Adam Shields

Summary: A joint biography of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor. 

I have been wanting to get around to The Life You Save May Be Your Own since it came out in the early 2000s. After having read a brief biography of Dorothy Day and a book of essays about Thomas Merton earlier this summer, I decided it was time. I have also read three books about O'Connor, a more academic look at her work, a short biography, and a collection of her early journals I felt like I had a pretty good handle on O'Connor. But I knew nothing about Walker Percy outside of his novels.

Elie mostly tells the story chronologically. Dorothy Day is almost 20 years older than Merton and Percy and nearly 30 years older than O'Connor. But she also lived longer than both Merton and O'Connor. And while Percy lived until 1990, and Day passed away in 1980, Day was 83 when she passed away, and Percy was only 73.

All four are well-known Catholic writers who were consciously Catholic in different ways. O'Connor was the only cradle Catholic, the other three were all adult converts to Catholicism. O'Connor and Percy were both also very much Southern Writers while Day was most identified with NYC and her non-fiction writing. Merton was the most clearly a “spiritual” writer and the only clergy member of the group.

As a biography or a group of biographies, this was well written and included good detail on their lives as well as context on their writing. But as a stand-alone, I think it was too long. It was too long to feel like a brief biography and it was too short to be a definitive biography of any of them. It was interesting to see how much the four of them interacted and wrote one another, although there were very few personal interactions. Merton considered joining the Catholic Worker movement but decided instead to become a monk. They all had mutual friends, and drafts of different books were passed around.

The value of the book was in the exploration of the different ways to think of themselves as writers and “Catholic” writers and how they related to the church more broadly. I don't regret reading The Life You Save May Be Your Own, but I did pick it up over the summer when I tend to hit a reading slump. And the length of the book did not help the reading slump.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-life-you-save-may-be-your-own/

Summary: A brief book about the problems of education reform.

I picked this up because it was by Jonathan Kozol. I read several of his books in the 1990s and was a bit surprised that he had a new book out. Kozol turns 88 in Sept 2024 and his work on social justice and education should be celebrated. I am glad I read this because it was by Jonathan Kozol, but at the same time, if you are interested in the problems of education reform and especially how it negatively impacts Black or other racial minorities or poor students of all races, I would recommend Bettina Love's recent book Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. I read it last year but did not write up my thoughts at the time because I was in a busy season. But it is a very helpful book that I think should be more widely read, not just among educators, but also among politically active people of all types of backgrounds.

An End to Inequality covers a number of different problems with public education from the physical environment (lead in water or paint, poor air circulation, heating, air, etc.) to curriculum to problematic reforms. I think one of the main themes of Bettina Love's book is handled well here. Generally, testing of educational reform programs is done at poor or minority schools. Any testing of educational reform at predominately white and higher income public schools are reforms that give students more options or freedom. While the reforms at lower-income and minority schools are reforms that are focused on more highly structured teaching models, narrower academic ranges of subjects, or economic efficiencies. Said another way, reforms at predominantly white and upper-income schools are designed to help students have more enjoyment at learning and reforms at lower-income and predominately minority schools tend to reduce educational enjoyment.

The main problem with this first third of the book is that the examples are presented anecdotally, not systemically. I completely believe that everything that he reports happened, but there isn't a structure to tell the reader how widespread these problems are or if they really are disproportionately impacting low-income and minority students. I think they are, I think there is plenty of evidence available in other sources to show that they are, but Kozol's standard format is to tell stories of particular students or teachers and that story-oriented structure tends to lack statistical underpinnings.

As he moves toward the policy prescriptions I think he blames administration (which deserves a lot of blame) too much. Toward the end of chapter five (Models of the Possible), he suggests that it isn't parents who oppose integration but administrators. This chapter largely recounts his time teaching in an optional school integration program in the 1970s. He had a supportive administrator who gave him flexibility with the curriculum and encouraged him to develop a love of learning. He describes what today would be called problem-based learning.

But I do think he is wrong about parents. While there are administrators who retrograde racial attitudes, I think the evidence is that parents play a significant role in maintaining segregation. School choice widens segregation. Parents' perception of school quality impacts housing values, and those perceptions are significantly impacted by how many minority students are in the school. Kozol notes that diverse schools are known to have better overall learning outcomes than segregated education, but that isn't the perception of parents. I think educators are likely to know that more than parents. However, like homework for elementary students, parents push for having elementary homework even as educators know it isn't helpful and can be harmful.

I agree with Kozol that the movement toward educational integration has largely stalled and that continuing school segregation, regardless of the cause, does harm to students. I think his comments about reparations are under-supported but still important. I am a regular listener to Advisory Opinions, a legal podcast that primarily focuses on Supreme Court and higher-level judicial opinions. Over the past few years that I have been listening, there have been a number of cases that impact school integration or affirmative action cases. And the two (pretty conservative) podcasters agree that racial issues are real within education and other segments of society. But that affirmative action and desegregation systems were designed mostly around fairness in access, not reparations. And current movements to reduce affirmative action or desegregation system are based on raw fairness now, not on historic reparations due to harm. The legal system understands repair, but that is not how affirmative action was largely framed as it came into being. I think Kozol is right that we need to reframe education reform around reparations and repair rather than fairness, but that is an underdeveloped topic in the book that I wish he had addressed more fully.

I listened to the audiobook and it was just over three hours with a Q & A at the end. If it were longer I probably would not have finished it. Again, if you are interested in school reform and willing to read about the problems of school reform, especially in how the reform movement can negatively impact students, read Punished for Dreaming instead.

This was originally posted to my blog at https://bookwi.se/an-end-to-inequality/

Summary: An introduction to American Church history.

Mark Noll originally released his book Turning Points in Church History in 2001. (It is now in its 14th edition.) Elesha Coffman is writing a United States-focused version with the consent (and introduction) of Mark Noll. Noll is approaching 80 and still has the third in his history of the use of scripture series and several other books he is working on, and he says in the introduction that he didn't have the time or interest to do an American-focused turning points book.

As with any type of book like this, the choices of what are the turning points matter and will be debated. I think that this choices were good. She started with the Spanish Armada, which she framed as a starting point for English colonialism and a shift in global power. I might have started with the rise of Puritanism or the English Reformation, but all three of those starting points are related and led toward the English colonies in North America.

Coffman did a very good job contextualizing the different turning points. In this type of book, the turning points are a frame for looking at an era of history not just the thing itself. So Azusa Street Revival was not just about that event, but about the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in the US and how they rippled through not just those denominations but also impacted Catholic and Episcopal charismatic reform movements as well.

She pays appropriate attention to women and minority Christian communities not just in discussion of the Black Church in chapter five (the founding of the first African American church at Silver Bluff) or the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and the civil rights movement in chapter 12, but in all of the chapters. One of my complaints would be that I would have liked a chapter on the women's rights movement. I probably would have chosen Sojourner Truth's Aint' I a Woman speech as the framing device, but there are several appropriate alternatives.

I am also glad that she includes a chapter on Catholicism. Again, there always could be more. The problem with introductory survey books is limiting. I had a working knowledge of all of the areas, but I still learned something in every chapter. I think the “Muscular Missions” chapter on the student volunteer movement was well done and appropriately critical of the sexism and bias of the movement while speaking well of the positive intent of evangelism. I would have liked more discussion of how dispensationalism influenced much of that movement, but again, I know not everything can be included.

One last regret, again, I don't think there was anything that should not have been included that was, but a discussion of the apocalyptic predictions of the end of the world with the Millerites I think was important. It was similarly placed with many new religious movements like the Mormons and the Christian Scientists and the Seventh Day Adventists and Shakers would have also been a helpful addition, but there already were 13 chapters those editorial decisions are hard.

I listened to this as an audiobook. It was something that I could dip in and out of so I spent a couple of months listening to a chapter here and there. I think mostly it was designed as a textbook, but this is very readable and especially if you do not have a lot of American church history, this is a very good place to start.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/turning-points-in-american-church-history/

Summary: A look at whole-brained discipleship which uses insights from recent neuroscience to help develop Christian maturity. 

A good friend recommended The Other Half of the Church to me about a year ago, and I have only recently gotten around to reading it. Many insights were not new to me because of work that either my wife or I have done regarding parenting, trauma, and attachment, or child development. I want to start with the fact that overall, I am glad that this book was written, and I commend it, even if I am going to spend most of my time discussing areas where I have concerns. The insights here into character development, group identity and its role in correction, and deep relationships are all important. Because of my training as a spiritual director and a couple of professional associations of spiritual directors which I am a member of, I know that more academic books in similar areas are being written. No book can address all of the nuance and potential areas of misunderstanding, so I am looking forward to reading more books to address different aspects.

This is a book that is co-written by Jim Wilder and Michael Hendricks. Much of the book is written in Hendrick's voice, and he relates insights about spiritual formation and brain science from Jim Wilder. Part of what I appreciate about the framing of this book is that it is intentionally oriented toward a reader unfamiliar with the science. It is very accessible, and the authors know that stories are necessary to communicate not just the information but the meaning behind it.

Many will come to The Other Half of the Church with some background from gentle parenting (Whole Brained Child, Brain-Body Parenting, etc.) or insights from trauma, attachment, or adult emotional development. In many ways, I think discipleship is a bit late to the game with these insights. I also think that from my experience (which is obviously limited), many of my Gen X cohort or the Baby Boomers are less likely to have exposure to this type of whole-brained approach than the Millennial parents who have been at the forefront of the Gentle Parenting movement. Millennials are much more aware of trauma, abuse, and the science around those realities, which, again, have some overlap with the science discussed here.

The main content of the book is only about 200 pages. The first chapter describes the problem of how Christianity has shifted toward a right-brained, information-heavy orientation over the past several hundred years. Like many other chapters, I think this could have been much more developed. But again, I know this is designed as an introduction, and that whole books have been written in this area. However, one aspect that I think is not discussed and matters is that conscious theological and ecclesiastical decisions were made that oriented Christianity toward evangelism and away from a more holistic discipleship. Particularly because this was published by Moody Press (a historically dispensationalist publisher), I would have preferred at least some mention of how dispensationalism, especially an orientation toward the immanent return of Christ, fed into some of these discussions. (See Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism for more.)

