This thesis has been approved by The Honors Tutorial College and the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism ____________________________________ Dr. Bernhard Debatin, Director of Studies, Journalism Honors Tutorial College and Professor, Thesis Advisor E.W. Scripps School of Journalism ____________________________________ Jeremy Webster Dean, Honors Tutorial College ! TO HELL WITH HELL?: A REVIEW OF ROB BELL’S LOVE WINS ______________________________________ A Thesis Presented to The Honors Tutorial College Ohio University ______________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for Graduation from the Honors Tutorial College with the degree of Bachelors of Science in Journalism ______________________________________ by Sarah E. King May 2013 ! Table of Contents I. Preface……………………………………………………………………………...…2 II. Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………….…...3 III. To Hell With Hell: A Review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins…………………........…….4 IV. Works Cited....……….....…….…………………………………………..………..42 V. The Precedent and Principles Behind “To Hell With Hell?”: A Scholarly Essay….....…………………………………….………...…………45 -Epilogue to the Review…………………………..………………………45 -Writing a Book Review…………….……………..……………...........…48 -Functions of a Book Review………….…....…………………………….54 -Components of a Book Review…….…………………………………….56 -Postmodernism and the Emerging Church…….…………………………65 VI. Works Cited and Bibliography……….…………………...………................…71 Preface This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Bachelor's of Science in Journalism degree from Ohio University. It contains work done from August 2012 to May 2013. The thesis has been made solely by the author; much of the text, however, is based on the research and writing of others, and I have done my best to provide references to these sources. This thesis consists of two parts. The first is a long-form journalistic book review of Rob Bell’s Love Wins. In this review I aim to contextualize and assess the main arguments of Bell’s book, as well as its form and style. In addition, I compare Bell’s theological perspective with the traditional evangelical Christian view. I also aim to address the controversy that surrounded the book’s release and add a voice to the discussion of whether the book should be considered to espouse universalist theology. Finally, I conclude that a more nuanced differentiation is needed when discussing Bell’s theological perspective. I propose that a three-pronged distinction between Bell’s theology and the traditional evangelical perspective would be useful in allowing for more nuanced and precise discussion of the book. The second section of my thesis is a scholarly essay that situates this review in the greater discipline of book review writing. I address the theory and structural components of reviews that influenced the shaping of my piece, as well as some key sources that I referred to in the writing process. Additionally, my scholarly essay provides further context and reflection on the influence of postmodernism on the emergent church movement, which was of great influence to Bell’s theological perspective in Love Wins. Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Michael Sweeney, for his ideas, comments, and critique, particularly during the first half of my writing process. His support was of great inspiration in helping to clearly shape the direction of this project. Additionally, I must thank Dr. Bernhard Debatin for taking on the role of advisor for my thesis project unexpectedly. His encouragement to approach the project with more professionalism and neutrality made my review incalculably stronger. He has spent many hours meeting with me through the process, sometimes serving as more of a counselor than a thesis advisor, and for that encouragement and support I am very grateful. Thanks also to Assistant Dean Jan Hodson as well as Dean Jeremy Webster, both of the Honors Tutorial College, for always being available for academic and personal advice during my time at Ohio University. Finally, I must thank my husband, Jeremy King, for his assistance in proof- reading, and more importantly, his invaluable support throughout this long and arduous writing process. I absolutely could not have finished this project without him. ! "! Love Wins, Rob Bell’s compelling and controversial nonfiction book about Heaven and Hell, was released in March 2011. Bell is a best-selling author, sought- after speaker, and founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan. Love Wins is his fourth book, and in keeping line with the first three, it addresses issues at the heart of Christianity with creative, poetic form and unapologetic questioning of the presuppositions surrounding the story of Jesus and the way they impact people today. It became apparent that Love Wins would evoke strong reactions of both support and opposition from those who came in contact with it when the book’s publisher, HarperOne, the division of HarperCollins focused on