With Or Without God [Paperback]

This is not a book for someone who's "comfortable" with their traditional understanding of church, God, Jesus and Christianity. Don't bother reading it - you'll just get angry.

For those of us who are NOT "comfortable" with the traditional understandings of these things this is an amazing book. For those of us who are still active in church it is challenging, even to those who might consider themselves liberal or progressive (as I do).

Vosper builds on the work of recent scholars and theologians such as Spong, Borg, Crossan, and Geering, to boldly state not only what most liberal Christians believe/doubt (God is not a being, there is no heaven or hell, the Bible is not inerrant - it has good, bad and ugly bits, Jesus was not God, Jesus was not a blood sacrifice to wash away sin, etc...) but to challenge us to envision what a "faith" could look like once it jettisons all the "unnecessary" dogmatic and institutional baggage we've accumulated on our 2,000 year journey.

Some of this "baggage" is as comforting as Linus' "security blanket" and will be just as hard for some people to live without! Can we no longer pray and expect God to respond? Can we no longer expect to go to heaven and see our dog Fluffy and all our loved ones? Can we no longer assume that we are the "one true" religion? Isn't Jesus the saviour of the world??

Vosper's great insight, in my opinion, which is perhaps not original to her, but she expounds the principle well, is that things like love, relationship, compassion, justice, and community have intrinsic value of their own - they don't need divine sanction to have worth. A group of humanists, working to provide better access to government services for a disadvantaged group is doing sacred work according to Vosper. God IS compassion, not some gray-bearded man in the sky.

Vosper goes way beyond where I thought progressive Christianity could go in my lifetime, but that's what separates the prophets from the rest of us.

This book is recommended for anyone who still holds out hope for the human community and our ability to work together "faithfully" holding to shared respect for common values such as dignity, justice and integrity. When the Christian church becomes such a community the "heaven on earth" world envisioned by Jesus will be a step closer to reality.

I would have preferred a rating of 6 or 10 stars, but the Amazon system sets a maximum of only 5.

This book, and Barrie Wilson's book "How Jesus became Christian: St. Paul, the Early Church and the Jesus Cover-up" should become the two most important religious books of the decade.

Recently, some Atheist, Agnostic, and other authors in the U.S. have gone beyond the traditional concept concept of God and have attempted to demolish Christianity through the use of hate and sarcasm. These two Canadian authors have taken a positive path that may lead to the advancement of Christianity in a new form.

Ms. Vosper shows how traditional Christianity's main function is to provide a pacifier for its members in order to give them a sense of security in a frightening world. She shows how scientific knowledge has sprinted forward over recent centuries while theology continues to be confined and immobilized within ancient structures. This way leads to irrelevance and continued decline. Vosper provides an exciting progressive alternative.

If you can afford to buy only one book this year, choose this one!

This courageous book demands honesty and integrity of people of faith -
Honesty, to own up to what scholarship has shown us about the contents and formation of biblical writings, especially the New Testament, over the past century. Not everything that the later gospels say Jesus said did he actually say: some writing over was in play as gospel writers addressed the issues of their own day some 40 to 70 years after the death of Jesus. So no secret pact between pastor and people not to fess up to the hard questions.
Integrity for having the courage to revise fundamentals, to envision faith as an exciting journey and a fascinating exploration - not a fixed destination. Imagine a faith oriented around values, communities of action and personal patterns of behaviour that actually make a difference in the world. That's the hard work of faith -- helping to create the Kingdom of God, assisting in the repair of the world, pitching in to help bring people together, encouraging and sustaining people in hope and driving away the feelings of helplessness and despair.
This is truly an insightful, moving book that challenges and produs us to move forward on our own spiritual journeys. It's a fascinating read for anyone who wants to think through their own faith commitments. It's well written with superb examples.