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Baal and the Gods of More Rescuing Church Growth from Idolatry Andrew Root How should we think about church growth in our current cultural moment? The golden era ushered in by the industrial revolution led the Prot - estant church in America to experience unprecedented growth and prosperity in the twentieth century. This environment has formed our understanding of and dependence on growth for stabilization: It’s assumed that if we aren’t growing, we are stagnant at best and declining at worst. In Baal and the Gods of More , Andrew Root challenges our assump - tions about growth, offering a deep analysis through the lenses of cultural philosophy, economic theory, and theological examination. Turning to 1 and 2 Kings, he shows that our desire for growth is an idolatry that mirrors the ancient idolatry of the Israelites in their worship of Baal and other fertility gods. Baal and the Gods of More argues that looking to innovation, cre - ativity, and other secular methodologies in the endless pursuit of “more”—more influence, more people, more reach, more money— will not save the church. Instead, the church needs to return to dependence on divine action and a relational encounter with the Word. “Root delivers a stinging rebuke to Western Protestantism, expos- ing how our fixation on growth has succumbed to a relentless logic of escalation that mirrors the ancient worship of Baal. He argues that our frantic obsessions with innovation and identity politics are merely two sides of the same capitalist coin, driving the church to trade the obedience of faith for the exhausting pursuit of ‘doing better.’ To escape this instrumental fertility cult, Root calls leaders to look to Mary—not as a cultic object but as the clearest teacher of a noninstrumental, relational ecclesiology revealed in the scan- dalous weakness of the cross.” —Gerardo Martí, Davidson College; coauthor of The Church Must Grow or Perish: Robert H. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity CONTENTS 1. Memes and Museums: Realizing the Church Has an Idolatry Problem 2. What’s So Bad About Growth? Dynamic Stabilization as Modernity’s New Fertility System 3. The Machine and the GDP God: How the Special Century and the Christian Century Got Us Addicted to Growth 4. Techno-Optimists and Identitarians Take Over the Church: How Baal Becomes Modern and Embedded in Protestantism 5. The Disobedience of a Lost Golden Age: Reading 1–2 Kings Next to Protestant Decline 6. You, Mother! A Sweet Apocalyptic Relationality
APRIL 2026 • 272 pp. • $29.99p • 9781540970060
Andrew Root (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is Carrie Olson Baalson Professor of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary. He is the author of more than twenty-five books, including the six-volume Ministry in a Secular Age set. Root is also the coauthor (with Kenda Creasy Dean) of The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry . He serves as staff theologian at Youthfront, is a frequent speaker, and cohosts the Ministry in a Secular Age podcast.
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