Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #122246 in Books
• Published on: 1994-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

An honest critique
I enjoyed this book greatly. Guiness encourages us not to "bow down" to the unintellectual age which has hindered Christian scholasticism. He does this in two parts. The first part of the book explains how the American religious consciousness has moved away from knowledge and even claims to be the enemy of knowledge. The second part of the book describes the current postmodern situation in America in which even nonreligious people are anti-intellectual, and how the church is simply becoming one with the secular world. The power of this book is that Guiness reminds us that we as Christians are to "love the Lord with all our mind" as well. The one critique (and therefore the loss of a star) is that Guiness does not investigate the postmodern philosophy of religion movement, which is returning to an academic approach to religious thinking, especially the writings of John D. Caputo and Merold Westphal. Of course, Guiness is not a philosopher, so he should not have to be accountable on philosophical terms. However, by ignoring the theistic postmoderns he has given an improper picture of religion in the postmodern world. However, as an overall book, it is a must read for all religious thinkers and religious nonthinkers alike. He will make you think about how you think about religion.

A corrective to evangelicalism
In this book, Dr. Guiness sets out to show the decline of the Christian mind in America in the past 200 years. He also reflects on the importance of the decline of Christian thought in American evangelicalism and its impact on Christian effectiveness in society.

Guiness sketches eight different ways in which the "high point" of the Puritan Christian mind has declined; Polarization, Pietism, Primitivism, Populism, Pluralism, Pragmatism, Philistinism and Premillenialism.

While I would generally agree with much of his analysis here, I wondered how Arminianism (in contrast to Calvinism) has contributed to the decline. It was a very interesting idea; the Arminian-Calvinist issue is one I'm currently exploring in my own study. His section on eschatology (the doctrine of last things; Christ's return, Rapture etc..) was also strange; eschatology is not a field that I have studied. I would agree that an excessive preoccupation with "end-times" can distract Christians from acting in the present (which seems to be his point) but otherwise I don't really see the significance of this point. One idea that came up several times in this section is the degradation of belief, theology and doctrine; a shift that has severely affected American evangelicalism. One of the memorable quotes in the Pluralism chapter from G.K. Chesterton, "Tolerance is the virtue of those who don't believe anything." Chesterton and Guiness were no doubt referring to the philosophical position of tolerance (i.e. regarding all propositions as true) rather than the idea of simply peacefully co-existing. This is personified in such quotes from Billy Sunday as, "I do not know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit knew about pin-pong."

However, each chapter is very short (4-6 pages) and I would have appreciated more documentation and evidence of what he was trying to show. To me, it seems that these small chapters could have quite comfortably been enlarged to 25-30 pages. His next section is about various secular influences on Christian thought (esp. the media, television and advertising). Again, his analysis seems too brief. His discussion of the contemporary image-centered culture versus the Christian word-centered (see John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word.."). I think this contrast was very insightful and it is a reminder that the means or medium, which is used to communicate, also says something (e.g. short, shallow, emotional commercials valued over slow, deep, thoughtful and propositional debate). Or as Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message."

Guiness' last section discusses what it means to, "think Christianly" and what steps can be taken to recover evangelical preeminence in American culture.

In sum, I would have appreciated this book to be double its actual length. I had the feel that ideas were being mentioned in an almost passing manner and that much more could have been said.

form and style follow analysis and function
Reading this book is part of a deliberate effort to study the relationship of reason to the Christian faith. The current subtopic is why evangelicals seem to be so anti-intellectual, this book follows: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind , and Love Your God with All Your Mind . There are two more in the TBR pile as well: Habits of the Mind by James Sire and The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship by George Marsden, so i am looking for more books with the same common theme, email me your favorites please.

I usually read for an hour or so each morning over coffee at a local fast food joint, i find if i don't get out of the house at this time, that i don't get out of the house at all. I was lamenting the slowness of my reading to a person i have gotten acquainted with while sitting in my favorite booth there. He told me my problem was that i am trying to reading books that are too long, i suspect he isn't much of a reader, but his point is well taken. So this very short, 150 pages book is my attempt to take his advice to heart. The trouble is that this book is not an easy read, not because it's topic is complex but because of its structure, i started the book and put it aside several times because it seems too disjointed and choppy. It wasn't until chapter 10 on advertising that i realized that the book's structure is deliberate and made to mirror the criticism he makes of the shallowness of Christian intellects, i know i am slow, but i eventually got it.

The average chapter is about 5 pages long, the book reads like a series of slogans strung out together on a clothes line, with cuteness in phrasing common. There is little complexity of thought with points then defense and analysis but rather a structure that mentally looks like an outline. I thought at first that it was a collection of essays written for serialization in a periodical hence the short, concise chapter length, but with the embedded advertisements in chapter 10, it became clear that the form was part of his message. Literally the book is written to those he is critical of, those majority of Christians that prefer TV to books, who desire style rather than substance, who are critical of the pastor if the sermon has more than 3 main points or goes over the allotted 30 minutes(45 in Reformed churches, we are just a little more intellectual). So he wrote the book in 3 sections, each with 8 points, none of the points with more than 2 levels of depth, chapters able to be read in 15 minutes or less (except the last, "Let My People Think", his prescription which is 21 pages long, an average sermon). Now this makes a cute point, but is really hard on a reader, who naturally expects a book not a collection of sermons, unless labelled and advertised as such. The cuteness is mnemonic, meant to be ear-some, witsome, memorable with turns of phrase to stick in the mind and become the central take home point to remain available in the reader to dredge up when he thinks about the topics covered.

Fit Bodies, Fat Minds
Introduction: A Scandal and a Sin
...."the greatest danger besetting American Evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind as to its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough" Charles Malik (pg 11)
...."Without a genuinely critical position resting on Christain foundations and directed by a coherent theological vision that can deal with modern science and technology and the reality of foreign cultures, it is very likely that the evangelical voice in politics today will once again confuse the Christian faith with the American flag." John Schaar (pg 13)
....Not surprisingly the disarray and frustration is deepest among evangelicals who think--whether those who do so for a living such as academics, or those who do so for the love of it, such as artists.",/i> (pg 15)

Part One: A Ghost Mind
...."But the real damage to evangelicals was self-inflicted...The true story of the evangelical mind in retreat is the story of the surrender, not the stealing of America."

1. Polarization
2. Pietism
3. Primitivism
4. Populism
5. Pluralism
6. Pragmatism
7. Philistinism
8. Premillenialism

Part Two: An Idiot Culture
....What follows, then, is an outline of some of the pressures shaping the Christian mind in America at the popular level. ... But the following list throws light on the source and style of modern pressures that make our thinking more like the 'idiot culture' around us than the mind of Christ within us." (pg 75)

9 Amusing Ourselves to Death
10 People Of Plenty
11 All Consuming Images
12 The Humiliation of the Word
13 Cannibals of PoMo
14 Tabloid Truth
15 Generation Hex
16 Real, Reel, or Virtually Real?

Part Three: Let My People Think
...."This is the incurable suspicion of thinking born of the distorted notion that, because divine wisdom is folly to human minds, Christian thinking is a contradiction in terms and itis therefore better to be irrational." (pg 137)