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Christianity Today, September (Web-only), 2007 |

Evangelical Minds

Christian Smith on Why Christianity 'Works'

Plus: Baylor publishing woes, and other news from the higher education world.

Hunter Baker | posted 9/13/2007 08:31AM

Journal Watch: Sociology of Religion Peter Berger once imagined that the end of the 20th century would witness believers huddled together in small sects as they tried to survive a worldwide secular culture. ...

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Carlene Byron

Posted: September 17, 2007 1:22 PM

Psychologist of religion Kenneth Pargament spoke a couple weeks ago at Duke and like Christian Smith suggested that people are drawn to religious faith in significant part because we are drawn to experiences of the transcendent. Churchgoers live, on average, 7 years longer than non-attenders and he seemed to consider it reductionist to ascribe the difference to the social benefits of group membership. He even dared to suggest that, especially since black churchgoers have a significantly greater difference in longevity, maybe great preaching and great worship really matter ... and then, tongue in cheek, that maybe bad sermons and bad church music can kill you!

George

Posted: September 14, 2007 2:15 PM

You write: "Isn't it the case that many Christians embrace the faith, not for its effects but for what they believe is its truthfulness?" And Smith responds: "Sure. But those are not mutually exclusive things. Both can be true. In most cases people really do believe it. But believing it may also have certain often-positive effects for people emotionally." Does Christianity work because I believe and enjoy its effects, or does it work because Christ lives and works? If no person chose to believe, if no one enjoyed the effects, would Christ be ineffective? To say that Christianity works because of what we do sounds like Christ is an idea rather than the living and effective God.

Raymond Takashi Swenson

Posted: September 13, 2007 6:53 PM

Like Stephen Jay Gould, people who are outside a religion find it baffling why anyone would choose to stay there. Outsiders think that people who have faith suffer from cognitive dissonance, holding beliefs contradicted by their own understanding of reality, and that "faith" consists of accepting ideas that are plainly contrary to reality. In some cases, outsiders assume that the "faithful" must either be extremely ignorant of the modern secular and "scientific" world view or are subject to some kind of emotional or mental or physical intimidation. Outsiders hold these views about the "faithful" as a deduction, but never scientifically test their claim about the ignorance or thralldom of the "faithful". Yet the Epistles of Paul, Peter, John and James demonstrate that those early Christians were men who had devoted a great deal of rational thought to their beliefs, anchored in vivid and life-changing experiences of the miraculous, and wanted the saints to do likewise.

John	Posted: September 13, 2007 1:09 PM

Christianity survives for two very fundamental reasons: it is extremely flexible (what does a Quaker have in common with a Pentacostal?) so it adapts well to different cultures, and the underlying message of Jesus of love and caring for your fellow man is a philosophy that is in general beneficial to society. Christians like to think that we're just a direct offshoot of Judaism and Peter and Paul, but truthfully modern Christianity owes as much to Greek and Roman and Medeivel German and Enlightenment English thought as to anything from the Torah. And the fact that Christianity is such a mutt religion of different ideas from different cultures coming together is a major source of it's strength, because it's adapted and adopted things that work and discarded ideas (slavery, racial discrimination, denial or women's rights) that don't.

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