In this highly accessible, passionately argued and scholarly book, Ian
Bradley presents fundamentalism, born a hundred years ago in the United
States of America, as the great twentieth-century heresy and aberration.
He identifies and seeks to reclaim for the twenty first century a
liberal theological tradition existing in Christianity, Islam, Judaism
and the other major world faiths. This liberal heart is found in their
scriptures and was often to the fore in their foundational stages but
has more recently been overlaid with conservative reaction,
fundamentalism and fear. He defines this liberal theology in terms of
the four values of grace, order, openness and diversity which he
suggests can be read by Christians as key attributes of the three
persons of the Trinity and of God in Trinity as a whole. This book
counters the growing influence of narrow, exclusive judgemental
religious conservatism with a powerful reassertion of the liberal gospel
of God's grace, goodness and generosity.