Why do people stop going to church? This big question is the subject of Julia Duin's small book,
Quitting Church: Why teh Faithful are Fleeing and What To Do About It. Duin is not a disinterested observer of the phenomenon of church-dropping; rather, she's a churchgoer who wants churches to work well, and also a skilled reporter who knows how to apply the tools of her trade.
The result is a book that makes for uncomfortable reading for anyone invested in good church ministry; Duin is straightforward in her examination of the myriad ways churches can fail Christian believers. But she's not without hope in American churches and their ability to find a way forward.
Duin took on some questions via email. Our exchange appears after the jump.
I'm overjoyed that my good friend Rob Stennett has won
the Award of Merit from Christianity Today for his novel
The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher. (Here's
CT's review of the book.) Stennett's hilarious book is about a real estate agent who joins a suburban church in order to reach the Christian home-buying market, and then has an even better idea: He'll plant his very own megachurch! (The working title for the book was
The Impastor, and I've yet to forgive Rob's publisher for nixing it.)
A.J. Jacobs, the author of
The Year of Living Biblically, calls it "equal parts Tom Perotta and Rob Bell." Couldn't be a more apt description of what Rob is able to accomplish in his writing: it's a kind of pastoral satire.
All Beliefnet bloggers are offering their picks for the best books on religion in 2008. Here are my top 5:
I interviewed Wright about this book in the spring, and it continues to inform my thinking. I'm not always a fan of Wright's popularizations of his academic work (this one is a reiteration of the doorstop The Resurrection of the Son of God), but in calling Christians to an epistemology of love and a re-emphasis of the Easter season, Wright knocked it out of the park.
Crouch's book is not only the best book on Christian culture I've ever seen, it's one of the clearest explanations I've been given of the concept of "culture." Immensely helpful, and a book Christian leaders will be talking about for years to come. Here is my interview with Crouch.
Jacobs, a professor at Wheaton, has made a year-end list or two already for his Looking Before and After. But I've not read that one, and, well, I'm a sucker for serious thinking on sin. This one follows the history of thinking about original sin from Augustine to "Hellboy," basically, and rewards the curious reader with unique knowledge (of good and evil) on every page.
I swear I'm not including this one just because McKnight kindly joined Beliefnet's blogging team this year. The Blue Parakeet is a page-turning trainer on how to read the Bible in a modern context. For centuries, Christianity has been marked by one major question: Given what we know now (about history, science, sexuality, you name it), how should we read the Bible? McKnight's book goes a long way toward helping everyday readers form an answer.
Jenkins writes with Balzacian regularity, and it's a wonder that so many of his books are so good. Here, he continues his project of creating a paradigm shift for those who imagine that Christianity essentially is, was, and will be a Western religion. My interview with Jenkins is here.
Former-vampire novelist
Anne Rice has to be one of the most fascinating public converts to Christianity we've seen in a great while, not least because she is being so open about how she moved from atheism to Catholicism and, from within her changed perspective, she's producing
such interesting work.
This week, Anne Rice is taking questions from Beliefnet Community members. Check it out, and join in--there is still time to
set up your profile, join the group, and ask Ms. Rice a question.
The best part of the exchange so far, in my opinion:
Is your return to Christianity an appeal of the forms and narrative, or is a return to the 'beliefs,' and if it is the latter, would you please expand upon how the beliefs that were let go in your college years came to be relevant and vital again? I ask this, because like you, I shed my beliefs in Christianity in my college years, and while I appreciate many aspects of the varieties of Christian tradition, I find the hurdles of literalism and exclusivism which seem to pervuade Christianity intellectually difficult.
Anne Rice's response:
Zero Equals Infinity --- You have asked an elegant question and made an elegant statement. I'm impressed. My return of faith was just that: faith in the existence of God came back to me. Some have said this is a Gift from God, and I would have to say that it feels that way. But I had been asking for faith for a long time. As I said above, I let go of all the sociological and theological questions that were tormenting me. I fell into a great "unknowing." I realized God knew. Some one really was in charge, and some one really knew why evil was allowed to exist and why people suffered. I didn't have to know in order to declare my love for God. So I let the questions go and I let the contradictions go. I returned to the Roman Catholic church and vowed to stay out of the controversies amongst Catholics. I went back to pray, to talk to God in a sacred space, to be with other believers, and I vowed not to argue with anybody about anything. It's hard to live this way. Christians are a people who love to discuss their faith. I want to embrace my fellow believers and non believers. I do not need to theologize or teach or preach. That's how I see it. Of course I saw God in the universe. I saw Him everywhere. My faith was visceral.
"Christianity...is a perpetual breeding ground for violence, abuse, superstition, war, discrimination, tyranny, and pride. Religion and spirituality is a bottomless pit breeding illusion, deceit, and oppression."
Post your guess below. The answer appears after the jump (no peeking before you guess!).
As a fan of Bible retellings--songs, novels, poems, films, etc that reimagine Bible stories in some way--I was heartened by something I heard on This American Life this weekend: Jonathan Goldstein, a tAL producer and contributor and the author of...
I was introduced to Philip Jenkins' work several years ago through his Atlantic cover story, "The Next Christianity." There, Jenkins explained that the center of global Christianity was shifting to the southern hemisphere. In The Next Christendom and the two related titles that...
Andy Crouch's Culture Making: Rediscovering Our Creative Calling is the Christian book of the year--its Publisher's Weekly nod for best religion book won't be its last. The concept of "culture" has been something of a snare for American Christians--we've critiqued culture...
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Today's blogged excerpt from Andy Crouch's book at the Culture-Making site asks urgent, necessary questions. Forget about the election, and ponder this:If we believe that God is still on the move in human cultures, then our most basic questions have...
One of the most unshakeable reading experiences I've had in the last year is Don Lattin's Jesus Freaks: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge. Taking a cue from Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of...
One of the most unshakeable reading experiences I've had in the last year is Don Lattin's Jesus Freak: A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge. Taking a cue from Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven,...
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The sidebar over yonder tells you all you need to know about the readiness of this here blog. I have not had time this week to get things up and running as they should be (and just think of all...
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