Bad Religion Revisited

 

Some weeks ago, I registered some of my reservations about Ross Douthat's recent foray into a distinctive style of apologetics, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. Douthat is neither a theologian nor an academic religion scholar but a journalist, a New York Times opinion columnist; but that is no reason to disparage his writings on religion. Moreover, whatever one concludes about Believe, I think that Douthat's 2012 book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press), which I have reread in preparation for Holy Week, remains a masterful account of the multiple crises facing contemporary American religion today and is, if anything, more relevant and more to the point than it was 13 years ago when it was first published. In that now classic book, Douthat served up a rigorous analysis of the contemporary American Christian landscape and offered advice to both believers and their institutions.

The first half of Douthat's book summarized how we got to where we are today. It's a familiar story - familiar certainly to those of us either old enough to have lived through it or historically aware enough to appreciate how our relatively recent past was so very different from our present. It's the familiar story of a "Lost World" of confident, evangelizing, post-war American Christianity and its largely (and seemingly self-inflicted) decline. Douthat's "Lost World" examined four successful strains of post-war American Christian experience - Mainline Protestantism (personified by Reinhold Niebuhr), Evangelical Christianity (represented by Billy Graham), Roman Catholicism (exemplified by Fulton Sheen), and African-American Christianity (de-marginalized by Martin Luther King, Jr.). From there, the familiar trajectory is traced, as most major American Church groups, for the first time in American history,  suddenly stopped growing and entered a period of unprecedented decline (as they frantically aspired to remain relevant by accommodating to the culture which they were originally meant to convert). 

A crucial key to understanding our present situation is that popular interest in the things that religion had traditionally been about has continued, even while religious institutions seem to have been in a free fall of decline - with predictable consequences for both religion and society. 

Whereas "both the Protestant Mainline and the Catholic Church were strong cultures in 1950s America - capable of making their presence felt in the commanding heights of American life," today's "mainline has drifted to the sidelines of American life, Catholicism's cultural capital has been reduced by decades of civil war, and Evangelicalism still has the air of an embattled subculture rather than the confidence of an ascendent force."

In the second part of Bad Religion, Douthat discussed four "heresies" that have come to dominate contemporary American culture and America's still ostensibly Christian religion: "heresies" he calls "Lost in the Gospels" (a fashion for finding a "real" Jesus prior to and apart from the historical Church), "Pray and Grow Rich" (an uncritical reconciliation of Christianity with prosperity), "the God Within" (a pyschologized, self-absorbed religiosity, what Philip Rieff famously warned against in his 1966 classic, The Triumph of the Therapeutic), and finally "The City on the Hill" (our contemporary - and if anything significantly increased since 2012 - uncritical reduction of religion to politics). What all these "heresies" have in common - the goal of all heresies, according to Douthat - is "to extract from the tensions of the gospel narratives a more consistent, streamlined, and noncontradictory Jesus," in contrast to Christian orthodoxy's "fidelity to the whole of Jesus."

In our contemporary context, it is especially the fourth of these "heresies" that seems so especially salient, although I think all the others remain vigorous alternatives to traditional Christianity.

Douthat identified "four potential touchstones for a recovery of Christianity, each of which has both possibilities and limitations. The first, he called, "the postmodern opportunity" (the possibility of the Church confronting and responding to globalized rootlessness, widespread skepticism, and religious relativism as the Church has successfully confronted and responded to such forces in its past). Personally, I suspect that may account for some of the seeming revival of spirituality and religion that appears to be occurring at present in certain settings. The problem with that for religion, however, is the challenge "to avoid simply becoming a kind of warmed-over accommodationism," which may end up  ultimately more interested in adapting to the culture than in changing it."

A second strategy would be something akin to Rod Dreher's  "Benedict option" (a limited withdrawal from engagement with the world on the model of St. Benedict's monastic response to the Roman Empire's collapse). One problem with that, however, is that it "often seems to have little to say about the millions o baptized Christians whom separatism would effectively leave behind." Ancient Christians, after all, "did not just withdraw from a collapsing civilization" but "took responsibility for it as well."

