Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense Paperback – October 7, 2014

A Christian pastor here on Amazon wrote about Unapologetic: "For my part, I thought the book was utter rot". And this phrase is almost the perfect summary of the sorry state of Christianity today, locked up in its 'unworldly' mindset where the idea of tapping into the culture of your time is equal to being 'worldly'.

Christ, however, as far as he can be known through the (3 oldest) gospels, really doesn't look to me like a guy who didn't understand his own time frame and culture. It would be much easier to make the case that Jesus may not have understood his religious leaders (although he probably did - and he was disgusted by what he saw). But when it comes to the culture of his time, Jesus seemed to really live among all those people. He looks like a perfect follower of St Francis of Assisi (although historically it's rather the other way round of course). What about the other Francis, who wrote this book? To me this book sounds like Jesus. Not so much the Jesus we encounter in Church, but the unapologetic, even dirty Jesus who didn't even mind touching the skin of lepers (if it's true what the gospels tell us). Wow, there you have one hell of an unorthodox guy isn't it? Even if Jesus didn't touch lepers, obviously people thought he was the kind of guy to do that. Very Unorthodox, very 'worldly'. I like people who love losers and sinners - the "ugly boy(s)" so to speak (to quote a song title by Die Antwoord). Yeah, that really smells like Jesus, and I think this is the kind of Jesus that mr Spufford is writing about.

To be honest, being atheist I'm well aware this is not necessarily good PR for Francis Spufford's book. Mr 'Christian pastor' might say: "See, he's even attracting atheists, how deep can a Christian sink?" -- But then, of course, who cares what a Christian pastor says anyway? We're not living in the heydays of Billy Graham anymore. Today, one video of Lady Gaga has more impact than the whole career of mr Graham - and those artists are at least somewhat more in touch with their time, their culture, the people. When Lady Gaga spends one night defending LGBT people as human beings who deserve respect just like anyone else, she's on the side of the outcasts at least - which is Jesus' side (as far as I can see). Or, take another artist, Brian, better known as Marilyn Manson... Once during a debate with Bill Maher, a super-Christian lady was boasting about her purity, and at some point she said to Brian: "You are not Jesus" (meaning he's not good like Jesus). But another lady (not a Christian) replied: "You can't say that - he [Marilyn Manson] may have more Jesus in him than you"... Ahhh, she was so right.

Marilyn Manson by the way is just a good guy in real life - but he is not someone who pretends he can save the world. So indeed, he is not Jesus. But we all know that Jesus didn't reach out to people "who were like Jesus" anyway! Jesus did not love people "who were like him". The wonderful thing about Jesus is that apparently this man loved those who were nothing like him at all. And he said "Do not judge, lest you be judged". And why does that sound so very "unchristian" today? Ah - there we are again, at the real reason why Francis Spufford's book can be attractive to non-Christians too. He writes in a tradition that reminds me of Robert W.Funk's book "Honest to Jesus" - without knowing it perhaps. This book brings us back to what we may call "the real Jesus", the one that most people who read the gospels do recognize, even while they may reject the "politically [and religiously] correct Jesus". When dogma's are silenced, there is still always reality. You can't fool all those hundreds of millions of people who, in their typical "folk religion" kind of way, have always recognized the real Jesus behind the dogma's - the humane Jesus. Those are the people who were never fully aligned behind official church doctrines. They saw, and felt, a Jesus who really comforted them. Most Christians never really cared about things like the "Trinity". Why would they. But Jesus, as a human being? That was something entirely different.

And this is what may indeed also attract an atheist to such a Jesus - and therefore to a book like this. Of course we don't buy into the whole shebang - like Jesus' deity, the virgin birth, and so on - the things typically found in the gospel which was so clearly written by Jewish Mystics no earlier than the end of the first century. But I don't think the Jewish writers were idiots either - they had 30 billion brain cells too. And another thing: not all atheists are falling to their knees in awe of Richard Dawkins and his new atheists either. Francis is totally correct in this book as he points out how the new atheists hardly seem to scratch the surface of what religion really means to people. In a way most of us are 'religious' in the sense of anticipating certain hopes with a certain acceptance of possibilities, be it atheists or others, we often believe in (or at least hope for) the 'meaning' or meaningfulness of certain things (like the universe) even without having any evidence for that. And the narcissistic creatures who are roaming through social networks since the heydays of Myspace (and since the '4 horsemen' started their campaign for a 'new atheism'), always looking for easy victims, often in debate they created themselves (like a 'honeypot'), where they can easily humiliate and dehumanize a believer with all sorts of 'new atheist wisdom', those have never been helpful either.

Being atheist doesn't mean being unable to respect certain things in religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, etc. Being an atheist doesn't mean I will treat science like something 'atheistic', and treat all believers like they are all unable to deal with science - and always try to position science as something that "defeats religion". Because this simply is not true. Science can investigate the human condition, and when it does, we usually find out there is a deep, human need for certain things that religions often provide for. Well, that's interesting. Atheists like Alain de Botton have explained that (ref. his book "Religion for Atheists"). Karen Armstrong recently wrote a book about religion and violence (it's called "Fields of Blood"). She's one of the best authorities on religion and I would call her an agnostic. She makes the point that violence is not a product of religion, but almost always a product of politics, or tribal fears (usually in a political context). And she, too, points out in many of her books that religion is the product of a deep human need. Technology is often used for profits and tends to alienate us from who we are as human beings. Being hostile to religion won't solve that problem, that's just closing our eyes for the real causes.

