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adamrshields's reviews
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Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics by Joshua Mauldin
4.0
Summary: A reappraisal of Barth and Bonhoeffer's thinking around modernity and politics.
I regularly recommend the Audible Plus lending library, where Audible members can borrow several thousand audiobooks at no additional costs beyond the membership. Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics is a book that has been on my to-read list for a while, but currently, the Kindle version is over $70, and the Hardcover is $66. While I borrowed the audiobook, if I had purchased it, it was less than $10 when I picked it up. I am never going to make sense of that type of pricing disparity.
I was glad I listened to it, even if it may be a book that would be better read in print. It was a helpful book to think about and even had some aspect of discernment (and an ongoing reading project of mine) that I had not anticipated. But I do want to note that I did not love the narration. The British narrator did not pronounce some of the names and theological, philosophical, or political terms correctly. It is not just variations between American and British pronunciations. More importantly, I thought the tone of the narration was just off, but not so much that I didn't listen to the whole book in just a few days.
Mauldin is concerned about the state of democracy and is using Barth's and Bonhoeffer's political thought to grapple with how they addressed the changes in Germany. To start, Mauldin looks at the critiques of modernity by Brad Gregory, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Stanley Hauerwas. I read After Virtue recently and have read several books by Hauerwas over the years. However, I did not have any background on Brad Gregory. The introduction to their ideas was thorough enough that I felt like I was clear.
From that introduction, Mauldin explores Barth and Bonhoeffer's understanding of modernity, progress, ethics, and politics. I have read more by and about Bonhoeffer than Barth. But these are topical areas that I don't have much background in.
Mauldin was right that, quite often today, Bonhoeffer's theology and writing are overshadowed by his biography. There is a long history of Bonhoeffer being appropriated for political purposes, and Mauldin does a good job exploring the limitations of modern uses of Bonhoeffer.
Some of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics was above my head, but I think I understood all the main points. I would like to explore more how philosophers and theologians influenced by those continental philosophers think about the relationship between God's sovereignty and progress and the limitations of knowledge regarding how to think about discernment by individuals and communities.
I was somewhat surprised that there was some overlap in Mauldin's exploration of how Barth and Bonhoeffer understood the church's role and how Michael Emerson and Glenn Bracey explored The Religion of Whiteness. In both cases, there is a grappling with what it means to prod the church to a more careful connection between church and politics and what happens when the church begins to follow something more than just Jesus. In Emerson and Bracey's case, they posit that a significant portion of White Christians in the US are treating Whiteness (the belief in racial superiority and hierarchy) as a type of religion (in the Durkheimian sense of the term.) In Barth and Bonhoeffer's cases, they were grappling with how Nationalist Socialism and the belief in Aryan superiority also became a type of religion that distracted the church from its proper role in society. The comparison has problems; not everything transfers, and going directly to comparisons with Nazi ideology does violate Godwin's law. However, in discussions about how to respond either to Christian Nationalism or support of Whiteness (overlapping but different issues), it is reasonable to think about where there are limited overlapping concepts.
After I finished Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics, I started reading Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America. That history is also relevant because, in many ways, the Puritans in England and America were attempting to enact a Christian Nation in terms that are not unlike the way that some current Christian Nationalists want to operate. Again, no history is completely parallel. The Puritans arose out of a desire for a more radical reformation than the Church of England as a whole wanted. The political realities of a monarchy and the congregationalism that arose in Puritan New England that was part of what gave rise to the impulse toward democracy in the United States is just different from the reaction to pluralism that seems to be central to Christian Nationalism today. But still, the parallels that exist can inform our thinking, help us be more humble about the limits of reform, and keep us from utopian thinking.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/barth-bonhoeffer/
I regularly recommend the Audible Plus lending library, where Audible members can borrow several thousand audiobooks at no additional costs beyond the membership. Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics is a book that has been on my to-read list for a while, but currently, the Kindle version is over $70, and the Hardcover is $66. While I borrowed the audiobook, if I had purchased it, it was less than $10 when I picked it up. I am never going to make sense of that type of pricing disparity.
I was glad I listened to it, even if it may be a book that would be better read in print. It was a helpful book to think about and even had some aspect of discernment (and an ongoing reading project of mine) that I had not anticipated. But I do want to note that I did not love the narration. The British narrator did not pronounce some of the names and theological, philosophical, or political terms correctly. It is not just variations between American and British pronunciations. More importantly, I thought the tone of the narration was just off, but not so much that I didn't listen to the whole book in just a few days.
Mauldin is concerned about the state of democracy and is using Barth's and Bonhoeffer's political thought to grapple with how they addressed the changes in Germany. To start, Mauldin looks at the critiques of modernity by Brad Gregory, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Stanley Hauerwas. I read After Virtue recently and have read several books by Hauerwas over the years. However, I did not have any background on Brad Gregory. The introduction to their ideas was thorough enough that I felt like I was clear.
From that introduction, Mauldin explores Barth and Bonhoeffer's understanding of modernity, progress, ethics, and politics. I have read more by and about Bonhoeffer than Barth. But these are topical areas that I don't have much background in.
Mauldin was right that, quite often today, Bonhoeffer's theology and writing are overshadowed by his biography. There is a long history of Bonhoeffer being appropriated for political purposes, and Mauldin does a good job exploring the limitations of modern uses of Bonhoeffer.
Some of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics was above my head, but I think I understood all the main points. I would like to explore more how philosophers and theologians influenced by those continental philosophers think about the relationship between God's sovereignty and progress and the limitations of knowledge regarding how to think about discernment by individuals and communities.
I was somewhat surprised that there was some overlap in Mauldin's exploration of how Barth and Bonhoeffer understood the church's role and how Michael Emerson and Glenn Bracey explored The Religion of Whiteness. In both cases, there is a grappling with what it means to prod the church to a more careful connection between church and politics and what happens when the church begins to follow something more than just Jesus. In Emerson and Bracey's case, they posit that a significant portion of White Christians in the US are treating Whiteness (the belief in racial superiority and hierarchy) as a type of religion (in the Durkheimian sense of the term.) In Barth and Bonhoeffer's cases, they were grappling with how Nationalist Socialism and the belief in Aryan superiority also became a type of religion that distracted the church from its proper role in society. The comparison has problems; not everything transfers, and going directly to comparisons with Nazi ideology does violate Godwin's law. However, in discussions about how to respond either to Christian Nationalism or support of Whiteness (overlapping but different issues), it is reasonable to think about where there are limited overlapping concepts.
After I finished Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics, I started reading Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America. That history is also relevant because, in many ways, the Puritans in England and America were attempting to enact a Christian Nation in terms that are not unlike the way that some current Christian Nationalists want to operate. Again, no history is completely parallel. The Puritans arose out of a desire for a more radical reformation than the Church of England as a whole wanted. The political realities of a monarchy and the congregationalism that arose in Puritan New England that was part of what gave rise to the impulse toward democracy in the United States is just different from the reaction to pluralism that seems to be central to Christian Nationalism today. But still, the parallels that exist can inform our thinking, help us be more humble about the limits of reform, and keep us from utopian thinking.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/barth-bonhoeffer/
The Religion of Whiteness: How Racism Distorts Christian Faith by Michael O. Emerson, Glenn E. Bracey II
And for religion, Emerson and Bracey are using Emile Durkheim's understanding of religion. They quote Durkheim's definition of religion:
So they say that Whiteness (the cultural belief in white racial superiority) functions as a religion in the Durkheimian sense. In their conception, it isn't an incidental overlap of some White Christians following a Religion of Whiteness, but that religious nature of Whiteness becomes a feature of their understanding of Christianity.
This is primarily a sociology book and deals with their data and why they think their descriptive model works. Many people who read (or judge without reading) The Religion of Whiteness will not limit their evaluation to Emerson and Bracey's definitions of either Whiteness or Religion. It will be very common for some to misread this as a condemnation of all people who are commonly labeled white instead of the much more narrow idea of Whiteness. And secondly, I think many others will not understand Durkheim's view of religion. Andrew Whitehead's book American Idolatry does not explicitly use Durkheim's understanding of religion. Still, he does suggest that Christian Nationalists (his focus and one that overlaps but is not the same as Bracey and Emerson's topic) are following a false idol but are not necessarily completely rejecting Christianity.
I would honestly like a much more cut-and-dried separation between the Religion of Whiteness or Christian Nationalism and "true Christianity." But I think Whitehead, Bracey and Emerson are trying to keep our reality complicated. It is not simple to separate these things, and I think we need to pay attention to Jesus' parable of the wheat and tares. It would be easier if it was simple to say, "You are a Christian Nationalist and therefore not a Christian," or "You are a follower of the Religion of Whiteness and therefore not a follower of Christ." There is a point where people have moved from Christianity, but that exact point where the line is crossed is not easy to discern.
One of the aspects of The Religion of Whiteness that I like is that it uses Betrayal Trauma as a descriptive model of the harm done to those who do not follow the Religion of Whiteness. The Betrayal Trauma model was developed out of research into marriage/partner domestic violence. And then, it migrated into the area of spiritual abuse and harm. I first came across the concept in this podcast, and while I am not an expert on it, what I understand of the model makes a lot of sense for it to be used here.
The main weakness of the book is a lack of clarity on White Christians who do not follow the Religion of Whiteness (ROW). I think they make the case that there is a difference between White Christians who are and are not followers of the ROW. They show through surveys that White Christians who do not follow ROW have a belief structure more similar to Christians who are Black or other racial minorities rather than other White Christians who do follow ROW. However, I was not convinced they had a clear handle on why the difference exists. I am convinced there is a difference, but it is unclear what makes people resist ROW.
In one section, they interview White Christians who were pushed out of jobs/churches for resisting Whiteness. In all of those cases, the people interviewed became aware of racial realities and then tried to work to help others become aware. But they had grown up in congregations where others did not become aware. As I read, there is no clear separation theologically, demographically, geographically, or behaviorally to fully explain the resistance by White Christians to the Religion of Whiteness. There is a slight tendency toward being in urban spaces, but that isn't very explanatory.
I think the book does have a bit of a chicken-or-egg problem with Christian Nationalism. Are Christian Nationalists more likely to follow a Religion of Whiteness because they are Christian Nationalists, or do people become Christian Nationalists because they follow a religion of Whiteness? It is more likely that these things overlap and confirm one another, but again, I would like more definition and separation than it is possible to give.
In the past two years, when I saw interviews, talks, or articles with Emerson, I thought there would be more disagreement between Emerson/Bracey and Perry/Whitehead, but after reading The Religion of Whiteness, I think the difference is in approach more than anything else.
I am not a bystander to this discussion. While I have not lost a job, I did leave a church because I became convinced that the church leadership, while speaking out against Christian Nationalism and extremism, was unwilling to go far enough to speak out against Whiteness. I didn't need the leadership to use the words whiteness, but there was a clear pattern of limiting its understanding of the problems of racism to explicit white supremacy as if to be racist meant that you were a member of a Neo-nazi group or the KKK. The church hosted discussions on race in 2018 and used sermon time to condemn racism. However, the clear pattern was to aim for moderation as the goal, not justice. It still took me a couple of months to admit it, but the final straw was the senior pastor speaking to a group of legislators, calling on them to work across political divides. He explicitly cited Martin Luther King Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail as justification for being a moderate. I realized that with this understanding there could be no real movement toward difficult issues in this topic because there was not a clear understanding of the problem. At that point, I had been a member for about 15 years. I had explicitly been talking to the church leadership and was involved in discussions and small groups around race for about ten years. I was not pushed out as the people cited in the book were. Instead, I became disillusioned that there could be change, which is a real difference.
The Religion of Whiteness, I think, rightly focuses on the problem of race as a significant contributing factor in the breakup of the Evangelical Church. But it is more than just the evangelical church. Mainline and Catholic Christians also have a significant problem with the Religion of Whiteness. The Religion of Whiteness is also not confined to politically conservative portions of the church. As has frequently been said, many in the deconstruction community also have not rejected the Religion of Whiteness in their rejection of some of the cultural components of Evangelicalism.
I have about 50 highlights and a couple of notes that you can publicly read. I want to reread this again because I do not want to miss important nuances. The Religion of Whiteness is a short book. It only has about 150 pages of main content, and I read it in a single day.
It is also worth noting that the release was staggered, which is odd. The Kindle edition was released on April 23, and the audiobook was released on April 30th. The Hardcover says it will be released on May 21st, but you can buy it at Amazon and presumably other vendors now, although Amazon says it won't ship until May 9th.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-religion-of-whiteness/
4.75
Summary: An exploration of how Whiteness (the belief in white racial superiority) functions as a type of religion in the Durkheimian sense.
I have been waiting to read this book for about four years now, ever since I heard that Michael Emerson was working on follow-up research to his Divided by Faith book. I read the Beyond Diversity report by Barna about some of the early research. And I have widely recommended this video where Michael Emerson introduces his Religion of Whiteness concept. And while it is now dated, I still very much recommend his book, co-authored with Christian Smith, Divided by Faith, because its use of the White Evangelical toolkit as a model to describe the cultural tools of handling race as White Evangelicals has been so influential to how many have spoken about Evangelicals and Race in the 25 years since the research for that book was done.
To understand the book, you need to understand both what is meant by Whiteness and what is meant by Religion. This is a good summary of what they mean by Whiteness:
I have been waiting to read this book for about four years now, ever since I heard that Michael Emerson was working on follow-up research to his Divided by Faith book. I read the Beyond Diversity report by Barna about some of the early research. And I have widely recommended this video where Michael Emerson introduces his Religion of Whiteness concept. And while it is now dated, I still very much recommend his book, co-authored with Christian Smith, Divided by Faith, because its use of the White Evangelical toolkit as a model to describe the cultural tools of handling race as White Evangelicals has been so influential to how many have spoken about Evangelicals and Race in the 25 years since the research for that book was done.
To understand the book, you need to understand both what is meant by Whiteness and what is meant by Religion. This is a good summary of what they mean by Whiteness:
"That is, whiteness is the imagined right that those designated as racially white are the norm, the standard by which all others are measured and evaluated. It is the imagined right to be superior in most every way—theologically, morally, legally, economically, and culturally. It is that power, now centuries upon centuries old, that is worshipped, felt, protected, and defended. As the legendary scholar W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1920: “ ‘But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?’ Then, always, somehow, someway, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is ownership of the earth forever and ever. Amen!” (p42)
And for religion, Emerson and Bracey are using Emile Durkheim's understanding of religion. They quote Durkheim's definition of religion:
"...a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things... beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called the Church, all those who adhere to them." Note that he defines religion by what it is and what it does, its function. And what is its function? To bring its followers into a single moral community..."
So they say that Whiteness (the cultural belief in white racial superiority) functions as a religion in the Durkheimian sense. In their conception, it isn't an incidental overlap of some White Christians following a Religion of Whiteness, but that religious nature of Whiteness becomes a feature of their understanding of Christianity.
This is primarily a sociology book and deals with their data and why they think their descriptive model works. Many people who read (or judge without reading) The Religion of Whiteness will not limit their evaluation to Emerson and Bracey's definitions of either Whiteness or Religion. It will be very common for some to misread this as a condemnation of all people who are commonly labeled white instead of the much more narrow idea of Whiteness. And secondly, I think many others will not understand Durkheim's view of religion. Andrew Whitehead's book American Idolatry does not explicitly use Durkheim's understanding of religion. Still, he does suggest that Christian Nationalists (his focus and one that overlaps but is not the same as Bracey and Emerson's topic) are following a false idol but are not necessarily completely rejecting Christianity.
I would honestly like a much more cut-and-dried separation between the Religion of Whiteness or Christian Nationalism and "true Christianity." But I think Whitehead, Bracey and Emerson are trying to keep our reality complicated. It is not simple to separate these things, and I think we need to pay attention to Jesus' parable of the wheat and tares. It would be easier if it was simple to say, "You are a Christian Nationalist and therefore not a Christian," or "You are a follower of the Religion of Whiteness and therefore not a follower of Christ." There is a point where people have moved from Christianity, but that exact point where the line is crossed is not easy to discern.
One of the aspects of The Religion of Whiteness that I like is that it uses Betrayal Trauma as a descriptive model of the harm done to those who do not follow the Religion of Whiteness. The Betrayal Trauma model was developed out of research into marriage/partner domestic violence. And then, it migrated into the area of spiritual abuse and harm. I first came across the concept in this podcast, and while I am not an expert on it, what I understand of the model makes a lot of sense for it to be used here.
The main weakness of the book is a lack of clarity on White Christians who do not follow the Religion of Whiteness (ROW). I think they make the case that there is a difference between White Christians who are and are not followers of the ROW. They show through surveys that White Christians who do not follow ROW have a belief structure more similar to Christians who are Black or other racial minorities rather than other White Christians who do follow ROW. However, I was not convinced they had a clear handle on why the difference exists. I am convinced there is a difference, but it is unclear what makes people resist ROW.
In one section, they interview White Christians who were pushed out of jobs/churches for resisting Whiteness. In all of those cases, the people interviewed became aware of racial realities and then tried to work to help others become aware. But they had grown up in congregations where others did not become aware. As I read, there is no clear separation theologically, demographically, geographically, or behaviorally to fully explain the resistance by White Christians to the Religion of Whiteness. There is a slight tendency toward being in urban spaces, but that isn't very explanatory.
I think the book does have a bit of a chicken-or-egg problem with Christian Nationalism. Are Christian Nationalists more likely to follow a Religion of Whiteness because they are Christian Nationalists, or do people become Christian Nationalists because they follow a religion of Whiteness? It is more likely that these things overlap and confirm one another, but again, I would like more definition and separation than it is possible to give.
In the past two years, when I saw interviews, talks, or articles with Emerson, I thought there would be more disagreement between Emerson/Bracey and Perry/Whitehead, but after reading The Religion of Whiteness, I think the difference is in approach more than anything else.
I am not a bystander to this discussion. While I have not lost a job, I did leave a church because I became convinced that the church leadership, while speaking out against Christian Nationalism and extremism, was unwilling to go far enough to speak out against Whiteness. I didn't need the leadership to use the words whiteness, but there was a clear pattern of limiting its understanding of the problems of racism to explicit white supremacy as if to be racist meant that you were a member of a Neo-nazi group or the KKK. The church hosted discussions on race in 2018 and used sermon time to condemn racism. However, the clear pattern was to aim for moderation as the goal, not justice. It still took me a couple of months to admit it, but the final straw was the senior pastor speaking to a group of legislators, calling on them to work across political divides. He explicitly cited Martin Luther King Jr's Letter from a Birmingham Jail as justification for being a moderate. I realized that with this understanding there could be no real movement toward difficult issues in this topic because there was not a clear understanding of the problem. At that point, I had been a member for about 15 years. I had explicitly been talking to the church leadership and was involved in discussions and small groups around race for about ten years. I was not pushed out as the people cited in the book were. Instead, I became disillusioned that there could be change, which is a real difference.
The Religion of Whiteness, I think, rightly focuses on the problem of race as a significant contributing factor in the breakup of the Evangelical Church. But it is more than just the evangelical church. Mainline and Catholic Christians also have a significant problem with the Religion of Whiteness. The Religion of Whiteness is also not confined to politically conservative portions of the church. As has frequently been said, many in the deconstruction community also have not rejected the Religion of Whiteness in their rejection of some of the cultural components of Evangelicalism.
I have about 50 highlights and a couple of notes that you can publicly read. I want to reread this again because I do not want to miss important nuances. The Religion of Whiteness is a short book. It only has about 150 pages of main content, and I read it in a single day.
It is also worth noting that the release was staggered, which is odd. The Kindle edition was released on April 23, and the audiobook was released on April 30th. The Hardcover says it will be released on May 21st, but you can buy it at Amazon and presumably other vendors now, although Amazon says it won't ship until May 9th.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-religion-of-whiteness/
Discerning the Voice of God: How to Recognize When He Speaks by Priscilla Shirer
She follows that will what she understands the purpose of discernment to be:
Primarily because of her theological commitments to the sovereignty of God and a cessationist understanding of the role of the spirit, we disagree on how discernment works and the method. Her method is summarized in her Five M model. She calls on us to look for the Message of the spirit, search for a Model in scripture, live in a Mode of prayer, submit to the Ministry of Eli (this is really about seeking after mentors and getting advice so the spiritualization of this one seems a miss), and expect the Mercy of confirmation. I would not disagree with any of these as tools of discernment.
However, throughout the book, her primary advice is to be a student of the scripture. I am all for understanding scripture. I think the Bible is the primary place we use to challenge our biases. All scriptural reading is interpretation and one of the book's weaknesses is a lack of understanding of how cultural bias impacts us. For instance, virtually all of her illustrations of discernment are gendered. Men go to men's bible studies or have business decisions to make; while women seek discernment about being stay-at-home mothers or home-schooling their children. If we do not understand how our cultural biases influence our scriptural reading, we will read our current cultural biases into scripture to confirm our desires.
This comes up in her discussion about drinking alcohol. She acknowledges that there is not a universal prescription against alcohol, but there is no discussion about how our current evangelical culture impacts her conviction against alcohol. Again, to be clear, I think she can have discerned that alcohol is wrong for her and that she can do that through reading scripture and seeking advice. But if she has not done any work to understand how other Christians at other times have understood alcohol, then she is not doing the work that her model seems to call on us to do.
And she regularly reads things into scripture that may be hinted at, but are not directly stated. For example, she says, "Wonder how many years Elizabeth and Zachariah disagreed with God’s timing on providing them a child. They never stopped praying until the days had obviously passed for them to conceive and bear children." But scripture doesn't say they never stopped praying for God to provide them with a child. She has read that into the passage and then takes that as a scriptural principle. Continuing to pray is a good idea, but when she invokes it as a scriptural principle instead of her interpretation of scripture, she draws on the authority of scripture to confirm her suggestions.
A lot of her somewhat off-handed advice is really good. For instance, she suggests that one of the ways we discern God's voice is that God is loving and that the loving voice would be from God while the condemning voice is not. That generally is good advice if not taken too far to confirm our prior cultural values. She also suggests that God is patient, and if there is a push to make decisions quickly, that can be a sign that the decision may not be from God.
Part of what I appreciate about this advice is that she understands how God speaks to her. One difficulty in discussing discernment is that personal experience differs from universal prescriptions. This is especially true because her commitment to a particular understanding of God's character and sovereignty is central to her understanding of discernment. For example, I have real questions about how she understands the character of God when she so positively commends this quote from Oswald Chambers, "Have you ever heard the Master say something very difficult to you? If you haven’t, I question whether you have ever heard Him say anything at all."
Earlier in the book, she talked about God's voice being loving, but then she assumes and directly says that if there is a choice between an easy thing and a hard thing, God's voice is probably to do the hard thing. My concern about her use of scripture again comes up here.
She suggests that Abraham has a history of immediately following God's direction. But that wasn't universally his mode of obedience. Hagar and Ishmael are counterexamples. We need the counterexamples in scripture to help us realize that the people of the Bible were not somehow different kinds of people. They were fallen, just like we are.
My final main concern is that her reliance on God's sovereignty feels like it can cause people to submit to harm because it is God's will. I believe in God's sovereignty; I question whether we, as finite creatures, can perfectly understand God at all times. I think we can tentatively understand God. But one of the things that has led to my research into discernment is exactly this: what are our limits of understanding in regard to discernment?
Toward the end of the book, there is this passage:
I read that section right after I saw on Twitter that Ann Graham Lotz wrote about the April 8 solar eclipse as the final portion of a Hebrew letter Aleph written over the US with the last three eclipses and was a sign of the end times. After the eclipse, she withdrew that post and rewrote it again. But that was an example of when you get into the habit of attributing to God our thoughts about God, it is easy to get into problems. And when we claim that we "always" do anything, we are probably fooling ourselves.
Overall, there was some good advice here, but I had a problem with the tone and orientation toward God calling us to do hard things. (That includes the concern about how the very gendered advice can lead women to submit to abuse.) I am also concerned about the problematic issues around her views on God's sovereignty. If you are new to the discussion of discernment, I suggest starting with Hannah Anderson's All That's Good.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/discerning-the-voice-of-god/
3.25
Summary: Discerning the Voice of God is a spiritual discipline that can be learned.
I am about eight months into a project to understand what people mean when they talk about discernment in the Christian context and how it can be learned and discussed. If you include the books that I read as part of my training to become a spiritual director and my previous general interest reading, I have read about two dozen books, many of them more than once, on the topic of discernment. I certainly do not believe that I have a clear understanding of all aspects of discernment. I continue to find new aspects of discernment that I had not thought about. And I have about two dozen more books on my list. But I have a handle on some aspects oft I have tentatively committed discernment tha to. That matters because in the case of Discerning the Voice of God, there are many areas of agreement, but my problems primarily come in three areas and my tentative commitments influence those.
First I want to mention the good. She is right that we can learn about discernment. And I think she is right to suggest that goal of discernment is to see is not to see if we will make the wrong choice. This quote from toward the end of the book I think is right.
I am about eight months into a project to understand what people mean when they talk about discernment in the Christian context and how it can be learned and discussed. If you include the books that I read as part of my training to become a spiritual director and my previous general interest reading, I have read about two dozen books, many of them more than once, on the topic of discernment. I certainly do not believe that I have a clear understanding of all aspects of discernment. I continue to find new aspects of discernment that I had not thought about. And I have about two dozen more books on my list. But I have a handle on some aspects oft I have tentatively committed discernment tha to. That matters because in the case of Discerning the Voice of God, there are many areas of agreement, but my problems primarily come in three areas and my tentative commitments influence those.
First I want to mention the good. She is right that we can learn about discernment. And I think she is right to suggest that goal of discernment is to see is not to see if we will make the wrong choice. This quote from toward the end of the book I think is right.
"But here’s what I want to encourage in you—the big message of this chapter, perhaps the big message of this book. Try never to forget it. Here it is … There’s no code for you to crack. No puzzle He’s waiting for you to put together. No stick He’s dangling in your peripheral vision, then snatching away when you turn your head toward it. He’s not sitting up in heaven with the cameras rolling and stopwatches ticking, testing whether or not you’re spiritually sharp enough to figure out the next move He wants you to make."
She follows that will what she understands the purpose of discernment to be:
When God speaks and causes your spiritual ears to hear Him, it is for the purpose of making Himself known to you. And not just in a textbook way. He wants to turn your knowledge of Him into your experience of Him. So when He speaks, you’ll recognize His voice because in following its directive, you will be put into position to experience God’s character in your life.
Primarily because of her theological commitments to the sovereignty of God and a cessationist understanding of the role of the spirit, we disagree on how discernment works and the method. Her method is summarized in her Five M model. She calls on us to look for the Message of the spirit, search for a Model in scripture, live in a Mode of prayer, submit to the Ministry of Eli (this is really about seeking after mentors and getting advice so the spiritualization of this one seems a miss), and expect the Mercy of confirmation. I would not disagree with any of these as tools of discernment.
However, throughout the book, her primary advice is to be a student of the scripture. I am all for understanding scripture. I think the Bible is the primary place we use to challenge our biases. All scriptural reading is interpretation and one of the book's weaknesses is a lack of understanding of how cultural bias impacts us. For instance, virtually all of her illustrations of discernment are gendered. Men go to men's bible studies or have business decisions to make; while women seek discernment about being stay-at-home mothers or home-schooling their children. If we do not understand how our cultural biases influence our scriptural reading, we will read our current cultural biases into scripture to confirm our desires.
This comes up in her discussion about drinking alcohol. She acknowledges that there is not a universal prescription against alcohol, but there is no discussion about how our current evangelical culture impacts her conviction against alcohol. Again, to be clear, I think she can have discerned that alcohol is wrong for her and that she can do that through reading scripture and seeking advice. But if she has not done any work to understand how other Christians at other times have understood alcohol, then she is not doing the work that her model seems to call on us to do.
And she regularly reads things into scripture that may be hinted at, but are not directly stated. For example, she says, "Wonder how many years Elizabeth and Zachariah disagreed with God’s timing on providing them a child. They never stopped praying until the days had obviously passed for them to conceive and bear children." But scripture doesn't say they never stopped praying for God to provide them with a child. She has read that into the passage and then takes that as a scriptural principle. Continuing to pray is a good idea, but when she invokes it as a scriptural principle instead of her interpretation of scripture, she draws on the authority of scripture to confirm her suggestions.
A lot of her somewhat off-handed advice is really good. For instance, she suggests that one of the ways we discern God's voice is that God is loving and that the loving voice would be from God while the condemning voice is not. That generally is good advice if not taken too far to confirm our prior cultural values. She also suggests that God is patient, and if there is a push to make decisions quickly, that can be a sign that the decision may not be from God.
Part of what I appreciate about this advice is that she understands how God speaks to her. One difficulty in discussing discernment is that personal experience differs from universal prescriptions. This is especially true because her commitment to a particular understanding of God's character and sovereignty is central to her understanding of discernment. For example, I have real questions about how she understands the character of God when she so positively commends this quote from Oswald Chambers, "Have you ever heard the Master say something very difficult to you? If you haven’t, I question whether you have ever heard Him say anything at all."
Earlier in the book, she talked about God's voice being loving, but then she assumes and directly says that if there is a choice between an easy thing and a hard thing, God's voice is probably to do the hard thing. My concern about her use of scripture again comes up here.
"Suffice to say, when instructions from God are difficult—like Abraham’s were, like yours and mine often are—we tend to be slow to obey. Yet when God told him to do the unthinkable, Abraham immediately left for the mountain. And because he obeyed at once, he experienced God’s divine intervention."
She suggests that Abraham has a history of immediately following God's direction. But that wasn't universally his mode of obedience. Hagar and Ishmael are counterexamples. We need the counterexamples in scripture to help us realize that the people of the Bible were not somehow different kinds of people. They were fallen, just like we are.
My final main concern is that her reliance on God's sovereignty feels like it can cause people to submit to harm because it is God's will. I believe in God's sovereignty; I question whether we, as finite creatures, can perfectly understand God at all times. I think we can tentatively understand God. But one of the things that has led to my research into discernment is exactly this: what are our limits of understanding in regard to discernment?
Toward the end of the book, there is this passage:
My friend and mentor Anne Graham Lotz once said, “I never make a major decision in life, especially one that will affect another person, before I have received direction from God.” Yes, I expected her to say that. I feel conviction that I should expect it of myself. But what penetrated my heart was what she told me next—that for every major decision she’s made in life, there’s a specific Scripture verse she can point to as the one that God used to personally direct her. “When circumstances would have made me doubt a decision,” she said, “His Word has carried me through. And not once has He led me on a wrong path.” That’s powerful.
I read that section right after I saw on Twitter that Ann Graham Lotz wrote about the April 8 solar eclipse as the final portion of a Hebrew letter Aleph written over the US with the last three eclipses and was a sign of the end times. After the eclipse, she withdrew that post and rewrote it again. But that was an example of when you get into the habit of attributing to God our thoughts about God, it is easy to get into problems. And when we claim that we "always" do anything, we are probably fooling ourselves.
Overall, there was some good advice here, but I had a problem with the tone and orientation toward God calling us to do hard things. (That includes the concern about how the very gendered advice can lead women to submit to abuse.) I am also concerned about the problematic issues around her views on God's sovereignty. If you are new to the discussion of discernment, I suggest starting with Hannah Anderson's All That's Good.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/discerning-the-voice-of-god/
Know Your Place: Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World by Justin R. Phillips
This thesis as I capture here is going to be too direct for some readers. That doesn't mean he is wrong, it just means that there is a directness that will cause some to be resistant to the message of the book. Phillips quotes Hauerwas, "Courtesy forbids direct speech", but does not practice Hauwerwas' quote. As an outsider to the South, it isn't my place to say whether this is the best approach for those who have grown up in the South. But I do think it is a truthful approach.
It is likely that many who grew up in the South won't have heard quotes like the following:
Another important theological issue that is still ongoing is the relationship between history and guilt. The issues in the quote below are not new. (Hudson Baggett was editor of the Alabama Baptist from 1966 until his death in 1994).
I think Know Your Place was well written and directly speaks to the issues of being a White Southern Christian (man) today. It isn't going to be the best book for everyone. But I do think it can be very helpful for those with ears to hear.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/know-your-place/
Summary: A series of essays exploring what it means to be Christian, White, and Southern in the context of the racial realities as they are.
Racism isn't solely a Southern phenomenon, but there are some aspects to the White Southern Christian culture, and it makes sense to look at it from that perspective. I have read a lot of history and theology regarding racial realities in the United States. I have not grown up in the South, but I have lived just outside Atlanta for nearly 20 years. Because I have been here for a while, but I have not grown up here, I am both an outsider and an inside observer. I very much have witnessed quite overt racism, and the racial innocence that is well described in Know Your Place.
I am going to have three brief illustrations about racial innocence that influenced my reading of Know Your Place. About 5-6 years ago, the church I was a member of had a series of midweek meetings about race and Christianity. The meetings had a large group and small group component. My small group was facilitated by a Black pastor (not from our church). The small group was about 15 people, and as we opened the first session, we went around and introduced ourselves. One of the men introduced himself and concluded, "I was born and grew up and spent my whole life in the Atlanta area, and I do not believe that I have ever witnessed something I would call racist." I believe that she was roughly the same age as my mother-in-law, who also grew up here; her education was segregated until her senior year of high school.
Another friend of mine is retired and grew up in rural Georgia. She privately emailed me after we were in a class together where I had talked about the racist history of Stone Mountain. She was unfamiliar with what I was referring to and wanted to know more about what I meant. We talked, and I sent her some articles about Stone Mountain being dedicated explicitly to white supremacy and being the site of the start of the second founding of the KKK. She had literally never heard of any of that history despite living in Georgia for much of her life.
Several years ago, Georgia passed a law that included a provision that says that teachers cannot teach that "the United States is a systemically racist country." I was discussing this law and the problems of how teachers can teach the required standards, including teaching about the Dred Scott decision in 8th grade, without violating the law. The person I was talking to expressed that all history should be taught but that it was wrong to teach that the country is racist. I continued to ask questions about the history of the US. It was clear that the person both did not know anything about the Dred Scott decision (which said that the US was under no obligation to recognize citizenship or other rights of black Americans regardless of whether they were free or enslaved) or other expressly race-conscious laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I give that way too long of an introduction because one of the problems of discussing race is that we have very different starting places because there is a mix of ignorance, willful blindness, and bad education. Most of the time, there is a mix of the three, but providing history to someone who is willfully blind to racial realities is unlikely to make a difference. Similarly, accusations of willful blindness when the person is simply ignorant or has had a lousy education often will create a backlash. And there is the problem of people defending their "home" because they feel like it is being attacked.
Know Your Place has good history and understands the culture, psychology and sociology of the South well. Phillips also has the theological chops to bring in theological ethics to cultural realities in a way that has grace, but tells the truth.
Early in the book this quote lays out the thesis quite directly.
Racism isn't solely a Southern phenomenon, but there are some aspects to the White Southern Christian culture, and it makes sense to look at it from that perspective. I have read a lot of history and theology regarding racial realities in the United States. I have not grown up in the South, but I have lived just outside Atlanta for nearly 20 years. Because I have been here for a while, but I have not grown up here, I am both an outsider and an inside observer. I very much have witnessed quite overt racism, and the racial innocence that is well described in Know Your Place.
I am going to have three brief illustrations about racial innocence that influenced my reading of Know Your Place. About 5-6 years ago, the church I was a member of had a series of midweek meetings about race and Christianity. The meetings had a large group and small group component. My small group was facilitated by a Black pastor (not from our church). The small group was about 15 people, and as we opened the first session, we went around and introduced ourselves. One of the men introduced himself and concluded, "I was born and grew up and spent my whole life in the Atlanta area, and I do not believe that I have ever witnessed something I would call racist." I believe that she was roughly the same age as my mother-in-law, who also grew up here; her education was segregated until her senior year of high school.
