Why this non-God talk?
What had long been contended in secret is now shouted from housetops. A number of young men who call themselves death-of-God theologians or "Christian atheists" had for a time stated their cases in those relatively secret and secure corners of universities called divinity schools, in those serene pockets of academia called seminaries and on the pages of staid theological journals or of religious magazines, including this one. So long as theologian talked to theologian no one seemed very much concerned. But now through the ministrations of the New York Times, Time magazine, the New Yorker, thousands of pulpits and hundreds of newspaper editorials the general public has been made aware of these men. Debate now rages: it looks as if we shall have a long, hot winter.
The general public cares and has a right to care about this debate, even though it reacts emotionally and without a broad or deep understanding of the issues. Fewer than one per cent of the American people think of themselves formally as atheists. Atheism has always been and remains something less than socially respectable. So, since almost no one in or outside the churches is atheist, why do custodians of Christian teaching identify themselves as death-ofGod theologians?
One way to answer this question is to ask why professors of theology who do not belong to the God-is-dead coterie — men who have much at stake in thought about and talk about and witness to God — have been so unexcited by the non-God-talk of the newcomers. In our series on "How I Am Making Up My Mind" William H. Hamilton, Thomas J. J. Altizer and Paul M. van Buren — the three most frequently mentioned death-of-God theologians — spoke their minds in articles which drew little more than the usual amount of mail, most of it negative but little of it emotional. The other young theologians who have expressed themselves in the series have either ignored or answered or — at least in intention — have "gone beyond" these men in their attempt to reconstruct theology. Few theologians agree with the non-God trio and apparently at crucial points they do not agree with each other.
