The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin

by Lauren F. Winner

Challenging the central place that “practices” have recently held in Christian theology, Lauren Winner explores the damages these practices have inflicted over the centuries

Sometimes, beloved and treasured Christian practices go horrifyingly wrong, extending violence rather than promoting its healing. In this bracing book, Lauren Winner provocatively challenges the assumption that the church possesses a set of immaculate practices that will definitionally train Christians in virtue and that can’t be answerable to their histories. Is there, for instance, an account of prayer that has anything useful to say about a slave‑owning woman’s praying for her slaves’ obedience? Is there a robustly theological account of the Eucharist that connects the Eucharist’s goods to the sacrament’s central role in medieval Christian murder of Jews?
 
Arguing that practices are deformed in ways that are characteristic of and intrinsic to the practices themselves, Winner proposes that the register in which Christians might best think about the Eucharist, prayer, and baptism is that of “damaged gift.” Christians go on with these practices because, though blighted by sin, they remain gifts from God.

Genres: Theology, Church, Audiobook, History, Religion, Christian Living, Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

Published October 23, 2018

About the author

Lauren F. Winner is the author of numerous books, including Girl Meets God and Mudhouse Sabbath. Her study A Cheerful & Comfortable Faith: Anglican Religious Practice in the Elite Households of Eighteenth-Century Virginia was published in the fall of 2010 by Yale University Press. She has appeared on PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly and has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Books and Culture, and Christianity Today. Winner has degrees from Duke, Columbia, and Cambridge universities, and holds a Ph.D. in history. The former book editor for Beliefnet, Lauren teaches at Duke Divinity School, and lives in Durham, North Carolina. Lauren travels extensively to lecture and teach. During the academic year of 2007-2008, she was a visiting fellow at the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, and during the academic year of 2010-2011, she was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University. When she’s home, you can usually find her curled up, on her couch or screen porch, with a good novel.

Reviews

[Adam Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takeaway: Spiritual practices are not magic bullets.

Over the past few years I have become a disciple of spiritual practices. I have a spiritual director. I regularly use the Book of Common Prayer. I really do think that the eucharist and baptism should be central to worship. This makes me the target audience of Lauren Winner’s new book, the Dangers of Christian Practice.

The rough thesis is that spiritual practices, while good, have weaknesses that need to be paid attention to. Just like the church is made up of human beings that are sinful and make every church community less than perfect, good practices that are commanded by God and advocated throughout history also have some weaknesses.

The easiest illustration and the best chapters is about prayer. Keziah Goodwin Hopkins Brevard is the main illustration. She is a 57 year old widowed owner of two plantations and over 200 slaves. She left extensive journals both of her thoughts and of her prayers as fodder for Winner’s discussion.

As Winner recounts, Brevard prays for pliant slaves, she prays for the death of slaves that lie to her, she prays that Heaven will have a separate location for abolitionists and slaves away from her. (Note the political and rhetorical implications of a separate heaven.) She prays to be a good master and for a heart open to God.

Winner notes that the subjects of our prayers have long been a concern for Christians. Aquinas and others cited have thought and written about praying for things that are sinful or out of distorted desires. But the very nature of prayer is part of the problem. It is not just intercessory prayer, but teaching prayer to others and how public prayer is often not solely directed at God. Prayer can easily become gossip, self justifying or deluded. But even out of bad prayer there can often be good aspects.

Winner gives illustrations of the anthologies of prayer that line her shelves. None of them are anthologies of bad or self seeking prayers that could help us understand how our own prayers may be come bad or self seeking. Instead prayer is presented and taught as an almost universal good.

The other two practices discussed in the Dangers of Christian Practice are the problems of the eucharist being held in too high of a value (the illustration is riots caused by accused desecration of the host) and the problems of antisemitism and supersessionism, and baptism and the problems of the privatization of baptism through private christening ceremonies that were held in the home in the 19th and early 20th century as well as the way that baptism can alienate the subject from their family or community as well as drawing them into the family of Christ.

