Finding Holy in the Suburbs

Short Review: I am glad that Christians are more carefully thinking about space and geography in relationship to our faith. We are Christians in a space, not just abstractly. Evangelicals started thinking more about being Christians in cities in 1990s and 2000s and people like Wendell Berry have been long writing about being Christians in rural areas, although that has had a resurgence as well.

It has been easy to bash the suburbs as Christians. The suburbs are about ease and wealth and hiding from your neighbors. But more importantly the Suburbs are not as cool as being Christian in the city and don't have the pastoral settings of rural areas and are not foreign lands. But Ashley Hales is thinking clearly about what the suburbs mean to how we are Christians, both positively and negatively.

In some ways this is an introduction to the concept of being Christian in a space. Because I have read pretty extensively about these sorts of ideas from an urban perspective this did feel fairly introductory to me in many areas. But not all. Hales handles that balance between the positives and negatives better than many space oriented books I have read.

For me the spiritual disciplines that are included in each chapter to minimize the negatives and encourage the positives was something that was missing in most other explorations of Christianity and space that I have read.

My full review, about 1000 words is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/finding-holy-in-the-suburbs/