Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It by David Zahl

Abstract

Reviewed by: Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It by David Zahl Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It. By David Zahl. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2019. 250 pp. Lutherans have not been terribly adept at agreeing on justification (see the process leading up to the Formula of Concord … and everything that has happened in Lutheranism since the Formula, for that matter) or communicating it to the outside world (see the failed effort at the 1963 Helsinki assembly of the Lutheran World Federation to do exactly that). Despite our confessional ferocity, we seem to do better articulating the article on which the church stands or falls when another Christian body enters the discussion (see the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with the Roman Catholic Church, subsequently subscribed by the World Methodist Council and the World Communion of Reformed Churches and affirmed by the Anglican Communion). So, it should probably come as no surprise that while Lutherans in North America have continued to divide and conquer ourselves, a handful of Episcopal clergy, affiliated with Mockingbird Ministries, is making justification by faith sexy again. Case in point is the new book by David Zahl, a college and young adult minister and pundit born into an Episcopal dynasty. The book's thesis is one of those things that is so compelling and obvious, once you see it, you wonder why you did not see it before. Americans are not actually less religious than before, Zahl argues. True, the matrix and stage of our religion has shifted away from church and synagogue. But if religion is that which gives life meaning, defines community, make us good in the eyes of ourselves and others, and convinces us that we are enough, then religion is far from gone. In fact, it has metastasized. And the new religion definitely does not justify by faith, in Jesus or any other gracious presence. It is hardcore law all the way. [End Page 212] Zahl proceeds to illustrate the hypothesis in nine areas of American culture, mentioning that one could easily add many more. He starts with the virtue-signaling (twenty-first-century English for "works righteousness") of being "so busy"; cycles through the soulmate myth of romance and its sequel, the "parenting-industrial complex"; moves on to technological addictions, work-as-identity, righteous vacationing, and even more righteous eating; proceeds all the way to the toxic tribalism of partisan politics; and finally circles back for a self-critical look at Christianity itself. The reader will enjoy alternating bouts of spiritual skewering and smug selfrighteousness, depending on her own selective capitulation to these rival religions. What then to do about it, when the whole problem is our frenetic doing? Zahl suggests we learn this simple truth: "We are almost never not in church." Legalistic church, at that. The antidote is faith that turns to the source of grace—and while Zahl supposes some might try to generate their own grace-based religions, the chances of success are next to nil, quite apart from the inherent problem of not being true. Real churches worshiping the real Lord of life then probably need to talk more to God, and in turn let God talk back to us, specifically about death, a lot more than we would like to hear. Such churches' discipleship would turn their attention not on external manifestations of "Enoughness" but on the internal bondage of their heart—equally recognizing that release comes not through technique or effort but only through Christ and the "good news that nothing that needs to be done hasn't already been done." We cannot fix our seculosity. We can only be saved from it. And only by Jesus. This is a handy manual for anyone, professional religious or otherwise, bemused by the escalating cultural conflicts in the United States. But I dare say it could even serve to get the word "justification" back on the lips of our dwindling Lutheran faithful. Having taught the doctrine from its Reformation setting countless times—and always having to start...