Just started the book Bad Religion by Ross Douthat in our small group last week, covering the prologue.The book focuses on Christianity in the US today and how it got to its current state. Douthat's thesis statement is that the interplay of orthodoxy and heresy has been essential to the formation of Christianity, but recently, the heresy has been dominant.
He discusses the value of having a both/and stance, showing the paradoxical causes us to wrestle deeply with issues. The black and whiteness of orthodoxy being challenged by heresy keeps us moving forward in a flexible way, allowing what is considered orthodoxy to shift and fit into cultures.
Our group discussed how this movement bred our many denominations allowing people to find churches that mesh with their personalities and tastes. We also discussed how today's Church goers may be more devout, as a whole. than those past generations, due to the inherent cultural differences between today and our grandparents generations. In the early to mid 1900s, church was an accepted social activity, what most people did simply because that is what everyone else did. Today this is no longer the case. And while there now seem to be so many variates of churches that anyone can find a place that suits them best, the tradeoff of the multi-denomination/many-church model is that in some ways we have lost a bit (or more) of the generational hierarchy that used to exist within the church, where the older generations of Christians are able to mentor and pass along wisdom to the younger generations.
In all, the discussion was interesting and lively. Looking forward for the material to come.
