I listened to this on the radio.
Not sorry I did but oh-my-dear it is such a load of tripe.
The thing he is hustling is all about picking and choosing belief - of making religion serve people instead of people serving religion. Because (strained metaphor alert) the old time religions are compact disks - you buy the prepackaged bits and that .. is .. that.
This dude's kick is that the New Thing is for the hip and happening to pick and choose. Reincarnation here, Trinity there, yoga in the Parish Hall and hey presto - you've got yourself a customized religion.
Slap an Apple-infected lower-case vowel in front and you've got a hook, brother.
It's Clown Eucharist all the way down.
It's like this; Your basic pre-packaged religions are not about having people serve them. It's about people serving God. Religion is delivery mechanism for Deity.
What Mr. Strand is dealing in is not God or religion or even much in the way of Faith: he's preaching lifestyle, dressed up fancy language to make some coin and sell a book. [1]
And it's damned odd, but listening to Strand go on and on and talk about lifestyle and faith and never mentioning God ... well it shook something loose in my brain-housing group.
I'll be at mass next Sunday.
[1] Which isn't a bad thing - we all have to eat and if Strand is making a living at this, well bully for him.
To listen to Clark talk about "iReligion"--our tendency today to download what we like from world's different spiritual traditions and use them as we will--listen to today's interview by Veronica Rueckert on Wisconsin Public Radio: Download Rkt090501e
Not sorry I did but oh-my-dear it is such a load of tripe.
The thing he is hustling is all about picking and choosing belief - of making religion serve people instead of people serving religion. Because (strained metaphor alert) the old time religions are compact disks - you buy the prepackaged bits and that .. is .. that.
This dude's kick is that the New Thing is for the hip and happening to pick and choose. Reincarnation here, Trinity there, yoga in the Parish Hall and hey presto - you've got yourself a customized religion.
Slap an Apple-infected lower-case vowel in front and you've got a hook, brother.
It's Clown Eucharist all the way down.
It's like this; Your basic pre-packaged religions are not about having people serve them. It's about people serving God. Religion is delivery mechanism for Deity.
What Mr. Strand is dealing in is not God or religion or even much in the way of Faith: he's preaching lifestyle, dressed up fancy language to make some coin and sell a book. [1]
And it's damned odd, but listening to Strand go on and on and talk about lifestyle and faith and never mentioning God ... well it shook something loose in my brain-housing group.
I'll be at mass next Sunday.
[1] Which isn't a bad thing - we all have to eat and if Strand is making a living at this, well bully for him.
