Adam Shields

Short Thoughts: I picked up Faith for two reasons, first I picked up President Carter: The White House Years when it was on sale a few weeks ago and I wanted to read another short book by Carter before I started a fairly long and detailed history of his presidency. I also picked up Faith as an audiobook because he won a Grammy for the book, his third win and fourth nomination.

As much as I like Carter, and appreciate what he was trying to do here, this was not his best book. A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety I think was a much better and more balanced book. Faith is trying to do too many things, and too often repeats what he already said in previous books. It is not that there are not interesting parts, but Carter spends too much time in areas where I think he is not at his best. I like Cater's stories and his recounting of what he is passionate about. It is not that he is not passionate about his faith, but his social action, not his theology is where I most want to hear from him.

I am not terribly disappointed that I listened to it, but I also cannot really recommend it, especially if you have read any of Carter's previous books. If you have not read Carter previously, this is probably better than I thought it was. I still think I would recommend A Full Life as a better book.

My slightly longer thoughts are on my blog at http://bookwi.se/faith/

Short thoughts: I have nearly 1700 words on my blog. I really considered stopping the book about five different times. I also considered asking for a refund from Audible because they have an easy refund of books you don't like. But I didn't. I bought the book and I am reviewing it so you don't have to.

There are a couple big problems with the book, the largest is that I can't figure out who Patterson is trying to persuade, because his argument would be unpersuasive to most, even though I think he may be right about the larger point that Gal 3:28 was derived from an early baptismal creed. The introduction dismisses several books attributed to Paul as pseudonymous writing. Others do as well, I don't particularly have a problem with that take. But if, as Patterson suggests, Paul was not actually sexist or in favor of slavery because Paul wasn't really the author of 1 Timothy, that doesn't really help solve the problem for people that are going to take seriously 1 Timothy regardless of whether Paul wrote it.

Another good example of the problems of the book is that Patterson argues that the books of Acts was likely written to both counter Marcion but affirm supersessionism. If this is the case, Acts could not have been written any earlier than 150-160. Many scholars date the book of Acts of the Apostles to around 80 or 90. If the earlier dating, which is more commonly held by most scholars is accurate, the whole argument around Marcion co-opting Paul and Acts being written to counter parts of Marcionism but to affirm a type of supersessionism completely falls apart. There are several other places where odd datings also make his argument difficult. But the Acts one is the worst. Even if I agreed with the underpinnings (Paul's attempt as cross ethnic table fellowship in Antioch was a failure and Acts was in part of repudiation of it), which I don't, the dating makes the argument unworkable.

There are a number of problems with the book and I can't recommend it. But if you want to read my longer comments, you can go to my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-forgotten-creed/

Short thoughts: trying to decide if I care enough about this book to write a longer review. It too me forever to get through this. I almost gave up a number of time, but I kept slogging through and I probably should have given up. I really liked Remains of the Day. Maybe it is because I knew the rough story from the movie before I read the book. But in that case the untrustworthy narrator made sense because he truly believed his bad perspective. Here he also believes his distorted perspective, but that distortion make him someone I just didn't want to be around. The story from about 50% to the end of the major event was mostly ridiculous.

The reveal at the end did not make me like the book any more.

So of the three Ishiguro books I have tried. I loved one. I did not particularly like this one. And I gave up on the Buried Giant. So I doubt I am going to try another.

Short Thoughts: This is a book about King's three years at Crozier Seminary (starting when he was 19). This is an area I had not really read about previously and I believe it is the only book directly looking at this time period. The broader look at the curriculum and his life and development was helpful.

There were two larger contributions I think. One was King's romance with a White woman (the daughter of the campus cook who was King's age.) King eventually broke the romance off because of concerns about how it would be received and how that would impact his life (and his ability to serve the church in the south).

The second helpful contribution is an exploration of King's plagiarism. That he plagiarized is well documented, here and other places. But I think that Parr also helps places that in context. There is no point where Parr can point to a professor either calling him on the plagiarism or on real teaching about plagiarism being taught. I think this is a weakness still in pastoral training. I never had any discussion of plagiarism in the context of preaching during seminary. That doesn't excuse King, but it was a different era. King's papers at the time where mostly handwritten and there were no tools to easily check papers for plagiarism as there is today.

The weakness, pointed out in the most critical review on Amazon was that this does not explore the Black community outside of Crozier. The book explores individual Black actors but not the broader community. King preached frequently at local black churches. The content of his sermons is discussed, the income generated is discussed, the invitations being at least partially about the respect for King's father is discussed. But the actual community is not really discussed.


My longer thoughts on are my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-seminarian/

I was hoping for more biography. But this was more sermon. Not that the biographies or people weren't interesting. But I think at least part of what Anyabwile is doing it affirming Calvinism of early Black preachers. I am not particularly Calvinist. And I was looking for biographies not sermons.

I read a couple of the sermons and the biographies and skipped the rest.

I have seen Amena Brown perform her spoken word poetry live twice I think. She mixes deep thoughts with humor and great writing. I picked up How to Fix a Broken Record on audiobook when it was on sale a few weeks ago. I moved it to the top of my list after listening to Amena Brown interview Hillary Yancey about Yancey's book Forgiving God.

How to Fix a Broken Record is the type of young-ish Christian memoir that I really like to read every once in a while. The 30-something's thoughts on life and love and what is really important. I get down on Christian Publishing at times, but Christian Publishing does print a number of books that are really good but do not get wide readership.

How to Fix a Broken Record is a roughly chronological spiritual memoir, early life, dating, church thoughts, career, eventual marriage, more thoughts on art and calling, miscarriage, the learning to be an adult, health issues, maturing. I am guessing, but I think I am probably about 7 to 10 years older. Some of her experiences are ones that I have lived through myself, many others are not. But they are still identifiable as common to the human condition. But like many other memoirs it is the telling and thoughts on them that matters, not the uniqueness of the experiences.

What continues to be important in my quest this year to keep 2/3 of my reading by Black or other authors of Color is that I see that experience does matter. It matters that when Brown goes on a mission trip to Africa, that she has to think about slavery and what it means to be descended from slaves. It matters that she has to think about hair differently than I do. It matters that as a woman, she experiences thoughts about pregnancy and miscarriage differently than I would.

