Writing for Religion Dispatches about the debate between the Christian faithful and the so-called New Atheists, Davidson Loehr suggests that the “controversy” feels stale and uninteresting. He notes that the Christian church doesn’t represent a pivotal element in many American lives anymore:

Christine Wicker, author of The Fall of the Evangelical Nation, and David T. Stone, author of The American Church in Crisis, are among the authors citing research that shows a dismal picture of American religion:

• Christian churches are losing two million people a year.

• Between just 2000-2005, church attendance declined in all fifty states.

• No matter what people may tell pollsters about their church habits, when you count the bodies in the pews, fewer than 18% of Americans attend any church regularly; 82% don’t.

• When asked to rate eleven groups in terms of respect, non-Christians rated evangelicals tenth. Only prostitutes ranked lower. After the stories of hypocritical preachers and political moralists caught with paid lovers, it might be interesting to ask the prostitutes about that ranking.

Source: Religion Dispatches 

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Where does the Book of Mormon rank on your list of all time, top five greatest religious texts? Alan Wolfe over at Slate dives into a reader’s guide that attempts to revitalize the literary reputation of Mormonism’s founding text. He comes away a little unconvinced, though:

Mormonism's success suggests that a religion can flourish in spite of rather than because of its founding texts. I do not doubt that Mormons are inspired by the words associated with Joseph Smith. But if another reference to music is permitted, I simply cannot imagine anyone setting those words to music the way Handel did with the Bible in his oratorios. The Book of Mormon has a structure. It does not sing.

To be fair, Handel’s Messiah oratorio draws partly from the über-poetic King James Bible, and I can’t imagine Biblical translations more contemporaneous with the Book of Mormon would provide lyrics that were much better. Still, if the Book of Mormon isn’t the riveting beach read you and Alan Wolfe were hoping for, maybe you’d like to ponder another question Slate poses: Where is the great Mormon novel?

Source: Slate

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