Every Job a Parable: What Walmart Greeters, Nurses & Astronauts Tell Us About God John Van Sloten (NavPress) $14.99

It is fascinating to me that there seems to be always new, fresh ways of saying important things.  Granted, I sometimes grow a little cynical about publishers who release yet another lack-luster book full of basic stuff about Christian living or having a happy family or how to read the Bible; do we really need yet one more on our already crowded shelves that seem to offer little that is new?

But then, just when we’re pretty sure there isn’t much more to say in a particular field, new titles come out that become must-reads for anyone wanting to think deeply and enter a national conversation.  Just take another look at our BookNotes newsletter from a week or so ago that not only offered bunches of links to bunches of books about the faith and the arts, but named three recent titles that are extraordinary and important, fresh and new and good.

Or recall our most recent post, again offering a handful of links to many previous books (on race, racism, multi-cultural ministry and such) which then suggested that the newly released The Myth of Equality is an instant classic that you really ought to get.

And so it is that I now want to announce that the new book by John Van Sloten, Every Job a Parable: What Walmart Greeters, Nurses & Astronauts Tell Us About God is a must-have, gotta-read, truly remarkable new book in a field that has become nearly glutted in the last year or to; it brings something new to the table, as they say, and captured my attention from the very title and cover.  Just when I thought we might not need any new books on this topic for a while, this is an exceptional contribution, surprising for how good and fresh it is.

 I’m not complaining about the many books that have appeared in the last few years as part of the faith and work conversation – that we can even speak of a national conversation and a movement is in itself one of the most remarkable and notable things on the religious landscape in North America these days.  (By the way, I’m speaking at an annual conference on these very things in Denver this fall.) The many recent books that have come out have emerged interested generated by those who in the last decade have taken up the project of teaching about the integration of faith and vocation, calling and career, worship and work.  From seminal late 20^th century activities (including the work of the Laity Lodge in Texas, who now promotes The High Calling blogging community, the publication of a series of books in the 1980s by Augsburg-Fortress inspired largely by Bethlehem Steel Executive William Diehl who wrote Thank God It’s Monday, and the Dutch neo-Calvinists in Canada whose uniquely Christian, principled, labor union (CLAC) published periodicals and organized conferences and released books about serving God in the work world. Os Guinness’s brilliant, game-changing book The Call was a major work recovering the dynamic of the Protestant understanding of calling and books like Heaven Is Not My Home: Living in the Now of God’s Creation by Paul Marshall (who had written for CLAC often) spelled out a distinctively Christian view of work, rest, and how discipleship might be lived out in the spheres and careers of education, art, politics, business, science and more.  Marketplace ministries, as some have called at least one aspect of this movement, were promoted through organizations like IVCF and the CCO (and their Jubilee conference, founded in the late 1970s with this topic as an integral part of its Kingdom vision of reaching college students with the cultural implications of the gospel) and, always, at Regent College in British Columbia. In the late 1980s the good publisher of this new book, NavPress, had a great book (now out of print) simply called Your Work Matters to God, and we featured it often.  We here at Hearts & Minds put together a little gathering at our own church decades ago called FaithWorks. 

And now we’ve got vocation-oriented think tanks and regional work-world ministries, and video series for church use (such as the brilliant, serious, REFRAME DVD series from Regent College) and all kinds of good stuff that was unimaginable a few decades ago.

Since we’ve often offered lists of books about vocation and calling and about faith and work (see a massive list HERE or a little essay about two jobs I had 40 years ago (complete with a James Taylor video clip and a review of Keller’s Every Good Endeavor) HERE or, more recently, a useful list HERE) we don’t have to list a lot more here. I put together some “industry specific” book lists for Redeemer Presbyterian’s Center for Faith and Work which you can see, HERE.  Just know that there are plenty of resources, and they keep coming.  In just the last year or two, we’ve recommended many, including these:

• (Re)Integrate Your Vocation with God’s Mission Bob Robinson (Good Place Publishers) $12.00 Of the many books on this topic, this is the only one that really offers a big picture and a specific conversation for relating faith and work, designed as a small group resource complete with a leaders guide included. Nothing like it in print, and, gratefully, it is really well done. Yes!

• How Then Should We Work?: Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Work Hugh Whelchel (Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics) $13.95  This book is not as well known as it ought to be but spells out a faithfully Biblical vision as clearly as any book we know. Concise, solid, and very helpful.

• The Gospel Goes to Work: God’s Big Canvas of Calling and Renewal Dr. Stephen Graves (KJK Inc. Publishing) $10.00   For the price, this brief and very handsome book is a treasure.  Really insightful, practical, upbeat and nicely designed.

• Henry’s Glory: A Story for Discovering Lasting Significance in Your Daily Work John Elton Pletcher (Resource Publications) $19.00  Written like a novel, a parable or sorts, helping church folks realize that common work matters.

• Work Matters: Connecting Sunday Worship to Monday Work Tom Nelson (Crossway) $16.99 One of our most recommended titles, this tells the story of what happens to a local church when a pastor commits to equipping folks for all-of-life-redeemed faith and work-world mission. 

• Work Matters: Lessons from Scripture Paul R. Stevens (Eerdmans) $16.00 Although Dr. Stevens (of Regent College in Vancouver, BC) has written much about faith, work, calling and such, this small book offers bunches of Bible explorations. Just wonderful.

• Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor Ben Witherington, Jr. (Eerdmans) $19.00 It is so good to have one of our best New Testament scholars weighing in on a Christian philosophy of work.  Very nicely done.

• Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work  Timothy Keller & Katherine Leary Aldsdorf  (Riverhead) $17.00 One of the very best books in the field. Important for anyone serious about this topic.

• A Woman’s Place: A Christian Vision for Your Calling in the Office, the Home, and the World  Katelyn Beaty (Howard Books) $22.99  The only really good book on a Christian perspective vocation, calling, and work written about the role of women in the work-world. Highly recommended for men and women.

• Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good Amy Sherman (IVP) $18.00 Oh my, this is perhaps the thorough study, offering various levels or models and ways to relate faith and work, being good stewards of our vocations for God’s sake. A truly significant volume.

• Finding Livelihood: A Progress of Work and Leisure Nancy Nordenson  (Kalos Press) $14.95 We love this because it is so eloquent, so lovely and wise, a deeply spiritual and literate rumination… 

• Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good Steve Garber (IVP) $ Eloquent, mature, thoughtful, beautiful, Garber tells stories of those who endure in God’s call upon their lives even when things are broken and hard, because of their deep awareness of God’s covenantal relationship with the creation and Christ’s grace, giving their lives deeper meaning and purpose, living in the world as it really is. Few books have  so richly captured the imaginations of so many in recent years, as Garber weaves together insights from Wendell Berry and Bono and other thoughtful writers and theologians, framing his storytelling of real folks he know well.

DO WE REALLY NEED ANOTHER BOOK ON WORK?

And so it was that when I heard that John Van Sloten was doing a book on work, I was eager to read him — he’s a truly great writer, colorful and dynamic, even, as you can see from his fabulous book about pop culture called The Day Metallica Came to Church: Searching for the Everyday God in Everything (published by Square Inch Press; $14.99.) I really trust his perspective, too.  But I was also a little nonplussed, if truth be told.  “Do we really need another book on faith and vocation, serving God in the work-world,” I asked him.  After the earliest voices being mostly ignored for a few decades, this topic has finally taken off and the many good books that are coming out are going to start sounding the same.  Is there really anything new that must be said?

John replied that he thought he had a unique viewpoint, something fresh, an angle that hasn’t been deeply explored lately.

And, wow, does John deliver in this exact way, providing a new way into the conversation, solid, Biblical teaching, and lots of interesting inspiration for anyone wanting to find God in the day to day and serve Christ in ordinary jobs.  Ordinary jobs?  Maybe I said that wrong — perhaps, a la C.S. Lewis’s line about mortals, there are no ordinary jobs.  In Van Sloten’s well-crafted chapters, every job sounds like a symphony, every work place holy ground. 

So, here is how he brings new insight and consequently new energy for thinking and talking about Christian calling in our working lives. The subtitle isn’t just rhetoric or a cleverly-worded stand- in for “another “Christian perspective work.”  No, he really, truly, does talk about the textures and tasks of these different jobs. He’s interviewed all kinds of folks who work at all kinds of jobs.  It isn’t generic. It is specific, and the jobs explored are so vividly shown that no matter what your own job is, you will be blessed by reading about these other callings and careers.  I’m not kidding – on the face of it, hearing how brothers and sisters in Christ find ways to see their day to day as holy callings and frame their sometimes mundane jobs by their faith is a blast.  You will love hearing about a judge and a landscaper and a florist and an asphalt company executive and a custom automotive restorer.  Who knew that being a language translator or nephrologist or middle manager could be so interesting!

RENEWED VOCATIONAL IMAGINATION

If that was all this wonderfully written book did, that would be enough.  Like an overtly Christian version of the also inspiring Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work (created by NPRs StoryCorps, edited by Dave Isay and now out in paperback published by Penguin; $16.00) it is just a blast hearing about all these remarkable moments in the day to day of our friends and neighbors.  Not too many of us, I suppose, have had earnest conversations about the joys and struggles of being a scientific researcher or farmer or photographer or forensic psychologist, so when we listen in to Van Sloten’s stories, we are getting a window into amazing part of our social fabric, God’s good world teeming (as Genesis puts it.)  It’s just a delight, and I think inspiring, and reading about police officers or emergency room physicians or labor negotiators will make you a better citizen and neighbor and church friend when you have a clue about what others do day by day. It’s fun to read and it’s truly informative. I hardly know any other Christian book that so nicely introduces us to our friends and neighbors and what they do.

And in all of this, to use a splendid phrase he introduces in the first chapter, Van Sloten wants to spark a  “renewed vocational imagination.”  

However, Van Sloten’s project is more than to just affirm varying careers as holy callings, more than just offering a word of encouragement or window of insight into Christian living in the work-a-day world.

To catch his deepest intent, you have to take literally his title, that jobs can be parables. And you must notice a phrase in the colorful subtitle; he is exploring what these various careers “tell us about God.”  

JOBS AS PARABLES

Like any good parable – and wasn’t Jesus a master teacher using parables as the core to his Kingdom instruction – we must hold it up to the light, ponder its multi-faceted nature, its luminosity, its pliability.  Every Job a Parable is divided into four main parts, and one part (comprised of two chapters) is called “What Is a Parable, and How is Work a Parable?”  In this part we are taught how to “notice God’s unnoticed presence” – and he does this by telling us a great story about a sanitation worker.  Another really interesting chapter in this part is called “The Iconic Nature of Vocational Parables: How Reversing Your Perspective Changes Your Vocational Point of View.”  This is rich, curious stuff, inviting us embrace his experiment – can we find God at work? Can we learn something about God at work? Can our work become parabolic?  Can they be, literally, iconic?

BEAR WITH ME ON THIS SIDEBAR

Allow me this one sidebar comment: I think John makes it clear what the best books on this topic make clear — that we don’t have to add on some extra spiritual layer of God-talk on top of our ordinary day jobs.  We don’t have to sanctify them by “bringing” God into the “secular” work world.  We don’t have to do evangelism on the job, we don’t have to somehow spiritualize them with religiosity.  Being made in God’s image and tasked with culture-making, it is simply what we do, coram deo, as humans.  We make or manage stuff; we reflect God’s own care for the world as God’s partners, vice-regents, stewards.  We work because we are blessed to do so (the command to gently “take dominion” and to “tend and keep the garden” was given to our primordial parents before the curse of the fall, of course, making it what Al Wolter’s calls “the foundational command.”) Work may be hard, even awful, in a fallen world but it is still in principle a fundamental good, a wondrous human trait in a God-ordered if distorted world.  So a Christian view of work always starts with the inherent dignity and meaning of labor.

Of course in a world that has (mis)understood and framed work as something other – an idolatrous way to make meaning, find identity, or get rich, or something bad (“a necessary evil” which we try to avoid, and about which we say derisively, TGIF) – we really do have to proclaim a new vision.  Books like Every Good Endeavor and Work Matters and Kingdom Callings help us offer a proper framework.  Which is to say, we all need to be able to articulate a Christian perspective to counter the world’s unhelpful and erroneous narratives about the meaning of work. To be motivated by a truly Christian perspective about work and to be able to explain that to our family and colleagues and neighbors really will give us a huge opportunity to bear witness to God’s work in our lives.  But, again, to counter a misguided narrative with a more wholesome, winsome, healthy view of work as inherent to the image dei and our office as stewards of God’s good work, is not to say work is barren and secular and we have to somehow bring God into it, or justify our work because it is a spiritual thing or a mission field.  To paraphrase what Hans Rookmaaker said about art, “Work needs no justification.” 

