Looks like I picked the wrong month to re-read Allan Bloom.

People with unacceptable opinions aren’t permitted to speak in respectable institutions.

In those places where they are allowed to speak, they can be silenced by angry mobs.

The central bank has spent years flooding the economy with cheap money.

And fascist imagery is now cool and transgressive.

Willkommen . . . bienvenue . . . welcome!

I was fascinated by this review of Christian Smith’s new book, The Sacred Project of American Sociology (HT First Thoughts). Smith apparently argues that not only is sociology failing as a science – no surprise there – but that it is in fact a “sacred project”:

American sociology as a collective enterprise is at heart committed to the visionary project of realizing the emancipation, equality, and moral affirmation of all human beings as autonomous, self-directing, individual agents (who should be) out to live their lives as they personally so desire, by constructing their own favored identities, entering and exiting relationships as they choose, and equally enjoying the gratification of experimental, material, and bodily pleasures.

And I immediately thought: “Yes, but will this book tell us anything Allan Bloom hasn’t already told us in The Closing of The American Mind?” I’m re-reading that book now after a long absence, and was very surprised to be reminded of the central importance of Max Weber as one of the chief villains in Bloom’s narrative. It’s a very plausible version of events. At any rate, I hope I can find time to sit down with Smith’s book.

Meanwhile, in sociology news, I am very bullish on Peter Berger’s new book The Many Altars of Modernity. My review should be out soon. I think this book has the potential to be at least as revolutionary as The Sacred Canopy, and that’s saying a fair bit. Stay tuned.

Thought some of our readers would like to know that the e-version of my new book Joy for the World is now on sale for 99 cents at Amazon. For a limited time!

TGC has posted my article on why pastors should visit people in their workplaces:

Pastors are constantly visiting people in homes, hospitals, prisons—almost anywhere except the places where we actually spend most of our waking hours. To be sure, those other kinds of visits are important. But on a typical day I spend six waking hours at home and nine in my workplace—and I’m one of the relatively fortunate people in that regard.

Jesus did it, because he clearly wanted his teaching contextualized to the workplace:

Theologian R. Paul Stevens reports in his book Work Matters that 122 out of 132 public appearances of Jesus were in the marketplace. And think about what Jesus was doing his whole life before he started his public ministry. For more than 15 years, he was working in an ordinary job, doing exactly the same kind of work his sheep do.

Jesus got to know the workplace by experience. That’s important because it allowed him to contextualize his teaching to the workplace. Out of 52 parables, 45 are set in the marketplace: fields, sheepfolds, vineyards, kitchens, palaces, courts, fisheries, and more.

TGC just ran my review of Os Guinness’ new book. It’s a good book with two serious flaws that will limit its appeal and effectiveness. The more serious flaw is the book’s attitude problem:

Guinness writes like a man who passionately hates the world, and bitterly resents the Western church because it doesn’t hate the world as much as he does. He (very) occasionally affirms that Christians should love the world, but these abstract statements are never fleshed out with particulars, and thus fail to rise above the level of barren platitudes. His operational attitude toward the world, and even more toward the Western church, is always and everywhere law, law, law, and no gospel.

Guinness’s hatred of the world and resentment of the church reach their high point in a shocking passage where he compares religious movements he dislikes to cooperating with genocidal totalitarianism…

That “shocking passage” must be read to be believed . . . so I reprinted it in the review.

These days the church seems to be long on people who can diagnose everything wrong with the modern world, and short on people who demonstrate love and hope.