Monday, September 21, 2009

Fighting Back Against the Stereotypes

TOP CANADIAN NOVELIST TAKES ON WRITERS, AND THE “NEW ATHEISTS”

Scroll down to click on the links for this. Scroll down further for earlier postings on other items about people and issues of faith in the media.

New Brunswick born David Adams Richards is one of this country’s most celebrated writers: he has won the Governor-General’s award for both fiction and non-fiction, Gemini awards for his screen writing, and the prestigious Giller Prize for his novel Mercy Among the Children.

Richards is also a Catholic who has found his way back to faith, and is described in one review as “a rare voice of moral and spiritual certainty in the Canadian literary scene” .In his latest non-fiction work, Richards analyses our culture’s stereotyping of people of faith, and takes on the so-called new atheists.

The book is called God Is: My Search for Faith in a Secular World.

The links below will take you to an excerpt from the book, as well as two reviews. The excerpt examines the way writers deride believers, and takes a few good whacks at Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and their ilk.

1. The excerpt: “Canada's literary community gets religion all wrong”, by David Adams Richards

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/canadas-literary-community-gets-religion-all-wrong/article1252508/

Source: The Globe and Mail, Aug. 15, 2009

2. The reviews: From the Globe and Mail: “Finding God, in spite of ourselves”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/finding-god-in-spite-of-ourselves/article1259818/

From the Toronto Star: “Of a faith hard-won in the Miramichi and T.O.: A novelist who deals in evil and grace affirms the validity of belief”

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/685138

Related reading in our library:

Amazing Grace; A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris

Call Number 230.03

A series of short essays exploring some of the language of Christianity that distanced Norris from her faith. In these reflections she also tells of her gradual conversion, and how to find faith in our current culture.

The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin

Call Number 261 New

How does the prevailing climate of opinion affect, perhaps infect, Christians' faith? Newbigin addresses such questions in this incisive analysis of contemporary culture, and he suggests how Christians can more confidently affirm their faith in such a context.

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