1. Tis the season for sickness. B.D. McClay over at The Hedgehog Review got mono, and while the short term result was a bout of feverish nightmares, excruciatingly painful swallowing, thundering headaches, and seemingly unending fatigue, the long term result was this marvelous essay: “The Ills That Flesh Is Heir to.” Her essay is a […]
Workaholics in the Hands of a Firing God
“When work becomes the primary arbiter of identity, purpose, worth, and community in our lives, it has ceased to function as employment and begun to function as a religion. Or at least we have made it responsible for providing the very things to which we used to look to God.” Those two lines are taken […]
Another Week Ends: Silicon Valley #Seculosity, Airborne Absolution, Big Law Kills, Maslow’s Smartphone, Stan Lee’s Humor, and True Detective Pikachu
Wrapping up the latest from the week, we’d be remiss not to recap the biggest news, which is that DZ’s new book Seculosity is now available for your pre-ordering pleasure! For a preview of the content, go here, and to get in your pre-order, go here. (According to those ‘in the know,’ pre-orders are actually what make […]
Pre-Order Seculosity Today!
Couldn’t be more excited to announce that my forthcoming book Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion And What To Do About It is now available for pre-order! Won’t be out til April 2, 2019, but the more advance orders the better. Here’s the promotional copy and cover:
At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough–what religions call “righteous.” To fill the void left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday activities–from eating and parenting to dating and voting–for the identity, purpose, and meaning once provided on Sunday morning.
In our striving, we are chasing a sense of enoughness. But it remains ever out of reach, and the effort and anxiety are burning us out. Seculosity takes a thoughtful yet entertaining tour of American “performancism” and its cousins, highlighting both their ingenuity and mercilessness, all while challenging the conventional narrative of religious decline. Zahl unmasks the competing pieties around which so much of our lives revolve, and he does so in a way that’s at points playful, personal, and incisive. Ultimately he brings us to a fresh appreciation for the grace of God in all its countercultural wonder.
Promotion will amp up as we get closer to April, and we need your help spreading the word. Best thing you can do right now (other than pre-order) is to tell your friends, neighbors, colleagues, pastors, etc and start using the hashtag #seculosity on social media. This is going to be fun…
Pre-Order Today!
Culture and the Countercultural Cross – David Zahl
The talk given at the Here We Still Stand conference in San Diego last month, in which I offered up the first full-length taste of my forthcoming book Seculosity (and had a lot of fun in the process). Many thanks to everyone at 1517 for putting it on:
