Unapologetic

What a fantastic book. With wit, beauty, wisdom, and depth, Francis Spufford here gives an emotional account of what Christianity feels like from the inside–and in so doing helps it make sense to both those on the outside and those of us that feel stuck in between. It accomplishes these goals and more.

Charles Taylor says that we live in a “cross-pressured” age, where people no longer believe instead of doubting but believe while doubting. Our malleable souls are caught–shaped by cultural liturgies that scream God's absence while something, something, keeps us tethered to this faith. It creates an odd inner experience, where you can grant every fact and argument levied by the most ardent atheist and still shrug and know you're still a Christian.

This is because our belief is not fundamentally an intellectual exercise, but an emotional one. Most of life is lived by intuition and instinct based on how various options “feel” affectively. Even our intellectual assent based on empiricism is followed because it “feels” better to be aligned with facts than not.

It is from this understanding that Spufford writes. Through eight chapters, he moves through broad areas of human belief and concern, exploring how Christianity engages them. Yes, he covers the broad historical and doctrinal understandings of these areas, but only as the background to his real project: articulating how this forms the emotional experience of Christians in the world.

The path it takes is circuitous and human in the most delightful of ways. You spend time in little diversions, wondering where he is going, just for him to come at his conclusion through the side door. He is self-consciously not writing an “apologetics” book and yet levies a devastating frontal assault on the competing ways of being in the world, showing how they make no sense based on how humans actually experience and live life.

When you start reading this book, the first thing that jumps out at you is just how well written it is. Spufford is an acclaimed author of many books, mostly fiction and essays. He does not write religious nonfiction. This is a strength, as he is able to look past the noise and detritus of Christianity's history and cultural baggage, and offer it back to us in a way that is both fully orthodox and a little slant.

There is something about books on Christianity written by artists and writers who are mainly novelists, poets, memoirists, etc. Christianity is not their “job” and so they don't feel the need to treat it preciously nor sentimentally. Such writers have such a grasp of–and habitation within–the human condition that they don't have time for all of that. They have wrestled with the shadows of this world and this helps really prioritize those parts of Christianity that are truly universal and give it to us in a way our humanity can connect to more easily. This book curses, has off-color jokes, and is full of seering honesty about the fraught nature of belief (and unbelief).

It is a book written from the depths and not handed down from the heights. He recounts biblical stories and offers his own exegesis in the form of a poet, using different language and framing what we're accustomed to. This makes Scripture and tradition genuinely fresh and new, even to a seminary-trained, life-long Christian like myself.

Spufford is clearly not a “professional Christian”, and that gives him another huge advantage: his lack of sectarian commitments. He will tease and even express offense at many actions and participants in certain parts of the church (especially the American church), but he is at pains to say that we are all still part of the same family, and our differences, as important as they are, are not the substance and core of our faith. In this book, he is committed to explaining the historic, orthodox Christian faith that unites all Christians at all times and places.

For me, at least, that truly makes Unapologetic the Mere Christianity of our generation. And I mean that literally and without irony.

Other books have been declared as such, but those are usually traditional apologetics books–seeking by means of proofs and evidence to “defend” the faith. But that was not what Lewis was doing in Mere Christianity. Instead, he was trying to explain the depth and logic of the faith to laypeople whose cultural Christianity had dulled their senses to it. It was an act of reminder and refreshing, a family conversation knowingly unfolding before the eyes of the public.

This book feels very much the same way. It deftly moves through classical theism, the problem of suffering, how to understand the Bible, politics and power, and the life and impact of Jesus in ways that are completely new and alive but fully historic and rooted. He is not shy to share his personal (strong) opinions on other matters of theology, life, and faith, and you will no doubt find many quibbles with many of his specifics. But it always gets you thinking and he is never far from what is truly essential.

This is such a fun book to read, and even more fun book to listen to. Spufford himself narrates the audiobook and will sing, stutter, scoff, add asides, and “perform” the book as if he simply talking to you in a pub. It is one of my favorite audiobook narrations I've ever encountered. But this voice will come through even in regular reading.

Unapologetic is a new personal classic for me. It is a book I want every person to read, whether you are a Christian or not (or somewhere in between). It is explicitly not an “apologetics” book, but it ends up being one of the most compelling (and raucous) arguments I've ever encountered for belief.

Even if it doesn't change your mind, it will offer you a vision of the Christian faith that is winsome, beautiful, resonant, compelling, and something everyone should wish were true. It'll also make you listen more deeply to those wishes in the first place, and perhaps even take them far more seriously.