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The Market Driven Church: The Worldly Influence of Modern Culture on the Church in America. By Udo W. Middelmann. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004. Paper. 208 p. $14.95.
Udo Middelmman's The Market Driven Church is a critical examination of modern American Christianity by a European educated in America. Middelmann finds the exceptional nature of American life remarkable to some and revolting to others. But his perception is hardly new. Seymour Martin Lipset noted it in The First New Nation (2003), It Didn 't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States (2001), American Exceptionalism (1997), and Continental Divide (1991). Middlemann's mentor, Francis A. Schaeffer, decried the decline of Western civilization and American Christianity in The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984) and How Shall We Then Live! (1976).
Middlemann complains that the Christian message no longer resonates, but has evolved into a personal life choice. God finds Himself "largely shoved into the private sphere" (136). Truth is reduced to individual preference, personal values, and private opinions, while objective truth is abandoned. The Gospel message is not longer spread as before. Thoughtful Christians are scarcer than a century ago, when public life was more informed by Biblical thinking. Modern Christianity has become a private religion, or at best a voting block with no other signs of being a living reality in neighborhoods. Christians rarely take stands that create a public challenge, or interact with what he calls "life in the market" (138). When there is political action by Christians, it...