The Old Creed and the New

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The Old Creed and the New is Don Cupitt's latest writing in his on-going project to modernize religious thought. His previous works have argued that since the Enlightenment almost every new movement in Christianity has been neo-Conservative and authoritarian. Here he looks to the liberal theologians of a hundred years ago who attempted to modernize religion but were often content merely to simplify and liberalize the creed. Today's radical theology, he argues, contrasts by beginning to produce something so different from traditional religion that the public may at first feel baffled by it. Don Cupitt here sharply juxtaposes the traditional Apostles' creed of western Christianity and the emergent creed of modern radical theology. Side by side, they look amazingly different, and Cupitt carefully explains what is happening, and why. The main change, he argues, is that the old creed situated the believer within a huge narrative cosmology, the central myth of a great religion-based civilization, whereas the new creed merely defines the bare outlines of a modern spirituality. The new religion emerges as being scarcely creedal at all: it is the practice of 'solar living'. People no longer 'look up': instead, they are content simply to claim their own lives, to find their own way of living them, and to live life to its fullest. Just ordinary life itself is now the religious object - which shows the 'post-protestant' character of the new outlook. The Old Creed and the New tries to define and situate this new kind of religion, and encourages the reader to think about it both intellectually and spiritually.