Still Evangelical?: Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning

Still Evangelical?

Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning

2017 • 222 pages

Short Review: Still Evangelical is worth reading. Part of why it is worth reading is that it is well balanced and actually has as many women and minority authors as White males. And for this discussion that matters. I mentioned each of the chapters in my full review, but the best chapters is Allen Yeh's chapter, which while about more than just this, is about the importance of retaining the orthodoxy we have while adopting a greater focus on orthopraxy. Mark Galli's chapter was most frustrating for me, but I think that it was also a necessary chapter as being the most standard critique of the state of Evangelicalism (not paying enough attention to the non-elites and roughly parallel argument for economic and cultural anxiety as the reasons people voted for Trump).

There were many other chapters that were also quite good. Roughly the line of argument throughout the book is that Evangelicalism as a group matters, that it is a worldwide movement and that the critique of the term in the US doesn't listen enough to those outside the US, or the term's history. But that there is a reason for the critique inside the US.

I really was not incredibly interested in this discussion and was planning on skipping the book. But I picked it up mostly because of Karen Swallow Prior talking about it positively. I gave it a chance and it was much better and more helpful than I expected it to be.

My full review is on my blog (about 1500 words) at http://bookwi.se/still-evangelical/

December 18, 2017