In Bad Religion, How We Became a Nation of Heretics, Ross Douthat "offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails--and why it threatens to take American society with it.
Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of American decline, Douthat exposes the spiritual roots of the nation's political and economic crises. He argues that America's problem isn't too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, it's bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses.
The faiths speak from many pulpits--conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably "spiritual"--and many of their preachers claim a Christian warrant. But they are increasingly offering distortions of traditional Christianity--not the real thing. Christianity's place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, Douthat argues, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption.
In a story that moves from the 1950's to the age of Obama, he brilliantly charts institutional Christianity's decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith--which acted as a "vital center' and the moral force behind the civil rights movement--through the culture wars of the 1960's and 1970's to the polarizing debates of the present day. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Barack Obama, Eat Pray Love to Joel Osteen, and Oprah Winfrey to The Da Vinci Code, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel's mantra of "pray and grow rich," a cult of self-esteem the reduces God to a life coach, and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country's ability to confront our most pressing challenges and accelerated American decline.
His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity is sure to generate controversy, and it will be vital reading for all those concerned about the imperiled American future".
2 comments:
That sounds like a very informative book. I wonder if there is a way to turn it around now though
Rain: The author was optimistic that things could turn around for the church, but he made the statement that "The bible doesn't say that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the United States". He makes a good point when he says that churches and other Christian organizations can be political without being partisan. For instance, when conservative Christians aligned themselves with the Republican party over the issue of abortion, they also signed off on water boarding and torture, a callous disregard for the poor, and predatory capitalism. And when liberal Christians (yes, there are some) go with the Democrats because of their advocacy for the poor, minorities, women, and other disenfrachised, they may find themselves at odds with the abortion issue and libertinism. Better to remain nonpartisan and bring their collective influence to bear against the policies of an incumbent party.
Post a Comment