Adam Shields

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/

Summary: A husband's memoir about his wife's affair and how he worked to try to save the marriage. 

This is a book that I both appreciated and recommend and one that I have some concerns about. Mostly, I appreciate the honesty. I kept thinking about CS Lewis' A Grief Observed. In both books, the pain is told in real-time without the restraint that would come later. That is an enormous strength because honest pain is so uncomfortable and unusual. But it is also hard to hear. And honest pain is often a bit irrational, so you do want to shake Harrison Scott Key quite often. Do not read this book if you do not want an honest account of pain. There is a lot of grace here as well, but the content warning is for the pain.

I am also concerned with the Gary Thomas connection. I listened to How to Stay Married on audiobook (which I think is probably the best format for this book), so there may have been a citation to Gary Thomas. But if not, Key's explicit idea at the end, which was implicit often in the book, is Thomas' line, “Maybe marriage was to make us holy, not happy.” I know why people gravitate to that line. There were times when I was more attracted to that idea. Marriage over time will often (not always, but often) have periods of pain and difficulty. The problem is that God can use anything to help mature us. However, in the way Thomas presents the idea, marriage was created to be particularly painful so that we can mature. It feels to me that if we were lucky enough to be married before the fall when sin did not enter the picture, his idea would not really make sense. People can mature in many different ways. Marriage is one of those. But people who are not married can still mature, and we do not need to be married to become mature.

I can understand why Key wanted to write this book. I often need to write to process my thoughts. It is a type of therapy, but therapy writing does not necessarily need to be published. I kept thinking about kids reading this when they got older, or his kids' friends, or his wife's future friends. This is always the difficulty for memoirs. There has to be a balance between honesty and the way that honesty can be harmful to others. In the book he talks about how in exploring his own responsibility for the problems in his marriage that he came to understand that his humor was often cruel. He was not attempting to be cruel, but he was also not attempting to empathize with the person he was being cruel to. He was just trying to be funny to make other people like him. Everyone wants people to like them, but part of maturity is learning how to put the needs of others before your own. And I wonder if he will think the words are worth it in 10 or 20 years.

In a more positive sense, How to Stay Married is yet another book by a layperson that was not intended to be a “Christian” book. It is a book that tries to explain their life, and because they are Christians, it is impacted by Christian theology and practices. I think Bono's book Surrender is another good example. How to Stay Married has no issues with swearing, discussing sex openly, discussing wanting to harm people in very real ways. But also being a beautiful illustration of forgiveness and the need for a community (church). No Christian publisher would publish this book, and that is, in some ways, too bad. I also don't think many Christian publishers would publish many wonderful devote Christian writers who do not fit a certain mold. This is not a book that was written to be an instruction manual for pastors, but I think pastors would benefit from the discussion about the role of the church and the church community that is detailed here.

I also worry that people may take this too literally, taking it as instructions instead of a biographical illustration of how this one particular couple moved forward. That is more to do with bad reading than the book itself. Many people want overly clear instructions instead of grappling with how life isn't simple.

I also have a lot of concerns about stories being written too soon. I had this concern about David Brook's Second Mountain and a number of memoirs by people who are under 50. I am not going to say no memoir should be written by someone under 50, but I would be wary. I just don't think marriage and parenting books should be written by people who are too close to the advice they are giving. Stories we hear are told by the authors in the way they want to tell them. So we don't know what changes would happen if this book were told later. Will they still be married in five years, ten? I want them to be still married. Key notes that no marriage is perfect. But it would be a different book if he had written this five or ten years from now.

This is a spoiler, so stop reading if you do not want to spoil the ending.

Harrison and his wife are back together. She is working through her own traumas and problems. He is working through his traumas and problems. But together, they are trying to work to stay married. That is the story I wanted from this book, and I am glad it is the story told in the book. But God would still be God if the marriage did not reconcile. Many marriages do not. Yes, the book helpfully calls on both partners to own their own problems. And Key grapples with what would be different if there was physical abuse, addiction, or other problems in addition to what they did have. I do not want to recommend a book about a marriage being reconciled without saying explicitly that not all marriages can or should stay together.

I have a problem with Paul Miller's book because he tried to get people to tolerate short-term pain for long-term good. That isn't bad in and of itself, but he was consciously telling people to put up with abuse because he thought that that would change over time. Abuse can change. But the default for Christian marriage advice, especially to women, is to tolerate abuse to show grace so that their partner will change. And that isn't something I think is good advice on a broad scale. Shaunti Feldhahn's book on marriage says that most people who consider divorce but stay together for five years have a better marriage. But I would want more insight before I gave that advice. I do not think it should be given on a large scale.

The summary of my impressions of How to Stay Married is that I am glad that Harrison Scott Key fought for his marriage and showed grace over the long term. I also think it would have been better for him to have not been such an asshole to start with. And I want it to be more normalized for counseling and trauma therapy to be more widespread so that Lauren (his wife) could get help with her grief about her father's own affair, her mother's death, and her postpartum depression so that she was not seeking such self-destructive ways to deal with her problems. I am glad that the pain of the book is clear so that we do not gloss over the pain of divorce or affairs. Those are destructive, and sin never just impacts the individual.

How to Stay Married was well written and well narrated if you listen to it on audiobook. But I have a lot of caveats and this isn't a book I would recommend to everyone. It is a very helpful book for the right person.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/how-to-stay-married/

Summary: A historical novel of the life of Hildegard. 

I do not read enough fiction. Generally, I want to read more fiction, but I always get caught up in learning more things. Historical fiction is a mixed bag because as much as I enjoy learning things as I read fiction, I am always wary of distorting historical figures by making them modern people in an earlier setting. Inevitably, fiction necessarily distorts history in favor of making the story better.

Now that I have read Illuminations, which I enjoyed, I want to read a good biography of Hildegard. The notes said the novel tried to stay historically accurate in the timeline. However, there were some changes, and there will always be speculation because no medieval figure has a well-defined biography.

Hildegard was a mystic, an anchorite, an abbess, a writer, a composer, and a preacher. She lived from 1098 to 1179 in what is now Germany. Pope Benedict, on October 7, 2012 declared her a Doctor of the Church, a designation only given to 37 people, four of whom are women.

The novel shows the problem of an anchorite (a person who was walled into a room or rooms for the purpose of prayer with only a small space to give them food). It also raises the problem of devotion to God, which may appear to our modern eyes to be more like mental illness. There is some debate, but it appears she was walled in at the age of eight with another woman, Jutta. Jutta was considered a saint at the time, but the book largely portrays her as someone who was traumatized and attempted to use the church as a means of escape from the world.

The novel does not dismiss Hildegard's mystic visions as mental illness, migraines, or other natural causes. The corruption of the church is primarily found in others, not Hildegard. I think the book avoided hagiography, but it is hard not to veer at least a bit into that realm. When Jutta dies, Hildegard and the two others who were added to the anchorite rooms are allowed to live in the monastery without being walled in. There is a lot of speculation here, but it is in this era that Hildegard begins to write not just her visions but also science and medicine and eventually a short autobiography.

The church has always had corruption. Often, women have been used for their utility (bearing children, forging alliances through marriage, etc), not honored for their imago dei. Illuminations was worth reading because it humanized the life of a medieval saint, even if it was a bit idealized. Some people do consider Hildegard a proto-reformer, and that is hinted at but not explored deeply. She was undoubtedly disruptive in her calls for the reform of corruption. Her visions were unverifiable and went outside of the standard church authority. And her music may be the most lasting of any of it.

originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/illuminations/

Summary: Fairly standard history of Reconstruction 

I traditionally am a fan of these very short introduction books, but I have read enough of them to know that there is a range in the quality. I have not previously read a book by Allen Guelzo although I have heard good things about some of his books. That being said I do think the author choices in this series matter because there can be some very idiosyncratic approaches to the content.

I do not know if Guelzo was a great choice or not, it is beyond my pay grade, but he has been controversial. He was a very vocal critic of the 1619 Project and participated in a much-maligned American history conference at the White House while Trump was president. Guelzo was invited to participate in the 1776 Project, which was a response to the 1619 Project, but did not. (No historian participated.) Guelzo is also a senior fellow at the controversial Clairmont Institute. Guelzo taught at Eastern University for years, not known for its conservatism, and one of the two reviews on Amazon of the book decries it as “woke history.”

I had a couple of red flags, first, he calls out David Blight (insinuated) and Eric Foner (by name) as part of a new movement that distorts the Civil War and reconstruction. Personally, I have found both historians very helpful, and my own approach is influenced by them. But it is not clear to me in this book, what exactly he opposes, because in this brief presentation, it seems to mostly agree. TheBligh disagreement is mostly in framing.

Foner book on reconstruction is fairly dominant at this point. And his book on the Reconstruction constitutional amendments I thought was also helpful. The section in this book on the forces of reform within the three main branches of government I thought was a helpful addition because nothing is ever simple. Part of the reality of reconstruction is that it was a fight between the three branches of government about what their post-Civil War roles should be. As Guelzo notes, many brief histories talk about the fight between the executive and legislative branches about who should control reconstruction, but the courts also played a signficant role, and largely it was one that limited the government power, which by default, hindered reconstitution.

The summary of the book is that reconstruction had many goals, but really only accomplished two of them. First, it reunited the country after the Civil War. Blight's contention was that the reunification was done at the cost of Black civil rights. Guelzo has a more positive framing and talks about how other civil wars both lasted longer and had a longer history than the US Civil War. He also emphasizes that a second civil war did not break out and that it was a genuine concern that did not happen. And second, the reconstruction amendments changed the understanding of citizenship. The 14th Amendment created a unified understanding of citizenship and equal protection for former slaves, and the 15th established voting rights for African Americans (males).

Mostly, I think this was a fairly standard reconstruction presentation. It was not an entire failure as it was often presented in the past. And it was not a complete success; the movement into Jim Crow and the role of a culture of white superiority, along with a lack of assistance in moving the formerly enslaved into land ownership and independence, still has implications today.

Republicans did have a problem with corruption, and the weakened Democratic Party meant that the corruption was not dealt with promptly. The courts did limit legislative ability to legally enact reforms like the 1876 Civil Rights Law, which would have done something to help change culture.

I picked this up primarily because it was free with my audible membership. Foner's Second Founding is also free if you have a premium membership on audible. I think both are worth reading.

This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/reconstruction-2/

Summary: An exploration of what it means to “become like little children.”

Faith Like a Child was the most recent of the Renovaré book club selections. I have followed along with the book club for the past few years. I appreciate the ability to have small groups that meet in person or online or to participate in an online message board. Or just just listen to the podcasts and read the articles. Generally, I just listen to the podcasts and read the articles because I already participate in an in-person and an online book group, and I allow the Renovare books to fill in as I have time. I previously read the excellent book by Borgo on spiritual direction to children.

I am probably exactly the type of person who needs to read Faith Like a Child. I am overly serious, very interested in acquiring knowledge, not particularly interested in play, and was routinely told I was mature for my age as a child. It is not that I think that play is bad, but it tends to be something I have to work on.

Borgo and I are not too far apart in age, but her children are adults, and mine were late in life and so are still in mid-elementary school. There are definitely things that you learn as a parent about how to perceive the world through the eyes of a child. Faith Like a Child has many stories of parenting and working with children. It has many stories of the struggle to enjoy life or see the world with eyes of wonder.

It also assumes that the work to live well as a Christian who “becomes like a little child” will need practice. There are many recommended activities and books at the end of every chapter. As a spiritual director, one of the things I need to do is read books and try practices that don't feel like they are for me. Because not every practice is for every person. However, as a spiritual director, I need some familiarity with the practices and spiritual activities that may be helpful for people who are not me. Two things that came up in spiritual direction sessions this past month or so were originally suggested in Faith Like a Child.

That being said, this book felt a bit off for me, and I am not entirely sure why. I can see the benefit of embracing wonder, play, rest, and many other things suggested here, but I have been very oriented toward maturity lately. One of my contentions is that evangelicalism has embraced pragmatic efficiency and “results” more than spiritual and emotional maturity. Maturity does take work. In some ways, I think that part of what Borgo is calling us to avoid the false dichotomy of “child-like” and immaturity. We can be emotionally and spiritually mature Christians and still play and enjoy life. And the false maturity of appearing to be above play and laughter is a rejection of real maturity. There is a false piety that rejects play as being too worldly and assumes spiritual things are serious.

I agree with all of the book's main contentions. And I think, especially as someone who finds play a bit hard, I think I need to hear the message of the book. But still, it just didn't hit me like I wanted it to, and I might have abandoned it if it was not part of a book club. Overall, I think the problem was probably me, not the book, but it did not grab me.


This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/faith-like-a-child/

Summary: Part memoir, part encouragement for emotionally healthy activism, part grace for the journey.

I have been blogging through my reading for about fifteen years now. One of the things I still am uncomfortable doing is writing about books where I have more than a passing acquaintance with the author. I do not want to oversell my relationship with Ally Henny, but I volunteered on a project she led for years. I am part of a group chat that, while it was well established before Covid, became part of my covid lifeline. I read some early portions of I Won't Shut Up, and I am mentioned in the acknowledgments. But we have never met in person (like many social media acquaintances), and I don't want to pretend we are best buds. It is this type of relationship that makes it hard to write, not because I don't like the book (I really do like and recommend the book), but because I am trying to figure out how to write about a book I like while acknowledging the reality of my bias is just a tricky balance to do well.

The best I can do is describe why I Won't Shut Up adds to and differs from the many memoir-ish books about racial issues in the US. First, I think that her writing as a Black woman who grew up and has primarily lived in the rural Midwest is something that no other books I have read has centered. Setting and context matter, and different backgrounds lead to different insights.

Second, there is a thread of grace throughout the book that is helpful for books like this. She has grace for herself and the ways she has grown over time. She has grace for those who have harmed her and those around her. And she has grace for the readers she is trying to encourage to grow. That doesn't mean that she ignores the harm, but that she has grace for the potential for change. She stayed with a church for a long time, which was harmful. She gave the benefit of the doubt and kept trying to help that church, and particularly the pastor of that church, see areas of weakness. But as she concludes, leaving sometimes is necessary. And when she eventually leaves that church, she has grace for the grief that she and her family feels.

The third aspect that I commend, which may not be quite as unique, is that Ally Henny frames this book around discovering her voice and how that voice is essential to moving forward as a country. Other books like Raise Your Voice: Why We Stay Silent and How to Speak Up by Kathy Khang and I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown both talk about how the voice (metaphorically and in reality) is essential to truth-telling. And without truth-telling, there can be no way forward. This is why, so often, it is Black and other minority women who are marginalized for speaking out about oppression.

When it was available I pre-ordered the Kindle Edition. But I knew as soon as she announced it that I would primarily listen to the audiobook because the theme of her voice would carry through more clearly in the audiobook. Having read some early drafts of the chapters, I knew there were accounts of spiritual harm. I don't want to equate anything in this book to what I have experienced, but I have been grieving leaving my own church, and I was reluctant to read the whole book when it came out. This book is consciously written for Black women, but the particularity of it makes it helpful to understand experiences that I do not have. I hope that I am not reading in an unhelpful “white gaze” type of way but in a way that honors the fact that I have something to learn.

Several of the characters are not fully named. One of those is “Pastor____.” As a fellow white male, one of the problems of Pastor___ is that he seems not to understand that he, too, has something to learn from those around him, particularly Black women. Dr Willie Jennings' book After Whiteness is particularly about theological education and how it has traditionally taught pastors to be “self-sufficient masters of educational knowledge.” Pastors who always understand their role to be the leader and expert have no place in their understanding of how to learn from others. I have no idea of the educational background of Pastor__, but I do understand the impulse to want to master the knowledge and tasks around me.There is grace in the book for slow learners. But part of what I think is important (as a 50-something-year-old white man) is that one of the most important things we can do for our legacy is to orient our lives to dealing with our own baggage and, at the same time, turning over our need to be in charge because the way forward is only through repentance and empowerment of others. Overwhelmingly, multi-ethnic churches, as the one which was led by Pastor__ are led by white men. According to research by Barna and Michael Emerson, roughly 70% of all multi-ethnic churches are led by white men. While the number of churches that can be classified as multiethnic has roughly doubled since Divided by Faith came out, the number of white men leading multi-ethnic churches is increasing, not decreasing. And while there are pastors who are doing well leading multiethnic churches, many people I know, have left those white-led multi-ethnic churches because of the harm they have felt there. (Korie Edwards also has written well about this.)

It was Ally who started the #LeaveLoud movement. No church is perfect, but some churches are definitely less perfect than others. Part of this less perfect reality is that the very people who need to be leading because of their orientation toward healing and harm mitigation, are some of the people who are least likely to be followed. Bias toward what we think of as leaders, means that white people tend to want to have white leadership. And a lot of Black or other people of color know that and end up in white-led multi-ethnic churches. There are no simple answers here, but that orientation is going to have to change. I Won't Shut Up is part of that movement toward change.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/i-wont-shut-up/

Summary: An attempt at devising a non-religious ethical system.

Beyond Religion is a book I would not have picked up on my own. But it was the next book chosen for a book club I am in, and the group thought it was worthwhile when it was chosen. As I have said before, book clubs are helpful to push your boundaries and to give you alternative perspectives. However, book clubs moderate interest in books, and I am not always thrilled by that result. Generally (and this may be my personality more than a universal reality), I like books I love less after a book club discussion. This seems to be because those other perspectives give me insight into why others do not like the book as much as I did. I do want that perspective because I learn about my blind spots. Sometimes, I am reluctant to encourage groups to read books I love.

At the same time, I also like books more that would otherwise hate because people's perspectives do the inverse to show me how my biases against a book may not have taken other perspectives into account.

That being said, the group did not like Beyond Religion as much at the end as they did going in. Most of the group had not read Beyond Religion before the discussion, but a couple had. This group is made up primarily of retirement-age women, mostly, but not all of whom are Catholic. Almost all of them have at least some children who are alienated from the Catholic Church or Christianity more broadly. Part of the book's appeal was to see how the Dalai Lama used the language of ethics to communicate with those children (or others) in terms that were not primarily Christian.

The problem with the book is that it primarily operates in terms of universal, theoretical, and not particular. The theory is necessary in books like this, but few illustrations or particulars made the book feel cold, distant, and abstract. In the last couple of chapters, there were multiple discussions of emotions and stress and suffering, and the lack of illustration of those ideas meant that either it felt like a textbook or it felt like the authors (there was a co-author) were not able to relate to the day-to-day lives of the reader.

Because the book group is made up of almost entirely women, the male bias was more noticeable to me because in discussions of emotions like anger or in calls to have understanding (grace) for others, there was no acknowledgment of how the gendered nature of anger and submission were present for almost everyone in the room. I do not want to break the privacy of the discussion, but several in the room are widows, and more than one spoke about their marriages in painful terms. And ideas like submitting to situations that cannot be changed felt like calls to tolerate abuse. In most cases, there was language about working for justice and suffering not having value in and of itself. But those limiting statements often felt inadequate to me.

There were helpful areas in the book. But like many self-help books, the people who need the self-help book are not those who tend to pick them up. People who are good at investigating their interiority can benefit from encouragement, but those who are not good at investigating their interior life also matter. It calls for everyone to investigate their interior life, and orienting efforts toward the individual interior may be inadequate to handle systemic ethical problems.

Martin Luther King Jr's well-known quote is relevant.

“It may be true that morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. It maybe true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, religion and education will have to do that, but it can restrain him from lynching me.”

Summary: A brief exploration of the seasons of Lent and its purpose and practice. 

Esau McCaulley's book on Lent came out a year ago, but I did not have time to read it during Lent last year, so I held onto it to read during Lent this year. In the meantime, I have started attending an Episcopal church. I have been theologically moving from my Baptist roots to an Anglican/Episcopal theology for the past ten years or so.

I will not lay out my whole reasoning here, but there are three main reasons for moving toward an Anglican understanding. Practically, I know that no ecclesiastical system is perfect. Abuse and corruption can (and do) happen in every system. However, I have been increasingly convinced that our ecclesiology needs structure within it to handle sin within the church. Within the US Episcopal church and the ANCA, there have been very public breakdowns of that system, and they have not worked as they should have. I lament the breakdown, and I think reforms need to be made and enforced, but within the SBC, the discussion has to start at a different place: whether or not the denomination should have structures to hold churches accountable for sin. I would theologically and practically rather start with the assumption that the church broadly should hold local churches and local pastors/Christians accountable for sin than throw up our hands and say we have no tools to deal with the problems plaguing many churches.

