Can I Believe?: Christianity for the Hesitant

This book explores the challenges of believing in Christianity, considering the vast number of options and the reasons why many people choose to be Christian despite the challenges. It offers a process for thinking about religion responsibly and clears away misunderstandings about the Christian story. The second half examines the positive and negative aspects of Christian commitment, why it is persuasive to so many people, and how it responds to the problem of evil. The book welcomes intelligent inquirers to give Christianity a fair look.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 224 pages
Publication date: 10 December 2020
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Perhaps Christianity is truly as believers claim it to be. But at least two issues cause the thoughtful person to pause.

First, there are so many other possibilities. How could one possibly navigate through them to anything like a reasoned and confident conclusion?

Second, why do so many people choose to be Christian in the face of so many reasons not to be Christian?

Yes, many people grow up in Christian homes and societies, but many more do not. Yet Christianity has become the most popular religion in the world. Why?

This book begins by tackling the initial challenge, outlining a process: how to think about religion in a responsible way, rather than settling for such vague notions as faith and feeling. It then clears away a number of misunderstandings from the basic story of the Christian religion, misunderstandings that combine to domesticate this startling narrative and thus to repel reasonable people who might otherwise be intrigued.

The second half of the book then looks at Christian commitment positively and negatively. Why do two billion find this religion to be persuasive, thus making it the most popular explanation of everything in human history? At the same time, how does Christianity respond to the fact that so many people find it utterly implausible, especially because so many Christians insist that theirs is the only way to God and because of the problem of evil that seems to undercut everything Christianity asserts?

Grounded in scholarship but never ponderous, Can I Believe? refuses to dodge the hard questions as it welcomes the intelligent inquirer to give Christianity at least one good look.

Weight: 246g
Dimension: 140 x 209 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780190922856