Warren Cole Smith: A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church

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Warren Cole Smith, publisher and editor of the Evangelical Press News Service , will address the theme of his controversial new book: "A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church".

From the Introduction:

"My Name Is Warren, and I’m a Recovering Evangelical... For most of my Christian life, I have considered myself an evangelical. From the time I made a public profession of faith in Christ at age fourteen and for most of my adult life until now, “evangelical” was a label I gladly wore. The word evangelical was one I liked because it seemed to transcend secular politics and religious denominations. I could claim kin with other evangelicals in denominations different from my own. I could disagree with someone about welfare reform or tax laws, but we could agree on the power of “Christ and him crucified” to save a lost and dying world, a world that includes you and me...

"...What is it about evangelical theology or evangelical practice that is both so appealing and so troubling? I could not deny that I had seen much good come out of parachurch ministries and evangelical churches, so I was not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. But it was clear that I was less and less comfortable calling myself an evangelical if what I was seeing was what that word meant. I began, you might say, to develop a lover’s quarrel with the evangelical church and evangelical theology and practice..." (Read the full Introduction here).

"Words exchanged in lover’s quarrels are best quickly forgotten, but the terms Warren Cole Smith uses to critique current evangelical excesses – “the Christian Industrial Complex,” “Body-Count Evangelism” – should long be remembered. Smith points out that megachurches sometimes inflate their numbers, but even an accurate count may register only superficiality. Smith’s call for churches to emphasize spiritual depth is worth hearing." -- Dr. Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief, WORLD Magazine, and provost, The King’s College

"This is an important book for a crucial moment in our history as Christians in the United States. Besides being richly biblical in its analysis of contemporary evangelicalism, this book is written by a veteran journalist with hard-hitting and inescapable data to support his conclusions. I highly recommend this book." -- Dr. Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California