Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
    Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
    Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics
    Audiobook13 hours

    Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

    Written by Ross Douthat

    Narrated by Lloyd James

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for the New York Times and the author of the critically acclaimed books Privilege and Grand New Party, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. Now he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails-and why it threatens to take American society with it. In a story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, Douthat brilliantly charts traditional Christianity's decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faith-which acted as a "vital center" and the moral force behind the Civil Rights movement-through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s down to the polarizing debates of the present day. He argues that Christianity's place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, but by heresy: Debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Eat Pray Love, Joel Osteen to The Da Vinci Code, Oprah Winfrey to Sarah Palin, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel's mantra of "pray and grow rich", a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach, and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country's ability to confront our most pressing challenges, and accelerated American decline. His urgent call for a revival of traditional Christianity is sure to generate controversy, and it will be vital listening for all those concerned about the imperiled American future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 17, 2012
    ISBN9781452677293
    Author

    Ross Douthat

    Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page. He is the author of To Change the Church, Bad Religion, and Privilege, and coauthor of Grand New Party. Before joining the New York Times, he was a senior editor for the Atlantic. He is the film critic for National Review, and he cohosts the New York Times’s weekly op-ed podcast, The Argument. He lives in New Haven with his wife and four children.

    Related to Bad Religion

    Related audiobooks

    Social Science For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Bad Religion

    4/5

    71 ratings10 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      I can respect Ross as a culture warrior who actually believes in something, as wild as it may be, but this is a critique that ignores the sins of money and power and instead focuses on the personal failings of the faithful. I guess this isn't the same Christianty that rampaged through the South under bedsheets, or the Church that laundered drug money or covered up endemic levels of child abuse. We are heretics because the leaders turned away from God.
    • 5/5
      So obvious yet so insightful. Comforting, that other Christians recognize these things. Convicting, that he's dared to say them.
    • 5/5
      Insightful. I found the discussion about heresy enlightening and the analysts of current American religion an exercise on tough love.
    • 4/5
      Sick of endless talking heads calling down damnation on anyone who believes people in a rich country should have more-or-less free access to more-or-less quality health care? Aghast at how so much religion is little more than a spray-tanned set of pearly-whites selling, selling, selling, selling redemption? Are you an atheist who struggles (even if only relatively lately) with the narrow ideology, dismissiveness, and ignorance of popular/New Atheism? Then "Bad Religion" is for you.

      While I can't imagine a universe where I'd personally be religious, I realize that for many people faith is a deep (and deep-rooted) calling. Douthat makes a compelling case that the hijacking of the answers to that calling, and the abandonment of 'principled' (my word) or 'complete' (my word) or 'orthodox' (his word) faith systems, has created a raft of social and political (and religious) ills. I find his analysis compelling, even if I found a couple of points weak (I'm not sure e.g. that Obama was 'deified' quite to the extent he tries to claim, or that what messianism there was was as damaging as the more 'conservative' forms under e.g. Bush Jr. and Reagan... but that is an argument that, at a high level, doesn't refute Douthat's overall point.)

      Because I am an atheist and the last several decades have left me with a deep, deep distrust of religion in both society and politics, it is a bit hard for me to hear his call for a return to more orthodox forms of Christianity without... my toes curling, my jaw setting. But. I understand his argument, and I've got to say, it might be right. That might lead to a more 'responsible' religion in the public sphere, which might be more 'rational' and more open to political engagement... and prevent the colonization of the political sphere by more 'unorthodox' religious movements.

