Book Review: “Religion as Metaphor”

“All of the Bible is true and some of it happened.”
Rev Bosco Peters reviews “Religion as Metaphor”, by David Tracey

Religion as Metaphor: Beyond Literal Belief by David Tacey

I hope David Tacey’s book is another doorway into the realisation of the importance of metaphor. It rightly argues that the new atheism and fundamentalism are both misunderstanding the stories literalistically.

I regularly encounter a fear that if someone questions the historicity (or validity) of a detail in the Bible, then the whole fabric of the Bible might unravel. “You cannot believe half of it, so why believe any of it?”

Many stories in the Bible, however, are not about something that happened somewhere else at another time, they are stories about what is always happening (including here and now) – and that’s what gives them their power. The right question to ask of such stories is not: what actually happened? But: what does it mean?

More at:  Liturgy.co.nz

New Book on Gay Marriage Raises the Bar on Love

Honestly, it was hard for me to read this book. Even as an avid reader, it was hard to stick with it; however, it wasn’t hard for the reasons readers might assume. Some might jump to assume that it wasn’t well-researched, or well-written, or both. Some might even assume that it wasn’t catchy enough to compete with our social media saturated culture.

Print

 Not so! Confronting Religious Denial of Gay Marriage: Christian Humanism and the Moral Imagination by Ms. Catherine Wallace is thoroughly researched, gracefully written, and enviably witty.

This book is like a hot date: engaging, intellectually seductive, and charming to boot.

(Prediction: If there were more books out there like this, we’d take longer breaks from Instagram. We would opt for page turners over photo uploaders!)

 

(Read the full review by Kat Katsanis-Semel at Huffington Post)

La « famille chrétienne » n’existe pas | Témoignage Chrétien

La tradition est sauve : « Le Synode sur la famille n’impose ni ne propose rien de nouveau… » Tel est le diagnostic dépité du théologien et historien André Paul, avant la dernière session du Synode. L’auteur connaît bien le dossier du mariage. Le reproche le plus lourd qu’il adresse à l’Église est son ignorance du sexe et de l’eros dans la construction familiale, et d’avoir fait du mariage une excuse pour le sexe, à condition toutefois qu’il soit voué à la procréation. L’amour que défend l’Église, juge-t-il, n’est pas celui selon Jésus mais celui des écoles pythagoriciennes.

Source: La « famille chrétienne » n’existe pas | Témoignage Chrétien