My first post for January 28, 2021.
The Bible: The Inerrant Word of God
“The Invincible Power of the Inerrant Word.”
Charles e Whisnant, Pastor/Teacher
We understand what the word inerrant means. It means that it is without any errors as it was recorded in its original autographs. This is a flawless book in all that it states.
Psalm 12:6-7 , Psalm 119:140: Proverbs 30:5 Jesus prayed in John 17:17, In James 1:25, In 1 Peter 2:2, Hebrews 6:18, Titus 1:2
Spurgeon said, Because the Word of God is inerrant, it is, by necessity, invincible. Because the Word of God is absolutely pure, it is therefore absolutely powerful.
The Bible is so invincible that it requires many different symbols to communicate the whole of its power.
1. The Word of God is a Sword that Pierces (Heb 4:12–13)
Hebrews 4:12 and 13 Four things the Bible is
What the Bible is
1. It is the Divine Word
2. It is the Living Word“The word of God is living.” Psalms 95:7. John 6;63
3. It is Active "quick" ""living" “Energēs,” from which we get the word energetic. The Bible is full of energy
4. It is Sharper than Any Two-Edged Sword Revelation 1:16; 2:12, Psalms 59:7;64:3
What the Bible Does
1. It Pierces the bible is the sword that pierces Verse 12: “. . . piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow. . . .”
2. It Judges “. . . and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
It is a Mirror that Reveals (James 1:23)
Listen: no one will ever be saved until they see themselves for who they are and what they are. And no one will ever be sanctified without looking to the prefect law of liberty and see where there needs to be improvements and corrections.
You can talk about the culture, and society, and give book reviews, and quote poems, and talk about TV shows and movies. And it is has the opposite effect. When you hold up the Word as a mirror, your people see themselves and they see their dire need for grace, and they come to Christ.
3. It is a Seed. that Germinates, and Regenerates, and Reproduces (1 Pet 1:23)
Hebrews 4:12, John 11:25; It would be easier to plant a oak tree with marbles then to see a person come to Christ without the Bible. Without this planting seed into the soul of man.
—“Seed,” in the beginning of the clause, is more literally the act of sowing, or engendering, which sowing is carried on “through the living and abiding word of God,” this “word of God” being the actual seed sown. The “seed” of all existence is the spoken Word of God, the expressed will and meaning of creative thought (Psalm 33:6); and so here, even when spoken mediately, through the lips of men (as explained in 1Peter 1:25), it is that which begets men afresh
A seed is a remarkable thing. A seed contains an embryo of a plant within it, ready to be germinated for propagation. Within a seed there is the ability to reproduce. It is capable of germination. What is this seed? That is, through the living and enduring Word of God. A supernatural life comes only from a supernatural seed. Eternal life comes from a seed that is living and enduring. It would be easier to grow oak trees by planting marbles than for someone to get saved without the planting of this seed in the soil of their hearts. The seed is the Word of God
4. It is Milk that Nourishes (1 Peter 2:2–3)
As we minister the Word of God, we must be feeding our people the milk of the Word. No one’s spiritual development will advance beyond their intake of the Word of God. None of us will be advance beyond the measure of the Word of God that is flowing into us like milk. Psalms 34:8
5. It is a Lamp that Shines Symbols of the Bible. Sword, Mirror, Seed, Milk, Lamp
“Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.”(Ps 119:105)
1. We live in a very dark world.
The Word of God is a lamp giving necessary light for all the travelers. Proverbs 6:23, Psalms19:8; 2 Peter 1:19
3. It says, “Your Word is a lamp to my feet.”
Boice writes, “We don’t know how to live our lives, but the Bible shines on the path before us to expose the wrong dangerous ways we might take and light up the right way.” It is the inerrant Word that gives infallible guidance.
6. It is a Fire that Consumes
“‘Is not My word like fire?’ declares the LORD.”(Jeremiah 23:29)
This is a red-hot book. The Scriptures are sizzling. It is the hottest message this world has ever heard. And when you’re called to preach, you’re called to play with fire.
7. It is a Hammer that Shatters (Jeremiah 23:29)
Its a rhetorical question here: “Is not My word like fire?’ declares the LORD, ‘and like a hammer which shatters a rock?”
This is the invincible power of the inerrant Word. I call you this day to wield the word, to hold forth the mirror, to scatter the seed, to serve the milk, to hold up the lamp, to spread the flame, to swing the hammer. And stop with the secular wisdom in the pulpit! Cancel the entertainment in the church! Fire the drama team! Get rid of the shtick! Unplug the colored lights! Put the pulpit back in the center of the building! Stand up like a man, open the Bible, lift it up, let it out, and let it fly!
The church is dying with a knowledge of God. Lack of discernment It has spiritual aids. Its dying with 100 of diseases We just don't know who God is.
Our doctrine of God: The character and nature of God. Trinity of God.
Why there are so few reformed churches: So few understand the truth.
Evangelical, evangelicalism as defined there's a dominant segment of evangelicalism that is wrapped up in what we would call the experiential charismatic kind of movement they're completely adrift in terms of theology the hermeneutics that are necessary to rightly interpret the Word of God, that movement starts in 1900 and Topeka Kansas and explodes into what we know as the charismatic room today. There's a parallel to that , there is a sentimental movement that the largest volume booksellers in America are sentimentalist i.e. homespun gosel.
Writings of Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and Max Lucado wit which are the defining writers in what is a sentimentalist view . This is a fast moving kind of evangelicalism and Sentimentalist and the Charismatic
It seems as if God is the poorest teacher that ever was because everybody seems to want to improve upon His message and improve upon His way of Salvation but He has invested the power of His Gospel in His word. We are to be about being ambassadors for Christ that's the ministers task is to the Word of God and clarity and in boldness in an urgency of the word.
