Review
In this fascinating and thoughtful book, Brian Mountford explores the borderland where Christians and atheists gaze at each other with expressions ranging from the hostile and scornful to the friendly and sympathetic. In some ways it is the most interesting place in contemporary religion. Mountford has an extensive knowledge of this borderland, and in the interviews and reflections in this book he explores it in the company of some eloquent and thoughtful contemporaries. --(Philip Pullman, author and self-confessed Christian Atheist)
Product Description
The key to the book is a set of interviews with people who fall broadly into the Christian Atheist category; some are more agnostic and less sceptical than others, but what they have in common is the rejection of traditional belief in God, counterbalanced by an admiration for the aesthetic genius of Christianity (leading to a sense of deeper value), the Christian moral compass, and in some cases the community aspect of Christian life. As one of his interviewees points out, you can?t have Christian atheism without mainstream, traditional Christianity, so Brian Mountford sets their comments within a broader discussion of the issues: God, aesthetics, orthodoxy, doubt and belief, ethics and communal values. His purpose is threefold: to validate and affirm the Christian atheist position within the broad spectrum of Christianity to say to the Church, you ignore this phenomenon at your peril to show that the distinction between atheist and religious adherent is rarely black and white, and that the ground between the two is a fertile source of meaning and value
About the Author
Interested in the clash between religious faith and doubt, Brian Mountford has worked in Oxford for 25 years as Vicar of the University Church and Fellow of St Hilda's College.
