A Confession... of sorts
I’ll go ahead and forewarn those of you who are only watching me for me art, or who are not religious, or not Christian, that those subjects are what this entry are all about. Namely, my religion, Christianity, and the fact that I’m bored to death.
( cut for very long rant and if you actually read it all I will be amazed at you )
( cut for very long rant and if you actually read it all I will be amazed at you )
My favorite baby is always Kierkegaard; in my experience, it was easiest to get into his thought by reading Either/Or first, since it's less didactic and more novel-like, and then moving on to Fear and Trembling, Repetition, and Stages on Life's Way--I still keep meaning to read Works of Love and some of his more specifically Christian writings, but those first four are sort of particularly important for getting into his thought. Paul Tillich is another theologian you might look into. . .Martin Buber is a great Jewish theologian and philosopher.
A current writer who's more popular/accessible on the subject of Christianity and popular Christianity today would be Harvey Cox--he's good to read for a liberal religious 'social gospel' perspective and a nice introduction to postmodern theology/liberation theology--his classic book is 'The Secular City', but that's perhaps a bit dated (it was written at a time when people were more seriously under the impression that God had 'died' for most people, that religion was basically a spent force)--for something a bit more current/relating more to current popular ideas in theology, I liked his 'Religion in the Secular City'. I guess even that was written in the 80's, but even if it didn't take off quite as some people expected it to, liberation theology is still an influential idea--his book 'Fire from Heaven' is more recent and deals with Pentecostalism and the worldwide spread of Christianity. Now that the largest churches in the world are in Korea, South America, and Africa, this is certainly an interesting subject to read about, in conjunction with 'Pentecostalism' and its many variants in particular.
Oh, and William James' 'Varieties of Religious Experience' is a classic and I L it. And James' essay 'The Will to Believe' is even more of a classic. I guess I'm giving you a lot of ~existentialist~ or leaning-that-way names. . .then there's St. Augustine and his Confessions or his City of God. . .you can also, of course, go the route of reading about the sociology of religion in general, and look up people like Mircea Eliade, or Claude Levi-Strauss, Durkheim, Jonathan Z. Smith--they certainly don't write from the perspective of a believer, but it's wonderful reading. You could also look into the writings of Christian mystics (James quotes many of these in his book mentioned above) as well as mystics in various traditions outside Christianity--Rumi and others in the Sufi tradition, or the bhakti poets from India. Various Vedanta thinkers from the Hindu tradition had a huge influence on the Unitarian movement (and vice-versa). . .Vivekananda was huge with Western audiences around the time of the World Parliament of Religions at the World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. You might also just pick up some nice survey books on other religions you aren't yet familiar with--Hinduism, Islam, the various strains of Buddhism, Jainism, Sihkism, Judaism. . . And you can get into Transcendentalism and the writings of people like Emerson or Thoreau, which are heavily influenced by both Christian and Eastern thought. Diana Eck has written some good light introductions to Hindu thought from a Christian perspective--a thin little volume called 'Darsan', and some other things.
Really, it's a matter of just jumping in and moving from book to book as your interest moves you--read the footnotes and notes as you go in reading anything, and check out the works that any given author references as you find them interesting.
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