Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys

Short Review: Christianity is not a culturally constrained religious experience. Both Acts and many places in the Pauline letters detail the conflict between those that wanted Gentiles to become Jewish before they become Christian and those that wanted Gentiles to become Christian without forcing them to adopt a new culture. This is a conflict that has happened repeatedly throughout Christian history.

I think one of the reasons why books like this are so important is that if we are culturally isolated we do not understand ways which our Christianity is cultural. David Platt had a quote recently (my paraphrase) that most American Christians cannot tell the difference between their christianity and their Americanism.

This is harmful for those of us in majority White culture, but it is more harmful to those that are in minority cultures. It not only creates internal conflict within the minority Christian but also harms their evangelism to their family and friends because it associates their culture with opposition to Christianity.

I think this is a book that is also very relevant to the recent John Chau controversy. Evangelism and colonialism are linked because of history and if we want to sort out the issues we have to directly confront the history. Ignoring it is not solving the problem.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/rescuing-the-gospel-from-the-cowboys/


I really only read this once, but I can't figure out how to delete the second reading without deleting my highlights.