<B>The book that has sparked a vigorous national debate</B> <B>about the state of American religion,</B> <B>praised by Timothy Keller as “provocative” and “compelling,” while <I>The</I> <I>New York Times</I> says “Douthat attacks nonsense on both the cultural right and left…responsible and fair,” and the <I>Washington Times</I> raves “a superb documentation of America’s crisis of faith,” now in paperback. </B><P>Ross Douthat has emerged as one of the most provocative and influential voices of his generation. In <I>Bad Religion </I>he offers a masterful and hard-hitting account of how American Christianity has gone off the rails—and why it threatens to take American society with it. America’s problem isn’t too much religion, as a growing chorus of atheists have argued; nor is it an intolerant secularism, as many on the Christian right believe. Rather, Douthat argues, it’s <I>bad religion: </I>the protracted breakdown of traditional faith and the rise of a variety of pseudo-Christianities that stroke our egos, indulge our follies, and encourage our worst impulses.<P> <P>Ranging from Glenn Beck to Barack Obama, <I>Eat Pray Love </I>to Joel Osteen, and Oprah Winfrey to <I>The Da Vinci Code</I>, Douthat explores how the prosperity gospel’s mantra of “pray and grow rich,” a cult of self-esteem that reduces God to a life coach, and the warring political religions of left and right have crippled the country’s ability to confront our most pressing challenges and accelerated American decline.