Chapter two lays out the initial discussion about how people grow and introduces the metaphor of soil and plants that will carry through the whole book. I think this is a helpful metaphor. Plants grow not just because of light, water, and seed but the soil quality. The book suggests that many churches do not have healthy soil, so when people become Christians, it is not their fault for lack of growth because the soil they are in (the church community, theology, and people around them) is depleted of nutrients. This leads into the next three chapters of the different aspects of a healthy soil, joy, Hesed, and group identity. Again, all three could have more development, but they do have decent introductions. The Group Identity chapter (chapter 5) is my main complaint about the three.

As noted later in the book, group identity can be positive or negative. However, despite the later expansion of how group identity can be unhealthy, I do not think adequate attention has been paid to a more robust understanding of community and culture concerning group identity. In particular, Christians often have a very hierarchical understanding of Christianity (not what is presented in the book) that I think needs to be taken into account as part of what it means to have a safe Hesed community. Hierarchical thinking about race, culture, or gender is very common in Christian communities, and without addressing those directly, the later Healthy Correction chapter can't work.

Again, I am not saying that the authors of The Other Half of the Church don't know this, but that they are writing an introduction, and this is an area that I think needs to be developed more fully to implement the ideas in the book. NT Wright's biography of Paul talks about how Paul encouraged boundary crossing, and the early church intentionally called Christians to view the boundaries between gender, economics or social status, and ethnicity as permeable within the Christian community. Paul was able to do this because he reframed their identity as being one in Christ. Today, some also try to do a similar thing, but they do it in a way that denies the existence of social divisions. Some go as far as claiming that to identify harm from social divisions is to deny Christ. Because of this reality, I think that a lack of grappling with those social realities does a disservice to women, racial or sexual minorities, people of different immigration or class backgrounds, etc.

Without a more robust understanding of how gender, economics, class, disability, race, and other issues work in the modern world, there can't be a healthy community that can call people to a better group identity. One of my other concerns about group identity is that the history of the Homogenous Unit Principle within the church growth movement has a very sketchy history. It was very much used to perpetuate segregation, to enable white normative churches and culturally homogenous churches, not just as a method but as the only God-ordained way for churches to operate. The very nature of Hesed as it is being used here, I think, means that a church that is unwelcoming to a particular demographic would make me question whether it could be practicing Hesed as intended. But at the same time, many churches that have been discipling people for generations discipled them into belief in segregation. So there is a lot of history that has to be unpacked there.

One of the other red flags for me in The Other Half of The Church is the repeated and regular call to think of the church as a family. The family metaphor is common in scripture, and I don't want to dismiss what the authors are trying to do by using the family metaphor, but it is hard not to see family as a red flag. Many unhealthy churches or Christian non-profits consciously use family language as a type of hierarchical dominance. That violates the principle of Hesed presented earlier in the book, but it has to be named.

Many unhealthy Christian communities use biblical language in unhealthy ways, which then impacts the ability to use that language in healthy ways. It is similar to the discussions of “evangelical.” Many who like the term evangelical point to the theological meaning, the root of the word, which means to share the gospel. But those who resist the term note that it is often understood now as a racially coded political marker or a consumer identity group. Again, the book does mention that group identities can be negative, but I think part of the nature of introductions to topics is that they can't get into as much detail as is necessary if you were going to fully develop a concept. In this case, I suspect that many people who may be interested in the concepts of the book have not grappled enough with their understanding of race, gender, culture, or class and will attempt to incorporate cultural preferences within their group identity in ways that can harm other Christians.

The book's most important chapter is chapter six, which discusses how people develop character through health correction. I do not like the chapter's subtitle (stop being so nice), but I appreciate the main point. In summary, people need some “healthy or appropriate” shame to be motivated to change emotionally. When we focus on behavior management, it uses conscious thought as a means of behavior change. There can be some value to that, but the deeper, preconscious thought change that is possible has to be done at a deeper level than simply conscious behavior change. This requires engaging that deeper emotion, and that can only be done well if the “soil” (Hesed, joy, and group identity) allows a person to be safe in a relationship to know that the change they are being called to will draw them into the community not be shunned or alienated from the community.

I have many personal antidotes where I think this happened to me. I remember someone talking to me about not using the idea of all women being treated well because they were all someone's “wife, sister, mother or daughter.” There was a sense of shame when he explained that it only gave them humanity through their relationship with other men. I had emotional resistance to correction, and at the moment, I do not think I responded well (although I don't remember my response. What I remember was: 1) a sense of shame that I hadn't already understood that. 2) clear knowledge that even if I wasn't ready to acknowledge it, I knew he was right. 3) a conviction that I needed to change. I can remember corrections from a seminary professor and friends and a number of corrections from people on social media, where I also had similar reactions. While I do think that a close community is the best place for correction, I do think that when people are open to it, and it is framed as a call to identify (something like, “as Christians, we talk about people in this way”), it can still work without in-person relationship. (But I also know these things can go quite badly.)

The final two chapters—a good discussion of the problem of narcissism within the Christian community and a concluding chapter that pulls together all of the previous chapters—round out the book.

Again, I think this is a very helpful book. My complaints largely concern what is not here or not developed enough. But this is intended as an introduction, so I don't want to complain about what is not here and that this was written to the audience that it was. I have some comments on several of my highlights that you can see here in places where I have concerns beyond what I have raised here. (I mostly listened to this as an audiobook, and I did not realize it wasn't synced with the Kindle when I got it. So, all of the highlights and comments I made, I had to find in the Kindle.)

I also want to link to my post on Brain-Body Parenting because I raise a concern about how whole-body parenting or discipleship can become a technique in the Ellul sense of the term. I think my concern there applies here as well.

Update: I wanted to add a quick update. On of the areas where I think there is a need for a follow up book or a book by someone else is to work through spiritual practices in light of neuroscience. I think this is part of what is going on with Trauma in the Pews where Janyne McConnaughey riffs off of Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline and talks about how traditional spiritual disciplines are impacted by developmental trauma. But I think there is a need for a more general book. The Other Half of the Church talks briefly about how spiritual practices are part of developing character but does not go into any details. One of the problems is that this book is written for Evangelicals, and many Evangelicals do not have a connection to the history of spiritual disciplines outside of those that may have been connected to Richard Foster or Renovaré. Part of what I think should be avoided in a book on spiritual disciplines and neuroscience is to think that we are rediscovering ancient practices as if the church hadn't been doing them all along, or that it evaluates them solely on modern science. For instance, I think that The Prayer of Examen is a personal exercise that fits in with the understanding of corporate character development presented in The Other Half of the Church. When done in the traditional we invite God to help us, we reflect on our actions. This will include time to “metabolize shame,” as discussed here, and then we pray for grace to move forward as a new person. My experience is that Catholic presentations of the Prayer of Examen are much more oriented toward grace and less oriented toward “do better” framings than Evangelical presentations of the Prayer of Examen that I have seen. Mindfulness and contemplative prayer, as presented in The Cloud of Unknowing, are also examples of Christian spiritual disciplines which long predate modern understandings of neuroscience but which are doing things that neuroscience confirms as being helpful to maturity in Christ.

This was originally posted on my blog at: https://bookwi.se/the-other-half-of-the-church/

strong>Summary: Exploring how our spiritual formation needs to be decoupled from western culture.

I am not sure I can describe Our Unforming better than an edited quote from the introduction.

“For all my life, I've read books on spiritual formation written by white authors and internalized their experiences of God as the norm and even as the authority. In recent centuries, our spiritual formation resources and teachings have primarily come from Western spiritual traditions. In that process, Western voices have generalized what spiritual formation is for all of us. The way we teach formation in the church is heavily influenced by Western values—such as individuality, dualism, and linear thinking—and Western history like colonialism, the Enlightenment, and industrialization. Even the African roots of early church fathers and mothers have often been ignored when interpreted through a white male lens...I want to untangle and de-westernize the ways my soul has been distorted by the disproportionate influence of Western authority in the church. This does not mean disregarding our long and rich history of Christian spiritual traditions. Rather, we need to recognize that our current understanding of spiritual formation is limited because it was developed under a dominant Western cultural tradition.

I believe we need a more robust spirituality for our times. Our spiritual practices need to be reimagined as our communities become increasingly diverse. We need a spirituality not detached from reality but one that takes seriously the injustices and disparities of our societies. We also need to be re-formed in order to discover the sacred in one another. Sadly, voices are missing from this conversation. We need to hear from one another and make space for one another so we can evolve and mature into a more dynamic spiritual community.

I still remember the words that began my unforming. An Asian American pastor and mentor, Dan, once said to me, “One day you'll make a big mistake, but the people around you will love you anyway. On that day, you'll be free, and you'll be able to more fully receive God's love for you.” These words continue to resonate in my soul. They reveal to me how easily I can get caught up in the drive for flawless performance, even in spiritual things. The push for perfection in performance is not just a Western trait, but it has become the standard for modern culture, no matter where we are in the world. The strength of a linear cultural orientation in spirituality is that it is optimistic, hopeful, and focused on growth. Even in suffering and grief, we can soothe our pain with the belief that God can use our sufferings for good. We expect positivity and growth even in the deepest of sufferings. The drawback of a linear orientation is when things don't go as planned, when life turns messy and complicated, we lack the spiritual vocabulary and depth needed to navigate.

...the Western church has tried to limit spirituality to the mind by suppressing or neglecting the body. Western Christianity starts with the premise that forming right beliefs will lead to right practices, right morals, and a right society.

