evangelicalism

Review: Pilgrim

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Cover image of "Pilgrim" by Tony Campolo, with Steve Rabey

Pilgrim: A Theological Memoir, Tony Campolo, with Steve Rabey. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802884947) 2025.

Summary: A memoir of Tony Campolo, popular speaker. social activist, and college professor, tracing his theological development.

This is the second “theological memoir” I’ve read of late. In both cases, the authors have passed on by the time the books were published (in Tony Campolo’s case, he died November 19, 2024). The “pilgrim” in the title has finished his pilgrimage.

The pilgrimage traced in this book is indeed a theological pilgrimage from fundamentalist roots, growing up in New Berean Baptist Church and a youth group known as the Bible Buzzards. In addition to regular services, Tony attended weekly Bible studies and preached on street corners as a teen. The first challenge to his theology came from Jewish basketball teammates. He had to wrestle with whether they were going to hell. The next came when he worked for a devout astronomer, Edwin F. Bailey and he was forced to reconcile young earth views with a cosmos billions of years old.

It wasn’t until college at Eastern Baptist College that he learned to think theologically, connecting the bits and pieces of Bible learning into a more coherent whole. It was here that he came to understand the idea of the kingdom of God, and through H. Richard Niebuhr, the idea that God wanted to transform society, and not just individuals. Also, he wrestled with calling, eventually deciding to pursue pastoral ministry. During this time, he met and married Peggy, who would have a major influence on his thinking in many areas. Soon, he was the father of Lisa and Bart. That pastoral journey ended when he confronted racism in his church, resigning when the church refused to accept a Black student into membership.

That led him into the professoriate. Eastern hired him to teach sociology and afforded him opportunities for graduate studies in both theology and sociology, a kind of double vision that enlarged his prospective. Succeeding chapters explore how this helped him address the Sixties search for self, issues of sexuality and abortion, and war. All this led to the launch of the Campolo Center for Ministry, to equip Christian leaders for wholistic ministry.

This, then, resulted in an increasing ministry as a public theologian, including a failed run for Congress. He traces the growth of his speaking and writing ministries. It also led to the first challenge from fellow evangelicals over remarks that some construed to be universalist in character, culminating in a kind of heresy trial at a Chicago O’Hare airport hotel. He became even more suspect as a Clinton confidante, and as part of a pastoral team working with the President and First lady to heal the marriage.

The later part of the book traces further developments, some would say, away from an evangelical faith, which Campolo denied. In his own family, he talks of the pain of children who walked away from faith, and his pride in the integrity of their lives. He addresses the “Red Letter Christian” controversy. Finally, he devotes a chapter to his changing views on homosexuality. He describes the presentations he and his wife gave for many years where they differed, the pain within their marriage this caused, and the reasons that finally led him to joining his wife affirming gay marriage.

The concluding portion of the book discusses his retirement years, following a major stroke. He describes his ministry with other seniors and finishes by summing up his life:

“My earthly pilgrimage has been an amazing journey, and when my life ends, I will be ready to abandon this worn-out body and overtaxed mind and rest in the presence of God for all eternity.”

I heard Campolo speak on one occasion. His impact was electrifying. He never ceased to be an evangelist. This helped me understand his ability to call a generation to give their lives in service to God and humanity. The book reveals an underlying courage through all the development of his thought. He faced challenges on street corners, from racists, and heresy hunters. He also had the courage to change his mind, even when such changes cost him support. Whatever one thinks of Campolo’s views, one must respect the courage that refused to waffle, or kow-tow to financial backers. What is most telling is the voice of this narrative, which seems matter-of-fact, about his times, his ideas, and himself, especially in the account of his children. All this makes for a highly readable and fascinating narrative.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Downsizing

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Cover image of "Downsizing" by Michelle Van Loon

Downsizing, Michelle Van Loon. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802884626) 2025.

Summary: A memoir of a fifty-year evangelical journey and the unhelpful ideas and practices to be downsized to embrace an authentic faith.

Downsizing. Many at my stage of life are engaged in the practice of deaccumulating the stuff we’ve acquired over the decades. Some of it we no longer need. Some of it we wonder why we ever acquired. It may be the reality that a smaller living space cannot accommodate all our goods. Or we are aware that we are moving toward the final deaccumulation when all our earthly goods are dispersed.

Michelle Van Loon offers the metaphor of downsizing for what she sees is needed in evangelicalism today. In one sense, evangelicalism is downsizing as people head for the exits. For many of the disillusioned, this has meant a process of faith deconstruction, a re-evaluation of beliefs and practices. Some emerge from this with a re-framed faith. Others walk away altogether. Instead, Van Loon proposes the metaphor of downsizing as a kind of spiritual rummage sale, allowing an uncluttered, authentic faith to emerge. Indeed, citing spiritual writer Phyllis Tickle, she proposes that the church has gone through such a rummage sale every five hundred years, the last being the Reformation and counter-Reformation. We’re due.

