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<\/a>G.K. Chesterton said so many things cleverly that Douthat\u2019s quotation of Chesterton is worth quoting all over again, in part because the line expresses what Douthat, in his book Bad Religion<\/em><\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0hopes for renewal: Often it has been thought that \u201cthe Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs\u201d but eac time it \u201cwas the dog that died.\u201d Douthat hopes the dog heresies will die, including the historical Jesus quest, the prosperity gospel, the God Within and Americanism as religion.<\/p>\nI\u2019ve avoided critique of Douthat\u2019s book and instead tried to pass on his vision \u2014 but let me say that I don\u2019t accept his golden era view of Christian orthodoxy in the 1950s running the American Christian scene; he doesn\u2019t always get his facts straight in details about people and places; he\u2019s got an idealistic view of the Catholic Church; his own conservative politics shape some of his own critique of accommodationism; he\u2019s got too simplistic of a good guy vs. bad guy approach\u2026 \u00a0but he\u2019s got some things to say about trends at work in the Christian culture.<\/p>\n
Do you think America is filled with \u201cbad religion,\u201d which is the thesis of Douthat\u2019s book? And of the four sources of renewal, which is the most promising and why? \u00a0What do you think of his characteristics of this renewal Christianity?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/strong>Douthat sees four sources of possible renewal:<\/strong><\/p>\n
1. Postmodern opportunity: \u201cthe very trends that have seemingly undone institutional Christianity could ultimately renew it\u201d (278).<\/p>\n
2. The Benedict option: \u201can extended period of withdrawal, consolidation, and purification\u201d (280). He sees this as the mustard seed strategy (he doesn\u2019t perhaps know of Tom Sine). He finds this in some Latin Mass Catholics, in the neo-Anabaptists, home-schooling \u2014 separatistic movements. He finds their danger in \u201cparanoia, crankishness, and all the other pathologies of the religious ghetto\u201d (281).<\/p>\n
3. Next Christendom, or Global Christianity, fueled by migrations, and the growth of Christianity in other parts of the world and their influences in the USA.<\/p>\n
4. Age of diminished expectations might lead Americans to see that \u201cbad theology and bad religion have helped us bring us to our present pass\u201d (283).<\/p>\n
To which Douthat proposes the following characteristics of what this renewal ought to look like:<\/p>\n
1. Political without partisan.<\/p>\n
2. Ecumenical but also confessional.<\/p>\n
3. Moralistic but also holistic.<\/p>\n
4. Oriented toward sanctity and beauty.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
G.K. Chesterton said so many things cleverly that Douthat\u2019s quotation of Chesterton is worth quoting all over again, in part because the line expresses what Douthat, in his book Bad Religion,\u00a0hopes for renewal: Often it has been thought that \u201cthe Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs\u201d but eac time it \u201cwas the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity"],"yoast_head":"\n
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