Van Sloten gets all this and he explains it wonderfully drawing on the very best theologians and writers such as Richard Mouw, Cornelius Plantinga, Jurgen Moltmann, Norman Wirzba, Miroslav Volf, Nicholas Wolterstorff.  As a Christian Reformed Church pastor he draws on Calvin and Luther and Kuyper and Bavinck.  As a contemporary thinker, he knows sociologists like Fredric Jameson and Barbara Ehrenreich and Alain de Botton as well as popular authors like Luci Shaw, Rob Bell, Scot McKnight, Kathleen Norris, and Tom Wright. His love for pop culture sneaks in, such as when he tells about the cult-classic, oddly moving documentary about a one-hit rock wonder, Searching for Sugar Man. I love a book that is well-researched and cites interesting sources, and this book is fabulously done in this regard, quoting not just Reformed theologians and contemporary thinkers about the work-world, but exceptionally interesting writers like Marilyn Robinson and John Donne and scientists and reporters and artists and monks and mystics. But, more importantly, these wisely incorporated quotes and citations are added on to his own utterly excellent perspective on work, culture, society, understood and related to God’s gospel story of creation, fall, and redemption.  Van Sloten is a good thinker and a good writer.

WHOA.

SAY WHAT?

Van Sloten is fully reliable (did I mention he quotes Wisdom and Wonder by Kuyper, a book I even have an endorsing blurb on?) and yet he writes provocative stuff grounded in this reformational worldview, stuff that I am still pondering like this, which comes early on in the book:

Recently there has been a lot of talk about the idea of working for the common good  — for the good of your neighbor, society, classmate, environment, and world.  A lot of people think this is the ultimate objective when it comes to work.

While working for the common good is an important part of a balanced vocational worldview, it is not all that work was meant for. In fact, it can get in the way and become an impediment to work’s chief purpose: a real-time knowing and experience of God. When this happens our jobs can become nothing more than a works-based means of vocational salvation. Work becomes something that is based on what we do for God, as opposed to who we are before God.

I don’t think he intends to make work into some super-spiritual experience, or a pretense for something else, as if doing the work doesn’t matter; not at all. And he insists that our work and faith should impact our world well. In fact, he emphasizes that, in God’s common grace, doing the work indeed matters.  But he wants to prevent us from overstating some world changing result, something extrinsic that makes work matter.  Most of us, in fairly ordinary jobs, just don’t have that sense of “making a difference.”  And, again, this is what makes this book shine — Van Sloten tells the stories of such non-dramatic, ordinary jobs, such as a flyer delivery person, a Walmart greeter, an electrician, hairstylist, food server, a residential landlord, and so many more.  

HIS MAIN POINT & HIS UNIQUE CONTRIBUTION

So, having said that, we can now safely, without misunderstanding, proceed to Van Sloten’s main point, that work is a parable that teaches us and the watching world something about God. As I’ve suggested, in the hands of a lesser thinker or more simplistic writer, this would come across as if work itself doesn’t really mater, that we live in some dualistic world made up of the ordinary, material stuff and then some super-spiritual added on aspect, and that we have to somehow balance body and soul, sacred and secular, work and spirituality, with the spiritual encounter bit being above and perferred to the mundane down to Earthier stuff. To be clear: he does not say that because he does not believe that.  Work matters, we serve God in ordinary ways, we find our meaning as humans doing real-world, down-to-Earth stuff, imaging God in this good if fallen world.  But, yet, by mirroring God and partnering with God, we can indeed experience God in the midst of all this: it is not merely that we work and honor God in this task of being human.  We honor God and serve the common good and learn more about God by observing the very structures of reality and the ways different jobs work.  Just like the Bible says we can learn something about God from the stars or from other aspects of creation (Job suggests we talk to the fish and Isaiah says farmers are instructed by God how to learn about seeds!) Van Sloten says we can learn about God by opening our eyes and seeing what’s going on in our workplaces. Work is an icon, work is a parable, work is a school for spiritual formation, work is the venue for knowing God.

And all I can say is wow.  Every Job a Parable takes what most of the best books on work all suggest and develops it well, vividly and practically, making this a book as much about spirituality as a book about calling, a book about faith formation as much as a book about careers, and a book that unites love of God and love of neighbor in ways that no other book about vocation/work has so successfully attempted. It is a book that anyone involved in this faith-in-the-work-world movement or leading this faith/work conversation simply must get.

 

HOW DOES HE DO IT?

GET THIS!

I want to bring this celebration of Every Job a Parable to a close by saying one of the most important things about it, other than it is rooted in a solid and wholistic worldview that affirms the dignity or work and that it offers a unique spirituality of work, helping us not only think faithfully about our callings in the work-world but how we can come to know God better within our job sites.

And it is this: that Van Sloten created this book out of a major project in his church (New Hope Hillside Church in Calgary, Alberta) where he preached sermons inspired by various careers and jobs that he set out to learn about.

Allow me to say that again: he preached a whole series of sermons inspired by various careers and jobs.

There is a page in the back of this book that is itself worth twice the price of the book, and that is the list of website addresses to the videos of Van Sloten’s sermons inspired by these various jobs. You can find them at youtube, too, so do check him out and see what inspired the book.

REAL JOBS OF ALL SORTS

And, wow – what careers and jobs he explores.  And what creative sermons they are.  There you can watch sermons about a police officer, a journalist, a city mayor, an optometrist, and audiologist, a human resource manager, a development worker, a university professor, a software engineer, a group of seven artists, a midwife, a custom car restorer, a radiation physicist, a professional skier and base jumper, an Olympic breaststroker, and a teacher.

There is on page 210 and 211 a nifty index of vocations mentioned, chapter by chapter throughout the book.  And, I might add, these are not passing references to a craftsperson or neuroscientist or investment banker, but really interesting explorations of the parabolic or iconic nature of these jobs, how they point to some aspect of God or Christ’s redemption.  You will have to read the book for yourself to see if Every Job a Parable rings true and is helpful in doing this or if he’s stretching to reach these conclusions.  Is he over-reaching to make these jobs teachable moments?   Maybe not all of the stories of work and workers he explores are as compelling as some, but I think he’s really, really on to something here.  There is no other book like it.

EVEN THE CROOKED AND IMMORAL

Just to entice you just a bit more, some of the chapters explore what we can learn not from insightful and generous saints in the marketplace, but from, well, a crooked lawyer, an immoral federal politician, and a befuddled accountant.  He interviews and develops insights from an atheist writer, too. (Not only is he serious about the broken nature of work and the messes of this life, but also he really does believe that God shows up “everywhere in everything.”

AND A MOTHER, A FATHER, A CHILD, AND A MAN WITH DOWN’S

Further, happily, there are those whose callings take them to vocations that aren’t traditional paid employment – he tells of a father, a mother, and a man with Down’s syndrome.  There is one nice story about the vocation of a child.   

Every Job a Parable: What Walmart Greeters, Nurses & Astronauts Tell Us About God is a book that has been waiting to be written, and I am grateful that John did his homework, interviewing software engineers and optometrists and, yes, a professional skier and doing those sermons.  I’m glad that the book added other stories of other workers and callings.  He was well-equipped to do this because of his being so well informed by his own tradition in the Dutch Reformed community, drawing on Kuyper and his rich theology of “common grace.”  That is, his first book – The Day Metallica Came to Church – set the stage for this book.  If he could plant a church inspired by this assumption that God shows up everywhere and that we need eyes to see grace and goodness (and sin and forgiveness) in every square inch of God’s world, then surely he could do that in varying fields, spheres, careers, and jobs. 

THE EVERYWHERE GOD

Come to think of it Every Job a Parable is a natural follow up to The Day Metallica Came to Church.  Compare the subtitles of the two – the Metallica one has as the subtitle “Finding the Everywhere God in Everything” so both are about finding God’s grace everywhere, even in the culture, serving Christ in the quotidian, being empowered by the Spirit to live well in the world and encounter God in doing so. Van Sloten is a master writer and great preacher with this gift for helping us connect the dots between God, God’s world, our lives in society, and the ragged glories of our culture.  Talk about deepening formation by applied theology and nurturing everyday spirituality or the “liturgies of the ordinary.”

As it says on the back cover, ” All work matters to God because all work reflects some aspect of the character of God. God created the world so that it runs best when it mirrors him. we find the most fulfillment when we recognize God behind our labor.”

A PASTOR WHO HAS NUMINOUS CONVERSATIONS ON YOUR TURF

Listen to John as he explains some of his own feelings about visiting people at their job sites, about helping them connect the dots between their faith, their spirituality, and their work in the world.  How many books do you know about work world stuff that talks about conversations that are numinous?

When I name that connection, something holy happens. It’s as though God is naming his presence at person’s work.

At this point, in the vocational-exegesis conversation, there is always a pause. I love seeing the look in people’s eyes when they realize that God really is moving through the work they do. At first they’re surprised, and then there is this beautiful sense of goodness and gratitude that washes over them. It’s as though they are becoming more of their vocational selves right before my eyes. In that moment I experience God’s delight.

It is such an honor to be a part of that process. I get to be God’s listening and naming voice. And all of those workers get a glimpse of what God thinks about them and what they do. God cares deeply about them, made them to bear his image in a unique way, and wants them to know him and experience his love, strength, power, and wisdom in all things – including their work.

Some of the most numinous experiences I’ve had have happened on-site, a people’s job: naming God’s presence in their studio, office boardroom, farm field, or retail store outlet. When I step into their turf, it feels incarnational. I feel like I’m imaging the God who comes to us. When I’ve in these places, conversations feel intimate and close, and God’s word through a person’s job seems clearer, as though God were within earshot.

I suppose I don’t have to say this, but this would make a lovely gift to give to your pastor if she or he don’t speak of these things.  And if they do, from time to time, then this will encourage them, offering them a resource to do more effectively and winsomely.  I simply can’t imagine anyone not enjoying this book and I am sure that most would benefit from it immensely. Rejoice with us in the release of Every Job a Parable.  Help us spread the word about it, and have it become better known.

What this little video of John explaining why he wrote the book.  Love the pictures of the different job-sites, don’t you? Kudos to Van Sloten, NavPress, and all who labored on this great new book. 

BookNotes

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The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege Ken Wytsma (IVP)  regularly $18.00 ON SALE NOW  20% off  our sale price $14.40

I would guess that you have followed with a heavy heart the reports about the verdict on the trial of the police officer that shot Philando Castile. 

I’ve been frustrated by some of the ink spilled.

Some have written, not unreasonably, about how the system worked, saying we should trust the jury of peers, insisting we shouldn’t second guess our fellow citizens who listened, debated, and did their best to be fair and just with the evidence as they saw it. Others denounced the juror’s decision presuming that the jury was rigged, that the racial bias of even a few of the jurors rendered their judgments unreliable. (Add to that the evaluation of the outcome of the trial the critique — proper in my estimation — of how certain judges in these cases instruct the juries and how substantial, even legal, a priori support for police officers makes it difficult for juries to rigorously pursue justice the way they should in these kinds of cases.)

It seems to me that both “sides” make some reasonable observations and I am sad that there is increasing polarization in our discourse about race and criminal justice.

Anyway, you and I know that these are hard times, that we continue to talk — sometimes shouting, even — about race and racism, about racial profiling and mass incarceration, about race and class and gender, and often our discussions are not very well informed.  Of course we are free in this country to have and share our personal opinions but part of our task, it seems to me, is to learn how to listen well, to be eager to learn something beyond our own opinions. We should listen widely, even as we tune out the ugly extremists, the idolatrous ideologies — three cheers for the recent public denunciation of the alt-right by the Southern Baptist Conference — and yet remain eager to consider those responsible voices with whom we disagree, staying at the table of conversation even when dialogue is hard. 