Christology is one of the pressing needs for the church to understand today but the person and work of Chrdist.
What is the Gospel: Some would say the Gospel is the good news that we can live a Purpose Drive Life, for the good news. Is that we have our sins forgiven those are good news that is the good news.
No.
The gospel is basically objectively the person and work of Jesus Christ subjectively, its how the benefits of the person and work of Jesus Christ are appropriated by the believe in faith alone.
If you want to know what the gospel is you've hear John's sermon on what is the gospel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCd4yYfxB6k John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul.
It is Christ what He has done, who He is and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrLL2rtHLYQ John MacArthur: Our Redeemer Lives. Proclaiming the Gospel.
The gospel is basically objectively the person and work of Jesus Christ subjectively, its how the benefits of the person and work of Jesus Christ are appropriated by the believe in faith alone.The gospel is basically objectively the person and work of Jesus Christ subjectively, its how the benefits of the person and work of Jesus Christ are appropriated by the believe in faith alone.
In popular evangelical literature, God is loving and friendly,
described in heartfelt, often saccharine language that evokes
nostalgia, comfortable domesticity, and familial love. This emotional
style has been widely adopted by the writers most popular among
American evangelicals, including such celebrity pastors as Max
Lucado, Rick Warren, and Joel Osteen. Todd M. Brenneman provides
groundbreaking insight into the phenomenon of evangelical
sentimentality: an emotional appeal to readers' feelings about
familial relationships, which can in turn be used as the basis for a
relationship with God.
Brenneman shows how evangelicals use
tropes of God as father, human beings as children, and nostalgia for
an imagined idyllic home life to provide alternate sources of social
authority, intended to help evangelicals survive a culture that is
philosophically at odds with conservative Christianity. Yet Brenneman
also demonstrates that the sentimental focus on individual emotion
and experience can undermine the evangelical agenda. Sentimentality
is an effective means of achieving individual conversions, but it
also promotes a narcissism that blinds evangelicals to larger social
forces and impedes their ability to bring about the change they
seek.
Homespun Gospel offers a compelling perspective on an
unexplored but vital aspect of American evangelical identity.
THE ARGUMENT IN A NUTSHELL
First let me explain what the author means by sentimentality, then sketch out how he believes it functions in American evangelicalism.
He uses sentimentality to describe a kind of emotion or way of feeling. Within evangelicalism, it refers to feelings of love inspired by three main images: God as (doting) Father, humans as helpless but adored children, and the nostalgic home of a blissful nuclear family. According to Brenneman, “these three metaphors pervade evangelicalism and form the basis for the sentimental appeal” (6).
Though this sentimentality definitely doesn’t come off well in Brenneman’s account, he insists we shouldn’t take it as a pejorative term. It is an effective style of persuasion in its own right, and a powerful way of engaging with the world. The goal of the book is to reveal the power of this pervasive but overlooked feature in evangelical rhetoric.
To show how the “sentimental appeal” works, Brenneman chose to focus on three best-selling mega-church pastors from three different branches of the evangelical tree. The central figure is Max Lucado, Church of Christ pastor and bestselling author who was the subject of Brenneman’s dissertation. Then there’s church-growth strategist turned spiritual-life guru Rick Warren. And finally, there’s Joel Osteen, America’s big-smiling, stadium-filling, prosperity-promising pastor-at-large.
The first chapter introduces the images at the heart of evangelical sentimentality. Brenneman argues that these pastor-authors appeal to God-as-adoptive-Father to make individual Christians feel better about themselves. God is the type of Father who puts your drawings on his fridge and never misses a ball game. All the resources of his power and knowledge are aimed at meeting the smallest needs and solving the smallest problems of his helpless children. In summary, Brenneman writes, “The biblical symbol of adoption serves as a foundation for emotional exploitation in contemporary evangelicalism” (36).
In his second chapter, Brenneman illustrates how sentimentality replaces careful intellectual engagement with critical issues. That is to say, sustaining the power of sentimentality means avoiding doctrinal discussions that could be divisive. But Brenneman also argues sentimentality insulates evangelicalism from intellectual challenges like those associated with evolution. It cultivates a different way of knowing where,“Purveyors position the emotions as being more reliable than the intellect and as a trustworthier source of truth” (53).
The third and fourth chapters suggest how sentimentality—ostensibly at home in the private world of individual feeling—confers authority and influence in the public world of economics and politics.
Brenneman’s distaste for his subjects and their methods comes through most clearly in these chapters, and his argument would be stronger without so many undeveloped claims as to the “real” motives of these pastors (e.g., 109-11, 126, 129). But underneath it all, the book’s basic claims are sound. Sentimentality sells. That holds true from popular Christian music to evangelical children’s literature to the complex of “Jesus junk”—my words, not his—surrounding the best-selling books of these pastors.
And in the world of politics, Brenneman argues, the power of sentimentality helps explain why evangelicals have rallied to issues surrounding children (abortion) and the home (marriage). The irony, he claims, is that the focus on individuals and their needs may end up undermining any evangelical attempt to transform society, since their leaders are more comfortable appealing to individual emotions than speaking truth to power.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH SENTIMENTALITY?
At the end of the day, though, as an account of modern evangelicalism, this book is unconvincing. Brenneman’s brush is just too broad.
