Overview

It is widely assumed that science is the enemy of religious faith. The idea is so pervasive that entire industries of religious apologetics converge around the challenge of Darwin, evolution, and the ""secular worldview."" This book challenges such assumptions by proposing a different cause of unbelief in the West: the Christian conscience. Tracing a history of doubt and unbelief from the Reformation to the age of Darwin and Karl Marx, Dominic Erdozain argues that the most powerful solvents of religious orthodoxy have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself. Revealing links between the radical Reformation and early modern philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and Pierre Bayle, Erdozain demonstrates that the dynamism of the Enlightenment, including the very concept of ""natural reason"" espoused by philosophers such as Voltaire, was rooted in Christian ethics and spirituality. The final chapters explore similar themes in the era of Darwin and Marx, showing how moral revolt preceded and transcended the challenges of evolution and ""scientific materialism"" in the unseating of religious belief. The picture that emerges is not of a secular challenge to religious faith, but a series of theological insurrections against divisive accounts of Christian orthodoxy.

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9780199844616

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Reviews

It is a great merit of Dominic Erdozain's book that it provides an approachable and well-wrought account of the development of such pluralism over the past 500 years Writing with great verve and passion, Erdozain is tireless in assembling texts and citations to support his various interpretations. --Times Literary Supplement The Soul of Doubt is a pleasure to read if you are at all interested in intellectual history, the roots and development of modern Western culture, and the role of religion, especially Christianity, in all that...This is a far-reaching and wide-ranging book that covers a lot of ground. Erdozain has shed new light, a new perspective, on modernity. --Patheos Compelling and absorbing reading. Judiciously researched and lucidly, often deliciously, argued, The Soul of Doubt is a 500-year sweep of elegant simplicity. --Christian Century Intriguing...This is an elegantly written, well-argued book. Highly recommended. --CHOICE This is the most important book on religious doubt in the modern West since Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. --Timothy Larsen, author of Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England The Problem of Pleasure established Erdozain as one of the most original and provocative new voices in modern Christian history, and specifically in the history of secularisation. This tour de force of incisive argument and wide-ranging erudition confirms his reputation. Others have suggested that the most powerful critiques of Christian orthodoxy have been primarily moral, indeed religious, but no-one has pursued this argument so consistently and across three centuries. --Hugh McLeod, author of The Religious Crisis of the 1960s This wide-ranging book offers a compelling account of the Christian roots of secularism. It skillfully blends intellectual history with the 'raw fuel' of human, historically-located lived experience, a force that Erdozain terms 'conscience.' The text sparkles with thought-provoking analogies and metaphors, and it establishes Erdozain's reputation as one of the most accomplished scholars of religion writing about the post-Reformation world. --Frances Knight, Associate Professor in the History of Modern Christianity, the University of Nottingham, UK Erdozain's argument is as relentless as it is well substantiated and unerringly illustrated. --Christian Century Erdozain's book accomplishes what good intellectual history should: it forces us to reconsider positions we had been taught to think were obvious. --Science, Religion, and Culture Erdozain executes his task with skill and verve. He possesses a delightful felicitous style that makes him a pleasure to read...an impressive performance, which should be considered required reading for anyone seeking a rounded understanding of religious belief and unbelief in the early modern and modern periods...the book is undoubtedly an outstanding achievement. ... Erdozain provides an invaluable-indeed indispensable-contribution to the rich and evolving tapestry that constitutes our historical reconstruction of the relationship between religion and secularism. --Reading Religion

This is the most important book on religious doubt in the modern West since Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. --Timothy Larsen, author of Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England The Problem of Pleasure established Erdozain as one of the most original and provocative new voices in modern Christian history, and specifically in the history of secularisation. This tour de force of incisive argument and wide-ranging erudition confirms his reputation. Others have suggested that the most powerful critiques of Christian orthodoxy have been primarily moral, indeed religious, but no-one has pursued this argument so consistently and across three centuries. --Hugh McLeod, author of The Religious Crisis of the 1960s This wide-ranging book offers a compelling account of the Christian roots of secularism. It skillfully blends intellectual history with the 'raw fuel' of human, historically-located lived experience, a force that Erdozain terms 'conscience.' The text sparkles with thought-provoking analogies and metaphors, and it establishes Erdozain's reputation as one of the most accomplished scholars of religion writing about the post-Reformation world. --Frances Knight, Associate Professor in the History of Modern Christianity, the University of Nottingham, UK

Author Information

Dominic Erdozain is a visiting scholar at Emory University. His first book The Problem of Pleasure: Sport, Recreation and the Crisis of Victorian Religion was published in 2010.

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