Second, I have been increasingly convinced that Baptist theology, or at least the streams that I have moved in, undervalued sacraments. Baptism was held up as necessary, but only one form of baptism. My church in Chicago, where I was a deacon, refused to admit Christians to membership if they had not been baptized as an adult. Several people opposed being baptized again as an adult because they had been baptized as an infant and did not believe that they should reject their previous baptism. I understand this is common in many Baptist churches, but I reject this as a methodological requirement that refuses to recognize the church's universality.

But that church and, even more so, the church I attended for years after moving to Georgia practically marginalized communion as a sacrament. In my previous Georgia church, with one exception in the nearly two decades I attended, there was never communion served during a Sunday morning service. Communion was only served during special weeknight services that were roughly quarterly. I do not think I participated in more than 10-15 communion services at that church. The rationalization is that the Sunday services were oriented toward evangelism and that they were taking seriously the idea that communion was for Christians. This was a perfect example of good intent (evangelism), which produced a distortion of the actual purpose of the church. A church that did not provide the sacraments to Christians because of its orientation toward non-Christians showed how the purpose of the church was distorted.

Most directly for this book, James KA Smith and others have convinced me that liturgy matters to the practice of Christianity. I do morning and evening prayer almost every day. I now participate in a eucharist service almost every week. While I don't know the liturgy as well as I want to, practicing it by being a part of a liturgical community and reading books like this one help me to understand more deeply what the details of the liturgy mean. This series (Fullness of Time) has five current books (Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.) I read Christmas during Christmas. I hope to read the rest over the next year as the seasons come around. This is best summed up in the quote, “Ritual is both a means of spiritual formation (we learn through repetition) and an encounter (God meets us in the act of worship and praise in the liturgy).”

According to McCaulley, “Lent came to be about three things: the preparation of new converts for baptism, the reconciliation of those estranged from the church, and a general call for the whole church to repent and renew its commitment to Jesus.” The practice of Lent varies across time and denominations, but it has many common features. McCaulley (and the rest of the series' authors) is in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition and orients his description of Lent to that tradition. 

He starts by describing the purpose and history of Lent and then discusses Ash Wednesday, the other rituals of Lent, the prayers and scriptures of Lent, and Holy Week. I do not know how to talk about the book better than several quotes. That isn't my preferred way to write about books, but it is the best way here.

Lent is not about how angry God is with us for our sins. It is about a God who intervenes on our behalf to rescue us from our sins. This is why the collect for Lent in the Anglican tradition begins with these words: “Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent.” The focus on penitence, fasting, and confession can lead us to believe that God needs to be appeased by us or that he will accept only a groveling and miserable humanity. Behind that false belief is the idea that a life of sin is better than life with God. The only downside is that sin brings judgment. In this view, the Christian is one who has reluctantly given up their sins to avoid judgment. But this is not so. Life with God contains the good, the true, and the beautiful. God's call to repentance is a call to give up those things that can bring only death. Ash Wednesday calls us to remember death, and by calling us to remember death it calls us to remember what causes death: sin and rebellion. By forcing us to remember our sin, it helps us realize that, at bottom, our sins are lies about the true source of joy. (Kindle Location 189)



Lent, then, is about facing our failures. But we do not encounter a God who begrudgingly forgives our sins despite his better judgment. The apostle Paul says God is “rich in mercy” (Ephesians 2:4). (Kindle Location 213)



Confession isn't about going to the priest to obtain a forgiveness not otherwise available. It is about God working through clergy to help us understand the forgiveness he offers and to discern together the best way to live our lives before God. We cannot be healed of what we refuse to acknowledge. So we examine ourselves in light of God's word for the sake of our healing and restoration. (Kindle Location 469)



“O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from thy ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangable truth of thy Word, Jesus Christ they Son; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever Amen”

This prayer reminds us that God's greatest glory comes not in the crushing of all opposition or immediate destruction of the disobedient. God is glorified through his mercy. To read the Bible well is to become acquainted with God's patience. (Kindle Location 635)

Summary: Well-constructed argument that the purpose of the church has been lost, but can be regained again.

I was somewhat reluctant to pick up The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory because I was unsure what more I could learn about Christian Nationalism and extremism, and because I have read so widely in the recent literature. But I saw a copy at my library, and several people I trust have recommended it. I related to his opening because I am a pastor's child who often does not understand the faith of many people who call themselves Christians.  While it was well-written and expertly crafted, I did not find the book's first half all that engaging because I knew the stories already. There is value in compiling all of it together in a single book for those who have not been paying attention. But it is tough for me to trust that people who haven't been paying attention will be interested in this.

