Adam Shields

I am not going to do a full review of this. I didn't realize it was an abridged version. There is only a little over an hour here. And while I do find it interesting, this is very short snippets of wisdom, not longer stories. Most sections feel like they would probably be no more than a page or so in print.

Summary: The second edition of an introduction to making reconciliation a real and tangible reality to Christian communities. 

Generally, my approach to reading is to find areas I can agree and learn from. It is not that I am not ever critical in my reading, but that I tend to work to be charitable. I say that because the reading of this book was much more critical than I tend to because it was read in a small group discussion. The group is all committed to racial reconciliation within my church, and they are not brand new to the conversation. So our critical reading was not based in opposition to the real need for racial reconciliation but in trying to test this roadmap to our experience and context. We were often challenged about being too critical, but the criticism was not about diminishing Dr. Salter McNeil's work or thought but about challenging ourselves to think more deeply. I think that part of what I take out of this book is that there needs to be more theoretical work put into reconciliation.

Dr. Salter McNeil has a lifetime of work in racial reconciliation. And similar to my concerns of critiquing John Perkins, I am not at all critiquing the reality that they have given their lives to the service of Christ. But because they have served well does not mean that we can take their history as prescriptive to the future. In her book Becoming Brave, Dr. Salter McNeil notes that she has changed over time. Going forward, racial reconciliation within the evangelical protestant world must change to be more focused on reparations and repair and less focused on reparations and repair relational and visible diversity. That critique has become widespread and has been made for more than 20 years, from Emerson and Smith's Divided by Faith to I Bring the Voice of My People to Elusive Dream and more. In her book Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation, Jennifer Harvey specifically called out Brenda Salter McNeil for her coddling white Christians. And it is to Dr. Salter McNeil's credit that she not only took that critique seriously but has noted it in both Becoming Brave and Road to Reconciliation.

In the context of my group discussion, there was quite a bit of discussion about basics, definitions, theoretical approaches, and the relationship between Christianity and reconciliation. Not every book can, or needs to, have a fully developed theoretical framework, but I think Road to Reconciliation needed more. For instance, the not so simple concept of race was not explored enough. Race is not a concept in scripture because it is a modern idea. But that does not stop many Christians from taking concepts that were in biblical ideas, like ethnicity and cultures, and transporting them to the modern idea of race. The modern idea of race is a socially constructed reality that inherently assumes a heirarchy and rankings. That does not mean that I don't think that the modern idea of race cannot be redeemed, but I do think that if we are going to attempt that, we have to be aware of the pitfalls and point them out.

So much of our theology impacts our social thought, and it is only when we critically investigate those basics do we see how there are strengths and pitfalls. That does not mean that we can't work with those Christians that we have differences of theology with on areas like racial reconciliation. Still, we need to investigate those assumptions because uninvestigated assumptions lead to misunderstanding. There are several examples of where I think Dr. Salter McNeil's theology that leans to light dispensationalism and reformed theology (she is ordained and operated within the Evangelical Covenant Church) makes some theological leaps that were not explored enough. But, again, I don't want to complain about what is not here because a book that I am looking for here would be much different from what was written. Road to Reconciliation is a lay-oriented book that is a bit over 200 pages. A book that explores theology and sociological basics of race and reconciliation more would necessarily be both longer and denser.

There was a lot of value in discussing this book with our group. The group largely agreed with the goals and general thoughts and emphasis. Having something to disagree with is helpful in the areas where we have to work through our thoughts, biases, and values. Racial reconciliation is something that doesn't have a simple roadmap. There are too many differences in context to make a roadmap work. That doesn't mean that there is no value in books like this that give ideas about how to proceed. But a model that works in one place will not translate to other areas. And as Dr. Salter McNeil says toward the end,

“Reconciliation is truly a journey, not a destination. It is a process that leads to personal, spiritual, social and systemic transformation...Reconciliation is a dynamic process and an objective. Like all living systems, reconciliation is a nonlinear process that is progressive and at times cyclical in nature. Having gone through the process once doesn't mean that you have “arrived.” Further growth and transformation are continually before you, and you may find yourself perpetually on the journey...We need to understand the dynamics of the journey and to focus on a few key skills that will help us stay the course and resist derailment.”

The value of books like this is to prepare people for the ongoing nature of racial reconciliation. One of the most significant harms to racial reconciliation in the church is the frequency people give up on the journey because they did not measure the cost before they started. I do not think that we can fully understand the total costs (or joys) before we start, but if we think we are running a sprint, we will not approach it in the right way when the race is an ultra marathon. And I think a lot of the frustration in racial reconciliation circles is based on inappropriate expectations, and books like Road to Reconciliation help prepare people for reality, even if I wanted more.

Summary: A brief biography of one of the civil rights era's most important voting rights figures. 

I have known about Fannie Lou Hamer for a while. She was a figure in many histories of the civil rights era and a character in several biographies I have read, but this is the first book I have read primarily about her. I decided to pick it up after listening to an interview with the author on the Pass the Mic podcast and because I needed to use some credits on Audible. It is a brief biography, and the context is very helpful. But I also wanted a bit more. In print, it is just under 140 pages of text. Given that brief length, I wish there were an appendix with the text of several of her speeches. On the other hand, the book is well documented, with more than 30 pages of endnotes and a ten-page index. That high level of documentation is great, but it reads as a very accessible biography.

After the first, each of the chapters opens with a short passage detailing violence against black women. That framing of the book by connecting Hamer with the current civil rights struggle gives context for why we need to pay attention to Fannie Lou Hamer and other relatively unknown figures today.

Traditionally I have used Julia Child as an example of someone that did not start what they are known for until later in life. Julia Child did not take her first cooking class until she was 36. She didn't start writing her first cookbook until her early 40s and didn't start her TV show until she was 50. By comparison, when she was six, Fannie Lou Hamer started working cotton fields when she was trapped into a work contract as a sharecropper. She was sterilized without her consent during surgery to remove a tumor as a young woman. Because of this, she was unable to have biological children but did adopt two daughters and raised two additional girls. It was not until her mid-40s that Fannie Lou Hamer started working in civil rights.

At a church meeting organized by SNCC, she learned that she had a right to vote for the first time. On Aug 31, 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer and 17 others attempted to register to vote, and they were all arrested. She and her husband were immediately fired. Over the next couple of weeks, she regularly moved and went into hiding. She was shot at 15 times in an attempt to intimidate her. She and her husband left the county for three months for their safety. In December 1962, she again attempted to register to vote but was denied because of failing a literacy test. She returned in Jan 1963 and passed the literacy test but was denied the ability to vote that fall because she could not produce receipts for the two poll taxes. She eventually was able to vote, but the violence and repercussions against her left her unable to find work. Finally, she was hired by SNCC in 1963.

In June of 1963, returning from an SNCC meeting, she was arrested and beaten so severely that she was left permanently disabled. She spent three months recovering out of state before returning to her work in Mississippi. Despite being widely known, running for Congress and other political offices multiple times, and working for SNCC, she and her family were destitute. One of her daughters died after being weakened by severe malnutrition in 1968. Another daughter was hit by a car in retaliation for her mother's work on voting rights, she was refused admittance to a hospital and died. Fannie Lou Hamer herself died of breast cancer in 1977 when she was only 59.

Fannie Lou Hamer's work to force the national Democratic party to change southern segregated primaries and her work creating an alternative political party in Mississippi changed politics across the country. She may not be the best-known civil rights figure, but the work she did was done in only a nine-year time period.

Summary: A religious biography of Jimmy Carter focused on his progressive Evangelicalism and the rise of the religious right.

I have begun to pay more attention to Jimmy Carter since I moved to Georgia 15 years ago. I was able to go to one of the quarterly report meetings of the Carter Center about seven years ago and was duly impressed, not just with the ongoing work of the Carter Center, but with Carter's sharp takes on current events. The event was a breakfast meeting at 7 AM. It followed an evening conference that Carter had hosted, which did not conclude until 10 PM the previous night. Carter has a murphy bed in his office at the Carter Center, so he would have slept in his office. As part of the question and answer time, Carter cited four different articles from several newspapers that he had read that morning before the breakfast meeting. He had compelling thoughts on questions as diverse as North Korean proliferation, Black Lives Matter organization, protests of police brutality,  environmental issues, and personal practices as a leader.

Part of what is fascinating to me isn't just Carter's post Presidental career, but how much of a transitional figure he has been to American politics. As I learned in the book, Carter was the first president born in a hospital. But his family home did not have running water until he was 11 and didn't have electricity until he was 14. Carter was on the local school board during the integration era after Brown v Board. And he was pressured to join the local White Citizen's Council, but resisted. He attempted to get his church to accept Black members in the 1960s, but there were only three votes in favor, including his and his wife's. His church was still segregated when he became President, and the pastor was fired in 1977 for attempting to integrate it. That led to a church split, and for the remaining two years, he alternated between the two churches when attending church at home. He joined the new, integrated church the week after leaving the White House. It is incredible to think that a sitting president, known for his racial activism, was still attending an overtly segregated church.

