‘What, if anything, do I believe about God? AND ABOUT SIN, SALVATION, AND SUFFERING?’
The burgeoning of people who doubt many traditional Christian answers makes this question highly pertinent today. The short and very short essays of Overdue Heresies aim to stimulate readers to reach, reaffirm, or rethink their own conclusions about God, Atheism, Jesus, Miracles, Sin, Salvation, and many other elements of the Christian tradition. They do not seek to persuade anyone of anything; rather, they encourage readers to enjoy disagreeing. They say little about the Quaker Way, though many of them resemble the messages that readers
might hear spoken out of the silence of a Quaker meeting.
The book is especially for: People who are spiritually inquisitive or question major parts of their church’s doctrines. Atheists and other ‘Nones.’ Students seeking fodder for late-night bull sessions. Seekers of truth. The book asks many questions and questions many traditional answers. It is not for people who seek certainty or believe they have found it.
表中的内容
Contents
Author’s Note
Introduction
My Faith
The Quaker Way
Writing the Book
God
Creation
Science
Atheism
Religion
The Bible
Jews
Isaac
Jesus
Judas
Peter
Christianity
Faith
Miracles
People
Prayer
Suffering
Prophesy
Proselytizing
Sin
Soul
Forgiveness
Salvation
Hell
Afterlife
War
Practice
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
关于作者
Malcolm Bell grew up in Brooklyn, served in the U.S. Army, and practiced law in Manhattan before the state and federal courts of New York. He wrote The Turkey Shoot: Tracking the Attica Cover-up (Grove Press 1985), reissued as The Attica Turkey Shoot: Carnage, Cover-up and the Pursuit of Justice, (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017, paperback 2022), which tells of being a New York State prosecutor who was assigned to indict police for the murders and other violent felonies they committed during the 1971 Attica prison riot, then was blocked from finishing the job. He resigned in protest and took the cover-up public in the New York Times, leading to revelations that high State officials had sought to suppress and to more justice than they found convenient.While becoming a confirmed Episcopalian at age thirteen, he began to question traditional Christian doctrines. His spiritual journey took him from the Episcopal Church to a United Church of Christ, where he taught junior and senior high Sunday school, to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), where he found his spiritual home. In the 1980s, he became active in the Sanctuary Movement and, as a matter of conscience, broke the law to stand with illegal refugees fleeing the state-led, U.S.-backed terror in Guatemala and El Salvador. He wrote about the Guatemalan civil war in his novel, Roses in the Night.He has long engaged in spiritual discussions in groups where he or he and his wife Nancy were the only Quakers. For the past forty years, he has jotted down his spiritual thoughts; they comprise this book. Today he lives with Nancy among the Green Mountains of Vermont, where he continues to write.