Adam Shields

Summary: Basic introduction to the concept of Spiritual Direction and what to expect before you get started as a spiritual director.

I am not completely sure how I picked up a copy of this. I think maybe it was a giveaway from the author. I don't think I agreed to review it. But as I was glancing through my books looking for something else, I found a copy of the PDF and I quickly read through it last week. I am one three-page paper short of finishing my certification as a spiritual director, so I am interested in how different people present the concept.

Most protestants are not real familiar with the concept. Generally, I say it is a form of discipleship. Loosely connected to the early desert fathers and how older monks led younger monks into the work of being contemplative once the monastic system was more established. Generally, most Catholic and Episcopal/Anglican priests are required to have a spiritual director. This is someone that helps pay attention to spiritual matters. Post-Vatian II, there arose a new emphasis on spiritual direction and more attention to spiritual direction for laypeople.

I was trained in spiritual direction through an Ignatian stream of spiritual direction. Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises, which was designed originally as a 30-day retreat for people to grow closer to God, often as part of a process of discerning a vocation. I think the best simple definition that I have commonly heard is that spiritual direction is a regular relationship with someone that helps to serve as a second set of ears to hear God's direction for your life.

John Mabry is a United Church of Christ pastor and spiritual director. There are a number of streams of spiritual direction, some are more ‘directive' than others. But most programs today lean towards a non-directive spiritual direction, which is how this orientation toward spiritual direction is designed. Mabry using the word ‘client' instead of directee throughout the book because of his orientation toward non-directive spiritual direction. But I think the term, while more familiar, introduces a connection to psychology and social work. Mabry does clarify how it is different from psychology or social work, but that connection is one reason why I am resistant to the term client. I also think it is worth pointing out that while I call myself a spiritual director, as does Mabry, the work of spiritual direction is the work of God and the Holy Spirit. My work is listening, God's work is direction and guidance.

Overall I think this is a very helpful introduction. It is brief. I read it in less than 2 hours. The audiobook is only 3 hours. In some ways, I think it may be too long for many that want to explore the idea more casually. But there is room for a 1 page, a 10 page, and a 100-page introduction to spiritual direction. I haven't found a 1 and 10-page version I really like yet, but there are advantages to each type. I do wish this were a bit cheaper. Right now it is $10 for either the kindle or audiobook version, which is a bit high for 100 pages. I would recommend it a lot more if it were $4-5 range.

Summary: A follow-up memoir-ish book about what it is like to shift from dealing with the active grief of a cancer diagnosis to an ongoing chronic illness that may at any time be fatal. 

Kate Bowler's earlier book, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I Loved, deserves all the praise it has recieved. I had followed her podcast and story and was aware of her earlier academic book on the history of the American prosperity gospel (I bought it nearly four years ago, but I still haven't read it yet). I read Everything Happens for a Reason in December 2018. It is such a helpful book for those of us that are around grief and death and illness but are not the one who is the immediate subject of the illness or grief. It details the cliché unhelpful advice that we are so often tempted to give. Or as Adam McHugh says in The Listening Life,

“When we try to help someone in pain, we often end up saying or doing things, subconsciously, to assuage our own anxiety. Let's be honest: we often want others to be okay so we can feel okay. We want them to feel better and move on so our lives can return to normal. We try to control the conversation as a way of compensating for our anxiety. Our approach to people in pain can amount to self-therapy.”

In the midst of a global pandemic where many people have died, and many others have ongoing illness or harm from the economic or other ramifications of the pandemic, it is important to remember the main message of trying to put a neat Christian bow on suffering and pain. No Cure for Being Human is a follow-up to that. At some point, if you do not die, you have to go back to living life again, albeit often differently. Life feels differently because of the trauma or illness or whatever it is, but others have not had the same experience, and their world has not shifted.

I know I have had experiences when I wanted the whole world to stop because my world changed, 9/11, my father-in-law passing away, the start of covid, even minor things like being on vacation. But we are not the center of the world, and other people's worlds continue, even if ours has shifted.

Our world is not really designed for human weakness and imperfection. Just-in-time scheduling ensures that if you stop, your work keeps going. If you get sick, bills still have to be paid, kids still have to get fed, and trash still has to be taken out. Kate Bowler may have had stage four cancer that almost no one survives from with debilitating treatments and huge bills and impacts to her life and the lives of those around her, but how does she keep going? Does she keep writing, not just these books, but her academic work as well (spoiler, she did keep writing and published this academic history of Christian Women celebrities in the midst of her cancer.)

This is a quick book; I read it in two days on Christmas break. It was engaging. And I think it is particularly timely because while we don't all have stage four cancer, we are in a global pandemic that has entered its third year and has a cost. This quote, I think, is particularly relevant to our place in covid right now.

“Pain is simultaneously intimate and distant, intense and boring. And, according to my rough calculations, any news, no matter how terrible, seems like old hat after about three months. Your leg spontaneously exploded? The polar bears are unionizing now? Oh, I heard that already. We find it especially difficult to talk about anything chronic—meaning any kind of pain, emotional or physical, that abides and lives with us constantly. The sustaining myth of the American Dream rests on a hearty can-do spirit surmounting all obstacles, but not all problems can be overcome. So often we are defined by the troubles we live with, rather than the things we conquer. Any persistent suffering requires being afraid, but who can stay awake to fear for so long?”

I saw on Twitter yesterday someone saying that (my paraphrase to obscure the actual person saying it) that everyone that takes medicine on an ongoing basis should just exercise and cut the dosage in half. The response was predictable; people with organ transplants asking if half of the drugs they take to repress the body's rejection of the organ was really a good idea. Or people with diabetes asking if they should take half of their needed insulin, or people on serious drugs that need to be weaned off carefully should just cut their dosages in half and disregard the problems of that. The tweet was dumb and universal in very unhelpful ways. But it was a good example of Bowler's contention that we are bad as a society at dealing with chronic problems. We want to solve problems and move on. But life is a chronic condition that we just can't move on from. We have bodies that fail or change in ways we do not always like.

Bowler is a good writer. Having listened to her podcast regularly, I appreciate her humor and seriousness. She has told a very open story, but no vulnerability can be complete. We are all still revealing ourselves in part, which is part of what it means to be human and communicate (as James KA Smith says). No Cure For Being Human is just as helpful as Everything Happens for a Reason. Bowler is a gift, and I hope she is around for a long time so that I can keep learning from her.

Summary: Historical exploration of the modern concept of Biblical Womanhood. 

Right off from the start, I was not planning on picking up The Making of Biblical Womanhood. I am an egalitarian concerning women in Church leadership. I am for full ordination and full participation of women in the church in all areas. I do not need to be convinced that the modern emphasis on gender roles is modern or problematic. I have read fairly widely in this area and don't need to be convinced.

But there was a sale at audible and I needed to buy one more book, so I picked up the audiobook. I was frankly surprised by how much new information I learned. I think where The Making of Biblical Womanhood is the best is when Barr is pointing out the history of women serving in roles that today some consider inappropriate for women. By pointing out how there has been a constriction of role, or in the sections on the bible and theology, how earlier generations understood the bible or theology differently, Barr is rightly making the cases that while women have not previously been equally able to teach or preach or lead, the fact that some have means that it is not a universal proscription from various roles.

At the end of the book, I think it is unsurprising that many critiques are of what the book did not do. Barr is not primarily a biblical scholar and she does not primarily make the case for women in ministry from that background. There are plenty of other books that do that. It is a bit of a catch-22 situation. Many that are opposed to women in ministry cite the history of Christianity and a flat reading of a couple of passages as all that is necessary to make the case. To counter that case, there needs to be a much more nuanced reading of the scripture (which isn't the main focus here) and a retelling of the history of Christianity to show that there has been a history of women playing a larger role in the public ministry of Christianity. Barr focuses on the latter and the critiques are often that she does not do the former. But the former has many other examples and when those authors point out alternative readings of scripture, they are met with charges that, “well that is not how the church has historically read those passages and women have never served in that way.”

I have been a bit surprised at some of the responses to the book that make it clear that many do not know the history of the ESV and many have not previously been introduced to some of the problems of translation theory. If you are new to discussions of biblical translations, and how no translation really holds completely to its guiding principles, I highly recommend One Bible, Many Versions: Are All Translations Created Equal? by Dave Brunn. I also think that hearing others telling how they were convinced to change their theology around women in ministry is helpful and so How I Changed My Mind About Women in Ministry is a helpful book.

I am fully convinced that history is an essential part of how we need to understand biblical theology. Because many Evangelicals do not have a good grounding in church history, we do not understand how history and culture impact our reading. Reading the Making of Biblical Womanhood in conversation with Jesus and John Wayne is a good idea as many have suggested. But a suggestion I do not think I have heard is to read it in conversation with Mark Noll's The Civil War as Theological Crisis and Vince Bantu's A Multitude of All People: Engaging Ancient Christianity's Global Identity. Those two books take very different tacts, but Noll's looks at the various ways that the social issue of slavery was impacted by the way that people read their bibles and the way that their biblical reading and theology were impacted by the social situation. And Bantu's book points out how Christianity has been whitewashed in a very similar way to how Barr is pointing out that women have been written out of Evangelical Christian history. The combination of these things paints a fuller picture of the ways in which our Christianity needs to be made more complicated.

Summary: An overview of the tension between the church's good and bad behavior throughout church history. 

I do not think I would have picked up Bullies and Saints if I had not heard the Seminary Dropout podcast interview. Part of the ongoing discussion of those discussing the future of evangelicalism right now is the right way to use and approach history. I think that history is only helpful if it is something that we learn from in the negative sense. In other words, because there is a tendency to look at your tradition with rose-colored glasses, our bias should primarily focus on the adverse history. That isn't to say we only look at negative history. Still, we need to prioritize negative history because stories are often told of only the good and because directly addressing the negative is how we address the log in our eye before the speck in others' eyes. The podcast interview suggested that John Dickson was attempting to get the balance right.

Bullies and Saints is a brief overview of Christian history (2000 years in just under 300 pages cannot be too thorough.) In the 25 short chapters (mostly 8 to 12 pages each), Dickson looks at areas of Christian harm or Christian good. Neither is glossed over. The modern concepts of human rights have been largely based on the cultural understanding of the individual's dignity that has at least some root in the Imago Dei. At the same time, as the church became more tightly involved with the state, there have been increased opportunities for the church to abuse its power. Some of that use of power was to restrain the state, pressure the state into supporting charitable causes, or encourage justice for all. But some of that power was to pressure people into becoming Christians, to change the Christian bias against war to a ‘just war' theory, or to adopt a ‘muscular Christian' understanding of leadership.

I appreciate that Dickson addressed slavery, the closing of pagan temples, a lot about war and violence (really the majority of the book), and the current child and sexual abuse issues in a relatively short time. However, I would have liked him to address imperialism and how the church has empowered Manifest Destiny and the Doctrines of Discovery. That is a significant hole in the book. But this is a 300-page book, and I am sure there are others holes that different people would find more important. No book can cover it all.

From my study of history, I know that no matter how bad you think what you know has been, there are examples of history that you do not know that are worse. But as Dickson notes, there is also often more good than what you may know. And as Dickson notes, that good and evil were often in the same person. Few within Christian history are solely villains. And there were several figures that I was completely unaware of, such as Alcuin of York, although many of the people discussed in this overview are more commonly known.

I think the summary, and call of the book, is best done in this quote that is about a quote from Albert Einstein:

Albert Einstein put this well when he was asked in 1915 for his opinion of the Great War. He wrote three pages of subtle critique of nationalism, and then ended with the words: “Yet, why so many words, when I can say it all in a single sentence, and indeed in a sentence that is most apt for me as a Jew: Honour your master, Jesus Christ, not only with words and songs but, rather, foremost through your deeds.” The antidote to hateful, nationalistic, violent Christianity, Einstein proposed, is Christianity in practice.

Don't get this, get the audiobook.

This is an audio of a video series about the book, which is essentially an abridged form of the book. Instead, get the full audiobook.

Summary: Historical questions are often much more complicated than we would like to present.

I have listened to John Fea's podcast for years now. And I have read his book on the issues that lead to Evangelicals voting for Trump. But I have not read Was American Founded as a Christian Nation or his more traditional history books. Part of what moved me to pick this up and read it after having owned the book for a couple of years was a desire to understand the rhetoric that has come to be known as Christian Nationalism. Fea uses the language of Christian Nationalism, although he uses it slightly differently than the sociologists like Perry and Whitehead use it. Fea is using Christian Nationalism as a descriptor of people who sought to make the country into an explicitly Christian nation. These two subtly different meanings are compatible but they reflect the different fields of study. Fea is a historian who is grounding his work on the historical events, people, and writing or speeches, while Whitehead and Perry are working with survey data. Both are trying to get at the mythology (in the sense of origin story) of America.  (Although Fea wrote this originally in 2011 and revised the book in 2015, so his use of the language of Christian Nationalism is prior to the Trump-influenced investigation of it.)

John Fea is trying to complicate the historical story and counter all of the different myths of the origin of the US in regard to its relationship to Christianity. He traces the ways that there have been many that have sought to make the US into a Christian nation and how the type of rhetorical Christian Nationalism that we see today is very old. He also traces the ways that there has never been a solely Christian Nationalistic movement. The founders were not all pietistic Christians seeking after God, nor were they all Deists that tried to remove a more fundamentalist Christianity from the public role.

Was Ameria Founded as A Christian Nation plays several important roles for me. First, it grounds our current movement historically. Christian Nationalism is not a new concept, either in its modern idea (the Religious Right was also very explicitly grounded in a type of Christian Nationalism) or historically. Many politicians throughout US history have pointed to concepts of the US being a specially chosen nation or different from all other countries in God's plan. In addition, the concept of Christian Nationalism as a type of exclusionary force is not new. Fea's Believe Me book talked explicitly about the historical role of anti-immigrant, especially immigrants that were not white protestants, played in not just recent Christian political movements, but also in earlier America First movements.

Willie James Jennings in discussing the theological rise of the concept of race speaks about theoretically, Christians should be inclusive, not exclusive in their orientation toward others. Christians are mostly gentiles that were grafted into the story of Isreal and should ideally, invite others to join them in also being grafted into the story of God's kingdom on earth. But instead, what has mostly happened is an exclusionary stance, that points to our own high status and views others as less than. Similarly, NT Wright has written well in his biography of Paul about the importance of a radical boundary-crossing as being essential to the rise of the early church.

I think we need much more orientation toward complicated history and less toward meme-friendly simplifications. If we can communicate history in the form of a meme, it is likely inaccurate history. I think this is particularly important for Christian who understand the impact that sin has on both individuals and institutions. Nothing is simply good or bad, even though there are clearly some things that are worse than others. I am not going to try to figure out what good things we may learn from Nazi Germany or chattel slavery. But I do think that part of rebalancing our historical sources means that we need to investigate areas where we have undervalued people and systems and sources so that we can have a more healthy understanding of the ways that our history continues to impact our present.

Summary: In 1944, a German rocket hit a Woolworths in South London, killing many. This novel explores what might have been if five of those children had not been killed. 

When encountering fiction, my primary method is to find authors I trust and to read their books without any investigation into the story. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking through a sale at Audible and saw that there was a new novel by Francis Spufford, an author I trust, and I purchased it without reading anything about it.

I started listening, and I was utterly lost and went back and read a little bit about the book to figure out what was going on The opening is a slow-motion description of a V2 rocket blast that killed a large number of people in a crowded Woolworth's department store. Spufford is writing an alternative history where that rocket never launched, or it failed somehow, and the Woolworths was not destroyed. This book follows the lives of five children from about nine years old until about 70. As readers, we check into their story with short vignettes that create an image of what their life is like, but we do not spend enough time with them to get a deep understanding of them.

I have read alternative history fiction before, which doesn't follow the typical model of alternative history, so I think Light Perpetual fails in that area. Generally, alternative history has one of two main models. Either unknown people from one time period go to another time through time travel, and either is shocked at the changes in technology and culture or use their knowledge of the future to make the lives of the past better. This story type is usually considered science fiction, and Orson Scott Card's Pastwatch or Eric Flint's 1632 series are good examples.

The other model of alternative history is to take some famous event or person and imagine a different reality. In this case, the story plays with the reader's knowledge of the natural history and the author's imagination of the alternative history. Stephen Carter's novel The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln imagines that Lincoln survives his assassination attempt in 1865 and two years later faces impeachment. Light Perpetual does not fit either of these two models. We as readers can know something about the history and cultural changes from 1944 until the early 2000s, but that is not alternative history because nothing has changed; it is just a fictional story set in our regular history. The framing of this novel as a type of alternative history, I don't think, really makes a lot of sense. The framing as alternative history distracts from the telling of a good story.

The second thing any potential readers of Francis Spufford need to know is that both of his novels have endings that change the reader's understanding of the whole novel until that point. I don't want to spoil either this or his novel about early NYC, Golden Hill, but I thought Golden Hill was a mediocre novel until the last handful of pages, and then I thought it was brilliant. So when I was about to give up on this novel, roughly 1/3 of the way through, I pressed on because I hoped for a similar resolution. And I was not disappointed, although what I got was not what I expected. Part of the problem of the early parts of Light Perpetual did not give me enough of the characters to be invested in their stories until I was about 2/3 of the way through the novel. I needed to feel like there would be resolution or redemption or people worth caring about. The novel got there, but it took a while.

