Off the Shelf

OFF THE SHELF ZEALOUS LOVE

the tragedy and an immense urgency.

Inspiring testimonies include the Polaris Project’s attempts to stem the tide of

By Mike and Danae Yankoski human trafficking, the KING Revival Zondervan Fellowship’s efforts to minister to Karen refugees who have fled the atrocities of Reviewed by Al Tizon Burma, Bridges of Hope’s work to address Glossy, colorful, and full of pictures on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, high-grade paper, Zealous Love has the and the many other faithful ministries look and feel of a coffee-table book. It of compassion and justice profiled in this glows with sophistication and elegance, book offset the excruciating images of but then calls for radical action in the children being sold into slavery, hungry service of Christian compassion and justice. people, illiteracy, and grinding poverty.

At first, I felt the incongruence. But as Something is being done about these I read through the book, my appreciation injustices, and the book makes it possible grew for what I surmise to be the intent for readers to get in on the action. Each of this project. I suspect that the call is section ends with a “Now what?” portion not intended for Christian bohemian that provides guidelines for personal and types, who say “social justice” as often as group reflection, as well as avenues for they say “hello.” Given the coffee-table practical action.

While we hear from renowned familpackaging, it seems directed toward a particular audience — namely, people who iar voices — David Batstone, Wendell have coffee tables … along with many Barry, Shane Claiborne, Eugene Peterson other nice things. A line in the introduc- — what I found especially compelling tion is telling: “Most of us reading this about this book is the lifting up of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, book are unimaginably rich.”

That said, the stories, resources, and people who are too busy to make a name practical guides contained in this book for themselves as they go about working would inspire anyone to do something on behalf of the hungry, the exploited, about the injustices that plague the planet. the sick, and the forgotten. The church Mike Yankoski, author of Under the needs to hear from these unsung heroes, Overpass (Multnomah, 2005), and wife Danae Yankoski, co-author of Crazy Love (David C. Cook, 2008) and The Forgotten God (David C. Cook, 2009) have teamed up for the first time to compile stories of Christians taking action against what they consider to be the eight most grave social injustices around the world.These injustices — human trafficking, unclean water, the plight of refugees, hunger, lack of education, environmental abuse, HIV/ AIDS, and economic inequality — lead the way in human suffering.

After a brief introduction of each injustice, we hear from five different practitioners combating that injustice in a particular part of the world. By the time you get to the fifth story in each section, you feel both the debilitating weight of PRISM 2010

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and this book does a good job of making their voices heard. Q Al Tizon is director of Evangelicals for Social Action’s Word & Deed Network and assistant professor of holistic ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

SOCIAL JUSTICE HANDBOOK

By Mae Elise Cannon InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Laura Bramon Good Evangelical contemporary social criticism often taps an odd solipsism. Where else can you stumble on modern day Scopes Monkey Trial headlines like “Did the Crusades Really Happen?” played as a platform for Muslim-Christian dialogue?* I admit that I harbored fears that Mae Elise Cannon’s Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World might offer a similarly shrunken view of the world, riding as it does on a wave of evangelical interest in “the poor”— a people group so exotic, in some Christian circles, that one would think its natives existed only in the developing world.

But Social Justice Handbook is the real deal, largely because its author has seen Christian mercy and justice ministries through the sights of an administrator and the eyes of a woman wrestling with an avocation.

Aside from its PowerPoint-ready “History of [Protestant] Christian Social Justice in the Americas,” Social Justice Handbook is a useful compendium and, in a quieter way, a testimony. Cannon keeps her encyclopedic roster of social justice issues, service ideas, and suggestions for further reading fresh by interspersing them with organizational profiles and personal anecdotes. Slowly, a reader starts to wonder: Who is this

WATCH THIS!

By Jonathan Walton New York University Press Reviewed by Harold Dean Trulear

woman with the dainty name and wellstamped passport, who mobilized the masses at Willow Creek and simultaneously, one supposes, fostered an asthmatic 2-year-old to his adoption, and fought for her younger brother to get a good education in Chicago’s ailing innercity schools?

Despite these revelations, Cannon remains something of a mystery. Her authorial voice is steady and gentle, and her willingness to share something of herself never overrides her desire to urge readers toward engagement with the broken systems that often necessitate ministries of mercy. Especially for leaders looking to harness the idealism and energies of their youthful charges, the Handbook will serve as a useful reference and honest encouragement. Q *In the fall of 2005 at Seattle Pacific University, an academic colloquium was presented under this title, which, in my opinion, taps an absurd (and possibly dangerous) strain of evangelical historical revisionism.

Laura Bramon Good is an anti-human-trafficking specialist who currently works with Touch A Life Foundation to combat child trafficking in Ghana’s Lake Volta region. She is a regular contributor to IMAGE Journal’s arts and faith weblog.

I recently asked my younger students at the Howard University School of Divinity to check out the website of the Reverend Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter, better known as “Reverend Ike.” I wanted to see how they would react to the presentation and claims of the man most consider to be the father of the modern prosperity gospel.

The students were nonplussed; the website seemed normal to them. I told them that at their age my friends and I thought of Reverend Ike as “cartoonish” but that now his message is mainstream.

The point of the exercise was for them to think about how culture has changed to the point where a message that once hovered between marginality and heresy has become a dominant image of Christian faith today.

Jonathan Walton provides us with some serious answers to this question in Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism. He focuses on the televised ministries of African American ministers, careful to contextualize his analysis within the larger framework of postmodern culture and sensibility.

Walton rightly includes an entire chapter on Reverend Ike and shows the connection between his message and those of contemporary televangelists.

But the issue is not just the message — unless you count the medium as the message as Walton does. He points to the contrast between the individualized nature of problem-solving in contemporary televangelism and the social justice history of the African American religious tradition. Televangelism, by its very nature, works against the type of corporate religious consciousness that leads to social change, and Walton PRISM 2010

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documents this well.

Additionally, Walton insightfully lays forth the theological distinctions between various streams of black televangelism, showing how such figures as T.D. Jakes, Eddie Long, and Creflo Dollar differ in significant ways from one another. But all fall captive to an individualistic worldview where the transformative power of the gospel is limited to personal change. In this regard, Walton cleverly argues that such captivity looms as the ultimate flaw in black televangelism, rather than its materialism.

This is an important insight that cuts across virtually all forms of broadcast Christianity, regardless of ethnicity, and a fresh lens for PRISM readers to employ in their own assessment of the role of broadcast media in Christian faith.

In this regard, Walton’s book transcends black church issues and may escape the attention of serious students of culture looking for tools that assist them in understanding the crux of our temporary cultural malaise. For that reason, this book should not slip beneath your radar screen because it is about

“black televangelists.” His analysis and challenges speak to the whole of American Christianity.

One significant lapse in Walton’s book must be addressed (and, in the spirit of the book of Matthew, I have already addressed it with him personally). In using examples to illustrate his thesis concerning the individualistic responses of the megachurch, he uses case studies with real names.Though the cases found their way to both print and visual media, to rehash them here sans the cloak of anonymity brings the stories of those victimized by scandal into play for discussion. Using the book in my Washington classroom proved problematic because of relationships between victims and those in my course. To Walton’s credit, he has acknowledged his omission of a pastoral concern for those hurt in his rehearsal. Q

problems of racism, classism, and injustice was so compelling that the author, Van Jones, was propelled to near-instant national stardom. After the election of Barack Obama, Jones, a lawyer and a civil rights and environmental activist, was appointed special advisor for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, where he clearly had the ear of the president.

The idea of harnessing economic development and the power of the market to the creation of a new clean energy

Harold Dean Trulear is associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC, and consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Faith and Families Portfolio.

THE GREEN COLLAR ECONOMY

By Van Jones HarperOne Reviewed by Rusty Pritchard With a tiny marketing budget and an author without national prominence, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems was propelled to the New York Times bestseller list last year merely through the power of social networking and savvy viral marketing — which is to say, by the smart and relevant ideas it contained.

The book’s premise that any effort to address the environmental crisis also had to include an effort to solve persistent

economy clearly still resonates in the halls of the White House, as witnessed

by Obama’s continued campaigning for those themes. But Van Jones no longer inhabits those corridors of power. As is now common practice, those who don’t want the administration to succeed on any measure choose to brazenly attack the strengths rather than the weaknesses of proposed policies. And by any reckoning, the optimism and freshness of Jones’ ideas were a strength. But his background as a civil rights activist who had previously explored communism, PRISM 2010

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who recklessly expressed his distaste for congressional Republicans in a vulgarity caught on film, and who expressed sympathy with strange conspiracy theories about the September 11 terrorist attacks, all provided ammunition for a conservative campaign to have him removed from office. He was.

But the ideas in the Green Collar Economy stand on their own.They show the evolution of Jones’ thought in their embrace of the market, their shift away from cheap activism, and their search for solution. In a central passage, Jones outlines a reframing of the fundamental myth of activism — away from a David and Goliath story and toward the model of Noah and his wife. “Instead of preparing to protest against a giant, as David did, perhaps it is better to prepare to lead a community through a crisis and into the future beyond that crisis, as Noah did,” Jones writes.

He recommends five principles: (1) fewer “issues,” more solutions, (2) fewer “demands,” more goals, (3) fewer [political] “targets,” more partners, (4) less “accusation,” more confession, and (5) less “cheap patriotism,” more deep patriotism. He writes, “To paraphrase scholar Cornel West, you can’t save a country you don’t serve, and you can’t lead a country you don’t love.”

The problems of unemployment and growing income inequality are, by many accounts, going to be resistant to a quick economic turnaround. Jones’ book offers a vision for a way forward that would transform environmentalism from a mostly white, mostly elite movement to something that works for everyone.

Highly recommended. Q A natural resource economist, Rusty Pritchard (rusty@flourishonline.org) is the co-founder and president of Flourish, a national ministry that serves Christians as they grow in environmental stewardship, healthy living, and radical discipleship. He writes a regular column for PRISM.

A MILLION MILES IN A THOUSAND YEARS

By Donald Miller Thomas Nelson Reviewed by Terry Cooper Today, as I listened to a colleague describe a suicide assessment he had just completed on a 12-year-old boy, it occurred to me that most people who really need to hear what Donald Miller has to say in his new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, will likely never read the book.

Miller tells a story of cool and creative friends, compelling adventures, redemptive encounters with strangers, and hard-won insights into the nature of God and life. Yes, the story contains painful episodes, but the boundaries of the story are ultimately defined by hope rather than despair.

The life story of the suicidal 12-yearold is bounded by the shadows of despair and persistent emotional pain.

As the child related it to my colleague, there is little joy and even less hope in his story. What could Donald Miller possibly have to say to this boy?

In reality, Miller has a great deal to say to him.

A persistent dark thread running through Miller’s life and work is that of being abandoned by his father. Miller knows about being a sad and lonely child and how that can powerfully impact an adult’s capacity to form meaningful, intimate relationships. He also knows that these experiences are not the end of the story — that grace is present even as the roots of the darkest story are being formed.

So why are so many people unlikely to read the book?

Because Miller makes it clear that our lives are stories that don’t begin or end with us, that we are part of a much larger,

more compelling story than that offered by the pervasive infomercial-style theology which promotes “earthly euphoria” as the reason for our existence.

Imagine being the pastor or counselor for the family of the 12-year-old.

Imagine being confronted by their cumulative pain and despair. Then imagine your response to their pain being informed by a book proclaiming that “the idea that Jesus will make everything better is a lie.” Imagine trying to explain this in simple terms.

Therein is the power of this book —

and the challenge to its reader. The author begins with a rambling narrative about making his previous book into a movie (BlueLikeJazztheMovie.com), slowly (93 pages later!) leading the reader to the proclamation, “Your life is a blank page.You write on it.” By the time the final page of the book is turned, the narrative has taken shape as a powerful meditation on, well, nothing less than the meaning of life.

But you have to be patient and persistent to get to that final page.You have to confront some unfamiliar and uncomPRISM 2010

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fortable perspectives on the purpose and nature of your own life. One such perspective is that life does not lead to a cinematic climax where we triumphantly resolve all of life’s conflicts; instead we get only the persistent, enduring presence of a God who cares.Try telling that to a hurting parent who just wants her child’s pain to stop.

I’d like to suggest that if you read this book you pretend that an old friend has come back into your life after a long absence. Find a quiet spot in a cozy chair where you can sit patiently and listen as your friend shares his rambling story of struggle and U-turns, vivid encounters, and painful losses.Then be prepared to discover that his story doesn’t have an ending; it is really nothing more than an invitation to tell your own story.

Then you might discover what Miller has discovered — that “it is not necessary to win for the story to be great, it [is] only necessary to sacrifice everything.” Or, as Miller quotes from death camp survivor Victor Frankl: We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly.

Our answer must exist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets before each individual. Q Terry Cooper is program facilitator at Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch in Amarillo,Tex., where kids from pre-school through high school live in group homes with house parents and a supportive community.

OFF THE SHELF CARING FOR WORDS IN A CULTURE OF LIES

ing us mired in calamity.

But Caring for Words is not a mere treatise on impending doom. Instead,

By Marilyn Chandler McEntyre McEntyre provides a strategy designed Eerdmans both to confront the crisis in which we find ourselves and to “impart the joy of Reviewed by Silas Montgomery a graceful sentence” to those who come after us, for their good and for the good Although I approached Marilyn Chandler of our humanity. Happily the book does McEntyre’s Caring for Words in a Culture not condescend to those without the of Lies with flashbacks to those tedious academic pedigree that McEntyre enjoys. high school English classes that turned Instead it engages as a good novel does, so many of us away from literature, my meeting readers where they are and fears proved unfounded. The book is a walking with them, all the while shapfeast of well-constructed thought and ing how they see themselves and their developed argument that will appeal to journey. any who delight in considered, informed, However, McEntyre does at times and intelligent discourse. digress from philology, hurting her arguMcEntyre argues that as our civiliza- ment and running the risk of alienating tion becomes more technologically driven, her audience.And she occasionally makes we have chosen to neglect the expression reference to theological and political of well-constructed thought, replacing views in such a way that disregards the nuanced articulation of ideas with absurd views of her more conservative brothers hyperbole, willful ignorance, and noisy and sisters in the faith. But these rabbit sound bites. Morally and practically, she trails are a petty nuisance in an otherwise likens the impact of this cultural disin- finely crafted work with a valuable terest in the beauty of good communi- message: Words have taste, meaning, and cation to the ecological disasters recent force. They have been trampled far too generations have created for our prog- long. Be a steward to words — redeem and eny — the pursuit of convenience leav- restore them for the betterment of yourself, your community, and humanity. n Silas Montgomery is completing his MDiv at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., and currently seeking a pastoral position in a local church.

Dying to Live

By Clive Calver Authentic Reviewed by Christina O’Hara As Christians we are to die to ourselves and completely surrender to God’s plan for our lives, asserts Clive Calver in Dying to Live: The Paradox of the Crucified Life.

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(A. W. Tozer is quoted throughout), it is an important one that bears repeating.

Calver tells interesting stories of friends and colleagues throughout his many years of church and World Relief ministry, but it’s not until two-thirds into the book, when he gets to his personal story of how he and his wife sacrificed the unity of their family in order to follow the call of God, that I was hooked.

When Clive and Ruth sensed God’s call to head up World Relief in the US, they decided they would have to leave their teenage sons behind to complete their education in the UK. But just as strong as their sense of God’s call was their sense that, after departing, their sons would walk away from God. But the call persisted, and despite their protests (“It’s not supposed to cost me my family!”) they left, counting the cost but trusting in God. Their sons did indeed leave the church and the faith of their parents, but in the process and over the years they discovered their own faith and now proclaim,“I never knew what it really meant to love Jesus until my dad left me for him.” Enough to send chills down any God-fearing parent’s spine!

We in the Western church tend to seek first our own comfort — a church that “serves my needs”— rather than God’s kingdom and righteousness.

Calver reminds us that we must embrace the Cross, dying to ourselves and our own agenda and surrendering to a God who wants to break us and remake us into Spirit-filled people who bear fruit for the kingdom. Rather than seeking to do something for Christ we must instead allow Christ to live his life in us. If we would be filled with his power, we must be willing to relinquish control of everything.

I recommend this book for those disillusioned with a flabby and complacent Christianity and hungry for a deeper walk with Christ. Expect to be challenged to make your life count by dying to yourself and inviting Christ to come alive in you. n Christina O’Hara is a campus minister and spiritual director in Sioux Falls, S.Dak.

TRUTH AND TRANSFORMATION

By Vishal Mangalwadi YWAM Publishing Reviewed by Michael T. Snarr As I write, the Samoan government is being censured for misusing its posttsunami aid, and President Karzai of Afghanistan is being firmly criticized for widespread governmental corruption.

In Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, Vishal Mangalwadi tells us we should not be surprised by such headlines of graft plaguing the non-Western world. Unlike the West, nations like Samoa and Afghanistan were not shaped by the civilizing influence of universal education, which included, among other things, character formation and intellectual development. In contrast, the United

States and Europe are based on the Ten Commandments, obedience, repentance, and other biblical principals.

Mangalwadi explains how for centuries, thanks to Augustine, the church stressed the importance of rationality and human reason. As a result, monasteries emphasized the importance of wedding scholarly knowledge to the Christian life.

For Mangalwadi, the West’s embrace of the fields of mathematics, theology, agriculture, medicine, metallurgy, etc., enabled it to distinguish itself from the rest of the world.

The first section of the book praises Christianity’s unique approach to rationality, as well as to morality, family, and humility. At the same time, Mangalwadi argues that the Enlightenment steered the West away from the very principles that led to its success. Whereas the Christian tradition had honored the intellectual life, the Enlightenment divorced the two.

Whereas Christianity emphasized the equality of all, the Enlightenment undermined this moral assumption. Mangalwadi laments the West’s rejection of the keys to its past success.

In the second section the author asks if the nations can be healed. Here he calls the church to reassert itself as a beacon on the hill by reclaiming the radical message of Jesus. In the final section he highlights how evangelism, the Holy Spirit, the church, and hope can transform the world.

Mangalwadi’s experience of living among the desperately poor in India speaks to his credibility. His breadth of knowledge, especially of the Bible, is evident as he adeptly weaves Scripture throughout to support his key arguments.

What’s more, Mangalwadi tells spellbinding stories, delivers a powerful indictment of moral relativism, and highlights the shortcomings of Hinduism. I found myself rooting for Mangalwadi as he sought to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity and its uniqueness.

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troubled me. His broad, sweeping generalizations are rarely supported by scholarly citations, and few are data-driven.

His claims that the West has been morally superior to non-Western cultures are supported with a handful of anecdotes that ignore the log in the West’s eye — the Crusades, colonization, and slavery, to name just a few.

Equally troubling were the author’s occasional misleading assertions. In particular, the author connects Scripture’s emphasis on taking care of one’s neighbor to foreign aid of nations. Regrettably, he makes a glaring error when he sings the praises of US foreign aid and calls it the most generous country in the world.

Strangely, Mangalwadi measures generosity by reporting foreign aid in absolute terms instead of relative terms. If US aid is measured based on its ability to give (think of the widow’s mite), it ranks at the bottom when compared to other wealthy countries.

These omissions, generalizations, and misleading assertions unfortunately undermine the book’s credibility. But despite these shortcomings, and given both Mangalwadi’s reputation and his status as a scholar born and educated outside the

West, the book merits our attention, especially if Western readers can receive it with humility and discernment rather than self-congratulation and complacency.

For as Mangalwadi says, truth is required for transformation. n Michael T. Snarr is associate professor of social and political studies at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio.

Everyday Justice

By Julie Clawson InterVarsity Press

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner

By Fred Pearce Beacon Press Reviewed by Laura Hartley How does the way I live contribute to injustice in the world? This was a question I was forced to reconsider as I recently read two books. I say reconsider because if you are like me, ideas such as “carbon footprint,”“sweatshop,” and “fair trade” are not new. Issues of both environmental stewardship and fair labor practices have been in my awareness to some extent for years. I try to drink only fair-trade coffee, get my vegetables through a local farmers’ cooperative, and avoid shopping at Walmart. Nonetheless, I was reminded through these books that there’s always something more I can do to live responsibly in the world.

In Everyday Justice:The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices, Julie Clawson gently pushes her readers to examine their consumption habits in six areas — coffee, chocolate, oil, food, clothing, and waste —areas she has been working on in her own life. She readily admits ways that she falls short in living up to her own ideals but showcases an impressive array

each issue. She reminds us that even small choices, if made by enough people, can have significant consequences. Because she does not want to leave her readers feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems, Clawson asks them to consider “tweaking” rather than overhauling the way they live. I found this approach helpful and did in fact respond by identifying a few additional areas where I could make different choices.

Still, I’m left wondering whether the call to justice might demand more of me than simply tweaking my very comfortable, middle-class lifestyle.

Fred Pearce’s Confessions of an EcoSinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff is a good complement to Clawson’s book. As the subtitle suggests, Pearce, a British journalist, spent two years travof consumption choices from both her eling the world over to investigate where own life and those of other “everyday the items he regularly consumes come practitioners” that help address issues of from, as well as where the waste he produces ends up. environmental and human justice.

Written for a more general audience, What Clawson does particularly well is weave a biblical framework for justice Pearce’s book makes fewer explicit through her discussion of modern issues. demands of his readers. His task is more Using texts from throughout the Old descriptive than exhortative, though he and New Testaments, she reminds her admits in the first chapter that his purreaders that the call to living justly is a pose in writing the book is to bring to central theme throughout the Scriptures. light the invisible people and pollution In the chapter on chocolate, for example, that help sustain a typical Western “pershe provides both stories and statistics to sonal footprint” (which he says is both demonstrate that the issue of slavery is as social and ecological).

While covering some of the same relevant today as it was for both Paul in the first century andWilliamWilberforce topics as Clawson (food, clothing, waste), Pearce does so in a more specific and in the 19th.

Clawson ends her book with a chap- detailed way. In addition to coffee and ter on Third World debt, connected to chocolate, his section on food also examthe biblical concept of jubilee. While ines seafood, herbs and spices, bananas, debt relief is not the same kind of con- palm oil, sugar, and imported vegetables. sumption issue as the others she exam- He includes chapters on the many prodines, Clawson does point out how ucts manufactured in China and illumiWestern economic policies and consumer nates the ecological and social impact habits have contributed to oppressive of mining metals and producing elecdebt burdens in many developing tricity. His section on waste looks at both countries. garbage and recycling.

At the end of each chapter, Clawson Pearce closes his impressive examisuggests some concrete actions that nation of the global marketplace with “everyday” Christians can take to address several chapters that illuminate why his PRISM 2 0 1 0

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journey left him feeling more hopeful than cynical.Though cautiously optimistic, Pearce places his faith in human ingenuity to solve both the human and environmental crises that Western consumption has created.

As a Christian, my hope is placed more firmly on the transformative work of the Holy Spirit than human innovation and goodwill. Nonetheless, I found myself both challenged and inspired by Pearce’s work to reexamine my personal footprint and to consider what changes I can make to contribute to global social and environmental change. Taken together, Clawson’s and Pearce’s books provide an excellent roadmap for serious reflection on the impact of both personal and communal lifestyle choices.While I may not be able to do everything, these books reminded me that this is no excuse for doing nothing. n

Secret Faith in the Public Square

Constantine era people would not join the church to improve their social status. Kierkegaard related concealment of

By Jonathan Malesic religious identity to the need to prevent Brazos Press Christians from doing good in the hope of getting credit for their actions. He saw Reviewed by Stephen P. Hoffmann reciprocity as a mark of acculturation by bourgeois society. Malesic connects Jonathan Malesic’s Secret Faith in the Public Bonhoeffer’s call for Christians to be Square: An Argument for the Concealment of reticent about their faith to his concept Christian Identity appeared only a short of “cheap grace.” Christians should be time after The Family: The Secret Funda- hesitant to use grace to justify subordimentalism at the Heart of American Power, nating the radical implications of the Jeff Sharlet’s exposé of evangelical net- gospel to the necessities of the world. working in Washington.

Interpreting this tradition for Malesic shares Sharlet’s concerns American Christians, Malesic takes issue about the entanglement of religion and with Stanley Hauerwas, for whom the politics. However, while Sharlet’s pur- church must be a model community pose is to warn that covert religious lob- standing as an alternative to the powers bying is a threat to democracy, Malesic’s that be. This presumes a degree of holiis to show that promoting a Christian ness in the church that is inconsistent identity in politics, business, entertain- with its need to rely on God’s grace, ment, or any other area of public life according to Malesic. If even Hauerwas’ Dr. Laura Hartley serves as associate dean of corrupts Christian witness. Confession radically countercultural public theology the Templeton Honors College and instructor of faith has become a means of gaining endangers the autonomy of the church, of communication studies at Eastern University. more votes, sales, or opportunities instead Malesic’s counterweight is a heavy one She tries to live responsibly with her husband of being a basis for sacrificial love of indeed. He looks to a “strong sense of and two children in Upper Darby, Pa. neighbor. He seeks neither to secularize transcendence” and a commitment to public life nor to discourage believers “neighbor love” as protecting the church’s from making faith-based decisions about distinctive identity, but it is not clear voting, spending, or any other interac- how this is sufficient for maintaining that tions with the social systems they inhabit. identity. Malesic’s theory of the “secret But Malesic does desire to restore a faith” is an important contribution to the proper balance between the cultivation discussion of how one should relate faith of the faith and its proclamation.To this to public life. But one need not be a end he commends a Christian tradition “culture warrior” to question his assumpof secrecy as the counterweight needed. tion that a profession of Christianity, Malesic explicates the discipline of especially by American evangelicals, secrecy as a minority tradition with deep usually leads to misunderstanding or roots in Christian theology. He focuses corruption of the faith. n on three key figures: Cyril (bishop of Jerusalem in the mid-fourth century), Stephen P. Hoffmann is chair of the departKierkegaard, and Bonhoeffer. Cyril ment of political science at Taylor University withheld knowledge of the creed and in Upland, Ind. sacraments from prospective Christians (catechumens) until they were deemed Do you find our reviews helpful? ready to accept the demands of disciWhat kind of books would you like pleship. The “discipline of the secret” to see on these pages? Send your was not to protect Christians from perfeedback to kristyn@esa-online.org. secution but to ensure that in the postPRISM 2 0 1 0

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OFF THE SHELF THE JUSTICE PROJECT

reform? Why not? Have you ever stopped to think about the context for God’s oft-quoted words from Jeremiah 29:11: Edited by Brian McLaren, “I know the plans I have for you, plans Elisa Padilla, to prosper you and not to harm you, and Ashley Bunting Seeber plans to give you hope and a future”?

Baker Books Do you think nonprofits are the only agencies that can do justice, or can busiReviewed by Erika Bai Siebels nesses do justice, too? Do you know For those of us who consider ourselves where your food comes from? Your informed veterans of justice — and for energy? Why should these things matter? those of us who are well-read and well- These are just a few of the questions intentioned but make good excuses about that will get you musing once you start why we don’t take the time to do jus- the book.

You might also find yourself thinktice — The Justice Project provides a wealth of stories to challenge our assumptions. ing about eye-jabbing quotes like this Essay after essay reveals what God has one, from Archbishop Desmond Tutu: to say about justice, God’s heart for “If you are neutral in a situation of justice, where the church in North injustice, you have chosen the side of the America has gone wrong in violating oppressor.”

Rather than outlining and whining justice (our relationship with land, Native peoples, and energy is just a start), and about all the injustices we face (both how we can take steps toward finding a historically and currently), the book encourages us with stories of Christtrue sense of justice.

Have you ever considered what and followers who are doing something to whom you’re supporting when you buy combat deforestation, apathy, and a sleepa certain product? Do you vote on a ing church that needs to be awakened single issue when it comes time for elec- to care about the poor and the “least of tion, and is that issue campaign finance these” — because God does and because we must.

How can we get there? The authors offer glimpses into their own struggles to better discern and do justice. Some common themes emerge. Listen — even when you don’t want to, even when you’d rather get up and walk away, especially when you think you’ll be offended. Invite others to the table to tell their stories and hear them out, recognizing the other as a fellow sojourner created in the image of God, not as an enemy. Repent. Be humble. Lead by serving. Love, like Christ did, even unto death. n

Jesus & Justice

By Peter G. Heltzel Yale University Press Reviewed by Mae Elise Cannon

Written with rhythm and style, Jesus & Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics offers a sharp critical analysis of the progression of evangelicalism and its expression in the public square. Heltzel addresses the historical significance of two primary streams of evangelicalism at the intersection of theology and politics while uprooting America’s “original sin” — racism. He highlights the teaching and praxis of two prominent Christian leaders, Carl F. H. Henry and Martin Luther King, Jr., acknowledging their contributions toward public dialogue and modern-day perceptions of the intersection between faith and justice as well as their continued influence through subsequent evangelical movements.

King is traditionally viewed from the framework of black Protestant liberalism, but Heltzel suggests that this unnecessarily limits King and neglects to acknowledge the parallels of King’s theology to evangelicalism. Heltzel expands the scope of the evangelical tradition by redefining its genealogy to be more inclusive of other prophetic black Christian voices, such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Fanny Lou Hamer, and others.

He argues that these voices emerge from the underbelly of the evangelical community while inspiring transformation through their prophetic witness, call to justice, and peaceful advocacy for social reform. King manifested these attributes and placed emphasis on both Erika Bai Siebels is trying to figure out how personal and systematic transformation to do justice in her neighborhood in Troy, in pursuit of his beloved community.

N.Y. and has written about restorative justice Heltzel asserts that out of the suffering for PRISM. of enslaved African Americans hope emerged in the theological truth of Jesus PRISM 2010

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and his teachings. King, an example of this heritage of black suffering, rested on the truth that “Jesus Christ was the stone of hope, a refuge in the storm, and an inspiring example of the nonviolent struggle for justice.”

From King’s legacy a stream of evangelical movements arose that were committed to both personal transformation and social reform. Jesus & Justice tells the story of two such movements: the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) and Sojourners/ Call to Renewal. John Perkins, cofounder of CCDA, is one of the pioneer leaders of “prophetic evangelicalism.”

Similarly, Jim Wallis, a white social activist, has been compelled by his faith to put justice into action through advocacy and political engagement. Both Perkins and Wallis exemplify the prophetic evangelicalism that emerged out of King’s legacy, placing emphasis on Christ as the one who suffers with and is the perfect embodiment of both love and justice.

Carl F. H. Henry was also a pioneer of the Christian faith and was considered by many to be the “theological

architect of evangelicalism.” If King’s influence was from the underbelly of the evangelical movement, Henry’s was at its very core. As both a theology professor at Fuller Seminary and the editor of Christianity Today, Henry carried great influence as a public theologian, leading the way for a conservative stream of evangelicalism. His legacy contributed to the emergence of several Christian movements, including Focus on the Family and the National Association of Evangelicals. While Henry’s emphasis was on the kingdom of God and personal righteousness, he expressed an uneasy conscience about racism and injustice. Although not actively involved in the civil rights movement, Henry used his voice to call for increased evangelical involvement in social action through public policy and other methods of reform. His theology acknowledged God’s heart for justice and for racial equality, but his own personal life did not manifest significant social action. He failed to acknowledge institutional racism and did little to rectify the horrors of racial inequality and injustice. Heltzel offers a strong and well-substantiated critique of Henry and his influence upon white evangelicalism and its failure to develop “theological vision, social analysis, and collective motivation” in response to the problem of racism.

Despite Henry’s and other white evangelical’s negligence, Heltzel leaves the reader with great hope that a new stream of evangelicalism is emerging.

Jesus & Justice is convincing in its argument that evangelicalism must be viewed in its historical context of white oppression and black suffering. Heltzel says, “Evangelicalism is singing and listening to the blues; it is evolving and growing green.” The blues represent the horrors and tragedy of black suffering, and the green shows the growing holism of evangelicalism inclusive of the ideas of peace and justice.With the intePRISM 2010

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gration of these two streams, we are reminded that “Evangelicalism is moving, and moving quickly, to embody justice around the world.” n Mae Elise Cannon is executive pastor of Hillside Covenant Church in Walnut Creek, Calif., and the author of The Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World (IVP, 2009).

Trails of Hope and Terror

By Miguel A. De La Torre Orbis Books Reviewed by Glen Peterson Social ethics professor Miguel de la Torre takes immigration reform to the desert, transforming it from dry policy debate to complex and compelling stories about real people. Along with fellow professors and students from Denver’s Iliff School of Theology, De La Torre walks the Sonoran desert to meet migrants and learn why they immigrate, then trans-

lates and tells their stories with passion.

The testimonies found in Trails of Hope are deeply personal.We meet folks who undertake long journeys to cross international borders at great risk of injury and even death — people whose children need to be fed, whose livelihoods are destroyed by global economic forces beyond their control, whose hometowns are void of opportunities for economic improvement. This book is not designed as a case for one side of an argument; nor is it an intellectual exercise from the ivory tower of academia.

It is a call to action, a call for justice and compassion.

The book also includes testimonies of those who provide water and first aid to migrants in near-death situations — aid that comes too late for some. It shares stories about human smugglers, vigilantes trying to enforce their own interpretation of the laws, border patrol agents barely trained for the difficulties of their jobs, ranchers and property owners from both sides of the border, church workers, theologians, students, and the family members of immigrants.

While the book raises many questions and offers few answers, one thing is made clear from this cloud of witnesses: A humanitarian crisis is being played out daily along the US/Mexico border.

Trails of Hope and Terror is organized along such topics as borders, economics, myths, families, the politics of fear, varying perspectives, and ethical responses.

A poem, prayer, or song accompanies each chapter.

De La Torre seeks corresponding themes in the biblical testimony of migrating people, such as the narratives of Abraham and Lot, in which arrogance, overabundance, and unconcern for the poor and the sojourner incurred God’s wrath.The history of the Hebrew people’s liberation — migrant people who were mistreated as slaves in Egypt — is a constant reminder of God’s concern for those considered foreigners. The

story of Joseph and Mary, who fled to protect their firstborn from the murderous hand of an insecure tyrant king, demonstrates God’s empathy for and identification with immigrants.

“In the act of God becoming human,” writes De La Torre, “God redraws the borders between people, making strangers into neighbors and aliens into members of a common family.” n Glen Peterson is a writer, catalyst, and activist living in Southern California where he volunteers for Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and is a consultant with capacitypartnership.com. He writes about immigration reform at LeviticusTwentyFour22. blogspot.com.

WHEN HELPING HURTS

By Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert Moody Publishers Reviewed by Rodolpho Carrasco “Have you ever done anything to hurt poor people?” asks Dr. John Perkins in the foreword to the timely book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself.

Evangelical America is awash in books calling for greater engagement in ministry to the poor via direct help and social justice advocacy. Much of the material in these books is introductory, focusing on the theological case for holistic gospel engagement and then providing starting points for ministry.

But not many approach the topic with a narrative thread that constantly returns to the core premise that not all help is helpful.

How can help not help? Here’s how: In the introduction, co-author Brian Fikkert tells of “helping” a suffering woman in Kampala, Uganda, by ponying up $8 so she could purchase penicillin.

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short — to fight an infection she had developed after asking her neighbor (who complied) to treat her tonsillitis by cutting out her tonsils with a kitchen knife.

Fikkert felt great about it at the time, but the realization eventually dawned on him that his help had undermined the local believers with whom the woman related.The purpose of this book is to explain how his help (and similar efforts) didn’t — in the long run — help. But I’ll give you a little spoiler here. Fikkert writes that he “failed to consider the local assets that already existed in this slum, assets that included small amounts of money, a church, a pastor, and the social bonds of the 100 refugees attending the small-business class” that he had journeyed to Uganda to teach over a two-week period. “The truth is that there was more than enough time to walk back to the church... and ask people there to help. While the refugees were extremely poor, they could have mustered the eight cents per person to pay for the penicillin,” thus deepening a bond of relationship among people who would continue to live

together long after he left the scene.

Applying long-term solutions in times of short-term crisis — that’s the challenge for believers who desire to be used effectively by God. From this starting point, Fikkert and co-author Steve Corbett provide background, theology, and practical experience that will help churches, small groups, and individuals to grasp concepts that appear basic but are difficult to implement in practice.

Their definition of poverty as broken relationships in four spheres (with God, self, others, and creation) will help readers assess the effectiveness of their own ministries and outreach efforts.

Asset-based development, do’s and don’ts of short-term missions, and overviews of current practices in wealth generation and poverty alleviation are right on target.

The practical experience of the authors is bedrock to this approach. I’ve been in the poverty-fighting trenches for decades. Some things you understand only as you do them. This book will not replace experience. But inasmuch as concepts for effective poverty alleviation can be taught didactically, When Helping Hurts does the trick. In the words of Dr. Amy Sherman,“While accessible to beginners, [this book] is rich with insights for veterans, too.” I concur. n

A Story of Rhythm and Grace

By Jimi Calhoun Brazos Reviewed by J.D. Buhl If you own Dr. John’s breakthrough album, Gumbo, then you know Jimi Calhoun. That the former bassist does not mention this 1972 classic until page 73 illustrates why the tempo lags in his well-intentioned book. He wants his past to serve only as support for his present as a pastor, church planter, and missionary in the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and for what he has to tell the evangelical community today. While written in an easygoing, first-person style, this is not a memoir.

Every drop of a name, every memory of a gig must be justified. “They are intended to be much more than just tidbits of inside information” about his early years, he states, but such control over his material locks up the funk he was known for. Consequently, Rhythm and Grace: What the Church Can Learn

Rodolpho Carrasco is a contributing editor to PRISM, an associate director at Partners Worldwide in Grand Rapids, Mich., and a board member of TechMission. He served for 19 years at Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, Calif., an urban ministry providing programs for African American and Latino young people.

Sign up (ESA-online.org) for ESA’s ePistle, the free weekly electronic newsletter that provides timely action alerts, updates, and commentary in four topical areas.

from Rock & Roll about Healing the Racial Divide lacks a groove.

His concern is “race casting,” that unconscious maintenance of comfort and culture that, while not overt discrimination, makes for our modern obsession with “interpreting all human interaction through skin-colored lenses.” Such a topic is most effectively communicated by personal anecdotes and examples; here Calhoun is on the beat. “When I was a kid,” he muses, “I used to wonder what white Christians thought was going to happen once they went to heaven.” His guess — that they imagined a paradise divided into “designated areas for each different race to congregate” — says much about the skincolored shades the church continues to wear. “Race casting has caused whites to not see blacks for who they are, and blacks to not see who they can become,” he warns. This leads to his second topic, racialization, that which “predetermines which areas each race comes to accept as ‘theirs.’”

Calhoun is not certain that race, as it is usually thought of, even exists.

From the many personal stories he shares he constructs a parallel world where concepts of difference fail to dominate.

In rock music, those engaged have something else they are immediately concerned with. The moment brings its own priorities, and things like skin color or physical appearance are just not as important as the business at hand.

Calhoun wishes that Christians were so engrossed in furthering the kingdom of God that creaturely diversity would cease to be such a distraction.The antidote to racialization is not increased attention to race matters, but “becoming free of the word ‘race’ as a noun and an adjective.” n J.D. Buhl is a regular contributor to PRISM’s music column. See his review of Diane Birch on the next page.

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OFF THE SHELF Knowing Christ Today

By Dallas Willard HarperOne Reviewed by J. Monty Stewart “So what do you do as a pastor?”

This question has been posed to me throughout my career. Some feel that pastoring has to do with visiting the sick, conducting board meetings, and administering the sacraments. Others suspect it has something to do with deciding on proper worship styles and writing sermons. Dallas Willard asserts that it is about knowing Christ and sharing that knowledge with others.

In his new book, Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge, Willard states that for too long Christians have separated faith from knowledge.

In his introduction he asks: Isn’t it impossible “to know the things you believe as a Christian? Doesn’t Christian faith automatically relegate you to an intellectual slum?” He answers these questions with an emphatic “no”: Knowledge is a friend of faith.

“Just believe,” we often hear pastors

say, but Willard asks why we accept this from pastors when we expect the other professionals we visit — surgeons, mechanics, accountants­ — to actually know (rather than simply believe in) the field they represent.“Rational and responsible people are those who strive to base their beliefs and actions upon their knowledge,” he writes. But the church,Willard suggests, seems to have relinquished knowledge to the secular world.

“We can fail to know because we do not want to know,” he says, using the prophet Hosea’s story to show how lack of knowledge often leads Christians to a faulty worldview.“If you really want to know Christ now, you have somehow to set aside the cloud of images and impressions that rule the popular as well as the academic mind, Christian and nonChristian alike.You must try to think of him as an actual human being in a peculiar human context who actually has had the real historical effects he did, up to the present.”

Willard shows a God who is beyond the deist view.This is a God who acts in the world, the evidence of which is played out in everyday life in miraculous ways.

Willard states,“So the factuality of a major miracle in this world can be known by those who would like to know and who are willing to give adequate consideration to the available evidence.”

The knowledge of Christ is then lived out in our spiritual lives as we move and have our being in Christ every day, as we function as citizens of the kingdom of God: living in humility, being righteous on the inside, putting agape love into practice, implementing the spiritual disciplines, and becoming the church.

Fleshing out what agape love means for the church, Willard uses words that some evangelicals may find daunting: “In explicitly Christian terms ‘pluralism’ has to do with accepting those who don’t agree with us as our ‘neighbors’ and loving them as we love ourselves — with treating them as we would like to be treated PRISM 2009

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if we were in their place.” In this post 9/11 world, Willard argues, Christians often end up tolerating but not loving their neighbors. Christ loves the Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists, many of whom live authentic lives, and we should love them as well.

So what is the job of the pastor?

According to Willard, pastors must do everything necessary to gain the knowledge of Christ, then share that knowledge with the disciples in the church, who take it out into the world. “Divine service is life.”

The next time I’m asked that question, I hope I remember to say,“I am growing in the knowledge of Christ so that I may share it with the nations.” What higher calling? n J. Monty Stewart is the pastor of the Kona Church of the Nazarene in Hawaii.

Scouting the Divine

By Margaret Feinberg Zondervan Reviewed by Kristyn Komarnicki Like members of the early church, contemporary Christians consider God’s Word to be alive with truth and meaning, and we search the pages of our Bible for insights and guidance. But unlike the earliest readers of the Scriptures, most of us miss out on the profound richness of its language. What sounds merely poetic to us today was to them pregnant with tangible, sensory substance and depth.

We might know how to use an online concordance (the whole Bible, in 41 languages, at our fingertips), but how many of us understand at a visceral level that when Jesus called himself “the gate for the sheep” (John 10:7) he meant he literally lays his own body down as a barrier between us and our predators? Do we ever

stop to wonder why Jesus, after identifying himself as “the true vine,” identifies God as the lowly vinedresser (John 15:1), the hands-on guy who gets dirty clipping and trudging through the fields, as opposed to the distant but powerful vineyard owner? While the words “milk and honey” bring to mind a moisturizer we might pick up at the mall, do we know that for Moses and his crew these ingredients implied a land that was not only abundant but ecologically balanced?

These are a few of the fascinating insights explored in Margaret Feinberg’s Scouting the Divine: My Search for God in Wine,Wool, and Wild Honey. In love with the Scriptures but yearning to connect at a deeper level, Feinberg set out to see the Word through the eyes of contemporary agrarians, folks who experience on a daily basis many of the realities common in biblical times. Befriending a vintner in Northern California, a shepherdess in Oregon, a Nebraska farmer, and a beekeeper in Colorado, Feinberg delves into their worlds for a brief time, studying the staggering intricacies of a beehive, watching sheep respond to their master’s voice, discovering the commitment required to train grape vines to produce the stuff of fine wine, and marveling at how wheat

and tares look identical until crushed to see what they’re really made of.

Delighting in the sensory details of her experiences, Feinberg draws spiritual parallels from each new discovery, winsomely sharing her own struggles to trust the Lord as instinctively as sheep trust their shepherd, to rejoice in God’s discipline even as vines respond to the pruner’s seemingly painful (and sometimes extreme) slicing, to patiently await the harvest in her life just as the farmer knows he cannot rush his crops, to enjoy without envy her role in the body of Christ in the same way that bees commit wholeheartedly to the particular job they are given.

Joining Feinberg on this journey into the heartland of wonderment will enhance your reading of the Scriptures from here on out. I understand such verses as “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103) and “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4) with a new appreciation — one I can taste, smell, savor, and digest. Once you’ve read this book¸ you’ll never again read the Good Book in quite the same way. n Kristyn Komarnicki is the editor of PRISM.

Money, Greed, and God

By Jay W. Richards HarperOne Reviewed by Bruce Wydick Twenty years ago when I was a student in Ron Sider’s economic justice class at Eastern University, we engaged in a class debate between capitalism and socialism.

I was drafted to play the role of “Federico No-es-rico,” a left-wing Marxist dressed in a camouflage uniform. My friend played a Friedman-esque character in a business suit who believed that free markets could solve all the world’s problems. For me the PRISM 2009

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debate was the highlight of the semester.

During my subsequent studies at Berkeley and in 12 years as an economics professor, I’ve had the privilege of reading a great number of articles and books on the role of markets in society, participating in numerous debates, and guiding my own students through the same questions we pursued at Eastern.

In Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem, Jay W. Richards leads us through his answers to these questions. Among the many books that I’ve read in this area, Richards’ is one of the best, especially for being written by a non-economist.

But like many works on economics by authors with backgrounds outside of economics, some of his main points fail to point out important nuances, qualifications, and limitations of the market mechanism that are understood by those with a deeper understanding of how markets actually work (or, in some cases, don’t.)

The book is built around what Richards sees as eight commonly held myths about capitalism. These include the belief that trade requires a winner and a loser, the belief that wealth is transferred and not created, and the belief that the essence of capitalism is greed. I

would boil down his book to three major themes, each of which most mainstream economists would generally support: (1) exchange is good; (2) wealth among the wealthy doesn’t create poverty among the poor; (3) capitalism is the best economic system in a world where people act in self-interest.We shouldn’t compare it to heaven — just to the other, lousier alternatives. No problems here, although these are not really original ideas, just well articulated in Richards’ lucid and entertaining prose.

The moderate discomfort I have with the book stems from Richards’ failure to place any boundaries around the benefits of the free market. For example, we know with certainty that the free market fails in both efficiency and its ability to maximize social welfare in the presence of “externalities.” Externalities are spillover effects from economic activity that impinge upon third parties or the community at large, such as pollution. The book does not even pay lip service to the problem of needing to correct the market for externalities, something that undergraduates learn in their first course in microeconomics. This is not a trivial omission.

Moreover, the market mechanism contains nothing to stop the “tragedy of the commons,” the tendency under a free market to over-exploit common-pool resources like water, forests, or grazing land.

As a result, no trained economist would ever posit that the free market alone could, for example, solve an issue such as global warming. But Richards devotes nearly an entire chapter to saying that he doesn’t think global warming is a big deal anyway.

Even more surprising is that in the middle of crises in financial markets and health insurance, there is little mention of the problem of market failure in the context of incomplete information between transacting parties. When two parties have unequal information in an economic transaction, the free market cannot produce its usual efficient outcome.

Economists understand that this infor-

mation problem is at the root of why the free market is failing us in these sectors, but again, no mention.

Both of these areas constitute arenas in which we believe markets fail, not from convincing heuristics and ideological hand waving but rather by mathematical proof and empirical evidence. The former is commonly accepted by all economists, the latter the subject of the trio of Nobel prizes given in economics in 2001. Again, these are not trivial exceptions to the generally beneficial properties of free markets. Climate change, financial market meltdown, and healthcare represent some of the biggest challenges of our time.

While I agreed with at least 85 percent of Richards’ points (especially those made earlier in the book), Christians who take unabashedly conservative (or liberal) stands on every issue generally make me suspicious. The great battle of our time is not between a (good) conservative force and an (evil) liberal one. It’s always more complicated than that, which someone of Richards’ intellect should work harder to appreciate. This being said, Richards’ book is excellent and enjoyable reading for those concerned about the debate over free markets and world capitalism. n

this book more than a spiritual travelogue. Her year-long studies in Jerusalem motivated the research and preparation for this pilgrimage; her seminary education in church history and later work in Middle Eastern studies strengthen the historical connections throughout the book. Her pastoral experience translates into an ability not only to initiate conversation about spirituality but also to listen deeply to people’s stories. On one level, her pilgrimage is a contemporary journey made with Bruce Wydick is professor of economics at the two friends. On another level, she travels with historical figures like Felix Fabri, University of San Francisco.

St. Francis of Assisi, and the apostle Paul.

Through their writings and biographies, Park is in constant dialogue with these Sacred Encounters figures about the nature of pilgrimage, sacred Middle Eastern places, and God.

By Tamara Park In each place she visits, Park looks for InterVarsity Press benches,a level meeting place that becomes a metaphor for dialogue. Park sits beside Reviewed by Jenell Williams Paris strangers and asks them to describe God. Sacred Encounters from Rome to Jerusalem These encounters are sometimes silly, somedelivers what it promises.With two friends, times profound, and sometimes obscured Pastor Tamara Park set out on a pilgrim- by language difference, but taken as a age to encounter God for herself and to whole, they offer powerful insight into initiate along the way conversations with the many ways we try to connect with people of various cultures about how they others and with God. The chapters of Sacred Encounters are experience God. Park’s experience and education make titled with the 25 stops on the author’s PRISM 2009

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journey. At times I wished for more depth of insight about a particular location or conversation partner, but the breadth of the book is remarkable — from Charlotte, N.C., to Rome to Albania to Jerusalem.

Sacred Encounters offers valuable insight into the spiritual life and lessons of a single female pastor. Its biographical and historical material offer educational value, and its narrative — which includes travel mishaps and the promise of romance — keeps the reader engaged.

It is a good find for readers of travel memoir, spiritual memoir, women’s spirituality, church history, or contemporary Middle Eastern issues. n Jenell Williams Paris is a professor of anthropology at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa.

Fallen Angel (DVD)

By David Di Sabatino Jester Media Reviewed by Al Tizon In 2006 director David Di Sabatino brought us Frisbee:The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher (2006), a documentary about the first bona fide evangelist of the countercultural Jesus Movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Now he brings us Fallen Angel: The Outlaw Larry Norman about the man who essentially provided the soundtrack for that movement. In both cases Di Sabatino portrays how these men served as conduits through which the Spirit of God powerfully moved people to faith in Christ, but also how flawed these human conduits were.Very flawed.

The cover of this latest offering on “father of Jesus Rock” Larry Norman, who died in February 2008, should bear the warning “May be harmful to Norman lovers,” because the trail of broken relationships, adultery, lies, and disingenuous business dealings does not jive with the (some say, self-generated) public image

of the Christian who was being persecuted by both church and world for his uncompromising faith.

Interviews with his first ex-wife, friends, members of the Solid Rock family of the 1970s, and former band members reveal a range of responses to these inconsistencies. While some have concluded that he was nothing more than a charlatan and a hypocrite, others say that he was a genuine brother in Christ who, despite being high-functioning and charismatic, had deep psychological and emotional problems that prevented him from establishing enduring intimacy with others.

“He died a lonely, broken man,” says Randy Stonehill. As Norman’s closest friend, Stonehill appropriately dominates the interviews as he provides both fond memories and sobering insights into the man. In many ways, Stonehill and others who were most hurt by Norman turn out to be the real heroes in the film, as they found ways to extend Christlike forgiveness to the one whom, in one form or another, betrayed them. This explains in part why after watching it I reached for my Stonehill LPs and not Norman’s to put on my turntable (that’s right, a turntable), as the film evoked in me the need to walk down memory lane.

On a pure entertainment level, if one has any interest in the Jesus Movement of the 1960s through the ’70s, this documentary is a must-see. The rare pictures and film footage will satiate any Jesus Music connoisseur. The inside scoop on what really happened in the Solid Rock community—an idyllic, artsy, avant-garde, Christian community experiment where something went terribly and suddenly and mysteriously wrong—is both compelling drama and good journalism.

And the soundtrack, which Stonehill provided by redoing songs from his definitive Welcome to Paradise and The Sky is Falling albums, demonstrates that some of that early Jesus Music has actually appreciated through time.

There are some gaps in the story that Di Sabatino chose for some reason not to mention, such as anything about Norman’s second marriage (to Stonehill’s first wife, to add to the drama), which also failed, but not before the birth of their son Michael. There was also no mention of Phydeaux Records, the music company that Norman had started after Solid Rock went under. Despite these oversights, this film has no rival in peering into the deeply flawed Christian rock-’n’-roller named Larry Norman.

As one among many whom Norman impacted with his music (see my May/ June 2008 PRISM postmortem tribute to him), I had a hard time watching this film. However, the hurt that truth brings will inevitably yield positive fruit. In fact, I’m beginning to taste it already, as I chew on the absolute scandal of God’s grace, which not only shows mercy and forgiveness to the undeserving, but also uses those very same broken, sinful people to accomplish great things in the world.

I suppose all of our heroes of faith would fall under this category. To the extent that this is true, Larry Norman is in good company. n Al Tizon directs ESA’s Word & Deed Network and teaches at Palmer Seminary.

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OFF THE SHELF The Hole in Our Gospel

By Richard Stearns Thomas Nelson Reviewed by Jan Johnson The “hole” in our gospel, according to World Vision President Rich Stearns, is that it too often lacks “tangible compassion for the sick and the poor, as well as biblical justice, efforts to right the wrongs that are so prevalent in our world.”

Stearns maintains that the gospel is much more than a private transaction with God in which individuals secure eternity in heaven; God expects that his kingdom within us will change and challenge our fallen world in the here and now. The gospel doesn’t help us to escape the world but rather to take part in redeeming the world.

Stearns takes the Western church to task in a direct yet artful way by asking readers to imagine two different churches: a growing American congregation with a decent focus on missions and typically plentiful facilities and programs; a growing church in a developing country that is intimately involved in helping its neighbors and has almost no facilities or programs. He insists that the former is not a “bad” church, but it is preoccupied with programs and oblivious to the latter church’s suffering. He asks if Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 8:13-15 about how the churches spread out their resources so that no one was in need wouldn’t be a good idea today as well.

He illustrates just how good an idea it still is by recounting stories from churches in developing countries so that readers get a glimpse of powerful gospel communities without the amenities so prevalent in America.

While this book covers territory that PRISM readers are familiar with — statistics about world poverty, principles

for dealing with it, pertinent Scripture — it also relates the author’s struggle in moving from being president of a luxury goods company (Lenox, maker of fine tableware) to becoming president of World Vision. He initially told a recruiter that he was unfit for the World Vision position because it required being part CEO, part Mother Teresa, and part Indiana Jones. His honesty about his reluctance makes this book a good read and an appropriate gift for people, including many church leaders, who esteem success in business.

Because the book includes a study guide, it can also be used in small groups to broaden participants’ vision for the holistic gospel. The five-session study guide includes plentiful questions, an action step, and a prayer, and it also points to an interactive website (TheHoleIn OurGospel.com) which provides additional resources and a space for dialogue where readers can share their thoughts, ideas, action plans, and experiences. n Jan Johnson (JanJohnson.org) is a spiritual director, speaker, and author of 19 books, including Invitation to the Jesus Life.

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A People’s History of Christianity

By Diana Butler Bass HarperOne Reviewed by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre A cover, as we all know, is not the thing by which to judge a book. But the cover of A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story, deliberately reminiscent of Howard Zinn’s best-selling A People’s History of the United States, delivers an important part of the book’s message. Remember Zinn’s radical retelling of American history? Remember how he affirmed good news about the power and resiliency of ordinary people when they united against exploitation, abuses of authority, and unjust systems?

Remember his willingness to acknowledge the dark side in order to get to the deep place where authentic hope may still be found? This book is going to do some similar upsetting and reordering.

Diana Butler Bass calls her book “a history of hope.” Like Zinn, she considers what has survived all the cultural cataclysms, schisms, hairpin turns, sectarian agendas, misreadings of Scripture, misleadings of the faithful, and divisions among Christians over the past two millennia.They have always been a disheveled lot, uncertain about how to live together and not very good, on the whole, at claiming the peace that passes all understanding. But every age has left its legacy — not only of doctrine and documents but also of a way of life embodied in the lives of recognized saints and of inconspicuous individuals whose practices were like the leaven that makes the whole loaf rise.

Bass addresses the project of corrective or restorative historiography in her introduction, where she acknowledges her debt to the man who radically reframed American history for so many:

“Like Zinn, I sidestep issues of orthodoxy and instead focus on the moments when Christian people really acted like Christians, when they took seriously the call of Jesus to love God and love their neighbors as themselves.”This appears to be a simple agenda, but it is actually a courageous experiment in creating a new cartography for an old landscape, mapping the byways where a “generative Christianity” has found its way in an inhospitable world — and sometimes an inhospitable church. The history of the church is often told in largely institutional, doctrinal, and political terms.

Though we have many lives of recognized saints, it has been harder to find stories of the ordinary faithful who were changed and reshaped by a faith that was, explicitly in the early church, a “Way” of life — day-to-day practices of caring for friends and strangers, speaking truth to power, and living faithfully when doing so entailed risk of life and property, social respectability, or family ties.

Each age, Bass points out, has articulated particular devotional practices and ethics in response to its political and social realities: imperial domination; threats of

war; neighbors from other faith traditions; institutional consolidation; revolution; and inventions that undermined stabilities, such as the telescope, gunpowder, the printing press, television, and blogs.Though Bass’ division of Christian history into “periods” is not new, her characterization of them possesses an exhilarating freshness. Early (1st- to 6thcentury) Christians lived subversively, communally, hospitably, with a common commitment to peacemaking. Medieval Christians (500-1450) left both a visible legacy of stunning architecture and a highly structured spirituality expressed in liturgy, monastic practices, and theological debate. Reformed Christians (14501650) focused on the Word — reading, writing, speaking, singing, and translating texts for the “priesthood of all believers.” Modern Christians (16501945) — shaped by secular learning, “enlightenment” science, cross-cultural access, and the politics of nation-states — worked across deep lines of division.

And contemporary Christians (1945today) find themselves in a “river” (a metaphor the author develops in generous and surprising ways) where political and theological crosscurrents mingle as waters rise, allowing strange mergings of faith traditions in the interests of spiritual renewal and planetary survival.

The urgencies Christians feel in our generation are not new, though they may be driven by new motives: pacifism, experiments in intentional communal living, resistance to imperialism, disengaging faith from patriotism, assimilation of multiple cultural traditions, 12-step programs, interest in Celtic spiritual practices, disputes over the use of images in worship, mother-language for God, ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, creation care, resistance to literalistic reading of Scripture, participation of women in church leadership. All these issues and experiments have histories. To trace those histories is to see how the Body of Christ has

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grown in its understanding of what it means to claim citizenship in the “City of God.” Given the inevitable constraints of a narrative that encompasses two millennia, the book is remarkably coherent, lively, and helpful in providing a sense of how the communion of saints who have preceded us and who surround us lift and hold us as we make our way on this journey with and toward the one who assured us, “I am the Way.” n Marilyn Chandler McEntyre is a Fellow at the Gaede Institute for the Liberal Arts at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif.

She is the author of Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, just out from Eerdmans.

The New Shape of World Christianity

By Mark A. Noll IVP Academic Reviewed by Benjamin L. Hartley Eight pages.That is how much attention the textbook for my first church history survey course at seminary gave to the history of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The textbook was Christianity: A Social and Cultural History (Macmillan, 1991), and it was co-authored by Mark Noll.That was 12 years ago. Much has changed since then, and Noll’s latest book, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith, provides readers with a good introduction to what Noll calls a “cascade of scholarship” in the area of world Christianity — an area to which Noll himself is a relative newcomer.

Noll introduces this subject by showing his readers the extent to which world Christianity reflects a familiarly American style of Christianity characterized by entrepreneurial faith, lack of state-sup-

ported religious institutions, responsiveness to urbanization, and a host of other social factors.

By telling the story of world Christianity with reference to an American template of religious development, Noll runs the risk of appearing to be the “ugly American” who sees all the world to be, well, like America! But Noll strenuously tries to prevent his readers from coming to this conclusion. His thesis is simply that the way American Christianity developed in the 19th century has intriguing similarities to the way evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity has developed beyond Western lands. This similarity does not mean that “Americans are dictating to the world,” but it does mean that the study of world Christianity may benefit from studying how Christianity developed in North America.

Noll’s central thesis is compelling in many ways, and his book certainly can be a good introduction for readers who know something about American Christianity but very little about Christianity elsewhere. Such readers can easily find a few “hooks” to connect their historical awareness across continents. But Noll’s argument that there is a correlation (not causation) between American Christianity and Christianity elsewhere is less convincing when the particular details of any given geographical and historical context are examined more carefully. In the first place, some of what Noll describes as an “American model” may also be said of the development of Christianity in other places well before Christianity’s expansion in North America.Evangelicalism in 17th-century Eastern Europe is but one example where revivalism took place within a chaotic setting similar to the American frontier a century later.

Second, because Noll points to the case of Korea without any reference to the centuries-long work of indigenous Roman Catholics in that country prior to Protestant missionary work in the

1880s, he fails to point out the ways this earlier Roman Catholic period of Christianity’s expansion in Korea departed from an American model. Noll ascribes to Protestant Bible translation such innovations as the hangul script, which was actually pioneered by Roman Catholics a century earlier, although more with liturgical texts than with the Bible.

Many examples of Christianity on the African continent today can likewise be noted, which would leave one wondering to what extent such manifestations were essentially American in their makeup.

The influence of African traditional religions and Islam on African Christianity, for example, departs rather significantly from American experience.

One could argue, however, that such criticisms about particularity are inevitable for a book that seeks to make a complex area of study more accessible through historical generalizations. Noll is well aware that individual contexts are complicated. That his first book on world Christianity would seek to make connections to the field of American religious history that he knows so well and that it would sometimes make gen-

eralizations a bit too easily are understandable. So long as the reader also keeps this in mind, The New Shape of World Christianity remains a valuable contribution for those who would like an excellent introduction to a growing area of historical scholarship. His suggestions for further reading and helpful charts and graphs about the shape of the American missionary force and the use of the Jesus Film around the world are in themselves worth a careful review.

What is abundantly clear is that this topic now must unquestionably be given far more than eight pages in any seminary’s church history survey course. n Benjamin L. Hartley is associate professor of Christian mission at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

The Next Evangelicalism

By Soong-Chan Rah InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Ning Zhang Two unambiguous reactions will surely be provoked by Soong-Chan Rah’s message in The New Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.

Some people will embrace it enthusiastically; others will cringe and cover their ears. As I read through the book, I often compared Rah to a biblical-era prophet — people will either want to follow him or assassinate him.

Rah is calling the North American church to seek healing for its captivity to white,Western cultural trappings and to embrace a new evangelicalism that is more humble, dynamic, and multiethnic.

Recognizing that Western captivity is already waning, he urges the American church to seek reconciliation and renewal but warns that reconciliation is never

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achieved without pain. Feeling disturbed, pained, and even guilty is a necessary step towards restoration.

Some might fear that Rah’s message of reconciliation will end up polarizing “us.” To this argument I can imagine Rah responding, “Who is ‘us’— white Anglo-Saxon Protestants in the United States? Or is ‘us’ the body of Christ regardless of skin color, speaking accent, or immigration status? Jesus came to polarize and distinguish — the weeds and the wheat, the goats and the sheep, those who enter through the narrow gate and those who travel the wide road. He has come to bring fire, not peace but division (Luke 12:49-53)! How differently Jesus conceives ‘us’ from how we do!

Jesus considers peace and reconciliation not according to color, ethnicity, or even family but according to our membership in the body of Christ!”

Rah’s book does not seek to inspire the superficial reconciliation of people but to realize true reconciliation within the body of Christ. This reconciliation of Christian brothers and sisters has long been lost, despite — or perhaps because of­ — the founding principles of this

Ning Zhang is assistant professor of anthropology and sociology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn. Her current research interests are in how globalization impacts grassroots organizations.

Do you find our reviews helpful? What kind of books would you like to see on these pages? Send your feedback to kristyn@esa-online.org.

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Celia Escudero Espadas

country. As Rah argues forcibly, “From Hellenistic philosophy to medieval thought to the Enlightenment and postmodernity, each phase of Western philosophy has put forth as its central tenet the primacy of the individual.” He points out that the American church has placed individual primacy at the center of its theology and ecclesiology and says that the church is “more likely to reflect the individualism of Western philosophy than the value of community found in Scripture.” All together, Rah argues, individualism, consumerism/materialism, and racism have shaped Western society and consequently shaped the American church, reducing Christian faith to an individual and pragmatic faith that exists along the line of personal likings, marketing efforts, and white privileges.

White churches are in decline, while immigrant, ethnic, and multiethnic churches are flourishing. The danger lies not so much in the fact that evangelicalism has long been held captive by its predominantly white cultural identity and history as it does in its lack of acknowledgement of this fact. Rah calls us to respond to this booming global Christianity, to reject the claim of cultural captivity no matter how comfortable we may be with it, and even to be willing to submit humbly to the authority and leadership of nonwhite Christians, for, as Jesus said, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” n

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OFF THE SHELF Salvation on the Small Screen?

“news,” variety shows, and Bible cartoons, she confronts some of her prejudices.

Salvation on the Small Screen? is not going to rock anyone’s world; TBN

By Nadia Bolz-Weber devotees will just be offended, and the Seabury Books rest of us will feel affirmed. On the other The Last TV Evangelist hand, religious media guru Phil Cooke’s The Last TV Evangelist: Why the Next Generation Couldn’t Care Less About Religious

By Phil Cooke Media and Why It Matters is squarely aimed Conversant Media Group at those already producing Christian media. Cooke points out that the “milReviewed by Alissa Wilkinson lennial” generation—those born between Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran minister 1980 and 1995—is having a direct effect who, as a sort of extreme sport, invited a on the way religious media evolves in bevy of friends to join her in watching the next decade, and he urges ministries Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and churches to wake up to this reality. bastion of televangelism, for a round- Cooke’s book confronts assumptions and the-clock marathon.The result is Salvation provides a basic blueprint for moving on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian forward, even in the rapidly changing Television, a wickedly funny meditation technological landscape.

One of the blurbs in the front of the on what appeared onscreen and the book says:“We love The LastTV Evangelist, reactions/discussions of the watchers.

Bolz-Weber’s disarming combination but if we published it, we would jeopof saracasm and thoughtfulness keeps the ardize our relationships with too many book from devolving into a screed. TV ministries.” It is signed “A major Scattered throughout the snark are poi- religious publisher.”

That, in a nutshell, explains the hurgnant thoughts on the shortcomings of her own tradition. She knows she’s not dles Cooke had to overcome in even in TBN’s target audience, but as she writing this book. He is a major conwatches the televangelists, apocalyptic sultant with many religious media companies and ministries today and as a result takes no sides on theology. His focus in this book is purely methodological: How has religious media changed? Who is driving the change?

How does this affect the way we approach Christian media in the future? Cooke is as spot-on as possible when making general assertions about the media trends of the future, particularly the movement toward what media theorist Henry Jenkins has called “convergence culture” —consumers becoming producers through digital photography and movies and other responsive technologies.

However, one problem with the book is the foregone conclusion that the Christian media is essentially good, and that we must necessarily adapt today’s PRISM 2009

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technologies to “reach people.” What’s lacking is a rigorous biblical defense of why the church ought to be utilizing the media at all. I would argue that the mere existence of a cultural form (say, flash mobs or reality television) should not necessarily lead to the church adopting that form. Rather each should be considered for the effect that it will have on the goals of Christ’s kingdom: restoring a broken world, building a community, spreading the truth.

This reactive attitude toward culture has been the way the church has operated over the last several decades, and it leads to the “copying” posture toward culture that Andy Crouch identifies in Culture Making.To be fair, Cooke delves into the hoped-for blurring of the lines between “Christian” and “secular” toward the end of the book, and he recognizes that organizations like Paulist Productions have been doing this successfully for some years now.

Cooke may be overlooking a subtle distinction when he implies that the increasing decline of Christian media is generational rather than cultural. Certainly, most millenials would rather watch paint dry than watch Christian television; on the other hand, so would my mother.

Bolz-Weber’s parents, too, are critical of such programming. Could it be that it’s not only the technology of the millenials that is driving the change but also a larger shifting culture which values relationship over message, sincerity over presentation, transformation over flash?

In the end, both books make it clear that the Christian media is reaching an inflection point, and that a massive shift is on the horizon. One only has to look to the efforts of the Obama campaign to see how technology can be successfully used to inspire, raise funds, proclaim a message—and even create the much yearned-for feeling of community.

Bolz-Weber and Cooke agree that the church must adapt as well. n Alissa Wilkinson is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She is the founding editor of The Curator (CuratorMagazine.com), an associate editor for Comment (Cardus. ca/comment), and on staff at International Arts Movement (IAMny.org).

Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers

By Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove InterVarsity Press

Claiborne and JonathanWilson-Hartgrove approach prayer much differently in their book Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals.

The authors take three biblical prayers (the Lord’s Prayer, John 17, and Ephesians 1:15-23) and teach believers how to pray. Their idea of prayer moves beyond the “me-ism” so often evident in the evangelical concept of a “personal walk with Christ” and guides the believer towards a life of action lived out in community. As they say in the introduction, “Prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants us to do.”

The Lord’s Prayer invites us to pray and live in community. This prayer encourages action. It prompts the believer to look at the poor, the oppressed, the economy, and even politics through the lens of a kingdom ethic.

The authors took the time in 2003 to go to Iraq, at the outset of the United States’ invasion of this country, and live out the Lord’s Prayer. Their thought is that the “most dangerous place to be for Christians is in safety and comfort.”

The idea is that the church should live out this prayer, becoming the answer to

Reviewed by J. Monty Stewart The Magic 8 Ball was a wonderful toy created in 1946. One would ask it a yesor-no question, shake it, and turn it upside down to receive an answer. The Magic 8 Ball would offer such answers as “Outlook good,” “My source says no,” or “You may rely on it.” Many a child has sought answers from this shiny black globe over the years.

Sadly many Christians have taken the Magic 8 Ball approach to their prayer life.We want prayer to be a talisman that makes God answer in a satisfying—or at least an unambiguous—way. But Shane

a hurting world.

John 17 is often referred to as the “High Priestly Prayer.” The authors use their discussion of this prayer—which cries out for unity, love, and action—to call for distinctiveness in the kingdom life. In a church world that strives so hard to be relevant, we need a vision of the kingdom that does not pander to the world’s politics. Christians need to see themselves as “God’s people” instead of allied to political positions of the left or right. The prayer of John 17 shows that love and unity among this people are the key to action. This doesn’t mean that Christians will agree on everything. The authors state it this way: “One of the greatest witnesses of the church can be our ability to disagree well.The world has not seen many folks who can do that.”

Ephesians 1:15-23 acknowledges the deep struggles of life yet still clings to hope. The way to show such hope is to live close to Jesus. The authors refer to this as becoming the “spittin’ image” of Jesus in the world. This prayer concludes with living life in the glorious inheritance of Christ. While this prayer has often been employed as a vehicle of escapism from this world into a futuristic kingdom, Claiborne and WilsonHartgrove demonstrate that in fact it is a prayer that moves God’s kingdom into the here and now. The inheritance Paul talks about is a life on fire—today—initiating change and bringing hope to a hurting world. As the authors put it,“We have a God who chooses to need us.”

There’s no place for the Magic 8 Ball in the prayer life of a Christian, but if you happen to have one handy, you might ask it this question: “Should I read this book?” Give it a shake and turn it upside down; if the answer comes up “Yes— definitely,” you’ll know that the Magic 8 Ball got it right at least this one time. n J. Monty Stewart is the pastor of Kona Church of the Nazarene, a multicultural church in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

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Cynicism and Hope Edited by Meg E. Cox Cascade Books Reviewed by Andrew Draper One of the more endearing quirks of Cynicism and Hope: Reclaiming Discipleship in a Postdemocratic Society is its (sometimes ironic) commentary on its own title. “Who or what are we reclaiming discipleship from?” asks Ric Hudgens, one of its dozen contributors. Dale Suderman, another contributor, dryly mocks the assumption implicit in the phrase “postdemocratic society.”“At some time in Western or American history we were once democratic!” he writes.“Maybe it was in Athens.”

The book has a rather quirky origin as well. In March 2007, several thousand Christian peace activists held a vigil outside the White House on the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. The next morning, a few hundred Mennonites from that crowd of activists met in a

church basement to hear a speech by theologian Peter Dula. Inspired by his speech (called “Cynicism and Hope”), some of them organized a conference, which took place the following autumn and ultimately produced this collection of essays.

In spite of my initial suspicions, Cynicism and Hope turned out to be a valuable read. It offers a striking example of how universality can spring from particularity; while the contributions clearly belong to the US political picture of 2007 and are grounded in the story of a particular community, they delve so deeply into the drama of sin and grace revealed by that time that they succeed in bringing together the already and the not-yet.

The essays offered are stimulating in their variety, so that the collection avoids monotony in spite of its strong harmonizing theme. Hudgens’ meditation on “constructive cynicism” and Suderman’s on “destructive idealism” are both highlights. Another is a brief history of Koinonia Farm in Georgia that brings the reader, with astonishing bluntness, from the community’s stellar-level accomplishments to its cellar-level struggles.

Another draws from the work of Flannery O’Connor and J.R.R.Tolkien to explore hope’s communal and personal dimensions. Dula, whose reflections on pain and passion in Iraq open and close the book, models the kind of raw honesty a church that “rejoices with the truth” so vitally needs.

Ultimately, the book gives its readers a beguiling glimpse into a community of fervent activists at a reflective moment as they blink in the face of a brutal and intransigent reality. It will make a good dialogue stimulant for those struggling with despair, be they spouses, parents, neighbors, churchgoers, or other kinds of activists. n

Green Revolution

By Ben Lowe InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Kiara A. Jorgenson

The millennial generation fills our high school and college classrooms, sits in our church pews, and occupies our workplaces — and through these young men and women a new American era has emerged.While some Boomers and GenXers characterize millennials as individualistic and self-absorbed, frequently tagging them as the “Me Generation,” many teenagers and 20-somethings are challenging that stigma. Ben Lowe, author of Green Revolution: Coming Together to Care for Creation, is one of them.As a recent graduate of Wheaton College and an activist who equips students in compassionate environmental stewardship, Lowe targets his young evangelical peers in this practical introduction to creation care.

Peppered with real-life narratives and feasible points of personal and social application, Green Revolution reads more like a journal than an environmental treatise and as such serves as great conversational Andrew Draper is a husband, parent, neighbor, fodder for youth, students, and those who work alongside them. and churchgoer in Brooklyn, N.Y PRISM 2009

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Lowe begins his book by summarizing contemporary environmental issues such as water supply, food production, deforestation, and the sustainability of ecosystems. Refreshingly, Lowe correlates environmental degradation with other social concerns and asserts that creation care is inherently a justice issue.

Having painted a clear picture of the stakes, Lowe then turns to relevant passages in Scripture.The chapters on God’s plan for the earth present some helpful steps for evangelical Christians, such as the need for repentance and self-sacrifice, but on a whole lack theological clarity and conviction. While Lowe does discuss a handful of germane passages, he does not articulate a comprehensive redemptive view of creation and thus leaves the reader with a vague and deficient understanding of important subjects like dominion and biblical environmental stewardship.Thankfully, the book’s excellent appendices offer numerous supplementary resources on those very topics, among others.

Lowe hits his stride in the final segments of the book, which closely examine the growing environmental movement. He begins this section by addressing the movement’s catalyst — the climate crisis. While leaving the global warming question unanswered, he boldly articulates a fair and scientific critique of global climate changes and in doing so challenges the reader to avoid committing what he calls “sins of omission.” Lowe then spends five chapters outlining factors contributing to the germination, growth, and sustainability of the movement and notes millennials’ unique role in the establishment of green communities and the legislation of creation-focused policies.

In short, prospective readers shouldn’t pick up Green Revolution to form a fullorbed theology of creation care or to become experts on the technicalities of the green scene. Rather, intrigued thinkers ought to pick it up with inspiration in mind. The youthful, hopeful tone of this

work will not only get readers composting, but also challenge them to see today’s young people as they really are — the “We Generation.” n Kiara Jorgenson is an affliliate professor of biblical studies at Colorado Christian University and on the teaching faculty at Valor Christian High School in Denver, Col.

Faith & Doubt

By John Ortberg Zondervan Reviewed by Daniel Boerman Although I am a professing Christian, doubt always holds a place in my mind. I look at a world full of malnutrition, abuse, and slavery, and I ask, “Where is God?” I read reports of a warming planet maltreated and neglected by selfish Christians, and I wonder, “Does faith really make any difference?” I plead with God for the hundredth time to help me solve a persistent problem in my life, and once again I hear only silence. Is God even listening?

John Ortberg wrote Faith & Doubt for people like me. Apparently he shares the same struggles. In fact, Ortberg, a Presbyterian pastor, argues that everyone possesses both faith and doubt. We all have some faith in the people around us; without it we would not dare to venture out of our houses. But we all live with doubts, too — can we really trust our doctor, our boss, even our friends?

And what about God? Are contemporary atheist writers correct in claiming it unreasonable to believe in God in the 21st century?

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doubt and uncertainty to keep us from commitment.This is obvious if we think about marriage. If you insisted on learning all there is to know about your fiancée in order to guarantee that she would be the perfect mate — before going through with the wedding — you would never get married. Every commitment involves some risk. So it is with God. We cannot be absolutely certain that Christianity is true on this side of the grave, but that does not give us an excuse to withhold our commitment. If we never make any commitments, we miss out on everything that makes life meaningful and worthwhile.

But if we are searching for certainty, faith will not take us there. “As long as you have faith, you will have doubts,” writes Ortberg. Faith implies doubt; there is no need for faith where there is certitude. Faith keeps us trusting and serving God while we wait to see how things will actually turn out.

“Uncertainty is a gift, because it gnaws at us to pursue truth. As hunger prompts our stomach to find food, doubts prompt our minds to find reality,” Ortberg states. Motivated by our uncertainty, we search diligently for truth and understanding. In fact, says the author, we should search more passionately for truth than we do for Jesus, for if Jesus is right, if he is indeed the way, the truth, and the life, our search for truth will inevitably lead to him.

The weakness of this book is its discontinuity from one chapter to the next.

Some chapters (e.g.,“Longing for Home”), while interesting, do not contribute directly to the main theme of the book.

Aside from this caveat, however, I found this book informative and encouraging, and I recommend it to anyone who struggles with serious doubts about their Christian faith. n Daniel Boerman’s articles and reviews have appeared in The Church Herald and Discipleship Journal.

OFF THE SHELF

TOTAL CHURCH

By Tim Chester and Steve Timmis Crossway Books Reviewed by Heather Munn “If only there were a different way of doing church,” say Tim Chester and Steve Timmis in their introduction to Total Church:A Radical Reshaping around Gospel and Community. There is indeed a different way, they go on to argue, and though it is certainly radical, it is not new.

Unapologetically evangelical and biblical, Chester and Timmis call for an understanding of the church that is centered on the gospel word and its proclamation, and on the community of believers, not as Sunday-morning acquaintances but as a true family.Their book is a powerful reminder of the very first church, revealed in Acts—a far-flung yet local, deeply involved community, its members sharing homes and lives and possessions with each other, inviting in strangers, talking constantly about Jesus.

That image doesn’t come out of nowhere. Chester and Timmis are lead-

ers of The Crowded House in Sheffield, England, a “network of missionary congregations, most of which meet in homes.” This book is deeply informed by that experience and includes some of its stories. But this is not the story of The Crowded House, nor a take-home version of its model; this is a theology of “total church.” Not a how-to, but a vision.

Without once using the word “holistic,” Chester and Timmis paint a picture of the church that is unrelentingly whole. Church is not an item on our schedules but a community that helps us to both think through and carry out our responsibilities. Evangelism, social action, missions, theology, and youth work are not a list of competing priorities (don’t be fooled by the fact that each has its own chapter) but integral and overlapping parts of our life as a church.

Social action and evangelism are inseparable; theology is born from crosscultural missions.

There is a great deal to think about here—and plenty with which to argue.

Some will take issue with the authors’ wholesale rejection of contemplative spirituality; some will see their apolitical, gospel-centered vision for social action as insufficient. These questions matter, but something else here is so compelling that I just had to put them aside and read on. The wholeness of this vision as it works out in evangelism and church-planting is simply beautiful.

Imagine that evangelism means inviting a non-Christian coworker, not to a church meeting, but just to spend time with your group of friends, who are your church, who actively care for each other, and who talk about Jesus all the time. Imagine letting her get to know them and decide for herself when to jump in and ask what this God thing is about—then imagine that she actually does. Imagine that this little group outgrows their living rooms, but rather than starting a building fund it forms a PRISM 2009

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church-planting team for a nearby town and sends them out. Imagine these groups of disciples, instead of megachurches, spreading across the nation.

This is not fantasy; this is work in which the authors have been collaborating with the Holy Spirit for years. This message is radical—and true.We would do well to listen. n Heather Munn lives in a Christian intentional community in Tiskilwa, Ill. She and her husband are pioneering a ministry that offers free spiritual retreats to the poor.

SIN BOLDLY

By Cathleen Falsani Zondervan Reviewed by Erika Bai Siebels Yes, this is yet another book about grace.

But this is one to read and put down, then pick up again, savoring it like a visit with a dear friend.

Cathleen Falsani, an award-winning former religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, last wrote The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People in which celebrities the likes of David Lynch, Anne Rice, Bono, and Barack Obama wax poetically about their thoughts on God. Falsani readily admits that grace is hard to define. As the book’s front inside flap says, “...you can’t do grace justice with a textbook, theological definition, but you can get closer to describing it with music and film, pictures and stories.”

And so she sets out to describe grace, not necessarily define it, painting story after story of instances in which she sets out looking for grace and it finds her, unexpectedly, as grace often does.

But what about the title? What does it actually mean to sin boldly? Turn to page 105, halfway through the book.

Falsani explains that the term “sin boldly” refers to a quotation by great reformer and radical Martin Luther, who wrote after being put on trial for heresy: If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly...Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.

We might not notice grace, but we have all experienced it, Falsani says. It happens without explanation. And that’s what makes grace so stunning.

Falsani’s stories are remarkable for the pure delight with which she tells them; they have caught her, too, offguard. For example, her belittling tour guide in Tanzania ends his disappointing safari with a close encounter with elephants, something Falsani has been secretly waiting for, like a child staying up for a glimpse of Santa Claus. That’s grace. And then there’s the grace of a nun in a wheelchair who stretches out her hands and tells Falsani, “You have the face of an angel.” Or determined people who refuse to let Hurricane Katrina ruin their desire to celebrate life. Or an orphan whose heart gallops within his chest just from getting up and walking across the floor; when you read Falsani’s description of the boy’s poor health, your own heart melts along with Falsani’s.These are moments of “grace-spotting,” as Falsani and her friend call them: jaw-dropping opportunities to point and shout, “Look!

Grace!”

Lest we forget to notice the grace all around us daily, Falsani concludes her book with a call to get outside and into nature, a place where even Jesus himself escaped to be alone with and encounter God. And who better to tell us some-

thing about grace than God, the Creator, the man behind the curtain of grace? n Erika Bai Siebels is a frequent book reviewer for PRISM. She lives with her family, including a daughter named Grace, in Troy, NY.

A Christianity Worth Believing

By Doug Pagitt Jossey-Bass Reviewed by Kevin Lester If you are anything like me, you have a shelf in your house with a number of unfinished books on it. While I often tell myself that I will go back and finish each one, I know there are some I never will. A couple of chapters into some books and I generally understand what the author’s message is and am not inclined to finish the whole thing.

After the first few sections of Doug Pagitt’s new A ChristianityWorth Believing, I thought I had it all figured out.

Certainly there are moments when Pagitt’s writing almost warrants this reaction.

The subtitle promises an exposition of a Christianity that is “alive and well” for all those who feel “left out, left behind, and let-down” by their faith experience.

The first chapter opens with Pagitt’s claim that, although he is a Christian, he does not “believe in Christianity”—at least not as it has been practiced for the last 1,500 years. His sweeping generalizations and reactionary statements are disappointing, and when he rants against contemporary Christian spirituality while encouraging a return to an idyllic early church, I heard some all-too-familiar echoes from early emergent thought.

However, Pagitt soon surprised this PRISM 2009

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fickle reader. In the remaining chapters of his book, he offers a well-crafted and insightful exploration of emergent theology, told through the lens of his personal experience within the movement.With this tactic, he provides the reader not merely a systematized checklist of alternative stances on theological issues but also an understanding of how and why he himself has been led to step aside from mainstream Christianity and into something quite new.

Or perhaps, more accurately, renewed: Pagitt’s apologetic for emergent thought begins with his making a case for theological freedom while drawing from the heritage of the Christian faith. He notes that much of what conventional church has come to hold as orthodox has been based on a Greek worldview. Ancient Christians allowed the gospel to be shifted from its context in the Hebrew worldview into that of Plato and Aristotle; the God of Israel became the Unmoved Mover. At one time, Christians felt free to engage their culture in such a way as to address the concerns and life of people in the Roman Empire.The question Pagitt poses is “How are Christians today free to respond theologically to the worldview of our contemporary culture, which is developing an alternative set of questions and concerns?” He is eager to see what Christians may find if they dare to peel off the remnants of Greek and Enlightenment philosophical presuppositions.

After discovering the right questions to ask, Pagitt provides us with his findings. He offers his thoughts on God, humanity, sin, salvation, mission, Scripture, and eschatology, inviting the reader to see the interplay between his worldview, wrought from his own life experience, and Christian faith.What is supremely helpful about Pagitt’s book is that even if you disagree with him, you can better understand where his emergent theology is coming from. While it may not be as original or creative as other works, such

as Bell’s Velvet Elvis or McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian, Pagitt’s book is certainly as engaging. If you’ve been either suspicious of or interested in the goings-on within some progressive Christian communities, give A ChristianityWorth Believing a read. n Kevin Lester lives with his wife in Philadelphia and is currently a student in the M.Div program at Palmer Theological Seminary.

CRISIS Edited by Mitchell Gold Greenleaf Book Group Reviewed by Tim Otto I suspect that Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain andTrauma of Growing up Gay in America is a book that few members of its target audience—religious conservatives—will read. Mitchell Gold, the editor, introduces the book by saying that the primary purpose of the book is to overturn “religious prejudice” against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) people. Gold relates a story of listening to a Christian minister who said that people are born gay and should be treated with respect.

The minister also said that “gay people can control their behavior by accepting Jesus Christ as their savior and having a personal relationship with God.” Gold then charges that such a message is nothing short of “child abuse.”

Given hyperbole like that, should Christians, especially Christians who take the traditional view on homosexuality, read a book like Crisis? I would offer a qualified “yes.” While there is plenty to beware of in the book, there is also much to be learned. In a Barna Group study of

non-Christian young adults, 91 percent of them perceived Christians as “antihomosexual.” If those young adults are on to anything—if Christians need to learn how to care for homosexuals—then listening to firsthand accounts of how the church has done poorly by the gay community might be a good initial step.

Reading these stories is painful. Irene Monroe recounts how her Christian foster mother frequently threatened to return her to the foster agency whenever she acted too masculine. Mel White relates how he, as a result of a deep self-loathing brought on by constantly hearing that homosexuality is a sickness and sin, wrote a long suicide letter to his parents and almost jumped into the Seine. Jarrod Parker tells how as a teenager he paid for reparative therapy for two years, hoping in vain that he could change his sexual orientation in order to be accepted by his family and church community.

Although heartbreaking, these stories teach us much.We get a sense of what it might be like to grow up thinking of oneself in theological terms such as “abomination” or in schoolyard terms such as “faggot.” Such stories might help Christians realize that Christianity should not be used as a pretext to look down on or ridicule homosexuals. Although the Scriptures condemn gluttony, no one thinks ridiculing obese children will reduce the number of gluttons. Perhaps Christians should champion school initiatives such as the “Day of Silence,” which opposes attitudes of contempt toward GLBT students.

Another theme that emerges is the inadequacy of simplistic answers. “Just date more girls” or “Just be celibate” or “Just go to reparative therapy” or “Just play with dolls more” just doesn’t cut it.

In the wake of the sexual revolution, ministers have rethought how the church teaches sexuality.Attempting to get beyond simplistic answers, the church has tried to discuss sexuality more openly and positively and honestly, while still holding on to biblical teachings. It seems to me PRISM 2009

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that this book challenges us to do a similar rethinking in regard to homosexuality.

