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Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism
In popular evangelical literature, God is loving and friendly, described in heartfelt, often saccharine language that evokes nostalgia, comfortable domesticity, and familial love. This emotional style has been widely adopted by the writers most popular among American evangelicals, including such celebrity pastors as Max Lucado, Rick Warren, and Joel Osteen. Todd M. Brenneman provides groundbreaking insight into the phenomenon of evangelical an emotional appeal to readers' feelings about familial relationships, which can in turn be used as the basis for a relationship with God.
Brenneman shows how evangelicals use tropes of God as father, human beings as children, and nostalgia for an imagined idyllic home life to provide alternate sources of social authority, intended to help evangelicals survive a culture that is philosophically at odds with conservative Christianity. Yet Brenneman also demonstrates that the sentimental focus on individual emotion and experience can undermine the evangelical agenda. Sentimentality is an effective means of achieving individual conversions, but it also promotes a narcissism that blinds evangelicals to larger social forces and impedes their ability to bring about the change they seek.
Homespun Gospel offers a compelling perspective on an unexplored but vital aspect of American evangelical identity.
Brenneman shows how evangelicals use tropes of God as father, human beings as children, and nostalgia for an imagined idyllic home life to provide alternate sources of social authority, intended to help evangelicals survive a culture that is philosophically at odds with conservative Christianity. Yet Brenneman also demonstrates that the sentimental focus on individual emotion and experience can undermine the evangelical agenda. Sentimentality is an effective means of achieving individual conversions, but it also promotes a narcissism that blinds evangelicals to larger social forces and impedes their ability to bring about the change they seek.
Homespun Gospel offers a compelling perspective on an unexplored but vital aspect of American evangelical identity.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
12 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
Todd M. Brenneman
2 books2 followersTodd M. Brenneman is assistant professor of Christian history at Faulkner University in Montgomery, AL. He is a 2009 graduate of Florida State University with a PhD in American religious history. His research interests include American religious history, religion and emotion, and children and religion.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 6, 2015
I appreciate Brenneman's "sentimentality" thesis and will reference it myself in thinking about American evangelicalism. That being the case, there seems to me to be a few historiographical issues worth considering.
1. It seems to me to be a stretch to say that the guilty verdict for American evangelical sentimentality is Scottish Common Sense Philosophy. For instance, how does one take seriously the discontinuities between classical fundamentalists and their Old Princeton heirs, themselves staunch Scottish Common Sense thinkers who would highly oppose evangelical sentimentality? It's also strange that there is no discussion of the formative role of the German pietistic roots for sentimental evangelical religion.
2. While the boundaries for what constitutes an evangelical are often unclear, I think that Brenneman's thesis would have been sufficiently covered if he had stuck with Lucado alone. Lucado, after all, constitutes most of his primary source examples – with the occasional dash of Warren and Osteen. Including Osteen is itself problematic since most self-identified evangelicals would want to distance themselves from him, even though they themselves still fall prey as a sentimentalite.
3. In an effort to prove his thesis, it seems that Brenneman reached unnecessarily beyond the scope of his research from what seems to be serious issues with evangelical sentimental religion, to issues that are historic orthodox Christianity. For instance, while it seems fair play to say that there is an evangelical over-obsession with the "Fatherhood of God," it's an overreach to not qualify the nature of the Fatherhood of God. After all, it's an ecumenical confession to confess "God the Father, maker of heaven and earth." In like manner, to say that evangelicals are obsessed with political issues like same-sex marriage and abortion because of a hyper-sacramentalizing of the home seems like a stretch. After all, the Didache laments abortion – surely it's more than just an obsession in the evangelical imaginary.
4. I also don't see how evangelicals subsumed their transformational aspirations because of a focus on individual spirituality. Maybe if you read the political hopes of evangelicals after the Second Great Awakening on into the 20th century, but if we are thinking of fundamentalists and premillennial dispensationalism, with a focus upon individual salvation, as the heirs of "sentimental spirituality" (which I do), then that narrative will look quite different.
Those criticisms being the case, I did really enjoy reading this book and will be referencing the "sentimentality" (alongside of Bergler's "juvenilization") of evangelicalism when talking about contemporary evangelical religion.
1. It seems to me to be a stretch to say that the guilty verdict for American evangelical sentimentality is Scottish Common Sense Philosophy. For instance, how does one take seriously the discontinuities between classical fundamentalists and their Old Princeton heirs, themselves staunch Scottish Common Sense thinkers who would highly oppose evangelical sentimentality? It's also strange that there is no discussion of the formative role of the German pietistic roots for sentimental evangelical religion.
