Evangelism in an Age of Despair: Hope Beyond he Failed Promise of Happiness (Andrew Root) - A Review
Mainline Protestants have long
struggled with evangelism. It’s not that they don’t want people to join their
churches; it’s that they have a problem with what they perceive evangelism
involves. This is largely due to experiences with people engaging in hard-sell
forms of evangelism that offer a message of "turn or burn." Although
this is not the only way to understand evangelism, it is how many perceive it.
This is unfortunate because the word evangelism comes from the Greek word euangelion,
which means good news. To evangelize is to share the good news of Jesus with
others. As we ponder what this might entail, we would be wise to consider what
the church’s message might be in this current age. How do we share the good
news of Jesus when many connect Christianity with Christian nationalism and the
apparent merger of white evangelicalism with Trumpism? The further question has
to do with reaching people in a context of despair.
Andrew Root’s latest book is titled
Evangelism in an Age of Despair. The subtitle is quite revealing—Hope
Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness. One of the messages embedded in the
Enlightenment, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, is that we
deserve to enjoy “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It sounds
good, but is it an attainable goal? Further, if this is one of our life
pursuits, how does the Gospel message fit in? Some preachers have made the
pursuit of happiness (and prosperity) the focus of their messages. Robert
Schuller turned Jesus’ beatitudes into the “Be Happy Attitudes.” As a recent
biography of Schuller reveals, even for Schuller, there was a disconnect
between his message and his life (see The Church Must Grow or Perish: RobertH. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity by Mark Mulder and
Gerardo Marti).
If you have read, as I have read,
Root’s series of books dealing with ministry in a secular age, you may be
wondering if this is simply another volume in that series. Although there is a
lot of overlap in style and even message, this book is not part of that very
important series. What is true is that this book is reflective of Root’s work
on the church in this secular age. Recognizing that what ails our age is
despair, a failure to experience the happiness promised to us. In response to
this reality, Root offers us a vision of evangelism based on a theology of
consolation. Although, as he admits, the first word in the title might suggest
this is primarily a book about evangelism, it’s not a how-to-evangelize manual.
It addresses something much deeper. Therefore, what he seeks to do here is
explore “consolation as part of a lived theology of the cross that cannot help
but make a space for evangelism” (p. 1). In other words, evangelism is a
by-product of engaging with a world in need of consolation with a message that
speaks of divine encounters rooted in the theology of the cross. With that in
mind, recognizing that evangelism and discipleship go together, “evangelism is
the invitation to lean into one’s sorrows to find the sacramental presence of
the living God changing one’s deaths into life” (p. 2).
For those who might be new to the
work of Andrew (Andy) Root, he holds a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological
Seminary and serves as the Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family
Ministry at Luther Seminary. He is a noted author of a series of books on
Ministry in a Secular Age, as well as a speaker at numerous events (I was
fortunate to hear him speak this past year at a conference). I have found his
books intriguing and helpful. The same is true with this book.
As is true of his other books on
ministry and the church, Root engages in Evangelism in an Age of Despair with
philosophers and theologians, past and present. While he brings in these voices
that range from Gregory of Nyssa to Johann von Staupitz to Michel de Montaigne,
he also creates a fictional storyline that illustrates the premise of the book.
In this storyline, Root tells us about a congregation whose members and those
connected to members of the congregation experience forms of suffering and
despair, but who also experience consolation as members of the community enter
into their suffering. As a result, people encounter Jesus and even enter into
the congregation. What he shows us in this story is not a form of hard-sell
evangelism that seeks to argue people into heaven. Rather, what attracts people
to this community is the expression of love for others they discover there as
members walk with them in their moments of suffering. This storyline that is
carried through the book allows Root to lay out key figures, including Michel
de Montaigne, the French Renaissance philosopher, whose philosophy of happiness
influenced many people through the ages, including Thomas Jefferson. Other
figures include the theologian Jean Gerson, a late medieval French theologian,
and, as noted, Von Staupitz, the mentor of Martin Luther. We not only encounter
Gregory of Nyssa, but perhaps more importantly, his teacher, his sister
Macrina, who helped him understand the nature of grief and the need for
consolation. Thus, Root writes that "Walking into sorrow is the
evangelistic shape of a church that is inviting its neighbors to share in the
place where the divine shares in the human, turning death into life, bringing
the world back together." (p. 23).
As we read Evangelism in an Age of Despair, we discover that the pursuit of happiness, which our culture
embraces, too often ends badly. That is because it doesn't allow us to deal
with the reality of suffering and sorrow. The gospel is different because, as
he notes, when the church enters into the sorrows and sufferings of others,
whether members of a congregation or outside of it, it engages in a form of
evangelism in that it brings good news. That good news can transform lives.
It's a bit risky, as we discover.
While the theological and
philosophical sources, which Root weaves in and out of the book offer important
insights, in many ways it’s the storyline of the people who make up this
fictional congregation led by a pastor willing to take risks, like baptizing a baby
who has died, because it helped the mother process the death. This is a
difficult book to review in that Root weaves the story with theological and
philosophical sources. While “evangelism” might not be the primary focus, Root reminds
us that when we enter into the suffering of others, we help open them up to
divine encounters, which may even lead to people who stand outside the church,
to enter in to communities of faith that reach out to them in their time of
sorrow, even if what is needed is for people to sit in silence with those who
grieve, or to clean an apartment or house when needed. This might not sound
like “evangelism,” and yet it is a means of bringing good news into the lives
of those who experience forms of despair.
The book itself is structured around
nine chapters, beginning with a chapter titled “Get ‘Em Healthy, Get ‘Em Happy.”
