Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

From the popular New York Times columnist, a powerful and original critique of how American Christianity has gone astrayâ€”and the deeply troubling consequences for American life and politics.

As the youngest-ever op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the railsâ€”and why it threatens to take American society with it.

Writing for an era dominated by recession, gridlock, and fears of American decline, Douthat exposes the spiritual roots of the nationâ€™s political and economic crises. He argues that Americaâ€™s problem isnâ€™t too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, itâ€™s bad religion: the slow-motion collapse of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses.

These faiths speak from many pulpitsâ€”conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably â€œspiritualâ€â€”and many of their preachers claim a Christian warrant. But they are increasingly offering distortions of traditional Christianityâ€”not the real thing. Christianityâ€™s place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, Douthat argues, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that breed hubris, greed, and self-absorption.

In a story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, he brilliantly charts institutional Christianityâ€™s decline from a vigorous, mainstream, and bipartisan faithâ€”which acted as a â€œvital centerâ€ and the moral force behind the civil rights movementâ€”through the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s to the polarizing debates of the present day. Ranging from Glenn Beck to Barack Obama, Eat Pray Love to Joel Osteen, and Oprah Winfrey to The Da Vinci Code, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospelâ€™s mantra of â€œpray and grow rich,â€ a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach, and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the countryâ€™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 reading for all those concerned about the imperiled American future.

Country	USA
Author	Ross Douthat
Binding	Hardcover
EAN	9781439178300
Edition	56684th
ISBN	1439178305
Label	Free Press
Manufacturer	Free Press
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	337
PublicationDate	2012-04-17
Publisher	Free Press
ReleaseDate	2012-04-17
Studio	Free Press

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

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