THIS WEEK'S COMMENTARY - White Horse Inn

April 20, 2008 Commentary:
The Gospel of Personal Relationship

"Your Own Personal Jesus" that was the song that Depeche Mode came out with years ago and it seems like that pretty much describes the religion of a lot of American popular Christianity today. In our last program we talked about the heresy of Gnosticism and the extent to which this approach pervades American religion. In an article in Harper's, Curtis White describes our situation pretty well, writing from the perspective of a non-Christian himself. "When we assert this is my belief" says White, "we are invoking our right to have our own private conviction no matter how ridiculous not only tolerated politically, but respected by others." In this kind of culture, "Yahweh and Baal, my God and yours, stroll arm-in-arm, as if to do so were the model of virtue itself. What we require of belief" he says, "is not that it makes sense, but that it be sincere."

"Combining this view of personal truth with free-market beliefs, even our religious views can become commodities, content, just as books are now 'sales units'" says White. "Our religious content becomes indistinguishable from our financial content and our entertainment content and our sports content. Just as the sections of your local newspaper attest. In short, belief becomes a culture commodity; we shop among competing options for our belief. Once reduced to the status of a commodity, our anything-goes, do-it-yourself spirituality cannot have very much to say about the more directly nihilistic conviction that we should all be able to do whatever we like as well. Each of us pursuing our right to our own isolated happiness." He concludes, "Belief of every kind, and cult, self-indulgence, and self aggrandizement of every degree all flourish and yet God is abandoned."

That comes from a secular periodical describing the situation in American religion today. We are going to taking up this subject of "Your Own Personal Jesus" on this edition of the White Horse Inn.


The Gospel of Personal Relationship