The third possible avenue for Christian recovery Douthat called "the New Chrsitendom" (the growth of Third World Christianity and its impact on the American Church through immigration and missionary activity). On the other hand, as in fact we are already seeing some signs of in the years since Douthat wrote this, "the American way of religion" may changes immigrants, more than immigrants change American religion.

Finally, he proposed "an age of diminished expectations" (a crisis-induced reassessment "that's willing to reckon with the ways that bad theology and bad religion have helped bring us to our present pass"). That Douthat saw as contributing to the mid-century, postwar religious revival in the U.S.  On the other hand, he feared, "institutional failure may just end up inspiring Americans to be even more suspicious of any sort of religious authority, and more inclined to put their faiht only in the God they find within." That caution certainly seems warranted by recent experiences of Churches' institutional failures.

Douthat concluded with an exhortation to the kind of individual and communal faith that can animate what he calls "a Christian renaissance." He called for a faith that is "political without being partisan," which frees Christians to embrace different political positions, while being open to the Gospel's challenge to every ideology. He recalled how not that long ago "America's leading Evangelical politician was the antiwar environmentalist Republican Mark Hatfield, and one of its leading Catholic officeholders was the pro-life Democrat Sargent Shriver. But what, one wonders in the light of all that has happened since, would be required to enable anything like that now? Secondly, he suggested "a renewed Christianity should be ecumenical but also confessional" and offered Timothy Keller (The Reason for God, 2008) as a model. Thirdly, he proposed "a renewed Christianity should be moralistic but also holisitic." By this, he meant not downplaying Christianity's moral demands in the area of sexuality but also not acting as if there were only one, rather than seven, deadly sins - and not exclusively emphasizing culturally contentious issues such as homosexuality, while neglecting, for example, "the heterosexual divorce rate, the heterosexual retreat from marriage, and the heterosexual out-of-wedlock birthrate that should command the most attention from Christian moralists.""

Finally, Douthat insisted, "a renewed Christianity should be oriented toward sanctity and beauty." He concludes: "Only sanctity can justify Christianity's existence; only sanctity can make the case for faith; only sanctity, or the hope thereof, can ultimately redeem the world. ... To make any difference in our common life, Christianity must be lived - not as a means to social cohesion or national renewal, but as an end unto itself."

Therein, ultimately lies the challenge. It seems increasingly plausible to suggest that it is less secularization as once understood than it is the varieties of "bad religion" that Douthat described - consumeristic, psychologized, and politicized - that pose the greatest ongoing and continuing threats to authentic Christian revival in the U.S.

Palm Sunday

 

The Gospel [Luke 19:28-40] we heard at the beginning of our celebration today told us of Jesus’ festive Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which has been dramatically reenacted in Palm Sunday processions all over the world for centuries – and most recently onscreen in the popular series The Chosen. The rest of the story, which we have just now heard [Luke 22:14-23:56], reveals the ultimate destination of that journey – to the cross and the tomb. We, of course, are the prime beneficiaries of this. It all happened, as we say every Sunday in the Creed, for us and for our salvation.

Thus, it is no accident that the cross in the central symbol of Christianity, because the cross of Jesus is precisely where we meet God in our world, just as the tomb – the eventually empty tomb – shows us where he is taking us.

In a world where suffering and death always seem to have the last word, the death of Jesus was God’s great act of solidarity with us in both our ordinary day-to-day suffering and our final mortality.

In itself, of course, there is not much to be said in favor of suffering. Nor should it be claimed (at least not without qualification) that we are automatically “ennobled” somehow by suffering. One can unfortunately live one’s entire life in anger rooted in resentment, as so much of our politics and public life seem to illustrate. 

Jesus, however, gives us a salutary counterexample, as every word he utters in his passion shows him reaching out to others – to the women of Jerusalem, to his executioners, to the convict being executed along with him – finally commending himself once and for all to his Father. 

So, this week we are invited to accompany Jesus to the cross and to the tomb

- to be consoled as were the women of Jerusalem,

- to be forgiven as were his executioners,

- to be remembered in his kingdom as was the dying criminal,

- and, finally, to be commended to his Father, with whom he now lives forever,

- because, thanks to Jesus’ cross, death no longer has the last word in our world.

