Rescuing Religion:
How Faith Can Survive Its Encounter with Science

John Van Hagen

In Rescuing Religion John Van Hagen argues that psychological theories and models of psychotherapy can help one hold on to a religious worldview while simultaneously living in a world increasingly described in scientific terms. Rescuing Religion grapples with that tension as it focuses on science's recent challenges to the historicity of the major Bible stories: Moses never existed, Jesus did not start a church. Yet facing such challenges presents us with an opportunity for religious growth. We can now go behind those Bible stories and glimpse the storytellers who in their own times faced enormous crises of faith. We can learn from their struggles and be inspired to face our own global ones. Like those ancient authors, we can search for God's power moving through history, even as we realize that we, like them, can only describe it in finite terms. Throughout the book, readers are buoyed up by examples of remarkable individuals who have sensed and described this movement.

"With his expert grasp of biblical scholarship and a psychologist's insight, Van Hagen shows how crises of faith can be the opportunity for forging holistic and hopeful understandings of ourselves and our communities of faith." — Robert J. Miller, Juniata College

"John Van Hagen has written a lucid, informative, thought-provoking work. In a world often polarized into scientific works that denigrate religion and religious works that ignore science, the author provides a much needed breath of fresh air." — David Greenwald, co-author, No Reason to Talk about It

Polebridge Press
February 2012
ISBN 978-1598150377
278 pages, paperback, $25

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