There’s no doubting Lucado, Warren, and Osteen have a wide-ranging influence. But there is a large and growing segment of evangelicalism in which these figures and their marketing empires are more often the butt of bad jokes than taken very seriously. Their books aren’t read. Their methods aren’t followed. Their rhetorical style comes off kitschy and foreign.
Folks in my corner of the evangelical world don’t want to be defined in their light, and there’s room for fair criticism of Brenneman’s book on this front. He does acknowledge a counterculture—in particular the signers of the Evangelical Manifesto (144ff). But I believe he underestimates how large this segment is.
That said, I don’t know any evangelicals for whom the fatherhood of God or promise of adoption aren’t central themes. I don’t know any who aren’t interested in helping people connect with God’s loving, providential care for their individual lives. And I think we’re at our best when we’re trying to get the hearts of our people engaged with the doctrines that fill our heads. By Brenneman’s definition, that makes us sentimental. Should we be okay with that? Is sentimentality a problem?
To answer that question, I think we need a far more nuanced understanding of sentimentality and its role than this book provides. Brenneman’s study is a starting point. We should take it as a call to greater self-awareness and an opportunity to think carefully about what we’re doing when we aim for the heart. In what follows I want to present at least a few qualifications toward a healthy use of sentimentality.
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily new. In Brenneman’s account, any celebration of God’s fatherly care is treated as innovative and merely therapeutic. He believes this sort of sentimental appeal “has integrally changed evangelicalism from the nineteenth century to the present” (159).
I’m not disputing that emotional engagement with the fatherhood of God is central to evangelicalism. I’m not disputing that some of the language used these days can be over the top. But I don’t believe the emphasis itself is uniquely modern. I’d say it’s basic to Christianity.
Granted, the Scriptures don’t promise that God has my birthday circled on his calendar. But there’s certainly an “appeal to tender feelings” (5) in Hosea’s image of God teaching Israel to walk, holding them up by their hands, bending over to feed them (Hos. 11:1-4). And isn’t there a tad of nostalgia when Jesus longs to gather Jerusalem “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Luke 13:34)? Brenneman may be right to suggest Paul’s language of fatherhood was influenced more by the Greco-Roman pater familias than by the romanticism of the 19th century (6). But Paul’s cry of “Abba! Father!” and his talk of the spirit of adoption leads straight into the promise that all things—even the mundane things—work together for the good of his children and that nothing can separate them from his love (Rom. 8:14-15, 28-39).
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily narcissistic. There is certainly a man-centered way to talk about God. And without question, narcissism remains a prominent problem in American evangelicalism. But it seems to me that Brenneman projects Osteen’s prosperity teaching onto anyone who celebrates God’s providential care for individuals (e.g., pp. 30-31). I agree we ought to be careful in how we tell people God loves them, but not more careful than Jesus.
When Jesus told followers they were more important than many sparrows, or that even their hairs were numbered by God (Matt. 10:29-31), he was drawing on the power of sentiment as Brenneman defines it. But he wasn’t fostering narcissism. He was glorifying the grace of God. He was drawing from one of the Bible’s consistent themes: the beauty of God’s love shows up in the particularity of his care for us, not because of how awesome we are but because of how gracious he is.
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily anti-intellectual. I agree with much of what Brenneman claims about the way sentimentality is used to avoid careful theological discourse. But he often assumes a dichotomy between emotional engagement via sentimentality and intellectual engagement (e.g., 31). It’s either constructive, apologetic theology or emotional obfuscation and exploitation. I believe Brenneman’s account misses a nuance at the heart of evangelicalism, one also rooted in the Scriptures. The goal of all Christian intellectual labor is worship. Doctrine and doxology go together. Doctrine is meant to inspire feelings of love, peace, gratitude and joy, and it’s emotional engagement that brings doctrine to life. We’re always aiming to make ideas sensible; this is the way to doxology. And sentimentality has a role to play.
But . . . sentimentality is dangerous. Perhaps the most useful takeaway from this book is its reminder that sentimentality is a rhetorical device of remarkable and often unrecognized power. Its power can be used for good. It can help us taste the sweetness of God’s truth. It can help revealed ideas come to life.
But if our appeal to sentiment is not clearly tied to truth, it will still be powerful and then it becomes dangerous. Brenneman’s book offers critical insight into how emotional experience can become the sole verification of authenticity and truth. If we aren’t careful, as pastors, we can all too easily build our people on a substitute foundation that won’t survive the shifting sands of what feels right.
We also can’t afford to underestimate the power of sentimental appeal in our preaching. It will usually be effective. It isn’t that difficult to move people, and it always feels good. But if not clearly tied to the point of the text, the power of this sort of appeal is a distracting power, an obfuscating and manipulating power. It’s a power that may draw us flattering attention as effective preachers—which is to say its power can be deadly.
God help us check our own hearts every time we aim at someone else’s.
First let me explain what the author means by sentimentality, then sketch out how he believes it functions in American evangelicalism.
He uses sentimentality to describe a kind of emotion or way of feeling. Within evangelicalism, it refers to feelings of love inspired by three main images: God as (doting) Father, humans as helpless but adored children, and the nostalgic home of a blissful nuclear family. According to Brenneman, “these three metaphors pervade evangelicalism and form the basis for the sentimental appeal” (6).
Though this sentimentality definitely doesn’t come off well in Brenneman’s account, he insists we shouldn’t take it as a pejorative term. It is an effective style of persuasion in its own right, and a powerful way of engaging with the world. The goal of the book is to reveal the power of this pervasive but overlooked feature in evangelical rhetoric.
