{"id":12480,"date":"2017-03-17T02:12:37","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T09:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=12480"},"modified":"2017-03-17T02:12:37","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T09:12:37","slug":"to-douthat-or-not-to-douthat-that-is-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/to-douthat-or-not-to-douthat-that-is-the-question\/","title":{"rendered":"To Douthat or Not to Douthat, That Is the Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

My normal practice, when posting about the books we read for our DMin program, is to first read the reviews and articles about the book and the author. This week that may have been a bad choice. Before ever opening Bad Religion: How we became a nation of heretics<\/em>, I was\u2026well\u2026I guess I\u2019ll just say I was less than enamored with the author (Ross Douthat) or the premise of the book.<\/p>\n

I had to check myself because Douthat approaches Christianity and religious life in America from a very different worldview than my own. I tend toward the left (he would call me a liberal) and he looks at life from pretty right of center (conservative). I do not want to live in an echo chamber, so I find value in reading and hearing from people who see the world differently than I do. I think disagreement is healthy and, as a Christian, I think it is important to listen especially to those who are honestly trying to live their faith as much like Christ as possible, but do so looking through a different lens than my own.<\/p>\n

Many of Douthat\u2019s statements resonated with me but, when he explained his thinking, I realized we had very little common ground in our foundational understanding of how Christians in America can course-correct. Douthat\u2019s premise is that, while we have always been a \u201cnation of heretics,\u201d Christianity is now truly in trouble because we no longer have the \u201ccenter\u201d of Christian orthodoxy to hold the core of the faith together.[1]<\/a> He uses examples like Oprah, Joel Osteen, and Glenn Beck to claim that Christianity is now a \u201cchoose your own Jesus\u201d sort of faith that no longer resembles the faith of traditional orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Traditional orthodoxy. What does Douthat mean by that? I may have missed it in the book, but I never really felt like he defined his understanding of orthodoxy other than a few mentions of creeds. In his interview with Christianity Today, he says that his idea of heresy and orthodoxy comes from \u201ctheological common ground shared by (the) Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations\u201d and that it\u2019s \u201ca C. S. Lewisian, Mere Christianity<\/em> definition of orthodoxy or heresy.\u201d[2]<\/a> I\u2019m not sure what that means. Can orthodoxy only be found in those areas where Catholics and Protestants come together (or as Douthat states, \u201cmany Protestant denominations\u201d)? I mean, Catholics and Christians have some pretty big dogmatic and doctrinal differences. Don\u2019t we? I\u2019m just not sure Douthat understands orthodoxy, especially in light of the fact that he believes, \u201cThe idea that America has some distinctive role to play in the unfolding of God\u2019s plan is compatible with orthodox Christianity.\u201d[3]<\/a> Unless he would also state that all people groups have a distinctive role to play in the unfolding of God\u2019s plan, I think he is buying into the American exceptionalism that he claims to find dangerous.<\/p>\n

In his conclusion, Douthat offers four things that faith and Christianity in America \u201cshould\u201d be: 1) Political without being partisan, 2) ecumenical but also confessional, 3) moralistic but also holistic, and 4) oriented toward sanctity and beauty.[4]<\/a> For the most part, I agree with these four statements. I think an American Christianity that consistently followed these ideals would be pretty spectacular. The problem is that Douthat struggles to flesh these out in a way that includes views other than his own, and his explanations come across as shallow and failing to deal with the complexities and messiness of life. How do we avoid partisanship when we have a two-party system and a single \u201cplank\u201d from the platform of those parties (pro-choice vs. pro-life) tends to define American Christianity? What does it look like to be ecumenical and confessional when his own words describe Mainline Protestants as \u201caccommodationists\u201d and Catholics and Evangelicals are noted as be \u201cco-belligerents\u201d in the culture wars?[5]<\/a> What does it mean to be moralistic as well as holistic? Douthat hits the moralism hard, but fails to talk about the fact that being holistic requires making real systemic changes in order to help people belong before they believe, and survive within the morality ascribed. Finally, who sets the standards for sanctity and beauty? Do Christians really have a monopoly on those things? Can we find sanctity and beauty outside of traditional orthodoxy?<\/p>\n

I think the heart of my complaint with Douthat is not that he is conservative or that his worldview differs with mine, but that he treated this book like one really long article. He relies on hyperbole and nostalgia to fill in the spaces where he has not thought through the complexities that result from his conclusions. He somehow came to the conclusion that post-WW2 America was some sort of halcyon era of Christian orthodoxy without digging deeper under the surface to understand the ugliness that festered in Christian America during that time. He relies on tired stereotypes of academia and secular culture to support his theories without exploration. I think he has some good points that could be developed into something helpful for the future of American Christianity, but he took the easy way out.<\/p>\n

So, I always ask myself, \u201cWhy did Jason (our lead mentor) want us to read this book?\u201d It may not be Jason\u2019s reason, but this book reminded me that we can\u2019t simply rely on a pithy turn of phrase or stereotypes to support our work. Douthat completely neglected to explore the rise in American Christianity that is coming with Millenials but looks very little like that of the 1950s and 1960s. Leaders look to the horizon for what God is already doing and support others in joining that vision.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [1]. Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How we became a nation of heretics<\/em>, (New York: Free Press, 2012), 6.<\/p>\n

[2]. Sarah Pulliam Bailey, \u201cQ & A: Ross Douthat on Rooting Out Bad Religion,\u201d in Christianity Today<\/em>, April 2012, 1. http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2012\/may\/ross-douthat-bad-religion.html<\/a><\/p>\n

[3]. Ibid., 3.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [4]. Bad Religion<\/em>, 284-291.<\/p>\n

[5]. Ibid., 286.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My normal practice, when posting about the books we read for our DMin program, is to first read the reviews and articles about the book and the author. This week that may have been a bad choice. Before ever opening Bad Religion: How we became a nation of heretics, I was\u2026well\u2026I guess I\u2019ll just say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"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":[870,7],"class_list":["post-12480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bad-religion","tag-douthat","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12480","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\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}