On November 11, 2013, Religion News Service reprinted an Associated Press story by Gillian Flaccus on the development of “atheist mega-churches”….
How then is one to understand the phenomenon described in the story? I think there are two ways of understanding it. First, there is the lingering notion of Sunday morning as a festive ceremony of the entire family.
[Also]…there is a more important aspect to the aforementioned phenomenon: Every community of value, religious or otherwise, becomes a denomination in America.
Vintage Peter Berger, stimulating, informative, and illuminating. As a leading sociologist who is also a committed Christian (Lutheran), Berger is great at identifying significant social trends that others overlook and pointing out what makes them so significant. Clearly, the title, “the denominational imperative,” echoes his landmark book called [b]The Heretical Imperative[/b], which I’ve always found enormously interesting and provocative, even though I sometimes disagree with him. It’s worth noting that Peter Berger was a close friend of the late Richard John Neuhaus, and he has contributed many important articles to Heuhaus’ journal [b]First Things[/b] over the years.
David Handy+