ON GOD MAKING A COMEBACK

BIGGER THAN EVER

"God is Back" has got to be one of the best titles ever for a new book.  The review of the book by the New York Times promises more between the covers as well:

"Not all that long ago, the great minds of Europe predicted a future with little or no religion. Science would make us highly skeptical of miracles. Psychiatry would direct all of our awe and wonder inward. Changing roles for women would weaken the patriarchal structure that props up clerics. Whatever script for modernity one followed, it had God playing a bit role.

As we all know, it didn’t happen that way. Modernity arrived and improvised new starring roles for God. The Americans led the way by becoming both “the quintessentially modern country” and a very devout one, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge write in their new book, “God Is Back,” and most of the world has followed that model.

In rich countries and poorer ones, democratic and undemocratic, primarily Islamic and primarily Christian — everywhere, basically, except Europe — devotion to God has remained surprisingly robust.

“The very things that were supposed to destroy religion — democracy and markets, technology and reason — are combining to make it stronger,” write Mickle­thwait, editor in chief of The Economist, and Wooldridge, the magazine’s Washington bureau chief, who together have written previous books about globalization and American conservatism, two ­similarly sweeping topics."

Here's the bit that surprised me from the review:

"While fundamentalists of all kinds get most of the attention, the authors zero in on another phenomenon: the growth and global spread of the American megachurch. With no state-sanctioned religion, American churches began to operate like multinational corporations; pastors became “pastorpreneurs,” endlessly branding and expanding, treating the flock like customers and seeding franchises all over the world. The surge of religion was “driven by the same forces driving the success of market capitalism: competition and choice.”

Definitely a side of religious expansion that's not been in the mainstream view.  Just added "God is Back" to my Kindle reading list.

Comments

[Alex Tolley]

Let's not let facts get in the way of a story.

Religious belief is negatively correlated with national income and education. Only the US is a notable exception to the national income rule.

Within the US, belief in God is declining, only gaining with fundamentalists. Every other group is slowly losing its beliefs.

While we also see quasi religious beliefs appearing, e.g. "new age" beliefs, in general, as one might expect, as people become educated and can use their minds, they question the religious dogmas, see for themselves that it answers few questions, just offers cozy homilies.

I just read Stanley Fish's idiotic oped in the nytimes a few days ago, arguing that only religion asks and answers the big questions. His piece was so ignorant of what science can do that it just read as asinine.

I don't think the enlightenment is dead, just yet. Perhaps just going through some local setbacks.