Jimmy Carter was born in 1924. Which made him was younger than Reagan (1911), who was older than Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon (both born in 1913). George Bush and Jimmy Carter were born the same year, but then George W Bush, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump were all born in 1946, a generation younger.  The changes in the US since Carter's birth are significant.

Randall Balmer's primary thesis in Redeemer is well summarized in this quote from early in the book:

In the simplest terms, the brief recrudescence of progressive evangelicalism in the early to mid-1970s gave way to a conservative backlash, a movement known generically as the Religious Right, a loose coalition of politically conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists. The leaders of the Religious Right faulted Carter and his administration for enforcing the antidiscrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act in evangelical institutions. They criticized his support for human rights abroad and equal rights for women and for gays and lesbians at home. Having joined the ranks of abortion opponents in 1979, the Religious Right castigated Carter for his refusal to outlaw abortion, despite Carter's long-standing opposition to abortion and his efforts to limit its incidence. By the time of the 1980 presidential election, evangelical voters overwhelmingly abandoned Carter and threw their support to Reagan, the candidate who, with his faltering grasp of the essentials of evangelical theology and his episodic church attendance, had perhaps the most tenuous claim on the label evangelical.

Much of the book focuses on Carter's theology and religious practice. It tells his life story, but mainly as a way to explore how that life shaped his theology and practice. Carter ran and lost to segregationist Lester Maddox in 1967. Carter spent the next four years campaigning for Governor, this time winning. He won the governor's job in part by painting his primary opponent as a “liberal integrationist” and accepting Lester Maddox's endorsement, and endorsing Maddox as the Lieutenant Governor. But as governor, Carter was the most liberal person on matters of race in the office until that point. In addition to race, he reorganized the state government for efficiency and cost savings, significantly reformed education by providing funds for vocational education, reducing class sizes, and balancing funding across school districts.

As a sign of Carter's social progressivism, which was rooted in his theological commitments, he thought that government should play “an ameliorative role in society, that governing wisely would, in Niebuhr's words, advance ‘justice in a sinful world.'” As part of that theolgically rooted progressivism, Carter supported of the Equal Rights Amendment, environmental concerns, and an anti-war stance on Vietnam.  As president, Carter was one of the few presidents in the last 100 years to not involve any troops in an armed conflict during his presidency.

As president, he continued many of the same political positions he started as governor. Carter had the most diverse appointments by gender and race of any president up until that time in both the Executive and Judicial appointments. He expanded the military's role in Europe but oriented it toward a defensive role. He strove after responsibility, as illustrated by his 1979 speech “Malaise Speech.” Balmer includes the entire speech as an appendix to illustrate Carter's call for responsibility and social transformation.

In many ways, Carter was just unlucky at his presidential timing. He was president during widespread inflation, which continued through most of Reagan's first term. By the end of his presidency, Carter had a balanced budget, but Reagan disregarded that budget and significantly increased spending while also cutting taxes. There was little that Carter could do about unrest in the Middle East, although he did more than most presidents in addressing the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Still, that did not help stabilize oil prices or supply. Reagan's team negotiated with Iran before his inauguration to not release the Iranian hostages until the afternoon of Reagan's inauguration. Carter worked for environmental policies and energy independence largely dismantled by Reagan.

And Carter was widely blamed for both the IRS's enforcement of anti-segregation policies, which had been put into place under Nixon and the Supreme Court's Roe v Wade, which also was decided before Carter's term, which was outside of his authority as president.

Balmer develops a thesis, turned into his famous Politico article in 2014 and then later his short book Bad Faith. The summary of Balmer's thesis is that the Religious Right got its first organizational start by organizing around the IRS's enforcement of anti-segregation policies that removed the tax-exempt status of segregated Christian schools, commonly known as segregation academies. These segregation academies arose in response to Brown v Board and were widespread. It was effectively recreating segregated schooling by removing most white students from the public school system and creating an alternative private whites-only Christian school system alongside the de facto Black public schools. It was only later that the Religious Right's political organizing shifted to abortion as a new topic.

The 1980 campaign with Reagan and the history of the Religious Right's rise has almost as much attention as the rest of Carter's presidency in the book. Balmer is using this biography of Carter also to tell the story about the short rise and then fall of progressive Evangelicalism, and that story is largely a story of the rise of the Religious Right as a backlash to the Civil Rights movement and the broader social progressivism of the late 1960s and 1970s. That is a significant historical development, but in some ways, I think it crowded out the biography of Carter, even if he was a prime example of Evangelical Progressivism.

Historians are re-evaluating carter. Balmer is part of that trend. It is a trend that will continue. Redeemer is a helpful, short book on Carter that pairs well with the longer recent books like The Outlier: the Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life, and President Carter, The White House Years. All three of those books, which I have not read, but which are well-reviewed, were published between 2018 and 2021 and were 750 to 986 pages.

Summary: A legal and historical look at the development of slavery in the US written and oriented toward theonomist leaning Christians. 

I honestly am not sure how to talk about The Problem of Slavery in Christian America.  The history is very good and helpful. But the political and theological bias of the author, primarily coming out in later sections makes it hard to completely recommend the book.

Part One is focused on the judicial and legal history of the development of slavery in the US, and it is excellent. I learned a ton, and I have over a hundred highlights to show how helpful I found this part. The most helpful is the close reading of the legal development of slavery and how that development undercuts some of the Lost Cause historical revisionism about the reality of slavery.

There has been a very long history of Christians opposing slavery, from very early, out of broad concerns about the love of neighbor and the golden rule reasoning and opposition to the cruelty of slave systems. Even though the British Common Law system did allow for slavery, there was a reasonably strict understanding that other Christians could not be enslaved and that limitations to slavery. The American (and Caribbean) development of slavery rejected British laws to be freer to enslave people.

In part, this desire to enslave was a counter to the system of indentured servitude (which was time-limited but still a form of slavery). Indentured servitude was, in many cases (but not all) a voluntary system where a person agreed to enter service for an agreed period in exchange for payment of the passage to America and room and board during the time of service. But indentured service was not producing enough workers at the rates that tobacco planters were willing to pay. Also, once free, indentured servants could become planters and compete with other planters. Indentured service was a type of apprenticeship at its best where a person would learn a trade and be set up for a future career. (Many indentured servants were very much abused, but there was legal recourse in the system even if it was still often a brutal system.)

Within 40 years of the first African people being brought to Virginia, the slave system was more clearly established. Virginia House of Burgesses created tax breaks (tariff reductions) for ships that would bring Africans to be enslaved, which created a supply. And the House of Burgesses gave land to anyone that purchased newly enslaved people, which created a demand. And it created systems that discouraged indentured servants from working to escape with enslaved Africans by making white indentured servants (or others) liable for the total value of escaped enslaved people as well as a criminal penalty. It was about the same time that mixed-race children were addressed in the legal system. Under British Common Law, a child born out of wedlock became the state's obligation, who could then investigate to find the father and hold the father liable for the economic costs of raising the child. In that British system, the father's status determined the status of the child. A free father meant that the child was free regardless of the mother's status. The combination meant that enslaved women who were not legally married required the state to determine and punish the father and free the child. The House of Burgesses changed the law to make the child's status follow the mother (the Roman system, where “the offspring follows the womb”), which in the context was what applied to livestock within the British Common Law system. Legally, slave children moved from the human legal system to the livestock legal system. And illegitimate children of enslaved people not only were no longer a legal liability for the state but became an asset to their enslaver (and often rapist). It took a couple more decades to make interracial marriage illegal formally and to establish punishments for white women who had mixed-race children (regardless of marital status), but before 1700 most states both legally and culturally prohibited miscegenation while removing any legal restrictions against the rape of enslaved women. Even where there were laws against the rape of enslaved (or free) Black women, there were virtually universal prohibitions against any Black people testifying against White citizens, in part because the enslaves were legally chattel and free Black people were not considered citizens.

McDurmon also details how slavery was a problem for the northern states as well. Within 25 years of creating the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies, there was a legal establishment of slave systems that could capture and sell Native Americans locally and to the Caribbean and import enslaved Africans. Most slave ships that brought enslaved people to the English colonies and were owned by people within the English colonies were from New England. And New England's primary exports were provisions and food for the Caribbean slave colonies, which were not self-sufficient for their foodstuff. Rhode Island, in particular, was essential to the slave trade. And as McDurmon makes the case, “Between the transatlantic slave trade and West Indian provisioning trade, it is hard to imagine any eighteenth-century Rhode Islander whose livelihood was not entangled, directly or indirectly, with slavery.”

