Faith and its Critics - Book Review

There is something reassuring in the intellectual rigour of David Fergusson’s faith in his just published new book Faith and its Critics (Oxford University Press ISBN 978-0-19-956938). Based on the 2008 Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Glasgow, this slim, readable, volume faces Christianity’s critics head on. Intriguingly, Fergusson suggests that a lot of modern atheism is an English language movement conducted through blogs and websites. And the fact that he estimates that there may be around 500 million atheists in the world – making them the fourth largest “religion” – underlines that we cannot take their arguments and theories of faith and religion at all lightly. But this book is full of confidence. It asserts the particular and unique dimensions of faith and urges Christians to fight their corner with positive arguments. The latter part of the book, focussing on the importance of sacred texts in religion, interested me most. Reminding the reader that most religious texts are “embedded in the cultural circumstances and assumptions of historical periods very different to our own” Fergusson focuses rather on interpretation as the key – “the task of interpreting sacred texts is therefore an unavoidable responsibility of the faith communities.” A fascinating book for students, clergy and laity.
Rob Marshall