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adamrshields's reviews
1902 reviews
I Won't Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to Silence You by Ally Henny
4.5
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/
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/
Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World by Dalai Lama XIV
From nearly the start of the book, I suspected that Miroslav Volf's book Flourishing may have been written in direct response to Beyond Religion. Flourishing took an opposite approach to Beyond Religion. Where Beyond Religion tried to create a non-religious ethical system to work in a pluralistic world, Flourishing attempted to call religious people to return to their religious roots to understand how to work together with others to live out their religious lives in a pluralistic world. Both of those books were written before the current discussion around Christian Nationalism, but both addressed the reality of pluralism because they understood the tension of withdrawing from pluralism.
Personally, I think Volf's approach is better, not just because of my personality and orientation, but objectively because making people move toward an entirely new ethical system is harder than returning to one that are aware of. In hindsight, I undervalued Volf's contributions because I valued both my religious background and pluralism. However, it is now clear that many others do not. That being said, the group discussion oriented me toward the ways that pain and trauma from the religious communities of your origin may close off that path for many. Especially in the wake of revelations of sexual and spiritual abuse being such a widespread reality, some version of the thesis of Beyond Religion is probably necessary. I don't think that this version of it is good enough to be helpful.
this was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/beyond-religion/
2.75
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.
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."
From nearly the start of the book, I suspected that Miroslav Volf's book Flourishing may have been written in direct response to Beyond Religion. Flourishing took an opposite approach to Beyond Religion. Where Beyond Religion tried to create a non-religious ethical system to work in a pluralistic world, Flourishing attempted to call religious people to return to their religious roots to understand how to work together with others to live out their religious lives in a pluralistic world. Both of those books were written before the current discussion around Christian Nationalism, but both addressed the reality of pluralism because they understood the tension of withdrawing from pluralism.
Personally, I think Volf's approach is better, not just because of my personality and orientation, but objectively because making people move toward an entirely new ethical system is harder than returning to one that are aware of. In hindsight, I undervalued Volf's contributions because I valued both my religious background and pluralism. However, it is now clear that many others do not. That being said, the group discussion oriented me toward the ways that pain and trauma from the religious communities of your origin may close off that path for many. Especially in the wake of revelations of sexual and spiritual abuse being such a widespread reality, some version of the thesis of Beyond Religion is probably necessary. I don't think that this version of it is good enough to be helpful.
this was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/beyond-religion/
Praying with Discernment: Moving from Sincerity to Spirituality by Stephen Swihart
I know that the point is that God cared about even the small things, such as being dry, so that they could share their testimony at church. But that type of prayer seems to focus on our own lack of planning rather than God's care for us. Wearing a raincoat or using an umbrella also would have kept everyone dry.
Overall, I do not recommend this book if you are interested in discernment. As with my comments on Dallas Willard's book on spiritual knowledge, I am left with no tools to address whether or not the prayer advocated for here is "good prayer." Discernment in this book is mostly pragmatic. The prayers that are answered are from God; the prayers that are not answered are not from God, to some extent that is helpful. There are clear examples of the author giving illustrations about unanswered prayer being what God wants.
The author says that we can only pray in ways consistent with scripture. A helpful section points out that scripture's promises are not universal promises.
Overall, I am very mixed on the advice on how to gain discernment. I agree that we should pray for discernment. We should know our bibles and seek the advice of others. But he says we should only pray prayers that "have the endorsement of scripture." That does not seem to be true of scripture itself. By that, I don't mean that we should pray for things that are contrary to scripture (he has the example of praying to be allowed to pursue an affair.) What I do mean is that he seems to mean by endorsement of scripture, is that we should only pray in similar ways to the way that people have prayed in scripture. My reading of scripture is that God seems to often "do a new thing" and that if we only do what has been done in scripture, we are limiting God.
The author of this would benefit from studying Ignatius. I am on the record as saying I do not think that Ignatius is perfect in his understanding of discernment, but Ignatius believes that God has given us emotion and feelings and that one of the ways that God speaks to us is through "consolation and desolation." This book tends to repress feelings and always assumes God asks us to do the hard thing. The modern evangelical distrust of emotion I think is a gnostic tendency to overly spiritualize our rational faculty. Ignatius always wanted to test our emotions and feelings to see if they were from God, but my concern is that in being overly rationalistic, we can tend to believe that our rational response is from God without the type of testing that Ignatius would expect us to do with either emotion or rational thought.
There is a good discussion about presumption in prayer. But again, while we do want to seek God's will, resistance to exploring what we want in the name of seeking after God, can leave us unable to understand what we want and how that desire may or may not be influenced by sin. Some of the ability to name what we want in a given situation can help in the process of discernment.
Another concern that I have with the book is its theology. This vignette I think illustrates the problem:
The pastor in this story not only was not being pastoral, but he was telling her a false theology because he was attributing evil to God. God does not ordain evil. I do not want to get distracted by the problem of evil, but what I think we can say is that while we may not be able to say exactly why God allows something to happen, we can say that God does not ordain evil. A better response to that mother was that God was with her son. That is a true statement. We cannot know why things happen in this life. We can speculate, but to claim to know is to claim a type of transendent insight we do not have acces to.