What if we were to say something like, “If you have same-sex feelings we would be honored if you would let us know.

We promise to respect you and walk with you as family.We will look to the Scriptures for answers and seek the Holy Spirit’s help as we discern together what God might have in mind for you.”

In addition to the stories of growing up gay, the book offers a couple of chapters that argue that homosexuality is not sin. The best of these is a chapter entitled “Homosexuality, the Bible, and Us”

by Rev. H. Stephen Shoemaker.Although his treatment of Romans 1 seems unconvincing to me, Shoemaker makes the case for affirming same-sex relationships in a concise and graceful way. Hearing solid reasons offered for the affirming stance may encourage some Christians, who hold the traditional view, toward a much-needed humility in the conversation about homosexuality.

My greatest hesitation in recommending the book is that editor Mitchell Gold is completely oblivious to his own faith agenda. Gold has started an organization called Faith in America, whose mission is “the emancipation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from bigotry disguised as religious truth.” His deepest trust and belief lie in the Enlightenment values of freedom, tolerance, self-expression, and equality expressed in the experiment called America. Gold is essentially trying to evangelize us all into believing that these are the ultimate truths that should trump religious beliefs.

The stories contained in the book often serve as testimonies of how the Enlightenment story released the person from the bondage and guilt of the “repressive” religious story. The testimonies are compelling and moving. If we are truly Christian, such testimonies should and will evoke our compassion. I worry, however, that some Christians might not realize how Gold is subtly hawking another gospel.

So my recommendation is a qualified one.

Let us learn what we can about how to love gays and lesbians, but let’s not convert to the religion of America. n Tim Otto is the preaching and teaching pastor at Church of the Sojourners, a small “new-monastic” church in San Francisco.

True Story

By James Choung InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Al Tizon True Story:A Christianity Worth Believing In is a cross between a novel and an evangelism manual. As peculiar a combination as this may sound, James Choung, director of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s San Diego division, successfully uses it to introduce a new way of doing evangelism that agrees with postmodern sensibilities.

More importantly, it agrees with the holistic nature of the gospel of the kingdom that Jesus preached.

The first three-quarters of the book tell the story of Caleb, a college-age evangelical Christian who has been raised on personal morality, missionary zeal, and the Four Spiritual Laws. In the story, Caleb undergoes a spiritual crisis as he tries desperately to discover something of the faith that is not only worth believing but also worth sharing with others. What, if anything, about the gospel is even remotely compelling for his irreverent and skeptical friend Anna, who in the story personifies postmodern disdain for institutional religion?

He desperately wants Anna to see the light, partly because he has a crush on her, but also because her skepticism uncovers his own doubt about how great

“the greatest story ever told” really is. If it’s so great, he asks as he argues with himself, then why does the gospel seem indifferent to the poverty, suffering, and pain that blight our world?

Caleb’s doubts frighten him. How can he even begin to talk about them with Jeff, the well-respected pastor of his church, without sounding as if he’s losing his faith? In one of their conversations, Pastor Jeff, who personifies (at least at first) the fundamentalist suspicion of anything that may undermine a “passion for souls,” asks, “Are you questioning the gospel?” Fortunately for Caleb, he finds an empathetic ear in an ethnic studies professor named Shalandra Jones, who affirms Caleb’s questioning, helps him deconstruct the gospel of personal salvation, and then guides him in re-envisioning the good news that encompasses both personal and social transformation. The drama that unfolds between Caleb and the supporting cast turns the pages, and before you know it, you’ve read most of the book.

With Caleb’s journey from crisis to discovery fresh on the reader’s mind, the last quarter switches to the manual portion of the book, providing the why, the what, and the how of telling God’s “Big Story.” Indeed God’s plan of salvation is bigger than saving souls; it also includes mending broken relationships, healing sick bodies, feeding the hungry, challenging evil sociopolitical structures, and taking care of the earth. In this light, evangelism must be more than offering eternal fire insurance to individuals destined for hell. Surely, insists Caleb (I mean, Choung), there is a way to be more faithful to the gospel of the kingdom in our evangelism. Inspired to pave this way, Choung proposes the Big Story approach.

Through a series of circle diagrams, lines, and arrows, which are all simple enough to be drawn on a napkin from memory, he illustrates the truths that PRISM 2009

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humanity was/is (1) designed for good, but (2) damaged by evil, then (3) restored for better through Christ, and (4) sent out together to heal a broken world. The net result of this new approach is that it restores the “good” in the good news, thus making it something that Christians can once again be genuinely excited about as well as something that non-Christians can understand easily and interact with nonthreateningly.

Finally someone has come up with a simple evangelistic approach that reflects the wholeness of the gospel.

Holistic ministry practitioners tend to nuance truths to a fault, articulating the height, width, and depth of the gospel, and as a consequence often make the good news harder for people to access.

So the simplicity of Choung’s circle diagrams is a welcome, refreshing, and much-needed approach.

On the other hand, the simple diagrams are also open to the charge of being just another formula. Is it just a matter of time before the American Bible Society produces hundreds of thousands of “4-Circles Tracts” to be handed out by zealous Christian students on college campuses all over the world? Please, no! If somehow we can understand the Big Story as a way to keep the crux of the gospel straight in our own heads while developing authentic relationships and serving the world in compassion and justice, then perhaps it doesn’t ever have to be reduced to an impersonal formula. But if its fate is eventually to crystallize into something resembling an Amway pitch, then I pray while it is still new and dynamic that the church will utilize it to welcome many to new life in the kingdom of God. n Al Tizon is director of Evangelicals for Social Action’s Word & Deed Network and assistant professor of holistic ministry at PalmerTheological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

OFF THE SHELF Quitting Church

By Julia Duin Baker Books

Reimagining Church

By Frank Viola David C. Cook Reviewed by Erika Bai Siebels There is no perfect church, because each church is comprised of imperfect people and practices. But is that reason enough to up and leave? Is there instead a way to dump our old ideas of what church is and start over? What would that look like?

Those are the questions being asked by Julia Duin in Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do about It and answered by Frank Viola in Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity.

Julia Duin, religion editor for the Washington Times, is great at citing statistics and polls of who’s leaving church and why. She learned that people quit church for many reasons: they can’t bear any more shallow sermons on the same

subject; they are hungry for something more than being spectators at a show; they feel de-valued as women or singles; they don’t like the pastor; they miss the Holy Spirit.

She’s not as stellar, however, at developing the “what to do about it” part of her book’s subtitle. Duin fails to ask the next likely questions of her sources. Can the church be saved? What can be done to prevent people from leaving? How can we help those who quit church? She does offer quick speculations and suggestions.

For example, Duin thinks singles ministries convey confusing messages to unmarried adults, on the one hand saying things like “God has a plan for you” and “God knows the desires of your heart” while on the other hand encouraging singles to celebrate celibacy and consider that it might be God’s will for them.

She suggests that instead singles ministries should be matchmaking services to affirm those family values and roles so esteemed by the church: that of husband, wife, father, and mother.

Matchmaking aside, Duin offers no real clear ideas of what to do about the fleeing faithful. She tries to address the subject in her last chapter, but it’s brief and inadequate. Only one chapter to address nine previous chapters worth of gripes? While she admits house churches might be on to something, the chapter and book end without satisfactorily explaining why that might be so.

Thankfully, Reimagining Church by Frank Viola is a good companion reader to Duin (it’s also his follow-up to Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices, which he wrote with Christian pollster George Barna). The church system is broken, he says, and a big part of that is due to church leadership. Jesus is the head of the church, period, and everyone in the church is called to be a priest; that is, each member of the church is called to actively edify and be subject to each other out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21). This is PRISM 2009

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how the church is supposed to function, Viola says, as demonstrated by the biblical models of first-century Christians.

When Paul writes to the churches in Ephesus or Philippi, he greets the whole church. He recognizes that the church, not one person (known as “pastor,” for example), needs to take care of its problems.

It’s refreshing to affirm the notion that all believers, regardless of gender or willingness, are called to be priests; that is, all members of the body of Christ can hear from, encounter, and tell others about God. In an egalitarian body, everyone functions according to his or her gifts without lording it over one another or holding special offices.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that the roles of overseers, apostolic workers, and elders that Viola reimagines are still in danger of getting set apart as extra-special offices. I suspect those roles might become the new clergy system that Viola so vehemently opposes.

Nevertheless, it is exciting to hear Viola reimagine church as we know it.

Fittingly, he calls it “organic church” and imagines it as something more like the New Testament church. In such a model, everyone is encouraged to participate

when meeting together, and the concept of church is more like a family— and a good biblical one at that. Family members spend time together—more than once each week—and in the intimacy of their own homes. They share meals together, which is the true meaning of breaking bread together.The Lord’s Supper wasn’t meant to be an appetizer, as it has tended to become, Viola says.

Where Duin does a good job researching the reasons why people quit church, Viola suggests what might be done. He calls for a paradigm shift in reconsidering how to do church from a biblical perspective. He talks about creating new wineskins rather than using old ones such as the institutional church’s practices and systems. In essence, readers might want to leave church altogether and start new ones that look and function differently. Or maybe pastors will read his book and want to remake their church into something more organic by giving up their titles, Sunday morning rituals, and church buildings.

But what can be done in the meantime, between quitting church and starting a new organic church? There are no stories in either book about what people are doing while they’re considering leaving church but haven’t yet done so. Are they suffering in silence or are they expressing their frustrations, concerns, and yearnings in the context of their current community, even if it isn’t the ideal one? More than starting new organic churches, should Duin’s and Viola’s readers say something to the larger institutional church in the meantime?

Hopefully, those who read these books will have the courage to speak truth into their current congregations,and Christian leaders will humbly take notice. Or perhaps Jesus will make all things, including the American way of doing church, new. n Erika Bai Siebels lives in Troy, N.Y., where she is working on a novel.

Why We’re Not Emergent framed glasses. Heck, Kluck even wears

a beret! (Yes, I googled them, admittedly expecting to find a couple of nerds.) So

By Kevin Deyoung and Ted Kluck why haven’t these two jumped on the EC Moody Publishers bandwagon? Deyoung, pastor of a church in the evangelically saturated town of East Reviewed by Al Tizon Lansing, Mich., and Kluck, a writer for When people ask what I think about the ESPN Magazine and other popular pubemerging church movement, I usually lications, tell us why.

Taking turns writing chapters, they qualify my answer, but for the most part point out what they consider wrongI give the EC a moderately positive headed trajectories of the EC, includthumbs-up. And I’m sticking to it, even ing a proposition-less view of Scripture, after reading Kevin Deyoung and Ted a foundation-less approach to truth, and Kluck’s Why We’re Not Emergent (by Two an incomplete understanding of Jesus as Guys Who Should Be). Having said that, all-inclusive and all-tolerant.

While it is I’m grateful for their critique of the true that the evangelical church excesmovement. It was a refreshing slap in the face that awoke me from a kind of EC sively loves biblical propositions, moral stupor, and I believe that every self- absolutes, and fire/brimstone preaching, proclaimed, card-carrying emerging Deyoung and Kluck accuse EC proponents of going too far in the opposite Christian should read it.

Deyoung and Kluck certainly fit the direction. By applying too much softprofile of those who make up the EC ener to Christ, Scripture, ethics, and truth constituency—young, white, middle-class; with new language and nuanced defiraised in traditional, evangelical, subur- nitions in the name of relevance, EC ban churches; and sincerely desirous of teachers have, according to the authors, making the gospel relevant for their gen- rendered the gospel impotent and unable eration. Furthermore, they’re witty and to offer the hope that people really need. hip and even look the part, donning the And besides, claim Deyoung and Kluck, EC trademarks of scruffy hair and thinly such an attempt at accommodating contemporary society is hardly new or “emergent,” as they regularly refer to the liberal and neo-orthodox projects of the 20th century, projects to which time has not been kind.

Whereas Deyoung’s chapters primarily treat these concerns theologically and pastorally, Kluck’s chapters are more personal and experiential. Both authors say what they say intensely but not angrily, confidently but not arrogantly. Though they take on some of the EC giants— McLaren, Bell, Sweet, Pagitt, Burke, and others—they refrain from questioning their integrity, sincerity, and ultimate place in the Lamb’s Book of Life. In fact, Kluck writes in his introduction, “We strove to represent these guys accurately, and hope that if we were to run into each other at a conference, a coffee shop named Ecclesia, PRISM 2009

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or a pub, we could truly enjoy each other’s fellowship, cognizant of the fact that we will be together in the kingdom.”

I wish Brian McLaren or some other big shot emergent pioneer had written the foreword to this book or at least endorsed it. It would have demonstrated an irenic spirit among brothers and sisters who disagree—a much better alternative to the name-calling, rock-throwing, Biblebashing ways that have so characterized church conflicts. Unfortunately, the emerging church debate is no exception, as many on both sides have exhibited inflammatory immaturity.Why can’t the church, emergent or otherwise, be different from the Bill O’Reillys and Bill Mahers of the world?

As I said, I affirm the EC and am sticking to it. Spirit-led followers of Jesus should always be open to fresh new ways of understanding and experiencing God as well as to innovative models of sharing the beautiful and mysterious gospel with others. If we are going to err as Christians, let us err on the side of adventure. If this book lacks anything, it would be the absence of a risk-taking spirit.The authors seem desirous enough to make the gospel relevant for postmodern times, but the necessary willingness to think outside the box doesn’t come through very clearly. To me, the faith they ultimately champion feels awfully safe. Is it just me, or do the words “faith” and “safe” constitute an oxymoron? Is there not a way for Christians to be adventurous in the Spirit while also being anchored in the Rock? If EC folks would humble themselves and take seriously the correctives in this book, they will come closer to striking that blessed balance and thereby securing a future for a creative, exciting and authentic movement of God for a postmodern generation. n Al Tizon is director of Evangelicals for Social Action’s Word & Deed Network and assistant professor of holistic ministry at PalmerTheological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

and competencies can take you, and beyond what is affirmed or risked by the crowd—and you will experience me

By Gary A. Haugen and my power and wisdom and love.”

InterVarsity Press Haugen believes that the American church is largely focused on being safe Reviewed by Jim Unruh and in control, rather than on a couraWarning:This book is dangerous. I was in geous dependence on God that conthe shower, reflecting and praying about fronts injustice. The result is that many Just Courage: God’s Great Expedition for the American Christians feel empty and Restless Christian, and I got so distracted unfulfilled in their spiritual self-absorpby God’s call that I cut myself while tion, while around the world children needlessly live and die in brutal slavery shaving.

Gary Haugen is the founder and and despairing poverty.

God hates injustice, and God hates CEO of International Justice Mission worship without justice.“God is not only (IJM), a human rights organization. His displeased with injustice; he is appalled book highlights the important work of that his people are not showing up to IJM, seeking to rescue oppressed indistop it,” writes Haugen, who believes viduals from human trafficking, slavery, that love of God and love of others must land theft, and other injustices. Laced include confronting massive, aggressive with personal stories, Haugen’s book also evil and violence in the world.

Haugen challenges the Western church to engage supports his position with scores of in justice issues locally and internationScripture passages and stories. ally.

But Haugen recognizes that confrontThe book’s foundation is that God ing injustice takes large doses of couroffers Christians this simple proposition: age, preparation, and God’s grace. He “Follow me beyond what you can consuggests three steps for courage: do less, trol, beyond where your own strength reflect, and pray more.To confront injustice leads us to truly receive our own rescue from Christ. He shares stories of people who discovered Christ in deeper and more significant ways as they were liberated from slavery or who braved dangers to rescue others.

Finally, he believes Jesus asks parents to make a choice: “Are we raising our children to be safe or brave, smart or loving, successful or significant?”

After reading this section, I was roller skating with my 5-year-old. It was his first time on skates and, with Haugen on my mind, I realized I was trying to keep him safe, preventing him from falling by holding him tightly upright. He was free from bruises, but he was not learning. Finally, I gave him a “brave” talk.

I told him that if he skated alone he would fall and he would get hurt. But I promised that if he was brave he would

Just Courage

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economy and sagging global standing, some of the language of this book seems immediately outdated. Few are calling the United States the global superpower anymore, and Bush’s aggressive crusading for democracy feels very 2003 rather than 2008. In this sense, the book is already outdated.

But on the other hand, the deeper project, not just of this book but also of this community, feels very much in tune with the times. For what Heltzel and Benson and their authors are doing here Jim Unruh is pastor of Faith Mennonite is, in part, challenging the white, male, Church in South Hutchinson, Kan. conservative, evangelical imperium in the United States. Here we meet a multiracial, multidenominational, multi-instituEvangelicals tional scholarly community that repreand Empire sents and writes about Hispanic, female, African American, Asian American,

By Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter African, Pentecostal evangelicalisms. Just Goodwin Heltzel, eds. this empire will ultimately be brought as the diverse constituency that elected Brazos Press down by the very diverse, unassimilable, Obama signals the end of white male singular individuals and communities hegemony in America, and just as the Reviewed by David P. Gushee white-male-dominated Christian right currently drawn into its web.

Into this discussion come these 21 was unable to stop Obama’s election This book offers a collection of essays that reflect the emergence of a politically radi- evangelical scholars, some of them seek- despite their cries of alarm, the very cal, evangelical scholarly community ing seriously to engage the Hardt/Negri existence of this kind of book portends among a cohort of younger Christians. thesis and others addressing various relat- the remarkably diverse future of both The book is significant partly because ed themes. All seem to agree on two America and American Christianity. n of its content but mainly because of this points: that the United States, especially emerging scholarly community, which under George W. Bush, has functioned David P. Gushee is a professor of Christian shows the promise of reshaping evan- as the global imperial power and the ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga., a gelical public witness in the United States master of the neoliberal economic order; regular PRISM columnist (“Kingdom Ethics”), and that white evangelical American and the author of numerous books about in some interesting ways.

First let us turn to the content of the Christianity has supported this imperi- Christian political engagement. book. Evangelicals and Empire: Christian alism with nary a whimper. Indeed, some Alternatives to the Political Status Quo is in argue that white evangelicalism’s leaders Check out part a collective response to two recent have essentially functioned as imperial Linking Arms, books by neo-Marxist scholars Michael power brokers themselves both in the Linking Lives: Hardt and Antonio Negri: Empire nation and within the more circumHow Urban(Harvard University Press, 2000) and scribed but still vast world of American Suburban Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age evangelicalism.The essays, some of them Partnerships of Empire (Penguin, 2005). These books quite technical, explore a number of Can Transform argued that classical imperialism is giv- variations on this theme.

Communities by Al Tizon, I began reading this book on the day ing way to a kind of diffuse, globalized Ronald J. Sider, John M. imperial order based in social, economic, America voted to elect Barack Obama Perkins, and Wayne L. Gordon and political forces not controlled by president. In light of that stunning repufrom Baker Books. any one nation, though the United States diation of the policies of the past eight remains the dominant power; and that years, and also in light of our staggering end up having more fun. What a simple lesson, but so important. I can imagine God calling us, his children, to a deeper engagement with justice. We may well get hurt, but we will discover what really matters in life.

Gary Haugen’s book is already having an impact on my ministry. My prayer is that many people read Just Courage and then allow the Spirit of God to speak and move us all to live for justice. n

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OFF THE SHELF

A Credible Witness

By Brenda Salter McNeil InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Lisa Sharon Harper “Writing this book was a labor of love,” writes Brenda Salter McNeil in the first sentence of A Credible Witness: Reflections on Power, Evangelism, and Race. Neither a political, sociological, historical, nor theological treatise, A Credible Witness reads more like a modern-day epistle revealing the author’s deep love, first and foremost, for the church.

Salter McNeil warns in her introduction:“As Christians we are on the witness stand…The world around us is deliberating regarding the truth of the gospel.”

She defines credible witnesses as those who “can testify only to what they know is true based upon their actual experience.” To establish a credible witness— in our postmodern, multiracial, global, and relational age, when credibility is marked by the authenticity of one’s experience—Christians must demonstrate commitment to both reconciliation with God and reconciliation with

the other.

John 4 is the backdrop for Salter McNeil’s urgent call to the church. The Samaritan woman at the well is nameless in the text, so Salter McNeil calls her “Sam.” She writes as if she and Sam are best friends who meet over coffee once a week. A review of nearly 15 years of books, articles, and sermons by Salter McNeil reveals her profound bond with Sam—a connection dating back to the mid-1990s when she led Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in racial reconciliation. Since then, John 4 has become one of the author’s core texts.

A Credible Witness serves a 21st-century evangelical church groping for direction in the postmodern age. While today’s evangelistic strategists focus on the significance of story and cultural relevance, their tactics rarely link the credibility of the Christian witness to Christians’ intercultural conduct in the world.“Evangelism and reconciliation are two sides of the same message,” writes Salter McNeil.

“When we don’t live like this, proclaiming and calling others to this reality, we produce inept followers of Christ.”With this, she redefines “evangelism.”

Salter McNeil launches her plea with reflections on the symbol at the heart of the Christian faith—the cross. She declares it is not enough to be reconciled to God alone. Jesus died for more than that.

Salvation, and by extension evangelism, requires reconciliation across race, gender, nationality, age, class, social status, and religion. Thus, she calls Christians to “intercultural competency” for the sake of the gospel.

Salter McNeil identifies power dynamics corrupting the cross-cultural witness of the church, and she reveals her own intercultural competence by abandoning the archetypal black/white paradigm of US racial discourse in favor of a broader discussion of race.

Through clear direction and practical advice, Salter McNeil makes an important contribution to the church.

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No congregation in our postmodern, multiethnic, global world can afford to train evangelists without equipping them to understand dynamics of power and race. A Credible Witness is a labor of love that will make a great first step for churches on the road to effective witness in our complex times. n Lisa Sharon Harper is the executive director of NY Faith & Justice (NYFaithJustice.org), a diverse movement of churches, organizations, and individuals committed to following Christ, uniting the church, and ending poverty in New York City through spiritual formation, education, and direct advocacy.

Who Gets to Narrate the World?

By Robert E. Webber InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Benjamin L. Hartley The image of Professor Webber that remains etched in my mind from my student days at Wheaton College in the late 1980s is of a man with a bullhorn at a student protest.

Published posthumously, Who Gets to Narrate the World?

Contending for the Christian Story in an Age of Rivals is the literary equivalent of that bullhorn. And it deserves to be heard— even if it is prone to overstatement and sometimes fails to consider important factors in our narration of the Christian story at this point in history.

This short book is a cry from the heart for Christians to remember that they are part of a dynamic and powerful story told by God—a narrative which, as Webber rightly points out, is too often reduced to sound bites of privatized “principles” that fail to adequately shape

Christian disciples. For this reason, some readers will be tempted to skim the first chapter, which introduces the “cosmic dimension” of God’s story, out of a belief that they already know this story and an 18-page rehearsal of it is a waste of time.

But that would be precisely the wrong response.Webber’s life of teaching, writing, and living was a testimony to the importance of rehearsing, remembering, and embodying God’s story as Christian disciples. I suggest that if you read this book carefully you will hear the Christian story in new ways and be better prepared to resist the idolatries of modernity and postmodernity that Webber condemns.

The book is not without its problems, however. I have issues with the way Webber starkly frames the problem as one of rivalry between the classical Christian story and radical Islam.To be sure, there is much to be deeply concerned about with regard to radical Islam, and Webber mostly explains this well.Too many readers, however, will equate “radical Islam” with “all Muslims,” even though Webber warns his readers not to do so in the introductory chapter.Webber’s uncritical adoption of the worldview promoted by Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon & Schuster, 1998) does not help either.

Huntington’s text is too simplistic in its vision of a bipolar world. The complexities of cultural interaction caused by migration movements—to name just one problem with the Huntington thesis—simply must be more carefully considered.

Finally, as one who teaches missiology, I was struck by how little attention Webber paid to the world Pentecostal movement or even to world Christianity.

Empirically speaking, Pentecostals more than any other group of Christians are the ones narrating the world by the sheer magnitude of their numbers and rapid growth. The bullhorn is in their hands on busy street corners from Sao Paulo to Manila. American Christians would

be wise to listen carefully to how God’s story is being narrated by Pentecostals.

That, too, will give us cause for both celebration and concern.

The book would be a good fit for a variety of local church study groups. Each chapter concludes with a short list of books for further reading as well as exceptionally well-crafted summary bullet points.

Readers who are looking for philosophical speculation about postmodernity will find the book wanting, but Webber would have it no other way. It is the rich history and liturgy of the Christian church that points the way forward. n Benjamin L. Hartley is assistant professor of Christian mission at Palmer Theological Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa.

Culture Making

By Andy Crouch InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Eric O. Jacobsen As a card-carrying evangelical I sometimes bemoan the anti-intellectual tendencies of some of the members of this colorful subgroup of the Christian world, as well as their occasional inability/ unwillingness to understand “worldly” culture on its own terms. For this reason, I have long been a fan of Andy Crouch’s corrective influence. Through his work with re:Generation Quarterly, Books & Culture, and the Christian Vision Project, Crouch has helped sharpen our thinking in important ways. He has the ability to take complex ideas from the likes of Albert Borgmann and Peter Berger and distill them in a way that duller minds like mine can understand and appreciate.

Crouch also makes us more aware of the various “texts” that fill our world, drawing our attention to such seemingly ordinary things as Viking stoves and trends in men’s shaving products and then using PRISM 2009

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them as fodder for his masterful cultural exegesis.

As a devotee of Crouch’s occasional writings, I was excited by the news that he had produced a book-length treatment of his particular take on culture. And I am happy to report that his cultural navigation abilities hold up well in this format.

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling is a fresh and relevant take on how Christians should relate to the wider culture. Not only does Crouch provide his own answer to this fundamental question, he also provides a useful framework for understanding some of the major phases that evangelicals have gone through in wrestling with this issue.Crouch observes that evangelical responses to culture over the past century can be compared to bodily gestures: condemnation, critique, copying, and consumption. When these same gestures are repeated often enough, they have a tendency to calcify into postures and become our default response to all kinds of culture.The evangelical community has cycled through these various postures, and it has not served us well.

While any one of these gestures may be an appropriate response to a particular

cultural expression, as postures they don’t do a good job (individually or cumulatively) of faithfully conveying our biblical mandate toward culture.

Not only are such responses insufficiently nuanced, they also tend to be reactive rather than innovative, and Crouch points out the severe limitations of approaches to culture that are merely passive or reactive. He encourages us to seek change by discovering ways to contribute something new to the existing culture.

Drawing on biblical motifs of stewardship and creation, Crouch calls Christians to make cultural contributions as either gardeners or artists.This particular way of expressing the cultural mandate also brings into focus the kinds of settings that are antithetical to the goodness of our humanity. The wilderness poses a threat to our well-being because of its inherent danger, for example, while the theme park stifles our creative abilities with its heavily scripted and staged programming.

Crouch also includes some wonderful insights on the stewardship of power, the roles that various scales of community can play in shaping culture, and the necessity of grace. I only wish he had provided more room for cultural collaboration within his approach.While I wholeheartedly agree that Christians need to be at the forefront of cultural creation, some cultural products/projects are too broad in scope or large in scale for Christians to create by ourselves (legislation, institutions, community celebrations). In such instances, Christians must be prepared to partner with those who subscribe to a very different worldview.

This is, however, a minor quibble.

Overall, I think this book will make Crouch’s helpful approach more widely available to the evangelical community and will serve to make us more effective interpreters of and contributors to the cultural landscape. n Eric O. Jacobsen is senior pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Tacoma,Wash. He is

the author of Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith (Brazos, 2003).

A Persistent Peace

By John Dear, SJ Loyola Press Reviewed by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove As a neighbor of Duke University, I have to confess that my greatest delight in reading John Dear’s autobiography, A Persistent Peace: One Man’s Struggle for a Nonviolent World, was in learning that God can save even a “spoiled, wealthy frat boy.” As a Baptist minister—writing in the midst of revival season, no less— I am surprised not so much that Jesus can grab hold of a self-absorbed individual and set him on a new path as that a young man groomed to walk the halls of power might find salvation in the way of the criminal Christ. “It requires good people to break bad laws,” Dear writes after 75 arrests and a quarter century of struggle to practice active nonviolence as a Jesuit priest. “It’s the way of the cross, the way of Jesus. The nonviolent struggle requires that we sacrifice ourselves and bet on the promise of resurrection.”

Dear is no Gandhi or King, which he readily admits. “I had nowhere near the inner strength… The roots of war lay deep within me.” With a relentless focus on the goal of disarming his own heart, however, Dear discipled himself to the great figures of the Catholic peace movement—the Berrigan brothers, Jim Douglass, Richard McSorley, Mother Teresa—to learn the way of peace.While the political actions to which this path led may seem radical, the spirituality Dear exudes is evangelical to the core.

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rooted in a personal relationship with the Son of God. But this personal intensity, as inspiring as it can be, is also what I find most unsettling about the book.Though Dear learned nonviolence from a host of heroes and has practiced it with an impressive array of movers and shakers (from Jackson Browne to Desmond Tutu), his story is, as the subtitle suggests, decidedly “one man’s struggle.” I don’t think Dear is to blame for this, though he confesses on more than one occasion how his own stubbornness has alienated others. The problem is bigger:We live in a time when the peace witness of God’s people is not a necessary part of discipleship but rather a specialized “calling.”Witnesses like John Dear remind us that Jesus has saved us not only from our sin but also from the myth of redemptive violence that fuels our wars against terror, drugs, crime, and poverty. But we don’t need more lone rangers crusading for peace despite the church.What we really need are churches where a persistent peace is the norm.

I suspect John Dear would be glad to fade into the anonymity of such a community. n Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of Free to be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line (NavPress, 2008) and New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today’s Church (Baker, 2008).

OFF THE SHELF Generation Change

By Zach Hunter Zondervan/Youth Specialties Reviewed by Sarah Macolino “We’re too young to know that some things are impossible, so we do them anyway.” This quote from the recent movie Amazing Grace launches Generation Change: Roll Up Your Sleeves and Change the World. These words are powerful, coming as they do from the mouth of a passionate young William Wilberforce, but what makes them especially poignant here is that the book quoting them was written by a 16-year-old named Zach Hunter. Hunter published his first book, Be the Change: Your Guide to Freeing Slaves and Changing the World, last year, and is the subject of a just-released biography entitled Zach Hunter: ModernDay Abolitionist (part of the Young Heroes series from KidHaven Press) by Q.L. Pearce.

Hunter understands that sometimes the most powerful truths are best delivered in the simplest packages. While his

informal writing style (as well as the cover design) will draw in a mostly teenage audience, Hunter expresses universal truths in ways that apply to adults as well as teens and to both Christians and non-Christians alike. He doesn’t avoid discussing faith, but he adds the frank statement,“Whether you share my beliefs or not, if you’re interested in making a difference in this world, I welcome you.” This is a message nonChristians need to hear from believers more often.

The book’s format is also welcoming.

Each chapter deals with a single issue— justice, hunger, and education are a few of the titles—and is illustrated with an example of a young person who is making a difference in that particular area of concern. For example, in the chapter about health, Hunter tells the story of Conner, a boy who began a foundation called Dry Tears and sold bracelets to raise money for clean water in Africa. Hunter’s simple but powerful outline of the events that brought Conner’s attention to Africa’s needs gives hope to the reader by showing that young people really can—and do—have a powerful influence for good.

Then Hunter invites his readers to consider taking on that responsibility themselves. At the end of each section, he provides a list of suggestions for what the “ordinary teenager” can do to make a difference. Both doable and affordable, these suggestions eliminate any excuses that young people (or their elders) might be tempted to make for remaining uninvolved. And, of course, the author himself is living, writing proof that the “too young to make a difference” excuse has no validity.

This book is a valuable resource for any teen who isn’t sure what changing the world is all about, for any Christian who wants to know what Generation Y is thinking, and for any non-Christian concerned about the most important issues of today. Speaking from both personal experience and the experiences of others, Hunter does an excellent job of explainPRISM 2008

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ing how Generation Y can become Generation Change. n This book has been peer reviewed by Sarah Macolino, 15, an avid writer herself. She lives with her family and dog in Philadelphia.

She enjoys softball, singing, and a good enchilada, and is photographically inclined.

The Church of the Second Chance

By Jens Soering Lantern Books Reviewed by David L. O’Hara Jens Soering has already written several books about the gospel and what it means for prison reform. While each of his books does a good job of laying out the case for prison reform, Soering’s latest offers several features that particularly commend it.

Each chapter of The Church of the Second Chance: A Faith-Based Approach to Prison Reform opens with a vignette from the Bible that illuminates some facet of our American prisons. Soering reminds us that Joseph was wrongly imprisoned for rape, for instance, and that Paul appealed for clemency on behalf of Onesimus, who had legally earned harsh punishment. In each of these commentaries Soering demonstrates his unique gift for showing us how deeply the gospel addresses the way we should deal with crime and criminals.

Still, for my money, the best parts of each chapter come after these commentaries—in the form of a dialogue, plus what I’ll call the “provocations.”

Each chapter concludes with the transcript of an interview with a prisoner, prisoner advocate, or crime victim. Plato and Shakespeare knew it, and Soering knows it as well: Dialogue— human conversation—is a powerful medi-

um for great ideas. As such, the book is worth the cost for these interviews alone.

For example, in one chapter he interviews fellow prisoner Ras Talawa Tafari.

Tafari is a Rastafarian whose prison sentence has been repeatedly lengthened simply because he will not cut his hair, in compliance with his religious beliefs.

This underscores an ugly fact about prisons: They train inmates to be prisoners, not to be good citizens.The dialogue takes an otherwise unattractive character (dreadlocks, poor diction, in prison for violent crime) and shows him to be, well, human.The danger in reading these interviews is that we might start to believe that these prisoners are our neighbors; but we know that only nice people are our neighbors, right?

If the dialogues are thought-provoking, the real provocations are nevertheless yet to come, in the form of the “Questions for Reflection and Discussion.” Soering’s “questions” are more like provocations to go and do justice and love mercy.They will not let us get away with a brief meditation (“Oh, how horrible prison life is; thank God it’s not me in there; now let’s move on to the next chapter.”) Instead, they spell out specific actions we can take for the sake of the imprisoned.

As an academic, I read hundreds of books each year; Jens’ books are the only ones that consistently make me cry. Some activists say the point is not to understand the world but to change it. Soering’s books, I think, can help us to do both.

Soering is not a perfect writer. He has a rough edge, and his use of statistics can be heavy-handed and occasionally mistaken. Nevertheless, my advice to you is to buy it, read it, and share it with others.

Don’t buy it for the stats; buy it for the stories. In the end, they may be the best tool for change that we have.This book feels like a live coal in my pocket now that I have read it: powerful—and dangerous to ignore. n

our neighbors into the body of Christ.

In a world marked by increasing isolation, heightened security/suspicion, and globalization, our neighbors are calling out for something new.

Sine quotes songwriter Martyn Joseph: “The revolution will be live. [It] will be in the streets. [It] will be cleaning toilets and giving another blanket to Karen. The revolution will not be talking about poverty in hotel banquet rooms. It will be eating beans and rice with Ms. Sunshine and watching Back to the Future with our neighbor Mary.

Get ready, friends…God is preparing us for something really, really—small.”

Sine asks his readers if we are satisfied with the “good life” that the “global mall” is holding out to us or if we’re David O’Hara is assistant professor of phi- willing to go deeper into the rich, soullosophy and classics at Augustana College satisfying “good life of God.” Do we in Sioux Falls, S. Dak. He is the co-author want to be marked by genuine human of From Homer to Harry Potter (Brazos, relationships or by the shiny stuff of the 2006) and Narnia and the Fields of Arbol: consumer culture? Much as we think The Environmental Vision of C.S. Lewis that these things will help us relate to (just out from University Press of Kentucky). our neighbors, the reality is that they He is also the editor of the forthcoming can find that stuff on their own. The Religious Writings of Charles S. Peirce. greater challenge is to offer things that are harder to come by these days— relationship, honesty, reciprocity—a way The New Conspirators of living that imitates Christ’s life of humility, celebration, and purpose.

And this is what the “new conspiraBy Tom Sine tors” are realizing and are trying to InterVarsity Press teach those of us stuck in traditional church routines. A return to the small Reviewed by Rachel Parker acts of care, listening, and hospitality are Tom Sine reaches making a profound impact on our neighunderground to pull bors, and it’s causing them to respond up into the main- to Christ.

In addition to his thorough cultural stream conversation a handful of the new- critique, Sine devotes six entire chapters est movements going to practical response—how we in our on in the church. In own contexts can respond by “reimagThe New Conspirators ining” whole-life faith, whole-life stewhe offers a thought- ardship, whole-life community, wholeful analysis of emergent, monastic, mis- life mission, and entrepreneurship.

Sine and his friends in the new sional, and mosaic churches. The folks involved in these movements offer streams sound fairly extreme at times, refreshing strategies for welcoming challenging their readers and followers PRISM 2008

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to make significant adjustments, marked most notably by the language of “whole life.” Some of us may think that making any sort of whole-life change is too much to tackle, and we’re not willing to pack up and say good-bye to our traditional churches. But I think they just might be okay with that and simply ask you to look for something “really, really—small” to incorporate into your life. Maybe your neighbor Mary is looking for someone to watch Back to the Future with tonight. n Rachel Parker is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass.

Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…

Or Democrat

By Lisa Sharon Harper New Press Reviewed by Michele Barnes McClendon Lisa Sharon Harper is a bright new voice in a movement that has become as reputable as it was inevitable: an era of evangelicals proclaiming a whole gospel, one that not only embraces personal transformation but compels social transformation as well.

In her new book, Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican…Or Democrat, Harper, an African American, recounts her conversion experience at a rural, white, evangelical camp meeting in her teens. Her subsequent involvement with her white, conservative evangelical church family and friends created a complex and delicate distance between Harper and her African American family/community.

The message that her newfound evangelical faith communicated to her was

that being Christian necessarily meant being Republican. During her early college years she championed the most visible causes of the religious right and could easily be found amidst campus pro-life rallies.

But her eventual involvement with Campus Crusade for Christ led her on a summer mission project that brought her face to face with inner-city outcasts and at-risk African American youths.

That summer was the first time she understood God’s deep love and concern for people living on the fringes of society.

Returning to college with a modified worldview and a deeper appreciation of justice issues, Harper discovered that her new perspective clashed with the conservative views of Campus Crusade for Christ, where the problem of homelessness didn’t seem to merit the same attention as abortion. Her Republican, evangelical community didn’t seem to share her new passion for caring for the poor and oppressed.They were more concerned with accepting responsibility for personal sin and morality than with acknowledging systemic sin and fighting to change it. But any understanding of the gospel that favors only one of these aspects, or one over the other, Harper says, will necessarily be incomplete.

In her book, she points out that 21st-century evangelicals have been reconnecting in the past decade or so to the rich heritage of such forebears as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Finney, Sojourner Truth, and William Wilberforce, all of whose understanding of Christian discipleship compelled them to advocate for social reform.

Modern-day evangelicals like John Perkins, Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, Tom Skinner, Ron Sider, and now Lisa Sharon Harper are calling us back to the true and rich traditions of evangelicalism, wherein a more holistic gospel abides—one that embraces both the personal and social dimensions of spiritual transformation. More evangelicals than PRISM 2008

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ever are coming to understand that God cares for the poor, the marginalized, and victims of injustice just as much as he cares for the unborn and for the integrity of biblical marriage. When we read the gospel with fresh eyes, Harper says, our politics begin to change.

She advises us to embrace our strong evangelical roots rather than partisan politics that can divide us as a faith community and inhibit our wider perspective of the kingdom of God. As a potent voice in a new generation of evangelicals, she delivers her message with a power that brings to mind the passage in Matthew 11: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it.” And, I might add, a few good women, too, of which Ms. Harper is most assuredly one. n Until last year a campus minister for the Coalition for Christian Outreach, Michele Barnes McClendon is currently a freelance writer and stay-at-home mom in Northeast Ohio.

Jesus for President

By Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw Zondervan Reviewed by Craig Wong A dear friend of mine, a Roman Catholic professor of political science and ecclesiology, shared a story recently that many fathers can relate to. It’s a classic phenomenon for children to grasp the oftrepeated wisdom of their parents only when they hear it from someone else.

Such was the case when my friend, whose vocational passion has always been for the church’s fidelity to Christ amidst competing lovers, handed a copy of Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals to his teenage son. “My son thought it was a revelation. Scales fell from his eyes,”

ets, from Nebuchadnezzar to Herod, or exegetes the subversive practices of the early church under Caesar…at a level that a junior high kid (and therefore, the average American) can enjoy. In a word, Jesus for President is simply prophetic.

As a 47-year-old, I might qualify as a borderline curmudgeon. I didn’t immediately take to the book, put off by the manipulative title and the visual explosion that covered every page (which, incidentally, won over my artsy wife before she indulged in a single sentence).

But having read it, I am now convinced of its value. We live in spiritually perilous times. The choices the church in America makes has, for better or worse, enormous consequences. Claiborne and he bemoaned with signature sarcasm, Haw make it unnervingly clear that it has adding. “It’s particularly embarrassing always been, for Yahweh’s people, a questhat his favorite quotes are those of my tion of allegiance. God or Caesar? Thus, colleagues!”

Jesus for President helps make possible, This little story captures what I for American Christians and pagans alike, believe to be the central strength of this the sobering recognition that there is collaborative work by Shane Claiborne even a choice to be made. n (from The Simple Way in Philadelphia, Pa.) and Chris Haw (from Camden House Craig Wong is the executive director of Grace in Camden, N.J.).What these two young, Urban Ministries, a congregation-based nonevangelically raised Christians have profit located in San Francisco’s Mission pulled off, with immaculate and wildly District that serves low-income families. He creative deftness, is an essential bridge also writes PRISM’s regular “On Being the between the theological academy and the Church” column. restless masses of a church in America that has lost its bearings.

In their own words, Jesus for President Transformation does not “presume to blaze new trails after Lausanne of scholarship” but, rather, introduces the reader to a remarkable canon of

By Al Tizon literature spanning both time and tradiRegnum/Wipf & Stock tion: for example, St. Augustine, Stanley Hauwerwas, Oscar Romero, Walter Recommended by Ron Sider Brueggemann, Jon Sobrino, René Padilla, Walter Wink, and Mother Theresa.

Al Tizon, director of Important as well are the scholars of ESA’s Word & Deed imperial history, whether of Babylonian Network, has just pubor Roman variety, that gird the authors’ lished an important witty and masterfully lucid examinabook: Transformation tion of the Bible through the lens of after Lausanne. It is the empire. Imagine a book that traces the best available account relationship between kings and prophof how younger PRISM 2008

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evangelical leaders from the developing world decisively influenced the global evangelical world to embrace holistic ministry.

Fifty years ago, most evangelical leaders would have agreed with the statement, “The primary mission of the church is saving souls.” Mission equaled evangelism, and evangelism was the primary task for biblical Christians. If one had a little time or money left over, modest engagement with social issues was, perhaps, permissible. But social action was certainly not a primary concern for evangelicals. That was what liberal Christians did.

Today it is difficult to find an evangelical leader who still thinks that way.

Almost all evangelical leaders now believe that evangelism and social ministry are both important parts of biblically shaped mission. Nor is the change merely conceptual and theological. All around the world, there are more and more local evangelical congregations and other ministries that are enthusiastically combining word and deed, effectively linking evangelism and social action in holistic ministries that both lead people to personal faith in Christ and transform broken people and impoverished communities.

This book is an excellent guide to how and why this momentous transformation took place. It helps the reader understand the key conferences, prominent leaders, and significant publications and organizations that led the way.

Transformation after Lausanne combines solid historical analysis, vigorous theological discussion, and helpful guidance for the future—in short, an excellent book about one of the most important changes in global Christianity in the last 100 years. (ESA supporting members can receive signed copies at a 50 percent discount. Call 484.384.2990 or e-mail kathryn@esa-online.org to order.) n

OFF THE SHELF Beyond the Suffering

By Robert Kellemen and Karole Edwards Baker Books Reviewed by Harold Dean Trulear Critics of the contemporary church bemoan its captivity to overly individualistic categories of thought. A self-centered gospel asks,“What can God/ Jesus/church/ Christianity do for me?” Sermons are reduced to self-help formulae, and worship truncates to consumer tastes as people “go to be fed” on Sunday mornings, as opposed to coming to church to worship God. Yet, the fragile and sinful condition of the human heart does require care. Would that such care were centered in community and theology rather than formula and therapy. Into the fray enter authors Robert Kelleman and Karole Edwards with Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction.

Kelleman and Edwards address the tension by using cultural resources from African American Christian history. The genius of their approach lies not only in gleaning ideas and concepts from that tradition but also in their assertion of the communal and relational nature of that tradition and its implications for the care of human frailty. Simply put, their book not only calls for thinking differently about pastoral and church care but also thrusts the emphasis back to the community of faith itself, urging us to take soul care and spiritual direction out of individualistic/self-centered categories and into the realm of relationships/ friendships.

Kelleman is a Christian counselor and seminary professor who has given sig-

nificant attention to relational development and its role in soul care. Edwards has done exceptional work in small group leadership and discipleship.Together, they find extraordinary resources for healing in the ways in which African Americans, particularly in the 19th century, coped with the hardships of racism, slavery, and discrimination.Their proposal for the use of these resources resonates well with those of Cheryl Townsend Gilkes,Archie Smith, Lee Butler, Edward Wimberly, Henry Mitchell, and Nicholas CooperLewter, all of whom have offered similar proposals for mining the rich tradition of African American Christianity and culture for sources of spiritual health and well-being. Kelleman and Edwards take the journey a step further in their book, offering both detailed descriptions of how certain principles operated in African American caregiving and practical suggestions for their implementation in a postmodern world.

The authors carefully distinguish between soul care (the sustaining and healing functions of faith) and spiritual direction (the art of reconciling and guiding within the Christian tradition). In so doing, they push a model that requires the building and strengthening of relationships within the community of faith in all four specific areas. Spiritual wellbeing is not truncated into an individual “getting better.” Rather, individuals are supported in community by community and for community.They not only experience healing and sustenance but also participate in reconciliation and guidance. Not only do we heal, but we also help heal others. Church can no longer be a feeding station in the narrow sense that its members are mere consumers.

Rather, the community, clergy, and lay people should participate together in a series of relationships and friendships that point to wholeness.

For the reader unfamiliar with African American Christianity and its history, this book offers the bonus of PRISM 2008

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bringing to life unsung persons of faith whose testimonies and influence on Christian life in America equal those of more well-known figures. Some will trail the footnotes to additional sources of faith and inspiration and history.You will not read this through in a sitting. The stories are too rich, the arguments too substantive, and the applications too thoughtful. But it is worth the time, investment, and potential for ministry to read carefully through this important offering. n Harold Dean Trulear is associate professor of applied theology at Howard University School of Divinity in Washington, DC, and a contributing editor to PRISM.

Beyond Left and Right

By Amy E. Black Baker Books

We the Purple

By Marcia Ford Tyndale House Publishers Reviewed by Bret Kincaid

Among the spate of faith-and-politics books published in time for the 2008 elections, at least two written by women are worthwhile reads. In Beyond Left and Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics, Amy E. Black, a political science professor at Wheaton College, writes a dispassionate, popularized primer for Christians looking for help

understanding, thinking about, and engaging US politics. In contrast, Marcia Ford, a religion journalist, book editor, and author of several books, writes a passionate though subtle argument for “reasonable” politics—a politics that is achievable if only the two political parties would recognize the power and seriously consider the vision of independent voters.

Black’s book is the closest thing to a Christian American politics textbook I’ve seen. In accessible prose, she discusses a range of issues related to faith and domestic politics. Her thesis is that Christians should engage politics knowledgeably and humbly, recognizing that politics is an instrument for loving God and neighbor. She begins by exploring the morality of political compromise and American political culture—including a very good chapter on religious identity and voting behavior. Additionally, she devotes several chapters to helping the reader grasp the basics of American political institutions, such as the two-party system, the three branches of government, and the constitutional limits of religious institutions.

Virtually the entire second half of the book examines the relationship between Christian faith and American politics.

Black first distills the political traditions of Catholics, Lutherans, Anabaptists, and the Reformed. This may be the least satisfying chapter for those who know well their rich traditions or who have found better ways of “cutting” the pie of American religious political traditions, but her brief descriptions may help beginners.This section would have been more useful, however, had she shown the reader how people who embrace any of these different traditions think about policy issues. Nonetheless, she beneficially touches on several political activities, such as political discourse and voting, while giving the reader normative ways of thinking through the challenges.

Voting—or rather, independent voters—is Marcia Ford’s primary focus in

We the Purple. She would likely disagree with Black’s exhortation that if, after accounting for several factors and educating oneself, one still can’t make a decision among competing candidates, the best line of action is to “vote with your party.” Ford is fed up with partisan politics. The bulk of her book describes the alternative—unaffiliated or “purple” citizens—who, according to Ford, make up at least a third of the electorate, including many evangelicals. Surveys indicate, however, that a large portion of selfidentified independent voters often vote for a particular party. Still, the proportion of independents has increased substantially recently, making them a critical factor in many election campaigns.

Independent voters, according to Ford, cannot be ideologically pegged, but they are generally interested in political reform.

They tend to want to replace the electoral college and are inclined toward term limits, campaign finance reform, redistricting reform, open primaries, and fewer barriers to voting—anything to break the sovereignty of the two major parties. Ford also rightly faults partisan conflict for obscuring the common ground in hotbutton issues like abortion and for leading to the repugnant partisanship of the church.

But there is no insight here into how to see politics through the eyes of faith.

Though Ford asserts, “If your faith does not in some way influence your political perspective and voting choices, that doesn’t say much for your faith,” she doesn’t help the reader see specifically how Christian faith should influence one’s politics. Even her argument favoring “reasonable” politics has no obvious faith-based grounds.

Why be “reasonable”? Why should American politics change? Why is she a “freedom freak”? Surely, the publicly relevant aspects of faith have answers, but Ford keeps her journalistic distance from them.

Though Black connects faith to politics more than Ford does, more fundaPRISM 2008

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mental questions are begged because Black’s thesis turns on this connection.

For instance, Black doesn’t explain why faith supports politics per se rather than, say, armed force. Instead, she claims “politics should never be an end in itself ” and then seems to contradict that claim later when she sagely argues that politics is about humbly seeking common ground.

Also, she understates the importance of biblical justice as a policymaking compass.

Still, agreeing that American politics are more complex than red and blue, both works have much to offer Christians preparing to vote well in November. n Bret Kincaid is associate professor of political science at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.

Resounding Truth

By Jeremy S. Begbie Baker Books Reviewed by Andy Crouch For several years Baker Books has been releasing titles in its “Engaging Culture” series.These in-depth explorations of particular aspects of culture —film, popular music, business, environmentalism, and more—are almost always worth reading. But the latest volume in the series, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music by the masterful English musician and theologian Jeremy Begbie, is a tour de force.

Begbie is not as well known in the United States as he should be—though that may be about to change, now that he has joined the faculty of Duke Divinity School to inaugurate a program in theology in the arts. His 2000 book Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge University Press), which juxtaposes music theory

with some of the knottiest problems in Christian philosophy, established him as an unusually creative theological voice.

Ultimately, though, Begbie is best experienced as a performer. His lectures, to use an unsuitably boring word, are unlike anything you’d expect from a Cambridge theologian: filled with visual art, accompanied by sound clips from many different musical cultures (jazz to Prokofiev to South African township songs), and punctuated by impromptu performances at the piano, all woven together with concise and memorable explorations of Christian Scripture and theology.

No book can do justice to Begbie’s stage presence, but Resounding Truth is a good introduction to the ways he is rethinking Christian ideas about music.

Begbie takes us on a whirlwind tour of “the Great Tradition,” the grand synthesis of theology and musical theory that animatedWestern thought from Augustine through the Middle Ages. For centuries, European Christians saw music as participating directly in a “cosmic order,” the mathematical and moral structure of the universe. This consensus was dismantled during the Reformation—with Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli embodying very different postures toward music in worship—and roundly rejected after the Enlightenment, when music came to be seen as merely a human form of expression rather than participation in cosmic harmony.

Begbie aims to revive some aspects of this Great Tradition, while recognizing that it was too ambitious in its original form. He draws our attention to three “musical theologians”—Schleiermacher, Barth, and Bonhoeffer—and two modern “theological musicians”—Olivier Messian and James MacMillan.At the center of the book is an examination of the incomparable Johann Sebastian Bach. And after all this historical work is done, Begbie still has a third of a book left to draw some remarkable connections between music and fundamental themes of

Christian faith, like time and eternity, freedom and constraint, and the Trinity.

For better and for worse, this book sits squarely within the Western tradition of “serious” music. So, while Begbie frequently cites female scholars, female composers and performers are no better represented here than they have been in that tradition. The exploration of nonWestern music and Western popular music is similarly thin.These omissions probably say less about Begbie’s knowledge and interests, which are close to encyclopedic, than his desire to prevent this already sprawling book from bursting its seams.

But whatever its limits, this book is indispensable—not just for musicians or theologians but for anyone who wants to participate seriously in “engaging culture.” More vividly than almost any other aspect of culture, music responds to and shapes the natural world, emerges from a long history of both performance and theory, and requires the investment of heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so Begbie reminds us that culture is a human response to God’s creation, is always steeped in history, and is ultimately rooted in our beautiful and broken human bodies and in our hope for their redemption and recreation.There is much more to be said about nearly every page of Begbie’s book—some of which he will no doubt say himself in future work. But the real measure of Resounding Truth’s value is how much it makes you want to listen, to play, to sing—and to pray. n

The Future of Faith in American Politics

By David Gushee Baylor University Press Reviewed by Amy E. Black

“I promise I will fight to discourage and diminish your school in any way that I can since it now plays for team Satan. Period.

There can be no discussion.” So concluded an e-mail message protesting the appearance of a prominent evangelical speaker on my campus this spring. The writer did not attend the talk before registering his disdain; indeed, he sent this vitriolic message before the speaker even arrived on campus. For far too many evangelicals in the United States, such conduct seems all too common. Lobbing verbal grenades at those with whom you disagree has supplanted meaningful conversation and productive discussion.

David Gushee’s new book, The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center, enters the potential minefield of addressing evangelicalism and politics with the laudable goal of setting a different tone.

Calling for “a biblically grounded rethinking of Christianity’s entire engagement with American culture,” Gushee suggests Andy Crouch directs Christianity Today’s that he will present “at least a rethinkChristian Vision Project, which asks “big ques- ing of our engagement with American tions” about culture, mission, and the gospel. public policy.”The first part of his book His book Culture Making: Recovering is the strongest and offers a significant our Creative Calling has just been published contribution to discussions of faith and

by InterVarsity Press. He is also an accom- politics, particularly his discussion of plished pianist. some of the key players, organizations, and ideas that comprise the emerging evangelical center. Indeed, many political Do you find our reviews helpful? What kind of books would you like to see indicators suggest that the evangelical on these pages? Send your feedback political landscape is in the midst of to kristyn@esa-online.org. change, and Gushee is likely correct that PRISM 2008

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this centrist movement is growing in strength and significance.

In his effort to show that most American evangelicals have broadened their political concerns beyond a singular focus on abortion and homosexuality, Gushee lists nine areas of “essentially consensus politics across every point on the evangelical political spectrum.” He mainly gets it right but stretches a bit too far when listing immigration and “access to universal healthcare” as areas of general agreement.

Unlike most discussions of evangelical politics that for all practical purposes speak only of white evangelicals in politics, Gushee tries to broaden his analysis to include African Americans and Hispanics as well. This is a commendable exercise and one too rarely

attempted. Gushee’s analysis of non-white evangelicals is not exhaustive, but then again, one should not expect it to be, given the scope of this particular book.

The second part of the book presents four political issues—torture, marriage, climate change, and war—that Christian believers need to consider and address. Overall, these chapters provide solid discussions of the debate surrounding important political issues. Gushee generally refuses to prescribe specific policy for evangelicals to promote, a restraint that may frustrate some readers, but, given the larger purposes of his book and the complexities of the American political system, this approach seems prudent. At times, however, his attempt at careful analysis and evenhanded portrayal of multiple perspec-

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tives falls short, as in the chapter on creation care when what he likely intends as a lighthearted description of “the major ingredients that make up the climate change skeptic recipe” is too strong a caricature.

Although Gushee may not quite achieve the gargantuan task of outlining “the future of faith in American politics,” this book is a must-read for evangelical believers who genuinely seek to be a public witness as they apply their faith to politics. n Amy E. Black is associate professor of political science at Wheaton College,Wheaton, Ill., and the author of Beyond Left and Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics (Baker Books), also reviewed in this issue.

OFF THE SHELF The Great Awakening

By Jim Wallis HarperOne Reviewed by Bryan McGraw Jim Wallis is nothing if not persistent. For decades now he has been a champion of two propositions that are problematic to many Americans: first, that faith, properly understood, should not and indeed cannot be merely private but must also speak to and shape matters of public debate; and, second, that authentic Christian faith compels support for policies typically associated with the political left (a generous welfare state, affirmative action, robust environmentalism, a disinclination to use military force, and so on).

The first proposition cuts against the widespread sentiment that faith and politics must be separate, and the second stands uncomfortably at odds with the last couple of decades, where “faith” has, for the most part, been a force in conservative politics but absent from (or even disdained by) its liberal counterpart. In a world where one side seems to shout “theocracy” at the merest mention of the divine while the other comes uncomfortably close to making the divine a mere instrument of partisan favor,Wallis has indefatigably pressed for a kind of progressive evangelical politics, what he calls in his latest book “conservative radicalism.”

The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America advances three main claims: (1) that the “era” of the religious right has passed and that Christians—white evangelicals in particular—have begun to engage politically on a much wider range of issues than abortion and homosexuality;

(2) that faith-focused mobilization is crucial to tackling such persistent problems as national and global poverty, environmental protection, and the like; and (3) that such mobilization can help solve those problems by getting us “beyond” the partisan and ideological divisions that stifle “real” progress.

Another “Great Awakening” is upon us, Wallis contends, bringing with it the potential to overcome what seem like intractable problems if only we’ll let it.

If only it were that simple, and if only Wallis were open to something other than what amounts to pretty standard left-liberal political positions with a bit of cultural conservatism thrown in for good measure. Wallis’ arguments are disappointing more than they are wrongheaded (though they are that in many places); after all, if we really are undergoing another “Great Awakening” that will betoken a new era in politics, wouldn’t it look at least a little different from what almost every Democratic presidential candidate proposes? Otherwise, it seems as if all Wallis really wants is for white evangelicals (at whom the book is mostly aimed) to switch teams and abandon the GOP. Perhaps that isn’t quite the case, but it’s hard not to notice that in the last two-thirds of the book, where Wallis sketches out what sorts of policies his “radical conservative” might support, nearly every one of them would be right at home in a Democratic Party platform.

Wallis and his allies are running the risk of making precisely the sorts of mistakes he is so critical of in the religious right. He, of course, genuinely believes that Scripture demands that political authorities take a more active role in promoting social welfare (both here and abroad), but I wonder what—or whom —Wallis is willing to sacrifice to make that happen. America is, and will remain, a two-party system, and if evangelicals take Wallis’ advice, it seems to me inevitable that they end up voting for PRISM 2008

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candidates whose party is almost entirely enthralled to the gospel of sexual liberation and abortion. Wallis forthrightly (and admirably) criticizes the moral libertarianism working at the heart of our popular culture, and he recognizes how destructive our sexual licentiousness can be. But he also seems all too willing to ignore those problems when they turn out politically inconvenient, refusing to recommend anything that might make a serious dent in the rates of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and abortion. Wallis’ pro-choice arguments are especially disappointing, given how abortion easily represents the greatest sustained assault on human dignity in our country today. If that does not demand serious political action, then what else does?

Jim Wallis is certainly right about one thing: We have entered a time when evangelicals are seriously reconsidering their political priorities and thinking about how they should be responding to the gospel’s commands regarding justice and care for one another. It would be a shame if they abandoned the religious right simply to embrace a different halfgospel, ignoring the “least of these” and waiting for another “Great Awakening” to try and get it right again. n Bryan McGraw is a an assistant professor of political science at Wheaton College.

Editor’s note: For contrast, we are publishing two reviews of Wallis’ most recent book, the first by a political scientist, above, the second by an activist, below.

The Great Awakening Reviewed by Kim Bobo For anyone concerned about the apparent right-wing stranglehold over this country’s faith community, Jim Wallis’ latest book offers examples of a new and growing shift in the American politi-

cal/religious landscape. He describes the church’s roles in four previous times of American “awakening”: the 18th-century struggle for independence; the early 19th-century fight for abolition of slavery and the launch of a Christian feminist movement; the New Deal programs of the early 20th century that challenged poverty and economic disparity; and the civil rights movement launched in the 1960s. After demonstrating the significant role of the religious community in these movements for justice, he outlines the thesis of the book: “We are poised on the edge of what might become another spiritual revival or awakening that will change things—big things in the world.”

As someone deeply engaged in challenging the daily exploitation of workers in the nation, I share Wallis’ hope that we are indeed on the brink of such a revival, and I have seen some of the same writing on the wall that fuels his hope.

Wallis acknowledges that evangelicals, along with most other people of faith, care about a wide range of issues, both those that are considered more “conservative”—such as divorce rates, garbage on television, teen pregnancies, and abortions—and those considered more liberal—such as poverty and the environment. Few people of faith are as single-issue oriented as the media likes to suggest.

The book cites multiple examples of leaders, especially well-known evangelical and megachurch pastors, wrestling with and working on these issues. I see this in my work every day. Like other people of faith, evangelicals and Pentecostals are concerned about worker justice. Evangelical and Pentecostal storefront congregations composed of workers holding down multiple low-wage jobs in order to make ends meet are strong supporters of workers who organize to improve conditions. Evangelical and Pentecostal congregations based in

wealthy suburbs, while not immediately identifying with exploited workers, are usually willing to get involved once they hear workers’ stories.They share the core understanding that Christ cared for people, both spiritually and physically, and that we, too, should care for our brothers and sisters.

Another core message of the book is the new vitality and commitment of young people to make the world a better place. Again, I can affirm this from my own work. I recently co-led an alternative spring break program in Philadelphia, helping young people assess the working conditions of employees in nonunion hotels. Although the students ran the gamut from conservative to liberal and represented everything from business to peace-studies majors, they are all eager to play a role in improving society.

They don’t want pat answers or to be told what to do, but they do want to be involved and make a difference.

The challenge for all of us concerned about economic justice in this nation is to find a way to encourage and support this new awakening Wallis has outlined.

How do we recruit, nurture, train, and strengthen new leaders to work in congregations and communities across the nation? How do we build structures and networks that can mobilize our concerns into concrete actions? How can we move ourselves and others from awareness to real social change? Wallis gives us hope that change is in the air.

Now it is up to all of us to tap into these opportunities to bring God’s kingdom to earth. n Kim Bobo is the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice (iwj.org).

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The Decline of African American Theology

By Thabiti M. Anyabwile Navpress Reviewed by Vincent Bacote Thabiti M. Anyabwile’s The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity reveals a much richer and evident theology in the African American church than one might expect, especially in the early centuries of the United States. We meet Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes, and Olaudah Equiano, examine the theology in Phyllis Wheatley’s poetry, and discover an insightful spirituality woven throughout Southern slave narratives.

Who knew that Hammon and Haynes were contemporaries of figures such as George Whitefield and John Wesley?

Their contributions particularly warm Anyabwile’s Reformed Baptist heart, and he discovers broad continuity with Reformation impulses in the majority of the early figures we meet. The book examines the doctrines of revelation, God, humanity, Christology, soteriology, and pneumatology, and, given the context of oppression, Anyabwile is surprised and encouraged by the depth and theological sophistication.

The decline referred to in the title begins at the dawn of the 20th century.

Anyabwile argues: “…a clear and distinct theological decline could be traced.

The rich God-centered treasure troves of Lemuel Haynes, Phyllis Wheatley, and others were plundered, wasted, and forsaken until the fool’s gold of much of contemporary African American theology and preaching were all that remained.”

The primary culprits, he believes, are the Pentecostal William Seymour, followed by the New Thought and nationalism of Marcus Garvey, the mysticism of Howard Thurman, the black theology of James Cone, and the prosperity theology of Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes, and Fred Price. Anyabwile concludes that these figures led the path to a distorted theology more reflective of the surrounding culture than the biblical witness.

There are problematic elements.Why use the term “postmodern” in a subheading in each chapter and wait until page 163 to define such a volatile and contested term? Moreover, I’m not convinced the descent is as clear as advertised. Granted, troubling developments exist, but are these figures connected to each other in some unbroken chain of influence? Would examining the legacies of the major African American denominations reveal these influences as significant catalysts for development (or rather, devolution)? The author admits the book is limited in scope, but can one really chart such a “clear” decline while notable characters are absent or barely present in this narrative? If the Church of God in Christ, the National Baptist Convention, the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, or the many others attended by most African Americans are silent, how much plausibility does the argument have?

Furthermore, if black theology is discussed, how can there be only a single reference to J. Deotis Roberts? Even if Cone is featured, to mostly ignore Roberts when introducing black theology is a major lacuna. Anyabwile also fails to give proper reference to the diversity of doctrinal development among Pentecostals and charismatics.

Our faith should always critique our cultural climate, yet I wonder if Anyabwile is fully aware of how his own faith has been “shaped more by historical and cultural practice than by Scripture.”

Indeed a decline has occurred, but it

is more complex than Anyabwile’s analysis suggests. The threat of the cultural captivity of the church is ever present, and the siren song of American individualism and consumerism has successfully seduced many. More attention to this challenge would have strengthened the book.

Anyabwile champions re-centering the Bible, re-exalting God, recovering the gospel, and revitalizing the church.

No arguments here, but I believe the way forward is broader than becoming a “truly Reformed” church.

Though flawed, the book merits reading, because it introduces us to early African American theological voices, and it gets the conversation moving on this neglected topic. n

church), Lakewood Church in Houston, Tex. (aka Joel Osteen’s church), the Potter’s House in Dallas, Tex. (aka T.D. Jakes’ church), Imago and Mars Hill in the Pacific Northwest (poster churches for the emerging movement), and seven others. This book chronicles their journey, the conversations they had about each worship gathering, and lessons learned from their shared experience.

While Christian reflections on the church abound, honest thoughts and questions from an atheist perspective are not as easy to find. Certainly diatribes against God, faith, and church of the Christopher Hitchens variety exist, but these are destined—or should be­­ —for the 50-cent carts in used bookstores along with other fanatical, fundamentalist literature. The insights of Vincent Bacote is an associate professor of self-proclaimed atheist Matt Casper, on theology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, the other hand, are decidedly more Ill., and director of the college’s Center for valuable in that they are civil and levelApplied Christian Ethics. headed, while at the same time brutally honest. Casper does not mince words about what he saw, heard, and experiJim and Casper enced. Amidst the pomp, the lights, the Go to Church slickness, the show, the personality cults, and the extravagance that describe much

By Jim Henderson and Matt Casper of what passes as worship, Casper raises Barna Books important red flags. Underlying these red flags is the question that Henderson Reviewed by Al Tizon finds the most difficult to field: “Is this what Jesus told you guys to do?”

In his ongoing quest Nevertheless, Henderson finds his for church relevance, atheist friend’s honesty and civility a postmodern pastor- healthy mix that becomes in his hands a evangelist Jim moldable lump of constructive criticism Henderson came up to help satisfy his desire to reshape the with a brilliant idea: church for the 21st century. His own hire an atheist as a insights intermingle with Casper’s, and participant-observer in between chapters, he suggests six to visit churches with important shifts that he believes the him.Thus began a research project con- church needs to make if it is to speak to ducted by Henderson and atheist Matt today’s postmodern culture: from apolCasper that involved visiting 12 key ogetics to an apology, from talking to churches across the United States over listening, from strength to weakness, a span of two months.The hit list includ- from beliefs to spirituality, from debate ed Saddleback Community Church in to dialogue, and from manipulation to Southern California (aka Rick Warren’s intentionality.

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Of the 12 churches they visited, two of them shone brightly for different reasons. Lawndale Community Church in Chicago impressed both men with its demonstration of selfless, sacrificial service in, with, and for the community.

It is truly a community church (in contrast to a commuter church), which provides holistic ministries for Lawndale residents, including health services, drug rehabilitation, employment, and innovative church services. Casper was especially impressed by the fact that the pastor—“Coach” Wayne Gordon—is “a middle-class white guy” who moved his family into the predominantly black neighborhood of Lawndale—not for a week, a month, or even a year, but for the long haul to facilitate real transformation in the community.

The other church that impressed them was the only one that Casper attended solo and then discussed with Henderson at a later time. The service at Jason’s House, located in Casper’s home town of San Diego, began with a meal, followed by simple singing, praying, and sharing. The integrity of relationships, the openness, the simplicity, and the humility struck Casper as being authentic like no other church they had visited. Furthermore, the connection between relating to God, relating to one another, and serving the community seemed organic, not contrived and disjointed. Casper shared with Henderson that he himself experienced a sense of belonging, even though he did not share the people’s core beliefs. “I still felt like an outsider,” Casper said, “but a welcomed outsider.” This, he suspects—the relational, welcoming, inclusive ethos of Jason’s House—reflects what he knows of the character of Jesus.

The book’s dialogical, popular style makes for easy reading, but Jim and Casper Go to Church is for mature audiences— that is, for church leaders who long to be authentic in their witness to the gospel in an ever-changing world. As I

ist dressed in a homespun hoodie. In one comic highlight, Campolo teases Claiborne:“Jesus dressed better than you.”

But Claiborne comes off as the more reasonable and attractive participant.

As he shares his experiences with The Simple Way community in Philadelphia, he is so joyful and excited that it’s obvious he enjoys—rather than just endures—the simple life, and it draws you in. He shares hard truths with a smile that makes it all seem desirable.

Campolo, on the other hand, occasionally comes across as negative, angry, Al Tizon is assistant professor of holistic and even bitter, appearing upset that ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary in people aren’t playing the game his way.

Wynnewood, Pa., and director of Word & It’s not his usual compelling, fire-meup preacher style, and his edge could Deed Network at ESA. make the seeker-listener tune out.

Simply Enough is designed as a group study tool, especially geared to young Simply Enough (DVD) adults.The six 12-minute segments (lifestyle, food, celebrations, stuff, money, and

By Tony Campolo and justice) are broken into three parts by Shane Claiborne built-in musical interludes. These pauses Alternatives for Simple Living keep the conversation quick-paced and allow you to stop for discussion or reflecReviewed by Carol R. Cool tion. The study guide’s thought-proExpecting talking heads voking questions offer opportunities to and a lecture, I was get real within community and to compleasantly surprised to mit to hard decisions. Each section also find that the DVD invites reactions to the music, a plus for study tool Simply younger audiences. Bonus clips feature Enough: Straight Talk from Tony Campolo additional conversations, and Altern& Shane Claiborne on Simple, Just Living atives for Simple Living provides postis instead a conversation between two cards, posters, flyers, and stickers to help friends. As in any conversation, the par- you advertise the sessions and CDs with ticipants shared their opinions, their full-length versions of the songs.

This isn’t basic Christianity, more war stories, their frustrations, their wittiest punch lines—and interrupted like Christianity 301, but if your group each other to do so. Quotable thoughts is ready for a challenge, Simple Living can (“When the church is silent, the rock move them deeper into an integrated stars will cry out”), poignant stories, simple lifestyle. Campolo and Claiborne convicting factoids, and moments of host a conversation that could lead to humor are interwoven in an easily life-changing conversations for your small group. n watchable way.

Campolo, every inch the college professor in a conservative sports coat, Carol R. Cool is a conference speaker and provides a visual counterpoint to Shane internationally published writer. She lives with Claiborne, the dreadlocked street activ- her family in Lancaster County, Pa. turned the pages, even though I laughed out loud at times, I also allowed the truths that emerged to do their work in my heart and mind—truths that potentially hold the keys to genuine renewal for the sterile, manicured, consumer churches that pepper the land.

I found myself wishing the Jim/ Casper team were available to churches that want an honest assessment for the sake of renewal. The risk, of course, is that God might decide to get ahold of Casper. What then? n

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OFF THE SHELF I’M OK—YOU’RE NOT

By John Shore Navpress Reviewed by Heidi Unruh My grandfather Lou, an avowed atheist, taught at a prison where he was the focus of intense prayer and proselytizing by Christian inmates. One day an ardent devotee approached my grandfather: “Last night I was praying for you, and the Lord said to me, ‘Lay off Lou for a while.’”

This fairly sums up the message of John Shore’s I’m OK, You’re Not: The Message We’re Sending Nonbelievers and Why We Should Stop—just lay off.

Shore’s argument begins with our fundamental commandment to “Love God; love others.” Love entails accepting and respecting people just as they are.

Telling non-Christians (a.k.a.“Normies,” in Shore’s lingo) that they need to accept Christ is inherently judgmental and unloving. Jesus gave us the Golden Rule: Treat other people the way you want to be treated. Honestly, would you want to hang out with someone with the hidden agenda of “You need to change to be more like me”? We need to love and live in such a way that people are drawn to our faith, to be open about our faith when people ask us, and to privately pray that they accept God’s invitation to his eternal party. But, Shore says, it’s not up to us to push them, kicking and fussing, through the door.

Shore’s “cease and desist” injunction targets the unsolicited spiritual browbeating of people who have already heard the gospel yet choose to reject Christianity. A fundamental flaw in Shore’s reasoning is his contention that this group includes just about every non-

Christian in America. “At this point, our Good News is old news,” he asserts.

Although Shore rightly assesses traditional evangelistic methods to be woefully inadequate and even counterproductive, this does not mean that we are off the hook with the Great Commission in our own neighborhoods. To the contrary, our culture is desperately hungry for the real Good News. People may not need to hear—again—the four spiritual laws, but they do need to hear about the Jesus who declared, “The Spirit has anointed me to preach good news to the poor ...”And they need to see Christians doing it.

Christians too often adopt a superior attitude toward non-Christians, but Shore goes overboard by admonishing, “It’s got to be perfectly okay for non-Christians to be non-Christian.” Love does not mean uncritical acceptance. Jesus loved the tax collector, the Pharisee, and the adulterer—but he invited them to a radically new life. The call of Christ is still “Repent and believe the good news!” Shore’s own painful life story, shared with poignant humor, suggests how Christians can walk alongside nonbelievers on the path of repentance and healing.

Theological critique aside, I recommend this book for several reasons. First, anyone interested in North American missions must grapple with our culture’s negative perception of Christianity, revealed in quotes from non-Christians such as this one: “I’d rather go to hell than live the hypocritical life I see so many Christians living.”

Second, it’s good to remind ourselves that producing converts is God’s job: “We can love Normies just as we find them, and let God worry about the rest of it.” While I disagree that unconditional love excludes nudging people toward Christ, getting stressed out about results doesn’t bring anyone closer to the kingdom.

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are rarely this much fun. If I ever get to invite seven people to a dinner party, Shore might make it onto my guest list.

And I’ll make sure he’s seated next to an unbeliever. ■ Heidi Unruh is director of the Congregations, Community Outreach and Leadership Development Project and staff associate with ESA, specializing in faith-based initiatives and equipping churches for external ministry.

THE SCANDALOUS GOSPEL OF JESUS

by Peter Gomes HarperOne Reviewed by Harold Dean Trulear Peter Gomes is a doctor of the church in the true sense of the term. The Harvard University chaplain and professor delights in his role of diagnostician of the church’s ills and is never short of prescription. Evangelical readers will not always agree with the details of his prescribed medication, but Gomes’ diagnoses give thoughtful Christians of all theological persuasions cause to reflect on their own ecclesiastical malaise and prayerfully consider immediate remedy.

The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News? represents his most daring diagnosis to date.

Gomes argues that the church has abandoned the preaching of the gospel of Jesus for the preaching of the person of Jesus.The danger lies in the church’s persistence in fashioning the Jesus it preaches in its own cultural image, the sort of “Christ of culture” that H. Richard Niebuhr warned of half a century ago.

Some will cheer when Gomes criticizes liberal churches for re-imaging Jesus, but

we may be less ready to accept his criticism of evangelicals whose focus on personal transformation falls far short of the actual transformation that is evidence of a true encounter with the radical Jesus.

In either case, the culprit is the same: a “culturally conservative religion” that preaches social and political assurance rather than the scandalous gospel of Jesus, which reflects risk and offense to the common culture.

Evangelicals will cringe when Gomes suggests that we have to “look beyond the Bible to the gospel.” His brand of biblical criticism will not sit well with most of us. Yet socially conscious evangelicals will share his concern for the cultural captivity of the church and our failure to take Jesus’ message seriously, from loving/praying for our enemies (including Osama bin Laden, an idea he cites from our friend Tony Campolo) to resisting temptations to power and the prayer breakfasts that embody them.The gospel is inherently offensive, challenges all pretense to human prerogative (and preemptive strikes), and risks rejection of the person who preaches it or who lives it.

Gomes proposes some delicious shifts in consciousness, such as moving from “What Would Jesus Do?” to “What Would Jesus Have Me to Do?” Also, he chides our faithfulness to revivalism as a false representation of a glorious past and offers a theology of renewal that focuses on the change necessary to live in the future. Future-oriented living is a key theme for Gomes. He believes it to be a real test of the early church’s faithfulness, in that the hoped-for second coming of Jesus did not materialize. As a result, the church found itself in a struggle for which it was not prepared.

Today’s church is similarly not ready for prime time.

Gomes’ rehearsal of Jesus’ concern for the marginalized, including the poor, women, and persons of differing sexual orientation, will give the thoughtful

terms such as “mission” or “crusade” on a regular basis. A second tactic is to conflate God and country, to see the United States as the “chosen nation.” Presidents conclude speeches with “God bless America,” invoke the nation, declare that the United States is exceptional, and issue a call for national renewal which has spiritual overtones and resonates with religious conservatives.

Presidential candidates and presidents also attempt to create a politically advantageous relationship with the faithful through “acts of communion” such as traveling to a certain place revered by a segment of the faithful, e.g., the Vatican.

Other acts of communion include issuing Harold Dean Trulear is associate professor of a presidential proclamation emphasizapplied theology at Howard University School ing some religious practice, for example of Divinity in Washington, DC, and a con- calling for a day of prayer and delivering a Christmas message which explicitly tributing editor to PRISM. refers to Christ.

The last tactic is “morality politics.”

Analyzing party platforms, Domke and THE GOD STRATEGY Coe note how issues such as abortion and same-sex relationships have been transBy David Domke and Kevin Coe formed into “national, religious, and moral Oxford University Press symbols.” Calls for constitutional amendments and conservative judicial appointReviewed by Kathy Lee ments accompany this morally-laden In The God Strategy language.

The authors conclude that discourse authors David Domke and Kevin Coe con- in American politics is no longer shaped tend that, even though by a wall of separation between religion it has been evident in and politics; instead, public discourse the public communi- reflects “an integration of church and cations of American state,” a fact which harms both American presidents and candi- politics and faith.

Through their careful and detailed dates since FDR’s 1933 inaugural address, the use of religion for analysis of presidential rhetoric, the authors partisan advantage came to the forefront leave no doubt that presidential candiwith the Reagan campaign of 1980. dates and presidents have since 1980 This calculated religiosity, which turns increasingly employed religious language religion into a political weapon, has been and ritual. However, the book’s subtitle, in widespread use by both Republicans How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America, is misleading.They provide scarceand Democrats ever since.

The strategy has four tactics or “sig- ly any discussion of how speechwriters, nals,” the first being the presidential use campaign strategists, and presidential aides of religious language, either invoking came to decide to employ religious lanGod or using names for God or spiritual guage.That the religious language is there Christian pause—especially as he presses beyond charitable responses toward what he calls an “inclusive church.” Not all of us will find it biblical to include everything and everyone Gomes believes should be included—but again, the doctor’s diagnosis forces us to examine the nature of our exclusivity to see if it reflects the message of Jesus or the refashioning of the person of Jesus into one who spiritually baptizes existing prejudice and social location. Worth reading slowly, in prayerful doses, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus offers content which gives pause, but in a spirit one can and should embrace. ■

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and that it can be used for partisan advantage is clear; what is not clear is that the strategy was actually articulated as such.

Also, the authors make assertions which beg the question, “How do they know?”

For example, they state that the Texas Republican Party is a “bellweather for relations” between religious conservatives and the national Republican Party, but the notes reveal no source for this claim.

Additional documentation would have been helpful; however, in the end, the authors’ comprehensive analysis of presidential communication leaves no doubt that, at least at that level of American politics, there is “an integration of church [Christianity] and state” in public discourse. The rhetoric of the presidential campaigns of 2008 bears witness to this conclusion. ■ Kathy Lee is associate professor and chair of the political science department at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.

WHY JESUS MAKES ME NERVOUS

By Joy Jordan-Lake Paraclete Press Reviewed by Scott Noble “I drowned my sorrows in perm solution.” For most of us, this phrase would have no discernible spiritual content, but for Joy Jordan-Lake it is a prelude to an essay on sulking vs. the significance of worship (or worthship).

In her latest frank, funny, and challenging book, Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous, Jordan-Lake examines “10 alarming words of faith.”The most compelling contemplations occur with the words resurrection, community, holiness, and wor-

ship, although all 10 can speak to any Christian in his or her particular faith journey.

Holiness is pretty much a lost concept in our postmodern world unless you grew up in a fundamentalist or holiness church community, in which case the word most likely conjures up images of rules, regulations, rites, and, most notably, failure. But Jordan-Lake argues that “real holiness, the kind Jesus presents, is not about chains or checklists but hunger.

And longing. Finding ourselves desperate for meaning, for purpose, for something bigger and richer and beyond the tawdry this-world that we let define us.”

I imagine that many who still wear the chains of the holiness strictures of their youth will find release and encouragement in her words.

Those looking for in-depth theological treatment of these concepts will not be satisfied by Why Jesus Makes Me Nervous. But those looking for a conversation on faith, struggle, disappointment, and hope will. And the best place for this conversation to take place is in the context of community, a term we hear often but rarely understand. Why is Jordan-Lake so taken with community?

“It’s just that Christ,” she writes, “on the night he was betrayed, made it nonnegotiable.”

In our highly individualistic culture, the idea of community can seem scary and threatening, even for those within the church. Why would I want to share my grief and wounds with others? JordanLake acknowledges it isn’t easy: “In a thousand ways, taking Jesus seriously makes life harder, tougher, uglier.” It’s so much easier to flee community, snuff out the hunger for holiness, and ignore our desire for wisdom. This is where Jordan-Lake is at her best—pointing out the potential disappointments in our walk with Christ yet persuading us to stay the course, illuminating what is gained by true obedience to the Savior.

In her final contemplation, JordanPRISM 2008

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Lake turns to hope, presenting several gripping examples of hope borne out of tragedy. Those of us who daily travel the joy-and-pain-filled roads of life can agree with Jordan-Lake when she concludes that hope perhaps “draws its very strength from having stood toe to toe with despair, and come out on top.” ■ Scott Noble is a freelance writer and book reviewer living in St. Paul, Minn.

CONSUMING JESUS

By Paul Louis Metzger Eerdmans Reviewed by Mae Elise Cannon I recently talked with Dr. John Perkins about the future of the evangelical church and its ability to share the message of Christ while also responding to the needs of the poor and marginalized. Perkins recommended that I read Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in a Consumer Church by Paul Louis Metzger, calling it a prophetic book that acknowledges the influence of the evangelical church while challenging it to become consumers of Christ rather than consumers of contemporary culture.

Consuming Jesus recounts Metzger’s personal quest to cope with consumer religion and its impact on race and class divisions in the American evangelical church. His thoughtful critique begins by laying out the theological history of evangelicalism: from the time when evangelism and social action were inextricably linked, through the rise of fundamentalism, through shifts in eschatological perspectives, on through the megachurch movement (including Saddleback and

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE PLANET

of our nation’s population that attends at least once a month, Grist misses an opportunity to encourage Americans to

by Grist.org (Brangien Davis green up their houses of worship. and Katharine Wroth, eds.)

Wake Up covers the cloth/disposable Mountaineer Books diaper debate (either), the paper vs. plastic question (neither—try cloth), and the Reviewed by Carol R. Cool turn-off-and-restart vs. leave-on computer/car/lights concerns (turn off, Grist.org is an envi- always). It cites various studies, managing ronmental website to make even these interesting, but profamous for offering vides no footnotes for those who would “green” news in a like to look more closely at the research. lighthearted way. Like Although many resources are listed the website, Grist’s throughout the book, a comprehensive new book, Wake Up appendix would have been helpful. and Smell the Planet: The Non-Pompous, Wake Up is an excellent book to offer Non-Preachy Grist Guide to Greening Your reluctant friends and family who feel Day, promises “solid advice with a few that being green is just too difficult. If unexpected laughs.” you can get them to read a page or two, And it delivers. Pun-filled headlines they’ll be hooked—at least on the book, (“So Lawn, Farewell,” “Commute-icable if not on a green lifestyle. Better yet, Diseases”) may keep you groaning, but read a few pages aloud and engage your they’ll also keep you reading. Ditto with circle in a lively discussion. “Recycle the quirky humor. An article on micro- Your Shame,” which covers old forms wave use includes this tip: “Don’t sit on, of electronic media, and “Compost in straddle, or lick your microwave while Peace,” on green burials, are two good it’s operating.” A discussion of the most places to start. efficient driving speed explains the kind Living up to its promise to be neither of drag “a car experiences as it pushes pompous nor preachy, the book pokes forward on the road—it fights the air, it fun at some more militant green ideas fights the friction of the road, it fights the while still managing to tell you where urge to pull off and get a Big Mac.” to get information if it’s an idea you Structured along the schedule of a actually wish to consider. Hardcore envitypical day, the book begins with your ronmentalists may find few new ideas morning wake-up call, explaining how here, but it’s an entertaining read for a to make grooming, breakfast, dressing, broad audience, reminding us that “green” and pet care all more environmentally doesn’t have to mean “boring.” ■ friendly.Your commute, workplace, lunch, dinner, chores, and free time follow, each Based in Bear, Del., Carol R. Cool (carolcool. with tips to maximize your greenness com) is a writer and speaker encouraging and minimize your carbon footprint. people to share Jesus through lives of service The book concludes with bedtime, and and love. here’s the section that will keep this title out of your church library: A full five Do you find our reviews Mae Elise Cannon is executive pastor of pages are devoted to sex toys. And while helpful? What kind of books Hillside Covenant Church in Walnut Creek, the book covers weekend activities, it would you like to see on these Calif. She formerly led the social justice min- never mentions attending worship serpages? Send your feedback istry at Willow Creek Community Church vices of any kind. That’s a shame: By to kristyn@esa-online.org. ignoring the approximately 60 percent in Barrington, Ill. Willow Creek) and up to today’s evangelical churches, many of which are largely isolated from social issues due to their homogeneity of race, socioeconomic status, and class.

Metzger employs a biblical paradigm to challenge evangelicals to restructure their values/worldview in order to overcome consumerism and be consumed by Jesus. He argues that evangelicalism has lost much of its influence because of the rise of fundamentalism and three of its primary contributions: (1) the privatization of spirituality, (2) the dissolution of public faith, and (3) the loss of an overarching public conscience.

Consuming Jesus admonishes the evangelical church for failing to understand social context and structures and calls the church to move away from isolationism and homogeneity.

Beyond critique, Metzger calls the church to experience and uphold the commonality and centrality of the Lord’s Supper as a symbol of the power of Christ’s blood to unify believers. In order for the church to move toward shalom, says Metzger, we must examine need, responsibility and blame, resources (money, talents, and goods), and ownership. Both reconciliation and redistribution are necessary, but so is glory—and the author reminds us that Christ displayed his glory so that the church may be one (John 17:22).

This richly considered book provides a broad understanding of the evangelical church from both a historical and theological perspective while offering a practical response. And it leaves readers feeling both convicted and encouraged to live within Christ’s passion and love for the poor without falling prey to our consumerist culture. ■

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OFF THE SHELF RED LETTERS

By Tom Davis David C. Cook Reviewed by Jeff Goins Red Letters: Living a FaithThat Bleeds begins not with startling statistics or an alarming call to action, but with a simple story about a teenager named Kirill who lived on the streets of Moscow.

We’ve all been there before, trying to assuage our feelings of guilt by avoiding eye contact or crossing the street, all the while justifying ourselves. Tom Davis did what many of us would have done. He shook off the beggar and kept walking. I can relate to that; it’s the “wise” thing to do. But then Davis did something different—he went back.

