Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

GOD IS NOT GREAT:  HOW RELIGION POISONS      EVERYTHING By    Christopher Hitchens Reviewed by    Geoffrey W. Sutton Hitchens begins his pungent polemic against religion by explaining how he came to question religious teaching as a child (chapter 1). Following a  deconversion experience  associated with a teacher's simplistic description  of reality covered with a simple religious gloss,  Hitchens reflects upon perceived oddities in scripture and child-abusing clergy. Next,  Hitchens adumbrates his thesis as:  four irreducible objections to religious faith: 1. that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original 2. error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, 3. that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and 4. that is ultimately grounded on with-thinking. (p. 4) Hitchens covers familiar grounds in his attack of religious faith with each chapter a blow

THE CASE FOR GOD            By Karen Armstrong. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton Karen Armstrong is a leader in religious affairs. A former Roman Catholic nun, she is a best-selling British author with demonstrated expertise in the monotheistic faiths. In addition to her many speaking engagements, she is a United Nations Ambassador for the Alliance of Civilizations. The Case for God is a misnomer. In the introduction, Armstrong explains her plan to review the history of religious thinking, which illustrates her theme that worldviews have changed in recent decades. Before the age of reason, people sought meaningful ways to view life events; hence, mythos provided guidance and functioned as a primitive psychology. As people learned ways to control their lives and the environment, a greater emphasis on logos (reason) developed. Eventually, these two perspectives appeared disparate. An important part of her thesis is the notion that belief has changed. Religion has bee

A Review of Marcus Borg’s  Reading the Bible Again for the First Time :  Taking the Bible Seriously but Not literally . By Geoffrey W. Sutton   My earliest memory of a conflict between the Bible and the observable world happened sometime in late childhood when I learned that the moon was not a light as it plainly said in my King James Version of Genesis 1:16. It was downhill from there. Like many of my friends, we learned a near literal interpretation of the Bible from parents with a limited education and churches where teachers shared a blend of fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Their application of select biblical laws, commandments, and rules to contemporary life seemed strangely arbitrary and unnecessarily restrictive. I should like to think Marcus Borg’s, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time , would have saved me considerable puzzlement—and likely some distress. I’ll say more later but first, a summary of Reading the Bible Again for the First Time . ****

SEX GOD EXPLORING THE ENDLESS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY     By Rob Bell Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton What Rob Bell Says about Sexuality and Christian Spirituality  When I was writing A House Divided , I read Bell’s book, Sex God , as part of my quest to see what various evangelical Christians have said on the subject. Bell, a graduate of Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary, founded the evangelical Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Michigan. His bestselling books have sometimes promoted controversy within Christian cultures because of his nontraditional views on classic teachings about such doctrines as salvation. He has been associated with the emerging church movement. In my book, I cite Bell as an example of the views of progressive Christians in contrast to those of conservative Christians. As with most of Bell’s writings, Sex God is an easy-to-read poetry-like collection of essays aimed at a general

Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind    by   Daniel C. Dennett &    Linda LaScola Reviewed by      Geoffrey W. Sutton I recently spoke with a seminary student who mentioned his interest in deconversion. Having studied Psychology of Religion for decades, I'm familiar with the topic both as a clinician and scientist. The conversation reminded me of a book I reviewed a few years ago. It turns out the review was accepted for publication but I cannot find evidence that it appeared in print so here's the review with the removal of some text that would have been for the academic publication. ******** Have you ever listened to someone disclose their deep spiritual doubts? In Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Faith Behind , Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola systematically disclose and analyze the deconversion experiences of 35 clergy and seminary interviewees who participated in their qualitative study. Encouraged by a pilot study in 2010, the authors pursued a br