Another friend of mine is retired and grew up in rural Georgia. She privately emailed me after we were in a class together where I had talked about the racist history of Stone Mountain. She was unfamiliar with what I was referring to and wanted to know more about what I meant. We talked, and I sent her some articles about Stone Mountain being dedicated explicitly to white supremacy and being the site of the start of the second founding of the KKK. She had literally never heard of any of that history despite living in Georgia for much of her life.
Several years ago, Georgia passed a law that included a provision that says that teachers cannot teach that "the United States is a systemically racist country." I was discussing this law and the problems of how teachers can teach the required standards, including teaching about the Dred Scott decision in 8th grade, without violating the law. The person I was talking to expressed that all history should be taught but that it was wrong to teach that the country is racist. I continued to ask questions about the history of the US. It was clear that the person both did not know anything about the Dred Scott decision (which said that the US was under no obligation to recognize citizenship or other rights of black Americans regardless of whether they were free or enslaved) or other expressly race-conscious laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I give that way too long of an introduction because one of the problems of discussing race is that we have very different starting places because there is a mix of ignorance, willful blindness, and bad education. Most of the time, there is a mix of the three, but providing history to someone who is willfully blind to racial realities is unlikely to make a difference. Similarly, accusations of willful blindness when the person is simply ignorant or has had a lousy education often will create a backlash. And there is the problem of people defending their "home" because they feel like it is being attacked.
Know Your Place has good history and understands the culture, psychology and sociology of the South well. Phillips also has the theological chops to bring in theological ethics to cultural realities in a way that has grace, but tells the truth.
Early in the book this quote lays out the thesis quite directly.
"Here is the brutal truth about the people and places that I love: The dominant social imagination was, and is, a white-supremacist ideology, employed to enslave, terrorize, dehumanize, or restrict people of color, while at the same time absolving the offenders and their heirs from the guilt of any wrongdoing. These offenses were committed in order to keep people in their place and upon these shared values and stories American life was built, sustained, and defended. My social imaginary has, at its core, white supremacist foundations from which I and many others have benefitted. This is my place in our shared story." (p31)
This thesis as I capture here is going to be too direct for some readers. That doesn't mean he is wrong, it just means that there is a directness that will cause some to be resistant to the message of the book. Phillips quotes Hauerwas, "Courtesy forbids direct speech", but does not practice Hauwerwas' quote. As an outsider to the South, it isn't my place to say whether this is the best approach for those who have grown up in the South. But I do think it is a truthful approach.
It is likely that many who grew up in the South won't have heard quotes like the following:
Henry Holcombe Tucker, Baptist minister and former president of Mercer University and the University of Georgia, posited in an 1883 editorial four key litmus tests for racial orthodoxy: First, human races are and will be forever unequal. Second, Blacks are inferior to whites. Third, intermarriage was detrimental to all races. Fourth, free social intermingling of Blacks and whites “must have its origin in sin.” (p99)
and
Southern tradition, according to Lillian Smith, taught children three lessons that connected God, the body, and segregation: God loves and punishes children. We, in return, love and fear God. Parents possess a godlike quality, enforcing God’s ways, and themselves are deserving of love and fear. The second lesson concerned God’s gift of the body, which was to be kept clean and healthy. Be careful how you use this gift, for God’s morality is “based on this mysterious matter of entrances and exits, and Sin hovering over all doors.”
White skin was the most important feature of the body: This ‘gift’ gave whites status, dictated their control over space and movement, and children learned by watching their elders. The final lesson of southern tradition was that of segregation, an extension of the other two: You always obeyed authorities—“They Who Make the Rules”—and you valued and protected your white body. Even outside of the home “Custom and Church” would continue the education through words and actions. (p107)
Another important theological issue that is still ongoing is the relationship between history and guilt. The issues in the quote below are not new. (Hudson Baggett was editor of the Alabama Baptist from 1966 until his death in 1994).
Hudson Baggett, editor of the Alabama Baptist, rejected the statement, saying the convention “cannot confess the guilt or sins of all other Southern Baptists. Every person must confess his own sins, if they are confessed.” He added, “many people resist the idea of collective guilt, especially if it is connected with certain things in which people felt they have no part directly or indirectly.” Baggett’s words perfectly summarize the perspective that persists today among many whites, Christians included: In the absence of perceived guilt there is no reason to seek forgiveness. Sin works by blinding us to the realities of our failings, individually or collectively. (p145)
I think Know Your Place was well written and directly speaks to the issues of being a White Southern Christian (man) today. It isn't going to be the best book for everyone. But I do think it can be very helpful for those with ears to hear.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/know-your-place/
Orthodox Christianity: A Very Short Introduction by A. Edward Siecienski
3.5
Summary: A brief introduction to Orthodox Christianity.
I have said a number of times that as much as the Very Short Introduction series is uneven, I keep coming back to it because it serves a helpful niche. These are books that are about 100-125 pages, usually with good bibliographies, that give someone without much background an introduction to the important aspects of a topic. I read at least 3 or 4 a year, especially when I can find them at my library on Audible's lending library (Premium Plus catalog). This one was free for me to listen to with my Audible membership.
The book was divided into three main parts. The first was Christian history, focusing on Nicaea to the spread of Orthodoxy into Russia. The second was about Orthodoxy's theological and liturgical development. The third focused on what made Orthodoxy different from Roman Catholicism. There was a concluding section about modern challenges and developments within Orthodoxy.
Overall this is was one of the better VSI books. The author was clear about what was important, and the audience, without getting too distracted by any particular part. As with any book of this sort, there can be quibbles with what was and was not included. And I wouldn't be reading it if I were not interested in more background, so in some ways the very act of reading it is admitting that I don't have the content background to evaluate the decisions. But this isn't my first book, or my fifth, on Eastern Orthodoxy, and based on what I do know, I think this was a good introduction.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/orthodox-christianity/
I have said a number of times that as much as the Very Short Introduction series is uneven, I keep coming back to it because it serves a helpful niche. These are books that are about 100-125 pages, usually with good bibliographies, that give someone without much background an introduction to the important aspects of a topic. I read at least 3 or 4 a year, especially when I can find them at my library on Audible's lending library (Premium Plus catalog). This one was free for me to listen to with my Audible membership.
The book was divided into three main parts. The first was Christian history, focusing on Nicaea to the spread of Orthodoxy into Russia. The second was about Orthodoxy's theological and liturgical development. The third focused on what made Orthodoxy different from Roman Catholicism. There was a concluding section about modern challenges and developments within Orthodoxy.
Overall this is was one of the better VSI books. The author was clear about what was important, and the audience, without getting too distracted by any particular part. As with any book of this sort, there can be quibbles with what was and was not included. And I wouldn't be reading it if I were not interested in more background, so in some ways the very act of reading it is admitting that I don't have the content background to evaluate the decisions. But this isn't my first book, or my fifth, on Eastern Orthodoxy, and based on what I do know, I think this was a good introduction.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/orthodox-christianity/
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The reality is that Demon was born to a teenage single mother who had grown up (and been abused in) foster care. His father died in an accident a few months before he was born that his mother would never talk about. Demon's mom tried to be a good mom, but was poor and did not grow up with the skills to raise a child well. She was a high school dropout in a poor rural community with few options. (Some spoilers are below, but I will try to limit them as much as I can.)
She eventually gets married to an abusive man, who abused both her and Demon. She ODs (and lives), but that leads to Damon being removed from the home. This starts Demon's interactions with social services and his own abusive situations within the system. Both he and his mom hope that they can be reunited, but his abusive stepfather is a complicating factor, as is his mom's pregnancy and the "good face" that his stepfather presents to the world. Demon is labeled as a hard-to-control child. His mother is labeled as an addict who can't be trusted. And his stepfather is the responsible one, and the system finds it easier to believe and trust him than either Demon or his mother.
From here, tragedy builds on tragedy with occasional bright spots, usually ending with more tragedy. The book is well-written but hard to read. I have some experience with child protective services. We had foster kids for nine months in a relatively good situation. However, we were legally required to report staff lying to the court, resulting in a string of new social service staff. So many things went wrong and did not need to have been so hard. My very brief interactions made all of the tragedies of child services in this book seem entirely possible.
There were bright spots that I also know are possible. A good teacher, a kind neighbor, a close community are where much good comes from. But those close rural communities also have limitations and addiction, disability from unsafe working conditions (like mines, logging, or factory work), and outside bureaucratic systems that are unresponsive to reasonable human needs often are inadequate.
Later in the book, there is a discussion of the differences between urban and rural poverty. Demon suggests he would prefer to be one of the rural poor instead of one of the urban poor because he can grow food, has an extended family, and has informal systems of care that the urban poor may not have access to. There is some truth to that, but the reality is that poverty is dehumanizing and brutal regardless of where you are poor.
Demon Copperhead is one of the better fiction books I have read in a while, but it is not for everyone. I listened to it on audiobook, but was careful not to have it playing when my kids were around because of the language, drug use, violence, and sex. This is very much a book about childhood written for adults, not children. As brutal as it can be, it is well worth reading, and I want to get a print version and reread it again in the future.