WE MUST LEARN AND PROCLAIM GOD’S PERSPECTIVE

For Christians, however, about whom the apostle Paul says “we are not our own”, we are called to more than spouting our opinions. We must be well-informed, repentant of our own ungodly attitudes, intentionally cooperating with the on-going sanctification that God’s Spirit is working within us, being increasingly shaped by what is true, by the insights of Scripture, and by an unceasing determination to work wisely for public righteousness and social justice.  That is, Christians aren’t called so much to speak their own mind and share their individual opinions in the public square, but to bear witness to, even if tentatively, God’s perspective, in tune with Christ’s goodness and beauty and grace. Which means we have to always be reminded of God’s view, especially on matters where our common discourse is so contentious.  As we often say here at BookNotes, we have to “think Christianly.”

WE CAN DO THIS — EVEN BY PAYING ATTENTION TO WORSHIP

(Only a little off the track, here, but allow me this little aside: one of the books we’ve promoted the most this year is the lovely little set of reflections nicely called The Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren (IVP; $16.00) because, in part, it shows how worship can spill over into ordinary life; we practice God’s presence and life in Christ-like power day by day because we’ve practiced it in ritual form in Sunday worship.  After passing the peace, Sunday by Sunday, we learn to be peacemakers in the world.  By hearing the litanies and prayers around communion, we learn to welcome all to God’s table. My confessing our sins week by week we get in the habit of being those who are able to lament and own up to sin in and around us.  By listening well to a sermon, you deepen your habit of being a life-long learner. You get the point: this wonderful book that reads like a memoir shows us how to translate worship theory and practice into ordinary living. At its best, good worship reminds us of God’s presence, announces Christ’s victory, and imagines the Kingdom coming, equipping us to serve well in the world. However – and here’s why I mention it – even in good churches with good rituals and healthy worship habits and solid preaching, I’m afraid we still don’t get around to hearing much about this stuff on most Sundays.  We need all the help we can learning about and being responsible within our racially troubled times. Being formed in worship well we should want to learn more, to be better servants of Christ in the world, we should desire to be better at loving our neighbors.  If you are worshiping well, and wanting to serve God with wisdom and vigor, you should want to buy some books and think this stuff through. Amen?)

START HERE ALWAYS: THE GOSPEL IS VERY GOOD

As I’ve said often here at BookNotes, Lisa Sharon Harper’s The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right (Waterbrook; $19.99) is a book that points us towards what it looks like in many different sides of life where sin’s alienation and brokenness could yield to gospel-based reconciliation.  There is a new creation coming and God’s beloved community is to be an example of and ambassadors for this creation-restoring shalom. There are other good handbooks that remind us of what God’s redemptive shalom might accomplish in the already-but-not-yet of this world, but I think Lisa’s voice as an evangelical, black woman brings extra insight about all manner of things and would be very, very helpful to read with your small group or reading group.  Or alone, if you must. I’m glad to mention this book often, and look forward to hearing of folks using it.

THERE’S LOTS TO READ AND WE’D LOVE TO SERVE YOU FURTHER

You can find other good reads on lists that I’ve compiled about racial injustice and reconciliation HERE (which has some fairly recent titles) HERE or HERE (from the fall of 2015 where I first discussed Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me) or HERE, a big list, still great, from 2009. HERE I wrote about Jim Wallis’s important book, now in paperback, America’s Original Sin and even though the special offer mentioned is no longer in effect, the review is worth reading, and we stuff mentioned here in this review now at 20% off.

From the day we’ve opened we’ve stocked these kinds of resources and it would be our

pleasure to serve you further in finding just the right couple of books on this topic. And good stuff keeps coming.  Just a few weeks ago we got in a new book that further explores in scholarly detail how legal biases and institutional forces and even legal codes created segregation. It’s called  The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (W.W. Norton; $27.95.)  The eminent scholar William Julius Wilson says that “Rothstein has presented what I consider to be the
most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local
governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation.”

TWO EXAMPLES OF INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

One of the most important and powerful books I’ve ever read, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, was reviewed HERE. We described it again when we awarded it one of our Hearts & Minds Best Books of the Year awards. It’s now out in paperback, by the way — now just $16.00. Over and over this valiant public servant fights cases of those wrongly incarcerated and wrongly convicted, often due to overtly racist (even illegal) accusations. It is a eye-opening story, even for those who follow the injustices about criminal justice.

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Pres; $19.95) is certainly one of the most discussed books of our time, and it is highly recommended. It shows that in any state in this nation it is not uncommon for black people to get arrested for simple drug charges where white people committing the exact same crime in the exact same situation are not prosecuted and, worse, that black people are given much harsher penalties and sentences than whites who committed the exact same crime. There is simply no excuse not to know this, now.

For an alternative study, see Fordham University’s law prof John Pfaff’s Locked in: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration–And How to Achieve Real Reform (Basic Books; $27.99) which offers a critique of her analysis. And for a serious theological study, see Redeeming a Prison Society: A Liturgical and Sacramental Response to Mass Incarceration by Amy Levad (Fortress Press; $39.00.)
For those that don’t want this kind of deep dive into that kind of heavy social science research and policy reform, though, Bryan Stevenson’s wonderfully written memoir is a great glimpse into the world of judicial injustice and the ministry of poverty law, legal aid, and institutional racism within the criminal justice system, told vividly. 

If you haven’t heard Bryan Stevenson speak, check out his TED talk, or this thrilling talk at Redeemer Presbyterian in New York a year ago.  And kudos to our neighbors over at Messiah College who had him as their commencement speaker a few weeks ago.  

CHURCHES ARE WORKING ON THIS

I am glad that some mostly white, typically conservative denominations are struggling with this.  Just for instance, some conservative Calvinist leaders in the PCA last year released Heal Us, Emmanuel: A Call for Racial Reconciliation, Representation, and Unity in the Church edited by Doug Serven (Storied Communication; $18.99) and just recently a book came out called Removing the Stain of Racism in the Southern Baptist Convention: Diverse African American and White Perspectives (edited by Jarvis Williams and Kevin Jones, released by their denominational publisher, Broadman-Holman; $24.99.) The head of our own PC(USA) denomination recently asked Presbyterians to read Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race (Elephant Room Press; $19.99), a very interesting and educational memoir by Debby Irving.   Of course, we have them if you need them.

START HERE IF YOU NEED SOME BASIC BOOKS

I often recommend that those who aren’t familiar with this topic start with something approachable and Bible-based that have basic calls to racial reconciliation. It is our suggestion that you have a few of these around your fellowship or church as you never know when a serendipitous conversation might open a door to share something to help.  Here are a few we most often suggest.

One: Unity in a Divided World Deidra Riggs (Baker Books) $14.99 Lovely, inspiring, honest but not overly hard hitting.  About unity as a Biblical and spirital theme; not just racial unity, either.  Nicely done by a very good African American writer — really useful and motivational for anyone.

Living in Color: Embracing God’s Passion for Ethnic Diversity by Randy Woodley (IVP) $18.00 My go to book about God’s desire for multi-cultural reconciliation.  Exceptionally impressive.

Embrace: God’s Radical Shalom for a Divided World by Leroy Barber (IVP) $16.00  You should read anything Leroy Barber writes. He’s a strong and vocal preacher for justice, but this book is really inviting, showing for earnest care for all, working for shalom.  Love it.

Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace, and Healing by Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice. (IVP) $17.00  This is the first in a series of books about various sorts of reconcilation, commisioned by a center at Duke Divinity School. Wow, what a vision!

Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America Michael Emerson & Christian Smith (Oxford University Press) $19.99  Social science research backing up Dr. King’s famous claim that 11:00 Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America. This focuses on evangelicals, particularly, but the data is vital, and the insights are valuable for all. One of the must-read books of our time.

Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism Drew Hart (Herald Press) $16.99 Dr. Hart tells of his work with young adults in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; he’s an old pal and a young leader I greatly admire. His PhD is from the Lutheran Seminary in Philadelphia and he now teaches at Messiah College.  This is a powerful, vivid, testimony.

Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities Into Unity, Wholeness and Justice by Brenda Salter McNeil (IVP) $16.00  Brenda is a hero of ours, a lively preacher and effective evangelist who always brings together (as one of her earlier books put it) “soul change and social change.”  This is a remarkably insightful book, brief, accessible, but full of her lifetime of study and activism.

SURELY ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Today I want to tell you about one of the most important books I’ve come across in this area, a book that I’ve highlighted already, but feel as if I should tell you about it again. It is not scholarly or difficult and while we are such fans of the one’s listed above, this one should be bumped up to the top of your stack. You should consider it sooner rather than later. 

The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege by Ken Wytsma (IVP; $18.00) is a book that you simply must read. It is meat enough to satisfy nearly anyone who wants to study up on this, and it is accessible for those who are eager, but don’t have all summer to wade through a major tome.  Eugene Cho says it is “an important and timely book that helps us dig deeper on the journey of justice and reconciliation.” Yes, yes, that it is.

And, again, it is well done, sharp, honest.

It is a book about which Nicholas Wolterstorff says:

The Myth of Equality is written so skillfully that it’s easy to miss how much it accomplishes. The first part brings to light, with unflinching honesty, how deeply racism and white privilege are embedded within the founding documents and practices of the United States. The second part masterfully shows that this inequality violates the call of the gospel to justice and unity. And the third part offers some wise suggestions to those of us who are white Christians about how we can ‘lay down’ our white privilege. I have no doubt that some readers will be angered by the claim that they participate in and benefit from structures of racism and white privilege, well supported though that claim is. I predict that there will be more who are convinced and inspired by the patient, passionate, and non-defensive way in which Wytsma makes his case. It’s a book that someone had to write.

WHY ARE WE SO UPTIGHT ABOUT NAMING WHITE PRIVILEGE?

I am sure you’ve heard the phrase “white privilege” and I suppose you have some idea what it implies.  But here’s the thing: even many of us who see ourselves as agents of God’s reconciliation, who are interested in the experiences of others – we celebrate diversity and seek out friends from other ethnic backgrounds and long for a multi-ethnic church and get fired up when we read about the injustices described in Just Mercy — we still don’t quite have a solid handle on how to talk about white privilege.  

This is one of the more interesting blurbs I’ve read on the book – and nearly anyone I admire in this field has weighed in, affirming Wytsma’s good efforts – but please read what Scot McKnight says:

White progressives, evangelical and not, seem to enjoy feeling bad about racial injustice and wagging self-righteous fingers at others, but they often exacerbate the injustices of racism by hardening the lines of defense. Far too often the only solutions proposed are more laws, tightening existing laws, and social engineering through public education. What we need are not resolutions but solutions ? solutions emerging from real people in real settings, with leaders who have discovered the long, painful path that leads from white privilege and white invisibility to social integration, racial reconciliation, and churches abounding in fellowship across racial lines and celebrating the glories of ethnicities. Ken Wytsma is the kind of leader who offers real solutions toward social integration and racial reconciliation, and he comes from that kind of community and church. The Myth of Equality is a genuine contribution for those of us looking for ways forward.

I certainly agree with McKnight’s nice affirmation of Wytsma’s good hope for solutions.  But I suspect that some will denounce him for “hardening the lines of defense” for making things worse by talking about white privilege so overtly.

Why do so many folks get upset when we introduce this notion into our conversations?  Why do many well-meaning and otherwise socially astute white evangelicals have a huge blind spot here?  Is this a fruitful line of discourse to pursue or does it just accentuate our differences, perhaps even fueling what some call “reverse racism.”  (And is that even a thing, and if not, why not?)  Is Jim Wallis right to call racism “America’s original sin” in the book by that name? 

I cannot say in a short review the many reasons you should have a copy of The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege and the many good things that Wytsma brings to us in this clear, relatively brief book. (It is a trim size and, excluding the many footnotes, is under 200 pages.)

FOUR REASONS TO READ THE MYTH OF EQUALITY

Allow me to suggest four things about it I really appreciate.

GREAT BIBLICAL STUDY AND ROBUST KINGDOM PERSPECTIVE

Firstly, it provides great Bible teaching about justice and injustice, racial diversity and Christ-centered reconciliation. The book is written in three parts and the second part – four solid chapters under the heading “Equality and the Kingdom of God” — does fabulous, big picture Kingdom teaching, naming some fairly-well known Scriptures about justice but also some fresh evaluations of why we too often miss the import of these texts.  Yes, he critiques Western individualism and a pie-in-the-sky view of heaven (and the subsequent “Salvation Industrial Complex”) and goes further in helping us realize a deeper, richer account of the Biblical story, the cross, the Kingdom, and more. 

