Book review
The Market Driven Church
Full description of book:
Udo W. Middelmann,
The Market Driven Church — The Wordily Influence of Modern Culture on the Church in America (Wheaton, IL, USA: Crossway Books, 2004). ISBN 1-58134-509-7.
Rating:
Scholarship: 6/10
Information content: 8/10
Spiritual content: 6.5/10
Overall rating: 7/10
Review:
This book is an interesting look and analysis of the American Church situation by a European (German) Christian Udo W. Middelmann. As an outsider, Middelmann analyzes American Christianity from a European Christian perspective, and expresses admiration for the strong religiosity of Americans as well as grief for the capitulation of the churches to Modernism with its attendant ills of shallowness and Pragmatism. This book therefore seeks to serve as a call to the American churches and with it, other churches around the world influenced by her, to resist the pressures of the world and be serious about the faith they claim to believe in.
Through the use of personal anecdotes, Middelmann introduces each chapter to the reader. He articulates the impressions typical "post-Christendom" Europeans have of America and how they are at once attracted and repulsed by her. Nevertheless, this book is more than just the author's impression of the country he has lived and journeyed in.
The main contention of the author has to do with what he sees as the dumbing down of the faith. At the personal end, there is an ignorance of the faith and reductionist thinking of Christianity into mere cliches (p. 73) and quick fixes offered by both the left and right (p. 57). There is also the diluting of the faith such that there is an "incredible lightness to the church's teaching about the Christian faith today" (p. 67) which causes Christians to be alienated "from the certainty of a real world" and thus ineffective to it. Christianity has devolved from "public and historical declaration" to "private and existential opinion" (p. 123), and Christianity and religion in general has become "a matter of taste, preference, and a sense of belonging" (p. 123). The text of the Bible has therefore been replaced with "my favorite text" (p. 91) and the God of the Bible "has been moved from heaven into the heart of the believer" (p. 91). Christianity and truth are thus rendered subjective and individualistic.
At the level of the churches, Middelmann castigates the commercialization of the Visible Church, thus the title The Market Driven Church. The flood of trinkets like "coffee mugs with verses and miracle-promising postcards" (p. 44) he condemns as a prostitution of Christianity, stating also that "the sale of such trinkets in Christian bookstores has turned off the serious reader" (p. 45). The emergence of the megachurch creates an alternative community which offers "religion, community and a better self-image" (p. 50), which form parallel channels to secular institutions like as it they were a separate country (p. 54). Churches have thus degenerated into selling a product (p. 110) to "compete on the wider market for attention" (p. 116). Such packaging of the Gospel "in too many techniques, too many distractions, too much color, music, and games makes that gospel in the end more implausible in our contemporary world" (p. 119). In short, the megachurch malls have pandered to the culture and made Christianity into just another lifestyle option, that is claimed to be somehow absolutely true nonetheless, which they sell to the masses. And with this selling out, such visible churches have no true message for the contemporary world, by making the Gospel seem implausible to address the problems in the world.
With regards to the issue of social issues and politics, it is good to let Middelmann speak for himself:
Such a change of focus from the real world to one's personal vision expresses itself in both left- and right-wing orientations in politics and society within the church. Both offer quick fixes, simplistic, one- or two-step solutions to all the problems we recognize. Some Christians think that the poor, the marginalized, and the variously inclined are God's favored people. They rarely see that life is more complex than that. Poverty, being on the sidelines of society, or pursuing your own favorite orientation in any area may also be the result of an unfounded opinion, personal vision, or ideological idolatry in the first place.
Much of the Christian Left pays little attention to the devastating consequences of erroneous worldviews, pagan religions, and political visions of the kingdom of God. They tend to quote Scripture to sanctify their dream of kingdom values without Christ. They call for justice but have in mind only a mathematical, numerical equilibrium. Their vision is a healed society through what turns out to be a paleo-Marxist view of equally distributed goods. Their slogan refers to "preferential treatment by God for the poor" and parallels an affirmative action program without any respect to culpability or merits in outlook. They tend to assume that pain is always the result of injustice from those who do not have the same pain. They forget that ideas and faith have consequences.
Ideas that are true to the real world have different consequences than ideas that exist only in relationship to an imagined world. The Left largely operates from a materialist and mathematical model applied to human beings and their life situation. They recognize victims but never self-inflicted wounds.
