Modern Man

Taking its cues from the scientism of a bygone era, Western Christianity has tried for too long to make the gospel a kind of scientific formula—a pseudo-science of Biblical facts, atonement theories, and sinner’s prayers—when it’s more like a song, a symphony, a poem, a painting, a drama, a dance, and, yes, a mystery. The Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century saw the artisan replaced with conveyer-belted, smoke-belching factories. Things would no longer be handcrafted, they would now be mass-produced. Christianity followed suit. The revivalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries sought to “industrialize” evangelism. While Henry Ford was mass-producing cars, Billy Sunday was mass-producing converts. Except it doesn’t work that way.