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brettt's review against another edition
3.0
The increase in American society of people who profess no religious beliefs would, we might think, decrease the amount of "religiosity" in our nation. By that we usually mean a kind of pharasaical devotion to the laws of some particular belief system and self-superiority on the part of those who master those laws when relating to those who have not.
But even casual examination of our culture shows that attitude persists long after the religion that's supposed to fuel it has been laid aside, Mockingbird Ministries director David Zahl says. To describe this new religion he coins the term "seculosity" and in his 2019 book of that name he describes how these different seculosities affect not only society as a whole but the church as well.
Zahl's seculosities will probably be familiar to people who read or think about our national culture and the way we live here in the 21st century. At one time or another, each of us has probably elevated busyness, romance, parenting, technology, politics or one of the others on his list to the place we'd ordinarily expect to find a deity. Essays, sermons and other presentations have rightly warned us against the idolatry that these seculosities represent. But Zahl's contribution is to combine several of them between two covers and give them a name and shared characteristics that can be helpful in identifying where seculosities have taken hold in our lives, whether we profess a religious faith or not.
Zahl points out that he doesn't offer an exhaustive list of the idols that the 21st century puts forth, and the weakness of Seculosity connects to that. Some of those he has chosen are quite well-known and have been covered pretty thoroughly -- the "Seculosity of Politics," for example, has been a concern of believers and non-believers alike for many years and Zahl's chapter of that name adds very little new to the discussion. Such well-traveled themes make Seculosity drag in its latter third and may make a reader wish Zahl had dropped them altogether or replaced them with one or another of the potential chapters he decided not to use. But overall this self-effacing and humorous caution against modern idolatry hits enough of its mark to make it worth the read and thought it might provoke.
Original available here.
But even casual examination of our culture shows that attitude persists long after the religion that's supposed to fuel it has been laid aside, Mockingbird Ministries director David Zahl says. To describe this new religion he coins the term "seculosity" and in his 2019 book of that name he describes how these different seculosities affect not only society as a whole but the church as well.
Zahl's seculosities will probably be familiar to people who read or think about our national culture and the way we live here in the 21st century. At one time or another, each of us has probably elevated busyness, romance, parenting, technology, politics or one of the others on his list to the place we'd ordinarily expect to find a deity. Essays, sermons and other presentations have rightly warned us against the idolatry that these seculosities represent. But Zahl's contribution is to combine several of them between two covers and give them a name and shared characteristics that can be helpful in identifying where seculosities have taken hold in our lives, whether we profess a religious faith or not.
Zahl points out that he doesn't offer an exhaustive list of the idols that the 21st century puts forth, and the weakness of Seculosity connects to that. Some of those he has chosen are quite well-known and have been covered pretty thoroughly -- the "Seculosity of Politics," for example, has been a concern of believers and non-believers alike for many years and Zahl's chapter of that name adds very little new to the discussion. Such well-traveled themes make Seculosity drag in its latter third and may make a reader wish Zahl had dropped them altogether or replaced them with one or another of the potential chapters he decided not to use. But overall this self-effacing and humorous caution against modern idolatry hits enough of its mark to make it worth the read and thought it might provoke.
Original available here.
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