Abolitionists started working against slavery reasonably early. The first abolitionist pamphlet appears to have been written by 1645. By 1723, Virginia made it illegal to free enslaved people for almost any reason. And those few reasons which were allowed required the owner to deport the newly freed person from the state. It also made it illegal for church groups to purchase enslaved people to free them. But as abolitionists began to raise concerns, the chattel nature of American slavery was made more explicit. A 1754 Act included this line, “WHEREAS, by the laws of this Province, negroes and other slaves are deemed to be chattels personal, and are, in every respect, as much the property of their owners, as any other goods or chattels are.”

I have already spent too much time on the parts of the book that I thought were very helpful. I need to at least mention where I am more concerned. First, I did not know when I picked the book up that Joel McDurmon is a Theonomist, and for four years, was the head of American Vision, a local to me non-profit that promotes Christian Reconstructionism.  Many but not all, Theonomists and Christian Reconstructionists are overt Christian Nationalists in the sociological sense of that term. The Classical Christian homeschool movement attached to Doug Wilson is heavily invested in a problematic approach to nationalism and ethnocentrism, if not outright racism. Joel McDurmon is trying to oppose the type of Neo-confederate whitewashing of the history of Doug Wilson while still maintaining his theonomist orientation. So part two of the book, where McDurmon directly addresses Christian involvement, is very mixed. The section that addresses Lost Cause theologians like Robert Dabney is helpful because he writes as an insider to groups that frequently use Dabney's biblicist theology to defend the bible. But as McDurmon points out, the biblicism of Dabney was used primarily to support white supremacy, not to defend against theological liberalism. It isn't just more fringe groups like Douglas Wilson that continue to recommend Robert Dabney, the Gospel Coalition and John Piper still recommend Robert Dabney's books and cite him positively. So I do want to affirm McDurmon's work to point out the white supremacy of theologians that continue to be cited today.

But the final section of the book McDurmon uses his libertarian thinking and citations of Thomas Sowell to oppose structural redress of slavery and racism. He is very aware of the actual long-term results of racism and slavery. He has no problem using the words “white supremacy” to detail the cultural belief of racial superiority within the broader culture and the church. But he opposes all structural, especially governmental redress. Why does he do this, because he opposes all government social programs, not just social programs around racial redress of wrong, but even public schooling. “Lest there be any confusion, no one has written more forcefully than myself opposing the state and statist, socialist programs, including public schools.” Ignoring the origin of public schooling by the Puritans so that all could read the Bible, he views public schooling as a leftist threat, which has only spread because of the sin of Christians to not step up to right wrongs in other ways. It is hard for me to take seriously the political thoughts of someone that opposes the very idea of public schooling as harming society.

There is also a stylistic problem which was grating, but I know it is stylistic. Current academic and stylistic bias is not to use Black or White as a noun but an adjective. In other words, do not say, ‘The blacks did x.” But instead, say, “Black citizens of the United States did x.” Several older books do this, but this is not an older book; the Problem of Slavery in Christian America was published in 2019.

My notes and highlights can be found here

Summary: A memoir primarily focusing on mental health and its connection to religious faith.

I believe I have read two of Charles Marsh's books and that I own two others. Marsh is the author of the Deitrich Bonhoeffer's biography that I believe most people should start with. And he has written widely about social justice, especially the Civil Rights movement, and how Christianity has fueled the Civil Rights movement.

Because I enjoy reading memoirs of people writing late in their lives (especially theologians and authors), I preordered Evangelical Anxiety without reading anything else about it other than that it existed. Marsh is not that old; he is 64 years old. So he is not writing the last book like John Stott, John Perkins, Eugene Peterson, Howard Thurman, Charles Pearson, and Billy Graham. Or even a memoir giving a broader overview of their life like Philip Yancy, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Will Willimon, Julie Andrews, Stanley Hauerwas, Dovey Johnson Roundtree, Melba Pattillo Beals, or Thomas Oden did. Marsh is writing a memoir that gives an overview of his life but primarily focuses on how he has grappled with his mental health over his life, especially how his faith has interacted with his mental health.

Evangelical Anxiety is a book that I think many will not appreciate. Just like a lot of Evangelical fiction is not very good because it has to meet the narrow boundaries of what is acceptable. Evangelical memoirs and autobiographies tend to present a neat, problem-solved perspective on their lives. Charles Marsh's memoir does not have a nice bow on it. He has grappled with debilitating anxiety and depression and other mental health issues, and the language and revelations will offend or scandalize many.

There is some (appropriately used) language. It is not crude language for the sake of crude language, but rightly used words to express a natural range of emotions and feelings that fit with the story. Probably even more disturbing is that Marsh discusses sexuality openly. From masturbation as a boy and the way, Evangelical understanding of sin made things worse, not better, to adult temptation. Some books leave very little to the imagination, but this is not that type of book. This is a book about Marsh. And when discussing sexuality, he is doing it openly, but from the perspective of how he grappled with his Evangelical theology of sin with the added complications of the distortions of his mental health. That is to say; this is not a tell-all book but a book that reveals how mental illness, sexuality, and sin can interact. This is not unlike Hauerwas' memoir about his marriage to his first wife and her grappling with mental illness, but from the perspective of the spouse with the mental illness.

As I was drafting this, I saw a tweet from Dante Stewart that I thought was relevant.

Christian faith would be so much healthier and healing if we lived like we believed faith liberates us from self-hate and God's love liberates us from self-shame. Trust me when I tell you this: you can shout, give, and preach all you want, but if your theology makes someone believe they have to hate themselves or be ashamed of themselves to be loved, then your theology is not the good news of Jesus.

Summary: A young adult memoir of Melba Pattillo Beals about her early years before integrating Little Rock's Central High. March Forward, Girl is a prequel to Warriors Don't Cry. 

Last year I read Melba Pattillo Beals' memoir of her life after Central High, I Will Not Fear. At some point, I read that Beals' best-known book, the memoir of her Central High desegregation experience, Warriors Don't Cry, was among the list of books that were being challenged as inappropriate to be taught in schools. So, as I was looking for that book, I also put her most recent book, March Forward, Girl, on my to-read list. I thought March Forward, Girl covered the Central High but was pitched to a younger audience than Warriors Don't Cry, but it is more of a prequel. I am not great at evaluating what age would be best for reading, but my inclination is that March Forward, Girl is targeted to children that are roughly 10 to 13.

March Forward, Girl was written just a few years ago, and Melba Pattillo Beals is now 80 years old. The book opens with her coming to understand racism as a very young child. Born on December 7, 1941 (the day of the Pearl Harbor attack). Melba, as a child, understood more than what her parents and other adults thought that she did.

It seemed to me that the grownups must have thought they could say anything out loud in front of me and I wouldn't really understand what they were talking about because I was so little. They were wrong. I took in every word, and I spent all my waking hours listening closely to the adult talk, trying to figure out their words, what they meant, and why they never spoke up, and pondering my world. How did I get here? How long did I have to stay? I imagined there must be places beyond Arkansas where my folks were treated better...Early on, I could tell that the white people in Little Rock believed we had to do whatever they wanted us to do. I told myself that it must be that God liked them better than us. They treated us like they owned us.

While March Forward, Girl was not published by a Christian publisher as I Will Not Fear was, it is still significantly concerned with her theological wrestling of what it means to be enduring pain and racism and to believe in God. Where was God in the midst of her pain? As I read March Forward, Girl, I thought about how Christians who are not paying attention to the world's problems and working toward their solutions are keeping people from God. Melba Pattillo Beals eventually came to a deep faith in God. But those early years, she struggled to understand her Grandmother's faith.

A personal memoir like this is a critical way to give context to history. She talks about hating to go to the stores because Black people were not allowed to touch items in most stores. They had to tell the clerk what they wanted, and the White clerk would gather them because items that Black people had touched would not be considered salable to White people. And Black patrons would only be helped if there were no other White people in the store. White people immediately moved to the front of any line, so it may take an hour to get a few items at the grocery store since Black patrons both could not pick up items on their own and had to wait until all White patrons had been served.

The experiences that Melba Pattillo Beals recounts of her childhood are not just inconveniences and or segregated stores and water fountains. She also tells about members of the Klan coming into their church service and lynching a man in the middle of the sanctuary. And of her walking home from the pool one day and being kidnapped by a group of men and taken to a Klan rally where they intended to rape her (she was too young to realize that this was what was being intended.) However, a White woman at the Klan rally eventually realized that she was only 11 but looked older and helped her escape.

It is these more serious examples that I think likely are why some White people are objecting to this memoir and Warriors Don't Cry. But these events were experienced by a child who is the books' target age. And I think we do need these first-person accounts, and we need to know that the people that experienced them are still alive. There was a Fresh Air interview from 2018 when the book came out. And an Oprah episode from 1996 brought together several students from Little Rock High forty years later.

