Apatheism: How We Share When They Don't Care

Review “Kyle Beshears has written, to my knowledge, the first full-length treatment of sharing our Christian faith with our apatheistic neighbors: those who simply do not care about questions of God, life, the universe, and everything. Beshears understands the cultural influences driving religious unconcern, and he provides helpful and practical suggestions for engaging lovingly and productively with non-religious friends. If you want to understand and impact our post-Christian age, I highly recommend this excellent volume.”-Tawa Anderson, associate professor of philosophy, Oklahoma Baptist University   “We’ve been trained to share the gospel with adherents of other religions. We’ve been trained to share the gospel with people who viscerally oppose Christianity. But what about that vast middle of folks who . . . just don’t care? As people live their lives unaware of their dire spiritual state, evangelism to the uninterested is perhaps our greatest challenge. Apatheism is the book you need to reach a world that doesn’t seem to care. With painstaking scriptural focus and a heart full of compassion for the lost, Beshears lays out an approach that is both biblical and wise. If you care about the people who don’t care, you need this book.”-Daniel Darling, senior vice president of communications, National Religious Broadcasters, and pastor of teaching and discipleship, Green Hill Church, Mt. Juliet, TN   “In a secular age, belief in God is not just contestable, but also uninteresting. There’s a new virtue in town: apathy, especially when it comes to ultimate questions about God, meaning, and happiness. In Apatheism, Kyle Beshears expertly diagnoses the root causes of this indifference toward the God question and provides a helpful model for sharing the good news of Jesus to the uninterested. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to effectively share the gospel with those who have lost touch with that deepest desire of every human heart for the pursuing love of God. “-Paul M. Gould, associate professor of philosophy of religion and director of the MA in Philosophy of Religion program, Palm Beach Atlantic University   “A wise pastor once told me the biggest problem we face as Christian leaders is not hostility but apathy. And that’s the problem that Kyle Beshears helps us address in this important new book. It’s not helpful for us to answer questions few bother to ask anymore. Beshears helps us stoke the latent desires of unbelievers to want to want to believe.”-Collin Hansen, editorial director, The Gospel Coalition   “Twenty years ago, when I took my first steps into the field of apologetics, non-Christians sometimes misunderstood what I said and often despised the claims that I made-but no one ever said, ‘I don’t care whether these things are true or false.’ But things have changed. Today, I hear some variation of this attitude over and over from high school and college students. It’s not that these young people are vehemently anti-Christian; they simply don’t care whether or not Christianity is true. Apologists in today’s culture must have the capacity not only to respond to false claims about Christianity but also to engage with this growing sense of apathy toward faith. In Apatheism: How We Share When They Don’t Care, Kyle Beshears provides a clear roadmap for sharing the gospel with those who claim that they aren’t interested in whether or not the claims of Jesus are true.”-Timothy Paul Jones, vice president of doctoral studies and chair of apologetics, ethics, and philosophy, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary   “In the New Testament, we often read about unbelievers being hostile toward Christians and their faith, but in many places today, we aren’t dealing so much with a ‘hostility toward the gospel’ problem (though that’s increasing in places), but with a ‘happy without the gospel’ problem. How do we reach happy pagans-those who are apathetic toward belief in God? With the rise in secularism in the We