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Book Review 

 

Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the 

American Dream 
By Brian Fikkert and Kelly M. Kapic 

 
Reviewed by Rosie Fyfe 

 
 

 
 

Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2019. $12.79 

 

I first read Brian Fikkert’s earlier work, When 

Helping Hurts (2014, and co-authored with Steve 

Corbett), when working as a community development 

practitioner in the Middle East. While the critiques 

outlined in that book challenged me and influenced my 

work, I was left wanting more constructive solutions. 

Becoming Whole, designed to be a companion book 

to When Helping Hurts, fulfils this purpose and 

provides a more systematic treatment of the same 

underlying concepts. Drawing on Christian theology, 

the book articulates an overarching framework 

designed to help readers develop more effective 

poverty alleviation initiatives. Brian Fikkert, a professor 

of economics and community development at 

Covenant College in the United States, co-wrote the 

book with his colleague Kelly Kapic, professor of 

theological studies. The book is a worthwhile read for 

anyone working in the field of community development 

who wants to engage their Christian faith in their work. 

Becoming Whole argues that addressing poverty is 

fundamentally about fostering change. Therefore, the 

story of change believed by those implementing poverty 

alleviation initiatives affects the way projects are 

designed and carried out. Underlying these stories of 

change are people’s understanding of the nature of 

God, humanity, and human flourishing. Fikkert and 

Kapic argue that initiatives enacted by Western 

Christians are often rooted in false metanarratives that 

are more influenced by worldviews from the 

surrounding culture than a biblical understanding of the 

world. They first critique “Western Naturalism,” which 

holds that there is no God. The authors argue that the 

false god of society thus becomes “a purely material, 

individualistic, self-interested, consuming machine” 

(74). They use the term “Evangelical Gnosticism” to 

describe another false story that bifurcates spiritual and 

physical life, separating out Sunday worship from the 

way life is lived the rest of the week. The subtitle of the 

book “why the opposite of poverty isn’t the American 

Dream” points to the destructive nature of these two 

stories. Fikkert and Kapic argue that these false 

metanarratives not only result in poverty alleviation 

efforts that do not reflect the wholeness of human 

flourishing described in Scripture, but also spread the 

“virus” of these false stories to those they are purporting 

to help in the developing world. The book concludes 

with a section on how the story of Scripture shapes the 

way Christians should properly understand human 

flourishing, and how this could be enacted in poverty 

alleviation initiatives. 

Becoming Whole is a helpful contribution to a 

growing field of Christian practitioners and academics 

wrestling with the question of how to do community 

development work in ways that are faithful to Scripture. 

Drawing on James K. A. Smith’s hypothesis that people 

are ultimately shaped by what they desire and their 

vision of the good life, this book reminds community 

development practitioners to be careful about taking on 

the assumptions and false visions of their surrounding 

culture. Fikkert and Kapic challenge Christians to 

instead design their “ministries in ways that people end 

up worshipping the one reality worthy of praise: the 

triune God” (54). The book also usefully draws on 

Charles Taylor’s work to emphasize the role of spiritual 

forces in community development work. Using the 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 1(2),  Winter 2020 

 
 

Fyfe, Book Review   114 
 

 

metaphor of the Toronto Skydome to describe Taylor’s 

concept of the “porous self,” they argue that Western 

Christians often live as if the roof is closed. This means 

that poverty alleviation ministries are designed in ways 

that assume that the spiritual world does not enter the 

material world, rather than with the understanding that 

the world is “enchanted,” meaning that the spiritual and 

material are intertwined.  

The final section of the book is effective in 

connecting the biblical narrative of creation, fall, 

Christ’s redemptive work, and new creation, with 

poverty alleviation initiatives. The examples provided 

are valuable in illustrating what this looks like in 

practice; for example, the impact of a program that 

teaches a biblical view of human agency. 

Navigating the interactions between two fields, 

theology and community development, is necessarily 

complex. And though commendable in explicitly 

working through these connections, the book’s 

approach to theology comes across at times as overly 

formulaic, reifying complex topics into sharp 

categories. For example, the diagrams of a “community 

that embodies God’s Kingdom” and a “biblical view of 

a human being” seem overly simplistic, and the latter 

does not do justice to the two biblical texts used to 

validate this model. Throughout the book there is also 

a tendency towards simplistic analysis that does a 

disservice to the complexities of actual practice. It is not 

helpful, or accurate, to propose that there are only three 

metanarratives in the world, and that every other 

worldview held by cultures the world over sits under 

one of these umbrellas. Finally, the attempt to arrive at 

the one ideal Christian model of working in poverty 

alleviation is based on an erasure of Christian 

difference, whether on denominational, theological, or 

cultural grounds, and misguided in its ambitions. There 

may be a range of ways to live faithfully as Christians in 

the practical outworking of community development. 

Becoming Whole provides an excellent starting 

point for Christians working or studying in the areas of 

relief, development, and advocacy, and wanting to 

integrate their faith in their work. There has been an 

identified need for Christians working in community 

development to engage theologically. Brian Fikkert and 

Kelly Kapic make a solid contribution in this space, 

especially in their engagement with the narrative of 

Scripture, and the difference this makes to poverty 

alleviation efforts. The focus on wholeness depicted in 

Scripture, and ultimately displayed by Jesus Christ, is a 

refreshing and necessary corrective for the NGO arena 

as well as for parts of the Church. Becoming Whole is 

not purely an academic exercise, but a calling for 

Christians to live as new creations in the fullness of 

God’s mission in the world: “preaching the Word and 

digging wells, starting schools and administering the 

sacraments, offering prayers and dispensing penicillin, 

fellowship with Christ’s body and financing 

microenterprises” (265). 

 

 

References 

 

Corbett, Steve and Fikkert, Brian. 2014. When 

Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without 
Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself. Chicago: 

Moody Publishers. 
 

 

 

 

Rosie Fyfe is the National Director of the New Zealand 

Church Missionary Society. She previously worked 

in a community development role in North Africa, 

before studying for a master’s at Trinity School for 

Ministry in the USA and writing a thesis on a 

practical theology of international development. 

 

Author email:  rosie.fyfe@gmail.com    
 

 

 

mailto:rosie.fyfe@gmail.com

