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A review by opheliabedilia
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists by Dan Barker
3.0
Barker has a really interesting story to tell. Unfortunately, he's not always that good at telling it. What he needed most was a heavy handed editor. The first half of the book is his own story, the history of his life of Christian faith and then his leaving that faith, and the consequences that had for himself and his family. The most interesting part of the whole book was the chapters about the reactions of those around him, particularly friends and even family, people he had considered great friends for years. The fault in the first half of the book is that there is a sense, at least to me, of some longing for his past "glory days" such as they were. Barker was a big name in a specific field, namely Evangelical Christian music writing and performing, and his efforts to make sure the reader knows this feel a little like he misses those days, or at least wants to be sure we know he was kind of a big deal.
The second part of the book is his arguments 1. for atheism and 2. against Christianity (mostly modern American Evangelical Christianity). This is the part where he especially could have used a better editor. He is thorough to a fault. There felt like there were thousands of examples of Biblical contradictions, for example, each explored exhaustively. It got boring. The same is true of examples of passages in which the Bible is not, by most modern standards, presenting good moral behavior. The second half of the book is also very heavy on philosophy. I am sure there are readers to whom this would appeal a good deal, so my boredom there could well be my issue, not the author's. I skimmed a decent amount of the second half.
My ultimate question is who is the intended audience? I think it's those who hold the faith he used to hold, but I can't imagine many of them willingly picking this up and reading it the whole way through. For those who are already in agreement with Barker, the personal story would be pretty interesting, minus some of the name dropping, but the second half would be preaching to the choir and therefore probably not interesting for most, unless they are beefing up on their knowledge to take to Thanksgiving day family arguments.
The second part of the book is his arguments 1. for atheism and 2. against Christianity (mostly modern American Evangelical Christianity). This is the part where he especially could have used a better editor. He is thorough to a fault. There felt like there were thousands of examples of Biblical contradictions, for example, each explored exhaustively. It got boring. The same is true of examples of passages in which the Bible is not, by most modern standards, presenting good moral behavior. The second half of the book is also very heavy on philosophy. I am sure there are readers to whom this would appeal a good deal, so my boredom there could well be my issue, not the author's. I skimmed a decent amount of the second half.
My ultimate question is who is the intended audience? I think it's those who hold the faith he used to hold, but I can't imagine many of them willingly picking this up and reading it the whole way through. For those who are already in agreement with Barker, the personal story would be pretty interesting, minus some of the name dropping, but the second half would be preaching to the choir and therefore probably not interesting for most, unless they are beefing up on their knowledge to take to Thanksgiving day family arguments.