“Perhaps this generation of teenagers will pull away from religion for good.”

That is the concluding line from this oped by Bonnie Erbe. I suspect she is enjoying a double entendre here as her article makes it clear that she finds religion useless at best and narcissistic at worst. She is reviewing the already-well-commented-upon Almost Christianity by Kenda Creasy Dean. I have not read the book and only skimmed the reviews, but what I noticed about Erbe’s piece is how she is able to devolve religion into a thoroughly individualistic experience.

From where I sit, all religions are “mutant” in some way, shape or form in that people use religion to satisfy their personal needs. Since just about every person puts his or her individual take on God, then it follows that every person’s version of Christianity or Catholicism or Islam, Judaism and Buddhism is slightly different from everyone else’s.

…I bow to [Dean’s] expertise as a minister and to Princeton Theological Seminary, but a lifetime of experience has proven to me that there is no one view of any theology

What Erbe should realize while prostrate before Dean and PTS is that variance and dissent within an order does not mean the absence of order. That is to say (and this is commonplace to most readers of this blog), there can be much debate and even division within a Calvinist community while they still adhere to a core theology. Our good friend Jim would call this dilettantism of the worst sort.

So while Erbe hopes that our successors will “pull away from religion for good” she offers us instead psychotherapy. Good luck with that.

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