2. While the boundaries for what constitutes an evangelical are often unclear, I think that Brenneman's thesis would have been sufficiently covered if he had stuck with Lucado alone. Lucado, after all, constitutes most of his primary source examples – with the occasional dash of Warren and Osteen. Including Osteen is itself problematic since most self-identified evangelicals would want to distance themselves from him, even though they themselves still fall prey as a sentimentalite.
3. In an effort to prove his thesis, it seems that Brenneman reached unnecessarily beyond the scope of his research from what seems to be serious issues with evangelical sentimental religion, to issues that are historic orthodox Christianity. For instance, while it seems fair play to say that there is an evangelical over-obsession with the "Fatherhood of God," it's an overreach to not qualify the nature of the Fatherhood of God. After all, it's an ecumenical confession to confess "God the Father, maker of heaven and earth." In like manner, to say that evangelicals are obsessed with political issues like same-sex marriage and abortion because of a hyper-sacramentalizing of the home seems like a stretch. After all, the Didache laments abortion – surely it's more than just an obsession in the evangelical imaginary.
4. I also don't see how evangelicals subsumed their transformational aspirations because of a focus on individual spirituality. Maybe if you read the political hopes of evangelicals after the Second Great Awakening on into the 20th century, but if we are thinking of fundamentalists and premillennial dispensationalism, with a focus upon individual salvation, as the heirs of "sentimental spirituality" (which I do), then that narrative will look quite different.
Those criticisms being the case, I did really enjoy reading this book and will be referencing the "sentimentality" (alongside of Bergler's "juvenilization") of evangelicalism when talking about contemporary evangelical religion.
July 20, 2016
I LOVE books like this.
Todd Brenneman has added a valuable tome to the study of evangelicalism. While many scholars focus on analyzing Christians based on doctrine (for instance, one of the flagship courses at my Christian grad school is "Christian Thought and Culture"), Brenneman suggests emotion can serve as an important marker for the study of Christianity. He identifies an "aesthetic" in evangelicalism, centred on the notion of God as a loving father, humans as childlike (and the glorification of children) and the preciousness of the domestic sphere; I had never thought of an aesthetic in this way, but it's a reasonable framework.
Tracing the roots of contemporary evangelical sentimentality to the nineteenth century and works by the Beecher sisters (particularly "Uncle Tom's Cabin") and emotional hymns (many of which were written by women, who had little outlet besides the hymn to voice their own religious sentiments), Brenneman explores how sentimentality has come to dominate evangelicalism. He also explains how influential the Baconian approach to science and Scottish Common Sense philosophy (which admitted the role of emotion) has shaped the mind-set of evangelicals but has also limited their ability to relate to the modern and postmodern era (specifically, the Baconian approach to science has been made obsolete).
Brenneman spends particular attention on the works of Max Lucado, Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, although other popular Christian writers and ministers are also mentioned, including T.D. Jakes. He notes that these authors tend to downplay doctrine - even attacking the term "religion" - and focuses on touching the hearts of their readers (this downplaying of doctrine DOES serve to expand the reach of these writers and this tactic has a long history in evangelicalism, dating back to George Whitefield and other revivalists). While print culture is the main medium addressed, Brenneman also explores the use of music (both hymnody and CCM) and how politics have been co-opted by sentimentality. In regard to politics, Brenneman notes that evangelicals draw upon Victorian ideals of domesticity, including the "innocence" of children; the home becomes sacred and a bastion against the corrupting influences of secular culture that threaten to destroy the traditional family.
The picture Brenneman paints of many evangelicals is that they are narcissistic and desire therapeutic religion. The authors mentioned above provide practical advice to their audience while portraying themselves as folksy and "average Joes." In their books, these authors write about God's wonderful plans for the readers and they insist that God will help the reader throughout their day (part of the "sacralizing of the ordinary"), including freeing up lane in traffic (I wonder if this is a subconscious affirmation of the doctrine of God's sovereignty?). But Brenneman ultimately sees this as narcissistic because the reader is made to feel cherished because God cares about all the little things that go on in their lives (and Brenneman provides plenty of quotes from Lucado, Warren and Osteen to back up this suggestion, including Lucado's declaration that "if God had a refrigerator your picture would be on it") and this contributes to a strong ethos of individualism in evangelicalism. I recall Canon Short offer the sobering differentiation, "You're not special because if everyone is special, no one is special. You are PRECIOUS!"
Brenneman has both praise and criticism of sentimentality in evangelicalism. Sentimentality has ironically made evangelicalism MORE resilient against criticism because it prioritizes how Christianity makes one FEEL as opposed to its intellectual coherency. As well, by downplay complex doctrines and theological disputes, authors like Lucado, Warren and Osteen are able to expand their audience (which is important because evangelical sentimentalists are emphatic about the need for conversion). But Brenneman laments that the individualism of evangelicalism makes it unable to reform the institutions that shape society; evangelical sentimentalists urge their readers to act out of their faith in their personal lives but evangelical sentimentalists tend to be silent on how to reshape the corrupt structures that affect the lives of large swaths of people.
Brenneman leaves some pieces and people out that I would have liked to have seen addressed such as "The Shack" and the Eldredges and he neglects to explore pastors such as Timothy Keller who deploy intellectual argument and downplay sentimentality. While he cites the lyrics to a Kutless song, "Sea of Faces" as evidence of narcissism in evangelicalism because it suggests Jesus would have still died even if only to save one person, that notion can be traced back as far as St. Augustine. I think it would be fascinating to see a companion book looking at sentimentality in Roman Catholicism (the same narcissism among evangelicals who feel fawned over by God in their personal relationship with Him would exist too among Catholics who implore the saints for special help and Catholicism, like evangelicalism, promotes a saccharine image of the family). Nevertheless, this is an excellent book that rigorously analyzes the domination of sentimentality in American evangelicalism and I think it belongs among the likes of Mark Noll's "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind."
Todd Brenneman has added a valuable tome to the study of evangelicalism. While many scholars focus on analyzing Christians based on doctrine (for instance, one of the flagship courses at my Christian grad school is "Christian Thought and Culture"), Brenneman suggests emotion can serve as an important marker for the study of Christianity. He identifies an "aesthetic" in evangelicalism, centred on the notion of God as a loving father, humans as childlike (and the glorification of children) and the preciousness of the domestic sphere; I had never thought of an aesthetic in this way, but it's a reasonable framework.
Tracing the roots of contemporary evangelical sentimentality to the nineteenth century and works by the Beecher sisters (particularly "Uncle Tom's Cabin") and emotional hymns (many of which were written by women, who had little outlet besides the hymn to voice their own religious sentiments), Brenneman explores how sentimentality has come to dominate evangelicalism. He also explains how influential the Baconian approach to science and Scottish Common Sense philosophy (which admitted the role of emotion) has shaped the mind-set of evangelicals but has also limited their ability to relate to the modern and postmodern era (specifically, the Baconian approach to science has been made obsolete).
Brenneman spends particular attention on the works of Max Lucado, Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, although other popular Christian writers and ministers are also mentioned, including T.D. Jakes. He notes that these authors tend to downplay doctrine - even attacking the term "religion" - and focuses on touching the hearts of their readers (this downplaying of doctrine DOES serve to expand the reach of these writers and this tactic has a long history in evangelicalism, dating back to George Whitefield and other revivalists). While print culture is the main medium addressed, Brenneman also explores the use of music (both hymnody and CCM) and how politics have been co-opted by sentimentality. In regard to politics, Brenneman notes that evangelicals draw upon Victorian ideals of domesticity, including the "innocence" of children; the home becomes sacred and a bastion against the corrupting influences of secular culture that threaten to destroy the traditional family.
The picture Brenneman paints of many evangelicals is that they are narcissistic and desire therapeutic religion. The authors mentioned above provide practical advice to their audience while portraying themselves as folksy and "average Joes." In their books, these authors write about God's wonderful plans for the readers and they insist that God will help the reader throughout their day (part of the "sacralizing of the ordinary"), including freeing up lane in traffic (I wonder if this is a subconscious affirmation of the doctrine of God's sovereignty?). But Brenneman ultimately sees this as narcissistic because the reader is made to feel cherished because God cares about all the little things that go on in their lives (and Brenneman provides plenty of quotes from Lucado, Warren and Osteen to back up this suggestion, including Lucado's declaration that "if God had a refrigerator your picture would be on it") and this contributes to a strong ethos of individualism in evangelicalism. I recall Canon Short offer the sobering differentiation, "You're not special because if everyone is special, no one is special. You are PRECIOUS!"
Brenneman has both praise and criticism of sentimentality in evangelicalism. Sentimentality has ironically made evangelicalism MORE resilient against criticism because it prioritizes how Christianity makes one FEEL as opposed to its intellectual coherency. As well, by downplay complex doctrines and theological disputes, authors like Lucado, Warren and Osteen are able to expand their audience (which is important because evangelical sentimentalists are emphatic about the need for conversion). But Brenneman laments that the individualism of evangelicalism makes it unable to reform the institutions that shape society; evangelical sentimentalists urge their readers to act out of their faith in their personal lives but evangelical sentimentalists tend to be silent on how to reshape the corrupt structures that affect the lives of large swaths of people.
