Customer Reviews

No Place for Truth: Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology

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In this brutally frank critique of modern evangelicalism, Wells demonstrates how the quest for "cultural relevance" in the evangelical church has in fact led to the church being co-opted by the some of the worst aspects of modern secular culture. Wells pulls no punches here. For instance, he characterizes the current vogue of "servant leadership" as simply being a crutch for pastors with no vision or ideas of their own, who must depend upon their congregations (or "audience") for direction. Although Wells seems a bit pessimistic in his overall view of modern society and culture, he is on target as far as the effects that modern culture has had on the evangelical church. Wells does an excellent job of describing the problem and tracing its origins, but he offers only some very general solutions - apparently he offers more in the way of answers in the companion volume to this book, God in the Wasteland. Proponents of the current models of "church growth" will probably find much to disagree with in this book; however, for those evangelicals who find themselves trying to make sense out of the changes that have swept the church in the past decade, this book is an excellent place to start.

The people of God need to stop and to consider the path that they have been walking in the world. To become a relevant people, without losing a deep fidelity to the Scriptures, it has been the big challenge of those that profess to believe in Jesus Christ. In this book you will be invited to reflect on which type of Christianity you profess. About which kind of God you say: I believe in him. You will be invited to escape of the religions teachings and to immerse in the Bible, looking for the God who Lord Jesus preached and who He obeyed until his death on the cross. If you are feeling that nobody around you knows what is right or what is wrong, this book is for you. Fantastic book is this! Don't lose it!

This is a provocative, demanding and rewarding book that attempts to grapple with some of the central challenges of Christian thought and life in a modern or post-modern world. Looking through Amazon and one or two other online sites, it is clear that many readers have also read Mark A. Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. I have too; and by way of introduction to David F. Wells' book, it is worth making brief reference to the other.

Both books touch on similar subjects, though with different emphases. Both are concerned with the decline of what Noll calls "the life of the mind" within American evangelicalism; and both are concerned with how authoritative Christian thought can be sustained in this modern or postmodern world. I suspect that Noll's book has proved the more popular, even if the only direct evidence for that is the number of customer reviews on this site: 29 for Noll; 12 for Wells. And both books were published a year apart -- Wells in 1993, and Noll the following year. With a title like that, Noll was always going to be onto a winner!

However, I suspect that one of the reasons for these differing figures is that Wells writes from a different perspective, one that ultimately makes more demands on the reader. Another might be that Wells' position is subtly yet noticeably more pessimistic. Noll is an historian who is eminently capable of working in theology; Wells is a theologian who is eminently capable of working in history. One only has to look at satellite television to realise which of these subjects is the more popular; and I hope that nobody reading this review imagines that Christian television has any connection with theology!

One of the great strengths of this book is that it approaches its subject with the very breadth of thought that both authors find wanting in evangelicalism in general. While its focus is on North America, it spreads its net wide; and Wells is especially good at teasing out subtle relationships between culture and religious thought. It also manages to be at once highly opinionated, generous in spirit, full of subtle humour, and intensely passionate.

How's this for a start? When, in his Introduction Wells asserts his "disbelief in much that the modern world holds dear" (p. 10), he also says that while he feels he must use this pugnacious style, he intends "no disrespect either for the reader or for the modern world. After all, I work for the one and must live with the other. The pugnacity is only in the appearance, not in the intention. The problem is that even the mildest assertion of Christian truth today sounds like a thunderclap because the well-polished civility of our religious talk has kept us from hearing much of this kind of thing." He then draws on John Kenneth Galbraith and G.K. Chesterton, to demonstrate a point that has nothing of religion or theology in it -- at first. So when the theological point arrives, it has force: "Evangelicals are antimodern only across a narrow front; I write from a position that is antimodern across the entire front. It is only where assumptions in culture directly and obviously contradict articles of faith that most evangelicals become aroused and rise up to battle 'secular humanism'; aside from these specific matters, they tend to view culture as neutral and harmless. More than that, they often view culture as a partner amenable to being coopted in the cause of celebrating Christian truth. I cannot share that naivete; indeed, I consider it dangerous. Culture is laden with values, many of which work to rearrange the substance of faith, even when they are mediated to us through the benefits that the modern world also bestows upon us."

