{"id":627,"date":"2015-07-24T12:45:01","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T18:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/?p=627"},"modified":"2015-07-24T12:45:01","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T18:45:01","slug":"the-power-of-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/watchinggod\/2015\/07\/the-power-of-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power of Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/469\/2015\/07\/hand-vintage-old-book.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-629 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/469\/2015\/07\/hand-vintage-old-book-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"hand-vintage-old-book\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"><\/a>I\u2019m actually in the mountains of Colorado right now, climbing hills\u00a0and dodging coyotes. But I wanted to draw your attention to something going on right now in the wider world of Patheos\u2013a huge conversation about the future of religion in America.<\/p>\n<p>This week,\u00a0the focus is on evangelicalism\u2013a branch of Christianity that has been particularly vibrant, and at times rather divisive, over the last several decades. After generations of steady growth is now seeing its first signs of contraction, part of America\u2019s growing swing toward secularization.<\/p>\n<p>Patheos asked several deep thinkers\u2013and oddly enough, me\u2013just what the future of evangelicalism looks like. The answers, and sometimes the follow-up questions, have been fascinating.<\/p>\n<p>My thoughts, naturally, centered on the power of story. You can read my musings <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/Topics\/Future-of-Faith-in-America\/Evangelicalism\/Let-Me-Tell-You-a-Story-Paul-Asay-07-22-2015.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. And if you\u2019re interested in checking out the rest of the conversation (trust me, it\u2019s well worth your time), click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/Public-Square\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m actually in the mountains of Colorado right now, climbing hills\u00a0and dodging coyotes. But I wanted to draw your attention to something going on right now in the wider world of Patheos\u2013a huge conversation about the future of religion in America. This week,\u00a0the focus is on evangelicalism\u2013a branch of Christianity that has been particularly vibrant, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2036,"featured_media":629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Power of Story<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I&#039;m actually in the mountains of Colorado right now, climbing hills\u00a0and dodging coyotes. But I wanted to draw your attention to something going on right\" \/>\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\/watchinggod\/2015\/07\/the-power-of-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Power of Story\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#039;m actually in the mountains of Colorado right now, climbing hills\u00a0and dodging coyotes. 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