Author: D. Brown

The moment I received my copy of David Kinnaman's Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity and Why it Matters, I'm proud to say that I judged the book by its cover. Upon pulling the inch-thick book out of its shipping box, I took one long look at the cover and simply could not bring myself to tear off the shrink wrap. The cover art (designed by FiveStone) was absolutely brilliant: Smart. Clean. Very clean. And the design matched the title perfectly in terms of tone. Just simple black and white set in a way as to symbolize a hint of something profound in its pages. I know this may sound obsessive, but the cover made me smile like a kid in a candy store for hours. In fact, I must have left the shrink-wrap intact for at least a week while I proudly displayed the work of art on my office shelf.

The weird fact is, I really do tend to buy books based solely on their cover art. I do the same with audio CDs. And I will be honest: I've completely regretted some of those purchases, having been utterly disappointed by the crappy contents inside, although this was not the case with this book. But I'm sure I'm not the only one. Publishers (including Unchristian's publisher, Baker Books) have design philosophy down to a "T" and they know how to make the most of consumers' subconscious tendencies.

But enough of this rambling. You want to know about the contents of Unchristian and I know that. But I can't write a review about this book without giving credit to the designers. The artists usually don't get enough credit, and I give credit where it's due. Except that's not the only reason I mention the cover.

I'm making such a ridiculously big deal about this because the cover really does contribute to the content: The giant "UN" set above "Christian" implies that the point of this book may be that the first thing a new generation sees of Christians is how we're often blatantly un-Christ-like. And the use of only black and white tells me that there may be inarguable statistics from Barna Research in this book that are going to shed light on how we as Christians really live our lives, regardless of how we claim to live. And on closer inspection of the "UN," I notice that, inscribed inside those two big letters, there are tiny words like, "boring", "hypocritical", "judgmental" and "confusing" and on and on with negative words like that. This tells me that, not only is this book probably not intended for Word-of-Faith practitioners, but that the book is probably packed full of biting accusations from those on the outside of Christendom. I could go on, but I'll just stop there.

Anyway, it turns out that the message I got from the cover wasn't too far off. In fact, it was quite accurate. Author David Kinnaman, who replaced George Barna as the President of the leading Christian research firm The Barna Group, masterfully crafts a case that both convicts and exhorts all Christians to...well, wake up. And when you read his quotations of people who he calls "outsiders" (non-Christians), you can't just sit back and say, "Well, they're just being critical." Take this quote for example: [According to one outsider,] "Christianity has become bloated with blind followers who would rather repeat slogans than actually feel true compassion and care. Christianity has become marketed and streamlined into a juggernaut of fearmongering that has lost its own heart."

But Kinnaman doesn't just include generalizations from outsiders, he provides solid, research-based facts and figures attesting to the reality that "Christianity has an image problem" and that the image outsiders have of us is really not too far off. For example, he says Barna's research shows that, "In virtually every study we conduct, representing thousand of interviews every year, born again Christians fail to display much attitudinal or behavioral evidence of transformed lives. For instance, based on a study released in 2007, we found that most of the lifestyle activities of born-again Christians were statistically equivalent to those of non-born-agains."

Kinnaman goes on and on with evidence indicating that we as Christians are really not as different from "The World" as we would like to think, and that those outsiders who criticize us and call us hypocrites are, in fact, often accurate in their descriptions. And he gives us a gentle nudge with Unchristian, as if to say, "Do our covers--the way we live our lives--give an accurate picture of what we claim is inside?" And I have to check myself and think, is there really anything impressive about my cover?

D. Brown

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