By: Andrea Lathrop on March 21, 2019
Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics ends with some positive possibilities for the future of the church in America but the author admits writing from a pessimistic framework. It was a very interesting and disheartening read. I worked through Douthat’s account of Christianity in the twentieth century in America to the Church’s…
By: Jason Turbeville on March 21, 2019
This weeks subject matter, on the surface, is a much less controversial task for those who keep track of such things. On the surface, we are talking about something that 77% of the U.S. population carries in their hand a smart phone. [1] Drilling down a bit further 69% of those in the U.S. are…
By: Rhonda Davis on March 21, 2019
Ross Douthat writes in an op-ed style as he addresses the decline of orthodox Christianity in America. He explains his position in the introduction: “America’s problem isn’t too much religion, or too little of it. It’s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christians in its…
By: Jenn Burnett on March 21, 2019
American Christianity has a particular flavour that is distinctly, well, American. The sentiment that has driven the nation to seek global influence has had significant impact on the church which has thus sought to influence the global church. Non-American churches are left to either receive or react to this influence. From Rick Warren’s sermons forming…
By: Harry Edwards on March 21, 2019
Ross Douthat, writing in 2012, could have waited just a few more years before penning Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics to include forthcoming distressing events, nicely rounding off his jeremiad observation of Christian decline in the United States. In a few years he could have included on his list the increased…
By: Mark Petersen on March 21, 2019
Cal Newport, with his astonishing productivity fuelled by discipline and strategic boundaries, reminds us in his newest book of the need to digitally declutter. Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World is a call to choose the path less travelled, and say a firm no to our culture’s vehement attempts to form…
By: Dave Watermulder on March 21, 2019
Two weeks ago, a distraught woman in my church came up to me with her 6thgrade son. They had moved to our area a year earlier from Shanghai, China and they were struggling. While the mom worked at her well-paying high tech job, her son was floundering at school, and according to her, “all he…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on March 21, 2019
This was a very difficult book for me. I have found beauty, inspiration, further faith formation, and lifelong relationships in many of the things that Douthat calls out in Bad Religion: How we Became a Nation of Heretics, and if that deems me a heretic, I have been called far worse, by far better. After…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on March 21, 2019
I had a pretty good idea what this week’s book was going to be about by its obvious title, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a focused life in a noisy world by Cal Newport, but I had no idea how much it would resonate with me and my core values. Newport is pretty clear what he means…
By: Colleen Batchelder on March 20, 2019
When I first delved into Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, I was highly skeptical. How could a book that challenges one’s daily interactions have any precedence or purpose in today’s growing technologically-driven society? However, I was reminded today why I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I won’t go into…
By: Chris Pritchett on March 20, 2019
In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport applies the practices of the minimalist movement to our digital practice. In the second part of the book, Newport encourages the reader to embrace the discipline of solitude. I found that quite fascinating. In our world of digital distraction, we see the need to practice what the church has practiced…
By: Dave Watermulder on March 19, 2019
My friends! I am sorry to be submitting this paper later than the others and to be behind the wave on this conversation within our cohort. At the same time, in approaching this book and topic, I think that I am also ahead in a certain way. I say this, because the topic that we are…
By: Mike on March 19, 2019
Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism helps readers resist, adapt, declutter, reduce, detox, and hopefully become more effective within an otherwise messy digital construct of zero’s and one’s. The key comment by Newport that caught my attention was “The App Store” wants your soul.[1] This post will examine Newport’s ideas and claims while trying to extract and…
By: John Muhanji on March 17, 2019
The two books (Digital Minimalism and Simple Habits for complex Time) we have now read are addressing current challenges that we are facing in a complex world. The complexity of life we live in today is changing hourly, and before one adjusts to what is happening around, another new development comes up and what we…
By: Kyle Chalko on March 17, 2019
What a book. What a topic. What a world we live in. It was interesting timing that we were assigned to read this book. I dont mean to be hyperbolic and just shout “wow its worse than ever”, but this is just a few weeks after the final act of the story of the golden…
By: Wallace Kamau on March 16, 2019
This review by Pete Adeney captures the idea the thrust of the book Digital minimalism. Many phrases have been used and are becoming popular in reference to what can only be equated to addiction to electronic gadgets, social media and the internet, including but not limited to: are we becoming a nation of zombies; modernity…
By: Digby Wilkinson on March 16, 2019
This comes as less than my best reflection on a book. I find myself mired in a mass shooting that should never have happened on our unique shores. A man from another world came to kill refugees and migrants finding sanctuary from fear in Aotearoa, a land far from their own lands. It seems we…
By: Jean Ollis on March 15, 2019
I feel like this topic is coming full circle. Remember that night, not quite two years ago, in the hotel lobby in Cape Town? A group of LGP8’s, new to each other and travel weary, stayed up late in the evening to earnestly and respectfully discuss homosexuality and the church. We were vulnerable, we were…
By: Greg on March 15, 2019
A thousand words are not enough to really delve into the controversy that this topic brings up. A thousand words are a drop in the bucket to the research that has been done or even time spent in explanations of them. They are not enough to describe the friends that I have that struggle with…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on March 15, 2019
My heart is heavy this week. It has been a week filled with trauma and crisis, which has made it a little overwhelming for this small-town girl. The week started with a shooting in Kalamazoo of a police officer and cumulated with the tragedy in New Zealand. So, my heart has been hurting, and the…
