Full Description
"Ward is consistently clear-sighted and perceptive as he charts a genuinely fascinating personal and spiritual evolution."--Publishers Weekly
Jon Ward's life is divided in half: two decades inside the evangelical Christian bubble and two decades outside of it.
In Testimony, Ward tells the engaging story of his upbringing in, and eventual break from, an influential evangelical church in the 1980s and 1990s. Ward sheds light on the evangelical movement's troubling political and cultural dimensions, tracing the ways in which the Jesus People movement was seduced by materialism and other factors to become politically captive rather than prophetic.
A respected journalist, Ward asks uncomfortable but necessary questions, calling those inside and outside conservative Christian circles to embrace truth, complexity, and nuance. He recounts his growing alarm and grief over the last several years as evangelical conservatives attacked truth, rejected personal character, and embraced authoritarianism and conspiracism. He shares his search for a faith that embodies the values he was taught as a child.
Ward's experience and reflections will resonate with many readers who grew up in the evangelical movement as well as all those who have an interest in the health of the church and its impact on American life.
Contents
Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Growing Up Evangelical: 1977-2000
1. Revival Child
2. Pro-Life Child
3. The Walls Close In
4. Apocalypse Pretty Soon
5. Surrender
6. Radicalized
7. The New Christian Right
8. Suffocation
Part 2: Separation: 2001-2012
9. Escape
10. A Strong Man
11. A Dark Turn
12. Revelation
13. Theocrats on the March
Part 3: Reformation: 2013-2022
14. Reckoning
15. Disintegration
16. Collapse
17. Choosing Not to See
18. Rebuilding
19. Losing Reality
20. A New Normal
Conclusion: Restoration
