The Protest of a Troubled Protestant

📖 The Scoop

What place is there for the believing Christian today? Can he find shelter from the great secular storms of the times, or is he doomed to be a stranger in his own church? What hope is there for the reconciliation of the historic Christian confessions? For Christianity, in its agony, to bring comfort to those who seek it in Christ's timeless message? These are hard but necessary questions. The answers Mr. Brown reaches are not simple, nor pat, nor very pleasing to the modern ear, for they bear witness to the ravaging of the truth so fashionable among modern theologians. This is no time for superficiality. "In twentieth-century America, with its millions of well-intentioned but fussy-minded 'good Christian people,' we rejoice -- in certain circles, anyway -- when church attendance rises, and are concerned when it declines. This is a mistake," the author says bluntly. We cannot be swept along by the ultra-tolerant notion that believing in something is enough, when a crisis of unbelief spreads within the churches as well as without, and threatens the very promise of man's redemption. Mr. Brown underscores a paradox: even as secular fevers rack the churches, the ecumenical movement gathers strength. Insofar as this represents growing unity among those of all faiths who share fundamental Christian beliefs in the face of adversity, it is a good thing. But there are dangers, too. On the Protestant side, the most enthusiastic ecumenists are those with the fewest (if any) Christian beliefs. On the other side, the Roman Catholic church is in danger of infection from the same fever-carriers Protestantism has had to grapple with for a century. Nor is ecumenism so easy a matter to undertake between those whose beliefs are too deep to be readily negotiable. Mr. Brown frankly cites what he feels are errors in Catholic doctrine that stand in the way of interfaith unity. He is perhaps even more critical of trends away from basic Christian doctrine in Protestant churches. Mr. Brown writes as a committed evangelical Christian -- one who accepts the truth of the Gospel. Let who will regard him as a "fundamentalist or a fool -- charges which are immediately leveled at anyone who takes religious faith seriously." For those with locked minds, labels are a cheap way to avoid the problem. For those who would hear, the author brings deep insight and honesty to the great problems besetting the Christian faith. Happily (in a field of writing plagued by dust-dry texts at one end and primitive tracts at the other), Mr. Brown also brings to the task an uncommonly graceful, readable style. "Protest is very much in the air today," Mr. Brown writes. "This book is certainly a protest. In large measure it is a reaction, vehement if not violent, to conditions which the author has been faced with as a minister, university chaplain, and just as a Christian trying to bear witness to a message which is "the power of God unto salvation," but of which the church seems ashamed. "Yet, having begun as a protest in the modern sense, this book would be a disservice to the cause of Christianity if it were not also a protest in the older sense (protestari, Latin: to testify for), a positive testimony...[because] the Gospel of Jesus Christ is God's answer to man's lostness, in the twentieth century as in the first." Such, indeed, is the message of hope the reader will find in this book.

Genre: No Category (fancy, right?)