Controversial Christian Author Ruffles Feathers, But Does His Rhetoric Benefit American Christianity?

Soong-Chan Rah is anything but subtle about his views on issues of racism and cultural insensitivity in the evangelical community.

The in-your-face author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity harshly critiqued the emerging church movement for being over-hyped and lacking diversity.

He’s called for the North American church to break free of its de facto allegiance to a Western, Eurocentric, and white American mindset, considering that African, Asian, and Latin American believers make up 60% of the world’s Christian population.

And as reported by Christianity Today, he’s famously caused major Christian publisher Zondervan to destroy existing copies of a book and led the publisher and the book’s authors to publicly apologize to the Asian American community for a version of their book that was “horribly, inexcusably, and unquestionably racist”.

And yet with all the wrongs he perceives, Rah doesn’t believe that American Christianity is dead. He is hopeful for what he coins the “Next Evangelicalism”, an “evangelicalism that crosses across racial and ethnic lines with a shared value system rather than a political agenda” that is being “redefined by a new constituency”.

In this similarly controversial interview with Edward Gilbreath, editor of UrbanFaith.com, Rah reveals why American churches must recognize Christianity’s new multicultural reality in order to remain a relevant global faith partner (link).

Still curious about what led one Christian radio station to abruptly cancel its interview with Rah on the day of the broadcast after the host took a closer look at the book? Then also check out this excerpt from his most recent book The Next Evangelicalism.