March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine by Melba Pattillo Beals Purchase Links: Paperback, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook

Summary: Exploration of why James Baldwin resonates so strongly.

Begin Again is the second of Eddie Glaude's book that I have read. I appreciate Democracy in Black but thought when I read it that it may have been written a couple of years early because it was writing about how democracy still perpetuates racism during the Obama years. And reading it in the Trump years meant that I thought he was right, but not quite pointed enough.

Because there are few writers that I am fascinated by more than Baldwin (although he is not an easy read), I was interested in a trusted guide. That is what Eddie Glaude was seeking to do. He was both explicating Baldwin, but also placing him in context for a modern reader who is reading Baldwin years after his death and a half-century after he impacted the world.

Both Glaude and Baldwin are magnificent writers. There are phrases that just matter to strongly to read this a single time. Because of the cost (using Audible credits is always just over $9 a book for me) I picked up the Audible and listened to Glaude masterfully narrate his book. But I need to read this again in print. I will do that relatively soon (probably after the new year). But first I want to read a full biography of Baldwin and two or three more of Baldwin's books. I have read five of Baldwin's books, but that is not nearly enough. I am nearly finished with No Name on the Street (nonfiction), which is mentioned frequently in Born Again. I will also pick up at least one more of his fiction books before re-reading Born Again a second time.

Born Again is a mix of biography, cultural and literary criticism, and modern explication of his work with a dash of personal experience of Glaude. It is nicely balanced from a range of perspectives. And a skilled thinker and writer like Glaude who both places him in context and digs the depths is worth reading.

Summary: A play on the traditional Little Mermaid story.

I am a big fan of remixes and reimaginings of stories. Orson Scott Card's Enchantment is a reimagining of Sleeping Beauty, Ta-Nehisi Coates Between the World and Me is a reimagining of James Balwin's letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Holmes trilogy is a reimagining of the original Sherlock Holmes books, most of John Scalzi's books are riffing off of older SciFi stories (Redshirts, Old Man's War, Fuzzy Nation to name a few.) So many of our best books are based on older stories and ideas reimagined for a different context or to say something different to a current generation.

The Son of the Deep is a reimaging of the classic Little Mermaid story, which most of us know about through the Disney reimagining, not through the Hans Christian Anderson version, which is based on an older folk tale. In the Son of the Deep, it is “Hugo” who is the merman and who saves the Princess, and who has to convince the Queen to marry him without his voice. The classic elements matter because they both are references that tell us more than just the simple words on the page; they highlight the subtle differences that do appear.

I will try to make this spoiler-free, but the back story to the Sea Witch matters even if we do not understand that connection until fairly late in the story. The magic of Hugo's voice loss is more powerful than in the Disney version. He is prevented from responding to questions that may reveal too much about his background, writing, or any other form of communication. The tension between family responsibility and responsibility in our love for each other is stronger than in the Disney version. But this is not just a reimagining of Disney's Little Mermaid; some of the classic elements, like merpeople becoming seafoam on death, are here.

This is a middle-grade or early young adult book. There is romance, but it is a chaste romance. There is tension, but it isn't scary. There are classic young adult tempers and concerns about adults/parents not understanding them. There is classic poor communication and teenage longing to be known and loved. I have been a bit burned out on reading lately and have returned to some of my classic comfort reading. I recently re-read the fantasy series by the same author and was reminded how much some of the young adult themes can be clarifying and helpful to return to as an adult. My kids are just a bit too young for this, but I think this might be a good read-aloud for them when they get to be about nine or so.

Short Review: This series continues to be very good. Good enough that I stayed up until 2 AM to finished it earlier this week. I am not going to give away details of the story. But this is the third year that The Six return to their magical world. They have to deal with the implications of the tragedy that happened at the end of the second book. And they have to deal with the continued relationship issues between Darcy and Prince Tellius (since there is a prophecy that says that they will get married and that neither really likes they idea of being forced into marriage). The six and Prince Tellius are now 15 years old. There is 15 year old stuff going on in the book that as an adult reader, even if it is realistic, is a bit wearing.

But what I love as an adult reader that has read fairly widely not just in young adult fantasy, but fantasy and classic fiction more broadly, there are subtle references to books throughout the series, but the references are both more frequent and more important in The White Thread. Good authors are readers. And seeing these references and allusions to others books and story isn't just self indulgent or ‘look at what I read.' They give a sophisticated sense to the story telling. Some young adult books are just a flat surface story. The book is nice and the story decent, but there is no depth. Books that have both subtlety and something under the surface that will help the book have a longer life, give more meaning to the story and give a reason for multiple readings.

My longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-white-thread/

Second Reading

I read the final book of the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series last week, and that inspired me to go back and listen to the audiobook of Strong Poison, the book where Harriet Vane was introduced. Unfortunately, I continue to not really be a fan of Ian Carmichael's audiobook. They are fine, but not as well narrated and engineered as I think they should be.

There is not much different from this second reading of Strong Poison than my thoughts after the first reading. I was mostly interested in getting the details of the book, so I could read the books between Strong Poison and Busman's Holiday over the next couple of weeks. I also wish that Harriet was more present in this book. She is basically a damsel in distress here. She is in jail for virtually the entire book. People know her and reference her, but she is not a strong character. She is more present in Have His Carcase, but that is still mostly told from Peter's perspective. I still have not read a number of the short stories, and I am currently in the middle of Gaudy Night (which is told from Harriet's perspective). Gaudy Night and Busman's Holiday prove that this could have been a good series that focuses on the two of them, not just Harriet as a sidekick.

At some point, I will probably read the Jill Paton Walsh series based on this one. Jill Paton Walsh turned a draft of Sayers into Thrones, Dominations and then wrote an additional three books about the married life of the Wimsey's.
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Short Review: This is my favorite of the series that I have read so far. I skipped books 3 and 5 although I will probably go back and read them eventually. I didn't really like book 4 (short story collection) so I needed something to make sure the series was worth continuing and this was the best reviewed of the next couple of books.

In this book, Lord Peter is watching a trial of a crime novelist accused of poisoning her former lover. Wimsey is convinced that she is innocent and once the jury comes back without a verdict, he decides to take the case and prove her innocence before the re-trial can start. In the meantime, Lord Peter falls in love with Harriet Vine and has the added pressure of needing to solve the crime to save the woman he loves.

There is quite a bit of speculation about how much of herself that Dorothy Sayers was writing into the Harriet Vine character. And there are several places where I wonder if the idea that seems a bit cliche to me know originated in this book or was adopted by Sayers. I just don't know enough about the history of mysteries to know.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/strong-poison/

Short Review: Darcy and the others are excited to return to fantasy world of Alitheia. Evil was pushed back at the end of the first book, but evil remains Alitheia and their role in the prophecy is still not really understood. Darcy and Prince Tellius are both concerned about the lines of the prophecy that suggest that they are going to get married. After all they are still only 13 and 14 in this book and they do not like the fact that they seem to have no choice about a significant decision like marriage.

That leads to Darcy calling on the Oracle to help her understand the prophecy. Like many fantasy worlds, magic has a price.

This is a very enjoyable second book in the series. I not only finished it quickly but I also read the third even faster. I am now just waiting on the fourth to be released so I can keep reading.

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

Short review: This third book in the series marks a turning point. Taran realizes that he actually has feelings for the Princess, but not until she is sent to live with some relatives to learn how to be a lady. While this is still mostly an action/quest oriented book, it is the most romantically oriented of the series. It is a good change of pace. Reading these again as an adult I am really impressed with how nicely the series is put together, not just how well written the individual books are.

Longer review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/castle-of-llyr/

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Another re-read

Summary: The Castle of Llyr is mostly a story about Taran coming to understand that he has feelings for Eilonwy. The Foundling and Other Tales is a book of short stories, more like Aesop's Fables, but designed to give context to the Chronicles of Prydain. 

Every time my family goes to Disney, my wife paints our magic bands to be personalized. This year, I asked her to paint my band to the theme of Disney's Black Cauldron. Like most people, my wife had never seen the Black Cauldron movie. When it came out it was the first Disney animated movie to be PG and it is fairly scary. We watched 30 minutes or so together to give her a sense of the art and context for her to paint the band. I went back later and watched the rest of the movie and was yet again disappointed that the movie was not better. It was not awful, but it changed the story too much combining the stories of the Book of Three and The Black Cauldron. And I think that while Taran and Eilonwy were presented well, I was not really a fan of any of the other character's development.

I decided to go back and read the third book in the series Castle of Llyr because I had not read it for a while and I wanted to see if maybe I could read it aloud to my children. I have not found some good read-aloud for my kids for a while. But the first two books are too scary for my kids at this point and the third one is too dependent on the first two books for context to be able to jump into it directly with my kids.

I don't know when my kids will be ready to read the Chronicles of Prydain, but I do look forward to it.

I am not sure why, but I have never read The Foundling and Other Tales. I was just unaware of the book until I was an adult. And I am not sure why I did not pick it up when I read the series about a decade ago. But I did pick it up and read it in a sitting. It is less than 100 pages and it is not difficult to read. The style is more like Aesop's Fables than contextual short stories for Prydain. I am not completely satisfied. I like the story about Dalben being found by the three witches. But when Dalben finds Coll and his pig (Hen-wen) it does not completely make sense of the timeline of the Book of Three. Either Hen-wen is about 20 or so years old at the start of the Book of Three (to make sense of Taran living with Coll and Dalben since before he could remember) or there is something wrong with the timeline of when Taran came to live with them.

The rest of the stories are fine, but nothing that really adds much to the understanding of the rest of the series.

Short Review: The Enchanted is my favorite of the series so far. I finished it up at 5AM this morning after not being able to fall back asleep after being up with a sick kid.

Darcy and the rest of The Six are back for their fourth trip to the magical world of Alitheia. Darcy and the rest of the six, as well as Prince Tellius are maturing into their roles. They have started paying attention to the important people in their lives and starting to put their own needs behind what they think is best for the other. That does not actually mean they make the right decisions, but the movement is a sign of maturity.

This is a story that is more about character development and relationship building than action. There is still action here, but the focus the characters and I think the book shines because of that. I will be impatiently waiting for the next book in the series.


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

Summary: A guide to understanding spiritual development and practices with a trauma-informed lens. 

As a spiritual director, I have been thinking about the role of trauma regarding spiritual direction. My training included a whole class on psychology and spiritual formation, primarily focused on ways to avoid moving into counseling or understanding our limits regarding addiction or other mental health issues. But there was no training directly about the role of trauma.

My wife is a teacher and has participated in training with the Attachment and Trauma Network (ATN), a non-profit that attempts to support families, schools, and communities to become trauma-informed. The president of ATN, Janyne McConnaughey, spoke at an online conference on religious trauma last spring, and I finally got around to watching her session. That session led to watching a podcast, where I saw that Dr. McConnaughey had a book designed to help churches and church leaders become trauma aware. My wife has read a couple of Dr. McConnaughey's books, so I had context for Trauma in the Pews.

Trauma in the Pews has three parts. First, there is a brief introduction to trauma and its prevalence in church settings. The second and the most extended section interacts with Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline and addresses 12 spiritual disciplines impacted by trauma. The final section is an introduction to how a church can become more responsive to ministering to, and with, those with a trauma background.

I have already purchased four copies of the book and given them away. I will recommend it to the group of spiritual directors I meet with for peer supervision. And I plan on buying more copies to give to friends working in church settings. I very much recommend the book. There are books on trauma that are more focused on introducing the concepts or discussing healing. But I am unaware of other books about the spiritual formation and development of those impacted by trauma. I am not unaware of trauma as a concept, but Trauma in the Pews was very helpful at thinking through ways that churches can unintentionally harm and push away people that ideally they want to help.

The book is very readable with lots of stories and illustrations. Every chapter has good questions that help you to process and would work with a discussion group. The chapters are relatively short and have a clear point.

I have three main takeaways regarding spiritual formation and trauma. First, trauma, especially trauma during the ages of most developmental growth, can often be misunderstood as sin. And some things traditionally considered a sin may be a survivor's best attempt at self-protection or addressing the trauma alone. Second, some trauma survivors' behaviors may seem aggressive or oppositional. But probably more likely for victims of developmental trauma are behaviors oriented toward getting along well. So trauma survivors may overcommit, do the tasks that no one else is willing to, or have inadequate boundaries, which Christians may significantly misunderstand as maturity or “a heart for service” instead of a trauma reaction. Third, we must address trauma, leadership development/training, and spiritual abuse as a preventative, not just after problems arise.

There were other points that Trauma in the Pews helped to confirm. For instance, as a concept, forgiveness is often misused in trauma situations. And people's image of God and their ability to receive love is often impacted by their family and social history, including trauma. And intention does not supersede the result; wanting to do right by someone does not mean they will receive your efforts as the right thing. And hurt people often hurt people. Of course, that does not excuse victims of trauma from victimizing others. But it gives context and why we need to help support healing.

I have about fifteen pages of notes and highlights that you can see here.

Overall, I highly recommend Trauma in the Pews. My only real complaints are about things where I wanted more. No one book can address everything. For instance, I think this article on Moral Injury in the church is helpful. And there are more details of trauma and the different types of trauma that could be helpful. For instance, this podcast on Betrayal Trauma gave me some additional context that is particularly useful in understanding trauma in systems like the church. Trauma in the Pews is primarily focused on developmental trauma, which is the expertise and experience of Dr. McConnaughey. Still, I want to explore and see if I can find more about how adult trauma may impact spiritual formation differently. Trauma in the Pews is a book that I hope will be more widely read and applied so that churches can become more trauma-informed and places of natural healing.

Short Review: I continue to be really impressed with the craft of these books. They are well paced, have a depth to the stories that I think will make re-reading a pleasure. And they layers that will appeal to adults that may be missed by younger readers that they are targeted at.

I am not going to say too much about the plot because if you have not read the previous books, this one is largely impossible to talk about without spoilers.

Like the White Thread, this is a story mostly about a rescue. But it is not simply another take at the traditional quest narrative in fantasy fiction, because much of the book is about the preparation for the rescue. I am swamped with work but I really am going to try to squeeze in the last book of the series next week.

My full review with some spoilers is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-scroll/

Summary: A brief biography of the compiler of the original Book of Common Prayer and the first Protestant head of the Church of England.

I am a low church evangelical by history, but very few things have been as important in my faith development over the past 15 years as the Book of Common Prayer. As I have said before, my theology has become more in line with traditional Episcopal/Anglican theology and away from my Baptist heritage (episcopal ecclesiology, openness to infant baptism, more sacramental in theological orientation, etc.), even though I think I will likely remain non-denominational in my actual church membership.

While I am a fan of the Eerdman's Library of Religious Biography series and picked Emblem of Faith Untouched in part because of that, I started reading because I am trying to work through ideas of how we should think of flawed Christian “heroes.” Thomas Cranmer was certainly flawed while being a very devoted Christian. He was a younger son of a minor noble and, as was common, went into the church and academy. He was very slow in school, taking roughly twice as long to get his bachelor's degree as usual. But he continued and became the rough equivalent of a professor before dropping out of the academy (which required celibacy and singleness) to get married. But his wife died, and he returned to the academy, albeit with some controversy.

While staying with some friends during a period of plague when people were avoiding larger cities, he walked through how he would approach Henry VIII's desire for a divorce theologically instead of through the ecclesiastical courts. In other words, Cranmer thought what was more important was whether the divorce was right according to scripture rather than whether the ecclesiastical courts agreed. Based on recounting that conversation, Cranmer was summoned to Henry and led a committee to investigate the marriage and reasons for divorce theologically and build support for divorce politically and geopolitically.

One part of Henry's divorce from Catherine that I had not understood with my previous reading was that Henry was betrothed to Cathrine when he was 13. Cathrine had already been married to Henry's brother, but Arthur died just a couple of months after the wedding, while Arthur was only 15. The marriage between Catherine,  the youngest child of the Spanish king and queen Ferdinand and Isabella, and Arthur, and then Henry was for geopolitical reasons, not love. According to Emblem of Faith Untouched, Henry's confessor was convinced, and convinced Henry very early in their marriage, that Henry marrying Catherine was violating Christian ethics and that their marriage would be cursed because she had been married to his brother first. The first four pregnancies of Catherine and Henry ended in either miscarriage, stillbirth, or early death of the child. Only the fifth resulted in Mary, who was the only child of that marriage, to live to adulthood.

While there are some theoretical arguments justifying Henry's divorce of Catherine, later divorces were even less justified. Henry had affairs throughout his marriages, and it had to have been clear to Cranmer that regardless of Cranmer's theological support of the divorce of Catherine, there was no theological support of mistresses and continued divorce and remarriage. Part of Cranmer's commitment was the divine right of kings and the positional authority of the king as an ecclesiological leader, not just a political one. In addition to this, Cranmer eventually was convinced by his interaction with German Protestants that the Pope's authority was geographically and theologically limited and that local countries should have primary political and ecclesiastical control of their territory. Practically, this meant that for Cranmer, there was almost nothing that would be inappropriate (sinful) for Henry to do if Henry wanted it. While Cranmer was the Bishop of Canterbury, Henry took many income-producing properties from the church and exchanged them with other properties so that the church was left with less and the crown with more. Cranmer rarely pushed back against these exchanges.

While Cranmer was acting as the King's ambassador and traveling throughout Europe on a variety of business for Henry, he married the daughter of a German Protestant. At the time, Cranmer was not ordained and did not have a church position. But Henry drew him back to England and appointed him as Archbishop of Canterbury, which required both ordination and celibacy, and Cranmer was married. So he came back took the position, and his wife remained in Germany until later when Cranmer reformed the rules to allow for married clergy.

I am not going to spend a lot of time on his history, other than to note that when Henry died, and eventually Mary rose to the throne and started a bloody persecution of Protestants, Cranmer was eventually arrested and spent years in prison before being executed. During that time in prison, Cranmer was very clearly tortured and wrote or had written for him at least eight confessions. Some were mild confessions, and some were more extensive confessions repudiating his Protestant beliefs. Nearly all of them are tainted by torture and threats. But at his execution, he renounced all prior confessions.

Two quotes I thought were worth sharing here. First, in 1534 Cranmer ordered all pastors to stop preaching on several subjects while a theological consensus was built. He prioritized slow change that was more broad-based.

That summer of 1534, Cranmer issued a proclamation ordering silence from the pulpit on the subjects of masses for the dead, prayers to saints, pilgrimages, and the celibacy of the clergy. Most likely, Henry had not made up his mind on these topics, and wanted the space to figure out what to do. Cranmer, who had been swayed by the reforms he'd seen in Germany, took a slow but steady, drip-by-drip approach to reforming the English church under an absolute monarch. He realized that any reformation could take place only in subtle moves. Without creating a splash, he took every opportunity to license men with the same inclinations, promoting like-minded reformers to the bishop's bench.

Second, as I have hinted already, Cranmer struggled with what it meant to follow Christ as king and Henry as king. He had an influential dream that illustrated this.

This dream represented the hub of his dilemma: Was service to Christ incompatible with service to the supreme head of the Church in England? Which king would win his soul? The horror in the dream was that both kings rejected him. Silent, Henry excluded him from his court, condemning him to death, while Christ turned away and closed the gate of heaven. “Cranmer, shut off from both life and the afterlife, could turn only to the mouth of hell.”

I do not, in the end, really have a better model for how to think about our Christian “heroes” of the past after reading this, but I do think that at least part of the answer is that we should better understand both the good and bad of those that have come before us. We need to see and discuss where people were right and wrong and where there is more ambiguity. Two, I think there really should be some limitations to how we honor people of the past. I heard someone say this past week, “well maybe we should stop naming buildings after people,” and in many ways, I think that may be right. No one is worthy of honor in all areas of life, even if they do individual things that are worth honoring. My classic reflection on this is AW Tozer's wife, who, after she was widowed and remarried, said, “Aiden loved Jesus, but [my new husband] loves me,” is a very classic illustration. She was not saying that AW Tozer was not a good Christian or hadn't done many good things. But she was illustrating the limitations of his honor. He should be honored for the way he brought people to Christ, but he was still a lousy husband and father. And we need to be able to see the whole person because we are all flawed and limited creatures.

Short Review: This the last book of a series. So I don't want to give anything away. My longer review on my blog has some clearly marked spoilers, but I won't give any spoilers here. At the end of the series, I can affirm again that this is a very well constructed book (and series). The plotting and character are solid. There are layers to the story that will probably be missed by some of the young adult readers, but adult readers will enjoy and it adds to the depth of the reading.

I put together a “best books I read this year” list every year and this series will be on the list. The only question is whether I will read them again before the end of the year. Audiobooks are coming, so I might wait for those.

My fuller review (about 1000 words) is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/bone-whistle/

Summary: A journalistic account of two Atlanta legal cases in response to the 1964 Civil Rights act, joined by the Supreme Court to uphold public accommodations (Title 2 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act).

I do not think I would have picked up Heart of Atlanta if my book club had not decided to go to a book talk with the author at the Atlanta History Center. But Heart of Atlanta is the type of narrow history that I think is exactly what we often miss in our too-quick presentation of the Civil Rights Era. The Civil Rights Era was so transformational because the movement was broad-based. Literally, hundreds of thousands of people participated, at least in minor roles. But even the often significant characters of the era have been forgotten. And the more minor characters were often never really known. One of the best examples of this is that frequently throughout the book, Ronnie Greene will cite a video or picture or newspaper story about these events, and the five main characters of the story were either unnamed or listed as “unknown.” In fact, the men often did not know that there was photographic or video documentation of their protests until Ronnie Greene showed it to them.

All five pastors in the subtitle were students at the Interdenominational Theological Center seminaries (ITC). Two of the five pastors are still living, Albert Sampson (involved in the earlier sit-in movement in North Carolina) and Woodrow Lewis (involved in the earlier Atlanta Student Protest movement). Unfortunately, the other three, Albert Dunn (also involved in the Freedom Rides), Charles Well, and George Willis (both having been in the military before returning to attend college and seminary), have passed away. All five continued their activism after their involvement in these cases, but like many pastors organizing in their communities, they did not obtain national recognition.

The manager and part-owner of the Heart of Atlanta Hotel, Moreton Rolleston, was a lawyer. He filed suit against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 the day it went into effect. His suit was a barrage of arguments, that Congress didn't have the right to regulate local businesses, that the 14th amendment did not prohibit individual discrimination, that the 13th amendment prohibited slavery and this regulation was a type of enslavement, that the regulation was a type of seizure and therefore a violation of his fifth amendment rights.

The five pastors attempted to eat at Lester Maddox's Pickrick Restaurant. Maddox took out a weekly ad in the local paper to promote the restaurant and rail against integration, and promote his brand of segregation. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a rotating group of the five pastoral students attempted to eat at the restaurant. They were turned away, at times with guns pointed at them, and threatened with a beating by the ax handles that Maddox sold to customers for the purpose. Civil rights lawyer Constance Baker Motley took up the case and quickly filed suit against Maddox and the restaurant. The two cases were heard by a federal court panel together and were very quickly combined into a Supreme Court Case, Heart of Atlanta Motel vs. the United States. (Baker Motley, just two years later, was the first Black woman appointed as a judge in the federal court system.)

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed on July 2, 1964. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Oct 5 and released the decision on Dec 14. The decision was unanimous with two concurring opinions, but it is a case that most do not know about. The court upheld Congress's authority to use the Commerce Clause to regulate local businesses and dismissed the idea that the 13th or 5th amendment could be used to prevent regulation.

I appreciated the book talk and hearing the author present an overview and respond to questions. Greene is a journalist, and I think this reads like it was written by a journalist and not a lawyer or academic historian. That is not meant to be negative, but a lawyer likely would have spent more time on the legal case and less on the context of the case. And a historian likely would have written with a different tone and contextualized the story differently. This isn't quite right, but this feels like it was written as a thriller. Greene keeps building tension and then moving back to the context before moving on with the story. It felt a lot like the biography of Robert Smalls that I recently read, which was written by Cate Lineberry, also with a journalistic background.

One of the points that I think came out in the book well was that despite the very different backgrounds of Maddox and Rolleston, they both were driven not just by personal racism but by a libertarian understanding of government that believed that the government had no right to regulate private businesses. Kevin Kruse's main thesis of White Flight, also about Atlanta, was that the libertarian wing of the GOP was empowered by the rise of integration and attempted to create more private spaces to minimize the reach of government regulations toward integration. But that libertarian impulse was clearly already present in 1964, not just in 1984.

Summary: A summary of the history of Global Christianity since the reformation.

I am not unfamiliar with Christian history. But this audiobook lecture series (18 hours, 36 lectures) on the history of global Christianity since the reformation was well done. Starting with the pre-reformation and then quickly running through various aspects of the reformation, I still learned things in an area that I had a good background on.

Part of what I wanted from this was the global aspects that I have less background on. The overview of Eastern Orthodoxy in lecture 10 was excellent as was the overview of the church in the Russian revolution and Liberation theology in Latin America. By my count, there was really only nine lectures that were not US/European focused. These are the areas I was less familiar with and more interested in, although I am not unfamiliar with aspects that did get covered. I wish there was more non-US/Europe lectures.

The PDF that is included was very thorough. It was not an exact transcript but includes bullet points and a number of images from the lectures in 385 pages. There were also questions and suggested readings for each lecture.

I picked this up because it was Molly Worthen and I had enjoyed her book The Apostles of Reason, on the history of the Evangelical idea of authority. And because it was free as part of Audible's Plus Catalog (although it is cycling off the Plus program at the end of July.) I have listened to a number of good history of Christianity lectures, especially the ones by Phillip Carey. The lecture by Luke Timothy Johnson on Christianity to the reformation I think is supposed to be the other part of this history, but I did this second lecture was better.

Summary: A brief look at the sociology and history of Christian Nationalism in regard to how it relates to democracy.

Perry and Whitehead's Taking America Back for God was the first book I read that was explicitly about Christian Nationalism. Samuel Perry is back with Philip Gorski with a short book that updates and takes a different approach to look at Christian Nationalism. While I think Taking America Back for God is a more comprehensive sociological look at CN, The Flag and the Cross, does a better job of giving historical context to Christian Nationalism.

This is a brief book, with only four chapters covering bout 130 pages of the main content (less than five hours of audio). The book ends with a more practical chapter on avoiding a future January 6th type of event and is more practical. But just as important are the three chapters that give context. The first chapter is about why this is “our nation, not theirs”. And then the third chapter is about how “Freedom, Violence, Order” is central to how Christian Nationalism thinks politically.

But I think my favorite was the second chapter on the history of Christian Nationalism's influences. This chapter has two important frames for the telling of that history. One, it focuses on the early history of the US as contextual within the European centuries-long conflict, of which the American Revolution was one small part. And second, it reminds the reader that the story of Christian Nationalism today has to account for the switch from the civil religion impulse of the mainline liberal Christian tradition to the conservative Evangelical tradition. (This is not unlike the political party realignment that was happening concurrently.) The first part of the framing reminds us that we are not the central player at all points in time in global history. The second part is a reminder to those who are currently opposing Christian Nationalism from a more progressive political position that it was, in fact, the progressives or earlier generations that were more likely historically to align with Christian National rhetoric today.

I finished this audiobook in a single day of chores and exercise. I am not new to the conversation on Christian Nationalism or how Christians use and abuse history for their own purposes. But as brief as this book was, there are essential refinements from the earlier Taking America Back for God and more nuanced views of what Christian Nationalism is. There is a helpful podcast with Paul Miller interviewing Samuel Perry on the Faith Angle Podcast. Miller is writing a critique of Christian Nationalism from a conservative political and theological perspective and as a political scientist. He is trying to frame his discussion of Christian Nationalism in ways that at least some people that Perry and Gorski will recognize themselves and agree with Miller's framing. While I think a legitimate critique of Perry's sociological work is that he is writing a descriptive sociological account that is more interested in raising awareness of the problem of Christian Nationalism and less interested in getting Christian Nationalists to self-identify with the framing. Part of this is that sociology and political science are different fields, as sociologists Gorski and Perry work in descriptive categories and tendencies toward belief and action. While Miller is working as a political scientist that wants to deal with specific ideas and individuals. These two things fit together and sharpen one another (as do bringing in historians like Randall Balmer (Bad Faith) or Anthea Butler (White Evangelical Racism) among many others.

There has also been a shift in the rhetoric around Christian Nationalism. With Marjorie Taylor Green, Al Mohler, and the Family Research Council, among many others embracing the term Christian Nationalism as an accurate, descriptive term, there is less discussion about whether this is a real category. But I also think that Miller's definition, which people like William Wolfe have said accurately describes how they see themselves, matters to limiting what is meant by the term. Perry and Whitehead, and Gorski are all talking about the racial component of Christian Nationalism, and six months ago, the common complaint was that using Christian Nationalist was just a way to say “racist” with different words. But Miller's shift of using “Anglo-Protestantism” as part of his definition keeps the reality of this being a white cultural phenomenon while lowering the temperature of the discussion in ways that I think continue to be accurate, but less combative. I have not read Miller's book yet, and I think that I will disagree with parts of it because Miller is coming from a more conservative political and theological position than I do. But I think the combination is likely helpful to bring about more accuracy to the broader discussion.

Summary: Lord Peter and Harriet finally get married and go on their honeymoon, only to have it be a ‘working vacation' as they solve a murder. 

I have very slowly been working through the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery series. I noticed when looking for something else that Audible had a copy of the old Ian Carmichael audiobook as part of their free audiobook library for members, and even though I have not read Gaudy Night, which is before Busman's Honeymoon in series order, I needed a fiction audiobook, and I jumped at it.

When I started Dorothy Sayers' books, I had already read Rhys Bowen's Royal Spyness series for a couple of years. Regularly I have noticed places where, even though I am reading Sayers after Bowen, I can tell that Bowen was paying homage to Sayers in her books.

I did not look it up until I finished this book, but a busman's holiday is the idea of a bus driver going on vacation by riding a bus somewhere. It isn't a vacation to do what you usually do for work, as a vacation. Lord Peter and Lady Harriet have decided to honeymoon at a small country house that Harriet has purchased to have as a place to get away from the pressures of their lives. I will not give away the plot, but as you would expect in a cozy mystery series, a body appears, and there is a murder to solve.

Ian Carmichael is not my favorite narrator. He is fine, but I have noticed lately that several of the books I am listening to do not seem to have been well-engineered for the way I think most people use audiobooks. Some people will listen on a speaker, maybe while cooking dinner or something like that. But I think most people listen on headphones or in a car. And Carmichael's voice, with his slightly high register and wide dynamic ranges, does not work all that well. Cars are noisy with traffic and the noise of the engine. Headphones often are in the actual ears, and you can't easily change the volume, so either loud or soft is a problem. Generally, non-fiction will have a pretty standard dynamic range, and you just set the volume and forget about it. But fiction necessarily has some dynamic ranges necessary to tell the story. But I want Audible to pay attention to the engineering work to get that right. I can't complain too much about this particular audiobook because I believe it was recorded in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, only a couple of the series has unabridged audiobooks. There are many abridged BBC Radio drama versions, but I am more interested in the complete novels.

I will make two more comments about the actual content of the book. First, Sayers makes a game of referencing the classics in this book. There are so many quotes and literary allusions. I am sure I missed most of the not explicitly noted ones. This series would benefit from someone annotating them and giving translations (lots of untranslated French) or context for the references. I think the references make sense of the characters, but I can see how they would be annoying.

Second, the book opens with letters from people complaining about the wedding and its impropriety. Lord Peter is important and has a position to uphold, and many people expect him to do it. There is an ongoing theme of grappling with emotion and the reality of the cynical difficulty in not being honest with yourself as a means of self-protection. It has been hinted at in earlier books, but Peter has what would not be called PTSD from his time in WWI, and his joking manner and lightness are a protective measure.

But both Peter and Harriet have what I think would best be described as glimpses of real joy in CS Lewis' sense of the term. It is not just the ecstatic or having fun as part of a honeymoon, but a sense of joy that images what may come in the new heaven and earth when all shall be made right. There are no sex scenes, but there are hints as you might expect on a honeymoon. However, they are barely ever alone because of interruptions, things going wrong, and the investigation. But those glimpses of joy are not at the physical intimacy, but when each of them realizes that their love is real and their deep cynicism brought on by years of hurt and murder has not prevented them from actually feeling love, even if they do find the expressions of love embarrassing.

There is a very British “stiff upper lip” or “emotion is bad” trope that is being poked at. And that culture is not our current culture. But there is still work that needs to be to free people to grapple with their emotions well.

Busman's Holiday makes me want to reread Strong Poison, where Harriet first makes an appearance, and then Gaudy Night, which I have not previously read, and then reread Busman's Holiday in print.

Summary: Reflection on Vincent Van Gogh, what Henri Nouwen taught and learned about Van Gogh, and some personal reflections of Carol Berry, a student of Nouwen.

I am not well educated in art history or art more generally. What I know of Van Gogh is that I can recognize his style of painting and that he cut off or injured his ear. I understood that he was likely mentally ill, which contributed to his suicide. Except he didn't commit suicide but was probably killed by an accidental shooting when some young men (probably teens) were playing with a gun. And even that cutting off of his ear was probably an accident.

That is not to say that there wasn't likely some mental illness in van Gogh's life. But the focus of this book, channeling Nouwen's thoughts, is primarily looking at van Gogh's preparation for ministry and attempts at ministering to the poor and how eventually, his art grew to be a method of serving God and drawing attention to the plights of the poor.

I don't have enough art history to know how historically accurate this book is or how unusual the presentation of van Gogh is here. But this seems like a well-researched and fairly presented book. And I was aware that van Gogh wanted to be a pastor before becoming a painter. So that did match my understanding. But I did not realize how much van Gogh attempted to use his art to change how people around him understood the world and poverty. I did not know he viewed art as a vocation and means to connect with God, although that is not unusual for artists.

This is not a straight biography of either van Gogh or Nouwen. It is a spiritual reflection using their lives as the jumping-off point. At some point, I want to read a more straightforward biography of both Nouwen and van Gogh. I thought the spiritual reflection was reasonable based on this history as I understand it. It was not strained or inappropriate as some spiritual reflection books can be. And it both made me reflect spiritually and want to learn more about the subjects, which I think is a good sign of a well-written book.

I read this on kindle. This means that all the images of his paintings were in black and white. If I had an iPad or other color screen, the kindle edition would have shown me the images in color. Or the hardcover edition has all of the images in color. This is a book where the images matter, and they are referred to in the text. If anything, I would have wanted more images and more direct references to them in the text. But the kindle (or an audiobook) is not the best medium for this type of book.

Summary: A defense of reading old books as a way to counter an orientation toward bias. 

I have read many of Alan Jacobs' books. I think he is one of the best essayists writing. I think I have read all of his books except a couple. Unlike some writers, he is not someone with one primary theme and hits that same theme repeatedly.

In some ways, Breaking Bread with the Dead could be considered an update to CS Lewis' defense of reading old books from Lewis' introduction to On the Incarnation by Athanasius. And if you have not read that one, you should. It is brief and accessible, and classic for a reason.

But Jacobs' is not just updating Lewis, he is also expanding on why old books matter, especially today. One of the biggest reasons modern people object to old books, besides the orientation toward the new, is concern about how past sins are normalized in old books. Those sins, like the support of slavery or sexism, etc., are discussed extensively in a section about Frederick Douglass' reading of an old book about public speaking that inspired Douglass' work. I think Jacobs' is working well here, but his reasoning did not entirely convince me. Part of the argument I agree with is that different eras have different orientations, and we need different orientations. And I appreciate that Douglass was inspired by a book not written in his own context.

But it is different for Douglass to read a book that had a section about an enslaved person being freed and finding those words to inspire his own freedom, and readers today reading books by people that justified slavery. In Douglass' case, he had minimal access to books and only a few books that he could have read. Today we have almost unlimited access to books. I am not saying we should never read books by people that have views that we disagree with. But I do think that in making his argument for reading things that we may disagree with, Jacobs made some leaps that were unpersuasive, even as his larger argument, I do agree with.

We should read old books and books from outside of our culture to be challenged by the different ways that both people from other cultures and older cultures think. But there are people from the past and other cultures who agree with us in many areas but use different thinking patterns to get there. I was listening to an interview with Mika Edmonson earlier this week, and he was asked about his tweet saying, (my paraphrase), “that it was possible to have a good theological library and not own books by slaveholders.” We can read old books by people that also at the time of slavery decried slavery in their own time.

One of the unaddressed issues in this book is how some of the old ideas were used for purposes that matter to how we receive them today. For instance, in The Problem of Slavery in Christian America, Joel McDurmon spends a long section on Robert Dabney and how many, including John Piper, still recommend Robert Dabney's books because of Dabney's position on biblical theology. But as McDurmon points out, Dabney's biblical theology was expressly to uphold white supremacy (in the sense of racial superiority). We do not need a biblical theology that was designed for the purpose of white supremacy when we also have biblical theology that was not designed for the purpose of white supremacy. We also have books like Plain Theology for Plain People, a book of theology initially published in 1890 at the same time Dabney was writing that has a traditional biblical theology but was also written by a Black church pastor who was originally born into slavery. Charles Octavius Boothe was one of the early pastors of Dexter Ave Baptist Church in Montgomery, AL, later pastored by Martin Luther King Jr.

Alan Jacobs is advocating discernment. And he is advocating reading books that will challenge us and our current ideas. Jacobs' central metaphor is that we are sharing table fellowship (the Eucharist) with authors who are also Christians but may have different ideas. I agree with this framing and that we should seek to be challenged by those who do not agree with us in every aspect of our thinking. And I agree with Jacobs that we must love and read charitably other Christians. I also agree that there are various benefits to seeking out old books, even if I do not read as many old books as I think I should. And while I am not entirely convinced by all of his reasoning, I think Jacobs makes a reasonable argument about why we should not automatically dismiss authors with ideas that we find objectionable. As with all things, discernment matters, and part of how we grow in our discernment is by experience, which means we need to be expanding our reading and thinking.

Takeaway: One of the most significant hindrances to systemic change is the inability of White Christians to speak clearly about the reality of race. 

I am not sure how to discuss Faithful Antiracism. Over the past two years, I have participated in a zoom book discussion group centered on racial issues in the Church. It started as a Be the Bridge group and then discussed Jemar Tisby's Color of Compromise, and since then, it has discussed various books about race and the Church. As part of leading the discussion of Faithful Antiracism, I would listen to the audiobook early in the week. And then reread it in print on Thursday afternoons and make notes on how the section was structured and questions to ask. This means I listened to and read the print version of the book over five weeks.

Much of my thoughts are about how Faithful Antiracism is an example of the difficulty that the White Evangeical church has about addressing race, even in the more progressive parts of the Church. I am very familiar with Christina Edmondson. I have heard her speak in person a couple of times. I have listened to the Truth's Table podcast for years. I have read many Intervarsity Press books about race. I was not familiar with Chad Brennan before the book, but I was familiar with the research, which he helped to direct, from Barna, which is being formed into several books. Micheal Emerson, who coauthored Divided by Faith, spoke about this research in this 25 minutes talk, which I recommend. I also was in an earlier Be the Bridge group with one of the Barna staff who helped manage the research as it was being worked on over the past couple years.

Over and over, as we discussed Faithful Antiracism, we could not figure out why the book seemed to hold back and frame issues in the American Church as if they were universal problems and not problems centered in the White church. One straightforward example is in the chapter about truth-telling about the recent history of the Church and race. The chapter focused on Billy Graham as the moderate in conversation with the more racially progressive Carl Henry. The point of this chapter was that there were both progressives and moderates, and we can't claim the progressives and ignore the ways that the White church also upheld moderation (and opposed desegregation and integration of the culture as a whole.) But this framing ignores the third member of Evangelicalism's founding fathers, Billy Graham's father-in-law, the pro-segregationist Nelson Bell. The fuller picture is that while many White Evangelicals were moderate like Graham, and some were progressive like Henry, many were explicit segregationists like Bell. Without grappling with that whole history and the ways that both moderates and progressives often were willing to organize with segregationists like Bell for evangelism and institution building (see Bad Faith), we can't get a good picture of the history that needs to be grappled with.

I know that both Edmondson and Brennan know this from the rest of the book. I know that they are interested in systemic change and truth-telling, but consistently throughout the book, it felt like they were held back. I don't know if it was pressure from editors or a desire to make a more palatable message for white readers, but I felt like this happened regularly.

Chapter 9, where the book discusses evaluating our progress in antiracism, was regularly framed with the illustration of a doctor meeting with a patient about a health problem. But that framing confirms the individualistic orientation of White Evangelicalism. Instead, the more accurate illustration is not an individual doctor with an individual patient but a public health professional trying to address systemic health issues. Both primary care doctors and public health doctors address individual diseases like heart disease, but they do it differently. A primary care doctor may talk about exercise, eating right, and the targeted drug regimen. But a public health doctor will address the ways that the structure of our society as a whole is contributing to heart disease. It is not that individuals eating right and exercising aren't essential for the individual, but that only addresses that individual, not the whole system, which has subsidized unhealthy foods and oriented toward an economy based on private cars, which often do not have sidewalks to walk and exercise safely, etc. Until this point and even in this chapter, the importance of moving toward systemic change is emphasized (it is even part of the subtitle), but the illustration chosen as the center of the chapter undercuts the point by again emphasizing the individual.

Again, my main point here isn't that Faithful Antiracism is a lousy book. Instead, my point is that it is a book that is an excellent example of where even in the attempt to overcome white reluctance to discuss the systemic reality of race, it still centers the white reader, the individual model of change, and frames issues as problems for all of society to address instead of addressing racism as a problem of white ideology.

Every book on race published by Christians seems to have to convince the white reader that there is a problem. As my group has read a variety of books on race, we keep having discussions about the fact that every book seems to have an intended audience of people just being introduced to race as a problem and addressing those same people later in the book as if they are ready to lead their churches and community organizations in addressing the problems of an ideology white supremacy. People who had to be convinced of the reality of the problem of race at the start of a book are not the same people who should be reading about how to structure appropriate measurements of organizational change at the end of the book. And I don't know where the books are coming from evangelical publishers starting with more advanced assumptions. To use the academic metaphor, a book can't be a 101, a 201, and a 9999 class simultaneously. It can't even really have a 101 and a 401 audience at the same time.

I am far from an expert, and this is primarily a complaint from silence; at least part of the problem of race in the white evangelical Church is that we want to be inclusive, and when someone that is at a 101 or 201 stage expresses interest, the whole group is asked to go back and center their perspective instead of centering the perspective of those that are experienced.

If you have read more than a handful of books on race and the church, Faithful Antiracism probably will not have a lot that is new. But I don't think that is fundamentally the problem of the book, but instead the problem with even progressive publishers centering the white evangelical experience. There are no simple solutions. A book has to break even if it does not make money. A book published by evangelical publishers that speaks more clearly about race than most white Christians want them to, won't make money and will likely be targeted for institutional backlash. White Evangelicals tend not to want to attend churches that were founded by Black or other minority denominations and leaders. They tend to want to attend churches that are white-led but inviting racial minority Christians into them to create more diverse but still white-centered spaces. I do not really know a solution until that fundamentally changes.