To show how the “sentimental appeal” works, Brenneman chose to focus on three best-selling mega-church pastors from three different branches of the evangelical tree. The central figure is Max Lucado, Church of Christ pastor and bestselling author who was the subject of Brenneman’s dissertation. Then there’s church-growth strategist turned spiritual-life guru Rick Warren. And finally, there’s Joel Osteen, America’s big-smiling, stadium-filling, prosperity-promising pastor-at-large.
The first chapter introduces the images at the heart of evangelical sentimentality. Brenneman argues that these pastor-authors appeal to God-as-adoptive-Father to make individual Christians feel better about themselves. God is the type of Father who puts your drawings on his fridge and never misses a ball game. All the resources of his power and knowledge are aimed at meeting the smallest needs and solving the smallest problems of his helpless children. In summary, Brenneman writes, “The biblical symbol of adoption serves as a foundation for emotional exploitation in contemporary evangelicalism” (36).
In his second chapter, Brenneman illustrates how sentimentality replaces careful intellectual engagement with critical issues. That is to say, sustaining the power of sentimentality means avoiding doctrinal discussions that could be divisive. But Brenneman also argues sentimentality insulates evangelicalism from intellectual challenges like those associated with evolution. It cultivates a different way of knowing where,“Purveyors position the emotions as being more reliable than the intellect and as a trustworthier source of truth” (53).
The third and fourth chapters suggest how sentimentality—ostensibly at home in the private world of individual feeling—confers authority and influence in the public world of economics and politics.
Brenneman’s distaste for his subjects and their methods comes through most clearly in these chapters, and his argument would be stronger without so many undeveloped claims as to the “real” motives of these pastors (e.g., 109-11, 126, 129). But underneath it all, the book’s basic claims are sound. Sentimentality sells. That holds true from popular Christian music to evangelical children’s literature to the complex of “Jesus junk”—my words, not his—surrounding the best-selling books of these pastors.
And in the world of politics, Brenneman argues, the power of sentimentality helps explain why evangelicals have rallied to issues surrounding children (abortion) and the home (marriage). The irony, he claims, is that the focus on individuals and their needs may end up undermining any evangelical attempt to transform society, since their leaders are more comfortable appealing to individual emotions than speaking truth to power.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH SENTIMENTALITY?
At the end of the day, though, as an account of modern evangelicalism, this book is unconvincing. Brenneman’s brush is just too broad.
There’s no doubting Lucado, Warren, and Osteen have a wide-ranging influence. But there is a large and growing segment of evangelicalism in which these figures and their marketing empires are more often the butt of bad jokes than taken very seriously. Their books aren’t read. Their methods aren’t followed. Their rhetorical style comes off kitschy and foreign.
Folks in my corner of the evangelical world don’t want to be defined in their light, and there’s room for fair criticism of Brenneman’s book on this front. He does acknowledge a counterculture—in particular the signers of the Evangelical Manifesto (144ff). But I believe he underestimates how large this segment is.
That said, I don’t know any evangelicals for whom the fatherhood of God or promise of adoption aren’t central themes. I don’t know any who aren’t interested in helping people connect with God’s loving, providential care for their individual lives. And I think we’re at our best when we’re trying to get the hearts of our people engaged with the doctrines that fill our heads. By Brenneman’s definition, that makes us sentimental. Should we be okay with that? Is sentimentality a problem?
To answer that question, I think we need a far more nuanced understanding of sentimentality and its role than this book provides. Brenneman’s study is a starting point. We should take it as a call to greater self-awareness and an opportunity to think carefully about what we’re doing when we aim for the heart. In what follows I want to present at least a few qualifications toward a healthy use of sentimentality.
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily new. In Brenneman’s account, any celebration of God’s fatherly care is treated as innovative and merely therapeutic. He believes this sort of sentimental appeal “has integrally changed evangelicalism from the nineteenth century to the present” (159).
I’m not disputing that emotional engagement with the fatherhood of God is central to evangelicalism. I’m not disputing that some of the language used these days can be over the top. But I don’t believe the emphasis itself is uniquely modern. I’d say it’s basic to Christianity.
Granted, the Scriptures don’t promise that God has my birthday circled on his calendar. But there’s certainly an “appeal to tender feelings” (5) in Hosea’s image of God teaching Israel to walk, holding them up by their hands, bending over to feed them (Hos. 11:1-4). And isn’t there a tad of nostalgia when Jesus longs to gather Jerusalem “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Luke 13:34)? Brenneman may be right to suggest Paul’s language of fatherhood was influenced more by the Greco-Roman pater familias than by the romanticism of the 19th century (6). But Paul’s cry of “Abba! Father!” and his talk of the spirit of adoption leads straight into the promise that all things—even the mundane things—work together for the good of his children and that nothing can separate them from his love (Rom. 8:14-15, 28-39).
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily narcissistic. There is certainly a man-centered way to talk about God. And without question, narcissism remains a prominent problem in American evangelicalism. But it seems to me that Brenneman projects Osteen’s prosperity teaching onto anyone who celebrates God’s providential care for individuals (e.g., pp. 30-31). I agree we ought to be careful in how we tell people God loves them, but not more careful than Jesus.
When Jesus told followers they were more important than many sparrows, or that even their hairs were numbered by God (Matt. 10:29-31), he was drawing on the power of sentiment as Brenneman defines it. But he wasn’t fostering narcissism. He was glorifying the grace of God. He was drawing from one of the Bible’s consistent themes: the beauty of God’s love shows up in the particularity of his care for us, not because of how awesome we are but because of how gracious he is.
