Christianity: It's Toasted!

In the first episode of Mad Men, the guys at Sterling Cooper ad agency are meeting with Lucky Strike and looking for a viable pitch for their ad campaign. The cigarette company is faced with the problem that they can no longer tout the safety of their product and they have no way to distinguish themselves from their competitors. Things are going south and Sterling Cooper is about to lose its biggest client until Don Draper steps in: 

Afterlife Demographics

In addition to Neil Carter, I count several of the blog moderators over at Godless in Dixie among my friends. Yeah, I'm name-dropping. People know me. Deal with it. Anyway, one of those mods is an ex-Christian who goes by the handle Thought2Much. His name, of course, is a reference to the reason why he deconverted. Now, before you get in a huff, thinking Christian, don't assume that this in any way implies that I'm saying Christians don't or can't think. You are unlikely to ever hear me say that I think all Christians are stupid or incapable of deep thought and reflection. After all, my last stop on the faith train was hardly a brand of anti-intellectual Christianity.

What I am referring to is thinking too much about certain doctrines or propositions found within Christianity that, when brought to conclusion, lend themselves to some silly things that often make one sit up, give pause, and question the validity of the entire scheme. There are plenty of these we could look at, but this time around I'd like to focus on what happens when we combine some standard Christian assumptions about the afterlife and view the end result.

The Boxers of Christianity

Deanna, a guest poster over at Neil’s Godless in Dixie blog, has an excellent post up about the narcissism of preaching. She paints an all-too-common portrait of members of the clergy. I have trouble finding fault with it. My only counterpoint would be to suggest something I’m sure she’d have no problem admitting. That is that not all preachers completely fit that mold. Certainly some folks will be able to think of exceptions to many of the otherwise spot-on characterizations she puts forward. The take-away for me is that this particular career path undeniably shapes and attracts certain people that find great success, acclaim, honor and monetary gain as a reward for traits like narcissism and megalomania. Of course there are exceptions. There are probably some decent people in politics too. How does the system treat them, though? Who fares better?

Survey Says…

Ligonier Ministries recently teamed up with LifeWay to conduct a survey about the theological views of Americans with a particular focus on evangelicals. I have a few thoughts on both the survey itself and its results.

The partnership between a Reformed para-church publisher and the retail arm of the Southern Baptist Convention probably suggests something about the inroads neo-Calvinists have made within that denomination. This is no surprise, of course. Al Mohler has been in charge of the SBC’s flagship seminary (SBTS) for quite some time. Additionally, Calvinistic Baptists seem to be the only ones within that denomination who are consistently serious about theology. I might be inclined to argue that when Christian fundamentalism intersects with middle class pseudo-intellectualism, Calvinism is the meme most fit to rise to the top. It's difficult not to agree with my friend Neil who observes that it is largely just “gentrified religious extremism.”