I first encountered Cook’s name on a “naughty list” of other critics of white evangelicalism, along with Jemar Tisby, Kristin Kobes du Mez, and Beth Allison Baar. His was the name I hadn’t heard before, and his the title that I hadn’t encountered. The title was intriguing to me, and when I noticed the table of contents populated by familiar names like Abraham Kuyper, Harold Ockenga, and Richard Mouw, I knew I needed to take a look. I have long had concerns about the Reformed worldview, particularly because of its colonial legacy. However, if Cook is correct, then the concerns I’m wrestling with might not be with our worldview, but rather the problem of worldview itself.
A worldview is a “general, abstract concept bearing on reality with no history of its own” (13). It is “a structure of principles that can make sense of the whole, including oneself and God” (13). The most familiar phrase for many of us is a “Biblical worldview.” That is, the Bible contains basic principles that help make sense of the whole world, all who live in it, and for all time. Cook makes the connection to my concerns early in the Introduction, pointing out that “the worldview concept codeveloped with the racial framework in the colonial period” (9). It’s visible in the concept of “civilization” that was carried from Europe to foreign lands and “was used to dispatch what was conceived as barbarity and general heathenism” (10).
This is how whiteness comes into the picture. For Cook, both world-viewing and whiteness took shape in the minds of European Christians during the colonial period. Like a worldview, whiteness came to mean an “involvement in the ubiquitous, transparent norms of reality” (13). Whiteness and world-viewing reinforced one another so that one particular way of viewing the world (i.e., European Christian) came to be seen as “comprehensive” and “total” (i.e., universal). The following chapters “convey how the cases under study believe themselves to have received the God’s-eye view that can and should be formulated as timeless principles and universally applicable laws – all of which carry divine force” (13).
The problem with worldviewing, as Cook sees it, is the way it blinds us to the concrete reality of lived experience; our own and those we encounter who might be different. Cook sees in the case studies an “unearned epistemic confidence” (203) because “we have no criteria for judging whether theologians, traditions, or churches possess sanctified reason as a reliable cognitive faculty that will produce true theological formulations” (217). In his view, a Biblical worldview has been used to “prove” the good intentions of the actor while contradictory actions are perceived as historical, trivial blemishes on an otherwise universal good. Whether or not each of the case studies is implicated in the way Cook suggests will be up to the reader.
Each section of the book presents an example of how worldview and whiteness take shape in the life and thought of figures who were influential in the formation of evangelicalism. Those chapters are followed by what Cook describes as “intervening chapters that deconstruct worldview theory itself from a particular angle…and then offer constructive prospects for a more honest, more viable, more faithful theology of identity” (15). Abraham Kuyper is paired with W.E.B. Du Bois. Harold Ockenga is compared to William E. Pannell. Richard Mouw is contrasted with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, particularly through Bonhoeffer’s experiences with a Black church in Harlem. Regardless of the specifics, I am compelled by the thesis as it resonates with my concerns about the Dutch Reformed tradition, historically and presently.
As someone with one foot in the RCA and CRC, it is clear that “the spiritual disease of division is symptomatic of a deeper problem” (2). For Cook, it is the assumption and presumption of a worldview. For Cook, the answer to this problem is to forgo the pursuit of an ever-firmer structure of universal principles that we have built out of our own hubris in favor of a deeper communion with God that instills humility “as exactly one creature before God” (295). That is, the future of faith will be brighter if we will focus our attention on particular, human relationships rather than a universal and (supposedly) certain knowledge. “Our side of this relationship must change if we are to become more open to the living God, more likely to grow in Christlikeness, and less anxious (and combative and polarizing) as we live truthfully with and for others” (19).
I was challenged by Cook’s work for a few reasons. First, the book is academic in its approach as evidenced by the quotes throughout this review. In addition, in brings in various fields of study to prove the point. Cook’s work requires a slow and careful read. Second, it was difficult to tease out whether or not the problem was, indeed, with worldview or actually with the impact that whiteness has on world-viewing. Whiteness, too, is often described as “total,” “normal,” and enjoys the privilege of not being questioned. So, I’m left to wonder if world-viewing might be salvaged apart from whiteness. Finally, it’s hard for me to imagine life apart from a worldview that helps me make sense of a complicated world and offers a stable place to stand during turbulent times. But I think that proves the point. We will be better served if we trust more in one another than oin ur ideas. So, I recommend Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith as well worth the effort.
6 Responses
What an excellent review, Peter. I definitely believe that Mr. Cook is onto something.
This book by Jacob Cook sounds like a necessary resource for myself and those of us who have left our denomination. Anything that helps us become “… more open to the living God, more likely to grow in Christlikeness, and less anxious (and combative and polarizing) as we live truthfully with and for others” is what I need! Thank you, Peter.
I agree with your caution regarding worldview and especially what it has become in white, evangelical spaces in North America. Some of those concerns are baked into the original concept but you don’t have to wait for someone in 2023 to point out the flaws in the system. Turns out Bavinck’s nephew, missiologist J.H. Bavinck provided this helpful critique in the 1920s. Personality and Worldview is an excellent example of the tradition self-critiquing and, if we are faithful to it, self-correcting.
Intriguing. I too want to live more open to the living God, shaped by my relationship with Jesus, and less anxious , combative and polarizing. I notice that you didn’t say too much about the third component of the title, the future of evangelicalism. I’m curious if he’s focusing his assessment on evangelicalism in white North America and Europe, or if he’s also taking into the account the blossoming of evangelicalism in the non-white world (which the periodical Christianity Today is working hard to depict). Or maybe that has been tainted by its white “roots” in colonialism. I’m also wondering if worldview is only something that white Christian cultures talk about (even without using that term), or if non-white, non-Christian cultures also have their worldviews and how Cook’s critique would apply to worldviews in general. My initial gut instinct is to think that we need both a big picture view of reality and a little picture of daily relationships—they can help shape each other. But maybe that’s exactly what the book is advocating.
Peter and James,
Your reflections today reminded me of what Frederik Douglass in his Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Frederick Douglass,_an_American_Slave wrote about his master.
“[M]y master attended a Methodist camp-meeting and there experienced religion… I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest pretension to piety…. and he proved himself an instrument in the hands of the church of converting many souls.” –Chapter IX
Perhaps the cruelty we notice is not so much related to worldview or a Reformed characteristic of meanness as it is to a broader human attempt to elevate the group to which we belong over those of other groups.
Thaks for this, Peter and respondents! I am late to the discussion due to travel, but compelled to process a few thoughts here:
1. Whiteness or black/brownness are less relevant than power or historical circumstance. Perhaps a few thousand years from now African folks will dominate/ exploit Europeans. It is less about race or virtue than circumstance.
2. In most cases, Asian and global south churches learned their version of the gospel from white evangelical westerners. Sometimes, they may lock onto certain beliefs that were really cultural ( role of women, for example). And Reformation folks similarly latched onto reactive interpretations from the 1500’s.
3. The Biblical Worldview we claim is sometimes untested. Many/most? Christians assume a magical, inerrant, overwhelming scrubbing af all things canonized as fundamentally correct. As I study more, I become increasingly convinced that what makes the scriptures convincing is their profound integration and cohesiveness. Are the scriptures true because they are(by declaration) inspired or they inspired because they are true?
All those who adopt a Biblical Worldview should wrestle with this question.