During our sojourn here in Grand Rapids, Michigan (which ends today), I took the opportunity to wander through Baker Book House. While doing so, I noticed the book you see to your left, God Without Religion: Can It Really Be This Simple? I thought to myself, 'No, it's not,' and kept walking.

Tonight I was thinking again about the book and looked it up on Amazon. As I had been thinking of the title, I began to consider that perhaps the author himself answered the question as I did, and there was finally going to be a book at a more popular level arguing for the understanding that all of life is religion, and that humans are religious at the very core of their beings.

But it seems that this is not the case. I haven't read the book, but all the reviews on Amazon indicate that it is another book pushing the idea that 'religion' equals 'institutional Christianity' and/or 'salvation by works' and that real authentic Christianity is just Jesus and the Gospel. The endorsements speak of '[dumping] the religious burden' and no longer having to live 'under religious bondage.' What you get, though, is a Christianity that, in addition to being somewhat abstract and overspiritualised, is bent towards individual piety and puts especial emphasis on the second person of the Trinity.

I have said it before, but will say it again: pitting the 'Gospel' and 'religion' against each other is an oversimplification and creates a false dichotomy.

Perhaps I might even be so bold as to say that there can be no Gospel without religion.