Van Loon approaches this through the lens of a spiritual journey memoir over her fifty years as a Christ-follower. She came to faith out of a Jewish background during the waning days of the Jesus Movement. She introduces her journey as one where she:

“…immersed myself in fundamentalist faith, worshiped in Messianic Jewish gatherings, experienced the revivalism of second- and third-wave charismatic congregations, gathere in a living room for home church, experienced the rise of one of America’s most influential nondenominational megachurches, became part of the rising Anglican movement, and had pit stops along the way at other kinds of churches of all kinds, from a cult-like sect to a neo-Reformed outpost to a throwback mainline church that owned not one but two harpsichords in addition to its giant pipe organ” (pp. 3-4)

Her experience make her a well-qualified participant observer of the last fifty years of evangelicalism, both at its best and worst. Her first couple chapters offer a brief history of evangelicalism, including the number of parachurch ministries that arose after World War Two. Each of the following chapters trace her journey through different movements. She offers a brief historical backdrop for each, setting them in context, describes her experiences, and the “downsizing” she engaged in as she moved on–the unhelpful practices and beliefs she left behind and the valuable truths and practices she carried.

Several things stood out to me in her narrative. One is the recurring danger of abusing leadership positions and spiritual authority. Examples include the Shepherding movements, Bill Gothard’s “Umbrella of Authority,” or the Mars Hill Church of Mark Driscoll. She also recounts the chaotic revivalism characteristic of some third wave charismatic churches, emphasizing experience over discipleship. Van Loon traces the rise of Dominionism, spiritual warfare theology, and the New Apostolic Reformation, and how they have wedded themselves to conservative political movements. She observes how “[T]he hunger for dominion is at the heart of so much bad practice in the church and has overflowed in the ways in which many self-identifying evangelicals express themselves in American culture” (pp. 139-140).

For Van Loon, downsizing expresses the downward journey of following Jesus, the journey to the cross. She invites us to purify ourselves of the blemishes of evangelicalism’s harmful beliefs to become Christ’s spotless bride. The issue is not the core beliefs of evangelicalism but the craving for power and control. This could be our kids’ purity or our nation’s institutions or other members of our congregations.

Van Loon is slightly younger than I am but we share common roots in the Jesus Movement. I remember the heady passion for Christ and hopes that our generation would change the world. We did, but not in the way of our youthful hopes. I did not experience some of the movements in which she participated. But a reflective look at this fifty plus year journey is a chastening experience and moves me to lament. We failed to reckon with the lures of money, sex, and especially power. Too often, we fixed our eyes on idols rather than our risen Lord. We cannot merely “downsize” these things. We must destroy idols or they will keep cropping up, as Van Loon’s account illustrates.

Perhaps the separating of an apostate, politically captive evangelicalism from smaller bands of believers seeking to follow Jesus in witness and service, pursuing his kingdom, is all a part of God’s downsizing. Van Loon calls us to a downsizing that is not an abandoning of faith but am embrace of single-hearted pursuit of Jesus, shedding all that encumbers. I hope I might live out my days in that kind of downsizing.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Church in Dark Times

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Cover image for "The Church in Dark Times" by Mike Cosper

The Church in Dark Times, Mike Cosper. Brazos Press (ISBN: 9781587435737) 2024.

Summary: Understanding and resisting the evil that seduced the evangelical movement, drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt.

Mike Cosper has both experienced and closely studied how leaders and their followers abuse power, embrace ideologies contrary to the gospel, and often act with cruelty toward those who question. He left a church with such a leadership culture. And he chronicled the ministry of Mark Driscoll in the podcast series The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. In this book, Cosper tries to understand how people of good intention were corrupted. And he articulates “practices of resistance” for those who do not want to repeat this history but resist it.

There are a spate of books that have been written on this topic. What sets Cosper’s book apart is his use of the thinking of Hannah Arendt, the philosopher who studied Hitler’s totalitarianism. However, in opening, he is quick, invoking Godwin’s Law, to deny an attempt to equate churches with Hitler. Nevertheless, the embrace of aspects of a totalitarian and authoritarian vision can inflict great harm. As he notes, “one can fall far short of [Hitler’s] monstrous achievements and still land squarely in hell.”

He begins with Arendt’s treatment of ideology, a story of everything that exchanges the gospel of grace for an iron logic. He uses Driscoll’s masculine ideology as an example, with its sweeping thesis that the church has failed to reach a generation because it lost all the men. To challenge Driscoll was to not be “man enough.” And this opened doors to spiritual abuse. Ideology proposes grandiose visions of changing the world through a particular leader or movement of leaders. An example Cosper gives is Bill Hybels and the Willow Creek movement.

The problem with ideology is that we bend reality and morality to ideological ends. It has meant exchanging the humility of redeemed disciples for the implacability of the fight. Authority is abused to attain spiritual goals. Often, we tend to look for moral monsters as a result. Instead, what we find is a banal form of evil, as Arendt did in studying Eichmann. Very ordinary people give little thought to the evil system they support. Likewise, church leaders often collude and close ranks against dissenters, not out of principle, but simply loyal conformity.

But how might we resist ideology and authority? Cosper turns to a Seattle native of another generation for help. Eugene Peterson never led a big congregation. He eschewed bigness for the pastoring of people. Rather than casting visions, he was more concerned to see how God was already at work in lives. Out of all this, Cosper arrives at three “practices of resistance.” First he encourages solitude and thought. Second he advocates storytelling and culture making–reflecting Dostoevsky’s idea that “beauty will save the world.” Finally he advocates worship that reminds us of the bigger story of God within which we live.