This chapter introduces the reader to the key figures and the context for what
is to come, especially when it comes to describing the variety of conversion
experiences that can take place. Chapter 2, titled “Sad Times and a Sad
(Pathetic) Church,” asks the question whether it is the task of evangelism to
keep the church alive. Here, Root brings in Montaigne, whom he describes as
being the “founder of self-fulfillment,” whose message led to the modern
obsession with the pursuit of happiness and the accompanying paranoia about
sadness. While it might seem an odd direction to take, Root believes that renewal
of Christianity can take place when the church enters the accompanying sadness of
the failure of the pursuit of happiness. He writes that “The church will always
be tempted to seek its own self-fulfillment and fear its own bankruptcy and
brokenness. But as Rosenstock-Huessy has pointed out, only by losing itself in
evangelism that joins these sad times will the church find the Spirit
generating renewal through the redemptive work of bringing life out of death”
(p. 54).
Chapter 3 focuses on “The Architecture
of Our Sad Times.” Here he draws on Charles Taylor, who speaks of the demise of
authenticity through a loss of ethics into apathy. In this age, when we are
being told to be true to ourselves, if this is to “be a legitimate horizon, you
first (1) need to believe that authenticity is a valid ideal. What Taylor means
is that you need to believe that everyone has the right to seek their
own authentic way of being.” The problem is that we have replaced universalism
with tribalism. The second belief involves “inside each person’s authentic stating
of what it means for them to be true to themselves, there can be debate,
disagreement, and even persuasion. The third point has to do with the way that
we hear and engage “others’ articulations of their authentic ways of being true
to themselves—can make a difference. They can lead us toward justice” (pp.
76-78). The second issue has to do with the paternity or origins of modernity. As
we move on to Chapter 4, which asks the question of “Why All the Happiness Is Making
Us Miserable.” Here again, he brings Montaigne into the conversation. Here he
addresses the question of immanent contentment and its relationship to
evangelism that too often “has embraced the pursuit of happiness using immanent
contentment. Look no further than the light and heavy prosperity gospel of the
right and the ramped-up claims of acceptance and affirmation on the left.” In
other words, evangelism seeks to tap into our desire for happiness in the
current moment (p. 129). What it also loses here is the cross. Evangelism in
the context of this pursuit of immanent contentment will not come by standing
over in judgment over those who pursue happiness but “by sharing tenderly in their inevitable
grief and sorrow, allowing friendships to be the sacrament of God’s salvation”
(p. 130).
Chapter 5, titled “’ Not Okay’ —Our
Sad Times of Stress,” addresses the forgetting of soul. Here, Root brings into
the conversation Descartes and Pascal, arguing that the depression we
experience results from becoming too tired in pursuing happiness. We seek
contentment but do not find it, which in turn causes sadness. Evangelism then
seeks to enter that sadness that arises from the soulless pursuit of happiness.
In Chapter 6, Root focuses on Pascal, “The Math Savant and the Fire.” While
Pascal was a math savant from an early age, but then a fire was lit, and Pascal
began to write as he found consolation for his sadness. The question here has to do with a different
form of evangelism that involves an invitation to investigation. That is, “evangelism
explores who and what we human beings really are, which is why it focuses first
on consolation, believing that the task for faith is made at this sacramental
level of personhood. Evangelism unmasks our miserable sorrows” (p. 197). Evangelism invites us to stop
running from our sorrow but instead enter into it, such that we find our consolation.
In Chapter 7, we meet up with
Gregory of Nyssa and his sister Macrina in a chapter titled “Sisters as
Pastors.” We learn here how Gregory learned to deal with loss through
conversations with his sister, who had also experienced great loss. He tells
her story in conversation with the book of Job. In Chapter 8, “Goodbyes that
Save,” we continue with Gregory of Nyssa and the question of dying well, along
with Jean Gerson, who also dealt with sadness in his own life. As a result of
his own experiences, he became the “doctor of consolation. From his own journey,
we discover that evangelism is the first step in a journey to God, which
involves walking with others on the same journey. This involves goodbyes,
otherwise, we are not pilgrims but tourists. We come to the close of the
journey in Chapter 9, titled “When Temptation Is Good.” The focus here is on the
role the theology of the cross plays in the kind of evangelism Root has in
mind. As Luther learned and taught, a theology of the cross calls things like
they are, such that sorrow is sorrow, evil is evil, despair is despair. On the
other hand, the theology of Glory refuses to call things as they are, such that
one is not allowed to enter into one's own sorrow. The theology of the cross,
the theology that undergirds evangelism, grows out of consolation, such that it
acknowledges that God is present in sorrow. Luther was guided on this journey
by his mentor, von Staupitz. As we near the end, Root defines evangelism by
suggesting that it “simply and profoundly invites the sorrowful to receive the
ministry of Jesus Christ through the community of ministers (the church)
entering their sorrow. This reception of the ministry of consolation takes them
into the life of God” (p. 272). Isn’t that the good news the church has to
offer a world in despair? Polemics and arguments won’t get you there. There is
an epilogue, but it brings the storyline to a conclusion, and you have to read
the book to experience the story.
Evangelism is not coercive or
manipulative, at least it shouldn’t be. Instead, as Andrew Root demonstrates in
Evangelism in an Age of Despair, it involves entering into the sorrows
and sufferings of our age, much of which is rooted in a pursuit of happiness
that does not allow a person to authentically acknowledge their despair, such
that they might experience the consolation that comes from divine encounters
rooted in the cross. Thus, in this book, we have something more important than
a how-to manual to grow a church. We have a path to engage in a form of
evangelism that brings consolation to those who suffer. In this there is hope.
Root's book can be purchased wherever you get your books. That includes my Amazon affiliate as well as my Bookshop.com affiliate.
Comments