You can feel the heartbreak, hurt, and hope in Jon Ward's "Testimony" book. As a journalist, he has asked the hard questions and wrestled with the evangelical movement. Many readers will find his faith background familiar. If you have questioned the actions of your evangelical leaders in America, you'll find you are not alone. Jon's church and religious history equips him to critically comment on the evangelical and conservative world today. He offers expert insight with humility and wisdom.

[All the gratitude to Brazos Press for gifting an advanced copy, with no obligation to review. All thoughts are my own and offered freely.]

This book follows the author's life of growing up within the evangelical world, witnessing the rise of several charismatic leaders and the effects of their ministries, and observing evangelicalism's descent into political power grabs, conspiracy, and violence.

At least twice a chapter, I was audibly saying, "Yes, exactly!" This book describes so many destinctions of evangelicalism that I was also raised in - the insular nature of conservative Christianity vs. "the secular world", using spirituality as escapism from reality, the "seven mountains" dominionism, and more. Ward's journalism background also provided exacting insight into the rise of Trumpism and how the evangelical world came to be under its spell.

While he offers precise criticism of many elements of sensationalized Christianity, Ward holds hope for Christians seeking a better way. "But the faith I was taught beckoned to something I still want: a fullness of life. . . . My faith has been sparked by seeing that the real Jesus beckons me to follow him into a life of vulnerability that threatens the false gods of comfort and ease. Like many others, I’m trying to figure out how to walk that path. It’s daunting and scary, and most days I feel like I’m not doing a very good job. But it does at least have the ring of truth."

10/10. I finished this in a day. An engaging, fast-paced blend of personal, spiritual memoir and informative critique. If you were raised within the evangelical world and have also felt dismayed at its current state, this book will feel like a companion to the questions, angst, hurt, and perseverance that so many of us have experienced as we journey towards the Divine together.

Testimony, Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation by Jon Ward was a movingly honest and sometimes heartbreaking account of the authors life.
I felt all of it deeply and experienced many of the same experiences in the Christian church. I loved Keith Green until I read his biography and suffered extreme addictions to emotionalism. There was no room for critical thinking. And don’t get me started on Trump. Gahhhhh.
So having said all that I read it and was relieved. I wasn’t alone. This isn’t for the weary of heart but it was a good story, his story and I see you Jon. May you heal and come to know God even more deeply than before making lots of room for critical thought.
Thanks Brazos Press via NetGalley.

Testimony, by Jon Ward, is an account of one man's experience growing up in and subsequently leaving the evangelical church, but Ward's insight into the ways the church has changed and his experience as a journalist covering conservative politics set this book apart from others like it. I appreciated Ward's honesty and willingness to confront the pain and resentment the church has created in its pursuit of political power. Ward provides the detail and nuance necessary to analyze this chapter of the church's history, but I think that the inclusion of his personal experience makes this book accessible to a wider audience. As a Houstonian and lifelong member of the Methodist church I have been disheartened by the changes I see in many of my fellow Christians. I still struggle to understand their reasoning, and I am distressed by the evangelical church's descent into fundamentalism. Ward's unique perspective as an ex-vangelical helped me understand the forces that influence so many of my friends. I'm grateful for his witness and I encourage anyone who is troubled by the direction the evangelical church has taken to read this book.

Here we are, three months into 2023, and I’ve already read three thoughtful memoirs by current or former evangelicals. Beth Moore’s “All My Knotted-Up Life” examines, in part, the church’s response to sexual abuse and Donald Trump. “Orphaned Believers,” by Sara Billups, addresses young evangelicals who are disillusioned with the way culture wars and politics have divided the church. The latest offering is “Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation” by journalist Jon Ward.

Ward grew up the son of a pastor, who was on staff at CJ Mahaney’s church in Maryland. He was raised in the Christian school/church bubble, where kids are taught to do as they’re told, think as they’re told, and not question authority. However as an aspiring journalist, he wanted to ascertain the truth of the matter and follow the evidence. This career path inevitably led to questioning and soul-searching.

The author began his journalism career with the Washington Times, a conservative daily, followed by two years with Tucker Carlson (on “The Daily Caller” website). Now, he works for Yahoo News. In the course of his reporting over a span of years, Ward observed how the evangelical church lacked discernment and was eventually co-opted by the Republican party, esp. Trump. He details how the evangelical world dealt with sexual abuse, racism, poverty, the pandemic, and abortion … with the unborn being the only vulnerable population that garnered any real action. The plight of others being attributed to their own choices.

Ward identifies as a mearcstapa or border-stalker, citing Makoto Fujimura’s book, “Culture Care” (a title which has just moved up on my TBR). Border-stalkers live on the edge of a group, yet are in a unique position to transmit ideas and teach empathy amongst various tribes, essentially serving as good Samaritans to a divided culture.

Of the three memoirs, this one was 45% footnotes (almost 250 of them). Jon Ward is serious when he says he cares about the truth. He supports his assertions by identifying source material. He cites not just chapter and verse, but news articles and books. He cares deeply about Christianity and the church in America, while calling it to return to the basic teachings of its founder.

