Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Church: Finding a Better Way to Influence Our Culture

by Dean Merrill

Book Overview

If America is sliding into a moral swamp, what's the best Christian response? The hardball approach of the religious right? Or is there a more productive way to engage our culture? Dean Merrill, a former vice president with Focus on the Family, challenges us to transform society--and our own hearts--from the inside out. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Church is about attitude, about living out our convictions in a Christ-like manner instead of bullying...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0310213088
• ISBN13: 9780310213086
• Release Date: November 1997
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

excellent, thought provoking

Every person who is thinking through issues of Church and culture needs to read this book. Between doing nothing in culture and fighting unwinnable culture wars, Merrill finds a middle ground, a third way. Especially helpful to me was the section on the mythical "good old days." Those who believe in the notion that America was once a "Christian Nation" and solving our problems means getting back to that place would do well to read this short, challenging, highly engaging book.

Great book - Be conservative but not mad about it

I have read a few books in this category of social decline and the role of the church today in light of history. This book is defintely my favorite in this category and one of my all-time favorites. Merrill uses specific examples from history to show that the 'Good 'Ol Days' are largely a myth. Enacting more laws will not change hearts and neither will painting our Bibles red-white and blue (metaphorically) by trying to Americanize the gospel with revisionist history. Of course we have problems today...There have been problems ever since the Fall. Unbeleivers still act like unbeleivers. Why are we surprised? Some Christians act like unbelievers - that should surprise us.Merrill is always reverent and uses our Lord as the prototype He's meant to be. This book reminds Christians to really be salt and light with practical ideas that sometimes call for sacrifice and always require reflection. We are meant to be much more than moralizing custodians of the culture. We are to transform it with love, involvement and yes, with standards of behavior - that we apply first to ourselves - just like Jesus did. Merrill is on target to tell the Church that romanticizing the past is just a distraction keeping us from really engaging the culture by "speaking the truth in love." I love this book - we can be conservative and not be mad about it.

The Very Right Response to the Problem!!!

Some earlier reviews of this work by Dean Merrill actually miss the point. It is not a call to be more docile, or even should be used by "humanists," but, in fact, it is a rallying call to help Christians understand their historical and biblical call to their culture.Dean Merrill speaks with authority. He spent 32 years in the Christian media, and the focus of this book is, "...about living out our convictions in a Christ-like manner instead of bullying our way into the system like any other loud and selfish government lobby."He uses biblical history - prophets such as Jonah and Elijah to make his point, as well as Ahab and Jezebel as analogies. He states that a "culture war" model has limitations, and head-on confrontations are external and do not make the opponents want to change. He writes that you cannot shout people into holiness. Then he points to the early church - "Whatever early believers thought and did about Caligula's disgraceful antics, it wasn't considered significant enough to make it into Luke's history. What was the early Christian reacion to Nero? What was their view of an immature, immoral, ruthless megalomaniac at the head of their government? Paul said that 'prayers and thanksgiving be given for...kings and all those in authority.'""Christians are engaged in titanic struggles," he writes, and it is primarily against flesh and blood. The enemies have names, phone numbers, faxes, and photos. But the Apostle Paul and other apostles seem to stand quietly by, wishing we would realize that the Christians' real enemies are Satan and his minions.Merrill writes that frontal resistance to evil regimes does not always win the day, and that the view of the 1st century church was to trust in the All Powerful One. The Christ-Following Minority has no choice but to understand the present reality - "there is no moral majority," and he points to some interesting facts, that in the 1760's, 1 out of 3 babies were conceived out of wedlock, and pre-marital sex was alive and booming.In his analysis, he points out four reactions to minority status that Christians exhibit - Anxiousness, apathy, anger, and apologetics. He states that the more we sidetrack ourselves with doing the job we prefer, trying to get non-Christian neighbors and acquaintances to act Christianly without the divine life of Christ inside, the more time and energy we waste. And he provides examples - biblical examples - such as Daniel, Esther, young Jesus, and the early church and New Testament leaders.This is compelling reading, and a little later in the book, he points out that the Founding Fathers of our country gave very little official favor or protection to Christianity. They set religion on its own in a free society to make its own mark, win its own converts, and pay its own bills.He writes, "Our society is a post-Christian one, and has been for more than 300 years - circa 1684. The King of England finally revoked the Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter and inst

Burn the sinners?

In this book, Merrill presents an overview of today's culture and points out effective and ineffective methods of influencing the people of today. He does an excellent job of assessing the wrong Christian responses while at the same time giving the correct way to respond. He points out that Christians usually are apathetic, anxious, or angry when dealing with today's problems when they should really be gently defending their faith. He then gives some excellent suggestions for Christian responses, such as praying for our government, censuring, attaching negative stigmas to sinful practices, and calmly sharing the hope that they have. Merrill is very reassuring in that he reminds us that God can work just as powerfully now as he did long ago, even though we may disagree with his timing. Overall, this book gives a clear, concise direction for defending the Bible and for witnessing to others in this sinful world.

A primer on how Christians should relate to their culture.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Church is a must read for Christians who struggle to relate to a culture that has lost respect for their faith. This book debunks the long-accepted myth that God's followers are supposed to be angry at sinners. The title is a play on words from a popular 18th century sermon by Jonathan Edwards in which he vividly describes God's impending wrath on sinners. The author openly questions whether a scorched-earth policy towards the unconverted is really God's plan for catching their attention. He details how most Christians react to societal decay [with anxiousness, anger, or apathy] while giving an alternative to the shrill rhetoric that is often expressed. Merrill chronicles how 1st century believers reacted to their culture and explains how their reaction can benefit Christians who want to find a better way to influence their culture without alienating its followers. The final chapter, along with a "to-do list" for Christians, challenges those who claim to follow Christ to stop blaming their culture and start relating to it.