Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism. By Todd M. Brenneman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. x + 196 pp. $27.95 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism . By Todd M. Brenneman . New York : Oxford University Press , 2014. x + 196 pp. $27.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesNo scholar can wade into the study of evangelicalism without weighing in on the question of what, exactly, evangelicalism is. For decades, historians relied mostly on theological criteria to determine who counts as an evangelical. But recently a number of scholars have moved away from this focus on doctrine in favor of an approach that highlights the aesthetics, emotions, and other non-rational aspects of evangelical culture. In Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism , Jason Bivins traced the aesthetics of fright in popular evangelical piety and political rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, 18). Lynn Neal's Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction explored her subjects' piety through their encounters with Christian romance novels (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), while Tanya Luhrmann's When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God examined charismatic evangelical congregations where faith is like learning to do than to think something (New York: Knopf, 2012, xxi).Todd Brenneman continues this turn in Homespun Gospel. He rejects historians' traditional emphasis on systematic theology. Evangelicals have in fact abandoned a concern with doctrine, although the beliefs stereotypically associated with them still shape the evangelical worldview, he writes, somewhat ambiguously (4). To Brenneman, sentimentality--appeal to emotion--is the key to understanding modern American evangelical culture and politics.In this study, the main characters are not theologians with advanced degrees, but the best-selling authors and mega-church ministers whose glossy paperbacks dominate the religion and spirituality section of your local bookstore: Max Lucado, Joel Osteen, and Rick Warren. By the measure of sales numbers and celebrity, these pastor-authors do deserve more scholarly attention than they have received. A survey by Lucado's publishers found that one in ten Americans had read at least one of his books. Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life has sold over 30 million copies.Brenneman argues that these authors and their colleagues in the sentimentality industrial complex stress the same central themes: God as the loving father, Christians as his children, and nostalgia for the traditional nuclear family. Jesus--especially in evangelical hymnody--is more a devoted lover than a divine redeemer. In books like You Are Special (Lucado), What On Earth Am I Here For? (Warren), and Your Best Life Now (Osteen), the anxious believer finds her worries smothered in God's love and streamlined into a step-by-step plan for self-actualization. Warren promises that The Purpose-Driven Life will reduce your stress, simplify your decisions, increase your satisfaction, and, most important, prepare you for eternity (48).Appeals to emotion, the fusion of theology and therapy, a customer-service ethos that shapes faith for the marketplace: Brenneman grants that these are long-standing trends in evangelical culture, and, indeed, are not unique to evangelicals (what do Lucado and Warren have on Oprah, the great prophetess of spiritual self-help? …