As I read the book, I was confident that the author would be a Trump supporter. I did not necessarily a strong supporter, but one that would have initially held his nose and voted for Trump against Clinton. And then grew to appreciate Trump more over time. I searched for the author, but I could not find anything about his experience in ministry or education. I did find his personal Facebook page. And while it is very rarely updated, several of the posts that were there were in support of Trump.
In the comments of one, he was directly challenged by a commenter about how he could justify supporting Trump. I am not trying to claim that no one with "good discernment" could support Trump. But in responding to the comment, the response was purely pragmatic and not rooted in a spiritual sense of discernment. And that is exactly the problem with discernment that does not have some sense of evaluation built into it. If it is purely a spiritual knowledge that can't be challenged, it is of limited value in helping churches discern a path forward together.
Originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/praying-with-discernment/
2.5
Summary: The way to pray better is to ask the holy spirit to give you the words.
I have been reading a wide range of books about discernment. While I am broadly interested in prayer, my focus in reading Praying With Discernment was on the discernment part, not the prayer part. I knew this was a self-published book and would likely disagree with much of it. I want to ensure I am not ignoring ideas about discernment because they come from streams of Christianity I am less attracted to.
This book is filled with stories of miracles. I have read many similar stories of praying for miracles and seeing them come to pass. I have personally seen some of those miracles, and I have, at times, been very attracted to the power of prayer shown in this book. I have listened to preachers advocate for the expression of power in prayer as a means of evangelism. But I have also watched the distorting effect of prayer when discernment seems to get lost.
I am also put off by some of the frivolousness of some of the prayers. This next story is an example.
I have been reading a wide range of books about discernment. While I am broadly interested in prayer, my focus in reading Praying With Discernment was on the discernment part, not the prayer part. I knew this was a self-published book and would likely disagree with much of it. I want to ensure I am not ignoring ideas about discernment because they come from streams of Christianity I am less attracted to.
This book is filled with stories of miracles. I have read many similar stories of praying for miracles and seeing them come to pass. I have personally seen some of those miracles, and I have, at times, been very attracted to the power of prayer shown in this book. I have listened to preachers advocate for the expression of power in prayer as a means of evangelism. But I have also watched the distorting effect of prayer when discernment seems to get lost.
I am also put off by some of the frivolousness of some of the prayers. This next story is an example.
"On another occasion, this friend took a small group with him to share their testimonies at a church. Before they arrived at their destination, they stopped for breakfast. Shortly after entering the restaurant the sky turned dark and it began to rain. In fact, it rained so hard that it would be impossible for any of them to get to the car without becoming completely drenched. When it was time to leave, my friend calmly and confidently said, “It will stop raining when we reach the front door. Let’s go.” Everyone got up and went to the front door. The instant the first person touched the door it stopped raining! Everyone got in the car without a drop of rain falling on them."
I know that the point is that God cared about even the small things, such as being dry, so that they could share their testimony at church. But that type of prayer seems to focus on our own lack of planning rather than God's care for us. Wearing a raincoat or using an umbrella also would have kept everyone dry.
Overall, I do not recommend this book if you are interested in discernment. As with my comments on Dallas Willard's book on spiritual knowledge, I am left with no tools to address whether or not the prayer advocated for here is "good prayer." Discernment in this book is mostly pragmatic. The prayers that are answered are from God; the prayers that are not answered are not from God, to some extent that is helpful. There are clear examples of the author giving illustrations about unanswered prayer being what God wants.
The author says that we can only pray in ways consistent with scripture. A helpful section points out that scripture's promises are not universal promises.
"You Must Recognize There are Two Types of Promises. In broad terms, there are promises you can and promises you cannot claim. For example, some of God’s promises are restricted to a certain party (like Joshua’s guarantee of success wherever he went –– Josh. 1:7-8) or to a specific period of time (like Israel’s promise to be saved from all her enemies after the second coming of Christ (Zech. 14:16-21). You cannot merely find a promise in the Bible and make it your own. You must first be sure that it is not already designated for someone else."
Overall, I am very mixed on the advice on how to gain discernment. I agree that we should pray for discernment. We should know our bibles and seek the advice of others. But he says we should only pray prayers that "have the endorsement of scripture." That does not seem to be true of scripture itself. By that, I don't mean that we should pray for things that are contrary to scripture (he has the example of praying to be allowed to pursue an affair.) What I do mean is that he seems to mean by endorsement of scripture, is that we should only pray in similar ways to the way that people have prayed in scripture. My reading of scripture is that God seems to often "do a new thing" and that if we only do what has been done in scripture, we are limiting God.
