Group items tagged

'I went on my first Christian radio show, a year ago, and the host set out to save me.... 'I have spent a lot of time thinking about the complexity of faith, and have tried to take theologically conservative faith seriously. As I did so, over a decade of research, I found myself more open to the idea of God, and more aware of the fragile human grasp on the real. '....It was a shock to have my host grill me about the state of my soul. It reminded me that one of the things that makes mutual respect between believers and nonbelievers difficult is that there is a kind of line in the sand, and you're either on one side of it or on the other. Skeptics do this too, of course.... 'Anthropologists have a term for this racheting-up of opposition: schismogenesis. Gregory Bateson developed the word to describe mirroring interactions, where every move by each side makes the other respond more negatively.... 'These days we Americans live not only with political schismogenesis, but also religious schismogenesis. 'Yet believers and nonbelievers are not so different from one another.... When I arrived at one church..., I thought that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I did not. Instead, I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected in those around me.... 'Many of my skeptical friends think of themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so. Yet these secular friends often hover on the edge of faith. They meditate.... 'We need to recognize something of what we share, and to carry on a conversation - and if we can keep the conversation going, we will, however slowly, move forward. If we can't, we're in real trouble. '

'I went on my first Christian radio show, a year ago, and the host set out to save me.... 'I have spent a lot of time thinking about the complexity of faith, and have tried to take theologically conservative faith seriously. As I did so, over a decade of research, I found myself more open to the idea of God, and more aware of the fragile human grasp on the real. '....It was a shock to have my host grill me about the state of my soul. It reminded me that one of the things that makes mutual respect between believers and nonbelievers difficult is that there is a kind of line in the sand, and you're either on one side of it or on the other. Skeptics do this too, of course.... 'Anthropologists have a term for this racheting-up of opposition: schismogenesis. Gregory Bateson developed the word to describe mirroring interactions, where every move by each side makes the other respond more negatively.... 'These days we Americans live not only with political schismogenesis, but also religious schismogenesis. 'Yet believers and nonbelievers are not so different from one another.... When I arrived at one church..., I thought that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I did not. Instead, I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected in those around me.... 'Many of my skeptical friends think of themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so. Yet these secular friends often hover on the edge of faith. They meditate.... 'We need to recognize something of what we share, and to carry on a conversation - and if we can keep the conversation going, we will, however slowly, move forward. If we can't, we're in real trouble. '