Summer Book Report #3

We've previously discussed the excerpted findings of Ron Sider's book, The Scandal of The Evangelical Conscience.  Evangelicals (as well as mainline Protestants and Catholics, to varying degrees) do not fare discernibly better than their non-Christian neighbors in terms of divorce, materialism, sexual morality, domestic abuse, and racism.  I read the book recently, and Sider (who previously wrote the landmark Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger), pins much of the blame on the "cheap grace" mentality that evangelicals bring to faith.  For example, he writes:

There is simply no biblical justification for saying that the glorious truth of justification by faith alone is more important than the astonishing reality that the Risen Lord now lives in his disciples, transforming them day by day into his very likeness.  Justification and sanctification are both central parts of the biblical teaching on the gospel and salvation.  To overstate the importance of the one is to run the danger of neglecting the other.  And that is certainly what popular evangelicalism has done.  Whether emphasizing simplistic slogans such as "once-in-grace-always-in-grace" or focusing on seeker-friendly strategies that neglect costly discipleship, we have propagated the heretical notion that people can receive forgiveness without sanctification, heaven without holiness.  Notions of cheap grace are at the core of today's scandalous evangelical disobedience.

  Another problem is the lack of communal accountability:

The notion -- and practice -- of an independent congregation with no structures of accountability to the larger body of Christ is simply heretical.  How can an independent "Bible church" claim to be biblical when its very refusal to submit to a larger church structure of accountability defies the essence of a biblical understanding of being the church?

Obviously, Sider's prescription for evangelicals' problems sounds curiously Catholic.  This raises a new set of questions, though.  If evangelicals mirror society's sinfulness due to their lack of communal accountability and theology of cheap grace, what excuse do Catholics have?  If there is blame to be pinned somewhere, my first guess would be the tendency to emphasize rules over personal transformation in the faith formation process.  Or maybe it's the difficulty of fostering personal accountability through faith-centered relationships in parishes where folks hurry out as soon as the mass ends (and where small-group bible studies remain rare).  Or maybe it's the music.

Rob