ACrisis of Faith

Tony Sunderland

The Battle of beliefs between the Christian Church and Gnosticism.

Religious history in the Western world has been dominated by the power and doctrinal discipline of the Catholic Church. But, argues Tony Sunderland in his new book, we are not solely products of this tradition, nor of that of its Protestant challengers. Lost in the footnotes of history is the story of the Church’s fascinating heretical counterpart, Gnosticism.

The Gnostics were brutally persecuted and their ideas were suppressed. But their teachings were powerful enough to linger on in the collective unconscious of succeeding generations and to re-emerge in the most unexpected places. From symbols on the American one-dollar bill to the ideals of the 1960s counterculture, from heavy metal music to twenty-first century technological innovations, various facets of Gnostic thought continue to offer us a way to interpret the meaning of our lives. As Sunderland traces the battle between the orthodox and heretical traditions of Christianity, his thorough research and ability to make counterintuitive connections reveal to us a struggle that continues to rage beneath the surface of contemporary life.

 

About the Author

Tony Sunderland is an Author and educational researcher who is acknowledged as an innovator in the writing and presentation of nationally accredited courses ranging from social science to the history of learning. His critically acclaimed book The Obelisk and the Cross, published in 2016, investigated some of the more contentious and abstract ideas about Christianity and the history of religious thought in Western society. He believes that there are many alternative explanations of how ‘things came to be’ in the Western world and that these have either been ignored or suppressed by dominant and overpowering narratives of what can be termed as consensus history.
Tony has visited many of the great archaeological sites in Egypt, Israel, Jordon, Italy, Turkey and Greece. His current research interests centre on the investigation and understanding of the Bible, the Nag Hammadi scriptures and the Dead Sea Scrolls and how these great texts have influenced the development of modern Western spirituality. Tony has been married for 27 years and has two children.