Davis’ book is about justice, hope, change, and living by the principle that Jesus is to be found in the “least of these” described in Matthew 25. When Davis went back, his faith started to bleed.

In the first few chapters, he discusses the problem of global poverty alongside the gospel’s essence—that it is something to be lived and not just discussed.

As “little Christs” (a term borrowed from C.S. Lewis), we have a responsibility to do something about suffering and injustice in the world.

Davis goes on to discuss the AIDS crisis, the dying continent of Africa (particularly Swaziland, which has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world and whose people will become extinct in 50 years if nothing changes), and his bleeding heart for the forgotten and forsaken.

While the statistics might feel overwhelming, Davis asserts that effecting change is not as difficult or costly as we usually suspect; it just requires a will-

Michael Lindsay’s excellent book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite.

A sociologist at Rice University, Lindsay draws a telling picture of the social networks of leaders and organizations that, over the last 30 years, have nurtured and sustained evangelical “moral leadership” for the purpose of directing social change in the US. He does this by reporting on well over 300 interviews with evangelical leaders from politics, academia, the film and TV industries, and corporate America. The book reads better than a Who’s Who in America because it is saturated with anecdotes and rich confessions of Protestant and Catholic evangelical leaders for whom faith makes a deliberate difference in their work.

Lindsay argues that these overlapping networks have gradually edged evanJeff Goins is an editor at the online maga- gelicals into the power circles of the zine Wrecked for the Ordinary (wrecked American elite. He concludes, however, that the kind of power the evangelical fortheordinary.com). elite exercises is convening power rather than decision-making power. Lindsay found “little evidence,” for instance, that FAITH IN THE HALLS evangelical power has led to changes in OF POWER law. Still, these political, cultural, and business leaders are able to “set agendas,”

By D. Michael Lindsay “coordinate activity,”“marshal resources,” Oxford University Press “share information,” and otherwise “create social space for interaction among Reviewed by Bret Kincaid peers where they can discuss ideas that I recall a CIA brief- can then be carried out by the organiing soon after 9/11 at zations they run.”

Calling these loosely overlapping netthe end of which one of the two CIA ana- works a “movement,” Lindsay sees it lysts began making an divided between what he calls “populist” off-the-record pitch, and “cosmopolitan” leaders/organizations. enthusiastically ped- Populist leaders are less affluent, more dling a government inclined to label people good or evil, vocation to the large more willing to use high-profile mass audience of evangelical college students mobilization, and more firmly connectbecause “one of us” was now at the helm ed to evangelical subcultures than are in the White House.“This is our chance cosmopolitan leaders. Conversely, the to make a real difference,” he said, refer- latter are more educated and well travring to “us” evangelical Christians. I was eled, less involved in their local church taken aback at the time, but I wouldn’t (with the exception of those who attend have been so surprised had I read D. a megachurch), and more concerned ingness to move towards the pain rather than away from it.The latter chapters call us to action, but unlike many books of this tenor, they don’t abandon us there.

Davis provides some potential routes to pursue, inviting us to join his 5for50 Campaign (5for50.com), go on a mission trip, and raise money and awareness.

My only disappointment was that there were not more stories. My favorite chapter, “Snapshots of Hope,” tells of African babies rescued from abandonment, Russian orphans turned into leaders, and tales of those who cared for them being radically transformed.

Red Letters isn’t about social action.

It’s about Jesus—about finding him in the least likely of people/places and about our commitment to meet him there. ■

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about legitimacy than the conversion of one’s opponents (a primary concern of populist evangelicals). Leaders of both groups are equally fervent about their faith, and their political beliefs do not differ.

Though Lindsay’s prose is sometimes challenging to follow, his book gives the reader a rich view of the landscape of American evangelical leadership and power. ■ Bret Kincaid is associate professor of political science at Eastern University in St. David’s, Pa.

GOD IS NOT GREAT

By Christopher Hitchens Twelve Books and

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY?

By Dinesh D’Souza Regnery Publishing Reviewed by Donald Brash

Where may we find a reason for hope?

This is the question that most drives the authors of two recent books in the enduring debate over the existence of God. In God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens proposes the oft-repeated twofold challenge to the belief that God exists: The world is both poorly designed and a cruel mess, thus negating the possibility of a

good and intelligent creator; religious people are guilty of great immorality and stupidity, and clearly no good or intelligent God would consent to be represented by such unethical fools.

Hitchens’ book has several significant weaknesses. First, his argument relies largely on anecdotes, as if the day could be won for atheism by a sheer landslide of stories. In “Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings” he primarily examines Mormonism and an obscure Pentecostal cult. Since these two Christian movements are rooted in events and in behavior that was irrational at best and deceptive at worse, Hitchens concludes that all religions must be rooted in the irrational and the deceptive. In a later chapter Hitchens cites everything from mass atrocities committed by crusaders and jihadists to the failure of church leaders to condemn particular acts of evil, amassing one example after another of the harm done by religious people to their innocent victims.

Hitchens’ second failing is his dependence on ad hominem arguments.

Theists are not only mistaken, he claims, but also stupid for believing in God. C. S. Lewis was “dreary and absurd,” he tells us, but nowhere does he seriously engage Lewis’ arguments for the existence of God. On the other hand, people who advance Hitchens’ agenda are honored with titles, and their conclusions are allowed to stand unchallenged by opposing points of view from within the disciplines they represent.

Third, Hitchens is unwilling to take seriously the more nuanced views among theists. There are many monotheists, myself included, who affirm the idea that the universe as we know it arrived at its present form by means of some manner of evolution. Theistic evolutionism, at its best, asserts that God created matter out of nothing and has kept his hand in the process ever since.This would not, of course, rescue the belief in a creator God from the charge that God PRISM 2008

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did not design things very well, but it does show that many of us theists take science seriously.

Fourth, Hitchens presumes that he occupies the moral high ground over and against people of faith, without explaining why his version of morality should necessarily govern you, me, or anyone else. Hitchens would have advanced the case for atheism if he had presented a convincing argument for his belief that morality is “independent of faith and cannot be derived from it.” As it is, he simply throws the idea out there without defending it, apparently in the belief that the weight of his own confidence in its self-evident value will cause many to suddenly believe in Hitchens’ unbelief. One of atheism’s more obvious flaws is that it cannot account for humans behaving better than is called for by our own personal (or own herd’s) survival.

Hitchens’ guarded solution to the world’s problems is that we should put our confidence in human reason alone.

I, too, think there is reason for hope, but history has proven that human reason, like some religious beliefs, can also be used to justify atrocities.

In What’s So Great about Christianity?

Dinesh D’Souza fleshes out the arguments he used in a live debate with Hitchens at The King’s College, New York City, last October. D’Souza writes to assert the reasonableness and the value of Christianity. Without denying that Christians and other faith-motivated people are responsible for some horrendous incidences of evil and suffering, D’Souza presents a coherent case that Christianity also contributed fundamentally to the political structures and social values that even Hitchens and company cherish. He does this by placing Christianity securely at the social and intellectual foundations of Western civilization’s pivotal moments. Along the way, he corrects the bad historiography of some accounts of the church’s attitude toward science.

D’Souza also provides a reasonable and informative assessment of the compatibility between Christianity and the current state of science regarding the origins of the universe and life. He helps his readers see that biblical accounts of creation, when understood in literary and historical context, do not challenge the principle of evolution as such. On the contrary, the work of evolutionists reinforces the potency of the argument for design by making us even more aware of the glorious order in nature.

Another of D’Souza’s strengths is his gift for explaining the views of specialists.

I refer not only to his summations of the work of physicists but also to his survey and appraisal of the work of Immanuel Kant, which enables D’Souza to distinguish between kinds of knowledge.

D’Souza’s well-reasoned defense of theism based on the morally self-transcendent capacities of human beings is exceptional.

D’Souza recognizes Christianity’s unique contribution to hope. We are redeemed because God became one of us; it is by the Son’s own suffering, death, and resurrection that all suffering is rendered ultimately meaningful. God has honored us by including us in this redemptive work. A poignant example of this participation is the grace displayed by the parents of the five Amish girls who were killed in 2006.Their commitment to Christ—their religious faith—inspired them to contribute to the redemption of that tragedy by forgiving the assassin and offering love to his family. Their faith inspired all of us who want to make the world a better place. But thankfully D’Souza does not succumb to the temptation to stack the zeal of the righteous on the scales of justice over and against the zeal of the unrighteous. If Jesus really was God, then the scales of justice have been eternally tipped in God’s favor, and ours, too.

D’Souza has written a competent response to atheism’s most recent representatives, but his book, too, has weak-

nesses. Like Hitchens, he seems to think the number of experts who agree with him might help him win the argument.

Next, he does not adequately address the weakness of apologetic exercises as such, which can have the effect of rendering faith secondary to reason. And lastly, a mere restatement of the gospel in traditional terms, albeit a very eloquent restatement, does not in itself adequately address Hitchens’ criticisms of a God who rules very differently from how we humans think things should be handled.

Ultimately all Christian theists must ask ourselves if there are times when our own witnessing fails to persuade because the God we describe is too far from the God to whom Jesus prayed when interceding even for those who were crucifying him. ■

here. But once McLaren has our attention, he presents a message worth hearing.

In many ways this work is part of a larger Christian prophetic tradition rooted in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s query, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?”Without flinching from the significant global crises of our age, McLaren masterfully weaves an analysis of the profound turmoil with the profound hope of Jesus Christ.

The author’s practice of framing large issues within small stories makes the work both inviting and accessible. Recounting the testimonies of people he’s met on his journeys—from South Africa to Switzerland, from Canada to Chile— McLaren puts a human face on global crises and responses of hope. Borrowing from Christian thinker Leonard Sweet, McLaren describes the engine behind global crises as “a suicide machine.” This Donald Brash is associate professor of histori- machine, he argues, “is out of control... cal theology at Palmer Theological Seminary and begins to destroy its creators and in Wynnewood, Pa. intended beneficiaries.” According to McLaren, the three systems that make up this machine—equity, prosperity, and EVERYTHING security—need to be informed by new MUST CHANGE narratives that do not threaten to destroy all of creation.

By Brian D. McLaren In suggesting that we need to rethink Thomas Nelson our understanding of the gospels (the Jesus story runs counter to the destrucReviewed by Gabriel A. Salguero tive narratives supporting the suicide machine), McLaren offers a postcolonial What do the life and reading of the gospel that is reminiscent teachings of Jesus have of those of Bartolomé De Las Casas, to say about the most Desmond Tutu, Cornel West, Mayra critical global prob- Rivera, C. René Padilla, Fernando lems in our world Segovia, N.T. Wright, Richard Horsley, today? Beginning his and John Dominic Crossan. And in doing latest book with this so he brings to a broader audience ideas substantial query, Brian that have heretofore received only a very McLaren propels his limited reading. McLaren’s comparative readers right into the core of the matter. analysis of the conventional view (Western, It’s heavy matter all right, but have no colonizing, white) and the emerging view fear: The man is on a mission to reveal a (Southern, colonized, colorful) of Jesus revolution of hope. is sure to foster conversations in homes, Everything Must Change undoubt- churches, colleges, and seminaries everyedly has an attention-grabbing title, and where. even the author acknowledges hyperbole I hope that in future conversations PRISM 2008

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McLaren will engage more diversity within the North American context (US authors often engage issues of global diversity more intentionally and passionately than they do the racial-ethnic conversations at home). Even though his conversations with Latin Americans,Asians, and Africans could be bolstered by more in-depth conversations with what has been called “the Third World in the First World,” this is still a great start.

While it is clear that McLaren has traveled and read widely and researched across disciplines, his book is nonetheless friendly to lay readers.The dialogue starters at the end of each chapter make it accessible for small Bible study and discipleship groups as well as conversations with seekers. ■ Gabriel Salguero copastors the Lamb’s Church, a multicultural congregation in Manhattan.

He is also a PhD candidate in Christian Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary.

NOBODIES

By John Bowe Random House Reviewed by Christian R. Ahlin Enduring Tolstoy’s monologues on the philosophy of history was part of the price I paid while reading War and Peace. But the story more than compensated for the time spent plodding through the author’s pet theories.

Journalist John Bowe’s recent Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy also contains some great storytelling, but I found the interspersed economic analysis less

profitable than Tolstoy’s speeches.

The book’s main content is three stories in as many locations (southern Florida; Tulsa, Okla.; the Pacific island of Saipan), each examining a case of labor abuse or slavery. Bowe expertly conveys the various settings and key characters (employees, employers, lawyer, labor activist, local resident, etc.) and creates an absorbing narrative. His even-handedness in eliciting and telling multiple points of view is remarkable, as is his tolerance of ambiguity.

Beyond being rivetingly told, the stories also have in common the Old Testament theme of upholding the rights of the poor. Bowe’s stories pinpoint egregious loss of rights in the United States by some of the world’s poorest, and he deserves credit for taking the risk to tell them.

The book also delves into analysis and policy prescription, mainly in the introduction and conclusion, where the results are more mixed.

Bowe states that everything in his book is a simple and patent metaphor for the “dark potential” of globalization. But why is slavery an appropriate metaphor for globalization and not, say, for government corruption? It is not hard to argue that more globalization would have made at least two of the book’s three tragic stories less likely: one where the workers’ illegal immigrant (non)status was instrumental and one where the industry involved sprang up precisely because of the existence of trade barriers elsewhere. It is also easy to imagine globalization reducing the worldwide quantity of slavery—much of which occurs purely domestically in some of the poorest countries—by spurring economic growth and thus reducing poverty. Indeed, the most dramatic poverty reductions of the past few decades have come in East Asia, in countries that have most embraced globalization.

Perhaps what Bowe wants to stress is simply that when wealthy and poor people meet, we must beware the theft of PRISM 2008

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the rights of the poor. He is absolutely right to urge caution, but the question is how to respond to the inherent dangers.

In my view, the focus would be better placed on the enforcement of basic rights —making sure that parties abide by their contracts and that all transactions are made voluntarily.Vigilance in these areas is warranted, as Bowe’s stories suggest.

But Bowe’s prescriptions are quite different: namely, worldwide regulation of labor, health, and the environment, including a worldwide minimum wage.

I wonder, however, whether more stringent laws are the answer when existing laws cover virtually all the abuses in the book. Bowe also does not address the potential counter-productiveness of wellintended labor laws. A recent study, for example, compared areas in India that adopted labor-friendly industrial dispute regulations in the mid-1900s with areas that adopted more neutral or employerfriendly stances. The labor-friendly areas had lower growth and productivity in manufacturing and ended up with higher urban poverty. Effects of supposedly pro-worker laws are sometimes effectively anti-worker.

Our current path of globalization deserves scrutiny, some of which Bowe admirably provides. It would be a mistake, however, to overstretch his metaphor for globalization or to do more harm than good with well-intentioned but counterproductive labor regulation. ■ Christian R. Ahlin, PhD, is assistant professor of economics at Michigan State University, where his research focuses on economic development in poorer countries, particularly micro-credit and causes/effects of corruption.

Do you find our reviews helpful? What kind of books would you like to see on these pages? Send your feedback to kristyn@esa-online.org.

OFF THE SHELF THE LOSS OF SADNESS

By Allan V. Horowitz and Jerome C. Wakefield Oxford University Press Reviewed by Terry Cooper Christians in the grip of wrenching life changes often experience insomnia, fatigue, sadness, concentration difficulties, and loss of appetite for food, sex, and leisure. From the perspective of many contemporary teachings/preaching on suffering, one might ask whether such people are sinfully weak or simply lacking faith. How local churches answer this question impacts how they respond to believers experiencing disabling, longterm sadness.

Many psychiatrists would find such a question irrelevant, trained as they are to diagnose such persons as depressed clients needing therapy and medication.

But whether the perspective is from the preacher’s pulpit or the therapist’s couch, the typical assumption is that the manifestations of intense sadness are remediable conditions to be alleviated as soon as possible.

In The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder, Allen Horowitz and Jerome Wakefield focus on psychiatry’s response to sadness arising from normative life experiences. They argue that clinically treating all sadness as a remediable condition has led to an unintended consequence—we don’t learn from normal life sadness because we focus on relief from symptoms rather than reflecting on how to learn from an experience.

Horowitz and Wakefield contend that standard diagnoses of depression do not clearly distinguish between clinical depression and “expectable reactions to situational contexts.” In layman’s language, when life sucks, we’re usually just sad, not sick. While we may need some temporary professional help in dealing

with the events, we should try to learn from our feelings, not anesthetize them.

The authors make a well-documented, persuasive case for re-examining the differences between depression and normative sadness. They call for a more nuanced discussion between psychiatrists and their peers and patients.

Since this book is essentially an “insider” argument written for mental health professionals, what use is it to PRISM readers? Simply this: The fact that so many Christians view all sadness as evil means that a lot of us rarely experience the joy of emerging from the valley’s darkness into the light that emanates from the throne. This limits our ability to walk empathically and assuredly alongside others who are in the darkness; thus too many are stumbling alone in the dark, with no hand to help them. Medication can ease the pain of the darkness, but it is no substitute for an experienced, compassionate companion who knows where the light is to be found.

Consider the heart of God as he views his saddest children—created for communion with him and endowed with gifts of mind, body, and spirit—as they

struggle through life’s significant challenges. Whether their struggles are relational, financial, or physical, consider how difficult it is for people to share their fear, sorrow, and anxiety within a congregation filled with smiling people who readily proclaim the victorious Christian life. Consider the children sitting restlessly in the pew beside their overwhelmed parents, filled with anxiety about uncertain futures. Finally, consider how many such broken hearts sit in your sanctuary every Sunday morning.

Is your church mindfully working to come alongside such broken hearts?

Or has it become what John McKnight calls a “careless community” (The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits, Basic Books, 1995), a church whose rituals and relationships have become so circumscribed and superficial that the hurting in your midst have been all but abandoned to the care of “professionals”?

Let’s assume Horowitz and Wakefield are correct in their claim that the broken hearts of many are being diagnosed and treated as mental illness rather than being embraced, loved, and walked alongside by the church. Assume the authors succeed in transforming the mental health system so that only genuine illness is treated.Where will people needing the support of transformative relationships then go? Will burdened hearts know to seek them in the sanctuary and hallways of your church? Is it safe to be sad in your congregation?

Next Sunday, observe those in the pew around you. What is their body language saying? Are they at ease? Or are they restless, tense, and closed off? If so, will you seek to come alongside them and provide a ready ear and a welcoming spirit? Or will you just slip them the name of a good psychiatrist? ■ Terry Cooper is director of Cal Farley’s Institute for Child & Family Asset Development and a member ofWestminster Presbyterian Church, both in Amarillo, Tex.

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JUSTICE IN THE BURBS

By Will & Lisa Samson Baker Books Reviewed by Phil Olson I feel eminently qualified to review Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands of Jesus Wherever You Live. Like its authors, Will and Lisa Samson, I grew up in suburban churches and continue to participate in suburban life and culture. The congregation I pastor is America’s oldest (since 1966) of any denomination residing in that supreme symbol of suburbia: the mall.

Justice in the Burbs features short chapters in three parts: a narrative that follows a fictitious family’s plunge into justice ministry; a theological and historical discourse by the Samsons on justice issues; and a series of meditations by authors such as Brian McLaren, Len Sweet, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, Christine Sine, and Luci Shaw.

As the Samsons correctly observe, “The majority of the American church in the 21st century preaches a perspective on God that fails to incorporate issues of justice.” In spite of their insistence that this is not a “how-to book,” the authors do provide some modest, practical suggestions on how to take initial steps towards engaging issues of (in)justice.

They strongly advocate practicing principles of Christian stewardship and advise justice-seekers not to look for quick fixes when a long-haul approach is warranted.

I have several concerns about Burbs.

The definition it offers of justice— “acting right in our relationships, as determining how we stand in relation to others in our world”—could be anybody’s definition; there is nothing uniquely biblical about it. It is also an extremely individual/personal justice and excludes any understanding of the corporate/ systemic variety. The book contains sev-

eral inaccuracies and outdated data and occasionally passes off cliché as theology (for example, saying they consider that tired ’70s slogan “bloom where you are planted” to be a “deeply theological statement”).

On the whole, Burbs is an adequate first step for novices, who will appreciate the discussion questions at the end of the book. As the authors observe, “It is hard for suburbanites to connect with issues of justice.” Hard, but not impossible. While reading the book, this suburban pastor was prepping for a Bridge of Hope National informational meeting to address the needs of single homeless moms, drafting an outline for a workshop at the forthcoming CCDA conference, teaching a “Growing Holistic Congregations” class at Palmer Seminary, preaching on missional themes in the book of Acts, and taking several road trips to investigate models of homeless shelters. Justice work can be done, even in the ’burbs. ■ Phil Olson (revphil@churchonthemall.com) is the pastor of Church on the Mall in suburban Philadelphia.

MOTHER TERESA: COME BE MY LIGHT

By Mother Teresa (Brian Kolodiejchuk, ed.)

Doubleday Reviewed by Laura Bramon Good Come Be My Light:The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta” chronicles Mother Teresa’s love for Christ, from brazen ardor to the “dark night of the soul” that settled over her for almost 50 years. Her public vow as a Loreto sister and her private vow of absolute obedience to God prefaced an ecstatic mystical encounter with Christ himself.

On September 10, 1946, which she would come to call her Inspiration Day, Mother Teresa heard Christ speak to her while she traveled by train to Darjeeling, India. In the sweaty press and heat of a third-class rail car, he called her to satiate his thirst on the cross by serving him in his “distressing disguise” as the poorest of the poor. She described the experience in one of her letters:“‘I thirst,’ Jesus said on the cross when Jesus was deprived of every consolation, dying in absolute Poverty, left alone, despised and broken in body and soul. He spoke of His thirst—not for water—but for love, for sacrifice.”

What began as one woman’s call to bring the succor and conversion of Christ “to the holes” of Calcutta’s poorest slums grew into the Missionaries of Charity, a Catholic order known today for its meditative and radically incarnational life of service among the impoverished, the infirm, the HIV/AIDS-infected, and others who constitute today’s “untouchables.”

While Mother Teresa’s public life was characterized by tenderly comic moments when the tiny nun shared podiums with Bono, Bill Clinton, and other luminaries, her private spiritual life, which she revealed to only a few confessors and

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friends, was distinguished by a visceral loneliness for God. As Come Be My Light draws the reader more deeply into Mother Teresa’s dark night, one begins to wonder what kind of Bridegroom would subject his “little spouse,” as she called herself, to such anguish and doubt regarding his own love for her. So great is her pain that Mother Teresa’s unfailing fidelity to him feels at times almost painfully absurd.

What might make her dark night so difficult for readers to comprehend is that Kolodiejchuk, as editor and spiritual biographer, never equates her experiences with depression, angst, or any other emotional experience with which the average reader might find currency. Private letters to and from Catholic priests with whom she shared her sins, fears, and the most intimate details of her interior life show that Mother Teresa’s spirituality had very little to do with the comfort, fellowship, or cultural coddling that can attend modern religious life. Her longing was for spiritual union with Christ, and her agony at separation was made bearable by the primal rhythms of poverty, Mass, and self-abnegation, includ-

ing several hours each day devoted to prayer and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Her letters show that ritual was less of an obligation for Mother Teresa and more of a lifeline. She truly believed that her life was immolation, a mystical oneness with and service to the Christ of the passion and resurrection, and she believed that in giving herself up to a kind of Gethsemane communion, she could save souls to Christ. She instructed her sisters: “Tell Jesus, ‘I will be the one.’ I will comfort, encourage, and love Him ... Be with Jesus. He prayed and prayed, and then he went to look for consolation, but there was none ... Try to be the one to share with Him, to comfort Him, to console Him.” The book’s extensive endnotes come in handy when trying to piece together the spiritual logic by which Mother Teresa lived. Particularly helpful are references from The Three Ages of the Interior Life, which describe Mother Teresa’s experience of “reparatory night” as a stage in which “[spiritual] life-savers struggle ... sometimes for years in order to snatch souls from eternal death; in a way, these reparative souls must resist the temptations of the souls they seek to save that they may come efficaciously to their assistance.”

Mother Teresa’s odyssey of ecstatic sacrifice remains mysterious: at once inspiring and repulsive, comforting and confounding. “I thirst,” reads an inscription beside the crucifix in every Missionaries of Charity chapel, and from the pages of Mother Teresa’s private writings, Christ’s words still echo back. ■

SHAKING THE SYSTEM

By Tim Stafford InterVarsity Press Reviewed by John Fea As a professor at a college with a tradition of promoting social justice, I encounter a lot of students who want to change the world. Unfortunately, few of them enroll in my classes. I am, after all, a history professor—and the study of the past, my students believe, is not very useful for budding world-changers.

Tim Stafford would agree that such an attitude is unfortunate. One of the best ways to be effective at changing society, he asserts in Shaking the System: What I Learned from the Great American Reform Movements, is to study history. When we dig into the past we realize that our activism is part of a vibrant tradition of American reform. We are part of something larger than ourselves. Such a realization should humble us, but humility is a virtue that Stafford claims is “in short supply in activist movements.”

Stafford tells stories about four major reform movements in American histo-

As part of a Word Made Flesh servant team, Laura Bramon Good spent four months volunteering at Missionaries of Charity’s El Alto, Bolivia, home for the ill and elderly. Today she works on human trafficking issues for the federal government.

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ry—abolitionism, prohibition, women’s suffrage, and civil rights—and shares the lessons he has learned from studying them.

For example, abolitionists and civil rights workers teach us that activism must be rooted in truth (that slavery and racism are sins). Yet the fact that we live in a fallen world means that many will not be willing to embrace the truth. History reminds us to be prepared for this type of resistance.

Many reform movements have also been seduced by violence. Carry Nation’s practice of vandalizing local saloons and John Brown’s arming of slaves at Harper’s Ferry are just two examples of social activism taken to violent extremes. Stafford is correct when he reminds us that few of these reform movements had any staying power. In the case of Brown, his extremism was partly responsible for a bloody Civil War. History also offers some models for engaging politics.William Lloyd Garrison, perhaps the abolitionist movement’s greatest prophet, refused to participate in the political system because he believed it to be corrupted by sin and compromise.

(He burned the U.S. Constitution because it allowed for slavery). Others tried to form political parties devoted to single issues, but few succeeded. Still others, such as Martin Luther King Jr., appealed to those in power but realized that politicians are in the habit of supporting social change only when it helps them win re-election.

It is refreshing to find a popular Christian history book that engages both the successes and the failures of those who sought to live their faith in the world, but Shaking the System leaves us wanting more. Stafford entices us with discussions of the role of spiritual community and the place of the “Kingdom of God” in the history of American activism, but he never develops these ideas. A bit more on how the lessons of the reformers apply to some of today’s pressing social concerns—such as abor-

tion or poverty—might also be helpful.

In the end, we need more books like this—studies that challenge Christians to look backward for help in moving society forward. ■

explaining anecdotally that without an intimate bond with the Holy Spirit, efforts to further the kingdom would be fruitless. His pragmatic approach and use of storytelling will appeal to those seeking to balance their relationship with God John Fea teaches American history at Messiah with making a difference in the world.

College in Grantham, Pa. Then Darling takes the baton, moving from storytelling into methodology.

She shares her desire as a young evanTHE GOD OF INTIMACY gelical Christian to be more connected AND ACTION with God and her discovery of the usefulness of spiritual training in contemBy Tony Campolo plative exercises. I found myself particand Mary Albert Darling ularly caught up in the section discussing Jossey-Bass “examen prayer,” in which a person examines her own soul, confessing shortReviewed by Jeff Goins comings and reflecting on Christlike accomplishments. The intention is neiCampolo and Darling ther self-deprecation nor elevation of one’s team up in The God of ego; rather, it is a prayerful inventory of Intimacy and Action: each day.

Reconnecting Ancient As an evangelical, I find that I occaSpiritual Practices, sionally get burnt out on prayer. Darling Evangelism, and Justice gave me a list of options long enough that to bring readers the I should not be bored for a while. She “holistic gospel,” a does a great job of pointing the reader to union of mystical grace, emphasizing that one does not do encounters with Christ and essential these exercises to win favor with God. action. Pointing to both Catholics and The disciplines she shares are detailed and Protestants whose proactive impact on for some may be tedious to read, but her society was fueled by their intimate description is ultimately helpful. relationship with their Creator, they highThe book ends with a warning from light mystics such as St. Francis of Assisi both authors not to get caught up in and political reformers such as Martin “narcissistic spirituality” or to attempt to Luther King Jr. serve humanity without a spirit of love.

The two authors complement one They share a final admonition to get another: Campolo, a prominent Christian involved in community, and they give a advocate for the poor, explains the why list of some modern monastic movements of evangelical mysticism; Darling, a that are practicing these disciplines Protestant trained in the Jesuit tradi- together. tion, explains the how.

This book is refreshing and challengCampolo begins the book with an ing; it connects the reader with practices outline of mystical Christianity. He then long forgotten by American Christianity describes certain encounters that evan- and points someone seeking a deeper walk gelicals have experienced but do not to fruitful methods of receiving God’s recognize as mystical, such as “new grace without delving into legalism. ■ insights” from a familiar passage of scripture. In the following chapters, he shares Jeff Goins is an editor at WreckedForThe his heart for evangelism and social justice, Ordinary.com.

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OFF THE SHELF

PLUNGE 2 POVERTY

By Jimmy and Janet Dorrell New Hope Reviewed by Stephen Trout

reader to action, with a complete guide to creating a poverty simulation experience in one’s own church and ministry context. Ample appendices of worksheets and statistics for learning about the problems of world poverty (“Why will 30,000 children under the age of 5 die today from hunger-related causes?”) are included, with practical solutions and measurable goals to encourage progress.

Participants in the simulation learn what it is to “become” destitute—if only for a weekend—dressing from the Goodwill, sleeping outside, and actually ministering directly to the poor in their neighborhoods. In the process they experience, perhaps for the first time, what it means to know and love their neighbor by walking in his secondhand shoes.

The Dorrells have modeled Christ’s compassion and heart tangibly and creatively, providing a framework for real repentance in our neighbor-love by revealing the idols of materialism and selfish accumulation of wealth and showing us how through Christ we can demonstrate the self-giving love which blesses others as God provides the means.

Plunge 2 Poverty vividly illustrates the truth that authentic change springing from a broken and contrite heart travels by way of the appetites (i.e., the gnawing interplay of physical yearnings and heart-cravings), stopping to kneel at the cross, and finding there the true defeat of all our idols. Moving past the empty tomb, we find the Redeemer, who will one day provide a lavish banquet table and who strengthens our hearts and hands now to meet our neighbor’s brokenness and need. ■

“I’m famished!” The words fly easily from our lips, though the location of our next meal is rarely in doubt.

All guilt trips aside, God knows our appetites were intended to end in him, eliciting satiated thankfulness and wonder through his amazing gifts: endless varieties of tasty food; comfortable, warm dwellings that shield us from the elements; the welcoming embrace of our loved ones. But what if these abundant material blessings (abundant for most readers of these words) were suddenly removed? What impact would the resulting emptiness have on the all-too-frequent tendency of our hearts to warp and distort these gifts into idols of comfort? This is the fascinating theme behind Jimmy and Janet Dorrell’s experiment in neediness, Plunge2Poverty.

In 1986, a youth director’s pleas for help in confronting member apathy toward the plight of the poor, hungry, and homeless met the Dorrells upon their return from a short-term mission trip to India with World Hunger Relief.

The result of this timely appeal was a unique poverty simulation weekend, designed to sensitize comparatively wealthy Christians to Christ’s clear but oft-neglected call to love our neighbor and the least among us.

The idea caught fire, and a new vision for educating and impacting hearts was born. Now, 20 years and 6,000 “pro- Stephen Trout is the director of counseling at gram graduates” later, the Dorrells have Kaleo Christian Counseling Center in San more than a truckload of great stories Diego, a ministry of Kaleo Church. to share. Their new book (essentially a “field manual”) intends to prompt the PRISM 2007

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HOW TO BECOME A SAINT

By Jack Bernard Brazos Press Reviewed by J. Monty Stewart The word “saint” can conjure all sorts of images—Mother Theresa, Saint Augustine, a character from a Val Kilmer movie, a person of integrity that has helped us on our spiritual journey. But Jack Bernard wants you to see a saint when you look in the mirror.

Bernard (who passed away shortly before this book was published) believed that all Christians—not just superheroes of the faith—are called to sainthood.

While his definition of sainthood— walking in holiness with God—might suggest legalism and perfectionism to some (especially to those raised in the “holiness tradition”), nothing could be further from Bernard’s premise, which focuses the spotlight on God rather than us.

This book is about ecclesiology as much as it is about sainthood. Bernard insists throughout the book that holiness can only truly be lived out in the context of the church, specifically in the local congregation. “The church is the soil in which God grows saints,” he writes, “...there are no saints outside the church.” In a world of iPhones, iPods, and MySpace, this is a refreshing reminder.

Bernard’s conviction that the perfect image of holiness is found in Christ’s relationship with God frees us from “doing” and allows us to simply “be” in and with Christ. His thoughts on such disciplines as prayer, Scripture reading, and stewardship are liberating as well, all of which focus on how we interact

with God rather than on quantifying our actions. One of the strongest chapters in the book is “Possessions and Money.” In a beautiful exegesis from Luke’s gospel, Bernard points out that material blessings are not an evil to be avoided but a symbol of our openness to receive from God. He unfolds a biblical view of poverty, equating it to a life lived in humility. This view moves beyond the dissatisfaction with materialism concerning what one does or does not have and focuses instead on living in what Jesus called openness (to receive blessings) and generosity (to pass them on to others). This chapter alone makes the book worth reading.

Bob Dylan once dreamed that he saw Saint Augustine. Jack Bernard thinks that saints are best viewed while awake.

Go take a look in your bathroom mirror—what do you see? ■ J. Monty Stewart practices sainthood as the pastor of Kona Church of the Nazarene, a multicultural church in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.

HOPE IN TROUBLED TIMES

By Bob Goudzwaard, Mark Vander Vennen, and David Van Heemst Baker Academic Reviewed by Bruce Wydick It has become virtually impossible to ignore the increasingly dismal tone of the morning newspaper headlines over the last six years. Stories about suicide bombings, global warming, and sweatshops can take the crackle out of even the crispiest breakfast cereal.

Fortunately, an antidote is available— Bob Goudzwaard, Mark Vander Vennen,

and David Van Heemst’s Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crises.

The book is ambitious, seeking to address and offer solutions to problems of world poverty, environmental degradation, and terrorism. Like many such overarching efforts, the book scores large numbers of both hits and misses.

Its hypothesis is that today’s big problems are rooted in false ideologies that have taken on a life of their own, that go essentially unquestioned, and that have become subject to their own internal logic in the minds of followers. The authors identify modern versions of these false ideologies as Islamism, “material progress,” and “guaranteed security.” (False ideologies of the past have included the French Enlightenment and its accompanying revolution, Marxism-Stalinism, and Nazism.)

Such ideologies underlie the roots of our current problems, argue the authors, because within each an internal logic dictates that ends justify means, even when they contradict the life-giving gospel values of charity, forgiveness, and love of God and neighbor. As such, they violate God’s law and are ultimately grounded in the realm of the demonic.

Hope in Troubled Times shines brightest in its discussion of Islamist terrorism and its American response. Here the authors adeptly untangle for us the roots of radical Islam as manifested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The authors argue cogently that the American response to 9/11, an ideology of guaranteed security in which preemptive war is internally justifiable, may miss the biblical mark no less than its ideological foe.

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faith in human ingenuity and accomplishment.”

In fact, the book would have been better had it just concentrated on the set of issues related to terrorism and the American response. (At only 200 pages, even making headway into these issues would have been a bargain.) For when it delves into the other issues it seeks to address, the quality of the analysis begins to head south. This is not surprising given the authors’ backgrounds, which lie primarily in the areas of philosophy and political science, but even so, the analysis of the economic aspects of development and globalization are shaky at best.

For example, the authors virtually assume that globalization has resulted in an increase in poverty. This is at the very least a disputable fact and is the subject of much serious academic work today. In contending that globalization is mostly bad for the poor, they virtually ignore the examples of China and India (nearly a third of the world), where poverty is rapidly declining as a result of integration with global markets.

In telling us what we can do about such problems, the authors run into many of the same problems that have confounded others before them. Making suggestions outside individual faithfulness to the values of the gospel contradicts the core hypothesis of the book, since radical change at a political level risks the creation of the very kind of ideology the authors oppose.

This leaves sincere readers wondering if there is anything more we can do besides oppose any technological change or trade agreement that might cost someone his job, develop a more understanding view of our enemies, vote for politicians who favor more social spending, and drive a Prius. Do we want to take away the freedom of people to better their lives materially? If not, then we must rely on convincing others that a simple lifestyle centered on the values

in the gospel is in their interest, which brings us back to evangelism.

These caveats aside, Hope in Troubled Times offers a coherent theory of what is wrong in this world and why, and it is stimulating reading for Christians who are concerned about the world and their role in it. ■ Bruce Wydick is professor of economics at the University of San Francisco and a regular contributor to PRISM. His book Games in Economic Development is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

GOD’S RIVALS

By Gerald R. McDermott IVP Academic Reviewed by Steven Boyer Seven years ago, Gerald McDermott authored the awardwinning book Can Evangelicals Lear n from World Religions?

(IVP, 2000), and he answered the question in the title with a resounding “Yes!” But this answer raised new and larger questions. If Christians can learn and profit from the insights of non-Christian religious traditions, then how should we evaluate these religions? What exactly does our sovereign God have in mind when he allows these different religions into the world in the first place? It is this perennial—and perennially controversial— question that McDermott’s new book, God’s Rivals, addresses with the same winsomeness and user-friendly clarity that made the earlier book a success.

The argument of God’s Rivals is first biblical and then historical. The three chapters on the biblical data are worth the price of the book, for they point

refreshingly back to the living, breathing reality of “gods” and “principalities and powers” in the Old and New Testaments, thus providing a powerful antidote to that tame version of monotheism that acknowledges the reality of angels and demons in its formal theology but largely discounts them from practical consideration in the real world.

Then come four chapters of historical investigation that creatively and even dramatically present the important contributions of four major thinkers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries of the Christian era (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen), who lived in a world at least as pluralistic as our own.

In the end, McDermott finds in these resources several solidly Christian explanations for why God allows different religions to operate in the world.

One explanation is that other religions are second-best alternatives to the one, true faith, permitted because of the spiritual hardness of people who would not accept the undiluted truth. Another is that they are the product of the ongoing rebellion of spiritual powers created

by God and originally good. A third is that they are spiritual counterfeits used

by God to point up certain truths that might have been overlooked or ignored by students of the biblical revelation.

McDermott thinks all of these answers might be correct, and this conclusion is the one thing that could pose a problem for readers interested in practical interaction with other faiths. It may be true that, since the religions originate in fallen supernatural powers, they are both truthful enough to make them valuable and distorted enough to make them dangerous. But it is hard to see how, on a practical level, one can have it both ways. Should we trust alternative religions as fundamentally good (even if Satan may use them for evil), or should we resist them as fundamentally evil (though acknowledging that God can use them for good)? At the end of God’s PRISM 2007

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Rivals, this tension remains.

And perhaps it must remain, in a world as messy and conflicted as ours.

In any case, this book will prove very useful for traditional Christians who are trying to think theologically about nonChristian religious traditions. It helpfully retrieves easily forgotten elements of the biblical revelation and also puts us in conversation with faithful Christians from the past who had much occasion to reflect upon the phenomenon of religious pluralism. ■ Steven D. Boyer is associate professor of theology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.

UNTAMED HOSPITALITY

By Elizabeth Newman Brazos Press Reviewed by Tim Otto In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling sets up two opposing versions of hospitality.

The Dursleys, Harry’s aunt and uncle, seek to make an impression on their friends by putting on a show of domestic bliss, presenting an immaculately kept house, exchanging entertaining stories, and serving up a masterful pudding—all while cruelly banishing Harry to his shabby room with a tasteless supper. By contrast, the Weasleys, who eventually rescue Harry, live in a house that is both unkempt and prone to chaos—but it is there that Harry finds a true home.

The two families’ divergent lifestyles grow out of their contrasting worldviews. In Untamed Hospitality:Welcoming God and Other Strangers, Elizabeth Newman examines two equally distinct

worlds: the commoditized world of the global market and the relational world of the Christian tradition.

Within the Christian worldview, we enter the hospitality of the triune God through worship. In worship, rather than grasping at false identities to impress ourselves and others, we can receive who we are with gratitude. Secure in that identity, we can truly welcome others, even those very different from ourselves. Newman explores how we can allow Christian practices such as worship, participation in the Eucharist, and participation in the life of our local church body to form us so that we become a more authentically hospitable people.

On the other hand, in a world informed primarily by the global market, we find ourselves subtly tempted to relate to those around us as commodities, welcoming others as a way of filling our own emptiness, much as we might consume a product or experience.

Newman compellingly surveys how a consumer society deforms our sensibilities so that we end up offering a superficial and false hospitality to others. We are, for instance, tempted to transform our homes into Martha Stewart-approved showplaces of taste and cleanliness. Such homes evoke envy and desire in others rather than a sense that they have come home. Or, we relate to others with a sentimental “niceness” more suited to the “hospitality industry” than to authentic relationships.

For any of us uncomfortable in a world that attempts to turn us into Dursleys, Newman’s provocative, erudite book is a welcome rescue. ■ Tim Otto is co-author of Inhabiting the Church: Biblical Wisdom for a New Monasticism (Cascade Books, 2006). He is an associate pastor at the Church of the Sojourners, a live-together church in San Francisco, where he spends a good bit of time changing sheets for guests.

GOD ON MUTE

addresses each of those questions headon, returning again and again to Christ’s chilling Gethsemane prayer, where Jesus

By Pete Greig falls to the ground begging the Father Regal Books to let the hour of crucifixion pass from him, yet submitting to the cup noneReviewed by Laura Good theless. Intertwined is the arresting Reading Pete Greig’s story of Samie Greig’s struggle with a God on Mute: Engag- baffling and violently epileptic medical ing the Silence of condition that tests the limits of the Unanswered Prayer, I author’s own faith. Greig eschews the was reminded of that easy answers, but he does not shy away haunting and perhaps from frank and practical discussions of heretical film, Martin why prayers might not be answered, Scorsese’s Last Temp- and he even breaks these ideas and tation of Christ. My examples down into an accessible perhusband and I stayed up late one sonal checklist for prayer and a roster of December night to view the film, riv- biblical figures who struggled with eted and repulsed and finally enthralled God’s silence.

While I cannot go as far as Brian

by Christ’s last, agonizing triumph, the tea lights of our makeshift nativity flick- McLaren, who, in the introduction, ranks God on Mute alongside Richard Foster’s ering down on us in the dark.

Our nativity, too, was perhaps hereti- Prayer and C.S. Lewis’ Letters to Malcolm cal. In that lean year, we had concocted (Mute is ultimately too generationa holy family out of discarded orna- specific and PowerPoint-ready to tranments passed on to us by various rela- scend the emergent church crowd), it is tives—Joseph, a bearded caroler; Mary, undoubtedly a solid, honest, highly praca cornhusk doll; and Jesus, a drummer tical, and personal book, one that roots boy missing his drum, seated on a sled. its call to prayer in both the author’s As I bent to blow out the nativity can- spiritual refinement and Christ’s hardles after the movie, I lingered over the rowing and very human example. ■ absurd little figures, feeling for the first time a very real fear and awe at Christ’s Based in Washington, D.C., Laura Good wholly human godhead, and also sens- works on human trafficking issues for the ing with Christ a deep human bond federal government, where she continues to learn about both answered and unanswered that I had never felt before.

God on Mute powerfully evokes much prayer. She also writes for Image, a Christian of this same awe and humble affection. arts journal.

Tackling the age-old question of why God often seems silent in the face of our most pained petitions, Greig wisely structures the book around two key narratives: Christ’s Passion Week and the story of Greig’s own faith journey in the midst of his young wife’s health crisis.

For each of the four final days of the Passion Week, Greig poses a question that diagrams a facet of the intense loneliness and despair that can assail us as we lay anguishing burdens before God. He PRISM 2007

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OFF THE SHELF

THE BIBLE AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE

or ‘being.’”

