Not Praying Jabez
J. Daryl Charles on a Little Book with a Big Problem
While the religious book publishing industry is currently experiencing something of a boom, one book—all 93 pages of it—has taken the industry by storm, putting its publisher, tiny Multnomah Press of Sisters, Oregon, on the map overnight. As of this writing, sales of Bruce Wilkinson’s best-seller, The Prayer of Jabez, are somewhere between eight and ten million (it is difficult to be precise, since the volume is flying off the shelves as fast as the shelves allow themselves to be stocked).
While people outside the Protestant Evangelical community might wonder what all the fuss is about, The Prayer of Jabez (PJ ) needs no introduction to Evangelicals, who, based on sales, really do believe that the book is not merely the best thing since, but better than, sliced bread.
Long before I actually picked up a copy of the book to read for myself (based on moral principle, I absolutely refused to purchase what would have been sales number 8,473,529 of PJ), my initial impression of the book stemmed from how it is being marketed. One religious book distributor is selling PJ in packs of ten—which helps explain why the book is selling like hotcakes. Evidently, the excitement being generated by mass sales has created something of a “Jabez culture” within Evangelicalism.
Inside the back cover of PJ, for example, I read that I can order The PJ Leather Edition, The PJ Journal, The PJ Devotional, The PJ Bible Study, The PJ for Teens, and The PJ Gift Edition. The latest religious book catalog informs me that I can now buy The PJ for Kids, The PJ for Little Ones, and yes, Jabez: A Novel. (Of course, I personally am awaiting The PJ Canadian Version for Parents of Children with RADS [Religious Attention Deficit Syndrome]). If that’s not enough, another catalog tells me the good news that the “extraordinary [Jabez] movement” has now been “captured in song” and is available on CD.
Jabez’s Grand Appeal
I was clearly one of the few Evangelical Protestants who had not yet read the book by the time the fall of 2001 rolled around. But my students forced the issue. “What do you think of The Prayer of Jabez?” was the constant query being thrown my way, whether in class or through e-mail. After all, teaching theology at a pan-Evangelical institution, I could hardly claim ignorance on (or indifference to) a matter that was touching every corner of the religious tradition of which I am a part.
What was so utterly captivating about this tiny volume that was taking Evangelicalism by storm? Wherein lay its grand appeal?
When I finally read The Prayer of Jabez, I discovered that the author is to be commended for his desire to be “used by God.” Zeal is certainly not a quality he lacks. Additionally, the reader cannot help but sense that the author has a high regard for scriptural authority; in his view, the Bible is to be believed, period. Finally, the reader is struck by the extraordinary passion with which the author seeks—and exhorts the reader to seek—divine favor. These attitudes stamp themselves indelibly on every page of the volume.
Conspicuous as these virtues are, however, they are not enough to offset the book’s flaws—flaws that run deep and require some commentary.
Several recurring themes are troubling: in particular, the author’s emphasis on the miraculous as normative and the book’s very self-centered (rather than Christ-centered) focus on receiving personal blessing. (Both are reminiscent of the “health-and-wealth” heresy prominent in some conservative Protestant circles in the 1970s and 1980s.) The former gives an unrealistic and unhealthy impression of normal Christian living, while the latter reinforces psychotherapeutic tendencies that dominate contemporary culture.
J. Daryl Charles is the Acton Institute Affiliated Scholar in Theology & Ethics. He is the author or editor of twenty books, including Retrieving the Natural Law (2008), Natural Law and Religious Freedom (2018), and, most recently, Just War and Christian Traditions (forthcoming). He is also co-editor of Abraham Kuyper, Common Grace: God's Gifts for a Fallen World, Volume 3 (2020). He is a contributing editor to Touchstone.
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