Smashes the False Foundations of Didactic Churches, February 13, 2008
Frank Viola
Didactic means “one way” and is a word used by scholars to describe conferences where there will be lectures instead of round tables. Generally they are sterile and annoying. Most churches today are like that, one-way, everyone sitting like rote students, a false sense of community that eschews integral consciousness.
This book joins The Complete Conversations with God (Boxed Set) as an extremely important work. I concluded long ago that the Catholic Church was a form of legalized organized crime picking the pockets of the many for the advantage of the few, and that certainly applies to most fundamentalist movements in the US, where “carpetbagger” is the first term I think of, followed by “cult” and “hypocrit.”
I really respect David Flower's review and his list of books, all unknown to me. Here I will list several others: the first two support this book's contention, the others touch on the good and the bad of religion and politics in the USA.
101 Myths of the Bible
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus)
See also, books I admire about faith done right and done wrong:
God's Politics LP
The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right
Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors
Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
This is a very valuable book. See also, shortly, my review of Carl Sagen's The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
