Sean
Peder Victorious is possibly even more riveting as a character study than was Giants in the Earth. The fact that Rølvaag could maintain my fascinated interest in a book so far out of my normal reading zone is a testimony to his greatness. I am grateful for these first two books, and I look forward to reading the third.
I love Odd Thomas. I'm in love with Odd Thomas. And thus my shock and finding myself barely able to finish this book. The art, fine though it is, simply is not my style at all (I admit to a prejudice against typical manga style cartooning). But the writing. Oh, I was so sad. I give it two stars rather than one only because I love the character so much.
Arnold has done a masterful job with his translation, but I'm not terribly fond of it. His verse form allows him a good deal of freedom, but imposes constraints that may or may not (how would I know?) alter the meaning he conveys. Though a bit murky in spots, his English is serviceable. I recommend it, but not as the only translation you should read. Isherwood's translation, or even Prabhupada's, would help.
Very enjoyable. Written for children in the best way–and therefore completely entertaining and thought-provoking for an adult. Well, for this adult at least. Rushdie adds his thinking about the nature of stories to our long philosophical conversation. If the questions, “What is ‘fiction' anyway?” and “What do stories have to do with real life?” intrigue you, spend a while with Haroun, his father Rashid, and all the friends they meet on the hidden moon.
Before I review what I believe to be a useful and insightful book, I must make it clear that I have never been an Evangelical Christian. I was raised Broad- to High- Church Episcopalean, and have been a Celtic Catholic (with emphasis on the “Catholic”) for forty years. I am not Gushee's target audience, and I have spent my life looking at Evangelicals from outside, not always liking what I saw of their theology and politics. So I write this as a fellow Christian but definitely an outsider.
The author, on the other hand, is most definitely writing as an insider, to people like himself. He is not writing, “Please don't go!”, but rather “Welcome to the big world outside the Evangelical tent! Where can you do now that you are out here?”
Rather than just jumping into the here-and-now, Gushee provides the outsider (and, I suppose, most lifelong Evangelicals) with a necessary tour of the history of the movement, starting way back before it was a department of the Republican party (!), back when it was not unusual for Evangelicals to be what would now be called progressive on social issues. In line with his general attitude toward Tradition and history—it matters a lot, but the future matters even more—he does not stop there, but he spends the rest of the book offering practical ways forward by helping the reader think differently about what authentic Christianity can be and can look like.
He offers Christian Humanism as a framework upon which to build a vibrant post-Evangelical Christianity in which the Christian can feel at home by maintaining core moral values. It is these moral values, which are often at odds with the limited morality taught by Evangelicalism, which Gushee sees as the impelling force driving intelligent, loving people out of their former church hones. Values like belief in Truth as represented by science (i.e., the real world), compassion for LGBTQ+ people, hatred of systemic racism, and others.
Gushee elevates compassion and real-world concerns over rigid traditions of biblical interpretation. As the keystone of this, he suggest that no theological statement should be made which could not be made in the presence of a child being burned to death at Auschwitz. I would add: or a black man being lynched by a white mob, or a gay teen dying on the street after his Christian parents disowned him.
Gushee spends the third and final part of his book dealing with specific theological issues relating to sex, politics, and race. These discussions are, it seems to me, perhaps an addendum to the book. Having talked about his own experience and that of others, and having offered the outlines of a way forward with new ways of thinking about the meaning of the Bible and the Christian Faith, he has actually ended his thesis. “But wait! There's more!”
As a gift to the reader he offers the detailed discussions of sex, politics, and race. To the poor ex-Evangelical who has an inkling of right from wrong but no idea of how to process that idea within a Christian context—to this sad person who has fled what he or she now sees as a repressive and unrealistic, even immoral, system of thought—he says: “Look! It is possible to think about and act on these issues from a genuinely Christian perspective without rigidity, moralism, superiority, or fear of the real world.” I think his handling of these touchy matters works well. I think he would convince me, were I the one to whom he writes. I hope it is as convincing for those who need this book.
If you are an ex-Evangelical, I highly recommend After Evangelicalism, especially if you are willing to read through a bit of academic writing (the author is a professor of Christian ethics, and, sadly, it shows.) Not having been in your shoes I can not vouch for the helpfulness of his arguments, but I hope they will prove useful.
I can't review this. Right as the father laid himself down on the ground and realized he would not be getting up again--this patch of ground was to be his death bed--my cat died. This whole depressing book ended for me personally on the worst possible note and so – my great sadness is just too big right now to talk about the book. But the book is good, but don't read it if you aren't up to it.
Wright deals with this big topic from a really biblical point of view, from a genuinely Christian perspective. It is so easy to let the Bible become nothing more than an excuse for our unrepentant dramatics, despair, or sense of superiority. Wright dashes all that nonsense to the ground with a good dose of biblical realism, Christian humility, and divine hope. Do you need to read this book? Almost certainly you do.
[I received an electronic Advance Reader's Copy in exchange for an honest review.]
You could be excused for thinking that a book about preparing for the Corona virus pandemic is perhaps a bit out of date, but back in March you might have been excused for thinking that everything would be back to normal in two weeks. Tsipursky makes a convincing case that the COVID-19 plague will be effecting us in meaningful ways for at least five more years. And even with all the disruption it has caused so far, few of us (from what I can tell) have given much serious thought to how things will continue to be different next month, let alone next year. So a book about preparing about what is yet to come is not so ridiculous as it may at first appear.
Tsipursky offers advise for individual and families on the one hand and for companies and organizations on the other. The counsels he offers will prove to be helpful not only for the current situation, but for all the long-term crises that the future will bring. He begins with what I consider the most important subject: the maladaptive ways our minds mis-process information and cause us to do dumb things that just don't help us or anybody. He goes on to talk about specific approaches that families and companies can take to make sure that they are planning for reality, not for an optimistic misguided fantasy future.
The chapter on thought fallacies is instructive and wise. I had to stop reading and hit myself when he explained about Anchoring, which is our tendency to treat the first things we learn as of permanent truth and importance, and not notice when new information comes out. I realized how I had done that very thing with the news of the novel corona virus; several weeks after the news began I realized that my thinking on the subject was already severely out of date, as I had been quietly and unintentionally ignoring news that significantly expanded or contradicted something I had already accepted as truth.
[The realization of my own fallacious thinking made me wish there were a service that would, for example, send you an email after something important has been in the news for a while and tell you about a particular fallacy you may be committing yourself. For example, “Weeks ago you heard that this disease is isolated. Have you really noticed that that is no longer true? Are you keeping up with reality or are you anchoring?”]
His advise for business is not of any particular interest to me and I will not comment on it, but his suggestions for persons and families is crucial for everybody. He gives brief but important counsel about the need to prepare adequate for such human needs as safety (ignore that wimpy “two weeks” advise you heard at the beginning of this particular crisis), connection, and exploration. I was especially impress that he mentions the need for love, which he defines as doing good for others during a pandemic or other long-term emergency.
I am glad I read this book. It will help me prepare better for the next year of this crisis, and for whatever else my future holds.
What an amazing exploration and exposition of the almost-artistic soul. I quite identify with the characters in these stories, perhaps more than I care to admit publicly. I know so many persons who are almost artists, wannabe artists, not quite artists, and also actual artists who just can't quite seem to. How could someone as genuinely successful in her art as Cather have depicted our state so accurately? There is a reason she is known to be great among authors.
José does an amazing job of depicting, realistically and wide-encompassing, Istak's struggles with his Christian Faith. It would have been so easy for the author to have simplified the struggle, most likely in favor or a facile and expected rejection. That he did not speaks highly of his experience as a human observing himself and other humans. And that is all I ask for from an author.
For the most part, the stories here collected left me with a feeling of “sad” rather than “disturbed,” featuring, as they do, many lonely, lost, middle-aged gay men wandering the world in pursuit of what they never can or will have. The sadness was heightened by a strong tendency to “kill your gays,” but one can hardly hope for happy joy in a book with such a title. But one story was, in its perverse way, really quite beautiful to me, and another, “Touching Darkness” was the most disturbing thing I have ever read and was, on its own, worth the effort of reading the whole sometimes depressing collection.