One of the book's strengths is that Alberta spends a lot of time interviewing people and allowing them to speak in their own words about their motivations and strategies. Several people commented in reviews or podcasts with Alberta about how surprised they were that so many people spoke on the record. I agree that allowing people to speak for themselves has real value. Quite often, Alberta gives context to those interviews because the subjects rarely explore their complicity in creating extremism within the church. At the same time, this is one of my biggest frustrations with the book because, as much context as Alberta gives, he often frames the conversation sympathetically.

For instance, when he interviews Stephen Strang in Branson, MI, at a Rewaken American event, Alberta talks about how uncomfortable Strang was with his surroundings. However, Alberta had previously discussed Charisma media and the magazine's role in spreading misleading information. Strang is the owner and publisher of Charisma, not someone incidental to the world. Strang signed up Mark Driscoll to a book contract and speaking tour after he was fired from Mars Hill. Strang wrote a book in 2020 defending Trump (God, Trump, and the 2020 Election: Why He Must Win and What's at Stake for Christians if He Loses) and a previous spiritual biography of Trump and four other books that were directly or indirectly about Trump. (Those books had introductions from Eric Metaxas, Jerry Falwell Jr, Mike Lindell, Benny Hinn, Mike Huckabee, and Lori Bakker.)

Alberta reports that Strang spoke nostalgically about the earlier fundamentalism of his upbringing. Strang also claimed he wasn't advocating that Trump run for president in 2024 (this interview was in 2022). Strang complained about “woke” Russ Moore and Christianity Today as an organization. He claims that Trump made a profession of faith during his presidency and “was a changed man.” Alberta did press back against some of these things during the interview. And Alberta did mention the books and other previous support of Trump. But detailing the background necessary to get a complete picture of the subjects interviewed in the book would double the page count.

There is a significant running theme throughout the book that the real problem isn't the extremists (who are clear about their positions) but the moderates who do not find the behaviors and comments of the extremists disqualifying. Strang is an example of that. He claims to be a moderate who was uncomfortable with the extremists who were present at the rally he was interviewed after. But Strangs' company was the main sponsor of the Reawaken America Tour; if he could not address the extremism, who did? Strang expressed discomfort but demonstrated that there was nothing that Trump (or others) could do that was too far to stop his support.

One of the most encouraging moments of the book was the discussion of the Faith Angle Forum in France, where Miroslav Volf and Cyril Hovorun discussed nationalism in the context of their former homes of Yugoslavia and Russia/Ukraine. This is discussed well in a Faith Angle podcast interview with Alberta by Michael Wear. What is encouraging about that section is that it feels like truth is being approached. But the accounts of true believers and what Alberta regularly refers to as grifters are nothing except cynicism or incredulity inducing.

Alberta suggests that in his interview with Greg Locke, Locke knew he had gone too far, admitted it, and pledged to do better and concentrate on the gospel. But then Alberta would point out that Locke continued emphasizing politics and ignoring the truth. In the case of the pastor near his home church who trafficked conspiracy theories, based on the new growth from those conspiracy theories, the church grew and bought a new property and planned a new building. This meant that even if the pastor recognized his false conspiracy theories, he knew they would go elsewhere if he didn't give the people what they wanted.

In my previous church, I called on church leadership (and had many conversations with various staff) to distance themselves from Marjorie Taylor Greene (who claimed to attend the church but had not attended in nearly a decade when she ran for office). The staff and leadership were concerned with the message any distancing would send. I told the leader of my church site (a multi-site congregation) that regardless of whether the church leadership wanted it, the choice was to alienate people who were attracted to MTG or people whom MTG repulsed. He agreed it was a risk, but the church leadership hoped the problem would disappear. (I do not want to suggest these are all related, but in a relatively short period, a significant number of site pastors and senior leadership of the seven church sites left, including the one I spoke to.)

