Page 1637 – Christianity Today (2024)

Style: Modern rock with hints of punk; compare to As Cities Burn, Brand New, Thrice

Top tracks: “I’ll Be Waiting,” “Fire Walk with Me,” “Comfort and Truth”

Launching their first independent LP thanks to an avid fanbase and successful Kickstarter campaign, the former Facedown Records rock outfit publishes a transparent rock journal of heartache-driven doubts, life queries, and vulnerable confessions. Written in the Catskill Mountains and recorded with Mat Malpass (Copeland, Manchester Orchestra) in Atlanta, the Poughkeepsie, New York natives use their wide musical influences to confront darkness with a fiery amalgamation of melodic modern-southern-punk rock—easily justifying their elite placement in AbsolutePunk’s Absolute 100 and growing impact among rock fans seeking raw musical and lyrical substance.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

The last time Christianity Today talked to Scott Stapp, Creed, the popular rock band he had fronted for nearly a decade, had just broken up after years of internal bickering.

It was the summer of 2004, and while his three bandmates went off to form their own group, Alter Bridge, Stapp pursued a solo career and, by his own reckoning, God. Fans had long speculated about Stapp's faith, but he was never very vocal about it because Creed didn't want to be pigeonholed as a "Christian band." But in that conversation with CT, Stapp came right out and said, "I am a Christian." He had just watched The Passion of the Christ and recorded a song for an album inspired by the film.

But shortly thereafter, Stapp started making news again for the wrong reasons. He got into a drunken brawl in a hotel lobby. He showed up intoxicated for a TV interview. Even after marrying a Christian woman in 2006, he was arrested for public drunkenness on the day after his wedding. A year later, he was arrested for domestic abuse after a night of partying; his wife, Jaclyn, dropped the charges after Stapp publicly apologized.

Today, Stapp has been sober for just over one year, and he's telling his story in a new memoir, Sinner's Creed (Tyndale), to be released October 2. In the book, Stapp confesses his many misdeeds and how he is now right with God. But he also reveals a troubling family background. When Scott—born Anthony Scott Flippen—was 8, his single mother married Steve Stapp, who was emotionally and physically abusive, according to Scott.

The singer writes that Steve Stapp told him God made man as "priest and prophet of the household. I make the rules, and the rules will be obeyed. When rules are broken, you are not only disobeying me, you are disobeying God. And your punishment will be enforced … Punishment without pain means nothing. The severity of the pain will keep you from repeating the offense …. I promise you will never forget my punishment. Because when I punish you, God is punishing you too." He claims Steve Stapp once said, "God created hell because he loves us. If I give you hell, it's because I love you."

Stapp says his stepfather ran the household with military precision, even using a timer for before-school routines—giving him exactly five minutes for a shower and to brush his teeth, six minutes to get dressed and get to the breakfast table, five minutes to wash, dry, and put away the dishes, and two minutes to get to the car. Anytime the timer elapsed before the deed was done, Scott would get a beating. His stepfather often cited Proverbs 13:24: "Whoever spares the rod hates their children."

No wonder the younger Stapp, who lived in constant fear of his father—and of God's punishment—grew up with issues, even as he became a multimillionaire rock star. He became a control freak, drove his bandmates crazy, and dealt with anger and depression. He even contemplated suicide in 2003, putting a pair of guns to his head. He writes that there was "no way out of this misery except to end it. The pain can't get any worse …[A]ccept death. Be a martyr. Go down in history with Hendrix, Bonham, Joplin, Morrison, and Cobain." But before pulling the triggers, he opened his and saw a picture of his 4-year-old son Jagger on the wall; Stapp says it had "come to life," and Jagger was saying, "I love you, Daddy. I need you, Daddy. Stop it, Daddy." Stapp ended up firing 36 shots around the room, destroying "every award and achievement I had won with Creed," but also that "Jagger's unconditional love had saved my life."

Creed—which has sold almost 40 million records overall—reunited briefly in 2009 for a new album and tour, and have reunited again this year for another tour and are reportedly working on another new album.

We recently spoke with Stapp about his new book, his roller-coaster journey, and, of course, Creed.

Why write a memoir and why now?

I finally got to a place where I had the clarity—and had my heart in the right place—to sit down and go through my life. The process of writing the book was so cathartic. I realized that so much of me had been tucked away very deep inside, and it was causing many problems in my life and my relationship with God. Writing this book became kind of a personal roadmap, to finally confront how one person can know right from wrong but completely do the opposite. I needed to address and confess my sin, mainly to continue to get my heart right with God. I needed to seek forgiveness and make amends. And I wanted to do it for my wife and my children.

I wanted to just tell the truth and share my faith. God gave me a platform with Creed, and I know he called me into ministry at a young age, but I ran from that. God used me despite myself. Jesus Christ saved my life, and has been by me from day one despite my sin and weakness. I should have been saying that since Creed first started up, but I didn't—because I was afraid and because I wasn't living the life. But that is my testimony now. God is a God of new beginnings, and this book is the beginning of mine.

You could've gotten right with God privately. So why so publicly?

To share the gospel and encourage others. Boldly, with no inhibition and no fear.

You wrote that as a kid you were fearless and you wanted to be Superman.

Yeah.

And you wrote, "For the longest time I thought this was confidence. Now I see it as a complex." What do you mean?

Well, to clarify, the fear that was instilled in me as a child was whether I was going to heaven or hell. It ended up being a key part of my makeup, driving the decisions that I made—always in fear of the consequences. But it was a double-edged sword too. It enabled me to accomplish a lot and have a lot of success, but I didn't have a healthy faith or a healthy fear of God. That was a result of pure manipulation.

Your biological dad left when you were very young, and that triggered some of your fears, and the feeling of abandonment. But when you were 8 years old, things looked better when your mom started dating Steve Stapp.

Absolutely. At first, he was my hero. It was like Clark Kent and Superman walked in the door.

But that changed dramatically as soon as they got married.

Yes. Now I look back and realize that when he was courting my mother, he was also courting me, putting his best self forward. But after they got married, there were things about Steve that came out very soon—another side of him that he said was what God had instructed him to do. That he was the priest and prophet in the household. That he was like god in the household. That side of him was not revealed until after the marriage—a side that was, in my opinion, extremely abusive.

That must have really messed up your image of God as Father.

Absolutely. To me, God was the god of fear and judgment and persecution. I was habitually disciplined, if you want to call it that—and in my mind, that was God. I was very afraid, but I didn't want to go to hell, so I went with the program.

Did you ever ask your mom why she wasn't protecting you from this guy?

Definitely, but she was under the same umbrella and was often treated exactly the same, so she was living in fear too.

When your book releases, what will Steve Stapp think about these revelations?

I don't know. We haven't spoken in years. My wife and I reached out to him, trying to forgive and move forward when we got married, and they elected not to respond and not attend the wedding. But one day, God will heal this. The irony is that I love Steve, and he did implant in me a love of Scripture, whether his mode of delivery was wrong or not. But I pray that my book will be a catalyst to healing.

Let's talk about Creed. Even when you guys were hugely popular, your bandmates blamed you that the group was being pigeonholed as a "Christian band."

Right.

Was that one of the biggest sources of conflict within the band?

Most definitely, and it remains one today.

Even now that you're back together?

Yeah. Those guys have openly confessed their atheism and tried to distance themselves as far from God as possible. But I'm continuing to pray and believe in my heart that God put me with these guys for a reason. I hope my life and testimony will speak to them, that God is real. I'm praying for that.

Other bands have gone through the same thing: "We're not a Christian band, we just happen to be Christians." U2 is a prime example, and they've survived 35 years without that kind of conflict. But then, 3 out of 4 of them are Christians.

Yes, and that's the difference. Every band goes through different difficulties. I met Bono and the Edge, and those guys are brothers to the core. They love each other, and they stand by each other publicly whether they agree in private or not. Our band has a different makeup and different issues, very common issues to mainstream rock and roll bands—singer vs. guitar player stuff. I think we fit more in that traditional mode. But you know, it's all God's plan. I've learned to let go and let God and stop trying to control things.

Is your maturing in recent years one reason that Creed is able to tour together today? Because you're not a control freak anymore?

Absolutely. In my early professional life, running everything was my passion, and the guys never communicated to me that that was a problem. I think one issue was one that Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and Lennon and McCartney shared—I wasn't reliable. I began to become publicly intoxicated at shows and was compromising my bandmates, putting them in bad situations. There's two things you can do with someone who suffers from addiction: You can either be a part of the recovery, or you can make the decision to say, "I don't want anything to do with this." And either one is right. So I don't have resentment for their decision. It is what it is, and it was God's will. And if it didn't happen the way it did, I don't think I'd have gotten to the place I am today.

How long have you been sober?

A little over one year. I used to be very naïve about the fact that alcoholism is a disease, and that there are things I need to do proactively every day to manage that and prevent relapses. Prior to a relapse a year ago, it had been a year-and-a-half. And prior to that, it had been two years. It's part of the disease, but all I know is that as long as I do what it takes every day and surrender myself to God, I'll be OK.

Being involved in the program [for recovering alcoholics] has helped me rediscover my relationship with God, because in these programs, God is the center. Now they may call him a "higher power," but I tell you, I needed a new foundation with God. I needed to throw everything out the window and start over. I've been humbled where I needed to be humbled. I was an egomaniac with an inferiority complex, and I needed to hit bottom.

You've talked about how God has helped in that process, but let's talk about how your son Jagger and your wife Jaclyn have helped too. Jagger quite literally saved your life when you were about to commit suicide.

That's right. My son Jagger is … I'm just so in love with him, and he's had such an amazing impact in my life. He has been the source of many attempts to get my life in order. When I look at him, he's a daily reminder of God's plans for my life and God's love for me. I know there were times where he had to deal with some embarrassment at school because of my behavior. But he's got strong faith and great wisdom.

Jagger and Jaclyn, and her mother Hayat, have saved my life in many ways. God blessed me with them; they're like angels to me. I could not have made it without their love and support and patience.

How would you describe your relationship with God today?

I've finally surrendered. I really addressed that issue in my relationship with God, and realized that it was time for me to stop thinking that I knew everything, and letting God work in my life. I never felt that I wasn't in contact with God; he was always with me. But my mindset about everything was to combat my father. I just got to a point where I had to let go of the past and deal with the issues in my life.

God is the miracle heart surgeon, and he gives the best heart transplants in the world. There are no scars on the outside, and the scars on the inside just make us better Christians and help us help others. I really feel that I got the needed heart transplant, and now it's just fresh and alive, full of love and grace and understanding.

Creed photo by Stephen Vosloo. Copyright © by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Family photo by Amanda Tang.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

There’s a kind of Irish writing that’s all about the myth of Ireland. Think—well, think of James Joyce’s Ulysses, of course. But it was around in light form back in Somerville and Ross’s 1899 Some Experiences of an Irish RM, and it has lasted well past the short-story writer’s Sean &oacute Faoláin’s death in 1991.

And there’s another kind of Irish writing, a different thing, which is all about the words. Supremely that’s Finnegans Wake, of course. Yeats was a wonder, a star come from County Sligo to ornament Irish literature, and all honor to him. But Joyce—Joyce is inescapable. He lies across Ireland like a bog from the Western Shores all the way to the Irish Sea, and every Irish writer has to cross him, one way or another. Flann O’Brien’s 1939 At Swim-Two-Birds is a good example of that word-obsessed Irish writing, and so, in its way, is City of Bohane, Kevin Barry’s first novel.

Down at Tommie’s bar, Barry writes, “Ceiling fans whirred noirishly against the night, and were stoical, somehow, like the old uncles of the place, all raspy and emphysemic.” Meanwhile the character Ol’ Boy struts across town, wearing “high-top boots expensively clicker’d with gold taps, a pair of hip-hugging jodhpur-style pants in a faded mauve tone, an amount of gold chains, a heavy mink coat to keep out the worst of the hardwind’s assaults and a goatskin beanie hat set pavee-style at the crown of his head.”

And in the midst of it all, a war is brewing in Bohane, with the gangs from the high-rises ready to sweep down on the central neighborhood of Smoketown. As the 17-year-old Jenni Ching tries to warn Logan Hartnett—the old leader of the Fancy, the gang that runs the city—”Cusacks gonna C o’ vengeance by ‘n’ by and if yer askin’ me, like? A rake o’ them tossers bullin’ down off the Rises is the las’ thing Smoketown need.”

It’s great writing, all of it—but, then, City of Bohane pretty much has to be about the writing: the different voices the characters use, the narrator’s strangely distant observations. Good as the writing is, the plot is as conventional as a 1940s B-movie. The plot is a 1940s B-movie, as far as that goes: For all that City of Bohane is set in a mysterious Irish city in the year 2053, Barry uses the futuristic setting to throw Ireland back to 1940s America as Hollywood’s imagined it. No cellphones exist in 2053 Ireland. No computers. No cars, for that matter. The gangsters come into Smoketown and the Big Nothin’ by tram and train, and they write paper letters when they need to communicate to one another their insults and challenges.Ireland itself might as well not exist in the novel, although Barry plays that part of the narrative with a light hand and a delicate irony. De Valera, for example, is the main drag of the town, and gets its name from the Irish leader Eamon De Valera. The housing projects are named after the Irish poets Louis MacNeice, Patrick Kavanagh, and Seamus Heaney. But if the people of Bohane know the origin of those names, they never mention them. The tarmac path from the Heaney Highrises down to the De Valera road is as meaningless as the intersection of Main and First Street in a Hollywood gangster film.

As violent, too, as a gangster film. As the story opens, Logan Harnett has been in control of a gang known as the Harnett Fancy for 25 years. “The Long Fella,” as he’s sometimes known. Or “H” or “the Albino” or just “the ‘Bino”: The townsfolk have a wariness—a fear, perhaps, that naming calls—about actually speaking his name aloud, and they routinely refer to him with the kind of circumlocutions that older generations of the Irish would use for banshees and the dangerous Little Folk of the Daoine Sídhe. From Smoketown—all “hoors, herb, fetish parlours, grog pits, needle alleys, dream salons, and Chinese restaurants”—to the mazes of Back Trace, the Hartnett Fancy has prospered by running the most lucrative sections of crime-ridden Bohane. And all of it has surely been due to the leadership of Logan: tall and lanky and elaborately dressed.

In short order, reading City of Bohane, we meet the novel’s other characters. Logan’s wife, for instance: Macu, short for Immaculata, a Spanish semi-beauty with a co*cked eye, now 43 years old, childless, and wondering what’s left of her life. And Logan’s mother, a monstrous manipulator and willful ruiner of lives from her perch (thanks to Logan’s money) in the honeymoon suite at the Bohane Arms hotel; perhaps everything one needs to know about her is contained in the fact that she’s almost ninety-year-old and still named “Girly.”

Meanwhile, Logan’s underemployed henchmen, the boys of the Fancy, sit obliviously in their cafés eating pumpkin seeds, while the young Jenni Ching and Wolfie Stanners try unsuccessfully to warn Logan—to warn anyone who will listen—that Bohane is about to explode, the new generation of gangsters from the high-rises unwilling to accept any longer the dominance of the Fancy. Ol’ Man Mannion, the elderly pawnbroker who seems to have a finger in every pie, has a sense of dread, as does the strange character of Sweet Baba Jay, a Christ-figure who watches everything in town but never intervenes.

As the story gathers steam, we learn that Logan is distracted from the future that ought to concern him, the rise of the young gangb*ngers, because he’s been called back to the past, with the arrival of Broderick—”the Gant”—his old enemy and rival for Macu, returning to Bohane for the first time in 25 years. The Cusack family, up in the high-rises, has put up for decades with Logan’s preeminence, but when one of their members is killed in Smoketown—”reefed,” as the Bohanians say—they swear “a welt o’ vengeance.” Jenni tries to head off a fight, but Logan won’t accept her advice. The return of the Gant has reminded of the old way of doing things, and he begins to hunger for a general bloodletting that will let off steam and ease the tensions of the city’s many long-lingering feuds.

And so the war comes. The Cusacks and the “Norries” come piling down from the highrises. Girly’s machinations issue in tragic results. The Sand-Pikeys from Big Nothin’ join in, promised a cut of Smoketown’s crime revenues. The Gant and the Long Fella head toward their showdown, Jenni ineffectually beats at the stone of catastrophe as it rolls toward town, and Sweet Baba Jay watches the inevitable end of the story begin to arrive.

Eyes Cusack, the leader of the high-rise gang, tries to explain how the death of a family member has upset everyone beyond the power of normal reconciliation to cure: “Me brud’s gone loolah on accoun’ and his missus gobbin’ hoss trankillisers like they’s penny sweets, y’check me?” Meanwhile, the narrator tries to explain what the dawn brings to Bohane: “Solstice broke and sent its pale light across the Big Nothin’ bogs. A half-woken stoat peeped scaredly from its lair in a drystone wall and a skinny old doe stood alert and watchful on a limestone outcrop.”

If you read for the sake of the writing—that kind of Irish writing that draws its power from the sheer brilliance of the words—then you have to love City of Bohane. Barry showed enormous promise with his 2007 story collection There Are Little Kingdoms (published in the United States in 2010), winning the Rooney prize for Irish Literature and rightly being dubbed by the Irish Times as “the most original writer to come out of this island in years.” And now with City of Bohane, he’s shown just how good he is, inventing not just a general new vernacular but refracting it like a rainbow into the different voices with which the different characters speak it. This is a Joycean level of language: playful and profound at the same time. Both unified and inflected. Fast as lightning and yet worth slow study.

If your interest, however, is in a new story—some deep novelistic account of the human condition and the manners and morals of the social order—then City of Bohane is not really worth your time. Watch Stuart Heisler’s 1941 film Among the Living or Richard Fleischer’s 1950 Armored Car Robbery. Robert Wise’s 1947 Born to Kill, for that matter, or John Huston’s 1950 The Asphalt Jungle. You’ll get the same noir feeling, in the authentic era instead of a mythical future, and it won’t take as long as reading City of Bohane.

In other words, the gloss of his writing is as shiny as new shellac, but it is not enough. When Kevin Barry finds a genuine topic to write about at novel length, a full novel’s story to tell that isn’t borrowed wholesale from B-movies, he is going to prove the best Irish writer since William Trevor. Until then, we have to survive with just City of Bohane.

Joseph Bottum is a writer in the Black Hills of South Dakota and author most recently of The Christmas Plains, coming from Image/Random House in October 2012.

Copyright © 2012 Books & Culture. Click for reprint information.

For the last few decades, there has been a growing awareness among American Christians regarding changes in world Christianity. Works by Philip Jenkins, Dana Robert, Mark Noll, Todd Johnson, and David Barrett have gone a long way toward addressing a knowledge gap among American Christians. A significant volume of literature now attests to the reality of the demographic shift from a Christian population centered in North America and Europe to a Christian population centered in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In The Rise of the Global South: The Decline of Western Christendom and the Rise of Majority World Christianity (Wipf and Stock), Elijah Kim provides a worthwhile survey and overview of the history of world Christianity, particularly as it rose in its Western Christian form and moved into its non-Western expression. Drawing from an impressive breadth of research, Kim begins the text by covering what may now be considered familiar ground. The first chapter provides a good overview of the changes in world Christianity, as do helpful charts and graphs that make their appearance throughout the book. The illustrations offered in the text serve as a valuable starting point for the study of world Christianity and provide a helpful reference resource. Kim adds to the ongoing conversation by emphasizing the central role of renewal, particularly Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, in the growth of Christianity both in the Western world and in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Kim’s weaving of the renewalist thread, a crucial topic for 21st-century evangelicals, provides additional insights into the growing base of knowledge.

Kim moves from an overview of the changes in world Christianity to an analysis and reflection on European Christianity (focusing mostly on British Christianity), followed by a study of American Christianity. The analysis of Western Christianity covers a range of academic disciplines but provides the best insights in its historical description. Kim offers sociological and theological analyses of the decline of Western Christianity, drawing from the historical description and offering helpful tables and charts that dramatize this decline. In the final chapter of the work, Kim’s description of the rise of non-Western Christianity emphasizes renewalist Christian movements. Kim suggests that indigenous movements in world Christianity often arise from Pentecostal and charismatic renewal contexts.

A Vision Worth Pursuing

The theme of the decline of Western Christianity alongside the seemingly meteoric rise of non-Western Christianity is an important topic for consideration. Kim’s emphasis on the root causes of Western Christianity’s decline will provide helpful insights for many in the West. In attempting to contrast the emerging strains of non-Western Christianity with the current state of American Christianity, Kim offers a necessary critique of Western Christianity. One concern, however, is that Kim employs language reminiscent of the culture wars of previous decades. Kim’s analysis of Western Christianity is more helpful in looking back at the history of Western Christianity than in paving a new way forward.

Kim’s work provides a much-needed voice on this important topic of conversation for the American evangelical church—particularly as it relates to renewalist movements as expressed through the Pentecostal and charismatic arm of the church. The hope in the rise of global South Christianity is for an evangelical renewal that bridges the global North and South. Kim gestures towards a hopeful vision of a reinvigorated renewalist movement that seeks to fulfill the Great Commission. This is a vision worth pursing regardless of our current place in world Christianity.

Soong-Chan Rah is Milton B. Engebretson associate professor of church growth and evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary. He is the author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (InterVarsity Press).

The world of finance may not be the most immediately intriguing subject. Certainly, bank heists and ransom money are common fodder for action movies, but to build an entire “thriller” around financial matters themselves though is a challenging feat. Can quarterly reports and fraudulent business dealings enrapture an audience’s attention without lots of bangs and gunfights? Arbitrage answers yes, but succeeds only partially.

Robert Miller (Richard Gere) appears to balance his shrewd business sense with being the ideal patriarch of a wealthy family with easygoing certainty—at least, within the film’s first ten minutes. It is quickly revealed that Miller regularly departs from his wife, Ellen (Susan Sarandon), for romantic trysts with Julie (Laetitia Casta), a French artist whose work he invests in. On one such occasion, Miller suggests to his mistress that they should leave for a tropical paradise together, leaving business and family behind. Their late night travels are cut short, however, by a car accident that leaves Miller wounded and Julie dead.

An old friend’s son, Jimmy (Nate Parker), owes Miller a favor, so Miller calls him in to help him flee the scene of the crime. The night’s implications make up for the rest of the film’s dramatic content. It becomes readily apparent that Julie’s death was merely the tip of the iceberg and this business wizard has much more to hide. Detective Michael Bryer (Tim Roth) uses his angst against the unfair acquittal of the rich to drive his quest to convict either Jimmy or Miller of the girl’s death. Meanwhile, Miller’s daughter, Brooke (Brit Marling), begins to see some discrepancies in her father’s financial records and, thus, in the moral character she thought she knew so well.

Arbitrage is entertaining, through and through. The film is fast-paced, yet methodical; it is contemplative without ever being lethargic. Indeed, its greatest strength is the remarkable and steady speed at which it keeps itself going. Like Sidney Lumet’s Network, the banal office existence of its characters, made somewhat spicy by extramarital affairs and double lives, is shown to be both dramatic and compelling. It dramatizes the ordinary lives of the extraordinarily rich. Not the Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians of the upper set, but the sensational capitalists that conservatives love to champion and liberals love to deride.

Gere maintains a stoic demeanor throughout most of the film, but his performance is compelling, and is even receiving Oscar buzz. He is no stranger to the leading role, but Arbitrage might well be a minus on his A-list status. Sarandon is given second billing but is barely given any screen time to make an impression either negatively or positively. Roth charms as a cynical, New York detective, but his British accent peeks out every now and again from his nearly impeccable Brooklynite gab. Parker and Marling evoke the most empathy among a cast of otherwise unfeeling characters. While their fellow players may occasionally lapse into emotion, these two keep the viewer enthralled while the last of their youth and innocence is done away with.

Arbitrage never lapses completely into cliché but dances on a tightrope for its entirety. While original, its plot is carried out by a troupe of stereotypes. The business man whose affair costs him more than he bargained for, the alcoholic wife who takes her cues from Lady Macbeth, the naive youths caught up in a world too wicked for them, and the detective who modernizes the Raymond Chandler, fast-talking, New York archetype. The characters remain interesting because of the cast that plays them. It is a timely drama given our age of bailouts and economic stimulus, but one that could easily have made an appearance at any other time as well.

The writing is also lacking at times. When one character affirms “the world is cold” and is answered back with “well then you’ll need a warm coat,” the more cynical spectator cannot help but cringe. Still, due to its excellent pacing, the plot is relatively easy to follow. Jarecki’s screenplay avoids the pitfalls of an overly sped film like Quantum of Solace and an overdrawn, slow-motion movie like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It’s just a shame the dialogue had to suffer the consequences.

In Arbitrage, the capitalist battlecry of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street (that “greed is good”) is heard loud and clear. Gere’s character actually intones that money is “god” at one point in the story. For all these characters, it would certainly seem to be. They are all controlled by it somehow. Whether striving against it or running along with its demands, the greatest commandment is to “follow the money” and, should the money be threatened, to protect it at all costs. At any point, the main characters stand to lose everything because of an accident on the highway. The discerning viewer can easily see that they have lost anything that mattered long before the curtain even rose—and that the advice to store up treasures in heaven is lost on them all.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. How can Christians avoid greed while still being good stewards of their money?
2. What sort of circ*mstances could lead to extramarital affairs and how can we prevent them? Is the thirst for money and power a regularly contributing factor?
3. Is Detective Bryer just in all his attempts to bring down the guilty Robert Miller? How can the law best restrain the insatiable desires of the human heart?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Arbitrage is rated R for language, brief violent images and drug use. Strong language is used as a matter of course. The main character is seen having an affair, although no nudity is shown. His mistress is shown at another time snorting cocaine. The whole film is made up of stressful situations and familial tension.

Photos © Nicholas Jarecki

© 2012 Christianity Today. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

"If you figure out a way to live without a master, any master, be sure to let the rest of us know, for you would be the first in the history of the world." These are words spoken by one character to another in a pivotal scene near the end of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, and they represent a key idea in the film: Do we flourish more when we are completely free and self-directed, or when we are subject to a master (or a mastering narrative/philosophy/religion)?

The Master—sprawling, cryptic, masterfully made—raises this question in provocative fashion, under the guise of a film about the early days of Scientology and its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the Hubbard role—a character named Lancaster Dodd, the leader of a pseudo-scientific, self-help program called "The Cause." Dodd is known by his adherents as "Master," and indeed, "mastering" oneself is the primary doctrine that he teachers. Like Scientology, The Cause teaches that human spirits (in Scientology: Thetans) are trillions of years old, reborn repeatedly in various "vessel" bodies. Through a therapy-type practice they call "processing" (in Scientology: "auditing"), these beings are able to purge themselves of the traumas, baggage and animal behavior that keep them from progressing to their perfect state. The goal is complete self-mastery, where "psychological" issues and even health problems are cured through focused mental processing.

Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd

Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd is meant to represent Hubbard in the earliest days of Scientology, during postwar America in the early 1950s. In the film he is a charismatic, wealthy, ascot-wearing family man with a supportive wife (Amy Adams) and children, with the exception of one skeptical son (Jesse Plemons) who believes his dad is "making all this up as he goes along." Dodd is a man of confidence and the life of the party, prone to raising glasses in toasts and saying things like, "We fought the day, and we won!"

The audience sees Dodd mostly through the eyes of the film's protagonist, Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a mentally unstable Navy veteran who stumbles across a "Cause" cruise ship and becomes something of a protégé (or project) to Dodd/Master. In stark contrast to the calm, collected, dignified Dodd (at least on the surface), Quell is a wild man—an animalistic, sex-crazed itinerant scoundrel. As played by Phoenix (very physically, sometimes cartoonishly), Quell feels like a prehistoric Neanderthal: low-hanging arms, shoulders hunched, with appetites only for sex and survival. As the film starts, he is a jobless drifter, having been fired or chased out of low-wage jobs due to fighting or other escapades. He's a vulnerable, impressionable man when he meets Dodd and gets sucked into The Cause, and the question at the heart of The Master is whether this self-help system really can help him take control of his life.

Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell

Echoes of Paul Thomas Anderson's previous films are clearly present in The Master—a film about an aimless nobody brought under the wing of a talented mentor (see Hard Eight), the thorny relationship between individualism/freedom and collectivism/family (see Boogie Nights and Magnolia), and the unlikely pairing of American men whose tenuous relationship is characterized by opportunity, admiration, and fear (see There Will Be Blood).

The style of the film also bears Anderson's mark: long tracking shots, dissonant orchestral music (here, by Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood), highly structured shot composition, and frequent usage of repetition. Throughout the film we see "doubles" of various shots/scenes that are repeated in a new way later in the film: Quell's early psychiatric evaluation matched later by his "processing" scene with Dodd; a rowdy naval ship at the outset, matched later by a prim and proper "Cause" cruise ship; Quell running away from danger in a field in one early scene; driving away on a motorcycle in the desert later in the film. As in his previous films, Anderson uses these doubles strategically to bring attention to the changes and contrast within the protagonist's arc. A double referent in the film's final scene a bookend to one of the film's first scenes on a beach—plays an especially crucial role in making sense of the film as a whole.

Amy Adams as Peggy Dodd

Another "double" in The Master is the pair of men at the heart of it—opposites in many ways but also bound by things (short tempers, fondness for potent alcohol, maleness). In one memorable scene in a jail, we see a great juxtaposition as Quell rages in his cell, banging his head on the walls like a caged animal, while Dodd stands with dignity in the adjacent cell, maintaining the façade of complete mastery over his "animal" temptations. But soon even Dodd loses his cool and the two men resort to an expletive-laden shouting match. It's just one of several ruptures in Dodd's supposed "self-mastery," suggesting that even the leader of The Cause has a hard time purging himself completely of those pesky sinful urges.

The film's strength certainly resides in the nuanced, powerful performances of Phoenix and Hoffman. They capture well the unsteady bond between Quell and Dodd, and we understand clearly why they are drawn to one another. Quell sees a man that can help him take control of his life; Dodd sees the ultimate challenge: if he can domesticate this unruly animal of a man, his program should work for anyone.

The problem with The Cause, however, is exactly what makes it appealing. The prospect of the ultimate self-help—that one is basically a god and has the power to eradicate the troublesome part's of one's nature—was attractive to the American mind in the wake of the startling horrors of World War II. The Cause, like Scientology, also holds special appeal in the American and masculine consciousness because it feeds on our innate pride and self-made manifest destiny. It's why celebrities, who often already have god-complexes, are likely attracted to the religion. But the problem is that man will never find answers to his struggles within himself, no matter how appealing and American the idea might be.

But as much as the film is about the misguided notions of this specific worldview (The Cause/Scientology), the film seems more interested in the broader questions of man's nature and the function of religion in general. As in There Will Be Blood, Anderson portrays a definite tension here between human nature and religion, which he suggests is a fraud that merely masks—or, at worst, plays to the baser parts of—man's primordial instincts. Dodd certainly comes across as a bit of a phony, using his religion as a capitalistic enterprise more than a system that gives his life purpose. In the end, he isn't so different from the brute animalism of Quell, in spite (or probably because) of the fact that he tries so hard to subdue it on his own terms.

One can understand Anderson's cynicism toward self-help religions of this sort, promising the conquering of man's millennia-old struggles with some simple therapeutic prescription. Even Christianity, which in theory is about finding help in a transcendent God and giving up any notion that the self can ever help itself, has in various manifestations drifted into the phoniness and false hopes of the self-help, "your best life now!" paradigm. When offered against the stark reality of human evil and chronic waywardness—things we are confronted with daily in the news and in our own lives—it's no wonder such iterations of religious belief are looked upon with derision.

With The Master, Anderson offers his most thematically complex and narratively obscure film yet. It's not all a success—the pacing of the film's second half sometimes drags—but the questions he raises on levels both specific (Scientology) and broadly existential (can man be his own master or must he serve another?) are important and provocative. It's a difficult film, to be sure, but a technically masterful endeavor full of details and density that suggest it will age well.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. What is it that initially attracts Freddie Quell to The Cause?
2. Is the Master sincere in his beliefs about the dogmas he preaches? What does his final conversation with Quell reveal about his worldview?
3. How is the answer provided by Christianity different than those offered by The Cause/Scientology?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Master is rated R for sexual content, graphic nudity and language. It is not suitable for children and should be approached with caution by adults. There are a few scenes of extended female nudity, including a dream sequences/hallucination in which every woman in a party is seen dancing around completely nude. There are also a few brief scenes of male masturbation (no nudity shown). The film also includes plenty of expletives including lots of f-words.

Photos © Paul Thomas Anderson

© 2012 Christianity Today. All rights reserved. Click for reprint information.

My mother often referred to a prayer that her mother said (in Swedish) nightly at the bedsides of her eight children as they headed off to sleep. The prayer became so embedded in their memories that one of her brothers, when he was dying 80 years later, asked my mother to “pray the prayer that Mama used to pray.”

Like my dying uncle, many of us have simple lines of thoughtful prayer to which we cling when life becomes rough. The Lord’s Prayer is an obvious one. Or some version of the “Jesus prayer”: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. Or the so-called prayer of St. Francis of Assisi that begins, “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace …” (as much as one senses the spirit of Francis in the prayer, it is highly improbable that he was its creator).

Throughout the years of my Christian journey, I have used Psalm 23 as a prayer, and there have been sleepless nights when I have repeated the Shepherd Psalm over and over, perhaps as many as a hundred times. The vision of green pastures and quiet waters has rarely failed to re-order my heart and mind.

Then there is the more recent Serenity Prayer. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The Serenity prayer is embraced by the Alcoholics Anonymous movement. It is usually prayed at the beginning and end of any meeting where self-confessed drunks gather to help each other stay sober for another 24 hours.

There is an ongoing debate as to who authored the Serenity Prayer. It is usually attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, but some claim that the prayer’s core ideas come from one or more spiritual masters of a century (or even a millennium) ago.

Friends who are alcoholics tell me that the Serenity prayer speaks to the core of the alcoholic’s mental disease.

The prayer highlights three concerns. First, one needs to recognize those events and experiences over which there is no immediate control and to accept them for what they are. We might call this the act of submission. Since most alcoholics admit to being control freaks, I can see why this line means so much to them.

Second, one needs to acknowledge those events and experiences where it is possible to effect change. Here the operational word is courage.

And third, one needs insight to know which of the first two is actually in play. Is something changeable, or is it beyond my control? The answer requires wisdom.

Some time ago I latched on to the Serenity Prayer as a tool for daily reflection. I began repeating it many times during the day, especially when I faced issues that were affecting my emotions and attitudes.

The Prayer has provoked me into wondering how often I waste time and energy trying to manage things that are beyond my grasp. To do this is to invite frustration, stress, even anger to flood my inner being.

This state of agitation is easy to observe in a small child who, lacking wisdom, throws a temper tantrum because he cannot get what he wants. He may scream, lash out at others, even breaks things. One frequently observes adult versions of this behavior that are just a bit more subtle and sophisticated: irritability, blaming, defensiveness, criticism of others, manipulation.

In such moments of immature behavior, the Serenity Prayer can become quite relevant.

Herein lies one of the reasons the incarnate Jesus appeals to me so powerfully. He is such a quiet, orderly, and patient person in the face of adversity. His “serenity” originates with what he completely controls: the affairs of his own heart. When the people of his hometown turn again him, he disengages without a word. In a Galilean storm, he chooses to rest his eyes. On an early morning while others sleep, he quietly communes with his Heavenly Father. On the cross he forgives hateful people.

In his mysterious divine/human way, the Savior seems in perfect touch with what he must—by choice—accept and what, at the moment, he cannot (or chooses not to) change.

Accepting things I cannot change is about surrender. There come those times where one simply surrenders and adapts to the realities around him. One friend calls this “living around the situation.”

On the other hand, there are those things that can be changed, and the list usually begins with the unChristlike attitudes and behaviors that coat one’s inner life. As one writer puts it, “Quit talking about changing the world until you’ve found a way to change yourself.”

In my relationships—marriage, family, work colleagues, friends, even “enemies”—the courage to change what is changeable begins with me. My alcoholic friends keep telling me this over and over again. Their disease told them that everyone else needed to change, but now, in sobriety, they’ve abandoned the blame-game and set out to change themselves.

But the Serenity Prayer also raises the idea of wisdom. How does one know the difference between what is changeable and what is not? “Grant me wisdom,” the prayer calls out.

Wisdom comes from learning from my (successful and unsuccessful) experiences, listening to others, and drawing instruction from whatever ways the Spirit of God wishes to whisper into my soul. Somewhere in the triangulation of these three things, wisdom emerges.

The other morning I left our home for a breakfast appointment at a restaurant. It was a beautiful New England day, and I drove down our street feeling confident that my personal world was properly ordered. Nothing was likely to go wrong.

But something did go wrong. There was an accident on the freeway, and I soon discovered that the traffic was backed up for at least a mile. Okay, I thought. I’ll just call my breakfast partner and alert him to the delay. But when I reached for my cell phone, I discovered that I’d left it at home.

Suddenly, the order in my life began to unravel. My sense of confidence and control collapsed. My emotions began to heat up into frustration and irritability. Silly thoughts, blaming thoughts, circled in my head. Why, I wanted to ask, had this crowd of drivers all about me chosen to drive this road to their jobs at just the time I needed to use the freeway? Why had the people involved in the accident not driven more carefully? And where were the police when I needed them? Of such self-centered thoughts is the stuff of spiritual disorder. Note the “I’s” and the “me’s” in my questions. Immature perspectives like this can begin to color a whole day of relationships and character formation.

Then I remembered that it was for times like these that my alcoholic friends prayed the Serenity Prayer. I began to say it out loud, repeating the lines several times, each time emphasizing one of the three parts, each time making a different word the center of my attention.

God, the hearer of all prayers, responded in ways we attribute to the work of the Holy Spirit. The traffic jam, I was reminded, was an event beyond my control. It was something to accept. I could not change the circ*mstances. But I—perhaps more accurately, God—could change me. And that’s what happened.

Oh, the rest of the story. The guy I was supposed to meet at the restaurant? I discovered that he was in a car just ahead of me. Perhaps he was praying the same prayer.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership Journal and chancellor of Denver Seminary.

Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The Sacred Wilderness of PastoralMinistry (IVP, 2012) by David Rohrer

Metaphors matter. Consider, for example, if you see your role as pastor as that of a CEO. You’ll view your duties in terms of casting vision and seeing it to fruition, hiring and managing auxiliary staff, and keeping watch of the bottom line. “Shepherd of the flock of God” carries different connotations—presence and guidance rather than vision and execution.

David Rohrer knows the power of metaphors. In The Sacred Wilderness of Pastoral Ministry he tries several of them on, including midwife, town cryer, and “crewman on a vessel sailing in turbulent waters.” But the one he likes best, the one he holds out as biblical and culturally relevant for today’s pastoral ministry is “prophet.”

Rohrer holds up John the Baptist as a model for prophetic pastoral ministry because, Rohrer suggests, John addressed two concerns pastors share today: “personal renewal” and “institutional reform.” More important, John “understood that he was about something that was bigger than himself and bigger than the institution he was seeking to reform.” He was always pointing away from himself. Though he drew a crowd in the wilderness, his goal was not to develop a platform, launch a movement, or build a following.

He pointed to Jesus and stepped out of the way. In this way, Rohrer explains, John helps pastors recognize that, above all, “we are in the business of giving witness to God.”

Because the pastor’s primary purpose is giving witness to God, the ministry is not ultimately about the pastor’s vision or aptitude or adequacies. It is about the work God is doing in and among his people. This, of course, has implications for the minister’s duties, which Rohrer teases out in each chapter. As testifier to God’s work, the pastor should make ready a people for the presence of the Lord. The pastor should recognize that he or she is the steward of God’s mission, not their own. And so on.

Rohrer frees pastors from the demands of success as it is often understood today—in terms of numbers of conversions or new members or programs—by reminding us that we are not responsible for success in ministry. Our ministry is not about what we are up to as much as it is about our testimony of what God is up to; not what God is doing through us but what God is doing in and around us. Our work, though of central importance to us, is ultimately but a part of something far bigger: the history of the church we serve and the grand narrative of God’s work in the world.

For Rohrer, John is a means of communicating something more important than John’s ministry. It’s appropriate, considering the point of John’s ministry was constantly pointing people away from himself to Jesus: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

The real value of the book is that Rohrer manages to affirm traditional local church ministry while calling readers to recognize their service in proper perspective. He doesn’t denounce institutional religion as unfaithful to Jesus. He doesn’t make shallow, consumeristic church members the minister’s villains. He simply reminds us of the all-too-human tendencies to hide from God’s searching light on the one hand or to take the credit for the fruit that the light produces.

In Rohrer’s words, the “joy of having a role in reflecting the light can easily morph into the lie that we are the light.”

When that happens, “our ministry becomes more about preserving our ministry than about giving witness to the living God.” Rohrer wants us to keep first things first.

From beginning to end, Rohrer is honest and transparent. He speaks openly from his own mistakes through nearly 30 years of ministry, his own temptations to “settle for providing people with the religion they want rather than the truth they need.”

All of this makes The Sacred Wilderness of Pastoral Ministry a timely invitation into a richer and deeper calling of giving witness to Christ and his kingdom.

-Brandon O’Brien is a contributing editor of Leadership Journal.

Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

A few years ago, I was editing a small Christian magazine, and we had commissioned a series of articles from Randy Harris, who had become popular for his “standup theologian” style of teaching at Abilene Christian University.

He sent me his first article hand-written and by fax. Who hand-writes articles, and who uses fax machines anymore? Randy’s handwriting was difficult to decode, and I was a little frustrated, but what I did not know then was that he wrote that piece in the middle of his 40-day retreat at Lebh Shomea house of prayer in the Texas desert. He had no computer, no Internet.

This 40-day prayer retreat changed the life of Randy Harris. It started when he asked himself, “What would happen if I gave God my full attention for 40 days?”

The fact that I did not get the context of Randy’s hand-written piece illustrates an important truth: I can’t fully understand someone’s prayer journey until I pay attention to God as well.

Like the Israelites waiting for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai or the disciples waiting for Jesus in prayer on the mountain, we expect that someone who has spent time with God, paying full attention, will come back with words of wisdom that will blow us away.

Randy doesn’t claim God gave him any special revelation, but he did receive something profound during his 40 days in the wilderness. Randy found that God wanted to teach him the gospel all over again. This time he would learn it more with his heart than with his head.

Those 40 days also set Randy on a quest to learn to live out the teachings and mission of Christ.

Over the next decade, Randy spent time with practitioners of prayer and mission in Celtic and Ignatian retreat houses. He did a two-year program in the Shalem Institute, learning to do contemplative spiritual direction. He spent time at the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., where he saw a way to bring together the contemplative and missional, a powerful way of following Jesus and touching the world.

We want the fearlessness of warriors and the discipline of monks. As warriors our weapons are not guns and swords but love and prayer.

“I had done a lot of mentoring of students, but it always seemed to be from the neck up. It wasn’t bad, and it impacted a lot of people, but I wanted to know if there was another level of engagement,” said Randy.

“As a college professor, I’m very interested in spiritual formation, but college students are notoriously difficult to form,” Randy said in his recent book, Living Jesus. “It’s a great formative age, but many students have also checked out of church. So I began to wonder, Is there a way to form students that will take permanently? They are probably never going to be able to replicate their four-year college experience, so what are the ways to form them so deeply that will impact them for the rest of their lives?”

That question and his journey led Randy toward an experiment he’s doing now with students at Abilene Christian.

After studying contemplative and missional communities, he learned not to be afraid of the word “rule” or “religious order,” as countercultural as that might seem. A rule is simply a way of life that a group of people commit to live.

Two books that helped him understand how to establish orders outside the context of a monastery: The New Friars by Scott Bessenecker and Punk Monk by Andy Freeman and Pete Greig, who come out of the British 24/7 prayer movement and build on Benedictine disciplines.

He devised a plan. He would form a group of freshmen and develop a three-and-a-half year plan, taking in a new group every year and having the upper-classmen continue on in the group.

The name for the group is Tau Chi Alpha—one of the things it stands for is “Toughest Christians Alive.” They are quick to say that this is an aspiration not a claim. They refer to themselves as “Monk Warriors.”

“We want to have the fearlessness of warriors but the discipline of monks,” Randy says. “As warriors our weapons are not guns and swords but love and prayer. We’re trying to develop skill using weapons that the Spirit of God has given us.”

The Monk Warriors believe that life change comes by the grace of God, but it is not without a response of intentional work, “training in righteousness,” toward goodness and love and learning the Word of God.

So the group commits to living out the Sermon on the Mount together. They sign a covenant to live basic principles of the teachings of Christ, like loving neighbor, practicing deep integrity, and sexual purity.

“One of the things that surprised me—I should have known—is how powerful signing on to a covenant is,” Randy said. They do not claim to live their vows perfectly, but they do take them seriously.

The young men also covenant to hold each other graciously accountable. They give others in the group permission to speak into each other’s life. If someone sees a member of the group on the soccer field not representing Jesus well, they’ve given permission to be spoken to in that situation. They pray specifically about sin in their lives and reach out to people who need hospitality or love.

About 20 freshmen come in each year, so the group stays at about 60-80 ongoing. The group also has some rituals that identify them, including chanting prayers, and they all memorize the Sermon on the Mount.

“The old guys had it right that when we memorize Scripture, it gets into you in ways it doesn’t when you just read it,” Randy said. While people might balk at memorization, Randy points out that we all have a storehouse of songs in our heads that we’ve memorized. Scripture can access that same part of the brain, particularly when chanted or sung or prayed. It doesn’t take as long as most people think it does to memorize, but it does take work.

The group also does exercises and challenges together. One of the exercises at meals is that members cannot serve themselves or ask to be served. “We watch and see if others need something, a drink or a plate of food, so we have to look around and notice people’s needs and fill them for one another,” Randy said.

The group also practices “dwelling in the Word.” This means the group reads a section from the Sermon on the Mount then asks questions such as, “If we took this teaching about loving our enemies seriously what would we do?” They formulate what they call “challenges” or “experiments” to go out and live this out.

Randy reports that many Tau Chi Alpha Monk Warriors who were struggling with their spiritual lives have more confidence and the relationships are pretty dynamic after time in the group.

“I think they would tell you it’s made a huge difference,” he says. “It’s a three-and-a-half year process, but the payoff is 10 years down the road.”

The college experience is probably not something students will ever get to repeat, so taking advantage of this crucial time to change the heart as well as the mind is central to what Randy is doing.

The Monk Warriors do not live together in one house, though some of the members room together. While some religious orders are cloistered, the Monk Warriors are very sensitive about not becoming elitist, self-absorbed, or isolationist. How do you instill values in a group of people in ways that change their lives yet doesn’t isolate them? How can they really impact their world? Their approach is to have a covenant with one another and live it out in the larger world.

“We learn monastic disciplines but do them in everyday life,” says Randy. “So we don’t plan to have a monastic softball league. The students are engaging the world, identifying places on this campus where they can be salt and light. Our light and life don’t revolve around this group. We are out there living this radical life, not spending all our time meeting with each other. And it has worked better than I thought it would.”

Greg Taylor is lead minister at Garnett Church of Christ in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is author (with Randy Harris) of Living Jesus: How the Greatest Sermon Ever Will Change Your Life for Good.

Copyright © 2012 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

(RNS) The typical American underestimates how many Protestants there are in the U.S., and vastly overestimates the number of religious minorities such as Mormons, Muslims, and atheist/agnostics, according to a new study.

Grey Matter Research and Consulting asked 747 U.S. adults to guess what proportion of the American population belongs to each of eight major religious groups: Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, atheist/agnostic, believe in God or a higher power but have no particular religious preference, and any other religious group.

The average response was that 24 percent of Americans are Catholic, 20 percent are Protestant, 19 percent are unaffiliated, 8 percent are Jewish, 9 percent are atheist or agnostic, 7 percent are Muslim, 7 percent are Mormon and 5 percent identify with all other religious groups.

Respondents were correct on Catholics – 24 percent of the country is Catholic. But according to the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 51 percent are Protestant, 12 percent are unaffiliated, 2 percent are Jewish, 4 percent are Atheist/Agnostic, less than 1 percent are Muslim, 2 percent are Mormon and 4 percent identify with all other religious groups.

While Protestants make up more than half of the American population, Ron Sellers, president of Grey Matter Research, said there are several reasons why there is such a gross underestimation of their numbers.

“Protestant is an umbrella word that people don’t think of,” he said, noting that people are much more likely to identify with individual Protestant groups, such as Baptist, Methodist or Lutheran, rather than with the Protestant tradition as a whole.

Sellers also mentioned that with Mitt Romney running for president as a Mormon and the current emphasis on Islamic-American relations, “smaller faith groups also may be getting disproportionate media coverage.”

Respondents under the age of 35 were even more likely than older participants to underestimate the Protestant population. Dan Cox, research director for the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute, said that may be because young people tend to have more friends who are religiously unaffiliated.

“The religiously unaffiliated and non-Christian groups are increasing, but we aren’t close to 30 percent of Americans identifying as unaffiliated or agnostic,” he said. “We are becoming more religiously diverse – that is entirely true – but we’re a long way from any of these numbers.”