Bøker av Rupert Shortt

While talk of Christianity's decline needs qualifying (the Christian faith continues to expand at a global level) it is incontestable that the faith falters in its Middle Eastern and European heartlands, meaning not just the retreat of religion from the public square - external hostility, and a weak response from ecclesiastical ranks, are mutually reinforcing - but also the thinning out of religion itself.   Public spaces have been largely evacuated of Christian presence as the state's ability to meet people's material needs has increased. Different dynamics are at work in various European countries - notably France, Germany and Spain - but the family resemblances are substantial. The Church has been left asking what it still has to talk about as the credibility of its own metaphysical claims has been diluted. Many people grant the positive role played by Europe's Christian heritage in raising us to the branches on which we now perch, but still think that the ladder can be kicked away. People with very little cultural memory of Christianity begin to ask Why should we care? And Is belief in God credible in the first place? Yet the secularist still cuts corners in inferring that the Church has done its job and can now fade away. Based on solid reportage and canvassing a broad range of views - giving due weight both to genuinely positive aspects of progressive politics and ways in which unaccountable ecclesiastical power needs to be challenged - Shortt nevertheless argues that the Churches are seriously underselling themselves. Representing the largest source of social capital on earth, they have a much stronger message than they themselves often recognize. Of course, Britain and other European countries are multicultural. Theocracy and other forms of authoritarianism should be shunned. But Christian values represent humanity's best hope. Clerics and other representatives should be saying so far more robustly.

"God is no thing, but not nothing." These words from the renowned thinker Herbert McCabe point to a fallacy at the heart of New Atheist polemics against religion: the deity rejected by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and their followers is not God as taught in classical tradition, but merely a blown-up thing. From this basic error flow many more misunderstandings about Christianity and other creeds. As a result, debate on life's biggest questions has grown vitriolic as well as confused. The problem is all the more acute because religion refuses to fade away. Even though parts of the Western world now appear almost totally secularized, Christianity remains the most potent worldview on earth alongside Islam. Globalization and democratization have only strengthened the two faiths still further. In this hard-hitting but constructive book, Rupert Shortt argues that Christianity is a much more coherent, progressive body of belief -- philosophically, scientifically and culturally -- than often supposed by its critics. Alert to the menace posed by religious fundamentalism, as well as to secularist blind spots, he shows how a self-critical faith is of huge consequence to wider human flourishing.

A timely and succinct critique that exposes the main flaws in Dawkins's latest book - including his weakness for crude caricatures, his philosophical illiteracy and other mistakes and muddles - while also demonstrating the coherence of a mature, self-critical faith and its contribution to human progress.

Investigation of the debates on religious conflict.

The aim of this book is twofold: One is to counter the huge weight of column inches being spent on the perceived, and actual, persecution of Islam. The second is to turn up the volume on the side of Christians rather than Atheists (a position which has been underpinned so vociferously by Dawkins et al in recent times).In fact there have been - and still are - many terrible stories of murder, oppression and persecution of Christians around the world, in East Timor, Burma, Egypt, China, Iran, and many other countries. The reason we don't hear much about them, says the author, is the fear of giving offence; the fact young Christians don't become radicalised; and persecuted Christians tend not to respond with violence. Yet Christians are persecuted in greater numbers than any other global religious body, and this fact is severely under-recognised.It looks likely interfaith relations will be a major challenge of the 21st century, and harmony between religions is looking pretty remote. Why are faiths now so associated with violent conflict? Why has the communications revolution had a deeper impact on Islam than on Christianity? Why is there a tendency to associate Christianity with the West, and with overt/covert forms of colonialism? Just how insular and prejudiced are we in the West about Christians abroad?