Wytsma is really good on this; in fact, in the introduction he summarizes:

The central thesis of this book is that a misunderstanding of the gospel leads to a false dichotomy: we prioritize the spiritual and personal aspects of faith and devalue or nullify the material and communal dimensions that bind us to God’s creation and to our brothers and sisters made in the image of God. This twisting of faith has resulted in historic injustices that have terrorized and handicapped generations of minorities.  

I really appreciate this wholistic, truly Biblical approach. I loved his summary of Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination and how he puts that in conversation with Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright making for a wonderful and helpful chapter. This is the sort of telling of the gospel we all need under our belts and although Wytsma has a fuller book on this (Pursuing Justice) this middle section of The Myth of Equality gives us a very useful theological framework for talking about justice and, yes, white privilege as it has developed in our culture.

TELLING THE HISTORY, EXPLAINING THE FORMATION OF RACIAL ATTITUDES

Secondly, the value of this book is exceptional in how it highlights the history of white privilege.  I know I have raved about and nearly begged our BookNotes readers to purchase and study and pray about and discuss Forgive Us: Confessions of a Compromised Faith co-authored by Elise Mae Cannon, Soong-Chan Rah, Lisa Sharon Harper, and Troy Jackson (Zondervan; $22.99) about the vile history of injustices committed in the name of Jesus upon native peoples, immigrants, blacks, women, LGTBQ folks, the land itself…. I know this is heavy and offers the weight of hard history, so I appreciate that some simply don’t have the capacity to study all that. Even though I have a pretty breathy endorsement blurb on the inside. But it’s a lot, I know.

Enter Mr. Ken Wytsma.

In a few short chapters of Myth of Equality one gets a bit about the history of how white people in the new world crafted worldviewish social imaginaries and tendencies and attitudes that placed themselves over and above others. He explains how in our society “we are deeply shaped by racial categories, yet we who are white remain mostly blind to how the undercurrent of racialized thinking affects our life as a nation and our own actions.”

He has a few great pages about how race was construed in late middle ages Europe and he ponders how black protagonists in Shakespeare (think, Othello) did or didn’t capture assumptions about skin color in that time and place. Even if it weren’t so painfully urgent, his overview of “color in the Western tradition” is utterly fascinating.  When did racism as we know it now begin?  How did it become such a feature of our Western imagination?  I suspect there is more to the story than he tells, but it’s more than enough to help us realize how things like this are socially constructed and capture our imaginations over time.

You may have heard of the utterly corrupt “Doctrine of Discovery” and you’ve heard a bit, I hope, about the injustices woven into biased immigration policies in the 1800s. (I learned about the biases against Asians in the history of immigration law when we became engrossed in advocacy for a large group of asylum-seeking Chinese from the Golden Venture ship who were imprisoned in our local jail for nearly a decade — see Patrick Radden Keefe’s epic book The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream and one of my old columns about it, HERE.)  Mr. Wytsma not only exposes these harmful policies that had huge implications for our nation’s handling of racial diversity and the so-called “melting pot” but also shows a bit about how bad attitudes and biases encoded into laws and policies a century or more ago still ripple down into our own current malaise.   

Naturally, he also does this historical study regarding slavery and the legacy of reconstruction and how the Jim Crow segregation stuff shaped generations of African-Americans.  He cites Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize winning (if mammoth – it’s still on my own waiting list) The Warmth of Other Suns to explore the social realities of the great migration north in the 20^th century.  How urban blacks are perceived to this day is complicated and I think a more thorough study would have to look at the role of pop culture and hip-hop and the rise of thug fashion and gang culture to understand how our mental pictures have been developed.  Read, at least, Daniel White Hodge’s The Soul of Hip Hop: Rims, Timbs and a Cultural Theology for a positive take on the theologies within that cultural movement.)

Wytsma quotes the heartbreaking results of the Clark “doll tests” and explains some of the other tragic attitudes about blackness that swell around our culture.  You may have read some of this in Christina Cleveland’s important Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces That Keep Us Apart, a book you’ll want to have as a follow-up to some of this almost unbelievable bias that is commonly documented.) How Wytsma gets at this historical stuff in the relative brevity of this first third of The Myth of Equality is its great strength – with such an astute study from such a thoughtful, clear-speaking teacher.  We all need to know this historical perspective and I suspect that even those who have read more massive studies of the nature of white privilege will learn something new about the concept and about the unfortunate history of these realities in our land. I can say with confidence that the vital content presented here is offered with the right balance of research and clarity that you can hardly find anywhere else. 

Besides the early Western formation of racial biases, the unsavory history of European colonization, important immigration policies, the impact of the slave trade, stolen labor, injustice during the reconstruction years, the terror of lynchings, the KKK and such, there was the ongoing discrimination in the North shaping the attitudes of those in the middle of the 20^th century. This is all really, really important to know; Wytsma explains how that shaped the rise of our US identity and the usually un-examined worldview of the dominant culture. Next, he has a brilliant overview of how our cities developed. There are a few little charts and maps that explain demographic shifts, the value of homes in the North, and a concise and essential explanation of redlining.  Again, less than thrilling facts about home ownership and loans and economic transfer and school policies all end up being key markers in a devastatingly real landscape and key aspects of a truly passionate story. 

By way of this overview, the construction of race and its impact on us all is explored concisely and honestly and I truly commend these first few chapters.  If you don’t know at least this material, I’d say you are not equipped to enter into conversations about race relations these days. If you’ve studied some of this before, consider this a positive and profitable review.

STORIES, ANECDOTES, EXAMPLES MAKE FOR A GOOD READ

A third and very important reason The Myth… is that it is fully of really helpful stories.  Ken starts the book with a conversation he had with a white wannabe urban church planter that, frankly, demoralized me so much I smacked my book shut; can folks really be so unaware of how they sound when speaking about race and being so tone-deaf to how people of color have experienced discriminatory things (often!) that white people rarely, if ever, have.  Mr. Wytsma is often charming and always levelheaded, but he was stern in his response to a couple of conversation partners.  For instance, he is blunt and concise in insisting that a white person who took offense after being told that they cannot fully understand what some blacks have gone through, awkward or even painful as such a claim may feel, is simply not the same as racism or being harmed by discrimination.  White people must let go of misguided notions such as that being accused of insensitivity are equivalent – in terms of injury or anguish – to the stuff most people of color have gone through. It just isn’t.

And so with anecdotes and stories we are off to the races, as they say, deep into the harder questions of white privilege and implicit bias and institutional racism before we’ve even gotten past the riveting introduction. The stories that are told here are illuminating and always bring the theoretical analysis down to earth; this is real-world stuff, and I suspect that our typical BookNotes readers will recognize these kinds of conversations, as you’ve had them in your own families, Bible studies, campus ministries, and church groups. We’ve had these conversations in our own settings, in the bookstore, on the road. The illustrations and examples and case studies and episodes described in The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots… are helpful and informative, even as they ring true.  When he explains some recent research or tells about other bits of other books – like Brent Staples telling about his strategy of setting white people at ease in Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do — you are given tools to think about this, stories to tell, ways to help others understand.  His work on the formation of identity is just really clear, really helpful, and the stories he tells make it come alive. Whether you agree or not with every formulation and interpret every episode as he does or not, this book models a candid discussion about all this, and it presents some basic teachings that we ought to be grappling with.

WHAT TO DO, HOW TO RESPOND?

Fourthly, besides this book being both candidly forthright and instructional about the construal of race and the history of racial injustice and besides it being loaded with stories and interesting examples, it explores powerfully what to do about this situation of white privilege. Once we are more deeply aware of implicit biases and the privileged experiences of some of us in our world layered with unfair advantages and institutional injustices as it is, how to we move forward?

Theologian Scot McKnight says “Ken Wystma is the sort of leader who offers real solutions toward social integration and racial reconciliation.” Part of the solution is to own up to so much of this. To get woke up, as they say these days.

Wytsma in a few devastating paragraphs parses some recent Barna research about evangelical Christians. Despite the good work evangelical publishers have done on reader-friendly, Biblically-based books about reconciliation, white Protestants with historic, orthodox views of the Bible and Christian faith have a lower than typical view of the question of how people of color experience racism in our culture, so much so that one researcher studying these statistics says “More than any other segment of the population, white evangelical Christians demonstrate a blindness to the struggle of their African American brothers and sisters.”  This does not bode well, of course, for the church’s ongoing witness in this arena.

Yet, curiously, white evangelicals have a higher than average view that racial reconciliation is important and that the church has something helpful to offer which is fascinating.

Combining these bits of data, Wytsma writes:

Taken together, these findings reveal that those who believe they are most equipped to help with reconciliation actually don’t think it is needed as much as other American’s do.

Wow.

This is one of the big reasons this book is so very needed right now.

We can be glad that IVP asked Ken to write this and that they will continue to release helpful resources for this conversation. (I do not know of any other religious publisher that is so dedicated to releasing books on this topic.) See, for instance, coming this August (2017) a much-anticipated book White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means To Be White by Daniel Hill (IVP; $16.00.) You can, of course, PRE-ORDER that now from us. Just tell us at the order form page what you want and we’ll send it to you at the discounted price as soon as it releases.

PRACTICAL IDEAS

Helping us to own up to our situation in the spirit of humility and willingness to learn is just the beginning of the practical stuff Wytsma’s book offers.  

Part Three offers three chapters under the title “The Challenge of Privilege” and helps us, again, firstly understand. There is a chapter that offers us a phrase well worth pondering: “When Racism Went Underground.”  The subtitle of this chapter may be disconcerting, and some may even find it unfair – “Implicit Racial Bias and the Stories That Hide Within Us.”

Do stories “hide within us”?  Of course they do – that has been one of the great insights of the movement promoting “worldview” thinking and Christian discernment in cultural analysis.  Many of us have been taught to read “between the lines” to see what presuppositions and values are lurking behind the ads and TV shows and professors textbooks, calibrating our hearts and minds in certain ways; we’ve realized that no news report or scientific claim or artwork is religiously neutral, that all of life is value-laden, conscripting us (as James K.A. Smith puts it in You Are What You Love) to a particular vision of the good life and a certain sort of way of being in the world.  One needn’t be a postmodernist or Freudian to understand how this works: we are people who see through a glass darkly, and our views and attitudes and assumptions and even our overt convictions are always formed in a mix of conscious and subconscious worldviews and social imaginaries, stories and myths and habits of heart that make us who we are.  Do we have assumptions and stereotypes and biases and prejudices (racial and otherwise) swirling just below the surface of our hearts? 

Anyway, Wytsma doesn’t overdo this, but he explores how we ended up here, what it might mean for those of us committed to justice, and how we can – yes —  “find ourselves in the other.”  Oh my, what a great closing chapter that is both inspiring and insightful, but useful in committing to taking next steps of unraveling these assumptions and attitudes of inequality and the social architecture and cultural structures that keep them in place.  He lists four specific things that are common sense and faith-based.  Laying privilege down may be harder than it seems and I wish he’d have written just a bit more about it.

One of the strengths of this book is that it doesn’t pretend to be the authoritative voice or the only take or the final answer.  It is forthright and informed and it is evident that Wytsma is working hard at this, alongside colleagues and friends of color, so it carries some authority, I’d say.  Yet, he repeatedly reminds us that he’s just speaking from his heart, saying what we thinks is helpful, what he’s learned thus far. 

Early on he sounds this out clearly:

I am not attempting to be the authoritative voice on race in America, and I can only really speak from a perspective of privilege and my experience. I am simply addressing a topic to which Scripture speaks clearly, a reality that in many ways has helped to shape my story. Indeed it has played a significant role in shaping the stories of all Americans, whether we know it or not. Speaking only to safe topics, where agreement comes easily, can’t be the chief goal of faithful witness. It wasn’t for Jesus. 

Indeed, the Bible calls us into honest and just conversations, to “speak the truth in love.”  Which sort of leads us to my opening paragraph, noting the varying responses to the lack of conviction in the acquittal in the Philando Castile shooting.  The title of the first part of Wytsma’s short “Conclusion” chapter is called “On Loving the Police and Believing Black Lives Matters.”  He talks how hard it has been for him as a pastor balancing an outspoken denunciation of police brutality and creating a culture within in his church that honors those in law enforcement; Pastor Wytsma describes sitting down with some police officers in his congregation, and this, again, reminds us how beautiful it can be when we move into these hard conversations rather than avoiding such awkwardness.  This book will help you understand our culture and our torn social fabric and the realities of inequality and privilege, but it will also help your church be a more faithful Body. It will help you lean to talk together well. 

