Dangerous Words: Talking About God in the Age of Fundamentalism

Dangerous Words: Talking About God in the Age of Fundamentalism by Eberle, Gary. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781590304327.

God. It’s such a small arrangement of letters to cause so much trouble. In the culture wars that rage around us today, few of the people who use that word as a weapon have any sense of its source, its nuances, or the ultimate elusiveness of its definition. The same can be said for a lot of other words from the vocabulary of faith, like religion, fundamentalism, or tradition. By decoding the hot-button words of religious language, Gary Eberle exposes their misuse as weapons of emotional rhetoric—while telling the fascinating real story of their history and shifting meanings. De-fanged and examined closely, the words he unpacks for us emerge as too complex and interesting to be used simply as verbal bullets. His entertaining analysis of “god-language” will open your eyes to the origins of some words you thought you knew. It also offers a hopeful new vision for genuine dialogue in the future.