No Faith In Religion Paperback

I'd read good reviews of No Faith in Religion and it has been chosen as a book to discuss in my church housegroup so I was looking forward to reading something that sounded so interesting.

I found the book started very slowly. I couldn't quite get my head around the main points that John Saxbee was trying to make and found I was wading through the pages without truly becoming engaged. I found the quality of the editing/proofing very poor - it was littered with grammatical and other errors - and would also have been a smoother read with footnotes rather than references within the text as there were so many. However at about the halfway point my interest kicked in and I began to really enjoy this read.

Saxbee writes from a liberal Christian perspective but is clearly well-read and is able to show the strengths and weaknesses of many different positions in the church. His underlying theme is that 'religion' isn't what we should be aiming for, but 'faith', and that so many of the problems besetting the church and Christianity in general are difficulties of religion, not faith. He had a very interesting chapter about Victorian sceptics who converted to Christianity later in their lives, portraying it as an understanding of faith in Jesus rather than an adherence to the Christian religion.

This was a worthwhile and thought-provoking book, well written (apart from the proofing issues) and wide-ranging and it's worth a read for all those who want to think about true faith in a world saturated with religion.