Mervyn Willshaw wrote this review of Time and Tide for the Methodist Recorder, 9 August 2001. Click on the cover icon to order this book online.
Cupitt insists that the Network offers a draft of the first truly liberating Church, because it is the first really free religious society. But readers will ask whether that claim is true.
Of course, all theology is a human activity. Theologians are human beings. Does that mean that all religion, all theology, has no reference beyond this world? Is there no transcendent reality to which human thought approximates? Is there no such things as revelation? Do we surrender entirely to a post-modern way of thinking which relativises everything or do we cling to the conviction that there is an intelligence "out there"?
Paul Davies is one contributor who is sure that there is some sort of objective reality "out there" which is both rational and intelligible. Otherwise science is impossible. Karen Armstrong, Richard Holloway and Graham Shaw also make particularly helpful contributions.