The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World

Once upon a time, evangelicals knew what truth was and weren't afraid to proclaim it. Now, however, postmodern anxieties about exclusive truth claims, coupled with a market-driven mentality that threatens to remake the church in the image of its "customers," have diluted doctrinally serious old-school evangelicalism. So says Wells, a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, who comes out swinging in this jeremiad, replete with outraged exclamation points and rhetorical questions. Though he ridicules megachurches, celebrity pastors, therapy and the small-group movement, some of his harshest words are for those in the emerging church, which to him represents the worst kind of postmodern declension. Unfortunately, the book is far livelier when diagnosing the evangelical church's pervasive problems than in prescribing a solution, a lacuna that Wells acknowledges in a concluding chapter, but does little to correct. (Apr.)