Does it make more sense to think that if a god exists, our belief in it is something that should comfort us and make us feel better about ourselves, or that if a god exists, our belief in it should challenge us and force us to reconsider what we value and want? I don't believe in any gods, but if any existed, they'd be different enough that the latter strikes me as far more plausible.

In New Religious Movements: A Documentary Reader, Dereck Daschke and W. Michael Ashcraft write:

In the introduction to The New Religions (1970), now a classic in the study of New Religious Movements, Jacob Needleman recalled a conversation with the famous Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel. At the time, Heschel was translating an old Jewish text, and in a dramatic moment in their conversation, he “pounded his finger on a stack of manuscript in front of him and quoted something he had just translated: ‘God is not nice, He is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.’ Needleman found this to be an apt expression of the experiences of many people who joined New Religious Movements California in the 1960s.

It's curious that the trend of religion in America has gone in the opposite direction of what Heschel describes. It's true hat conservative evangelicals, whose churches are the largest and fastest growing, are generally given to fire and brimstone, but they are also a long, long distance from the original American fundamentalists.

These churches are emphasizing "self help" in a big way, focusing on the idea that God will help you and make you happy if you just want it enough. Early fundamentalists railed against everything — not just the obvious things like alcohol, but also things like dancing and makeup. Today, many churches host dancing events or classes on how to do makeup, not to mention all the religious diet books designed to make you look thinner and better.

What happened? The American stress on individualism has altered Christianity here in a major way. All religions in America have tended towards emphasizing individualism and self-help over self-sacrifice and community.

 

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