Ask the Author: Barbara O'Brien

“Please ask questions about my book, Rethinking Religion, or about religion in general.” Barbara O'Brien

Answered Questions (5)

Sort By:

An error occurred while sorting questions for author Barbara O'Brien.

Hey, I liked your Bio. Have you revisited Christianity (sorry haven't read your blog yet if you cover that). I'm always poking at my aversions to my "mother" religion. Curious what your experience is.

Barbara O'Brien That depends on what you mean by "revisited." Have I seriously considered going back to Christianity as my spiritual/religious path? No. On the other hand, I remain interested in Christianity in a more academic sense, trying to understand how it developed as it did and why so much of it today seems to have gone off the rails.

This is something I wrote about at great length in my book, Rethinking Religion. I have a deep respect for Christianity in its more non-literalist, non-fundamentalist forms, and I hope that some of what I wrote might help the tradition disown the right-wing reactionary zealots who appear to dominate it today.

flag

2 likes · like
Comment

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Barbara O'Brien The perspectives in Rethinking Religion: Rethinking Religion: Finding a Place for Religion in a Modern, Tolerant, Progressive, Peaceful and Science-affirming World have been perking in my head for several years. There currently are a lot of "orthodoxies" in popular culture with which I disagree -- that religion primarily is about believing in doctrines about God; that religion and science are ultimately incompatible; that being "spiritual but not religious" is the wave of the future. All of those popular ideas are based on gross misunderstandings of what religion and spirituality actually are. And in framing my arguments in "Rethinking Religion" I draw on Christian theologians even more than I draw on Buddhism.

In the early part of my life I was immersed in Christianity, and for the past 25 or so years I've been immersed in Buddhism, and while these traditions have points of agreement they operate within radically different conceptual frameworks. Going from one to another broadened my perspective considerably. I have things to say that no one else is saying.

flag