It’s tough to imagine a society more fixated on sermons than colonial New England. And few sermons were more likely to be published and purchased than the type historians came to call the “jeremiad.”
Twentieth-century historian Perry Miller first coined the term because of how often these glum sermons used texts from prophecies of doom like those in Jeremiah. Jeremiads were typically inspired by some natural calamity, impending war, or perceived decline in purity and devotion of an earlier generation. They evoked terms of a special covenant and warned of disaster unless the people would repent.
In some ways, John Dickerson’s recent book fits comfortably into this venerable American genre, as one might assume given its title: The Great Evangelical Recession: 6 Factors That Will Crash the American Church . . . and How to Prepare. Dickerson, a journalist-turned-pastor of a thriving Arizona congregation, believes evangelicalism in America is teetering on the edge of collapse unless believers wake up and change course. So he attempts to provide a “bold” and “fresh” program for reclaiming vitality (18).
These are dramatic claims I’m not convinced are fully justified. But the questions are worth asking: Is American evangelicalism declining? And what, if anything, can we do about it? Read more
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