Douthat\u2019s thesis from 2012 is that institutional Christianity in the United States is in decline, but the United States remains a nation where the majority of the population still claims belief in God. Many of these so-called believers may be church-goers in congregations that are somewhat disconnected from church history. Others are disconnected from any church at all (“spiritual but not religious”). This disconnection from institutional or historic Christianity has led not to a nation of non-believers, but a nation of heretics. Like Manichaeism or Gnosticism, we have now multiple corrupt forms of Christianity. The first part of the book is dedicated to tracing the development of the crisis of orthodox Christianity to the age of heresy that he claims we now experience.<\/p>\n
According to Douthat, this decline began in the 1960\u2019s and ultimately led to this decline of orthodoxy and rise of heresy, but also a deep rift in the American Church that might be more palpable today, six years and one Trump administration later. One reviewer claims: \u201cAccording to Douthat, the response of the left was defined by accommodation, an attempt to hold on to cultural prominence by updating Christian conviction to suit modern tastes. This decision\u2014evident in elements of both Protestantism and Catholicism\u2014backfired as mainline churches saw numbers plummet through the 1960s and 70s. Having traded Christian convictions for partisan causes, little remained to make Christian institutions necessary. Douthat\u2019s conclusion is typically witty and on-point: \u2018Political activism wasn\u2019t enough: Why would you need to wash down your left-wing convictions with a draft of Communion wine, when you could take the activism straight and do something else with your weekends?\u2019 (109).<\/p>\n
The reviewer continues: \u201cThe response of the right, he argues, was different in substance but similar in result. Social shifts of the 1960s, especially the sexual revolution and its legal enshrinement in Roe v. Wade, galvanized conservative Christianity and rejuvenated an evangelical base that was still laboring to move beyond the cultural retreat of the fundamentalist decades. Douthat celebrates the political partnership of evangelicals and Catholics and the ECT concord. He celebrates Carl Henry, Francis Schaeffer, and their tribe, who reengaged evangelicals with secular culture.”<\/p>\n
But in the end this conservative reaction fared no better than liberal accommodation in one crucial respect: \u2018the growth and momentum and confidence of post-World War II Christianity was still a distant memory\u2026The awakening that some believers claimed was happening around them was often more evident in their particular subcultures than in the culture as a whole\u2019 (131). At the turn of the century, he argues, there is plenty of vibrant religiosity, but it is powerless and largely irrelevant.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n The author identifies four primary themes of \u201cBad Religion\u201d within American (heretical) Christianity at the time the book was written. They are each given a dedicated chapter in Part II of the book, \u201cBad Religion.\u201d<\/p>\n The first has largely to do with the influence of \u201cthe Jesus Seminar\u201d and the quest for the historical Jesus of the 1980s-90s. Popular and academic authors like Dan Brown and Bart Ehrman represent for Douthat a perversion of the historical accounts of Jesus of Nazareth, using mysterious and cryptic findings to create conspiracy theories as to the divinity of Jesus.<\/p>\n The second stream of heresy Douthat identifies is the Prosperity Gospel and its many (and sometimes subtle) expressions. From Joel Osteen\u2019s \u201cGod wants you to be rich and healthy\u201d to Bruce Wilkinson\u2019s perversion of 1 Chronicles and the Jabez\u2019 prayer to suggest that God wants to bless and expand the believer\u2019s \u201cterritory,\u201d which to Wilkinson means basically materialistic comforts and social power. In this section, I wonder if Douthat is being fair to Pentecostals, holding them solely responsible for this heresy.<\/p>\n The third stream of heresy is basically the emotional version of the Prosperity Gospel, which Douthat calls \u2018the God within.\u2019 Oprah is the symbol of amorphous, untethered, self-affirming spirituality. As a side note, Oprah cannot run for president because her entire metanarrative would crumble in the first presidential debate. There\u2019s no room for critique or conflict, and no energy for combat (in any form), only positivity and affirmation. It’s impossible to get to the White House without a good pair boxing gloves.<\/p>\n The fourth stream of heresy that Douthat identifies encompasses the previous two even though Douthat separates them. This, of course, is Christian nationalism and the idolatry of the American ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Though it\u2019s true that American values influence the Osteens and Oprahs of the nation, this form of heresy is a bit more pungent. Douthat begins with an attack on Glenn Beck, a fine example of the heresy of the Christian right. But Douthat seeks to be fair by pointing to the utopian dream of Woodrow Wilson, along with the American twist to Christianity from John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson (as examples on the other side of the aisle). Douthat is not one to pull punches on any politician or political party.<\/p>\n In his conclusion, the author finally suggests a way forward to the problem of \u201cBad Religion\u201d in America, which is quite different than Hunter\u2019s way forward, even though they share similar findings in their research analysis, and likely hope for a similar renewal of Christianity in this nation. Douthat argues in favor of a public Christianity that is \u201cpolitical without being partisan,\u201d that is \u201cecumenical but also confessional,\u201d that is \u201cmoralistic but also holistic, and that is \u201coriented toward sanctity and beauty.\u201d And it\u2019s here where we see the difference between a \u201cJohn Paul II\u201d Roman Catholic, and a neo-Anabaptist. Douthat\u2019s solution mirrors his assessment of the problem. A doctrinal problem requires a doctrinal solution. Hunter sees the problem as more a problem of lived reality, and so his solution of “faithful presence” is praxis-oriented.<\/p>\n My concern regarding Douthat\u2019s solutions for today\u2019s world is that we have missed the moment to take his approach. In 2018, it seems impossible to be political without partisan. Douthat\u2019s observations have only exasperated since then. It seems that in all four areas of critique that Douthat identifies in his book, the nation has only gotten worse. Prosperity Churches are still growing and attractive, as is self-affirming spirituality. Douthat would argue that the inclusion of LGBTQ peoples into church leadership and same sex marriages in the church are examples of this self-affirming spirituality and the loss of confessionalism. Even some mainline denominations have taken the work of Bart Ehrman to argue for a church position that denies the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And it\u2019s not even worth mentioning how Douthat\u2019s critique of Christian nationalism has found its way into the White House. It seems that we\u2019re too far from envisioning how Douthat\u2019s solution could work. Add to the exasperations of these heresies the multitude of mass shootings and police brutality in the last six years, and \u201cright beliefs\u201d don\u2019t ring nearly as compelling as the humble, \u201cfaithful presence\u201d approach of Hunter, which seems more of an embodiment of the person of Jesus and his way.<\/p>\n Whereas Douthat seems to believe that people “believe” their way into “living,” whereas Hunter seems to believe that people “live” their way into “believing.”<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Matt McCullough, \u201cBook Review: Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics,\u201d\u00a09Marks<\/em>\u00a0(11\/13\/12): 2,\u00a0https:\/\/www.9marks.org\/review\/bad-religion-how-we-became-nation-heretics\/<\/a>\u00a0(accessed March 22, 2018).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Douthat\u2019s thesis from 2012 is that institutional Christianity in the United States is in decline, but the United States remains a nation where the majority of the population still claims belief in God. 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