This then raises a further problem: if the cause of the transformation of Christian life and practice is not consumerism but the whole capitalist dynamic of our society, then the answer David gives—a return to what we might call traditional, confessional Protestantism—starts to look less promising, or at least more complicated.

Introduction

For nearly two decades, David Wells, the Andrew Mutch Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has been subjecting American church life, particularly white, evangelical church life, to rigorous, if not merciless, scrutiny. In four deep tomes he has argued that, for all of the superficial signs of health among American evangelical churches—crudely considered, their impressive size, financial resources, and political influence, compared to the lack of these for evangelicals elsewhere in the world—there is a deep, dark sickness at the heart of the American evangelical church which indicates a deep spiritual crisis which is even now bearing evil fruit.[1]

The books are an interesting tetralogy, bound together not only by a pervasive tone of pessimism but also by common enemies (American pragmatism, the mega-church) and by a common solution (classic Protestant orthodoxy and church life).

Now, Wells has summed up and extended his critique in a single volume, The Courage to be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).[2] I say “extended” because, in addition to providing an excellent summary of the argument of earlier volumes, he now includes some critique of the recently arrived “emergent/ing” churches in his critique.

His thesis (with which I am in basic agreement) is that, broadly speaking, these represent the latest example of American secular values expressed in a Christian idiom. As mega-churches represented the greed and big-is-best mentality of the eighties, so the emergents represent, among other things, the consumerist pick-and-choose mentality regarding truth, the past, etc.

In this essay, I want, first of all, to offer a summary of David’s basic arguments, and then to lay out some lines of reflection and critique. The latter should not be taken as any sign of disagreement with the fundamentals of his case or his scholarship: I am in essential agreement with the first and somewhat in awe of the latter.

Nevertheless, I believe that it is possible his books will be read by some in the Protestant orthodox community as a confirmation of their (our) essential correctness; and I want to argue that, in fact, many of his criticisms apply as painfully to those who pay lip-service to all that David holds dear. We confessional types are no more immune to the wider cultural waters in which we swim than the mega-church people and the emergents.

The Argument of The Courage to be Protestant

David’s book is divided into seven chapters. In the first, “The Lay of the Evangelical Land,” he outlines the three basic types of Christian with whom he is going to engage: classic evangelicals; marketers; and emergents. All three come in for relevant criticism.

Not surprisingly, David criticizes the marketers and the emergents most vigorously. The former is an attempt to repackage classic evangelicalism in a way that is appealing and entertaining. Their strategies are rooted in polls, focus groups, and giving the people what they want, and they inevitably abandon the hard things—the doctrines, the imperatives—to make Christianity more palatable.[3]

The latter are virtually impossible to define in terms of doctrine, so broad is the collection of beliefs they represent. They see the essence of Christianity more in terms of what I would call aesthetic qualities—as seen, for example, in their preference for the language of “conversations” and “openness.” The idea is to be on an exciting journey, but never actually to arrive.[4]

As for classic evangelicalism, David correctly identifies two weaknesses in the movement, particularly as it developed in post-World War II America: its increasing doctrinal minimalism, a requirement of its basic existence as a coalition movement; and its marginalizing of the church in favor of parachurch entities, a factor closely connected to the first weakness.[5]

Much of the remainder of the book is a detailed dissection of these three movements in terms of the salient lines of critique laid out in the first chapter. It is probably a fair assumption that most readers of Ordained Servant will find themselves in deep sympathy with most or all of what he has to say. He attacks mega-churches for what we might describe as the triumph of marketing techniques, a means of growing, and of seeing growth, in primarily numeric terms.

Underlying this, of course, is what we might call a Pelagian view of human nature—though it is worth remembering that Pelagianism in the early church was a movement rooted in strict self-denial, and was originally a protest against what it saw as the potential moral laxity of Augustine’s teachings. In essence, it was a countercultural movement. Mega-church Pelagianism today is, ironically, not a cultural protest movement but an expression of the dominant free market culture through a vaguely Christian idiom. In other words, it just goes with the flow.

When it comes to emergents, David (correctly, in my view) sees the connection between these and the mega-church advocates as lying in the impact of modernity, particularly in its consumerist aspects, on their respective agendas. While mega-churches see Christianity as a commodity to be marketed, so emergents see Christians as eclectic consumers who can pick and choose those bits of truth, tradition, etc., that they like. Interestingly enough, David heads up the chapter entitled “Truth” with a quotation from Marx’s Communist Manifesto, “All that is solid melts into the air, all that is holy is profaned.” This was written, of course, in the heat of the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, but yet is a remarkably prescient description of the impact of consumerism—or, perhaps better, capitalism—on the values and ideological structures of society.

While David’s own analysis might well be regarded as very conservative in many respects, harking back to an earlier, better age, it has potent similarities with the neo-Marxist critique of postmodernism offered by writers such as Perry Anderson, Frederic Jameson, and, especially, Terry Eagleton. These writers have argued that much of postmodern relativism is a function of the underlying consumerist culture in which we now live. Truth has become, if you like, a product; and one buys that which one likes and leaves on the shelf that which one finds less attractive.

Along the way, David offers some healthy debunking of much of the philosophy of language that undergirds, or at least provides the pretext for, the rejection of traditional notions of truth and that has been rather naively absorbed by the vanguard of the emergent movement as basic. This verbiage, which marks so much postmodern theory, is, as Mark Thompson has elsewhere argued, predicated on the fundamentally unbiblical premise that language is essentially opaque, obscure, elusive, and manipulative. On the contrary, while human beings can and do use language to be opaque, obscure, elusive, and manipulative, that is a problem of sinfulness, not something which is inherent in language itself.

Herein, one might say, is one of the problems with emergentism: not that it is too critical of the culture, but that it is not critical enough. Postmodern philosophy tells us this about language (in an apparently clear and non-manipulative manner!) so it must be true, and all that the Bible and church have ever opined on this issue must be set under this critical axiom.[6] It reminds me of a recent encounter with someone who claimed my classes at Westminster had taught him how to be critical of culture; yet, when this same person heard a presenter on National Public Radio make a claim about Westminster, his first instinct was to believe the presenter and attack the seminary for incompetence. Criticism which only ever critiques the tradition is no real criticism at all; rather, it is merely an idiom for cultural compliance.

One of the frustrations that some have voiced about David’s work over the years is that its all sounds like so much bad news; what about positive proposals? Well, in this volume David does offer a positive vision. Theologically, he argues for a message built around the five solas of the Reformation, emphasizing Gods’ holiness and sovereignty, the uniqueness of Christ’s person and work, and justification by grace through faith. Practically, his vision is built around the three marks of the church as articulated in later Reformed confessional documents such as the Westminster Standards: the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments, and discipline.

Critical Reflections

One of David’s strong points is that, though primarily a systematic theologian, he is too good a historian to indulge in some of the ahistorical doctrinal abstractions which too often afflict the discipline. He knows that beliefs, behavior, and social and economic conditions are intimately connected. That is what makes his analysis so satisfying: it is not just that he offers some version of the “the church is in a bad way because of sin” argument. Such an argument, undoubtedly and indisputably true as it is, of course, is by itself of but very limited usefulness, somewhat akin to saying that the Twin Towers collapsed on 9/11 because of gravity.

Universal causes only take us so far in understanding the nature of particular actions and events. Thus, everything happens because of providence; and bad things happen because of sin. So much for the general rules; a more useful and probing question is how and why did this bad thing happen at this particular juncture of time in this particular place and in this specific way?

Answering that question is the task of the historian or the cultural analyst, and that kind of question yields far more useful results. Thus, David not only tells us what we know—that the church is in trouble because of sin; he also provides contextual specifics that allow us to gain greater insight into the specific manifestations and ramifications of particular sinful phenomena in the contemporary church world.

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