The Marginal Relevance of the Bible

The full title of my new book forthcoming from the publisher Wipf and Stock in their premier Cascade Series is: Unmasking Biblical Faiths. The Marginal Relevance of the Bible for Contemporary Religious Faith. Everything is completed except the indices, which I am now finishing.

Here is a description of the book from the back cover:

This book “aims to address many of the challenges to traditional Christian faith in the modern world. Since the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment, human Reason, formerly tethered by the constraints of organized religion, has been set free to explore the universe relatively unchallenged. The influence of the Bible, on the other hand, weakened due to the successes of modern historical criticism, is found to be inadequate for the task of enabling the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), in that it cannot adequately respond to the many questions about religious faith and the world that human reasoning raises for modern human beings. In a series of short but tightly reasoned essays, Charles Hedrick explores the confrontation between traditional Christian faith and aggressive human reason, a conflict that is facilitated by Western secular education.”

I was brought to write this book upon my retirement, purposing in the closing years of my life to analyze critically my own personal religious beliefs and my place in the world. The essays are brief but collectively they form a cumulative argument that the Bible is only marginally relevant for developing a religious faith for the contemporary world. The book represents the results of ten years of critical reflection on subjects related to religion, ethics, the Bible, the nature of the world, and human values. Candidly I was disappointed that many of the fundamental ideas of my own personal religious faith did not stand up to rational scrutiny.

Here is a list of the table of contents:

1. The Nature of the Universe

2. Reason and Faith

3. On Being Human in the Contemporary World

4. The Bible

5. The Nature of God

6. Jesus of Nazareth

7. Traditional Christian Beliefs

8. On Being Christian in the Modern World

The book does not offer many definitive answers to the perplexing questions raised by an impartial study of religion, for religion is primarily opinion based. What I can promise, however, is that the book will take you on a rationally sound journey into selected details of religious faith in the twenty-first century.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University