Michael Brendan Dougherty says that despite what you think, Americans really don't take religion seriously. Religiosity is fine by us -- just not religion. Excerpt:
Serious debates about religion are marginal. For years, Catholic and Protestant apologists would square off, sixteenth-century style, in "Great Debates" in Long Island, arguing over Scriptural authority, the doctrines of Mary, and whether salvation is granted by faith alone. In a truly religious society, wouldn't we expect to see these sorts of debates generate enormous attention? Instead they attract a few hundred people and a sub-cultural following on the internet. The same goes for atheists. When Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great, debated his brother, Peter, a traditional Anglican, hardly anyone noticed. Americans either cannot follow these debates, or more likely, find them a disquieting interruption.
Sometimes I wonder if Americans treat faith as a vaccine: we get just enough of the stuff to prevent our souls from being "infected" by the real thing.
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Conflating interest in theology (and in particular systematic theology) with interest in religion is fundamentally a Modernist mistake. There is more to religion than the doctrines of Mary and whether salvation is granted by faith alone. The essence of Modernism, that which distinguishes it from pre-modernism or post-modernism, is the obsessive need to categorize, quantify and systemetize everything. In the Modern religious regime, moral theology has become a subset of systematic theology, and mysticism is extremely downplayed.
The fact that many peoples religious beliefs are extremely shallow certainly isn't a new/modern phenomenon. I would maintain that it has always been the case. Read literature going back hundreds of years and you will find ample evidence of that.
That which is born of the flesh...is flesh.
Always has been always will be.
I think Charles Cosimano has a point that a pluralistic society by its very nature would tend to be less dogmatic to ease everyone getting along. Conversely a near religious mono-culture (ex Turkey) would tend to be more dogmatic and have more persecution of religious minority.
The linked article was interesting. I think modern man has the freedom to discuss religion, and a lack of interesting because there's no objective way to verify which religion (if any) is correct. So there is no way to settle the debate which makes the debate pointless. I think people are pragmatic and don't waste their effort.
I find it quite disconcerting that in all of this discussion, no one has mentioned reading the Bible. Since when did it happen that being a Christian became so disconnected from the personal responsibility to learn the scriptures? Oh, yes, there were mentions of reading the apologists, reading people who talk about Christianity, reading people who talk about the Bible, reading people who debate theology.
But no one actually mentioned that Christians should read the Bible for themselves. That would be quite the innoculation against much of the religious tripe that many extremists are spouting and the tripe that pretenders pass as "christian" or "spiritual."
A caviot, though, one person did mention that Christians should have:
"A good grounding in the basics (yes, that is an issue), and then attempting to live by and practice"
and that sums up the reality and what most Christians are missing. The Good Grounding in the Basics.
TRex
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