A Religious Atheist?
Critical Essays on the Work of Lloyd Geering

Edited by Raymond Pelly & Peter Stuart

Key Points

• Guaranteed to appeal to the many dedicated readers of one of New Zealand's most celebrated intellectuals.
• A stimulating response to Geering's enquiry into the contemporary status and use of Christianity.
• A compelling critical survey of Geering's thought.

Book

During his lifetime, internationally celebrated New Zealand thinker and author Lloyd Geering has published numerous thought-provoking books on the nature of religious belief - and has also been tried for heresy (in 1967). This book critiques Geering's now well-known religious atheism in terms of its philosophical underpinnings.

The authors look at the justifications of 'Geeringism', in particular his rejection of the cognitive content (and other aspects) of Christian belief, and illuminate not only the specifics of his approach to the age-old question 'How are we to live?', but also the wider set of ideas from which such issues have arisen.

Contents

Introduction
1 Reading Lloyd Geering
2 Are Religious Beliefs Human Projections?
3 Secularisation: An Outmoded Concept?
4 Lloyd Geering and the End of Resurrection
5 Revisioning the Reality of God
6 Religion without God?
7 The Inventing of Myths, Gods and Paradise
8 Lloyd Geering without Church
9 Does Geering's Thought have a Mystical Side?
10 Secular Supersessionism: Geering, Jews and Judaism

Contributors

John Bishop, Ken Booth, Neil Darragh, Gregory W. Dawes, Peter Donovan, Kai Man Kwan, Christopher Lewis, Christopher D. Marshall, Paul Morris, Raymond Pelly, Peter Stuart

Author

Raymond Pelly (MA, DTheol) is Priest Associate at the Anglican Cathedral in Wellington. He has taught at St. John's College Auckland, the University of Massachusetts, and Westcott House, Cambridge. Recent publications include Auschwitz-Resurrection (2000), and Anchorhold. The Prayer of the Heart in Daily Life (2005). He is writing a book, Pilgrim to Unholy Places, which explores what meaning we can give to the 'sacred' in a radically de-sacralised world.

Peter Stuart (MA, NZ & Oxon) is an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Wellington, where he was Canon Theologian and Director of the Wellington Institute of Theology until recently. A historian and theologian, his interests include the theological education of lay and ordained people for ministry; and the relationship between Christianity and society, politics and higher education in New Zealand. He is also secretary to the Wellington Theological Consortium.

Publication details

Theology, Philosophy, Religious Studies
paperback, 230 x 150 mm, 200 pp approx,
ISBN-10 1 877372 37 4, ISBN-13 978 1 877372 37 7, $39.95
Publication Date: October 2006
Status: currently out of print