The Errors of “Pop” Theology

The history of popular American theology in the last decade is a history of some ludicrous miscalculations of the future. Pop theology is a particular expression of lay-oriented theology after World War II, fortified by the phenomenon of mass religiosity during the 1950s. Many laymen started reading theology. Church membership was increasing. During the mid-1960s, as pop theology reached and began to fall away from its peak, the publishers were searching incessantly for that next great trend in theology, assuming that if they could just identify it in advance, they could supply books for the emerging market.

My thesis is: the central tradition of recent avant garde American theology has been almost consistently wrong in its estimate of the future. For that reason we have experienced an incredibly varied and demoralizing sequence of fads. Pop theology is by definition faddish, and it is not surprising that astute laymen and pastors should soon come to expect it to be ostentatious and shallow. When theology is accommodative and faddish and phony it does not deserve the attention of laity or clergy.

The history of popular American theology in the last decade is a history of some ludicrous miscalculations of the future. Pop theology is a particular expression of lay-oriented theology after World War II, fortified by the phenomenon of mass religiosity during the 1950s. Many laymen started reading theology. Church membership was increasing. During the mid-1960s, as pop theology reached and began to fall away from its peak, the publishers were searching incessantly for that next great trend in theology, assuming that if they could just identify it in advance, they could supply books for the emerging market.

My thesis is: the central tradition of recent avant garde American theology has been almost consistently wrong in its estimate of the future. For that reason we have experienced an incredibly varied and demoralizing sequence of fads. Pop theology is by definition faddish, and it is not surprising that astute laymen and pastors should soon come to expect it to be ostentatious and shallow. When theology is accommodative and faddish and phony it does not deserve the attention of laity or clergy.