Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

AS THE YOUNGEST-EVER OP-ED COLUMNIST FOR The New York Times, Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In Bad Religion he offers a masterful and forceful account of how American Christianity has lost its wayand why it threatens to take American society with it. In a world populated by pray and grow rich gospels and Christian cults of self-esteem, Ross Douthat argues that Americas problem isnt too much religion; nor is it intolerant secularism. Rather, its bad religion. Conservative and liberal, political and pop cultural, traditionally religious and fashionably spiritualChristianitys place in American life has increasingly been taken over, not by atheism, but by heresy: debased versions of Christian faith that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses. In a brilliant and provocative story that moves from the 1950s to the age of Obama, Douthat explores how bad religion has crippled the countrys ability to confront our most pressing challenges and accelerated American decline.