Customer Reviews

Fit Bodies Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't Think and What to Do About It (Hourglass Books)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed this book greatly. Guiness encourages us not to "bow down" to the unintellectual age which has hindered Christian scholasticism. He does this in two parts. The first part of the book explains how the American religious consciousness has moved away from knowledge and even claims to be the enemy of knowledge. The second part of the book describes the current postmodern situation in America in which even nonreligious people are anti-intellectual, and how the church is simply becoming one with the secular world. The power of this book is that Guiness reminds us that we as Christians are to "love the Lord with all our mind" as well. The one critique (and therefore the loss of a star) is that Guiness does not investigate the postmodern philosophy of religion movement, which is returning to an academic approach to religious thinking, especially the writings of John D. Caputo and Merold Westphal. Of course, Guiness is not a philosopher, so he should not have to be accountable on philosophical terms. However, by ignoring the theistic postmoderns he has given an improper picture of religion in the postmodern world. However, as an overall book, it is a must read for all religious thinkers and religious nonthinkers alike. He will make you think about how you think about religion.

In this book, Dr. Guiness sets out to show the decline of the Christian mind in America in the past 200 years. He also reflects on the importance of the decline of Christian thought in American evangelicalism and its impact on Christian effectiveness in society.

Guiness sketches eight different ways in which the "high point" of the Puritan Christian mind has declined; Polarization, Pietism, Primitivism, Populism, Pluralism, Pragmatism, Philistinism and Premillenialism.

While I would generally agree with much of his analysis here, I wondered how Arminianism (in contrast to Calvinism) has contributed to the decline. It was a very interesting idea; the Arminian-Calvinist issue is one I'm currently exploring in my own study. His section on eschatology (the doctrine of last things; Christ's return, Rapture etc..) was also strange; eschatology is not a field that I have studied. I would agree that an excessive preoccupation with "end-times" can distract Christians from acting in the present (which seems to be his point) but otherwise I don't really see the significance of this point. One idea that came up several times in this section is the degradation of belief, theology and doctrine; a shift that has severely affected American evangelicalism. One of the memorable quotes in the Pluralism chapter from G.K. Chesterton, "Tolerance is the virtue of those who don't believe anything." Chesterton and Guiness were no doubt referring to the philosophical position of tolerance (i.e. regarding all propositions as true) rather than the idea of simply peacefully co-existing. This is personified in such quotes from Billy Sunday as, "I do not know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit knew about pin-pong."

However, each chapter is very short (4-6 pages) and I would have appreciated more documentation and evidence of what he was trying to show. To me, it seems that these small chapters could have quite comfortably been enlarged to 25-30 pages. His next section is about various secular influences on Christian thought (esp. the media, television and advertising). Again, his analysis seems too brief. His discussion of the contemporary image-centered culture versus the Christian word-centered (see John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word.."). I think this contrast was very insightful and it is a reminder that the means or medium, which is used to communicate, also says something (e.g. short, shallow, emotional commercials valued over slow, deep, thoughtful and propositional debate). Or as Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message."

Guiness' last section discusses what it means to, "think Christianly" and what steps can be taken to recover evangelical preeminence in American culture.

In sum, I would have appreciated this book to be double its actual length. I had the feel that ideas were being mentioned in an almost passing manner and that much more could have been said.

Reading this book is part of a deliberate effort to study the relationship of reason to the Christian faith. The current subtopic is why evangelicals seem to be so anti-intellectual, this book follows: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind , and Love Your God with All Your Mind . There are two more in the TBR pile as well: Habits of the Mind by James Sire and The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship by George Marsden, so i am looking for more books with the same common theme, email me your favorites please.

I usually read for an hour or so each morning over coffee at a local fast food joint, i find if i don't get out of the house at this time, that i don't get out of the house at all. I was lamenting the slowness of my reading to a person i have gotten acquainted with while sitting in my favorite booth there. He told me my problem was that i am trying to reading books that are too long, i suspect he isn't much of a reader, but his point is well taken. So this very short, 150 pages book is my attempt to take his advice to heart. The trouble is that this book is not an easy read, not because it's topic is complex but because of its structure, i started the book and put it aside several times because it seems too disjointed and choppy. It wasn't until chapter 10 on advertising that i realized that the book's structure is deliberate and made to mirror the criticism he makes of the shallowness of Christian intellects, i know i am slow, but i eventually got it.

The average chapter is about 5 pages long, the book reads like a series of slogans strung out together on a clothes line, with cuteness in phrasing common. There is little complexity of thought with points then defense and analysis but rather a structure that mentally looks like an outline. I thought at first that it was a collection of essays written for serialization in a periodical hence the short, concise chapter length, but with the embedded advertisements in chapter 10, it became clear that the form was part of his message. Literally the book is written to those he is critical of, those majority of Christians that prefer TV to books, who desire style rather than substance, who are critical of the pastor if the sermon has more than 3 main points or goes over the allotted 30 minutes(45 in Reformed churches, we are just a little more intellectual). So he wrote the book in 3 sections, each with 8 points, none of the points with more than 2 levels of depth, chapters able to be read in 15 minutes or less (except the last, "Let My People Think", his prescription which is 21 pages long, an average sermon). Now this makes a cute point, but is really hard on a reader, who naturally expects a book not a collection of sermons, unless labelled and advertised as such. The cuteness is mnemonic, meant to be ear-some, witsome, memorable with turns of phrase to stick in the mind and become the central take home point to remain available in the reader to dredge up when he thinks about the topics covered.

Fit Bodies, Fat Minds
Introduction: A Scandal and a Sin
...."the greatest danger besetting American Evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind as to its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough" Charles Malik (pg 11)
...."Without a genuinely critical position resting on Christain foundations and directed by a coherent theological vision that can deal with modern science and technology and the reality of foreign cultures, it is very likely that the evangelical voice in politics today will once again confuse the Christian faith with the American flag." John Schaar (pg 13)
....Not surprisingly the disarray and frustration is deepest among evangelicals who think--whether those who do so for a living such as academics, or those who do so for the love of it, such as artists.",/i> (pg 15)

Part One: A Ghost Mind
...."But the real damage to evangelicals was self-inflicted...The true story of the evangelical mind in retreat is the story of the surrender, not the stealing of America."

1. Polarization
2. Pietism
3. Primitivism
4. Populism
5. Pluralism
6. Pragmatism
7. Philistinism
8. Premillenialism

Part Two: An Idiot Culture
....What follows, then, is an outline of some of the pressures shaping the Christian mind in America at the popular level. ... But the following list throws light on the source and style of modern pressures that make our thinking more like the 'idiot culture' around us than the mind of Christ within us." (pg 75)

9 Amusing Ourselves to Death
10 People Of Plenty
11 All Consuming Images
12 The Humiliation of the Word
13 Cannibals of PoMo
14 Tabloid Truth
15 Generation Hex
16 Real, Reel, or Virtually Real?

Part Three: Let My People Think
...."This is the incurable suspicion of thinking born of the distorted notion that, because divine wisdom is folly to human minds, Christian thinking is a contradiction in terms and itis therefore better to be irrational." (pg 137)

Os Guinness is probably my favorite contemporary author and cultural critic with such outstanding works as The Call, The American Hour, The Great Experiment, Prophetic Untimeliness and The Long Journey Home just to name a few. But Fit Bodies, Fat Minds is an excellent beginning for the simple fact that today's youth are the primary audience for this book.

Guinness argues that Christians have a responsibility to use and develop their minds as part of their walk with the Lord. As he examines our current cultural chaos, Guinness points out eight hurdles to developing a "Christian mind" - all eight begin with the letter "p" obviously indicating that Guinness is attempting to relate to Baptist readers! Guinness presents the claim that the wave of anti-intellectualism that swept across this country following the Civil War has had damaging effects on the relevancy of the gospel to our culture and that efforts to reclaim the Christian mind are critically important to reclaiming our culture for Christ.

