Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul

by G. Jeffrey MacDonald

What has become of the Christian Church? Once devoted to molding Americans into better people, in recent years the Christian Church has gotten a corporate makeover. In a desperate attempt to bolster membership rolls, ministers have begun to treat their churches more like companies, and their congregations more like customers. As a minister in a small church and as a national religion reporter, journalist G. Jeffrey MacDonald witnessed firsthand this lapse into consumerism. He realized that in an effort to cast a wide net for souls churches have sacrificed their authority to transform Americans' self-serving impulses for the better. In the headlong rush to operate more like businesses, churches are sacrificing their moral authority, perhaps permanently. The result is a crisis for the American conscience. MacDonald's incisive critique of today's movement away from true religion shows how desperately America needs a new religious reformation.  

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, Christian Living

256 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 2010

Reviews

[Gs · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very interesting to start, but it quickly floundered. The author seemed to repeat himself quite a bit, especially in the second half of the book. It is definitely an interesting book for those who have not read a similar book before, but for someone like me, it was the same tired comments in the end. I did like it, but I hoped for more.

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the book frustrating. It is a needed critique of the commercialism infecting our church experience. But it's also a grumpy book. The author has a tendency to want to go back to the good old days when we sat on hard pews and the preacher made everyone feel uncomfortable. And yet, we need to be pushed.

So, I give it three stars because I'm not sure what to make of it.

[Victoria Weinstein · Rating 1 out of 5]

A petty, mean-spirited screed by a pastor who obviously has an ax to grind after being fired from his church. Lacks love, heart and vision. If I wanted to listen to this much anti-layperson negativity I'd just go to a clergy conference and sit with the bitter old dinosaurs. No thanks.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a conflicting book in a lot of ways. Many other reviews have noted MacDonald's primarily negative tone, and how he seems to have something of an axe to grind against a congregation that didn't seem to like his attempts to infuse a more pious perspective on worship. These reviewers aren't wrong, there are definitely some negative overtones to MacDonald's work, and a lot of his research plays fast and loose with conclusions and just doesn't seem especially systematic - he often chooses fairly sensational examples to focus on to make his points, for instance. But at the same time I think the book does a decent job communicating the heart at the core of the message, which I think is a heart for reform that sees Christianity as the very hope for moral and ethical foundations in America that most evangelicals would say it is. Though his prose is perhaps questionable at times, MacDonald actually wants the vision of a Christ-centered world that many other Christians espouse as their final goal; what he does is challenge the way that people are going about achieving that vision. Some may find MacDonald too negative, others may find him too ecumenical. I'm not entirely sure about either charge. Overall I enjoyed the ideas of this book, if not the book itself.

[Brian H. · Rating 2 out of 5]

It makes some points I totally agree with, particularly on missions, lament and commercialization, but falls flat due to its nitpicking attitude, simplistic solutions to “problems” and soap box finger pointing.

[Lillian Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provocative and convicting. My review in the Christian Century Magazine,

http://www.christiancentury.org/revie...


Selling out?
Jan 11, 2011 by Lillian Daniel
In my first years in ministry, the senior minister I worked with had a policy of performing weddings for any couple that asked, whether they were connected to the congregation or not. He believed that this was one way to show hospitality to couples who did not attend church and who later might return to church as a result of that hospitality.

Since I was a newly ordained associate minister, the senior minister's policy became my policy. And due to my status in the hierarchy, I got stuck with most of those nonmember weddings. I came to dread them more than any other aspect of ministry.

The unchurched couples would order me around like any other service provider they had contracted with. They would bore me with rants about why they hated organized religion or why their wedding pictures would actually be much prettier if taken at First Congregational Church. And why, they wondered, couldn't the videographer stand in front of the cross and Bible to get the best shot of the ring bearer? Surely you can picture that ring bearer—too young to talk, with no idea what he is doing, dressed up like a little magician in satin and velour.

I could and did perform those rent-a-church weddings. But I hated myself in the morning. A few of these couples did show up again at church, but it was often to avail themselves of something else they regarded like a service for purchase—the sacrament of baptism. These new parents who had not attended church stood up to make promises they showed no evidence of intending to carry out.

I disagreed with my senior colleague about the value of providing those wedding services to nonmembers and vowed that I wouldn't perform them when the decision was left to me. And I have tried to stick to that policy.

Jeffrey MacDonald says that disciplines of that sort are rare in American churches.....

READ MORE
http://www.christiancentury.org/revie...

[Seán · Rating 2 out of 5]

MacDonald's got it right: most of these functionally illiterate megachurch clowns are not Christians, they're just Christ-Lite consumers. Still, I wish the book and his suggested solutions were meatier.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great analysis of the problems of a consumeristic church ... leaves you a little wanting for answers on solving it (but I guess that's what the Bible's for!).

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

"MacDonald's biting critique is must reading, even though it makes us wince." - Christian Century.

I winced. . .