"Creedal messianism" is Stephen Rose's original term for the belief system that the church, including original witnesses, created to obscure Jesus' iconoclastic understanding of the gospel.

Rose argues that messianism is a cruel virus which eats away at the very essence of selfhood.

In Beyond Creed he shows how messianism has hampered the veryprogress Jesus sought to bring about on earth.

Stephen C. Rose wrote the ground-breaking The Grass Roots Church in the 1960s and remains an articulate critic of mainline denominations in the US. His personal theological understanding has never been published until now. Rose lives and works in New York City.