Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

by Jon Ward

Overview

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. Ultimately, he longs for a return to the way, the truth, and the life of Christ.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587435775
Publisher:	Brazos Press
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	200,748
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Jon Ward is the chief national correspondent at Yahoo! News. He has covered American politics and culture for two decades, including as a White House correspondent traveling aboard Air Force One and as a national affairs correspondent writing about two presidential campaigns. He is the author of Camelot's End: Kennedy vs. Carter and the Fight That Broke the Democratic Party and hosts The Long Game podcast. Ward has written for the Washington Post, the New Republic, Politico, Vanity Fair, HuffPost, and the Washington Times and lives in Washington, DC.

Table of 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

Editorial Reviews

02/06/2023

In this enlightening memoir, Ward (Camelot’s End), senior political correspondent for Yahoo! News, recounts a life caught between Christian and secular worlds. Ward grew up in the 1980s and ’90s as an evangelical pastor’s son, going to protests outside abortion clinics and embarking on mission trips. But when the Sovereign Grace Church took a sharp turn toward New Calvinism, its notions of man’s total depravity left Ward further disenchanted with the sin-obsessed, “hermetically sealed” church world he’d already started to question. Ward pursued journalism and landed his first reporting job at the Washington Times, though for years he dealt with an “existentialist despair” after realizing his upbringing hadn’t prepared him for “the world in which now moved.” West fully broke with the church after the evangelical community embraced Donald Trump in 2016, causing rifts with his family. Nonetheless, Ward advocates for a Christian presence in public political discourse, in which he contends believers should serve as “agents of nuance rather than of reductionism.” While this sometimes seems more like an ongoing personal inquiry than a finished product (as when he touches on the current status of his faith in the final chapters), Ward is consistently clear-sighted and perceptive as he charts a genuinely fascinating personal and spiritual evolution. This will resonate especially with Christians wondering about faith’s place in modern American society. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly