A rector who can no longer preach what he no longer believes. John Hodder has read the critics, wrestled with Harnack's devastating history of dogma, and discovered that his faith cannot survive the collision between honest doubt and ecclesiastical certainty. Now he must face the bishop who ordained him, the congregation that trusts him, and the woman he loves whose father represents everything hollow in modern Christianity. This eighth volume reaches the crisis point: Hodder's private doubts become public controversy, and he must choose between comfortable silence and costly truth. Through his relationship with Alison Parr and his confrontations with her wealthy, rigid father, Churchill examines what remains of Christianity when its supernatural claims are stripped away. Is faith a gift or a struggle? A comfort or a conquest? For readers drawn to the honest wrestling of modern religious fiction, this is a novel about the price of integrity in a world that prefers comfortable answers.