 After telling a remarkably moving story about a Palestinian mother and Jewish woman talking, Ken reminds us of the beauty of sharing bread.  Hospitality, after all, is about welcoming the other.  “When we are in a posture of hospitality,” he concludes, “we can’t objectify those with whom we disagree. We can’t throw stones while serving bread. ”  

BookNotes

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We were thrilled to have the opportunity to have a small book display at the biennial CIVA arts conference again this year. With the help of the main editor at Square Halo Books, Ned Bustard, we shipped a few heavy boxes last week to their event at Azusa Pacific University.   Ned himself did a workshop on print making there this weekend which gave him a chance to show off his own work as a print maker, some of which is seen in the adult Bible story book he created called Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-Ups. (See our BookNotes description of it HERE.) We only wished we could have sent more books along, and that we could have joined Ned in talking with the participants there about our wares.

CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) is an exceptional organization for serious artists, art historians, museum curators, art teachers, theologians of culture, and those who teach aesthetics. As a non-church-related Christian organization it is perhaps parallel to CLS (the Christian Legal Society) which networks, encourages, and resources people of faith working in the legal profession, or, ASA, The American Scientific Affiliation, a good group for Christians who work in the sciences.

CIVA is world-class, world-renowned, and ecumenical (although with roots in the evangelical community, starting over 40 years ago when a sculptor and art prof at Bethel College organized the first gathering in 1979.)  We have admired them from a far from the very beginning.

Two years ago the CIVA conference was held at Calvin College in Grand Rapids and the brand new book in their series “Studies in Theology and the Arts” is a wonderfully edited collection of papers, talks, and even panel discussions that were held at CIVA 2015.  Entitled Contemporary Art and the Church: A Conversation Between Two Worlds, edited by W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley (IVP Academic; $30.00) it is nothing short of groundbreaking, stunning, and almost one of a kind. I’ll try to explain why.

Unlike some other vocational fields, there are plenty of books about faith and the arts; we have shelves and shelves dedicated to this topic.  We have books that are simple and basic – that everyone should read if you care about living a good life in God’s colorful world – and some that are heavy, heady, and wonderful for those who are serious artists or working in the world of scholarly and academic discourse in the arts. (You can see a few of our older annotated lists of such books HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, or HERE. I did a review of Beauty Give By Grace: The Biblical Prints of Sadao Watanabe HERE.)

Even though I can hardly write my name with much flourish, let alone draw or paint or dance, I love these books and have found the breadth and depth of my own faith and Christian world-and-life view deepened by reading in this evocative field. I’ve often said that if I were to be stranded on the proverbial desert island and could only take one book, it would most likely be Calvin Seerveld’s Rainbows for the Fallen World. I know many in CIVA circles look to Cal as one of their great mentors.

The brand new CIVA book takes the “faith and the arts” conversation deeper into what they call contemporary art (which is to say, not “modern” art which is a very specific style and movement which started over a 100 years ago.) Contemporary artists work most often in mixed media, video, performance, installation stuff, and their work is often transgressive.  In the book’s excellent, rousing introduction it describes contemporary art as “artworks that employ narratives that feature marginal voices, transgressive activities, and the social and kinesthetic body.  From Jeff Koons to Ai Weiwei, these artists, unlike their modernist precursors, “call on practices that generally exist in reaction to a perceived Western art canon.” 

Not only is there serious engagement with this latest ethos within the art community, a second focus of Contemporary Art and the Church is, in fact, how the church might interact with the arts; that is, it explores significantly how artists these days might be more integrated into the life of local congregations and how local churches themselves might become more artful, aesthetically rich, creative.  We have several great books about wisely discerning how to think about the arts in Christian worship; see, for instance the very thoughtful Visual Arts in the Worshiping Church by Lisa Deboer (Eerdmans; $24.00) or the more practically-minded Creative Church Handbook: Releasing the Power of the Arts in Your Congregation by J. Scott McElroy (IVP; $20.00.) Most of the papers presented at the CIVA conference that became chapters in this new book are pretty scholarly, even if they highlight great examples and case studies.  It really is a remarkable volume.

In both the section in CAatC about Christian engagement with contemporary art and artists and the section about the church and worship, there were major keynote addresses and responses to those presentations. The responses are shorter but bring a different angle and offer very helpful conversation and much to ponder.  I am really out of my own areas of expertise here, and had to take some of this fairly slowly, but it is just so very intriguing and good.  Even if you’re not used to reading this sort of stuff about art history, a theology of culture, and the like, it is a very valuable education.  And it’s so good just knowing that this level of discourse is going on.  I think you could give this book to any college professor in the arts these days and they’d be impressed with the maturity of insight and the quality of scholarship.

Just for instance, in artist and scholar Wayne Roosa’s amazing chapter  — his insights about the Old Testament prophets use of subversive performance art and naming some contemporary social prophets sent me to the internet to look up more, by the way — he explains the much-discussed On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art by the important, esteemed, critic James Elkins. (Mako Fujimura’s International Arts Movement, convened an IAM symposium on this text several years ago and we have stocked Elkins’s books ever since.)  Roosa contrasted Elkins’s dour “not much conversation is possible” analysis with a more optimistic view found in Eleanor Heartney’s Postmodern Heretics: The Catholic Imagination in Contemporary Art. Along the way he draws in insights from Buber and Wittgenstein and Levinas, not to mention a stunning performance episode from Burning Man. What a chapter!

Linda Stratford (who coedited with James Romaine a book we carry called ReVisioning: Critical Methods for Seeing Christianity in the History of Art) in her shorter response called “Art and Spiritual Pilgrimage” shows that Roosa’s take on Elkins is more pessimistic than Elkins would have intended.

Her response is gracious, wonderfully expressed, and after a fascinating reflection on Andy Warhol she reminds us that:

It is time to cultivate a fruitful interplay between artists and today’s spiritual pilgrims. This requires that we adopt a posture more welcoming to the spiritual pilgrim, and in order to do that we must push back somewhat on Roosa’s contention that art and church are not a pair sharing “the same soil.” Both contemporary art and the church serve as arenas for contemplative awareness; both rely primarily on the revelatory power of expression; both serve as arenas for imaginative cultural change; and both serve as agents of social transformation. It is the nature of art that it discloses in an imaginative way; it is the nature of Christian faith that it is disclosed not only in a propositional set of beliefs but also in fresh, imaginative mode of questioning and searching… Transgressive art can serve the purpose of spiritual formation if we avoid the trap of labeling art “religious” or “not religious” and instead allow it to speak on its own terms.

Stratford captures much of the intent of the many authors in this book when she says:

With renewed lay and clerical training in our rich art heritage, and awareness of its generous theological breadth, we may indeed end up better equipped to invigorate the church’s missional posture. A renewed relationship between the church and the contemporary art world will have a wider impact than the dynamic between the two. Equipped with more richly informed, nuanced interaction with the contemporary art world, the church will find itself strengthened by adopting a posture more welcoming to the spiritual pilgrim than that of “The Church of the Ready-Made Definition.” 

There is much in Taylor & Worley’s Contemporary Art and the Church: A Conversation Between Two Worlds for art enthusiasts, patrons, collectors. The chapter “Artists as Witnesses in the Church” by legendary art collector and CIVA co-founder Sandra Bowden and Marianne Lettieri shares their own stories of installing shows, loaning art, collaborating with art historians to get art pieces described well, and eventually creating the CIVA-funded book Seeing the Unseen: Launching and Managing a Church Gallery. What a lovely, lovely, chapter.

And, there is serious theology.  The heady, obviously brilliant Ben Quash (Found Theology: History, Imagination and the Holy Spirit which was published the previous year by T & T Clark) was a big hit at the original conference and here his presentation is a major chapter that asks how contemporary art can be “devotional.”  The respondent was the book coeditor Taylor Worley (who, by the way, has a PhD from University of St. Andrews and is associate professor of faith and culture as well as associate vice president for spiritual life and ministries at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. He himself is coeditor of Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture: Responses to the Work of David Brown.) Taylor’s reply to Quash is called “Graced Encounters.”  Nice, eh?

Although some of it was pretty philosophical, I adored the chapter “Something from Nothing: A Theology of Nothingness and Silence for Yves Klein’s Le Vide” by Christina L. Carnes-Ananias.  I had never heard of this seminal art experience, well described here, including a line about Albert Camus’s response when he attended the Le Vide show on April 28, 1958, which indicated how important it was and, I suppose, something about the driving spirit of much of this sort of work.

The section on worship is remarkably thoughtful and rich – Katie Dresser, whose PhD is from Harvard, and who teaches art at Seattle Pacific, has a great piece about the imago dei expressed in worship. W. David Taylor’s response (“What Art? Which Worship?”) is worth reading twice.  You should know Taylor, by the way, as he compiled a wonderful little book for church folks interested in being more thoughtful and engaged in the arts called For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Art (Baker; $18.00.) He is an ordained Anglican minister and director of Fuller’s Brehm, Texas. (If some of this is new to you or your congregation, Taylor’s very approachable book includes great pieces by Eugene Peterson, Luci Shaw, Lauren Winner, Andy Crouch, John Witvliet, and Jeremy Begbie.  It is the kind of book that I’d think every church should have in their church library or resource center.)

One chapter in Contemporary Art and the Church by Chelle Stearns called “(Con)Founded Theology” offers a “haptic pneumatology for contemporary art.”  I didn’t know what that was either, so don’t worry. 

And there’s a chapter by David W. McNutt with the subtitle “How Karl Barth’s Ecclesiology Can Help the Church Embrace Contemporary Art.”  Right on!

One of my favorite chapters in the new CAatC book (again, academically rigorous as it is) is called “Art, Place, and the Church: Thinking Theologically About Contemporary Art in the Worship Space” by theologian Jennifer Allen Craft.  She draws on The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard and quotes Ricoeur and phenomenologist Merleu-Ponty, but most of us will be glad to see her footnotes including Wendell Berry and Brian Walsh and Walter Brueggemann’s The Land and that great book about an agrarian reading of the Bible by Ellen Davis.  Any chapter that quotes Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere and relates it to worship should cause us to take notice, eh?

Please know that although there is a lot of academic footnotes and lots of allusions to what will be for most of us obscure artists and art shows, and there is philosophy and theology and liturgics and aesthetic theory that may not be your own native tongue, there is also lots of plain-spoken and truly inspiring calls to be seriously engaged in the world, to bear witness to the cosmic reconciliation where Christ is redeeming His hurting creation, and there is much that even those of us who aren’t involved in any art stuff will appreciate.  In almost every chapter there is academic rigor and deep faith and testimony.  There is history and cultural studies and there are stories and examples, which is to say that even those of us not schooled in this discourse will find most of this really fabulous, informative, helpful.

A true highlight of the book for me was a lively panel discussion on the history, struggles and future of CIVA where philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff (his book Art in Action remains a standard) invited four key figures to ruminate together.  And what a joy to listen in on such a candid symposium of remembrance and hope.  In this chapter you get the verbatim from Sandra Bowden, Ted Prescott, Calvin Seerveld and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker. I have to admit I hadn’t anticipated having Hearts & Minds named as a sign of hope in these matters, and it made my eyes moist with encouragement.  Maybe it is just me, but I think for any of us who are leaders, social activists, agents of change, founders of organizations of any sort, hearing the stories of these good folks who felt so marginalized and misunderstood within their churches and religious institutions was moving and good. Learning how they banded together to work in this particular field in God’s Kingdom is inspiring and instructional. (I am sure that scientists and lawyers, just for instance, could tell similar stories of needing to band together for like-minded fellowship and mutual encouragement.) I simply have to praise God for this kind of stuff, knowing of the sacrifices and innovative leadership offered in this arena. 

There was another symposium/panel discussion at CIVA that year, and it, too, made its way into the book. It is a wonderfully informative set of stories by those practicing art making in these days.  Moderated by the very active new media artist and scholar Kevin Hamilton, we get to listen in on this conversation by serious artists talking about their wok in the public square.  For anyone in the church who is interested in supporting various careers and callings, this is a glimpse into the lives of artists that is well worth pay attention to.