Cosper goes deeper than some in exploring the dynamics of authoritarian and ideologically captive churches. If nothing else, he introduces many to Hannah Arendt as a prophet for our time. The practices he commends make sense for resistance. They may not win the day in the sense of persuading people to repent from subverted ideologically driven churches. Rather, they sustain faithful witness to the gospel. Solitude and thought bring discernment. Storytelling and culture making point to the good, true, and beautiful gospel. And worship reminds us that as communities, we are God’s dwelling places, caught up in God’s cosmic plan to redeem all things. As dark as our times may be, the real destiny is not one of making one country great but extending God’s love to a world for which he died and will one day return to as king.

Cosper speaks unsparingly about the dark times facing evangelical churches within our cultural landscape. But he offers hope from the only sure source Christians have ever known-the risen and returning Christ. Many talk of speaking truth to power. Mike Cosper preaches the gospel of Jesus to every false ideology. What other hope and what other answer can we offer to dark times?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Losing Our Religion

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Losing Our Religion, Russell Moore. New York: Sentinal, 2023.

Summary: A call to repentance, to come to Jesus, for an evangelical church that has lost its credibility, authority, identity, integrity, and stability.

“The problem now is not that people think the church’s way of life is too demanding, too morally rigourous, but that they have come to think the church doesn’t believe its own moral teachings.”

Russell Moore, p. 44.

Russell Moore has experienced first hand shattering disillusionment with a church that no longer seems to believe its own message. He was at one time the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a popular author and has spoken trenchantly on the moral issues of the day, grounded in his belief in the authority of the Bible. That all changed when, seeing the immoral behavior of our former president in his candidacy, he refused to endorse him. Added to that, when an investigative report uncovered hundreds of cases of sexual abuse in his denomination, he advocated for the survivors of abuse when denominational leaders were stonewalling the issue. For the first offense, there was a popular backlash that included withholding of contributions. For the second, he was called on the carpet for being divisive and jeopardizing the support of church mission programs. He was attacked and demonized. At the end of his term as president of the ERLC, he resigned and joined a nondenominational congregation, leaving the body he had been a part of since he first walked down the aisle in response to an altar call.

Moore has wrestled with the parlous state of an American evangelicalism being abandoned by those who no longer think the church believes its own message, that has embraced political rather than spiritual power, that has justified the immoral for the end of “winning” a culture war, that has jettisoned a belief in truth, and turned to a nostalgic wish to return to some unspecified past greatness rather than to trust and walk with Christ into his future for his people. He sees the crumbling of such a “religion” to be a good thing. We ought to lose such a religion. Moore recurs to the practice of the altar call, a time of decision and turning from all these illusions and returning to our first love for Christ who alone can save us.

In five chapters, Moore outlines what he sees evangelicalism has lost. There is lost credibility, the growing gap between professed belief and actual behavior. There is lost authority as churches have embraced the tribal narratives of different political groups rather the truths they profess together in the creeds. There is a loss of identity in the embrace of a Christian nationalism of blood and soil rather than the multiethnic pilgrim exile community who follow Jesus. There is a loss of integrity in the acceptance of moral compromise to “win” battles–a far cry from Christian faithfulness that prioritizes trusting obedience over “results.” And we have lost the stability of nostalgia that fails to face the traumas we have endured in the recent past, where we end up repeating what has not been repaired.

Each chapter not only addresses the losses both of our failings and our crumbling illusions. Moore addresses how the faithful live when the ruins are falling. He urges us to embrace rather than resist disillusionment, to face rather than deny judgment. He calls us to tell the truth and avoid foolish controversies. A telling challenge for me was that he urges us to not “self-censor.” Most of extremist lies come from a very small but vigorous group who persuade truthtellers to go to ground. He urges us to refuse secularization and false framings of warfare that target people rather than spiritual powers. He urges the cultivation of intergenerational community. He challenges “whataboutism” that justifies immoral acts by the immorality of the “other” side, calling us to long-term integrity rather than short-term success. He movingly describes his growing friendship with Beth Moore, of whom he once spoke critically as he urges us to new communities and friendships with those whose gospel faithfulness transcends other differences.

As he concludes, he speaks of revival in very different terms. A reviving of American moral and religious greatness might actually be a bad thing without repentance and the hard work of the deep healing of our spiritual woundedness. Nostalgia seems so much safer and yet this is like going back to slavery in Egypt rather than following God in the uncertainties of the wilderness. His final words recur to his title: “Maybe only when we lose our religion will we be, once again, amazed by grace.”

This is both a hard and hopeful book. Moore unflinchingly names the failures of evangelicalism. He doesn’t offer any glowing promises but simply, for those who will hear, a call to press through our disillusionment to repentance, through our cynicism to belief in Christ, through our culture warring divisions to engaging local communities, and through the fog of a post-truth and post-morality world to integrity of belief and behavior. There are no promises here that these things will save evangelicalism or America. Rather, the only hope offered is that come what may, we will be saved, along with those drawn by gospel faithfulness. That is the hope we all find at the altar.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover

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The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, Lerone A. Martin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.

Summary: A study of how J. Edgar Hoover worked in concert with sympathetic Christian leaders to foster his vision of a White Christian America.