religion, spirituality, and personal growth literature, released a provocative promotional video for the book in February 2011. In the video, Bell tells the story of an art show held several years before at his church. An artist in the show had contributed a piece of that Bell and others found compelling, which included a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi. Sometime during the course of the evening, Bell says, someone taped a handwritten note to it that read, “Reality check, he’s in Hell.” Bell was struck by this experience, and reflects in the video on how a person could know this for sure. From there, he asks a series of escalating questions. “Will only a few select people make it to Heaven and will billions and billions of people burn forever in Hell?” And if that is the case, Bell wonders, how does one become one of the few? And what must God be like, if “God is going to send you to Hell unless you believe in Jesus”? He says that it is often “caught and taught” within ! #! Christianity that Jesus rescues you from God, but “what kind of God is that, that we would need to be rescued from this God?” asks Bell, “How could God ever be good? How could that God ever be trusted? How could that ever be good news?” These are the questions Bell addresses in the book. He goes on to say in the video, “What you discover in the Bible is so surprising and unexpected and beautiful that whatever we’ve been told or taught, the good news is actually better than that, better than we could ever imagine. The good news is that love wins.” Even before it was clear exactly what theological perspective the book would espouse, conservative evangelicals vehemently responded to the contents of the promotional video, likely because they anticipated Bell’s position in the book to be a threat to traditional evangelical ideals. Upon the video’s release, speculation about Bell’s answers to the questions he poses in the video began to abound. The first hint of evangelical contention with the video came with conservative pastor John Piper’s tweet, “Farewell, Rob Bell” with a link to the video, which was posted February 26, 2011, the same day the video was released. Time Magazine would later refer to the tweet as Piper “unilaterally attempting to evict Bell from the Evangelical community” (Meacham). From there the controversy erupted, as many speculated that Bell’s book was affirming universal salvation—the idea that “every person who ever lived” as Bell puts it, would experience redemption through Jesus and would have a place in Heaven, regardless of whether or not they believed in Jesus in this life. Blog posts popped up all over the Internet, dissecting every word of the video. Justin Taylor, an editor for Christian ! $! publisher Crossway, and blogger for the conservative evangelical group the Gospel Coalition published a blog post entitled “Rob Bell, Universalist?” on his blog Between Two Worlds. In it, Taylor acknowledged that he had not yet read the book, as it had yet to be released, but that based on the promotional video’s content, Bell was “moving farther and farther [sic.] away from anything resembling biblical Christianity.” His strong words condemned Bell as someone “called to be a minister of the Word” who was “distort[ing] the gospel and deceiv[ing] the people of God with false doctrine.” It was evident that Love Wins would be divisive among evangelical Christians, as it revealed a pre-existing, growing distance between the more liberal, postmodern evangelicals, who esteemed Bell for offering a fresh perspective on an age-old question, appreciative of the view of God that he was espousing, and the conservative evangelicals who held to a more traditional view of the Gospel and believed Bell’s teaching to be heretical, and potentially dangerous. Pastor Kevin DeYoung, also a blogger for the Gospel Coalition, would later write in his review of the book, “Love Wins has ignited such a firestorm of controversy because it’s the current fissure point for a larger fault-line. As younger generations come up against an increasingly hostile cultural environment, they are breaking in one of two directions— back to robust orthodoxy (often Reformed) or back to liberalism. The neo-evangelical consensus is cracking up. Love Wins is simply one of many tremors” (DeYoung, 5). In other words, Love Wins is a symptom of a greater trend: the end of the illusion of ecumenical unity among evangelicals and the increasing distinction between liberal and conservative Protestants. Thirty percent of Americans identify themselves as evangelical, which is the largest percentage of any religious tradition in America ! %! (Putnam and Campbell, 16). Therefore, it is unsurprising that as the debate became more heated, even the secular media began to take note. CNN was the first to pick up the story on March 1st (Marrapodi, March 1st) but in the coming weeks, virtually every major media outlet from the New York Times1 to the Huffington Post2, USA Today3 to Time magazine4, would run stories on the debate and on Bell himself.