radicals, and humanists...religion

                                                                   

Nathan Schneider interviews Terry Eagleton on his new book, " Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate." Eagleton enters in the midst of the noise from both sides with what he calls, " a version of the Christian Gospel relevant to radicals and humanists. In a part of the interview Nathan asks Terry...

 Rather than focusing on “believers” or “atheists,” which are typically the categories that we hear about in the new atheist debates, you write about “a version of the Christian gospel relevant to radicals and humanists.” Who are these people? Why do you choose to address them?

Terry: I wanted to move the arguments beyond the usual, rather narrow circuits in order to bring out the political implications of these arguments about God, which hasn’t been done enough. We need to put these arguments in a much wider context. To that extent, in my view, radicals and humanists certainly should be in on the arguments, regardless of what they think about God. The arguments aren’t just about God or just about religion.

 Are you urging people to go to church, or to read the Bible, or simply to acknowledge the historical connections between, say, Marxism and Christianity?

Terry: I’m certainly not urging them to go to church. I’m urging them, I suppose, to read the Bible because it’s very relevant to radical political concerns. In many ways, I agree with someone like Christopher Hitchens that most religion is fairly hideous and purely ideological. But I think that Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are gravely one-sided about the issue. There are other potentials in the gospel and in the Christian tradition which are, or should be, of great interest to radicals, and radicals haven’t sufficiently recognized that. I’m not trying to convert anybody, but I am trying to show them that there is something here which is in a certain interpretation far more radical than most of the mainstream political discourses that we hear at the moment.

You can read the transcript of the interview ( HERE ), all very interesting, but I don't think he has the weight to knock Hitchens or Dawkins out of the ring. Fascinating he brings the gospel into the conversation as a bridge...very interesting.