The work ahead to unform our spirituality, however, requires that we break free from these Western parameters. Sometimes this task is referred to as “contextualization.” Contextualizing, however, still assumes that the Western way is the standard way, and all other ways are creative deviations. The work of unforming and re-forming our souls is not contextualization. We are not taking Western norms and adding ethnic expressions. We are going back to what the missionaries should have done in the first place, to allow our experiences of God to be fundamentally changed by sitting and learning from one another. Carvalhaes writes that historically colonized communities still find subversive and creative ways to reimagine worship and liturgy, and we need to learn from these expressions. He writes, “While empires and colonization processes tried to fix rituals as a way of controlling senses, understandings, and bodies, colonized people have always intervened in these processes, creating, rebelling, challenging, undoing, and redoing.” These practices are ways in which colonized people have tried to break free from Western-controlled spaces. Carvalhaes states that we can reclaim our spiritual practices through other forms of knowing, such as attending to our bodily movements, senses, and emotions as expressions of our spirituality.

Summary: An exercise in discernment by exploring the legacy of three Christians of the same era and their relationship to slavery. 

I read Ownership by Sean McGever with an eye on how he handles the topic of discernment, even though the word discernment was not the focus. Over the past year, I have read about a dozen books on discernment, trying to grapple with the purpose and limitations of Christian discernment. One of the reasons for starting this project was reading Henri Nouwen's book Discernment and how he grappled with discernment for himself. I am not going to rehash that post again, but while Nouwen received spiritual guidance and help from a pair of priests, after the death of all three and about ten years after the book was published, it became more widely known that the two priests that Nouwen confided in were serial sexual and spiritual abusers. Nouwen described them as some of the most holy men he had known. Nouwen's discernment about those men is a good reminder of the limitations of our discernment, but also that historical judgment and tools can be helpful as a means of helping to see our natural limitations of perspective.

McGever makes the simple but important point that our geographic and social location impacts our decision-making (and discernment) because it impacts how we see choices. None of Edwards, Whitfield, or Wesley's grandparents owned slaves because the slave trade was not yet in wide effect. However, the difference between whether their grandchildren owned slaves was significantly impacted by whether they were in England or the US. Geography and social location always impact choices.

In his discussion of Whitfield's creation of the orphanage, he presents Whitfield's positive reasons for doing so. There were orphans, and those orphans needed care. The colony administrators were willing to give the orphanage start-up land and some start-up money. Whitfield and the colony administrators assumed that the orphanage would be self-sufficient after the initial startup.

My day job is as a non-profit consultant. One trend in non-profit grant-making since the early 2000s is that there needs to be a plan for sustainability as part of a grant. But non-profits, by definition, are not profit-making organizations. After-school programs do not generate revenue if they are primarily serving at-risk students. Clinics serving homeless youth don't make money on the side without violating the organization's main mission. But this is exactly the problem that Whitfield got into.

Whitfield needed to make money by finding a crop or business that the orphanage could do to pay for the ongoing costs of running the orphanage. They started with White indentured servants. Then, they started relying on the orphans themselves to do labor on cash crops. Eventually, Whitfield and the administrators lobbied to change the law of the state of Georgia so that they could have African slaves work to make the orphanage self-supporting.

On Twitter the other day, there was a thread about how ethical choices don't just need ethical ends but also need ethical means to get to those ends. Whitfield had ethical ends (care of orphans), but once in the weeds of the organization, he eventually moved to unethical means because the ethical means he tried hadn't worked. This is often where discernment falters because when things seem not to be working but you still feel called to continue, there is a temptation to move to unethical means or change our ethics to allow for what we previously considered unethical.

I think you can summarize this argument about Whitfield's change in understanding of slavery as his theology changed because of his economic interests, not that his theology influenced his economic interests. This generally fits with the arguments of a wide variety of others. Edward Baptist studies the economics of slavery and thinks that the justification and expansion of slavery were largely a result of the economic success of slavery. Joel McDurmon, a lawyer studying the legal construction of slave law in Christian American colonies, largely concludes that economic interests drove legal changes, not that legal changes led to economic results. Akhil Reed Amar, a constitutional scholar writing about the US Constitution and slavery, points out that those opposed to slavery had many opportunities to oppose the expansion of slavery, but for the most part, their economic interests meant that they opposed slavery as an ideology, but they did not put feet to those beliefs and because it was against their economics interests.

Jonathan Edwards, until recently, was not evaluated for owning slaves. Within the past couple of decades, as interest in Edwards has increased, there have been recent documents that have raised questions about his understanding of slavery. Edwards does seem to have changed his views toward the insinuation of slavery, but not owning slaves. He bought at least one slave directly from a slave ship but eventually came to view the slave trade as immoral, but not slavery as a whole. There was some change, but not much.

The third subject is John Wesley. Wesley did come to an abolitionist position, but not until near the end of his life. He was slightly older than both Edwards and Whitfield but lived about two decades longer than both. Wesley had direct experience with slavery when he was in Georgia and was familiar with the institution of slavery more abstractly before that point. He argued for the education, especially Christian education, of slaves but not initially against the institution of slavery as a whole. Wesley did challenge Whitfield about owning slaves but did not break the relationship over slavery and argued against ending the institution of slavery.

McGever believes, and I think he is right, that had Wesley grown up in America or come to America for a longer time, Wesley may have also eventually owned slaves and never come to his late-in-life abolitionist position. Had Edwards or Whitfield lived longer or had different social circumstances, they may have come to similar conclusions as Wesley did later in life. Our social circumstances do not excuse our individual choices, but they do influence them.

I think many reading this book may not be aware of the basic facts in the first 80 percent of the book. So, that initial 80 percent is important to lay out the facts that McGever is dealing with to get to the main focus in the last 20 percent. In the last 20 percent of the book, there is an evaluation of how to think about the three, not just as a historically distant evaluator but as a Christian who shares in the legacy of all three. McGever directly tries to help us, as modern readers, see ourselves in all three. He is trying to help us see that we all have the capacity to have cultural blind spots, but we also can overcome those cultural blindspots by listening to others and history.

Quakers and others of this era strongly resisted slavery and not only worked toward its end but also made financial and other sacrifices because of their Christian convictions. More than the other two, Wesley was willing to listen to this minority report and learn from it. But it did take Wesley years to change, and even while he did change, his change was late enough that some of the institutional inertia of Methodism did not oppose slavery and did not fight for the full humanity of Black Christians, especially in the US, leading to the eventual split of Methodism and the institutional dehumanization of its Black members, as illustrated by Richard Allen and Absolum Jones.

I would have liked to have an explicit discussion of discernment and the ways that historical events and understanding can inform Christian discernment, but even without an explicit discussion of discernment, I think that this is a helpful exercise that will lead to better discernment for those willing to read and understand what Sean McGever is trying to do here.

This post was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/ownership/

Summary: A history of Dispensationalism from Darby to pop culture. 

I did not grow up in a strongly dispensationalist church. But as I reflected throughout the book, I was surprised to learn how many institutions, communities, and preachers who were important to me were influenced by dispensationalism. The strength of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism is that it does not fall into caricature but is carefully nuanced about the various streams of Christianity influenced by dispensationalism.

As someone who was a child and teen in the late 70s and early '80s, I was aware of movies like The Thief in the Night, even if I was too young to be strongly influenced by them. I know several people who were freaked out by the scare tactics of that era of dispensationalism, but I tended toward questions or avoidance rather than direct fear. I was more attracted to “Scholastic Dispensationalism” than pop culture dispensationalism. A friend of mine's was a pastor's kid at a local Evangelical Free Church. I went to a lot of their youth group activities, and I can remember going to their annual “prophecy conferences” and can remember the charts and explanations of the details of the end times as a teen and preteen. That nearly gnostic idea of the secrets that you can learn if you only follow the right teachers were more of a temptation to me.

I am hesitant to simplify because the complex story is so interesting, but the overly simplified story is that from Darby to Moody to fundamentalism to the rise of the scholastic Dispensationalists to the pop culture dispensationalists, there was an almost continual simplification of the ideas of dispensationalism from a complex system of anti-institutionalist thought toward simpler and simpler premillennialism. That simplified story is too simple, but there is a thread there that as people found parts of the theological ideas to accept and parts to discard, the beloved parts by the earlier generation were usually discarded in favor of an easier-to-explain system.

A simple chart or image is more attractive than a complex multi-page chart. But the thicker theological thinking went in the opposite direction. Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind, but that does seem to be what is shown here. While movements tried to take the more theological seriously, the dominant streams of dispensationalism were the imagery of an imminent return of Christ, which contributed to a passion to evangelize and reach the world for Christ.

The complex picture here takes seriously the problems of race, gender, and class while not distorting the more positive intent of evangelism. I had so many highlights, including very long highlights, because the nuanced story is complex. This long quote I think, gives a good sense of the story that this book attempts to tell:

A notoriously difficult group to define, evangelicals in America have been categorized as much by the tensions they manage between “head” and “heart” religion, and between populist and establishment aspirations, as by the theological commitments they profess or the sociological profile they share. And yet a history of dispensationalism, which has played a decisive role as a system of theology and a subculture, recasts our understanding of evangelicalism in at least two important ways. First, dispensationalism brings to the fore the interdependent relationship between theology and culture that has shaped American evangelicalism...Second, a focus on dispensationalism illuminates contemporary trends toward polarization that have plagued evangelicalism in recent decades. These trends, I contend, are deeply intertwined with the “rise and fall” narrative of dispensationalism. While it was never the only theological tradition among fundamentalists or evangelicals, dispensationalism supplied at least four generations of white conservative Protestants, stretching from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, with a theological framework to read the Bible and understand the world. Insiders and outsiders differed over how accurate or helpful dispensationalism was, but its teachings supplied a reference point to millions of Christians all the same. With the fall of dispensationalism as a formal theological system in the 1990s, the white conservative Protestant community has deepened an ongoing crisis in theological identity, with many outside observers now questioning whether theology has much to do with evangelicalism at all. Rather than treat the current state of affairs as normative, a study of dispensationalism reveals the historical development of a theologically thin, while politically robust, popular evangelical culture. Conservative white Protestantism has always had other theological contenders, but the inherited theological tradition of dispensationalism, which now has fewer living theological proponents, played a significant role in shaping the “evangelical mind” until very recently. (p22-23)

The original dissenters were unique for teaching that all of history was divided into a series of dispensations that inevitably ended with the failure of humans to fulfill their obligations to God. They taught that the current dispensation was nearly complete, revealing the failure of organized Christianity, and that soon the state churches and the societies they enabled in Europe and North America, which they called Christendom, would be destroyed. These dissenters originally congregated in cities like Dublin and London, with one of their largest assemblies in the southwestern English port city of Plymouth. As a group they refused to be called anything but “Christian,” so they became known as “the brethren from Plymouth.” The name stuck, and they became known as the Plymouth Brethren. (p23)

The story of dispensationalism invariably begins with Darby and his teachings, but it would be a mistake to think that dispensationalism was a simple transmission of Darby's teachings. True, key parts of what would become dispensationalism originated in Brethren thinking, but other aspects of Brethren teachings (such as radical separation from all denominations) found almost no resonance with dispensationalists. Americans used Brethren ideas to meet their own needs. To mention some examples, Americans held their own interests in religion and revivalism, in certain conceptions of geography, economics, race, class, gender, and American power, that supplied their interpretations of “dispensational time” with unique significance.

