by James P. Wind president of the Alban Institute
A new book by G. Jeffrey MacDonald provocatively picks up one of the most powerful New Testament images — Jesus’ head-on collision with thieving merchants in the Temple at Jerusalem — and applies it to American congregational life, especially its Protestant versions. In Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul (Basic Books, 2010), MacDonald, a UCC pastor and award-winning journalist who covers the religion beat, gives a series of troubling examples of how the Almighty Market, particularly in its latest American Consumer-Driven incarnation, has overwhelmed, or at least diluted, the soul, or essential character, of our religious communities.
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