{"id":17499,"date":"2010-01-25T03:01:32","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T03:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/harriet_baber_on_saddleback_church_market-driven_with_transcendence_not_on_\/"},"modified":"2010-01-25T03:01:32","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T03:01:32","slug":"harriet_baber_on_saddleback_church_market-driven_with_transcendence_not_on_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=17499","title":{"rendered":"Harriet Baber on Saddleback Church: Market-driven, with Transcendence not on the menu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a navel-gazer, I was depressed by Saddleback. It seemed the butt end of Christianity: stripped of history and icon\u00c2\u00adography, wholly immersed in its secular surroundings, constructed according to a business model and promoted by motivational speakers \u201d\u201c bland, cheerful, dull.<\/p>\n<p>We drove away, past immaculate housing estates and strip malls iterating chain restaurants and shops, replicated in every suburb from coast to coast. I wondered why anyone would want to live in that charmless place, much less to get more of the same at church.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/commentisfree\/belief\/2010\/jan\/22\/popular-evangelical-churches-market-driven\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a navel-gazer, I was depressed by Saddleback. It seemed the butt end of Christianity: stripped of history and icon\u00c2\u00adography, wholly immersed in its secular surroundings, constructed according to a business model and promoted by motivational speakers \u201d\u201c bland, cheerful,<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=17499\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,42,419,154,184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-life-church-life","category-religion-news-commentary","category-evangelicals","category-other-churches","category-parish-ministry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}