June 23, 2005
Bottom Ten List
Inspired by Dr. Sam Storms' own bottom list, I here post my "ten worst books for the Church (of the modern era)." They are in no particular order and appear on the list either because they have had wide distribution or their ideas have had pernicious impact--even if the distribution of the book is negligible.
- Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, Left Behind series
'Nuff said
- Letha Dawn Scanzoni and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?
As can be seen from the title itself, the book fails to offer an open dialogue, but prejudices its entire presentation on an ad hominem, which is then supposed to justify the authors' conclusions. For a much more balanced and rigorous presentation, see Robert Gagnon's The Bible and Homosexual Practice
- Laurie Beth Jones, Jesus CEO
Reduces Christian leadership to manipulation and "techniques."
- John Shelby Spong, A New Christianity for a New World
Few reasonable Christians take Spong seriously, but his books reaffirm the notion that the world sets the agenda for the Church. Spong's crass prostitution of his clerical status in the Episcopal Church only adds to the outright secularism of his anti-christianity.
- Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life
Excise the explicitly Christian content of Warren's book and you have Tony Robbins.
- John Piper, Desiring God
All the Calvinism without the added burden of a God with emotional problems.
- Donald McGavran, C Peter Wagner, Understanding Church Growth
Something along the lines of how to get the Holy Spirit to grow your church. God becomes a project manager for measurable success.
- James H. Rutz, The Open Church
The "Jesus in blue jeans" myth of the ancient Church with just enough anti-institutionalism to make leftover 60s radicals happy.
- Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology
Whatever insights Bultmann brings is constrained by anti-supernaturalist and chronological biases that end up with a perspective of the Scripture proving itself to us instead of we to Scripture. Furthers the historical Jesus agenda of the Jesus Seminar folks and their cadre of hermeneuticians of suspicion.
- Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking
A little happy narcissistic Pelagianism never hurt anyone, right?
Posted by Clifton at June 23, 2005 10:54 AM
| TrackBack
My brother-in-law was telling me about Desiring God. I knew Piper was a hardcore Calvinist, but figured maybe that element of his theology was downplayed a bit since the books are devotional (from what I understand). How does the theology affect his message? Or maybe I should just go read the reviews on Amazon...
Hilarious (and extraordinarily sad) that you claim Gagnon is "balanced and rigorous"!
Also pretty sad to see homophobia so profound that it requires listing a book that almost nobody's ever heard of ("Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?") in second place on your little list.
Hard to believe the Church is so insecure (and so repressed) that it makes this issue - out of all the possibilities! so all-important; all because it can't accept God's own reality. The modern world is starving for God and the Church is feeding it a diet of dust.
bls:
Well, well, well . . . if the Church is so insecure (and so repressed) why did you focus on that particular issue so exclusively?
Seems there's a lot more going on in my list than just one single book having to do with homosexual behavior. In fact, there are nine other titles there. Nothing else piqued your ire?
Also, you appeared to miss the caveat that none of these books were in any particular order.