The trouble with God - David Boulton

Millions of people living in the so-called "Christian West" want to be true to the teachings and values of the tradition they have inherited, but find it impossible to believe in the old ideas of God in His choir-filled Heaven and Satan in Hell-fire. They long for a thoroughly modern, intellectually defensible, emotionally satisfying faith which will be unashamedly religious and piritual in its commitment, but frankly secular in its relevance to this world and this age. David Boulton is both a humanist and a Quaker attender, and he argues in The Trouble with God that humanism and a reasonable faith are not the enemies and opposites they are often imagined to be. Modern humanism, the wider humanitarian movement and western concepts of human rights are all rooted in Christian and religious values. We need both a humanism which cherishes the religious values of "mercy, pity, peace and love", and religion which has freed itself from supernaturalism to acknowledge that every faith-system is a wholly human creation.;Drawing on his own varied experiences as boy-evangelist, failed politician, peace campaigner, television producer and broadcasting watchdog, David Boulton puts a case for "radical religious humanism" and urges a fresh commitment by both believers and "devout skeptics" to the making of what he calls "the republic of heaven on earth".