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily anti-intellectual. I agree with much of what Brenneman claims about the way sentimentality is used to avoid careful theological discourse. But he often assumes a dichotomy between emotional engagement via sentimentality and intellectual engagement (e.g., 31). It’s either constructive, apologetic theology or emotional obfuscation and exploitation. I believe Brenneman’s account misses a nuance at the heart of evangelicalism, one also rooted in the Scriptures. The goal of all Christian intellectual labor is worship. Doctrine and doxology go together. Doctrine is meant to inspire feelings of love, peace, gratitude and joy, and it’s emotional engagement that brings doctrine to life. We’re always aiming to make ideas sensible; this is the way to doxology. And sentimentality has a role to play.
But . . . sentimentality is dangerous. Perhaps the most useful takeaway from this book is its reminder that sentimentality is a rhetorical device of remarkable and often unrecognized power. Its power can be used for good. It can help us taste the sweetness of God’s truth. It can help revealed ideas come to life.
But if our appeal to sentiment is not clearly tied to truth, it will still be powerful and then it becomes dangerous. Brenneman’s book offers critical insight into how emotional experience can become the sole verification of authenticity and truth. If we aren’t careful, as pastors, we can all too easily build our people on a substitute foundation that won’t survive the shifting sands of what feels right.
We also can’t afford to underestimate the power of sentimental appeal in our preaching. It will usually be effective. It isn’t that difficult to move people, and it always feels good. But if not clearly tied to the point of the text, the power of this sort of appeal is a distracting power, an obfuscating and manipulating power. It’s a power that may draw us flattering attention as effective preachers—which is to say its power can be deadly.
God help us check our own hearts every time we aim at someone else’s.
First let me explain what the author means by sentimentality, then sketch out how he believes it functions in American evangelicalism.
He uses sentimentality to describe a kind of emotion or way of feeling. Within evangelicalism, it refers to feelings of love inspired by three main images: God as (doting) Father, humans as helpless but adored children, and the nostalgic home of a blissful nuclear family. According to Brenneman, “these three metaphors pervade evangelicalism and form the basis for the sentimental appeal” (6).
Though this sentimentality definitely doesn’t come off well in Brenneman’s account, he insists we shouldn’t take it as a pejorative term. It is an effective style of persuasion in its own right, and a powerful way of engaging with the world. The goal of the book is to reveal the power of this pervasive but overlooked feature in evangelical rhetoric.
To show how the “sentimental appeal” works, Brenneman chose to focus on three best-selling mega-church pastors from three different branches of the evangelical tree. The central figure is Max Lucado, Church of Christ pastor and bestselling author who was the subject of Brenneman’s dissertation. Then there’s church-growth strategist turned spiritual-life guru Rick Warren. And finally, there’s Joel Osteen, America’s big-smiling, stadium-filling, prosperity-promising pastor-at-large.
The first chapter introduces the images at the heart of evangelical sentimentality. Brenneman argues that these pastor-authors appeal to God-as-adoptive-Father to make individual Christians feel better about themselves. God is the type of Father who puts your drawings on his fridge and never misses a ball game. All the resources of his power and knowledge are aimed at meeting the smallest needs and solving the smallest problems of his helpless children. In summary, Brenneman writes, “The biblical symbol of adoption serves as a foundation for emotional exploitation in contemporary evangelicalism” (36).
In his second chapter, Brenneman illustrates how sentimentality replaces careful intellectual engagement with critical issues. That is to say, sustaining the power of sentimentality means avoiding doctrinal discussions that could be divisive. But Brenneman also argues sentimentality insulates evangelicalism from intellectual challenges like those associated with evolution. It cultivates a different way of knowing where,“Purveyors position the emotions as being more reliable than the intellect and as a trustworthier source of truth” (53).
The third and fourth chapters suggest how sentimentality—ostensibly at home in the private world of individual feeling—confers authority and influence in the public world of economics and politics.
Brenneman’s distaste for his subjects and their methods comes through most clearly in these chapters, and his argument would be stronger without so many undeveloped claims as to the “real” motives of these pastors (e.g., 109-11, 126, 129). But underneath it all, the book’s basic claims are sound. Sentimentality sells. That holds true from popular Christian music to evangelical children’s literature to the complex of “Jesus junk”—my words, not his—surrounding the best-selling books of these pastors.
And in the world of politics, Brenneman argues, the power of sentimentality helps explain why evangelicals have rallied to issues surrounding children (abortion) and the home (marriage). The irony, he claims, is that the focus on individuals and their needs may end up undermining any evangelical attempt to transform society, since their leaders are more comfortable appealing to individual emotions than speaking truth to power.
WHAT DO WE DO WITH SENTIMENTALITY?
At the end of the day, though, as an account of modern evangelicalism, this book is unconvincing. Brenneman’s brush is just too broad.
There’s no doubting Lucado, Warren, and Osteen have a wide-ranging influence. But there is a large and growing segment of evangelicalism in which these figures and their marketing empires are more often the butt of bad jokes than taken very seriously. Their books aren’t read. Their methods aren’t followed. Their rhetorical style comes off kitschy and foreign.
Folks in my corner of the evangelical world don’t want to be defined in their light, and there’s room for fair criticism of Brenneman’s book on this front. He does acknowledge a counterculture—in particular the signers of the Evangelical Manifesto (144ff). But I believe he underestimates how large this segment is.
That said, I don’t know any evangelicals for whom the fatherhood of God or promise of adoption aren’t central themes. I don’t know any who aren’t interested in helping people connect with God’s loving, providential care for their individual lives. And I think we’re at our best when we’re trying to get the hearts of our people engaged with the doctrines that fill our heads. By Brenneman’s definition, that makes us sentimental. Should we be okay with that? Is sentimentality a problem?