"The tumult of the last few years has forced me to reassess what I really believe (a process I've gone through a few times in my life now). I've had to pull myself away from the easy anger of opposition and redouble the search to know what I stand *for*, not just what I'm *against*. And of course, beyond the *what* is the *why*, a set of questions that require even more work to answer." (loc. 148)

Growing up in Evangelical Christianity, Ward was taught that the answers were all there—if only you listened to the people who had them. Give yourself over to God and you will be blessed, I suppose. Only later did he start to dig into the teachings he'd grown up with and to ask himself whether the American Evangelical Christianity he knew was aligned with what Jesus said and did in the Bible, and with the gospel teachings he aimed to stay true to.

I'll say this up front (or as up front as paragraph 3 can be): it's a rhetoric that I'm familiar with because I read too much and am curious about church cultures like the one Ward grew up in, but it's not one that I have personal experience with. I read religious memoirs, and more broadly books about religion, because they interest me, but I am well aware that I (born and bred liberal, not raised with Christianity) am rarely the target audience. Here, the target audience is almost certainly someone closer in background to Ward—a white man who grew up in a certain brand of conservative religion but has since questioned it, or started to question it. So if that sounds like you, this will probably make for a bang-up read, especially if you're interested in the way religion and politics have dovetailed in the US in recent (and not so recent) years.

Ward has clearly put years of work into unpicking what he grew up blindly believing, and even if I don't share his beliefs I can comfortably get on board with what he believes *about* his beliefs, if that makes sense. Take this summary of the idea of faith: "If we say we know something to be true 100 percent with no doubts, then we don't need faith. It's only when we realize we could be wrong, and we can't know for sure, that we must rely on belief. Easier said than done" (loc. 2917). In a time when so much gets polarized, or stripped down to its simplest form (not in the sense of "truest form" but rather in the sense of "child's finger painting vs. finely detailed portrait"), Ward is looking for what is complicated and complete.

There is a lot about recent politics here, far more than I expected. Ward is a journalist with extensive experience covering national American politics, and he ties the rise of Evangelicalism neatly with the rise of (sigh) the things that led to the absolute train wreck of political nightmare that was the 2016 presidential election and presidency that followed—and the political nightmare of a power-grab that, under the guise of religion, continues. It's not entirely what I want to be reading (it's not new material if you read too much news from respectable outlets, and I try to limit my political reading to said news because just that raises my blood pressure as it is), but it's concisely and precisely done and would be useful for those who have closer ties to Evangelical circles.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

[Note: I’m not a relative of the author.] Jon Ward and his family has participated in or been at the heart of many of the major Christian movements since the Jesus Revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s. As a young believer, he participated in many of the religious movements. As a journalist, he watched the rise of the Religious Right. Though he was in it or of it, he still felt like a “border-stalker”—not really part of those tribes. He struggled with the inconsistencies and the power-grabs that he walked away from the faith and politics for a while. Ward encourages us to ask questions, without fear, and wrestle with our doubts and the hypocrisies we might observe. His book encourages anyone who wonders if doubt, questions, annoyance and more at what’s happening in organized political and religious movements has love, joy, peace, patience….at its core.

Ward’s testimony here is an archetype for spiritual formation: we start out believing what our parents believe, then what the “cool kids” believe (i.e. those to whom we want to attach ourselves) and it’s not until we have a crisis of faith—doubt, disappointment—that we can truly own our own faith. This is not just a story of Jon Ward’s faith journey but he seamlessly weaves in cultural and political and religious events happening around his story.

I was intrigued at how he analyzed the rise of “nones” or “nonverts”—those who claim no religious affiliation though they once had it—since the early 1990’s. Another author’s recent book claims the rise of the “nones” happened with the fall of the Soviet Union: that Christianity and patriotism were so woven together, the fall of a great enemy meant we had no need for a religion. I believe that in the early 1990’s with the rise of marriage of conservatism and Christianity, many people were turned off of religion. George H. W. Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism fell out of favor. Anger politics and anger religion took over with the rise of Rush Limbaugh and others. Ward agrees that a new enemy was needed to replace the Soviet Union and so the zealotry turned inward to the US culture. Anger is not attractive; no one likes hanging out all the time with a friend who’s always angry. They don’t make us feel better. But it is entertainment and slowly the anger politics and anger religion seeps into our brain until that’s how we think. What’s the old adage? Show me your five closest friends and I’ll tell you what you think and how you behave.

I listen to Jon Ward’s podcast, The Long Game, and find his in-depth interviews illuminating of the world of Washington, D.C. and beyond. His book, Testimony, is a welcome addition to the telling of his story and how we all should take politics with a grain of salt—or a whole shaker of salt in some cases—and he exhorts us to dig deeper than the Sunday School answers of how we should live in accordance with Christ’s words.

Please read this book, especially if you were raised in the Evangelical church in any capacity.
5*****

I received an ARC as a reviewer on NetGalley. It was much better than I expected, and I read over 100 books a year and I have a low threshold for boredom or nonsense.

