Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

The fact that Douthat's book is a tendentious defense of the more homogeneous Christianity he imagines to have been the norm in the fifties is not a bad thing in itself. Every author on religious and social issues has a point of view to defend. The problem with Douthat's book is the hypocritical and disingenuous analysis of the "heresies" he descries. The current culture war did not appear out of thin air. Rather, the draining of mainstream churches in the last decades is a direct result of the social revolution of the sixties and seventies. That revolution was in large part a reaction against what many saw as the stultifying "Leave It To Beaver" culture of the fifties. Douthat urges a return to the orthodoxy of that era. The traditional Christianity that Douthat touts in fact never was a monolithic entity. There were rumblings for a more liberal and inclusive Christianity from the mid nineteenth century on, with the rise of higher criticism and the wider exposure to pre-Christian and non-Christian religions. Many churchgoers felt alienated from "orthodoxy." It cannot be denied that many "heretics" became enmeshed in radical splinter groups that were generally unorthodox and often frantically sectarian and cultish. However, the more sincere and open-minded spiritual seeker began to investigate the sources of his faith and the nature of the religious response in general. Douthat ignores this strain of heretic in his call for a more homogeneous orthodoxy and throws out the baby with the bath water, arguing that current America is "a place where traditional Christian teachings have been warped into justifications for solipsism and anti-intellectualism, jingoism, and utopianism, selfishness and greed." (page 4.) Interesting. These charges sound suspiciously similar to the sixties rebels' complaints about the "old time religion" of the cold war fifties. The net result of heretical do-it-yourself religion, Douthat claims, is "a country where religion actively encourages the sort of recklessness that produced our current economic meltdown, rather than serving as a brake on materialism and a brake on avarice." (page 5.) "For all its piety and fervor," Douthat complains, "today's Unitied States needs to be recognized for what it really is: no longer a Christian country, but a nation of heretics." (page 6.) Amen and halleluiah. America is no longer a parochial backwater that can't see beyond its Pinnochio nose. America is a living organism, not a fossil. We are part of a global village that encompasses many cultures and religious faiths. This is as it should be. America is not a "Christian" nation; it is a nation of religious pluralism. We live in a give-and-take world that demands that we find common ground with all faiths and not retreat into a blind "orthodoxy." In particular, Douthat's disdainful dismissal of "do-it-yourself, pick-and-choose, God-within" Christianity is offensive to the spiritual quest of those who have rejected orthodoxy for its failure to meet their needs. The backlash against mainstream churches in the sixties and seventies was sparked by disenchantment with the antiquated and parochial socio-political ideology of the post-war years. This was the trigger that unleashed the disintegration of mainline churches that Douthat deplores so much. The disillusion on many Christians brought on by the revelation that much of the Bible, and the New Testament in particular, is not history, but allegory, and by Americans' exposure to Eastern spirituality, prompted many to join their "heretical" contemporaries from other religions in reassessing the basis of their faith. This resulted in the exodus from churches in the following decades. It is true that many less introspective apostates flocked to the new swarm of "materialist" churches or to extreme quasi-Christian sects. But it is also true that the new freedom to pick-and-choose led others to a reexamination of their faith in a renewed and deepened religious experience and to throw off the chaff of orthodoxy to discover the kernel of truth that lay hidden and forgotten within it. The more spiritually oriented among the apostates felt that orthodoxy stifles this wide-ranging spiritual quest though threats of stigmatization and spiritual exile. Despite the doubtful claims of Douthat that the main objective of orthodox religion is to maintain social stability and the status quo, many of the recently liberated Christians felt that the new freedom they exercised to explore the bases of their faith fomented a spiritual development that outweighed the dangers of the "decadence" surrounding them. Douthat seems to perform a curious flip-flop in the latter part of his book. After