Unbelievers : an emotional history of doubt

Title:

Author:

Ryrie, Alec, author.

Publication Information:

Cambridge, Massachusetts. : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, [2019]

Edition:

First Harvard University Press edition.

Format:

Books

Physical Description:

262 pages ; 22 cm

General Note:

"First published in Great Britain in 2019 by William Collins"--Title page verso.

Contents:

1. An age of suspicion: Impostors, drunkards and flat-earthers -- The fool's heart -- Physicians, 'naturians' and 'Nulla fidians' -- From ancient to modern -- 2. The Reformation and the battle for credulity: Calvin and the Epicures -- Between superstition and impiety -- 'Doubt wisely': from innocence to experience -- 3. The atheist's comedy: Incest, thunder and wishful thinking -- Shaking off the yoke -- The good atheist -- 4. The Puritan atheist: 'The monster of the creation' -- Horrid temptations -- Fear of flying -- Unbelievers -- 5. Seeking and losing faith: 'It's a great matter to believe there is a God' -- The spiritualists' progress -- Farther up and farther in -- Seeking a rock to build on -- 6. The abolition of God: The three impostors -- From then to now, I: anger -- From then to now, II: anxiety -- From Jesus to Hitler.

Summary:

"Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records. Ryrie traces the roots of atheism born of anger, a sentiment familiar to anyone who has ever cursed a corrupt priest, and of doubt born of anxiety, as Christians discovered their faith was flimsier than they had believed. As the Reformation eroded time-honored certainties, Protestant radicals defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics. In the process they set in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious age"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Faith and reason -- Christianity -- History.

Atheism -- Europe -- History.

Philosophy and religion -- Europe -- History.

Reformation.

Faith -- History.

ISBN:

9780674241824

Document ID:

SD_ILS:4259540

Availability:

Library	Call Number	Format	Status	Item Holds
Searching... Hingham Public Library	211.709 RYR	BOOK	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

"How has unbelief come to dominate so many Western societies? The usual account invokes the advance of science and rational knowledge. Ryrie's alternative, in which emotions are the driving force, offers new and interesting insights into our past and present."--Charles Taylor, author of A Secular Age

The award-winning author of Protestants offers a new vision of the birth of the secular age, looking to the feelings of ordinary men and women--so often left out of the history of atheism.

Why have societies that were once overwhelmingly Christian become so secular? We think we know the answer, but in this lively and startlingly original reconsideration, Alec Ryrie argues that people embraced unbelief much as they have always chosen their worldviews: through their hearts more than their minds.

Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records.

Ryrie traces the roots of atheism born of anger, a sentiment familiar to anyone who has ever cursed a corrupt priest, and of doubt born of anxiety, as Christians discovered their faith was flimsier than they had believed. As the Reformation eroded time-honored certainties, Protestant radicals defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics. In the process they set in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious age.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

This brief, entertaining volume from Ryrie (Protestants) explores the experience and practice of "unbelief" as it emerged in the modern Western cultures. He defines unbelief as a state of dissociation from or dissatisfaction with a dominant Christian religious narrative, and categorizes these responses as either an emotional story of anger or an anxiety that individuals put upon themselves. The former he considers a reaction against an overwhelmingly homogenous Christian society; the latter as the inability to keep one's faith as sturdy as one feels it should be. Ryrie begins with a careful discussion of the history and changing definitions of atheist and unbeliever, and his reasons for using these particular terms. The bulk of the work concerns unbelief in Western Europe in the centuries around the Reformation, through the experiences of Protestants, Catholics, and various breakaway groups that sought to locate belief outside the organized church. Wrapping in and analyzing the writing of Machiavelli, Christopher Marlowe, and Walter Raleigh, as well as lesser-known figures such as Hannah Allen, Ludovic Muggleton, and Caspar Schwenkfield, Ryrie's comprehensive research makes this a masterly piece of work. Ryrie's deeply researched work is an enlightening ramble through intellectual history of opposition to Christian belief that will appeal to any reader interested in religious scholarship. (Nov.)

Library Journal Review

Emotional histories of religion can be hard to find, but this latest book, after Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World, from Ryrie (Christianity, Durham Univ.) highlights the dynamic role that emotions have played in the very human tendency to disbelieve religious claims. Two emotions particularly run through the work like a guiding current: anxiety and anger. With these two currents, Ryrie has an explanatory tool to pry apart the historical narrative of the rise of atheism during the Enlightenment. In doing so, he finds that unbelief is much older and more nuanced than many historians have credited. This is a history of unbelief that carries readers from ancient to modern times. Ryrie does well to insist that unbelief can be found in the religiously motivated as well as in those who have no need for any notion of God or gods. The author does stick to what he knows best; that is, the book is written predominantly with Christianity in mind. VERDICT Those with an interest in the history of religion will be treated to a new perspective on the old opposition between believers and nonbelievers.--Denis Frias, Mississauga Lib. Syst., Ont.

Brockton Public Library

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Summary

Summary

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Library Journal Review