My Sunday School started The Battle for God today

The adult Sunday school at my church is reading Karent Armstrong's The Battle for God.

Some one joked we could easily take 2 years studying this book. ;-) It's a bit more academic than they are used to. I say they because this book finally pulling me into Sunday school. I mostly find the usual material not challenging enough. Go figure.

We're supposed to read Chapters 1&2 for next week.

But I was wondering what your thoughts were on the book, if you've read it before.

The book is really an extension of "The History of God", expanding and giving context to her chapter about fundamentalism. In that chapter she goes off on an extended rant about the dangers posed by fundamentalists to both faith and society.

I have only one minor quibble about it, in that she puts the beginnings of the phenomenon at the diaspora of the Jews from Spain in 1492. As I read more deeply in early church history, mainly "God Against the Gods" and "When Jesus Became God" it became more apparent that there has been a "rigorist" faction, or factions, almost from the start. Indeed, you could almost put that label on the faction that was demanding gentiles be circumcised before they could be baptized.

Overall, it is an excellent and important book. Good luck.