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One of our most influential literary critics challenges those who too easily dismiss religion and faith

Terry Eagleton's witty and polemical Reason, Faith, and Revolution is bound to cause a stir among scientists, theologians, people of faith and people of no faith, as well as general readers eager to understand the God Debate. On the one hand, Eagleton demolishes what he calls the "superstitious" view of God held by most atheists and agnostics and offers in its place a revolutionary account of the Christian Gospel. On the other hand, he launches a stinging assault on the betrayal of this revolution by institutional Christianity.

There is little joy here, then, either for the anti-God brigade-Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in particular-nor for many conventional believers. Instead, Eagleton offers his own vibrant account of religion and politics in a book that ranges from the Holy Spirit to the recent history of the Middle East, from Thomas Aquinas to the Twin Towers. "'Terry Eagleton's intervention into the debate sparked by Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion is, by turns, thought-provoking, infuriating, inspiring and very, very funny.' London Review of Books 'a gloriously rumbustious counter-blast to Dawkinsite atheism... paradoxes sparkle throughout this coruscatingly brilliant polemic... This is, then, a demolition job which is both logically devastating and a magnificently whirling philippic... Much of what it says is too true.' Paul Vallely, The Independent 'Eagleton's book began as a series of lectures delivered at Yale University. They must have been a riot... He's fantastically rude all round, about 'Ditchkins', about religion itself... It's terrific polemic.' Melanie McDonagh, Evening Standard"

Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate