The Trouble With God: Building the Republic of Heaven

by David Boulton

Millions of people living in the so-called Christian West long for a thoroughly modern, intellectually defensible, emotionally satisfying faith which will be unashamedly religious and spiritual in its commitment, but frankly secular in its relevance to this world and this age. Of such is the republic of heaven.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

Reviews

[Virtuella · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book vastly interesting from a British history point of view and it helped me understand, for example, how the Methodist Church became such a progressive church. There are many astute observations and profound insights, and it is, moreover, a well-written book that I enjoyed reading. However, I think Boulton makes a central mistake. What he calls the “biography of God” is merely the biography of human understanding of God. He thinks because God is not the Supreme Superdude in the Sky he envisaged when he grew up in a fundamentalist sect, it means that God doesn’t exist (rather than questioning whether “existence” is a term that should be applied to God at all) and that other interpretations of the word are meaningless. In his sketch of the history of Judaism and Christianity, he assumes that in the past people believed in the literal Superdude but now we know better. He is wrong. For one thing, sadly, there are still plenty people believing in the Superdude. More importantly, though, it is arrogant to say all the people of the past were likewise deluded. Absolutely not. There have always been people who knew that religious language is inherently figurative. First and foremost the biblical authors – whoever wrote Gen 1+2 certainly knew that they were not eye witnesses to creation and that what they were writing was a view of the world that made sense to them. If they knew it, others knew it. It is simply not true that prior to the English Revolution, everyone thought God was a literal man with superpowers. (Compare Mark Vernon "After Atheism” tracing this through medieval theology).

The book also remains, a few token comments aside, largely androcentric, Eurocentric and anthropocentric. The human who is in Boulton’s view the supreme being of the cosmos seems to be pale, male and stale for the most part.