Face of Christianity has been co-opted, Marcus Borg writes

September 21, 2014
Theresa Johnson

The face of Christianity in America has been co-opted by a faith that is individualistic, self-oriented, exclusivist and entrepreneurial, Marcus Borg writes at Patheos.com:

Patheos has invited a number of us to write an end-of-summer post about what we find “most critical within our tradition” today (italics added), “the issue of greatest import.”

My tradition is Christianity – especially in its American form. I have been both all of my life. The most critical issue within American Christianity today as I see it? The co-optation of its most publicly visible face by an individualistic, self-oriented, exclusivist and entrepreneurial form of Christianity.

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Michael Russell

September 22, 2014 10:27 am

He just figured this out? Parishioners I know are active throughout the community in myriad organizations. We might be amazed if we counted up all those hours and acknowledged them as a success for the formative work we do.

More significant is the screechy bombastic form of Christianity that twists the Gospel into supporting the Ayn Randian ethos of the moment.

Cynthia Katsarelis

September 21, 2014 11:35 pm

Well, I know that my parish seems to be 98 percent about personal development and ourselves in general. Justice is rarely discussed, and never as a Christian theme. Horrors that we should be “political” and speak the truth of injustice that we all participate in…. So yeah, individualistic, self-oriented, exclusive (the social justice crowd certainly got shut up). But the parish is growing, the self message, plus all that spending on a good music program seems to be a winning formula. Why mess it up troubling the waters with talk of justice and how the system works for us upper middle class white people, but not for others?

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