The institutional and theological structures of dispensationalism in the nineteenth century were forged by white evangelicals who privileged the goal of white reconciliation after the Civil War over the aims of Reconstruction. While the project of reconciliation achieved astounding success in creating a broad coalition of white evangelicals, it also killed a potential (if unlikely) future of a racially diverse dispensational tradition. Later generations exacerbated earlier decisions, and with few exceptions dispensationalists have never led in advocating for social or political equality. In many cases they actively supported such discriminatory measures as racial segregation. They often did so for expediency and for reasons unrelated to the specific theological commitments of dispensationalism. But sometimes they did connect social attitudes to their theology. It is in these examples, which span from responses to Reconstruction to Cold War anticommunism, that dispensationalism's social and political location is most visible. The geographical spread of dispensationalism is tied to its demographics, too. A remarkable subplot in the story of dispensationalism is how its teachings originally gathered a regional following in the Great Lakes basin and then, over time, spread to the South and the West Coast while retreating from New England. By and large, the South slowly and only haltingly adopted dispensationalism, and then in ways that accommodated other southern-specific factors. For the most part, dispensationalists were eager to gain new adherents in the South, even if that meant accommodating white southern attitudes on race and segregation. The demographic and geographic dimensions of dispensationalism are also connected to its economic story. Who funded the expansion of dispensationalism? It is difficult to give one answer. In the nineteenth century, and stretching to the fundamentalism of the 1920s, the broader institutional complex that housed dispensational teachings was funded by industrial profits. For example, the oil money of Milton and Lyman Stewart funded the founding of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and the publication and distribution of The Fundamentals. (p35-36)

The distinction between individual and social agency, and between spiritual and corporeal brotherhood, allowed Dixon to wax about spiritual equality while ignoring social racism in his midst. Northerners as well as Southerners inhabited cities stratified by race and material inequality, yet Dixon was muted on why such a situation existed. The “solidarity of the race” was God's intention, Dixon preached, but sin broke it. “Now God is making a new solidarity which begins at Calvary and is based upon the new creation,” and yet the plane of transformation was narrowly spiritual. “Only the cross can make the confusion of Babel give way to the fusion of Pentecost,” he taught, referencing God's act of dispersing humanity into separate tribes and language groups, and the latter coming of the Holy Spirit to diverse early followers. “Only in this fire of God's love can races be molded into one family with the spirit of true brotherhood.” Clarence was no Thomas, yet the distinctions he made fueled new premillennialist views of racial difference. (p184)

Summary: Helpful thinking about the ways that enneagram impacts discernment.

In my ongoing reading about discernment, this was a book that I found on Kindle Unlimited. I have a subscription to Kindle Unlimited, but mostly it is used by my parents or kids, who share my Kindle account. But there are cases like this where I find a book in my reading area and it is always nice to borrow it instead of purchasing.

I am mixed on the enneagram. I think that  to the extent that someone thinks that it is helpful and accurate in describing them, then it can be helpful to give language around personality types. On the other hand, I also think there is not a lot underlying enneagram and any system of categories has limitations because no system like this will perfectly describe someone. It is about tendencies and rough categories.

What I like about the enneagram is that it intentionally is focuses on health, moving toward healthy interactions, not simply description. It also recognizes that those aspects of personality that are strengths are also weaknesses when pushed or taken too far. There are healthy expressions of personality and our internal tendencies and unhealthy expressions.

The format of this book is unique and helpful. You can get a general book that has everything for all types. Or you can get a type-specific book that has the main content of the book but also has an end section focusing on just that type. In my case, I got the type 5 book and it has about 160 pages of main content and then a chapter that summarizes and focuses on just type five (or your specific type.) I think type five describes me pretty well, and so I read the whole book, but for those who are just interested in your type, especially if you are borrowing it from Kindle Unlimited, the focused chapter on your type is about 30 pages of summary that I think you can get most of the understanding from in a short time. You will get more detail if you read the whole book and you will see how your type fits into the larger system of the enneagram. If you are aware of spouses, friends or coworkers' enneagram types, then the larger book can also help  you see how your type and their types interact.

Broadly, I think the Enneagram of Discernment is thinking about discernment and vocation in similar ways to how I have been thinking about it. Moser uses this definition:

“working definition of discernment: Discernment is the gift and practice of living our lives from a deep sense of vocation, with wisdom, in the fullness of time.” (p33)

Palmer [Parker] perhaps says it best when he describes vocation “not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess.” (p72)

“Way of Discernment is no express lane. While it can provide momentary help in times of decision, it's a longsuffering journey. So, when the next decision comes, journey through The Way of Discernment. Hear the call to go back and get it, and discern your life with flourishing abundance.”

Summary: Tracking the history of how Lewis was received in the United States.

Not using these words, it seems that Noll is making the case that while Evangelicals may be defined as those who love Billy Graham, ecumenicals may be defined as those who love CS Lewis. Noll traces the response in the United States over three chapters. US Catholics first promoted (and published) Lewis in the US. The secular media and academy also responded to Lewis. And then mainline Protestants and finally, the Fundamentalists and Neo-Orthodox. Noll didn't explicitly say that ecumenical Christians are the ones who like Lewis, but that does seem to be his point. Within Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and fundamentalists, some are less interested in moving outside of their own circle of Christians. But in some ways, the Neo-Evangelicals that were breaking away from Fundamentalists were, as a movement, more ecumenical, and while they found Lewis later, their embrace was in some ways because of Lewis' ecumenical approach that sought to use common reasoning and logic and public intellectual resources to make the case for Christianity.

Again, this was not a part of Noll's book, but I do think that it is relevant to talk about the recent movements within SBC, PCA, and ANCA to adopt more theologically conservative positions on women in ministry as an example of a movement toward fundamentalist positions. I had Noll for three classes between college and seminary. When I was in seminary, working for a local SBC association and going to a mainline seminary, there was a discussion about whether SBC should be considered Evangelical or Fundamentalist. Even in the mid-90s, some people in SBC embraced the term fundamentalist. Many of the sociologists of religion who were commenting on the question at the time (as I remember it) were noting the tensions between those SBC Evangelicals who were more ecumenical in orientation and those SBC fundamentalists who were not sure of the Christianity of those outside of SBC.

I believe that what happened was that the SBC fundamentalists adopted the term evangelical because of the negative association of fundamentalism, not because of a change in theological position. And now, 30 years later, increasingly hard lines are drawn because the impulse toward ecumenism isn't seen as embracing the larger body of Christ but as being “liberal.” Noll's earlier work on the life of the mind is an undercurrent behind CS Lewis in America because the extent to which CS Lewis was embraced reflected the embrace of the life of the mind as a goal.

This book is part of the Hansen Lecture series by the Wade Center. I have previously read The Everlasting People and I have on my list to read Community: Action, Faith, and Joy in the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers. I do not know if other books in the series have responses to each chapter, but I liked that in this book. Karen Johnson, who has a good book on Black Catholics in Chicago, responded to the chapter on Catholic reception. Kirk Farney responds to the chapter on secular and mainstream media. And Amy Black responds to the chapter on Protestant reception. I thought those responses were helpful. Although I did not think they always responded well to his points, they did give additional context.

This was originally posted to my blog at https://bookwi.se/cs-lewis-in-america-by-mark-noll/

Summary: A very pregnant Georgie hosts her first dinner party with her new chef and that leads to a new mystery. 

I enjoy reading long series as long as I do not get too bored with the characters. The Royal Spyness series is in the 17th book, similar to the Inspector Gamache series. They are very different types of mysteries. The Royal Spyness series is very much a light cozy mystery series. There is almost always a murder, but Bowen leans into cozy feel of the series. The series took a long time to get from Georgie having a romantic interest to marriage and now her first baby. I am enjoying a more confident Georgie.

Rhys Bowen has referenced classic mysteries before, there are several references to Dorothy Sayers books. And this one both references Agatha Christie's books and has Agatha Christie as a dinner party guest who helps to solve the mystery. That could feel gimmicky, but it is handled well here, and I thought it helped move Georgie to a more healthy, maturing adult. She is not in her early 20s anymore. She is married and will have a baby by the end of this book (that is really not a spoiler).

I appriciate that Darcy (her husband who works as an off the books spy for the British Foreign Office) does not try to protect her and keep her away from murder here, but instead encourages her to solve the crime. There is a balance between realism of a woman in the 1930s and the reality of a modern reader who expects women to be able to act without supervision at all times.

This is definately a light series. I am not reading it for great intellectual depth. But it is a good light book that I enjoy. I mostly am listening to the series and I enjoy the narration. I think the narration highlights that there is a lot of repetition in the book. The books could be cut a bit without any loss. The books are told as if she were writing in a diary, and that method doesn't always work. “I don't really have time to write, I am having a baby” or “Still June 20th....” isn't really necessary and it feels like it fluffs up the book more than necessary. But on the whole I enjoy the series and I think that the post wedding books have found a new equilibrium that I am enjoying.

