FRANCIS SPUFFORD Unapologetic ****

On the strength of the writing in his novels (which are a recent departure for him) I had a go at this – one of Francis Spufford’s earlier books – and this is great too – a breath of fresh air.

Spufford is a Christian, married to a Canon at Ely Cathedral, and is fairly liberal in his understanding of the creeds. I particularly like his 'definition' (he wouldn't like the term) of sin as HPtFtU - the Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up. Not he insists just the Human Propensity to Fuck Up in the abstract - but to Fuck Things Up - our active inclination to break stuff - relationships, moods, promises etc. 

 

“It's a book for believers who are fed up with being patronised, for non-believers curious about how faith can possibly work in the twenty-first century, and for anyone who feels there is something indefinably wrong, literalistic, anti-imaginative and intolerant about the way the case for atheism is now being made.”