To answer that question, I think we need a far more nuanced understanding of sentimentality and its role than this book provides. Brenneman’s study is a starting point. We should take it as a call to greater self-awareness and an opportunity to think carefully about what we’re doing when we aim for the heart. In what follows I want to present at least a few qualifications toward a healthy use of sentimentality.
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily new. In Brenneman’s account, any celebration of God’s fatherly care is treated as innovative and merely therapeutic. He believes this sort of sentimental appeal “has integrally changed evangelicalism from the nineteenth century to the present” (159).
I’m not disputing that emotional engagement with the fatherhood of God is central to evangelicalism. I’m not disputing that some of the language used these days can be over the top. But I don’t believe the emphasis itself is uniquely modern. I’d say it’s basic to Christianity.
Granted, the Scriptures don’t promise that God has my birthday circled on his calendar. But there’s certainly an “appeal to tender feelings” (5) in Hosea’s image of God teaching Israel to walk, holding them up by their hands, bending over to feed them (Hos. 11:1-4). And isn’t there a tad of nostalgia when Jesus longs to gather Jerusalem “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Luke 13:34)? Brenneman may be right to suggest Paul’s language of fatherhood was influenced more by the Greco-Roman pater familias than by the romanticism of the 19th century (6). But Paul’s cry of “Abba! Father!” and his talk of the spirit of adoption leads straight into the promise that all things—even the mundane things—work together for the good of his children and that nothing can separate them from his love (Rom. 8:14-15, 28-39).
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily narcissistic. There is certainly a man-centered way to talk about God. And without question, narcissism remains a prominent problem in American evangelicalism. But it seems to me that Brenneman projects Osteen’s prosperity teaching onto anyone who celebrates God’s providential care for individuals (e.g., pp. 30-31). I agree we ought to be careful in how we tell people God loves them, but not more careful than Jesus.
When Jesus told followers they were more important than many sparrows, or that even their hairs were numbered by God (Matt. 10:29-31), he was drawing on the power of sentiment as Brenneman defines it. But he wasn’t fostering narcissism. He was glorifying the grace of God. He was drawing from one of the Bible’s consistent themes: the beauty of God’s love shows up in the particularity of his care for us, not because of how awesome we are but because of how gracious he is.
Sentimentality isn’t necessarily anti-intellectual. I agree with much of what Brenneman claims about the way sentimentality is used to avoid careful theological discourse. But he often assumes a dichotomy between emotional engagement via sentimentality and intellectual engagement (e.g., 31). It’s either constructive, apologetic theology or emotional obfuscation and exploitation. I believe Brenneman’s account misses a nuance at the heart of evangelicalism, one also rooted in the Scriptures. The goal of all Christian intellectual labor is worship. Doctrine and doxology go together. Doctrine is meant to inspire feelings of love, peace, gratitude and joy, and it’s emotional engagement that brings doctrine to life. We’re always aiming to make ideas sensible; this is the way to doxology. And sentimentality has a role to play.
But . . . sentimentality is dangerous. Perhaps the most useful takeaway from this book is its reminder that sentimentality is a rhetorical device of remarkable and often unrecognized power. Its power can be used for good. It can help us taste the sweetness of God’s truth. It can help revealed ideas come to life.
But if our appeal to sentiment is not clearly tied to truth, it will still be powerful and then it becomes dangerous. Brenneman’s book offers critical insight into how emotional experience can become the sole verification of authenticity and truth. If we aren’t careful, as pastors, we can all too easily build our people on a substitute foundation that won’t survive the shifting sands of what feels right.
We also can’t afford to underestimate the power of sentimental appeal in our preaching. It will usually be effective. It isn’t that difficult to move people, and it always feels good. But if not clearly tied to the point of the text, the power of this sort of appeal is a distracting power, an obfuscating and manipulating power. It’s a power that may draw us flattering attention as effective preachers—which is to say its power can be deadly.
God help us check our own hearts every time we aim at someone else’s.
http://9marks.org/review/book-review-homespun-gospel-by-todd-brenneman/
Book 27.95 got for Kindle for 10.00
Visit a Christian bookstore in America today, and you won’t have to search hard to find sentimental language. This reality is partly what led Todd Brenneman, Assistant Professor of Christian History at Faulkner University, to write his book, Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2014). In Homespun Gospel Brenneman seeks to plot the influence of nineteenth-century sentimentality on American evangelicalism today.
Much of Brenneman’s study is driven by the sense that “most evangelicals have abandoned the life of the mind in favor of a religious life of emotion” (4) and thus that scholars have overemphasized categories of belief in their discussion of evangelicals. That is, Brenneman suggests that definitions of evangelicals (e.g., the Bebbington quadrilateral) rely too heavily on trying to identify shared doctrinal commitments and instead should look at practice and emotion.
To tackle this concern, Brenneman focuses his study on the writings and sermons of three prominent evangelicals: Max Lucado, Joel Osteen, and Rick Warren. He supplements his exploration of their works with selective reference to other writers such as Bruce Wilkinson (of The Prayer of Jabez fame), Joyce Meyer, and T. D. Jakes; to contemporary Christian music lyrics; to political figures such as Mike Huckabee; and to institutions such as Chick-fil-A.
He probes this question of sentimentality from four angles. First, he explores what he calls the “therapeutic culture” of evangelicalism, a culture that reinforces narcissistic tendencies in the individual, boiling down Christianity to dealing with personal problems and blinding evangelicals to broader societal concerns. This narcissism is supported by three common motifs in popular evangelicalism: God as father, human beings as God’s children, and the home and family as a seat of nostalgia. Lucado, Osteen, and Warren loom large in this discussion as Brenneman shows from their writings how they use “syrupy” language to appeal to the individual’s emotions. The emphasis falls on having “a personal relationship with God,” painting a picture of an emotional connection with the deity and downplaying the intricacies of theology (49).
