THE SLEEPING GIANT: Arousing Church Power In America

A dangerous euphoria envelopes the American church, in the opinion of the author. It is no longer possible for the church to serve as sanctifier of the status quo. This brief book, which in another time might have been called a tract or broadside, sets forth the failures of the church in sweeping condemnatory terms and offers proposals for correction of its errors in terms equally sweeping and generalized. The essence of the author's program would seem to be that it is ""high time the church got tough"" with its lackadaisical members and took up a discipline -- imposed by authority if necessary -- of study, sharing and service. Much of the discussion has to do with what is generally called social action; it consists largely of citation of gross contradictions between the wealth and well being of church members and the poverty and need of the human race. If the church were to become what it ought to be, by the year 2000 it would be ""lean"" and stripped of indifferent members, have no denominations, no Sunday School or Sunday worship; but it would consist of people taking risks in love, recover the Bible, be driven by a sense of urgency -- and ""all the young people will come back."" The reader may have an increasing sense that most of what the author is saying has been said incessantly in recent years, perhaps with less tone of harangue and more insight and penetration.