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This is inside baseball for people who are evangelical but horrified by the associations with white evangelicalism today. The range of essays is useful, and I appreciated the international focus on the people of color whose work was featured. There is an essay or two I will use in my church history class to illustrated the challenges within evangelicalism over the last 40 years.
As expected, this collection makes for an uneven read. Some of the essays are personal and heartfelt, while others are measured and matter-of-fact. There's some overlap (Bebbington's Quadrilateral, anyone?), but there are also strong divergences among the writers regarding what the actual issue is, what's at stake, and if there's a way forward. While time fails me to offer thoughts on each piece, I have a few stand-out comments. First, having just read Rah's book Prophetic Lament, I was struck b...
Interesting topic but was so so so bored. Maybe the reader was the problem? Ugh. Maybe I just dont care about politics.
If you are a self-proclaimed evangelical, or a believing Christian of any type, this book is guaranteed to encourage you, challenge you, frustrate you and puzzle you. Written a few years after the 2016 election, this collection of evangelical Christians leaders each take a turn sorting through what has happened to the church since the election. For a book that is so recent, there are places where it feels dated. The reaction to the election of President Trump is so immediate that there are bound...
Summary: Ten ethnically diverse evangelical "insiders" explore whether to still identify as "evangelical" and what that means in light of the 2016 election.Still evangelical? This is a question I've wrestled with and written on. What seems clear, and perhaps even more after reading this book, is that 2016 is a watershed moment in the evangelical movement in the U.S. The book brings together a collection of evangelical insiders, albeit not those in the news for their associations with the preside...
The question making the rounds – “Do you still consider yourself an evangelical?” – has theological, political, and cultural ramifications. This book collects essays from a dozen writers (if you count editor Mark Labberton's valuable introduction) to address that question. The list of authors includes plenty of names you should know (and probably more I should know if only I knew I should know them) from across the political spectrum, and each one makes a worthy contribution.Whether each thinker...
A solid, timely book formed by a wide range of perspectives. If you have been wrestling with what it means to be "evangelical" in America post 2016 (like I have), then you probably won't be shocked or surprised by anything you read in these essays. Rather, you may be assured you aren't alone, gently convicted, and reminded of some of the positive legacy of our tradition that hasn't gotten any airtime in the past two years.In my opinion, the stand-out contributions are from Karen Swallow Prior, A...
I was born and raised Catholic, and when I was in high school I chose to complete my initiation by receiving confirmation in the Catholic church. However, I also grew up alongside a community of Evangelical Christians, many of whom deeply influenced my formative years. I've come to see Evangelicalism as a sort of step-parent religion to my own Catholicism.While I disagree with much of the Evangelical theology I encountered over the years (particularly the kind that questions the Christian status...
Short Review: Still Evangelical is worth reading. Part of why it is worth reading is that it is well balanced and actually has as many women and minority authors as White males. And for this discussion that matters. I mentioned each of the chapters in my full review, but the best chapters is Allen Yeh's chapter, which while about more than just this, is about the importance of retaining the orthodoxy we have while adopting a greater focus on orthopraxy. Mark Galli's chapter was most frustrating
I am a graduate of the one of the largest evangelical seminaries (Fuller), having both the M.Div. and PhD. I value the education I received and the professors I studied with. The question is, do I consider myself an evangelical? I probably don't fit into the Evangelical box anymore, but it is part of me, like my Pentecostal and Anglican pieces. In recent years, especially in the aftermath of the Trump election, and the news that some 81% of self-described white evangelicals voted for him and lar...
This is a collection of essays by folks from a variety of (Christian) backgrounds asking whether the label "evangelical" has been hopelessly compromised by its association with the white male politicizing of the church that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. Answers take many forms. One says Luther called himself an evangelical and she stands by the Reformation, so she's still an evangelical. Others say that their experience of evangelicalism is very different from the one portrayed in
Kind of hard to write a review of this one since it is a collection of essays by different authors. On the whole, I LOVED it. There were some I was a little less wild about (I admit, it was hard for me to be open minded when reading an essay by the president of Focus on the Family, considering James Dobson’s recent “open letter” to Christians advising them to vote for Trump, dismissing his blatant racism as a mere issue of “tone, style, and like-ability.” Personally I felt like that was an odd c...
81% of evangelicals voted for Trump. This collection of essays is a cri de coeur from the other 19%. It probably shouldn’t be surprising that the political polarization that has beset the rest of the country can be seen within the evangelical church as well. I don’t agree with all of the ideas expressed here, but I guess that was the point of reading it in the first place. Just like each of the contributors, I think I’m right politically, and the other side is wrong. But we also agree that the m...
As someone who has been wrestling with my own Christian identity for some time now, I found this collection of essays helpful in exploring the various contours and perspectives on the nature of evangelicalism. The essay I enjoyed the most were by Lisa Sharon Harper, Mark Young, Robert Chao Romero, Soong-Chan Rah (whose chapter overlapped somewhat with his book length Prophetic Lament, written around the same time), Allen Yeh, Shane Claiborne, and Tom Lin.
I am the son of two immigrants, my father was Polish and my mother is Guatemalan. I grew up in small Latino churches. I am evangelical. I was on staff at an evangelical megachurch. I am a PhD student at a historically significant evangelical institution. I am also a registered Republican. It should go without saying that the entire Trump “event,” from his nomination to his presidency today, has been rather complicated for me. This is not least because so much of what his presidency has brought t...
Looking back to the past and around at the present, these authors reflect helpfully on what the label "evangelical" has meant, has come to mean, and might mean in the future. They also do a good bit of work in discussing a path forward and illuminating the hard work that evangelicals need to do if their movement is to be faithful to Jesus in the present and in the near future.
I found some of the essays more compelling then others, but the multi-vocal format was perfect for the topic. Hearing from both conservative and liberal writers--all of whom with good thoughts to share—felt like a good spiritual discipline in these times. The review of the history of Evangelicalism, and some of its characteristics by several authors really helped me. I hadn't thought before about the uniquely anti-authoritarian/anti-institutional bent of the Evangelical movement, which means the...
Challenging reading, hard to hear some of the perspectives of other ethnic voices. But also very interesting to learn history and context of evangelicals
Since this is a collection of essays, it's not a book that needs to be read from beginning to end. I would give 5 stars to many of them, 2 or 3 to a few others. There are enough 5 star essays, in my opinion, to make the book worth reading. It may also introduce you to some Black, ethnic and immigrant voices you might then be interested in hearing more of. This book may not help the reader decide whether to continue to identify as evangelical or whether to stay in the evangelical church. What it