Can the meaning of religious language be separated from its use? Religious Language, Meaning and Use addresses what has become a contentious (though often overlooked) question in the philosophy of religion. Through philosophical argumentation and by means of religiously-inspired essays, this book seeks to return religion to the context in which the meaning and impact of its words become inseparable from the life of the believer.

Part I begins by considering the various philosophical challenges that occur when the context and meaning of religious language is ignored. Chapters cover such topics as the risk of religious belief becoming idolatrous, the cost of neglecting the New Atheists critique of religious belief, the importance of seeing religious pictures in the context of religious practice, the fact of fideism and the plurality of truth, how atheism, in the writing of Simone Weil, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Paul Tillich has been used as a stepping-stone for religious faith and finally, the role of Agape in defining human well-being and flourishing.

Part II presents the writings of philosopher Robert C. Coburn who has, for over 50 years, been at the forefront of the study of metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Writing in clear non-metaphysical prose, Coburn discusses how religious ways of talking are intimately tied to the mundane existence of the ordinary.

This book makes a compelling case for the close affinity of practice and meaning, demonstrating why religious belief, practice and truth are best understood in non-metaphysical stories about the way believers do things with words. Rather than floating in a metaphysical world above the fray, religious language is, as Wittgenstein said in a different but related context, 'there like our lives'.