Religion and Secularization

There’s a great article in The Atlantic this month. Some quotes:

“The answer to the question of which religion will dominate the future, at least politically, may well be: None of the above.”

“…one shouldn’t go overboard in describing American religiosity. For one thing, it is as shallow as it is broad…”

“Consider what is occurring within the growing American evangelical movement. It has built megachurches that meet the needs of time-pressed professionals by offering such things as day-care centers, self-help groups, and networking opportunities. Its music owes more to Janis Joplin than to Johann Sebastian Bach. Its church officials learn more from business-school case studies than from theological texts. And its young people—well, as the children of parents who have gone through a born-again experience, they are not likely to be as obedient as the evangelical leader James Dobson wants them to be. Having opted to grow on secular terms, American evangelicalism is becoming less hostile to liberal ideas such as tolerance and pluralism. New efforts to take it in directions sympathetic to environmentalism and social justice are a direct result of the maturing of the faith, which followed from earlier decisions to make the movement more appealing to large numbers of Americans, especially the young.”

“Historians may one day look back on the next few decades…as the era when secularization took over the world.”

~ by Tyler on February 19, 2008.