By: Mary Walker on January 25, 2018
Modernity is a war of religious ideas, not a war on them.[1] In his fascinating book, The Soul of Doubt, Dominic Erdozain demonstrates that it is not science but conscience that has produced our modern culture of religious doubt. “The ‘religious roots’ that I consider fundamental to modern cultures of unbelief are twofold: the positive…
By: Jennifer Williamson on January 25, 2018
In The Soul of Doubt Erdozain contends that most of Christianity’s starkest critics (i.e. those who cried, “Foul!” when Calvin burned “heretics” at the stake and Luther thumbed his nose at morality) made arguments rooted in genuine Christian ethics. His essential claim is that “[T]he ‘secular’ critique of Christianity was a burning product of the…
By: Greg on January 25, 2018
“Buddha would have made a great Christian,”says Steve Cioccolanti, “because his life and teaching were not against any particular religion, rather searching for the ultimate truth and purpose of life.”[1] A Christian can see the hand of God move in the lives of those others have deemed secular. God can been seen throughout history moving…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on January 24, 2018
Dominic Erdozain’s book, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx, was a fascinating and often times humorous read. The latter I did not expect from a book on this topic. A few things stood out to me as I read: The fact that the Christian’s conscience is highlighted as…
By: Katy Drage Lines on January 24, 2018
Everything has two faces.– Pierre Bayle Some of my favorite people claim no faith, or proudly reject any association with Christianity or the Church. And honestly, who can blame them, these days? For instance, a friend of mine grew up in the church, came out as gay, was rejected by that community and left the faith,…
By: Jay Forseth on January 24, 2018
While reading around the book before reading the book, The Soul of Doubt (thank you Adler for teaching us how to first read around a book), other titles from Dominic Erdozain caught my attention–Does Sport Build Character?, The Problem of Pleasure, In Praise of Folly, Religion and Recreation… Caught my attention, yes he did! After reading Erdozain…
By: Dan Kreiss on January 24, 2018
Much like last week’s text, the title of the work for this week seems oxymoronic. What part does theSoul have in doubt? For Dominic Erdozain, there is an historical connection between Christian naysayers and the core of the faith but, his premise suggests that genuine opposition is fertilized in the soil of Christianity. “His claim is that…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on January 24, 2018
My mother’s words still ring in my ears when describing the rowdy Spring breakers in my hometown of Palm Springs California, who were less than model citizens with their lawlessness and drunken street orgies: “They are very secular.” Even though the word lacked meaning to my young ears, I understood the inference from her derogatory…
By: Jim Sabella on January 23, 2018
I used to collect fossils. When I was pastoring in Pennsylvania I found this huge fossil—about the size of a basketball split in half. It looked like a sponge on one side and like a coiled snake on the other. I had never seen anything like it before. At the time we didn’t have the…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on January 19, 2018
For the past two weeks, I have pondered on what it means to be secular in America. In America, I have found that it is not a matter of if someone believes in God or has a spiritual belief system but a matter of what exactly they profess to believe in. I live in a…
By: Chip Stapleton on January 19, 2018
Ian, our seven year old, is somewhat obsessed with time. The first thing he does every morning – no matter how early it might be – is come in to our room, grab my cell phone and check the time (and the weather). If we are in the car, or at home there is never…
By: Trisha Welstad on January 19, 2018
Sometimes education takes unlearning: unlearning methods that do not help our growth, unlearning terms that are more couched in modern vernacular than the truth of their meaning. When coming to a text on nationalism by a sociologist who is thinking anthropologically and has lived all over the globe with an education as diverse, there is…
By: Kyle Chalko on January 18, 2018
We are all drawn to community. And ironically is it exclusivity which helps build community. at least, for those that are within. Consider how fast our LGP8 cohort made a distinction between ourselves and the other groups by labeling ourselves the great eight. No one made the different cohorts be competitive and tease each other…
By: Kristin Hamilton on January 18, 2018
I am a secularized Christian captivated by mystery. My ‘thin spaces’ are found in art, incense, bread and wine, and cement floors dappled with the light through stained glass windows. On the other hand, I feel like there can be no transcendent without exploring they ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of human thought and motivation. The 70s…
By: Shawn Hart on January 18, 2018
Religion, politics, sex, and money are just four of the very dominant topics that we seem to debate aggressively over in our modern day society. Though religion used to seem to have the leading hand in these discussions, it seems as though they have now taken the back burner to many topics, and completely overshadowed…
By: Mike on January 18, 2018
Benedict Anderson, aka Aaron Binenkorp’s Imagined Communities is an influential human sciences text that traces the post-colonial development of nationalism that this post will analyze from the lens of the religious decline of power in the West. Anderson says the 18th Century marked the dawn of nationalism and the “dusk of religious modes of thought.”[1] …
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on January 18, 2018
To some, secularity could be described as an absence of God, or a space in which God is not believed in or readily sought after. Another definition of secularity describes it as an evolution where God was once exclusively acknowledged and worshiped, but then adapted to a choice for individuals to question God’s role, identity,…
By: Mark Petersen on January 18, 2018
As I embarked upon my reading of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, I felt uncomfortably trapped at a formal dinner party sitting next to the most erudite, obnoxious man. He was unfortunately trying to impress me with his name-dropping, and relished quoting obscure literary texts in their original languages. It was only as I compelled myself…
By: Jean Ollis on January 18, 2018
I found it! An online resource to help explain Benedict Anderson’s comprehensive text on nationalism. But I hesitate to click and hit enter. The website, titled “The Nationalism Project”, sparked my interest but also gave me a sense of dread. What if this site was pro nationalism to an extreme of white supremacy? I precipitously…
By: Stu Cocanougher on January 18, 2018
Last week I spent several days with church planters in San Francisco, California. At the same time, I was reading Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor’s landmark work, A Secular Age1. I found this to be a serendipitous experience. A Secular Age is an award-winning, exhaustive (896 pages) work which gives a fresh perspective on the secularization…