The author of this would benefit from studying Ignatius. I am on the record as saying I do not think that Ignatius is perfect in his understanding of discernment, but Ignatius believes that God has given us emotion and feelings and that one of the ways that God speaks to us is through "consolation and desolation." This book tends to repress feelings and always assumes God asks us to do the hard thing. The modern evangelical distrust of emotion I think is a gnostic tendency to overly spiritualize our rational faculty. Ignatius always wanted to test our emotions and feelings to see if they were from God, but my concern is that in being overly rationalistic, we can tend to believe that our rational response is from God without the type of testing that Ignatius would expect us to do with either emotion or rational thought.
There is a good discussion about presumption in prayer. But again, while we do want to seek God's will, resistance to exploring what we want in the name of seeking after God, can leave us unable to understand what we want and how that desire may or may not be influenced by sin. Some of the ability to name what we want in a given situation can help in the process of discernment.
Another concern that I have with the book is its theology. This vignette I think illustrates the problem:
"A distraught mother refused to be comforted when she learned that her son was involved in a deadly accident. When the pastor visited her, she lashed out at him and shouted, “Where was your God when my son was killed?!” The pastor wisely answered her question: “He was at the same place when His own Son was killed . . . He was on the Throne.” There are no genuine accidents, not as long as God is seated on His Throne!"
The pastor in this story not only was not being pastoral, but he was telling her a false theology because he was attributing evil to God. God does not ordain evil. I do not want to get distracted by the problem of evil, but what I think we can say is that while we may not be able to say exactly why God allows something to happen, we can say that God does not ordain evil. A better response to that mother was that God was with her son. That is a true statement. We cannot know why things happen in this life. We can speculate, but to claim to know is to claim a type of transendent insight we do not have acces to.
As I read the book, I was confident that the author would be a Trump supporter. I did not necessarily a strong supporter, but one that would have initially held his nose and voted for Trump against Clinton. And then grew to appreciate Trump more over time. I searched for the author, but I could not find anything about his experience in ministry or education. I did find his personal Facebook page. And while it is very rarely updated, several of the posts that were there were in support of Trump.
In the comments of one, he was directly challenged by a commenter about how he could justify supporting Trump. I am not trying to claim that no one with "good discernment" could support Trump. But in responding to the comment, the response was purely pragmatic and not rooted in a spiritual sense of discernment. And that is exactly the problem with discernment that does not have some sense of evaluation built into it. If it is purely a spiritual knowledge that can't be challenged, it is of limited value in helping churches discern a path forward together.
Originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/praying-with-discernment/
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta
dark
hopeful
4.75
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/
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/
Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters by Carmen Joy Imes
4.25
Summary: Tracing the ways that creation (including humans) is the image of God.
I have known of Carmen Joy Imes through social media for a few years but this is the first book of hers that I have read. I have been interested in the imago dei for a while. I picked up both this and Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters and I did not really read more than the titles. I probably should have started with Bearing God's Name since it was written first, but by my perceived understanding of the titles, I was more interested in Being God's Image.
The book is in three basic parts, tracing the image of God through scriptures. It starts in early Genesis, through the wisdom literature, and in the New Testament, ending in Revelation. There are many subthemes as the topic is traced through the bible. But the dominant one is that humans are not created to be God's image but created as his image, which entails a vocational place within the physically created order.
Reviewing a book like this is hard because it is so wide-ranging. I am very much in favor of tracing a theme throughout scripture because part of the reality of scripture is the bible is a collection of different books written at different times and in several languages. This is a good book to highlight how cultural models and literary models influence how we should read the bible. The "plain reading of scripture" only works if you consider the culture and history. We do not read the bible by ourselves; we read with the wisdom of scholars and the church universal as influences.
Imes is a biblical scholar; I am not. But as I have read widely. There are a few places I am not sure I was convinced of everything, but broadly, this is a very orthodox reading based on what I have previously read, and I think this treatment shows how important the image of God is to a vocational understanding of the Christian life.
This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/being-gods-image/
I have known of Carmen Joy Imes through social media for a few years but this is the first book of hers that I have read. I have been interested in the imago dei for a while. I picked up both this and Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters and I did not really read more than the titles. I probably should have started with Bearing God's Name since it was written first, but by my perceived understanding of the titles, I was more interested in Being God's Image.
The book is in three basic parts, tracing the image of God through scriptures. It starts in early Genesis, through the wisdom literature, and in the New Testament, ending in Revelation. There are many subthemes as the topic is traced through the bible. But the dominant one is that humans are not created to be God's image but created as his image, which entails a vocational place within the physically created order.
Reviewing a book like this is hard because it is so wide-ranging. I am very much in favor of tracing a theme throughout scripture because part of the reality of scripture is the bible is a collection of different books written at different times and in several languages. This is a good book to highlight how cultural models and literary models influence how we should read the bible. The "plain reading of scripture" only works if you consider the culture and history. We do not read the bible by ourselves; we read with the wisdom of scholars and the church universal as influences.
Imes is a biblical scholar; I am not. But as I have read widely. There are a few places I am not sure I was convinced of everything, but broadly, this is a very orthodox reading based on what I have previously read, and I think this treatment shows how important the image of God is to a vocational understanding of the Christian life.
This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/being-gods-image/
Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge by Dallas Willard
2.75
Summary: Knowledge is not simply ideas that can be tested (naturalistic concepts) but also includes spiritual knowledge.
I read Knowing Christ Today with a particular lens and purpose. I have been on a reading project to understand the Christian concept of discernment better. Part of what has arisen in my look at discernment is the role of the Holy Spirit and that type of spiritual confirmation that is not quite tangible through naturalism's perspective on knowledge or experience. In the language of Ignatius, it is the consultation and desolation that you feel drawing you toward or away from Christ.
I picked up Knowing Christ Today over a decade ago when it was on sale on Kindle, but I have never read it. I had a long drive, so I also purchased the audiobook version to listen to while driving. I have a complicated relationship with Dallas Williard, which is why I think I had not read this previously. I very much respect his role in reawakening attention to the spiritual disciplines. But I also feel like we talk past one another quite a bit. I am a bit allergic to apologetics. While Willard believes that apologetics is best used to help Christians feel confident in their faith (not evangelism) and that he believes that change in behavior does have a relationship to our belief about the world (both of which I agree with), I still end up arguing with him (on the side of the anti-theist positions) when he veers into apologetics.
I have not read Alvin Plantinga, but I think that is part of who Willard is building on here as he develops the idea that spiritual knowledge is a valid form of knowledge. That narrow point, I think, is true; spiritual knowledge is a valid form of knowledge. But that does not really help to evaluate what spiritual knowledge is or when it is rightly invoked. It does not help in evaluating spiritual knowledge of Christianity compared to other religious understandings of spiritual knowledge or different perspectives within Christianity on spiritual knowledge. This means that I did not find Knowing Christ Today all that helpful to my project.
That doesn't mean that there is no value in the book. I often find Willard broadly helpful while finding his main argument unpersuasive. The main problem, I think, is that he wants to focus on a modernist understanding of knowledge and against a post-modernist understanding of a variety of perspectives as partial looks at truth. My bias is that we can only speak of God as fully knowing the truth and that all the rest of creation can only have partial access to that truth. Not because truth itself is relative, but because, as a created being, we can only have the perspective on the truth of a created being, not of the creator. Again, that does not mean that we can't know any truth, but we have a limited ability to know every bit of the truth. So, I agree with Willard that spiritual knowledge is real, but his perspective doesn't help with any of the issues I have with spiritual knowledge or experience, and in some ways, I think it makes them worse.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/knowing-christ-today/
I read Knowing Christ Today with a particular lens and purpose. I have been on a reading project to understand the Christian concept of discernment better. Part of what has arisen in my look at discernment is the role of the Holy Spirit and that type of spiritual confirmation that is not quite tangible through naturalism's perspective on knowledge or experience. In the language of Ignatius, it is the consultation and desolation that you feel drawing you toward or away from Christ.
I picked up Knowing Christ Today over a decade ago when it was on sale on Kindle, but I have never read it. I had a long drive, so I also purchased the audiobook version to listen to while driving. I have a complicated relationship with Dallas Williard, which is why I think I had not read this previously. I very much respect his role in reawakening attention to the spiritual disciplines. But I also feel like we talk past one another quite a bit. I am a bit allergic to apologetics. While Willard believes that apologetics is best used to help Christians feel confident in their faith (not evangelism) and that he believes that change in behavior does have a relationship to our belief about the world (both of which I agree with), I still end up arguing with him (on the side of the anti-theist positions) when he veers into apologetics.
I have not read Alvin Plantinga, but I think that is part of who Willard is building on here as he develops the idea that spiritual knowledge is a valid form of knowledge. That narrow point, I think, is true; spiritual knowledge is a valid form of knowledge. But that does not really help to evaluate what spiritual knowledge is or when it is rightly invoked. It does not help in evaluating spiritual knowledge of Christianity compared to other religious understandings of spiritual knowledge or different perspectives within Christianity on spiritual knowledge. This means that I did not find Knowing Christ Today all that helpful to my project.
That doesn't mean that there is no value in the book. I often find Willard broadly helpful while finding his main argument unpersuasive. The main problem, I think, is that he wants to focus on a modernist understanding of knowledge and against a post-modernist understanding of a variety of perspectives as partial looks at truth. My bias is that we can only speak of God as fully knowing the truth and that all the rest of creation can only have partial access to that truth. Not because truth itself is relative, but because, as a created being, we can only have the perspective on the truth of a created being, not of the creator. Again, that does not mean that we can't know any truth, but we have a limited ability to know every bit of the truth. So, I agree with Willard that spiritual knowledge is real, but his perspective doesn't help with any of the issues I have with spiritual knowledge or experience, and in some ways, I think it makes them worse.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/knowing-christ-today/
Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics by Simon Blackburn
fast-paced
2.75
Summary: An introductory, but probably too brief to be helpful, look at Ethics.
