Don Cupitt

The period 800 to 200 BCE, the so called axial age, was the time when Old World pioneering philosophers and religious teachers laid down basic ideas by which people have been living ever since. John Cupitt observes that this we live in a second axial age -- an age of communication. Everything is accessible to everyone, and everyone can make a contribution. The world is therefore made and remade not by the individual genius, but by a change in the general consensus. Cupid describes the emerging religion and philosophy of the new axial age in clear and accessible language. He predicts that though it may seem very strange at first, we will learn to love it.… (más)

On Dover beach in the 1860s the English poet Matthew Arnold saw in the receding tide at dusk an image of the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. Twenty years later Nietzsche was proclaiming the death of God as an event that had taken place long before, but was still unrealized. The modern crisis of belief has deep roots. Don Cupitt shows how the rise in our science-based, democractic industrial society, of historical criticism and of knowledge of other religions has over the centuries slowly eroded the traditional framework of doctrinal belief--leaving us, as it seems to many, free, alone, and disoriented. But there is another story, for Cupitt also shows a line of creative thinkers, from Pascal to Wittgenstein, responding to each new challenge as it has arisen. A new understanding of religion is emerging which Cupitt calls non-realist, for it is without dogma. Instead, Christianity is seen as a way, a spiritual path, and an ethic. Religion becomes more like an art, for it is a function of our primal capacity to generate stories, symbols, and meanings to live by.… (más)