The Trouble with Christianity: A Psychological Perspective

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.