{"id":30,"date":"2014-06-27T05:08:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T05:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=30"},"modified":"2014-08-11T20:43:01","modified_gmt":"2014-08-11T20:43:01","slug":"the-double-truth-of-evangelical-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-double-truth-of-evangelical-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018double truth\u2019 of evangelical Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"
Terry Eagleton\u2019 book titled \u201cCulture and the death of God\u201d picked my interested for particular reasons. From the onset, I was impressed by Eagleton\u2019s evidently brilliant layout of the changing relationship in religious affairs, mythology and art during the enlightenment through modernity and in post modernity.\u00a0 During the course of reading Eagleton\u2019s literature, I found the familiarity with philosophers like Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard helpful in understanding certain aspects of Eagleton\u2019s seminal work. The above scholars and great minds motivate my ears to want to listen and learn more about their different schools of thought. Especially as they interact with Christianity and religion.<\/div>\n
\n

Eagleton\u2019s work challenged me to question certain assumptions. For example, in the past, I tended to link the secularizing effect of the enlightenment to some of the present forces that seem to challenge religion; but in fact I was intrigued by the impact of the political factor of the enlightenment\u2019s era on Christianity and religion in general. Eagleton writes:<\/p>\n

The Enlightenment\u2019s assault on religion then was at root a political rather than theological affair. By and large, the project was not to replace the supernatural with the natural, but to oust a barbarous benighted faith in favor of a rational, civilized one.[1]<\/a>\u00a0Perhaps Eagleton\u2019s presentation of Hume\u2019 perspective on matter of religion stipulates more about the skepticism that engulfed matters of faith. According to Eagleton:<\/p>\n

Hume considered that religion had much less of an everyday influence than was commonly assumed. He was not prepared to settle for a rational version of Christianity, trusting as he did neither in reason nor in Christianity. In fact, he regarded almost all religion as actively inimical to political virtue\u2026 Virtue must be autonomous not strategic. Religion corrupted morality by fostering self-interest (fear of punishment, the desire for immortality), as well as by eroding the natural sources of our passion for justice and sense of benevolence.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

I find that Christianity in our day and age still has to grapple with its relevance in the political arena. Could it be that the uncertainty about Christianity continues to press on the minds of people in society, thus the desire for rational and plausible surrogate alternative? Modern day evangelicalism sometime adds to the difficulty of finding meaning in Christianity because evangelical culture tends to resemble Eagleton\u2019 notion of the \u201cdouble truth\u201d[3]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to this doctrine, the skepticism of the education must learn not to unsettle the superstition of the populace. It must be sequestered from the common folk, for fear of the political unrest it might incite. There can be no common ground between the more rational and more barbarous species of religious faith\u2026 There must be one God for the rich and one for the poor. There is a genteel religion of love, justice and the adoration of the Supreme Being, and then there is the benighted, bloodthirsty cult of the priests. Orthodox religion is a matter of primitive terror and a priestly lust for power.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

Eagleton has compelled me to reflect on why Christianity seems to be commonly used for division and not unity in political spheres.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0Terry Eagleton, Culture and the Death of God (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), Loc. 204<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0ibid., 393.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0ibid., 322.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>\u00a0ibid., 332.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Terry Eagleton\u2019 book titled \u201cCulture and the death of God\u201d picked my interested for particular reasons. From the onset, I was impressed by Eagleton\u2019s evidently brilliant layout of the changing relationship in religious affairs, mythology and art during the enlightenment through modernity and in post modernity.\u00a0 During the course of reading Eagleton\u2019s literature, I found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"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":[22,17],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dimlgp","tag-eagleton","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","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\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/1344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}