I've started reading "Bad Religion, How We Became A Nation Of Heretics", by Ross Douthat. It is so intriguing that I've decided to write a post on each chapter to share it with my friends.
Douthat traces the decline in influence of religion on American culture since the optimistic years following WW II. He sees the problem not as too little religion nor too much religion, but as what he calls "bad religion".
From the preface comes this illustration. "A chart of the American religious past would look like a vast delta with tributaries, streams, and channels winding in and out, diverging and reconverging--but all of them fed, ultimately, by a central stream, an original current, a place where all the waters start. This river is Christian orthodoxy."
There has always been a struggle between the stewards of orthodox Christian belief and practice and those who seek to adapt to new circumstances by experimenting with, adding to, or deleting from that orthodoxy. America, with its lack of central authority, its melting pot of cultures, and its enshrined freedom of religion has been a fertile ground for these experiments.
These "experimenters" typically have taken one aspect of the multi-faceted (and sometimes seemingly contradictory) Christian stream and emphasized it, resulting in a tributary that at first is connected, but eventually departs dramatically from its origin. The result has been a collection of "choose your own Jesus" movements. So, we have become "a nation of heretics"--still religious, but with declining influence in the American culture.
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