Bad Religion (Ross Douthat, 2012)

In this day and age, with about 500 all-news channels catering to every political leaning, people often don't read books that don't match their beliefs. I am guilty of this quite often, but it is also hard to open up to other viewpoints when the books themselves too often are shoddy partisan hit-pieces. So, opening up to Bad Religion was a real experience for me.

Bad Religion crossed my radar twice: through an appearance by the author on the Bill Maher show, and an article by the author shared with me by a friend. For some reason this led me to believe that the author was liberal-minded, but it quickly became clear that Douthat is a conservative-leaning Catholic and I was going to be challenged.

The good news here is that Douthat makes his viewpoints clear and argues rationally. This is not one of those election-year Regnery books that makes heaps of unsubstantiated claims against whatever Democrat is running for president. The premise is that religion in the United States has, in a few different ways, lost its connection with the American people that it enjoyed comfortably until the mid-1960's. Douthat uses the classic tripartite approach: the "accommodation" of the Mainline Protestants, contributing to their dwindling numbers; the "resistance" of the Evangelical Protestants, which subjects them to the follies of fundamentalism; and the "Catholic Civil War" that has been raging on-and-off in various parts of the world since Vatican II between reformers and traditionalists. All of these phenomenon have served to increase the secular share of society. However, the secular world is not atheist. They too yearn for spirituality, and they are getting it from some pretty weird places: Eat Pray Love, "Mad Money", Joel Osteen, Oprah, the "historical Jesus" people, etc. And therein lies the "bad religion" of which Douthat speaks.

Although this book deeply intrigued me, I can't say that I ate up Douthat's thesis without reservations. Though I'm no fan of the whole "spiritual, but not religious" angle, I think that one can live a faithful life in religion and still be curious and questioning about the origins of Christianity and drawing distinctions between the "historical Jesus" and the Jesus formed from the Gospels and Pauline literature. Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to read this book and decide for themselves how religion can comfortably serve a meaningful role in modern American society, as well as balance our faith with our natural curiosity for the historical truth.