This epitomises Wells' ability to lay a profoundly humane groundwork for a theological starting-point, and then for an entire historical and theological argument; and that is one of the main reasons why this book is such a compelling indictment of contemporary evangelical theology. Or perhaps I should say non-theology; for that is what Wells finds everywhere -- though like Noll, he finds the malady less prevalent outside the USA.

Beavers who are over-eager might get impatient at Wells' methods. Indeed, I suspect that at the root of one or two of the more negative responses this book has received, there lies a typically modern impatience. But for those willing to take time, there are rewards a-plenty. For example, the opening chapter's title is "A Delicious Paradise Lost." The Eden-like innocence belongs to the town of Wenham, Massachusetts, in the two hundered of so years after the town's foundation in the 1630s by a group of puritans of English descent. Less than ten years later an English visitor described the place as "a delicious paradise" which he would choose "above all towns in America to dwell in." Via authoritative comparisons with contemporary towns in Britain and America (the book has plenty of informative footnotes and cross-references), Wells charts Wenham's growth, which was very slow. He embraces the role of the church as a building and as community of believers (and a community which included many who were nominal believers); he shows how, as people of differing religious backgrounds moved into the town, they interacted with the dominant puritan heritage; and he follows the lives of a number of prominent figures, notably the schoolteacher. This was a community defined partly by its strong sense of place, and partly by its awareness of how people lived together -- or how they should live together. Of course, it wasn't really Eden. But until well into the 19th century it was so utterly different from the modern world that we might imagine it to be such.

In a series of similar historically rooted pictures, Wells shows how those qualities disappeared, to be replaced by transience, by superficiality. In one of his many virtuoso analogies, he shows how Truman Capote (1924-84) was transformed by publicity "from an author of some initial repute into a personality. . . He bonded briefly with his devotees, but the bond was synthetic. In this new world, the statues are made of celluloid, not of stone; here the achievements are those of personality, seldom of character. . . This is experience without community. It is the experience of mankind in the mass, bereft of the forces that once drew it into centers of human fraternity and organization." Gloomy stuff! But it has precision and insight.

All this proves to be an essential preliminary for the theological discussion that makes up by far the larger part of this book. The theological discussion is fed from the ground up, by being rooted in the communities in which theology should, and at one time did, hold its discourse. The third chapter takes its title, "Things Fall Apart", from Yeats' poem The Second Coming (yet another example of the broad synthesis that characterises this book), and charts the decline of theology from its place as the "queen of sciences" to an irrelevance, even in the evangelical world to which Wells and most of those who will read his book belong.

Wells explains, with a magisterial grasp of history, culture and theology, how the decline of evangelical theology in the last two hundred is a direct result of the church's engagement with the world and its prevailing culture. It is a striking demonstration of the adage that the church rarely now turns the world upside (Acts 17:6); rather, the world has turned the church upside down. Hence the title: the church has been so concerned with accommodating itself to the world that it has forgotten how to sustain the mission God intended it to have to the world.

Wells shows how thought, including that of some greats of American theology, became gradually corrupted by this accommodation. Along the way the religious institutions have become corrupted too. One of his most devastating critiques is of the modern seminary. Great institutions like Princeton and Yale began with Christian values at their core, with subjects designed from a Christian perspective. But as these universities have become inexorably secularised, other institutions had to take over their role; and those in turn have been run off their feet to maintain recognition by the world. Many of the qualifications issued by modern Christian colleges, including doctorates, have very little real value: they merely provide a veneer of respectability so that being a pastor might appear to have the same worldly status as being a lawyer, an academic or a doctor. It is not just that there is little reflection: there is no time for it.

As for the corruption of the church's life . . . I'll leave you to read the examples Wells gives, which are shocking even to someone who knows something of what the God Channel and things of that kind spew out indiscriminately.

As I say, this is not an optimistic book. But it is honest. It offers few large-scale solutions. But it is a clarion call to those who read it, and who believe that we should indeed love the Lord our God with all our minds. If one follows Well's thesis through, it becomes clear that institutions are not readily amenable to reformation. But individuals are. Just as the Gospel began with individuals, so it will be with individuals that any reformation of theology will begin.

