TheBolgBlog

Evangelicalism: An Americanized Christianity -- Book Review

Here is a book review I recently completed...Some of the details: Evangelicalism: An Americanized Christianity. By Richard Kyle.  New Brunswick, N.J.:  Transaction Books, 2006. Pp. xiv, 337. $34.95.

Richard Kyle is professor of history and religion at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas. He received theological training at both Baptist and Presbyterian divinity schools. His church membership has been a part of the Mennonite Brethren.

Kyle writes a brief history of popular evangelicalism in the United States, giving two chapters to 18th and 19th century evangelicalism. His main focus, however, is Twentieth-century evangelicalism, writing two chapters dealing with the first half of the century, and three chapters on the second half. 

Kyle’s evaluation of popular American evangelicalism is, with rare exception, entirely negative. “There is only a fine line between being relevant to its surrounding culture and being absorbed by that culture. American evangelicalism has stepped over this line (2).” Much of Kyle’s critique regards the accommodation of evangelical faith to popular culture. He laments the loss of expository sermons, four-part harmony choirs, the organ, and the pastor as shepherd. He decries the use of guitars and drums, personal stories on relevant topics, and big screen monitors in worship. He praises high culture, with its focus on objectivity, the timeless, and the transcendent, and he decries popular culture as trivial, new, and spectacular.

Any missiologist will benefit from Kyle’s close look at the relation between church and culture in America.  However, Kyle sees the relation of church and culture as a zero-sum game – more of one equals less of another – they are always at odds. From Andrew Walls, we know that one cannot have too much of either gospel or culture – just too little. Rather than abandon popular culture and embrace high culture as Kyle prefers, what American evangelicalism needs is more gospel.

Fuller Seminary and Emerging Churches

This last spring, I had the opportunity to speak at the Association of Theological Schools “SPAN” conference for administrators. They asked me to speak about the changes in the American/British church scene that I wrote about in the book “Emerging Churches”, a book I co-wrote with Fuller professor Eddie Gibbs.

My talk addressed the need for seminaries to be transformed if they are to continue to serve the needs of churches in the Twenty-first century. As I spoke, I realized that Fuller has already made many of these changes and is well suited to partner with emerging churches in the future.

For me, the conversation on the emerging church and Fuller started in a little conference room located in Glasser Hall, one of the older converted homes on the Fuller campus, back in thee mid-nineties. About five to ten of us would have a “brown-bag” lunch weekly. Some were Masters students, such as myself, and Barry Taylor, some were doctoral students, and some were professors: Wilbert Shenk and Eddie Gibbs. The conversation always strayed to conversations about how the church must adapt in the coming few years.

Wilbert Shenk, the instigator of the meeting, suggested the subversive idea, brought over from England and Lesslie Newbigin in the early nineties, that the West functioned as a mission field: that the church ought to see its surrounding cultures in the same way as good missionaries do. Eddie Gibbs brought his deep understanding of everyday church life to the meetings; Eddie had recently penned “In Name Only”, the classic text on nominality, and was working on a subsequent book, “Churchnext”.