arguing strenuously (and futiley) for a return to orthodoxy, he offers a more sober analysis of evolving Christianity in the chapter, The Recovery of Christianity." After admitting that in hindsight from future generations "perhaps my [his] own comments on the present age of heresy will look...presumptuous and premature," he recounts how "the Christian gospel originally emerged as a radical alternative in a civilization as rootless and cosmopolitan and relativistic as our own. There may come a moment," he continues, "when the loss of Christianity's cultural preeminence enables believers to recapture some of that original radicalism. Maybe it is already here, if only Christians could find a way to shed the baggage of a vanished Christendom and speak the language of this age." To be candid, he is writing of the "baggage" of compromised contemporary Christianity as he sees it, but if the shoe fits "orthodoxy".... He goes on to write of the "radical theology" of those who "present Jesus Christ's selfless love as the answer postmodernism's obsession with power, and God as the bedrock that remains when every merely human foundation has been deconstructed." He then analyses the basis of the "so-called emerging church movement, which was 'born out of disillusionment' with existing Christian structures." He continues, "the 'emergent' movement tries to answer the deracination of contemporary life with a faith that meets seekers where they are: in conversation rather than in Sunday preaching, in house churches and small groups rather than in explicit apologetics...In different ways, both of these movements are attempting to rebuild Christianity from the ground up- bypassing failing institutions, avoiding culture-war flashpoints, and casting the faith as a lifeline for an exhausted civilization rather than just a return to the glories of the past." Is he serious? This is what many of the "heresies" are all about. He undercuts his thesis even more a couple of pages further on: "An age of institutional failure may just end up inspiring Americans to be even more suspicious of any sort of religious authority, and more inclined to put their faith only in the God they find within." Turn the page, and you will read, "Sometimes cultural crises lead to reassessment and renewal. But sometimes they just make people double down on their original mistakes." Admittedly, he was posing this "renewal" as a counterpoint to the heresies he descries, but again, thank you, Mr Douthat, for stating the case for authentic Christianity as practised by many "heretics." He even manages to give a nod to the theory of Strauss and Howe discussed below when he writes: "The revival of mid-century was prompted, in part, by economic and political shocks--by a depression and a world war, and the spirit of humility and realism and reassessment that they helped inspire. God willing no horrors of that magnitude await us, but our current economic turmoil does raise the possibility that a similar reassessment might be in the offing--that an age of diminished expectations might also be an age that's willing to reckon with the ways that bad theology and bad religion have helped bring us to our present pass." I couldn't have stated my case for spiritual renewal better myself. Douthat loads his gun and shoots himself in the foot. Here, Ross, there's one more bullet left. Why not point the gun directly at your head? He claims: "This book has often made a more instrumental case for Christian orthodoxy--defending its exacting moralism as a curb against worldly excess and corruption, praising its paradoxes and mysteries for respecting and complexities of human affairs in ways that more streamlined theologies to not, celebrating the role of its institutions in assimilating immigrants, sustaining families, and forging strong communities." (Did I miss that chapter?) "My hope throughout has been to persuade even the most skeptical reader that traditional Christian faith might have more to offer this country than either its flawed defenders or its fashionable enemies would lead one to believe. But whether I have succeeded or failed in that argument, neither religions nor cultures can live on instrumentality alone. It is not enough for Americans to respect orthodox Christianity a bit more than they do at present. To make any difference in our common life, Christianity must be lived--not as a means to social cohesion or national renewal, but as an end unto itself. Anyone who seeks a more perfect union should begin by seeking the perfection of their own soul. Anyone who would save their country should first look to save themselves. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added t you." Really, Ross? Why did you wait two hundred and ninety three pages to get to the heart of the issue? Somewhere he cites the Bible quotation about removing the splinter from one's own eye before attempting to remove the beam from another's. Nothing remains static. The radical social upheavals of the sixties and seventies were a natural part of a cycle of change. The old Hegelian model of social change- a gyre of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis- still holds true. Strauss and Howe in their book The Fourth Turning modify this scheme of development to propose a repeating cycle of social eras in which a crisis (WWII, for example)results in a conservative "golden age" (the Happy Days Fifties, Douthat might argue) that leads to a spiritual and social era of disenchantment and radicalism (the Hippie Years.) This peters out in a period of decadence (Generation X), which in turn is converted into new "heroic" retrenchment of togetherness brought on by a new crisis (the looming crisis on our horizon today.) The cycle begins again with a new conservative era. According to this (very much oversimplified) theory of social change, the culture wars of today indeed do presage a "new orthodoxy" of the type Douthat favors, or at least a new conservatism. Perhaps the excesses of today will be tempered by a new crisis that will lead to a new orthodoxy. But this will not be a return to the Golden Years of the fifties. The seeds of a new conservative orthodoxy are planted in the preceeding "decadent" era, lie dormant during the crisis years, and flower in a new Golden Age with its own brand of "propriety." And the seeds of a new radicalism are sown in the growing discontent with this stifling new orthodoxy, only to flower in an era of a new brand of nihilism grown in the fetid but fertile soil of the "golden years." What goes around, comes around. Now a word on style. Modern prose for the lay person is often composed of simple sentences displayed in an outline form that is easy to follow. I was brought up on a more flowery Victorian style, employing an elegant but clear use of parenthetical phrases that flow in a pleasing rhythm. I enjoy this kind of writing even though it is a dinosaur in our times. Douthat's writing is dense and convoluted like the prose of old, but it is certainly not elegant. It is "highbrow journalism," which is his prerogative, I suppose, being a contributor to Atlantic and an "op ed" columnist for the New York Times, but it grates on my aesthetic sensibilities. Combine a cumbersome prose style with intellectual dishonesty and the impression that the author suffers from a general ignorance about the subtleties of his subject matter, and you are left with a book that rates two stars for it merits, but four stars for its potential to get your dander up and write a three page review.

At a time when religious beliefs of all types are fiercely criticized and often excluded from public discussion by technically well educated but deeply misinformed people, this is an important book. Douthat essentially points to the vital intellectual role that mainstream Christian denominations (Catholic, Lutheran, etc.) once played in sobering and refining our broad cultural discussions about important American values. Until the late 1960s when their influence began an ongoing decline, their pervasiveness and their dialogues/competition with one another forced them to be precise and articulate in expressing their theological teachings and the practice of values in daily life. Even atheists and non-Christians benefited from this phenomenon because it meant there were powerful, influential institutions regularly pushing Americans to think against the darker and more selfish impulses of human nature: greed, materialism, infidelity, dishonesty, violence, etc. These discussions were inherently healthier than the crop of more extreme and marginal views that have arisen in their place via denominations that have neither the long intellectual history nor carefully codified theologies of those older faiths, let alone any of the extraordinary commitments (like vows of poverty, chastity, etc) that also placed a healthy pressure on popular cultural values like crass materialism (an ever-present danger of capitalism).Douthat does not try to gild or sugar-coat the history of mainstream religions: he doesn't talk about the "good old days" when people were "truly faithful" and went to church, versus the "sinful" times we've fallen into now (though he does quote statistics to show that religiosity has indeed declined or at least been forced to retreat into the private sphere to an unhealthy degree). Nor does he pretend that those religious institutions were always healthy or infallible. In fact, religion is not his primary object; rather, it