Marginal Christianity

December 16, 2014 What Psychology Says About Materialism and the Holidays Six questions for materialism expert Tim Kasser, PhD Reporters/editors/producers note: The following feature was produced by the American Psychological Association. You may reprint it in its entirety or in part. We only request that you credit APA as the source. We also have a photograph of Kasser for reprinting.   Would the holidays be the same without some materialism in the mix? In today’s consumer society, what does it mean to be materialistic, and is that necessarily a bad thing? Psychologists have conducted research that has helped answer those questions and many more. APA recently asked Kasser the following questions:   APA: What does it mean to be materialistic and why is it generally viewed in a negative light? Why are some people materialistic and others not? Read more at http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2014/12/materialism-holidays.aspx

Dwight Longenecker     From American Atheistic Materialism…Good Lord Deliver Us.   And the plea is appropriate because prayers for deliverance are a kind of exorcism, and if any society needs exorcism it is the American Atheistic Materialistic society.   Pope St. John Paul II said there were two atheistic materialistic societies: Communist Russia and the Unrestrained Capitalism of America. The philosopher pope asserted this not because he hated America or was against capitalism per se , but because he was against the kind of unrestrained capitalism which is a form of atheistic materialism.   “Materialism” is a popular nickname for greedy consumerism. We say a woman is “materialistic” if she does nothing but go to the mall and shop until she drops. We call a man “materialistic” if all he cares about is his financial success, his career and the prosperity, power and pleasure his success will buy him. These forms of materialism are symptom...

By Shani Raja http://blogs.wsj.com/dispatch/2012/06/21/australians-lose-their-faith/ Australia is turning its back on religion. That’s the latest finding from a census completed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which shows more than one-fifth of the nation’s 21.5 million inhabitants now claim to follow no religion at all. Compare that with the first census taken a century ago, when a broadly similar grouping—including agnostics and atheists—made up just 0.3% of the 4.5 million population. Or with the U.S., where a comparable 2008 survey found just 1.5% claiming not to follow a faith. Australia’s 4.8 million nonreligious in the 2011 census was also about a million more than was recorded five years earlier at the last national headcount. Proponents of religion frequently promote it as a route to happiness. But in Australia, whose prosperity has soared in recent years thanks to a mining boom fueled by developing Asia, some believe it might be the country’s rising level o...