We have the strange anomaly of orthodoxy in creed and heterodoxy in practice. The striped-candy technique has been so fully integrated into our present religious thinking that it is simply taken for granted. Its victims never dream that it is not a part of the teachings of Christ and His apostles.

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Lars Widerberg

WE NOW DEMAND GLAMOUR and fast-flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God.
We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.
The tragic results of this spirit are all about us: shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of fun in gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religious externalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, the mistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit. These and such as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and serious malady of the soul.

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Lars Widerberg

This is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modern evangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons and automatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods of reaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

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Lars Widerberg

We have already seen the reaction [the denial of spiritual longing and desire] among the masses of evangelical Christians. There has been a revolt in two directions, a rather unconscious revolt, like the gasping of fish in a bowl where there is no oxygen. A great company of evangelicals have already gone over into the area of religious entertainment so that many gospel churches are tramping on the doorstep of the theatre. Over against that, some serious segments of fundamental and evangelical thought have revolted into the position of evangelical rationalism which finds it a practical thing to make peace with liberalism.

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Lars Widerberg

One man wrote an article as an exposé of me. He said that I claimed that religious entertainment was wrong and he said, “Don’t you know that every time you sing a hymn, it’s entertainment?” Every time you sing a hymn? I don’t know how that fellow ever finds his way home at night. He ought to have a seeing eye dog and a man with a white cane to take him home!
When you raise your eyes to God and sing, “Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord, to me,” is that entertainment—or is it worship? Isn’t there a difference between worship and entertainment? The church that can’t worship must be entertained. And men who can’t lead a church to worship must provide the entertainment. That is why we have the great evangelical heresy here today—the heresy of religious entertainment.

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Lars Widerberg

[Christianity has seen] a steady decline in the quality of Christian worship on the one hand and, on the other, the rise of religious entertainment as a source of mental pleasure. Wise leaders should have known that the human heart cannot exist in a vacuum. If men do not have joy in their hearts they will seek it somewhere else. If Christians are forbidden to enjoy the wine of the Spirit they will turn to the wine of the flesh for enjoyment. And that is exactly what fundamental Christianity (as well as the so-called “full gospel” groups) has done in the last quarter century. God’s people have turned to the amusements of the world to try to squeeze a bit of juice out of them for the relief of their dry and joyless hearts. “Gospel” boogie singing now furnishes for many persons the only religious joy they know. Others wipe their eyes tenderly over “gospel” movies, and a countless number of amusements flourish everywhere, paid for by the consecrated tithes of persons who ought to know better. Our teachers took away our right to be happy in God, and the human heart wreaked its terrible vengeance by going on a fleshly binge from which the evangelical Church will not soon recover, if indeed it ever does. For multitudes of professed Christians today the Holy Spirit is not a necessity. They have learned to cheer their hearts and warm their hands at other fires. And scores of publishers and various grades of “producers” are waxing fat on their delinquency.

The Root of the Righteous, p. 69

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Lars Widerberg

The church today is suffering from a rash of amateurism. Any untrained, unprepared, unspiritual, empty rattletrap of a fellow who is a bit ambitious can start himself something religious. Then we all listen to him, pay him for it, promote him and work to try to help this fellow who never heard from God in the first place. Amateurism has gone mad, gone wild. That’s because we are not worshipers. Nobody who worships God is likely to do anything off beat or out of place. Nobody who is a true worshiper indeed is likely to give himself up to carnal and worldly religious projects.
(“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #4, Toronto, 1962)

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Lars Widerberg

When I say we are suffering from a rash of amateurism, I mean that we like to have just everybody, anything, anyway worship. It can’t be. You must prepare yourself to worship God. That preparation is not always a pleasant thing. There must be some revolutionary changes in your life. There must be some things destroyed in your life.
(“The Chief End of Man,” Sermon #6, Toronto, 1962

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Lars Widerberg

Whoever will listen will hear the speaking Heaven. This is definitely not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for listening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at the opposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.

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Lars Widerberg

I was reading some of the excerpts of the book Lars posted and it interested me enough to purchase the book. "Tozer on Worship and Entertainment" I am not finished with the book yet. The reason for this post is that I just finished the chapter called "Entertainment: An Evangelical Heresy" And when I was reading it I remembered alot of it from this thread. Anyway I was amazed by what Tozer had to say on the subject of entertainment. We as a church have been greatly Robbed. I was overwhelmed at what was said.

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Adam Fell