Book
Review: Diana Butler Bass. Christianity
After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening.
Harper One, 2012 (Kindle Edition).
We are already in the year 2012. Diana Butler Bass offers, in her important new book Christianity After Religion, an interpretation of our recent decade
which is compelling and troubling. My cultural perception of Christianity in
our society remains captivated by the paradigm shifts of the 1980s and 1990s
when the Religious Right was popular and had a lot of media attention, our
mainline denominations continued their long pattern of disestablishment and
diminishment and the mega-church movement was booming. But according Butler
Bass, and with some penetrating sociological data, the place of church in
culture may have shifted again, significantly, since 2001.
She argues: “the first dozen years of the new millennium have been downright
horrible for religion, leading to a sort of “participation crash” in churches of all
sorts as the new millennium dawned. In particular, five major events revealed
the ugly side of organized religion, challenging even the faithful to wonder
if defending religion is worth the effort, and creating an environment that can
rightly be called a religious recession”.
1) 2001: Butler
2) The Roman
Catholic sex abuse scandal
3) Protestant
conflict over homosexuality: Butler Bass argues that the whole, long, public
debate over sexuality in almost all of the large, national churches has
seriously undermined our effectiveness for ministry and our standing in our
society. “Although some Christians surely
felt theologically and morally uncomfortable with the idea of a gay bishop, many
more were appalled by the nastiness of the controversy, the obvious politicization
of their denominations, the low spiritual tone of the discussion, and the
scandal of churches suing their mother denominations over property.”
4) 2004: The
religious Right wins the battle, but loses the war: Butler Bass cites a popular
and influential recent book on American Christianity to make her case. “In their recent book American Grace, Robert
Putnam and David Campbell cautiously suggest that the real victory of the
religious Rights has been to alienate an entire generation of young people.”
In my mind, that is a painful conclusion but my own perception tells me this
may be correct. Is this true and accurate? Butler Bass concludes: “The old religious Right may have won some
cherished political battles, but in the war over the hearts of their youth they
surely lost more than they gained.”
5) 2007: The
Great Religious Recession: Finally, Butler Bass argues that when
the great economic recession hit our nation at the end of 2008, the churches
were too feeble to respond to the massive human need all around. “The economic recession arrived at a moment
when churches and denominations were already in a religion recession. The
national economic crisis served to weaken embattled religious organizations,
further marginalizing conventional faith institutions in a chaotic cultural
environment.”
I
believe we need a full discussion of these themes. What is happening in church
and society? What worldly events are impacting our churches? How are powerful
cultural forces influencing the churches? What is the public witness of the
Church in our society today? Most of all, Diana Butler Bass’ reflections help
us break out of some of the stale stereotypes from the 1980s and reflect in new
ways on these important questions. Diana Butler Bass’ new book is important and
worthy of careful study and group discussion. Let’s talk about it!
