i'll be quoting the last part of Hunter Baker's article in Christianity Today, "Why College Doesn't Turn Kids Secular", posted 8/16/2007 08:53AM, which itself is an interesting read...
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The Atheist Game
As I write this item (Aug. 13, 2007) Christopher Hitchens's book God Is Not Great and Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion are ranked numbers six and eight on the Amazon.com Religion and Spirituality list. The popularity of these books raises the question of what it means. Is atheism growing into a more forceful movement that will drive new wellsprings of secularization and privatization of religious belief? I suspect a different scenario drives the phenomenon. The books are reactions to the declining stock of the secularization thesis and the deprivatization of religion in public life of which scholars such as Rodney Stark and Jose Casanova have eloquently written. If anything, I think the books by Hitchens, Dawkins, and others indicate that religion is now being taken seriously enough in the public square to warrant a counter-offensive.
Hunter Baker is special assistant to the president and director of strategic planning at Houston Baptist University. Got a tip regarding academic research or higher education? E-mail him at hunterbaker@gmail.com.
Thanks for the link-up, my little sister in the Lord.
ReplyDelete-- Hunter Baker