Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, has written a provocative book about the state of religion in America. Bad Religion: How We Became A Nation of Heretics sets out the history of faith in American, the changes that have occurred in understanding and practice in the last 50 years and the inevitable results of these changes in American life. His premise is that the problem with America in the first half of the Twenty-first Century is not a lack of religion at all--it's too much bad religion.
We'll take the book chapter by chapter, asking volunteers to comment on each installment and opening up discussion in the combox. At the end of Chapter 4, Chapter, and on completing the book, we will meet for a potluck dinner and face-to-face discussion.
The book is available at any retail outlet and used copies can be had through alibis.com. There is also an e-book version for those of you techno-savvy folks.
This really is a great book and well worth your time. Please join us in our virtual book club! If you want to be on the mailing list for new posts, please send an e-mail to toadehall@me.com and put book blog in the subject line (let us know whether you are also willing to be a volunteer blogger--the Team can walk you through the process--it isn't hard!). You can also follow the blog and get updates that way. Just click on the "subscribe by e-mail" link at the bottom of the blog.
Hope to see you in the combox soon! The more the merrier....
If my writing has to be as well thought out, and as well written as the comments I have read, then I am clearly out of my league.
ReplyDeleteI heard about this book and blog from my brother and sister-in-law, who are both Catholic. I have read the book and have found it to be very interesting, both in the parts I agree and those I disagree with.
But from the profile it sounds like this is a blog by Catholics for Catholics, and I am not sure if my comments are appropriate here.
I am a universalist in the largest sense of the word. I don't believe that any one religion, let alone any one sect can totally understand God. I believe all the religions in this world combined are like a tiny drop of water in an infinite ocean. No religion owns God, and no single religion can speak for God.
I was brought up in the Episcopal church and attended Episcopal private school. I consider myself a Christian. But I recognize if I was born in India I might be a Hindu, or in Nepal, a Buddhist.
I believe there is a basic core truth in all religions and that core is love. A friend of mine wrote a song that sums up my theology very well...
"I got this message from Jesus, and from Mohamed too, from Abraham and all the Buddhas, and the native people too. It ain't no real big secret, no reason to push and shove, because in the whole wide world there's only one true religion and its called love..."
I mention this so my comments will not seem to be out of left field (both the far out sense and the political sense) in a blog devoted to Christianity and Catholicism.
Bad religion to me is represented by the screeching evangelicals who are so out of touch with reality they don't even "believe" in evolution. (I was quite shocked when my cousin, a NASA engineer designing the next generation space vehicle, said he does not does not believe in evolution. "Yes, why did God put those fossils there?")
I'm uncomfortable with term "Heretic" because it has way too much historical baggage. My sister-in-law disagrees but I think Douthat, or his publicist, believed the term would sell more books. Douthat's definition of heretic is quite benign, basically one who has strayed from the true path.
Douthat's whole writing style is based on contradiction. He is very good at presenting both sides of an argument, blaming both the extreme left and right for our "Bad Religion." It is hard to quote from the book, because any quote on one side of an issue is contradicted in the next paragraph or even the next sentence. This style is good in that he explores both sides equally. But this contradictory style of writing is infuriating in tying to pin down what the author "really" thinks.
I may be jumping ahead... spoiler alert!
Later in the book he lists a series of "paradoxes" which are actually contradictions, describing God and the life of Christ. His actual definition of orthodoxy, which is quite radical, is that faith is the holding of the paradox of contradiction without trying to solve it. For example, God appears quite fearful in the old testament and quite merciful in the new. Jesus has his own series contradictions.
This is not the orthodoxy I was taught in church or private school. Christian orthodoxy was basically defined by the Nicene Creed.
So Douthat's writing style itself ties into his belief system of contradiction. The "paradox" is holding and believing both views at the same time.
For a philosophy student who taught logic, this is a quite a difficult concept. Yet the human mind often extends beyond logic. One often used example in philosophy of a contradiction is the term "married-bachelor." But we all know men who act like "married-bachelors"- men who are married but behave like bachelors: going out, drinking with their single friends, trying to pick up women etc. So we can see that even apparently contradictory terms can have meaning.
Thanks and God Bless!
jim Dade City FL