And I must say this: I got choked up reading the vivid Biblical insights of Calvin Seerveld in a brilliant chapter near the end called “Helping Your Neighbor See Surprises: Advice to Recent Graduates.”  As one who edited a collection of inspiring, visionary commencement addresses helping young graduates (Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life, nicely published by Square Halo Books) I am particularly interested in the sorts of advice given to those moving into the professional spheres of their lives.  Seerveld is speaking to those with art degrees, of course, but I was still so taken with it I read it twice. He offers plenty of fresh insights, including about the hard work it takes to master a craft (“it takes almost monastic focus to achieve the technical competence basic to good artwork”) but also how we ought not allow our multi-dimensional human life to be swallowed up by being an artist.” This is a profound insight into the nature of things:

You are essentially the same person even if you are both a priest and a husband – but you should not wear sacerdotal robes when you sleep with your wife in bed. You may be both a mother and a first rate lawyer, but if you treat your home like a prison and the children as if they are on parole, the resulting distortion bodes trouble. Likewise, when it comes time to pay the bills, it is not right to say, “Sorry, but I’m an artist!” A person is never just or wholly an artist but always an artist and a citizen, a mystic, a hypochondriac, an intelligent person and so on…

Few have done more to write academically and Biblically about the arts and aesthetics than Cal Seerveld.  (See my review of a six volume set of books of his, here.) Of course, he is always clever and a bit playful (he says that “artistry is making merry with metaphor.”) But it takes a certain sort of chutzpah, or humble confidence in being an older brother to many, to remind a gathering of artists not to call themselves artists.  What?

And, not to overstate the role of the arts, either, blessed as it may be.  Seerveld writes,

It is also important to realize that the artistic responsibility to be imaginative is limited. The imaginative task is to arouse the twinkle of hope in your neighbor, and not, for example, to solve the societal disaster of widespread poverty. 

After movingly describing two passionate paintings that he surely showed on slides, about degradation and brokenness in the world, Seerveld insists that visual artwork that is normative and fulfills its limited creaturely task doesn’t have to preach the gospel or change the world.

God wants art to do subtle justice to what is good and bad in reality, and serve it up with a sparkle of colorful grace and a wink of mercy. Your artwork does not and cannot have to do everything you have the capacity for, but its limited offering can be a cover for thanking God. 

As is typical with Seerveld’s sort of reformational worldview, influenced by the neo-Calvinist all-of-life-redeemed vision of Abraham Kuyper, he preaches a bit about the reality of the Kingdom of God that encompasses all societal spheres. (Even in the panel discussion he kindly expressed a hint of frustration that CIVA was talking about “the church” and “theology” (two topics he knows a lot about and cares for deeply) as if that is what makes good art useful for Christians.  Christians with a robust vision of vocation will serve God in their work whether it is related to the institutional church or not, since the reign of God is creation-wide and not limited to the congregation as such.  After some excited reminders of God’s reconciling, restoring work in the world, he reminds us, then, how art can contribute to the coming of the city of God.  Even if you know a lot about the arts, you should buy this book to read what Seerveld nicely says about “jesters and ventriloquists” on pages 215-216. It was a great compliment to CIVA members old and new, and to all of us reading along in this important volume, to be called such things by Seerveld. I will be pondering this new description of my own calling for quite some time.  

The book ends with another truly exceptional chapter, a wonderful, informed, significant, and beautiful message by CIVA Executive Director Cameron Anderson.  It is called “Saving the World” and it offers much wisdom and insight for us all.  

Anderson explains his goal:

In this closing essay I invite you to consider how all that is rich and good in our respective cultural arenas, the artistic and the ecclesial, might be directed to love God and neighbor more completely.

Cam quotes John Chrysostom on I Corinthians 1: 18 about the role of the weak and misunderstood, perhaps the foolhardy saints now known as contemporary artists.  Wow.

And he explores the often-cited line from Solzhenitsyn and Dostoevsky that “beauty can save the world.”   I needn’t here recount the scholars and writers Anderson cites in his brief overview of the role of beauty in our lives, but he does hang out a bit with C.S. Lewis.  This is good, rich, stuff, and it must have been a joy and invigorating to hear this talk live.  It is well worth reading, well worth pondering, good for any of us.  I know it will be a stretch for some, but I highly recommend Contemporary Art and the Church: A Conversation Between Two Worlds, edited by W. David O. Taylor and Taylor Worley.  It’s important.

I couldn’t quite work this in earlier, but there included in the book are some full color photographs nicely reproduced showing a handful of pieces done by some of the CIVA participants, such as  Bruce Herman, Tim Lowly, Karen Brummund, Marianne Lettieri, Erica Grimm, Roger Feldman, Joyce Yu-Jean Lee, David Hooker, Jay Walker, Phaedra Taylor, Allison Luce, Scott Erickson, Many Cano Villalobos, Steve A. Prince, and Ted Prescott.  These are done on glossy paper as an insert in the book and illustrate some very allusive, interesting, creative pieces.

TWO MORE

There have been two previous books in the CIVA “Studies in Theology and the Arts.”

Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism by Jonathan A. Anderson and William A. Dyrness (IVP Academic) $24.00  This book was a bit controversial when it released about a year ago;  it offers a long-awaited and some think much-needed discussion about the problems — at least according to these authors — of the 1970s classic Rookmaaker volume Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Jonathan Anderson, by the way, has a major chapter in the new one, too, and is a very significant scholar.  And William Dryness has bunches of other books that we stock. He’s a vital, prolific author who spoke this week at CIVA 2017. This book is a truly major contribution to the conversation about faith as it is seen within modern and contemporary art and along with books by Daniel Siedell (God in the Gallery:A Christian Embrace of Modern Art and Whose Afraid of Modern Art?) represent a major new level of discourse about Christian engagement in the 21st century art scene. We commend it for your consideration.  See my review of it HERE.

The Faithful Artist: A Vision for Evangelicalism and the Arts by Cameron J. Anderson (IVP Academic) $26.00.  I mentioned earlier that Cam has a wonderful chapter in the new one. He has worked in campus ministry with faculty and grad students, has his own MFA and is now the Executive Director of Christians in the Visual Arts.  This one was the second release in this impressive new CIVA-related series and, again, I cannot say enough about it.  I discussed it a bit at BookNotes when it first released and I only wish I had the expertise to give it its due. We respect Cam and his work very much and this book is very highly recommended.  We’ve mentioned The Faithful Artist several times in our BookNotes newsletters (including naming it among our “Best Books of 2016” listings) but I find this review by our friend Bob Trupe to be helpful in explaining it. Check out his review HERE (but come back and order it from us, as Bob himself nicely suggests.)

We are grateful for the chance to sell these kinds of books and hope that if you know anyone who might find this useful that you would alert them – or, better yet, buy a book or two for them.  Not many bookstores carry this kind of stuff, and we would be please to play a small part in your efforts to encourage others for whom these kinds of books could be a lifeline.

BookNotes

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If you follow us on social media you may have seen a few pictures we posted from our recent flurry of doing big off-site books displays. We enjoyed being with friends from the Lower Susquehanna Synod of the ELCA where naturally we had a lot of books about Luther and Lutheran theology and resources to help them observe the 500^th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation. Thanks to some local friends who volunteered to help us load in (on the beautiful campus of Messiah College) and to the many customers (pastors, church leaders, and lay delegates) who browsed our pop-up bookstore there. 

The very next day we ended up at Lancaster Theological Seminary who hosts an annual academic conference sponsored by the Mercersburg Society in the tradition of what is called Mercersburg Theology.  (This 19th century movement is curiously capturing the attention of many from various quarters these days; the founders, John W. Nevin and Philip Schaff, taught not far from us here in Mercersburg,  a small town near Gettysburg, PA, and then moved to Lancaster in the late 1800s.)

A theology student working on a PhD from Calvin Seminary gave a great paper, we heard from a leading Kierkegaard scholar (an African American woman influenced by Howard Thurman) and Dr. Bill Evans gave a keynote. (His book called Imputation and Impartation: Union with Christ in American Reformed Theology is a truly excellent doctrinal study with uniquely Mercersburg fingerprints all over it) I enjoyed meeting fellow PC(USA) theologian — I say “fellow” because I’m a Presbyterian, not because I’m a theologian — Douglas Ottati. The title of his remarkable Eerdmans book Theology for Liberal Protestants may be off putting to some (and I think it is a bit misleading) but he’s a writer to know. The theme of the Mercersburg Society gathering was somewhat related to the upcoming Reformation 500 commemorations so there was some serious study of the theme of grace. We had some serious books there, including introductions to Calvin and Luther and the other history-makers of the 1500s.  Perhaps we’ll do a BookNotes newsletter just about that later this summer.

No sooner did we pack up from this small but intense conference than we drove two Hearts & Minds vehicles to the Penn Central UCC Conference annual conference, an always interesting and enjoyable gathering among many of our Central Pennsylvania friends and local customers. The United Church of Christ is perhaps the most theologically and politically progressive but their clergy and certainly their membership are diverse, and we take books “right, left, and center” and, as we joke, with “something to offend everyone.”  It gets a laugh, but in this crowd there is respect, collegiality, and good conversation with everyone staying at the table (as they say) in Christ-centered unity. 

Most churches (although not all) of the mainline denominational variety are aging and shrinking.  Some are on the front lines of thinking about the nature of mission in the post-Christian, pluralizing culture, seeking creative ways to share buildings, re-tool their staff, seeking revitalization in fresh ways. (See the brand new Fresh Expressions: A New Kind of Methodist Church for People Not in Church for case studies of creative, missional communities that are serious about outreach and service and more.) Lutherans are of course more shaped by their more formal liturgy and polity. UCC folks of the Mercersburg heritage share a pretty serious interest in the “mystical presence” and skew a bit more liturgically rich than many Protestants.  Many UCC churches have a connection to New England congregationalism, though, so are less fancy in these matters.  Which is to say, our book displays serving both the Lutherans and the wide range of UCC congregations had many different sorts of books about ecclesiology, worship, and liturgy.  Worship is one of our keen interests and we are glad that mainline churches are often very thoughtful about these things.

But, to be honest, the heady theology and the missional church strategies and the sacramental theology and the books about leading worship well don’t sell that much.  

Most ordinary folks are looking for books that are upbeat and interesting, inspiring without being fundamentalist or simplistic. I’m a Max Lucado fan, for instance, and we always take some Lucado books, and other accessible evangelical authors that aren’t too progressive or odd.  It makes us happy to sell books that are helpful in turning ordinary church goers into disciples of Jesus, titles like Think, Act Believe Like Jesus: Becoming a New Person in Christ by Randy Frazee or Bible studies like Discipleship Essentials by Greg Ogden or the new God Has A Name by John Mark Comer, or Eugene Peterson’s Long Obedience in the Same Direction, a classic. I was very excited when a Lutheran Synod staff member asked if we had Go: Returning Discipleship to the Front Lines of Faith, a NavPress book by Preston Sprenkle.  As a matter of fact we did.

There is a scene in the first Ghostbusters movie when the wacky battle with the green slimy ghost is starting and Dr. Egon Spengler informs the team that whatever you do, do not cross the streams of their laser beams.  The character played by Bill Murray wisecracks, asking him to clarify.  He replies, famously, about the “total protonic reversal” that “it would be bad.”

We were brought up in a religious context where this was more or less the assumption and, in some years of our lives, the specific admonition.  Mainline denominational folks were considered too theologically mushy and lukewarm to be of trusted by us evangelicals.  Other evangelicals might detract from the truth we Reformed Christians held so tightly.  Catholics and Episcopalians and other higher church denominations looked down their liturgical noses at everyone else. And mainline folks just had nothing to do with the independents, the ones who called their churches “Bible believing.”  Everybody feared crossing the streams.

But you know what? We cross ’em all the time and nothing much awful happens.  There are some sparks sometimes, shooting off into our seemingly calm atmospheres, but no lightning bolts. We put Radical Spirit: 12 Ways to Life a Free and Authentic Life, a new book on humility by liberal Benedictine nun Joan Chittister and the new posthumous collection of Marcus Borg (Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in the Twenty-first Century) right next to the lovely little pair Being Christian and Being Disciples by Anglican Rowan Williams, next to a few by PCA leader Tim Keller and even some writers who think N.T. Wright is too liberal. (I know.) We put C.S. Lewis there with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, two authors everybody has heard of but most haven’t yet read.  We show off old monastic spirituality and Puritan writers as well as modern contemplatives like Henri Nouwen and Richard Rohr. Everybody gets along and we encourage reading widely, crossing the streams for God’s Kingdom’s sake.

