[Note: This is one post in a series on David Gushee’s book After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity. The aim of these posts is to help you start conversations with people in your community. Invite someone to read this book with you and discuss it together. You don’t need to agree with each other or the author to benefit from doing this type of activity.]
David Gushee’s After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity is a great book to read and discuss with someone who doesn’t think like you. It offers people from all different backgrounds and predispositions a way into a conversation about issues that matter.
If you are a proud evangelical, you’ll be challenged to confront important issues facing your expression of the Christian faith.
If you are a disgruntled evangelical, you’ll hear someone who has some of the same issues with evangelicalism as you. This will afford you the chance to consider a different expression of the faith.
If you are an exvangelical but still a Christian, you’ll likely find an ally in these pages. This can be encouraging to you.
If you are a complete outsider, you’ll get access to some important struggle sessions taking place within Christianity.
Most importantly, if you’re someone committed to (or interested in) living the Doubters’ Club lifestyle, you’ll find encouragement to keep conversations open and to prioritize loving people.
Whether you read this book by yourself or with a small group of friends. Each post on After Evangelicalism will follow a similar format.
A recap of important points in the chapter.
An intriguing quote or statistic
A couple of conversation questions.
Let’s dive into the Introduction.
Recap:
In the introduction, David Gushee summarizes the problems he sees facing evangelicalism. As the book suggests, however, he is not interested in deconstructing the Christian faith for deconstructionist reasons alone. Instead, he wants to offer people who find themselves disillusioned by evangelicalism a way forward through the “evangelical maze in order to come out on the other side—not just alive and intact, but still interested in a relationship with Jesus” (Gushee, 11).
Intriguing Quote/Statistic
“‘If that book is right, I would need to throw out half my library and start over again. That’s not happening.’ That ended the conversation” (Gushee, xi).
“According to the Pew Research Center’s landmark 2014 Religious Landscape Study, adults who had been raised evangelical but who had either switched to another religious tradition or no longer identified with any religious tradition comprised roughly 8 percent of the total US population. That’s about 25 million people” (Gushee, 2).
Conversation Starters
What is your relationship to evangelicalism?
Are you willing to rethink everything in your life? Or are you too invested to seriously consider changing your mind?
What problems/issues do you see in evangelicalism? What benefits do you see in evangelicalism?