As the first in a four book series, David Wells has offered the church a stinging rebuke for allowing modernism to corrupt her along with a hopeful encouragement to return to Christ as the center of all she does. This entire series is not for the faint of heart but is so desperately needed today because of its two-fold approach. On the one hand, Wells brings the eye and training of a skilled historian to his analysis of culture.  On the other hand, he writes with the heart of a pastor-theologian as he examines the Scriptures for antidotes to the church’s shallowness and naiveté. He does both tasks with a respect for his readers’ intelligence and a desire to be academically credible.

On the cultural analysis front, he documents how our society has changed since the 1600s, moving from rural to urban, from weighty to “lite,” and from thoughtful to amused. Turning his scrutiny to the church, he despairs that we have abandoned theology, embraced a self-centered piety instead of a cross-focused worship, and subjected ourselves to the “authority” of pop-psychology and marketing techniques. He has particularly harsh things to say to pastors who have paved the way for the church’s seduction with their overvaluing of “success” and happiness.

His final two chapters offer hope, albeit a cautious one, if the church returns to the truth of the Scriptures and the goodness of the Gospel and eschews the idolatry of relevance. He does believe reform to be possible – but warns that nothing less should be accepted or sought after. The last paragraph of the book warns, “Those who are most relevant to the modern world are those most irrelevant to the moral purpose of God, but those who are irrelevant in the world by virtue of their relevance to God actually have the most to say to the world. They are, in fact, the only ones who have anything to say to it.”

Reviewed by: Randy Newman