I Sold My Soul on eBay – a review

I’ve just finished reading Hemant Mehta’s “I Sold My Soul on eBay” and I found it quite interesting.

Mehta, an atheist, decided to “auction off his soul” on eBay in early 2006, the proposal being that he would go to church for a number of days, and the more money that was offered, the more church services he would attend. The competition was won by Jim Henderson, who agreed with Mehta that he would visit a wide variety of Christian church services, and report back on his experiences.

What follows is a fascinating odyssey into American churchgoing from the perspective of a non-Christian (Mehta himself was brought up in the Jain religion). It’s honest, humorous at times, and yet always highly respectful. The aim of the book is three-fold. To help Christians understand atheism and atheists, to help Christians rethink how their services might appeal more to outsiders, and to help atheists understand better the Christian perspective, and the common ground that is often shared between us.

Mehta visited all kinds of services, from the small and traditional to the mega-churches that have sprouted up around America. In one church he was invited up on stage to discuss his atheism, and the different perspective he shared, with the pastor. What he found both delighted and perplexed him. While he found the rituals and some of the beliefs and attitudes utterly unconvincing, he also discovered a strong sense of energy and humanity, as well as a desire to improve the lives of the less well off.

The result is a critique of American Christianity, almost in the way someone would write a school report. Mehta had both good and bad to say about the churches he visited. Mehta found the motivational talents of many of the pastors enormously uplifting, even if he himself didn’t buy into the underlying dogma. He praised their sense of community and their programs to help the disadvantaged. Nevertheless he also found a relatively high level of distrust for outsiders and a corresponding lack of engagement with those of differing world-views. He criticised the tardiness of many churchgoers and an apparent lack of courage to stand up to religious extremists, and he also had some things to say about churches who seemed to put a higher premium on erecting new churches in deprived countries than on improving the quality of life of those people who were being helped.

Mehta’s book is primarily aimed at Christians. It is not an effort to deconvert them, just to explain his point of view and how Christian services appear to an outsider. The book is devoid of insults or sarcasm, and thus will probably do a better job in explaining the atheist mindset to a Christian, than will any of the recent works of Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens. I share many of Mehta’s perspectives and I was impressed with his sense of optimism, openness and thoroughgoing common-sense throughout the book.