This is a very brief overview. There are lots of side tracks as well as a good introduction to the concept and a concluding chapter that challenges the ideas of spiritual practices especially as it has arisen out of post-liberal theology.

The ideas behind Dangers of Christian Practice are very helpful. One that in someways could be an article or a much larger book and still be helpful. I was very skeptical about the concept of the book and probably would not have picked it up without reading James KA Smith’s very positive review at Christian Century. However, despite my skepticism, I this was well worth reading and a good reminder to not place too much weight or responsibility on any aspect of discipleship, moral formation, or model of church.

All models of church and modes of discipleship have weaknesses. All can be corrupted and tainted. But as Winner rightly notes in the last chapter, they are what we have. Because they are not perfect does not mean that we should abandon them completely. Winner is not advocating that. Instead she is advocating more humility and understanding of the practices so that we can minimize the harm that misusing spiritual practices can bring.

I listened to the Dangers of Christian Practice on audiobook. It was not my favorite narration, but it was acceptable. I kept checking my player because it felt like it was running slightly too fast. Like maybe the narrator read it too slow, and the editor sped the narration up slightly digitally by cutting some of the pauses and space between the words. But for me, it was far cheaper on audiobook than on kindle or hardcover.

I edited and expanded this review slightly on my blog based on discussion in the comments below at http://bookwi.se/dangers-of-christian...

[Isaac Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a Christian anthropologist/historian, this book focuses on three Christian rituals in an effort to demonstrate how even the most well intended practices can cause harm. These three rituals are eucharist, prayer, and baptism. The issues she attributes to eucharist are that much of the dogma and behavior surrounding it arose to justify antisemitic violence. Further, that this inherent tribalistic sentiment still perpetuates violent tendencies. While this section of the book was deeply interesting, she left out a lot of what could have been said, especially about eucharist being used to homogenize and strip people of their cultural heritage.

Prayer can be detrimental in that the words someone prays can illicit an illusion of truth through repetition. Thus, as people repeatedly pray for what they desire, their theology shifts. Likewise, as they pray what the church has given them, their desires change to conform with that language. This cyclical nature can have disastrous effects in several ways: 1) because prayer is functionally one-directional when it comes to the normative standards of human communication, people can learn to feel justified in potentially harmful beliefs without external engagement. For instance, slave owner journals show that they habitually prayed that God would suppress their emotions so that they could be better slave owners, controlling their slaves just as they believed God should control them. There is so much wrong with this, but I'll move on. 2) Corporate prayers are inevitably machines for conformity, both modeling what is acceptable as people listen to the prayers of others, and forcing people to prove their uniformity through their prayers when it is their turn. 3) many liturgical prayers, such as the Prayer of Humble Access contain inherently degrading messages which erode confidence and make people more susceptible to the power of suggestion from external forces. While that is not necessary harmful, it opens the door wide for abuse, and the data shows that ecclesial settings abuse quite often.

Baptism is another degrading practice which attempts to strip someone of their self-concept. Language about how the old self has died, and that the new self has risen, etc... devalue the person in much the same way that cults do when they indoctrinate someone into their folds, stripping them of their name, their previous identity, claiming their old desires were corrupt, and so on. These practices are common in cults because they are effective in ensuring people detest their old selves enough that they will never leave. How interesting that this is one of the most common practices in Christianity.


Winner did an excellent job of detailing the detriments of these practices, and it was honestly refreshing to see a Christian being willing to do this. Where I ran into a huge problem was that upon finishing an exhaustive survey of how these practices have caused harm, and with no evidence that they have ever been beneficial, or even beneficial enough to counteract the harm, she claims that these practices should be engaged in "because they are all we have and because there are gifts from God."

