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John Micklethwait - God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World

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John Micklethwait God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World

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A landmark examination of the resurgence of religion around the globe
The Editor in Chief of The Economist and its Lexington columnist show how the global rise of religion will dramatically impact our century in God Is Back. Contrary to the popular assumption that modernism would lead to the rejection of faith, American-style evangelism has sparked a global revival. On the street and in the corridors of power the authors shine a bright light on a vast yet until now hidden world of religion.
Twenty-first-century faith is being fueled by a very American emphasis on competition and a customer-driven attitude toward salvation. Revealing how the religion boom is destabilizing politics and the global economy, God Is Back concludes by showing how the same American ideas that created our unique religious style can be applied to channel the rising tide of faith away from volatility and violence.About the AuthorBoth John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge were educated at Oxford and went on to work for The Economist. John Micklethwait has overseen the magazines Los Angeles and New York bureaus and is now its U.S. editor. Adrian Wooldridge has served as West Coast correspondent, social-policy correspondent, and management editor, and is currently Washington, D.C., correspondent. Together, they have coauthored three books, The Witch Doctors, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation, and The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.Both John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge were educated at Oxford and went on to work for The Economist. John Micklethwait has overseen the magazines Los Angeles and New York bureaus and is now its U.S. editor. Adrian Wooldridge has served as West Coast correspondent, social-policy correspondent, and management editor, and is currently Washington, D.C., correspondent. Together, they have coauthored three books, The Witch Doctors, A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalisation, and The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea.From The Washington PostFrom The Washington Posts Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Diana Butler Bass Conventional analysis of contemporary faith divides the world into two camps of political engagement: liberal secularists, who reject any role for religion in public life, and conservative believers, who strive for a Christian or Muslim state. As a result, discussions on religion and politics degenerate into arguments over excising religion from or adding more religion to public life. Readers who subscribe to this dualistic view will be surprised by God Is Back. At first glance, the title gives the impression that John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge are arguing for an international faith-based political agenda. But this is a cool-headed book, more analytical than partisan, marked by crisp prose and well-formed insights into politics and policy. Although the authors are sympathetic to religion, they recognize its limits and problems, especially the tensions between fundamentalist forms of Christianity and Islam. While explaining the worldwide renewal of faith, they also examine the flash points of religion and politics. In the end, they criticize both secularists and believers. They argue that the main fault lies not with religion but with the union of religion and power, used coercively. They urge their readers to move beyond a good/bad view of religion toward a more thoughtful approach that considers the role of churches in strengthening economies, providing meaningful work and reducing poverty. A historical question frames the book: Is modernity hostile to religion? The authors give two answers. First, the French Revolution proposed that religion itself was problematic and that societies should embrace secularism. Second, Americas founders envisioned that religious freedom and its resulting competition might foster a healthy interplay of faith and politics in public life. God Is Back argues that while Europe has followed the French model of secularism, the American model of religious tolerance seems to be prevailing in the world today. The book opens with an American evangelical-style Bible study in Shanghai, where the pastor proclaims: In Europe the church is old. Here it is modern. Religion is a sign of higher ideals and progress. Spiritual wealth and material wealth go together. That is why we will win. These words echo the American view that economic prosperity meshes with religious freedom. This vignette supports the books main point: that religion and modernity are not at odds, that, in the American mode, they can function together to create prosperity and individual freedom. Historians have been making similar arguments for several decades. But God Is Back moves beyond the standard analysis to argue that religion offers people a wide range of additional social rewards beyond economic ones, including comfort, community and meaning. Because modern life tends to cut people off from tradition, it creates a longing to reconnect that religion can satisfy. Thus, the more advanced a country becomes, the greater its peoples need for faith to fill in the gaps left by cultural change. But the atheists keep asking, Isnt religion the primary source of conflict in the world today? Wouldnt a secular world be less violent? Can radically different religions get along in the modern world? The authors say yes, no and yes. They admit the conflicts but insist that the American model provides a hopeful template for religious pluralism and mutual tolerance. I have a few quibbles with their argument. In the historical sections, they depend too heavily on evangelical historians, thus giving their overview of American religion -- and Christianity in general -- an overwhelmingly Protestant cast. In addition, they accept the theory that people choose religion rationally on the basis of its social benefits; this is a hotly debated topic in religious studies. As journalists, however, Micklethwait and Wooldridge excel: Their eye for detail, ability to see the other side of the story, sense of nuance and irony are all highly developed. God is Back is an intelligent account of contemporary religion and the role it might play in making the modern world more open, tolerant and peaceful. In the end, the authors confess that their basic message is a profoundly liberal one. Complete religious freedom -- including the freedom to reject religion -- is the best human path to the future. To that it can be hoped that people say: Amen.

John Micklethwait: author's other books


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Table of Contents

ALSO BY JOHN MICKLETHWAIT AND ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE
The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus

A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization

The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea

The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America
THE PENGUIN PRESS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group USA Inc 375 - photo 1
THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 , U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada),
90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin
Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R0RL,England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R0RL, England

First published in 2009 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, 2009
All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Micklethwait, John.
God is back : how the global revival of faith is changing the world /
John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-03241-1
1. Religion and sociology. 2. United StatesReligion. 3. Religion and sociology
United States. I. Wooldridge, Adrian. II. Title.
BL60.M498 2009
306.6090511dc22 2008050021

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may by reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

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For
Gus, Charlie, Hubert and Milanda Read and Alexander and Penelope Privitera
INTRODUCTION
IT WOULD BE HARD to find a better cross-section of the new China than the people gathered in the sitting room of this comfortable apartment in one of Shanghai s gated communities. The host for the day, Wang, isright down to the BlackBerry on his belta prosperous, bespectacled management consultant, who once worked for Intel. The guests, sitting on sofas and chairs brought in from the kitchen, or perched on the floor, include a pair of biotechnologists, a Chinese American doctor from Los Angeles, a prominent academic, a manager from a state-owned business, two ballet dancers and several successful entrepreneurs. A laptop adorns the coffee table, BMWs are parked in front of the building and advertisements for jewelry decorate the elevator. These people may not be Shanghais super-rich, but they are well off and educated, men and women on their way up in life.
They are gathered in Wangs sitting room to worship God and interpret His ways to man. The proceedings are informalas with most house churches, there is no pastor, just a group of Christians gathered together to discuss the Bible. The service is introduced by a chic young woman in a Che Guevara T-shirt. She apologizes for the late start, asking with a giggle why there are always technical problems when it is her turn. (Her husband is fiddling with the laptop.) She says a spontaneous prayer and the group sings the first hymn. The accompanying music is downloaded from the Internet and the words are beamed up on the apartment wall from the laptop with the help of a projector that Wang normally uses for corporate presentations. True to this karaoke format, the hymns are jaunty in a slightly overwrought way: the lead singer on the downloaded track sounds like a Chinese Cline Dion. The young fashionista follows on with four unscripted prayers, interspersed with four hymns, one with a smattering of English words. Then Wang takes over.
He starts by asking everybody to introduce themselves. There are a few absentees, including the owner of the apartment, who is away finishing a deal in Shenzhen, but Wang welcomes back a pharmaceuticals executive who has just returned from a visit to New Jersey. There are handshakes and a few hugs. Most of the children are ushered into a bedroom and bribed, not altogether successfully, to stay quiet with an assortment of sweets, videos and toy guns. It is time for the real business: Romans 1:18-32. The congregation reads the text together from heavily annotated Bibles. Then the discussion, led by Wang, begins. It lasts for almost two and a half hours.
Every sentence in the scripture is examined, beginning with the idea that God is wrathful. What exactly does this mean? Wang explains that the Lords anger is triggered only by wickedness, which Wang defines as the opposite of righteousness (the topic of the previous weeks meeting). The wicked are people who knew the right pathGod had revealed Himself to thembut ignored it. This is the prompt for a long discussion about different forms of revelation and their relation to nature. Various passages of scripture are scrutinized, with a striking number of corporate allusions: the meteorologist cites research by Enron into predicting the weather; Wang argues that Adam was the first chief executiveeverybody flips back through their Bibles to read the passagebecause he was given dominion over nature. But gradually, the discussion of revelation gives way to a passionate attack on Darwinism. Evolutionary theory, argues Wang, breaking into English to reiterate the words, is the biggest lie, because it pretends to be rigorous science. This is immediately confirmed by a biotechnologist who works on stem cells. Every day she looks at them, admiring their beauty and complexity: stem cells must be divine. If you trust evolution, you distrust God, rejoins the surgeon. Evolution is another false idolnot unlike Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism or any of the other mock religions that Chinas Communists are trying to promote, now that they have discovered that they cannot kill God.
The second part of Romans 1:18-32 includes the New Testaments denunciation of homosexuality and other shameful passions. (Even the women pervert the natural use of their sex by unnatural acts. In the same way the men give up natural sexual relations with women and burn with passion for each other. Men do shameful things with each other, and as a result they bring upon themselves the punishment they deserve for their wrongdoing.) At first, Wang does not want to go there: he would rather concentrate on revelation. But he gets drawn in by one of the scientists, who asks about transsexual operations. These are not natural, advises Wang; like euthanasia, they are invading God s domain. As for homosexuality, it is plainly a sinthe text could not be clearer. But arent homosexual urges natural in some people? The doctor backs up this observation by citing a paper from the American Psychological Association, and the group agrees that homosexual sinners should not be punished any differently from heterosexual sinners. The real problem is general immorality, which is on the increase all over Shanghai. Somebody mentions Sodom and Gomorrah. The passage is readand one of the English speakers, perhaps wanting to show his translation skills, explains at some length how the word sodomization was derived. There is some awkward shuffling, relieved only when somebody else condemns gambling, citing a Royal Caribbean Cruise as evidence.
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