“Many of us are frustrated when we speak of religion because our religious words are defined by fundamentalism. Instead of a cosmetic ‘reframing,’ Gary Eberle provides a clear and deep rethinking of religious vocabulary that is liberating and, well, enlightening. If you care about rescuing religion from fundamentalism—both religious and atheist—Dangerous Words is essential reading.”—Barbara O’Brien, founder of mahablog.com and author of Blogging America: Political Discourse in a Digital Nation

God.

It’s such a small arrangement of letters to cause so much trouble. In the culture wars that rage around us today, few of the people who use that word as a weapon have any sense of its source, its nuances, or the ultimate elusiveness of its definition. The same can be said for a lot of other words from the vocabulary of faith, like religion, fundamentalism, or tradition. By decoding the hot-button words of religious language, Gary Eberle exposes their misuse as weapons of emotional rhetoric—while telling the fascinating real story of their history and shifting meanings. De-fanged and examined closely, the words he unpacks for us emerge as too complex and interesting to be used simply as verbal bullets. His entertaining analysis of “god-language” will open your eyes to the origins of some words you thought you knew. It also offers a hopeful new vision for genuine dialogue in the future.