Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction: Mercy and sacrifice -- pt. 1. Unclean. Darwin and disgust -- Contamination and contagion -- pt. 2. Purity. Morality and metaphors -- Divinity and dumbfounding -- pt. 3. Hospitality. Love and boundaries -- Monsters and scapegoats -- Contempt and heresy -- Hospitality and embrace -- pt. 4. Mortality. Body and death -- Sex and privy -- Need and incarnation -- Conclusion: Elimination and regulation.

"I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Echoing Hosea, Jesus defends his embrace of the "unclean" in the Gospel of Matthew, seeming to privilege the prophetic call to justice over the Levitical pursuit of purity. And yet, as missional faith communities are well aware, the tensions and conflicts between holiness and mercy are not so easily resolved. At every turn, it seems that the psychological pull of purity and holiness tempts the church into practices of social exclusion and a Gnostic "flight" from the world into a "too spiritual" spirituality. In an unprecedented fusion of psychological science and theological scholarship, Richard Beck describes the pernicious (and largely unnoticed) effects of the psychology of purity upon the life and mission of the church.

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