Bourgeois Christians: Worldly Evangelicals and the Paradoxes of Paganism

Bourgeois Christians: Worldly Evangelicals and the Paradoxes of Paganism is a historical, philosophical, sociological, and theological critique of Evangelicalism. It combines biblical texts with ideas from existentialism and phenomenology, philosophers like Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, and theologians like John Calvin and J. I. Packer. It shows how pagan cultural forces divert Evangelicals from serving God in the name of God. This is a paradox. It also deals with Christian ethics, especially the duty to love your neighbor. It describes the worldliness of the evangelical church. The book also shows how paganism influences many Evangelicals and how they like that influence. Indeed, paganism thrives in many evangelical churches, hiding in denominational traditions, evangelistic techniques, and therapeutic teaching, resulting in a moralistic, therapeutic theism. Many Evangelicals, those I call bourgeois Christians, live an average kind of Christian life that is merely Christianish. I show the way out of this weak Christianity and into an embodied and embedded faith that focuses on neighbors rather than the culture's self-centered individualism. The book emphasizes loving action, not just a religion of the mind, and shows how much evangelical piety is populist--a comfortable religion that Americans want.