What? This makes no sense. What does she mean "they are all we have"? Without any explanation for this claim or what category she is using to say "all," she launches into how these practices, despite never having been what Christians claim they are, can still be gifts. The entire next chapter explains what a gift is, and that the giver is not responsible for how the recipients abuse it. All this to justify her argument that these practices are gifts from God that must be perpetuated. I can't help but be frustrated at this cognitive dissonance. It seems as though the quote above is merely a thought-stopping-cliche, and that the notion that maybe these practices should be abandoned if they only cause pain wasn't even a thought that crossed her mind. I am having such a hard time understanding how someone could spend pages upon pages detailing the failings of something only to state we should perpetuate it because God wants us to and we have no other option. The last thing I'll say is that this sort of logic is uncomfortably close to how someone processes when they are in an abusive relationship.

[Amelia and John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so, so important.

In recent Protestant theology, people have been speaking of religious practices like Communion, marriage, or contemplative prayer, as ways to reform issues within and outside of the Church. The trouble is that, as Winner demonstrates, practice does not make perfect.

Sometimes the things that we do, do damage in the world, to ourselves, and each other. Along with the things that Winner writes about, some other practices come to mind.

Giving thanks can be damaging when it is framed as being grateful for having more than others. “I am just so fortunate that I, unlike some people, have a house or married parents.” Not only is this a selfish way of giving thanks, but it makes God out to be unjust! Why should God give to some and not to all? It reinforces the inequalities of who has what and who does not.

Another damaging practice is works of mercy, especially giving to the poor. How often did Jesus speak of the Pharisees as giving to the needy in public, for the approval of onlookers? And how often do people weaponize their generosity as a means to objectify the very person they are supposed to be serving?

Practices are not themselves what will fix Christianity’s problems, because as Winner points out, though we receive perfect gifts (like sacraments and prayer) from a perfect Giver (God Himself), recipients like us are prone to receive those gifts in damaged and damaging ways.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lauren Winner makes a compelling case that, though spiritual practices are gifts from God, we, the receivers of those gifts, are damaged and thus damage the gifts themselves. This is not to say that the gifts are then unusable, but that they inevitably cause harm. We must be in a constant state of investigation about the harms caused by the practices in order to redress/repent where we can.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an important contribution to the discussion of Christian practices that deserves serious attention. Winner's careful historical work describing and analyzing the ways some beloved Christian practices (Eucharist, petitionary prayer, baptism) can be badly deformed is an important corrective to much theological and devotional work that treats Christian practices as unalloyed goods. The work draws richly on Winner's scholarly and pastoral sensitivities in fruitful ways.

As with the best of constructive theology, this account is generative of further thought and exploration. I am still mulling Winner's core contention that the deformations she identifies are characteristic of the practices themselves, rather than results of external factors or simply the sinfulness of the practitioners.

One line of questioning raised in my mind: what might be the characteristic deformation(s) of believer's baptism by immersion, and are those deformations somehow isomorphic to the deformations of domestic infant baptism? Might divergent traditions of specific Christian practices speak to each other in salutary ways about how to be alert to and perhaps ameliorate the deformations peculiar to the particular way a practice is carried out in a given time, place, and tradition?

I hope that other participants in the Christian practices discussion will rise to the challenge of this book, by imitating Winner in providing robust, historically detailed investigations of the ways that particular Christian practices can go wrong; by formulating less facile descriptions of the significance and power of Christian practices in general; and by arguing back at her theological anthropology in illuminating ways.

Re: audiobook -- my one complaint about Tavia Gibson's narration was that she was often speaking too fast, especially in sections of dense theological explication. Using an app that allowed me to adjust playback speed down to 0.75x the original made it much easier to track with the argument.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some thought-provoking ideas, but this book wasn't as useful as I thought it would be. Winner gives some important historical examples of Christian practices gone awry, but the book seemed to miss opportunities and didn't seem to outline its own scope of faith. There wasn't anything super *wrong* about the book, but I'm not sure there was much to compliment in it (at least from my perspective) either.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this remarkable, surprisingly short, thoughtful book. Winner deftly takes the reader through overlooked historical accounts, deep and thoughtful engagement with biblical exegesis, as well as sharp philosophical-theological reflection. She focuses on 3 practices: eucharist, prayer and baptism, but the book is really about the bigger concept of sin - how pervasive sin truly is, and how it can distort even the "purest" gifts of Christianity, namely our traditional practices, which we believe are given to us from God. She nuances the simplistic notion that these practices are always and purely formative, and I think she succeeds. We must always be wary of how distorted practices can actually "malform" us, even with the best of intentions, and reflecting on this actually lends a deeper appreciation for what the practices can and should do in their best modes.

For my part, her reflection on baptism is some of the best writing on that subject I've ever encountered, and the closing chapter - on the nature of gifts and gift-giving - is some of the most stimulating stuff I've read in a while. I totally loved it and will be thinking about this one for quite some time. It had been on my radar since it's release, and I only wish I had read it sooner.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really helpful and challenging addition to the conversation around Christian practices. It raises important questions about the reception and enactment of the gifts of Eucharist, prayer and Baptism which do not allow for easy or rose-tinted answers. Instead Winner calls us to grapple with the ways in which these practices have become deformed in our all too human hands not to cause us to despair but rather to call us to an honest participation in these divine gifts which God still uses for good.

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brilliantly uses historical christian practices (eucharist, prayer, and baptism) to show that these practices are always damaged gifts (due in part to the ongoing intractability of sin). They do not "form" practitioners into fully virtuous people. Readable, short, and rooted in history, this book helped put the nail in the coffin of all forms of postliberal, liturgical, and ecclesiocentric theologies (think Hauerwas).

[Chris Osantowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am confused by the cognitive dissonance that it takes to talk about the dangers of prayer and Eucharist as poisoned by sin and not realizing that the mere belief in sin and accompanying practices hold just as much if not more danger.

For example the doctrine of total depravity has caused me profound psychological damage by breeding mistrust in my own proclivity towards kindness, yet total depravity isn’t examined in this book. The book recognizes the damage some theology does, but assumes the validity of other just as dangerous theology. The line feels arbitrary, I would love to hear how the authors thoughts have developed in the 5 years since publishing and the continued rise in Christian nationalism.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoughtful academic book showing that Christian practices, such as prayer, communion, and baptism, are not always positive, and contain the ability or systemic forces to damage people and faith.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

As one who extolls the value of spiritual disciplines and values Lauren Winner as a thoughtful teacher of Christian spirituality and practice, I looked forward to reading this book. The Duke Divinity School professor demonstrates the deformations inherently in the practice of Eucharist, prayer, and baptism, not to speak against these practices, but to show how we should and can guard against the attendant issues. She is a careful thinker and gifted writer. I enjoyed the issues she revealed and the line of thought it leads to for me in both my own practices and my teaching others.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner's book argues against the notion that Christianity has a set of pristine practices that are immune to corruption. She argues this by looking at the history of certain practices: How the Eucharist caused antisemitism, prayer has been used by slave-owners to make their slaves more obedient (and make themselves feel better about beating them), baptism that is used to reinforce social loyalties and divisions, etc. While the immediate knee-jerk reaction to all these stories is that these were practices not done properly, the truth is not so simple. Each practice has inherent tensions within themselves that make these deformations possible and no practice given by God is received perfectly. The fact that, as Winner points out, Judas partook of the last supper shows damaged reception of divine gifts right at the point of their creation. The book is a difficult read at times because of the author's reflection that move from historical to theological and back, but the point she is making is really important. Christian practice cannot surmount fallibility. This does not mean the practices should not be done. It is quite the opposite. Our fallibility and characteristic damage does not stop them from being gifts.

Winner offers in many ways a kind of counterbalance to theologies like Yoder or, for her, Hauerwas. These theologians argued that real righteous action is indeed possible, for Christ says without concession, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Similarly, the NT ethic rests on the actual possibility of the imitation of Christ: love has he loved us, forgive as Christ forgave you, walk as Jesus walked, etc. If left to itself, the book neglects this more realistic dimension of Christian practice, but I think the book is merely offering a counter-balance. The Biblical narrative has both the reality of God's kingdom breaking in, tearing the seams of fallenness as it did the temple's veil, but the notion that the church is not sinless as Christ is sinless is contradicted by narratives that clearly show it isn't: Peter still learning that God shows no partiality, Paul's thorn in his flesh, churches that just don't seem to have it all together, etc.

Thus, Christian practice is always a kind of double-edged sword: There are warnings about slipping away that must be coupled with the promises that no matter where we wander, Christ will not let us go. Perseverance is coupled with peccability, soaring with falling. The two must be held together, not as some dualism that we are both simultaneously saint and sinner or that every action no matter what the action looks like is both righteous and fallen in equal measure. It is the recognition that the journey of discipleship is not a linear ascent upwards. It is crooked and curved, dipping and spiking, twisting and turning. And when it comes to Christian practices, as I often say, apart of Christian belief is not merely trying to be better, it is also recognizing how we so often are worse. Put another way, I often think Christianity is the true religion not because it gets everything right (althought I would not be one if I did not think there were much that it surely does), but because it has the potential, hopefully, of reveal how we can get things terrible wrong. It is the tension between holding that creation is still good, but also that deep longing in the midst of our comprehensive corruption for a new reality where "righteousness is finally at home."

The book is a great challenge. It named a number of things I have been sensing about how Christians talk about practice. The book, I suspect, is not merely a critique of certain views of practice, but will function as a catalyst for better ones.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book challenges the notion that Christian practices are inherently pristine - that they can only be good and healing.

I came out of the introduction with the impression that Winner meant that, in fact, Christian practices carry the inherent potential to be damaging. And perhaps she does, though she uses the term 'characteristic damage' rather than 'inherent damage', which perhaps mitigates things. In other words, Christian practices carry the characteristic of being potentially damaging.

In the examples she goes on to use, however - aspects of the Eucharist leading to the killing of Jews in medieval Europe, slave-owning white women in the antebellum American South using prayer in an attempt to get God to help them control their slaves, and (more mildly) baptism (of infants) becoming a social family occasion (rather than a church sacrament) in late 19th century society - it seems to me that the characteristic damage relates to certain constructs around particular Christian practices, rather than to the practices (in their 'ideal' sense) per se.

Though I suppose, assuming a thoroughly postlapsarian world, anything has the potential for damage due to the existence of sin - and anything can include Christian practices - which I think is what Winner is driving at.

All that said, I think the book does useful work in pointing out how the things we think are good can end up having negative applications and impacts - and we shouldn't smugly assume that Christian practices, as they are made manifest in any given context, are different in that regard (if we didn't already know this by personal experience). We shouldn't be romanticists about it. These things need attentive care and consideration. Winner is a Christian thinker doing critique of Christian practice close to the historical home base of her own tradition, and that's a good thing.

The historical remove of the examples Winner employs allows a bit of a remove from the reader, but we should allow the challenge to sink in, close to home, nonetheless.

The chapters on Eucharist, prayer and baptism are very absorbing, and historically fascinating. But the chapters on Eucharist and prayer are also particularly unsettling - and should be. They should turn the stomach.

So those are my rather scattered impressions. I'm now going to head over to https://syndicate.network/symposia/th... where there is a written symposium on the book, and see what they think.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Lauren Winner, the author, since her Girl Meets God book. I like that she negotiated some tricky transitions, and is a prof at Duke’s theology school, as well as an Anglican priest. And thru many trials still a believer. Being constructively critical of one’s faith while still holding to it? Seems a good thing.

I also liked the idea behind this book. If fallen people do holy things, can they screw it up? Yes. Will they? And how? And what ought we to do about it. First, raise the question, and be aware of it. Fasting for example she points out is not an unmitigated good for people with eating disorders.

Seems solid so far.

And there were some good historical examples, if so. And if widespread. But therein is the beginning of the rub.

What I want out of a book like this is to teach me a new application. To teach me how to better apply my faith, *in practice*. I’m going to fast. I’m not going to have an eating disorder, beyond that common to American men over 40.

But so far, there is not much that I have found that I can apply. No to slavery? And in fact do the opposite (free the captives). Don’t be so self centered that you complain to God about your slaves and how they are ruining your mood? Check check and check. Not a problem for me. I agree!

So what else can be applied by your average professional man, post covid, in the new normal work at home isolation—what is there for me to apply?

She makes a good point about practice in community.

But other than obvious things like this, not really finding it.

So, a daily book of hours would be more helpful I think. Rather a basic bar for a religious book, and as good as Winner is, this book falls beneath this bar.

So, academic, faithful, good critiques, and yet useless to me. Or maybe all I’ve proven is that I am hard of hearing, or hard of heart spiritually.

But I really think there is a book on how to practice and how to use moderation to accelerate virtues thru practice, rather than limit them, harming yourself and others.

Perhaps it’s just how little we all do practice. When I was a kid, my grandmother would walk to church in the morning. And would follow the practices. So few people are in walking distance of a church now, so few are involved in christian community—even among those who would want it. So maybe practice to the point of being bad practice is as rare as good practice for the majority of people.

Nevertheless, 2.

[Jonathan Badgley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lauren F. winner’s The Fangers of Christian Practice is a thoughtful review of the ways Christian practices, sacraments of Eucharist, Prayer and Baptism in particular, can and have been deformed in Church history. Winner argues that Christian practices bear within them intrinsically the modes of their deformation:

* Eucharist is reflective of violence, and anti-Semitic violence has plagued church history, specifically leading from the metaphysics of Eucharist
* Prayer is about our desires and intimacy with God, but it can be deformed in that our desires are not pure. Our desires are in fact violation of God’s desires for us, and violation of God’s desires for others. Winner leads us painfully through the deep and consistent prayer lives of Antebellum slave holding wives whose prayers shockingly demonstrate not a desire for “thy kingdom come”, but of the power to maintain a kingdom of economic violence.
* Finally, Baptism inherently balances extraction from the natural family and enjoining to the church family, which can be deformed to the extent that Baptism leans on one or the other.

Winner muddles through some issues that might be better handled by a philosopher than by a theologian, but characteristic of a theologian she excels in drawing the themes together coherently into an evocatively pastoral crescendo. How can Christians deal with the ever-present danger of deforming the perfect gifts of the sacraments that God has perfectly given to us? By recognizing a greater gift still encompasses all of the others, repentance and it’s embedded practice of lament over sin. Winner beautifully draws together the Japanese practice of Kintsugi in which broken pottery is repaired using golden flakes so that the brokenness is highlighted and beautified, and draws insight from Henry James’ novel exploring similar themes. This conclusion is drawn together so well that I have no intention of exposing it in this review.

I recommend this book for those who want to explore the Christian disciplines more deeply as they will gain Winner’s astute appreciation of the dangers _within_ the power of their practice.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

My women’s ministry group just started Wendy Capp’s Me Over We--a study of loving and living as the church. Scripture tells us, "His bride has made herself ready" (Rev. 19:7) Lauren F. Winner’s The Dangers of Christian Practice provides a perfect companion to Capp’s study as Winner explores the ways that we can fulfill Revelation 19:7. She addresses the underbelly of Christian practices gone wrong, blighted by the sin of the sinners who practice them. Winner shines light on the insidious stains of antisemitism in the Eucharist, racism in prayer, and classism in baptism--all perfect gifts from a perfect Giver broken by the broken people into whose hands they fall.

According to Winner, “Christianity is the extension of relationship with the God of Israel to the Gentiles through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The deformation most deeply characteristic of Christianity is supersessionism by which I mean the belief that the church replaces Israel in God’s plan for friendship with humanity and salvation of creation...untenable on a straightforward reading of Romans 10 and 11.”

If, as Winner asserts, sin is misdirected desire, then my prayers should be that God would align my desires to His, not for my but Thy will be done. For example, instead of begging for a husband, I should ask God to transform my discontentment into godly contentment in Him. But there is a balance. Powerful and effective prayer is a seesaw with God as its fulcrum. Generic prayers lead to a generic relationship; specific prayers may not lead to the end I intend but to a greater purpose of greater intimacy with Christ.

To change one’s patterns of thinking is to adopt new choreographies of being. As we anticipate the return of our Bridegroom, Winner’s academic yet accessible research acts as a bridesmaid in the bathroom, Shout in one hand, iron in the other, affectionately assisting the Bride to present herself “as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:27).

[Emoni · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s taken me almost a whole year to finish this rather average length book, but I’m so glad it did as it really made me reflect on every chapter and practice described. Also, I was able to take the time to put the information this book contains in conversation with my own faith.

I think the biggest takeaway this book offers to both believers and non-believers alike is a mountain of historical evidence that reveals how easy it is for Christian practices to be deformed in intentional and unintentional ways with overall positive and negative results. The practices discussed in the book (eucharist, baptism, and prayer) reveal how easy it is for our rituals to take on a warped meaning that while still serving a religious purpose, now contains one that is somewhat or very much so out of tune with what one can ascertain as its original/true meaning.

Now as a Christian, this book reminds me how easy it is to use religious language and practices as a guise for fulfilling selfish and sinful desires or in some cases using them as ways to lie to ourselves about the truth by evoking God’s name and meaning. Looking forward, I agree with the author that such practices still have value because they are God-given, yet I also will make the effort to investigate not only the what of our practices but also the why behind them.

[Elizabeth Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly stimulating and necessary. even though i’m not sure i actually agree with Winner’s axioms and definitions (set out helpfully in the first chapter), this was an excellent study on an aspect of christian praxis i have barely ever considered. the idea of characteristic damage, despite, i think requiring a bit of circular logic, is generative for thinking about the telos of various practices. i was most excited by the eucharist chapter (as it’s the practice much of my own research centers in) which discusses host desecration narratives in medieval europe and how we have a theologically robust enough account of the eucharist to make room for the ways in which it can and has been dangerous and deforming. i didn’t except it to be an especially academic book (it is thoroughly researched but relatively jargon free and so i think still accessible), but i think it will helpfully inform my research going forward. it also has profound implications for every day people who seek to pray and practice the sacraments well.

[Daniel Rempel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The damaged gift sits at the heart of every love story.”

This narrative account of three Christian practices is masterfully held together by the introductory and concluding chapters. Within, Winner counteracts the “pristination of practices” that Protestant theologians have attempted over the last forty years to demonstrate how there is a particular deformation present within these same practices, one caused by the “wiliness of sin.” We ought not to discard the practices which have been given to us as gifts, but by being aware of their inherent deformations, we can work towards an understanding and implementation of the practices which (hopefully) minimizes their harm.

One thing which was curiously missing from this text was the role of the Spirit, both in confronting our pristination, but also in reworking how we seek to faithfully participate in such practices. Could there be room for engagement with Barth’s critique of religion (Ash Cocksworth says no, but we’ll see…)