I have been working on a reading project to think through the concept of Christian Discernment. One aspect of discernment is ethical behavior. When I saw that Ethics: A Very Short Introduction was free to Audible members, I picked it up for a change in pace and to see what it might communicate about Christian Discernment.
Early in the first section, the author glibly dismissed religious influences on ethics and while I thought that it was poorly reasoned, I thought I might still get some value from the book, after all, it is not a very long book. I do not think I have a very good background in Philosophy or Ethics, although I keep trying to read and catch up. But this introduction, I think, was targeted toward people with less background than I have.
I have found the Very Short Introduction series quite uneven in quality. One of the problems is organization. Some want to primarily talk about the scholarship around an area, not the area itself. Some have a very idiosyncratic approach to the area. And some do a great job giving an overview. I think the problem here was that Ethics is a big area, and the author tried to introduce both practical ethical dilemmas and a very brief history of ethical thought. I think the practical ethical dilemmas section was broadly helpful at introducing the idea of different ethical approaches, but I think he did not give sufficient weight to various approaches and tended to place his views as the right ones without enough explanation of other views. And I think there probably could have been some explanation of why he chose these areas and others.
I was not surprised that the history section was just too short. This is a very short introduction book without space for more. That being said, even accounting for this being primarily a Western approach to ethics, the fact that he dismissed religious, ethical frameworks at the start meant that he did not really grapple with how Christianity has shaped Western ethics.
This wasn't a waste of time, but it isn't a book I would recommend. I find it interesting that Amazon's average review is about 4.5 stars, Goodreads' average review is just below 3.4 stars, and Audible's is 4.3 stars. Generally, I find that most of the time, if there are at least a hundred ratings, the ratings tend to be fairly similar. But the split between 3.4 and 4.5 is pretty wide. And I think Goodreads is more accurate, in my opinion. I think this review hits at what is wrong in more detail than I did, but many reviews on GoodReads raise similar concerns.
My review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/ethics/
I have been working on a reading project to think through the concept of Christian Discernment. One aspect of discernment is ethical behavior. When I saw that Ethics: A Very Short Introduction was free to Audible members, I picked it up for a change in pace and to see what it might communicate about Christian Discernment.
Early in the first section, the author glibly dismissed religious influences on ethics and while I thought that it was poorly reasoned, I thought I might still get some value from the book, after all, it is not a very long book. I do not think I have a very good background in Philosophy or Ethics, although I keep trying to read and catch up. But this introduction, I think, was targeted toward people with less background than I have.
I have found the Very Short Introduction series quite uneven in quality. One of the problems is organization. Some want to primarily talk about the scholarship around an area, not the area itself. Some have a very idiosyncratic approach to the area. And some do a great job giving an overview. I think the problem here was that Ethics is a big area, and the author tried to introduce both practical ethical dilemmas and a very brief history of ethical thought. I think the practical ethical dilemmas section was broadly helpful at introducing the idea of different ethical approaches, but I think he did not give sufficient weight to various approaches and tended to place his views as the right ones without enough explanation of other views. And I think there probably could have been some explanation of why he chose these areas and others.
I was not surprised that the history section was just too short. This is a very short introduction book without space for more. That being said, even accounting for this being primarily a Western approach to ethics, the fact that he dismissed religious, ethical frameworks at the start meant that he did not really grapple with how Christianity has shaped Western ethics.
This wasn't a waste of time, but it isn't a book I would recommend. I find it interesting that Amazon's average review is about 4.5 stars, Goodreads' average review is just below 3.4 stars, and Audible's is 4.3 stars. Generally, I find that most of the time, if there are at least a hundred ratings, the ratings tend to be fairly similar. But the split between 3.4 and 4.5 is pretty wide. And I think Goodreads is more accurate, in my opinion. I think this review hits at what is wrong in more detail than I did, but many reviews on GoodReads raise similar concerns.
My review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/ethics/
Son of Bitter Glass by K. B. Hoyle
adventurous
hopeful
medium-paced
4.5
Summary: A retelling of the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson.
Son of Bitter Glass is the second in KB Hoyle’s Fairytale series. This series is set in the same world, but the novels are stand-alone. The first in the series was a gender-switched retelling of The Little Mermaid. The Son of Bitter Glass is a retelling of The Snow Queen. I have never read The Snow Queen, although these are elements of the story that I can see that CS Lewis adapted into The White Witch in The Lion, The Witch, And the Wardrobe. Disney’s Frozen was very loosely adapted from The Snow Queen as well. About halfway through the book, I skimmed the Wikipedia summary to see if I missed any significant elements or references. I do not think I was, and if you haven’t read The Snow Queen, I do not think you need to know the story to enjoy this book.
The Son of Bitter Glass opens with Eira and Isbrand as children. Eira is the daughter of an ambassador who himself is a friend of the king. Her mother died before she remembered her, but her father remarried so that she would have a mother. The stepmother has her own children with Eira’s father, and Eira feels out of step with her family. Her best friend is the prince, Isbrand (Isa), and they spend as much time together as they can apart from her family.
