OldSpeak

Book Review: The Market Driven Church

By Joshua Anderson
May 07, 2004

In the opening chapter of his recently published book, The Market Driven Church, Udo Middelmann, born and educated in Germany, favorably quotes from Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and comments, “De Tocqueville saw, even back then, a danger in the marriage of too much power with too little wisdom. A nation of producers, traders, and consumers runs the risk of measuring most things by their motion, possibilities of the markets, and the speed of the transaction and expected future results. What sells must be good. People should be given what they like.” The influence of democratic pluralism on American Christianity is essential to Middelmann's argument, and the implicit message in referencing the 18th century French writer is obvious; in the same way De Tocqueville’s geographic and cultural distance from the United States gave him particular insights into the health and future of our young country, Middelmann’s European residence allows him to see with a clear vision how significant and good or dangerous is the pervasive and seemingly inevitable cultural impact of America upon its Church. And, at least for Middelmann, that vision is bleak.

In the span of eight chapter essays, Middelmann outlines an American church that has increasingly capitulated to the secular culture around it by offering a version of Christianity that accentuates “personal” truth at the expense of universal realities, experiential evangelism instead of well-reasoned arguments for faith, and a (sub) cultural influence that is expanding more because of the lax theology of its consumers than any real creativity. One of Middelmann’s most frequent complaints is characterized in his constant comparison of the robust and expansive implications for all spheres of life promoted in medieval, European Christianity with the frequently limited and compartmentalized demands of the American Church, which seems content to offer Christianity only as an comforting alternative to our culture’s host of social problems (materialism, sexual brokenness, disrupted families, etc.), rather than as a compelling world view which those outside the church deny at their own peril. Specifically, Middelmann fears that Christianity has allowed the surrounding pluralistic culture, with its resistance to exclusive truth claims and universal realities, to define the battleground on which Christians present their faith. In a biting analysis that is typical of much of the book, he writes,

What was earlier an obligation for each person—to choose to bow before the God and truth of the universe—has been reduced to a personal (i.e., private) choice not at all that different from other persons’ choices: Will you have decaf or regular, white or black, sugar or sweetner? Evangelism is much like the lady who says, “Let me tell you what exercise has done in my life.”

The consequence of Christians relegating their faith to the private world of their hearts shows itself in the prevalence of America’s Christian subculture, which offers its own websites, magazines, coffee houses, award shows, tv channels—in short, a world of its own. Instead of standing outside secular culture while at the same time reforming it, the American church is content to produce an imitative Christian pop culture that is often far more “pop” than it is Christian. In contrast to St. Paul, who placed an “intellectual ax at the root of the [pagan culture’s] thinking,” Middelmann sees a modern American Christianity that has largely withdrawn from the definitive philosophical arguments of its day.

Where [the Church] once focused on right thinking and a moral life in all spheres of society from inside the church, she now competes for the time and dedication of the public with such offerings as schools and gyms, bingo halls and adult education programs. In the past she reached into the community. She has today become an alternative community among many others.

Much of the problem, according to Middelmann, lies in the overwhelming influence of postmodernism, which he calls a “justification for an assumed freedom for our minds to see things only because and when we see them.” In American Christianity, post-modern thinking shows its influence by the emphasis, above all things, on the creation and maintenance of the individual believer’s relationship with Jesus. The historically important Biblical mandate to take dominion of all of creation has somehow been lost under a blanket of best-selling devotional books, prayer journals, and inspirational pop music (though he does not mention it, the current craze regarding Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life is a good example of this phenomenon). “Rather than believing in ‘the light of the world’ or ‘the bread of life,’ we have reduced Christianity to personal salvation, without being aware of the problems this creates,” writes Middelmann, who argues that this introspective worldview inevitably leads to an American church where "the emotive massage [has] replace[d] the intelligent message.”

While there is much to commend in The Market Driven Church, the book is not without several significant flaws, though the fault may lie more with Crossway Books (the publisher) than the author. Middelmann is not a native English speaker, and it shows throughout his text, which is often characterized with poorly constructed sentences and an overly simple style of writing. Additionally, there is much wasted writing; two chapters in particular stand out as peripheral to the book's goal—one is a poorly researched and hardly original attack on the fatalistic implications of historic Calvinism in American Christianity, the other an interesting, but unfocused, critique of America's obsession with spectator sports. The fact these two chapters are placed at the very end of the book adds to the feeling that they are tacked on to add additional pages rather than additional insight. Finally, as a book of loosely connected essays, Middelmann's book sorely needs a thorough introduction; the lack of one can only be characterized as a gross oversight by both its editor and author, and will likely lead to many prospective readers getting muddled down in attempting to discern Middelmann's thesis instead of weighing the quality of his arguments.

There is particular frustration with the technical shortcomings of The Market Driven Church because it is an important book; the problems Middelmann identifies are genuine, and he proves to be adept at showing how they relate—not to a lack of faith—but rather to a limited and incorrect view of scripture. If the church is to again provide a compelling alternative to the secular and pluralistic culture around it, its members must learn to think and act biblically—an argument Middelman presents, if not eloquently, then at least persuasively.

 

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