Book Review: 'The Christian Culture Survival Guide'

Matthew Paul Turner's The Christian Culture Survival Guide is a somewhat witty look at many of the human accretions hanging off of Christianity. Covering the salvation experience, the church, the pastor, church involvement, the worship service, getting along with other Christians, boycotts and extremes, dating and sex, Christian entertainment and bookstores, and awakening your Christian life, Turner pokes fun at some of the crazy things within Christian culture. He draws on his own experience growing up in various church communities and provides some "serious" advice on surviving the oddities of Christian religion. Not all Christians will be able to identify with every cultural element discussed by Turner but there's enough in the book for every Christian to identify with something. Underlying the humour is a serious message for Christians that, if we are going to communicate with those outside our culture, we really need to take a hard long look at how stupid we often appear to be -- a stupidity that is not part of the core gospel message of Jesus Christ. Overall, though, the book is probably not really humorous enough and it is possible that, by collecting all of these cultural aberrations, he produces an over-generalised stereotype of Christians. Someone reading this book might not realise that there are actually Christian in the world who don't look like the ones the author is describing! Buy The Christian Culture Survival Guide from Amazon.com