{"id":3824,"date":"2017-04-30T19:29:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T00:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3824"},"modified":"2017-04-30T19:29:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T00:29:15","slug":"maverick-philospher-considers-john-updikes-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2017\/04\/30\/maverick-philospher-considers-john-updikes-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"Maverick Philospher considers John Updike’s Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Maverick Philosopher<\/em><\/strong> blog recently responded to Gerald R. McDermott’s “‘A Rather Antinomian Christianity’: John Updike’s Religion,”<\/a> which was posted March 13, 2015 on The Witherspoon Institute website, Public Discourse.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Highlighting McDermott’s assertions that “Updike ‘radically divorced’ Christian theology from Christian ethics,” that “Updike’s religion helped build the theological scaffolding for mainline Protestantism’s baptism of gay marriage,” and “Sex is one of the means\u2014maybe the foremost<\/em> means\u2014whereby the [moral and religious] search is conducted,” Maverick Philosopher writes,<\/p>\n

“We are concupiscent from the ground up. So it is no surprise that even Christianity can be so twisted as to serve the sex monkey by one who apparently was it’s slave. But if truth be told, I just now ordered Couples<\/em> to see how the brilliant Updike makes his case. Updike is a master of social phenomenology as I discovered when I read Rabbit Is Rich<\/em> in the early ’90s.<\/p>\n

“As for the radical divorce of theology and ethics, there cannot be anything salutary about splitting them asunder. But if split them you must, it would be better to jettison the theology and keep the ethics for the sake of our happiness in this world, which we know, as opposed to the next which we merely believe in. It is an empirical question, but on balance the sexual revolution has not improved human eudaimonia<\/em>. Our predicament post-pill is hardly a paradise.<\/p>\n

Updike looks to be a poster boy for the false dichotomy of spirituality versus religion.<\/p>\n

Read the entire response: “John Updike’s Christianity.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Maverick Philosopher blog recently responded to Gerald R. McDermott’s “‘A Rather Antinomian Christianity’: John Updike’s Religion,” which was posted March 13, 2015 on The Witherspoon Institute website, Public Discourse.\u00a0 Highlighting McDermott’s assertions that “Updike ‘radically divorced’ Christian theology from … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person-singular","category-updike-in-context"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3826,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3824\/revisions\/3826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}