Originally published: “Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse (Grand Rapids IVP: 2020),” in Themelios 47, no.2 (Fall 2022), 428-29 or online here.
Occasionally, a book is published that is “for such a time as this.” This often happens when a crisis or something about the current cultural moment invites deep reflection on a particular topic. In this moment, Chuck DeGroat has written a manifesto for our age: When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse. In this important work, DeGroat provides a lucid and sobering tale of what happens when narcissism invades communities of faith. Written both from personal experience and academic research, this work is one that faith leaders would do well to consult as the world faces a crisis of narcissistic leadership, both inside and outside the church.
The problem with labels is that they often get thrown around haphazardly. Such is the case with the key term in the book’s title: narcissism. In fact, DeGroat notes that the use of the term greatly increased “during the 2016 election cycle, when Donald J. Trump found himself in the crosshairs of both amateur and professional diagnosticians” (p. 3). This work, though terse, explores what narcissism is, how it is manifesting in our current cultural moment, and a way forward for both narcissistic systems and leaders. DeGroat approaches the subject with both honesty and compassion: honesty in that he does not shy away from raw descriptions of narcissistic tendencies found in some individuals; compassion in that behind every narcissist is a heart full of shame, fear, and isolation.
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