I recently had a conversation with a devout atheist in which he repeatedly referred to a “being” and admitted that the Bible was a reference point for him

By Gerd Theissen at times.Theissen reinforces the argument Fortress Press that within a pluralist, postmodern, postsecular society, the Bible still connects Reviewed by Dan White Hodge with its mystery and theology.

While Theissen’s book is not for the Weighing in at a slight 150 pages, Gerd “faint of heart”—it is a master’s-level Theissen’s new book text—I still recommend it for those can provide only the seeking a broader and more informed broadest strokes in understanding of the contours of a response to the ques- “biblical identity,” regardless of whether tion “Why should or not it springs from “religious belief.” anyone read the Bible, This is the key to a clearer application let alone devote time in a constantly changing world of the to studying it?” But his strokes are sure eternal question “Where does God fit and push those of us who regularly inter- into all of this?” I especially appreciate act with the Bible to understand those how Theissen encourages his readers to who do not. As Theissen points out, many “approach the biblical story with a spirit people “will never pick up the book if of self-critical awareness and openness the only reasons to read the Bible depend to genuine dialogue.” This is something on first holding religious beliefs about we all need to do a lot more of! ■ the Bible.”

Theissen provides a fresh understand- Dan White Hodge is an ordained minister ing of the Bible’s role, influence, and who recently completed his PhD at Fuller importance in contemporary society. Theological Seminary’s School of Intercultural Divided into four sections—why an Studies. He is also adjunct professor in the educated person should know the Global Studies/Sociology department at Bible; biblical “essentials”; the heart of Azusa Pacific University. the Bible (core themes); and the Bible in dialogue with a pluralist world—the THE END OF MEMORY book examines how the Bible integrates with the humanities, the social sciences,

By Miroslav Volf and natural sciences.

Wm. B. Eerdmans In both a secular and post-secular world, the Bible is still relevant, argues Reviewed by Jesse Couenhoven Theissen, yet it remains complex and mysterious. In one of the better parts of Written (often movthe book, the author discusses “faith in ingly) for both acaGod and the secular experience.” From demic and thinking lay his point of view, even a secularist has audiences, Miroslav some connection with the “spiritual,” Volf ’s The End of and the Bible has a role, even if it is just Memory: Remembering as a reference point from which a conRightly in a Violent versation can be launched: “...when God World manages to be is not the mystery behind all things, the at once deeply perplace of God is taken by reality per se PRISM 2007

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sonal and universally significant. Volf ’s theological explorations are framed by his experiences of psychological abuse as a soldier suspected of subversion in then-communist Yugoslavia. How, he asks, should he remember his confrontations with Captain G. (his main interrogator)—and for how long?

In posing these questions Volf confronts the complacent assumption that memory is not a moral or theological responsibility. While he challenges the commitment basic to many discussions of the Holocaust, the idea that one should “never forget,” he is not presenting a defense of the old saw “forgive and forget” but rather presenting a complex ethics and theology of both memory and forgetting.

Volf ’s key theological contention is that we should remember truthfully and for the sake of blessing—made possible by filtering memories of suffered wrongs through the lens of the Passion, which teaches us to seek communion with wrongdoers.This idea should both challenge and appeal to any evangelical, though some may question Volf ’s apparent appeal to universalism when he states that God has given all of humanity a new future by unifying us with Christ.

Even more memorable is Volf ’s discussion of when we should stop remembering. Non-remembrance, he says, should not be confused with forgetting.

When Jeremiah writes of God “remember[ing]...sin no more,” he is not saying that God will forget sin the way we lose track of names or our keys; he is saying that God intentionally gives the gift of consigning sin to oblivion, in that it will no longer come to mind. Nonremembering,Volf argues, is a necessary feature of full reconciliation, and thus only possible in heaven: If seeing a sibling always makes me think of a wrong I suffered at his hands, that could not be heaven. Short of heaven, however, Volf suggests that non-remembrance is likely inappropriate, since we should remem-

ber the sins of those who are likely to hurt again, or who are impenitent—nonremembrance is the end of reconciliation, not its beginning.

I was left wondering whether there ought not be more room for a redeemed memory of sin—in which sin not only comes to mind but does so as part of a Eucharistic celebration of hurts healed —but the fact that this book could raise such questions for one who had hardly thought about memory before is a credit to how worthwhile it is to read. ■ Jesse Couenhoven considers being a news junkie, food snob, and sci-fi fan all part of his job as professor of moral theology at Villanova University.

PROCLAIMING THE SCANDAL OF THE CROSS

By Mark D. Baker Baker Academic Reviewed by Stephen Stanley Why did Jesus have to die? How does his death on the cross long ago save me today? I can remember back to my junior high days, asking my mother such atonement questions.

I cannot recall what she said except that her answer helped stimulate in me an ongoing reflection.

This is why I value Mark Baker’s contribution of images and stories that help engage this multi-faceted “crucial” truth with my 21st-century world.

His book Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement invites the church to reflection, conversation, and a renewed awe of a God who revealed himself on a cross. He presents (with commentary) 18 imaginative contributions from respected teachers, authors,

and theologians. In calling for a continuing “contextualizing” of the scandal of the cross, Baker seeks to open new windows of imagination for concretely embedding Christ’s atoning work in the contemporary church’s proclamation and mission.

In the first chapter, Baker reviews main points from his preceding work, Recovery of the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts, written with Joel Green. In a quote from this book he reminds us that this “bewildering scandal” calls for a “worldview shift of colossal proportions, because it subverts conventional ways of thinking and knowing.” He also reminds us of the assertion made in this book that evangelicals’ emphasis on the “penal satisfaction” theory—Jesus as our substitute to satisfy the wrath of God—has muted this scandal and failed to fully engage and challenge contemporary contexts. Baker now wants to help the church uncover the New Testament’s multiple atonement images and be freed from a tendency to view biblical texts through this lens. This diversity of biblical metaphors expressing complementary truths has been historically attested to by the church and can offer fresh possibilities for today.

Baker’s array of images generates real potency for his book. His first is a discussion of C.S. Lewis’s image of Aslan and Narnia’s “deep magic” in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Other images follow in the form of sermons, dramas, personal accounts, and class lessons.They arrive from varying American cultural contexts, global contexts, and multiple church traditions. Such “contextualizing” helps the reader distinguish emerging contrasts for a clearer understanding of God’s work on the cross, such as notions of legal guilt versus the experience of shame, “algebraic” (equalizing) justice versus overwhelming grace, individualistic redemption versus the new creation in a new world. As a result, even PRISM 2007

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those committed to a prevailing penal satisfaction premise can still discover fresh, more nuanced approaches to enlarge evangelistic and pastoral ministry.

Clearly Baker’s examples can help us connect not only with the real world but with our real selves as well. In one example, Doug Frank’s “Naked but Unashamed” account speaks deeply to unarticulated, unresolved shame that can drive both competition and passivity in evangelical life. In another, Chris Friesen’s fictional drama “Atonement in the Coffee Shop” biblically demonstrates how Christ made peace by turning the other cheek and absorbing human sin and violence.

Thus “the system of algebraic justice that expects and requires a struck person to strike back and balance the relational equation” becomes unraveled and leads to new possibilities for reconciliation and transformation. In still another, Duke Divinity School’s Richard Hays presents Romans 5:12-19 as a picture of overwhelming grace itself, constituting a new people as Christ’s new creation. And finally, Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury, discusses real human difficulty in offering forgiveness and portrays God as the actual One who is most able to forgive because of what he suffered on the cross. Thus Good News has declared forgiveness and now calls forth a forgiving people.

This book now calls for the same question that I asked my mother long ago and redirects it to the contemporary church: “To what degree have we learned from the New Testament witness to struggle with the message of the cross in our own contexts?” Ongoing reflection and creative struggle are still in order. I feel that Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross will serve me as a resource and catalyst for years to come.

The writing is clear; the images are vivid. Far from being trendy or simplistic, this book will deepen and enlarge.

Mark Baker invites believers to read and read again, to talk together, and to wor-

ship—and to reverence the “deeper magic” of God’s saving work. ■ Stephen Stanley is a pastor serving on ministry teams at Evanston Mennonite Church in Evanston, Ill., and at the Lawrence House Fellowship in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago.

GRACE (EVENTUALLY): THOUGHTS ON FAITH

By Anne Lamott Riverhead Books Reviewed by Erika Bai Siebels Some would say they learn lessons of grace from altar calls, campfire songs, or “seeing the light.” That is not necessarily how Anne Lamott talks about grace. Since her days as a columnist for Salon and her acclaimed Traveling Mercies and Plan B, she has embraced Jesus the way a hippie embraces peace. In her most recent book, Grace (Eventually), she compares her love for Jesus to the way her dog loves her—“falling into a trance of despair when she can’t feel me.”

In Grace (Eventually), Lamott meditates on grace experienced when forgiving her teenage son, when battling jealousy of people who have better necks or more money, or when picking up the phone to call someone when she has just binged on donuts and would rather feel sorry for herself.

She is human—struggling to understand how Jesus might love Donald Rumsfeld, for example, and celebrating her 20th anniversary of sobriety—but she really does want to do what Jesus would do. That’s why she takes walks.

“That is what Jesus always did,” she writes.

“He gave crazy people some space.”

She describes her own spirituality as “devout, with a sometimes bad attitude, a black sense of humor, and tendencies toward gossip and character assassination.”

How’s that for truthful and sassy? And yet her neurosis makes her endearing, because, at the end of the day, she sounds like one of us. She knows grace isn’t a magic wand or silver bell that rings to announce its arrival. Rather, she writes, God hears our cries and will be near and hear, and help...eventually. “Of course, it is the eventually that throws one into despair,” she says.

What throws me into despair is the viewpoint Lamott expressed in an essay called “The Born.”In it she describes her experience as a co-panelist at a social justice conference with people she considered progressive-thinking Jesus lovers —that is, until the conversation turned to abortion. She sat, silently screaming to herself, while others talked about the need to address abortion and other prolife issues as matters of social justice.

Finally she said that a woman’s right to choose “was nobody else’s goddamn business.” “This got their attention,” she writes.“A cloud of misery fell over the room, and the stage.”

Reading those words, a cloud of misery came over me as I realized I could no longer cheer for Anne Lamott. She ranted over the “patriarchal sentimentality about minuscule zygotes, when real, live, already born women, many of them desperately poor, get such short shrift from the government now in power.” I can understand her frustration over the poor and the government now in power, but calling reproductive rights a crucial part of the fight for the sacredness of human life is misleading.

I’m just not sure how to respond when she considers it a moral necessity to “not inflict life on children who will be resented.” I understand and concur that a calling to motherhood—to parenthood, really—is like that of a priest or a nun or a poet, but I don’t get how PRISM 2007

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abortion is a matter of women’s rights.

In the meantime, I will keep reading Anne Lamott anyway, because I know, as she says, God will be close to us all, no matter how things bounce. ■ Erika Bai Siebels finds grace so vital that she named her first-born child Grace. A freelance writer, she lives with her husband and two daughters in Troy, N.Y.

WAYWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

By Charles Marsh Oxford University Press Reviewed by Bret Kincaid In Wayward Christian Soldiers, Charles Marsh offers a scathing inhouse critique of the broad evangelical support for President Bush and especially his decision to attack Iraq.

Even more, Marsh criticizes the “partisan captivity of the gospel.” He repeatedly refers to the “Faustian bargain” conservative evangelicals have made by “compromising their faith” and exchanging “the truth of God” for political access and power.

This transaction has, according to Marsh, blinded them to the suffering of innocent civilians in Iraq and to the damage their politically conservative loyalty has done to the Christian evangelical witness worldwide. He goes so far as to conclude that “the evangelical empire has produced...a world bereft of moral accountability, intellectual curiosity, trustworthiness, and honesty.”

This articulate prophetic word, unfortunately, is not as charitably argued or well supported as many of the conclusions he developed in his earlier work, God’s Long Summer. In addition to using

hyperbolic language like that just quoted, Marsh provides little evidence to support his accusation that a Faustian bargain has occurred. He largely assumes that conservative evangelicals have gained political access and power by “willfully” (his word) setting aside the truth about the policies and political behavior of the White House to make good on their part of the bargain—to remain loyal to the GOP and President Bush. However, Marsh finds that loyalty to Bush is the result of the widespread—but mistaken, according to Marsh—evangelical belief that Bush is one of them, an orthodox evangelical who is “‘the real deal in terms of his walk with Christ’.”

However, this reader believes that evangelicals support Bush because they believe he is connected to God and not necessarily because they are more “thrilled” by power than truth, as Marsh claims. Isn’t it likely, too, that they also favor many of Bush’s policies—from faith-based initiatives to tax cuts to preemptive war for security and human rights purposes—because they believe these policies are right for Christian reasons? That is an honest question that needs to be addressed if one is going to offer a charitable (and completely credible) critique.That said, Marsh does offer enough evidence to argue persuasively the startling truth that after reading “war sermons” preached by prominent “patriot preachers” and visiting evangelical churches, he heard and read almost nothing about the innocent children and other civilians killed in Iraq. Deeply disturbing.

The ideas presented in the latter half of Marsh’s book are his most compelling. Drawing on the thought of several historic Christians, he offers ways to repent of wayward politics. He argues that evangelicals must return to being a peculiar people in a strange land, speak the truth with humility, avoid the “messianic impulse,” and listen to the rest of the international body of Christ. Quoting Dietrich Bonheoffer, who also found

himself addressing a wayward church, Marsh exhorts, “What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward people.” ■ Bret Kincaid is associate professor of political science at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa., and the editor of ESA’s online public policy community (esa-online.org/PublicPolicy).

THE LIFE OF MEANING

By Bob Abernethy and William Bole Seven Stories Press Reviewed by Amanda Petersen

and compassion.” Anne Lamott provides humor in her inimitable style, affirming that “laughter really is carbonated holiness.” Perhaps I was most encouraged by the words of Rev. Scott Morris, MD, who founded a health center in Memphis that offers next-to-free services to the homeless and poor, focusing on preventative medicine and holistic health. He sums up our raison d’être this way: “It is about people of faith rising up and doing what we are called to do: care for the body and the spirit.”

The rich diversity of perspectives was so appealing and enlightening that at times I found myself frustrated by those contributors who expressed beliefs with which I am most familiar. I could do without the redundantly crafted introductions to each piece, but I recommend the book to anyone looking to broaden their scope of knowledge, be comforted in their journey, and be challenged into new insights of truth and meaning.

My copy of The Life of Meaning will not find its way to the used book store or be sold online for a few dollars. It is one that will stay on my shelf, because its pieces are worth going back to over time—as a reminder of how the human experience connects us all, as a reflection on truth, as a study aid, and as a comfort.

As the title promises, it is indeed about faith, doubt, and repairing the world, but it is also about so much more. ■

In The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, Bob Abernethy and William Bole have compiled a beguiling blend of writings featuring the thoughts and ideas of many of the guests on their PBS program, Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly.With contributors such as Jimmy Carter, Stanley Hauerwas, Madeleine L’Engle, Anne Lamott, Desmond Tutu, and the Dalai Lama, as well as many new names I came to know and appreciate as I read, the book is as engaging it is varied.

An interview with Lutheran scholar Amanda Petersen is an editor at the online Martin Marty reveals that he considers magazine Wrecked for the Ordinary himself “a hitchhiker on the spirituality (wreckedfortheordinary.com/). of others.” This book is filled with free rides. Never too heavy or too light, the book’s 66 short pieces (in 415 pages) offer a highly readable balance of wisdom, humor, and reflection.

From Nhat Hanh: “When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding PRISM 2007

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OFF THE SHELF

LETTERS TO A YOUNG EVANGELICAL

selves and provides enough background to make issues truly accessible to those who are just joining the debate.

While some may take issue with

By Tony Campolo the author’s personal positions, he leaves Basic Books room for disagreement and dissent, in many chapters spending more time Reviewed by Andrew Howe presenting the arguments against his Young Christians nav- stances than for them. Despite our tenigating the evangelical dency to partition, this book frames world can find them- Christian debate as a reason to unite as selves pulled in one body striving for perfection.

At just under 300 pages of short multiple directions by complex and often writings, Letters is friendly to short attenconflicting social and tion spans and discussion groups. Letters theological issues. to a Young Evangelical is certainly not an Many of us struggle exhaustive portrayal of any of the issues to assemble a consistent, Christ-centered it presents, but it is a much-needed inviworldview in light of the divisive debates tation for young Christians to develop that dominate the evangelical landscape. a literate, applicable worldview informed In Letters to a Young Evangelical, Tony by the message of Christ. ■ Campolo takes on the role of mentor, exploring a variety of issues—fundamen- Andrew Howe just earned his B.A. in socitalism, same-sex marriage, abortion, ology from Eastern University, where he was pacifism, speaking in tongues, the emer- involved in the social justice group SPEAK as gent church—and providing the guid- well as theY.A.C.H.T. Club (Youth Against ance and grounding necessary to make Complacency and Homelessness Today). them accessible and navigable to young believers.

LIVING FAITH Each letter addresses an issue by outlining the origins and implications of

By Curtiss Paul DeYoung differing Christian views and closes with Fortress Press a “Red-Letter Christian” resolution to the problem, that is, one based on the Reviewed by Christopher M. Petersen words and life of Christ himself.

Campolo carefully balances an over“Mystic-activists” face arching principle of tolerance within down the structures Christendom with cautions concerning that dominate and beliefs that have led many astray. This oppress the poor as aspect of Letters is perhaps the most valuthey personally disable to young evangelicals, so often cover the “interreladiscouraged by the shouting matches tionship between conwe witness over key Christian issues. templation [and] a Campolo provides an honest account of vision of hope that his own Christian worldview, one that transcends labels like “liberal,” “conser- longs for a socially just world.” So says vative,” “charismatic,” and perhaps even Curtiss DeYoung in his superb new “evangelical.” Unlike so many others, book, Living Faith: How Faith Inspires Campolo encourages young Christians Social Justice, in which he outlines the by inviting us to mull over issues for our- lives, philosophies, and impact of three

mystic-activists: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Malcolm X, and Aung San Suu Kyi. He has provided a challenging primer on these three individuals and a compelling call to action for those invited to activism from a contemplative perspective.

The strength of DeYoung’s book lies in his comprehensive view of mysticactivists, whom he defines as individuals directly engaged with their culture’s injustices while drawing on their personal connection with the divine. He chose Bonhoeffer, Malcolm X, and Suu Kyi not only for their compelling stories and committed activism but also because each of them, while rooted in his or her spiritual tradition, moved beyond that tradition to embrace and work alongside those of other faiths.

In his closing chapters DeYoung clearly marks for 21st-century mysticactivists what he believes is essential to envisioning social justice from a contemplative perspective. This includes undermining the assumptions on which a culture’s institutions are founded, outlining a “remoralization” of society, and providing prophetic leadership. By examining the lives of his three protagonists alongside the lives of several other mysticactivists from various traditions, DeYoung helps readers broaden their grasp of the various avenues of mystic-activism.

A final mark of mystic-activists is the intertwining of their personal integrity and social ethics. Here is where DeYoung falters, especially in his presentation of Malcolm X and Suu Kyi. Although he attempts to present them as humans who have flaws, I sensed an over-idealized view.

I contrast this with James Cone’s comprehensive perspective of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X in Martin and Malcolm in America in which he dissected their shortcomings while still recognizing their revolutionary spirits. While DeYoung has refrained from a full critique of his primary examples, except in the case of Bonhoeffer, it in no way detracts from the terrific inspiration of his invi-

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tation to contemplation and action in the 21st century. ■ Chris Petersen raises scholarship support for students at Cornerstone Christian Academy in Philadelphia, Pa., where he writes on Christian spirituality.

CRIMINALS OF THE BIBLE

By Mark Jones FaithWalk Publishing Reviewed by Jens Soering Once the self-proclaimed land of the free, the United States has become the world’s leading jailer.

This country incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other nation on earth. Of all the prisoners on the planet, nearly one-quarter are housed in U.S. correctional facilities.

That makes Mark Jones’ Criminals of the Bible especially timely. In 25 brief but engaging chapters, Jones, a criminal justice professor, examines biblical heroes and villains from the standpoint of current laws. Joseph’s brothers, while probably not breaking any laws in their own age when they sold Joseph to passing Midianites, would be guilty of human trafficking today. Citing UN and U.S. State Department documents, Jones gives an overview of modern-day slavery and case studies of three victims. Each chapter ends with a “Lesson for Today” that includes the author’s reflections on divine justice.

While Jones certainly covers traditional crimes like murder and prostitution, he also devotes considerable space to the kinds of offenses that have dominated the headlines since September 11, 2001: terrorism, genocide, treason, and

Clever titles do not a classic make. But offerings like Alan Hirsch’s The Forgotten Ways make the effort to wade through the emerging material worthwhile.

The Forgotten Ways represents the potential that the emergent movement has for the renewal of the whole church.

Replete with illustrations, graphs, diagrams, and insights wrought from experience, the book introduces the concept of Apostolic Genius, which exists, Hirsch argues, in all churches.The six elements of Apostolic Genius—the lordship of Christ, disciple-making, missional-incarnational impulse, apostolic environment, organic systems, and communitas—make up what he calls mDNA (m is for missional). The organization of the book around each of these elements makes for clear, accessible, and practical reading.

He uses the phenomenal growth of the early church during the preConstantinian era and the underground Chinese church during the Cultural Revolution of the 20th century as models of what Apostolic Genius can do Jens Soering’s latest book is The Convict when unleashed in the world. Both Christ: What the Gospel Says About examples demonstrate the phenomenal Criminal Justice (Orbis Books, 2006). growth amidst the social marginalization and persecution of the church. Stripped See www.jenssoering.com. of legal, social, and positional power, the church grew exponentially in both of these cases, both in numbers and in THE FORGOTTEN WAYS spiritual maturity.The power behind this growth is the latent power in all churchBy Alan Hirsch es—namely, Apostolic Genius.

Brazos Press/Strand Publishing Apostolic Genius and its six elements (the mDNA of the church) are “the Reviewed by Al Tizon forgotten ways” of the gospel. As ChristI confess to feeling ianity after Constantine became the skeptical (bordering official state religion, and as the church on cynical) when I added layer upon layer of preservatives crack open a book in (traditionalism) upon itself, Apostolic the “emerging church Genius was all but buried and forgotten. genre.” So much of It needs to be dug up, says Hirsch, if the that literature unfor- church today is going to advance in any tunately falls prey to significant way. The time is ripe, as the the postmodern driv- cracked foundations of Christendom open el that gives many of the movement’s new vistas of missional opportunity for books the shelf life of a loaf of bread. the postmodern church.

sedition.These crimes pose a special challenge for even the most devout Christians, since they are not interpersonal injuries but attacks on our social institutions, our culture, and even our faith. In Criminals of the Bible, we are gently reminded that our spiritual family tree contains more than a few men who might be considered enemy combatants or “fifth columnists” in our own age. How would the prophet Jeremiah fare today, as the United States enters the fifth long year of the Global War on Terror?

Jones does not, however, make the mistake of railing against the evils of empire or explicitly denouncing capital punishment, for example. Instead, he uses the trained educator’s approach of asking probing questions, inviting us to examine our own views, and taking a fresh look at the Bible. To what extent are our beliefs about crime and punishment truly Christian? That is a question we can no longer afford to leave unanswered. ■

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The church’s concern for the poor did not get as much attention as this reader would have liked, but Hirsch incorporated it enough within the elements of Apostolic Genius—primarily within disciple-making and missional-incarnational impulse—that careful readers cannot but interpret concern for the poor as part and parcel of the church’s mDNA. Overall, there is very little to disagree with and much to celebrate in this book.

Church leaders who desire to mobilize their people for genuine transformational ministry in this postmodern age need to read it. In fact, plan a staff retreat around it. Restructure and simplify the church according to it. Define mission by it. And then hang on as God moves in your midst. ■ Al Tizon is assistant professor of holistic ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary and director of Network 9:35 of Evangelicals for Social Action.

THE CULTURALLY SAVVY CHRISTIAN

By Dick Staub Jossey-Bass Reviewed by Erika Bai Siebels Beneath the CocaCola font on the cover of Dick Staub’s The Culturally Savvy Christian:A Manifesto for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of Christianity-Lite roars a bold wake-up call for Christ followers to thoughtfully engage faith with culture.

Staub tells us not only why we need to translate faith and culture to each other but also how. Moreover, he does so with the very intelligence that he challenges us to seek and exemplify.

Staub considers today’s superficial pop culture “the cultural equivalent of junk food; it looks, feels, and tastes good but is often utterly lacking in nutrients.” And yet, he says, the Christian who is creative, spiritual, intelligent, relational, and ethical should not merely scoff at, run away from, or co-opt culture. Instead, we need to recognize culture’s power to influence, an act that requires, at its heart, a search for meaning and truth.

As Christians, we know the truth: We were created in God’s image, rebelled, and are continually longing to get back to God. “Never has there been a greater need for wise, gifted storytellers who understand the story we are in and can communicate a better way gracefully and truthfully,” writes Staub.

Then should the culture look to the church? No—not to the big-box, feelgood American Christianity Staub refers to as “Christianity-Lite.” That kind of church has grown big but shallow, desperate to change culture by either imitating it or voting against it.

Transformation will only occur within the church and the culture when individuals are transformed by encountering God. Leo Tolstoy once said, “Everybody thinks of changing humanity, but nobody thinks of changing himself.” How will that happen? Staub suggests taking our instructions from Romans 12 (vs. 1-3): Sacrifice, do not conform to this world, and renew your mind. In other words, we need to take our faith seriously.

Staub understands the reality of his call to action, though. He warns,“In your pursuit of God and a complete transformation, do not be discouraged when you experience setbacks, because our call to become fully human is a direction, not a promise of perfection.” And so he charges us to be listeners to both faith and culture, God-seekers who keep in mind the greatest of commands, which is love.

He concludes with a creed for artists

who are Christian: Dig deeper, be vigilant, and demand better art, he says. We have a creative and powerful God, forgiven hearts, and the Holy Spirit on our side.

Can we not, as one of our main cultural icons suggests, “just do it”? ■ Erika Bai Siebels observes life and chases God in Troy, N.Y.

LESS THAN TWO DOLLARS A DAY

By Kent Van Til Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by David O’Hara Books on social justice too often amount to little more than laments, slogans, or wild utopian dreams that are unlikely to become realities.

Although Kent Van Til’s Less Than Two Dollars a Day: A Christian View of World Poverty and the Free Market begins with a lament and ends with a big dream, it carefully and effectively transcends slogans. A surprisingly substantial book about distributive justice, it offers the added bonus of demonstrating how to build a good argument.

Revealing that an astounding 40 percent of the world’s people live on less than $2 a day, the opening chapters offer a refresher course on economic theory that does a reasonable job of explaining a complex history of ideas in accessible terms. The next few chapters do the same thing with biblical and theological issues surrounding the economics of trade and poverty.

Van Til examines Adam Smith and economic theory to illustrate the implicit reliance of free market theory upon distributive justice throughout history.

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Drawing on a range of thinkers from Henry Shue and Amartya Sen to Abraham Kuyper and Michael Walzer, the author argues that even champions of free market economics must acknowledge an obligation to the poor.

If visions of a painful college econ class are making you shrink from this book, relax. Van Til prefers big ideas to numbers and charts, and he does a good job of alternating between discussing how the big ideas came to hold sway and telling us what the big ideas mean for us right now, providing a satisfying blend of what Aristotle calls theoria and praxis.

The book ends by pointing out that we could cut global poverty in half if every adult in every developed nation donated about $100 a year.Van Til concludes with the question that encapsulates his dream: If we can, why don’t we? ■

we can truly understand and partner with each other.

For those who have not surrendered to the inevitability of the continuance of our separation, Robert Franklin’s latest book, Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities, will be instructive. Franklin has produced a primer in understanding African American churches and the issues they face, and if understanding is a first step toward action, this book will help readers at least crawl before they walk.

Franklin is less well known as a public intellectual than counterparts Cornel West and Michael Dyson. Yet he has quietly established a solid reputation as a serious Christian thinker, living much of his career at the intersection of theology and action. Whether serving as seminary professor or administrator (he just took over as president of Morehouse College), foundation executive, or public David O’Hara is assistant professor of phi- ethicist on NPR or at the Samuel DeWitt losophy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, Proctor Conference, Franklin has conS.Dak. sistently sought to match biblical principles with institutional realities. This effort is no less.

CRISIS IN THE VILLAGE The book’s title comes from the African proverb, “It takes a village to

By Robert M. Franklin raise a child.” And, no, it was not Hillary Fortress Press Clinton who introduced the phrase, but rather Marian Wright Edelman, head of Reviewed by Harold Dean Trulear the Children’s Defense Fund, the only registered lobby to the federal governAfter countless years ment designed to speak solely on behalf of racial reconcilia- of children. Franklin takes the image and tion dialogue, national runs with it to a variety of places, proapologies, and move- grams, and policies designed to strengthment mergers, white en the black community’s ability to care evangelicals still don’t for its own. “get” black churches, One does not have to agree with all especially those whose of Franklin’s recommendations to appretheology seems to be ciate his heroic efforts to take good ideas consistent with their own.The segrega- about social change and propose meantion of our worship hours and the ingful solutions that take institutional inability of white evangelical churches and cultural life seriously. For example, to engage in mutual submission with Franklin advances particular advocacy black church leadership both indicate and program initiatives concerning such that we have a long way to go before things as healthy marriages, prisoner

reentry, and the mentoring of children of prisoners. In each case, he matches the initiative with the church body he deems most appropriate to engage on the basis of its unique ethos and infrastructure.

Also, he refuses to reduce social action to service delivery, keeping the issue of the revival of the prophetic voice front and center.

Franklin’s willingness to wrestle in book form with the particularity of his argument is refreshing; it is reminiscent of Ron Sider’s ongoing risks at proffering policy in an era where statecraft is reduced to pragmatism and where prophecy is vague and without specific accountabilities. But black scholars are not opposite reflections of their white counterparts. The division we continue to face reflects an ongoing veil through which thinkers like Franklin peer whenever they prepare to voice public commentary. Crisis in the Village offers readers an opportunity to see what and how this particular thinker sees. ■ Harold Dean Trulear is a pastor, professor of applied theology, and regular PRISM columnist (see page 6).

COME TO A LEARNING PARTY!

SOULARIZE 2007 Hosted by Spencer Burke of theOoze.com and held in Nassau, Bahamas, October 25-27, 2007, Soularize 2007 will bring together N. T. Wright, Brennan Manning, Rita Nakashima Brock, and Fr. Richard Rohr on the future of the Church. Open your eyes to see new ideas from unexpected places and people. Share your story, learn from others, and celebrate this transitional time in the life of the Church.

Learn more at theooze.com/soularize.

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OFF THE SHELF

RIGHTEOUS

By Lauren Sandler Viking Press Reviewed by Rick Jackson

But even as Sandler is repulsed by much of what she sees, the people who populate the pages of her book are never reduced to two-dimensional cutouts.

Sandler recognizes that she and they hunger for the same thing: authentic and fully realized lives. She wrestles throughout the book with the idea of agape, and she sees it on display in those she meets. In one memorable passage, Sandler allows members of New Life Church to pray for her.While their politics frighten her, she nonetheless is moved by their care. “Tonight they demonstrated the simple concept that powers and sustains this movement: They have shown me the kindness of strangers.”

It is empathy that leavens Sandler’s cynicism and makes Righteous worthwhile. This book can be criticized for representing only one slice of evangelicalism, but it is the slice that many on the outside see as the whole of evangelicalism. For that reason, perhaps Christians can read this book to gain some empathy for Sandler and others who are frightened so much by the Disciple Generation. ■

It’s easy to look at Lauren Sandler’s Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement and shrug: Here’s another journalist’s tale of how she entered the exotic and peculiar world of evangelical Christianity, much like an anthropologist examining an obscure tribe. While certain passages could justify such a description, Sandler’s engaging and eye-poking book offers so much more than that. It is a journey of self-examination, written by a selfdescribed secularist of the political left who holds her own world up against an evangelical youth culture comprised of huge numbers of young believers who savor rock concerts, skateboarding, tattoos, and conservative politics. In the end, she concludes that her world, Rick Jackson is assistant professor of journalwhile in the right intellectually, is still ism at Seattle Pacific University, Seattle,Wash. missing something essential.

“The Disciple Generation continuPRACTICAL JUSTICE ously thrives because the secular left can’t even find the words to express why life

By Kevin Blue is worth living,” Sandler writes. “We can’t InterVarsity Press even play the game.” Make no mistake, Sandler finds plenty that horrifies her.

Reviewed by José Humphreys There’s Seattle’s booming Mars Hill Church, led by ultra-cool Pastor Mark Practical Justice Driscoll, who calls on “manly men” to outlines Christlike lead and “lovely helpers” to follow. actions that range There’s Ted Haggard’s New Life Church from personal acts in Colorado Springs, where apocalyptic to public approachAmerican militarism and Christian faith es within a broader are indistinguishable. There’s Patrick sphere. In a chapHenry College in Virginia, where hometer titled “Should schooled children pursue their degrees I Help?” Blue chalwhile being trained as ground troops in lenges Christians who are overly suspia conservative revolution.

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cious of the poor and shows how God’s provision for us comes with no caveats or strings attached, asking only that we be a channel of giving and grace for those in need.

While some may prefer a clearer distinction between individual acts of mercy and the larger theme of justice, Blue subversively shows that the two are not mutually exclusive. Justice derives from God’s love, heart of mercy, and alignment with the poor and marginalized. Justice is not a fight that happens at a safe distance but in relationship with the poor and marginalized. For example, Blue urges Christians to move beyond providing handouts to taking a homeless person out to share a hot meal; this level of face-to-face investment requires both engagement and time.

On a systemic level, Blue challenges American foreign policies that can often breed unjust business practices globally.

He also encourages justice workers to think about broader issues like race and class, without neglecting the need to develop skills and assets that would promote vitality in both individuals and communities.

Kevin Blue deals insightfully with the more intrapersonal and contemplative side of justice work as well. It’s easy for justice workers to become burned out and embittered. Maintaining a sense of purpose in the prophetic vocation and being aware of our motivation are of the utmost importance. Without overly romanticizing justice work, Practical Justice is a great resource with a holistic perspective on justice by someone who is field tested. It truly spurred me to rethink justice beyond events and activities. ■ José Humphreys is a church planter in New York City and a regional coordinator with Esperanza USA, a national Hispanic community development organization.

DESPERATE WOMEN OF THE BIBLE

By Jo Kadlecek Baker Books Reviewed by Laura Good Desperate Women of the Bible, a collection of devotional studies on the brief, often haunting Gospel accounts of Jesus’ interactions with seven women, from the wellknown woman healed on the Sabbath to the refreshingly obscure Canaanite mother, affirms Christ’s commitment to redeeming grieving and suffering women of both the past and the present. Author Jo Kadlecek, PRISM columnist and creative writing teacher at Gordon College, breaks each of her book’s chapters into four digestible sections, ushering readers through exegesis and personal reflection with her warm, conversational tone.

Kadlecek’s sincerity and amiable writing style are the book’s strongest assets. While the sometimes plodding rehash of biblical action and the repetitive discussion questions may disappoint some readers, intertwined testimonies regarding her own desperate moments

help bring the discussion to life. Her bibliophilic streak also buoys the book, providing readers with a wealth of films, novels, and nonfiction books to plumb, including C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed and the 1996 film The Spitfire Grill.

Kadlecek’s study strikes a solid balance of earnestness and instruction in “Thirsty for More than a Drink,” the book’s first chapter, where she weaves personal narrative, Man of La Mancha’s Dulcinea, and a brief review of JewishSamaritan history into a study of the woman at the well. She stumbles perhaps most acutely in the final chapter, where she takes on the story of the Canaanite mother who accosts Jesus in the region of Tyre.This perturbing episode, recorded in both Luke and Mark, presents a fatigued Christ seeking refuge from the crowds but being sought after by a foreign woman who pleads with him to heal her daughter. Kadlecek bravely tackles a story rarely included in devotional literature, but while she sketches out historical and scholarly helps often used to illuminate the story, her discussion recoils into an empathetic gloss before it has keenly attended to the questions she acknowledges within the text.

While reaffirming the Psalmist’s exhortations on the beauty and necessity of a broken spirit, Kadlecek sometimes skirts the complexity of the passages she examines—whether in explanation or in discussion suggestions—and thus stops short of inviting readers to fully engage both their hearts and their minds in biblical study. While adult readers may not be fully satisfied with Desperate Women of the Bible, its warm, energetic tone and clear structure make it a good bet for adolescent readers—perhaps even of both sexes—and can help any reader remember the reality of Christ’s compassion and healing. ■ Laura Good holds a master’s degree in writing and works on human trafficking issues for the federal government in Washington, D.C. PRISM 2007

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SPOTTING THE SACRED

By Bruce Main Baker Books Reviewed by Rachel Parker One of my friends has the refreshing ability to acknowledge God’s hand in little details; she often tells of experiencing God’s provision or presence in her life. I have another friend who, although a faithful Christian, seems almost skeptical of God’s presence in the world and is constantly crediting his good fortune to coincidence or his own hard work.

By which friend am I more likely to be challenged and encouraged?

Herein lies the premise of Bruce Main’s Spotting the Sacred: Noticing God in the Most Unlikely Places. Ever at work in the world around us, God asks us to put on the eyes of faith in order to notice and acknowledge his presence, not only because he is worthy of our gratitude but also because it enriches our own lives and builds our faith. Main writes, “As God’s people...the challenge for us is to retrain our eyes, our hearts, and our ears to intuitively see and hear behaviors that reflect the heart and nature of God in our world. For in our ability to nurture these images we will find our ability to live more faithfully and passionately in our world.” That retraining process sounds a little daunting until one dives into the book and reads story after story of things that Main has noticed along the way: an elderly woman from his church who faithfully clips coupons for his family, the sacrifice of six professors who paid the tuition for a promising student so she could stay in school, his wife’s courage in delivering an obscure but timely message from God to a friend.

Main argues that Jesus modeled a

lifestyle of noticing. Even when on his way to one destination, Christ often interrupted himself to notice an opportunity. Many of us, myself included, get so focused on the task, errand, or person in front of us that we miss opportunities to minister that abound around us.

A captivating storyteller, Main does a masterful job of gently, but convincingly, challenging his readers to bring their faith to a new level.With each succeeding chapter, I found myself anticipating new ways to find God in my everyday world. ■ Rachel Parker lives in Boston and enjoys seeing God come alive through the smile and joy of her 1-year-old daughter, Carolena.

EVIL AND THE JUSTICE OF GOD

By N.T. Wright InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Becky Garrison I took N.T.Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God with me during a recent press trip to Israel. While touring many of the sacred spots that I’d heard about since childhood, I found myself reflecting on Wright’s wisdom. Simply put, how do we deal with this problem of evil in a post-9/11 world?

Wright, who is Anglican bishop of Durham, England, and a prolific New Testament scholar, uses the examples of September 11, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2004 tsunami to remind us that “our primary task is not so much to give answer to impossible philosophical questions as to bring signs of God’s new world to birth on the basis of Jesus’ death and in the power of his Spirit, even in the

midst of ‘the present evil age.’”

Through an exploration of the biblical narrative that culminates in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, Wright takes this topic head on. He uses deceptively simple and straightforward prose rather than ivory tower discourse for his theological discussion of evil, which makes it digestible by those without a PhD pedigree. Like another English scholar, C.S. Lewis, Wright possesses that rare ability to connect with the average person without dumbing down the debate.

Wright reminds us that evil is not a concept that resides outside of us like some force we must combat Star Wars style. The church needs to remember that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. From this place of gentle humility, the church can confront real worldly evils.

After laying out his analysis of the problem of evil,Wright tackles the subject of forgiveness, offering the readers some much-needed practical spiritual food for thought. Having interviewed Miroslav Volf for the Wittenburg Door back in 1999, I welcomed Wright’s inclusion of Volf ’s book Exclusion and Embrace in his reflections.

Following the last anniversary of September 11, a “best-selling” psychologist counseled that now is the time to forgive and move on, even though issues such as the recent discovery of body parts at Ground Zero, the lack of a suitable memorial, and the ongoing war in Iraq presented roadblocks to the problem of forgiveness. Wright offers a muchneeded pastoral response to such nefarious nonsense by offering counsel that is firmly grounded in the Christus Victor theory of the atonement. ■ Becky Garrison is senior contributing editor of the Wittenburg Door and author of Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church (Jossey-Bass, 2006).

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EVERYBODY WANTS TO GO TO HEAVEN BUT NOBODY WANTS TO DIE

By David Crowder Relevant Books Reviewed by Kathryn MacIvor Many theologians agree that the kingdom of God is both already in place and still emerging.

According to David Crowder, who, with Mike Hogan, authored Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody Wants to Die (or the eschatology of bluegrass), this profound paradox has a decidedly bluegrass twang.

The authors, band mates in the alternative rock/worship outfit, the David Crowder Band, invite the reader to experience their personal journeys through death and grieving. The result is a creative yet disjointed hodgepodge that includes a history of western ideas of the soul, a history of bluegrass, IM sessions between the authors, and three stories about suffering that intersect and diverge throughout the book, offering a unique reading experience.

The book’s innovative storytelling and creative formatting (geared for the abbreviated postmodern attention span) are engaging, but the pieces never quite congeal. The authors provide “conclusions,” attempts at answering some of life’s most difficult questions, but ultimately fail to connect the dots.

Meaningful correlations between bluegrass, suffering, and the history of the soul remain murky or altogether absent throughout the text.

Knowing and loving bluegrass myself, I agree with the authors’ premise that “‘the high lonesome sound’ of bluegrass music was born from pain yet,

despite such dismal roots, has hope at its core... In the living of life here on earth, there is most assuredly present a large amount of joy, but there is also a given amount of pain. Bluegrass is a shaking, shimmering echo of this—our reality.”

This is beautifully stated, but the authors fail to effectively illustrate this connection throughout the rest of the book. Instead they wind the reader through the fascinating history of ScotchIrish settlers in Appalachia, the loneliness of Bill Monroe’s childhood, and a witty description of the difference between a violinist and a fiddler.

On the other hand, the authors are undeniably successful in showing how African-American spirituals “both acknowledged the suffering in this life and in the same breath looked out toward the Glory Land...Hope placed in the future inadvertently brings hope into the present, in turn making the present tolerable.” Here, Crowder and Hogan finally bring their hazy “presentyet-emerging” concept into focus.They make the history of bluegrass sufficiently interesting, but it remains a bit superfluous. It isn’t until they describe the rich paradox found in African-American spirituals that their concept hits home.

Despite their failings, Crowder and Hogan do an excellent job of creating an atmosphere of authenticity and honesty, drawing their readers into their personal struggles with death, faith, and consolation. Without denying or minimizing the suffering of the here and now, they have crafted a refreshing and comforting portrait of hope for a postmodern world plagued by cynicism on the one hand and surface comfort on the other. ■ Kathryn MacIvor is liaison for special projects at Geneva Global, Inc., an advisory firm for philanthropists in Wayne, Pa. She is originally from the hills of Tennessee and believes God speaks through mandolin solos.

A HERETIC’S GUIDE TO ETERNITY

tage by the church. It is in this section that the author reveals his desire not for a Protestant reformation but for a thorBy Spencer Burke ough transformation—of all instituJossey-Bass tional faiths.

Finally, in “Living in Grace: Mystical Reviewed by J. Monty Stewart Responsibility,” he considers Jesus as the true heretic he was in light of tradiA reading of A tional Judaism. Jesus extended grace Heretic’s Guide to to those deemed undeserving; he entered Eternity may at first into relationship with and loved the leave one ponder- dregs of society, the diseased, and the ing whether author religious outcasts. “Grace wants everySpencer Burke has one to come to the party,” he writes.“It’s a Martin Luther a wild bash, not a sedate country club complex. This work luncheon for members only. It’s a rave certainly nails his —a wild, uncontrollable, raucous celebragrievances to the wall. In spite of the fact tion of God’s desire to connect with us.” that heresy has been punishable by both The “mystical responsibility” that he church and state throughout history, Burke espouses is comprised of living in faith contends that an urgent need exists for and resting in grace. contemporary heretics in the Kingdom I suspect that many will find this of God. book more than a little threatening. If His passionate plea is laid out in you have been raised in the instituthree sections. In “Questioning Grace: tional church, or in any other “religion” The Future of Faith,” Burke discusses for that matter, it will rattle—in the best how God’s grace is being suffocated by of all possible ways—the foundation of a burdensome religiosity. While grace is your belief structure (read: dry bones). in fact freely available to everyone, reli- The author’s idea that grace is all encomgion requires that people measure up to passing, and therefore you are in the receive it—and often puts itself in the Kingdom of God unless you reject it, position to decide just who does and will be touted by some as heretical unidoesn’t measure up. “Christians say that versalism. I hope that telling you that grace is available only if people acknowl- Burke is not, in fact, a universalist makes edge that they are sinners,” he writes. you curious enough to buy the book! ■ “But could it be that God’s grace is still grace apart from the issues of human sin J. Monty Stewart is the pastor of Kona Church or innocence—and there is no exchange of the Nazarene, a multicultural church in economy to heaven?”

Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. He also wrote the proIn “Questioning What We Know: file on Father Damien, found on page 3.

New Horizons of Faith,” Burke explores how modernity left many people disgruntled with the organized church.

Yet in the postmodern world, people appear to be more open to spirituality than possibly ever before in history.

Because for centuries the institutional church has been the center of all spirituality in the Christian faith, Burke contends, grace has often been held hosPRISM 2007

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OFF THE SHELF

THE REDEMPTION OF LOVE

By Carrie A. Miles Brazos Reviewed by Marcie Macolino Like a cool breeze on a sticky day, Carrie Miles’ book, The Redemption of Love: Rescuing Marriage and Sexuality from the Economics of a Fallen World, offers a refreshing perspective on such complicated and well-worn topics as patriarchy, the breakdown of the family, the biblical perspective on marriage, and the rising rates of divorce and cohabitation. Miles looks to the Bible for a clear understanding of problems and causes, using economic sociology as a tool/lens. Defining economics as “the study of how we ‘allocate scarce resources among competing ends,’” she examines the forces in our culture and institutions that influence our everyday lives.

Starting with the establishment of sexuality and the family unit by God in the Creation story and the economic realities that the Fall brought to that relationship, Miles traces how changing economic realities through history— such as the shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society—had corresponding shifts in the marital and family relationships. She reveals how past family structures that appear to be more consistent with God’s plan had more to do with economic (resource-allocating) realities than with a more virtuous culture. “Rather, they married, stayed married, and refrained from having sex or children outside of marriage partly because this is what the church taught, but even more so because these virtues were the material requirements of survival under the economic conditions that prevailed then.”

Lest you suspect that this book is a dry treatise on historic and economic forces, I must mention the exquisite section on the Song of Songs that illustrates and

elevates the biblical blessing of sex and marriage. “The biblically ideal marriage includes harmony and compatibility, passion and compassion, self-fulfillment as well as self-sacrifice, and equality as a necessary stepping-stone to unity.”

While it is not always immediately clear how her connections hang together, Miles’ impressive scholarship and broad, encompassing conclusions are well worth the effort. (Here’s a tip for synthesizing and articulating the content: Reread the introduction after completing the book!)

We are challenged to be free enough from the economic realities of the fallen world to participate in the redemption of love and sexuality. We are invited to reveal God’s ways to the world in an attainable marital unity. Both liberal and conservative explanations and solutions for the current climate are exposed as limited, and we are shown a fuller, higher way. Although a challenging read, I cherish this book for its clarity and truth, and for its clarion call for the redeemed to live in the reality of that redemption! ■ Marcie Macolino practices pediatrics in Philadelphia, Pa., where she encounters on a daily basis the effects of sexuality in a fallen world.

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THY KINGDOM COME

By Randall Balmer Basic Books Reviewed by David P. Gushee Thy Kingdom Come—An Evangelical’s Lament: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America can be viewed as Randall Balmer’s resignation letter from American evangelicalism as it exists today. By offering a scathing indictment of pretty much the entire agenda of the religious right, the Columbia/Barnard religious historian has thrown himself into the white-hot debate over religious politics in America, weighing in on the side of the progressive left over the conservative right.

This brief book, though footnoted, is not so much a scholarly work as what might once have been called a “pamphlet,” readable in a few hours’ time.

It is a hotly written polemic against the religious right’s agenda in the areas of abortion, homosexuality, religious liberty, K-12 and college education, intelligent design, and economic/environmental policy.

Balmer writes as an embittered and frustrated evangelical who believes that his faith is being hijacked by shady ideologues who are doing damage both to Christianity and to America. He recounts his evangelical heritage, shows us by narrative his entrée into various sectors of evangelical life, and proclaims his own status as a card-carrying evangelical. It is from that platform, not as any kind of secular liberal, that he attacks the religious right.

It is very difficult today for those on the left and right of the culture wars, and increasingly the corresponding left and right of the religious landscape, to avoid caricature and to treat each other and each other’s arguments and passions with respect. And so we fire volleys at each other across the barricades.

Balmer offers little by way of schol-

arly insight in this book. Mainly he is angry over, hurt by, and (undoubtedly) embarrassed about the nexus between evangelicalism and Republican power politics. He can’t stand it anymore, and this is his j’accuse.

In launching this broadside Balmer sometimes overreaches. For example, he associates the religious right with reconstructionism, which in my view is a marginal influence. But more acutely, he no longer seems able to enter into the “world” of (politically) conservative evangelicals and view it with any sympathy. Balmer sees manipulative, poweractivist politicians like James Dobson and Rick Scarborough and the ignorant foot soldiers who are moved by their rhetoric. That’s the religious right.

He doesn’t seem to see the earnest, often highly educated folks who are troubled by soulless schools, are appalled by lateterm abortion, or retch at internet porn or the very existence of movies like Friday the 13th (Part Whatever).

I agree with Balmer’s moral conclusions in many areas. I wish he noticed that there are evangelicals, like me, like most readers of this magazine, who are vehemently opposed to torture, support

John Perkins, and others have led the charge in resisting this tendency toward bifurcation in evangelical Christianity.

So, too, has Eldin Villafane.

Villafane’s career as a theological educator has been emblematic of the quest for a holistic vision in American evangelicalism. It began with his writing as a privileged “outsider,” joining with other voices such as Manny Ortiz, Orlando Costas, and Justo Gonzalez to interpret the faith from the margins as Latino thinkers. They charged themselves with explicating Christian faith from a Latino perspective and explaining how that perspective impacts our view of God, the church, and the world in general.Villafane’s latest effort, Beyond Cheap Grace:A Call to Radical Discipleship, Incarnation, and Justice, represents a mature benchmark for the latter task.

By taking Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of “cheap grace” as his point of departure, Villafane not only demonstrates the need for what he calls “radical discipleship”—which includes both David P. Gushee is a University Fellow and personal piety and social justice—but Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at he also invites young Christians not familiar with the German martyr to Union University in Jackson, Tenn. discover the depth of Bonhoeffer’s thought and commitment. In a time of war, Bonhoeffer’s model is especially BEYOND CHEAP GRACE instructive.

By Eldin Villafane Villafane locates the means of resistWm. B. Eerdmans ing bifurcation of faith in his understanding of discipleship. He explores the Reviewed by Harold Dean Trulear notion of sacrifice as a central compoTwentieth-century nent of the Christian life, challenging American Christian- postmodern notions of “suspicion and ity struggled might- skepticism” through a crucified lifestyle. ily with the ten- His call to a “cruciform” discipleship dency to bifurcate offers believers the opportunity to think personal and social less in triumphalist terms that elevate ethics. Personal piety human reason and ingenuity (and by became the prov- implication technology) as the great ince of fundamen- answers to the world’s problems, and talists and evangelicals, while liberal and more in the mode of the Christ who mainline churches claimed social justice “emptied himself ” on our behalf.

Evangelicals too often eschew the as their domain. In the past 30 years, voices such as Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, Cross for the Resurrection, resulting in the Evangelical Climate Initiative, fight hard against divorce, and reject the marriage of evangelicalism to any political ideology. I would argue that there is an evangelical right, left, and center, and there are also evangelicals trying desperately to pry us away from these horrid political labels altogether.

Such evangelicals are all around us.

Their cause is not helped when the only alternatives appear to be the religious right and the secular or privatized-faith left. I want to reclaim an evangelical Christianity that emphasizes a fully biblical understanding of the reign of God, that focuses on Christ’s lordship and the authority of his teachings, that stresses and lives out the radical political independence of the church (because it serves Christ alone as Lord), that never forgets its mission to reach out to and serve the world (especially the least of these), and that wants above all to love God wholeheartedly and to love our neighbors as ourselves. ■

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a postmodern version of Christianity rather then a Christian challenge to postmodernity. Villafane proffers the Incarnation as a model for Christians, but only once we understand the process in light of Jesus’ self-emptying. Such a move requires that Christian activists maintain significant time for theological reflection as a component of ministry, thereby developing a more fully orbed vision of Jesus Incarnate as a model for ministry.

Villafane devotes much of his reflection on the application of his perspective to how theological education must change. The respondents to his chapters—Fuller Seminary theologians VeliMatti Karkkainen, Howard Loewen, and Richard Peace—provide concrete suggestions from their own work as theological educators. But any reader, whether involved in formal theological education or not, can apply the principles promoted in this helpful text as we press for a holistic gospel in the 21st century. ■ Harold Dean Trulear is a pastor, professor of applied theology, and a member of PRISM’s editorial board. He writes the Faithful Citizenship column found on page 6 of each issue.

STREET SIGNS

By Ray Bakke and Jon Sharpe New Hope Publishers Reviewed by Stephen Trout In Street Signs: A New Direction in Urban Ministry, Ray Bakke and Jon Sharpe put a decisive nail in the coffin of reductionist, loveless approaches to ministry to the city.

Starting with the assumption that God loves the city more than we do (and that God is actively loving people there already), the authors challenge some long-cherished misconceptions that we need “outside experts” to invade the

city is much more comprehensive than the multiplication of church ministries within it.” A wise and practical strategy is included in the form of an “Urban Consultation Agenda,” a suggested forum for listening and hands-on participation to begin networking and relationship-building in your city. ■ Stephen Trout is a freelance writer and counselor at Kaleo Church in San Diego, Calif.

LIVING THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

By Glen H. Stassen Jossey-Bass Reviewed by Warren Rachele city and set up faith-based efforts on their own terms. In fact, each city has a life of its own—a history, sociology, and vast diversity, not to mention existing ministries—and the strength of this book lies in its challenge to first listen and learn its stories. (Think James 1:19—“be quick to listen and slow to speak...”)

Noting the general distinction the reformers held—namely that our taxes help pay for common grace and our tithes for saving grace—the authors remind us that “both graces are derived from God’s resources.” Common grace is abundantly manifest, variously expressed in a city’s architects, artists, prophets, and politicians. God cares about these expressions of his creative character, as well as the unique organic roots of brokenness caused by sin and embedded in structures that oppress and divide— racial, socio-political, and religious (the affluent moral ghettos). Effective ministry, the authors posit, takes seriously all these factors, for the gospel motivates and empowers us to love in new ways.

The authors point out that God’s love for the city is shown in numerous scriptural passages and countless Bible stories and that “God’s agenda for the PRISM 2007

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The Sermon on the Mount has challenged Christians and non-Christians alike with its call to a way of living that was, is, and always will be contrary to the status quo. Christ’s words were astonishing enough in the first century, but they are particularly foreign to 21stcentury ears accustomed to messages of self-empowerment and personal gain.

Some may dismiss the challenge as purposely inflated, taking the view that Jesus overstated his kingdom requirements in order to give humankind an ethical standard to work toward. Disputing the ethic position in his new book, Living the Sermon on the Mount: A Practical Hope for Faith and Deliverance, Glen Stassen issues a bold call to the church to recover an understanding of this sermon as a message about God’s presence and the deliverance for a vulnerable people who need God as much today as the Israelites once did on the edge of Egypt.

To prepare the way for his exegesis of the verses in Matthew, Stassen proposes two requirements for understanding his position. First, in order to grasp the linkage between what God had done and what God is doing, it is necessary to read the sermon with Matthew

is less personalized and self-focused and more attuned to the common work that God is doing through the interconnected lives of his people. Stassen has brought this notion to life by combining his scholar’s mind and his socially aware heart in the writing of this book. Not a how-to as much as it is an undeniable beacon of hope, Living the Sermon on the Mount urges us as the redeemed to live moment by moment in grace rather than on the treadmill of impossible ideals. ■ Warren Rachele is a pastor in Denver, Colo., leading a community focused on racial reconciliation and mercy ministries.

FINDING GOD BEYOND HARVARD in one hand and, in the other, Isaiah with its parallel themes of deliverance and justice. Second, and of greater application to the contemporary church than the first, is the idea that the sermon is not about human effort but instead about God becoming present in Jesus and bringing with him the justice and healing of the kingdom of righteousness.

It is in this light that Stassen invites us to a new reading of the sermon, one that encourages us to align our lives more closely with the words of Micah: We will seek justice and mercy and walk humbly, knowing the immediate presence of God. Recognizing the immediacy of God’s presence helps us to climb the initial hurdle of the Beatitudes, viewing them not as an agonizingly high standard to be struggled toward but rather as the evidence of grace resting upon those God is delivering. Stassen’s fine book makes a defining contribution to the church of reconciliation by showing how this deliverance contributes to overcoming the “vicious cycles” of human interaction.

Recovering the ideal of being swept up in the wave of God’s deliverance is crucial to the restoration of a faith that

By Kelly Monroe Kullberg InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Connally Gilliam Kelly Monroe Kullberg’s Finding God Beyond Harvard: The Quest for Veritas is a sequel to the book she edited under her maiden name 10 years prior, Finding God at Har vard (Zondervan, 1996).The earlier book offered testimonies of faculty, alumni, and student orators about faith thriving within a rigorous intellectual atmosphere. The latest book tells the tale of the beginnings of the Veritas Forum, a movement for the “exploration of true life,” inspiring tomorrow’s culture shapers to “connect their hardest questions with the person and story of Jesus Christ.” Part colorful travel narrative and part historic record, Finding God Beyond Harvard chronicles the emergence of veritas (truth) as it began showing up at Harvard, at other influential academies, and in the life of the forum’s founder, Kullberg.

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For anyone interested in a big-picture and authentically human vision of the interplay between issues of truth and the contemporary academy, this book is a must read. Think broad canvas: an impressionist’s array of powerful names and ideas; a realist’s renderings of key personal moments during Kullberg’s years as Harvard chaplain and Veritas catalyst; and a background of undulating light and shadow (meaning versus nothingness, play versus isolation, hope versus despair). The collage is compelling. It is a beautiful picture of how the light of truth doesn’t so much trump its opposition as it fearlessly illuminates a path for the opposition to find its way to what is good, real, and longed for.

And for those not particularly concerned with the academy? It’s still a good read. My trust in reason as a gauge for reliability was partially deconstructed during my seven years of higher education. My resulting secret rule of thumb: “You may or may not be able to prove your idea about what’s true intellectually, but will your idea about what’s true sustain you through suffering? Will it enable relationships to last? Will it breed joy and beauty? Will it show you the way to life?” Kullberg is a model and cheerleader for grappling rigorously with the nature of the created universe, the Scriptures, and the person of Jesus, and because she grounds her tale in rigorous reason, her book embodies a resounding “yes” to all these questions.

So whether one is a hardboiled cynic with a hard-earned PhD or your average schmo just yearning for a real and good life, it seems to me that Finding God Beyond Harvard has about it the ring of truth, of veritas. Put differently, it made me want to hang out with its author. ■ Connally Gilliam is on staff with the Metro Mission of the U.S. Navigators and is the author of Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving the Life I Didn’t Expect (Tyndale, 2006).

OFF THE SHELF

THE CONVICT CHRIST

THE SUBURBAN CHRISTIAN

By Jens Soering Orbis Books

By Albert Hsu InterVarsity Press

health care for prisoners, inadequate public defense for indigent criminals, prison rape, and a number of other equally painful but important topics.

Despite the unpleasant nature of the Reviewed by David O’Hara topics Soering covers, his book is hopeful.

Jens Soering’s new book, The Convict Soering knows through long practice that Christ: What the Gospel Says About prayer makes a difference. He believes Criminal Justice, is at once satisfying and that those of us on the outside can be made to care about the lowest of the low disquieting.

It is satisfying for several reasons. and that we can be shaken from our fear Its brief chapters are composed of tight of crime and criminals to do what the gosprose that combines hard data with well- pel commands: pray for them, visit them, told anecdotes and excellent reflection and fight for justice for them. Best of questions. A prisoner himself, Soering all, Soering makes concrete suggestions has firsthand insights into prison and in each chapter for ways Christians can the Scriptures that you won’t get else- help bring about change.

This is not a book to make us where. This is his third book, and it is plain that he is becoming a writer with comfortable, but it just might make us a prophetic voice, which leads me to the better. ■ “disquieting” part: Prophets are wont to tell us what we do not want to hear. David O’Hara teaches philosophy and Greek Soering’s is a voice crying out in an at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S. Dak. immured wilderness, telling us what the He is the coauthor of From Homer to Harry prophets have always told us: Do justice; Potter (Brazos, 2006) and of a forthcoming book on the environmental vision of C.S. Lewis love mercy; fear only God. His thesis is that the gospel is deeply (University Press of Kentucky, 2007), and concerned with criminal justice, a fact he is co-editing the Religious Writings of easily overlooked outside prison walls, Charles S. Peirce. where fear of criminals can overwhelm the gospel’s call for justice and mercy.

Soering reminds us that Christ himself died as a condemned criminal, and the Bible speaks clearly about God’s concern for prisoners. For example, the Gerasene Demoniac has strong parallels with the mentally ill in our prisons. Jesus cared for this man; shouldn’t we share Jesus’ concern for others like him? “I was a prisoner and you came to visit me...”

The first chapter outlines in stark, broad strokes what has gone wrong with our justice system. The case he outlines is, at times, shocking. (Example: the USA incarcerates its citizens at a higher rate per capita than any other country, including China, North Korea, and Iran.) Subsequent chapters dwell on treatment programs for sexual offenders, the death penalty,

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Reviewed by Connally Gilliam The Suburban Christian: Finding Spiritual Vitality in the Land of Plenty is part apologetic on behalf of believers living in the suburbs and part prophetic call to these same suburban believers to live differently. The book defends and challenges the same set of people with informed humility. In the course of its 10 chapters, author Albert Hsu communicates that the suburbs are more than the sum of their stereotypes. They are neither bastions of isolated, whirlwind, commuting consumers disconnected from God and others nor Leave it to Beaver promised lands free of relational pitfalls, hidden seductions, and spiritual dangers.

Rather, the suburbs and ex-urbs are, first and foremost, where over half of all Americans (of many ethnic backgrounds) live. And where people are, God is in fact showing up, redeeming, and transforming.

Hsu lays out a historic overview of the suburbs—their promise and their delivery (for good and for ill). He assesses the relative merits and demerits of everything from the rise in prominence (and size) of the single-family home to the emergence of the auto-dependent community, from the effects of “branding” on the choices we make to the contextualization of the suburban church. And he offers plentiful and practical advice to individuals, groups of friends, and churches on how to navigate the suburban jungle with an eye to God’s kingdom.

Hsu’s navigation principles are lodged in practicing the spiritual disciplines while developing (individually and as a worshipping community) an increasingly clear

sense of vocation or calling.The unbounded nature of the suburbs—lacking both geographic center and strong sense of communal identity, while emphasizing both personal autonomy and material expansion—must be countered by a mindfulness of God’s presence and a clear sense of intentionality, says Hsu. Suburbanites must deliberately choose how they will live (practicing hospitality, learning interdependence, intentionally limiting consumption), because—to put it in the vernacular—the best defense is a good offense.

In short, I liked this book. I wish it addressed more fully how the suburbanite who is committed primarily to the community around her can also be meaningfully involved with the visibly absent poor (my struggle). But on the whole, the book is a well-written reminder that neither country life nor city life is necessarily nobler. Rather, the noblest thing is to seek the welfare of the neighbors, community, metropolitan region, and global church God has placed around you, even if your place is in the suburbs. ■ Connally Gilliam has lived in towns, big cities, and the suburbs. She is on staff with the Metro Mission of the U.S. Navigators and is the author of Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving the Life I Didn’t Expect (Tyndale, 2006).

SIMPLY CHRISTIAN

By N.T. Wright HarperSanFrancisco Reviewed by Silas Montgomery Christian apologetics are often thought of as burdensome and condescendingly intellectual, particularly by the uninitiated.

Dispelling this reputation while remaining faithful to the basic tenets of the faith is a considerable challenge. However, it is precisely this task that Dr. N.T.Wright has successfully completed in his book Simply

low Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which he has thrown open before us.”Along the way Wright uses simple, beautiful illustrations, rather than the more technical theological nomenclature that non-Christians may not understand. Because of this straightforward and informal approach, the arguments Wright makes are accessible to a broad audience, making Simply Christian a useful apologetic and a strong call to social justice and reconciliation within the church.

I have only two reservations with Simply Christian: its decidedly high-church slant towards the end of the book and its weak stance on biblical inerrancy. Wright presents the liturgy and practice of his particular tradition (Anglicanism) as the correct form of Christianity. Further, Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense. he maintains that the Bible is “nonnegoWright’s purpose is twofold:“to commend tiable” in its relevancy, power, and author[Christianity] to those outside the faith, ity, but also accepts that it has been heavily redacted. These problems do not outand to explain it to those inside.”

To accomplish these objectives,Wright weigh the benefit this apologetic proorganized Simply Christian into three vides to those curious about Christianity, sections.The first deals with the “echoes but unnecessarily detract from its utility of voices” found in morality, beauty, and credibility. ■ spirituality, and relationships that point to a living and active God, but that are Silas Montgomery is pursuing a master’s in insufficient in themselves to bring about divinity at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School a restoration of Creation. The second in Deerfield, Ill. section attempts to explain who God is and what a proper understanding of our DISSIDENT DISCIPLESHIP relationship with God looks like. The

By David Augsburger final section shows what real Christian Brazos Press practice and life look like, particularly in light of the nature of God and what Reviewed by Roy Barsness God has done through Jesus for humanity and creation. Wright argues that this To live as a disciple practice must take the form of not only of Chr ist is to correct theology, but also a commitment challenge the status to reconciliation and social action on quo.

Although the part of the church corporate and its Augsburger refers individual members. to it as dissidence, Wright skillfully ties these three ideas it should in fact together at the end of the book, showing be common to all what the “echoes” are hinting at and what b e l i eve r s . B u t we must do in response, namely to “fol-

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Augsburger desires to grab our attention with the word, targeting our passivity as we watch the world grow increasingly more violent and self-absorbed.

In this important work—subtitled A Spirituality of Self-Surrender, Love of God, and Love of Neighbor—Augsburger challenges us to remember that as disciples of Christ we are called to be Christ’s presence in a world of increasing poverty, violence, and inequality. He invites us to remove ourselves from conversations that settle for a spirituality of personal growth and individual salvation and to embrace instead a spirituality that is discovered in solidarity with the other. Augsburger contends that Christ is made known in community, that the Eternal Thou is present in every I and thou encounter.

This other/Other focus radically adjusts our spirituality, replacing the intrapersonal with the interpersonal, and calls forth an activism often lacking in our understanding of discipleship.

Theologically,Augsburger clearly presents his Anabaptist tradition. He takes to task Luther, presenting Luther’s theology of sola fida (by God’s grace alone) as passive and docile. Augsburger’s statement that “grace is visible or it is not viable” has the potential, however, to make grace something that we do rather than something that is bestowed upon us from God. This stance challenges his read of Buber and Buber’s idea that the Eternal Thou (grace) is visited upon us when we stand in genuine encounter with the other.

Theological differences aside, this book is an essential read. It challenges all Christians/persons to consider their faith in the context of community. In so doing we can no longer look into the face of the other without beholding God; we can no longer continue to ignore the poverty and the hatred that surround us. ■

SHOUTS AND WHISPERS

impossibility and necessity of the Incarnation and Resurrection and how the creative process goaded her on in her journey of faith.The collection is enlivReviewed by Laura Good ened by one-on-one interviews with artists such as Kathleen Norris and Paul Flannery O’Connor, the favored apolo- Schrader, who leavens the literary congist of Christ-haunted writers, served up versation with a discussion of faith and the grotesque out of a sense of spiritual filmmaking. Holberg also branches out duty, seeing her doomed matrons and to include in the collection pieces by marauding misfits as shock-inducing shouts Barbara Brown Taylor, Silas House, and leveled at the dulled ears of modern Joy Kogawa, writers of significance who readers. It is therefore fitting that Shouts may not yet be household names to and Whispers: Twenty-One Writers Speak contemporary readers. about Their Writing and Their Faith bears Shouts and Whispers ultimately delivers homage in its title to her creative creed. a thought-provoking range of perspectives Edited by Calvin College professor on the intersection of faith and literature, Jennifer L. Holberg, Shouts and Whispers offering pieces to interest both Mitford showcases essays by and interviews with enthusiasts and Luci Shaw devotees. But headliners of Calvin’s annual Festival of the book’s egalitarian editorial efforts are Faith and Writing. For readers familiar puzzlingly undercut by the lack of author with similar compilations, the lineup of introductions standard to books of its ilk, authors is somewhat predictable, but introductions that help readers of all aims nonetheless enjoyable. and experience understand the backgrounds Frederick Buechner offers a compel- from which profiled authors speak. The ling, pastoral meditation on the inter- essays may be a bit confusing to readers section of reading and believing; Will who don’t know offhand that Thomas Campbell expounds on subversion and Lynch is a funeral director or that Katherine the literary life; Madeleine L’Engle offers Paterson is best known for young adult a tenderly autobiographical take on the fiction. But hopefully those who pick up Shouts and Whispers for Anne Lamott’s interview or Brett Lott’s excellent essay will go on to explore the works of unfamiliar authors. Ultimately Shouts and Whispers honors O’Connor’s memory by appealing at once to the lay reader, the journeyman writer, and the seasoned student of faith and literature, and pointing all of them toward the novels, memoirs, poetry, and films where accomplished artists of faith have endeavored to confront life’s vital questions. ■ Edited by Jennifer L. Holberg Wm. B. Eerdmans

Laura Good works on human trafficking issues for the federal government. A former Milton Fellow at Image Journal, she holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She lives in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Roy Barsness, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and professor of counseling psychology at Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, Wash.

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EVANGELICALS IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE

RED AND BLUE GOD, BLACK AND BLUE CHURCH

By J. Budziszewski Baker Academic

By Becky Garrison Jossey-Bass

Reviewed by Bret Kincaid

Reviewed

by Michael Snarr

Followers of Jesus have been exploring the public relevance of his life and work since he began preaching in the earthly city, though little of the exploration has resulted in systematic or theoretical thinking about politics. This is especially so among evangelicals. So in a sense, as a Christian political scientist, I found it refreshing to read J. Budziszewski’s Evangelicals in the Public Square, in which he argues that evangelical Christians should make a more concerted effort to develop an evangelical political theory.

The book is the product of a 2003 conference sponsored by Ethics and Public Policy and consists primarily of Budziszewski’s argument and his penetrating critique of the political thinking of Carl F. H. Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and John HowardYoder, arguably four of the strongest Christian influences on evangelical political thought.

A leading natural law political theorist, Budziszewski points out early on that recent evangelicals either reject or are ambivalent about natural law’s usefulness for political thinking, despite Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s affirmation of it. He scrutinizes (and criticizes) each author’s unwillingness to embrace—or in the case of Kuyper, his unwitting and careless use of—natural law. Budziszewski believes it is a resource that is necessary not only to develop a political theory that non-believing political thinkers can find compelling, but also to relieve the pressure on Christian political thinkers to use what he calls “inflationary strategies” to make the Bible say more about politics than it does.

But Budziszewski also carefully evaluates the authors’ political thought beyond

their positions on natural law, to which four interlocutors well-schooled in each of the four authors’ thought respond in the latter half of the book. All of the respondents concede that their respective author did not develop a political theory as Budziszewski defines it. Each respondent argues, however, that although Budziszewski captured a portion of the author’s political thought, he missed important aspects because he focused primarily on a single book of each author.

Jean Bethke Elshtain’s concluding essay treats the reader to her thoughts, as one “poised between Lutheranism and Catholicism,” about a variety of topics discussed at the conference, including Budziszewski’s complaint that evangelicals have not developed a political theory.

This reviewer shows her enthusiasm for systematic Christian exploration of the political relevance of Christian faith but at the same time presents her “hunch” that developing any systematic Christian political theory “is too much to expect... not because in principle it cannot be done but because the consequences of sin are such that we should be rather humble about our political philosophies and what we can hope to accomplish through them.” ■ Bret Kincaid is a professor of political science at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pa.

At first glance, Red and Blue God: Eyewitness Accounts of How American Churches Are High-jacking Jesus, Bagging the Beatitudes, and Worshiping the Almighty Dollar may seem like just another entry in a recent spate of Christian books critical of both Republicans and Democrats. But the author is Becky Garrison, senior contributing editor of the religious satire publication The Wittenburg Door, and the book is clever, outspoken, and downright funny as well as intellectually stimulating and challenging.

Garrison is not afraid to tackle any issue—taking on prayer in schools, money, homosexuality, the environment, Israel, and abortion. In her chapter titled “Guns, God, ‘n’ Ground Zero,” Garrison laments President Bush’s divergence from fellow Christians, including the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), who have issued strong statements against the use of war by governments.

Garrison discredits both the religious right’s narrow agenda and the Democrats’ tendency to embrace New Agers at the expense of anything that hints of Christianity, and her stinging criticism of both parties leaves Christians with few viable choices on Election Day. But to her credit Garrison gives the reader hope by offering constructive solutions throughout the book.The suggestions are not quick fixes; many are fresh and offer the reader new ways of trying to live out the gospel in a polarized and inhospitable political world. ■ Michael Snarr is associate professor of social and political studies at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio.

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OFF THE SHELF

THE SENSE OF THE CALL

By Marva Dawn Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Jim Unruh

The book is packed with Bible studies, illustrations from church history, and personal anecdotes, all geared to convince readers of their need to be regularly reclaimed, revitalized, and renewed.

Although Dawn is knowledgeable and her topic is significant, the book can feel disjointed as she weaves in commentary on current world events, worship styles, and principalities and powers, among other subjects. And while her style is entertaining, the first two chapters, which summarize the rest of the book, are sufficient for most of us weary church people who are most in need of Dawn’s promise of Sabbath rest. While I found enough in her work to be helpful both personally and professionally, by the end of my journey through this 300-pluspage book, I was ready for a rest! ■

“The sense of our call is that God’s kingdom reclaims us, revitalizes us, and renews us and thus reigns through us before others, on behalf of others, and sometimes in spite of others, and always with others.” This idea is the pillar of Marva Dawn’s book for church leaders and ministry workers, The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church, and the World.

Repeating the themes of her 1989 book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, Dawn challenges church leaders to observe the Sabbath by resting, ceasing, feasting, and embracing. Resting and ceasing refer to what we give up in order to experience Jim Unruh is pastor of Faith Mennonite Church transformation, while feasting and embrac- in South Hutchinson, Kans. ing explore the blessings we receive through our observance of the Sabbath.

SACRED RHYTHMS Dawn emphasizes that serving God is

By Ruth Haley Barton not just about doing the work of the InterVarsity Press church, but about being in grace-filled relationship with God and others. God Reviewed by Kathryn Prill Green intends Sabbath-keeping to be a way of life, not a ritual requirement.

Breathe. Examine. Rest.These are a few of the simple measures explored in Ruth Haley Barton’s accessible guide to spiritual disciplines, Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation.

Inspired by the patterns of nature and music, Barton considers eight rhythms: solitude, scripture, prayer, honoring the body, self-examination, discernment, Sabbath, and “Rule of Life,” that is, incorporating the rhythms into one’s habits.

Aware of how busyness can consume the lives of Christians, no less than nonChristians, Barton believes that by practicing these rhythms we can “create the conditions in which spiritual transformation takes place,” a phenomenon that goes beyond such faith habits as church attendance to true intimacy with God. PRISM 2006

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Each chapter focuses on one of the rhythms, showing its possible executions and benefits and providing a “practice” section with clear instructions.The appendices include usages for both individuals and groups, and suggestions on how to choose a rhythm according to particular needs. The book features quotes from other practitioners of spiritual disciplines and refers readers to these experts’ works.

Cofounder and president of The Transforming Center, an organization that teaches the practice of Christianity via the disciplines, Barton is at her most passionate when writing about solitude and silence. And her honesty—disclosing her failures and sharing the joy she’s found in successfully combining two rhythms into her daily bike ride—endears her to readers, who will find comfort in knowing that even “professionals” struggle in their practice of spiritual disciplines.

Those looking to learn about or refresh their knowledge of spiritual disciplines presented in a current, personal way will be pleased to have this book and Barton as a guide. ■ Kathryn Prill Green lives in Minneapolis and is the coauthor of BodyPrayer: The Posture of Intimacy with God (WaterBrook Press, 2005).

GOD TALK

BEFRIENDING THE STRANGER

By Ruth A. Tucker InterVarsity Press

By Jean Vanier Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Steve Kimes In his book Befriending the Stranger, Jean Vanier chats with us about the outcast in our society—the outsiders, the sinners, the weak, the rejected, the poor, the hopeless. These people, whom we encounter every day and in whose shoes we may someday find ourselves, are referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures as anawim: the mentally ill woman who disturbs us on the bus; the homeless man who begs for change; the developmentally disabled adults who languish in institutions; the adulterer who weeps in silence over the heavy cost of his sin; the street child who lives with hunger and fear. While we might prefer to ignore these people in favor of focusing on our denominational conferences or favorite political parties, God ignores the latter and focuses on the former. God offers mercy and deliverance to the outcast, and, as Vanier reminds us, if we want to be God’s people we must do the same.

As founder of l’Arche (The Ark), an international group of communities where Christians live with and serve those with disabilities, Vanier is particularly qualified to deliver this reminder to the body of believers. Woven throughout the book are the stories of those whose spirits have graced l’Arche over the years: Helen, who smiled only after a year of love and then died; Claudia, who was abandoned but remained joyful; Innocente, who was left to starve in an orphanage and whose face lit up every time she was spoken to. This community of the helpless and weak, existing only through God’s strength, is the very substance of the practical but difficult theology Vanier describes.

But Vanier goes farther than simply challenging us to compassion for the

Reviewed by Christopher M. Petersen When I began exploring silent prayer years ago, Ruth Tucker’s GodTalk: Cautions for Those Who Hear God’s Voice would have been helpful. The respected missiologist and church historian has provided a pragmatic, although limited, primer to the mysterious and confusing silence of God. She combines experiential learning and post-Reformation church history for a humble corrective to those who claim to “hear” God’s voice and practical directives to those who struggle with God’s silence. Evangelicals, needy around us. Rather, he encourages especially those who claim God’s inteus to be humble and recognize the weak- rior voice on everything from taking a ness, helplessness, and need for forgive- new job to finding a convenient parking ness within ourselves. “I cannot welcome space, ought to hear out Tucker as she and receive Jesus,”Vanier proposes,“unless deconstructs personalism and shows us I welcome my own weakness, my pov- God’s gift of silent grace.

Tucker exposes the inconsistencies erty, and my deepest needs.” To take up the Cross is not just to endure suffering; of individuals who claim to have heard it is also to accept and welcome our own God’s voice, including religious, political, poverty. And what’s more, the poverty and social powerhouses. She questions within us is such that we need the poor both the kind-hearted woman who claims to minister to us in order for us to learn God directed her to purchase a winter how to be weak and helpless before a compassionate, gracious God. Thus it is essential, the author says, that we move beyond efforts to do good to the poor to a place of humility where we can allow the poor to do good to us.

In this way, Vanier’s true challenge to us is not to assist the needy but rather to walk with the needy as companions, because we need them. Amen. ■ Steve Kimes is pastor of Anawim Christian Community in Portland, Ore., a community of homeless and mentally ill people who are committed to Jesus as Deliverer.

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coat for a poor girl at a high-end department store and Pope Urban, who claimed God called him to the Crusades. She targets biblical deists, Pat Robertson, the Catholic priesthood, and even the venerable C.S. Lewis for their inabilities to defend God or interpret his voice. In a world of scientism and rational defense of God,Tucker says, “much of the gospel we cling to is shrouded in mystery, and our best apologetic response is often a humble silence.”

Assisting her readers in entering the mysterious silence of God is where I most appreciated Tucker. Her courage in facing those who claim God’s voice in the details of their lives is refreshing: “Fabricating conversation is a serious transgression.” She constantly drives the reader back to the written word of God in the Bible and the silent word of God in truthful words and loving actions.

She is a clear advocate for less conversation with God on life’s little things and more action born out of love’s germination in the mystery of silence.

Dr. Tucker’s introduction—from a reformed perspective—to cultivating silence in a personal spiritual journey is commendable. However, I finished the book feeling half-full. I wanted to hear about St. Ignatius in her discussions on discernment and about St. John of the Cross in relation to the darkness of faith.

For reformed and evangelical thought on silence, read God Talk. To go deeper, read practitioners of the Trappist, Benedictine, and mystical traditions. ■

ASK, THANK, TELL

By Charles R. Lane Augsburg Fortress

GIVING TO GOD

By Mark Allan Powell Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Steve Carr Growing up Lutheran, I remember learning that Brother Martin regarded the book of James as an “epistle of straw.”

Luther demanded that God’s grace be prioritized, and he fought to keep the church away from works-righteousness theology. Put differently, if Luther were to concoct an Ephesians 2 cocktail, he’d mix four parts verse 8 (“by grace you have been saved”) with one part verse 10 (“created in Christ Jesus for good works”).

Imagine how thrilled I was to read two books by Lutheran authors which champion our stewardship mandate. Ask, Thank,Tell by Charles R. Lane and Giving to God by Mark Allan Powell blend solid theology with fresh thinking about the ethical imperative to live out our faith as stewards of God’s wealth.

Lane defines his task in the introduction and stays on course throughout the

Chris Petersen raises scholarship support for students at Cornerstone Christian Academy in Philadelphia, Pa., where he writes on Christian spirituality. Petersen also wrote this issue’s feature article on finding God in silence and solitude, “Consider the (Urban) Ravens,” on page 15.

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book.“Stewardship has been kidnapped,” he writes, “and is being held hostage by a sinister villain named ‘Paying the Bills.’”

Instead, the focus of a church’s stewardship ministry should indeed be ministry.

Lane reinforces this critical point at the end of each chapter with a suggested stewardship ministry mission statement.

Ask,Thank,Tell: Improving Stewardship Ministry in Your Congregation is fundamentally about people, and the reader is left understanding that the author’s heart is for stewards, not stewardship. Biblical stewards grasp the difference between ownership and stewardship, a point aptly illustrated in the second and third chapters. But Lane doesn’t stop with theological points. He proposes reorganizing stewardship ministries around three work teams, each one covering a task in the book’s title. Lane’s suggestions as to how these teams and their ministry activities might be organized will provide a rich resource for stewardship leaders throughout the church.

Mark Allan Powell displays a similar pastoral heart in Giving to God:The Bible’s Good News about Living a Generous Life, but the aim and audience of the book are quite different. Powell has created a

tool which is entirely personal—a resource which might be used to hammer out one’s personal theology of stewardship or as a devotional guide for small group Bible studies.Thoughtful discussion questions at the close of each chapter assist the reader at points critical for personal reflection.

The author carefully demonstrates that the gospel of stewardship is not tantamount to a divine investment or insurance policy. Citing 2 Corinthians 9: 6,11, Powell notes, “Such rewards need not be tangible...those who give of their earthly treasure experience the spiritual reward of hearts increasingly drawn into the wondrous love of God.” The meat of the text is sound teaching about this very dynamic.

The books share a single, minor deficit. Stewards are indeed most distracted by an incorrect relationship with their money. However, modern disciples desperately need good news about the stewardship of our time, the creation, and our health, as well.A comprehensive treatment of those topics is beyond the scope of these books, but I hope that capable leaders like Powell and Lane will utilize future opportunities to broaden the stewardship discussion. This minor point

doesn’t temper my enthusiasm for each the centuries to sustain this agenda. book; I recommend them heartily as Unfortunately, Orr-Ewing’s précis of Josh McDowellesque apologetics lacks the invigorating and important. ■ depth and originality needed to address Steve Carr is a senior financial planner for this burgeoning phenomenon. It is, of Ronald Blue & Co. in Indianapolis, Ind., and course, easy to criticize a book for what chairman of the stewardship team at Zionsville it does not say, but Is the Bible Intolerant?

Presbyterian Church. In both professional seems conspicuously superficial in a time practice and ministry, his passion is to help when conspiracy-hungry readers have Christians experience peace of mind and made Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible embrace generosity. and Why a bestseller.

For example, in her attempt to demonstrate that the Bible is not sexist, IS THE BIBLE Orr-Ewing neglects the infamous houseINTOLERANT? hold code passages that, according to a

By Amy Orr-Ewing growing number of critics, have been InterVarsity Press fountainheads of patriarchal oppression (Col. 3:18-4:1; Eph. 5:22-6:9). And, while Reviewed by Nathan Eubank discussing the discrepancies between Amy Orr-Ewing doesn’t just want to ancient manuscripts of the Bible, Orrprove the Bible is tolerant; she wants to Ewing does not mention or discuss any assure us that the ancient manuscripts of the significant variances being loudly on which the Bible is based are reliable, touted as proof of the Bible’s unreliability.

Orr-Ewing also claims that the that the New Testament canon was created by egalitarian consensus rather than church’s fourth-century declaration of patriarchal fiat, and that postmodernity which books should be included in the hasn’t destroyed the possibility of histori- New Testament was not authoritative, cal knowledge.To accomplish this in 127 but was simply an attempt to silence pages, Orr-Ewing borrows from a pleth- pesky heretics by formalizing what the ora of well-known evangelical arguments, entire church had acknowledged for apprising the reader of complex issues centuries. At this point, legions of jauntywith laudable clarity and making it pos- looking hardbacks at your local Barnes sible for laypersons to respond to the and Noble practically jump off the shelf casual dismissals of those who assume to say, “But these ‘heretics’ were members of the church. Thus, there was no the Bible is out-dated nonsense.

But what about not-so-casual dis- universal acknowledgment of the canon, missals? Armchair critics of the Bible which means the Bible was created by are becoming increasingly sophisticated a male oligarchy.”

Despite her penchant for clarity, Orrthanks to the growing number of respected scholars such as Bart Ehrman and Ewing glosses over the most pressing Elaine Pagels who write exceptionally challenges to evangelical Christianity, makpopular books averring that the early ing Is the Bible Intolerant? a lucid rehearsal church was a goddess-worshiping theo- of increasingly outdated arguments. ■ logical smorgasbord until power-hungry leaders muzzled the free-thinkers, Nathan Eubank is a recent graduate of excluded their scriptures from the Bible, Duke Divinity School who is currently teachinvented the deity of Christ, and con- ing Bible and Latin at Durham Nativity tinued tampering with the Bible through School in Durham, N.C.

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OFF THE SHELF

JESUS—SAFE, TENDER, EXTREME

like Jesus—Safe,Tender, Extreme and Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God, I want to know which

By Adrian Plass Jesus is worthy of my worship.

Zondervan Popular British author and speaker Adrian Plass aims to convince us that JESUS MEAN AND WILD Jesus is safe, tender, and extreme by “talkBy Mark Galli ing about what Jesus does and doesn’t Baker Books do in my life.” Three sections of musings on Scripture and experience are Reviewed by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove illustrated with a series of personal In a recent study titled American Jesus, anecdotes that reflect on the three title religious historian Stephen Prothero characteristics. For the most part, the documents the progression of popular boundaries between these characteristics images of Jesus over 200 years of American are so porous as to render the stories history from “Enlightened Sage” to and prayers interchangeable. “It is only “Sweet Savior” to “Manly Redeemer” when we are truly safe in Christ that to “Superstar.” Prothero says his study we are able to be disinterestedly couramakes no claim about who Jesus really geous in the work he would like us to is; he simply wants to display the vari- do,” writes Plass. In other words, when ety of ways Americans have imagined we find safety in Christ, we find the courage to practice extreme tenderness. the Son of God. The German historian Albert This is the gospel of Plass’ Jesus.