This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-proof-of-the-pudding/

Summary: A mix of history, memoir, and theology to discuss the problem of God being portrayed as White and how this has communicated Whiteness (an ideology of racial hierarchy).

I have been looking forward to reading When God Became White since I heard it announced. I have only read her Intersectional Theology, but I own three of her books and I hope to read at least two of them this year. (Invisible, The Homebrew Christianity Guide to the Holy Spirit, Healing Our Broken Humanity). There are several reasons why I was looking forward to When God Became White. First, I wanted to explore the concept of Whiteness from a more theological perspective. Emerson and Bracey's Religion of Whiteness explores it from a Sociology of Religion perspective, and I am familiar with its historical development from authors like Ibrahm Kendi and philosophical development of whiteness from authors like George Yancy. There are others working on theological development of the concept of Whiteness, but I expected (and found) that Grace Ji-Sun Kim broke out of the Black/White paradigm of discussing Whiteness and I knew from listening to a number of interviews and her writing that she would bring a gender critique as well.

The strength of When God Became White is its exploration of her own story and the way the Asian experience more broadly. The discussion of Whiteness is often limited to the White/Black binary. Throughout the book she discusses Warner Sallman's Head of Christ thats her mother kept in an honored place in their home above the couch (Color of Christ by Harvey and Blum has a lengthy discussion of the history and impact of Sallman's painting.)

“The white Jesus on our wall was a depiction to me of how God looked as well. I pictured God as an old white man, just as everyone else did. There was no reason to question that notion. It was everywhere: in paintings, stained-glass windows, and storybooks. I never questioned it. I didn't even think twice about whether Jesus was white or not. It was not in my consciousness to question anything that was taught by my mother or the church. Both pushed a white Jesus, and I just took it as the truth.”

“What I didn't know then that I know now is how influential that picture was on my own theology and faith development. That image of a white Jesus was imprinted on my brain and body so that I could not even question whether Jesus actually looked like that. It was a given, as it was the most famous picture of Jesus. I went to visit family in Korea twice during my youth, and even my family members there had the same picture of the white Jesus in their homes. The Korean churches also had the same picture of white Jesus. Furthermore, when I traveled to India during my seminary years, all the churches that I visited had this same white Jesus picture. This confirmed to me that this must be the real Jesus, as it is universally understood to be the image of Christ. I just took it for granted that Sallman's Head of Christ must be the real thing.” (P8)

“As the center of Christianity, God being white implies that whites are the center of humanity and that God's concerns and God's desires center on white people at the expense of people of color. This has damaging consequences for people of color who experience grave injustices due to racism, discrimination, and xenophobia.” P13

“The notion of race is based not on biology but on social meanings that are created and re-created due to changing contexts. The concept of race was created mainly by Europeans in the sixteenth century and is based on socially constructed beliefs about the inherent superiority and inferiority of groups of people.” p19

“Before the seventeenth century, Europeans did not think of themselves as belonging to a white race. Instead, they viewed themselves as belonging to different parts or regions in Europe and had a very different perception of race and racialization. But once this concept of white race was shown to be advantageous to Europeans and enslavers, it began to reshape and redefine their world....Before the late 1600s, Europeans did not use the term Black to reference any group of people. However, with the racialization of enslavement around 1680, many looked for a term to differentiate between the enslaved and the enslavers. Thus the terms white and Black were used to represent and differentiate racial categories.” (p20-24)

“White Christianity and missiology are intertwined with colonialism, and it has had devastating effects all over the world. Whiteness is the root of much colonialism around the globe, and there are four deadly weapons employed in white Christian conquests: genocide, enslavement, removal, and rape. These weapons divide people, separating them from land, people, story, culture, and identity. These weapons serve colonizers in gaining more land and low-cost or no-cost labor to grow wealth.” (p48)

For most of the church's history, our prayers, hymns, and liturgies have been written by white European men. The language used in our church worship imagines, describes, and reinforces a white male God. From the beginning to the end of worship, we praise, read about, and pray to a white male God...The white male language used throughout our religious practice reinforces our perceptions and beliefs that white and male is superior to nonwhite and female. We memorize prayers, hymns, and creeds during childhood that become embedded in our thoughts, hearts, and behaviors that end up carried into adulthood. These white male liturgies have become part of our being and greatly influence our perception of God...We know that God is neither white nor male. That was merely a notion of God constructed by white male theologians. God is Spirit and, as a spiritual entity, cannot have gender or race, and this should be reflected in the liturgical languages that we use within the church. It is paramount that we rethink and re-create our liturgical language about God..in Korea, the concept of ou-ri, translated as “our,” is far more important than the individual. “Ourness” is a concept that has built up the Korean community with an emphasis on being connected to each other to protect and help others. Ou-ri in the Korean language is often used as a personal pronoun. So instead of saying “my family,” in Korea, we say “ou-ri family.” Instead of saying “my spouse,” we say “ou-ri spouse,” even though you are married to only one spouse. This different outlook and emphasis in life challenges us to become different individuals within the community, to prioritize the needs of the community. We need to adopt an ou-ri-ness in our theological journey so we can fight racism and overcome the other divisive beliefs we face as people of God. All people are invited to the banquet of God where we can dance, rejoice, and be merry in the presence of God. It is the ou-ri-ness of God's love that we should be embodying as Christians.” (p168)

Summary: A biography of a radical Christian who took seriously the call to help the marginalized.

Dorothy Day is someone that I have known about for a long time, but someone who I have not known much about. I have read one of DL Mayfield's previous books and I know that she takes seriously the call for Christians to serve and live with the marginalized so I thought she would be a good author to read about Dorothy Day. (I have also read a book by her husband, a counselor.)

Unruly Saint is not a lengthy biography, about 250 pages. And most of its focus is on the founding of the Catholic Worker and its early years. Mayfield's personal reflections on Day and her use of the research on Day as a way to grapple with her own Christian faith I think is one of the strengths of the books, but also one that may not appeal to everyone. I particularly read a lot of biography and memoir because I want to know how others have thought about what it means to live a good life or discern how to they can live in a complicated world. Reflective biographies like this give me insight not only into the subject of the biography but the author.

I was aware of the basic shape of Day. I knew she was a writer and that she founded the Catholic Worker Newspaper and various others activities to serve the poor during the Great Depression. I knew she was a radical and had been a communist prior to becoming Catholic. I knew that she had a child and was a pacifist. But I think that was really the extent of what I knew walking into this biography.

I am not going to rehash the book. But what I appreciate about Mayfield's writing is that she is empathetic to both the strengths and weaknesses of Day and she doesn't try to cover up either. At the end there is a grappling with the movement to officially recognize Day as a Catholic Saint. It is clear that Day wanted to try to live like a saint but didn't want to be treated like one. There are several quotes about how Day was concerned about being minimized and reduced to “a saint” in a way that reduced the call to serve the marginalized to work that only saints did and not a calling on all Christians. Mayfield also reflects on the fact that Day was overwhelmed by her work often, but saw the need and couldn't say no to giving away almost anything she had to someone who needed it because she understood the desperation of real need. Day assumed that others would react as she did when they also saw the need; but many do not.

There was a real community that formed around her, but it was also not a community that cared for Day as peers. She was lonely in part because she had such a strong call and skill at organizing. But I think she needed a community that would have shared responsibility and helped to get her to learn about her healthy, created limitations. There just do seem to be people with nearly superhuman capacity, but it isn't unlimited capacity. There are people that I know who do so much more than I am physically capable of, but no one can operate without limitations.

More than anything else this made me want to know more about Dorothy Day. I already have a copy of The Reckless Way of Love by Dorothy Day, with an introduction by DL Mayfield and Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By Beauty, the biography written by her granddaughter. Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness is on Kindle Unlimited, so I will borrow that eventually.

This was originalaly posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/unruly-saint/

Summary: A survey of systems that perpetuate disparity, inequity, or racism in various areas of society.

One of the aspects that is most frustrating to me within the church is the controversy that is liberation. Some people and parts of the church do not believe that liberation is a significant theme of what the church should be doing. There are various reasons for that. Some believe that liberation will only occur at the second coming of Christ, and some of those believe that working toward liberation will actually prolong Christ's return. Some do not believe that the church's work should involve physical realities and that the only liberation that should occur is spiritual liberation. So, it is not surprising that Latasha Morrison opens with a chapter on liberation, grounding the book in her survey of the themes of liberation found throughout the Bible. But honestly, the chapter just made me mad. I was angry not at what she said, but that she has to actually argue that liberation is something that the church should be involved in. This is such a central theme to both scripture and historic Christian theology that no book should need to make the case that liberation is something that we need to do.

The rest of the book is framed around nine areas of society where liberation needs to occur. She sets up a simple framework of Preparation, Dedication, and Liberation. Preparation is learning about and understanding society's problems so we can correctly address them. Dedication is the steps that we take to address those issues while girding ourselves for long-term efforts. And that is done with the goal of liberation for all people. Morrison is addressing these areas because they are areas that have been traditionally seen as “White Spaces” and they have a legacy of systemic inequality or discrimination.

This framing reminds me of Kevin Kruse's book White Flight, which is about the history of White Flight in Atlanta. One of the main points that Kruse makes in the book is that White people saw segregated spaces (parks, schools, transportation, etc.) as white spaces before desegregation. However, after integration, due to their cultural belief in white racial hierarchy, the spaces did not become shared spaces where all people had equal access, but as Black spaces where White people were no longer given priority. Kruse's thesis is that this view of public space is a significant impetus for the rise of political libertarianism and decreased investment in public goods. If public spaces no longer privileged White use, and White people did not “feel comfortable” in shared spaces, and White people began to use private spaces that were economically or geographically segregated as a proxy for racial segregation, then White people would stop supporting the use of tax funds on shared public goods that they had previously supported. Michelle McGhee has a similar approach in her book Sum of Us, where she tries to get White people to see that racial equity is not a zero-sum game.

