Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.87 (649 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0465063772 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 264 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-12-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
As religion becomes more consumer-oriented, congregants are able to avoid the moral, intellectual, and theological commitments Christianity requires by simply joining a differentand less rigorouschurch. Incisively critiquing today’s dangerous movement away from true religion, MacDonald demonstrates just how much Americans stand to lose when churches sell their souls to recruit parishioners.. America’s churches, he argues, have abandoned their sacred role as dispensers of community values, and instead are increasingly serving up entertainment, aerobics, yoga classes, and other services that have nothing to do with religious
From Publishers Weekly A journalist and United Church of Christ ordained minister, MacDonald, an occasional PW contributor, bemoans the rise of America's religious marketplace, taking church leaders to task for caving in to pressure to provide inoffensive, low-threshold environments that keep members comfortable. The author's extrapolations from his four-year pastorate of a 40-member congregation occasionally ring bitter, and Christians of good faith may disagree with stances such as fencing the communion table—the practice of setting criteria for who can receive communion. . Overall, however, MacDonald's journalistic prowess makes this book a thought-provoking challenge to today's church. Critically examining contemporary efforts such as small group ministries, which he considers insular, and short-term missions, which he regards as misguided efforts to satisfy participants' demands, MacDonald rebuke
Marketing the Mystery: Capitalism Comes to Church As the editor of an explicitly Christian periodical, I am usually wary of books that arrive on my desk from secular publishing houses. More often than not, the titles they want us to review are "Christian" in name only, using the religious angle as a veneer for social and political issues. Such books are, at best, useless and, at worst, deliberately destabilizi. Has it come to this? The decline of the Protestant Churches in America. I bought this book two years ago, when it first came out and finally got around to reading it and I am delighted with the author's take on the place of religion in American life. G. Jeffrey MacDonald is an intelligent voice in a noisy world of religiosity, and articulates a number of the problems with modern-day religion, even if masquerading as "that ol' time . Joe B said Well Written and Provocative. I have enjoyed this writers work in the Boston Globe newspaper and when I found he had written this book, well it was a must read. In addition, I had the pleasure of not only meeting but partaking in a Sunday church service with Pastor MacDonald and I found him to be most affable and intelligent. This is to me a must read not only for Christians but people of a