DAVID CRUMM SAYS: This book began with a wacky stunt, when young atheist Hemant Mehta put his religious skepticism on the eBay auction block. In 2006, he invited a high bidder to send him to church.

The result was a $500 donation by the high bidder to a nonprofit of Mehta's choice and a series of visits to congregations that Mehta turned into this remarkably kind and insightful critique of our religious culture.

He's a pretty good observer of what seems to be good, ridiculous and even nonsensical to visitors in many of our churches. He even praises some aspects of congregational life in the course of the book.

Rob Bell writes the Foreward, urging Christians in particular to read this book. In his Foreward, he says: "I knew I would love talking with Hemant Mehta long before I met him. I have much in common with atheists. What I find time and again is that the god they've rejected is a god I've rejected."

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Product Description

Unique insights from an atheist’s Sunday-morning odyssey

When Hemant Mehta was a teenager he stopped believing in God, but he never lost his interest in religion. Mehta is “the eBay atheist,” the nonbeliever who auctioned off the opportunity for the winning bidder to send him to church. The auction winner was Jim Henderson, a former pastor and author of Evangelism Without Additives. Since then, Mehta has visited a variety of church services–posting his insightful critiques on the Internet and spawning a positive, ongoing dialogue between atheists and believers.

I Sold My Soul on eBay tells how and why Mehta became an atheist and features his latest church critiques, including descriptions of his visits to some of the best-known churches in the country. His observations will surprise and challenge you, revealing how the church comes across to those outside the faith. Who better than a nonbeliever to offer an eye-opening assessment of how the gospel is being presented–and the elements that enhance or detract from the presentation.

Mehta announced prior to his churchgoing odyssey that he would watch for any signs of God’s existence. After spending Sunday mornings in some of the nation’s leading churches, what happened to the man who sold his soul on eBay? Did attending church change his lack of belief? The answers can be found inside.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #569067 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-17
• Released on: 2007-04-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400073474
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Mehta, an atheist, once held an unusual auction on eBay: the highest bidder could send Mehta to a church of his or her choice. The winner, who paid $504, asked Mehta to attend numerous churches, and this book comprises Mehta's responses to 15 worshipping communities, including such prominent megachurches as Houston's Second Baptist, Ted Haggard's New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and Willow Creek in suburban Chicago. (Mehta ranks Willow Creek as the church most likely to draw him back.) Mehta, who grew up Jain, offers some autobiographical context, then discusses nonreligious people's approach to topics such as death and suffering. But all that is just a preamble to Mehta's sketches of the churches he attended. He doesn't find much community in churches; families sit far apart from other families, and people race "out the front doors to their cars" as soon as the service ends. Churches earn high marks for Mehta when they offer great speakers and focus on community outreach, but they also do many things wrong, including singing repetitive songs and alienating non-Christians by ubiquitously proclaiming them to be "lost." Mehta's musings will interest Christians who seek to proselytize others and who want to identify their evangelistic mistakes. (Apr. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Hemant Mehta is an honors graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he helped establish the organization Students WithOut Religious Dogma (SWORD). Mehta also is chair of the Secular Student Alliance’s board of directors. His story has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Seattle Times, the Village Voice, National Public Radio, and FOX News Channel, among other major news outlets. Currently, Mehta is working toward a masters degree in math education at DePaul University in Chicago.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction
The Question of Faith
There once was a town that was the envy of all who lived outside it. The people in the town were happy, their businesses did well, and everyone was in good health. New residents arrived constantly, knowing they would be building their lives in a wonderful place. God was watching over the town.
One summer, however, things changed. Monsoons drenched the area, and most of the crops were washed away. Animals couldn’t find shelter from the continual rain, and they were dying along with the crops. The people became depressed as they lost their sources of food and income—and watched their family members fall ill. The times were so bad that an atheist in the town went out one night and painted his credo on the side of a prominent building:

G O D I S N O W H E R E

When the townspeople saw this, they wanted more than anything for the man to be proven wrong. But they struggled to mount a convincing counterargument. They had no reason to think God was still with them. If He were, wouldn’t the rain let up? They went on with their business, wading always through inches of water, thinking no one could help them. One day a wise monk visited the despondent community. He knew how beautiful the town had been, and he wondered what could have happened to
destroy everyone’s faith. He wanted to do something to restore the people’s hopeful outlook on life.
As the monk walked through the town, observing the devastation, he realized the difficulty of his task. He stopped townspeople and asked what they were thinking. They told him God had left their village, and there was no one who could help them. They had no choice but to succumb to the misery. The monk assured them their lives would get better, but his words were easy to dismiss.
Then the monk rounded a corner and saw the atheist’s message painted on the side of the building. Suddenly, he saw what had to be done. The next day, as the townspeople passed the building, they saw a slightly altered message. Only one diagonal line had been added, and yet it changed everything. The message now read:

G O D I S N O W / H E R E

The change in the town was dramatic and immediate. When the people realized God was still with them, they became optimistic again. Maybe God had just been testing them, and for a while they may have failed the test. But now they knew they could withstand anything with God’s help. The people realized their future was being looked after and their prayers would be answered. In no time at all, the town became prosperous again and the residents spread the word of God to every newcomer.