The Right within the church also has a simple vision of how to solve all problems. For those holding this view there is little recognition of genuine problems for life in a fallen world. They are like Job's friends and always see a personal cause for all life's situations. "You suffer: ergo you must be a bad person. Change your ways, and you will have no further problems!" They overlook the tragic side of life. There is no justice under the sun. Parents may have wicked children, and children may have stupid parents. The rain falls on the righteous and the wicked. (p. 57-58)
Middelmann ended his book with a look at people's passion for sports and states that the current fascination with sports may be because it "becomes an entertaining substitute for the battles in real life" (p. 187), being a form of secular religion (p. 194), citing Nancy Brewska Clark's proposal (as cited in David Wells book God in the Wasteland). Truly, the church and culture as a whole has lost its will to think, and instead create their own alternative reality in order not to face the problems in the real world.
Critique
There are two main points of criticism of this book. The first being the intellectualism promoted in it, and the second is its attack on Calvinism.
The book rightly decries the dumbing down of the thinking faculty in the modern times, and how the faith has been reduced to simplistic cliches which are implausible to tackle the problems in the world. But the solution proposed is not the biblical response. The biblical response has always been to follow 2 Cor. 10:5 to subject our minds to Christ, and to grow in the knowledge of His Word (Ps. 119; Prov. 23:12; Eph. 4:13-14), NOT necessarily to be more open to intellectual thought, although doctrine IS intellectual. Middelmann however, states that the church has lost its audience not because the audience are sinners but because she has been offering "watery lemonade in the context of a rather poor sound and light show" , and therefore cannot inform or nourish people with a "hunger and thirst for intelligible insight" with the wisdom and certainties of God (p. 201). On the earthly side, such may be somewhat correct, but to state that churches have no audience not because the people are sinners is treading on very thin ground, and the whole statement smacks of the idea of Intellectualism. And we know where Intellectualism has landed Christianity in Europe — into apostasy. For the beginning of Christianity and the epistemological foundation of all our doctrines and theologies MUST be through faith (Heb. 11:1,6) in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:18 - 2) as based upon Holy Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16-17, 2 Peter 1:20-21), not autonomous human reasoning and intellect.
Secondly, the author, in an attempt to somehow attack the laid back attitude of American evangelicals, decided to blame what he calls "Hardened Calvinism" as the culprit leading to some form of fatalism and inaction on the part of evangelicals. Nevermind the fact that the majority of Evangelicals are not Calvinists but Arminians and even Pelagians; all of such facts are just conveniently thrown out of the window. Middelmann defines "Hardened Calvinism" with the proposition "History is the will of the Sovereign God" (p. 148). He further states that in such an absolute understanding of God's sovereignty, a "controlled view of history", people are not set free to "do both evil and good" (p. 157). Revising history, Middelmann charges John Calvin's successor Theodore Beza and the Synod of Dordt with changing "the teaching of the Bible into something quite similar to the Koran in the view of God's sovereignty and his relation to history and creation" (p. 169), ultimately insinuating that such is the "Islamization of Christianity", which is the heading for that particular chapter. Middelmann here shows his ignorance of what Calvinism actually teaches (which is not fatalism), what John Calvin actually teaches also and of the whole idea of the relation between God's sovereignty and the actions of Man. For just a cursory read through the chapters of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion on the topic of providence, divine predestination, election and reprobation (Chapter XVI to XVIII of Book One) will show that John Calvin was vigorous in the exposition and defense of the system of theology that bears his name. Far from it also that Calvinism leads Man to inaction, but it is precisely because God is sovereign that we are liberated to do His will for whatever He asks us to do then will not be fruitless but will accomplish His purpose. Furthermore, the impetus for action has nothing to do with God's sovereignty per se, but on the passion and love we have for Him and His glory (cf Ps. 69:9). Also, God sovereignly calls people to action like what He did to the prophet Isaiah (Is. 6).
Conclusion
In conclusion therefore, this book by Middelmann certainly gives us a different and interesting perspective to view the malaise infecting the American church and her theological colonies around the world. That said, the two errors made by Middelmann are serious indeed, and the solutions to the Modernist problem in America if approached from those two errors of Intellectualism and attack on Calvinism would result in some form of theological liberalism reminiscent of the atmosphere of death in Europe to take hold. As such, this book does give us a good outsider's perspective and show us the symptoms, but we would do very well to look to Scripture ultimately for the solution towards Modernism and the Market-driven mentality in the churches.
With not much research and misrepresentation of Calvinism, the scholarship rating is given a 6, the interesting perspective earns it an 8, while the spiritual content rating is given a 6.5, for the horrible misrepresentation of Calvinism is balanced somewhat by the book's attack on the fad-driven church. The overall rating is thus a 7 for the book.