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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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.
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?