{"id":334,"date":"2010-08-13T15:40:52","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T15:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/08\/what-im-reading-follow-up-on-anne-rice-and-gay-marriage-and-an-article-on-teenagers-in-the-church.html"},"modified":"2010-08-13T15:40:52","modified_gmt":"2010-08-13T15:40:52","slug":"what-im-reading-follow-up-on-anne-rice-and-gay-marriage-and-an-article-on-teenagers-in-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/08\/what-im-reading-follow-up-on-anne-rice-and-gay-marriage-and-an-article-on-teenagers-in-the-church.html","title":{"rendered":"What I’m Reading: Follow up on Anne Rice and Gay Marriage, and an article on Teenagers in the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“An Open Letter
\nto Anne Rice<\/a>,” by Karen Spears Zacharias, should be of interest to anyone who has followed
\nAnne Rice’s public declaration that she has left Christianity. I wrote a quick
\nresponse earlier this week: “Can You Follow Christ Without Being a Christian<\/a>.”<\/span> <\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve also been
\ngrateful for an interesting discussion in response to my post, “Some of My
\nQuestions About Gay Marriage<\/a>,”  written in response to Ross Douthat’s blogpost “The Marriage Ideal<\/a>” and Andrew Sullivan’s response, “The Unique Quality of Lifelong Heterosexual
\nMonogamy<\/a>.” <\/span> I
\nalso commend to you Ellen Painter Dollar’s thoughtful response: “I’m Probably
\nGoing to Regret This But…<\/a>” <\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Finally on a
\ntotally separate topic, I commend Kenda Creasy Dean’s article, “Faith, nice and
\neasy<\/a>,” about American
\nteenagers in the church. Here’s a quotation from it to whet your appetite: <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

American young people have learned a
\nwell-intentioned but ultimately banal version of Christianity that’s been
\noffered to them in American churches. Most youth seem to accept this bland view
\nof faith as all there is–as something nice to have, like a bank account,
\nsomething you have in case you need to draw from it in the future. What Christian
\nadults have not told them is that this account of Christianity is bankrupt. We
\nhave not invested in their accounts: we “teach” young people
\nbaseball, but we “expose” them to faith. We provide coaching and
\nopportunities for youth to develop and improve their pitches and their SAT
\nscores, but we blithely assume that religious identity will happen by osmosis
\nand will emerge “when youth are ready” (a confidence we generally
\nlack when it comes to, say, algebra). The result? Teenagers who don’t have the
\nsoul strength necessary to recognize, wrestle with and resist the symbiotes in
\nour midst–probably because we lack this strength ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/font><\/p>\n


\n<\/font><\/p>\n


\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“An Open Letter to Anne Rice,” by Karen Spears Zacharias, should be of interest to anyone who has followed Anne Rice’s public declaration that she has left Christianity. I wrote a quick response earlier this week: “Can You Follow Christ Without Being a Christian.”    I’ve also been grateful for an interesting discussion in response…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-faith","category-what-im-reading"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat I'm Reading: Follow up on Anne Rice and Gay Marriage, and an article on Teenagers in the Church - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/08\/what-im-reading-follow-up-on-anne-rice-and-gay-marriage-and-an-article-on-teenagers-in-the-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What I'm Reading: Follow up on Anne Rice and Gay Marriage, and an article on Teenagers in the Church - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“An Open Letter to Anne Rice,” by Karen Spears Zacharias, should be of interest to anyone who has followed Anne Rice’s public declaration that she has left Christianity. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}