      Thought-provoking, in any case.
    • 4/5
      An exploration into the current state of Christianity in America by exploring its recent history suggesting the downfall of Christian institutions and the prevalence of heresies are responsible for many of the challenges being experienced by Christianity today.Douthat begins with the last moment of full strength of Christianity in America immediately after WWII. He then chronicles the two types of responses to the events of the past 60 years: accommodation and resistance. He does well at showing how liberal Protestantism has become what it is on account of the accommodationist impulse, and chronicles how Evangelicals and conservative Catholics have found themselves surprising allies in a movement of resistance against certain cultural trends.He then goes on to discuss a broad range of the particular heresies he has in mind. He begins with the scholarly affection of All Things Gnostic and the Quest for the Historical Jesus and shows well that most of the results end up looking a lot like the liberal Protestant accommodationism of the past 40 years. He exposes the Prosperity Gospel for what it is, idolatrous and heretical Christianity. He turns to the God Within a la Oprah, Chopra, and others, perhaps the more culturally acceptable form of the prosperity gospel, and shows how it cannot reflect historic Christianity. He then does well at showing how American nationalism has become its own sort of religion: both sides of the debate expect the government to be the solution above all solutions, and both parties have their share of both messianic and apocalyptic expectations of accomplishment. It's no longer "God and Church" but "God and America" in the USA, for quite a lot more effort is being expended in promoting a certain political ideology or cause than the Gospel of Christ. Douthat concludes with his hopes for a sort of resurgence of historic Christianity, political without being partisan, with healthy institutions. Douthat is Roman Catholic and that particular frame of reference is evident throughout the work; I would not be as sunny about the value of institutions as he would be, and would also question whether the trends he notes are only 50 or so years old. It would seem that as long as there has been an America there has been a tendency toward some heresy or another; for that matter, in whatever "good ol' days" one would like to explore, odds are that most had more heretical views than would be imagined. But the book is a good meditation on how we got here and what it means that we're here now. Christianity will survive; it always does; but how it must look in order to maintain faithfulness before God is quite the open question.
    • 5/5
      This is a remarkably well written book, even when one does not agree with every strain of analysis. He surveys the post World War II religion in the United States, looking at the 1950's growth of main-line religion followed by a major decline that continues today (the "locust years"). He then surveys the accommodationist ethic tht exists all about, partiuclrly in regard to sexual ethics. Then the resistance in Roman Catholic and Evangelical circles. Prt two of the book is the Age of Heresy, where he takes up scolarly fascination with apocryphal literature, sometimes raising it up to canon for themselves. He followes with the waywardness of the prosperity gospel. Then the people who seek a very individualist practise, which they call spirituality while dismissing religion. Beyond this are those who mix up political culture with their religion. At the end, he tries to rationaalize all this, not quite successfully
    • 4/5
      Douthat's book is a brief look at the state of Christianity, today. He argues that heresy has always been a part of the Christian religion and has often helped orthodoxy to strengthen its stance; but that now, heresy has taken over and orthodox religion has taken a back seat. Most of his focus seems to be on Christianity in America over the last 60 or so years.Some of the things he labels and lumps under heresy are actually more like New Age, and have only a shallow connection to Christianity. While it's true that some of these, as he calls them, "God Within Apostles" do borrow words from the Christian Bible and they do use a Jesus, even if he's not the same as the one in the New Testament, they don't call themselves Christian. These belief-systems still falls into the group of heresy, I guess, because they use the term 'God' outside of the orthodox idea of Christianity.I did enjoy his chapter titled "City On a Hill" about what has been called by many writers as the American Religion. I especially liked when he said, "Jesus never said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the United States of America." That probably sounds like heresy to some people.My opinion on the orthodox/heterodox issue isn't important, here, but I will say this: it is my thinking that most people have seen the leaders of orthodox Christianity do stupid things and suffer no sudden judgment, so they don't see why they should be orthodox. Add to that that most people don't care for the prohibitions and stringent demands of orthodox religion. It seems that they want (to paraphrase Bonhoeffer): cheap grace and easy forgiveness. And why not, right? One thing that I didn't like about the book was the lack of an actual bibliography, though the notes are extensive. This makes it difficult to track down the books he refers to and quotes from. It's not impossible, but it is time consuming to have to skim back through the notes to find the first reference to a particular book, in order to get all the publication information. This may just be a personal peeve, but there it is.I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Christian history, esp. in America. Also, anyone interested in religion in general and the way it seems to be going, particularly Christianity. I was familiar with orthodoxy and heterodoxy from previous study, but this book reminded me of many of the ideas that I had not thought about in a while. All I can really say is: read it and see what you think.
    • 4/5
      While I don't agree with every detail of Douthat's analysis, I was pleasantly surprised by the insights he unpacks here. "America's problem," Douthat argues, "isn't too much religion, or too little of it. It's bad religion: the slow motion collapse of traditional Christianity and the rise of a variety of destructive pseudo-Christianities in its place." From this thesis, Douthat walks the reader through the developments of 20st century Christianity - from the 1950 boom times to the multiplying heresies of late-century. While necessarily brief and biased, Douthat's insights were both fresh and challenging. Perhaps most helpful is Douthat's analysis of heresy itself: "Christian heresies vary wildly in their theological substance, but almost all have in common a desire to resolve Christianity’s contradictions, untie its knotty paradoxes, and produce a cleaner and more coherent faith.” Therefore, many heretics see themselves in terms of "rescuers rather than enemies of Christianity—saving the faith from self-contradiction and cultural irrelevance." While one could nit-pick specific details of Douthat's historical analysis, his thesis remains powerful and immensely helpful.
    • 2/5
      Ross Douthat's book contains two sections of unequal quality. The first roughly half of the book is a history of American Christianity from about the beginning of the twentieth century, emphasizing the post-World War II period until about 1970. This section conveys a lot of information that meshes with my experience of the period, and makes for an illuminating summary, along with a spirited treatment of the Civil Rights Movement relying largely on revisionist sources.The second section is Douthat's critique of American Christianity since the Civil Rights Movement and Vatican Council II. He conveys the demographic statistics of institutional change pretty well, but his flair for journalistic rhetoric overtakes him, marring his analysis of religious trends in the period. He focuses on a few bete noirs (Oprah, Glenn Beck, Joel Osteen, Elaine Pagels) whose opinions he deems heretical. I personally think calling these opinions or movements heresies grants them more status than they merit. He devotes hardly any attention to important religious trends of the period that might have more claim to be formal heresies, such as Mormonism or the spread of Pentecostalism, although he does analyze the de facto Unitarianism and Universalism of many mainstream Protestant church organizations. As the book hastens to a close it deteriorates into a political tirade seemingly rehashed from newspaper columns. There is plenty of criticism lavished on all sides of all issues.I would recommend the first half of the book for anyone wanting a quick and entertaining roundup of the twentieth century history of Christianity in America. The best thing it did for me is point me in the way of some very good sources that I should brush up on. I would recommend the book as a whole for those who like sectarian controversy for its own sake, or who particularly enjoy zingers of which there are plenty.
    • 5/5
      Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics. Ross Douthat. Free Press, 2012. I found this book fascinating and encourage anyone interested in a modern history of religion and its intersection with culture and politics in the United States to read it. It is a readable, concise history of American religion since the end of World War II; and includes the theologies of Joel Osteen, Harvey Cox and Glen Beck as well as the rise of the evangelical movement and Vatican II and its aftermath. Throughout the book he shows the relationship of these various theologies with the politics of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. For my liberal and/or non-religious friends don’t let the title or the angry negative reviews on Amazon deter you from reading this book. For my conservative friends and family, don’t let the fact that Ross Douthat writes for the New York Times and considers Glen Beck’s “theology” suspect, deter you from reading it. I’d lend it to anyone, except I made the mistake of getting it for my Kindle