{"id":22360,"date":"2019-03-21T08:03:09","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T15:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=22360"},"modified":"2019-03-21T08:03:09","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T15:03:09","slug":"not-my-kind-of-dinner-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/not-my-kind-of-dinner-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Not My Kind of Dinner Party . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

This was a very difficult book for me.\u00a0 I have found beauty, inspiration, further faith formation, and lifelong relationships in many of the things that Douthat calls out in Bad Religion: How we Became a Nation of Heretics,<\/em> and if that deems me a heretic, I have been called far worse, by far better.\u00a0 After doing some simple google research (aiming to learn more about the authors background to better understand his point of view, spiritual and educational background) and learning that Douthat was publically anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ as a writer for the campus newspaper at Harvard[1]<\/a>, he appears to have the characteristics of someone I would not invite to speak to the church I serve, New York Times columnist or not.\u00a0 His unique spiritual upbringing, a marriage of both Pentecostalism and Catholicism, is full of promise and possibility; imagine the best of a spirit filled Pentecostal tradition full of energy and excitement bound together with the Catholic tradition and ritual of the centuries.\u00a0 However, the way that this upbringing comes across on the page raises further issues to me, since the best of these traditions does not produce the type of mis-informed roughage we have been tasked to read.<\/p>\n

Douthat writes romantically about the time in American history when congregations were booming and new church construction was developing.\u00a0 Time is spent highlighting the day the Interchurch Center in Manhattan was consecrated, and denominational affiliation was at an all-time high.\u00a0 Having lived across the street from the Interchurch Center for three years (colloquially referred to as \u201cthe God Box\u201d due to its faith based tenants and its distinct square shape) I enjoyed these soliloquys of the bygone era.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Douthat quickly begins to blame church decline on some pretty amazing people (in my view) and historical occurrences.\u00a0 Douthat is not a fan of the Jesus Seminar.[2]<\/a> The Seminary professor who taught me New Testament, Hal Taussig[3]<\/a>, was a member of the Jesus Seminar, and the way that I learned graduate level Greek Bible was through the Jesus Seminar lens.\u00a0 Burton Mack and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza are critiqued for their scholarly work on the gospel of \u201cQ\u201d or the way that Jesus embodied a \u201cfeminist pulse\u201d within Judaism.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 The study of Q\u00a0 . . . or at the least a brief look at a gospel parallel . . . is riveting to this doctoral student, and only brings out the hope, joy, and promise of resurrection woven through the gospel narrative that much more distinctly.\u00a0 The fact that women are mentioned in the New Testament with such a great frequency, and throughout the text are given historically stunning positions of power, only furthers the ministry of Jesus, and Schussler Fiorenza describes this with grace and skill.<\/p>\n

Douthat is also not a fan of Elaine Pagels, mainly due to her work in the field of non-canonical gospels.[5]<\/a> She has written about the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Judas, just to name a few.\u00a0 What Pagels does so impeccably is to share with the popular reader the numerous ways the early Christian communities were trying to understand what Jesus\u2019 ministry meant to their immediate context.\u00a0 Similar to my comments on the work of Schussler Fiorenza and Mack, I love the additional insight and really aren\u2019t we all still trying to do that same thing today?\u00a0 The tradition of Mary riding donkey to Bethlehem does not come from any of our four canonical gospels \u2013 but from the non-canonical Infancy Gospel of James, [6]<\/a> and this only further demonstrates how elements of these writings had already permeated Christian tradition before the Synod of Hippo in 393, one of the events which attempted to help order and define the sacred texts that make up the Bible.<\/p>\n

Clearly Douthat has an amazing audience.\u00a0 He has written at least three books and has a large readership in the thousands through his essays, opinion pieces and other articles.\u00a0 But much of this book seemed full of judgement and privilege to this reader. If Douthat can admit that his entire concept of this ideal Christian Center is \u201can interpretation of an era\u201d[7]<\/a> then I can assert that my interpretation of his critique has gone astray.\u00a0 If the spirit of \u201cparadox and mystery\u201d is what has made Christianity so \u201cextraordinarily adaptable\u201d[8]<\/a> what better place to turn than to the first few generations attempts to wrestle with that mystery for further inspiration and understanding?<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201cNY Times Columnist Ross Douthat Defended Murderous Dictator Pinochet in His Harvard Days,\u201d The Real News Network, last modified December 19, 2018,\u00a0\u00a0 https:\/\/therealnews.com\/columns\/ny-times-columnist-ross-douthat-defended-murderous-dictator-pinochet-in-his-harvard-days<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How we Became a Nation of Heretics,<\/em> (New York: Free Press, 2012), 160-162.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> \u201cHal Taussig,\u201d The Westar Institute, last modified March 20, 2019, https:\/\/www.westarinstitute.org\/membership\/westar-fellows\/fellows-directory\/hal-taussig\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ross Douthat, Bad Religion<\/em>, 161.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ross Douthat, Bad Religion<\/em>, 151.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> \u201cThe Infancy Gospel of James,\u201d in The Other Bible<\/em>, ed. Willis Barnstone (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1984) 390.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ross Douthat, Bad Religion<\/em>, 51.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ross Douthat, Bad Religion<\/em>, 11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a very difficult book for me.\u00a0 I have found beauty, inspiration, further faith formation, and lifelong relationships in many of the things that Douthat calls out in Bad Religion: How we Became a Nation of Heretics, and if that deems me a heretic, I have been called far worse, by far better.\u00a0 After […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"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-22360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bad-religion","tag-douthat","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22360","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\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22362,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22360\/revisions\/22362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}