Atheism, Fundamentalism and the Protestant Reformation
Uncovering the Secret Sympathy

Examines the idea that new atheism and Protestant fundamentalism have the same historical origin, and share a range of surprising beliefs.

Liam Jerrold Fraser (Author)

9781108427982, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 19 July 2018

278 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

In this study of new atheism and religious fundamentalism, this book advances two provocative - and surprising - arguments. Liam Jerrold Fraser argues that atheism and Protestant fundamentalism in Britain and America share a common historical origin in the English Reformation, and the crisis of authority inaugurated by the Reformers. This common origin generated two presuppositions crucial for both movements: a literalist understanding of scripture, and a disruptive understanding of divine activity in nature. Through an analysis of contemporary new atheist and Protestant fundamentalist texts, Fraser shows that these presuppositions continue to structure both groups, and support a range of shared biblical, scientific, and theological beliefs. Their common historical and intellectual structure ensures that new atheism and Protestant fundamentalism - while on the surface irreconcilably opposed - share a secret sympathy with one another, yet one which leaves them unstable, inconsistent, and unsustainable.

1. The unfinished reformation
2. Things fall apart
3. An inductive theology
4. The secret sympathy
5. A house divided.

Subject Areas: Agnosticism & atheism [HRQA5], Humanist & secular alternatives to religion [HRQA], Alternative belief systems [HRQ], Theology [HRLB], Christian theology [HRCM], Religious fundamentalism [HRAM6], Religious issues & debates [HRAM], Religion & beliefs [HR]