The following situations and beliefs are true in many Protestant/Evangelical churches today.
- `Worship' is the pinnacle of the church service. Worship is considered successful based on the feelings of those involved.
- Sermons are focused on self-gratitude and self-esteem rather than the Bible.
- Theology is considered a bad word, just a few rungs higher than Hitler.
- The Bible is used only to support a thought, belief or idea rather than our thoughts, beliefs and ideas being based on the Bible.
- The `experience' of God is more foundational than the truth of God.
- 53% of those claiming to be Bible-believing, conservative Christians claim there is no such thing as "absolute truth."

The title of this book summarizes it well. The author's main point is that Evangelical churches have been heavily influenced by the culture and have thus lost the conviction that truth is absolute and theology is important. With this as a premise for the book, the author writes (sometimes painstakingly) about the process by which our Western culture has morphed into what it is today. With detail, the author then traces the history of Protestantism that later spawned Evangelicalism. Weaving it all together, the author presents how Evangelicalism has succumbed to a relativistic culture. And ultimately how this led to the death of theology.

How has all of this happened? The stated purpose of David Well's book is "to explore why it is that theology is disappearing. (emphasis mine)" No claim is made for the content of theology, or even for the poor quality of theology. This is not the intention of the book. The book reads more like a culture-write-up that a missionary would study before entering a field of service with anthropological insights into the behaviors of the Evangelical Christian living in the contemporary world. The `Western Christian' culture is thoroughly analyzed, especially in its esteem toward truth, and namely theological truth.

David Wells' writing style is unique. Unlike many contemporary authors (Christian or secular), Wells writes in a way that forces you to think. In many ways this is a positive. The reader must read the book slowly and thoughtfully in order to grasp the language that the author uses. But, it can also make for painfully slow reading. Perhaps this irritation found in the book is a result of the desire of our society for the instantaneous and the undemanding. With that said, I personally found myself getting bogged down in the author's writing style. Constantly I was forced to check the dictionary, and sometimes the dictionary didn't even help. This particular peculiarity of our society drives Wells' crazy, but he should realize that the readers of his book are products of the society that he is criticizing. If these people are the `mission field,' then they need to be reached in their heart language. The author should not compromise his academic standards, but a clearer `dumbed-down' writing style may have more effectively reached the church of today.

The content, or main message of the book is excellent. Christianity in the past 100 years can be compared to the frog in the boiling pot of water. Unknown to the church, just recently have we started to boil. There definitely is a problem but unless fixed, the church faces certain demise. The evangelical church today is a large, potentially powerful organization that has the ability to turn the world upside-down. Yet it remains largely ineffective and instead, the church has been turned upside-down by the world.

The manner in which Wells traces the history of both Western culture and Protestant culture is interesting and revealing. The book accomplishes its stated goal in explaining why these problems have come about in the Evangelical church of today. Personally, the book has produced an awareness in me regarding the direction and follies of today's church. And as a church planting missionary, I need to be careful in not carrying over these problems into churches in the Philippines.
Lastly, I believe there is a small danger in culture bashing. A large part of the book is dedicated to exposing the folly of today's society. While this is important (as reflected in Wells' second aspect of theology- reflection), it has its limits. The Bible is clear that the world is foolishness and that we should find our trust in the spirit and His words (see 1Cor. 2). Though the culture needs to be evaluated in light of Scripture, we should not expect the culture to change apart from the wisdom that the Spirit gives. The culture needs the reflection that Wells calls for, but it also needs to be reached. A reoccurring frustration with Fundamentalism (the assumed camp that David Wells is a part of) is that it does not reach out into the culture in which it exists. Because of their fear of contamination, effective reaching out is rarely done. Admittedly, reaching out is like playing with fire (which the church has clearly been burnt by). But this reaching out is necessary.

In conclusion, this is a good book. The author does an excellent job of exposing the weaknesses in churches today, and he also does an excellent job of tracing the influences that weakened the church. Church leaders would do themselves well to read this book and take appropriate action in their churches and ministries.

In a separate lecture elsewhere, Wells reported to his wife that when this book is published, he will receive a lot of criticism from the EVANGELICAL flank of the church. As some of the reviews below have shown, he was excatcly right.

