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A Lover’s Quarrel
“MY NAME IS WARREN, AND I’M A RECOVERING EVANGELICAL.”
Y
There are plenty of critics and blowhards who lob rhetorical
bombs from a safe distance. But Warren Cole Smith has
CM
ISBN 978-1-60657-028-9
www.authenticbooks.com
Warren Cole Smith
Both thoughtful and courageous.
Dinesh D’Souza
Best-selling author, What’s So Great About Christianity
Luder Whitlock
President emeritus, Reformed Theological Seminary
Marion Montgomery
Author of more than two dozen works of criticism, fiction, and poetry
Alan R. Crippen, II
President, John Jay Institute
This is an important book for a crucial moment in our
history as Christians in the United States. Besides
being richly biblical in its analysis of contemporary
evangelicalism, this book is written by a veteran
journalist with hard-hitting and inescapable data to
support his conclusions. I highly recommend this book.
William Lobdell
Former religion editor, The Los Angeles Times
Author, Losing My Religion
Pat Terry
Contemporary Christian music pioneer
Warren Cole Smith, like a good tour guide, points out
the sights and sounds of a troubled evangelicalism in
ways that will make you want to get off the bus and look
around. His keen and ironic sense of history makes
points of interest take on a life of their own. For those
concerned about evangelicalism, Smith’s tour becomes
one more reason to seek change. For those who didn’t
know evangelicalism was in trouble, his insights will be
an important wake-up call. It’s one of the most poignant
and clearly written histories of evangelicalism and its
connections that has been written in quite a while.
Steve Rabey
Writer and editor, Youthworker Journal
In his powerful, judicious, and constructive critique of
evangelical churches, parachurch organizations, media,
and culture, Warren Cole Smith demonstrates that many
evangelicals have become addicted to size, speed, and
power and have abandoned a biblical perspective of
creation, history, and mission. Determined not simply
to point out problems, but to help evangelicals regain
a biblical focus and fulfill the evangelistic and cultural
mandates more effectively, he provides positive
examples of what some organizations and congregations
are doing to further these aims.
Steve Maye
President, Lead With Character
Trustee, Erskine College
Authentic Publishing
We welcome your questions and comments.
11 10 09 / 6 5 4 3 2 1
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible,
New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International
Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
A catalog record for this book is available through the Library of Congress.
Acknowledgments xv
Foreword xix
To Build Up, Not to Tear Down
Introduction 1
My Name Is Warren, and I’m a Recovering Evangelical
Chapter 1 15
The Evangelical Myth
Chapter 2 43
The New Provincialism
Chapter 3 63
The Triumph of Sentimentality
Chapter 4 95
The Christian-Industrial Complex
Chapter 5 125
Body-Count Evangelism
Chapter 6 153
The Great Stereopticon
Chapter 7 183
Christianity’s Next Small Thing
Chapter 8 205
True Religion
Epilogue 227
Notes 231
Index 251
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
xv
A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
xvi
Acknowledgments
xvii
A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
xviii
FOREWORD
To Build Up,
Not to Tear Down
xix
A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
xx
INTRODUCTION
My Name Is Warren,
and I’m a Recovering
Evangelical
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A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
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A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
this and a lot more. The data my life experience was gathering
pointed to a troubling conclusion: the men and women I knew
who were still growing in faith twenty years after they were first
planted in this garden had, almost to a person, transplanted
themselves outside of the evangelical milieu in some significant
way.
Indeed, one of the more interesting of many religious
movements taking place in this country today is the quiet move-
ment of many evangelical leaders—Frank Schaeffer is by no
means the only one—away from evangelical churches to more
historical and liturgical expressions of faith. Billy Graham was
a founder of Christianity Today magazine, but today many of
its editors and contributors are Anglican or Orthodox. Some of
those on the staff of Chuck Colson’s organization are Anglican
or Roman Catholic.
My question, quite simply, is, Why? What is it about evan-
gelical theology or evangelical practice that is both so appealing
and so troubling? I could not deny that I had seen much good
come out of parachurch ministries and evangelical churches, so
I was not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But
it was clear that I was less and less comfortable calling myself
an evangelical if what I was seeing was what that word meant.
I began, you might say, to develop a lover’s quarrel with the
evangelical church and evangelical theology and practice.
My quest to resolve that conflict took me, among other places,
to the little mountain town of Weaverville, North Carolina.
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CHAPTER 1
The Evangelical
Myth
The problem with the modern American church is that it is far too “modern
American” and not nearly enough “church.”
—STANLEY HAUERWAS
T his book is a partial telling of the story of how and why the
American evangelical church became the richest, most powerful
religious movement in history, while the country in which this
movement took place—the United States—sank ever deeper
into moral and spiritual confusion. It is also the story of the
relationship between the two, of how, in fact, the rise of the
modern evangelical church may actually have caused the confu-
sion we now lament.
But this book, this journey into and through the evangelical
church, might also give us ways out of that confusion. Perhaps,
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A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
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The Evangelical Myth
That’s the myth. And like all myths, there is truth in it. But
also like all myths, it is more of a hope than a history. And the
more the hope diverges from the history, the more the myth
becomes a fiction.
It is my argument that the evangelical myth is not yet a
complete fiction, but it is nearly so. And here are just a few his-
torical facts that suggest the vitality of the evangelical myth and
that—sometimes paradoxically—point toward its destruction:
• In 2004 the values voter was credited with giving
George W. Bush the margin of victory he needed
for the presidency. This election was just the most
dramatic of several in the past twenty-five years in
which the religious voter was considered vital.
• According to the Hartford Institute for Religion
Research, the number of Protestant megachurches in
the United States (churches with more than 2,000
regular attenders) was less than a dozen in 1970, but
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A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Myth of
Evangelical Political Power
Labor Day, in election years, is supposed to be the begin-
ning of the campaign season. But in the nonstop campaign cycle
that federal elections have become, Labor Day is more accurately
the beginning of the final stretch of the political season. After
Labor Day is when most of the money gets spent and most of
the public activity takes place. It’s when most of the campaigns
go into high gear.
But it’s possible that by Labor Day 2004 the presidential
race was already over, though no one knew it then. It is also
possible, given the repudiation of Republicans in the 2006 and
2008 elections, that this weekend may end up becoming the
high-water mark for the impact of American evangelicalism on
the political process—or at least on the Republican Party.
Just a few days earlier, Christian music star Michael W. Smith
had played a prominent role as a performer at the Republican
National Convention in New York City. Indeed, one of his songs
was played just as George W. Bush came out to deliver his ac-
ceptance speech, which was the climax of the convention. In the
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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The Evangelical Myth
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A Lover’s Quarrel with the Evangelical Church
The chapters that follow provide new names for what we see
if we look into that mirror—if we have the courage to look into
it with fresh eyes.
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