{"id":1248,"date":"2009-01-12T10:15:31","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T18:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=1248"},"modified":"2009-01-12T13:57:01","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T21:57:01","slug":"drive-through-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/drive-through-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Drive-through religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Christian publishers and retailers realize that today’s busy consumers are looking for . . . spiritual food that can be consumed in a convenient way,” said Bill Anderson, the [Christian Booksellers Association] president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(\u201cA closer, faster walk with thee<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s religion advocates sometimes evince an almost child-like ahistoricism, it seems to me.\u00a0 \u201cReligion,\u201d they say, is an essential component of a civilized\u00a0 society.\u00a0 Which religion, whose religion, and what era\u2019s religion would that be?\u00a0 The differences that separate an American believer and non-believer today are barely perceptible compared to the gulf that yawns between today\u2019s cheerful Religion-lite, which has been defanged, homogenized, and told to mind its manners, and the monopolistic, crusading Christianity of centuries past.\u00a0\u00a0 How many of our conservative religious promoters would trade life in secular America for existence when Christianity was at the zenith of its power and made no apologies about trying to control as much of the temporal realm as possible?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not dwell on those outmoded religious activities that one is not supposed to remind religious advocates about, such as the burning of heretics and books; pitchforking the wrong type of Christian; and opposition to liberal political reform.\u00a0 I do wonder, however, whether Michael Gerson, say, would be happy living under an admirably devout Catholic principality, or George Weigel under a Lutheran one, during the Thirty Years\u2019 War.<\/p>\n

But even less politically incorrect religious practices from the past seem equally remote.\u00a0 Who\u2019s still for hair shirts and flagellation?\u00a0 Does the dispute over when baptismal regeneration takes place seem compelling enough that one can imagine Britain\u2019s Privy Council addressing it, as it did in 1850?\u00a0 How about spending virtually all day in church on Sunday, being instructed about the fires of hell?\u00a0 I\u2019ve never heard a theocon argue for reinstatement of Sunday blue laws, which would torpedo our retail sector, or even voluntary compliance with the Sabbath; could it be that the good of the economy trumps the clear commandments of God?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The religious superstructure of centuries past has been dismantled.\u00a0 Rising in its place is a remake of religion \u201cin the image of mass-consumer capitalism,\u201d\u00a0 according to a sociologist of American religion <\/a>at the University of Notre Dame.\u00a0 That remake offers up easily digestible bits like the “5 Minute Theologian\u201d\u00a0 and “7 Minutes With God.\u201d\u00a0 Only a quarter of Americans attend church weekly.\u00a0 Yet moral chaos has not broken out; society has grown more prosperous as secularism expands.\u00a0 Empathy with others, an awareness of the necessity of the Golden Rule, survive the radical transformation of religious belief, it turns out.\u00a0 Perhaps because a moral sense is the foundation, not the result, of religious ethics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Christian publishers and retailers realize that today’s busy consumers are looking for . . . spiritual food that can be consumed in a convenient way,” said Bill Anderson, the [Christian Booksellers Association] president. (\u201cA closer, faster walk with thee.\u201d) Today\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[152,168],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1248"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1258,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1248\/revisions\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}