Caught in the Current: British and Canadian Evangelicals in an Age of Self-Spirituality (Advancing Studies in Religion, 14) (Volume 14)

Book info: Caught in the Current: British and Canadian Evangelicals in an Age of Self-Spirituality (Advancing Studies in Religion, 14) (Volume 14) (Hardcover, 248 pages) – McGill-Queen's University Press, 2023. Language: English.

Evangelical Christianity is known for its defence of traditional Christian teachings and resistance to liberalizing trends. Many Western evangelicals themselves do not yet realize how their faith is being reshaped by the modern zeitgeist.Caught in the Current explores how and why Western evangelicals are changing. Church attendance is declining, conservative moral positions are unpopular, and young people are drifting away from the faith. Evangelism is avoided, so few are joining congregations. Yet these surface changes are only symptoms of a more profound shift that church leaders have not fully apprehended. Drawing upon 125 interviews with British and Canadian clergy and active laity, Sam Reimer argues that evangelicals have been deeply influenced by a post-Christian culture that has rejected institutional religious authority and embraced self-spirituality. As individual evangelicals struggle to navigate these waters, and to distance themselves from politicized evangelicalism in the United States, they are caught between conformity and resistance, between faithfulness to church moral teachings and accommodation of secular values. Many are responding by turning inward to define their Christian beliefs for themselves. The ironic result is that the decline of institutional religious authority is not happening just in Western culture, but within evangelical churches as well.Caught in the Current is an insightful and nuanced assessment of how British and Canadian evangelicals are navigating a post-Christian culture, often in ways that are distinct from how their counterparts in the United States approach it.

Series editor: Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme

Advancing Studies in Religion catalyzes and provokes original research in the study of religion with a critical edge. The series advances the study of religion in method and theory, textual interpretation, theological studies, and the understanding of lived religious experience. Rooted in the long and diverse traditions of the study of religion in Canada, the series demonstrates awareness of the complex genealogy of religion as a category and as a discipline. ASR welcomes submissions from authors researching religion in varied contexts and with diverse methodologies.

The series is sponsored by the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion whose constituent societies include the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, Canadian Society of Patristic Studies, Canadian Theological Society, Société canadienne de théologie, and Société québécoise pour l’étude de la religion.