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{"id":5318,"date":"2018-05-26T07:47:45","date_gmt":"2018-05-26T12:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rogereolson\/?p=5318"},"modified":"2018-05-26T07:47:45","modified_gmt":"2018-05-26T12:47:45","slug":"my-feeble-attempts-at-satire-miss-the-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rogereolson\/2018\/05\/my-feeble-attempts-at-satire-miss-the-mark\/","title":{"rendered":"My Feeble Attempts at Satire Miss the Mark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

My Feeble Attempts at Satire Miss the Mark<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n

Occasionally I use my blog to make a stab at making a point about religion using satire.<\/p>\n

My most recent post\/essay (\u201cTotally Tongue-in-Cheek\u2026\u201d) was satire. Hardly anyone seems to have gotten the point.<\/p>\n

It was not about restaurants.<\/p>\n

The point was: What if restaurants did this? They don\u2019t\u2026and for very good reasons.<\/p>\n

Why do churches do this? They do\u2026and possibly for reasons that are very good for them.<\/p>\n

But is the trend toward public hiding of identity and genericizing good for the public, for people searching for a church? Is it good for the churches to have a specialized ethos but hide it behind a veneer of being generic or \u201cplain label?\u201d<\/p>\n

I did recently spend a couple weeks in a large American city chock full of relatively new, growing churches. Almost all of them have generic names and no identifiable theological-spiritual identities. And yet, a scholar (like I am) of American religion can \u201cpick up on\u201d such theological-spiritual identities hidden behind a veneer of being generic and \u201cfor all people.\u201d When I visit them the worship tends to be planned to not identify the churches\u2019 theological-spiritual identities.<\/p>\n

When I use my skills as a scholar of American religion I \u201csee\u201d their theological-spiritual identities, but I also \u201csee\u201d that they are actively trying to hide them. And many of them are so eclectic as to not fit any theological-spiritual identity which often results in blandness.<\/p>\n

I think satire is a lost art or I\u2019m just not good at it! Maybe both.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"