Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials

In this erudite survey, Van Loon (Translating Your Past) takes a hard look at what’s worth keeping from the last 50-odd years of evangelicalism. Rooting her account in minister Phyllis Tickle’s notion that the church undergoes a “rummage sale” roughly every 500 years to excise “theological garbage,” Van Loon considers the merits and drawbacks of parachurch ministries (“specialist” Christian organizations that foster community in ways traditional churches sometimes can’t) and the prosperity gospel, which she contends is rooted in a “core yearning for security” that power-hungry preachers have twisted into a transactional, “Christian-ish” version of the American dream. Elsewhere, she suggests that revivalism, which exploded with the growth of Pentecostalism in the first half of the 20th century, taps into a genuine hunger for spiritual connection but has been enacted in “emotionally manipulative ways” that fail to deepen congregants’ faith. Van Loon’s analyses are sharp and her grasp on evangelical history impressive, though her central metaphor of downsizing—and her efforts to show how readers can apply this principle to their own faith—can feel like an afterthought. Still, as an exploration of the complex factors that formed 20th- and early 21st-century evangelicalism, this edifies. (Aug.)