We even sold a copy or two of the new IVP Academic paperback Evangelical, Sacramental, Pentecostal: Why the Church Should Be All Three by the reasonable and calm Gordon Smith, even though most of our Lutheran and certainly most of our UCC friends would hardly claim to be any one of the three, let alone all at once.  Such a book reminds me of the wonderful Streams of Living Water: Essential Practices from the Six Great Traditions of Christian Faith by Richard Foster which tells of why we need each other’s strengths and sensibilities to have a balanced, Biblical sort of spirituality. 

So it goes, exhausting ourselves lugging boxes and setting up tables and squeezing books onto every square inch of display space we can muster. And crossing the streams, encouraging folks to read widely, and gladly being a part of the messy life of some of our mainline denominational church assemblies. 

* * *

At the UCC annual conference I was asked to do a workshop about books folks might enjoy.  I mixed it up with theology books and resources for church revitalization and memoir and titles of social concern.  I first waxed about the value of reading, quoted the must-read book by Chris Smith Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. I told even laypeople they might enjoy Reading for Preaching by Cornelius Plantinga, a book any church-going book lover will cherish. I told a few stories of people whose lives were changed by reading, and how reading together can be transforming — I told about Wilberforce and Hannah More and Wedgewood and commended Eric Metaxas’ marvelous book Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery which illustrates how cultural renewal and social justice movements are sustained by communities who read. I hoped to inspire reading widely, thinking well, and enjoying the koinonia that develops when big ideas are in the air because people are reading books together.

Of course, I held up high (and read the alluring table of contents of) Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn McEntyre and her newer devotional about words called, nicely, Word By Word: A Daily Spiritual Practice. These are nearly necessities for us, these days. I hope you have them.

This is one vital part of the recovering of a civil and morally serious culture: we simply must care about words, recall our very identity as people made in the image of a God who speaks, and honor those who are gifted as writers, storytellers, wordsmiths. Readers become empathetic, caring, helpful.

Well, all that was prelude to a little show and tell seminar I did. Here are just some that I highlighted for this particular crowd.  I wish you could have heard my explanations, why I thought they’d be good reads, what to watch out for, what to appreciate, sense my passion about this. I even read a few excerpts out loud.  Time ran out, of course, and I felt like those ghostbusters after the battle with the big marshmallow, splattering their good stuff all over.  It was a mess and it was a blast.  Maybe you’ll find this list interesting.  Order from us today.

TWENTY-ONE GREAT ONES QUICKLY DESCRIBED to order see below

All Things New: Rediscovering the Four Chapter Gospel Hugh Whelchel (Institute of Faith, Work, Economics) $6.99 This six-week Bible study explains the full story the Bible presents, cover to cover – the goodness of the blessed creation, the ruination of the sin-wracked creation, the decisive victory over death in Christ’s atonement, and the full-orbed promise of the restoration of creation. The next two studies invite conversations about how the gospel is best expressed in this full four-chapter story (and not the truncated middle two parts) and why this matters.  Liberal or conservative, progressive or old school evangelical, nobody gets this quite right and I think this little Bible study resource would be revolutionary, rocking your group with fresh insights and new resolve to live out a hopeful faith in all areas of life.  Not too many people bought it – maybe mainline churches don’t have many small group Bible studies going on.  We’ve got plenty and hope you order it soon.

Reintegrate Your Vocation with God’s Mission Bob Robinson (Good Place Publishing) $12.00  This is also a small group Bible study resource, a great book for those who want to have both a book to read and lots of Bible verses to look up and discuss. It has just a bit of content each week, sidebars and good quotes, and excellent discussion questions.  This, like Whelchel’s more concise booklet above, covers this four-chapter plot of the Bible and then goes to wonderful measures to show us just why this matters, especially for our vocational lives, relating worship and work, Sunday and Monday, so to speak.  There is simply no small group resource like this in print and we highly recommend it.  Full disclosure: Bob is a dear friend, he kindly re-publishes many of my Facebook posts, tweets, and BookNotes columns, and I have a rave endorsement on the back of this little book.  

The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right Lisa Sharon Harper (Waterbrook) $19.99  This is a book that came out about a year ago and we take it everywhere we go. Lisa is a friend, a hero in many ways to Beth and me, and we enjoy explaining this book. It is rich, full of big ideas, but yet intimate and even tender at times, as Lisa shares about this question haunting her: does the gospel as it is typically explained come across as truly good news, especially to those who are hurting, who have been oppressed or marginalized. She is a strong African American woman with some Native American blood and she re-imagines the gospel story using the same sort of “unfolding drama” of four chapters that Whelchel and Robinson commend above, showing how the promised restoration brings a promise of shalom.  Indeed, her description of the Bible story uses really helpful language, telling how God gave us blessed shalom, our sin brought alienation, and Christ’s redemption brings reconciliation.  Isn’t that a great way to understand things? The second half of the book explores the implications of gospel-reconciliation for race relations, creation care, injustices between men and women, even international tensions.  God’s good news is a very good gospel, indeed, and her call to be agents of reconciliation in all aspects of life is really, really worth reading.  If I were the head of the UCC, I’d have everybody reading this together. It is good for evangelicals who need stretching a bit into a more wholistic and socially engaged gospel and it is good for progessive activists to root them clearly in the Biblical story. And it is good for all of us, who need a truly good, good gospel.  Highly recommended.

Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World Richard Mouw (IVP) $16.00 As you may know, I really, really like this book and recommend it often. I thought that just showing it would cause it to fly off our shelves — we had a bunch.  I expected a bit more lament and expressions of frustration with the quality and tone of our current statecraft — we did sell a few of the brand new Preaching in an Age of Trump by (Chalice Press) — and although it is true that many of us feel we must speak clearly against immorality, narcissism, dishonesty, and bad policy in high places, as Christians we must always be gracious and fair.  Anyway, this is a book we take everywhere we go and it is shown off with hope that folks will read it and take it to heart.  

The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life Os Guinness (Word) $17.99  I often highlight newer books in these little book workshops but sometimes I pull out an old chestnut like this and get all verklempt telling why it means so much to me.  This, truly, is one of my top five books ever, and it is so eloquent, wise, insightful, rich, and important that I take it almost everywhere we go. I am sad that many in mainline churches don’t know his big body of work – we had his newest Impossible People about being steadfast and faithful, Renaissance about being hopeful God will bring God’s own renewal to us in Christ’s own way, and that exceptionally thoughtful Fool’s Talk although, truth be told, nobody bought any.  I did convince a few to try The Call, perhaps because they liked the idea of reading a book by a relative of the Guinness beer family or just because I insisted it was one of my own favorites.  One chapter is called “Everyone, Everywhere, Everything”  and captures the dynamic of the social revolution of the Reformation that liberated the laity to use the language of calling and empowered all of us to serve God, for His glory alone, in all that we do, everywhere. The discussion questions in the back are exceptional, making this a book I recommend most heartily.

Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life Tish Harrison Warren (IVP) $16.00  I’ve raved about this book before, often, having been one of the first to review it late last December when we got it in.  (You can revisit that BookNotes column, here.) Her wonderful book shows how she finds God in the ordinary stuff of a daily day of her life, mostly by drawing on worship practices and stuff we “rehearse” in church.  What a beautiful telling of why worship matters and how Sunday spills into all of life as we discover God’s presence through the whole live-long day.  I think this was one of our best-selling books in this latest stretch of shows, admittedly because I told anyone I could about it. I wish we had sold more!  If you haven’t read it yet, get on board. It is wonderfully fun to read and may be life-changing.  Andy Crouch, by the way, has a really nice foreword, and Jamie Smith’s brilliant You Are What You Love shows up a bit.

Moveable Feast: Worship for the Other Six Days Terry Timm (Imagination Press) $12.99  One of the brilliant features of the above mentioned Liturgy of the Ordinary is how Tish Warren relates worship practices to daily life, mostly a day in her life as a homemaking mom.  Here, Rev. Terry Timm, pastor of a great church in Pittsburgh, reflects on the “front end” of this equation – how to worship well, how to plan worship, and how to frame church as a formative center which shapes us for our vocational callings in all of life the rest of the week.  I do not know of any other book that does this so nicely, so thoughtfully, so accessibly.  Every pastor and worship leader should be thinking like this, and I believe it could be helpful to anyone who plans, leads, or attends worship.  Yep.  We’re happy to tell folks of any faith tradition about this gem.  For some more comments about it, see my BookNotes review here…. just scroll down to the bottom of the list.)

Break Open the Sky: Saving Our Faith from a Culture of Fear Stephan Bauman (Multnomah) $15.99  Do you recall my naming this in that big review I did of the Goudzwaard & Bartholomew Beyond the Modern Age just two weeks ago?  I was listing books that offer a bit of cultural discernment, naming where we’ve been and what’s going on.  Bauman is not heavy-handed and the book is a delight to read, inviting us (by way of moving stories and solid Bible exposition) into a spacious world where fear need not bind us so. I really loved this wise book, found it enjoyable and challenging, and I can’t say enough about it.  It would make a great book club title, pushing us to be aware of the pressures of our world and allowing faith to give us fresh insight, courage, resolve, and love.  Yes, love. I told all about it during this workshop, but I’m not sure I did a great job so I’m commending it to you here, now. Give it a try, I’m sure you’ll be touched by it. 

Ken Wytsma (IVP) $18.00  I hope you know this author – Wytsma is important; he’s an excellent thinker and a fine writer.  His significant book Pursuing Justice came out of the annual Justice Conference that he developed a few years back, and his deeper book about faith, The Grand Paradox: The Messiness of Life, the Mystery of God and the Necessity of Faith, actually, is amazingly splendid. He did a great little book on creativity (Create vs. Copy) and now, this, on what has become known in the conversations about race as “white privilege.”

Listen to these three thoughtful endorsements of this brand new, very enlightening book:

It is impossible to deny that Christ is moving his church today toward racial reconciliation. It is likewise impossible to deny that many white Christians like me are not as comfortable with that movement as we say we are. In The Myth of Equality, Ken engages a visceral topic with clarity, compassion, and inspiring conviction. He prompts us to engage the deep and bitter roots of racial bias and privilege in American faith. A must-read resource for those beginning to feel that ‘the way things are’ is not okay. A readable, well-reasoned push toward Christ’s justice.  

Paul J. Pastor, author of The Face of the Deep

The Myth of Equality is written so skillfully that it’s easy to miss how much it accomplishes. The first part brings to light, with unflinching honesty, how deeply racism and white privilege are embedded within the founding documents and practices of the United States. The second part masterfully shows that this inequality violates the call of the gospel to justice and unity. And the third part offers some wise suggestions to those of us who are white Christians about how we can ‘lay down’ our white privilege. I have no doubt that some readers will be angered by the claim that they participate in and benefit from structures of racism and white privilege, well supported though that claim is. I predict that there will be more who are convinced and inspired by the patient, passionate, and nondefensive way in which Wytsma makes his case. It’s a book that someone had to write.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University, senior research fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia

Ken Wytsma is a white evangelical man from a conservative white evangelical world, and he is doing his homework on race. I’ve witnessed Ken’s journey toward deeper understanding of the construct of race, its impact on individuals and communities of color, and what redemption requires. I’ve witnessed the wrestling and the transformation as aha moments have moved him into deeper love, more solid commitment, and earnest work toward the healing of our world. Through The Myth of Equality, Wytsma offers a peek at his homework. But this is no cheat sheet. It’s a journal of discoveries shared with humility, grace, and unrelenting commitment to truth. 

Lisa Sharon Harper, chief church engagement officer, Sojourners, author of The Very Good Gospel

The Tech Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in It’s Proper Place Andy Crouch (Baker) $13.99  I simply held this up and said that anybody who cares about family life should have this, and anybody who works with children or youth should have this and anybody who has grand-kids should have this and, well, anybody who uses the internet at all really should consider this as well.  Yep, I want to say that this is the best brief book on the role of screens and digital devices in our technological world and it is a wise guide into this brave new world of ours.  I so enjoyed this, found it richer and more interesting than I expected (and you know I esteem Andy Crouch very, very much, always pushing his books Culture Making, Playing God, and the more recent Strong and Weak.)  Read any of his good books, I implored my friends in the workshop, but this one is a must for most of us.

