“Ron Byars should receive a citation for honesty,” esteemed theologian Walter Brueggemann reckons, this in his take on Believer on Sunday, Atheist by Thursday; in this recent book [2019], its author is “pulling no punches,” he adds. As when Byars writes, disarmingly, “When we try to explain it [our faith], we cannot help being very much aware that our explanations might not actually explain anything to…that part of ourselves that craves to know it all, uneasy with mystery.”
In his review for Presbyterian Outlook, Chris Currie reckons, “While faith may make a difference on Sunday, by Thursday we are on our own in a world ruled by…religious skeptics.” The book, he continues, “takes the substance of faith seriously, and tries to articulate that substance and identity and appeal for our own age. Especially on Thursdays.”
Professor emeritus of preaching and worship at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, Byars, who spent many years in pastoral ministry, “wants to help us embrace an adult Christian faith in the face of cultural disdain,” Fleming Rutledge observes. This Episcopal priest adds, “This uncommonly well-written analysis of what ails the mainline churches in our day is an electric charge of a book.”
Believer on Sunday, Atheist by Thursday: Is Faith Still Possible?
By Ronald Byars
Cascade Books, 2019
The previous Featured Book, Scotty McLennan’s Christ for Unitarian Universalists: A New Dialogue with Traditional Christianity, is now available in the Library.
