I was talking to my pastor about this just the other day. To think that the United States was a Christian nation because people paid lip service to Christianity is a bit naive. As Father Carey (my pastor) noted, Pope Benedict has already envisioned a church with far fewer members that may be better just for that reason. Better a salt of the Earth that retains some savor. I thought the description of Albert Mohler as "starched" rather amusing. I spoke with Albert Mohler at some length over the phone a few years ago. He is anything but starched. He is a charming, funny, very intelligent and informed man.
Moreover, Dave also sends this: God Still Isn't Dead.
Moreover, Dave also sends this: God Still Isn't Dead.
Betting against American religion has always proved to be a fool's game. In 1880, Robert Ingersoll, the leading atheist of his day, claimed that "the churches are dying out all over the land." In its Easter issue in 1966, Time asked "Is God Dead?" on its cover. East Coast intellectuals have repeatedly assumed that the European model of progress, where modernity equals secularization, would come to the U.S. They have always been wrong.
Thank you for including the provocative post on "the end of Christian America." My radar is locked onto issues like this one because (God help me!) I am planning to teach a course next fall in which the role of religion in the 21st century is the thematic focus for a freshman English composition class. My challenge will be to guide students in the art of writing logically reasoned arguments in response to religious issues they discern in their lives. As the university where I teach is firmly enscounced in the Bible Belt of the American south, my additional challenge will be to discourage evangelical prosletizing while striving to encourage solidly thought-out and articulated rhetoric. So, in preparation for the upcoming challenges, I am dedicating myself to reading anything and everything about America's religious impulse. Your posting is yet another bookmark that I can add to my growing core of go-to resources. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI hope the secularists continue to be wrong. They deserve it.
ReplyDelete