You’ll bleed your way through this book!

Alister McGrath a former atheist with a hint of nostalgia for the bad old days in Northern Ireland will poke you till it hurts.

He’s smart enough to know that we all go nostalgic for the follies our adolescence. His happened to have happened outside of Christ and in the days of the Irish “troubles.” He’s also smart enough to know that Jesus Christ is the answer to the world and its woes…

However, he isn’t buying absolutist positions about God. Neither does he buy a faith devoid of imagery and imagination. In fact he pictures atheism thriving only when it captures human imagination. The halcyon days of atheism were the 19th Century when it was easy to “imagine” a world without God–one filled with human freedom and dignity. It was a make-believe world existing in the heart of Victorian England, and Europe, just before a real-life godless era dominated by the likes of Hitler and Stalin.

McGrath clearly lays the greatest bloodshed in history at the feet of the atheists. But he also pops us a good one for ceding ground to them throughout Reformation history.

Seems our forbears had a knack for sterilizing everything but the preaching. And even that gets pretty pedestrian. They killed art in the church (and out of it). Ironed every wrinkle of emotion out of church services. This left both gospel and church easy prey for their detractors.

McGrath sees hope in the joy and imagery of Pentecostalism in developing nations–especially as they export their exuberant, experiential faith to the developed West.

He warns against TC, or “Theologically Correct” speech as a near cousin to Politically Correct speech and just as destructive. Whenever the church spends its strength in cannibalism it is least appealing those those who need it most.

The book concludes with a prediction to the further rise of faith and the twilight of atheism. You’ll love McGrath even as he pokes his finger in your eye! A definite read-and-pass-along book!