is the principal factor in a intellectual/cultural/political shift he is trying to describe. His real aim is to show that the displacement of (imperfect but intellectually important) mainstream religious institutions by more heretical discourses (i.e. non-denominational Christianity AND atheism) has proven destructive to the sophistication and precision of American values and politics. In place of well-reasoned and complex sets of values that can attend to the nuances and difficulties of various political/ethical situations, American politics is now saturated with reductive viewpoints that grossly oversimplify and often blatantly distort the issues we face as a society. Culturally we have become surprisingly ignorant in our discussions and understandings of the ethical/moral issues we inevitably face, allowing ourselves to be manipulated instead by flat and ill-considered sentiments that Douthat labels "heresies."According to Douthat, all heresies share one trait in common: they purport to simplify an intellectually complex set of ideas and beliefs. The atheistic tendency to simply reject the existence of God and reduce all morality to mere cultural relativism is as heretical to Douthat as the non-denominational tendency to simply equate God with peace and happiness and include everyone under a generic banner of "Christianity" with no real scrutiny or talk of particular beliefs. While these categories may seem like opposite ends of the religious spectrum, Douthat brings them convincingly together in terms of their effect on society: they share an obvious tendency to discourage intellectual complexity and instead fashion a moral/ethical system that is surprisingly malleable and self-serving; that is, remarkably prone to being refashioned to justify self-interest so people may do whatever they like without having to question their actions or desires. As a result, individuals and American politics are becoming shallower, more self-serving and narcissistic, as well as less ethically precise or thoughtful. What is being lost from society is the presence of any mainstream moral force that is sufficiently influential to sober the materialism and self-centricity which are inherent to capitalism.The worse effect, however, is the destructiveness that also occurs to democracy. Without an effective pressure to forge any kind of well-reasoned moral consensus as a culture, we also get the hyper-polarization of politics and the rise of increasingly marginal or extreme forms of various beliefs. In place of an intellectually diverse Christian and non-Christian consensus on broad issues of morality and the ability to discuss moral/ethical dilemmas with real sophistication, we end up instead with a list of binaries (conservative or liberal, evangelical or atheist, pro-life or pro-choice, etc.) and the compelling pressure to join one side to ensure the other (worse) side doesn't win.I suspect few readers (except those who read the Founders) will have considered how important religious discourse may be to the sophistication and healthy functioning of our American political system. Douthat does an admirable job pointing out the role it once played at a time when there was a strong connection between religious institutions and popular culture, and how dramatically it has changed since mainstream religion was forced out by atheistic and non-denominational/inclusivist forces alike. He also illuminates how misguided and ineffectual it is to popularize religion by stripping it of the rigors of orthodoxy and judgmentalism--which, as Douthat capably shows, turn out to be its most important societal functions. Though he doesn't quite say it, he ends up essentially echoing the Founders' sentiment that democracy thrives best if an intellectually and religiously diverse public is allowed to freely and passionately argue its premises with one another--not in private, but right out in the open public sphere, where the discussions are sure to forge at least some consensus and a surprisingly precise vocabulary/system for thinking about the issues we face. The privatization of religion--its exclusion from the public sphere but also its watering-down into "unoffensive" non-denominational forms--has powerfully undermined those kinds of discourses and left culture in general dangerously ignorant, reductive, and reactionary as a result.

I’m Australian and was intrigued to read this excellent analysis of USA Christianity. Australian Christianity is in a much worse state, but the same issues apply, only more. I particularly liked the comment about the Christian churches focussing on their opposition to gay marriage and gay sex, but ignoring the proliferation of extra marital heterosexual activity, adultery and divorce.