That leads to a second angle: anti-intellectualism. Brenneman argues that evangelical anti-intellectualism emerges from a reliance on an outdated model of science driven by a Baconian–Common-Sense view of facts and a sentimentality that brushes aside detailed engagement in intellectual difficulties. Pastors like Lucado and Warren minimize doctrinal differences—and even their own denominational affiliations—in an attempt to appeal to larger numbers of people, and they use sentimentality to discuss a unity that hides differences. Brenneman describes the result of this tactic: “[c]entering emotion as the core of people’s religious identity lessens their need to be bound to specific doctrines” and “discourages the intellectual exploration of their faith” (81).
In the third angle, Brenneman examines how evangelicals use sentimentality in media and marketing to spread their message and, more importantly in Brenneman’s view, establish their brand or authority. Again, sentimentality allows them to downplay doctrinal differences and appeal to larger audiences through a smattering of products centered around a known quantity. Thus, for example, the Purpose-Driven Life brand has spawned Purpose-Driven journals, CDs, devotionals, pocket planners, and a line of greeting cards. From a media standpoint, contemporary Christian music and praise songs often glide over theological intricacies and even Christian particularities to appeal to broader audiences, so much that their simplified theology and emotional language were instrumental in the rise of megachurches and the expansion of Christianity in the late twentieth century. Sentimentality has also allowed for a focus on providing products for children such as VeggieTales movies, products that focus on broad messages like “God loves you” without exploring the details of biblical narrative.
The fourth angle, somewhat unexpectedly, explores evangelical involvement in politics. Brenneman argues that sentimentality defines the political concerns of evangelicals—specifically, their focus on family issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. At the same time, sentimentality blinds evangelicals to the deeper problems in political issues found in social structures and corrupt powers. Rather, Brenneman argues, relying on sentimentality causes evangelicals to come up only with “simplistic solutions,” and thus “they face difficult challenges in shaping this world into the kingdom of God” (143).
In the end, Brenneman’s study leads him to suggest a new definition of evangelicalism: “‘Evangelical’ refers to an aesthetical worldview fashioned by belief in the truthfulness of the Bible, by experience of new birth into the Christian community, by emotional relationship between individuals and God through Christ, by concern to share the message of Christ with others, and by interest in shaping human society into the kingdom of God” (16–17). For Brenneman, sentimentality is the “core” of evangelicalism (87), and it helps explain both the success of evangelicalism today and its inherent weaknesses and failures.
Evaluating Homespun Gospel
Brenneman makes several important observations in his book, observations that historians and evangelicals do well to consider. He illuminates aspects of evangelicalism that evangelicals have trouble seeing because they are in the culture. His volume is especially helpful in thinking about popular forms of evangelicalism, forms that minimize the role of theology in the church, that elevate the individual to narcissistic levels, and that tap into the power of marketing in ways that create personality cults rather than cultivating faithful devotion to Christ.
For example, he notes that the three popular evangelical ministers he studied have often fallen into the mode of basically saying that “the universe revolves around the practical problems of day-to-day life,” leading to “an individualistic gospel that encourages readers of works like these to consider that God has nothing better to do than make sure he fills his children’s lives with blessings” (48–49). Surely, the gospel is larger than this.
Again, Brenneman notes, “[w]hether it is asserting that one should be God’s best friend or should try Jesus instead of the church, many evangelicals are moving away from the doctrinal aspects of Christianity” (74). Certainly, if evangelicals are going to stay connected to historic Christianity in any real sense of the term, I would argue that they must gravitate toward, not away from, Christianity’s doctrinal distinctives.
Brenneman’s discussion of contemporary Christian music is particularly revealing. He shows how evangelicals have at times replaced names for the divine with generic pronouns and then set their songs in romantic settings that sound much like love songs played on secular radio. These are the songs that evangelicals play over and over and drill into their minds, songs with a simple message that he (Jesus) loves you without necessarily exploring a full-orbed theology for life.
Observations like these about sentimentality and its prevalence in popular evangelicalism are instructive not only for understanding the nature of popular evangelicalism, but also for evangelicals to consider constructive ways forward. Though many of the ideas Brenneman presents in his book make for a hard pill to swallow, evangelicals can benefit from thinking carefully about how sentimentality has affected popular evangelicalism in significant ways.
Bearing these important challenges in mind, I nonetheless had a few concerns about the book’s arguments. First, Brenneman’s methodology leaves me wondering about some of his broader conclusions. He does a good job of identifying themes of sentimentality in the pastors he examines, but does not offer a full assessment of the individual pastors. For example, while he points out the sentimental stream in Rick Warren’s writings and preaching, he does not offer a complex understanding of Warren’s theology or ministry as a whole. That leads to a potential misperception of Warren’s (and others’) thought.
In addition, Brenneman also draws selectively on other writers and elements of contemporary evangelicalism, such as lyrics from Christian praise songs, to highlight his themes. While this allows him again to identify sentimental language in various forms of the broader movement, it also means that his study misses other elements in evangelicalism that might qualify his thesis. For example, simply showing that a handful of praise songs has romantic language in them does not explain how that language is nuanced by other themes in those songs. Nor does it show how prevalent—or not—such sentimentality is in praise music.
