October 30, 2024

An Unanxious Celebration of the Church

Institutionally, Christianity Today has a multilayered relationship with the church, following a model with no precise equivalent in secular journalism.

On one hand, we report on the church—not as cheerleaders or PR hacks but as objective observers striving to paint an accurate portrait of triumphs and failures alike. Yet even as we carry out this journalistic mission, we also celebrate the church unapologetically, affirming its status as Christ’s beautiful bride. Our leaders and staffers belong to the church, as members of Christ’s body in its various evangelical expressions.

Thus, when we cover a book like Brad East’s The Church: A Guide to the People of God, the latest entry in Lexham Press’s Christian Essentials series, we aren’t engaged in a bloodless exercise of promoting mere religious literacy. You’ll get solid analysis (hopefully!), but it’s anchored on the conviction that the church is a divine blessing, whatever the sins of the humans who fill its pulpits and pews.

In his review for CT, Oklahoma pastor Brett Vanderzee calls the book “a much-needed tonic for our times. As you may have heard lately about Americans and the church, there has been plenty of love lost. In their own book The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham document how 40 million Americans said sayonara to the church in the last quarter century—the biggest and fastest religious transformation in our country’s history. If there was ever a time to answer the question ‘Why church?’ that time is now.

“And yet, there is no sign of anxiety in East’s answer. Far above the fray, he begins with the transcendent mystery of the church and moves deftly to the church’s mother: Mary. By divine adoption, he writes, we became brothers and sisters of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, we are Mary’s children, which makes us children of the church. To those who have lost touch with the church in our day, East gives time-honored advice: ‘Call your mother.’

“The Church is bookended by reflections on Mary, some of them quite stunning. God’s people have long recognized her as the ‘mother of God,’ and Jesus’ human flesh comes entirely from her. ‘No human being ever knew Christ with greater intimacy than Mary,’ East says of the woman whose womb enveloped our Lord. It is striking for a Protestant to write about Mary with such depth, devotion, and insight.

“Still, in true Protestant fashion, The Church is laser-focused on the Good Book. It is fitting that East—who wrote his dissertation on the relationship of church and Scripture—has saturated his book on the church with Scripture. Biblical citations carbonate nearly every page in parenthetical bubbles. A back-of-the-napkin tally of the book’s Scripture index shows references to 46 of the Bible’s 66 books.

“But this is no mere box-checking exercise: It amounts to a substantive claim about the relationship of God’s Word to Israel, for ‘the business of the Bible is the calling of a people.’ They go hand in hand, and to its credit, The Church will not let us forget it.”

Resisting the Presidential Cult

I won’t burden you with any thoughts about the upcoming presidential election. I promise you’re not missing out on anything revolutionary, or even all that interesting.

Zooming out a little, though, I do wish our society could dial down its levels of obsession over presidential campaigns (and the presidency as a whole). In this, my perspectives broadly align with those of libertarian political analyst Gene Healy, whose 2008 book The Cult of the Presidency I revisited for my new CT print column, The Beckoning Nightstand. (As a refresher, my purpose in writing the column is exploring books that have sat languishing on my shelves—books too old for CT to review in the conventional manner, yet still too modern to classify as old.)

Here’s a sample from the column, which appears in the CT’s September/October issue:

“Healy’s work, subtitled America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, can usefully reframe well-worn evangelical conversations about political idolatry, though it wasn’t written with Christians in mind.

“We often bemoan flagrant departures from Christ-centered faith, like Christian nationalism or blind loyalty to Team Red or Team Blue. But the presidential ‘cult’ operates on a lower wavelength, Healy argues. Even if you keep a healthy distance from partisan spectacle, you might have fallen under its sway.

“This tendency can be easier to see if we distinguish individual leaders from the office itself. Americans are fond of dismissing particular presidents as fools, knaves, and charlatans. Yet we still expect the White House to work wonders, Healy observes, pining for the president to heal society’s every ill.”

Matt Reynolds

Senior Editor, Books

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Our September/October issue explores themes in spiritual formation and uncovers what’s really discipling us. Bonnie Kristian argues that the biblical vision for the institutions that form us is renewal, not replacement—even when they fail us. Mike Cosper examines what fuels political fervor around Donald Trump and assesses the ways people have understood and misunderstood the movement. Harvest Prude reports on how partisan distrust has turned the electoral process into a minefield and how those on the frontlines—election officials and volunteers—are motivated by their faith as they work. Read about Christian renewal in intellectual spaces and the “yearners”—those who find themselves in the borderlands between faith and disbelief. And find out how God is moving among his kingdom in Europe, as well as what our advice columnists say about budget-conscious fellowship meals, a kid in Sunday school who hits, and a dating app dilemma.

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