Sarah Young’s Jesus Calling is one of the best-selling books of all time. Published in 2004, it has sold more than 45 million copies. Its cultural impact has also been significant. It may be one of the most “gifted” books of all time. An organization called The Next Door makes the book available for free in women’s prisons. Former presidential spokesperson (and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders) said she read it before each of her daily White House press briefings.
The book has also attracted critics. It is written in the first person, as if Jesus himself is talking. Is the book supposed to be taken as a new revelation? Is it a prophetic utterance of some kind? Both the author and the publishers have denied that. They say the use of the first-person is a literary device, empty of theological meaning. Is C.S. Lewis channeling demons in The Screwtape Letters? No, of course not.
Nonetheless, the book has stirred controversy since the year it was published. And I don’t mean the fringe “discernment bloggers” and “conflict entrepreneurs” who profit from controversy, who find every slope slippery and find heretics in every pew.
I’m talking about serious people. Writer Tim Challies called it a “deeply troubling book” and itemized ten issues he has with it. He concluded, “Jesus Calling is a book built upon a faulty premise and in that way a book that is dangerous and unworthy of our attention or affirmation. The great tragedy is that it is leading people away from God’s means of grace that are so sweet and so satisfying, if only we will accept and embrace them.”
Kathy Keller is another prominent Christian writer who has issues with Jesus Calling. She wrote in 2012 that the book undermines the sufficiency of Scripture.
Into this controversy has stepped the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Until Sarah Young died last year, she had been a long-time member of that denomination. She graduated from Covenant Seminary, the PCA’s flagship seminary. She and her husband Steve, a PCA elder, had served as missionaries with the PCA’s missions arm, Mission to the World. Many PCA elders and members felt that the PCA had both the right and the duty to examine the book and make a statement about its “appropriateness for Christians.”
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The decision immediately generated controversy. When MinistryWatch posted our story on social media, commenters almost immediately called it a “witch hunt” and an attempt to ban books. Christianity Today’s excellent account of the PCA’s decision included a comment from Alaska elder Jerid Krulish, who said he knew a lot about fishing. “I know a fishing expedition when I see it,” he said to laughter in the room. “I find this to be disparaging and a waste of these committees’ time.”
One pastor, Daniel Wells, noted that Sarah Young’s recent death meant that the family was still grieving and that the timing for such an action was inappropriate.
The Peace and Purity of the Church
These points, while worth noting, fail to consider an important vow that members and elders of the PCA make. To become a member of the PCA, members must answer the following question in the affirmative:
Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace?
Elders have an even greater responsibility.
Do you promise to strive for the purity, peace, unity, and edification of the Church?
To many modern evangelicals, such language as “peace and purity” seems anachronistic. And in the modern public square, where promises are made to be broken, the notion of making public vows that have meaning and consequences seems positively quaint. But these vows that both Sarah Young and the elders of the PCA took make the recent action of the General Assembly not only appropriate, but a bounden duty.
Not A Witch Hunt or a Book Ban
Because words matter, it is important to note what the PCA decided. It is not banning the book. It has not vilified or condemned either the book or its author. It is conducting a study. It is taking a year to seek the truth about this book and its appropriateness for Christians as a devotional tool. Critics of the decision have failed to note that the real possibility that the denomination might give the book a clean bill of health, thereby resolving this 20-year-old controversy once and for all.
But if the book has serious theological problems, shouldn’t we know?
I think one of the reasons this decision by the PCA has generated controversy is that it is in sharp contrast to the way we have grown used to resolving public controversies. We have become far too used to choosing sides, gearing up, and fighting with whatever tools are available – whether ethically used or not.
That’s why I will watch what happens with the Jesus Calling study with great interest. I have hope that the study, and its conclusions, will be a gift to both the PCA and to the broader evangelical church.
But the greater gift will be in showing us how to deal with tough issues. This decision is a thoughtful, measured, pastoral approach to an ongoing controversy. The Bible says, “Come, let us reason together.” The PCA’s recent decision indicates that it takes that admonition seriously.
It’s a good model for us all.