A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
New Testament scholar Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer describe how church cultures become toxic and contrast them with a ‘tov’ culture shaped by goodness, empathy, grace, truth, justice, service, and Christlike leadership. Using institutional patterns and the aftermath of abuse, they focus less on identifying a single bad leader than on the habits, incentives, loyalties, and silences that allow harm to be protected.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
The book gives travelers and church leaders constructive language for evaluating culture after merely saying that abuse is wrong. Its strongest contribution is moving attention from reputation and charisma toward what an institution consistently rewards, conceals, and makes possible. It can support discernment and reform, but the Library does not treat the presence of ‘tov’ vocabulary as evidence that a community has become accountable or safe.
Good starting place if…
You want a Christian framework for recognizing toxic church culture and cultivating institutional habits of empathy, truth, justice, service, and goodness.
Know before you begin…
The book includes abuse, leadership failure, institutional denial, and betrayal. Its positive framework can guide questions but cannot investigate allegations, establish facts, protect whistleblowers, or replace independent safeguarding, legal advice, or trauma care. Churches can adopt the language without yielding power; evaluate policies, reporting structures, outcomes, and whose testimony carries weight.