Book Review on Redeem All: How Digital Life is Changing Evangelical Culture
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A Needed Topic. But Does Not Address It with Excellence
Redeem All, released on December 21st in 2021, was the first book I read during 2022. My reading plan this year is to successfully complete 50 books. My hope is that the additional 49 books are much better than this book. The title and subtitle — How Digital Life is Changing Evangelical Culture — were appealing to me as an evangelical denominational staff person. I seek to engage in forthtelling innovational, so I felt this book would add to my body of knowledge and suggest various innovations I could share and attribute to this book.
It did not.
I would say that the introduction and first two chapters that focus on congregations and parachurch movement in evangelicalism and their use of digital approaches were informative. Primary research for these chapters, however, did not reflect a diverse inquiry into varying approaches. There was a lot about Life.Church, and that was interesting. But the research was not broad enough to reflect on sustaining principles but was more anecdotal insights.
By the time I got to chapter three I realized the author was beyond the initial focus of the earlier parts of the book and was writing chapters to have a full length book. From a sales perspective I felt a sense of “bait and switch.” While chapters four and five, make important points readers need to understand, these were insufficient to redeem the book.
Being a Southern Baptist I worried about the accuracy of the book when in one place Russell Moore was named as the head of the Southern Baptist Convention, and in another that Albert Mohler was so named. Neither has ever had a formal role like this. They may have aspired to the presidency but have never achieved it and are unlikely to do so in the future for several reasons.
While a small point, this led me to wonder about the accuracy of other research and attributions. This showed that the author is not deeply knowledgeable enough about the evangelical church to have authored this book.
You will need to judge the value of this book for yourself.
Copyright 2022 by George W. Bullard Jr.