[Denise Kettering · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the face of postliberal calls to let practice and habituation shape our lives of faith in meaningful ways, Winner provides a helpful warning and corrective about the ways that these very practices can be deformed. In each of the three examples she gives (Eucharist, prayer, and baptism) she demonstrates how the particular practice deformed in ways that are inherent to the practice itself. She does a good job of demonstrating her argument and I think that the prayer chapter is particularly helpful in demonstrating Winner's point. Winner is not asserting that these deformations mean that these practices are not important in shaping Christian life, but rather cautions that practices are subject to sin as well. I find Winner's examples convincing and they provide a helpful caution to the way that we speak about practice in relationship to Christian formation.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the premise of this book shows promise and the author probably has a strong argument in her own mind, she fails to back it up with much useful analysis. Most of the anecdotes are significantly lacking a broader cultural perspective and some of her conclusions seem to be a reach. I was particularly disappointed with the chapter that was based solely on newspaper clippings from the 19th century as justification for why people did things. The most redeeming quality of the book were the comments and quotes from those that she claims to be arguing with (Hauerwas, among others) that are thought provoking and based on sound thinking, but she fails to back these up with any further discussion.

[Potter McKinney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Winner has written what is one of the most important theological works for our present moment that addresses, in such an elegantly, literary, yet immediately intelligible way, what Christians have to do with the nitty-gritty of our oft-blighted history. It is easy to think that the simple solution to the world’s problems is to pray more, grow the church, commune more people, encourage fasting, or any other sort of practice. One wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. But, Winner argues, these things often cause more problems than what we started with; they become damaged gifts in the hands of folks unequipped to receive them, and in history they are used for even heinous purposes. Sometimes we have to live with the damage. I cannot recommend this book enough.

[Tim Cruickshank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings. Good, a really important conversation to have with respect to spiritual practices and hopefully it can inspire the examination of current spirituality, but felt like she used many, many words to say just a little.

Really digs into some historical insurances of gifts (baptism, Eucharist, prayer) being used poorly to demonstrate how Christian practice can "fail to acknowledge, let alone account for or respond to, the sun entailed by those practices." Also felt like the examples, based on historical accounts 100-900 years prior, made it tough to identify with the deformations of gifts that she was identifying.

Read the first chapter and you've probably gotten enough.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I seem to always read Winner's books - from girl meets God, to Mudhouse Sabbath, to Still... others... and now this.
This book was surprises you. When you think Winner will get overly progressive and ditch the practices she critiques and bring light to how they've been damaged in our use of them, she somehow has a beautiful way to making room for what they are - in their purpose - and be honest about what how've often damaged them - without tempting us to let go of them.
Her prose and vocabulary (stretching) and story telling and broad references help bring this theme together so well.
Not the easiest of her books, but well worth it.

[Kendall Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fair and decent rejoinder to much of the recent focus on "practices." For this Winner's contribution is to be commended. I'm not sure I fully grasped her point about these dangers being inherent to the things themselves. If she means this in a particularly strong sense, then I disagree with her, but if it's a weaker sense, then the point seems rather trivial. I also disagree with lumping baptism and the Supper into the broader category of practices alongside things like prayer and spiritual disciplines. It's not that there aren't some similarities. There certainly are, but baptism and the Supper are fundamentally different in a way that I'm not sure Winner appreciates.

[Rob O'Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read it, and I appreciate the conversations that Winner is attempting to have. However, it is not a "novel," as proposed. It is a collection of obscure case-studies, which is in itself problematic. Her conclusions are more prompted by anecdotal doctrinal debate than biblical exegesis. If she had spent as much time reading Paul rather than missals, she may have landed on some more solid -- if not still controversial -- conclusions that would have allowed for conversation and debate, rather than coming across as arrogant and judgmental.

[David Bjorlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still mulling over whether I completely agree with Winner's claims, but I believe this is an important and necessary challenge to those theologians, ethicists, and liturgists that have treated worship and Christian practices as goods that work ex opere operato to form people in the Christian virtues.

[Andrew Blok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't read that much theology, so this one was a stretch for me at times. A powerful look at some of the ways Christian practices (Eucharist, prayer and baptism) can lead to harm (or at least anti-Christian beliefs).

[Nick Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked and appreciated this book, and I’ll appreciate even more the books built on its work, looking at particular practices and “practice”-based theologies at greater length and depth. It’s also, unsurprisingly, very well-written.