By: Digby Wilkinson on March 22, 2019
Ok, Bad Religion is a book of rhetoric.[1] Moreover, I love it, but not for the right reasons; it is pessimistic and cynical – my favourite words. However, and it’s a big, however, those words do not always twin with wisdom and insight. Inasmuch as Ross Douthat comes across as somewhat prophetic, he draws a…
By: Shawn Hart on March 22, 2019
For your reading discomfort: https://babbletop.com/15-most-dangerous-internet-challenges/ As I worked through our reading this week, I could not help but ask the question; “Did we go full circle?” I mean how did we get from Sarah Pink writing, “Pre-field work surveys of literature, digital and other visual texts and examples of how other ethnographers have successfully worked with…
By: Kyle Chalko on March 22, 2019
Cal Newport’s first book we read, Deep Work, was a MAJOR game changer for me. I mean like a serious life change. Because of this, I wanted to take this book very seriously. And so I did. I committed to taking this book as seriously as I could and incorporating as much of it into…
By: Sean Dean on March 22, 2019
One of my favorite moments of the show M.A.S.H. is this time when a patient is brought before Hawkeye Pierce and for some reason they have run out of anesthesia. Hawkeye has to improvise and fast so he can do the work that needs to be done, so he distracts the patient by asking him…
By: Jean Ollis on March 22, 2019
It was refreshing to read another Cal Newport text this week – Digital Minimalism. His premise of ‘technology as distraction” resonates with me. In fact, I want to shout out PREACH IT CAL! I agree with almost every technology concern he raises in his writing. I have been/still am concerned about the role our phones,…
By: Jennifer Williamson on March 22, 2019
A century ago, when missionaries left for the field, they said goodbye to friends and family, expecting never to see them again. Today, with the ease of global travel and the accessibility of global communication, missionaries find it easy to stay connected with people “back home” while serving in even the remotest parts of the…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on March 21, 2019
In Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat examines some of the most significant changes that have occurred in U.S. religious life since the 1950s. Douthat argues that the problem with contemporary American religion is not growing secularism or unrelenting religious fanaticism. Instead, Douthat contends that religious…
By: Jay Forseth on March 21, 2019
[1] While reading this week’s book, my mind (yes, evangelicals do occasionally use their mind, Mr. Mark Noll) kept going back to Dr. Henry Cloud and John Townsend in Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life. I used to hand that book out like candy when I was…
By: Dan Kreiss on March 21, 2019
It came on quickly. No one anticipated the outcome and there is still significant uncertainty when considering future implications. Even Steve Jobs had very little idea how the smartphone would transform society. To him the iPhone was an mp3 player that could also be used to make cellular calls and texts.[1](5) Since that time (only…
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…
