1 - Wrestling with God in the Modern West

Summary

Christianity, like “religion” in general, evokes passionate responses, positive and negative. Yet many of these reactions, on the part of scholars and broader publics alike, indicate that at least two problems continue to pervade thinking about religion, including Christianity. First, observers too often think of given religions as single entities defined by rigid dogma, an oversimplification that ignores the fluidity, contestation, and multiple manifestations within all religious traditions. Religions simultaneously encompass sets of practices, ethical guidelines, doctrines and sacred texts or text analogs, imagined ideas, and historical legacies. Second, oversimplifying religion lends itself to emphasizing and caricaturizing extremist interpretations of religious traditions, especially by those who use religious teachings to justify violence, terror, and coerced conformity on the part of others. It also risks representing such interpretations as an easily definable core of complex religious traditions themselves.¹