I originally posted this review on my blog at https://bookwi.se/demon-copperhead/
5.0
Summary: A troubled childhood recounted. (A retelling of David Copperfield)
One of my habits (sometimes bad and sometimes good) is to avoid reading about fiction books before I read them. Once I know an author, I would rather experience a book without any background. There are times when this is a great strategy. And there are times when I somewhat regret the strategy. In this case, I was utterly unaware that Demon Copperhead was a loose retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Because I have not read David Copperfield, I don't know what would have been different had I known, but I did not know. I later read the Wikipedia summary of David Copperfield and can see the many parallels, and I think that made sense of a few threads of the story that I was confused about.
I have read most of Barbara Kingsolvers' books at least once. I enjoy her writing and appreciate its incisive social commentary. And because of my history with her work, it was unsurprising that Demon Copperfield was set in southwestern Virginia. Several of her books are set in rural Appalachia, and many of them grapple with the social realities of that area.
I read several reviews afterward, and one reviewer said the social commentary at the end of many chapters was a feature of Dickens' writing, not just Kingsolvers'. Many chapters in Demon Copperhead tell an aspect of the main character's life (his real name is Damon, but everyone calls him Demon from a very young age), but will conclude the chapter with a reflection on one social reality or another. For instance, there is a discussion about the underfunding of Child Services and how even those who want to do good by working there are often so underfunded and overworked that their efforts are largely futile. The adult Demon who is narrating, reflects on how that underfunding reflects on the values of our society.
I listened to this on audiobook from the library but carefully copied out the following quote because the social commentary is clear-eyed, even if a bit cynical. Demon is talking about the ways that we believe a false narrative about people's ability to work their way out of bad situations. So he refers to himself in the third person about why things did not go better for him.
One of my habits (sometimes bad and sometimes good) is to avoid reading about fiction books before I read them. Once I know an author, I would rather experience a book without any background. There are times when this is a great strategy. And there are times when I somewhat regret the strategy. In this case, I was utterly unaware that Demon Copperhead was a loose retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Because I have not read David Copperfield, I don't know what would have been different had I known, but I did not know. I later read the Wikipedia summary of David Copperfield and can see the many parallels, and I think that made sense of a few threads of the story that I was confused about.
I have read most of Barbara Kingsolvers' books at least once. I enjoy her writing and appreciate its incisive social commentary. And because of my history with her work, it was unsurprising that Demon Copperfield was set in southwestern Virginia. Several of her books are set in rural Appalachia, and many of them grapple with the social realities of that area.
I read several reviews afterward, and one reviewer said the social commentary at the end of many chapters was a feature of Dickens' writing, not just Kingsolvers'. Many chapters in Demon Copperhead tell an aspect of the main character's life (his real name is Damon, but everyone calls him Demon from a very young age), but will conclude the chapter with a reflection on one social reality or another. For instance, there is a discussion about the underfunding of Child Services and how even those who want to do good by working there are often so underfunded and overworked that their efforts are largely futile. The adult Demon who is narrating, reflects on how that underfunding reflects on the values of our society.
I listened to this on audiobook from the library but carefully copied out the following quote because the social commentary is clear-eyed, even if a bit cynical. Demon is talking about the ways that we believe a false narrative about people's ability to work their way out of bad situations. So he refers to himself in the third person about why things did not go better for him.
"This kid, if he wanted a shot at the finer things, should have got himself delivered to some rich, or smart, or Christian, non-using kind of mother."
The reality is that Demon was born to a teenage single mother who had grown up (and been abused in) foster care. His father died in an accident a few months before he was born that his mother would never talk about. Demon's mom tried to be a good mom, but was poor and did not grow up with the skills to raise a child well. She was a high school dropout in a poor rural community with few options. (Some spoilers are below, but I will try to limit them as much as I can.)
She eventually gets married to an abusive man, who abused both her and Demon. She ODs (and lives), but that leads to Damon being removed from the home. This starts Demon's interactions with social services and his own abusive situations within the system. Both he and his mom hope that they can be reunited, but his abusive stepfather is a complicating factor, as is his mom's pregnancy and the "good face" that his stepfather presents to the world. Demon is labeled as a hard-to-control child. His mother is labeled as an addict who can't be trusted. And his stepfather is the responsible one, and the system finds it easier to believe and trust him than either Demon or his mother.
From here, tragedy builds on tragedy with occasional bright spots, usually ending with more tragedy. The book is well-written but hard to read. I have some experience with child protective services. We had foster kids for nine months in a relatively good situation. However, we were legally required to report staff lying to the court, resulting in a string of new social service staff. So many things went wrong and did not need to have been so hard. My very brief interactions made all of the tragedies of child services in this book seem entirely possible.
There were bright spots that I also know are possible. A good teacher, a kind neighbor, a close community are where much good comes from. But those close rural communities also have limitations and addiction, disability from unsafe working conditions (like mines, logging, or factory work), and outside bureaucratic systems that are unresponsive to reasonable human needs often are inadequate.
Later in the book, there is a discussion of the differences between urban and rural poverty. Demon suggests he would prefer to be one of the rural poor instead of one of the urban poor because he can grow food, has an extended family, and has informal systems of care that the urban poor may not have access to. There is some truth to that, but the reality is that poverty is dehumanizing and brutal regardless of where you are poor.
Demon Copperhead is one of the better fiction books I have read in a while, but it is not for everyone. I listened to it on audiobook, but was careful not to have it playing when my kids were around because of the language, drug use, violence, and sex. This is very much a book about childhood written for adults, not children. As brutal as it can be, it is well worth reading, and I want to get a print version and reread it again in the future.
I originally posted this review on my blog at https://bookwi.se/demon-copperhead/
The Chosen by Chaim Potok
4.5
Summary: A classic coming-of-age novel about two Jewish teens (one Orthodox, one Hasidic) who meet while playing against one another in baseball and become friends.
There are so many classic novels that I have not read. So many times I read one and wonder why I have not read it previously. No one can read everything, so I have to keep slowly working through the many classic novels I have picked up over time.
There is a reason this is such a beloved novel. It is well-written, and like I mentioned with Esau McCaulley's memoir, its particularity makes it universal. Most readers are not either Hasidic or Orthodox Jews. And readers today did not grow up in WWII, or the immediate postwar era where the Holocaust was discussed and the potential nation of Israel was debated.
But while the details are different, the potential to follow our own path or follow the expectations of those around us is common. The cultural differences between two different types of Jewish experiences can help illustrate how different experiences between seemingly similar groups work. The closer you are to the inside, the more those differences seem to matter.
This is a young adult novel, but not childish in orientation. I am interested in reading the second book (according to the extras, it was initially written as a single novel but was re-written to be two separate novels before publication.) The second book, The Promise, is about the two main characters, Reuven and Danny, as adults. I also have My Name is Asher Lev, which I will read after I read The Promise.
Originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-chosen/
There are so many classic novels that I have not read. So many times I read one and wonder why I have not read it previously. No one can read everything, so I have to keep slowly working through the many classic novels I have picked up over time.
There is a reason this is such a beloved novel. It is well-written, and like I mentioned with Esau McCaulley's memoir, its particularity makes it universal. Most readers are not either Hasidic or Orthodox Jews. And readers today did not grow up in WWII, or the immediate postwar era where the Holocaust was discussed and the potential nation of Israel was debated.
But while the details are different, the potential to follow our own path or follow the expectations of those around us is common. The cultural differences between two different types of Jewish experiences can help illustrate how different experiences between seemingly similar groups work. The closer you are to the inside, the more those differences seem to matter.
This is a young adult novel, but not childish in orientation. I am interested in reading the second book (according to the extras, it was initially written as a single novel but was re-written to be two separate novels before publication.) The second book, The Promise, is about the two main characters, Reuven and Danny, as adults. I also have My Name is Asher Lev, which I will read after I read The Promise.
Originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-chosen/
In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk's Memoir by Paul Quenon
2.75
Summary: A meandering memoir about the life of a monk, with lots of time devoted to his novice master, Thomas Merton.
I remember In Praise of the Useless Life coming out a few years ago and having largely positive reviews. I put it on my "to-read" list and picked it up recently because it was free to borrow from Audible if you are a premium member.
Generally, it is one of those books that I am not disappointed I read, but I also do not recommend it. The story meanders without really having much focus. Much of the short memoir is about the author's relationship with Thomas Merton. Quenon was only 17 when he came to the monastery. Merton (known in the monastery as Father Lewis) was Quenon's novice master. The stories are fine, but nothing in it drew me in.
The title "In Praise of a Useless Life" did not reflect the book. Quenon has published many poetry books and contributed to several photography books. Merton was well known but far from the only extraordinary monastery member. If anything, the memoir was about extraordinary lives, not useless ones. I get the point; a life of prayer and service is not "exciting," but the visitor's and monks' work as writers, artists, and spiritual directors is far from useless. Maybe I was primed for a different book by the title, but it just isn't a book that grabbed me, nor one that I would put much effort into reading. If you borrowed it for free like I did, it may be worth it, but there are so many books available that I would probably get another instead of this one.
I originally published this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/in-praise-of-the-useless-life/
I remember In Praise of the Useless Life coming out a few years ago and having largely positive reviews. I put it on my "to-read" list and picked it up recently because it was free to borrow from Audible if you are a premium member.
Generally, it is one of those books that I am not disappointed I read, but I also do not recommend it. The story meanders without really having much focus. Much of the short memoir is about the author's relationship with Thomas Merton. Quenon was only 17 when he came to the monastery. Merton (known in the monastery as Father Lewis) was Quenon's novice master. The stories are fine, but nothing in it drew me in.
The title "In Praise of a Useless Life" did not reflect the book. Quenon has published many poetry books and contributed to several photography books. Merton was well known but far from the only extraordinary monastery member. If anything, the memoir was about extraordinary lives, not useless ones. I get the point; a life of prayer and service is not "exciting," but the visitor's and monks' work as writers, artists, and spiritual directors is far from useless. Maybe I was primed for a different book by the title, but it just isn't a book that grabbed me, nor one that I would put much effort into reading. If you borrowed it for free like I did, it may be worth it, but there are so many books available that I would probably get another instead of this one.
I originally published this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/in-praise-of-the-useless-life/
I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People by Terence Lester
He is clearly right that poverty has a moral judgment to it. Lester defines poverty as a lack of access, which has truth to it. He made a connection between spiritual and physical poverty to draw a connection, but that connection was sometimes strained. His connection, "We carry spiritual poverty and need someone else to pay that debt, which of course is what Jesus did," depends on a traditional Penal Substitutionary Atonement model, which I think distorts both spiritual and physical poverty.
Lester addresses the lack of understanding many people have about poverty and homelessness.
Stories can help people understand that homelessness and poverty have complex causes and that understanding the stories of people who are homeless can give greater context and help us have empathy for the homeless. However, one of the problems is that gaining more insight does not always help. Not all stories are positive ones. We can gain understanding and confirm our prior assumptions because we will assume that the stories that match our assumptions are the standard ones, and the stories that do not match our assumptions are the exceptions. The homeless person who does not want our offer of food or we see regularly asking for money can confirm our assumption that homelessness is primarily about laziness. The reality is that there are no silver bullets that will solve all types of homelessness. Mental health issues are real and a significant cause of homelessness, but additional mental health services will do nothing for those who are homeless primarily because of a lack of affordable housing. Addiction is a significant cause of homelessness, but additional recovery programs will not address people fleeing domestic violence.
Lester ends the book with a call to go deeper into what we are called to do. For some, that will be homelessness, and for others, it will be something else. He is right that depth of work will produce longer-term results than moving from problem to problem.
I See You made a good discussion book for our book group. But I think it was focused too much on introductory material. For those new to homelessness, it can be a good introduction. Still, I also think it will be somewhat frustrating because many people looking for an introduction also want simple solutions to that problem. Lester avoids simple solutions and concentrates primarily on personal relationships to address homelessness. Those personal relationships are essential, but I imagine that most people will walk away without any real change in their lifestyle or approach to homelessness because real change will have a significant cost in time and attention.
This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/i-see-you/
3.5
Summary: All people are made in God's image, which can help us see and help the marginalized.
I See You was a book that my book club read. I have some history of working with the homeless. I volunteered for four years during college with Olive Branch Mission in Chicago (at their traditional emergency shelter and food program). Later, I did a summer internship in their drug and alcohol rehab program and then worked part-time in exchange for room and board for a couple of years of grad school. And my MSW internship was with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. I have worked directly with homeless people and on homeless policy, although my professional and volunteer work has not been with the homeless for a couple of decades now.
There is always a tension in advocacy books like I See You between helping people see the systems that contribute to the problem and helping readers see individuals impacted by the problem. If you concentrate too much on the system, then it can be dehumanizing and abstract. If you concentrate too much on the individuals, you can humanize some people impacted by the problem but not see the larger structure of society that contributes to the problem. I think I See You focuses too much on the individual, which is the tendency for books oriented toward evangelicals.
I See You led to a lot of good discussions with my book group, but it is more oriented toward introducing the problem of homelessness and felt a little too simplistic in its approach to me. The main idea is summarized in this quote:
I See You was a book that my book club read. I have some history of working with the homeless. I volunteered for four years during college with Olive Branch Mission in Chicago (at their traditional emergency shelter and food program). Later, I did a summer internship in their drug and alcohol rehab program and then worked part-time in exchange for room and board for a couple of years of grad school. And my MSW internship was with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. I have worked directly with homeless people and on homeless policy, although my professional and volunteer work has not been with the homeless for a couple of decades now.
There is always a tension in advocacy books like I See You between helping people see the systems that contribute to the problem and helping readers see individuals impacted by the problem. If you concentrate too much on the system, then it can be dehumanizing and abstract. If you concentrate too much on the individuals, you can humanize some people impacted by the problem but not see the larger structure of society that contributes to the problem. I think I See You focuses too much on the individual, which is the tendency for books oriented toward evangelicals.
I See You led to a lot of good discussions with my book group, but it is more oriented toward introducing the problem of homelessness and felt a little too simplistic in its approach to me. The main idea is summarized in this quote:
“The theory for a long time—coming not only from the right but also from some Democrats—is that poverty means that there’s something wrong with your character, that you’ve got bad habits, you’ve got a bad lifestyle, you’ve made the wrong choices.” In this book I want to help deconstruct some of the misconceptions we have about the poor and tell you the stories of those who are experiencing poverty.
He is clearly right that poverty has a moral judgment to it. Lester defines poverty as a lack of access, which has truth to it. He made a connection between spiritual and physical poverty to draw a connection, but that connection was sometimes strained. His connection, "We carry spiritual poverty and need someone else to pay that debt, which of course is what Jesus did," depends on a traditional Penal Substitutionary Atonement model, which I think distorts both spiritual and physical poverty.
Lester addresses the lack of understanding many people have about poverty and homelessness.
"Ignorance is defined as simply a lack of knowledge and information, but it’s what we do in reaction when we are faced with our own ignorance that makes all the difference. The trap I’ve seen most people get into is believing the way they see the world is the only way the world exists, that what they see and experience is the truth."
Stories can help people understand that homelessness and poverty have complex causes and that understanding the stories of people who are homeless can give greater context and help us have empathy for the homeless. However, one of the problems is that gaining more insight does not always help. Not all stories are positive ones. We can gain understanding and confirm our prior assumptions because we will assume that the stories that match our assumptions are the standard ones, and the stories that do not match our assumptions are the exceptions. The homeless person who does not want our offer of food or we see regularly asking for money can confirm our assumption that homelessness is primarily about laziness. The reality is that there are no silver bullets that will solve all types of homelessness. Mental health issues are real and a significant cause of homelessness, but additional mental health services will do nothing for those who are homeless primarily because of a lack of affordable housing. Addiction is a significant cause of homelessness, but additional recovery programs will not address people fleeing domestic violence.
Lester ends the book with a call to go deeper into what we are called to do. For some, that will be homelessness, and for others, it will be something else. He is right that depth of work will produce longer-term results than moving from problem to problem.
I See You made a good discussion book for our book group. But I think it was focused too much on introductory material. For those new to homelessness, it can be a good introduction. Still, I also think it will be somewhat frustrating because many people looking for an introduction also want simple solutions to that problem. Lester avoids simple solutions and concentrates primarily on personal relationships to address homelessness. Those personal relationships are essential, but I imagine that most people will walk away without any real change in their lifestyle or approach to homelessness because real change will have a significant cost in time and attention.
This review was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/i-see-you/
How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/how-to-stay-married/
4.25
Summary: A husband's memoir about his wife's affair and how he worked to try to save the marriage.
This is a book that I both appreciated and recommend and one that I have some concerns about. Mostly, I appreciate the honesty. I kept thinking about CS Lewis' A Grief Observed. In both books, the pain is told in real-time without the restraint that would come later. That is an enormous strength because honest pain is so uncomfortable and unusual. But it is also hard to hear. And honest pain is often a bit irrational, so you do want to shake Harrison Scott Key quite often. Do not read this book if you do not want an honest account of pain. There is a lot of grace here as well, but the content warning is for the pain.
I am also concerned with the Gary Thomas connection. I listened to How to Stay Married on audiobook (which I think is probably the best format for this book), so there may have been a citation to Gary Thomas. But if not, Key's explicit idea at the end, which was implicit often in the book, is Thomas' line, "Maybe marriage was to make us holy, not happy." I know why people gravitate to that line. There were times when I was more attracted to that idea. Marriage over time will often (not always, but often) have periods of pain and difficulty. The problem is that God can use anything to help mature us. However, in the way Thomas presents the idea, marriage was created to be particularly painful so that we can mature. It feels to me that if we were lucky enough to be married before the fall when sin did not enter the picture, his idea would not really make sense. People can mature in many different ways. Marriage is one of those. But people who are not married can still mature, and we do not need to be married to become mature.
