Safely Home

The American Church spent the better part of the twentieth century living with the implications of the isms of the nineteenth. The revivalism of Finney and others became the intellectual predecessor to the technique-driven, program-based church. The evolutionism of the nineteenth century gave us a sociological approach to worship which demanded age segregation. The egalitarianism of the post-Civil War era taught us to view the local church as a connection of completely independent individuals, instead of as members of families, of covenanting communities, and as heirs to a patriarchal legacy. Likewise, the feminism of the post-industrial revolution, driven in part by the rise in absentee fathers, turned the church into a matriarchal society with women as the primary communicators of spiritual truths to the next generation. By the twentieth century, the combined effect of these noxious, antifamilistic isms, had finally taken its toll on the local church, transforming many into baby sitting operations, psychological rehab centers, and size-driven experiments in mass marketing anything but the family affirming community of saints required by Scripture. But perhaps someday we will look back upon the early years of the twenty-first century as the turning point. Book jacket.Eldredge, Tom is the author of 'Safely Home', published 2003 under ISBN 9781929241484 and ISBN 1929241488.