The Trouble with Christianity

In this book, using Eric Fromm s distinction between Humanistic and Authoritarian Religions whose implications for Christianity the author explored at some length in his recently published /The Two Faces of Christianity/, he identifies what he believes to be the fundamental psychopathology which has prevented Christianity becoming an unambiguous good for humanity, namely an authoritarian mind-set. Central to this mindset is the idea of God as a controlling force acting on the universe, but separate from it, rather than as a property of all that is . Dr Oxtoby argues that it is this ubiquitous authoritarian thinking, with its emphasis on the need for obedience to imposed authority which lies at the root of the sado-masochistic obsession with pain, suffering and death of the Doctrine of the Atonement."