I can understand why Key wanted to write this book. I often need to write to process my thoughts. It is a type of therapy, but therapy writing does not necessarily need to be written. I kept thinking about kids reading this when they got older, or his kids' friends, or his wife's future friends. This is always the difficulty for memoirs. There has to be a balance between honesty and the way that honesty can be harmful to others. In the book he talks about how in exploring his own responsibility for the problems in his marriage that he came to understand that his humor was often cruel. He was not attempting to be cruel, but he was also not attempting to empathize with the person he was being cruel to. He was just trying to be funny to make other people like him. Everyone wants people to like them, but part of maturity is learning how to put the needs of others before your own. And I wonder if he will think the words are worth it in 10 or 20 years.
In a more positive sense, How to Stay Married is yet another book by a layperson that was not intended to be a "Christian" book. It is a book that tries to explain their life, and because they are Christians, it is impacted by Christian theology and practices. I think Bono's book Surrender is another good example. How to Stay Married has no issues with swearing, discussing sex openly, discussing wanting to harm people in very real ways. But also being a beautiful illustration of forgiveness and the need for a community (church). No Christian publisher would publish this book, and that is, in some ways, too bad. I also don't think many Christian publishers would publish many wonderful devote Christian writers who do not fit a certain mold. This is not a book that was written to be an instruction manual for pastors, but I think pastors would benefit from the discussion about the role of the church and the church community that is detailed here.
I also worry that people may take this too literally, taking it as instructions instead of a biographical illustration of how this one particular couple moved forward. That is more to do with bad reading than the book itself. Many people want overly clear instructions instead of grappling with how life isn't simple.
I also have a lot of concerns about stories being written too soon. I had this concern about David Brook's Second Mountain and a number of memoirs by people who are under 50. I am not going to say no memoir should be written by someone under 50, but I would be wary. I just don't think marriage and parenting books should be written by people who are too close to the advice they are giving. Stories we hear are told by the authors in the way they want to tell them. So we don't know what changes would happen if this book were told later. Will they still be married in five years, ten? I want them to be still married. Key notes that no marriage is perfect. But it would be a different book if he had written this five or ten years from now.
This is a spoiler, so stop reading if you do not want to spoil the ending.
Harrison and his wife are back together. She is working through her own traumas and problems. He is working through his traumas and problems. But together, they are trying to work to stay married. That is the story I wanted from this book, and I am glad it is the story told in the book. But God would still be God if the marriage did not reconcile. Many marriages do not. Yes, the book helpfully calls on both partners to own their own problems. And Key grapples with what would be different if there was physical abuse, addiction, or other problems in addition to what they did have. I do not want to recommend a book about a marriage being reconciled without saying explicitly that not all marriages can or should stay together.
I have a problem with Paul Miller's book because he tried to get people to tolerate short-term pain for long-term good. That isn't bad in and of itself, but he was consciously telling people to put up with abuse because he thought that that would change over time. Abuse can change. But the default for Christian marriage advice, especially to women, is to tolerate abuse to show grace so that their partner will change. And that isn't something I think is good advice on a broad scale. Shaunti Feldhahn's book on marriage says that most people who consider divorce but stay together for five years have a better marriage. But I would want more insight before I gave that advice. I do not think it should be given on a large scale.
The summary of my impressions of How to Stay Married is that I am glad that Harrison Scott Key fought for his marriage and showed grace over the long term. I also think it would have been better for him to have not been such an asshole to start with. And I want it to be more normalized for counseling and trauma therapy to be more widespread so that Lauren (his wife) could get help with her grief about her father's own affair, her mother's death, and her postpartum depression so that she was not seeking such self-destructive ways to deal with her problems. I am glad that the pain of the book is clear so that we do not gloss over the pain of divorce or affairs. Those are destructive, and sin never just impacts the individual.
How to Stay Married was well written and well narrated if you listen to it on audiobook. But I have a lot of caveats and this isn't a book I would recommend to everyone. It is a very helpful book for the right person.
This is a book that I both appreciated and recommend and one that I have some concerns about. Mostly, I appreciate the honesty. I kept thinking about CS Lewis' A Grief Observed. In both books, the pain is told in real-time without the restraint that would come later. That is an enormous strength because honest pain is so uncomfortable and unusual. But it is also hard to hear. And honest pain is often a bit irrational, so you do want to shake Harrison Scott Key quite often. Do not read this book if you do not want an honest account of pain. There is a lot of grace here as well, but the content warning is for the pain.
I am also concerned with the Gary Thomas connection. I listened to How to Stay Married on audiobook (which I think is probably the best format for this book), so there may have been a citation to Gary Thomas. But if not, Key's explicit idea at the end, which was implicit often in the book, is Thomas' line, "Maybe marriage was to make us holy, not happy." I know why people gravitate to that line. There were times when I was more attracted to that idea. Marriage over time will often (not always, but often) have periods of pain and difficulty. The problem is that God can use anything to help mature us. However, in the way Thomas presents the idea, marriage was created to be particularly painful so that we can mature. It feels to me that if we were lucky enough to be married before the fall when sin did not enter the picture, his idea would not really make sense. People can mature in many different ways. Marriage is one of those. But people who are not married can still mature, and we do not need to be married to become mature.
I can understand why Key wanted to write this book. I often need to write to process my thoughts. It is a type of therapy, but therapy writing does not necessarily need to be written. I kept thinking about kids reading this when they got older, or his kids' friends, or his wife's future friends. This is always the difficulty for memoirs. There has to be a balance between honesty and the way that honesty can be harmful to others. In the book he talks about how in exploring his own responsibility for the problems in his marriage that he came to understand that his humor was often cruel. He was not attempting to be cruel, but he was also not attempting to empathize with the person he was being cruel to. He was just trying to be funny to make other people like him. Everyone wants people to like them, but part of maturity is learning how to put the needs of others before your own. And I wonder if he will think the words are worth it in 10 or 20 years.
In a more positive sense, How to Stay Married is yet another book by a layperson that was not intended to be a "Christian" book. It is a book that tries to explain their life, and because they are Christians, it is impacted by Christian theology and practices. I think Bono's book Surrender is another good example. How to Stay Married has no issues with swearing, discussing sex openly, discussing wanting to harm people in very real ways. But also being a beautiful illustration of forgiveness and the need for a community (church). No Christian publisher would publish this book, and that is, in some ways, too bad. I also don't think many Christian publishers would publish many wonderful devote Christian writers who do not fit a certain mold. This is not a book that was written to be an instruction manual for pastors, but I think pastors would benefit from the discussion about the role of the church and the church community that is detailed here.
I also worry that people may take this too literally, taking it as instructions instead of a biographical illustration of how this one particular couple moved forward. That is more to do with bad reading than the book itself. Many people want overly clear instructions instead of grappling with how life isn't simple.
I also have a lot of concerns about stories being written too soon. I had this concern about David Brook's Second Mountain and a number of memoirs by people who are under 50. I am not going to say no memoir should be written by someone under 50, but I would be wary. I just don't think marriage and parenting books should be written by people who are too close to the advice they are giving. Stories we hear are told by the authors in the way they want to tell them. So we don't know what changes would happen if this book were told later. Will they still be married in five years, ten? I want them to be still married. Key notes that no marriage is perfect. But it would be a different book if he had written this five or ten years from now.
This is a spoiler, so stop reading if you do not want to spoil the ending.
Harrison and his wife are back together. She is working through her own traumas and problems. He is working through his traumas and problems. But together, they are trying to work to stay married. That is the story I wanted from this book, and I am glad it is the story told in the book. But God would still be God if the marriage did not reconcile. Many marriages do not. Yes, the book helpfully calls on both partners to own their own problems. And Key grapples with what would be different if there was physical abuse, addiction, or other problems in addition to what they did have. I do not want to recommend a book about a marriage being reconciled without saying explicitly that not all marriages can or should stay together.
I have a problem with Paul Miller's book because he tried to get people to tolerate short-term pain for long-term good. That isn't bad in and of itself, but he was consciously telling people to put up with abuse because he thought that that would change over time. Abuse can change. But the default for Christian marriage advice, especially to women, is to tolerate abuse to show grace so that their partner will change. And that isn't something I think is good advice on a broad scale. Shaunti Feldhahn's book on marriage says that most people who consider divorce but stay together for five years have a better marriage. But I would want more insight before I gave that advice. I do not think it should be given on a large scale.
The summary of my impressions of How to Stay Married is that I am glad that Harrison Scott Key fought for his marriage and showed grace over the long term. I also think it would have been better for him to have not been such an asshole to start with. And I want it to be more normalized for counseling and trauma therapy to be more widespread so that Lauren (his wife) could get help with her grief about her father's own affair, her mother's death, and her postpartum depression so that she was not seeking such self-destructive ways to deal with her problems. I am glad that the pain of the book is clear so that we do not gloss over the pain of divorce or affairs. Those are destructive, and sin never just impacts the individual.
How to Stay Married was well written and well narrated if you listen to it on audiobook. But I have a lot of caveats and this isn't a book I would recommend to everyone. It is a very helpful book for the right person.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/how-to-stay-married/