Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

Books

AS THE YOUNGEST-EVER OP-ED COLUMNIST FOR The New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and forceful account of how American Christianity has lost its way-and why it threatens to take American society with it. In a world populated by "pray and grow rich" gospels and Christian cults of self-esteem, Ross Douthat argues that America's problem isn't too much religion; nor is it intolerant secularism. Rather, it's bad religion. Conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably "spiritual"-Christianity's place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses. In a brilliant and provocative story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, Douthat explores how bad religion has crippled the country's ability to ...