Relatedly, while Brenneman rightly pinpoints a heavy emotionality in much of popular evangelicalism today, he does not explore how the many evangelicals who are devoted to intellectual endeavors might temper his argument. As one example, Tim Keller’s broad appeal as an intellectually engaged evangelical pastor speaks against Brenneman’s claim that “[t]he ordinary, the sentimental, and the anti-intellectual are combined to remove authority away from a life of the mind to the emotions evoked by everyday life” (65).
Again, I think this book is helpful in pointing out how contemporary popular evangelicalism is significantly influenced by sentimentality. But while Brenneman concludes that in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries there have been “relatively few preferring the rational [strand]” of evangelicalism, I think he downplays the presence of intellectually engaged evangelicals, even if they don’t sell as many books as Joel Osteen. Said another way, Brenneman’s methodological approach to the topic allows him to identify the theme of sentimentality in popular forms of evangelicalism, but fails to show that sentimentality is essential to evangelicalism as a whole.
Second, in some ways he overplays the discontinuity between contemporary American evangelicalism and historic Christianity. One must be careful here. I am not suggesting that no discontinuity exists. It most certainly does, and Brenneman brings out that discontinuity well by focusing on the influence of Victorian sentimentality on contemporary evangelicalism.
But in seeking to argue his thesis, I think he may overemphasize the sentimental theme. Christians have used some of the very language he identifies as sentimental long before the Victorian era. Language of God as father and Christians as children of God stems back to the Bible itself. While he makes a convincing argument that modern psychology has affected the way Christians talk about God as father, I’m concerned that he overstates the discontinuity of this theme between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and earlier eras when theologians also spoke of God as a loving Father. It would have been helpful to see more of the continuity between sentimental themes in the Christian tradition and in the contemporary evangelical scene.
Third—and this is a minor point, but still relevant—Brenneman selectively uses Jonathan Edwards to display an eighteenth-century theologian whose God is “angry” and who will burn unrepentant sinners in hell (20, 76). As Edwards scholars know, though, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” does not represent the quintessential Edwards. Using Edwards as a hellfire-preaching foil to sentimental Lucado minimizes important nuances—especially since Edwards had so much to say about human affections.
Defining “Evangelicalism”
Finally, we must consider Brenneman’s suggestion for a new definition of evangelicalism. He rightly encourages us to think about practice in our definition of evangelicals, but I wonder whether the specific emotional elements he incorporates into his definition really identify something distinctive about evangelicals.
First, he says evangelicals’ worldview is fashioned “by emotional relationship between individuals and God through Christ.” But wouldn’t liberal Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Christians all recognize that they are shaped by emotional relationship in these ways? If you remove God from this statement, even atheists would have to agree that they are shaped by emotional relationship between individuals. That is to say, I don’t see that this phrase is distinctive of evangelicals.
Second, Brenneman argues that we should define evangelicals as having an “aesthetical worldview.” Here he seeks to highlight “the fluidity between belief and practice that exists in evangelicalism” (160). Underscoring the relationship between belief and practice certainly has merit, and yet again, I’m unsure how this is distinctive of evangelicals.
As an alternative, I find that Doug Sweeney’s definition offers an understanding of evangelicalism that incorporates an element of practice and emotion in a way that shows the distinctive heritage of evangelicalism in historical perspective: “Evangelicals comprise a movement that is rooted in classical Christian orthodoxy, shaped by a largely Protestant understanding of the gospel, and distinguished from other such movements by an eighteenth-century twist” (The American Evangelical Story, 23–24). He goes on to define key terms in this definition, connecting “classical Christian orthodoxy” with the ancient Christian creeds and “Protestant understanding of the gospel” with the solas of the Reformation (sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus, sola Scriptura). Most importantly, the eighteenth-century twist is a “renewal movement” that emerged out of the Great Awakening in the eighteenth century, and this movement shaped the practice of evangelicals in service and missions and the emotion of evangelicals in the emphasis on heart religion and Christian renewal. This definition allows us to make good on linking practice with belief while still speaking in terms that are distinctive to evangelicals.
Ultimately, I find in Brenneman’s book many beneficial observations about contemporary evangelicalism. He rightly identifies a number of sentimental themes in popular forms of the movement that help us understand it better.
My sense, however, is that he pushes his thesis farther than the historical evidence can bear by identifying evangelicals’ “dependence on emotion—especially sentimentality—as the sine qua non of religion” (19). He defines “the core of the evangelical message” as “the sentimental connection between the human being and God” (87), declares that “the core of evangelicalism” is “sentimental emotion” (90), and argues that “[f]rom the middle of the nineteenth century, sentimentality became a core part of evangelical practice” (111). In Brenneman’s analysis, sentimentality is essential to evangelicalism, and this core sentimentality in evangelicals “renders them unable to answer the intellectual challenges that evangelicalism faces in the contemporary period” (19).
To say that sentimentality is “the core” of “the evangelical message” is a stretch. Few evangelicals today would articulate the “core” of their faith as a sentimental emotion. Brenneman justifies this approach by reading “against the grain,” but even with the influence of sentimentality on evangelicals in the modern era, such emotional appeals do not fully distinguish them from the broader Western culture which also relies heavily on emotional appeals in its popular forms. And evangelicals clearly form a distinct group from the broader culture.
So what differentiates them? At the very least, they are distinguished by their belief in and commitment to the gospel, the euangelion (Greek for “gospel”) from which they derive their name. Brenneman has done evangelicals and historians a favor by showing us how sentimentality has influenced evangelicals in their popular religious expressions, but has failed to convince this reader that sentimentality forms the “core” of the evangelical movement.
Have you any interested in having all your sins forgiven affiliation