About a year after that conversation, the church's senior pastor spoke to the Georgia House as the “chaplain for the day.” In his brief remarks, he called on the legislators to put the good of the state before their political viability. This was a nice line, but given that I am sure many legislators knew that he has refused to speak out about MTG, his credibility was lacking. He ended the talk by explicitly citing Letter From a Birmingham Jail as justification for maintaining his moderate position “because King was attacked on all sides.” At this point, I knew that my previous 15 years of membership and advocacy of the church to move toward justice (and not moderation) had been wasted.

Much of the book's story is about how moderates who refuse to speak out against extremism end up encouraging it. This fits with my personal experience. As much as I know that extremism exists in a variety of areas, the extremism of the White evangelical church is political extremism that seems to have forgotten who Jesus is.

Part three of the book starts to tell the story of those who have tried a different way. It is about churches, often a fraction of their former size—people who have lost jobs and suffered the consequences. Alberta himself hinted at this in the book's opening. He told the truth in his previous reporting, and people yelled at him during the receiving line at his father's funeral. Again, I know many people who have lost jobs, left churches and faced relational conflicts. I texted a friend just last week who said he regularly has nightmares about his church experience. And he isn't the only one that has told me that.

Part three opens with Brian Zahnd, an author I have followed for years. That section, again, gave more context to Strang because Strang published several of Zahnd's books and showed that, at least in part, Strang was well aware of the problems of a capitalistic and political church. Later profiles of David French, Curtis Chang, Dan Darling, Rachel Denhollener, and others were not surprising to me; I know their stories. And while I am not as conservative as most of these people, I want them to succeed in their work.

Much of the third section is about people who are opposing sexual abuse in the church. To tell that story, Alberta has to tell the story of the sexual abusers. One of the stories told is of Ravi Zacharias. Again, I know that there is a limited page count. This is already a long book. But as he frames Zacharis' story, he talks about how many people were praising him when he died (there were) but that the story was different a year later when accusations came out. Again, people who were paying attention knew there were accusations before he died. And it was well known he had fabricated degrees, previous positions, and other background details. But the organization, and general Christian community, did not hold him accountable for those lies. He personally admitted to falsifying those degrees and positions in 2017 but suffered no real consequences.

Later, Alberta talks about how both he and the journalist Julie Roys were just unwilling to believe the accusations against Zacharias before his death, even though they were journalists and well aware of widespread abuse in other cases that made the accusations against Zacharias credible. This more extended section on Roys and Denhollander gets into Roys' work on problems around John MacArthur, and again, I have the same complaint. As much as Alberta is carefully crafting a broadly correct argument, there are so many more details that moderates have ignored. He notes that MacArthur is “too big to fail.” But you do not have to get to the details shared here to see that MacArthur was problematic long before recent issues. The racial issues, the financial self-dealing, MacArthur and his staff's support of far-right “discernment bloggers” perpetuating conspiracy theories should have been disqualifying. But they were not. And all of those were details that were not significant enough even to be included in the book.

Literally, nothing in this book surprised me. I was aware of almost everything and knew about most of the characters. And when I didn't know specific characters, I knew others who had played similar roles. However, the stories here just won't be enough to move anyone who has not been previously moved.

I want to commend his writing, his skill in building his case over time, and his skill as an interviewer and journalist. I had read or listened to a number of interviews and reviews before reading The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory. The subtlety of not including any women interviews until the third section is both an incisive critique of the evangelical world and a good way of pointing out that women primarily lead the way forward. But that is part of the problem; I do not think the critique goes far enough.

It is clear that the extremism is being empowered by the moderates who do not find the extremism disqualifying. But the moderates in most of these cases are quite conservative. There is an exploration of how corruption is a natural result of sin. And Alberta is quite clear that he thinks the only way forward is to expose that corruption. However, the exploration of how theology empowers corruption is barely touched on. Alberta is a journalist, not a theologian, and I do not want to complain about the lack in an already lengthy book. Still, that lack means that many reformers profiled are exposing sin but not necessarily moving toward more healthy systems. No church system is perfect. Abuse and corruption can be found in all areas of the church and the secular world. However, some streams of Christianity are more open to addressing how theology and practices influence corruption. And this is an area where this book would have benefited from more time.

He starts to address this in the epilogue, but mostly, it explores the results of embracing extremism more than the ways that extremism is empowered theologically.

This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-kingdom-the-power-and-the-glory/