Of course, Guinness points out, that reclaiming our culture for Christ won't be easy - we must first reclaim the importance of the word taken captive by our image-obsessed society. It will take study - reading in particular - for the development of the Christian mind. Guinness quotes Oswald Chambers who wrote, "God will not make me think like Jesus, I have to do it myself; I have to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

If you are interested in bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, or if you've ever wondered why reading and your studies as a student are important to your Christian walk, you need to read Fit Bodies, Fat Minds. Tipping the scales at only 152 pages, this book is perfect suited to begin exercising your brain and building your intellectual prowess to match your muscular physique.

As an evangelical pastor, I agree with the author's theme that many believers hold the mind in contempt; people want to feel, not think. Yet the emphasis of Scripture is that lives are transformed as minds are renewed (Rom.12:2).
The evangelical world is in trouble: we have a higher divorce rate and a higher bankruptcy rate than society at large. Few will address this problem seriously because few will acknowledge that there really is a problem--at least a serious one.
Guiness has hit the nail on the head. Our churches are dumbed-down and we have a long history of contempt for thinking. This book is a must for all who recognize that all is not well within evangelicalism.
There are times the author is unfair, as, for example, in his chapter about premillennialists. When many amillennial seminaries were denying the faith, it was the premillennial movement that became the bastion for solid doctrine. Among the non-feeling oriented premillennialists, doctrine and truth are often quite valued.
Despite some pet aggravations the author mishandles, this book is a MUST and should serve as a blueprint for changing course into a better direction. We must no longer applaud ignorance and view thinking as "heartless." Read this book!!!

Good book that shows how temporal distractions can distract us from those eternal things that should be our focus. It is a quick read, broken down into short chapters. In perhaps one of the most convincing proofs for the necessity of the book, I actually found it in the "diet & exercise" section of my local Christian bookstore.

Os Guinness, Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum and one of the few conservative popular Western Angelicans, book is a good little primer on Western scosiety's, especially American society's in general and Evangelicals in particular, lack of interest in intellectual matters and almost complete ingorance of where many of current evangelical ideals have srung from.

Religion he asserts was once the road to knowledge in America. He quickly shows the two phases of ideas that helped shaped American's anti-intellectual (1700-Civil War and Civil War to the present). Of course, most who read the book will be more familar with the more contempory arguements.

The book is an easy read but does suffer from being to short. The chapters are not very long and the arguements are not quite laid out well enough. Although I agree with him, I think he should ahve written a more detialed book; however, I may be wrong in assuming too much. It may be that he was just writing a quick primer for a culture knee deep in intellectual mediocrity, and anything else may loose their attention.

This is an important book but we must realize that it is written for a popular audience. Thus, what we essentially have is 152 pages of Os Guinness' conclussions not 550 pages of his conclussions and a through discussion for the reasoning behind them. There are times when I was not fully convinced by some of his arguements and I believe a large part of that is due to the abbreviated format.

That said he in general makes excellent conclussions and gives and accessible outline for the current state of evangelical thought. I believe the greatest point of this book is the reminder that not thinking... not loving God with all of our mind is sin. This is hardly ever talked about by most Christians since most Christians are complacent in this sin. But, it is at the heart of our faith and an essential topic of discussion.

What keeps thisbook from receiving 5 stars is the last part of the title. "And What to Do About It". If the title had simply been "Fit Bodies Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't Think" I would have given the book five stars. The proposed sollutions only took up 20 pages of this book and while what he wrote was true I finished it feeling convinced that the solutions were only part of the solution. That in and of themselves they would change nothing. But, that said I do not know the full solution or I would have written my own book.

