Scholarly Frustrated Evangelical Book Review

Randall Balmer's Thy Kingdom Come has a couple problems. The first two, while negligible, are slightly annoying and to be honest, I didn't mind the last one. First off, the book has too many subtitles: The full title is actually "Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament". Frankly, this is annoying. Pick one and stick with it. The other annoyance is the occasional tendency to create straw man arguments. Wile some have criticized him for an excessive amount of this, I saw only one glaring example: when he discusses evangelicals and the environment. rather than simply saying, "Evangelicals have been extraordinarily reluctant to participate in conservation movement, to the extent that it is sinful" or something like this, Balmer says something like, "You would think that evangelicals would be the most active participants in the environmental movement..." This comes toward the end of book where he has systematically dismantled the movement's ideology, so you know that evangelicals are going to be in the wrong. He points out the idea of stewardship as a fundamental part of Christianity. while I agree with this, I also think it's more honest to point out that this (stewardship of God's creation) was never as great a focus, as evangelism and preparation for Christ's imminent return. Also, while evangelicals were certainly late to the table on this issue, so too was the Church in general. It seems somewhat disingenuous, if not intellectually dishonest to create this argument, "you would think..." when the same could (& should) have been said for liberal mainstream churches. The final problem is one I truthfully didn't mind, but I can see how it would be problematic: Balmer's tone. He's pissed. He's pissed at the way his faith tradition has been usurped by the so-called "Religious Right" and it shows. Balmer's tone is one that is fairly indicting. He doesn't try to build any bridges- but that is the point. He doesn't want to build bridges with these people (Dobson, Kennedy, Falwell, Robertson, and others) because they are screwing up something precious- a movement that was at the forefront of the progressive movement at the turn of the century, and now seems more focused on what it is against than what it is for. Being a snarky ass myself, I didn't mind the angry, frustrated tone. Balmer's passion resonated with me. However, I can see how those who are "part of the matrix" (if you will) will not see this book as a call for reform, but as a diatribe against them specifically. Because of this, the book ends up being a case in preaching to the choir- but as a member of the choir, I really enjoyed it.
Particularly fascinating was Balmer's take on the evangelicals' adoption of abortion & homosexuality as causes célèbres. Balmer maintains that it was seeing the high rate of divorce within evangelicalism that prompted church leaders to downplay their historic opposition to this topic (about which Jesus said much- and always negatively) and decide on focusing on these two topics (it was safe: good Christians wouldn't be affected by either one). And while his cynical explanation of how & when abortion became a hot-button topic has been denied by at least one of the members he claims was present, his observations about how republican administrations talk about outlawing abortion, but never do because it is in their best interests to do nothing was incisive.
In the end, I think its a great book, if flawed. If Balmer had taken a different tone (such as tomorrow's subject Tony Campolo, he likely would find a more receptive audience, but I believe his "lament" is that of a prophet who longs to see his faith return to its world-changing origins and changing the world, helping build the kingdom of God with Jesus is what we are called to do.

Lord God,
you who breathed the spirit of life within me.
Draw out of me the light and life you created.
Help me to find my way back to you.
Help me to use my life to reflect your glory
and to serve others
as your son Jesus did.

pax,
jefe
P.S.- today is Orthodoxy Sunday- celebrating the end of the iconoclasm controversy. For a GREAT article on icons and their use- check out this site from frederica matthewes-green's website