Download Faitheist: How an Atheist Found Common Ground with the Religious AudioBook Free
The story of an former Evangelical Religious turned openly homosexual atheist who now works to bridge the separate between atheists and the religious The stunning popularity of the "New Atheist" activity - whose most famous spokesmen include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and the overdue Christopher Hitchens - talks to both the growing ranks of atheists and the widespread, vehement disdain for faith among many of them. In Faitheist, Chris Stedman explains to his own history to struggle the orthodoxies of this activity and make a passionate argument that atheists should engage religious diversity respectfully. Becoming aware of injustice, and craving community, Stedman became a "born-again" Religious in late childhood. The idea of a community bound by God's love - a love that was undeserved, unending, and assured - captivated him. It had been, he writes, a spot to belong and a construction for making sense of hurting. But Stedman's religious community did not embody this idea of God's love: They were staunchly homophobic at a time when he was slowly and gradually coming to realize that he was homosexual. The great hurting this caused him might have converted Stedman into a life-long New Atheist. But as time passes he came to learn more open-minded Christians, and his interest in service work brought him into connection with people from a multitude of religious backgrounds. His own religious beliefs might have fallen away, but his desire to change the earth for the better continued to be. Disdain and hostility toward faith was retaining him again from participating in meaningful work with people of beliefs. And it was keeping him from full associations with them - the types of associations that break down intolerance and increase the world. In Faitheist, Stedman draws on his work managing interfaith and secular neighborhoods, his academic research of faith, and his own experiences to claim for the necessity of bridging the growing chasm between atheists and the religious. As anyone who has stood on both edges of the separate, Stedman is distinctively positioned to provide a means for atheists and the religious to find common floor and work together to make this world - the main one world we can all agree on - a much better place.
