In the “Introduction to Philosophy” course taught at the evangelical Bible college I attended, there was just a single textbook: James W. Sire’s The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog (InterVarsity Press), originally published in 1976 and now in its sixth edition. Reflecting on this course two decades later, it now strikes me as odd (if not maddening) that a sole white male evangelical author who was not trained as a philosopher could provide sweeping appraisals in his survey of various “worldviews.” This was not seen as myopic or biased, but simply responsible and faithful. Why? Because the course was designed to promote a “Christian worldview” against all other competing “worldviews.” I imagine many readers raised in similar American evangelical contexts may recognize this underlying impulse towards adopting a “biblical” or “Christian” worldview.
In addressing such practices and motives within American evangelicalism, Jacob Alan Cook’s Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic) provides a damning critique of evangelicalism’s embrace of “worldview” ideology. Cook’s central argument is that “worldview” as a theory and practice is inextricably linked to white supremacy, particularly in its adoption and promotion by “straight, white, affluent, male Protestants” (137; note the acronym). For Cook, “whiteness” is not necessarily tied to ethnicity or phenotype, but can be better understood as “an ability to blend in, to be part of the norming group in any given room, the privilege of not questioning whether one really can or ought to try ordering, grasping, or even viewing the whole world” (13). That is, both worldviewing and whiteness are totalizing abstractions based on hegemony and power. Cook articulates his aims plainly, hyphening “world-view” in order to emphasize this universalizing posture: “What am I after is a patient, thorough explanation of why world-viewing gets who we are—individually, together, and before the living God—wrong” (19).
Though the book’s title suggests a forward-looking approach, and Cook does advance a generally progressive Christian perspective, the majority of the book actually focuses on the past as Cook traces American evangelicalism’s history through the influence of three figures—Abraham Kuyper, Harold Ockenga, and Richard Mouw—and their, well, worldviews. These three historical case studies make up the three-part structure of the book. Immediately following the evaluations of these figures are chapters that each provide a case study of a counter-figure—W.E.B. Du Bois, Bill Pannell, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, respectively—alongside the contemporary insights of other disciplines (psychology, sociology, epistemology). These counter-figures and disciplinary insights are presented as potential resources for evangelical theology in moving beyond “worldview” theories.
Cook’s overall arguments are effective and convincing. For instance, the chapter on views of identity and “the self” draws on social psychologist Hazel Markus’ work on “self-schemas” in order to point out how “worldview” theories within American evangelicalism often operate out of an outdated and cursory understanding of the “self” that does not adequately adopt new developments in both psychology and theology, developments which would challenge the notions of an objective, singular, and “biblical” worldview. In the book’s coda, Cook ultimately offers the theology of Bonhoeffer as a possible way forward. Following Bonhoeffer, we can reimagine Christian identity based not upon individualistic worldviews, but on a communal Christocentric identity rooted in concreted practices of love and justice, as embodied by the risen Christ. Such socially- and scientifically-aware approaches are more helpful perspectives of how human beings function and make meaning in their world.
Though Cook’s project is expansive, it is not exhaustive in its examination of the “worldview” phenomenon in American evangelicalism. This is perhaps intentional; an “exhaustive” approach shares much with the worldview impulse being critiqued. Still, even as Cook provides more than enough reasons for why “worldview” theory ought to be abandoned, one wonders if the book’s critiques do not go far enough. Absent from the book are considerations of other highly influential figures promoting worldview paradigms in American evangelicalism, such as Arthur Holmes, William Lane Craig, Francis Schaeffer, or Nancey Pearcey, as well as key “worldview” texts that have shaped the imaginations of contemporary white American evangelicals within both K–12 settings and higher education, such as Sire’s aforementioned The Universe Next Door or Natasha Crain’s Faithfully Different: Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture (Harvest House Publishers, 2022). Readers could imagine how a part 4 to the book might have included one of these figures or texts as another case study. Also absent are explorations of potentially beneficial alternatives to “worldview” theory, such as the “social imaginary” articulated by Paul Ricoeur and made more mainstream by Charles Taylor, or the “lifeworld” of Jürgen Habermas—both social imaginaries and lifeworlds connote a more holistic, intersectional, and social anthropology than the abstract, “objective” individualistic worldview. This is not to detract from the meticulous research Cook has done on worldview theory (each chapter contains well over one hundred footnotes), only to say that more good work ought to be done which builds upon Cook’s solid scholarship as a foundation.
This book would be beneficial assigned reading within evangelical Christian seminaries aiming to reimagine their trajectories in light of recent social and political events in the United States since 2016. Indeed, it is a powerful, prophetic, and persuasive clarion call to white American evangelicals to take stock of the insidious underpinnings of their worldview theories and open their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed (cf. Isaiah 6:10).
Joel Mayward is assistant professor of Christian Ministries, Theology and the Arts at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon.
Joel Mayward
Date Of Review:
December 22, 2023