On Isa’s 12th birthday, a hobgoblin brings a curse from the Snow Queen. The queen is murdered, and the king, Eira’s father, and many others get a piece of the “bitter glass” in their eyes. But Eira protects Isa and keeps him safe from the bitter glass. The king charges Eira with protecting the prince. Over time, the childhood friends come to love one another romantically. But Eira is duty-bound to protect Isa, and it looks like Isa needs to marry another to keep him safe from the Snow Queen’s curse. As the story develops, there is a quest, and the one overlapping character of the series, James, helps Eira on her quest.
I am trying to keep the details vague because I do not want to spoil the story, although it is based on a short novel over 175 years old. So, if you want spoilers, they are easy to find. I like to go into fiction books with little understanding of the story. However, in a series that retells classic fairytales, part of the book’s fun is the elements that are the same or different from the source material.
I have read all of KB Hoyle’s fourteen books, many more than once. She is a storyteller who understands how classic stories are supposed to work. As I read this, I listened to the audiobook My Plain Jane. My Plain Jane was riffing off of Jane Eyre, but other than the rough outline, it was an entirely different book. It was a consciously postmodern self-referential novel filled with pop culture humor and joked about how backward the original story was. There is a place for that kind of retelling, but that isn’t the retelling this is. The Son of Bitter Glass takes the source material seriously as a fairy tale and keeps it a fairy tale. There are romantic elements, but this is a middle-grade or early YA book for pre-teens or early teens.
Part of what I like about classic novels is that the stories are more upfront about teaching. Some are more heavy-handed than I would prefer, but if you read a classic novel, you know that the novel is trying to teach you something about the world and how you should live. Sometimes, it is a negative teaching (how not to live), but often, the protagonist is imperfect but striving to do the right thing. Eira is imperfect, but she understands the concept of duty and is trying to do the right thing.
At one point, there is an explanation of the bitter glass that I think illustrates how the moral is clear.
“Do you understand? The bitter glass distorts their vision—their perception—of everything in the world. It makes good people forget their love of good things, and it makes them love bad things instead.” Nordika closed her pale eyes as if pained. “The curse meets each person where their heart is weakest and turns them inside out.” (p92)
I don’t mean that this is a moralistic book in the negative sense, but that it takes seriously the classic fairytale structure, which has a moral vision, and retells it in a form for current readers.
The Son of Bitter Glass is an excellent example of why I pick up every novel by KB Hoyle. They are well written, expertly plotted, and have significant depth to the books, so I always get more from multiple readings, and they are just plain enjoyable books. I look forward to her next novel.
This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/son-of-bitter-glass/
This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/son-of-bitter-glass/
My Plain Jane by Jodi Meadows, Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand
lighthearted
3.5
Summary: Jane Eyre meets Sixth Sense, "I see dead people."
I like the concept of remixes or retellings of classic stories. The very nature of a well known story means that you can retell it by changing the perspective or the gender of the characters and you can easily have a cultural commentary or additional humor, or simply get to hint at part of the story to reference ideas without fully developing them in ways that is not possible for a completely original story.
That being said, I came into My Plain Jane having just finished My Lady Jane and I had a set of expectations that were not met. I thought I knew what to expect and the books are just different. My unmet expectations created a hurtle that I would not have had, if I had started with Plain Jane. But I had to get over my expectations of what the book was going to be. My Lady Jane was a historical figure that was generally told accurately, but with the addition of shape shifting magic (into animals).
My Plain Jane is riffing off of Jane Eyre, which is a fictional story. I read Jane Eyre just over a year ago, the story is fairly fresh in my mind. This is a bit of a spoiler, but My Plain Jane alternates telling the story from several perspectives. Charlotte Bronte is a teen, almost finished with her boarding school. Her real life best friend is Jane Eyre, a barely older orphan who was also at the school but now is a teacher. Charlotte is always writing and Jane is always painting or drawing; they do not have a lot of friends at the school outside of one another.
The main story really starts when Jane sneaks off to a local pub because she hears that a somewhat secret organization, Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits will be there. That organization is an early Ghostbusters society. In this story, people who have briefly died and come back to life can see ghosts. The Society is mostly made up of people who can see ghosts and they go around the country helping to remove problem ghosts. Jane can see ghosts and one of her best friends, Helen, is a ghost. One of the tension points is that Jane wants to keep secret her ability to see ghosts because she is afraid of what people will think if they know she can see ghosts.
One of the lead investigators of the society is Alexander Blackwood. He realizes that Jane can see ghosts because he can see ghosts. The society needs more ghost hunters so he pursues Jane Eyre trying to hire her for the Society. But Jane is somewhat traumatized by her visit to the pub and the way that Mr Blackwood captured the ghost. She is afraid that Helen will be captured as well. So Jane accepts a job working for Mr. Rochester at Thornfield Hall to get away from Mr Blackwood. However, Charlotte Bronte's greatest wish is to work for the Society, so she worms her way into the society by promising that she can convince Jane to join. Mr Blackwood and Charlotte (and her hapless brother who has secretly dropped out of school to be Mr Blackwood's assistant) go to Thornfield Hall, highjinks ensue.