In 1966 a stained glass window at the Capital Hill Methodist Church was dedicated in honor of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, recognizing the “Christian stature and national leadership” of this man. As it turns out, this was no isolated event, as Lerone A. Martin shows in this book, based on research of thousands of newly released files, some of which Martin sued for under the Freedom of Information Act.

Martin does several things in this book. He shows how Hoover, reflecting his own Christian beliefs built the FBI as a white, male, Christian law enforcement agency focused on sustaining a white Christian America against the forces of communism and other groups (read women and people of color) who would dilute that vision. He documents how Hoover courted and worked with white Christian leaders, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical, who he deemed sympathetic with that vision after careful vetting. And he shows how these leaders promoted Hoover’s vision through their pulpits, platforms, and publications, fostering a broad Christian public who looked to Hoover as a spiritual authority.

He begins with the formative influences in Hoover’s life as a young man, including his strict Presbyterian upbringing, and aspirations to go to seminary and ministry. His father diverted him into the study of law, leading to work in the Department of Justice, leading a task force responding to a series of bombings targeting prominent Americans by radical elements. This forged his passion to uphold Americanism against anti-American elements, which he soon had power to pursue as the first director of the Bureau of Investigation, later the FBI, in 1924.

Hoover required, in his oath for agents, that they be both soldiers and ministers in this crusade to protect Christian America. A Jesuit retreat house in Annapolis led by Fr. Robert S. Lloyd, SJ, played a key role. Annual abd later,regular semi-annual spiritual retreats were organized with Hoover’s blessing for agents, with FBI leaders as retreat organizers, with Fr. Lloyd leading them in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. The militant character of the Jesuits fit Hoover’s vision of equiping godly soldiers for the nation’s good. Martin also traces the development of Masses and prayer breakfasts that emphasized the important of Christian values in the fight to preserve a moral America. Both the religious leaders Hoover worked with and the agents who participated were white, male, and nearly all Christian in religious identification. At this time, Blacks could only work in support roles like being chauffers and could not participate.

Hoover’s Masters of Deceit, a book against communism that became a bestseller, resonated with the nascent evangelical movement birthed out of the success of Billy Graham’s crusades and the rise of their own journal, Christianity Today. It was disturbing to learn how eager Carl F.H. Henry, the editor of Christianity Today was to publish articles by Hoover in the publication. Hoover was only too glad to comply, publishing a series of articles in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, reprinted by other evangelical organizations, published as booklets, and re-printed by Hoover and the FBI, and distributed widely at government expense to churches and anyone who asked.

In the process, Hoover became a kind of arbiter, a secular pope who determined what was orthodox and what was not. His FBI investigated the Revised Standard Version, published by the National Council of Churches, which Hoover considered a communist front. As civil rights developed and Martin Luther King, Jr. arose as a leader of the movement, Hoover turned the agency’s energies toward them, not to protect them against the vicious attacks of White authorities but to ferret out communist influences and discredit the movement, protecting the White southern establishment.

The irony Martin sees in all this is that while Hoover became a white evangelical hero, he was never one of them, not sharing their focus on conversion experiences and worshipping at a “mainline” church and keeping company with Catholics. Despite suspicions about his sexuality and relationship with Clyde Tolson, he was universally honored in evangelical circles, having his picture taken with Biully Graham and many others and honored at many evangelical gatherings.

I found it disturbing to see the lack of discernment among Christians of various stripes in becoming instruments of Hoover’s rather than Jesus’s gospel, amplifying his power and influence, even while he surveiled them! The temptation to claim Hoover as “one of ours” is evident, showing evangelicalism’s pathological attachment to celebrities to give them credibility.

Finally, while Hoover did speak against the more extreme elements of the Klan, we see the patterns of using government structures to maintain White power and to advocate for a version of White Christian nationalism and the ready complicity of White evangelicals who uncritically welcomed these efforts. Some will argue aganst this book that Hoover never promoted White supremacy. What Martin shows is that Hoover simply assumed White supremacy in how he recruited agents, ran the bureau and made religious alliances to advance his agenda.

While many trace the yoking of White evangelicalism to visions of American greatness to the Reagan years, Martin reveals to us that in fact, this was a pattern from the very beginnings of this movement. Some have suggested that racism is America’s “original sin.” This work makes the case that for the contemporary evangelical movement, White Christian nationalism is it’s version of “original sin” and that J. Edgar Hoover played a leading role as Tempter.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: Struggling with Evangelicalism

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Struggling with Evangelicalism, Dan Stringer, Foreword by Richard J. Mouw. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021.

Summary: Traces both the author’s personal struggles with evangelicalism and a four step process of healthy struggle involving awareness, appreciation, repentance, and renewal.

If anyone can claim bona fide evangelical roots, Dan Stringer can. He is the biracial son of missionary parents, living in five different countries on three continents during his youth. He embraced the worship music and lingo of evangelical youth ministry in the 1990’s. His undergraduate degree is from Wheaton and one of his graduate degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is ordained in the Evangelical Covenant Church denomination and serves as a team leader for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. There is much he appreciated in this background, and as the years went on, much with which he struggled–political partisanship, racism (why do only whites use this label, typically?), a history of colonialism in his own state of Hawai’i, the ways women have been treated, and the celebrity leader culture.

For Dan, help began as he was able to distinguish between evangelicalism as a “brand” that suffers a poor reputation, and evangelicalism as a space that includes over a half a billion people globally, involving collective responsibility for its care, access from a broad range of people, and opportunity for relationship across divisions, even for those who don’t fit the brand.

As Dan continued to wrestle with ways to address his struggles and wrote and interacted with others, he arrived at a four step process that he unpacks in his book. The steps are:

  1. Awareness. Many who have been part of evangelicalism don’t understand how we got here, so understanding our history and what distinguishes evangelicals from other Christians (and even appreciating that evangelicals are just one part of the larger Christian family) is important. Following a rubric developed by Kristen Kobes Du Mez he discusses evangelicalism as a theological category, a cultural movement with its own particular “style,” a White religious brand (many Black, Latino, and Asian Christians in the U.S. share theological beliefs with evangelicals but don’t share the “brand”), and a diverse global movement. He also discusses what distinguishes the brand from the space. Awareness also includes faith stream awareness, which has to do with how our particular group’s tradition has been formed through its history and location, allowing us better to appraise our strengths, weaknesses, and resources for renewal.
  2. Appreciation drills down on strengths. Stringer defends the decision to focus on appreciation before repentance. Strengths remind us how we got here, the ways God has been faithful, and reasons to hope that what is broken can be redeemed. It’s not an occasion for triumphalism, but a basis for hope and reminder that there is goodness, as well as brokenness in who we are. We remember things like our love for scripture, our experience of God’s presence, our commitment to the whole mission of God, the fellowship of believers, our focus on Christ, and our freedom in him. We remember grace that has brought us this far as both saints and sinners. And it points us in directions where we may strengthen our strengths.
  3. Repentance. Stringer invites us into communal repentance, adding to our sinner’s prayer a sinners’ prayer (where one places the apostrophe is important). The baptism of Jesus by John was a baptism of repentance and yet Jesus had no sins personally to repent of. This was an act of communal repentance. When we repent communally, we listen to others to understand the damage we’ve caused and don’t use a “not all of us” defense, but rather use collective terms to acknowledge our identification with these wrongs, we cry out for God’s deliverance, and begin to take steps befitting our repentance.
  4. Renewal. This section begins by bluntly facing the question of whether evangelicalism is worth renewing. There is not a time before racism in American evangelical history. There are abuses of power and patriarchy to which we would not return. He acknowledges that, for some, it is not their task to renew evangelicalism, whether because of the severity of their wounds or the fact that they have been pushed out. Stringer says that one need not cease to be a follower of Jesus, a Christian, should they decide to leave evangelicalism. Christianity is larger than evangelicalism. But he also offers reasons to seek renewal: to reduce harm and toxicity, to offer and model hope that persists through faith and doubt, to reflect God’s heart rather than the values of worldly empires, and finally to once again offer a credible and compelling witness in the world.

This last speaks powerfully to me. I’ve seen people delivered from addictions and broken relationships and communal hatreds when they encountered Jesus. The gospel of Jesus has been at the heart of movements to abolish slavery and community development ministry. It is at the heart of our love for scriptural preaching and the conviction that a word from God is powerful to transform. These have been strengths and, sadly, we have forgotten them or lost confidence in the work of God evident in them, substituting worldly power, worldly agendas, worldly wealth, and worldly wisdom for the foolishness of the powerful gospel.

I also am grateful for the space Dan Stringer makes for people still wrestling with whether to stay or leave. At one point, he includes a letter to “exvangelicals” (look up #exvangelical on Twitter if you want to learn more). It’s not a letter of criticism or exhortation to return, but one of repentance, that simply acknowledges the wrong done and that we (not they) may listen better. He offers appreciation without triumphalism, repentance without defensiveness, and a hope for renewal without grandiosity. His process offers a way through anger, turmoil, grief, and cynicism toward health, whether it is healthy engagement in a collective responsibility to leave things better than we found them, or how to live constructively as one decides what one’s place inside or outside this movement will be. For me, it has articulated “what it takes to stay.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The Compelling Alternative

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It was a familiar conversation, one I’ve been a part of many times in recent years. How did white evangelical churches become so captive to one political party, welcome patriarchal treatment of women and cover up abuse, become militaristic, nationalistic, anti-science and anti-environment, and racially divided from those who believed as they did but had different colored skin.

There have been a proliferation of critiques, both from other Christians as well as the secular press. What I found myself wondering as I listened to this discussion is why the alternative vision so many of my friends and I pursue has had so little sway among so many that claim the identifier “evangelical.” This is worth serious study, but I have a few very preliminary thoughts–less “answers” than hypotheses.

One is that we have focused more on critique than an alternative compelling vision of pursuing the kingdom. We focus more on:

  • What’s wrong with “making America great again” than on magnifying the greatness of God and God’s global mission of forming a great people of every language, tribe, ethnicity, and nation.
  • Criticizing patriarchy rather than casting vision for what marriages of mutual service shaped by Christ are like and what churches might be like where women and men use all of the gifts of God to serve the people of God in shared leadership.
  • We join the chorus of #MeToo discussing abuse in the church and rightly so. However, I rarely hear about redeemed, chaste, and flourishing sexuality–mostly what I hear is silence.
  • We speak against the racism of “white” evangelicalism but still have a long ways to go in partnership with believers of color, learning even to submit to their leadership and repenting of white Messiahship.
  • We denounce political captivity to one party, but offer little more than political captivity to another. Rarely do we recognize that the church is its own polis, a people of the Third Way speaking prophetically without being entangled with any party, turning neither to the left nor the right.
  • We deride the anti-science attitudes of others but fail to convey the doxological wonder of exploring the incredible world God has made, sometimes falling into a greater confidence in science than in God.

