They just don’t make ‘em like they used to (in this case: covers to popular Christian books):
As wild as it initially appears, though, the cover becomes slightly more explicable when you read the first page of the book:
I think you can gather the gist of the book from surveying some of the graphics sprinkled throughout:
I appreciate the Petersonian note sounded in this one:
George Marsden, concluding a chapter on evangelicalism since 1930 (published in 1991):
One of the striking features of much of evangelicalism is its general disregard for the institutional church. Except at the congregational level, the organized church plays a relatively minor role in the movement. Even the local congregation, while extremely important for fellowship purposes, is often regarded as a convenience to the individual. Ultimately, individuals are sovereign and can join or leave churches as they please. Often they seem as likely to choose a church because it is “friendly” as to do so because of its particular teachings. Denominational loyalties, although still significant for substantial numbers of evangelicals, are incidental for many others, especially those with a transdenominational consciousness who have attempted to bring unity to the movement.
Given this situation, it is remarkable that American evangelicalism has the degree of coherence it does. Little seems to hold it together other than common traditions, a central one of which is the denial of the authority of traditions. Nonetheless, one can attend apparently unconnected evangelical churches at opposite ends of the country and, as likely as not, find nearly identical teachings on most subjects. Probably the principles of the mass market, which emphasize standardization and national campaigns, are primary forces that help maintain this considerable evangelical uniformity.
Whether such centripetal forces for coherence or some countervailing centrifugal forces will prevail is difficult to tell. Perhaps what has been happening over the past two decades is that the traditional transdenominational core has become subordinate to several parties (the charismatic, the conservative-nationalistic political, the progressive evangelical), and that these parties will soon be as distinct as were the mid-twentieth-century fundamentalist and modernist heirs to nineteenth-century evangelicalism. One cannot predict with assurance. Yet, given evangelicalism’s typically informal sense of the church, it is difficult to see how any single party could come to dominate and hold the larger movement together. Perhaps it will continue to develop in the form of sympathetic parallel manifestations of related traditions.
One other chief consequence of the lack of an institutional church base, and of the declining role of the traditional denominations, is that evangelicalism’s vaunted challenge to the secular culture becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. The movement depends on free enterprise and popular appeal. To some extent conservative churches grow because they promise certainty in times of uncertainty, in the name of the old-time gospel. Yet, with few institutional restraints on what message may legitimately be proclaimed, the laws of the market invite mixes of the gospel with various popular appeals. So the evangelical challenges to the secular “modern mind” are likely to be compromised by the innovative oversimplifications and concessions to the popular spirit of the age. Hence, as is so often the case in church history, the advance of the gospel is bound up with the advance of secularization within the church. Perhaps this conjunction is inevitable in a fallen world. The tares will grow with the wheat.
Loving one’s enemies leads disciples to the way of the cross and into communion with the crucified one. But the more the disciples are certain to have been forced onto this path, the greater the certainty that their love remains unconquered, that love overcomes the hatred of the enemy; for it is not their own love. It is solely the love of Jesus Christ, who went to the cross for his enemies and prayed on the cross for them. Faced with the way of the cross of Jesus Christ, however, the disciples themselves recognize that they were among the enemies of Jesus who have been conquered by his love. This love makes the disciples able to see, so that they can recognize an enemy as a sister or brother and behave toward that person as they would toward a sister or brother. Why? Because they live only from the love of him who behaved toward them as toward brothers and sisters, who accepted them when they were his enemies and brought them into communion with him as his neighbors. That is how love makes disciples able to see, so that they can see the enemies included in God’s love, that they can see the enemies under the cross of Jesus Christ. God did not ask me about good and evil, because before God even my good was godless. God’s love seeks the enemy who needs it, whom God considers to be worthy of it. In the enemy, God magnifies divine love. Disciples know that. They have participated in that love through Jesus.
George Marsden, summarizing how certain positive signs of “health” for American Protestants at the end of the nineteenth century tended to obscure the deeper realities of secularization at work in American life:
American Protestants in the late nineteenth century…faced a peculiar situation. Externally, they were successful. One could see that from the great stone edifices that were gracing the street corners of cities and towns. Internally, also, they could point to some real spiritual health. Millions of men, women, and young people were profiting from their ministry, growing spiritually, and dedicating their lives toward serving God and their fellows. Enthusiasm for foreign missions, for instance, had never been higher, and the motives for those who made arduous journeys to foreign lands were often self-sacrificial. Many others served their neighbors in quiet ways that were never recorded. And while in many public areas the impact of Protestant Christianity was receding, in countless private ways—especially in family life and the teaching of virtue and responsibility—the influences were strong and positive.
Nonetheless the success was deceptive. Behind it…lurked problems of immense magnitude: formidable intellectual challenges were eroding faith in the Bible, and massive migration to cities and immigration of non-Protestant people produced a secularism that removed much of the nation’s life from effective religious influence. The problems were huge, perhaps in human terms insurmountable. Yet the success itself had a tendency to obscure the dimensions of the crises. It also sometimes had the effect of inviting superficial solutions, such as working to preserve Protestant respectability but at the expense of a prophetic Protestant message that would challenge, rather than simply confirm, the value systems that were coming to control American life.