Wells's thesis can be summarized thus: "Since the church has adopted all the vestiges of modernity, it has become irrelevant to God, and as such can no longer deliver the demands of God to a dying people. This is so because the church views reality in light of a modernistic (and postmodernistic, although that thought is not developed thoroughly) framework. It cannot make itself better because any attempt at SELF-reform will only re-inforce modernity's grip on the church. The Church's only hope is for "prophets" to call the church back to its focal point: the Holiness of God, without which life is meaningless."

However, the book is not perfect for several reasons. 1)At times it was too technical; had it become more personal for pastors and theologians it would have fared better. 2)It did not deal adequately enough with postmodernism, although with all fairness to Wells, pomo did not have the cultural influence in the early 90's as it does now.

Its strengths, however, really show themselves in the last few chapters. In fact, pages 298-301 are worth the price of the book. Here are a few excerpts: "Christian faith is only Christian to the extent that it has been constituted by the Word of God, the Word that God has made powerful and effective in the reconstituting of sinful life" (298). And: "The habits of the modern world, now so ubiquitous in the evangelical world, need to be put to death, not given new life" (301).

Finally to one reviewer who gave it 1 star and accused it of being puritanical dribble, Mr Rivers. I gather the impression that he did not read past the first chapter. Wells uses one puritan village as a microcosm (and an accurate one) of theology in practice before Modernity. Furthermore, Wells did not come up with this idea; he documents Cambridge historian Paul Johnson's book, OUR TIME. It appears Mr Rivers not only read past the first chapter, he did not even read the footnotes in the chapter. Even assuming that he read the book, he is still not interactin with Wells's arguments. He is merely restating them and then saying he does not like them. While he said this shut the door for more research, I personally cannot wait to read Wells's other books in this genre.

I have spoken with so many pastors and Christians who have read David Wells' work and dismissed it as being "too critical." I don't disagree entirely but I'm not surprised to hear such a common assessment when the most popular verse of the Bible has shifted from John 3:16 to "Thou shalt not judge." Anyone with a prophetic discernment is relegated with the critical in spirit. I actually admire David Wells for having the courage to speak so boldly at the risk of sounding imbalanced. Even if his book(s) may not have practical-hands-on tips on how to do church there is enough insight in his writing for any Christian leader to brood over time. Interestingly, we who are so prone to look for methods that work get disappointed by books like this because it does not contain pat answers. In fact, reading this book has helped me tremendously in getting my focus back on the basics, that God uses people over methods and revelation over feelings (although Wells goes a bit too far in downplaying emotions). I recommend that this book be read thoughtfully rather than being reactive to it. In a time when the church has gone soft on doctrine David Wells' book will be timely in helping to restore theology back to its central place.

David F. Wells has written a powerful wake-up call to hook up with God's moving in history today with God's moving in the past as contained in the Holy Scriptures. His perceptions are prophetic in grappling with where we went wrong in linking up with the self movement, and modernity. Both of these lack the "otherness" which is a necessity that we not believe in a "buddy God" who likes us when we just fit in well with our surroundings. His insights could highlight for one who is dissatisfied with one's local church and just doesn't know how to get a handle on what is happening. His conclusions in the last chapter of the book are tingling with excitement about the directions one can go in ironing out the painful steps back into reality of the Truth. This is a valuable book which need not be limited to readership by the "evangelical" camp, but rather by anyone who is interested in God who is the great "I Am" that will not be domesticated or enviserated (a word Wells uses occasionally.O Go for it if you want to wake up and get moving in faith that undoubtedly will run counterculture to most of what we hear today. The reward is eternity. -Paul Hackett

Wells' penetrating analysis of the state of the church in evangelical America is beyond refutation. He is a true scholar -- as well as one who truly seeks for a day when God is honored by those called by His name. Pastors and leaders caught up in the New Evangelical mess need to read and repent.

David F. Wells has written a powerful wake-up call to hook up with God's moving in history today with God's moving in the past as contained in the Holy Scriptures. His perceptions are prophetic in grappling with where we went wrong in linking up with the self movement, and modernity. Both of these lack the "otherness" which is a necessity that we not believe in a "buddy God" who likes us when we just fit in well with our surroundings. His insights could highlight for one who is dissatisfied with one's local church and just doesn't know how to get a handle on what is happening. His conclusions in the last chapter of the book are tingling with excitement about the directions one can go in ironing out the painful steps back into reality of the Truth. This is a valuable book which need not be limited to readership by the "evangelical" camp, but rather by anyone who is interested in God who is the great "I Am" that will not be domesticated or enviserated (a word Wells uses occasionally.O Go for it if you want to wake up and get moving in faith that undoubtedly will run counterculture to most of what we hear today. The reward is eternity. -Paul Hackett

I read this book at the recommendation of a friend. Inside, although it was thick and hard to chew off at times, Wells hit on the perils of postmodernism before the word took on the catchy buzz is has of late.

