Book Review: Jesus vs Evangelicals
Grace Koch
Campbell, Constantine R. 2023. Jesus vs Evangelicals: A Biblical Critique of a Wayward Movement. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Reflective.
If you want a challenge to your personal walk with God, read this book. The introductory paragraphs alone will shock you, especially if you are a citizen of the USA.
Con Campbell is a theologian, Biblical scholar, author, musician, and former pastor who is professor and associate research director at Sydney College of Divinity and does sessional tutoring at the Canberra School of Music. When his busy schedule allows, he and his wife, Niah, attend the Anglican Church of St. John the Baptist. It was there that I met them, and when I told him of my interest in his book, he graciously gave me a copy. As I had shared some of my own journey as an evangelical with him, he said that he hoped I would still speak to him after I finished it.
In the acknowledgements, he admits that this was a risky book to write as it questions and confronts how evangelicalism has developed both within the USA and, to a lesser extent, in Australia. Although the book emphasises the problems within the evangelical movement, Christians from all backgrounds will benefit from engaging with Campbell’s wide-ranging and scholarly approach that combines solid Biblical evidence with a broad understanding of contemporary developments within both the USA and Australia. The section on God and country fits in well with last month’s Anabaptist discussion online about Christian nationalism.
Campbell writes from his own experience as a pastor and teacher, having served in several churches within the USA especially in the greater Chicago area and the Sydney Anglican dioceses. Several of the points he makes stood out to me.
1) After a brief examination of different descriptions of evangelicalism, he quotes historian Mark Noll’s three general classifications of evangelicals: theological or those who are evangelical by conviction, cultural or those who adopt the way of life and practices of various church communities, and political or those who share an accepted set of political commitments. Although each category may blur into the next, the cultural and political emphases have taken an upper hand for much that is happening in the USA.
2) The section on exclusion zones, along with the one on bad judgement, compares how Jesus ministered to the outsiders of society with our own tendencies towards exclusion of people who do not follow our own sets of rules. We can use these sections in self-examination.
3) Leading on from that section comes a scholarly description of what is happening amongst the megachurches and the resulting tribalism that emerges. We can see some of these developments in Australia as well, with divisiveness along church lines. He explores how the concepts of premillennialism have caused great divisions, especially in the USA.
4) For me, the most moving part of the book was on ‘acceptable sins.’ He says that the very sins Jesus finds most repugnant are the ones evangelicals tend to excuse, such as pride, arrogance, hypocrisy, judgmentalism, etc. He centres on pride and judgementalism, speaking from his own experience in describing how they can affect us, especially those who suffer marriage breakdowns. He quotes Matthew 23:23-24, which describes straining out the gnat but swallowing a camel. This section inspired me to do quite a bit of soul-searching.
Campbell ends with a chapter on saving faith, which takes a solidly biblical approach to how evangelicals can ensure that they do not fall into the various fallacies that the movement has generated. Near the end he suggests three possibilities for the future of the term ‘evangelical’; keeping it, redefining it, or getting rid of it altogether. He ends with many references to hope, showing how Jesus can transform our viewpoints, our desire for a closer walk with God, and our love for one another. Such a book is long overdue.
[1] Noll M. 2019 “Introduction: One Word but Three Crises” in Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be, ed. Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George M. Marsden (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), Kindle loc. 594.
