There is a strain of theology that is little more than humanism trying to be transcendent. There are no texts to be burdened with, no propositions to be understood, and few absolute moral imperatives. This makes it wonderfully ecumenical since any religion properly thinned out can affirm it. From the standpoint of this existentialist theology, all religions are talking about the same thing, just using different metaphors. Even God is thinned out, removed of personhood, and completely inoffensive. He is not a “he,” because that implies a personal, sexed, limited being, whereas God could be nothing less than Being itself, so ineffable that the best thing a theologian can do is sit in silence.

What’s particularly interesting about this book is that it looks like a bit of offense from a rather defensive religious position. The appeal of this kind of thinking is that it sidesteps the charging bull of criticism leveled at all religious traditions, but particularly Christianity, since the Enlightenment. All of the nice parts of a religion, such as “do unto others…”, are kept, and all of the less easily defensible parts are disavowed. The difficulty then becomes the fact that once you so rob religion of its content, there is not much to talk about: you can’t refute it, but you can hardly recommend it either. Armstrong is trying to do just that. She wants to say that there really is a role for religion in this scientific age, even though what she offers is so unspecified that it’s manifest equally in ancient cave paintings and opera.

In and of itself, not so bad. But it looks like she rewrites a bit of history in her image to get there. I’ll return to that if I get a closer look at the book.