My Plain Jane broadly follows the layout of Jane Eyre but some of the plot points are reexplained by ghosts. There are plenty of current pop cultural references, like,
“Go home, Miss Brontë.”
“I can’t afford any more delays, Miss Brontë.”
“Please stop talking, Miss Brontë.”
Nevertheless, she persisted.
But the humor just wasn't really as good. There were funny moments. Some of the pop culture references were well done. Yes, we know that Jane Eyre was young enough to be Mr Rochester's daughter, we understand as a modern reader that this is creepy. But the best parts of the book were not the retelling of Jane Eyre, it was the ghostbuster/scooby-doo "solve the mystery" parts. And that made the project as a whole less successful than My Lady Jane.
I was irritated that the Christianity of Jane Eyre's motivations has been stripped from the book. Her kindness to her aunt and the forgiveness she gave her was explicitly tied to faith. But here there is not really any motivation for it here. In other places as well, the motivations for actions did not really make much sense. This leaves us with lines like, "I have a thing for Rochester," confessed Jane. "It's not healthy." Because in the modern sense there is no reason for Jane to fall in love with Mr Rochester and so it is oriented around unhealthy reasons for her to do so.
I checked out the audiobook from my library. It was fine. But it was not a great book and less successful than My Lady Jane. There is a third book in the series but My Plain Jane has not made me interested in picking it up anytime soon.
This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/my-plain-jane/
I like the concept of remixes or retellings of classic stories. The very nature of a well known story means that you can retell it by changing the perspective or the gender of the characters and you can easily have a cultural commentary or additional humor, or simply get to hint at part of the story to reference ideas without fully developing them in ways that is not possible for a completely original story.
That being said, I came into My Plain Jane having just finished My Lady Jane and I had a set of expectations that were not met. I thought I knew what to expect and the books are just different. My unmet expectations created a hurtle that I would not have had, if I had started with Plain Jane. But I had to get over my expectations of what the book was going to be. My Lady Jane was a historical figure that was generally told accurately, but with the addition of shape shifting magic (into animals).
My Plain Jane is riffing off of Jane Eyre, which is a fictional story. I read Jane Eyre just over a year ago, the story is fairly fresh in my mind. This is a bit of a spoiler, but My Plain Jane alternates telling the story from several perspectives. Charlotte Bronte is a teen, almost finished with her boarding school. Her real life best friend is Jane Eyre, a barely older orphan who was also at the school but now is a teacher. Charlotte is always writing and Jane is always painting or drawing; they do not have a lot of friends at the school outside of one another.
The main story really starts when Jane sneaks off to a local pub because she hears that a somewhat secret organization, Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits will be there. That organization is an early Ghostbusters society. In this story, people who have briefly died and come back to life can see ghosts. The Society is mostly made up of people who can see ghosts and they go around the country helping to remove problem ghosts. Jane can see ghosts and one of her best friends, Helen, is a ghost. One of the tension points is that Jane wants to keep secret her ability to see ghosts because she is afraid of what people will think if they know she can see ghosts.
One of the lead investigators of the society is Alexander Blackwood. He realizes that Jane can see ghosts because he can see ghosts. The society needs more ghost hunters so he pursues Jane Eyre trying to hire her for the Society. But Jane is somewhat traumatized by her visit to the pub and the way that Mr Blackwood captured the ghost. She is afraid that Helen will be captured as well. So Jane accepts a job working for Mr. Rochester at Thornfield Hall to get away from Mr Blackwood. However, Charlotte Bronte's greatest wish is to work for the Society, so she worms her way into the society by promising that she can convince Jane to join. Mr Blackwood and Charlotte (and her hapless brother who has secretly dropped out of school to be Mr Blackwood's assistant) go to Thornfield Hall, highjinks ensue.
My Plain Jane broadly follows the layout of Jane Eyre but some of the plot points are reexplained by ghosts. There are plenty of current pop cultural references, like,
“Go home, Miss Brontë.”
“I can’t afford any more delays, Miss Brontë.”
“Please stop talking, Miss Brontë.”
Nevertheless, she persisted.
But the humor just wasn't really as good. There were funny moments. Some of the pop culture references were well done. Yes, we know that Jane Eyre was young enough to be Mr Rochester's daughter, we understand as a modern reader that this is creepy. But the best parts of the book were not the retelling of Jane Eyre, it was the ghostbuster/scooby-doo "solve the mystery" parts. And that made the project as a whole less successful than My Lady Jane.
