Unapologetic – Review
Despite what Francis Spufford claims, Unapologetic is an apologetic work. The subtitle gives it away: “Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense.” It is simply an apologetic on the emotional level rather than the intellectual level. I badly wanted to like this book since I agree with the author’s premise.
But I didn’t.
To be fair, this book was not written for me and so it should surprise no one that I didn’t care for it. I would guess that this book was written for the post-Christian, who sees Christianity as at best Irrelevant and at worst dangerous. I hope that such skeptics would get something positive out of the book.
What didn’t I like?
For one thing, there was far too much profanity. I’m not a prude when it comes to language. I was an army chaplain for a few years and have heard it all. But in a book arguing for Christianity, it was distracting. There was not just a bit of profanity, nor was it mild. He drops the F-bomb quite a few times. I guess the author was hoping that would help skeptics take it more seriously.
He also makes some pretty sweeping statements about Christianity, which in fact are more about his group within the Church of England. For example, he states that Christians have given up on the concept of hell and only a few fanatics still believe in it. While there has been some development in the understanding of hell, many evangelicals and pentecostals (which make up a huge segment of the Christian church), still believe in hell.
There were some good things in the book. I did enjoy his chapter on Jesus. In fact, at times he does some pretty good traditional apologetics, especially when dealing with the non-canonical gospels.
However, in general I was pretty disappointed with the book. Spufford is a talented author, but this book was not for me (which Spufford would probably agree). I doubt I would recommend it to anyone except the most radical skeptic who needed something to shock them into considering Christianity.
I link to this in a recent post I wrote about writing fair and diplomatic reviews. Good job writing what I see as a critical yet fair review.
Thank you.