Excellent book

Unbelievable but to the point.... worldwide problem today!...would recommend to any serious reader

There is no doubt about it: controversial titles help to sell books. Being a free thinking person with a serious interest in religions and spirituality I couldn’t resist getting this book. From the outset I wondered “where is he coming from, passing judgment on the populace having become heretical?” Is Douthat just one more finger-pointing fundamentalist relegating those of incongruous beliefs to the sin bin of doctrinal deviance? Going through his book we become acquainted with numerous “deviant” individuals and organizations. What is missing is a compendium at the beginning of the book of exactly what comprises “good religion.” Due to that deficiency, Douthat is free to cruise through the historical terrain taking pot shots in every direction at whomever and whatever strikes him as being associated with “bad religion.”There are at least three ways to critique this book: 1. Is it well written, factual and informative? Other than being biased and opinionated, yes it probably passes the muster for those criteria. The author attempts to include a lot of aspects and influences of religious activity, especially since the 1950s, so it is difficult to collectively assess. He chooses to overlook the bad elements of religion which existed in the 1950s. I think that many elements contributing to change were left out, many of them arose in the period 1880 to 1950, although he does include Ralph Waldo Emerson, dismissively so. He denigrates pantheistic thought but fails to examine panentheism. He pays little attention to the recent global village of pluralistic influences or the information technology evolution. I would give three stars for this aspect as provided by the author.2. The book is clearly addressing conservative Christians but does it truly reflect their viewpoints? Mostly, I believe it does but many evangelicals will disagree with his endorsement of Catholicism as having been on the good side of the religious dynamic. He highlights several prominent Christians from the 50s and 60s but doesn’t consider that considerable conflict existed between their ideologies. I think he overstates mid-century theological and doctrinal harmony. I would give four stars for this aspect.3. Is Douthat’s premise that Christianity reached its zenith in the 1950s, and has gradually slid into apostasy since then, a realistic one? Only if considered within the confines of the author’s (undefined) criteria. I would give two stars for this aspect since I find it unconvincing. I found the book to be entertainingly informative but hypothetically unconvincing.A question that needs to be challenged by free thinking people is “should religion be boxed in, frozen and protected from what some perceive as disruptive, non-conforming, progressive influences because it has been judged by some to have already attained its ultimate maturity?” I think not. I found it presumptuous that Douthat selected a decade which he determined to exemplify Christian America’s pinnacle of good religiosity as far as it served to influence communal, mainstream society. Millions of Christians would disagree. Just consider one issue: the status of women in that time period. In the 1950s women had their place or were put in their place, mostly stuck at home and rarely entrusted with leadership in academia, business, the professions—or the church. It was a man’s world to dominate. As women became more liberated and equality was promoted, society changed and, reluctantly, also the male controlled church had to accommodate more roles for women. However, evangelical, Catholic and Mormon churches are still struggling with this issue! Is it realistic to want contemporary Christianity to revert to conditions which prevailed sixty years ago in regard to women? Absolutely not. Nor is it realistic on so many other fronts and levels to highlight 1950s’ conditions as benchmarks of excellence. To have relevance Christianity will have to grow and change. To be true to Christian ideals it must always be a work in progress. In the Middle Ages the Christian attitude towards most women was not much better than what we witness from today’s Taliban. But, fortunately, gradually Christianity has changed its attitude towards women. Is that change due to BAD RELIGION? Definitely not.A large presumption made by most apologists for monotheistic religions is that Holy Scripture was established to last—and by implication, to be enforced—for eternity. Would that be a reflection and will of a just and loving Deity? Has society not changed for the better in five thousand years? Should not our ability to be inspired towards new revelatory truths grow with our ability to be increasingly more Christ-like? I believe so. Many have received new revelations (however they be defined) which have benefited others spiritually, mentally, financially, socially, etc. In fact, thousands of books are published every year by Christians who have felt inspired to share a different take on theology, Christology, doctrine, Bible interpretation and social issues. A few have been inspired to propose that some parts of the Bible may no longer be relevant, or not be as important as they were in former ages. They claim that some “truths” have been revealed which confirm the validity of the Bible’s timeless spiritual message but invalidate some of the outdated legalistic pronouncements which are unhelpful.Sadly, it seems Douthat wants Christians to return to the past. Instead of his pessimistic appraisal about the present state of Christianity, we should acknowledge that progress has been and is still going to be made. Church attendance and membership may decline but the importance of belief in God, spirtuality and the Christian message prevails. We must have discernment, grow in wisdom and foster a culture of reverence, but allow room for religions to be progressive for the benefit of all mankind. Not everything new is good but labeling most new trends, thoughts and inspirations as being heretical, as the author has done, will not accomplish what most Christians surely want: growth of belief and devotion in an increasingly universal Christianity of love, compassion, grace, hope, forgiveness and salvation.