An atheist goes to church

By Warren Schatz and ChristianWeek | February 1, 2008

This book will certainly attract criticism. Critics will shout that "church worship is not directed towards atheists" and others will ask "how can an atheist can tell us how to worship God?"

Some might claim that that one person's perspective is too biased or the approach is too subjective. Still others might suggest that examining one Sunday morning worship service isn't fair because "it is only one Sunday out of the whole year" or "the Church is more than Sunday morning."

All these complaints will miss the point of the whole exercise. Jim and Casper isn't trying to tell us "how to do church to reach atheists" or "what the Church should believe." Its goal is much simpler. It is an attempt to show what one atheist saw and heard while visiting different churches in America.

As Jim describes the mission to Casper: it is "to help all of us see how we come across to people who are not predisposed to believe what we say we believe." The goal is not so much to tell us how to do church but rather to have someone to act as a mirror to reflect back to us what church looks like to those who are outside the Christian environment.

And the results are surprisingly helpful. Casper helps us see how our words and claims don't always match well with our buildings, activities and behaviour. Casper points out glaring inconsistencies such as wealthy, upper-class Southern Californians being encouraged to "not give up."

"Why the unrelenting focus on 'don't give up' for an audience that, when compared to the rest of the world, practically has it all already?"Casper asks.

During a visit to a church in Dallas, Casper observes there is talk of an equal body of Christ but everything else about the service indicates otherwise: "So everybody here is as important as [T.D.] Jakes? And everyone at Lakewood is equal to Joel [Osteen]? That may be what they're saying, but when the pastors go home to their estates and their parishioners go home to their apartments, I doubt any of them really believe it."

This book really shines when Casper's insights allow us to carefully examine if the attitudes and beliefs we project outwards are the ones we want others to encounter. This can be helpful even to the many churches that do not fit the profiles of the ones examined in Jim and Casper Go to Church.

The experiment is not intended as a systematic, objective, scientific exercise, and it is not surprising that the educated, urban, left-leaning, musician Casper is drawn to the more "post-modern" styles of church. However, this doesn't invalidate his pointed observations of modern evangelical life. His attraction to those churches that demonstrate authenticity, relationship, consistency, integrity and action are invaluable to all of us trying to live out the gospel in our own cultural settings. This alone makes this book excellent reading for all pastors and church leaders.

One weakness of the book is the limited range of churches surveyed. It would have been helpful to include one or two more forms of evangelical churches in North America such as the conservative traditional church and the small-town, rural church.

At times Jim seems to fall into the trap so many post-modern and emergent writers do of suggesting that it is the "organized" church that is too blame for evangelicalism's problems (as if the church of Philippians, Galatians and Corinth were not "organized").

Also, while I sympathize greatly with Jim's insistence that lifestyle is more important than mere intellectual "beliefs," there is a danger that right beliefs are too de-emphasized. While actions may be as important as right beliefs, right beliefs are still vital. Without right beliefs there is nothing to separate the Christian from other social activists.

The final test for us may be in hearing Casper the atheist say: "What does the way Christianity is practised today have to do with the handful of words and deeds uttered by a man who walked the Earth two thousand years ago?"

And finally, this charge from Casper: "If I did believe in God, and that I was going to be granted eternal life in heaven, I would want to do something significant here on Earth, to live as much of my life as I could following the example set by Jesus when He was here on Earth—do unto others as you would have them do to you."