How to Fix a Broken Record was well written. The mix of deep spiritual thoughts and life advice with lots of humor makes the whole book a pleasure. Her narration of the audiobook is excellent, but equally good in print. She has five spoken word albums and I need to check those out as well.

This is cross posted at my blog at http://bookwi.se/how-to-fix-a-broken-record/

Short Review: I read this in part because it has CS Lewis' defense of old books. I largely support Lewis' point. But I think he goes too far in assuming that the modern reader can read old books and not distort them because of the change in culture and history. Much of NT Wright's focus has been to tell modern readers how they are misreading scripture because they have a different culture and history. And I think that is true of many old books. It is not that I think we shouldn't take Lewis' advice. I think we should read old books. But I also think we should be doing the work necessary to understand them and that is often reading about those old books to understand what we may be misunderstanding about them because they were not written to us, but to a different set of people.

I thought the first section of On the Incarnation was much better than the second. The positive defense of the Incarnation was more helpful than Athanasius' arguments with Jews, Pagans and others about the incarnation.

But this is a short book, about 75 pages with the introduction. On kindle there are a number of edition for $0.99.


My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/on-the-incarnation/

Summary: An exposure of how ‘White American Folk Religion' and Christianity are not the same things.

It is not surprising at this point, or it should not be, that many Christians seem to be confused about how Christianity and the American Dream overlap and contradict. Often Christians are discipled to believe that the abundant life that Jesus talks about is actually fulfilled in the American Dream.

Jonathan Walton is not confused, and so, somewhat provocatively, but I think accurately has set out to separate the American Dream from Christianity by illustrating what is ‘White American Folk Religion' and what is Christianity.

As with any project, like this, some people will identify with some of these lies more than others. What I find easy lies to believe will not necessarily be the same as what you do. If I were writing the book I would probably have a slightly different list. But the working out of these does expose how we have been discipled by patriotism more than Christianity quite often. James KA Smith talks a lot about secular liturgies that disciple us, Jonathan Walton is really doing the work of exposing these secular liturgies so that we can work to reframe our beliefs and actions around actual Christianity.

In general, Walton is telling this story autobiographically. Each chapter is a different lie, and so he identifies how he has previously believed or been impacted by the lie then deconstructs the lie and replaces it with right belief and right behavior (similar to how James Bryan Smith approaches understanding and resounding to God in The Good and Beautiful God. In most cases I think this method is a strength of the book. It is disarming when the author focuses on his sin and confesses it as a way to help us see our own sin that may be slightly different, but still related. There a places however, where I think that he was reaching a bit too far to make the connection and could have better used different people as illustrations so that there was a closer connection. But overall, I do think the method was helpful.



There are a number of points to highlight. But in general the main thread is that Christianity is not about using power for personal gain or profit (financial or social) but to empower others. And we often lie to ourselves or resist the truth because we want to feel better about ourselves than we should. The chapter on the US being generous is a good example. I hear all the time that the US is the most generous country in the world, but that tends to ignore parts of the relevant story or statistics that would show differently.

I could show a number of highlights, but I am going to show a couple quotes from the chapter on America, the Land of the Free. Walton contrasted a statement by Donald Rumsfeld where freedom was about the freedom to be a consumer...

“Freedom, as articulated by Rumsfeld in keeping with the founders of the United States, has little to do with the flourishing of all people—who are made in the image of God—and the abundant life made available through Christ. Instead, it has everything to do with creating the best path for those who are deemed worthy of pursuing wealth and self-determined happiness as well as its deference and maintenance. The vision Rumsfeld cast was not one free of racism, discrimination, and hatred, but one of “lights, the cars, the energy of the vibrant economy...Traditional American conservatives tend to define freedom in economic terms, with free markets and economies measured by economic growth, personal wealth, and individual liberty. And traditionally politically liberal Americans generally tend to define freedom in terms of social and environmental justice, sexual liberation, reproductive freedom, free expression, and a higher level of government involvement. Jesus transcends both of these perspectives and defines freedom in spiritual terms as liberation from sin and the restoration of shalom.”

“Jesus' invitation to me was not to enlist in a nation's army but into the family of God. I had the choice to say yes or no, and I was loved independent of my desire to give that love in return. All I needed to do was accept and embrace that he alone could free me. In Christ alone I find my freedom. I stand today on this truth, and it has made me free. It set me free from addiction, self-hatred, a destructive view of those with differing opinions, and an oppressive view of women. Moreover, this truth freed me from workaholism and an identity rooted in my accomplishments, ushering me into an abundance not defined by the forefathers of this nation but by my Father in heaven. The truth in Romans 5:8 that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” grounds my seeking of love and justice for all people, including those who would see me as less than human because of the color of my skin. In Christ, I am not working to be free; I live out of the freedom I've received. Not only does WAFR define freedom differently from the God of the Bible, it offers no freedom at all.”

I appreciate Ta-Nehisi Coates. And I was intrigued when I saw this book because Coates is a vocal atheist. I think he is respectful of Christianity, but he rejects Christianity largely because of its followers. It is a position that I easily understand, even if I do not reject Christianity for the same reason.

Books that are collections of essays are hard to do well. They are almost always uneven in their writing quality. And rarely hold together and build on one another well. And most of the time the sum is less than the individual parts.

I think there were two or may be three essays here that were pretty good. None of them were awful. But in general, while there was thoughtful aspects of to Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity, I would recommend just reading Coates directly.

One of the aspects that I know has irritated Coates and because it keeps coming up, has begun to irritate me as well, is the issues of Coates' ‘hopelessness'. There were two essays directly about this and two more mentioned it. (Spread the essays out, two essays, both about Coates and Hope right at the end was odd.) Coates has said that he doesn't believe he is hopeless, he believes that he is a realist. Reinhold Niebuhr led a movement of ‘Christian Realism' that to me feels more like what Coates is trying to communicate.

The fact that Christians are so hung up with Coates' ‘hopelessness' says more about us than it does about Coates. The need of Christians to see hope in the world, in the face of continued sin I think does matter. It is not that we do not hope in Christ's return. Or that we shouldn't work in the world today. Coates believes in working for change in the world today, but he also believes that the world is unlikely to change. In many ways, I want to respond to Christians that talk about his lack of hope, that what is more hopeful? Working when you do not believe in either an afterlife or the likelihood of change, or working for change when you believe in cosmic justice and a God that is working to restore all things?

I picked up Between the World of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Christianity when it was on sale. And I am fine reading it. It was only a bit over 100 pages and the price I paid was worth it. But I would not rush out to buy it or put it at the top of my reading list.

originally posted on my blog at http://bookwi.se/between-the-world-of-ta-nehisi-coates-and-christianity/

Summary: Provocative and helpful look at how race impacts Theology and Missions.

I have been VERY slowly reading Can White People Be Saved. Over the past three and a half months that it took me to work through a little over 200 pages actual text I spent a lot of time thinking and re-reading.

I did not do this with every single talk, but with most chapters, I would read the chapter, then watch the talk and then sometimes read the chapter again. I think I watched most of the talks and responses and Q&A periods that are online. And I read all of the text.

Any conference book will have some chapters that are more interesting to a particular reader than others. But I was pretty engaged in most of the talks. The first two I think were the two that I spent the most time on. The title talk Can “White” People be Saved by Willie James Jenkins comes round about the subject to say yes ‘White' people can be saved, but similarly to the rich young ruler whom Jesus said needed to sell all that he had. Jenkins, as is common among many that are talking academically or from an activist position is not talking about all people that have light skin color that most call White, but of those that have claimed White identity as their marker, an identity that views racial superiority as implicitly true. There is nuance and care here, but I think the basic talk, as provocative as it is, is also essential. Many people that call themselves White do not understand the cultural assumptions that they are bringing to their Christianity, and how those assumptions impact how they think about Christianity. As Jesus said to the rich young ruler, you may have followed the law, but there is something that is hindering you from God.

The second chapter, by Andrea Smith, is talking about Decolonizing Salvation and processing Christianity through Indigenous eyes. This is probably the chapter that I felt most blindsided by. I have read a little bit about Indigenous theology, but only a little bit, and the issues brought up, like how Indigenous people tend to not identify with the Exodus story as many Liberation theologies do because of the history Indigenous people in the US. This is a chapter that completely makes sense to me once I read it, but it also concerns theological areas I had never considered because I did not have enough cultural awareness of Indigenous issues.

I just cannot talk about every chapter (but I have 74 highlights in a book that is only a bit over 200 pages and you can go read all of them on my Goodreads page.) So I will only highlight two more chapters.

Andrew Draper has a chapter on Decentering White Identity. That particularly intrigues me because I am part of a private Facebook group that is attempting to do that, PTM 101. This is not about ‘hating ourselves' as White people, but about trying to Decenter ‘Whiteness' from our identity and to center non-White, especially Black issues in how we think about culture. Because I have some attachment to Draper's topic, this is the chapter other than the first two that I had the most highlights in.

Draper's opening was clear,

“Throughout this paper, I will make the claim that whiteness is best understood as a religious system of pagan idol worship that thrives on a mutually reinforcing circularity between the image (the ideal or the form) and the social constitution of those who worship it.3 As idolatry, whiteness must be dealt with like any such cultic system: its high places must be torn down and its altars laid low.4 The purpose of this paper is to offer a few concrete practices in which White folks must engage to begin casting down our White idols.

Toward this end, I propose five practices in which White folks must engage to resist the sociopolitical order of whiteness: first, repentance for complicity in systemic sin; second, learning from theological and cultural resources not our own; third, choosing to locate our lives in places and structures in which we are necessarily guests; fourth, tangible submission to non-White ecclesial leadership; and fifth, hearing and speaking the glory of God in unfamiliar cadences.

Can “White” People Be Saved?: Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition

Summary: A explication of the theological roots of spirituals and the blues. A good example of why White seminary students need to be reading Black and other authors of Color. 

Over the past couple years there have been several minor controversies in US seminaries about assigned texts. Masters Seminary (started by John MacArthur) about a year ago had a former student write about the fact that he had not read a single book by a Black author during his seminary studies. That prompted a response by another former student that was (is?) a staff person at the seminary. The response includes this quote:

“I don't mean to be dismissive of their contribution, but African-American Christians are a small portion built upon the main foundation, that just so happens to be, according to God's providence, a white, Western European/English one.”

“The essence of antebellum black religion was the emphasis on the somebodiness of black slaves. The content of the black preacher's message stressed the essential worth of their person. “You are created in God's image. You are not slaves, you are not `niggers'; you are God's children.”36 Because religion defined the somebodiness of their being, black slaves could retain a sense of the dignity of their person even though they were treated as things.”

Satan is not merely an abstract metaphysical evil unrelated to social and political affairs; he represents the concrete presence of evil in an society. That was why exorcisms were central in the ministry of Jesus. The casting out of demons was an attack upon Satan because Jesus was setting people's minds free for the Kingdom which was present in his ministry. To be free from Satan meant to be free for Jesus, who was God making Iiberation a historical reality. Anyone who was not for the Kingdom, as present in the liberating work of Jesus, was automatically for Satan, who stood for enslavement.

Howard Thurman's explanation is closer to the truth. He contends that the slaves had been so ruthlessly treated as things by white masters that blacks soon learned to expect nothing but evil from white people. “The fact was that the slave owner was regarded as one outside the pale of moral and ethical responsibility.... Nothing could be expected from him but gross evil—he was in terms of morality— amoral.”

Slave catechisms were written to insure that the message of black inferiority and divinely ordained white domination would be instilled in the slaves. Q. What did God make you for? A. To make a crop. Q. What is the meaning of “Thou shalt not commit adultery”? A. To serve our heavenly Father, and our earthly master, obey our overseer, and not steal anything.

The spirituals are slave songs, and they deal with historical realities that are pre-Civil war. They were created and sung by the group. The blues, while having some pre-Civil War roots, are essentially post-Civil war in consciousness. They reflect experiences that issued from Emancipation, the Reconstruction Period, and segregation laws. “The blues was conceived,” writes LeRoi Jones, “by freedmen and ex slaves — if not as a result of a personal or intellectual experience, at least as an emotional confirmation of, and reaction to, the way in which most Negroes were still forced to exist in the United States.” Also, in contrast to the group singing of the spirituals, the blues are intensely personal and individualistic.

Short Review: This is the story of five gains for the Black community and the resulting backlash. The framing of this history is important. Because commonly we understand the Black protests, but we do not pay attention to the White backlash to gains.

The five movements pairs are, 1) end of slavery and reconstruction with the backlash to reconstruction and ‘redemption'. 2) The great migration pairs with the (White) race riots of the late 1910s and early 1920s. 3) Brown v Board with the anti-integration movement. 4) Affirmative action and the anti-affirmative action policies. 5) Obama's election and the movement toward voting restrictions. These are not definitive for all of the examples of White Rage in US history but emblematic. And like what Jemar Tisby pointed out in Color of Compromise, each one was less overt and more subtle than the last, but still rooted in racism.

I am not going to recount the history here, but I have nearly 2000 words on my longer review.

My only real complaint is that the audiobook and kindle book are not synced up. Not really sure why, but it was irritating that I couldn't highlight sections I wanted to unless I specifically went to find them.

My longer review: http://bookwi.se/white-rage/

Short Thoughts: I read this soon after finishing the book Rethinking Incarceration. I did not do it intentionally, but If Beale Street Could Talk is a perfect fictional followup to that non-fiction book on the criminal justice system. The issues of poverty, police misconduct, the broad powers of the district attorney's office on how to charge and how to bundle charges, the violence of the prisons themselves, the focus on retributive and not restorative justice, the enormous financial and emotional costs placed not just on the accused, but the extended networks and family of the accused and more are all here.

Baldwin is such an incredible writer. This is the third fiction book of Baldwin's I have read and the first that I have really liked. I appreciate Baldwin's skill with his other fiction, but I don't really like the characters. This is also the first book of his that I have read that has a female narrator and that is done very well.

This is a heavy story. One that I did not really want to pick up because I knew the rough story line. And one that I set down several times because of the weight, but it was well worth reading and the weight is based on truth, not sentimentality or falseness.

My longer thoughts are on my blog at http://bookwi.se/if-beale-street-could-talk/

In the past 8 years since The Christian Imagination was released, I have seen a diverse group of Christians say that this is the most influential theology book of the last decade. I am not going to disagree, although I do not have the depth of theology of make that type of statement.

I do not usually quote the description of books when I am writing, but I am going to here because I cannot think of a better way to describe the book.

Why has Christianity, a religion premised upon neighborly love, failed in its attempts to heal social divisions? In this ambitious and wide-ranging work, Willie James Jennings delves deep into the late medieval soil in which the modern Christian imagination grew, to reveal how Christianity's highly refined process of socialization has inadvertently created and maintained segregated societies. A probing study of the cultural fragmentation—social, spatial, and racial—that took root in the Western mind, this book shows how Christianity has consistently forged Christian nations rather than encouraging genuine communion between disparate groups and individuals.

Weaving together the stories of Zurara, the royal chronicler of Prince Henry, the Jesuit theologian Jose de Acosta, the famed Anglican Bishop John William Colenso, and the former slave writer Olaudah Equiano, Jennings narrates a tale of loss, forgetfulness, and missed opportunities for the transformation of Christian communities. Touching on issues of slavery, geography, Native American history, Jewish-Christian relations, literacy, and translation, he brilliantly exposes how the loss of land and the supersessionist ideas behind the Christian missionary movement are both deeply implicated in the invention of race.

I was aware of the concept of superssionism prior to this book (the idea that Christianity superseded Judaism and replaced God's covenant with Israel by a new covenant with the church.) But it is just not something I have thought much about. Christianity has failed to reject supersessionism clearly and there has always been a stain of supersessionism, from the overt Marcionism and Manichaeism that were both rejected as heresy, to the much more subtle replacement theology that arose later. It has really only been since World War II and the Holocaust that Christianity has widely started seeing supersessionism as a theological problem. Jennings makes the case that the ethnic prejudice against Jews that was rooted in supersessionism and was strongly present throughout the middle ages, gave theological cover for a different type of ethnic superiority that gradually developed into the concept of race and the racial hierarchies that undergirded colonialism, race-based slavery and White supremacy.

The second significant stream that Jennings explores is the lack of connection to the land. When people mostly did not move except for a few traders or pilgrims, there was a connection to the land and large scale migration and colonialism destroyed that connection.

...when the Spanish arrived, they did not arrive alone. They brought pathogens, plants, and animals: wheat, barley, fruit trees, grapevines, flowers, and especially weeds; horses, pigs, chickens, goats, cattle, attack dogs, rats, and especially sheep. The world changed—the landscape became alien, profoundly disrupted. Daily patterns that depended not only on sustaining particular uses of certain animals and plants, but also on specific patterns of movement, migration, and social practices in certain places met violent disruption or eradication. This environmental imperialism was shaped around what environmentalists call ungulate irruptions. Ungulates, “herbivores with hard horny hooves,” when introduced to lands with an overabundance of food, reacted to this wealth of food as the Spanish themselves reacted to the wealth of gold and silver: “They increase[d] exponentially until they [overshot] the capacity of the plant communities to sustain them.”31 They ate everything in sight, decimating existing crops, destroying cycles of food growth and harvest, changing the biological regime of the New World, and altering the spatial arrangements of native life.

A third point of exploration is how the concept of providence and lack of empathy and viewing of Native Americans or Africans as fully human allowed Europeans to view colonialism as providential blessing from God. “He (Acosta, a theologian in Peru during early Spanish colonialism) calculates the dramatic increase in wealth to Spain and the church as irrefutable signs of the workings of God through them not just for the propagation of the gospel but also for the financing of wars against the enemies of Christianity.” Acosta and many other Christians did not see the death and destruction brought about by colonialism as harmful but a blessing. The early Puritans did not see the widespread disease that was introduced through Spanish and other invaders that left large swaths of North and South American unpopulated as a human disaster and tragedy, but as God's providence that opened up space for them to build new communities that were dedicated to God.

The supersessionism (replacement theology) of European Christians allowed them to not see themselves as the gentiles that were being grafted into the Jewish covenant and therefore see the native populations of North American, Africa and Asia as also gentiles just like them; instead the European Christians viewed themselves as the owners of the covenant and therefore read Old Testament as justification for destruction.

Acosta perpetuates the supersessionist mistake, but now in the New World the full power of that mistake is visible. Acosta reads the Indian as though he (Acosta) represented the Old Testament people of God bound in covenant faithfulness and taught to discern true worship from false. Acosta reads the religious practices of indigenes from the position of the ones to whom the revelation of the one true God was given, Israel. Christian theology contains at its core a trajectory of reading “as Israel,” as the new Israel joined to the body of Jesus through faith. Yet by the time Acosta performs his reading, this christological mediation has mutated into the replacement of Israel as the people that make the idea of idolatry intelligible as a primarily Christian insight.74 From this position of holding an idea of idolatry resourced solely by a supersessionist Christian vision, Acosta speculates as to the possibilities of whether Indians as pagans under the control of the devil may be led to the light.

Throughout the 15th to the 19th centuries Christians of European dissent are following in Acosta's footsteps and are not even sure that non-Europeans can hear the gospel message, both because they are not sure if non-Europeans are fully human and if they are fully human if they are worshipers of satan. If the invaded people are worshipers of the satan and controlled by satan, then they are to be overcome, not wooed into the Christian faith. The distortion of Christianity that views non-Christians without full imageo dei does not see all of humanity as brothers and sisters because they were all created in God's image, but only views other Christians as brothers and sisters.

Part of what Jennings is making clear in The Christian Imagination is that what happened historically was not the only historical option. There were others throughout this history that called the church to a different way of thinking, a different Christian Imagination. Sometimes it is even the same people that over time, develop a different Christian Imagination.

These comments are already too long and I cannot flesh out Jenning's full insights into a blog post, but this is not just history, but constructive theology. Jennings is inviting the reader to reconstruct our Christian Imagination in a way that rejects supersessionism, embraces the full humanity of all and the sibling relationship to all people in and outside of the church, and to reattach ourselves to the land and sustainable human sized practices.

Immediately after reading The Christian Imagination, I started reading Jenning's commentary on Acts, which has many similar insights but from the perspective of biblical theology. The Acts commentary is much less academic and I think would make for a good bible study, or as I used it, personal devotional reading.

Summary: A reimagined Superman, played out as a Cold War story with Superman landing in the 1950s Soviet Union.
As I say in almost all of my posts about graphic novels, this is not my area. I read books that are recommended by people who it is there area, like Seth. It was not Seth that I heard this from first. I heard about it first on a podcast that I do not remember. And then it was in the Christ and Pop Culture best of 2018 series. And there have been others that have recommended it once it was on my radar screen.

I like remakes. I know many people do not, but I like the reimagining of stories. A shot by shot remake is not particularly interesting to me; but a different take, a new character perspective, an alternate timeline, etc., is often interesting.

Complete reimagining like this tends to focus on upsetting our assumptions. Superman in his original conception was the ultimate American, the image of the American Dream. Superman: Red Son imagines Superman as the ultimate communist. One that not only believed in the ideals but tried to enact them and oppose those that were working within communism only for their own power.

I thought the ending was well done and I think really the only option for this type of story. The art was good, but I read this more for the story than the art.

One of the problems with polarization today is that many do not believe that true believers can continue to exist. There is an assumption of only cynical belief, a belief that uses others for their own purposes. Superman here is not a cynical believer, he is a true believer, but one that is not blind to others that are cynical or power hungry, or at least not always blind.

As much as I do think we need to identify mixed motives and motivations, the reality of true belief if something that is important to allow for.

originally posted on my blog at http://bookwi.se/superman-red-son/

Short Review: I am reading this for a class I am taking. I will come back later and write up something after the class is over.

Summary: An excellent book about the missing part of Bonhoeffer's story within many of his biographies.






Essentially for the past month I have not written anything about my reading. Starting almost exactly a month ago, I went on a silent Ignatian retreat as part of a prerequisite for starting a graduate school program to become spiritual director. Between that retreat, work, kids being home for summer, a quick vacation and everything else, I just have not sat down and written anything. I write more for myself than anyone that happens to stop by this blog, but to have that record, I have to actually write. Weeks, months or years later, I want to know what I thought when I read a book when I read it, not just what I remember at any particular time.

I went on the retreat with Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus and Willie James Jenning's commentary on Acts, finishing both the during the five days of my retreat. Not every Ignatian retreat is like mine, but I was focusing on hearing from God, and this book, and Jenning's commentary on Acts, were what I think God wanted to say to me.

I really know almost nothing about the Harlem Renaissance. I should, but that is a portion of my education that is lacking. The third chapter on the imagery of the Jesus, especially a Black Jesus, during the Harlem Renaissance was so very helpful. I need to read more about the Harlem Renaissance not just because it is an area that I should know about, but because my grandmother actually lived in Harlem during that era.

She came to the US from Finland as a 12 year old in 1926. She lived in Harlem until, I think, the summer of 1931. So her time there, and Bonhoeffer's time there, overlapped. I wish I had been aware enough to ask her questions about it when she was alive.

The overly simplified argument of Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus is that prior to Bonhoeffer's confrontation with the Black church, especially Abyssinian Baptist Church and the pastors and others of the church, Bonhoeffer did not understand the role of the church in Christianity or understand Christianity's concern for the poor and marginalized. Bonhoeffer even says that prior to that point, he does not believe he was actually a Christian. Note that he would have been saying this after having written two theology dissertations and him having been the associate pastor of a church for a year.

Williams suggests that it was the inspiration of Bonhoeffer's contact with the Black Church in America that allowed his opposition to Hitler and Nazi ideology more generally to not just be theological, but focused particularly on the anti-semitism in ways that almost no one else in Germany Confessing Church movement was. The Confessing Church opposed the political take over of the church and opposed the way that the language and actions of antisemitism was being used by the Nazi party, but most Christians in the Confessing Church movement were still themselves antisemitic and/or supersessionist.

I have 26 highlights on my goodread page if you want a sense of Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus. It is not cheap. I would recommend almost everyone try to get it at a library and use interlibrary loan. Both Kindle and paper versions are around $40 a copy.