This story served as my introduction to the world of other religions. At the age of five, I knew very little about religion or God. But I did know one thing: anyone who believed in a faith different from that of my family was wrong. I don’t remember being taught that, I just picked it up indirectly from my parents and other adults who shared our religious beliefs. When my mom told me the story of the once-prosperous village, I don’t think she intended to criticize other belief systems. She just wanted me to understand that God was great and if I said my prayers, according to our religious beliefs, I would be in His good graces.
I could understand the wonderful, sanguine message that the power and reach of God were incredible. But recalling the story now, almost twenty years later, I can’t help but ask a number of questions: Where was this town? Why didn’t they arrest the guy who vandalized the building? Wouldn’t the monsoon rain wash away the freshly applied paint? And are you telling me that just one slash mark really changed everyone’s thinking? Such is the nature of a skeptical person. We don’t put our confidence in fables that are meant only to inspire us. However, when my mom first told me that story, I thought it was true. She didn’t issue a disclaimer that identified the story as fiction. Only after I began asking questions did the story begin to lose its credibility. And as I grew up, I heard other parables like this one from other religions, stories meant to teach moral lessons. While I understood them to be just lively fairy tales, I found that even adults believed them to be literally true, without bothering to raise the types of questions I had.
Why are people unwilling to examine and question their beliefs? I wondered. But such questions reflect who I am today, not me as a child. When I heard of the attitude change brought about by a simple punctuation mark, I welcomed the wisdom God brought, and I hoped I would be as blessed as the townspeople were whenever I went through a rough period. How horrible it must be to think God isn’t around! If only the people had held on to their faith from the start, they would’ve been able to make it through the time of despair much more easily. And I was saddened to learn that whoever these atheists were, they didn’t believe in God. I guess the story produced its intended effect, since these thoughts stayed with me for years. Amazingly, even though my parents raised me in the Jain faith, I didn’t recall my mom mentioning our religion in the story. As I talked more with people who were religious, I discovered that many of them had heard similar stories about atheists. In fact, many of the stories portrayed atheists in a more malicious light. It took another ten years, after I had become a teenager, before I realized the extent to which such prejudices and stereotypes colored the reputations of nonreligious people.
I have lived on both sides of the religion divide—first as a devout religious believer and, since age fourteen, as a person without religion. I am an atheist, but I don’t fit the common stereotype held by so many in the religious community. I am not angry with God, and I don’t want to rid the world of religion. In this book, as we talk about matters of belief and nonbelief, I hope you will think of me not simply as an atheist, but rather as a person with questions about faith, an openness to evidence that might contradict my current beliefs, and a curiosity about Christianity and its message. Please don’t assume I am the enemy of religious belief. I’m not trying to tear down anyone’s religion, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers.

By way of introduction, my name is Hemant, and I’m a friendly atheist. I’m serious when I say that in this book I’m going to do my best to help improve the way churches present the Christian message. I suspect a number of questions have popped into your mind already. Is he so naive that he believes religious people care what people like him think about Christianity? (I do think Christians care about how they present their message, and I would never consider that to be naiveté.) Why isn’t he capitalizing the words atheist and atheism? (Because atheism is not a religion, and atheists do not adhere to any religion. So I don’t capitalize the word as I would Methodist or Presbyterian.) How is his name pronounced? (I prefer HEH-mint.)
I agree that my assumption that committed Christians will listen to what a nonreligious person has to say about churches and the job they’re doing is a bit of a stretch. No athlete ever risks asking the opposing team’s captain for advice on running a particular play… Well, not unless there’s a hidden agenda,
right?
Honestly, I have no ulterior motive. In fact, coming from a religious background myself, one I will describe in chapter 2, I know how important a place of worship can be. The religious culture that centered on my Jain temple was a positive force in my life, and I always see how profoundly and positively religious belief affects the people I love. At the same time, I understand why so many people have chosen a life of nonbelief. I’ve been an active atheist for many years, and I chair the board of directors of a national secular organization. From your vantage point, I’m playing for the other team. I know exactly what the other side thinks and feels. And you’d be surprised how far off the mark many Christians’ perceptions of atheists actually are.

AT HOME WITH AN ATHEIST
I’m gazing at my bookshelf as I write this, and I’m convinced a stranger looking at my reading material wouldn’t be able to determine my loyalties. There’s a Bible that was given to me by a liberal high-school friend. There are enough pamphlets on Christianity, given to me during college, to last a lifetime. Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith sits next to Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, while Tim Lahaye’s Mind Siege finds a place next to Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. There’s a book by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek educational material from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a slew of magazines ranging from Charisma to Maxim. I mark my page in the Richard Dawkins book I am currently reading with a bookmark that has the Beatitudes written on it. (The bookmark was sent to me by a woman who read about my story in a newspaper.) Even my (religious, but not Christian) mom is working her way through Joel Osteen’s bestseller, Your Best Life Now. The books aren’t sitting on my shelf to confuse people. I actually read them and enjoy them. And sometimes, dare I say it, I even disagree with what the scholars say.
But as I read Christian books, and as I spent months attending an amazing variety of churches in different parts of the country, I kept running across a consistent and troubling truth about American Christianity. It is clear that most churches have aligned themselves against nonreligious people. By adopting this stance, Christians have turned off the people I would think they want to connect with. The combative stance I’ve observed in many churches, and from many Christians on an in...