The book opens with a history of educational segregation and the long-term impacts of that segregation, as well as the ways that disparity continues to exist within education. This is an area where I have both professional backgrounds (I am a program evaluator for an after-school program primarily working with minority students), and I have a personal connection to education with my wife as a teacher, and my mother-in-law was a principal in the district where my children attend elementary school. My wife and I intentionally enrolled our children in the school where she works because it is a school with a high minority population. The school is 90% racial minorities (mostly Black or Hispanic) and 70% low-income. A half mile from the school is another elementary school in the same district, which is 11% Black or Hispanic and 7% low-income. There are many historical and zoning reasons for the disparity. Still, it would be entirely possible to redesign the school boundaries so that both schools were equitable in income and racial diversity. But the divide remains. The school board itself is split between four White board members and three Black board members, although the student population has been predominately minority for over a decade. The racial acrimony on the board (race is a proxy for a political party) triggered an accreditation review with recommendations to be performed. Late last year, a judge threw out the district map for board members as an illegal gerrymander designed to maintain a White majority on the board.

The school my kids will attend for high school if they continue progressing with the students in their current school was opened in 1965, the year the district integrated. It was named for a Confederate general. In 2020, right before the election, the school board agreed to form a commission to review the naming of that high school and other schools in the district. After the election (where a predominately White and GOP board member was maintained), the school board dissolved the commission before its first meeting. When my wife and I were looking for a house, we looked at an open house where the seller's realtor toured us around the home. But he suggested that he take us to other homes in the area because the elementary school where that home was zone had a high rate of minority and immigrant children, and he didn't think that the school was very good. (My mother-in-law was the principal of that elementary school at the time, and it was one of the best in the district.) Most of the issues discussed in the chapter on education in Brown Faces White Spaces have local examples within my school district.

Other issues that are addressed are medical inequity, the criminal justice system and policing, minority double consciousness as a result of workplace discrimination and business practices, the military as an integrated and segregated space, land ownership, Black appropriation within entertainment and the interaction of sports and protest. All of these are handled well, focusing on revealing racial disparity and asking the reader to reflect on how the status quo systems maintain inequity even if it is not always a desired outcome.

One of the editorial decisions that some will disagree with is the widespread use of both Brown and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) to mean all racial minorities in the US. There are a number of Black people in the US that have spoken out again BIPOC as a blanket term for all racial minorities when what is meant is Black. The lack of specificity is what is usually objected to, but in this case, she is using BIPOC inclusively, not as a way not to say Black. Similarly, there is a history of using the term Brown to be inclusive, but there is some objection to the term. Morrison is being inclusive in using Brown and BIPOC, but there will be some complaints about that choice.

Conservatives who object to discussing racial issues will still object to any discussion of the systemic nature of racism, even as she gives many examples of their systemic nature. Georgia and a few other states have passed laws banning the teaching of about systemic racism in public schools. The objection is that all discussion of systemic racism is rooted in Marxism and critical theory. Any who say that are ignoring the long history of objections to racial categories and hierarchy from the Black and Indigenous Christian communities that predated Marx. However, those objections will continue because they are not rooted in getting to the truth but were a means of dismissing racial concerns.

I think this survey is an excellent next book for Morrison because her focus is education, and one of the weaknesses of the Be The Bridge model is that it can be reduced to White consumption for pain for the purpose of White education. I don't think that is the intent, but White ignorance of racial issues and resistance to the idea that White people can be ignorant of racial issues often means that White skepticism asks for more and more trauma to be revealed as proof of the problem. This is what Esau McCaulley is addressing in his How Far to the Promised Land when he shares the story about being asked, “What is the most racist thing you have ever experienced?” at a panel discussion.

A survey book like this, which is filled with a balance of stories and facts, will give a jumping off point for groups to have a discussion, and relate personal experiences, while not requiring members of the group to reveal their own pain and trauma, which they may not be ready to reveal to a group that has not yet proven itself safe.

I mostly listened to this as an audiobook. I am familiar with Latasha Morrison's voice from her podcast and hearing her in-person at events where she spoke. I know her voice and her capabilities as a speaker. The editing and engineering of the audiobook were not up to the quality that I would generally expect. The audiobook is not so bad that I would not recommend it. But it is choppy, and the editing is not great. Some portions should be re-recorded and re-edited, and I guess the deadlines did not allow enough time for this to happen. I know Morrison is a good speaker, and I even went to a book launch where she read a portion of the book, which was clear and well-narrated. But the editing was mediocre. Again, I don't think this is a matter of her skill; it is a matter of editing or a compressed schedule. I hope that the audiobook is re-edited to make it better. That being said, I did listen to almost all of the book on audiobook and it is certainly not the worst audiobooks I have listened to, there are a number that I stopped listening to because they were so bad. This is a case where I think it should have been better, but I am disappointed that it wasn't better because I think it is crucial that authors read their content as much as possible.

I have read widely on racial issues, both historic and current. Many of the chapters included details I was familiar with, and in a number of cases, I have read multiple books on a subject that was covered here in a chapter. There will always be editorial choices about what to include or not include and how much data to present versus how much story to tell. Brown Faces, White Spaces framed these discussions with nuance and skill, including a significant level of detail, while not getting bogged down for readers with less background. There are questions at the end of each chapter, as well as footnotes and suggested readings for those who do want more details.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/brown-faces-white-spaces/

Summary: A relevant history of a theological reform movement that became political.

Every once in a while, I come across history revealing areas where I did not realize I had a big hole, but once identified, many connections get made. I have read a number of English history books, but once I read Hot Protestants, I realized that they all seemed to stop around Elizabeth or James and not pick up again until George III. I had never read a book on the English Revolution and did not realize where that was in the timeline.

Hot Protestants is a history of Puritanism, a revival movement within the Church of England. Part of what struck me was how explicitly Puritans understood England to have a similar covenant as ancient Israel had with God and how that theological commitment led to many of their social and political commitments.

“Fasting was a public responsibility as well as a private one. It was widely accepted that a Christian country like England was a successor to ancient Israel. Just as Israel had the true church before the Jews rejected Jesus, England had God's true church, thanks to the Reformation. Like Israel, England was in a covenant with God, and like Israel, it would be blessed or punished to the extent that it followed or defied God's law. Therefore, when it strayed, it needed to collectively implore God's forgiveness, just as the ancient Jews had done. The Church of England ordered public fasts when faced with signs of God's wrath—plague, famine, war, and the like.34 Church of England fasts, however, were called too infrequently to satisfy puritans, and unless undertaken in a puritan manner, they were too formal and short to generate and express the humiliation and repentance that a jealous God expected. Puritan ministers asserted the dubiously legal right to call public fasts on their own. Zealous Protestants would travel 10 or 20 miles for a puritan fast, which could easily last an entire day between the many long prayers and sermons from the ministers present.” (p35)

Summary: Discerning the Voice of God is a spiritual discipline that can be learned.

I am about eight months into a project to understand what people mean when they talk about discernment in the Christian context and how it can be learned and discussed. If you include the books that I read as part of my training to become a spiritual director and my previous general interest reading, I have read about two dozen books, many of them more than once, on the topic of discernment. I certainly do not believe that I have a clear understanding of all aspects of discernment. I continue to find new aspects of discernment that I had not thought about. And I have about two dozen more books on my list. But I have a handle on some aspects oft I have tentatively committed discernment tha to. That matters because in the case of Discerning the Voice of God, there are many areas of agreement, but my problems primarily come in three areas and my tentative commitments influence those.

First I want to mention the good. She is right that we can learn about discernment. And I think she is right to suggest that goal of discernment is to see is not to see if we will make the wrong choice. This quote from toward the end of the book I think is right.

“But here's what I want to encourage in you—the big message of this chapter, perhaps the big message of this book. Try never to forget it. Here it is ... There's no code for you to crack. No puzzle He's waiting for you to put together. No stick He's dangling in your peripheral vision, then snatching away when you turn your head toward it. He's not sitting up in heaven with the cameras rolling and stopwatches ticking, testing whether or not you're spiritually sharp enough to figure out the next move He wants you to make.”

When God speaks and causes your spiritual ears to hear Him, it is for the purpose of making Himself known to you. And not just in a textbook way. He wants to turn your knowledge of Him into your experience of Him. So when He speaks, you'll recognize His voice because in following its directive, you will be put into position to experience God's character in your life.

“Suffice to say, when instructions from God are difficult—like Abraham's were, like yours and mine often are—we tend to be slow to obey. Yet when God told him to do the unthinkable, Abraham immediately left for the mountain. And because he obeyed at once, he experienced God's divine intervention.”

My friend and mentor Anne Graham Lotz once said, “I never make a major decision in life, especially one that will affect another person, before I have received direction from God.” Yes, I expected her to say that. I feel conviction that I should expect it of myself. But what penetrated my heart was what she told me next—that for every major decision she's made in life, there's a specific Scripture verse she can point to as the one that God used to personally direct her. “When circumstances would have made me doubt a decision,” she said, “His Word has carried me through. And not once has He led me on a wrong path.” That's powerful.

Summary: A reappraisal of Barth and Bonhoeffer's thinking around modernity and politics.

I regularly recommend the Audible Plus lending library, where Audible members can borrow several thousand audiobooks at no additional costs beyond the membership. Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics is a book that has been on my to-read list for a while, but currently, the Kindle version is over $70, and the Hardcover is $66. While I borrowed the audiobook, if I had purchased it, it was less than $10 when I picked it up. I am never going to make sense of that type of pricing disparity.

I was glad I listened to it, even if it may be a book that would be better read in print. It was a helpful book to think about and even had some aspect of discernment (and an ongoing reading project of mine) that I had not anticipated. But I do want to note that I did not love the narration. The British narrator did not pronounce some of the names and theological, philosophical, or political terms correctly. It is not just variations between American and British pronunciations. More importantly, I thought the tone of the narration was just off, but not so much that I didn't listen to the whole book in just a few days.

Mauldin is concerned about the state of democracy and is using Barth's and Bonhoeffer's political thought to grapple with how they addressed the changes in Germany. To start, Mauldin looks at the critiques of modernity by Brad Gregory, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Stanley Hauerwas. I read After Virtue recently and have read several books by Hauerwas over the years. However, I did not have any background on Brad Gregory. The introduction to their ideas was thorough enough that I felt like I was clear.

