Are You Brave Enough to be Protestant?

Just finished reading David Well's The Courage to be Protestant. This is his fifth book that more or less summarizes his four earlier works that address the relationship between the church and culture. This series began with the very influential No Place for Truth. David Wells is inarguably a sharp, serious thinker. Consequently, some of the book is lost on me. However, the fundamental argument he makes is that unless evangelical churches reclaim the robust doctrines of historical evangelical Protestantism and proclaim these truths explicitly, regularly, and unapologetically, then what is left of the evangelical church will continue to collapse.

He breaks "evangelical" churches down into three categories. I apostrophize evangelical because while these churches may claim to be evangelical (gospel-centered), their doctrine or lack thereof places them outside the bounds of true evangelical churches. The first category is the historical evangelical Protestant churches. These are the churches that quote the Reformers and their predecessors apporovingly and not in sentences that also include the words "misogynist," "narrow-minded," or "hate," as in "I hate that narrow-minded, misogynist Martin Luther." These churches uphold the solas of the Reformation and let God decide who the church is and how the church exists.

The second group is emergents. These "churches" desire so desperately to relate to the culture that they are willing to claim either ignorance of important doctrines or irrelevance. The point of the church for these folks is community. It doesn't really matter the content that they commune around.

The third group is the marketers. I don't want to name names here, but these are the large churches that survey this group and poll that group to determine what the culture likes and dislikes about a church and then builds a church based on that info. For Wells and any biblically-based Christian, letting the culture as opposed to the Bible dictate who the church is and how it lives is a serious error. He demonstrates that such churches dumb down, water down, and eventually tear down doctrine so that in the end, many of these churches are not very different from the world.

"Why are these trends happening?", Wells asks. He spends much of the book tracing the movement from the outside God to the inner self as the source of knowledge and purpose. America is quite spiritual, but not religious. That is, most Americans reject any form of authority other than themselves. Emergents and marketers have picked up on this (probably inadvertently because they are part of the same culture) and have run with it to the tune of booming numbers and exploding budgets.

Wells' anaylsis is thought-provoking and insightful. Any sort of review would fall far short of conveying the magnitude of his thoughtfulness. Yet, in the end Wells describes what fallen man does best: worships fallen man and rejects God's revelation. His book, however, concerns a shift in Western culture that encourages this turn inward, as if fallen man needed this encouragement. Sadly, our churches are now taking the bait, having failed to discern that culture is not neutral. In short, Wells' remedy is to think God's thoughts after him. Given the state of Western churches, this prescription is easier written than consumed.

So, take up some Wells and read. You might be surprised to find that he occasionally writes of yourself. Let us also pray that God would work by his Spirit and through his Word to strengthen his churches and guard us against this pervasive sin.