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The central portion of Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith lays out the New Perspective on The Church - which is no longer new. It is broad brush summarized as follows:

Jesus taught and enacted a kingdom vision.

His immediate followers were committed to this vision

Paul's disavowal of the necessity to submit to Jerusalem demonstrates that it was Spirit driven

At its core the movement was a rebellion against human, particularly Roman, empire in favor of what could be - Kingdom of God

The diversity of texts found at Nag Hammadi among others demonstrate that belief in the early church was not uniform

The Gospel of Thomas is as old and as faithful as any of the four in the NT

Luke in Luke-Acts was setting forth a Christian epic to compete with the Aeneid and other epics

This community (ekklesia = gathering with political undertones) became distorted into a hierarchical church emphasizing beliefs and authority

→ The distortion is apparent as early as the first epistle of Clement (ca. 92 AD)

→ The distortion develops through Tertullian and Origin and Cyprian 

→ The distortion crystallized with Roman favor and Constantine

The council at Nicaea, far from being a sober and Spirit led occasion marked the end of the beginning. The transition was complete.

Meanwhile the Christian bishops went on debating the fine points of theology, Now they argued over what homoousious really meant and the nature of Mary's relationship to God and Christ. They composed more creeds and excommunicated more people. After the fall of Rome in 476, the ensuing centuries toll a dismal story if the repeated failure of using creeds and excommunications to achieve any result, except for further rancor. (p. 108)

So here is a question to ponder:

Which parts of Cox's perspective on the Church ring true - and which parts don't? How would you tell the story?