Skeptical Critique of a "Universal Christian Worldview"

Molly Worthen in an article ("The Evangelical Roots of Our Post-Truth Society," Times Sunday Review, April 13, 2017) offered a much needed public critique of a spiritually unnecessary, and intellectually suspect, notion of a universal Christian worldview.

For the record, I believe worldviews are local cultural constructs (if they exist at all and if they do they are those) that might be influenced and shaped by engaging in Christian beliefs and practices rather than an erroneous definition of worldview that sees the historically rooted, wonderous and gracious mystery of Christianity reduced to some sort of Kuyperian social ideology bent toward political domination.

Empty Church, Toxteth Cemetary Church, Karen, 2008, Flickr

In the article Nazarenes are interviewed and characterized by the writer as skeptics of a certain sort of American Christianity. It's really a folk religiosity, valuable to describe the way things are but somewhat disconnected from its historical roots and its global reach. If being intellectually and spiritually suspicious of this type of belief and practice makes me a skeptic, then I'll take it. It's kind of how Nazarenes got started . . .