[Oe List ...] Redefining FAITH

[Karen Snyder]

I think Rifkin is on target.  

I recently saw an interview of Diana Butler Bass, introducing her new book, Christianity After Religion:  The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (2012).  I was impressed with her thinking.  

Has anyone read this book  - or others that she has written?  It is so recent that the Chicago public library and IL libraries have not yet added it to their collections.

Karen


On Mar 19, 2012, at 6:43 AM, R Williams wrote:

> Colleagues,
>  
> I first knew of Jeremy Rifkin back in the 80s when I read his book Entropy.  I recently rediscovered him and find that he delves into subjects and issues that the faint of heart would never venture near.  Here's an example from his book The Empathic Civilization:
>  
>      ...faith (is) the belief that one's life is worth living, and for that reason alone, it (has) meaning in the larger scheme of things and therefore (needs) to be lived fully in deep connection with others.
>      ...faith...can be purloined and made into a social construct that exacts obedience, feeds on fear of death, is disembodied in its approach, and establishes rigid boundaries separating the saved from the damned.  Institutionalized religions, for the most part, do just that.  (pgs 169-170)
>  
> Is this too harsh a judgment on Rifkin's part, or is he on target?  I continue to struggle with what I perceive to be a wedge that has been driven between faith and religion by religious institutions.  I long to see faith and religion reunited, and an appeal to what our culture is imposing as a rather simple understanding of "spirituality" in the form of "back to nature" movements, etc., does little to resolve that conflict, at least for me.
>  
> Randy
> 
> 
> "Listen to what is emerging from yourself to the course of being in the world; not to be supported by it, but to bring it to reality as it desires."
> -Martin Buber (adapted)
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