Of all the theological words that have taken a hit during the 21st century, evangelism has suffered perhaps the most. Too often, the word evokes all the stereotypes a Pure Flix film can offer: canned speeches, formulaic presentations, a confrontational style. After two centuries of preaching crusades, relational evangelism, pocket tracts, and door-to-door witnessing, the energy for evangelism is lost in many corners of Christianity.
Believers, of course, still want to see other people come to know Jesus Christ. But in certain contexts, they seem allergic to the language of evangelism. In seminaries, for instance, one often sees efforts at bringing Christian faith into public spaces labeled as “witness,” “interfaith dialogue,” or “cultural engagement.” In his newest book, Evangelism in an Age of Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness, Andrew Root wants to rehabilitate this beleaguered term, offering a renewed vision of how the Good News draws people into a relationship with God.
Root begins by reframing what is at stake, defining evangelism as “the practice and theology of consolation.” He does so by shifting our focus from possible evangelism techniques to a set of underlying theological questions: What does coming into relationship with God mean in the first place? How does this happen? And where does the cross of Christ fit in?
To begin sketching out his answer, Root traces the story of Mary Ann and Renate, coworkers at a fictional high-end apparel brand, who form an enduring friendship across various trials. Against this thematic backdrop, Root teases out the failure of one form of evangelism (rooted in happiness) and proposes a very different alternative (rooted in consolation). As we follow this friendship through job losses, illness, and death, we see evangelism reconceived as joining others in sorrow—just as God joins us in our own.
It might seem strange to link conventional forms of modern evangelism to the pursuit of happiness. To help us see the connection, Root shows how the pursuit of God, though rightly the deep desire of our souls, has been wrongly bound up with any number of earthly goods, such as a better family or social prosperity. Christianity, in this sense, does more than joining us to God. It takes on the added burden of making us happy along the way.
There are real problems, Root writes, with the way evangelism existed in the 20th century. Most fundamentally, he suggests, it existed as a “tool to gain things that can be counted.” Following French theologian Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Root describes how a preoccupation with enjoying lives of vitality and fullness led Christians to mistake vibrant religious experience for genuine church health. But emphasizing Christianity as a path to personal fulfillment moves too quickly past the cross of Christ, the Spirit bringing life out of death, and resurrection from the grave.
When we ignore these realities, we lose sight of our spiritual bankruptcy. And as Root stresses, “it is into this bankruptcy that the church is called. Christianity’s renewal is possible only inside embracing and joining this poverty, for this is what leads us to the cross.”
Root’s diagnosis is sobering not only theologically but culturally as well. For generations, the field of positive psychology has deeply influenced Christian accounts of human flourishing. Even setting aside invitations to “live your best life now” and other prosperity-gospel excesses, a striking amount of contemporary Christian discourse plays up themes of emotional resilience and well-being. We see this in the growing number of books that equate the Christian life with the condition of being psychologically well-adjusted.
By contrast, Root’s vision for evangelism involves getting comfortable inside desolation, which sits uneasily with rival visions that seek to renovate the heart without first dwelling inside its ruins.
In mapping out an intellectual genealogy of how evangelism came to be so intertwined with happiness, Root first takes us through the work of philosopher Charles Taylor, best known as the author of A Secular Age. In modern societies, Taylor argues, people tend to commit themselves wholeheartedly to individualism, rules-based rationality, and the soft tyranny of experts. We enjoy a large measure of autonomy, but we’re always constrained by the rules we’ve chosen, and various authorities stand ready to tell us we’re doing it all wrong.
Not surprisingly, Root writes, our evangelism practices echo the problems of the modern world. Evangelism, particularly the prevailing model of the late-20th century, was rooted in individual fulfillment and individual choice. It predicated a relationship with God on transactional formulas, as seen in evangelistic tools like the Four Spiritual Laws and ministries like Evangelism Explosion. And it traded on the testimony of experts, whether from crusade leaders or spiritual gurus.
Not only, then, do people find themselves condemned to endlessly pursuing happiness and authenticity, but our evangelism can encourage these futile quests. Linking the gospel with visions of earthly well-being can only amount to a false promise: What happens when the call to Christ means unhappiness, suffering, or even death?
As Root argues, we need “an evangelism that can address failing happiness-seekers.” But the legacy Taylor describes runs deep. Root embarks on a tour through the work of philosophers Michel de Montaigne and Blaise Pascal, showing how the first treated pursuing personal happiness as the highest good, while the second called that mindset into question. He then turns to a quintet of theologians, including Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory’s sister Macrina, and Martin Luther, to develop a theology of God’s presence amid desolation.
These figures emphasize God’s consoling nature, helping Root construct a version of evangelism that elevates God’s presence in our sorrow above our pursuit of happiness. As Root puts it, “Evangelism in these sad times is ultimately the confession that God meets us in our human sorrow and through our sorrow takes our person into Jesus’s own person. This is good news!” We encounter Christ as one who has been raised from the dead, and Christ encounters us as those who are dead and need raising to life. Accordingly, God finds us not in the pursuit of happiness but in the shambles of our failure.
There is no need to manufacture shame or sadness to accomplish this vision. Life brings enough of both on its own, as the theologians Root discusses are keenly aware. In dignifying human suffering as the place where God finds us, Root gives a breathtakingly fresh vision of evangelism, one that summons Christians to be present in the depths of suffering as well.
This vision has far-reaching ramifications for all who share the gospel. As one example, Root highlights how evangelism invites us to embrace a pilgrim mentality. We journey with others on the trail of sorrow, and in doing so, we reconfigure the practices and priorities of the Christian life. The pilgrim differs from the tourist, Root writes, in that the pilgrim joins this trail where God draws near, while the tourist observes and then departs. “If we lose this sense of pilgrimage,” he writes, “evangelism becomes grossly instrumentalized.” It “becomes something other than pilgrims joining pilgrims in saying goodbye, trusting that God meets and transforms us inside the sorrow of goodbyes.”
Though Root’s proposal focuses on evangelism, it bears on the whole of Christianity. Centering sorrow in the manner he advocates would mean shifting our pastoral approach to suffering, changing the mix of songs sung in worship, and reincorporating virtues of courage and patience into our discipleship. It would mean questioning the hope we invest in political involvement and reevaluating norms of ministry “success.”
It’s possible, of course, to make too much of sadness and sorrow, leaving no place for joy in the Christian life. If, as Root suggests, the way to Christ is found in sorrow, then how might we offer worship to God in a celebratory spirit? And how can we avoid pitting evangelism against the delight we’re meant to enjoy in Christ?
These are tensions Root might have done more to clarify. But that shouldn’t detract from the value of his book. In a world where turmoil, in forms large and small, never seems to cease, leading others to Christ will naturally involve journeying with them in sorrow. Evangelism in an Age of Despair helps us inhabit that sorrow not as mere sympathetic well-wishers but as fellow pilgrims walking the same road.
Myles Werntz is the author of From Isolation to Community: A Renewed Vision for Christian Life Together. He writes at Taking Off and Landing and teaches at Abilene Christian University.