As I keep pondering this, I wonder if it is more than a matter of who has the better way? Might it be that we are both wrong? I wonder if we are looking at a mirror image of each other, and that we all have abandoned the core values that made evangelicalism such a vibrant movement within Christianity over the last couple centuries, not only in the U.S., but globally. David Bebbington has articulated this as a quadrilateral of core values:

  1. Bible-centered. We affirm the inspiration, trustworthiness, and authority of the Bible. My sense is that there is very little Bible in much of evangelicalism–often only in misapplied proof texts rather than attentive listening to and meditating upon and even memorizing scripture. In particular, one challenge for us is to read scripture together with people of color and believers from other parts of the world who may not have the same blinders we have.
  2. Cross-centered. The cross challenges all our pretensions to power and influence–from gender relations to politics. The cross gives us all pause to recognize that we are sinners, and that this recognition is good news, because in the cross, the curse of sin is reversed, real pardon is possible. We believe “the ground is level at the foot of the cross,” that all of us meet without distinctions of race, gender, socioeconomic status, or anything else that separates people. There is no “othering” and certainly no fear-mongering that infers the inferiority of others. We are all both base sinners and the redeemed of God.
  3. Conversion-centered. The cross shows us we need something more than personal and social betterment. We are dying people who need new life, and our hope is in Christ’s death and resurrection. Period. That both moves us to be converted and seek that of others. What I notice is how little we speak of these things. Have we so lost confidence in the transforming power of the gospel that we have turned to meagre earthly things like politics, or efforts to control other people?
  4. Activism. Evangelicals were distinguished by gospel energized activism that effected abolition of slavery, the building of hospitals, the earliest social agencies, and the founding of educational institutions, among other social goods. I wonder if much of our activism, whether of the right or left is co-opted by political connections or shaped by what is in favor in our political tribe rather than energized by the Jubilee proclamation of Jesus in Luke 4:18-19.

I wonder if white evangelicals of the left and right are both apostate. Have we both renounced our birthright in Christ, which is what is truly compelling? Are we both worshiping idols, just different ones? I wonder if we might begin with common confession that we have turned from our first love, a common repentance. Might that be the beginning of the revival we urgently need, both within the people of God and spreading to a deeply divided and struggling nation? Right now, we are only amplifying the divisions that exist among us when, as reconciliation people, we ought to be healing them. Might the beginning be to admit our unfitness for the work, and how desperately we need God to heal us before we can begin to bring healing?

Review: Mother of Modern Evangelicalism

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Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears, Arlin C. Migliazzo, Foreword by Kristen Kobes Du Mez. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020.

Summary: The first comprehensive biography on Henrietta Mears that focuses on her early life, her Christian Education ministry at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and her national impact on a nascent evangelical network of leaders, on Christian publishing and retreat ministry.

She had been dead for almost a decade when I received a copy of What the Bible is All About. I was a young Christian, still in high school, trying to read the Bible. The book started me on a lifelong habit of reading scripture through its clear explanations of the layout of the Bible, the world of the Bible, and the central figure of scripture, the Lord Jesus. In a small way at least, I was one more person in whose life Henrietta Mears had an impact. I had no notion of the breadth of impact the grandmotherly woman on the back cover had during her life on American evangelicalism.

The edition of What the Bible is All About that helped me begin reading the Bible.

Mears established the largest Sunday School in the country and headed up the National Sunday School Association, raising the standards of Christian education throughout the country. She hosted a ministry to some of the leading men and women in Hollywood during the 1950’s. She was a catalyst in the ministries of Bill Bright, Dawson Trotman, and Billy Graham as well as many others. The need for Christ-centered and biblically sound Sunday School materials led to establish Gospel Light Publishing, which she headed up for many years. She purchased a Christian conference center, Forest Home. Her college class turned out a generation of leaders who became pastors, missionaries, and leaders in a number of professions across the country, creating a network that served for the expansion of a theologically conservative but culturally engaging evangelicalism.

All this in spite of a very obvious fact. Mears was a woman in an era where gender roles were very well defined and men preached and led. She never challenged this gender framework. She simply led with excellence and expected that of those around her. She sought out men especially for her college ministry who would be leaders, mentored them, sometimes in demanding terms. She poured herself into others with a kind of tough and yet utterly supportive love that led to their blossoming.

Working at the intersection of the entertainment industry and a center of education, she both hued to theological orthodoxy and adopted an open and generous stance to the intellectual and entertainment world of her day, establishing a model for a culturally winsome evangelicalism that contrasted with the fortress mentality of some fundamentalists (though not all, as Migliazzo notes).