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Customer Reviews

Fun, insightful and informative
You may have read about Hemant Mehta in the Wall Street Journal as the "eBay Atheist" who offered to attend church for the highest bidder on his eBay auction. Well, Hemant has now written a book about his experiences visiting churches as an atheist. Think of Hemant as kind of a Mystery Shopper for churches. Most churches these days claim to want to be "seeker-friendly" and try to be welcoming to outsiders, so Hemant is there to tell us whether our attempts are actually working

I have to say that as soon as I started reading the book I could not put it down. It is engagingly written and deeply insightful about the pros and cons of Christian churches. Even as a Christian pastor myself, there were so many times I found myself agreeing with Hemant's assessments of contemporary churches. At other times I was amused at his bewilderment at some of the stranger things that we Christians tend to do in church (like the lady in the more charismatic church who kept shouting out random phrases like "Thank you Jesus" right over his shoulder the whole time, or the unenthusiastic liturgical responses from the congregation at the Presbyterian church.)

The book is actually written in three parts. The first four chapters are an introduction to Hemant, his eBay Atheist story, why he is an atheist even though he grew up as a Jain, and a couple of chapters about what atheists are and are not really like (we religious people tend to have a lot of false stereotypes about atheists). The middle four chapters are his reviews of the 14 different churches he attended, and the last two chapters are his summary of what works, what doesn't, and what it would take to actually convert him.

The thing that I've appreciated most about Hemant's approach is that he doesn't see himself as an antagonist to people of faith. While holding true to his own convictions, he nonetheless is open to exploring other options, and especially to helping Christians become better than we currently are. For instance, in his introduction he says:

"I am an atheist, but I don't fit the common stereotype held by so many in the religious community. I am not angry with God, and I don't want to rid the world of religion. In this book, as we talk about matters of belief and nonbelief, I hope you will think of me not simply as an atheist, but rather as a person with questions about faith, an openness to evidence that might contradict my current beliefs, and a curiosity about Christianity and its message. Please don't assume I am the enemy of religious belief. I'm not trying to tear down anyone's religion, and I don't pretend to have all the answers... I'm a friendly atheist. I'm serious when I say that in this book I'm going to do my best to help improve the way churches present the Christian message."

I think that's an admirable goal and I appreciate Hemant's open and friendly spirit. After all, I share his goal of wanting to help Christians become better at actually displaying Christ's message of love. I think any pastor or church-going Christian that is concerned about how we really come across to outsiders ought to read this book. You'll come to respect and appreciate Hemant's advice just as I have. Definitely buy this book!

Hemant is very objective and asks relevant questions
The unique aspect of Hemant going to various churches is that he has little knowledge of Christianity. You can see that by the questions he asks while attending church services. Anyone that is familiar with Christianity will enjoy answering the questions Hemant asks throughout the book. One theme throughout the book is Hemant wishing for sermons to be relative to everyday living and not just scripture reading with no elaboration. I also think Hemant has a good idea that dialogue needs to be more frequent concerning atheists and christians. On page 142 he really hits a personal aspect to why I'm am an atheist. He even gives a chapter to what it would take for him to believe in god. I think it's a well rounded book and very objective. I think the target audience for this book is Christians who want to see what it's like for someone to enter a church and unaware of what is going on.

A Great Read
Let me first begin by saying that I have been a pastor for nearly 21 years.

I believe Hemant Mehta's book is a must read for every pastor and every Christian that cares for unchurched people. It is an easy read that most will knock out in just a few sittings. His writing style made it seem like I was sitting across the table from him at lunch. He is an honest and brilliant young man who raises some legitimate and thoughtful questions about the Americanized Church. I thoroughly enjoyed his reviews of the churches he attended. Since I was raised in the church it's difficult for me to view our liturgy and traditions through fresh eyes. Hemant helped me do just that. His blatant, and at times humorous, critiques lend valuable insight that most church goers will appreciate.

Most churches espouse in their mission statements that they desire to reach the unchurched, but few, including my own church, take consistent and proactive measures to do so. We fall into the trap of thinking that if we have a hot band and a funny speaker, people will line up for life change. Those days are over.

I hope that "I Sold My Soul on eBay" will open dialogue between Christians and Atheist for years to come. I think we all could learn from one another's perspectives. I know Hemant has already taught me some priceless lessons.

This book is a good reminder that people, even those who disagree with our beliefs, are not the enemy.