Do you know that 27% or approximately one in four Americans read no books in the past year? Zero. In fact, according to recent surveys done by the Associated Press, if you read 5 books a year you are in the top 1% of the population. I certainly hope you are among that select few. Books, art, music, theater, etc. are windows to our culture not to mention things which keep our brains from turning to mush.
I make it a point to try and read books on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Being informed on what people are reading, saying, thinking is essential to authentic engagement. So, what are you reading?
This week I began the NY Times bestseller, What’s So Great About Christianity, by Dinesh D’Souza [Rishwain Research Scholar Stanford University]. The work is essentially a thoughtfully written response to the recent flurry of publications by atheist authors such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.
D’Souza sets out to determine whether or not God is obsolete and if the critics of religion in general are fair, honest, and rational in their public attack on Christianity in particular. He looks at faith with a questioning eye and what he sees is quite fascinating. So far I’ve found D’Souza to be refreshingly frank about those on both sides of the issue.
In the preface of his book, D’Souza writes the following…
Instead of engaging the secular world, most Christians have taken the easy way out. They have retreated into a Christian subculture where they engage Christian concerns. Then they step back into secular society, where their Christianity is kept out of sight until the next church service. Without realizing it Christians have become postmodernists of a sort: they live by the gospel of two truths. There is religious truth, reserved for Sundays and days of worship, and there is secular truth, which applies the rest of the time…they have sought a workable, comfortable modus vivendi in which they agree to leave the secular world alone if the secular world agrees to leave them alone.
Ouch! See what I mean? D’Souza seems to hold no interest in sugarcoating reality or simply demonizing those who reject religion – although he does offer some harsh words for rabid atheists who have little concern about being nice and who openly label non-atheists as ignorant irrational rubes. In their not-so-humble opinion, “theology is little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed it is ignorance with wings.”
Anyway, I’m pretty excited to keep reading. This text is going to take some time to absorb and process. As I do, I’ll be blogging some snippets of interest – taken from both the book and my brain.
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