Brenneman leaves some pieces and people out that I would have liked to have seen addressed such as "The Shack" and the Eldredges and he neglects to explore pastors such as Timothy Keller who deploy intellectual argument and downplay sentimentality. While he cites the lyrics to a Kutless song, "Sea of Faces" as evidence of narcissism in evangelicalism because it suggests Jesus would have still died even if only to save one person, that notion can be traced back as far as St. Augustine. I think it would be fascinating to see a companion book looking at sentimentality in Roman Catholicism (the same narcissism among evangelicals who feel fawned over by God in their personal relationship with Him would exist too among Catholics who implore the saints for special help and Catholicism, like evangelicalism, promotes a saccharine image of the family). Nevertheless, this is an excellent book that rigorously analyzes the domination of sentimentality in American evangelicalism and I think it belongs among the likes of Mark Noll's "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind."
February 27, 2018
Given that cynicism and sentimentality are opposites, it is difficult to write a critique of sentimentality without sounding like a cynic. Brenneman does not meet that challenge as well as I'd hoped. While his critiques of evangelicalism are warranted, valid, and overdue, he limits his scope to some easy targets (Lucado, Warren, Osteen, Jakes, etc.) Perhaps that is a strategic move to hit all of the bestsellers, but it did make for a limited evaluation.
The book is helpful, but the writing is somewhat poor. Phrases are used over and over until the point of monotony...and then some. Certain arguments are repeated so frequently I felt like a student sitting through a class wherein the teacher was hinting at key study points for the final.
All in all, worth the read although you could probably read the first two chapters and conclusion to get the gist of the entire book. I'm hoping that this book is the beginning of a larger conversation of the anti-intellectual/sentimental movement that has become so prevalent in Christianity.
The book is helpful, but the writing is somewhat poor. Phrases are used over and over until the point of monotony...and then some. Certain arguments are repeated so frequently I felt like a student sitting through a class wherein the teacher was hinting at key study points for the final.
All in all, worth the read although you could probably read the first two chapters and conclusion to get the gist of the entire book. I'm hoping that this book is the beginning of a larger conversation of the anti-intellectual/sentimental movement that has become so prevalent in Christianity.
April 1, 2020
Incredible work!
This work answers the questions why/when/how the Sentimentality was adopted by the church and how this process downplayed the Bible's doctrines. Highly recommended.
This work answers the questions why/when/how the Sentimentality was adopted by the church and how this process downplayed the Bible's doctrines. Highly recommended.
April 14, 2021
Some good insights, but attempts to prove too much. A bit disappointed.
October 15, 2023
Fascinating Perspective
I don’t believe Brenneman would describe himself as an evangelical, but he understands the movement and offers different ways to evaluate how evangelicals practice their faith. Sadly, I believe his general premise is spot on that evangelicals are more about sentiment and emotions rather than theological beliefs. I think he gives food for thought, both to evangelicals and those who study them (us).
I don’t believe Brenneman would describe himself as an evangelical, but he understands the movement and offers different ways to evaluate how evangelicals practice their faith. Sadly, I believe his general premise is spot on that evangelicals are more about sentiment and emotions rather than theological beliefs. I think he gives food for thought, both to evangelicals and those who study them (us).
April 11, 2021
This was a paradigm shifter. Remember the Truman Show? In an attempt to escape he rows his boat into the ocean and bumps into a wall...in the middle of the ocean..which looks like sky. His world suddenly becomes very small.
This book made me feel that way. I felt like I was standing on a hill looking down on the kingdom which is my Christianity. I've been wandering around within the walls, never realizing I was within the walls. With a little more objectivity than I am either familiar with or comfortable with, Brenneman analyzes the current evangelical movement and its dependence on sentimentality.
This book made me feel that way. I felt like I was standing on a hill looking down on the kingdom which is my Christianity. I've been wandering around within the walls, never realizing I was within the walls. With a little more objectivity than I am either familiar with or comfortable with, Brenneman analyzes the current evangelical movement and its dependence on sentimentality.
July 20, 2016
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway. Full disclosure, I am not a Christian and have seen Evangelicalism as a childish simplistic form of religion. This book added ammunition to my impression of Evangelicals. It is well written and does back up the premise of the use of sentimentality by the popular purveyors of this product of the Christian religion.
February 14, 2015
As an evangelical Christian, I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised by how the author treated this topic. American evangelicalism is indeed sentimental, but there are historical and cultural reasons for this characteristic. Even though the author may not have intended it, I found this book challenged me to stand up and get serious about my faith.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews