As one who enjoys reading, there are very few books that I genuinely loathe…“Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand is one that comes immediately to mind. (And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy the story…it’s just that the train-wreck of John Galt’s 80-pages-plus “radio address” near the book’s end ruined it.) However, on VERY rare occasions, I discover a book that I simultaneously loathe and love. Horton’s “Beyond Culture Wars” falls into this purgatorial category.

I will begin with the main reason that I loved the book. First, I wholeheartedly agree with the book’s major premise that the American church, in both its mainline/liberal Protestant and conservative Evangelical expressions, has decidedly lost its way, trading in its theological identity for some sort of mushy socio-political alternative lifestyle. Many within the church have mistakenly identified particular political and economic agendas as theologically “orthodox” when the reality is that Scripture has very little, if anything, to say about it. Take, for example, the debate about the comparative advantages and disadvantages of capitalism versus socialism. If we were quite honest, the Bible says next to nothing that could be construed as “favoring” one over the other. Or, better, what the Bible does say about the nature of human solidarity stands as a burning critique of BOTH capitalism AND socialism’s sinful excesses. Yet, the Church has essentially allowed itself to be co-opted by proponents of particular economic philosophies which, in turn, has a) alienated those who do not share that economic philosophy from the message of the Gospel and b) has distracted the American church from her primary mission of evangelism and the salvation of souls.

Horton is at his best when he is attacking the American civil religion that has disguised itself in Judeo-Christian robes. This leads him to positions that many I know would find surprising and perhaps offensive. For example, Horton does not wish for a return of prayer in the public schools, not because he doesn’t believe in prayer but because the prayer that is offered in such circumstances is not nor could it ever be prayer offered to Jesus Christ. Instead, the nation offers up prayers to a generic “god” who would best be named the American Dream and those who join the prayer intercede not for the coming of the heavenly Kingdom but for the success of the national self-interest.

However, when it came to providing answers, I found that I largely HATED Horton’s solutions. First, Horton annoyingly tries to lay the blame for this current “identity crisis” that has infected American Christianity on 19th and early 20th-century revivalism, especially in its involvement with emancipation, women’s suffrage, and prohibition. Having been raised in one of those disparaged “revival” movements (i.e., Pentecostalism), I felt that Horton’s analysis of the impact of revivalism in America fell flat. In reality, it was an attack that, in my opinion, was driven more by his disagreements with Charles Finney’s hamartiological views than with any careful analysis of the actual effects of the various revival movements. Furthermore, it could be argued that these high levels of religious movement’s broader social engagement that are responsible for American religious vitality compared to, say, Europe.

I also struggled with Horton’s commitment to the “Two Kingdoms” ideology of Luther and the later Reformation. He purposely avoids, it seems to me, discussing the ways in which Calvin attempted to use the civil government in Geneva to enforce theological orthodoxy, especially in his burning of Michael Servetus. I would think that, given Calvin’s clear heroic status in Horton’s mind, he would have taken time to address this tragic event, especially because it speaks directly to his claim about the key troubles of our own times. There is a significant history lesson here but, since it would come at Calvin’s expense, Horton would rather avoid it.

At the end of the day, while I agreed largely with Horton’s diagnosis of the issue, I’m not altogether convinced by his proposed cure, steeped as it is a Reformed theology that I find almost repugnant in some respects. For me, the most fascinating part of reading Horton’s book was recalling that it was published in 1993…just over 25 YEARS ago in those long-forgotten halcyon days of the Clinton administration. Reading Horton’s warnings in the midst of Trump’s ascendancy demonstrated how little the American church has actually learned. The problems Horton identifies have magnified ten-fold. Instead of backing down, religious leaders have chosen to double down on doomed-to-fail attempts to attain and retain worldly power. The questions Horton raises in this work are even MORE valuable analytical tools in our own world.

As long as fundamentalists and evangelicals have a theology that places them constantly in an adversarial relationship to this world and its culture, they will continue to involve themselves with art only when trying to censor it; with politics, only when it is a quest for control; with science, only when they want to oppose evolution; with victims of AIDS, only when they remind them that they deserve it; and with education, only when school prayer, sex education, and condoms are discused. Where are we when the SAT scores are falling? Telling the world that it is because public prayer was banned in schools in 1963!