An atheist too can have both feet on the ground. When I look around, I see is some 7.3 billion people who all try to make sense of their lives. Who am I to blurt out one liners like "religion poisons everything"? But those 'new atheist' phrases make Christians like Francis write a book like Unapologetic. There is a lot in this book to like, lots of good thinking.

Do I believe Francis Spufford has it all right? No. He apparently believes that Christianity is somehow inherently true. But he doesn't push that in your face all the time - so the book is really readable also for an atheist. The way I see it is, of course, different. I believe that the wisdom teachings attributed to Jesus (preferably read through the lens of historical text criticism - which leaves a number of passages in the gospels highly doubtful, but others very likely authentic) - that those words of wisdom are "true", in the same way that the Buddha or the Dalai Lama and many others have said things that testify of deep wisdom. So in this sense I could be an "atheist for Jesus" if you like.

I also don't think Francis Spufford is a guy like Dinesh D'Sousa - who wrote a book years ago called "What's So Great About Christianity" - but that book bears the hallmarks of fundamentalism, while the book by Spufford does not. The subtitle of Unapologetic is far more subtle: "Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense". To me this sounds much more humble, more down to earth.

I would nevertheless recommend also reading at least a book like "With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe" (by Gretta Vosper). It is good to realize that Christians exist in many forms, and Gretta Vosper (like John Shelby Spong and many others) is one who does not believe in God anymore (certainly no literal Abrahamic God) - but she does understand why the Christian message (or at least parts of it) still make so much sense far beyond the boundaries of the Christian belief system. And this is something I also see in Unapologetic - because, while Francis seems to believe in God, he also believes that the question whether God exists or not is the least relevant of all questions. In this, I see a strong connection with everyone who has (finally!) understood that Christianity can be much more about human beings than about God.

This may not be a very pleasing message for the Christian 'pastors' and 'ministers' out there, but then again: who cares? Should we let certain self-proclaimed christians run away with a stolen Jesus, deformed to the needs of orthodoxy? Or shall we claim Jesus back from their hands, to where he probably really belongs: in those places where people love real wisdom and mercy, compassion, forgiveness - the things most of us will easily recognize in the Jesus of the first 3 gospels? Atheists could do a much better job than making a fool of Jesus. When we try to get back to "the real Jesus" (the humble, humane Jesus), we can be sure a lot of Christians around would be among our best fellow fighters.

I consider Unapologetic a highly recommendable book.

The first chapter or so was brilliant. The writing in general sparkles. The forays into exegesis of the Gospels faltered so badly that I almost awarded just two stars. But that first chapter has stuck in my mind and provided some very valuable perspective.

The best book I have ever read on Christian faith as a kind of emotional trust rather than cognitive belief. There is no apology, as either cognitive defense or obsequious appeasement; rather there is an explanation of Christian faith as an emotional and spiritual phenomenon. It is neither conservative nor liberal in theology, although I suspect that people who strongly identify as either of these orientations will each accuse the writer of being either an overt enemy or covert collaborator. The writing style is cynical and witty for me, although strongly conservative Christians in particular (or those who prefer polite and inoffensive literature) may find it offensive in parts. Certainly, the language includes swear words, perhaps more than necessary to achieve a purely provocative effect. Overall, I found the book stimulating and inspirational. Inevitably, those who believe that it is both necessary and possible to assert and defend "the Truth" of Christianity will lament the fact that the author defiantly refuses to go down that road. I'm with him on that point.

One test of the intellectual honesty of someone expressing their views on a contentious issue, such as the validity of religious faith, is how well he or she can present the opposing point of view in a way that those who hold it would regard as being fair and accurate (a criterion which "new atheists" always seem blissfully unconcerned with). By this standard, I think Spufford has written a remarkably good defense of Christianity in terms of its current cultural challenges (at least as far as they appear in England and the U.S.). More conservative believers may be put off by his occasional use of profanity (which, rightly or wrongly, he wields for specific effect), but I think few would deny that he's a very gifted writer, and he has a real knack for describing significant issues and experiences in profoundly human terms. There were a number of times in this book when I found him expressing aspects of my own faith experience more eloquently than I'd ever encountered before. My few complaints with this book include its title, which strikes me as rather clunky and propagandistic -- completely at odds with the elegant thoughtfulness of its prose -- and which probably guarantees that it won't be read by many who might have found it enlightening. I also was dismayed by what I found to be an overly condensed and simplistic treatment of theodicy (though I agree with Spufford's point that this issue ultimately appears very different to those outside an experience of faith vs. those within one). And it bothered me that in attempting to be open-minded and reasonable, Spufford at times lets his faith seem rather lukewarm and overly-accommodating (always a challenge for those of us on the liberal side of a religion). In reality, of course, faith is as deeply felt, complex, provocative and challenging as its equally human twin, doubt.