Religious Postures

Sophisticated liberal Christians like to deride the crudities of Fundamentalism, but are their own positions any more defensible? Wells begins with the fundamentalists, taking as his chief example the sect of Jehovah's Witnesses. He shows how they twist biblical texts, ignoring the historical background of the Bible and the numerous contradictions it contains. Fundamentalism lives on ignorance of modern scriptural scholarship. Professor Wells summarizes the achievements of the pioneers in this area, W.M.L. de Wette and David Friedrich Strauss. In a striking parallel with some biblical stories, Wells examines the legend of William Tell, showing how it came to be accepted as history. Following a general survey of the liberal defense, the author gives an account of the ideas of influential modern apologists like Tillich, Collingwood, Bonhoeffer and Julian Huxley, with a merciless dissection of the apologetic use made of the confusions of German metaphysics. Professor Wells also discusses whether morality requires a religious sanction, whether atheism is reasonable and how religion manages to survive criticism.