Are any of the noted contributors worth two-inflationarily-debased pennies in today’s “evangelical neoloberalists” are have they all quietly passed on to greater obscurity?  I recognize none of them.  Of course, I may be out of their sphere of aberrant influence and thus just a non cognoscenti.

Not only are the contributors obscure, but the review references Honest to God and <i>The Secular City<i>. Forty years ago I was a religion major at a liberal Methodist college and those two books were all the rage. I wonder how much they are read today.

Actually, several of the contributors achieved high office.  Leslie Houlden became professor at King’s College in the University of London.  Maurice Wiles was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, for 21 years.  Don Cupitt pronounced himself to be a Buddhist Christian but continued as a clergyman in the Church of England and was for many years Dean of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.  He founded a network called Sea of Faith for those who no longer believed in an objectively real God but found the whole idea of god to be useful.  He made a short TV series on the same theme.  One of the above gentleman has been a good and kind friend; out of loyalty I will therefore make no comment on the book and its contributors.  Readers of this blog will know, however, that I do not share their theology.

Thanks for the information.

One interesting tidbit. At he time of the publication of HTG (and maybe for a few years after) the tripos (the Oxbridge exams in theology) only covered up to 451. Few if any of the contributors (maybe one) had cut their teeth on, or been immersed for a long time in, all the thinkers that had worked through, or worked with, the pressures that critical thought and critical scholarship put on classic creedal affirmations. In another words, the same thing that Rowan Williams said of Spong’s incautious claims (putting it politely) can be said of these contributors—namely—‘alot of serious thought and writing has gone on that these authors are unaware of.’

The most interesting writer is Frances Young, about whom one can read on Wikipedia.  She began her career as a skeptic about the incarnation, but became a thoughtful and influential patristic scholar.  She seems to have altered her views in time.

Fr. Tee,

You have very fortunate friends.

Thank you for the additional information.