Book Review—8/23/10

What if someone told you that Evangelicals aren’t hated as much as the media would have us believe, committed Christians aren’t falling off the map in droves, many college professors really do have an Evangelical prejudice (far more than toward ANY other religious group), and that, for the most part, Evangelicals are walking more consistently in their faith than ever before? Would you believe them?

If you find that group of statements difficult to buy, you’re probably basing your skepticism on the frequently used results of various surveys that show how far American Christianity has fallen in the modern era. In Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...and Other Lies You’ve Been Told, Bradley Wright analyzes the data that such surveys produce and takes Christians to task for interpreting the studies in such a way that bolsters their point rather than carefully considering what they actually reveal. The book is not for the faint of heart, as Wright undertakes to deconstruct the myth of the “dying Church” in America so often repeated in our churches. He reminds believers to critically examine the statistics they are presented rather than taking them at face value.

As an evangelical Christian with a Ph. D. in sociology who has dealt in data his entire educational life, Wright is among the few who possess the academic authority to write such a shocking book. In fact, he is a professor who specifically focuses his sociology work on American Christianity.

In the beginning of his book, Wright mentions that the motivation for writing it came about when he wrote a series on his blog questioning the divorce rate for Christians. Wright said for a long time he heard that Christians’ divorce rates were equal to or worse than those of unbelievers, and after studying the best data available, he found the opposite to be true: Christians had significantly lower divorce rates than unbelievers and that rate became even lower the more frequently a person attended church services. This caused him to start doubting other oft-cited statistics and eventually this book was born out of his many statistical discoveries.

It should be noted that this professor has done his homework on this subject because he has a vested interest in the Church’s health as an evangelical believer. Wright claims that his “goal is not to show the Church in a particular light but rather to let the data speak for themselves.” However, before he even presents his data he offers a good case for how and why bad statistics “mutate” and proliferate. These reasons can vary from people wanting to sell books or conferences or simply as a scare tactic for right living—Wright is quick to point out that fear has never been something proven to achieve long-lasting results in morality. Wright encourages believers not to totally reject all statistics, but rather sniff out fear appeals by noting the extreme wording involved in the appeal itself and understand how these truly inaccurate statistics are able to makes the rounds in Christian circles. 

In the body of the book, Wright examines six areas of Christian life by mining data from numerous respected American studies with very large sample groups. These areas include church growth, what we believe, our participation in church activities, family and sexual issues, how we treat others, and how others see us. Wright points out through detailed explanation (and numerous graphs) that, in most categories, evangelicals do very well compared to others and that most numbers improve even further the more a person attends church (e.g. rarely, yearly, monthly, or weekly). His point isn’t that believers are supposed to compare their sins with those of others, he is merely combating the “Christians these days are no better than non-Christians” mantra so prevalent in churches today.

 At the end of the book, he simplifies his data into a report card of sorts, rating evangelicals “healthy” in categories of church growth, abstaining from sin, knowledge of doctrine, youth carrying on sound theology and lifestyle practices. He rates them rather poorly, however, in areas like gender equality (referring to attendance, not leadership), loving behaviors, tithing, attitudes toward various groups (other races, non-Christians, etc.), with the worst grade given for the Church’s self-concept.

One of Wright’s strongest points deals with this idea of low self-concept in the Church. He asks how we can effectively minister to others as the Body of Christ if we are constantly saying “Church doesn’t work.” Imagine if you invited a friend to church who you’ve been trying to witness to for a long time and all he hears Sunday morning is negativity: youth are fleeing the church, Christians are mired in sexual sin, etc. Will that kind of negative attitude toward God’s people make your vulnerable friend interested in finding the solution to his emptiness through Christ? Probably not if his exposure to Christ aside from your witness, is limited only to how God’s Word is not penetrating people’s hearts, all good Christian children are losing their Christian heritage in college, and church attendance has virtually no effect on a person’s behavior every other day of the week. This is not to say that God cannot overcome that to work in someone’s heart, but that we can make it unnecessarily difficult for an unbeliever to discover the message of the Gospel amid our baggage.

Conversely, Wright is not trying to “ignore bad news to focus solely on good news;” striving for objectivity is a defining characteristic of a sociologist, so naturally Wright is only trying to get the Church to look at itself honestly, neither overemphasizing the good nor the bad.

Despite all the good things found in Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites, Wright’s data is still, at the end of the day, just data. He is limited by seeing what is on paper and not in the individual hearts and minds of the people represented, which means at times evangelical issues can get oversimplified (especially in the section on attitudes toward other groups as well as the section on sinning). This, however, is not Wright’s fault, merely the problem with using samples and statistics to tackle such large, complicated life issues. The inner-workings of living out our faith are much more complicated than any graph could ever try to simplify, but Wright does an exceptional job with what resources are available to him. 

Taken as a whole, this is a book American Christians need to encounter. It is a stirring wake-up call that the world’s ways of measuring success don’t always apply to the Church. We need to be reminded often to put more trust in the Lord than in our own methods for preserving and expanding His kingdom.

Rachel Lonas

Target: All
Type: Statistics/Church culture
Take: Highly Recommended