The First Love Story: Adam, Eve, and Us Bruce Feiler (Penguin Press) $28.00 What fun having this New York Times bestseller on our display at these kinds of church events. Feiler is known in many circles for his breakout hit book and PBS documentary series Walking the Bible. We’ve carried all his books since even before that one, as we love his “creative nonfiction” journalism where he travels around and describes what he sees, searching for meaning and clues and signals that point us towards a good life. Yep, this starts near the Tigris and Euprates Rivers searching for the mythical Garden of Eden.  He is on the ground in some exciting territory — should he be wearing a flak jacket when he goes into ISIS war zones? — and he covers scholarly, historical, religious, emotional, fruit of the sacred texts that talk about Adam and Eve.  These really are our founding stories, we Jewish and Christian believers, at least, and Feiler playfully but wisely explores the implications for love and sexuality and family of this grounding narrative. 

The many great, great blurbs endorsing The First Love Story are from smart writers and thought leaders such as Andrew Solomon and Jon Meacham and Rabbi David Wolpe and the Jesuit James Martin.  Even the Muslim Jesus scholar Reza Aslan chimes in saying it is “eye-opening look at one of the most famous stories of all time…” He suggests is forces us to “rethink our understanding of sacredness and profanity.”  It’s compelling, written with plenty of his characteristic wit and earnest grace.

Great Wall of China and the Salton Sea: Monuments, Missteps, and the Audacity of Ambition Russell Rathbun (Eerdmans) $21.99  I mused about this a bit, citing the lovely and insightful foreword by Nadia Bolz-Weber (who they most likely know, if only from her great Krista Tippett “On Being” interview, and her spicy memoir Pastrix.) I explained it is a memoir, but also a travelogue, as our intrepid writer moseys around these two massive monuments to ambition and hubris.  From a rumination on the Tower of Babel to a reflection on why we like to look at pictures of ruins, from his own family’s connections to the massive failure that created the Salton Sea to his visits to China, Rathbun gives us an entertaining, quirky, and very moving book that is creative in its conception, creative in its writing, and very serious in its message for those that may have the ears to hear.  What a great book. If you’d like to see another short review I did of it, find it here among others in this big BookNotes list.)

 

Hallelujah Anyway:  Rediscovering Mercy Anne Lamott (Riverhead) $20.00  We hardly had to introduce Annie to anyone in this crowd. She is the sort of religious writer many appreciate – honest, colorful, culturally liberal, but very serious about expressing the love and grace she discovered from Jesus.  Few writers are as expansive in their big hearts and few are as honest about their own sins and foibles and fears and stupidity. She owns it, and I think that may be why many relate to her.  This book is about mercy.  It was one of  our biggest sellers at these events.

The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian Brian McLaren (Convergent) $21.00  I think those who tilt conservative and traditional theologically should read this because he is naming what is, in fact, a bit of a shift in the American religious landscape.  I don’t know if it is as widespread as Brian suggests – otherwise the UCC might be growing in more lively ways – but I do think he is documenting a huge conversation that has been going on in recent years.  I suggested to my UCC friends in the workshop that although I might wish they would also read more conventional evangelical formulations, this former evangelical pastor understands their own DNA and describes their theological tradition’s strengths. They would do well to study this and see if it gives a coherent voice to their own “God is still speaking” ways.

The three big shifts McLaren describes are:

• The Spiritual Migration: From a System of Beliefs to a Way of Life

• The Theological Migration: From a Violent God of Domination to a Nonviolent God of Liberation

• The Missional Migration: From Organized Religion to Organizing Religion

Here is just one of the many rave views this has gotten by thoughtful thinkers, pastors, seekers:

Brian McLaren is a leading thinker in articulating the disenchantment so many of us feel regarding Americanized Christianity and the hope we have that there is, as McLaren says, “a better way to be Christian.” The Great Spiritual Migration calls us, not to wander aimlessly in the wilderness of pseudo-spirituality, but to follow Jesus forward into the promised land of a more authentic Christian faith. I applaud this important and encouraging book                                           Brian Zahnd, author of A Farewell To Mars

Love Let Go: Radical Generosity for the Real World Laura Truax & Amalya Campbell (Eerdmans) $21.99  I’ll admit we don’t quite know what to do this with exceptionally interesting, really fun and fascinating memoir, a creative telling of a church that was given a boatload of money and basically said “we don’t want it.”  That part of the story is interesting enough, and makes for a provocative read, but that’s just the very beginning of this enchanting and radical tale. Church leadership decides to take the money and give $500 to every parishioner with the instruction to “do something good” with it.  Wow, this is paying it forward, writ large! Love Let Go is the well-told story of what folks did, how it affected them, and the lessons learned about generosity, greed, philanthropy, development, and more. It is a great story, but could be valuable for anyone involved in thinking about entrepreneurship, church-based mission, and congregational vitality through generous stewardship.

The Road Back to You:  An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery Ian Morgan Cron & Suzanne Stabile (IVP) $24.00, hardback //$8.00, workbook  Many who explore contemplative spirituality know Richard Rohr’s (or others) works on the Enneagram. The Enneagram is an ancient, spiritual sort of personality assessment tool, sort of like an older, deeper version of the Meyers Briggs personality tests, which mainline Christian folks also know well.  So to tell people that this is the best (and most fun, by far) book on the topic is easy.  I will put it to you like I did in my workshop: if you know the Enneagram, you will love this upbeat and fun and very helpful study of it (and you’ll want to get the workbook, too.)  And if you are new to the Enneagram, you’ll want to start here.  I’m not even sure what I think about all this, but the book is a bundle of stories and wisdom and a little bit of Bible and spirituality and faith formation and psychology and relationship advice, with some famous-people gossip – speculating about what number various celebrities are, just for fun.  It is interesting to me the buzz on this book; almost everywhere we go somebody asks about it. The authors have great podcasts that will make you want to buy the book.  Even at one of these events last week a customer rushed up to the book table wondering if we had this (of course) because he had heard about it at a writer’s conference he attended at Princeton.  It really is a fascinating book.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God Eugene Peterson (Tyndale) $24.99  As a former PC(USA) pastor, Eugene Peterson is respected within most mainline denominations and is claimed by many evangelicals.  After his long stint as a pastor and a decade teaching spiritual theology at Regent in British Columbia (taking a professorship alongside the likes of James Houston and J.I. Packer and adjunct teacher Marva Dawn) he has earned the right to be considered one of the most respected and appreciated religious writers of the last 50 years. This is a new book of sermons that were preached in the late 60s and early 70s at the church start-up he did in those years, Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air Maryland. There are a few new essays where Peterson puts these old sermons in context. This is worth having and savoring.  (Do you know the poem from which the title is drawn?)

The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Tell About Ourselves Curt Thompson (IVP) $22.00 We named this one of the Hearts & Minds very “best books of the year” a few years back and continue to feature this almost everywhere we go. I think some who browse are not sure if they want to pick it up – it could be a bit intense to grapple with such heart level stuff – but we are earnest in describing how well it is written, how deeply Biblical it is, and how insightful Curt is (he is a psychiatrist and knows quite a bit about neuro-science.) It is a marvelous book – very highly recommended, as is his previous one, The Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices Than Can Transform Your Life and Relationship. We have raved about this before, and any number of customers have told us how much this book means to them. It is an enduring, deeply and profoundly Christian resource that we continue to promote. Whether you carry deep shame or not, this is very highly recommended.

Be Still: Departure From Our Collective Madness  Gordon Stewart (Wipf & Stock) $21.00  Oh, how I wish I had had time to read some of these short pieces out loud during my “show and tell” workshops about books these days. They were all written by a Presbyterian pastor – his brother is a UCC pastor, and I flubbed a joke about God calling one of them to a better denomination – but were crafted to be spoken out loud on “All Things Considered” and an NPR feature on Minnesota public radio.  Can you imagine someone trained in the best tradition of mainline Protestant seminaries, reading the likes of Augustine and Aquinas,  Luther and Calvin, Barth and Niebuhr, spicing up their radio op ed ruminations with contemporary writers and poets like Buechner and Updike, Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry?  Stewart is nearly what one might call a public intellectual (if only he were better known.) In these well-crafted short pieces, designed for a public listenership, he draws connections from the things that matter most to the things most on our mind these days.  He writes about racial injustice experienced by urban youth, and hospital ministry with the dying.  He writes about fear and doubt and goodness and hope.  The title might make you think it is mostly about politics — it was written before the resist Trump movement, I might add — and there is plenty of public theology for the common good in here. But these thought-provoking pieces are more than just a sane rant again the “collective madness” of our contentious discourse these days. It may be more like Thoreau, short reflection on what he sees, what he deeply knows, and what we can do as we ponder together ways to make our lives more sane.  I’ve appreciated these calm reflections a lot and have been taken to re-reading a few for the sheer joy of spending time with a well-crafted essay.  Nicely done.

Leave it to Walt Brueggemann to come up with a really nice blurb, and then the prayer-maker poet J. Barrie Shepherd:

This wondrous collection of rich snippets would be of interest and
value if only for the rich source material that Gordon Stewart quotes
from, as it must be an inexhaustible memory and/or file. But the many
words he quotes are no more than launching pads for Stewart’s expansive
imagination and agile mind that take us, over and over, into fresh
discernment, new territory, unanticipated demands, and open-ended
opportunity. All of that adds up to grace, and Stewart is a daring
witness to grace that occupies all of our territory.
–Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

‘Gordon Stewart has a way with words, a clean, clear, concise, and yet
still creative way with words, a way that can set the reader almost
simultaneously at the blood-stained center of the timely–the urgent
issues of our day–and also at the deep heart of the timeless,
those
eternal questions that have forever challenged the human mind. Stewart
looks at terror, Isis, and all their kin, from the perspective of Paul
Tillich and, yes, John Lennon. He moves from Paris, Maine, by way of the
town drunk, toward the City of God. This is strong medicine, to be
taken in small, but serious doses. Wear a crash helmet!
–J. Barrie Shepherd, author of Between Mirage and Miracle

Rebuilding the Foundations: Social Relationships in Ancient Scripture and Contemporary Culture John Brueggemann and Walter Brueggemann (Westminster John Knox) $20.00  A certain generation of UCC leaders knew Brueggemann well.  His father was an E & R pastor (before they merged into the UCC in the 50s) and Walt himself held membership in the denomination of his youth.  He publishes a lot, but this is fascinating.  As I described in our BookNotes when I first announced it, Rebuilding the Foundations is co-written with his son, the Department Chair and Professor of Sociology at Skidmore College.  He is a scholar about inequalities and has a book called, curiously, Rich, Free, and Miserable: The Failure of Success in America.  Here, Walt and son John explore what Rabbi Michael Lerner in Tikkun called “a startlingly insight and important book” which “addresses some of the most important issues facing the human race today.”  Okay, so there’s that.

And, who wouldn’t find it interesting to combine a sociologist and a Bible scholar, exploring together how these ancient texts in the Bible might help guide us to re-construe our own social problem?

Mark Mulder, professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Calvin College writes:

Rebuilding the Foundations offers a clear-lucid, and compelling discussion of current social issues with insights from the intersection of biblical interpretation and sociology. A profound syntheses of the sociological and prophetic imagination. 

Revelation: A Search for Faith in a Violent Religious World Dennis Covington (Little Brown) $26.00  Covington is one of my favorite writers, classy, thoughtful,  yet intense and vivid. His searing books such as Salvation on Sand Mountain are on many people’s list of all time favorites. My copy has post-it notes stuck throughout as I dreamed about reading moving excerpts in my little workshop. Of course I ran out of time and rather in-eloquently shouted out that it is about this guy who travels around the world to some of the most violent spots, wondering how, oddly, religion is a cause of some of the world’s worst stuff, and, yet, seems also to be the only real answer to averting the awful violence we humans commit. In high-octane, energetic prose, Covington takes us to drug cartels and ISIS camps and sneaks across borders in places the State Department would not have permitted him to go. This report back is part travelogue, part war-on-terror journalism, part seekers heart cry, trying to figure out the meaning of faith in a troubled world. Highly recommended. 

Well, there were others.  But you get a sense of the various sorts of interesting titles we like to promote for this particular sort of tribe. Please know we are smiling and energetic, standing ready to recommend many kinds of books for all sorts of readers.  We’re at your service.

BookNotes

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