While the work of Mears between 1928 and her death in 1963 was fairly well known, Arlin Migliazzo draws on various archival materials and interviews to show the depth and breadth of that work. He also introduces us to the young Henrietta Mears, growing up in the upper Midwest. She grew up in a devout Baptist family. Her father traveled extensively for his business and so her mother Margaret played a significant role in her upbringing, imparting her faith, as well as a keen work ethic, and high standards of responsibility.

He also traces her college training in education and early teaching experience, where almost immediately, she was made principal of a small rural Minnesota high school. Returning to Minneapolis, she took up leadership of the Sunday School under leading fundamentalist pastor William Bell Riley. She built a girls ministry called Fidelis that reached over 500 in number. She turned her back on marriage. After almost ten years came the call to Hollywood Presbyterian Church.

She had a husky voice, weak eyes, and was described as “built like a fireplug.” She could be demanding. When she felt betrayed, she could be unforgiving. She liked the finer things, including fur collars. Migliazzo notes her weak record on issues of race. Yet when she began to speak in a class or convention, she commanded attention for the clarity of her teaching and passion for Christ. How else to account for her influence on the likes of Graham, Bright, and others?

Migliazzo’s outstanding biography not only helps us to take the measure of her life in full but also sets her in the larger framework of the emergence of evangelicalism from its fundamentalist roots. She played a vital role in that emergence, and “showed” the capabilities of women given over to Christ in a time when “telling” wasn’t possible.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Disruption of Evangelicalism

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the disruption of evangelicalism

The Disruption of Evangelicalism (History of Evangelicalism Series, Volume 4) Geoffrey R. Treloar. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2017.

Summary: Countering the existing narrative of evangelicalism at its zenith before World War I followed by a great reversal, this work argues a more positive assessment of evangelical response to the disruptions of war.

The fourth volume in the series of the History of Evangelicalism Series covers the years of 1900 to 1940. The standard narrative is of evangelicalism reaching a pinnacle of influence at the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference of 1910, followed by the challenges of the Great War (World War I), and sent reeling into retreat by the forces of modernism and the post war boom and depression, resulting in a bunker-mentality fundamentalism. Geoffrey R. Treloar argues for a more positive assessment of evangelicalism throughout this period while noting the challenges, external and internal that it faced during this time.

Treloar understands Bebbington’s four marks of evangelicalism in terms of intersecting axes. One axis is the biblicist-crucicentrist axis focused upon doctrine and more inward looking and the other axis the conversionist-activist experiential axis. Broadly speaking, the first period between 1900 and 1914 focused around the more outward looking conversionist-activist axis. Two figures exemplified this period–the revivalist Reuben A.  Torrey and the missionary statesmen and ecumenist John R. Mott, who presided over the 1910 Edinburgh Missions Conference with its watchword, “the evangelization of the world in this generation.” Scholars like A. S. Peake were engaging modern biblical criticism, although the first signs of a conservative approach concerned with doctrinal integrity was evident in the publication and distribution of The Fundamentals to pastors.

The second period was the Great War of 1914-1918. Evangelicals rallied to support the war effort of the Allied Powers and an ethic of laying down one’s life shaped the zeal of many who fought. And many did, while others returned, some stronger in faith, but others shattered by the horrors of trench warfare. Evangelicals struggled with the tension between supposed “Christian nations” who did not act very Christianly at Versailles. The revival expected during and after the war did not occur. While church attendance did not fall off, neither was there the vibrancy of the pre-war period.

This leads to the third discernible period in Treloar’s survey. He explores the tensions within the diverse evangelical movement, responding to modernism. On the one hand is a more liberal evangelicalism that attempts to hang on to its core of faith while engaging modernist ideas and social involvement. On the other, there is the rise of a fundamentalism concerned with doctrinal integrity and maintaining the priority of evangelism. Two figures Treloar focuses on here is Aimee Semple McPherson, representing the growing pentecostal movement and the uses of the new technology of radio, and Thomas Chatterton (T. C.) Hammond, whose work, first with the Church of Ireland as an evangelist and pastor, where he honed skills in articulating a winsome and theologically acute Christian faith, and later with the newly formed Inter-Varsity Fellowship and the Anglican Church in Australia. He was most know for a manual of doctrine, In Understanding Be Men, used to equip non-theological students with a knowledge of evangelical doctrine. Meanwhile J. Edwin Orr continued to study and mobilize believers to pursue revival in the church, and Australian Lionel Fletcher widely evangelized, seeing as many as 250,000 conversions in his extensive travels. By the 1930’s, a vibrant missions movement had also revived.

Treloar’s point is that while the war represented a definite disruption in the trajectory of evangelicalism, and an unraveling of the various strands of the movement, after a nadir period in the 1920’s, this very diversity resulted in a renewal of both axes–the doctrinal biblicist-crucicentrist, and the conversionist-activist.

I do think Treloar offers a more nuanced rendering of this history. Yet I believe he ignores the critique Mark Noll makes in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Noll notes that both the activist, and conservative theological commitments led to a disengagement with modernist scholarship, and a retreat from serious influence in the academic world. Apart from the theological rigor of the IVF in Great Britain and related institutions like Tyndale House, I would contend that this period represented a serious retreat and reversal in the market place of ideas, if not in other aspects, a retreat reversed only with the rise of the post-World War II evangelicalism of Carl Henry and his like.

