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After God: The Future Of Religion (MasterMind) Hardcover – April 18, 1997

by Don Cupitt (Author)

9 customer reviews

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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 twilight—as 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 techniques—perhaps an art form—enhancing 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.”

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Product Details

Series: MasterMind
Hardcover: 160 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; 1st edition (April 18, 1997)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0465045146
ISBN-13: 978-0465045143
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,374,211 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2637 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Philosophy
- #2680 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Religious
- #3619 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Comparative Religion

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3.8 out of 5 stars

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2 star		11%
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Insightful look toward resolving the modern religious crises

By Jake Sapiens on December 10, 1999

Format: Hardcover

I think Don Cupitt makes some visionary steps toward outlining workable religious practice for the future. As a more secular thinker myself, I have always felt that religion as it endures today remains largely unworkable. Yet I have always felt that there remains a need for the roles that religion has filled in the past, even though I haven't felt clear on exactly how it might do so in a workable fashion. Don Cupitt shows some very plausible ways it might. He boils down religion to recurrent essentials, and tailors them together in a way that does not offend the sensibilities of rational thinking people.
He takes a very good metaphorical approach instead of getting bogged down in issues of literal existence where inevitable clashes with science would otherwise turn off more empirically minded people. I came to read his book after reading George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's "Metaphors we Live By" and "Philosophy in the Flesh." This gave me a much deeper appreciation for the metaphorical undertaking that Cupitt delves into as well as providing a deep context of cognitive science within which Cupitt's thinking manifestly makes a lot of sense. Fundamentalists and hard core atheists may not like his approach. I think otherwise most people will appreciate his thoughtfulness.
Cupitt points in the right direction with his emphasis on the linguistic, however he seems to lack the cognitive science background to flesh out those theories with the more primordial cognitive underpinning structure. Lakoff and Johnson prove good for that purpose. Of course that would have made his task unwieldy for such a concise and to the point book. Though he may not understand the things that he does, he does them well. After leaving his introductory reverie on language he delves into a masterful use of metaphorical thinking that much of the secular world could desperately use.

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The Unanswered Question

By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on September 4, 2003

Format: Hardcover

In 1906, the American composer Charles Ives wrote a short orchestral piece called "The Unanswered Question". He described the music as a "cosmic drama." The piece is indeed a musical picture of the human search for meaning and religion and a world full of skepticism about both. (Ives himself was a believer of a rather traditional sort.)
I thought of Ives, and his "Unanswered Question" in reading Don Cupitt's short study "After God". Cupitt is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and his written widely on religious subjects. He is the founder of the "Sea of Faith" movement, which is an attempt to provide meaning for religion in a non-theistic, non-traditional sense.
The book is modernistic in tone. It is addressed to the many people who attempt to find a form of religion in their lives separate from theism. In setting out his topic Cupit states: "Religious life is an expressive, world-building activity through which we can get ourselves together and find a kind of posthumous, or retrospective, happiness". (page xiv)
The book is in three parts. In the first part, "The Coming of the Gods", Cupitt tries to give a historical, genetic account of the origins of theistic belief, based on the development of cities and ruling hierarchies from more primitive hunting or agrarian societies. He finds both religion and early philosophy deriviative of this change in human social organization.
In the second section, "The Departure of the Gods" Cupitt explores the difficulties in the concept of a transcendent God separate from the imminent world of the everyday.Read more ›

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A stimulating summary of the religious era.

By A Customer on August 1, 1998

Format: Hardcover

It should be noted that this book is not an argument against organized religions, but is rather a description of their demise, along with what I will call an autopsy. It is a review of an already completed story. I am grateful to Don Cupitt for providing structure for my own vague and disjointed thoughts and convictions. This is a beautifully crafted book - an optimistic and forward looking view.

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Cupitt interesting as usual, but oversimplifies everything

By A Customer on February 27, 1999

Format: Hardcover

Don Cupitt is a Christian who does not believe in a God "out there", but a God who is part of the human reality. He has been publishing approximately a book a year since the late 1970s on what the implications of a "non-realist" God are for religion and Christianity. As the former Priest and Dean of Emmanuel College Cambridge (he is now retired), Don Cupitt's Christianity is not simply an intellectual position, but a practical part of his life.
The book is divided up into three parts: The Coming of the Gods, the Departure of the Gods and Religion After the Gods. This review will first summarise the book then discuss the issues it raises.
The Coming of the Gods deals with how God and the supernatural world were originally experienced. Soul was the principle of life, usually associated with blood and therefore usually embodied. Spirit on the other hand was usually not embodied, it was an active free-ranging power, sometimes helping sometimes tormenting. Spirits are sometimes called powers or energies. They are semi-personified, they are many of them (they are sometimes members of a "host" or "legion"), and they rarely have names. Angels and Demons are a little more personified - a few of the angels are given names, scarcely any devils. Spirits have five types of relationship with humans: humans can be filled with a spirit, a spirit may be a guardian, may inspire, indwell or possess you.
A "god" a symbol of a group. Cupitt argues that the earliest Old Testament traditions identify God as the "bull of Jacob" (Gen 49:24) (the NIV translates it as "Mighty One of Jacob" but Cupitt argues that this is because the translators find it too embarrassing find the God of the Old Testament as a tribal deity).Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Highly recommended

Intelligent and thought provoking. One of the best books on religion I have read. Embracing of deconstructionism is a minor flaw--minor because it is not a key topic.

Published 17 months ago by Orwellflash

After Spong

A challenging book indeed. Cupitt's challenge makes Spong's challenge seem easy, Spong's challenge, while not easy, seeming intellectually a far simple one for those of us who have... Read more

Published on April 5, 2008 by calmly

"After God"

Don't get me wrong, this is a god book for what Bishop John Shelby Spong would call "beleivers in exile", but at times the author comes off with a Eurocentric... Read more

Published on April 2, 2000

oh dear

Cupitt is one of these Christians who don't believe in God... hmm... while he writes very well and explains his position at length and with great literary talent, in terms of... Read more

Published on March 17, 2000

Was looking for insights, was disappointed

In reaction to the rise of science, the rise of the "global village," and the rise of religious fundamentalism, so many books are struggling over the disintegration of... Read more

Published on July 25, 1997 by Frank Paris

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