{"id":7224,"date":"2010-07-13T00:07:55","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T05:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/"},"modified":"2010-07-13T00:07:55","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T05:07:55","slug":"religious-colonialism-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Colonialism 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Prothero.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>Stephen Prothero\u2019s newest book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World\u2013and Why Their Differences Matter<\/a>\"\"
\n<\/strong><\/em>., seeks to educate his audience on the basics of the major world religions. After his sketch of Islam, upon which I\u2019m no expert, he turns to Christianity. If this chp represents his work, I\u2019d say he gets a B. While he has a handle on some topics \u2014 like the diversity of Christianity in the world \u2014 there are others that baffle me. I\u2019ll get to those in what follows, but first I want to admit something up front. I\u2019m sketching this chp in light of what I think should be in a sketch of Christianity. So I have to talk a bit about what he didn\u2019t write, and not just about what he did write \u2014 which is good and readable.<\/p>\n

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But, if you had to describe Christianity as a religion, what would be the top three topics you\u2019d discuss? Would you include Mormonism<\/a> as part of Christianity? (Would Mormons?) Which persons in the history of the Church would you say have to be mentioned?<\/b><\/div>\n
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Prothero sees Christianity as a religion of salvation (Islam as submission). Simple terms often go a long way if they are the right ones. I\u2019d say his term \u201csalvation\u201d is a very good one. It needs some defining and nuancing, which he doesn\u2019t do in a book like this, but salvation is a good descriptor of Christianity if you want to narrow it down to one term. Anyway, it\u2019s good to describe how Christianity has presented what it has to offer to the world.<\/div>\n
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He thinks earliest<\/i> Christianity was up for grabs \u2014 and here he doesn\u2019t discuss the movement from Jesus through Paul and Peter to Nicea as cohesive, which is how Christians have always understood those years. He prefers the pluralism themes of Ehrman and others.<\/div>\n
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He also thinks Christianity is defined by what it believes over against Judaism and Islam\u2019s emphasis on how one behaves. And for all his talk about this, there\u2019s very little theological probing in this chp. Instead, he focuses on personal salvation (fair enough) and the facts about the diversity of Christianity (which we need). Still, while I like those two dimensions of his chp, more on the theology would help. And it would also help if he weren\u2019t so casual and flippant about what Christians believe.\u00a0<\/div>\n


\nHis avoidance of probing theology mysteriously, and I think a bit uncharitably to most Christians, who by his own admission care a great deal about orthodoxy, permits him to include Mormons in his sketch of Christianity. In this chp we could have had a sketch of Jesus\u2019 vision, Paul\u2019s theology, Peter\u2019s theology, etc. \u2026 in other words, Christianity is a Bible-based theology and more on what the NT presents would help. I\u2019m perhaps pushing him too much on what he didn\u2019t write, but I\u2019m doing this because he offers a sketch of Christianity \u2026 and I\u2019m thinking about how that can be best done.<\/p>\n

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He emphasizes Story: the Story of Jesus, the Story of Jesus in human history and the Story of Jesus in the lives of individual Christians, all the while emphasize Christianity as a rescue religion and the theme of salvation.\n
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Then we start getting the facts: 2.2 billion Christians, the Reformation as splitting the Church (and here has a minimum of theological sketch of the differences), the Lutherans, the Reformed, the Anglicans and the Anabaptists (more please). He could easily have had more on Eastern Orthodoxy, esp because of the number of Eastern Christians. A section on Mormonism, the Evangelical Century (19th), the Pentecostal<\/a> (20th), Brown Christians (here he is referring to non whites more than Latin Americans, so he includes Asians and Latin Americans and Africans). He\u2019s got a good grasp here on the Next Christendom themes. Then on Islam and Christianity and a brief on Christian mystics.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Prothero\u2019s newest book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World\u2013and Why Their Differences Matter ., seeks to educate his audience on the basics of the major world religions. After his sketch of Islam, upon which I\u2019m no expert, he turns to Christianity. If this chp represents his work, I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1325],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religions"],"yoast_head":"\nReligious Colonialism 3<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stephen Prothero's newest book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter ., seeks to educate his\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Religious Colonialism 3\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Stephen Prothero's newest book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter ., seeks to educate his\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-13T05:07:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/assets_c\/2010\/07\/Prothero-thumb-333x359-16052.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/\",\"name\":\"Religious Colonialism 3\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-07-13T05:07:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-07-13T05:07:55+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"Stephen Prothero's newest book, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter ., seeks to educate his\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2010\/07\/13\/religious-colonialism-3\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Religious Colonialism 3\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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