A third thing that readers of Light Perpetual probably want to know is that Francis Spufford has written one of the few books of apologetics that I think is worth reading. I am not a fan of Christian apologetics as it is commonly conceived. Yes, Christians sometimes need help working through issues of faith and reason. But I do not think that most non-Christians are persuaded about the rationality or usefulness of Christianity by philosophical or other types of arguments. Christianity is about a relationship with Christ, not about argumentation and methodology. Francis Spufford's Unapologetic isn't trying to argue anyone into belief; he simply tells others that despite occasional issues of doubt and disbelief, he finds Christianity emotionally satisfying and that it “makes sense” of his experience. Once I was finished with Light Perpetual, I think Spufford was channeling that non-fiction defense of Christianity into a fictional story that could explore life's meaning.

Light Perpetual is not a book of Christian fiction that could be published in the US. First, there is too much sex, drugs, language, and ambiguity. There is a lot of good Christian fiction that has been published in the US, but commonly Christian fiction deserves a lot of its scorn for being trite and overly neat. (If you haven't read Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith by Daniel Stillman, I recommend it.) My favorite Christian fiction is works by British authors like Susan Howatch or Spufford, or books that deal with faith but are published by secular publishers like Marilynne Robinson or Madeline L'Engle. Some Christian publishers have published excellent fiction like the Back to Murder series, but they are rare and often do not sell well.

Spufford is telling a moral story, although not one that is wrapped up with a bow, and where everyone gets there just rewards. Yes, some gain wisdom with age and glimpse the meaning of life. But there is also hardship at the end of life. Parents cannot solve every problem of their children or grandchildren. Sometimes kindness is repaid with cruelty. Some people gain years, but not wisdom.

I listened to Light Perpetual as an audiobook. This is a book that I look forward to picking up a print copy and slowly working my way through again to see what I may have missed on my first reading. I suspect there is more there than what I got the first time and that a second reading with be worth the effort.

Light Perpetual: A Novel by Francis Spufford Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Summary: A discussion of the difficulties of being a Black Christian in predominately White Christian institutional spaces. 

I met Edward Gilbreath at a Jude3 conference in August 2019, back in the pre-pandemic get together in-person era of conferences. However, I have known of him for a long time. He was a writer for Christianity Today, their first, and for many years only, Black staff person. And I previously read Gilbreath's book on Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I also have known his father-in-law and sister-in-law for years (15-20) through work, and I think we both attended the same church for a while, although I am not sure if we were attending at the same time. That somewhat shared experience and roughly similar ages (he is about 3-4 years older than I am) mean that as I was reading Reconciliation Blues, his story of the differences of experience between Black and White Christians was even more tangible for me.

Gilbreath attended Judson College. I attended Wheaton, not far away. Judson is denominationally affiliated with the American Baptists, and I considered going because I grew up American Baptist, many people I know went there. But by the point Gilbreath entered Judson, he was already conversant in White Evangelical because of his teen youth group experience in a White Evangelical church. The era of the experience does matter. Dante Stewart is roughly 20 years younger than Gilbreath, and their college experiences are different. Stewart was at a large state school, and his White Evangelical experience was through para-church college sports ministry. Gilbreath was at a small, predominately White college on the Evangelical edge of a Mainline denomination. But there was also a lot of experiential overlap. The experiences were similar, but I think some of the expectations were different because the era was different.

The Promise Keeper's style friendship-based racial reconciliation movement may not have peaked until about when Reconciliation Blues came out in 2006, but that culture was common a couple of decades before its publication. The critiques of the individualism of that era's racial reconciliation movement in books like Divided by Faith and the more recent I Bring the Voice of My People and Myth of Colorblind Christians, but the kernel of the critique is still the same. Gilbreath mainly reflects on his experience of college and his early work at Christianity Today and in Christian publishing from roughly 1991 until 2006, a 15 year period that had a lot of feel-good approaches to handling race.

Reconciliation Blues was one of the personal experience memoirs showing that those approaches did not always work. Memoirs like Austin Channing Brown's I'm Still Here and Shoutin' in the Fire came later, but this story of the frustration of Black Christians trying to survive in White Christian spaces is such an old story. It goes at least back to Frederick Douglass' critiques of White Christianity and his leaving William Lloyd Garrison's supervision. WEB DuBois' double consciousness was one of the early sociological explanations of the problem. Memoirs are always about a point in time. Reconciliation Blues is about the 15-year era before Obama's rise and the false idea of post-racial America. It is a reminder of how common and harmful the colorblind theology of the post-Civil Rights era was. And it is a reminder that hearing voices from other generations can help contextualize our current period, especially for people coming to current conversations around race for the first time.

So many issues are the same, politics, individual vs. systemic responses to race and poverty and other social problems, the insular nature of White Evangelicalism, the attacks against directly dealing with race as a type of liberalism or Marxist/Communist thought. It is both encouraging and discouraging to see that there are things that have changed, but that so little fundamentally has changed. It has only been about 15 years since Reconciliation Blues was written, but that 15 years feels much longer in many ways.

Summary: Privilege, of all sorts, is to be used to expand Jesus' kingdom and for the good of others. 

Privilege has become a controversial word. Not so much for the rough meaning but because of the political implications and the tribalism that has arisen. In many ways, the main message of the book is what has commonly been understood as the Spiderman principle, ‘Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.' (Which is a variation of Jesus' statement in Luke 12:48, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (NIV) Popular culture may attribute this concept to Spiderman instead of Jesus, but it is a deeply Christian concept.

Privilege also has, in many settings, come only to be thought of in racial terms. While Gilliard is not excluding racial privilege here, he is not reducing all privilege to racial. The book's focus is seeking out biblical stories of the right use of privilege and drawing principles for modern use. Along the way, there is social teaching, but primarily this is a book of bible study and implications to that study. I can't help but be reminded of Andy Crouch's book on power, Playing God. When it is common to deny that we have privilege (or power) or the limit the concept of privilege (or power) to particular narrow types, Gilliard reminds us that we all are privileged in some ways and that all of us should strive to use what God has given us for the sake of others.

There are six primary biblical touchpoints, Pharaoh's Daughter (who the bible doesn't even name), Ester, Moses, Paul and Silas, Jesus, and Zacchaeus. The book opens with a discussion of what privilege is and why it is important to understand within the context of scripture and within the life of a Christian. And the book ends with two chapters on repentance, one about the biblical call to repentance and one about producing fruit in keeping with repentance. In many ways, being a Christian is about dealing with our need for repentance and our submission to Christ as king. Christians who are unwilling to repent or do the work to restore relationships around that repentance are not doing the real work we are called to.

Subversive Witness would make a great small group discussion. It is centered on biblical stories, which can lower the temperature of discussion around the concept of privilege. In addition, it is fairly short (188 pages of main content), so that it could be discussed in eight to ten sessions without a problem. There are several good podcasts interviews like this one with Marty Duren or Latasha Morrison or this one on the Shake the Dust podcast if you want to get a sense of the book. I also have about 20 highlighted passages which also will give you a sense of the book.

Subversive Witness: Scripture's Call to Leverage Privilege by Dominique DuBois Gilliard Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Summary: Dr. Thomas More has recently been released from two years of prison for selling prescription drugs and returns to his Louisiana community to discover that all is not right. 

The Thanatos Syndrome is sort of a sequel to Love in the Ruins, but apart from the characters, much has changed. Thomas More is still a somewhat neurotic psychiatrist. He has ‘found himself' after two years in jail and is no longer drinking to the extent that he was. He is now married to his former nurse/secretary/love interest from Love in the Ruins. But the world is very different. Love in the Ruins was in a sort of post-apocalyptic world where there was no real national government and many extremist groups that had created their own little fiefdoms. But Thanatos Syndrome is set in a late 1980s Louisiana (it was written about 15 years after Love in the Ruins) that is not too different from the real 1980s Louisiana.

Thomas More had one real significant research achievement the Lapseometer. In Love in the Ruins, it was designed to read the state of the soul with the ability to fix mental imbalances. In Thanatos Syndrome, it is a brain scanner that detects heavy salts in the brain that impact brain function. Soon after being released from prison, he is asked to consult with several patients. Most of these are people he has previously worked with and knows in this small community. They are changed. Over time Thomas More realizes that something is impacting a large area making people more docile, more computer-like in their ability to access information, and the women are more sexually aggressive. There is a crazy old catholic priest who was a boy during the early days of Nazi Germany that speaks up if the social commentary was not clear enough.

Walker Percy is writing a social commentary novel. The main theme of the book is social engineering. A group of rogue scientists and doctors are using the water system to nearly eliminate crime, teenage pregnancy, and other social ills, but also removing part of what it means to be human. Thomas More thinks that the human part is really important. Percy (and More) are Catholic and there is an underlying catholic social teaching that opposes abortion and euthanasia and eugenics as well as an obligation to care for AIDS patients and other ‘undesirables'. He critiques racism and sexism while illustrating it, so there are problems with me recommending it.

I really like Thomas More as a character. He is a soul doctor and even if curmudgeonly, he is likable. He embraces a number of his weaknesses and does not try to hide his struggles. One of the controversial parts of the book (spoiler) is that one of the doctors that are behind this unethical experiment is using the experiment to create a school for the purposes of child sexual exploitation. And other doctors are aware of his subproject, but they ignore it “for the greater good.” Many of the general comments about the book objected to it because they didn't see how that fit into the broader story. It is my assumption that Percy picked the sexual abuse of children as something that could pretty universally be condemned to show that social engineers tend to engineer society not for the common good, but for their own benefit. Like the last book, sex is more desired and talked about abstractly than it is illustrated in the pages. But this is not a book for kids.

Kids would not read it regardless because it is fairly slow and oriented around the ideas and social commentary more than the plot. I primarily listened to this as an audiobook with some occasional kindle reading. (The audiobook was part of the Audible free library, but it is leaving on Feb 22, which is what prompted me to pick it up.) The narration is good, but it is not a top-tier read. I am glad I read it, but I am still mixed on Walker Percy. My favorite of his books has been The Second Coming. Love in the Ruins and Thanatos Syndrome were odd by I am glad I read them. I have started The Moviegoer and The Last Gentleman and gave up on both of them.

Summary: An ethnographic study of an interracial church with context from national church research. 

A friend of mine recommended The Elusive Dream a year or so ago, and since then, I have listened to several interviews with Dr. Korie Edwards as well as most of her podcasts from this year. This allowed me to be familiar with the rough outline and look forward to reading the book. The Elusive Dream is an adaptation of Dr. Edwards' dissertation. A second edition of the book came out in Oct 2021, but the copy I read was the first edition from 2008.

The Elusive Dream is an ethnographic study of an interracial church at its heart. Most interracial churches are white-led (70% according to recent research by Michael Emerson), and most multiethnic churches (where no racial/ethnic group has more than 80% of the congregation) are still majority white. Dr. Edwards chose a church to study that was Black-led, not a recent church plant, and when she started her research, was still majority white. This means that even among multiethnic/interracial churches (which are 16% of congregations according to Emerson's research above), Edwards chose a church that was unusual. But during the years of her study, the congregation shifted from majority white to majority Black. That shift is central to the reality of interracial churches. Even with Black leadership, and especially with white leadership, interracial churches tend to center white cultural expressions of church.

As discussed in Myth of Colorblind Christians, many churches in the US have focused on church growth through the Homononous Unit Principle, a concept that advocates churches orient around a single cultural expression for the purpose of better evangelizing people of that culture.  That principle still has some influence in interracial and multiethnic churches because many of these churches tend to not have diverse representations of class, education, or culture, even if they are racially or ethnically diverse. This is how Dr. Edwards describes it early in the book:

However, as I continued to visit interracial churches across the country, I noticed a pattern. Nearly all of the churches, regardless of their specific racial compositions, reminded me of the predominantly white churches I had visited. Generally, the churches were racially diverse at all levels. Whites and racial minorities were in the pews and in leadership. There were sometimes cultural practices and markers that represented racial minorities in these congregations, such as a gospel music selection, a display of flags from various countries around the world, or services translated into Spanish. Yet the diversity did not seem to affect the core culture and practices of the religious organizations. That is, the style of preaching, music, length of services, structure of services, dress codes, political and community activities, missionary interests, and theological emphases tended to be more consistent with those of the predominantly white churches I had observed. These churches exhibited many of the practices and beliefs common to white churches within their same religious affiliation, only with a few additional “ethnic” practices or markers. It was like adding rainbow sprinkles to a dish of ice cream. In the end, you still have a dish of ice cream, only with a little extra color and sweetness.

One of the most important things to state clearly is that segregation of churches was the result historically of white racism. Churches were generally integrated prior to the Civil War, although they were white-controlled. After the Civil War, Black congregants were no longer required to submit to white leadership and began to form new Black-led congregations to fully express their Christian faith. According to Edwards by 1890, it is estimated that 90 percent of Black Christians attended a Black-led congregation. Again, this is not because Black Christians were resistant to worshiping with Christians of other races, but because they were segregated within other churches or excluded from churches completely.

Elusive Dream refers to the dream that Martin Luther King Jr spoke about in his famous speech. That dream remains elusive not just because of differences in worship styles, although there are differnces in agregate between racial groups as a result of historic segregation of worship. That dream remains elusive because culturally, white Christians as the demographically and culturally dominate group within the US leave congregations when the worship and church activities as a whole do not center white comfort.

As part of the ethnography there is a detail of two white pastors leaving the church relatively close together and the controversy over hiring new associates. Several white families left when the two white pastors left. Additional families left when there was an attempt to hire a Black associate pastor. But most importantly, it appears that white families tended to leave the church when their children hit teen or pre-teen ages. Some white families that were interviewed after leaving left the church preimtimvely because so many other families left when their children became teens.

Another part of the book details the differnces in orientation toward worship and the ways that controversy erupted over the desire among some African American worshipers to “shout” or have other examples of more expressive worship. The Black senior pastor attempted to stop these expressive worship practices because of the discomfort of white members. As detailed later by Edwards, it appears that even when the congregation became majority Black, a small group of Black members that were concerned about the departure of white members would side with white members against proposals popular with most Black and some white members. While there is a lot of detail and discussion in  the book, this is the summary finding:

I have argued that interracial churches work to the extent that they are, first, comfortable places for whites to attend. This is because whites are accustomed to their cultural practices and ideologies being the norm and to being structurally dominant in nearly every social institution. What this means is that, for interracial churches to stay interracial, racial minorities must be willing to sacrifice their preferences, or they must have already sufficiently acculturated into and accepted the dominant culture and whites' privileged status. Consequently, the chances for a widespread movement of interracial churches are slim.

In the end, Edwards suggests that interracial churches have to reject white cultural normatively to be successful in the long term. And while she thinks that is possible, she is not particularly hopeful.

If churches want to realize Dr. King's dream, they must first embrace a dream of racial justice and equality. Interracial churches must be places that all racial groups can call their own, where all racial groups have the power to influence the minor and major decisions of the church, where the culture and experiences of all racial groups are not just tolerated, but appreciated. This demands a radical approach and is certainly a high calling. Whites and racial minorities will have to resist white normativity and structural dominance and fully embrace the cultures, ideas, and perspectives of all racial groups. Otherwise, the dream will remain elusive.

I have 16 quotes saved to my GoodReads account from The Elusive Dream. If you attend or are interested in racial issues within the Evangelical church, I highly recommend this book to raise awareness of the potential for problems and how the church may (even if unintentionally) maintain a culture of white superiority, white cultural normativity, and white comfort. While this is not the only book that details the difficulties of interracial churches, the ethnography focus is helpful to follow a single church over the years to illustrate real problems.

Summary: A dystopian trilogy (with a prequel) that is both an enjoyable read and prescient. 

I have not been reading much fiction lately. But with my brain distracted by real life and less time since my kids are not in school right now, it felt like a perfect time to pick up KB Hoyle's Dystopian series. About 18 months ago I read Hoyle's fantasy series that started with The Six. I read the series quickly and loved the books. They were certainly in my list of favorite fiction books that I read in 2018.

Once I have a feel for fiction authors, I tend to try to read them completely blind. I had not read any of the descriptions of the series before picking it up. And as I finished each one, I just picked up the next without writing a post. At this point, I do not think it makes sense to write individual responses because this is a single story, told over four books.

I am not going to give away plot details but a couple of notes. KB Hoyle has great plots. Hints are given, but I did not know where the story was going to end up as I was going along. I can also guess that a few people will be disappointed in how some of the first two books end, but remember, this is a single large story arc, keep reading.

Also, this is a young adult dystopian book. Hoyle does not tell childish stories, but they are pitched to a teen or advanced pre-teen audience. There is some romance and hinting at sexual situations (the title of the first book is breeder and the evil government plot involves young women serving as baby factories so some of this is set up in the concept.) However, there is nothing on the page more than insinuation and teen appropriate discussion. (Spoiler–there is an attempted rape at one point, but the victim does not fully understand what is going on apart from the violence until later. )
Having read both series that KB Hoyle has written, the plotting and engagement is high. This series will not appeal to everyone. And while I picked up a dystopian series because we are on pandemic lockdown, that will not be helpful for everyone. But for me, the chapters were short enough that I could pick up a book here and there and make real progress. The book was engaging and had a clear good vs evil structure that even as it dealt with hard things at times, it was comforting to read a story about people that were trying to save humanity and willing to risk it all.

Summary: 49 sermons on Advent from one of the best preachers alive today. 

I have spent a lot of time watching Fleming Rutledge preach on youtube since I discovered her about 5-8 years ago. I am completely serious that I think she is one of the best preachers alive today, and I think many should read her sermon collections or watch her preaching on video.

I started Advent in 2019 as a semi-devotional reading for the Advent season. And it is so worth reading to get the historically accurate vision for what Advent is about. As a low church baptist, my perception was that Advent was a time of preparation for Christmas similar to Lent, where we remember that Christ came to earth 2000 years ago. So there is an aspect of that in Advent, but it is more accurate to say that Advent is a time of preparation for the second coming, not just the first. In other words, it isn't that Advent is ignoring Christmas, but that part of what we are doing is remembering the first coming as a way of looking forward to the second coming.

the truly radical nature of the Advent promise, which sweeps away cheap comforts and superficial reassurances and, in the midst of the most world-overturning circumstances, still testifies that “Behold, I am coming soon! . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:12, 13).

And because of the focus on the second coming, there is a lot of emphasis in this collection of sermons on judgment. Judgment is not a common theme for Advent or Christmas among my low church evangelical pastors, but it makes sense in the context of what Rutledge is preaching about. She points out the injustice around us and how we can rest in the fact that the second coming will make right the injustice around us, not as a way to gloss over the injustice, but as empowerment for our own work to right injustice. This quote highlights that balance well,

The church is not called to be a “change agent”—God is the agent of change. The Lord of the kosmos has already wrought the Great Exchange in his cross and resurrection, and the life of the people of God is sustained by that mighty enterprise.26 The calling of the church is to place itself where God is already at work. The church lives, therefore, without fear, in faith that the cosmic change of regime has already been accomplished.

or this one

All the references to judgment in the Bible should be understood in the context of God's righteousness—not just his being righteous (noun) but his “making right” (verb) all that has been wrong. Clearly, human justice is a very limited enterprise compared to the ultimate making-right of God in the promised day of judgment.

Those that I have known that have regularly celebrated Advent frequently talk about hope, but I got the feeling that it was a hope toward our future in heaven that could at times diminish our world right now. But Rutledge frames hope by looking at the coming work of Christ to complete his making right of the world and that we do that best by rightly looking at the presence of evil in the world.

The great theme of Advent is hope, but it is not tolerable to speak of hope unless we are willing to look squarely at the overwhelming presence of evil in our world. Malevolent, disproportionate evil is a profound threat to Christian faith.

I could post quotes all day. But I won't. I will commend the book and note that it took me three Advents to finish reading it. There are 49 sermons here. And that is probably too many. Not that there is fluff here that should have been cut out, but that there is just too much content. I think it may have been a better book at 280 pages instead of 426.

Summary: A conclusion (?) to the spin-off Shadow series about Bean and his family bringing them back into the Ender Quintet. 

I have seen The Last Shadow both marked as the sixth book in the Ender series (starting with Ender's Game) and the fifth book in the Shadow series (starting with Ender's Shadow). It plays both roles. As I commented with The Last Tourist (odd that both have the same naming convention), it is just easier to read books that are written more closely together. The Shadow series was started in 2003 and Ender's Game is a 1985 novel that was based on a 1977 short story. What I did not know until the author's comments at the end of the book, was that initially Card had a contract to write the novel Speaker for the Dead, but realized that once he started writing that book with its roots going back to the short story version of Ender's Game, he needed to elaborate and change some of the plotlines to prepare for the later books.

As I have commented before, I am not sure there is any book I have read more than Ender's Game. Orson Scott Card has played around with the story since its novelization in 1985. He released a revised version in 1991 that took into account the fall of the Soviet Union. He revised it again slightly for a 20th-anniversary release in 2005. And he released an audio play version in 2013 that referenced some of the subsequent short stories and included new scenes and perspectives. And in 2011 there was a film adaptation. I am very familiar with the series and have even read the companion book that pays tribute to the ways that the novel has impacted scifi.

Despite my love for the “Enderverse”, I have been a bit mixed about Card's writing over the years. Card has embraced his libertarian political ideas with the two books Empire and Hidden Empire about a second American Civil War. And Card's Mormon theology regularly comes through in his writing, not just in his religious book series but frequently in his social commentary, especially around family.

A story has to be able to stand up on its own, not just as a plank in the world-building of a series. For the most part, I think The Last Shadow cleaned up some of the mess of the Children of the Mind. The original characters of Ender's Game are essentially all gone except for Jane and some cameos by others. Miro from the 2nd-4th books of the series plays a significant role as does Peter from the fourth book and then the children and grandchildren of Bean that were introduced in Shadows in Flight.

The old adage from Arthur C Clark about “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is at play in The Last Shadow. Having achieved instant space travel by essentially a type of technology that could be called magic and a level of genetic science that would be called magic (probably black magic) by many, this continues to be a series that is as much about philosophical ideas as action. In this case, a number of threads spin around the concepts of love and loyalty and the limitations of humans, even if they are very smart humans.

I am trying to discuss the novel without spoilers. There is a lot of emotional angst, not just about the brilliant children that are always in Card's books, but among their parents and other adults that are trying to lead or relate to them. Humanity is never just the rational for Card. There is always a role for the irrational and the communal responsibility to the group. I think this is probably an end to the series, but I could be wrong. I thought the last book was an end to the series. And Aaron Johnson has written five prequel books with some input by Card about the first and second formic wars (which I have not read.) So I could be wrong about this being the end.

In the author's note at the end of the book, Card thanks Steffon Rudnicki and other voice actors that have brought the series alive in audio formats over the past 20 years. For me, this is primarily an audiobook series. I have read them all in print, but I enjoy them most in audio. I recieved an advanced copy of the audiobook (these will not be published officially until Nov 16, 2021) and the audio production and multi-voice narration continues to be excellent.

Summary: A Bengali girl tries to find a way to help her family meet their expenses. 

Rickshaw Girl is an elementary-level book about a Bengali girl and her family. It has been recently adapted into a movie done well at several film festivals but has not been widely released yet. The trailer is available here. The trailer has clear adaptations, which is not surprising since the original book is short and intended for early readers.

The original book, published ten years ago, was one of the early novels by Mitali Perkins. I first heard about MItali Perkins in this podcast interview. Since then, I have read three young adult novels and this elementary-level novel. I knew about the book but had not purchased it until I saw that it was on sale for kindle. So last night, I read it after putting my kids to bed. As an adult, it is a short and simple book. But it is right in the level to read alongside my kids. Once we are finished with our current book, I plan to re-read this with my children.

The main character, Naima, is the oldest child. She has completed three years of school and is a talented artist, winning awards for her painting. But she had to leave school because the family could only afford to send one child to school at a time. Her father is a Rickshaw driver and recently took out a loan to buy a new Rickshaw. But his health has been poor, and he is having difficulty earning enough money to support the family and make the payments. Naima's best friend, a boy who lives next door, who she is being encouraged to no longer spend time with because they are early teens and it is no longer proper, is able to drive his father's rickshaw part-time to give his father a break and to earn some money. This makes Naima wish that she were a boy so that she might also be able to earn money for the family, but there are no jobs open to her as a girl. This leads her to work through ways that she might be able to earn money for the family, albeit in ways that are not proper to her culture.

Stop here if you do not want to read spoilers for the rest of the story (I recommend the book.).....

Naima attempts to ride the rickshaw to see if she could somehow take it out for her father. But she loses control of it, and there is minor damage to the rickshaw. She is disappointed that she did not help the family and caused more expenses. Her father agrees to sell some of her mother's jewelry to pay for repairs causing her shame. It takes some convincing, but Naima goes to the repair shop that her father is going to, a new shop that has just reopened, and her father hopes will give him a good deal. Naima hopes that she can agree to paint or do other work in exchange for part of the cost of the repairs. She borrows some boys' clothes on the assumption that the shop will not allow a girl to work at the shop.

Naima finds a widow who learned the repair trade from her father. The widow's brothers did not continue in the trade, and after her father and husband passed away, she decided to re-open her father's shop with the help of a women's micro-loan. Mitali Perkins has a history of writing to raise awareness, and this book is in part raising awareness about microcredit and working with Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank who recieved the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

When I re-read this with my kids, we will talk about cultural gender roles, caring for your family, the reality of poverty, and likely other issues that my children raise. One of my children, I think, will be able to read this by themself and the other is not quite ready to read alone, but this will be appropriate to read together.

As I am posting this, the kindle edition is $1.99. The paperback is only $4.95. The audiobook is too expensive for just over an hour of content at $10.95 or an Audible credit.

I am not going to write a full review of this one. This was a free audiobook from Audible. I am a fan of Civil Rights history so I was familiar at least in part with all of the people included here, but I think this is a good introduction to Civil Rights history. I skipped the chapters on MLK, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and Stokeley Carmichael because I have read full biographies, at least one each, on those three. But while those three were included, mostly the focus of this lecture series is on figures that are less well known, but essential to the Civil Rights Era movement.

While each lecture is really about an individual, the helpful context to those individuals allows for a good overview of the movement as a whole. The Civil Rights movement is too big and too important for anything to be the only book that you read/listen to. But this is a good introduction if your background of the Civil Rights movement is primarily Brown vs Board, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus boycott, the I have a dream speech, and King's assassination.

Summary: A critique of the primary orientation of approaching racial issues within the church through relational unity, and an assertion that an approach of repair and restoration is more adequate. 

Anyone reading my reviews regularly knows I have been reading widely about racial issues within the church for years. I first became aware of Jennifer Harvey with her book on parenting white children. At some point in time after that, I picked up the first edition of Dear White Christians but did not read it until the audiobook for the second edition came out.

Dear White Christians, like I Bring the Voice of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation, has a clear critique of the friendship-oriented racial reconciliation that was popularized by Promise Keepers and the many books on cross-racial friendship that came out in the mid-1990s until now. Like Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Harvey's complaint is not that friendship is not important, but that if the orientation is to friendship as the goal, then restoration will not be accomplished. Instead, there has to be an orientation toward restoration, and in the process, relational unity across racial and cultural, and class lines will be a byproduct.

I think Walker-Barnes and Jennifer Harvey's books are a good pairing because they have a similar purpose, but are written to different audiences and from different backgrounds. Harvey is a white ethicist and clergy in the American Baptist denomination. Walker-Barnes is Black, a Womanist theologian and a professor of practical theology at Mercer, but her doctoral work is in clinical psychology. The orientation toward ethics and psychology comes out in their writing. But these books are also written to different audiences. Walker-Barnes is pitched to the evangelical and non-denominational Christians who looked favorably on Promise Keepers. Harvey's book is written to the mainline Protestant world of American Baptists, United Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopal churches, which are more theologically, socially, and politically liberal, but still very racially white. Womanist critique is the heart of both books, although Harvey does not claim to be a womanist theologian, but only influenced by womanist theology and ethics.

The first edition came out in 2014 and did not have reference to Michael Brown's shooting which occurred weeks before the release, or the subsequent attention to the shootings of Tamar Rice, John Crawford, Philando Castile, and many others. Contextually, the research with the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church's (USA) work on reparations was primarily pre-2008. In many ways, the mainline work around racial justice and reparations is about 10-15 years earlier than the more recent work around reparations in the Evangelical world exemplified by Kwon and Thompson's book. But as the appendix in the 2020 second edition, shows there is little concrete work beyond study committees and educational work.

The central problem that both Harvey and Walker-Barnes identify is that most white Christians do not understand the true history of slavery and the long-term social and cultural implications of subsequent discrimination. The historical work of Jemar Tisby, Randal Balmer, and others is important to create a shared understanding of history and to address the intentional forgetting that has been the central response of white Christians in the post-Civil War era. Without historical memory, white Christians primarily view reparations and repair as unnecessary and a political act instead of a theological one.

This is a challenging book because questions assumptions of the individualism of many white Christians. While mainline Protestant churches are as a whole more politically liberal than evangelical Protestant churches, but in 2020, a slight majority of white mainline Protestants voted for Trump. That slight majority is far less than the estimated 76 percent of white evangelicals, but it does give an explanation about why there has been little significant movement past study commission stages. As the appendix discussed, at this point, white education about racial history is necessary to build enough support for Christian institutions to really address repair. I think these books paired together would be a fascinating follow-up for a church small group that may have previously read Color of Compromise or gone through Be the Bridge curriculum. Both of these books have an academic bent to them but are accessible.

Summary: Short history of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.

I am a fan of the idea of concise introductory books about big topics that give enough information and context to a subject but do not overwhelm the idea. Several publishers have books like these. For example, the Oxford Very Short Introduction series has over 300 books, including the excellent Very Short Introduction to Protestantism and the awful Very Short Introduction to the Bible or African History. In addition, Christian publishers have the Armchair Theologian series, which I think is equally mixed, on Niebuhr Brothers, John Knox, Aquinas, and John Calvin. The Drama of American History is a similar project with books that are about 100 pages.

I have previously read Eric Foner's book on the three constitutional amendments that occurred during reconstruction and his more extended overall history of reconstruction and David Blight's book on the historical memory of the Civil War in the 50 years after. But the movement into Jim Crow is something I have less background on. One of the problems of a short book on a subject area is that it tends to rely on the easy-to-tell story, not the nuanced, more difficult to explain aspects that tend to be less well known. The standard history of reconstruction is a “Lost Cause” narrative. Except for WEB DuBois' work on reconstruction, the common historical narrative is that it was a failure because of northern incompetence, the poor work ethic and education of the formerly enslaved, and the corruption of carpetbaggers and scallywags. There are still some threads of the Lost Cause in this book, although it is also trying to tell a more accurate story.

The problem with a short book is that there is only so much room in a hundred pages. The book does include the problems of a lack of education for the formerly enslaved and the corruption of Grant's administration. It also speaks of the rise of the KKK and political terrorism, the lack of political will (as well as the concern about the constitutionality of federal supervision of state perversion of justice). But in a book that primarily focuses on political history, there is a limit to exploring the issues of white superiority within both the North and South, the Democrat and the Republican/Unionist parties. For example, many Northerners favored a number of the Black Codes that stripped Black citizen's rights, allowed for unjust arrest and re-enslavement through the penal system or through forced adoption or apprenticeship programs, and voting restrictions that also applied to both Black and poor White citizens.

There was discussion of political violence, but not enough. And there was discussion about the corruption of justice systems, the lack of funding for education, the to-short political will at the end of the Civil War, and the problems of federal enforcement of the new constitutional amendments. But in many ways, the very nature of a short book on this topic means that even when it isn't trying to support Lost Cause narratives, the lack of more extensive context means that the book isn't doing enough to counter the white-centered story narrative of the Lost Cause.

Looking at reconstruction from the formerly enslaved perspective, it makes sense that Black families did not want women working in fields under white field supervisors that could routinely and, without any consequence, rape black women. It made sense that Black farmers wanted to grow subsistence crops to feed their families instead of cash crops that could only be sold to systems controlled by the plantation owner who still believed in and acted upon their white supremacy. And the justice system that could be corrupted to arrest (or lynch) anyone that started to become independent from traditional white-controlled mercantile systems was not a real justice system.

Reconstruction is a complicated story. There are many reasons why it failed to fully incorporate the Black population of the US as full citizens. But the primary blame needs to be correctly pointed to a racist President Johnson, a corrupt administration of President Grant and Grant's lack of investment in protecting Black citizenship rights, the state's rights orientation of the political philosophy at the time, and the pressure to quickly re-incorporate the former Confederacy back into the US. There were also problems with abuses of the Freedman's Bureau being run as an arm of the US military. And corruption was a widespread problem at the time. But the story has to be told in a more complicated and nuanced way to get at the problems of how the story has most often been presented over the past 150 years.

Summary: A memoir of coming out of a fundamentalist, racist, and abusive upbringing. One reviewer described this as a prequel to his other books on grace and suffering. 

There are few names in Christian publishing that are more recognizable than Philip Yancey. He started his career writing for Campus Life and Christianity Today but became widely known for his books, most reflections on suffering and/or grace. Yancey has written about 30 books, depending on how you count books he contributed to or edited. And he has sold roughly 15 million copies of those books. He has been widely influential.

Philip Yancey is part of my parent's generation, turning 72 next month, and I think it is natural for authors to think about memoirs and influences at that point. It is not that younger authors can't also write memoirs; Danté Stewart's Shoutin' in the Fire is an excellent reflection of an author in his 30s. But memoirs that are written toward the end of life have a different type of reflective ability.

Where the Light Fell primarily deals with Yancey's childhood and early adulthood before he became a writer. This is a book about what influenced him with a final chapter that grapples with that history, one that I read twice. The book is unflinching but charitable. There is a lot of pain here. And a clear view of the impact of generational trauma. Yancey is not a Christian author that tends to tie everything up in neat bows. At the end, there is still pain and disfunction.

Philip Yancey was the youngest of two children, born in 1949, three years after his older brother. His parents had what appears to be a storybook romance. His father was in the military at the end of WWII. He was invited to the home of a church member after attending church soon after becoming a Christians. His mother was living with that family while supporting herself through college to become a teacher. They met and soon married. He soon became wrapped up with her dream of becoming a missionary to Africa. They finished bible school, and he taught at a black bible college in Atlanta as they raised support. But soon after Philip was born, his father contracted polio and died before Philip had a conscious memory of him.

It was only in his 20s while introducing his wife to his grandparents, that Philip saw a newspaper article that changed his understanding of that death. The article talked about how his father had left Grady Hospital, where he was in an iron lung, and went to a chiropractic rehabilitation center because he believed that he would be miraculously healed so that the family could go to Africa as missionaries. Unfortunately, days after leaving the iron lung, he died. Not long later, his widowed mother committed the two boys to be missionaries in Africa as a kind of consolation for the loss of her dream. She raised the boys in a strict fundamentalist holiness tradition. Her meager widow's pension was supplemented by bible teaching, both paid and unpaid roles.

Yancey is generous to his mother in many ways. Providing context to not just the difficult circumstances but also the culture and family history of his mother's upbringing and deprivation. But there is no question that this was an abusive household, primarily with tools of emotional and spiritual abuse. But within the context of overt racist, hierarchical theology and confrontational KJV-only fundamentalism. In being generous to his contexts, he does not shy away from the implications and harms of that background. Nor does he shy away from grappling with his complicity in racism or cruelty toward others.

Part of what his life of grappling with pain and suffering has meant is that grace is essential because we are in a world of suffering and pain. But grace does not mean that everything gets fixed. His still-living 96-year-old mother has never read any of his books. She still believes that Philip and his brother have sinned against God by not becoming missionaries as she desired. His brother has not directly talked to his mother in nearly 40 years, with only a few letters back and forth and Philip as an intermediary. His brother rejected Christianity in his 20s still identifies as an atheist.

The strength of Where the Light Fell is in the grappling, not just the story. Yancey is a talented writer. The book is gripping and challenging to put down. But the value isn't only the prose; it is also the theological reflection that seeks out grace even when it is hard to see.

There just isn't much here. A standard progressive/liberal theology. But the sermons/talks/short articles are too little to develop much and many of them are rhetorically light. Designed to rile people up and get them energized, but not a lot of depth. I gave up 1/3 of the way through.

Summary: A reminder that the church is (or should be) a radically inclusive gathering. 

God Gets Everything God Wants is a book I would never have picked up if I had not recieved a free copy via a Twitter giveaway. First, I am pretty strongly not in the deterministic stream of the Calvinist tradition, and the title hints at that. It is not that I am an open theist, but that I get very uncomfortable with relying on God's will or election being the answer to complex questions. Second, this is a very theologically progressive book. I lean toward progressive theology, but I am also increasingly wary of white progressivism interested in its own freedom, but not aware of the weaknesses of white progressivism's lack of grappling with the way it has fallen short of being inclusive for all. And so, while I grew up in a denomination that was in the mainline progressive tradition, I was mainly in a small evangelical wing of that denomination and have mostly found spiritual insight in the Black church tradition or Catholic tradition because my overly broad perception is that the progressive mainline tradition has not been oriented enough toward constructive theology.

That being said, I intentionally went to the University of Chicago Divinity School for my seminary program because I needed to get out of Evangelical institutions and experience a broader sense of Christianity. And one of the most important aspects of my mainline Protestant-oriented seminary program was experiencing the seriousness that so many of my classmates and professors gave to their faith. I believe that many in the Evangelical and Pentecostal traditions dismiss mainline faith expressions because they have not sought out mainline Christians to understand the expression of mainline faith in its own context. Over the past couple of months, I have been increasingly dismissive of Christians unwilling to acknowledge the Christianity of those who accept women as pastors. The fights over Jesus and John Wayne and the Making of Biblical Womanhood are just not my fights. I have always believed that women should be ordained to all roles in the church. And this doubling down on people pointing to 1 Tim 2:12 as the end of the discussion without acknowledging Roms 16 (Pheobe being the one that Paul sent to read and teach the book of Romans, the acknowledgment of Priscilla as the more important of the teaching team, Junia being described as an apostle, etc.). I am not here to argue about women as clergy but to give context to my reading of God Gets Everything God Wants.

Katie Hays is the pastor of Galileo Church in Texas. The church attempts to love the marginalized people of their community as Jesus would. Its first missional priority is to support the LGBTQ+ community. And that priority is communicated throughout God Gets Everything God Wants. And many Christians will never pick up this book because of that. But I want to communicate here more than anything that if people do not pick up this book solely for that reason, they are missing a call for the church to love radically. The very best parts of this book are the grappling with what it means to love well (and the honest grappling with how Galileo and all churches will end up being inadequate to loving as they should because of sin.)

I keep coming back to NT Wright's biography of Paul because Wright so strongly emphasizes that what Paul did was orient the church to be a transitional, trans-ethnic, and trans-class body. Amos Yong's commentary on Acts walks through how the book of Acts primarily breaks down lines of division within the church and becomes an increasingly inclusive body. Raphael Warnock's The Divided Mind of the Black Church is even about how the Black church, in its work to be inclusive, has to keep striving to follow God's calling toward inclusiveness. The need for the church to return to its vision of radical love is a common theme historically within Christian writing because it is so hard to do in practice.

God Gets Everything God Wants is a book that grapples well with what is most often called deconstruction and lovingly points a path forward to the church and as an inherently flawed but still vital part of what it means to be a follower of Christ. Katie Hays is gentle as she acknowledges the harm that so many have felt from the church. But she also points to a vision of what the church should be striving toward as an ideal.

I did set this book down for a good long while before finishing it, I don't think it is a perfect book, but I want to commend it to many. The last couple of chapters are the best part of the book, in my opinion. And the seriousness and faith-driven commitment to her ideals of the church, I think, is essential for people committed to a male-only pastorate or who are skeptical about the compatibility of Christianity and the LGBTQ+ community. If you are theologically committed to a male-only pastorate or a traditional sexual ethic, Katie Hays is not trying to change your mind, and this book won't do that. But what it will do is help you an author that takes her faith very seriously (albeit with a few swear words in the text) so that it is harder just to dismiss faith claims of people that theologically disagree with you.

Summary: James Baldwin's chosen biographer, his friend and sometimes secretary and translator David Leeming.

After reading my last Baldwin book, I knew I needed to read a complete biography before reading more of Baldwin's writing. Previously, I have read three novels (Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room, and If Beale Street Could Talk) and three essay collections (The Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son, and No Name on the Street). In addition to those, I have read three books about Baldwin that had biographical aspects but were not primarily a biography, Begin Again by Eddie Glaude, What Truth Sounds Like by Michael Eric Dyson, and James Baldwin and the 1980s by Joseph Vogel.

David Leeming was James Baldwin's friend and his hand-chosen biographer. This biography was originally published in 1995, nine years after Baldwin's death. Leeming first met Baldwin in Instanbul, where Leeming was a professor and Baldwin was staying with a friend trying to write. One of the constant refrains of this biography is that Baldwin needed people around him, but he couldn't write with people around him. So there was a tension between his ability to draw people to him and his need to get away from those people so that he could write, in part because of the costs of having those people around him.

Leeming started working for Baldwin as a secretary and continued working for him in various capacities for years. The close friendship and historical memory that Leeming brings to the biography is a real strength because Leeming was actually in the room for many events of the book, including his last days. At the same time, there is always a bit of a mistrust about biographers that are too close to their subject. The concern is about how that relationship distorts their perceptions. Leeming does not seem to have a problem allowing Baldwin to be a flawed individual. Baldwin for all of his brilliance was flawed. And Leeming had access to all of Balwin's papers, as well as many personal conversations. The intimacy of the narrative and genuine affection make for a very compelling read.

But I also wonder if there will be a new complete biography of Baldwin because he has been so much the figure of our current racialized era. Dyson and Vogel's mini-biographies about small segments of Baldwin's life are worth reading, but I really needed the whole scope of Baldwin's life to get his story right in my head. I realized that I had learned Baldwin's story from Baldwin's essays and those essays are primarily telling a story for a point, not presenting a timeline. In my head, I had The Fire Next Time written before Notes of a Native Son and Another Country as a later novel. Because Baldwin is such an autobiographical writer, that structure of his life, and the deeper context for his life I think will help me read his books more clearly.

As always, the more I read about Baldwin, the more I want to read Baldwin. I also can't help but think about Baldwin in comparison to others. As I have said before, my grandmother was a new immigrant to the US in 1926 and she lived in Harlem from 1926 until 1931, from 12 until 18. She was a new immigrant and only spoke Finnish initially. Baldwin was only 2 when she moved to Harlem and was around 8 when she moved. I don't have any fantasy that she may have interacted with him any more than I think that Baldwin and Deitrich Bonhoeffer had any interaction even though they were both in Harlem in 1931. But what I do find interesting is how much Baldwin's relationships mattered to his long-term life. One of his early mentors (and high school teachers) was poet Countee Cullen, who was WEB DuBois' son-in-law and the author of The Black Christ, which James Cone and others have pointed to connecting lynching with Christ's crucifixion.

It was not surprising to me that Baldwin knew Richard Wright given that Baldwin followed Wright's path to Paris, but I was surprised to read that Wright met Baldwin at the airport and helped him get his first Paris room. Baldwin also met Marlon Brando before either was famous and their friendship continued for decades. Baldwin new people and I think his ability to relate to people was part of why he is such a good writer.

If anyone has a suggestion for another complete biography, I would like to read another one in the next year or so, but I was very happy to read this one.

Summary: Georgiana's friend Belinda has inherited a small house. They go to inspect it while Darcy is away on “business.” Eventually, there is a murder that Georgiana has to solve. 

The Royal Spyness series has been going on for quite a while. The series is a cozy mysteries series, and it is pretty fluffy. But I have enjoyed them and mostly listened to them as audiobooks. The series' weaknesses are still present, but I still mostly enjoy the series despite them.

Georgiana and Darcy have returned from their honeymoon. Darcy has continued his undercover work for the crown, and he is off on another trip. Since she has inherited a house, Georgiana no longer has the same money problems as she did earlier in the series. But she still is not really interested in settling down and living a conventional life of the wealthy aristocracy. Because she is bored, she agrees to go with  Belinda to Cornwall to inspect her inherited old cottage.

Belinda spent time in the area as a child and pre-teen and played with others. But her grandmother sold her house, and Belinda no longer came to visit. Several of the children she played with have grown up and become important in the community. Belinda and Georgiana stay with one couple and find a situation they have to figure out how to deal with. That becomes another situation, and Georgiana has to save Belinda.

There was a very clear reference to the book/movie Rebecca and the type of gaslighting and manipulation that was in that story. The references to Rebecca gave strong hints to the story and the solution to the mystery. There is a split between Georgiana's experience solving mysteries and her negative self-perception. I am glad that now that Georgiana and Darcy are married, the angst over that relationship has mostly passed. The next book in the series was released last month, and it is a Christmas-themed mystery.

Summary: Memoir of one of the two remaining Freedom Riders. 

Two things can be true at one time. The era of overt legal segregation was not that long ago (my mother is two weeks younger than Ruby Bridges, and many school districts around the country did not desegregate until roughly about the time of my birth). And we are very rapidly losing those that played prominent roles in the Civil Rights Era. Charles Person is one of just two members of the original Freedom Riders that are still living. Buses are Coming': Memoir of a Freedom Riders was published just a couple of months ago. It is yet another book that I would not have known about without a recommendation from a friend. A friend of mine was invited to go to Charles Person's home a couple of weeks ago, and there he spent four hours talking with him and learning about his story. It was out of that meeting that I heard about Buses are Comin'.

Charles Person was born in 1942. He was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders. As a Morehouse freshman, he participated in the Atlanta Student Movement that organized the end of segregated restaurants and shopping in Atlanta. During those protests, Charles Person was arrested and spent 16 days in jail for “trespassing and disturbing the peace” while standing in line at a lunch buffet attempting to pay for a meal. As retaliation for singing freedom songs while in jail, he was moved to solitary confinement for ten of those days. In part because of the jail sentence, he fell behind with his spring classes during his freshman year; he dropped out of Morehouse that spring and applied to be part of the Congress on Racial Equality's Freedom Ride. (Person had applied to MIT and Georgia Tech, was accepted into MIT, but could not afford to attend and was rejected because of his race from Georgia Tech during the final year of required segregation at Tech.)

Roughly half of the book is about Person's early years before college and the protests at the Atlanta Student Movement. The second half of the book is a much more detailed look at the initial Freedom Ride. That first Freedom Ride brought attention to the illegal segregated interstate travel, but it did not succeed. One of the buses was burned, and virtually all of the Freedom Riders were severely beaten. Eventually, with a representative of President Kennedy and the work of Birmingham pastor Fred Shuttlesworth, the Freedom Riders were flown out of Birmingham.

In response to the failure of the first ride, Diane Nash of SNCC organized a follow-up Freedom Rides. It took more than seven months. More than 400 riders participated in 60 rides before the federal government agreed to enforce the 1946 Morgan v. Virginia and the 1960 Boynton v. Virginal Supreme Court rulings that desegregated interstate travel. The Buses are Comin' is just about the first Freedom Ride. In an afterward, Charles Person speaks of the follow-up work, but he did not participate in those follow-up rides because of his parents' resistance.

The more I read about the Civil Rights Era, the more it is clear that the real work of the Civil Rights Era was small-scale organizing by people that will never be well known. Of course, it is vital to learn about Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Stokley Carmichael, and John Lewis, but the unknown people allowed their work to be successful.

These Buses are Comin' reminds me of a similar memoir by Carolyn Maull McKinstry. While the World Watched tells McKinstry's story of narrowly missing being killed by the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and her participation in the Birmingham Children's crusade. Unlike most Civil Rights Era memoirs, which are usually framed as harrowing hero stories, most of While the World Watched is about her recovery from the trauma of losing four of her best friends, participating in a march, and being arrested a child, and the resulting alcoholism. The hard parts of the movement were made clear. That is also true, but there is more of a hero story framing with I Will Not Fear by Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine.

Melba Pattillo Beals, Carolyn Maull McKinstry, and Charles Person are still living. They range in age from 72 to 79. All of them were part of the student movement of the Civil Rights era, and while they participated in those initial marches and protests, the rest of their lives were still impacted by ongoing racism. Beals, in her memoir, speaks about the difficulty of finding housing even 20 years after discrimination based on race in housing was made illegal. Not in the book, but based on my friend's discussion with Charles Person, he went into the military. He was trained as an engineer there because of continued education and job discrimination. McKinstry speaks about her brother, who stopped speaking for years after the string of church and home bombings in their area and who died before he turned 50, in large part because of the trauma of his early life.

I regularly encounter white adults resistant to the idea that there is ongoing racial discrimination or that there is a continued impact from historical discrimination. It is books like these I wish people would read. I think it is a story and memoir that has the best chance of changing minds and opening up people beyond their personal experience and ideological blinders.

Summary: A biography (primarily of the Civil War years) of Robert Smalls, best known for captaining a steamship from Charleston harbor to escape from slavery during the Civil War, but who eventually served five terms in Congress.

I do not remember when I first heard about Robert Smalls. I am sure it was a history book sometime in the past ten years, but I have regularly seen him mentioned in passing in various books without really getting a full sense of his life story. There are two books that I am aware of that are about Robert Smalls, this one, Be Free or Die, is primarily about the Civil War years with a chapter on his early life for context and an epilogue for the remainder of his life. The second book is Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839-1915. My understanding is that Gullah Statesman is a more comprehensive biography and more focused on his later life, but it is not on audiobook, and the audiobook was on sale recently. So I listened to this audiobook, mainly on a long drive this weekend.

Robert Smalls was born into slavery in 1839. He was leased out for his labor and eventually started working as a deckhand on the steamer packet boat, The Planter. He quickly rose from deckhand to pilot. And in May 1862, when the White officers left the ship to spend the night with their families, Robert Smalls and the rest of the enslaved crew, along with at least some of the wives and children of the crew, left the dock and sailed out of the harbor and past the Confederate defenses and patrol boats out to the line of Union ships that were blockading the port. In addition to freeing themselves, the crew had just loaded three cannons that were being moved and Confederate codebooks and Smalls knowledge of the waters as a pilot. The crew shared a reward for turning over the ship leased to the Confederacy, and Smalls became the pilot of the Planter working for the Union and eventually its captain.

The book opens with that story, breathlessly told. That story is important, and it was hazardous and audacious. But there is a breathless quality to the storytelling that I thought detracted from the book. The book returns to the story of his mother and his early life and the context before moving on with the rest of Smalls' exploits during the Civil War. Using part of the reward money for turning over the Planter and his salary as the pilot, Robert Smalls started a store that served the thousands of formerly enslaved living in the Union-controlled islands around Charleston. Eventually, earning enough money to purchase the home where he had grown up as an enslaved person in a federal tax sale. The fact that it was a federal tax sale was important because most other property that formerly enslaved people purchased or entrusted with from field orders was stripped away in the early Reconstruction years. But Smalls, although sued for the property and the case going the whole way to the Supreme Court, was able to keep the property. (He allowed the widow of his former owner and her family to continue to live in a portion of the home for years, although the White family refused to eat meals with their benefactor.)

Smalls' story was not just immediately exciting and widely told in newspapers and by Smalls himself, but the intelligence that Smalls and the crew were able to share with the Union leadership and the skills and knowledge of the local waters was important throughout the Civil War. In addition, partly because of his initial fame, Smalls went on tour to Washington and Philadelphia to raise support for the war and awareness of the plight of the formerly enslaved living in refugee camps under Union-controlled areas. Smalls personally delivered a letter from the Union general that was in charge of the Union-controlled areas to allow for the recruitment of Black soldiers from the formerly enslaved. While the Union had not previously authorized Black soldiers, Smalls' personal delivery of the letter and his intervention with President Lincoln and the Secretary of War did bring about the authorization for Black troops. The more well-known 54th Regiment portrayed in the movie Glory was established after the troops from the Sea Islands. Initially, the Union was going to abandon the Sea Islands (without evacuating 10,000 formerly enslaved and leaving them to fend for themselves), but the establishment of Black troops to defend the islands and support the Union's work in attacking Charleston and surrounding areas were important precedents. Eventually, nearly 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors served during the Civil War.

The biggest weakness of Be Free or Die is that it only briefly touches on the last fifty years of Robert Smalls life. He served for five terms in the US Congress; he was in opposition to the new constitution of South Carolina that eventually brought about Jim Crow, he was a federal tax collector, he was on the board for a Black-owned and controlled Railroad that served to move goods and people inland from the Charleston port, he helped establish a newspaper. He expanded his store that was started during the Civil war. He attained the rank of brigadier-general in the South Carolina Militia in the 1870s until white Democrats started to regain power after the fall of Reconstruction. Unfortunately, this part of the story is only told in a few pages, and I will have to read Gullah Statesman to get a better sense of his later life.