{"id":2636,"date":"2014-01-06T08:30:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T13:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roadsfromemmaus.org\/?p=2636"},"modified":"2014-01-06T08:30:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T13:30:29","slug":"why-i-love-true-religion-because-i-love-jesus-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/asd\/2014\/01\/06\/why-i-love-true-religion-because-i-love-jesus-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Love (True) Religion Because I Love Jesus, Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bethke\"<\/p>\n

T<\/span>his coming Sunday, Jan. 12, will be the two year anniversary of the post<\/a> that has inexplicably (to me) probably been the most-read thing I’ve ever written. It’s always somewhat odd to me to note the things that get the most hits. They’re almost invariably stuff that’s more off-the-cuff than much-deliberated (like this silly post of coffee and theology jokes<\/a>). (Kind of depressing, really.)<\/p>\n

One thing I’ve noted from the comments on the post is that, at the time, many people chided my criticisms since I was picking on some “kid” who was just expressing himself, while I insisted that he was acting as a professional and making a contribution to public discourse that was therefore subject to critique.<\/p>\n

Since then, that “kid<\/a>” has of course made quite the career from the video in question and now has a book entitled JESUS > RELIGION<\/i>. It’s still selling quite well<\/a> on Amazon, with 308 reviews and counting, and is a NYT bestseller. His Facebook page<\/a> currently has over 231,000 “likes.”<\/p>\n

Now, one might argue that it was this video that propelled him from “amateur” to “professional” status, and it certainly did make him a celebrity. But as I mentioned at the time, the video was quite professionally produced, and he had already been soliciting speaking engagements for some time before the video came out. So he was clearly a professional, just not quite yet a very successful one.<\/p>\n

But now he has joined the pantheon of Evangelical pop spirituality stars. I wish him well. I do not think that that kind of spirituality will long endure, however, as Evangelicalism now seems to be engaged in a fairly serious self-critique which is coming to look at the sort of religion this gentleman pushes as rather shallow and even heretical.<\/p>\n

I actually ended up doing a couple of follow-up posts to explore some further issues related to the original. Here are all the posts in the series:<\/p>\n