Douthat, Ross Gregory. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics<\/i>. New York: Free Press, 2013.<\/p>\n
Summary<\/strong><\/p>\n I think that there are few who would argue that Christianity in the USA looks different than it did just one generation ago. Many would argue that Christianity in America has lost its cultural influence altogether; church attendance numbers seem to bear that out. Douthat says this shift is the result of \u201cBad Religion.\u201d His thesis, simply put, is that American Christianity has departed from its roots. The United States is therefore faced with the social, cultural and religious implications of that departure, namely a crisis of traditional Christianity and a general crisis of faith in America. [1]<\/p>\n According to Douthat, the reason for the departure has to do, in part, with the way in which the church engages in culture or in some cases its lack of engagement. Additionally, there has been a decided shift from more an orthodox Christian stances toward an intense individualism that leads toward an orthopraxy of an individual experienced as opposed to an orthodoxy of belief. [2] This individualism has contributed to a re-expression of \u201c God within\u201d and is articulated by Hollywood, the various media platforms as well from the pulpits of well-known preachers and evangelists who preach a doctrine of prosperity. [3] \u00a0Additionally, there is a continuing and strengthening polarization of the faithful into predominately two political parties each drawing hard lines of division not only from political opponents from brothers and sisters in Christ.<\/p>\n It is in this climate that, \u201cBoth doubters and believers stand to lose if religion in the age of heresy turns out to be complicit in our fragmented communities, our collapsing families, our political polarization, and our weakened social ties. Both doubter and believers will inevitably suffer from a religious culture that supplies more moral license than moral correction, more self-satisfaction than self-examination, more comfort than chastisement.\u201d [4]<\/p>\n Application<\/strong><\/p>\n Unlike Heath\u2019s Rebel Sell <\/i>thesis, [5] and Hunter’s Change the World\u00a0<\/em>thesis [6] which in my estimation are more American-centric, Douthat\u2019s Bad Religion <\/i>has a wider impact. I remember in the early 1990\u2019s walking into a church in the middle of the Eastern part of Europe and seeing a book on a table that espoused what I considered to be an extreme prosperity doctrine. The pastor told me it was one of the first Christian books that were published in the national language after the fall of communism. I remember thinking, \u201cof all of the books they could have translated and publish they chose this one.\u201d That was my first introduction to the religious influence of the Untied States around the world. I\u2019d always read about it and knew it existed but never saw it in action.<\/p>\n The religious impact of the United States on these emerging European churches in the 1990\u2019s became a part of their DNA and is evident and in some cases problematic still today. Some of these early translated texts have impacted the theology and doctrines of movements and whole denominations. As missionaries, we find ourselves working with national leaders to address these issues. The internet, international media availability and the increase of English as the lingua franca have made the problem more challenging. All that to say that \u201cbad religion\u201d is not just an American problem\u2014\u201cbad\u00a0religion\u201d is a world problem. That gives all the more reason for us American\u2019s to get it right at home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Douthat, Ross Gregory. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. New York: Free Press, 2013. Summary I think that there are few who would argue that Christianity in the USA looks different than it did just one generation ago. Many would argue that Christianity in America has lost its cultural influence altogether; church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-12386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-douthat","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n