Atonement for a ‘sinless’ Society: Engaging With an Emerging Culture

“Sin doesn’t really exist as a serious idea in modern life,” wrote the journalist Bryan Appleyard. He is not alone in his views. Sin has become just as tainted, polluted and defiled in the postmodern mind as the word itself indicates. Atonement for a “Sinless Society” is about an encounter between two the story of the postmodern, postindustrialized, post-Christian “sinless” self and the story of atonement played out in the Passion narrative. Alan Mann charts a way through the apparent impasse between a story that supposedly relies on sin and guilt to become meaningful, and one that fails to recognize the plight of humanity as portrayed in this way. Drawing on cultural commentators, narrative therapists and contemporary theologians, Alan Mann shows that the biblical narrative needs to be re-read in the light of this emerging story so that it can speak meaningfully and sufficiently to an increasingly “sinless” society.