From that introduction, Mauldin explores Barth and Bonhoeffer's understanding of modernity, progress, ethics, and politics. I have read more by and about Bonhoeffer than Barth. But these are topical areas that I don't have much background in.

Mauldin was right that, quite often today, Bonhoeffer's theology and writing are overshadowed by his biography. There is a long history of Bonhoeffer being appropriated for political purposes, and Mauldin does a good job exploring the limitations of modern uses of Bonhoeffer.

Some of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics was above my head, but I think I understood all the main points. I would like to explore more how philosophers and theologians influenced by those continental philosophers think about the relationship between God's sovereignty and progress and the limitations of knowledge regarding how to think about discernment by individuals and communities.

I was somewhat surprised that there was some overlap in Mauldin's exploration of how Barth and Bonhoeffer understood the church's role and how Michael Emerson and Glenn Bracey explored The Religion of Whiteness. In both cases, there is a grappling with what it means to prod the church to a more careful connection between church and politics and what happens when the church begins to follow something more than just Jesus. In Emerson and Bracey's case, they posit that a significant portion of White Christians in the US are treating Whiteness (the belief in racial superiority and hierarchy) as a type of religion (in the Durkheimian sense of the term.) In Barth and Bonhoeffer's cases, they were grappling with how Nationalist Socialism and the belief in Aryan superiority also became a type of religion that distracted the church from its proper role in society. The comparison has problems; not everything transfers, and going directly to comparisons with Nazi ideology does violate Godwin's law. However, in discussions about how to respond either to Christian Nationalism or support of Whiteness (overlapping but different issues), it is reasonable to think about where there are limited overlapping concepts.

After I finished Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics, I started reading Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America. That history is also relevant because, in many ways, the Puritans in England and America were attempting to enact a Christian Nation in terms that are not unlike the way that some current Christian Nationalists want to operate. Again, no history is completely parallel. The Puritans arose out of a desire for a more radical reformation than the Church of England as a whole wanted. The political realities of a monarchy and the congregationalism that arose in Puritan New England that was part of what gave rise to the impulse toward democracy in the United States is just different from the reaction to pluralism that seems to be central to Christian Nationalism today. But still, the parallels that exist can inform our thinking, help us be more humble about the limits of reform, and keep us from utopian thinking.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/barth-bonhoeffer/

Summary: An exploration of how Whiteness (the belief in white racial superiority) functions as a type of religion in the Durkheimian sense. 

I have been waiting to read this book for about four years now, ever since I heard that Michael Emerson was working on follow-up research to his Divided by Faith book. I read the Beyond Diversity report by Barna about some of the early research. And I have widely recommended this video where Michael Emerson introduces his Religion of Whiteness concept. And while it is now dated, I still very much recommend his book, co-authored with Christian Smith, Divided by Faith, because its use of the White Evangelical toolkit as a model to describe the cultural tools of handling race as White Evangelicals has been so influential to how many have spoken about Evangelicals and Race in the 25 years since the research for that book was done.

To understand the book, you need to understand both what is meant by Whiteness and what is meant by Religion. This is a good summary of what they mean by Whiteness:

“That is, whiteness is the imagined right that those designated as racially white are the norm, the standard by which all others are measured and evaluated. It is the imagined right to be superior in most every way—theologically, morally, legally, economically, and culturally. It is that power, now centuries upon centuries old, that is worshipped, felt, protected, and defended. As the legendary scholar W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1920: “ ‘But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?' Then, always, somehow, someway, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is ownership of the earth forever and ever. Amen!” (p42)

“...a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things... beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called the Church, all those who adhere to them.” Note that he defines religion by what it is and what it does, its function. And what is its function? To bring its followers into a single moral community...”

Summary: Essays exploring the role of hermeneutics and theology for the Christian life.

I am the kind of person who picks up an audiobook of theology because I have a full day of work to do in my yard, and I need something to keep me motivated. Theologizin' Bigger is exactly what I needed to keep me going.

There are a lot of books that I will listen to while working and then I will get the broad overview and decide if they are worth coming back to more slowly in print later. This is a book that I think is worth revisiting in print later, not because it is hard to understand but because it is well-written and deserves careful reading.

There are 17 chapters split into four sections, and I don't know which is my favorite. I spent a lot of time grappling with hermeneutics (how we understand the role and message of the Bible) about 10 or so years ago. I went to seminary in my early 20s. I am glad I did because it was easier to do grad school when I was young, but there are questions that I didn't have in my early 20s because I did not have the life experience yet. For me the role of scripture was a question for my late 30s. I was aware of a number of technical issues around the Bible and biblical interpretation, but it took me longer to see more bad uses to really start grappling with the ways that the methods of our bible reading were a real part of the problem of Christianity. The chapters of on the bible may seem simple, but they are not simplistic.

I started following Trey Ferguson on Twitter because I met one of the other co-hosts of the Three Black Men podcast at a conference back in 2019. My grappling with issues of race is why I was at a Jude 3 conference in the first place. I am not new to issues around distortions of Christianity because of Whiteness, but the second section of the book, on distortions of Christianity and how his life experience matters to correcting those distortion. The reality that Christianity and Jesus was about freedom does matter. A Christianity that is not about liberating people isn't a real Christianity.

There is a real thread that goes through the third and fourth sections of the book, but I think it is more subtle than the first two sections. In many ways it is a continuation of the theme of liberation. Part of liberating people from bad Theologizin, that has a God and vision for faith that is far too small is confronting the wrong ideas. Trey Ferguson was on the Gravity Common's podcast talking about the problems with Penal Substitutionary Atonement as it is normally presented and at the end of the podcast he was asked to preach the real gospel. That podcast I think showed the real focus of the last two sections, not that they are concerned solely with PSA but that like PSA, we have to “lean into mystery” and focus on a “rehumanizing project” as his last two chapters are called.

Faith matters, and part of why Ferguson is calling us to a large view of theology and our role in it, is because the small view of what it means to understand our role in the world needs a bigger view. A strong view of boundary setting, which is what many in the Christian world want to focus on, will limit what it is that we can do in the world. Even if our understanding of God is often too small, God is not a small God.

My one complaint is a standard complaint for me. I really do prefer that authors read their own books. Trey is a pastor and speaker. He hosts two podcasts and is regularly on other people's podcasts. He has a distinctive voice, not just the sound of his voice but the content of his voice and while this audiobook was fine, it wasn't his voice. And I would have preferred it to be his voice.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/theologizin-bigger/

Summary: A troubled childhood recounted. (A retelling of David Copperfield)

One of my habits (sometimes bad and sometimes good) is to avoid reading about fiction books before I read them. Once I know an author, I would rather experience a book without any background. There are times when this is a great strategy. And there are times when I somewhat regret the strategy. In this case, I was utterly unaware that Demon Copperhead was a loose retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Because I have not read David Copperfield, I don't know what would have been different had I known, but I did not know. I later read the Wikipedia summary of David Copperfield and can see the many parallels, and I think that made sense of a few threads of the story that I was confused about.

I have read most of Barbara Kingsolvers' books at least once. I enjoy her writing and appreciate its incisive social commentary. And because of my history with her work, it was unsurprising that Demon Copperfield was set in southwestern Virginia. Several of her books are set in rural Appalachia, and many of them grapple with the social realities of that area.

I read several reviews afterward, and one reviewer said the social commentary at the end of many chapters was a feature of Dickens' writing, not just Kingsolvers'. Many chapters in Demon Copperhead tell an aspect of the main character's life (his real name is Damon, but everyone calls him Demon from a very young age), but will conclude the chapter with a reflection on one social reality or another. For instance, there is a discussion about the underfunding of Child Services and how even those who want to do good by working there are often so underfunded and overworked that their efforts are largely futile. The adult Demon who is narrating, reflects on how that underfunding reflects on the values of our society.

I listened to this on audiobook from the library but carefully copied out the following quote because the social commentary is clear-eyed, even if a bit cynical. Demon is talking about the ways that we believe a false narrative about people's ability to work their way out of bad situations. So he refers to himself in the third person about why things did not go better for him.

“This kid, if he wanted a shot at the finer things, should have got himself delivered to some rich, or smart, or Christian, non-using kind of mother.”

Summary: A series of essays exploring what it means to be Christian, White, and Southern in the context of the racial realities as they are.

Racism isn't solely a Southern phenomenon, but there are some aspects to the White Southern Christian culture, and it makes sense to look at it from that perspective. I have read a lot of history and theology regarding racial realities in the United States. I have not grown up in the South, but I have lived just outside Atlanta for nearly 20 years. Because I have been here for a while, but I have not grown up here, I am both an outsider and an inside observer. I very much have witnessed quite overt racism, and the racial innocence that is well described in Know Your Place.

I am going to have three brief illustrations about racial innocence that influenced my reading of Know Your Place. About 5-6 years ago, the church I was a member of had a series of midweek meetings about race and Christianity. The meetings had a large group and small group component. My small group was facilitated by a Black pastor (not from our church). The small group was about 15 people, and as we opened the first session, we went around and introduced ourselves. One of the men introduced himself and concluded, “I was born and grew up and spent my whole life in the Atlanta area, and I do not believe that I have ever witnessed something I would call racist.” I believe that she was roughly the same age as my mother-in-law, who also grew up here; her education was segregated until her senior year of high school.

Another friend of mine is retired and grew up in rural Georgia. She privately emailed me after we were in a class together where I had talked about the racist history of Stone Mountain. She was unfamiliar with what I was referring to and wanted to know more about what I meant. We talked, and I sent her some articles about Stone Mountain being dedicated explicitly to white supremacy and being the site of the start of the second founding of the KKK. She had literally never heard of any of that history despite living in Georgia for much of her life.

