Martin Salter interviews Dr James Emery White for en
James Emery White is senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina and founder of Serious Times, a ministry which explores the intersection of faith and culture and hosts ChurchandCulture.org. Recently he authored the book The Rise of the Nones about people with no faith.
MS: Why are the ‘nones’ as a group increasing so rapidly?
JEW: The sophisticated answer involves the processes of secularisation, privatisation and pluralisation. But, on a more popular level, I think this has to do with something I outlined in the book Lawyers, Guns & Money. Religion in general, and certainly Christianity, is perceived to be overly entangled with law and politics, filled with hateful, intolerant aggression, and consumed with materialism. Many outside the Christian faith think Christians no longer represent what Jesus had in mind – that Christianity in our society is not what it was meant to be.