I was irritated that the Christianity of Jane Eyre's motivations has been stripped from the book. Her kindness to her aunt and the forgiveness she gave her was explicitly tied to faith. But here there is not really any motivation for it here. In other places as well, the motivations for actions did not really make much sense. This leaves us with lines like, "I have a thing for Rochester," confessed Jane. "It's not healthy." Because in the modern sense there is no reason for Jane to fall in love with Mr Rochester and so it is oriented around unhealthy reasons for her to do so.
I checked out the audiobook from my library. It was fine. But it was not a great book and less successful than My Lady Jane. There is a third book in the series but My Plain Jane has not made me interested in picking it up anytime soon.
This was originally published on my blog at https://bookwi.se/my-plain-jane/
A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper's Daughter by Catherine Meeks
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
Summary: A memoir from sharecropper's daughter to academic to retired anti-racist educator.
I do not know how I ran across Catherine Meeks' work. She was a professor at Mercer and then Wesleyan College. She worked as an organizer for the city of Macon and was the founder of Lane Center for Community Engagement and Service. Then, she retired in 2008 and started another career as an anti-racist trainer within the Episcopal Church, eventually founding the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. She again retired from that role this past December. In 2022, she received the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award and the Presidential Volunteer Service Award medal.
What I enjoy about reading memoirs and biographies is that I see the complications of lives, not just the awards or recognitions they receive. Catherine Meeks was born to a sharecropper and a teacher in rural Mississippi. Her mother worked as a teacher throughout her childhood, but it took her 18 years to finish her college degree. Her father was illiterate and died when she was a child. The background of growing up in poverty during Jim Crow matters to the rest of her story. But this is not simply a Horatio Alger story of growth and success. Esau McCaulley, in a podcast interview that I cannot find right now, talked about the problems of writing a memoir as a successful Black man. He talked about the fact that people want a happy ending. And even when there is a happy ending, the happy ending can be used as proof against those with a less happy ending.
What is important about A Quilted Life is that the story is framed as a whole, made up of all of the pieces, happy and sad, good and tragic, that were put together to illustrate a whole life. History is recent. Catherine Meeks just retired a few months ago but lived in the Jim Crow South. She witnessed a murder by a college security guard of a youth teen who was shot because he was Black on a college campus. Her first few homes did not have indoor plumbing, but she is younger than my grandmother.
Most people will not know Catherine Meeks, but she is a good example of how important unknown people are to the long-term change of our society. Professors, community organizers, and non-profit leaders do the actual work of changing people and systems for the good. And most of the time, that work is done unheralded.
We need more memoirs like A Quilted Life to illustrate actual discernment in practice. One of the book's themes (and of my recent reading) is the role of discernment over time. Sometimes, discernment looks like a very clear direction from God. But more often, it is less clear and more about becoming the person that God wants you to be and then doing what is in front of you. Catherine Meeks is an example of just that type of discernment. She knows she is not perfect, but our call isn't to perfection but to continue.
This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/a-quilted-life/
I do not know how I ran across Catherine Meeks' work. She was a professor at Mercer and then Wesleyan College. She worked as an organizer for the city of Macon and was the founder of Lane Center for Community Engagement and Service. Then, she retired in 2008 and started another career as an anti-racist trainer within the Episcopal Church, eventually founding the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing. She again retired from that role this past December. In 2022, she received the President Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award and the Presidential Volunteer Service Award medal.
What I enjoy about reading memoirs and biographies is that I see the complications of lives, not just the awards or recognitions they receive. Catherine Meeks was born to a sharecropper and a teacher in rural Mississippi. Her mother worked as a teacher throughout her childhood, but it took her 18 years to finish her college degree. Her father was illiterate and died when she was a child. The background of growing up in poverty during Jim Crow matters to the rest of her story. But this is not simply a Horatio Alger story of growth and success. Esau McCaulley, in a podcast interview that I cannot find right now, talked about the problems of writing a memoir as a successful Black man. He talked about the fact that people want a happy ending. And even when there is a happy ending, the happy ending can be used as proof against those with a less happy ending.
What is important about A Quilted Life is that the story is framed as a whole, made up of all of the pieces, happy and sad, good and tragic, that were put together to illustrate a whole life. History is recent. Catherine Meeks just retired a few months ago but lived in the Jim Crow South. She witnessed a murder by a college security guard of a youth teen who was shot because he was Black on a college campus. Her first few homes did not have indoor plumbing, but she is younger than my grandmother.
Most people will not know Catherine Meeks, but she is a good example of how important unknown people are to the long-term change of our society. Professors, community organizers, and non-profit leaders do the actual work of changing people and systems for the good. And most of the time, that work is done unheralded.
We need more memoirs like A Quilted Life to illustrate actual discernment in practice. One of the book's themes (and of my recent reading) is the role of discernment over time. Sometimes, discernment looks like a very clear direction from God. But more often, it is less clear and more about becoming the person that God wants you to be and then doing what is in front of you. Catherine Meeks is an example of just that type of discernment. She knows she is not perfect, but our call isn't to perfection but to continue.
This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/a-quilted-life/