Summary: A young girl, her brother, and mother visit the San Diego border to celebrate Las Posadas and see their Grandmother through the border fence at Christmas. A great book to spark a conversation.

I read this tonight for the first time with my 5-year-old. I am intentionally filling my kids' library not just with books, but books that will lead to conversations. Between Us and Abuela is a book that is going to take several readings to get through the conversations that it should bring up.

The short version of Between Us and Abuela is that a girl, her brother, and mother go to the border to see their grandmother and celebrate Las Posadas (the commemoration of Mary and Joseph looking for a room in Jerusalem right before Christmas.) There is an annual commemoration on the US/Mexico border called La Posada Sin Frontera. The tradition is adapted, so family and friends gather along the border wall in San Diego/Tijuana, hear the Christmas story, sing songs and see family across the fence.

The children and their mother have not seen their grandmother in five years. My five year old asked how long that was, I reminded her that she is five years old.

The family is allowed 30 minutes to go inside an outer fence so that there is only an inner fence that separates the family. My daughter, of course, asks why they are separated. I will approach this in several different ways as we re-read the book. But it matters that the story naturally leads to the right types of questions.

They are not allowed to pass anything through the fence. The girl understands that she is not allowed to give her Grandmother the scarf that she knitted for her. The younger brother has made a picture for his grandmother and is distraught about the fact he can not give it to her. This leads the girl to design a quick kite with the yarn and knitting needles that she has brought along that can fly over the fence (and which the border patrol does not prevent since they are technically not violating the rules of passing anything through the wall.)

I kept myself under control, but I was on the edge of tears throughout the second half of the book. Family matters, and this book shows that well.

The art is beautifully done and matches the light Christmas theme of the book. Mitali Perkins is a Christian and has written both explicitly Christian books and books that are less overt in their Christian message. Between Us and Abuela is a book that hints about Christianity, other than being set expressly at Christmas.

Between Us and Abuela: A Family Story from the Border by Mitali Perkins, Illustrated by Sara Palacios Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition

Summary: A broad overview of racism in American told from the perspective of Christianity and our call toward justice.



The preface to America's Original Sin opens with a description of the shooting and Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. Just a few days before that I read that section, I watched the documentary Emmanuel that also recounted that shooting. Wallis hoped that in the aftermath of the shooting there would be a change in the way that we talk about race and racism within the church and country as a result. But four years after the shooting, there has not been a fundamental shift in the conversation. The Confederate Flag was removed from the South Carolina Capital grounds, the SBC condemned the flying of the Confederate Flag at its annual meeting that next year. But it is hard to point to any other fundamental changes in the conversation.

That lack of change is not particularly surprising given the history of Christianity in the US, but I do think that as we read books like America's Original Sin, it is important that we pay attention not just to the theological affirmations of what we as Christians should be doing, but also the history of what we have done. The Emmanuel AME Church shooting should have been a wake up call to the church, but it wasn't. There are hundreds of other points history, including the church kneel in rallies in the 1950s and 60s that should have been significant wake up calls, but they haven't been.

I probably would not have picked America's Original sin up if a group in my church had not been reading it, but I wanted to participate in the discussion, so I read it. I respect Jim Wallis and I thought the book was worth reading. In general, I try to primarily read minority voices when I am reading about racism. There are other books that also have introductions to Christianity and Racism that are similarly good. Every book has its own orientation and focus. And Wallis does have a real history working for racial justice within the church.

But at the same time I do not agree with how all of that shakes out in every point. I think that many that are resistant to discussing racism within the church or even acknowledging racism as a real problem either in or outside of the church are going to be turned off by Wallis' politics. It is not that I disagree with all of Wallis' politics or that I disagree with how this Christianity influences his politics, but like it or not, Jim Wallis is identified primarily with the Evangelical political left. So I think that limits who will pick up this book and how those that do, will respond. There is certainly need for the political left to deal with its own racism. And if Wallis had more directly targeted the racism of the political left (as Robin DiAngelo particularly focused her book, White Fragility, toward liberal Whites, I think this could have been a more helpful book.

If I have a complaint, it is that Wallis makes himself too much of a character in America's Original Sin. I understand that he is personalizing and giving illustration to why racism matters. But I also think that it ends up centering his experience more than is helpful.

Again, I agree with many of the conclusions and steps along the way. This quote I think rightly focuses racism on the systemic:

Sociologist Allen Johnson, whom I cited earlier on the history of white supremacy, also discusses the implicit nature of our biases from that history. He says: Most of the choices we make are unconscious, it being in the nature of paths of least resistance to appear to us as the logical, normal thing to do without our having to think about it. This means, of course, that we can participate in systems in ways we're not aware of and help produce consequences without knowing it and be involved in other people's lives, both historically and in the present, without any intention to do so. . . . I could say this history has nothing personally to do with me, that it was all a long time ago and done by someone else, that my ancestors were all good, moral, and decent people who never killed or enslaved anyone or drove anyone from their land. Even if that were true (I'll never know for sure), the only way to let it go at that is to ignore the fact that if someone was willing to take the time to follow the money, they would find that some portion of the house and land that we now call home can be traced directly back through my family history to the laws and practices that whites have collectively imposed through their government and other institutions. Back to the industrial capitalist revolution and the exploitation of people of color that made it possible. And back to the conquest, forced expulsion, and genocide through which the land that is now the United States was first acquired by Europeans. In other words, some portion of this house is our share of the benefits of white privilege passed on and accumulated from one generation to the next.

Summary: A retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in modern Brooklyn.

Retellings or reimagining of classic stories is a staple, both for author development and for mining stories for new insights.

Pride by Ibi Zobi, author of American Street, is retelling Pride and Prejudice, a book I have only read once, five years ago. This version opens with a riff off of the classic opening:

It's a truth universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it's a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up.

Takeaway: As much as the use of the phrase, ‘it is a relationship, not a religion' bugs me (because of how it is usually used), Christianity that pursues theology or behavior modification and not Christ, gets distorted.
Reading about spiritual growth prompts me to read more about spiritual growth. As I have started my introduction to Spiritual Direction class, the required texts lead me to want to pick up other books that are related. Which also makes me want to re-read as well. I know I need to re-read many books, but books on spiritual formation are probably the books I most need to re-read because they are often very subtle critiques of our understanding of Christianity.

As part of this renewed interest, I have been listening to the Revovaré podcast, which has been playing some old talks from early conferences. In the episode with Emilie Griffin at the end of a Q and A period, Dallas Willard says that we are not in charge of our own spiritual formation. We simply need to remain present and engaged while God works on us.

Open to the Spirit very much feels like a book that has been inspired by Dallas Willard. Scot McKnight is trying to biblically point the reader to the importance of the Holy Spirit. McKnight is a New Testament scholar and mostly is oriented toward a biblical theology of the Holy Spirit. Open to the Spirit also reminds me of Amos Yong's Who Is the Holy Spirit: A Walk With the Apostles. In Yong's commentary on Acts, he is drawing parallels between the work of Jesus in Luke with the work of the Holy Spirit through the early Christians in Acts.

In Open to the Spirit, McKnight is showing how Jesus in his earthly life was guided by the Holy Spirit similarly to how Yong shows the early Christians being guided by the Spirit.

I am too behind on both blog posts and everything else in my life to write much more. But I am going to post five quotes from the book to give you a sense of it. (The kindle book as I write this is $1.99 and the audiobook is $7.49 with purchase of the kindle book)

A sticking point when it comes to our understanding of the Holy Spirit is that humans are not open to the invasive, transcending, and transforming presence of the Holy Spirit. There are, of course, reasons why we are not open. Two that come immediately to mind are (1) we don't want transcending power, and (2) we don't want the transforming presence of God because we'd rather stay the way we are. (5%)

The surefire test to know the Spirit is at work in your life is observable change as you grow toward Christlikeness. It doesn't have to be dramatic, and it doesn't have to be giant leaps from selfishness into selflessness. Rather, what we look for is visible change, shifts, movements, and growth. (40%)

Such a conclusion denies the truth of how Spirit-prompted people live. They are joined together in the metaphorical Body of Christ, the church, which physically is the fellowship and community of those who follow Jesus. A Spirit-prompted Christian life is about learning to live in fellowship with other Spirit-prompted people. In that community we learn to live the gospel at the deepest levels. Kevin Vanhoozer, an evangelical theologian, once observed that “it is the life of the church, not the commentary [our explanations of the faith], that is our most important form of biblical interpretation.”5 The Spirit drives Spirit-filled people to the Body of Christ. When we are open to the Spirit who creates the church, we will be open to God's community, the church. (49%)

When we all exercise our Spirit-prompted gifts, we are drawn out of ourselves and toward one another. Are you open to the new orientation the Spirit has for you? Are you open to the Spirit's gifts in others to edify you? For the Spirit-prompted gifts to work well, we need the Spirit-prompted fruit as well. They are mates lost without each other—which is why the fruit of the Spirit is the focus of the next chapter. (58%)

“A saint,” Schmemann wrote, “is thirsty not for ‘decency,' not for cleanliness, and not for absence of sin, but for unity with God.”6 Such a thirst for union with God, for worship of God, for the ecstatic joy of loving God, is the Spirit's work that gives us victory over sin. Back to the meaning of sin. If sin is self-reliance and self-centeredness, then the Spirit's fruit will be loving, holy, and Christlike living. Never lose sight of these words from Paul: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let usnot become conceited, provoking and envying each other.*9 To achieve victory over sin involves first becoming people who are shaped by love, which is a virtue that orients life toward others. Victory over sin and the flesh produces an inner sense of well-being and contentedness (joy and peace and forbearance) and becomes thoughtful toward others (kindness, goodness, and gentleness) as well as faithful in our relationships with others (family, friends, church, community). Finally, the inner self is no longer out of control but is marked by “self-control,” which means Spirit-controlled. (77%)

Summary: Letters to his granddaughter with a mix of family history and life advice.




Of course, I am aware of Sidney Poitier's acting. But I had no understanding of his life story. I picked this up blind from the library.

Sidney Poitier grew up on Cat Island. A small island in the Caribbean, without electricity, running water, or cars. When he was 10, his family moved to Nassau where he first tried ice cream and first saw a movie (both recounted in the book.) He also got into trouble and was sent to live with his older brother in Miami when he was 15.

Again he got into trouble and at 16 moved to NYC and worked a series of dishwashing jobs, before a brief stint in the Army and more dishwashing jobs. He was functionally illiterate at this point. A waiter at one of the restaurants he was working at taught him after work over a series of weeks until his reading improved enough that he could work at it on his own.

Poitier saw a newspaper for an actor when he was looking for a new dishwashing job and figured that acting would be less work than dishwashing. He failed on his first audition, but later convinced an acting teacher to take him on. His tenacity and talent eventually led to stage acting jobs, which led to a few movie roles. At 24, he was in Cry Beloved Country. He was first nominated for an Academy Award in 1958 for Defiant Ones but did not win an Academy Award until 1964 with Lillies of the Field.

Once he left his parents at 15, he did not send them a letter or contact them again until 1950, when he was 23. He says he was ashamed for not making something of himself. So it was not until he finished his first movie and had a couple of weeks before his next that he went back to Nassau.

Poitier's story is fascinating, and when he is in storytelling mode, the book is riveting. When he is in advice mode, the advice and book are mixed. I was interested in his perspective and how his movement from a childhood without electricity or any other modern amenities to a life of wealth and fame shaped how he understands the contemporary world. But there were lots of thoughts on all kinds of subjects as well, from science to religion to money to family obligation.

I must admit I was pretty bored the last 15 percent or so of the book. But I did enjoy the book overall, and at some point, I will pick up one of Portier's memoirs and more directly hear his whole story. I listened to the audiobook, and his narration did add to the book. He was in his early 80s when he narrated, so there is both age and weight in the voice. He is not at the prime of his career, but you clearly can hear the talent. Life Beyond Measure was published almost exactly ten years ago, so his great-granddaughter, who is addressed in the book is about 12-13 now.

Summary: Short biography of the Focolare Movement by one of its founders.
A friend recommended this short audiobook/kindle book to me a couple of days ago. I am a part of a private facebook group for ‘The Initiative and friends with John Armstrong, who is the founder. The Initiative is a group that is seeking to draw together Christians of all streams together in Christian unity. Chiara Lubich and the Focolare Movement have signficantly influenced the Initiative. I have been broadly aware of the Focolare movement, but I have not explored previously.

May They All Be One is not a new book; it was initially published in 1977. But it was only last month that an audiobook version was only released last month. Both the Kindle and audiobook versions are under $5 and are short. The audiobook is just over 2 hours, and the kindle edition is the equivalent of under 100 pages.

This is a very brief overview. I appreciate the introduction and the idealism and devotion that was communicated here. The book is simple, the writing clear and unvarnished. Chiara Lubich has written several books, 30 different ones if Goodreads is accurate. So I probably need to read more.

The Focolare Movement was started by young women in Italy during World War II. They knew they could die at any time. Lubich convinced her friends that if they died, they would want their gravestone inscriptions to say, “And we have believed in love”. Their goal was to serve all around them by seeking unity. Focolare was a peace movement, but it was not only a peace movement. They advocated for human rights and the poor. They desired international institutions of peace as well as local institutions that worked for the common good.

Part of what has made the movement different from other Catholic institutions was the ecumenical focus. Focolare was not only Catholic; its vision was for a campaign that sought peace throughout Christianity.

There is a real idealism of Christianity here. Focolare is taking seriously not just John 17, but also many other of the idealistic passages about love, justice, righteousness, and peace. The corrective of the Focolare seems to be the counter to the Realpolitik and pragmatism that took hold in the post-WII cold war. Focolare is not pragmatic. It is not pragmatic to pay attention to the human rights of the weak and powerless, but it is Christian.

I wanted more from May They All Be One. But it is meant as a brief introduction, not a more robust exploration. And it was written only about 20 years after the start of the movement, but about 30 years before Chiara Lubich passed away. So there is much more to the story. If anyone has suggestions for follow up books, I welcome them.

Summary: A book that attempts to tell the story of how Christ uses the common.

Blessed Broken Given has bread as the central metaphor of the book. Mostly that bread is directly referencing eucharistic bread. Occasionally it is more mundane, but because I have followed Glenn Packiam for years on twitter and read a couple other of his books, I know that even when he is directly referencing more mundane bread, he is still keeping the eucharistic bread in the frame. It is one of the tensions that I think Packiam's ministry holds well. Glenn Packiam is the pastor of a local church that is part of a multi-site non-denominational mega-church. He is also an ordained Anglican clergy. He is high-church theologically in a low church setting. If I were local to him, I think I would want to be a member of his church. It is not distant from my theological position; I attend a multi-site non-denominational mega-church that I am not always in theological alignment with, primarily around wanting it to be more sacramental.

Blessed Broken Given is a book fo theological wisdom about what it means to be a Christian. It tells stories to teach as Packiam circles around his point from a couple of different directions. In a late chapter, where he starts talking about what it means to live in a Post-Christian society, one which no longer embraces Christianity as a central organizing metaphor, but one that also has not found a way to express itself outside of being no longer Christian, he has the following quote:

“This is the generation that wants justice but not any sense of righteousness. We hunger for community but have no taste for the Cross. We want the goods of the good news without the Christ of the gospel. We want the life of the kingdom without the claims of the King. Maybe this is a reaction born of deep disappointment.”

Summary: A broad overview of the church desegregation protests, and then a deep dive into one particular church with extensive interviews and history.

I think that many people do not have historically accurate views on how the church has traditionally related to racism, segregation, and the Civil Rights Era. An excellent introductory book for the subject is Jemar Tisby's Color of Compromise. But no introduction can adequately address every issue in a long history.

The Last Segregated Hour works through the kneel-in campaigns that started in the mid 195s, alongside the lunch counter protests, the freedom rides, and other similar desegregation campaigns. The initial section that details the national perspective of the Kneel-ins feels repetitive because the history was repetitive. Teams of mixed race worshipers would visit a church, usually coordinated with a larger group so that several churches were visited at the same time. Some churches would welcome the groups, or at least not prevent them from being seated. Some churches would allow them in the sanctuaries but segregate them into a particular area. Some churches would ban them from entering, occasionally resulting in violence or police presence.

These Kneel-in campaigns happened over and over throughout the country for years. Churches that banned the mixed-race worshipers usually were visited over and over again, until they were allowed in. Some individual churches had groups of mixed race worshipers attempt to enter the congregation weekly for over a year before they were allowed to be seated.

According to Haynes, there was not a consistent denominational or church tradition that across geography was either more welcoming or more segregated, although in general Baptist churches were a bit more likely to be segregated, and Catholic was the most unlikely. But there were examples of almost every type of church being both segregated and welcoming.

Once the book moves to the particular example of the city of Memphis Kneel-ins starting in 1964 and then the specific campaign at Second Presbyterian Church, the book becomes more engaging. It is not that the national history and context is not essential; it is. But the particular does give a close understanding that I think makes this book worth reading. Part of the importance of the book is the interviews. Four chapters focus on memories of members at Second Presbyterian, the protestors themselves (separate sections looking at the different experiences of both White and Black protestors), and then a chapter on the perception of the member children and youth.

The history gets circled a number of times from different perspectives to pay attention to how the protests were viewed and experienced differently from pastoral, lay leaders, general members, the outside community, and the protestors. And the book does not stop with the actual protests and resolutions. There are three chapters on the long term fall results and implications. A church split happened as a result of the protests. Both the original and the new church have had 50 years to deal with the consequences of the kneel-in protests. And there is a section on repentance and corporate wrestling with the history.

I have read a couple of books by Haynes, the most recent is the Battle for Bonhoeffer. What I appreciate is that Haynes is interested in not just recounting history but using history, the usable past. In both Battle for Bonhoeffer and The Last Segregated Hour, Haynes posits modern parallels, while being careful to not go beyond the historical data or his professional limitations. The part that seems most relevant to me is the connection between ideological and racial issues.

“At the time, in fact, many Southerners were convinced that racial integration was part of a communist plot to destabilize American society. And since communists were notoriously ‘godless,' it follows that anyone fighting to end segregation was an atheist or a dupe of atheists. (Page 165)