Heretic – \u201cA person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted\u201d (Google).\u00a0 Ross Douthat forwards the position that we (Americans) have become a collection of heretics.\u00a0 While I generally agree with the observations found in the book, and find myself often lamenting (all of us in this class have really\u2026) the condition of the church in America, a deeper examination of the word \u201cheretic\u201d unearths some interesting things to consider.\u00a0 So, can I nitpick just a little?<\/p>\n
In order for a bunch of heretics to be identified, there would first need to be a generally accepted norm.\u00a0 It could be argued that American society since the 1960s has strayed so far from Orthodoxy (be it Catholic, Orthodox OR Protestant) that a single, widely accepted norm is no longer discernible.\u00a0 Without a discernible norm, there can be no heretic.\u00a0 As Douthat himself points out, \u201c[y]ou can\u2019t have fringes without a center, iconoclasts without icons, revolutionaries without institutions to rebel against.\u201d1 \u00a0In much the same way that organizational norms are required in order for a deviant to be identified and either vilified (in the case of Destructive Deviance) or lionized (in the case of Constructive Deviance), so must there be a central spiritual norm in order for heretics to emerge.\u00a0 In America, we have no center, no singular icon, no core religious institution.<\/p>\n
Much like ancient Rome where one of the elements required to be considered truly \u201cRoman\u201d was to embrace lots of different religious systems on par with each other, the prevailing thought (even among \u201cChristians\u201d it would seem) is \u201cI\u2019ll get there my way, you get there your way and when we all get there eventually, we\u2019ll have a party!\u201d\u00a0 This is a sobering reality.\u00a0 And the relative speed at which \u201cthe river of Orthodoxy has gradually been drying up\u201d2 is cause for alarm for those comfortable swimming there.<\/p>\n
In a mere 50 years, essentially 2000 years of firmness and stability (some might say \u201cintractability\u201d?) has been erased, replaced with the squishy relativism of liquid modernity.\u00a0 In the course of roughly two generations, we rocketed from generally accepted and widely held beliefs to rebelling against those beliefs, to a collective amnesia that these beliefs ever actually were embraced!\u00a0 How is this possible?\u00a0 There had to be some deeper, grander, more sinister work being undertaken behind the curtains of the human theater leading up to this moment in time, right?\u00a0 This MUST be a bad thing, RIGHT???<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 Like Douthat suggests, we HAVE to, like Auden, find our way among the (metaphorically speaking) shuttered churches of 1930s Spain and be driven to our knees and a \u201cmore rigorous and humble form of Christian faith.\u201d3 \u00a0Right?\u00a0 RIGHT???\u00a0 <\/i><\/b>To hold a different view would be unchristian\u2026<\/p>\n
Or maybe it was just time for the old to be replaced with the new, the intractable with the malleable\u2026\u00a0 Maybe what we are seeing is a return to a more pure version of church, one that is more comfortable in the Agora than the cathedral.\u00a0 My question for the author is, why can\u2019t \u201c\u2018[p]arachurch\u2019 efforts and \u2018emergent\u2019 communities\u2026 replace institutional church.\u201d4?\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 <\/i>It is unfair to posit such a statement without supporting it with research.\u00a0 His position that these are the locus of the \u201clowest common denominator\u201d borders on insulting.\u00a0 What if these more closely resemble the ecclesia envisioned and prophesied by Jesus himself than the institutional church ever could?\u00a0 A close reading of institutional church history reveals it to be the main perpetrator of violence against Jesus\u2019 original vision of his church.\u00a0 The organizational instinct of institutions is to faction and fraction, thus leading us headlong into this mess we are in today with a glaring absence of a single, unifying figure.\u00a0 In America, we have lots of spiritual people but decreasing numbers of Jesus-followers.\u00a0 I agree with the author on this point, I believe it is bad religion.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
1. Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics<\/i> (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2012 Kindle Edition) 6.<\/p>\n
2. Ibid. 8<\/p>\n
3.Ibid. 283<\/p>\n
4. Ibid. 286<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Heretic – \u201cA person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted\u201d (Google).\u00a0 Ross Douthat forwards the position that we (Americans) have become a collection of heretics.\u00a0 While I generally agree with the observations found in the book, and find myself often lamenting (all of us in this class have really\u2026) the condition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"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":[2,7],"class_list":["post-4546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-douthat","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546","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\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4548,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions\/4548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}