Book Review: “Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age” by Justin Ariel Bailey

Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age is not the book I expected it to be. When I saw the title, I expected the book to be a kind of ground rules work for reinventing the wheel with apologetics and seeing arguments and the like in new ways. Instead, Justin Ariel Bailey seeks with the book to re-imagine apologetics. That is, he’s seeking to re-enchant apologetics with the human imagination and capture minds for Christ.

The first part of the book discusses apologetics and the imagination. Bailey notes the alleged crisis of doubt in an increasingly secular England alongside the “authenticity” demanded by Schleiermacher’s vision of Christianity. These chapters are very strong and provide enormous insight into the problems contemporary apologetics has in reaching people. Primarily, Bailey notes that this is due to a problem with enchantment, failing the imagination, and not providing a robust way to engage people beyond mere argumentation.

The second part of the book outlines models for reimagining apologetics through George MacDonald and Marilynne Robinson. These two thinkers have been hugely influential, and Bailey argues that they offer a different way of doing apologetics by capturing the imagination instead of having specific argumentation.

I do wish that Bailey had included some more examples in the models for re-imagining apologetics. Or, failing that, perhaps examples that haven’t been used as frequently in the literature. George MacDonald and Marilynne Robinson serve as fine examples for using the imagination in apologetics, but they’ve also received quite a bit of attention. It would be interesting to see a book like this explore, for example, the strands of faith found in the wildly imaginative worlds of someone like Gene Wolfe. I’m not saying that specifically we need Wolfe or anyone else, but it would be helpful to have explorations of figures whom we may not have seen as frequently in apologetics literature. That said, Bailey’s examination of the two he chose as emblematic for his project is insightful and robust.

Reimagining Apologetics seeks to encourage readers to think of apologetics in ways that may win people for Christ in ways that don’t conform to what is usually thought of as “apologetics” today. Part of that means a return to the way apologetics was done in the past. Another part means reimagining the future of apologetics–a future in which we use both heart and mind to conform others and ourselves to Christ. Recommended.

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Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of the book for review by the publisher. I was not required to give any specific kind of feedback whatsoever.

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