Jim Palmer

Jim September 22nd, 2011

Hi, I’m Jim Palmer and I’m an author.

My Masters of Divinity degree is buried in a box beneath my bed. It’s a remnant from my former life as a successful Senior Pastor. That was before I walked out on institutional church and organized religion to find out what was real about my relationship with God. I’ve been chronicling my spiritual journey since 2006 beginning with Divine Nobodies: Shedding Religion to Find God (and the unlikely people who help you), and then Wide Open Spaces: Beyond Paint-by-Number Christianity. My new book, Being Jesus in Nashville will be out in February, 2012.

WARNING: REJECTED BY A MAJOR CHRISTIAN PUBLISHER

I should be dead, and this book would have never been published. Many of you know of my two near-death experiences that occurred while writing my third book. I set out to disentangle Jesus from the religious machinery of Christianity and discovered a profound and unexpected answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” I devoted more than a year of my life to live as Jesus and learned that Jesus was special not because he was more divine than the rest of us, but because he was courageously more human than most. Unfortunately that message didn’t go over well with my publisher.

When I started writing this book, it was under contract with a major Christian publishing house. This book and its message was rejected on the grounds that it lay “outside the bounds of biblical, orthodox Christianity.” After some introspection and soul searching I decided to share my story and message by self-publishing this book. Kind of scary; never done this before!

THE DIVINE NOBODIES TRIBE

My loyal tribe has shared this journey with me the last several years. They are ordinary people, mostly from a Christian background, including atheists, who have been shedding religion and no longer support the view of Jesus promoted by the institutional church – one that leads to condemning people of other faiths, forces Christians to adopt beliefs and practices they often cannot live up to or support in good conscience, and requires people to promote a message that divides human beings in the name of Jesus, in the name of God.

We believe that Jesus stood for the inherent, equal, and divine worth of every human being, including standing for your own greatness no matter what. It involves courageously working towards a world that works for each and every divine nobody on the planet. Like these two ordinary folks:

Joe, a fireman who survived 9/11, remembers Catholic school, namely Sister Agnistine’s class, involved getting the crap kicked out of him leaving him with a distorted view of God as harsh and angry instead of loving and kind. “My journey has taken me to the place where I want to know God more intimately and I believe the way to do so is to remove all the ‘religious stuff’.”

Lynn is a counselor whose been working at a county correctional facility for the last 20 years. “I read Divine Nobodies recently after having it on my client bookshelf for the last 3 yrs. I needed the confirmation [your book] gave. I am a lesbian who will be marrying (in NY State) the gal I have been with for the last 15 yrs. I am thrilled but a couple of friends who are very religious have tried to piss on my parade with their fears for my spiritual health. I just wanted to thank you for being a fellow spiritual buddy and I will checkout your blog, the other book you have written and the one that you recently have written. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jim !!!!! Hugs, Lynn”

THE CHALLENGE

My mission to empower the oneness of all humanity is to self-publish and freely market Being Jesus in Nashville to news outlets, social media and more. My first two books, Divine Nobodies and Wide Open Spaces, published through Thomas Nelson Publishers, reached over 40,000 readers. But now I don’t have the machinery or the usual teamwork of a publishing house to market and promote this book and message.

If Divine Nobodies or Wide Open Spaces were meaningful to you and your journey, if my presence online through my blog, Facebook and Twitter has added something to your life, if you believe in what this book and campaign is about, I want to personally ask that you join the cause and share the book with your friends, social network and tribe. Feel free to email me at jim@divinenobodies.com.

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