Written in 1993, Wells articulates (and somewhat prophesies) of the many perils of "reforming" a church without a solid, biblical theology.

Overall, I'd say this is a must-read for any well-meaning theologian.

I believe the depth of research and the knowledge Wells possesses is how every book should be published. Frankly, I'm tired of "theological" books that are written without any kind of sourcing, especially biblical. It is not enough in today's "truth is what you make it" to simply publish books of "opinion" theologically. Wells calls readers to return to a solid biblical foundation, centered on the Redemption story of Jesus Christ and Scripture as a historical truth.

Below are some highlights. I'm looking forward to ordering book number 2 in his series, God in the Wasteland.

Chapter 1: A Delicious Paradise Lost

* The transferring of values has been lost with the fracturing of our families.
* There was no chasm between private and public life. Now there is.
* There is a total lack of permanence in today's world.
* "We are everywhere and we have access to everything." We are transitioning from a life that was bounded and limited to a life that knows few bounds
* "The stream of information, the succession of new environments, and the number of new experiences have accelerated to the point sometimes of becoming unbearable.

Chapter 2: World Cliché Culture

The need to be in motion...is obviously very great.
"The Enlightenment promises have proved to be empty."
We are living in a fool's paradise. Comforting ourselves about what God is doing while the world is falling apart.
* Mass is the key. We generally defer to the lowest common denominator - creates fragmentation.
In the past, the West was held together by tradition, authority and power. Only power remains.
* The source of "authority" is only found in the private, self-consciousness now.
"the Church often seems to be blithely unaware of the peril that now surrounds it."

Chapter 3: Things Fall Apart

The shift from God to the SELF as the central focus of faith.
Theology:
1. Confession
2. Reflection
3. Virtues developed from the two
(Willard: Conviction, Conversion, Testimony)

The Church should infect culture. Has to be centered on Word.
Belief and Practice are inextricably related to each other.
We've abandoned doctrine and truth in favor of "life."
"In the absence of conviction, all belief collapses, even the belief in unity."

Chapter 4: Self-Piety

Individualism and Conformity
* We generally do what feels good. What's right is what feels good.
* Liberals generally believe if left to selves, the world would be fine.
* We need to balance Biblical narrative of dignity and depravity.
* The problem with individuality is that we are actually just conforming to the masses.
* TV has a huge influece on this conformity and mindless absorbtion into the masses.
* We care more about the "experience of Christ" than if Christ is objectively real.

Schuller: "Sin is not what shatters our relationship to God: the true culprit is the jaundiced eye that we have turned on ourselves."
* Bibical: The self is TWISTED, that it is in rebellion, that it is in need of help.
* "Theology becomes therapy."

Chapter 5: The Rise of Everyperson

"The love of freedom, from which individualism arises, is as fierece as the love of equality, from which conformity arises."
* Faith has become democratized. Every is seen has having the same ability to "hear" from God." Making up one's own mind now equals the greatest "success."
* Theology thus becomes open to reform on a strong leader's back only.
* "Genuine leadership is a matter of teaching and explaining what has not been so well grasped, where the demands of God's truth and the habits of culture pull in opposite directions.
* "The Christian faith should not be captive to anyone."
* "Without real leaders, God's people are led by the pollsters - which is to say, they lead themselves."

Chapter 6: The New Disablers

* Pastors are not merely managers.
* Should be worthy character, a passion for truth, and the kind of wise love that yokes together character and passion in service for others.
* Practical atheism: Reducing the church to nothing more than the services it offers or the good feelings the ministry can generate.

Chapter 7: The Habits of God

* Biblical prophets: They had a CERTAINTY about God. It is historical, not ways we could "do things."
* "A Christian mind sees truth as objective."
* We must find this truth outside of ourselves.

Chapter 8: The Reform of Evangelicalism

We must return to an understanding of the HOLINESS of God.