Review of Rob Bell's Love Wins

Perhaps you've seen the Time cover pointing us to the phenomenon of Rob Bell, an evagelical pastor from Michigan who raised eyebrows in his own community by raising questions about Hell.  I've read the book and have produced a lengthy review.  I invite you to check it out and join in the conversation:

LOVE WINS: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. San Francisco: Harper One, 2011. Xi +201 pages.

The trailer for Rob Bell’s Love Wins set Twitter afire even before the book was released, but why all the furor? The answer can be found in the responses offered by the defenders of evangelical orthodoxy. Because Bell raised questions as to whether the Hindu Gandhi might not be in hell that was sufficient proof that the young evangelical mega-church pastor had gone off the deep end and embraced the universalism of liberal Christianity. Further proof of the author’s unorthodox ways could be found in the fact that the book was being published by Harper One and not Zondervan (forgetting that Zondervan is a division of Harper-Collins and that by moving the book to Harper One, Bell’s book would get a bigger audience – especially among non-evangelicals).

The problem with Bell’s position was that in affirming the premise that Love Wins, he was somehow undermining the justice of God, not to mention the atonement, evangelism, perhaps even the church. With all the clamor over the book, it’s no surprise that Time Magazine deemed Bell worthy of its annual Holy Week cover story. They even reached back four decades to the famous “God is Dead” cover story for inspiration, entitling the story: “Is Hell Dead?” Over night the relatively obscure pastor from Grand Rapids had become a media sensation.  [to continue reading click here]