Marginal Christianity

So why are the Dones leaving?  Josh Packard’s  Church Refugees: Sociologists Reveal Why People are Done with Church but not with Their Faith  give sociological explanations. Some of the answers would take significant time to unpack, but in short: The Dones say they left because the judgmental posture of church people individually and collectively which assaulted the communal experience they longed for. The Dones say they left because they are tired of trying to serve Jesus through the bureaucratic methods of church organizations which often stifled progress and gave little attention to what they cared for most. Many of the Dones wished to build the Kingdom but were only offered opportunities to build someone’s church empire. The Dones say they left because they wanted to come to their own answers about God through dialogue and struggle, not though prepackaged lectures and the predetermined conclusions of their church leaders. And the Dones say they left because their...

by Robert Benne  1 . 19 . 15 T he more I am hit by the decadence and vulgarity of American culture, the more I return to the thought of Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889-1968). Now out of favor in spite of his enduring scholarship and his central role in the development of academic sociology, Sorokin was already beginning to fade when I entered graduate school in the late-1950s. His stout anti-communism, critique of loosening sexual mores, and cultural conservatism ran squarely against the academic trends of the time. And it didn’t help that his life story gave him far more credibility than his colleagues to discuss the great ideological debates of the Cold War. It was an extraordinary career. Born in Russia and steeped in Russian Orthodoxy, Sorokin spent time in jail because of his resistance to the Czar. He joined the February Revolution and became a functionary in the Kerensky regime, but that of course was temporary. After the Bolsheviks took over in October, S...