Homily for Palm Sunday, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, April 13, 2025.

The White Lotus: Was It Worth It?

I was not a White Lotus fan prior to this season. I managed to skip over completely the HBO series' first two (and, apparently, more highly regarded) seasons. I finally tuned into season 3, curious about what all the attention was about. While I found the series somewhat repulsive on many levels, there is something about rich people behaving badly, especially rich people behaving badly in very beautiful places, that is perennially interesting. Envious or not, we are at least voyeuristic about the lives and bad behaviors of rich people, whom we invariably look up to and invest with unjustified power over us, and so we find a series such as this hard to resist.

By now, everyone who is remotely interested has seen the season 3 finale and knows everything that happened and may even have analyzed it all to death. At this point, what more is there to be said?

It is easy to characterize the obscenely wealthy characters in The White Lotus as malevolent in various ways, although it is their vacuousness that seems to dominate the scene and characterize their behavior most of the time. Their much prized wealth and good looks open many doors, largely closed in real life to their envious audience. But anything resembling real happiness somehow seems determined to elude them. Only marginally more interesting as people are the hotel's workers - notably the two who have the most significant plots, Belinda and Gaitok - who are portrayed as seemingly good persons, who are inevitably roped in by their envy of the what their social betters have.

A lot of choices are made by these people. Rick refuses (fatally) to take the advice of his girlfriend, Chelsea, the only person who loves him and offers him a better path, choosing instead to remain stuck in his personal path of self-pity and vindictiveness, rooted in what turns out to have been a lie his mother had told him. (He also sets the stage for that tragic end by the utterly stupid choice, which no normal person would have made, to return to the hotel - as if nothing had happened - after attacking its owner in Bangkok, an obvious intimation of even more harmful choices to come.) Piper makes a choice to abandon her life of pseudo-Buddhist virtue-signaling and admit instead that she really likes being rich - almost getting herself killed in the process and just into time to become really rather than performatively poor. Saxon seems actually to learn something (how much is unclear) from his experience. He actually listens to Chelsea (more than Rick does) and so, maybe, has a shot at becoming a decent person in his new circumstances back home, instead of the "soulless" person Chelsea had originally called him. Belinda makes the most dramatic choice, chucking all her moral scruples to become really rich. (She too had set  up her situation by her amazingly stupid choice to identify herself to a man she believed to be a murderer, something most sensible people offstage would probably avoid doing.) Gaitok, at the very low end of the White Lotus social hierarchy, struggles between remaining an unambitious nice guy with limited prospects, professionally and romantically, and heeding his own Lady Macbeth (Mook) as she strives to motivate him to become more practical and ambitious. In the end, he gets both the career and the girl. However morally compromised, Gaitok and Belinda at least get a materially happy ending of sorts. So do the most vacuous rich guests, the three life-long girlfriends, who come out of the experience at least able to appreciate what they have in one another. (That's a nice ending for them, but the turnaround - beautifully expressed in Carrie Coon's monologue - comes about too suddenly, with little explanation.)

One of the best lines in the show, which summarizes its moral compass so well is when Piper's mother Victoria assures her that the morally right thing to do with excess wealth is to enjoy it. Anything else would be offensive to the millions without wealth who are striving to attain it. Unfortunately even the enjoyment is somewhat circumscribed and in many cases quite dangerous.

Dramatically, the ending is unsatisfying. How does the family just get on the book without any reference to Lochlan's near-death experience? Does Saxon feel nothing about Chelsea's death? Likewise, her supposed friend Chloe? And the Russian thugs just go on as before, unpunished in a manifestly unjust world.

Even with enormous wealth, the world cannot completely be controlled, and the characters are forced to negotiate situations they would not have chosen. But, within those parameters, there remains much room for moral realignment, good and bad, and for finding what finally matters most in one's particular life. 

Susanna

 

Today's Old Testament reading at Mass [Daniel 13] recounts the Book of Daniel's dramatic story of Susanna, set in the Jewish exile community in Babylon. The story of Susanna was a popular one in the early Church and has long been a staple of the lenten liturgy.

