At the Bloxham Festival for Faith and Literature, 19-21 February 2016, the short list of six books for the Michael Ramsey Prize 2016 was announced.
………..
I was asked to present:
– Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense (London: Faber and Faber, 2012) and
– Frances Young, God’s Presence: A Contemporary Recapitulation of Early Christianity (Cambridge: CUP, 2013)
Alison Barr, Senior Commissioning Editor at SPCK, gave an overview of the prize and the books.
The following is a development of my comments at the Bloxham Festival on the two books by Frances and Francis.
1. Unapologetic by Francis Spufford
This could win a prize for the longest sub title. The publishers, Faber and Faber, have even managed to squeeze it onto the spine of the book.
Spufford explains that he wrote the book ”˜to try to extricate for people, from the misleading ruins of half memory, what Christianity feels like from the inside.’ (p.22)
(a) What kind of a book is this?
Well, unapologetically, it is a popular defense of the Christian faith from emotional sense and a presentation of the good news of Jesus Christ in the face of New Atheism..