New from Fortress Press

Shrimp here, reading yesterday's (not today's) announcement of a book release from Fortress Press. Fortress' new slogan is "The Power of Scholarship" and at the bottom of its front page one discovers that it is also "Innovative - Accessible - Ecumenical." A drier description is that Fortress Press is an imprint of Augsburg Fortress Publishers, the publishing ministry for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

No Delusion Necessary: How Radical Theology Harmonizes Science and Religion

MINNEAPOLIS March 31, 2008 -- While Richard Dawkins's best-seller The God Delusion roiled many people of faith, theologians were nonplussed. Most theologians today do not understand God in the same way as is being criticized so heavily in such books as Richard Dawkins and others. In fact, states theologian Richard Grigg, most theologians left behind an unalloyed, classical theism about two hundred years ago.

Yet, Grigg argues, the many efforts to reconcile scientific worldviews with Christian faith still stop shy of the radical reconception of God begun in contemporary theology and made necessary by contemporary science. In his erudite and provocative book published by Fortress Press, Beyond the God Delusion, Grigg calls for a more radical theology, in which notions of divine transcendence and immanence, personhood, power, and role in the evolving universe are radicalized and reconceived.

Building on the work of such theologians as Sallie McFague and Gordon Kaufman, and with a strong grasp of the particulars of contemporary cosmology and biology, Grigg'€™s exciting work challenges readers to an intellectual honesty as sturdy as their faith.

Richard Grigg is Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut, where he also chairs the department.

Beyond the God Delusion: How Radical Theology Harmonizes Science and Religion
ISBN: 978-0-8006-6272-1
Price: $16.00 / CAN $18.99 / UK £8.99
Spec: 5.5" x 8.5", paperback, 160 pages
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To order call Augsburg Fortress at 1-800-328-4648 or visit the Web site at www.fortresspress.com


Well, we don't know if "most theologians left behind an unalloyed, classical theism about two hundred years ago." Neither are we sure that is the best way to combat Prof. Dawkins. We'll confess that of all the writers mentioned in the above announcement we've only read Sallie McFague. Which suggests to us that a good reading of, say, The Bible might be more helpful to those who've read Dawkins' rant.

Shrimp out.