In reality, as Alec Ryrie shows in this short but beautifully crafted history of early doubt, unbelief was (and is) chosen for ‘instinctive, inarticulate and intuitive’ reasons just as much as is belief. Ryrie is a Reformation scholar, but one with a particular interest and expertise in the culture of Protestantism. He adopts this approach in Unbelievers, arguing persuasively that unbelief was as much, if not more, about what people felt as what they thought, in particular a confluence of moral outrage and personal anxiety.