It tells the story of Susanna, wife of very respected Jewish elder Joakim, who is trapped by two corrupt Jewish elders who falsely accuse her of committing adultery under a tree with some unidentified young man. After Susanna is unjustly condemned to death, she calls on God, who hears her prayer and stirs up young Daniel to challenge the elders and defend Susanna's innocence. Daniel interrogates the elders separately, thereby catching them in their lie. It is a classic morality tale about how God saves those who hope in him. 

Thus was innocent blood spared that day.

Then as now, people were conscious of and alert to political corruption and the unfairness of things, thanks to some people's privileged positions. Societies - such as our own - have often prided themselves on practicing justice. In human terms, justice, judging people according to their deserts and merits rather than their wealth, status, or political power, is something we value as a great accomplishment of civilization. We compare societies by how just they are - or at least appear to be. Around the world right now, people are judging us the United States by how just or unjust we appear to be in the ways we treat one another in society, how our government treats those lacking in wealth, status, or political power.

In the Lenten liturgy, this reading has traditionally been paired with John's Gospel account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery [John 8:1-11], which we heard yesterday. Unlike Susanna, the woman the Gospel account was presumably actually guilty and had been judged justly and condemned justly according to fair application of the law. Thanks to Jesus, the woman gets off and is told by Jesus, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on do not sin any longer.”

The point of the comparison is not to devalue justice, but to praise and glorify God's great mercy. Justice is a great thing, a great human accomplishment societies should aspire to and be proud of. But, as Portia says in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice: "In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation." When it comes to what we need the most, mercy outranks justice any time.

Homily for Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle, NY, April 7, 2025.

Fight: The 2024 Election Relived

 

After the shock of the Trump's victory in the 2016 election, journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes wrote Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign. The authors covered the campaign primarily through "background" interviews and a commitment to wait until after the election to go in print. Now that Trump has done it again, so have the authors. Their latest account is Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House (Harper Collins, 2025).

Fight focuses on the story as it played out in the aftermath of the disastrous Biden-Trump debate in June 2024.  The first - and by far most interesting part of the book - covers what, for lack of a better word, can be called the coup that removed Biden from the top of the Democratic ticket. Clearly the authors think that Biden decisively damaged Democrats' chances, first, by irresponsibly deciding to run for a second term, and, then, by resisting removal from the ticket for weeks following the debate debacle. The book highlights the intra-party conflicts that led to Biden's stepping aside, especially the role of Democratic heavyweights like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, whose personal relationships with Biden deteriorated dramatically as a result. The book also highlights the role of money in American presidential campaigns, the decisive significance ascribed to the way donors's money started to dry up in the aftermath of Biden's poor debate performance. Fight illustrates how Kamala Harris deftly and successfully moved quickly to win the nomination (despite opposition from Pelosi and Obama), but was unable ever really to overcome the factors working against her chances of winning, not least the widespread impression that she never articulated very well her reason for running. The book highlights how Harris successfully maneuvered Biden into endorsing her, but also suggests that Biden's endorsement also reflected his resentment of Obama, who had supported Clinton over Biden in 2016.

The book does not neglect the Trump campaign, but its beginning point precludes coverage of Trump's re-ascent from his post-January 6 nadir. We get coverage of the political maneuvering within the Trump campaign, how well the Trump campaign was actually managed, the assassination attempt and its effects on the campaign, the selection of J.D. Vance as Trump's running mate, and, of course, Trump's effective outreach to low-propensity voters and use of new social media. Obviously, these are important and interesting topics. But overwhelmingly, at least to this reader, what this book highlights most is the Biden-Harris story, and the "gaslighting" that the authors believe best describes the Democratic party's 2024 story - "gaslighting," first, about Biden's apparent decline, and, "gaslighting," then, about the prospects for Harris to win. As someone who had come to believe, by the end of the campaign, that Harris had a realistic chance of winning, I really appreciated the convincing way the authors demonstrate how very poor her chances really were.

This "gaslighting" theme inevitably highlights how dysfunctional the Democratic party's leadership became in 2024. "Democrats tried to break Donald Trump. Instead, they shattered again. They said they were saving the country the presidency, and the Congress from Trump and his MAGA movement. They saved nothing, not even themselves. Democrats lost everything, including their friendships."