WHY YOU CAN'T STAY SILENT: A Biblical Mandate to Shape Our Culture

Minnery, an employee of Colorado-based Focus on the Family, decries the decline of morality in American schools, media and laws, and calls Christians to do something about it by becoming politically active. He refutes arguments that Christians shouldn't get involved in "the world" and that the church's primary responsibility is evangelism rather than social activism. For ammunition he cites Christian reformers throughout history, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe (whom he patronizingly calls "One Mom Who Mattered"). While acknowledging that "righteousness is a very broad objective," Minnery suggests specific strategies for future activists, such as determining whether or not someone has useful experience with an issue—as do, for example, pro-life activists who have had abortions. His rhetoric sometimes overcomes his facts, as when he asserts that "students who want to meet on their own for an after-school Bible study often face bureaucratic delay" in approval for their gatherings. Since he provides no examples of this, and since such delays would verge on violating the Equal Access Act, this assertion comes across as hyperbole. Readers who agree with Minnery's unabashedly Republican beliefs will probably enjoy his call to arms and strategies for confronting the culture. Others might wonder why, given the centuries of activism in the Christian church, Minnery feels that such a battle cry is necessary, unless his goal is to revive the religious right's heyday of the 1980s. (Mar.)