Evangelism in an Age of Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness
By Andrew Root
Baker Academic, 294 pages
Published March 11, 2025
Like clockwork, each year Andrew Root adds to his series on the church in a secular age, meeting the moment with wisdom and encouragement. This year’s contribution, Evangelism in an Age of Despair, continues his trademark style – true-to-life fictional narrative interwoven with trenchant cultural analysis and the history of ideas to tackle the “e-word,” a subject equally taboo and urgent in mainline Protestantism.
Root argues that, rather than mirror the flashy stylings of evangelical Christianity (which prove less effective with each generation), we should understand evangelism as a ministry of consolation, not conversion. “Evangelism is the invitation to receive consolation, to receive ministry;” this, he believes, is how to best apply the gospel. Contrary to the typically ebullient tone of innovative, program-oriented outreach, Root makes the case for leaning into sorrow and theologia crucis – a theology of the cross – which points to the true source of transformation and conversion.
Central to his case for evangelism-as-consolation is Root’s diagnosis that a source of sadness in our times is, somewhat unexpectedly, “the pursuit of happiness.” Root provides a genealogy of this modern ethos that begins with the work of French essayist Michele de Montaigne, one of the progenitors of the hollow ethics of “authenticity.” He provides a contrasting evangelistic vision drawn from pre-Reformation theologians Jean Gerson and Johann von Staupitz and the figure of Blaise Pascal, and plucks 20th-century German-American philosopher-theologian Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy from obscurity to support his argument for hope in times of despair.
Root could easily make his case by simply listing the ills and injustices that deluge us daily via our screens; the popular “gestures broadly at everything” meme shows how desensitized we have become. Instead, Root builds around a deeply personal narrative, telling the story of Mary Ann, HR director at a tech company and member of a small-but-mighty congregation, and Renate, an unchurched employee at the same company who faces deep sorrow. (Spoiler alert: Mary Ann personally contributes to these sorrows!)
Root’s writing is satisfying not just because his diagnosis of our age’s malaise is so trenchantly argued, but because of his depiction of that small-but-mighty congregation’s practical ministries, offered not just to one another, but to strangers and outsiders.
Root’s writing is satisfying not just because his diagnosis of our age’s malaise is so trenchantly argued, but because of his depiction of that small-but-mighty congregation’s practical ministries, offered not just to one another, but to strangers and outsiders. In examples such as the church’s “Swedish Death-Cleaning” team (which helps anyone in need of sorting a loved one’s possessions after their death), Root centers key congregation members rather than the pastor (though he has his own story to tell). The late Rev. Dr. Gene Fowler once wrote about the “caring potential of the congregation” for those who grieve; Root shows that caring potential is also “evangelistic potential” for congregations in these sad times.
So often churches limit the scope of their ministries of consolation to their own members, and their evangelistic potential is overlooked. Root’s book is a timely reminder that the Gospel has always spread most rapidly and widely in sorrowful times – in times of famine and plague, war and its aftermath – but only when Christians have leaned into the sorrowful side of our world with the hope of Christ in their hearts.
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