{"id":7757,"date":"2004-03-10T09:08:17","date_gmt":"2004-03-10T09:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/hooked_on_heaven_lite.html"},"modified":"2004-03-10T09:08:17","modified_gmt":"2004-03-10T09:08:17","slug":"hooked_on_heaven_lite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/hooked_on_heaven_lite.html","title":{"rendered":"Hooked on Heaven Lite"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Brooks says Mitch Albom is more to be feared than Mel Gibson<\/a><\/p>\n

\nI worry about Albom more, because while religious dogmatism
\nis always a danger, it is less of a problem for us today
\nthan the soft-core spirituality that is its opposite. As
\nany tour around the TV dial will make abundantly clear, we
\ndo not live in Mel Gibson’s fire-and-brimstone universe.
\nInstead, we live in a psychobabble nation. We’ve got more
\nto fear from the easygoing narcissism that is so much part
\nof the atmosphere nobody even thinks to protest or get
\nangry about it. <\/p>\n

\n….In this heaven, God and his glory are not the center of
\nattention. It’s all about you. <\/p>\n

Here, sins are not washed away. Instead, hurt is washed
\naway. The language of good and evil is replaced by the
\nlanguage of trauma and recovery. There is no vice and
\nvirtue, no moral framework to locate the individual within
\nthe cosmic infinity of the universe. Instead there are just
\nthe right emotions – Do you feel good about yourself? –
\nbuttressed by an endless string of vague bromides about how
\nspecial each person is, and how much we are all mystically
\nconnected in the flowing river of life. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Brooks says Mitch Albom is more to be feared than Mel Gibson I worry about Albom more, because while religious dogmatism is always a danger, it is less of a problem for us today than the soft-core spirituality that is its opposite. As any tour around the TV dial will make abundantly clear, we…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHooked on Heaven Lite - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/hooked_on_heaven_lite.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hooked on Heaven Lite - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David Brooks says Mitch Albom is more to be feared than Mel Gibson I worry about Albom more, because while religious dogmatism is always a danger, it is less of a problem for us today than the soft-core spirituality that is its opposite. As any tour around the TV dial will make abundantly clear, we…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/hooked_on_heaven_lite.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-03-10T09:08:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hooked on Heaven Lite - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/hooked_on_heaven_lite.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hooked on Heaven Lite - Via Media","og_description":"David Brooks says Mitch Albom is more to be feared than Mel Gibson I worry about Albom more, because while religious dogmatism is always a danger, it is less of a problem for us today than the soft-core spirituality that is its opposite. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}