One of the best books I read in 2008 was Rodney Clapp’s Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation. Clapp is author of numerous works and serves as editorial director of Brazos Press. Examining American Christianity and contemporary cultural life through country music generally and Johnny Cash specifically, Clapp offers a penetrating and engaging analysis of defining tensions embedded within our national identity. I included Clapp’s most recent publication in a book study I led this fall at St. George’s Church, Nashville, entitled “Good Books and the Good Book.”   To read a thoughtful review and summary of this book, click on the link below.

In another report from the Wall Street Journal cited in Touchstone Magazine recently, University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox offers three reasons why church-going fathers are more relationally involved with their children than non-church-going fathers. First, the ritual and preaching at church offer a sense of purpose and “sacred power” to their parental role. Second, a church-going commitment to the faith helps Dads deal with stress in more productive ways than without it. And third, church provides social networks of support and accountability for fathers to stay “on a family-centered path.” Wilcox’s article was published this past Father’s Day weekend in WSJ. Read it here: http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB121331741679270239.html

The other day I stood before the “New Spirituality” section of a local bookstore, and my eyes fell on a new title by Michael Horton, an Oxford-educated Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. His latest book is entitled Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church. While I am unfamiliar with this author, I began perusing the chapters and decided to buy the book. The inside flap reads: “Horton argues that while we haven’t yet arrived at Christless Christianity, we are well on our way. Though we invoke the name of Christ, too often Christ and the Christ-centered gospel are pushed aside. The result is a message and a faith that are, in Horton’s words, ‘trivial, sentimental, affirming, and irrelevant.’”

While it is hard for me to imagine the appeal of an organized movement devoted to godlessness and secularist ideology, I suppose it is worthy of our attention that non-religious groups around the US are banding together to “evangelize” those put off by the church and religious dogma. Undoubtedly encouraged by recent best-selling books on the dangers of organized religion by avowed atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, a group called The Freedom from Religion Foundation has kicked off an ad campaign hoping to boost membership and create greater community among fellow non-believers around the country. The Wall Street Journal reported on this development in the following article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122696699813835335.html?mod=googlenews_wsj