Several years ago, Georgia passed a law that included a provision that says that teachers cannot teach that “the United States is a systemically racist country.” I was discussing this law and the problems of how teachers can teach the required standards, including teaching about the Dred Scott decision in 8th grade, without violating the law. The person I was talking to expressed that all history should be taught but that it was wrong to teach that the country is racist. I continued to ask questions about the history of the US. It was clear that the person both did not know anything about the Dred Scott decision (which said that the US was under no obligation to recognize citizenship or other rights of black Americans regardless of whether they were free or enslaved) or other expressly race-conscious laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act.

I give that way too long of an introduction because one of the problems of discussing race is that we have very different starting places because there is a mix of ignorance, willful blindness, and bad education. Most of the time, there is a mix of the three, but providing history to someone who is willfully blind to racial realities is unlikely to make a difference. Similarly, accusations of willful blindness when the person is simply ignorant or has had a lousy education often will create a backlash. And there is the problem of people defending their “home” because they feel like it is being attacked.

Know Your Place has good history and understands the culture, psychology and sociology of the South well. Phillips also has the theological chops to bring in theological ethics to cultural realities in a way that has grace, but tells the truth.

Early in the book this quote lays out the thesis quite directly.

“Here is the brutal truth about the people and places that I love: The dominant social imagination was, and is, a white-supremacist ideology, employed to enslave, terrorize, dehumanize, or restrict people of color, while at the same time absolving the offenders and their heirs from the guilt of any wrongdoing. These offenses were committed in order to keep people in their place and upon these shared values and stories American life was built, sustained, and defended. My social imaginary has, at its core, white supremacist foundations from which I and many others have benefitted. This is my place in our shared story.” (p31)

Henry Holcombe Tucker, Baptist minister and former president of Mercer University and the University of Georgia, posited in an 1883 editorial four key litmus tests for racial orthodoxy: First, human races are and will be forever unequal. Second, Blacks are inferior to whites. Third, intermarriage was detrimental to all races. Fourth, free social intermingling of Blacks and whites “must have its origin in sin.” (p99)

and

Southern tradition, according to Lillian Smith, taught children three lessons that connected God, the body, and segregation: God loves and punishes children. We, in return, love and fear God. Parents possess a godlike quality, enforcing God's ways, and themselves are deserving of love and fear. The second lesson concerned God's gift of the body, which was to be kept clean and healthy. Be careful how you use this gift, for God's morality is “based on this mysterious matter of entrances and exits, and Sin hovering over all doors.”

White skin was the most important feature of the body: This ‘gift' gave whites status, dictated their control over space and movement, and children learned by watching their elders. The final lesson of southern tradition was that of segregation, an extension of the other two: You always obeyed authorities—“They Who Make the Rules”—and you valued and protected your white body. Even outside of the home “Custom and Church” would continue the education through words and actions. (p107)

Hudson Baggett, editor of the Alabama Baptist, rejected the statement, saying the convention “cannot confess the guilt or sins of all other Southern Baptists. Every person must confess his own sins, if they are confessed.” He added, “many people resist the idea of collective guilt, especially if it is connected with certain things in which people felt they have no part directly or indirectly.” Baggett's words perfectly summarize the perspective that persists today among many whites, Christians included: In the absence of perceived guilt there is no reason to seek forgiveness. Sin works by blinding us to the realities of our failings, individually or collectively. (p145)

The title of the book, It Seemed Good to the Holy Spirit and To Us is taken from Acts 15:28, which is part of the letter written to the gentile Christians after the Acts 15 council. After the council, this letter summarized what had been decided. What is clear from the context is that this was not simply a decision of a single leader, or a small group of leaders, but of the broader church. The main thrust of It Seemed God to the Holy Spirit and To Us is to explore the book of Acts to get clues into how the early church practiced discernment and how other spiritual and relational practices in the church helped to facilitate that group discernment process.

Mark Love is intentionally exploring these early church practices for the purpose of helping the modern church learn from them. So this is not just a biblical studies book, but a book for the church today. Central to his thesis is that, “...Pentecost gives birth to...a community living in [a] new social arrangement of the kingdom of God–a church.” (p22)

I am going to quote a long passage from early in the book because I think it sets the stage for how he understand the role of the book.

“I am demonstrating several convictions I have about ministry in how I deal with these texts. First, ministry finds its life in a deep engagement with Scripture. Ministry emerges naturally through a long habitation with Scripture. Good ministry is an art, requiring a well-funded imagination. In shaping a theological imagination, Scriptures must be more than a tool one uses to solve puzzles. Instead the deep structures of texts—the way they move, their rhythms, the peculiar way they name things—must become deep structures for ministers as well. This deep imagination, related to Scripture, is exactly what we find in Acts 15 when James summarizes the discernment of the community in relation to the inclusion of Gentiles.” (p25)

“...our congregations are not built for discernment. We prize control and mastery, rather than surprise and pliability. If the church is a boat, we are building oars to propel the boat under our own power, rather than constructing sails to receive the empowering wind of the Holy Spirit.” (p50)

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/it-seemed-good/

Summary: A brief introduction to Orthodox Christianity.

I have said a number of times that as much as the Very Short Introduction series is uneven, I keep coming back to it because it serves a helpful niche. These are books that are about 100-125 pages, usually with good bibliographies, that give someone without much background an introduction to the important aspects of a topic. I read at least 3 or 4 a year, especially when I can find them at my library on Audible's lending library (Premium Plus catalog). This one was free for me to listen to with my Audible membership.

The book was divided into three main parts. The first was Christian history, focusing on Nicaea to the spread of Orthodoxy into Russia. The second was about Orthodoxy's theological and liturgical development. The third focused on what made Orthodoxy different from Roman Catholicism. There was a concluding section about modern challenges and developments within Orthodoxy.

Overall this is was one of the better VSI books. The author was clear about what was important, and the audience, without getting too distracted by any particular part. As with any book of this sort, there can be quibbles with what was and was not included. And I wouldn't be reading it if I were not interested in more background, so in some ways the very act of reading it is admitting that I don't have the content background to evaluate the decisions. But this isn't my first book, or my fifth, on Eastern Orthodoxy, and based on what I do know, I think this was a good introduction.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/orthodox-christianity/

Summary: A meandering memoir about the life of a monk, with lots of time devoted to his novice master, Thomas Merton.

I remember In Praise of the Useless Life coming out a few years ago and having largely positive reviews. I put it on my “to-read” list and picked it up recently because it was free to borrow from Audible if you are a premium member.

Generally, it is one of those books that I am not disappointed I read, but I also do not recommend it. The story meanders without really having much focus. Much of the short memoir is about the author's relationship with Thomas Merton. Quenon was only 17 when he came to the monastery. Merton (known in the monastery as Father Lewis) was Quenon's novice master. The stories are fine, but nothing in it drew me in.

The title “In Praise of a Useless Life” did not reflect the book. Quenon has published many poetry books and contributed to several photography books. Merton was well known but far from the only extraordinary monastery member. If anything, the memoir was about extraordinary lives, not useless ones. I get the point; a life of prayer and service is not “exciting,” but the visitor's and monks' work as writers, artists, and spiritual directors is far from useless. Maybe I was primed for a different book by the title, but it just isn't a book that grabbed me, nor one that I would put much effort into reading. If you borrowed it for free like I did, it may be worth it, but there are so many books available that I would probably get another instead of this one.

I originally published this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/in-praise-of-the-useless-life/

Summary: All people are made in God's image, which can help us see and help the marginalized.

I See You was a book that my book club read. I have some history of working with the homeless. I volunteered for four years during college with Olive Branch Mission in Chicago (at their traditional emergency shelter and food program). Later, I did a summer internship in their drug and alcohol rehab program and then worked part-time in exchange for room and board for a couple of years of grad school. And my MSW internship was with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. I have worked directly with homeless people and on homeless policy, although my professional and volunteer work has not been with the homeless for a couple of decades now.

There is always a tension in advocacy books like I See You between helping people see the systems that contribute to the problem and helping readers see individuals impacted by the problem. If you concentrate too much on the system, then it can be dehumanizing and abstract. If you concentrate too much on the individuals, you can humanize some people impacted by the problem but not see the larger structure of society that contributes to the problem. I think I See You focuses too much on the individual, which is the tendency for books oriented toward evangelicals.

I See You led to a lot of good discussions with my book group, but it is more oriented toward introducing the problem of homelessness and felt a little too simplistic in its approach to me. The main idea is summarized in this quote:

“The theory for a long time—coming not only from the right but also from some Democrats—is that poverty means that there's something wrong with your character, that you've got bad habits, you've got a bad lifestyle, you've made the wrong choices.” In this book I want to help deconstruct some of the misconceptions we have about the poor and tell you the stories of those who are experiencing poverty.

“Ignorance is defined as simply a lack of knowledge and information, but it's what we do in reaction when we are faced with our own ignorance that makes all the difference. The trap I've seen most people get into is believing the way they see the world is the only way the world exists, that what they see and experience is the truth.”

Summary: A classic coming-of-age novel about two Jewish teens (one Orthodox, one Hasidic) who meet while playing against one another in baseball and become friends.

There are so many classic novels that I have not read. So many times I read one and wonder why I have not read it previously. No one can read everything, so I have to keep slowly working through the many classic novels I have picked up over time.

There is a reason this is such a beloved novel. It is well-written, and like I mentioned with Esau McCaulley's memoir, its particularity makes it universal. Most readers are not either Hasidic or Orthodox Jews. And readers today did not grow up in WWII, or the immediate postwar era where the Holocaust was discussed and the potential nation of Israel was debated.

But while the details are different, the potential to follow our own path or follow the expectations of those around us is common. The cultural differences between two different types of Jewish experiences can help illustrate how different experiences between seemingly similar groups work. The closer you are to the inside, the more those differences seem to matter.

This is a young adult novel, but not childish in orientation. I am interested in reading the second book (according to the extras, it was initially written as a single novel but was re-written to be two separate novels before publication.) The second book, The Promise, is about the two main characters, Reuven and Danny, as adults. I also have My Name is Asher Lev, which I will read after I read The Promise.

Originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-chosen/