“…the Christian case for fidelity and chastity will inevitably seem partial and hypocritical if it trains most of its attention on the minority of cases–on homosexual wedlock and the slippery slope to polygamy beyond. \u00a0It is the heterosexual divorce rate, the heterosexual retreat from marriage, and the heterosexual out-of-wedlock birthrate that should \u00a0command the most attention from Christian moralists…asking gays alone to conform their lives to a hard teaching will inevitably seem like a form of bigotry.” [5]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We certainly are a body full of hypocrites! Furthermore, Douthat writes about us hypocrites,<\/p>\n
\u201cA choose-your-own-Jesus mentality encourages spiritual seekers to screen out discomfiting parts of the New Testament and focus only on whichever Christ they find most congenial.\u201d [6]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sounds like the consumerism we have been recently reading by Cavanaugh, or as I said in our Zoom meeting this week, our churches are full “salad bar” consumer Christians. Us hypocrites are really good at twisting things to our own liking, or as Scripture says, listening to things our itching ears want to hear!<\/p>\n
I for one rejoiced when I heard our author calling Protestants and Catholics to work together, asking all Orthodox Christians to live out their Christianity authentically, like a Wesley, Wilberforce, Francis, Bonhoeffer or Solzhenitsyn. [7] I love the fact that our fellow Cohort member Mark is Catholic, but I want him to know I don’t see him as that. He is Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, who loves the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. \u00a0Mark, we are Brothers. And to all of my Elite LGP8 colleagues, I say we are family–the family of God. For that I am thankful!<\/p>\n
Perhaps, this review from Mark Oppenheimer best sums my feelings about\u00a0Bad Religion,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n“Ross Douthat has the hair of an older man\u2014thinning on top, a trim beard below\u2014and the air of one. He\u2019s had only one girlfriend since college, and they are now married. He\u2019s astonishingly well read but in conversation lacks the brashness of a precocious DC wonk. He gets just as animated about the Red Sox, action movies, fantasy novels, and television as he does about policy. And even when his passions\u2014for G.K. Chesterton, the novelist Anthony Powell, and conservative Catholicism\u2014seem more appropriate to a desiccated English squire, they are born of a childhood that, more than most, shaped the man.” [8]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My only regret with reading our most recent books is that I have not been able to successfully connect them to my dissertation topic of Stewardship. Hopefully I will do better with that in our future readings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1]\u00a0Op, Ed. “Ross\u00a0Dothan\u00a0Biography: Politics, Religion, Moral Values and Higher Education.<\/i>” The New York Times. Accessed March 21, 2018. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/.<\/p>\n
[2] Douthat, Ross Gregory. To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism<\/i>. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.<\/p>\n
[3] \u00a0Lamb, Brian\u00a0(May 6, 2009). Q & A with Ross Douthat. C-Span Archives.\u00a0Retrieved October 20,<\/span> 2009<\/span>. C-Span.com.<\/cite><\/span><\/p>\n[4] Ballmer, Randall. “Sunday Book Review: Bad Religion by Ross\u00a0<\/em>Douthat.”\u00a0<\/i>April 27, 2012.\u00a0The New York Times. Accessed March 21, 2018. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/.<\/p>\n[5]\u00a0Douthat, Ross Gregory. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics<\/i>. New York: Free Press, 2013. p. 290.<\/p>\n
[6] \u00a0Ibid., p. 178.<\/p>\n
[7] \u00a0Ibid., p. 292.<\/p>\n
[8] \u00a0Oppenheimer, Mark.\u00a0Ross Douthat’s Fantasy World.<\/em> \u00a0Mother Jones: January\/February 2010. Assessed March 21, 2018. https:\/\/motherjones.com\/.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ross Douthat is a little bit of a Rockstar. The Magna Cum Laude Harvard grad, to name a few of his appearances, has been on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, Colbert Report, and Bill Maher Show (Thanks Kyle for posting this one). \u00a0I have viewed interviews of Douthat by NPR, CNN, and FOX, etc. He has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":96,"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-17169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-douthat","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17169","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\/96"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17175,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17169\/revisions\/17175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>[4]<\/p>\n