The premise of this book is simple. In our culture, we tend to take extreme measures to improve our bodies, but we let our minds vegetate. As Kudzu on p. 8 concludes, "Buns of steel- brains of silly putty!" This tendency of being physically fit, yet unable to think analytically is an especially sad one to see in the Evangelical Christian community. It is not just a scandal, says Guinness, it is also a sin. We need to wake up.

The author then goes on to explain how it is that we as Evangelicals have largely lost the Puritan mind, which had shaped Evangelicalism. Even more than that, there is a strong anti-intellectual attitude in most Evangelical groups.

Christians need to be set free to think. That is, freedom from all the mindless and strange teachings within Evangelicalism as well as from the corrupt culture that surrounds us. We need a new reformation.

Part One is called A Ghost Mind.

The chapter headings are:

1. Polarization
2. Pietism
3. Primitivism
4. Populism
5. Pluralism
6. Pragmatism
7. Philistinism
8. Premillenialism

Here is one quote from the first part of the book.:

"RELATIVISM BEFORE SECULARISM

"But the 'religion of civility' is different. It is a corrupt form of civility- an oppressive form of tolerance- that in seeking to give no offense to others ends with no convictions of its own. This pseudocivility, or intolerant tolerance, begins with a bland exterior of permissive ecumenism - everybody is welcomed - but ends with a deep-rooted relativism hostile to all serious differences and distinctions. 'Tolerance,' G.K. Chesterton said, 'is the virtue of those who don't believe anything.'"

p. 52

Part Two: An Idiot Culture

9 Amusing Ourselves to Death
10 People of Plenty
11 All Consuming Images
12 The Humiliation of the Word
13 Cannibals of PoMo
14 Tabloid Truth
15 Generation Hex
16 Real, Reel, or virtually Real?

Part Three: Let My People Think

The chapter titles are clever and to the point.
Here is one quote from the second part of the book.:
"We are schooled in the lifestyle of creating and devouring things. Regardless of their truth, rightness, meaning, history, and value, anything and everything can be the victim of the all consuming image market."

p. 109

I think that the above quote is especially timely when we, as Americans are just elected a man as president of the United States based almost solely on his image. We know little about Obama, and what we do know is rather disturbing. He looks good on camera and can give a good speech, but we really do not know what we are getting.

I hope that our President Obama does a good job, but we seem to be electing an image.

Then, in the third section, Guinness really drives the message home to Christians. This quote is especially relevant.

"Many evangelicals were rightly shocked and incensed at the liberal Protestant 'Re-Imagining,' the 'Global Theological Conference by Women' held in Minneapolis in 1993. Presentations deriding orthodoxy and denying the atonement of Jesus Christ, a standing ovation for lesbians, a service of milk and honey to the goddess Sophia - what is left of 'mainline Protestantism' was flaunting some of the vilest heresies that have ever reared their heads in the church of Christ in two thousand years.
Yet what many evangelicals fail to recognize and protest is the similar movement growing in convervative circles. "
p. 131

He went on to talk about some of the rank heretical teachings that are regularly promoted among Christians, including Faith teachers and others. These weird and heretical kinds of teachings, including neo-paganism and speculative gnosticism, are "only the beginning of the degradation of evangelical thinking that is coming unless we experience reformation."
p. 131

This is an easy book to read. It is not very long.

In FIT BODIES FAT MINDS, Os Guinness makes the point that American evangelical Christians have failed to "love the Lord your God with all . . . mind". He claims that this is the biggest sin that the American Church is guilty. In the book, Guinness explores the issues that led to a decline in Christian thought and issues that are currently keeping Christians from truly using their minds.

I mostly agree with Guinness' claims. Evangelical Christians in America have not used our minds. We have left them atrophy to the point where, like the rest of America, we are addicted to mediocrity. We need to relcaim the intellect for Christ and take every thought captive to His obedience. However, Guiness doesn't really offer any solutions to the problem. Therefore, FIT BODIES FAT MINDS is more of a wake-up call than a plan of action.