Doubts and Loves
What is Left of Christianity
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“A sensitive, brave and inspiring book” exploring the state of modern Christianity from the international bestselling author of Leaving Alexandria (Karen Armstrong).
A prize-winning author and former Bishop for the Scottish Episcopal Church, Richard Holloway has written extensively on the role of religion in modern society. Now, in this passionate and heartfelt book, Holloway interrogates the traditional ways of understanding the Bible. In doing so he demonstrates the power of the great Christian stories as they apply today, so far removed from their antiquated settings.
Holloway’s sophisticated and sensitive approach provides a blueprint for living with faith that takes the core teachings of the Christian past and invigorates them with renewed power for today’s world. The result is “an exhilarating book. It is not every day that you encounter a person of Richard Holloway’s experience wrestling with the very foundations of his chosen way of life. This in itself gives the book a tone of urgency” (The Scotsman, UK).
This edition of Doubts and Loves includes a new afterword by the author.
“I don’t know when I have been more impressed, indeed, excited, by a work…It answers the seemingly tormenting questions in a completely satisfying way.”—Ruth Rendell
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following in the footsteps of John A.T. Robinson and John Shelby Spong, Holloway, formerly Bishop of Edinburgh, shows why Christianity often seems irrelevant to the contemporary world and what it must do to retain its vitality. Traditional Christian doctrines such as original sin, hell, the resurrection of Christ and the inerrancy of the Bible have no power in the modern world, says Holloway, because they fail to emphasize the central meaning of the Christian faith. These doctrines, preached by an institutional religion that often requires literal adherence to the creed, have made the Christian faith into a theology of death. Instead, he argues, Christianity is really a theology of life that consists of imitating the self-sacrificial and subversive actions of Jesus, particularly his love of the unlovely and unloved and his forgiveness of those condemned by society. Attentive to what he believes are these central elements of authentic Christian faith, Holloway recasts Christian doctrines in their light. Arguing that a literal belief in Christ's resurrection from the dead is not necessary to the Christian faith, he suggests that it is more meaningful to think of resurrection as simply a transformation and to help others bring new life to communities still held in the grip of death. Thus, for example, black South Africans experienced resurrection after apartheid was dismantled. Holloway's book will certainly appeal to followers of Matthew Fox and Spong, but his unoriginal thesis offers no particularly new or illuminating insights that haven't already been revealed more engagingly and fully by these others.
