The Old Creed and the New is Don Cupitt's latest writing in his on-going project to modernize religious thought. His previous works have argued that since the Enlightenment almost every new movement in Christianity has been neo-Conservative and authoritarian. Here he looks to the liberal theologians of a hundred years ago who attempted to modernize religion but were often content merely to simplify and liberalize the creed. Today's radical theology, he argues, contrasts by beginning to produce something so different from traditional religion that the public may at first feel baffled by it....

What is it about religion that, despite all odds, allows it to survive? In After God, the renowned scholar Don Cupitt considers the fate of religion, now that we have effectively killed off our gods. The author, a trained theologian and an ordained priest in the Church of England, takes us through the evolution of religious belief from the dawn of the gods to their twilight--as well as to the morning after.Tracing the postmodern pilgrimage from traditional belief to cynicism to faith after God, Cupitt says we need to build a new religious vocabulary. He challenges us to see religion less as...

In Mysticism After Modernity, Don Cupitt argues that the extensive modern literature about mysticism has rested upon a mistake - the belief that there can be meaningful experience prior to language.

In Mysticism After Modernity, Don Cupitt argues that the extensive modern literature about mysticism has rested upon a mistake - the belief that there can be meaningful experience prior to language.

In Jesus and the Gospel of God, Don Cupitt takes a second look at the doctrine of the incarnation, going back to Scripture itself and especially to the person of Jesus as we see him in the synoptic gospels. His declared aim is to restore the real Jesus to his proper centrality in the Christian faith, and to focus attention on the man and his message rather than on doctrines about him.
He begins by making a distinction between the primitive eschatological faith and the developed dogmatic faith. The primitive faith, he believes, was at its purest in John the Baptist,...

Don Cupitt is best known for developing a non-realistic interpretation of Christian doctrine and an ever-more radically antirealist position in philosophy.Cupitt has sought to go beyond ecclesiastical religion to a purely this-worldly humanistic religion of life: he argues for a kingdomversion of Christianity that will bring it closer to the original Jewish Jesus. This book contains essays written over twenty years that appear in book form for the first time.

In everyday speech we often hear people jokingly mention what they call the 'ultimate questions', the 'big questions', or 'the great questions' of life. In Don Cupitt's judgment, however, these questions are no joking matter. He believes that there is no higher truth than the truth that is built into our everyday speech and that, therefore, these questions should be taken seriously. In The Great Questions of Life, he collects and classifies all the great questions, in the wordings that are most familiar to us, and interprets and answers them. He shows how the decline of the old religion has...

Scientific knowledge has stripped Christianity of the mythical matrix in which the creeds were conceived. The historical study of the Bible and the quest of the historical Jesus have raised the future of the faith to crisis level.At its Once & Future Faith conference in March 2001, four world class thinkers Don Cupitt, Karen Armstrong, John Shelby Spong, and Lloyd Geering joined Robert Funk and the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar to sort through the issues and attempt to form an agenda for the reinvention of Christianity. Their suggestions on questions such as life after death, the meaning of...

If new Platos or Buddhas were to appear today, what would they say about the nature of reality, the human condition and the way to happiness?The period 800-200 b.c.e. the so-called Axial Age was the time when Old World pioneering philosophers and religious teachers laid down the basic ideas by which people have been living ever since. Today those great religious and cultural traditions are coming to an end. We are entering a new Axial Age.Don Cupitt observes that this second Axial Age is one of communication. Everything is accessible to everyone, and everyone can make a contribution. The...

According to Don Cupitt, radical theology is a personal struggle for a new and better kind of religion following the loss of the older sort of popular, traditional, ecclesiastical faith. It is, he says, inevitably, highly autobiographical. This set of eighteen unpublished or little known published essays which document Cupitt's gradual radicalization over the last thirty years open a window onto the progression of his thought and demonstrate his long held desire to come up with a message that can reach and influence ordinary people. Because, in Cupitt's judgment, the real ?radical theology?...