I’ve been reading S. Michael Craven’s newsletters for a long time now. He takes on thorny and contentious issues in Christianity and writes about them with thoughtful clarity and compassion. His first book, Uncompromised Faith: Overcoming Our Culturalized Christianity, shows the same intelligence and passion I have come to expect from his other writings. Despite tackling hot-button issues that usually inspire strident rhetoric—for example, homosexuality and same-sex marriage—Craven almost always presents well-reasoned arguments without shrillness. Even when he sinks to ad hominem attacks, such as linking Carl Jung to Hitler and the Nazis, he forgoes lurid and inflammatory language. He writes about Jung’s pseudo-scientific spirituality:

The popularity of the Volkish movement, with its foundational concept of an Aryan elite, actually may have contributed to the preconditions necessary for the rise of Nazism in Germany. One scholar wrote, “By 1933 the German right was captured by Volkish ideas. It was a trend in German thought that became so strong that millions accepted it as the only solution to Germany’s problems.” Jung was regarded as an important proponent of Volkish thinking, a connection that many followers of Jung have worked hard to conceal, for obvious reasons.

It’s hard to find a Christian writer today who can write any kind of cultural critique without invoking the Nazis. They are to us what demons were to Jesus’ contemporaries. At least Craven sticks to references that have a plausible connection.

Craven identifies three isms—modernism, postmodernism, and consumerism—that in his view have most hindered the spread of the gospel and the effectiveness of the church in America. His book is unconcerned with the global impact of efforts in the American church to spread the gospel beyond the United States; he instead tackles the obvious decline in Christian influence in the public sphere in America. He does not mean political influence but cultural influence. The Christian right may have a stranglehold on the Republican party, but Christianity—right or left—certainly has little influence in Hollywood or Wall Street.

The book is long on critique but short on solutions. Craven identifies the cultural and ideological trends that have most harmed the effectiveness of the church, but he offers little as an effective strategy for combating those trends. Nevertheless, he provides a good start, and those who give serious thought to where the American church will be in 40 years should read this book. For the United States has been overtaken by a modern form of paganism, characterized by a diffuse belief in an impersonal God, confidence in progress, suspicion of history, and radical self-reliance.

Craven is not alone in his judgment that America is becoming increasingly pagan. Eccentric art critic Dave Hickey writes in a recent article,

Citizens of ancient Rome made sacrifices at the temple of the god most likely to find them a mate or cure erectile dysfunction. We Americans conflate the shops of Rome with its temples. We shop for dreams in galleries and boutiques–and every cent we pay for an object that exceeds its utility may be taken as a pagan sacrifice to the power of that specific object to lend us some assistance.

No wonder Craven calls consumerism idolatry. In America where do we turn in a time of crisis? What will save us from an economic tailspin? Shopping! When the politicos and pundits tells us our salvation will come when we break out the credit cards and cash and head to the nearest retail outlet, then we know we are no longer a nation that trusts in God, despite what it says on our currency. An earlier generation would have repented (or at least been urged to repent) of avarice. But now avarice, no longer a vice, is our greatest virtue—as long as it’s a democratic avarice and not elitist like those AIG bigwigs who reaped obscene windfalls after gutting their own company.

The promise of the subtitle is that readers would learn to overcome their culturalized Christianity. The book certainly helps with recognizing how our culture has not only influenced but actually subverted the message of the gospel, but it does little to help us overcome this subversion. For that we may have to wait for a prophet with more fire in his belly.