Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #284484 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 339 pages

From the Publisher
In this final volume of the set that began with 'No Place for Truth', David Wells analyses Western culture in all its complexity, brilliance and emptiness, and gives a critique of contemporary evangelicalism that is both unsettling and reinvigorating.

From the Inside Flap
A prophetic call that the evangelical church cannot afford to ignore

In our postmodern world, every view has a place at the table but none has the final say. How, as Christian faith adjusts to new culture, should the church confess Christ?

Above All Earthly Pow’rs, the fourth and final volume of the set that began in 1993 with No Place for Truth, paints a picture of the West in all its complexity, brilliance, and emptiness. As David Wells masterfully depicts it, the postmodern ethos of the West is relativistic, individualistic, therapeutic, and yet remarkably spiritual. Wells unabashedly locates American postmodernism’s roots in the last century’s waves of immigration – waves that, for all their diversity, have brought with them numerous new religions and a cultural relativism born out of confusion and a fear of offence. Wells also carefully differentiates between intellectual and popular postmodernism; while few Americans read Foucault or Derrida, nearly everyone is subject to the permeating flood of TV ads.

Wells’s book culminates in a critique of contemporary evangelicalism aimed at both unsettling and reinvigorating readers. Churches that market themselves as relevant to consumption-oriented postmoderns are indeed swelling in size. But they are doing so, Wells contends, at the expense of the truth of the gospel, as the trappings they adopt come laden with theological consequences. By placing a premium on marketing, the evangelical church is in danger of selling authentic engagement with culture for worldly success.

Welding extensive cultural analysis with a formidable theological contribution. Above All Earthly Pow’rs will grip pastors, educators, and all serious readers concerned about the fate of evangelical Christianity.

About the Author
David Wells is Distinguished Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is an ordained Congregationalist minister and author of 'No Place for Truth', 'God in the Wasteland' and 'Losing our Virtue' (all IVP).

Customer Reviews

Consumer religion
Not the easiest read but a devastating critique of post-modernism and the church's response to it. Wells says our world is that of consumerism. You choose your religion like you buy your consumables and seeker sensitive mega churches churches may be conforming to this spirit of the age. Wells calls back to a truth centered Biblical faith.

enlightening
This book can be a little hard going for the casual reader, however it is thoroughly worthwhile to pick up and read. Wells insight into contemporary socio-religio-cultural relationships is extremely insightful. I continually, whilst reading, had to keep stopping and sharing with my wife yet another snippet from the book.

I must admit I did have to re-read some passages a few times to get the point, but it proved invaluable doing so. This book it a must-read for Christians who want to try and understand what confronts them in terms of evangelism and how the world perceives religion.