By: Harry Fritzenschaft on April 3, 2019
Haidt (as a social and cultural psychologist who has spent sixteen years researching and teaching at the University of Virginia) explores why society has such trouble discussing religion, and why we can’t, “make conversations about morality, politics, and religion more common, more civil and more fun.” Haidt contends that politics and religion as expressions of our…
By: Harry Edwards on April 3, 2019
Save for the author’s ardent commitment to Darwinian evolution, there is much to learn and appreciate from Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. I also wished he addressed an important corollary of his project, namely, the grounding of morality. But that may be exclusively in the…
By: Karen Rouggly on April 2, 2019
It was February 2015 and overnight, everyone and their mother became concerned with the latest fashion statement. Everyone had an opinion on it and people were camped out solidly on their side. The internet was roaring. It’s almost as if you could hear the virtual chanting in the streets, “Gold, Gold, Gold!” and “Blue, Blue,…
By: John Muhanji on March 29, 2019
We have many indigenous churches which are now calling themselves as Africa Independent Churches (AIC) which broke away from the mainstream churches which were established by missionaries. Some of these churches are led with people who have never gone through theological training nor any other church leadership, but they claim to have been trained by…
By: Karen Rouggly on March 27, 2019
This last week, I’ve been at a conference that centers around the idea of vocation. Most of the conference attendees are folks from institutions of higher education, some religious and some not. As my colleague and I wandered the breakout sessions and sat through the workshops, we both remarked a few times on the terminology…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on March 23, 2019
Ross Douthat, an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times took an interesting faith journey through various streams of Christianity including infant baptism in the Episcopal church, attending evangelical and Pentecostal churches as a child, and converting to Catholicism after turning seventeen and becoming quite traditional in his Christian faith, has developed a passionate argument…
By: Mary Mims on March 23, 2019
I started reading Ross Douthat’s book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, with great interest because, in the introduction, he promised to talk about the Black Church and its role in the American Church. As I read on, I found Douthat’s first characterization of the Black Church ill-informed at best. Douthat states…
By: Wallace Kamau on March 23, 2019
Martha Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed-or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her. Jesus was categorical about the best place and posture for a believer to be safe on matters of God. Humility at the…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on March 23, 2019
Today, I chose to take the opportunity to visit a Muslim church service that was honoring the victims of the horrible New Zealand tragedy. It was a ‘community service’ open to the public. I wanted to write this blog after attending the service, as I had just devoured Douthat’s book and felt a little ‘boxed…
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Mario Hood on March 21, 2019
Ross Douthat in Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, explores the major changes that have occurred in U.S. religious life since the 1950s. Douthat is similar to David Bebbington and Karl Polanyni. Bebbington in his work, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, deals with the historical board period that provides rich insights into the…
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: 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: 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…
