The Pastor in a Secular Age (Ministry in a Secular Age Book #2): Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God

naming my own presumption of invulnerability: “The fears, anxieties, even terrors that belong to the porous self are behind it. This sense of self-possession, of a secure inner mental realm, is all the stronger, if in addition to disenchanting the world, we have also taken the anthropocentric turn, and no longer even draw on the power of God.”

Yet most people in our congregations haven’t hit rock bottom, ready to admit their vulnerability and the necessity of engagement.

The bohemianism of late 1960s counterculture revealed that few people could stand this immanent framing of human life.

It is not that meaning, rites of passages, and the significance of the ordinary have been annihilated; it is just that they have been hollowed out, repurposed for ends other than experiencing the divine.

It seemed ever possible that we could get to human flourishing and continue to create a dependable world without any real longing for sacred time or need to be protected from the devil. It was assumed that we no longer even needed pastoral chaplains to keep us on the right track.

The mansion of their buffered self has been overtaken by a force that took residence in it, throwing every room into chaos. Admitting their weakness, addicts engage prayer, confession, and communal life, for the very reason that they are vulnerable (to a relapse).

we shouldn’t miss that this move to the how was once imagined as a gift from an acting, present God who justifies sinners, bringing forgiveness and love.

Yet now the how of your own deeds means you’re free from needing God at all, as long as how you live your life makes you happy and not a jerk (to echo Moralistic Therapeutic Deism).

Our political and social orders were no longer tied directly to divine action. A ruler no longer received authority by divine right of blood. Rather, it was we the people who mobilized, with our vote, who represented us. It was we the people who created our own system and the institutions that support it. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness