Bad Religion

Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics is good.

Though not a theologian, Douthat’s navigation of the last half-century of American religious history is theologically impressive. His instincts are sound, and his sketch of current heresies (a redesigned Jesus, prosperity gospel, the Oprahesque “God Within,” and Americanism) is well-selected and richly described. His outline of what a recovered Christianity would look like is sober and inspiring in equal measures. Douthat is an entertaining, highly engaging tour guide at the carnival.

I have some beefs with the book. Douthat sometimes makes his comparisons too easy. Selecting Billy Graham and Joel Osteen as the symbolic markers makes it easy to speak of decline since the 1950s. A different, equally revealing picture would emerge if he had compared Billy to his son Franklin. Douthat talks about the Jesus Seminar and the dead ends of the quest of the historic Jesus, but doesn’t mention NT Wright. Academic theology is not as moribund as Douthat makes it sound; Barth is more alive than ever in American theology (a good thing, considering alternatives), and postliberalism, for all its limits, was a breakthrough.

There are more quiet pockets of intelligent orthodoxy throughout the country than Douthat has discovered. I hope he follows up with a book on that side of American Christianity.