The Church in Dark Times

For many of us from my own generation, there's no more powerful example of the seduction of evil than the rising of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

For most of us, whether survivors of childhood abuse or those who survived other significant traumas, we often expect evil to be obvious - the evil guy in the dark alley or the powerful dictator over an evil movement or nation or organization. However, as we head into Mike Cosper's "The Church in Dark Times: Understanding and Resisting the Evil That Seduced the Evangelical Movement," we are reminded that malevolence is often more subtle and kept alive by our best intentions and seemingly righteous ideas.

If you don't believe that evil has seduced much of the current evangelical movement, the odds are fairly strong you'll struggle with the very foundation of "The Church in Dark Times."

I, for one, do believe it.

Drawing on the work of twentieth-century political theorist Hannah Arendt, Cosper dives into her theory of the "banality of evil" - the thoughtlessness that allows ordinary people to become complicit in all kinds of manner of corruption. It's an idea not far removed from another book I'm reading right now by Jemar Tisby, ""The Spirit of Justice."

Cosby explores the growing crisis of abuse and other failures in modern evangelical churches, lifting the veil to expose underlying causes yet, like Tisby, also exploring reasons for hope and practices that foster healing and renewal.

Indeed, "The Church in Dark Times" is very committed to both understanding and resisting this evil, hence its title, yet also uncompromising in portraying it. This isn't a melodramatic work - instead, it's a powerfully researched look that largely avoids politicization and likely has more significant crossover appeal than other titles I've read on this particular subject.

Cosper is a cultural critic who produced and hosted The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast. He services as director of podcasts for Christianity Today and co-hosts the weekly podcast The Bulletin. "The Church in Dark Times" is an expansion, really, of Cosper's Mars Hill podcast as it looks at those very issues and applies them in a myriad of different ways. "The Church in Dark Times" is a well-researched, informative, engaging, and very necessary portrayal of the evil that has seduced the evangelical movement and how it can be resisted.

As humans, we like simple answers to explain complex things and thus we seek out ideologies to make sense of the world. In this book, Cosper explains how the Christian church has increasingly adopted ideologies to explain life when they will always fall short of theology. "The allure of an ideology is that it flattens the complexity of the real world and thus insulated and inoculates a person from the need to think."

Cosper was the host of the popular Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast and has seen first hand how those in the church who cling to mission statements can manipulate and hurt others when they are adopting an ideology that is more man-centered than God-centered. Writings from Hannah Arendt, who was a German Jew living during WWII, added a richness to the discussions as Cosper hearkened back to her work to show that not much has changed between now and 70 years ago.

I appreciated the philosophical discussions in this bookand how Cosper highlighted how we always want to fix problems in our culture and don't often recognize that things are complicated. Some of the writing could be a bit meandering and hard to follow at points.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC. This book is one that will live long in my thinking and memory. It examines the aftermath of mega churches and fallen leaders in a way that is critical but ultimately hopeful, engaging with Hannah Arendt’s work. It’s also beautifully written. Definitely one to read.