Hemant Mehta, I Sold My Soul On eBay
3. Hemant Mehta, I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith Through an Atheist's Eyes.
This one was a bit odd, mostly because it was not the book I was expecting it to be. I was expecting an atheist's critique of religion, directed toward an audience at least potentially sympathetic to atheism, plus maybe some rollicking stories of foolhardiness-on-the-internet. However, this volume is low on the rollicking, directed at convinced Christians, and is intended to assist those who are attempting to convert the non-religious. Which, wha-?
So the backstory: Mehta was raised in the Jain faith in Chicago, deconverted at fourteen, became active in the Secular Student Alliance in college (founding a group on his own campus), and then realized that in becoming an atheist he had made a jump: he had rejected all religion because of dissatisfaction with one religion. Consequently, he started trying to explore Christianity, using the most prominent Christian preachers he could find, Robertson and Falwell. When Christian friends protested that those preachers were not good representatives of Christianity, Mehta decided to attend a local church instead, but that he'd sell the right to pick which church, as well as how many hours he should attend, on eBay.
The auction was won by Jim Henderson of Off The Map, a Christian group that's trying to "help Christians discover how they are perceived by non-Christians" as a step toward "reinventing evangelism." Mehta basically became a one-man focus group for Off the Map. Henderson picked out a few dozen mainstream churches and Mehta went to multiple services a day for a few months (fifty hours of church-time), and wrote this-is-what-the-service-looked-like-to-an-openminded-atheist critiques for each of them. Mehta's critiques are polite and non-inflammatory, reading like annual performance reviews ("here's what you're doing well; here's what you should work on"). The churches he visited all seem like very moderate and respectable places: no demon-possessed German shepherds or the like.
So. This is not a romp of someone doing crazy things on eBay and what happened thereafter. Nor is it the psychological drama of a single buyer/church trying to save one atheist's soul. Nor anything else that I might have been expecting. But still, the premise -- an open conversation between Christians and an atheist about how Christianity might best approach atheists for possible conversion -- was an interesting one to me.
Unfortunately, I'm not the target audience for this book, which means it fell somewhat flat: most of the material here is pretty familiar to me. Many of the things that Mehta thought while sitting in church pews are the same things I've thought. Several chapters are a primer on "What Atheists Believe" (dude, it's not like there's an atheist orthodoxy!) for people who have been getting their "knowledge" about atheists through the Christian gossip mill.
The three sections that made the book worth reading for me were the story behind the book's existence, Mehta's own religious history and deconversion from Jainism, and the publisher-written "study guide" at the end (which gives one some hints about what a Christian perspective on Mehta's views might be). In many ways, it seems that the archives at The eBay Atheist would be a more satisfying read for me, because they contain both sides of the conversation between Mehta and the community at Off The Map.
Altogether, I would recommend the book to evangelical Christians who are willing to examine their approach to non-religious people, but I feel that atheists would likely find the book of only moderate interest, and would be better-served by the archived conversations at The eBay Atheist.
Mehta also runs the group blog, Friendly Atheist.
This one was a bit odd, mostly because it was not the book I was expecting it to be. I was expecting an atheist's critique of religion, directed toward an audience at least potentially sympathetic to atheism, plus maybe some rollicking stories of foolhardiness-on-the-internet. However, this volume is low on the rollicking, directed at convinced Christians, and is intended to assist those who are attempting to convert the non-religious. Which, wha-?
So the backstory: Mehta was raised in the Jain faith in Chicago, deconverted at fourteen, became active in the Secular Student Alliance in college (founding a group on his own campus), and then realized that in becoming an atheist he had made a jump: he had rejected all religion because of dissatisfaction with one religion. Consequently, he started trying to explore Christianity, using the most prominent Christian preachers he could find, Robertson and Falwell. When Christian friends protested that those preachers were not good representatives of Christianity, Mehta decided to attend a local church instead, but that he'd sell the right to pick which church, as well as how many hours he should attend, on eBay.
The auction was won by Jim Henderson of Off The Map, a Christian group that's trying to "help Christians discover how they are perceived by non-Christians" as a step toward "reinventing evangelism." Mehta basically became a one-man focus group for Off the Map. Henderson picked out a few dozen mainstream churches and Mehta went to multiple services a day for a few months (fifty hours of church-time), and wrote this-is-what-the-service-looked-like-to-an-openminded-atheist critiques for each of them. Mehta's critiques are polite and non-inflammatory, reading like annual performance reviews ("here's what you're doing well; here's what you should work on"). The churches he visited all seem like very moderate and respectable places: no demon-possessed German shepherds or the like.
So. This is not a romp of someone doing crazy things on eBay and what happened thereafter. Nor is it the psychological drama of a single buyer/church trying to save one atheist's soul. Nor anything else that I might have been expecting. But still, the premise -- an open conversation between Christians and an atheist about how Christianity might best approach atheists for possible conversion -- was an interesting one to me.
Unfortunately, I'm not the target audience for this book, which means it fell somewhat flat: most of the material here is pretty familiar to me. Many of the things that Mehta thought while sitting in church pews are the same things I've thought. Several chapters are a primer on "What Atheists Believe" (dude, it's not like there's an atheist orthodoxy!) for people who have been getting their "knowledge" about atheists through the Christian gossip mill.
The three sections that made the book worth reading for me were the story behind the book's existence, Mehta's own religious history and deconversion from Jainism, and the publisher-written "study guide" at the end (which gives one some hints about what a Christian perspective on Mehta's views might be). In many ways, it seems that the archives at The eBay Atheist would be a more satisfying read for me, because they contain both sides of the conversation between Mehta and the community at Off The Map.
Altogether, I would recommend the book to evangelical Christians who are willing to examine their approach to non-religious people, but I feel that atheists would likely find the book of only moderate interest, and would be better-served by the archived conversations at The eBay Atheist.
Mehta also runs the group blog, Friendly Atheist.