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Product Description
What is it about religion that, despite all odds, allows it to survive? In After God, the renowned scholar Don Cupitt considers the fate of religion, now that we have effectively killed off our gods. The author, a trained theologian and an ordained priest in the Church of England, takes us through the evolution of religious belief from the dawn of the gods to their twilightas well as to the morning after.Tracing the postmodern pilgrimage from traditional belief to cynicism to faith after God, Cupitt says we need to build a new religious vocabulary. He challenges us to see religion less as an ideology and more as a tool kit, a set of techniquesperhaps an art formenhancing our lives the way that literature and art do.”A heretic’s heretic” and ”an atheist priest,” Cupitt has respect for both skepticism and devotion. He neither accepts nor denies religion at face value; he takes faith to pieces, throws away what he can’t use, and assembles the remainder into new and extraordinary shapes, challenging us to creatively reshape it, give it new language, reinvent it.After God is for those who find it hard to be among the congregation of an orthodox religion but who miss the discipline and rewards of practicing a faith, and for the person who will understand Cupitt when he writes, ”I actually think that I love God more now that I know God is voluntary. Perhaps God had to die to purify our love for him.”
Amazon.com Review
Don Cupitt, professor of philosophy and religion, accepts Nietzsche's death knell for God and writes off the worldwide rise of conservative religious movements as a mere reactionary convulsion. The significance of religion for him lies not in faith but in the therapeutic value of orienting oneself in relation to a metaphysical otherness, even if it is only imaginary. Until now, the valuable existential techniques available in traditional religions have always demanded the prerequisite of faith. Cupitt's daring reformulation of religion drops this prerequisite and demands only a sincerity and creativity that can perpetually recreate modern global culture by drawing on all available religious traditions.
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