There is so much to get out of his actual Testimony (with all the layers that that word carries as believers in the Christian faith). So when you read it, please remember - he is sharing his ACTUAL TESTIMONY. Usually when someone does that you listen and thank them for being vulnerable and telling their story. You can later be free to talk to them about things you disagree with, but you typically don't run up and tell them that their story isn't true. You sit and think about it and pray about it and ask God what He wanted you to learn from that person's life. So that's what I'd ask of you as a reader. At the very least his story will be a really interesting read, with some familiar names if you have been around the Evangelical community for many years, especially in the 80s and 90s.

If you want the BLUF, go ahead and skip to "The Good". If you want a more nuanced review, please read on.

I grew up in the Evangelical church, as did Jon Ward, (and I am about his age) although we definitely had very different experiences in our particular congregations. My church was not nearly so insular or authoritarian. I did not know who he was before reading the book, and while I read a ton of news articles daily, I do not read Yahoo News. (Despite having also read Katie Couric's memoir last year for my book club, I had not felt the need to ever look at Yahoo News. Sorry, Jon.)

I consider myself somewhat conservative, but the last few years have left me so ashamed of far right-wing Republicans. I crave substance and character. I desire the real TRUTH. I want to see people treated the way God wants them to be treated - with kindness and respect. I want to stop having ANGER be the only emotion thrown out by people. So while my faith has stayed, I do not blindly follow leaders in the church whom I might have only a decade or so ago. I appreciate the foundations that the church gave me, which is mainly my salvation and my responsibility to try to live as Jesus lived. But we are now at a place where we can critically look at some of the unBiblical practices and teachings that many churches had taught, and we are in a position to make changes toward what God really wants. This is a GOOD thing. The letters of the Apostles in the Bible to the churches were doing the same thing - telling them where they were going wrong and letting them fix it. So I say, let's examine these issues and make the church better!

The Good:
*Very interesting to read - not boring!
*Gives some background and context to what the evangelical church has been through since the Jesus Movement of the 1970s
*Shows that there are people who are not tied to identity politics and extreme partisanship still within the church, so if this is you, you are not alone
*Is written out of LOVE, not written in anger or out of retribution (This is important!!)
*Gives a LOT of food for thought - especially for someone who is willing to listen and think critically
*Is something I think a LOT of people would benefit from reading, especially to either identify what they went through or see how others lived when they might not have realized it
*Book is much better than some other memoirs of people in the church that seem to do nothing but complain and then say they aren't Christian anymore. He is totally the opposite of that.

The Not as good (but not really bad):
*Last two chapters are a little less interesting
*Would have liked more of what he is doing to work on being a bridge-builder between people

Again, thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book #sponsored
I would buy this book for myself, friends, and family with my own money.

Thanks so much to Brazos Press for an ARC of Testimony! This title caught my eye because my husband grew up evangelical and had a fairly negative experience (understatement). I thought Testimony would be informative and educational, and I was correct. This book is part memoir, part self-discovery, part exposure.

Ward’s testimony (pun intended) is honest, even it’s difficult — this is a white man who admits he struggled to understand “Black Lives Matter.” Instead of wallowing in his ignorance, he sought out members of the Black community and educated himself. Admitting ignorance when it comes to racism is no small feat; I was proud of the author at this point.

No joke: imagine becoming an adult and on your quest to seek information and become your own person, you’re shocked to discover lynching really took place and that the KKK is a thing. You don’t know what’s what when you’re trapped in a bizarre spiritual orb that aims to create obedient, ignorant soldiers rather than well-rounded, spiritual adults.

This book is a reminder to have grace when we are dealing with seemingly difficult and closed-minded people. They may not be as closed-minded as we think; they may be the product of an environment that rallied strongly against thinking critically. This is something I will keep in mind when I interact with others.

The second third of the book deals with politics and the Trump presidency. This is not a topic that interests me, so the book drug a bit in that regard. Overall, though, this is an easy binge read in just a couple hours or so.

4/5 stars. Also, one more shoutout to Brazos Press for being so communicative with and kind to us influencers!

Jon Ward, award-winning author and journalist, has now turned the microscope on his own life and worldview in the book, "Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation." Ward tells about his upbringing in a strict, evangelical family which included faithful church attendance and service to the Lord. I could relate to so many of the things he was taught as a child, and could even relate to his adulthood spending time fighting against his far-right Trump-loving family members. I especially enjoyed these quotes he shared about faith: "The way I experience faith is not a block of concrete. Faith is change. Faith is here one moment and gone the next, a stream that evaporates" (Brooks); "Can I believe it all again today? At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the NO is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you're human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that's choked with confession and tears and great laughter" (Buechner).

I enjoyed Ward's honesty and transparency, and could understand some of the struggles he's dealt with. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book was very insightful and pretty comprehensive. As someone raises differently but still with non-denominational
Churches and then discovered IHOP and BETHEL in my adults years, I think Ward was very honest and respectful. I loved the history lesson of how everyone is connected and how politics has been muddled in as well. Fast read and very informative.

Jon Ward writes with wisdom, honesty, and warmth. This is a book for those of us who have been on a spiritual journey of discovery, and those of us who do not always feel we belong with the mainstream message that sometimes overshadow quieter whisperings of faith.