"Only an atheist can be a good Christian and only a Christian can be a good atheist," wrote Ernst Bloch. Yet unlike Dawkins and Hitchens, who perceive religion as an opiate handed out by repressive priest- and mullah-run states, it was not enough for Bloch to posit religious belief as a delusion. Belief for him rested in social context. It could not simply be dismissed as "the sigh of the oppressed creature in a hostile worlD' without recognizing that the sigh contained the pre-illumination of a different, better world. Atheism in Christianity is a detailed historical study of the Bible and its long standing fascination across classes, locating its appeal in the stories that oppose the under-classes to authority and that promise transcendence.

A new introduction by Terry Eagleton will bring this classic up to date for modern audiences.