It amazes me how seamlessly Marsden’s analysis can be extended—with very little modification—to the present-day. The factors he mentions continue to be decisive contributors to this process: urbanization, higher education, science, economic life, and politics. And similar to that day, Protestants today can point to some “encouraging trends” to avoid reckoning with how thoroughly secular American culture has become, church attendance and all the rest notwithstanding. This is why James Davison Hunter says “our contemporary culture is a culture of nihilism without nihilists.” He continues,
Most Americans still believe in God, for example, even in 2024. Yet our public culture is overwhelmingly and insistently secular in character. The same holds true for nihilism. Despite the intentions or motivations of individual actors, and despite the idealistic mantras our politicians and pundits chant to their children (and themselves) before they go to bed, nihilism is the operative reality of contemporary public life.
It would seem that the roots of our nihilistic culture run much deeper than many of us might realize (or care to admit). Further, to acknowledge this is not to deny the pervasive influence of Protestant Christianity on American culture, but rather to recognize the complex relationship that has existed between these forces for quite some time.
Currently reading: Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George Marsden 📚
Kristyn is in New York for a few days with her mom and sister; they’re enjoying NYC at Christmas time. Lily, Bella, and I are trying to make the most of things while she’s gone. Yesterday, we had a blast ice skating at the Long Center with their grandpa (“Poppa” is what they call him).
Finished reading: The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero 📚
A little repetitive, but overall a very useful book. Lots of wisdom about tending to your inner life (facing your shadow, leading out of your marriage, slowing down for loving union, practicing Sabbath delight) and how that transforms your outer life (planning and decision making, culture and team building, power and wise boundaries, endings and new beginnings).
Writing in Mockingbird, Simeon Zahl surveys competing “theories of change” in Christian ministry and offers his pitch for an “Augustinian” approach. As he explains at the outset,
Every ministry makes basic theological assumptions about human nature and about how God works in people’s lives. In more theological terms, you could say that every form of ministry has an implicit theological anthropology and an implicit theology of grace. These assumptions are not always conscious or clearly articulated, but they have huge effects on pastoral practice — and on Christian experience.
He looks at the implicit anthropologies of a “sacramental participation” approach to ministry and a “Christian information” approach. (I trust you can envision the broad contours of these approaches.) While acknowledging that these various approaches are not mutually exclusive, Zahl argues that typically a person has a primary theory of change that informs their overall approach to ministry.
In the second half of the essay, Zahl outlines his Augustinian approach, which (obviously following Augustine) gives priority to the heart and its desires as the key to change. He lists three theological assumptions of this approach:
First, as I’ve already said, human beings are driven not by knowledge or will but by desire. We are creatures of the heart, creatures of love.
Second, the human heart is very hard to change. It strongly resists direct efforts to change it. The truth of this point is easy to demonstrate. Have you ever tried to change someone’s mind about politics through rational argument? Have you ever tried to talk someone out of loving the person they have fallen in love with? I rest my case.
Third, human beings are wired in such a way that judgment kills love. When we feel judged, we hide our love away, we put up our walls, we resist. If your theory of change depends in any way on the idea that telling someone what is wrong with them will lead to them changing what is wrong with them, you will be sorely ineffective. Augustine says it beautifully in his treatise On the Spirit and the Letter: “[The law] commands, after all, rather than helps; it teaches us that there is a disease without healing it. In fact, it increases what it does not heal so that we seek the medicine of grace with greater attention and care.”
He then provides four implications that this theory of change—this Augustinian approach—has for ministry practice:
First, it means that the heart of Christian ministry is the facilitation of an emotional encounter with the God revealed in Jesus. I say this without condition or reservation. If you are not successfully engaging with people’s feelings and desires, with their anxieties, their loves, and their pain, then you are just playing a game with Christian words; you are not doing ministry. The intransigence of the human heart is the fundamental problem of Christian ministry. The Spirit of God traffics in emotion and desire. […]
Second, the Augustinian approach assumes that effective ministry always must deal with the fact of human resistance to judgment and law. It means that you won’t end a sermon or a church service with a moral exhortation or a set of behavioral guidelines. And it means that you are likely to deploy the great preaching paradigm, the distinction between the law and the gospel. Law-Gospel preaching is one of the most powerful technologies of the heart that we have available to us as Christians.
Third, if the Augustinian approach is true, it means that certain other approaches are not going to work very well. If you think you can change people by preaching sermons whose purpose is just extracting practical advice for Christian living from Scripture, you are not going to make much of a dent in that brick wall, I assure you.
This perspective is also important for thinking about spiritual practices. Yes, habitual prayer, service, contemplation, justice work, and Bible reading can have powerful shaping effects on people, including on their emotional experience. But — and this is an important but — the Augustinian perspective tells us that we can do all this only once our hearts have already changed enough that we desire to engage in the practice. No one will develop a transformative and durable new practice of prayer unless they fundamentally want to and want to enough to carry them through life’s inevitable obstacles. As Jesus told us, you must change the tree first, then the right fruit will follow (Mt 12:33-35). Focus on the heart, and the practices will follow; focus on the practices alone, and we’re back to the brick wall.
Finally, an Augustinian theory of change means that technologies of the heart are important in ministry. Novels, stories, movies, illustrations — these are powerful technologies of the heart, much more powerful than mere words and ideas. The reason we love stories, the reason we love art and music, and the reason such things can be so transformative when we draw on them in ministry, is that they know how to speak the strange electric language of the heart.
The whole piece is absolute gold. The first implication in particular (“the heart of Christian ministry is the facilitation of an emotional encounter with the God revealed in Jesus”) rings truer with each passing year. Most ministers probably can only learn this lesson the hard way (i.e., on the far end of much ineffective experience). But for those who never learn it: How do you keep at it? I genuinely wonder…