As a side note, I was fascinated by Treloar’s focus on T. C. Hammond. His In Understanding Be Men was still in print in the mid-1970’s and was the theological handbook I studied in my early years on InterVarsity/USA staff. I was saddened to learn that Hammond was associated with a “White Australia Policy” as were many American churchmen in the 1920’s with “100 Percent Americanism.” Ideas of white supremacy and racism, sadly have a long history in evangelicalism.

Treloar does a great service in chronicling this period of evangelical history, often relegated to a kind of evangelical “dark ages” far less illustrious that the eras that preceded and followed. He helps us see that far more was going on in both theological and missiological formation in the evangelical movement than is often credited.

 

Review: The Kingdom of God Has No Borders

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The Kingdom of God Has No Borders

The Kingdom of God Has No Borders, Melani McAlister. New York: Oxford University Press, (forthcoming, August 1) 2018.

Summary: An exploration of the international dimension of American evangelicalism, focusing particularly on Africa and the Middle East, the impact this American movement has had globally, and in turn ways global evangelicalism is engaging American evangelicalism.

American evangelicalism has been the subject of much historical, sociological and political analysis. Nearly all of this has been focused within the borders of the United States. Melani McAlister studies this movement through a different lens–the mission efforts of the past fifty years that have led to an international engagement, particularly as growing indigenous movements have challenged American evangelical beliefs and practices. The work includes extensive archival research, on the ground observation, and carefully chosen photographs that enhance the text. The focus of the author is on efforts in the Middle East and Africa, consistent with the author’s research area as an associate professor of American Studies and International Affairs at George Washington University.

The scope of this study is the last fifty years, going back to the 1960’s. After an introduction, the first section of the book is concerned with “networks,” the linkages of various key organizations within evangelicalism (e.g. the National Association of Evangelicals, InterVarsity, the Southern Baptist Convention, and others) both with one another, at conferences and in mission efforts. The narrative begins with the efforts of evangelicalism to reconcile its concern for peoples of color with the racial struggle coming to the surface in the 1960’s, then moves on to the Congo Crisis and encounters with Marxist movements and the intersection of religious and political concerns–would Congo become another Vietnam. At the same time, Israel captured the American imagination in its victory in the 1967 war, leading to travel to biblical sites and increasing linkages between religious hopes and American foreign policy. This section concludes with the largest networking encounter of the period, Lausanne ’74 and the growing tension between missional advance and social justice concerns from delegates in the developing world who were asserting their own voices increasingly.

Part Two is organized around body politics. It begins with Richard Wurmbrand displaying the wounds from his tortures before the U.S. Congress. Much of this section concerns persecution of evangelicals abroad and the intersection with concerns for religious liberty at home. McAlister traces the engagement with South African apartheid and how U.S. evangelicals dealt with the treatment of blacks and the witness of black Christian leaders. She explores the rising awareness of the Muslim World and the 10/40 Window heuristic for the unreached and resistant areas of the Muslim World. The section concludes with African American evangelicals efforts to address the crisis in South Sudan, and the redemption of people taken into slavery, an engagement of the heart that fails to get to the heart of the political turmoil in this troubled part of the world.

This leads naturally into Part Three, titled “Emotions.” McAlister explores what she calls “enchanted internationalism” that motivates much of evangelical mission. She chronicles the “short term missions” movement and the motivation of so many who “have a heart” for the lost, but often do not truly engage the cultural realities of the places they go, often supplanting national workers who may be as, or more capable. McAlister tells the complicated story of American engagement around HIV/AIDS, and homosexuality in Africa, where African evangelicals take a much harsher line than Americans like Rick Warren, and resent what they see as American cultural imperialism asserting itself into African churches. Again, much of the focus is South Sudan, as she joins Dick Robinson from Elmbrook Church as he visits believers scattered through the country and joins a Global Urban Trek of InterVarsity students in Egypt working with South Sudanese refugees as they confront both the enchantment of close identification one student had with Muslim Egyptians, and the struggle of a black participant who feels the racism of Egyptians while identifying more closely with the South Sudanese. All confront the expectations on Americans, the complexities of political and social realities, and the challenge of trying to live authentic Christian lives in difficult circumstances.

As someone who lives inside the world McAlister is studying and works in one of the organizations she investigates, I wondered how she would treat us. She is honest at one point in identifying herself as secular (on an Elmbrook Church mission project, one of the few organizations that permitted her to participate in such projects), and I thought fairly represented the facts. This was neither tribute nor hatchet job. It represents both noble efforts and questionable outlooks. She explores how global realities intersect with the American expressions of evangelicalism–how can we care for people of color around the world while tolerating racism at home? How do we hold mission in the Muslim world together with an increasing animus toward Muslims at home? How concerned are we for the religious liberties of the other as we advocate for our own? Furthermore, will we truly regard those who are fellow evangelicals around the world as equals and allow them to speak into our religious and political life as Americans? What happens when grateful recipients become equal partners? What happens when American evangelicals are a minority in a growing global movement?

I was deeply impressed with the incarnational approach of McAlister, who makes the effort to get on the inside that enables readers to see what American evangelicalism in its global efforts might look like to an outsider. I often read accounts of evangelicalism that are unrecognizable. The challenging aspect of this book is how recognizable it is, a mirror held up to us that shows all our features—and flaws.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary advance review copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.