The message, of course, is inextricaSchweitzer once noted that when scholars sought the historical Jesus in bly tied to who this Jesus is: “Our God the 19th century they usually found some- is many things, but... the life of Jesus one who looked strikingly like them- suggests that the core of his being and selves. Small wonder, then, that images the motive for his involvement with us of Jesus range so widely. But those of us is love.... he defaults to compassion, who worship Jesus care about more than reaching out to those in need from a understanding how multiple images of heart that is filled with care.” In nearly Jesus correspond to their cultural and 300 pages, Plass has little more than that historical contexts. When I read books to say about Jesus. He fills out his case with heartwarming stories and some dry British humor.

Christianity Today managing editor Mark Galli is perhaps talking about just this image of a safe and tender Jesus when he says that “Gumbylike divinities” give him “the distinct impression that Jesus came not so much to proclaim the kingdom of heaven but to bolster my sagging self-esteem.” Jesus Mean and Wild is Galli’s much more convincing attempt to show that Mark’s Gospel presents us with a Jesus who reveals “not a onedimensional, sentimental love—a love that merely makes us feel good—but a love capable of saving a desperate world.”

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us with suffering, ask for repentance, declare war against evil, and make enemies worth loving. He exposes our “Religion of Niceness” and shows how it is more concerned with appearances than with the truth. “If Jesus was merely loving, compassionate, and kind—if Jesus was only nice,” Galli asks, “why did both Jews and Romans feel compelled to murder him?”

“Jesus loves us so deeply that he sometimes slaps our vague idealism in the face with a healthy dose of reality,” Galli writes. In contrast to Plass’ sugary romanticism he offers a refreshing realism. For that, I am grateful. But I am also struck that the Jesus of both these accounts—whether liberally loving or conservatively realistic—seems disproportionately focused on the individual.

Not that Plass and Galli do not mention the church. They do. But for both of these authors the church is that place where we meet Jesus—or even that group of people who follow after Jesus.

The church presented in their books is distinctly not, however, an alternative political reality, offering a third way of conceiving the world beyond realism and idealism and giving us a place where we can go to get away from the marketplace of Jesus images where each individual chooses what works for him. ■

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is a founding member of The Rutba House and the author of To Baghdad and Beyond (Cascade, 2005).

GRACIOUS CHRISTIANITY

By Douglas Jacobsen and Rodney J. Sawatsky Baker Academic Reviewed by Jenell Williams Paris Douglas Jacobsen, in a Books and Culture letter to the editor (July/August 2006), describes Messiah College as unique among Christian colleges in its hospitality toward Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, Anabaptist, and other believers. The college welcomes scholars from many Christian traditions, challenging them and their students to be “truly hospitable in how we relate to each other across ecclesiastical and theological boundaries within the American Christian community and the global Christian church.” Elaborating upon precisely that kind of loving and hospitable Christianity, Jacobsen, distinguished professor of church history and theology at Messiah, and the late Rodney Sawatsky, former president of Messiah, present us with Gracious Christianity: Living the Love We Profess.

A concise primer of the faith, Gracious Christianity describes the Christian basics in chapters such as “God and Creation,” “The Bible,” and “Human Nature.”

Graciousness is emphasized throughout, in Christian theology and even more in Christian living. Graciousness focuses on friendship, kindness, and compassion, and these virtues impact the way Christians dialogue with other Christians and with those of other faiths, as well as the way we live in a diverse society and interconnected world.

An important question, which emerged out of the authors’ friendship and which undergirds the book, is “how Christians could be more embracing of those different from themselves yet remain people of strong faith and conviction.”

The authors model an engaging answer to this question in their articulation of Christian orthodoxy, drawn from wideranging (from Anglican to Anabaptist to Catholic) sources, citing the likes of John Wesley, Evelyn Underhill, John Donne, Ernest Boyer, and Thomas Massaro. Allowing such diverse believers to dialogue—if only through their respective literatures—models an encompassing and respectful way of living Christianly in this global, diverse religion.

While respecting the genuine and meaningful differences among Christian traditions, gracious Christianity emphasizes the common heritage and common hope shared by all believers. The book is designed, in the words of its subtitle, to help Christians “live the love we profess.” It is concise and as such raises many questions that aren’t treated in detail. A helpful companion website (graciouschristianity.org) offers additional resources for discussions and activities that can help cultivate graciousness in readers’ communities. ■ Jenell Williams Paris is associate professor of anthropology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn.

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GOOD NEWS FROM THE BARRIO

By Harold J. Recinos Westminster John Knox Press Reviewed by Abner Ramos In Good News from the Barrio: Prophetic Witness for the Church, Harold J. Recino rebukes American Christians by calling us to take off our patriotic blinders and embrace a Savior who does not dance to the tune of “God Bless America,” the U.S. government, its leaders, or its laws.

As religious nationalism gains momentum in a post-September 11th world, mainline denominations have responded by adopting empire-building ideals and fear-based theologies—fed by speechwriters in the White House instead of the gospel. Recino invites us to turn to the experiences of “barrio Christians”— those who understand that throughout history God has aligned himself with the outcast, the oppressed, the poor, and the foreigner to teach religious and political establishments to ultimately fulfill his will on earth.

While religious expression in America has become a pluralistic buffet open to spiritual searches of every ilk, the church has continued its preoccupation with theological debates and doctrinal

discussions that have little to do with the daily lives of those we were commissioned to reach.American Christians therefore have little to offer those who want real answers to their questions and problems. Recino proffers a barrio theology that is focused outward, one that challenges us to believe the renewal of society is possible only when we seek God at the altar, that looks at the works of Jesus in the context of marginalized people, that opens us to a reality that goes beyond our experience and forces us to admit that people degrade themselves when they fail to love their neighbor. Barrio spirituality refuses to be defined by the American tendency to shop for faith and the religious endorsement of an American way of life. Recino believes that mainline denominations can learn from the barrio how to love a broken and xenophobic world, but the church is too arrogant, blind, and unwilling to listen.

The book culminates beautifully with Recino’s recollection of his childhood experience with a Jewish violinist in a South Bronx alley.When the Jewish man played his instrument, young Recino watched windows open as Italian, Irish, and Puerto Rican mothers were drawn to the splendor of his music. It wasn’t until Recino sat down to listen to the words of the old Jewish man that he began to understand the meaning of racism, of being ostracized by those who don’t understand, and of the hardships endured by those who are different. The reader is left to draw a parallel between the curious child’s interaction with the old man and mainline churches’ interaction with the ghetto: If we are to be learners of everything barrio theology has to offer, we must first sit down and listen with respect and interest to their stories of persevering with God in the midst of suffering.

Good News from the Barrio is well written, thought provoking, and a good read for anyone who is open to under-

standing how the theology of those at the margins plays a prophetic role in bringing life to the church. ■

are a vivid reminder that Jesus has an “upside-down” kingdom in which “those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor. 12:22).

Abner Ramos works with Intervarsity In 14 case studies the author weaves Christian Fellowship at East Los Angeles a tapestry of redeemed lives, love in the College, Monterey Park, Calif. trenches, and lessons learned. In so doing he intends to challenge the comfortable yet declining institutional church in TROLLS & TRUTH America by Jesus’ present holistic minBy Jimmy Dorrell istry, which includes practical ministry New Hope Publishers to the poor (overcoming hunger and joblessness with mercy and a biblical sense Reviewed by Stephen Trout of vocation) and pursuing real transformation (radical honesty in repentance Something holy is happening under and celebrating redemption). Jesus “used Interstate in Waco, Tex. While motorists the misfits of society to teach the proroll noisily overhead, Jesus is hanging found truths of the Father,” writes Dorrell, out with the “trolls”—the social misfits, “...a demoniac, a leper, a prostitute, a the marginalized, and the homeless folk beggar, a poor widow, a tax collector...”

—along with a growing number of locals James 2:5 also makes this clear: “Listen, and university students—sinners all, find- my dear brothers: Has not God chosen ing grace that only “the Lord of the the poor in the eyes of the world to be streets” can provide. rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom In 1992 Jimmy Dorrell and his wife he promised to those who love him?” started meeting with five homeless men While exchanging architectural and for a Bible study beneath this spacious aesthetic beauty for concrete and traffic underpass. Today over 300 folks gravitate could conceal an aspect of our creative to Church Under the Bridge (CUB) every God (see Exodus 25-30 and Revelation week, rain or shine, to sing, share food and 21), Trolls & Truth demonstrates that a resources, and receive Jesus in Word and missional ecclesiology that identifies sacrament. Trolls & Truth introduces read- with culture, as opposed to an ecclesiers to some of the “trolls” whose lives ology that occasionally includes missions, helps a culture confess its sins and find new hope in Christ. A vivid dramatization of this at CUB happens each Palm Sunday when, after group foot-washings, a homeless man dressed as Jesus sits astride a donkey and is led triumphantly through the singing worshippers.

Reflecting theologian Abraham Kuyper’s famous dictum—“There’s not one square inch of creation about which Jesus Christ does not cry, ‘This is mine, this belongs to me!’”—this delightfully odd juxtaposition of cement and salvation possesses a beauty all its own. ■ Stephen Trout is a pastor and freelance writer based in Philadelphia, Pa. PRISM 2006

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OFF THE SHELF

BUILDING A PEOPLE OF POWER

asks challenging questions at the end of each chapter for further reflection and, ultimately, to awaken his readers to take action. After all, since God is in the business of redeeming people and communities, that should be our calling, too. ■

By Robert C. Linthicum Authentic Books Reviewed by Erika Bai Seibels In Building a People of Power: Equipping Churches to Transform Their Communities, Robert Linthicum examines the firstcentury Jewish culture of power, one in which power was defined by political influence, economic gains, and celebrity status. Sound familiar? Some things—in this case, the human tendency to pervert God’s good creations—never change.

God’s ideal of power is modeled for us in Jesus: that of servanthood taken to the point of death on a cross, far from the dream heroism the Jews had in mind at that time.

The biblical vision of a shalom community—one founded on a godly understanding of power—is based on such practices as the forgiveness of debts every seventh year and the Jubilee tradition of periodically giving back land birthrights in order to redistribute wealth.The book goes on to contrast the vision of this shalom community gone wrong with the reality of the world, particularly in ancient Jewish tradition and culture.

Into this context comes Jesus.

Linthicum takes us on a journey through the Gospels, examining how Jesus dealt with and defined power, in order to provide inspiration and practical guidance as to how we, the church, can become people of power who transform communities.

The most radical method for doing so, Linthicum writes, is by connecting with people: meeting with them, talking to them, relating to them.

“The military builds power by the continual building of its stockpile of arms and its technology of creating evermore sophisticated and powerful weaponry. Politicians build power by law and by hype, by eliminating foes and advanc-

Erika Bai Siebels writes about arts, books, and music at www.terraarts.blogspot.com.

TWINKLE

By Elisa Morgan Revell Reviewed by Jo Kadlecek ing their position through negotiations, compromise, and force. Business leaders build power by growing their corporations and by seeking to increase market share...That’s how we’re taught to build power. To seek to build power by building relationships between people...as they engage in public life seems out of touch with the world as it is. Therefore, to build power relationally is the most radical of acts.”

Building a People of Power looks to Nehemiah for lessons on how to meet with people: listen, ask questions, repeat, empathize, pray, think through resources and timing, and strategize accordingly.

The rest of the book provides detailed help, using the models of both Christ and Nehemiah, in thinking through relational issues of confrontation, leadership, organization, and negotiation through community development and community organizing.

Linthicum challenges his readers to set society free from “the systems which would otherwise destroy and use us...so that we might increasingly become the... shalom community that God intended for the human race.”

Not only does he provide a biblical framework and understanding for why and how this is important, but he also PRISM 2006

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Books on evangelism can be tired and stale. And a book on evangelism with a title like “Twinkle” might suggest content that is not only cliché but superficial.

Don’t be fooled. Elisa Morgan, president /CEO of MOPS (Mothers of PreSchoolers) International (and a longtime personal hero of mine), is anything but.

Though Twinkle: Sharing Your Faith One Light at a Time might target busy mothers of young children, it offers creative insights and solid theological perspectives for all thinking Christians who care about living well and pointing others to Jesus in the process. In fact, Twinkle is an extension of Morgan’s ministry, seminary training, and authentic faith; its relevant lifestyle approach is credible because she lives it.

Drawing consistently from Scripture, personal anecdotes, cultural research, and meaty quotes (from the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela), Morgan’s writing is strong and her argument compelling. She divides the book into two parts: looking at the reasons we don’t share our faith (“Getting Past the I Can’ts”) and moving into practical ways we can (“Grabbing On to the I Cans”).

Too often, she writes, we’re afraid of failing or offending or not having all the answers, so we keep the good news to ourselves. But, she suggests, even a small

light can change the darkness.The key is not to force the moment but simply to trust the light of Christ to break through.

“God’s work in the lives of those on the way to him began long before we came into a relationship with them,” she writes. “And it’ll probably go on long after we’re out of their lives. Evangelism isn’t about a finite investment of time and energy. Rather, evangelism is a layered offering of light, over time, in various degrees of brilliance. Sometimes dim.

Sometimes clear.”

To reinforce her premise, Morgan repeatedly points to the completed work of Christ on the cross as a means of taking off the pressure and encouraging Christians simply to relax in the truth of our identity in him.“By being vulnerable, God made himself believable,” she writes.

“Being real means modeling the process of Christianity, not just the product.”

In short but rich chapters, Morgan invites us to the wonder-filled adventure of letting our light—however dim we think it—shine in our service, our relationships, and our daily living. It’s a fresh and accessible take on an old but essential element of the Christian faith. ■ Jo Kadlecek is an author and regular PRISM columnist.

LEFT BEHIND IN A MEGACHURCH WORLD

By Ruth A. Tucker Baker Books Reviewed by Les Cool The title of this book—Left Behind in a Megachurch World: How God Works Through Ordinary Churches—caught my eye, reflecting several key elements of my everyday life:“left behind” as others grow and make the news, “mega”-just-about-everything these days except what I seem to be doing, and as “ordinary” as a no-frillssingle-patty hamburger meal that has not been Biggie-Sized! My small-church pastor’s heart skipped a beat, expecting —maybe secretly hoping for—a bit of big-church bashing. But Ruth Tucker serves up none of that. Instead, we find a warm, though unsettling, meander down memory lane in search of answers for congregations that exist outside the current church-growth trends.

Huge membership rolls, larger-thanlife pastors, and big-budget programs make the news; our culture is partial to success that is measurable. But the XL church, marketed and bottom-line savvy, often smells more like the local superstore than the Body of Christ. What are we to think of the XS church that finds itself not only small but with membership that is leveled-off or even shrinking?

Tucker helps us see beyond “small in size” to the heart of the smaller church, introducing us to pastors and congregations that may appear to be left behind but, in reality, offer much of what people need: love, authenticity, grace, a place to call home.

Tucker questions the impact of the megachurch on the next generation of Christians. Our consumer mentality drives us to find bigger, better, or just more choices. “It is too easy to leave a church,” claims Tucker. Is that because we, as one family or one person, are hardly missed in the crowd? The left-behind church PRISM 2006

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may be the answer.

For every megachurch many smaller churches exist. For every megapastor many small-church pastors are out there serving their flocks.When you take the pulse of the Body of Christ, you begin to realize, says Tucker, that “the ripple effect of the little churches that dot the North American landscape is impossible to calculate.” While our culture continues to celebrate the megachurch, reality affirms the need for the kind of nurturing, intimacy, and high-accountability climate only smaller churches can provide. ■ Les Cool is the founding pastor of HOPE Community Church in Newark, Del. (coolcopy43@comcast.net).

THE MAKING OF A MENTOR

By Dr. Ted Engstrom & Dr. Ron Jenson Authentic Books/World Vision Reviewed by Rachel Parker Minister to many; focus on a few.

According to Drs. Ted Engstrom and Ron Jenson, this is the strategy of leadership espoused by Jesus as he mentored his disciples. The authors encourage

their readers to follow this pattern by making mentoring an intentional part of discipleship. Engstrom and Jenson speak from their significant experience as both mentors and “mentorees” (as the authors incorrectly refer to mentees throughout the book—English majors, beware!).

As one of Engstrom’s mentees says, “...mentoring is not simply the imparting of new skills or a program by which to lead life. Rather, it is the imparting of character and wisdom that the mentor has gained through experience.” This statement not only describes Engstrom’s philosophy of mentoring but also the content of this book. Rather than a list of methods for mentoring, the authors describe nine character-building attributes (encouragement, self-discipline, gentleness, affection, communication, honesty, servanthood, godliness, and confrontation) which must mark the life of a mentor as he/she attempts to influence the lives of others. Ultimately, mentoring is not about shaping a person into a mold that reflects the mentor but rather into one that reflects Christ himself. As mentors develop their own spiritual character and conform to the likeness of Christ, they are then able to encourage their mentees to do the same.

The Making of a Mentor is accessible

and user-friendly and encourages reflection along the way. At the end of each chapter is a rating scale to help the reader assess his/her proficiency in each area and consider how to improve. Appendices further encourage reader response.

Additionally, each chapter concludes with several quotes from Christian leaders who offer thoughts related to the chapter’s topic. One such quote says,“There’s nothing magical or radical about the ideas in this chapter...but if we can teach ourselves to put these ideas into practice on a regular basis the results will be truly amazing.” This idea is really true about the book as a whole. It is written in a rather elementary style and the concepts are basic and easy to understand, which may be disappointing for those who are looking for more scholarly writing.

However, if these “simple” concepts are actually implemented by people seeking to influence others, we will be astounded by the increase in unity, fellowship, and depth in the body of Christ. ■ Until the recent birth of her daughter, Rachel Parker was mentored by the amazing folks doing urban ministry at the Emmanuel Gospel center in Boston, Mass.

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POSTMODERNISM 101

By Heath White Brazos

WHO’S AFRAID OF POSTMODERNISM?

By James K.A. Smith Baker Academic

HOW POSTMODERNISM SERVES (MY) FAITH

By Crystal Downing InterVarsity Press Reviewed by David L. O’Hara In recent years talk about “postmodernism” and its relevance for Christianity has abounded. What has not abounded, however, are good, clear explanations of just what postmodernism is and why the rest of us should care. If you’re curious about it, here are three good new books you should check out.

You might want to start with Heath White’s aptly named Postmodernism 101: A First Course for the Curious Christian.

White, a philosophy professor atValparaiso, takes big, important ideas and explains them in a way that helps the reader understand why they matter.

White has three aims: first, to explain what postmodernism is; second, to help evangelicals see why understanding it matters; and third, to help Christians respond to postmodernism thoughtfully and constructively. White succeeds at all three aims without getting bogged down in scholarly jargon. He addresses difficult issues through clear illustrations, writing like a storyteller rather than an academic.

The book is organized thematically to highlight some of the key themes of postmodernism, taking time to think about things like power, morality, selfhood, culture, and hope. Each chapter winds up considering the importance of postmodernism for evangelism, creed, and liturgy; and each section ends with well-

written questions so the book lends itself to discussion groups. A well-written “For Further Reading” section will help interested readers delve more deeply.

The only obvious weakness of White’s otherwise excellent book is that sometimes his characterizations of postmodern philosophies are inaccurate caricatures.

He describes pragmatism as teaching that “truth is just whatever helps you get around in life” when, in fact, of the classical pragmatists, only William James ever said anything like that, and he didn’t say it consistently. But White is right inasmuch as many professed theological Pragmatists today are relativists.

This is the best layperson’s introduction I’ve seen to postmodernism, period.

James K.A. Smith’s new book— Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church— picks up where White leaves off. If you’re already developing a familiarity with the broad trends in the history of thought that have led to postmodernism and are now looking for someone to guide you through some of the major 20th-century figures in postmodernism, then Smith’s book should be your next read.

Smith, a professor of philosophy at

Calvin College, has been a publishing powerhouse in the last few years, producing a consistently thoughtful series of articles and books. Smith is a good complement to Brian McLaren: Where McLaren is good at asking questions and provoking people to act, Smith is good at answering questions in a way that provokes people to think.

If you’ve ever tried to read Derrida or Foucault, you know that they can be simply mystifying to the uninitiated.

Consider Smith’s book your initiation.

Each chapter begins with the discussion of a popular movie that will show you what you’ve already begun to experience and to grasp the Derridean and Foucaultian concepts Smith then smoothly and cogently introduces. As the subtitle suggests, the book doesn’t just explain the significance of these three postmodern French philosophers: Our guided tour of the postmodern campus winds up in the chapel, where Smith introduces us to radical orthodoxy as a way of taking both the challenges of postmodernism and biblical Christianity seriously.

Okay. Some of you have only read this far because you think you ought to know something about postmodernism, not because you really like the idea of reading a lot of theory, no matter how clearly it’s written. If so, then Crystal Downing’s new book might be the one for you. How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith: Questioning Truth in Language, Philosophy, and Art doesn’t just talk about postmodern ideas like language games and suspicion of metanarratives. Downing shows you what postmodernism is all about. It is one thing to write about aesthetics; it is another thing to write beautifully. Downing, an English professor at Messiah College, does both.

Downing writes from a first-person perspective, telling her own story, and all along talking about how we can learn about our world through reading someone else’s story. The art of her writing PRISM 2006

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and the art of her teaching blend seamlessly in most of the book, making it a fun and sometimes quirky read.

Like Smith and White, Downing eventually shows us how postmodernism is relevant to Christian faith, but her route takes us through the arts. This is Downing’s other strong point: Since much of Christian practice revolves around language and art (just think about it) and not just theology, this book could be helpful for thinking about liturgical art, architecture, and the arts in which we live and move every day.

All three books are worth reading on that score, in fact. Each one deals with theories, but each author is driven to ask how those theories affect the world we inhabit. To put a finer point on it, as Bruce Benson suggested several years ago in his Graven Ideologies (InterVarsity Press, 2002), postmodernism is not merely a gadfly for the church to swat at; it may very well be the medicine we need to keep us from idolatry. ■ David O’Hara is assistant professor of philosophy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.Dak. He is the author of From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy (Brazos, 2006) and is editing the Religious Writings of Charles S. Peirce.

OFF THE SHELF

WHY A SUFFERING WORLD of his glorious grace” (Eph. 1:6).

MAKES SENSE What’s the application for the

By Chris Tiegreen Baker Books Reviewed by Stephen Trout Suffer ing, as C.S. Lewis observed, is the divine “shout” God uses to get our attention. The insufferable part about it, of course, is that even if we t h i n k we k n ow God’s purposes (which we never fully do) or can discern its causes (which we never completely can), suffering literally stings us awake to life’s painful passage.

Like Bunyan’s Pilgrim, we must wade through the deep waters to reach the bright shores of lasting comfort on the other side.

Made for meaning and purpose, we can never escape such persistent questions as “Why is there so much pain in the world?” and “Why am I suffering?”

But the question posed in Chr is Tiegreen’s book goes to the core of all such questions: “Why would a God of foresight allow us the choice of evil to begin with?”

The answer is the revealing of God’s glory, the purpose for which we were made (Col.1:16; Rom. 8:18, 9:22-25).

Tiegreen asks, “How, for example, can a merciful God show mercy in a world that has not erred? ...How can he show himself as Deliverer unless there is captivity? ...a Healer unless there is sickness?

Or Forgiver unless wrongs have been committed? He can’t.” Just as the crimes that Joseph’s brothers committed against him set the stage for God’s mercy and redemption, our sin and rebellion and the hurts we inflict upon each other set the stage for Jesus, the God-man who himself suffers to redeem and eventually renew us completely, “to the praise

sufferer? Through Christ, we have a merciful God who continually reveals himself in the context of human need.

As Tiegreen notes, the very names our God chooses for himself speak to our neediness and his sufficiency: “JehovahJireh, Provider; Jehovah-Rapha, Healer; Jehovah-Nissi, Banner (in victory).”

Jesus our Immanuel is “God with us” in each painful trial. By his grace, new questions of hope and expectation emerge (“God, how do you want to reveal yourself in this situation?”). New facets of God’s loving character are revealed through our broken places in a spectrum of glorious colors: unimagined perseverance, divine healing, purging and refinement, or increased compassion.

By illumining God’s design in a suffering world, Tiegreen hopes to encourage the church to more closely resemble a hospital for broken sinners, where the “wounded can rest and heal” until Christ shines on that far shore with indelible wounds of love. ■ Stephen Trout is a pastor and freelance writer based in Philadelphia, Pa.

SECRETS IN THE DARK

By Frederick Buechner HarperSanFrancisco Reviewed by Peter Larson It’s been said that being a Christian is like learning algebra: Just because you know the answers doesn’t mean you know how to work the problems. In Secrets in the Dark: A Life of Sermons, Frederick Buechner works the problems.

Avoiding the trite, triumphal platitudes dispensed by many

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preachers, Buechner dwells in the shadowlands where light is mingled with darkness, faith is mixed with doubt, and hope is never far from despair.

These sermons make no attempt to be pragmatic or useful, nor are they particularly interested in moral or doctrinal truth. For Buechner, the point of the sermon is always Jesus, this awesome and mysterious stranger who meets us amid the failures and ambiguities of life. His sermons are inhabited by people who are frail and fallen: an old woman dying of cancer who goes to movies to escape her loneliness; a man who has stopped believing in God because his son has AIDS and whose truck sports a gun rack and a “Jesus Loves You” bumper sticker.

For Buechner, the kingdom of God is a paradox, trivial and transcendent, downto-earth and heavenly, shabby and glorious. In a sermon titled “The Church,” Buechner seems to sum up his credo: “Life even at its most monotonous and backbreaking and heart-numbing has God’s kingdom buried in it the way a field has treasure buried in it.”

Although he is clearly disturbed by the power and arrogance of imperial America, Buechner rarely ventures into political or social commentary. If anything, he is best described as a mystic— but the kind who hangs out in cancer wards and coffee shops. In one sermon, he describes how a Christian acquaintance drove 800 miles, unasked, to be with him when his daughter was seriously ill. Reflecting on that simple experience of grace, Buechner laments the proliferation of church governments and budgets, denominations and rummage sales, and phony TV preachers.

“Maybe the best thing that could happen to the church would be for some great tidal wave of history to wash all that away,” he writes,“the church buildings tumbling, the church money all lost, the church bulletins blowing through the air like dead leaves, the differences

between preachers and congregations all lost, too. Then all we would have left would be each other and Christ, which was all there was in the first place.” ■ Peter Larson is the pastor of Lebanon Presbyterian Church in Lebanon, Ohio, and a contributing editor to PRISM.

DOES HUMAN RIGHTS NEED GOD?

By Elizabeth Bucar and Barbra Barnett Wm. Eerdmans Reviewed by Rebecca Yael Miller Two doctoral candidates at the University of Chicago Divinity School have put together this remarkable compilation of essays, all seeking to answer the intentionally nebulous question “Does human rights need God?” For the purpose of discussion, the editors chose not to define God in terms of a particular faith or philosophy (though some contributors argue for a more narrow definition), but use the word “God” to refer to anything from a strict Judeo-Christian perspective to a vague sense of spirituality.

Part I of the book is structured around faith-informed answers to the title question. Contributors to this section include prominent scholars from the Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, and Confucian traditions.

Evangelicals will likely find Max Stackhouse’s essay the most palatable.

Stackhouse argues not only that human rights as we understand them today are founded on biblical thought and principles but also that individual religious convictions were foundational to the

emergence of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights and similar U.N. documents. Indeed, for Stackhouse “the foundations for human rights claims are essentially theological,” thus leading him to reject both the standard secularist account and religious and ethical pluralism.

Part II is structured around secular answers to the question. Essays in this section include contributions from moral and political philosophers as well as legal scholars, some defending natural law and others dismissing it. Special attention is paid to women’s rights as they pertain to religious beliefs.

Part III is formulated around regional responses, the most notable of which is an essay by Palestinian scholar Sari Nusseibeh, who considers “whether God is the obstacle to the protection of human rights in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

While a rich and varied compilation, the book falls short in answering its own question. Indeed, in many ways it raises more questions than it answers.

Instead of directly answering the question at hand, each essay—save Stackhouse’s —is a general observation of human rights and the way in which those rights or their institutions interact with the propensities of the author’s faith, political philosophy, or region. This, however, seems to be the intention of the editors, and instead of faulting the essays (which by and large are well reasoned and articulated) I will simply say that a broader title would have been more appropriate.

All in all, for anyone interested in political philosophy and the moral and religious foundations of human rights, this book is well worth a read. ■ RebeccaYael Miller is PRISM’s Washington Watch columnist.

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FREE OF CHARGE

By Miroslav Volf Zondervan Reviewed by Harold Dean Trulear “Go with the flow.”

Until I read Miroslav Volf ’s Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, that phrase always suggested, for me, compromise and conformity. To go with the flow was to blend in, to avoid controversy and challenge, to “go along to get along.”

But Volf identifies another “flow,” indeed the true flow of the universe, that which moves from the essence of God as loving Creator to the whole of creation (and particularly humanity). It is God’s love, manifested in the graces of giving and forgiving. Volf sets these graces against the backdrop of a culture where the takers outnumber the givers and forgiveness “doesn’t make sense.”

With respect to giving, Volf argues that there are three types of people in the world: takers, who use “illicit means to [obtain] what is not theirs”; getters, who “legitimately acquire what [they] need or desire”; and givers, who “generously give to help and delight others.” He similarly sees three types of behavior with respect to forgiveness: revenge, which “corresponds to illicit taking”; the demand for justice, which “corresponds to legitimate acquiring”; and forgiving, which “roughly corresponds to generous giving.”

Volf pursues the categories of taking and revenge with insightful, though somewhat predictable, results. His writing on giving and forgiving roots these behaviors squarely in the character of God, from whom all giving and forgiveness flow to God’s creation, thereby enabling those who bear his life through Christ to offer the same to a broken

world. These are not easy tasks, according to Volf. Christians must consistently grasp the extent to which they have received both gifts and forgiveness from the Creator in order to continue the “flow” of these graces to others. Along with examples from everyday life, Volf chooses illustrative scenarios from victims of war/crimes, political upheaval /revolution, and gross governmental tyranny/neglect.These cases demonstrate not only the lengths to which forgiveness extends, but also the difficulty in taking a principle that many of us learn in Sunday school as a strategy for dealing with the playground bully and translating it to an ethic governing our response to evil atrocities.

Volf ’s most critical challenge is to those who “get” and those who “demand justice.” The author understands both types of people but hastens to point out their inadequacies in representing the fullness of God’s love and grace.The one who legitimately acquires falls short by not recognizing that even that process is enabled by a giving God, which in turn should then feed an outward flow to others. The one who demands justice usually calls for retributive justice, overlooking the gracious manner in which God forgives “indiscriminately.” Such forgiveness is not a cheap grace, for to forgive is “to condemn,” that is, to acknowledge the nature of the evil deed in order to offer forgiveness for it.

Volf ’s use of the stark examples to which I alluded above makes this book far more than ephemeral, feel-good theology. Rather, like his earlier book Exclusion and Embrace (Abingdon Press, 1996), Free of Charge helps answer questions concerning the application of Christian principles to the challenges of living in a volatile political world and its increasingly graceless culture. ■ Harold Dean Trulear is a pastor, professor, and PRISM columnist.

THE SECRET MESSAGE OF JESUS

By Brian D. McLaren Thomas Nelson Reviewed by David L. O’Hara Br ian McLaren’s books typically draw two types of responses: Some are intrigued by his advocacy for lived faith and the “emergent” church; others are horrified by his disregard for clarity and orthodoxy.

His newest book—The Secret Message of Jesus—is sure to generate those same responses.

If you’re in the first camp, you will probably enjoy McLaren’s book, up to a point at least. Interested in Jesus but turned off by Jesus’ church? Fascinated by the notion of God but put off by religiosity? You’ve found a kindred spirit in McLaren. But beware! McLaren loves the questions, but he also advocates trying to live the answers, and his book is an enticement to seek them for yourself. McLaren doesn’t give you the answers or tell you the secret. He wants you to find out for yourself, and there’s only one way to find out: to try it. Some things must be tasted to be known.

If you’re in the second camp, you’ll be fed up with McLaren by the end of the book (if not by the end of the first chapter). McLaren is not writing academic theology here, mostly because he’s not interested in the ivory towers of academe. He’s interested in the street, and they speak differently down there.

He’s also not going to tell you the secret in plain words, because he knows that if he does, you’ll stop listening. His point is that knowing God is not the same as knowing about God, and that faith that hasn’t got the traction to change your life is no faith at all.

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McLaren needs to be more careful, however, in what he says about the value of theology and teachers. He is, after all, a teacher of theology. He’s right: Faith isn’t just a matter of the mind. But the mind is an important gift and safeguard against foolishness.

Despite its flaws, this book is worth reading, especially if you’re curious about lived faith and dissatisfied with what you’ve seen so far. McLaren invites his readers to discover that no matter how much they know about God, there’s still more of God to get to know. ■ David O’Hara is an author and assistant professor of philosophy at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S. Dak.

THE IRRESISTIBLE REVOLUTION

By Shane Claiborne Zondervan Reviewed by Joshua Andersen Christendom is full of folks offering lots of answers and writing lots of books.

We’ve been told that the hearts of men should be wild, that our lives should be purpose-driven, and that we would all do well to model our prayers after an obscure Bible character named Jabez.

But few heralds of Christian truth have the humility to begin their books like Shane Claiborne, who dedicates his story to “all the hypocrites, cowards, and fools...like me.” Throughout The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, Claiborne, a self-proclaimed “theolog ical prankster” from east Tennessee, exhibits that same humility without ever compromising his message.

Revolution is a well-written, highly

anecdotal book of stories that opens a window into Claiborne’s spiritual journey and vocation as an “ordinary radical.”

His chapters follow his multiple conversions, from Methodist youth group zealot to servant of lepers in Mother Theresa’s Calcutta to peacemaker in wartorn Iraq. His prose reveals a sharp wit, a resounding humility, and a deep passion for embodying Christ’s love for the “least of these.”

Claiborne’s world is one in which the poor and marginalized are neither the recipients of his charity nor the subjects of his sermons, but rather his neighbors, friends, and dinner guests. His gospel is one of “incarnational” living that transforms lives (including his own) through proximity, not programs. On his home streets of Kensington—a north Philadelphia neighborhood frequently described as the “badlands”—prostitutes, beggars, and addicts are nothing short of Claiborne’s family and, at times, his teachers.

Claiborne is one of many on the frontlines of what has been referred to as “the New Monasticism,” a movement gaining enough steam to land Claiborne on the cover of Christianity Today. It is a revolutionary movement made “irresistible” because it is populated by “little people, guerrilla peacemakers, and dancing prophets,” writes Claiborne. “The revolution begins inside each one of us, and through little acts of love, it will take over the world.”

Claiborne helped found The Simple Way, a community of Jesus-followers working, living, and playing in the Philadelphia ghettoes. He is a soughtafter speaker, although his homemade clothing and “ragamuffin” appearance sometimes get him stopped at the doors of the very events he has been asked to headline.

The Irresistible Revolution, Claiborne’s first book, is ultimately an invitation.

“Come and see,” he writes, quoting Mother Theresa’s common refrain. “Let

blows it. I was mildly disappointed to find that only eight pages cover how we control damage that’s already been done.

The subtitle is really the book’s premise: How to Stop Making Jesus Look Bad. It’s a preemptive strike, homing in on the ways we can keep from embarrassing ourselves and others in the first place.

We need the mindset of an ambassador, says Merrill.Those outside the faith view us as such whether we’ve accepted the responsibility or not. Ambassadors “are always assumed to be speaking and acting on behalf of their homeland.

Their nationality is like a brand,” Merrill contends.

We recognize ourselves in Merrill’s Josh Andersen is a freelance writer and a illustrations of how Christians hinder fellow story-tellin’ Tennessean. the cause of Christ. How we talk— spewing jargon, displaying arrogance, attempting to manipulate—reveals our DAMAGE CONTROL inner character to the world, and often

By Dean Merrill it’s not attractive. He cites the lack of Baker Books cooperation among denominations and Reviewed by Carol Cool the discrepancy between our walk and Sometimes I’m our talk as other factors that turn peoembarrassed to be ple away from Christ.

So how do we stop making Jesus a Chr istian. Not because I find Jesus look bad? Merrill begins with who we embarrassing, but are. Jesus expected his emissaries to have because the actions “an inner tranquility, a sense of calm, to of his followers fill soothe whatever troubled situation they me with shame. encountered.” In doing that, we need to Who hasn’t been promote reconciliation, care for the needs embarrassed when a coworker brings of the helpless, communicate effectively, up a church sex scandal, the deacon and display God’s supernatural power who absconded with church funds, or in the world.

It’s a tall order. As Merrill advises, the latest public statement from a prom“We cannot just assume that we already inent “Christian” bigot?

And sometimes I’m the Christian know what God is thinking. We have who embarrasses other believers. I’m to ask—and then listen. Only then can insensitive or lose my temper. I demand we speak with confidence.” If we do my rights and show disrespect for oth- that, we may find ourselves doing less ers. I can make Jesus look bad as well as damage. And that’s what makes this book valuable. It provides a good offense (withthe next guy.

The title of Dean Merrill’s book out being offensive) that will keep us filled me with hope: Damage Control. from needing to play so much defense.

Now I would know how to handle it when some Christian, me included, Carol Cool is a writer from Delaware. me show you Jesus with skin on.”

Claiborne invites his reader to come and meet his family, the lepers of Calcutta, the homeless of Kensington, the Iraqi Christians throwing a picnic in the shadow of America’s “shock and awe” campaign. Through these snapshots, and with something of a twinkle in his eye (like any good southern storyteller), he invites us to meet the King of kings himself, who, Claiborne reminds us, was essentially a “homeless rabbi” followed by a “ragtag bunch of disciples who betrayed, doubted and denied; and a converted terrorist named Paul.”

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DEVELOPMENT TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

challenges and frustrations.

Secondly, the resulting Anabaptist/

By Richard A. Yoder, Mennonite ethic of development reflects Calvin A. Redekop & Vernon E. Jantzi a helpful constructive ideal for all who Good Books operate within faith-based organizations.

Reviewed by David A. King Many of us who work in such environments often struggle with the degree to Development to a which one’s experience in such an orgaDifferent Drummer: nization reflects Christian “community.”

Anabaptist/Mennonite Significant strides would be made toward Experiences and a workplace as community if leaders and Perspectives is equal followers alike were to take seriously— parts compilation (of on an organizational and individual level experiential essays —the eight “mutually reinforcing values” written by develop- suggested by the authors. ment practitioners), I was also struck by the level of selfanalysis (of the assessment exhibited by the practitioners, efficacy of Mennonite approaches to as well as by the Mennonite denominadevelopment), and presentation (of tion. The concern shown for the value the “Anabaptist ethic of develop- of one’s efforts as experienced by the ment”). The essays, first presented by “other” was refreshing—another perspecscholars and practitioners at a confer- tive we would all do well to adopt. The ence held at Eastern Mennonite stories, the analysis and critique, and the University in 1998, speak to experiences ethical framework presented are reflecfrom grassroots, middle-ground, and large- tive of a healthy perspective that should scale policy perspectives. be embraced by everyone within any The stories convey with honesty each organizational context. ■ practitioner’s gratifying experiences of success as well as such haunting ques- David King currently serves as chief develtions as “Are we doing the right thing, opment officer of the Campolo College of and in the right way?” The analysis sec- Graduate and Professional Studies at Eastern tion takes this introspection deeper by University, St. Davids, Pa. addressing “hindsight” questions such as, “Would you choose this occupational path if you had it to do over?”; “Did you GOD THE INGENIOUS make a difference?”; and “What would ALCHEMIST you do differently?”

By John R. Claypool Several things struck me about this Morehouse Publishing book. First, it is applicable to a much Reviewed by M. Daniel Carroll R. broader audience than the title may suggest.While the perspectives related in the Unlike most books experiential essays indeed relate to develan Old Testament opment experiences in the field, they are professor like myself also enlightening for anyone operating would normally read, within an organization (who doesn’t?).

God the Ingenious The grassroots, middle-ground, and policyAlchemist:Transformsetting perspectives provide language and ing Tragedy into a framework that most would find helpBlessing is brief (at ful as they consider their organizational 77 pages, it can be

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read in a single sitting) and accessible to one and all. But what makes it most appealing is that its thesis is so relevant to the contemporary Christian walk.

Claypool, an Episcopal priest and professor of homiletics at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, writes that believers “must trust in God’s ingenious ability to take bad choices made in human freedom and somehow transmute them into experiences of growth and blessing.” This conviction is grounded in the Jacob and Joseph narratives of the book of Genesis and finds its clearest expression in Joseph’s reassurances to his brothers: “What you intended for harm, God intended for good” (Gen. 50:20).

God desires to redeem our most difficult moments in order to provide opportunities for deepening faith. The God of grace is committed to blessing us.

That movement toward those who hurt, however, is not accomplished by some sort of divine imposition upon our existence; rather, the assurance that our lives do matter and that the future can be different comes by way of grateful surprise before the love of the Holy One. Over the course of their lives, both Jacob and Joseph mature. They admit the flaws in their character and come to recognize the beneficent hand of God in the midst of misfortune. But this is not simply biblical exposition. Into his engaging retelling of these patriarchal accounts Claypool weaves the testimony of experiences from his own life and those of others, thus making the stories of Genesis relevant: We, too, walk a life of ongoing pilgrimage and need the constant encouragement of their truth.

I could quibble over some of the exegetical details of God the Ingenious Alchemist, as Claypool’s efforts to avoid at all costs the use of the masculine pronoun to refer to God can make for some awkward sentences (while yielding quite a creative assortment of titles

for God). Some also might question the picture of a self-limiting God that Claypool champions. But, in the end, the lessons of this little book are helpful.

They are a wonderful reminder that we are not abandoned to the painful consequences of our sin, but can hope for wholeness to result from our interaction with a loving and gracious God. ■ M. Daniel Carroll R. (Rodas) is Earl S. Kalland Chair of Old Testament at Denver Seminary and a contributing editor to PRISM.

CREED WITHOUT CHAOS

By Laura K. Simmons Baker Academic Reviewed by Jo Kadlecek Most lovers of literature think of British writer Dorothy L. Sayers as a mystery writer, essayist, or playwright. What many don’t recognize, however, is the extent of her gifts as a thinker and communicator of theology.

Laura K. Simmons, biographer and assistant professor at George Fox Seminary, hopes her new book, Creed without Chaos: Exploring Theology in the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers, will change that.

Sayers enjoyed an influential and fascinating career, beginning as a copywriter for an advertising firm in 1922 and ending as a translator of Dante’s works, which she considered to be her greatest literary contribution. In between, she wrote plays for the BBC, churches, and theaters; wove dozens of mysteries in her detective novels and short stories; and found the time to write so many essays, letters, and treatises around so many themes that it’s difficult to peg her into any one category. Her work set her apart both as a rare woman writer of

theology and as an essential Christan voice in the last century.

Simmons finds all of Sayers’ writings to be thick with thoughtful theology.

Perhaps because of her work as a professional writer, Sayers had the ability to wrap theological insights around a variety of culturally relevant issues of her day in effective language. Contemporary readers must take her seriously as a theologian, Simmons suggests, because she crossed that critical bridge between culture and the church that many academic theologians find so difficult to traverse. It was Sayers’ writing talents, her deep faith, and her observations of ordinary life in England that best equipped her to communicate the gospel message to a wartorn people in a way theologians of the church did not.

Ample helpings of Sayers’ own words are served up to support Simmons’ claims.

For the reader rarely exposed to the mind behind the Lord Wimsey detective stories, this is succulent stuff. By scouring hundreds of primary sources, letters, and manuscripts, Simmons portrays the complexities and paradoxes of this enormously gifted thinker and writer.

Though the book sometimes feels heavy with scholarly footnotes, it nonetheless brings to life a woman whose creative writing and intellectual expression of the Christian message had a farreaching impact on British and North American culture. Simmons has helped us appreciate a much-needed role model in our literary heritage, one whose theology and creativity can inspire us anew about how to engage our culture. ■ Jo Kadlecek is an author, teacher, and regular PRISM columnist.

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CAPITAL CONSEQUENCES

by Rachel King Rutgers University Press Reviewed by Kathleen A. O’Shea Rachel King has done us all a favor by writing Capital Consequences: Families of the Condemned Tell Their Stories, a book about the consequences of capital punishment for those closest to the condemned.

It is easy for us to acknowledge that victims have families. King invited us to meet some of them in her earlier book, Don’t Kill in Our Names: Families of Murder Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty (Rutgers, 2003). But in Capital Consequences we come face to face with the parents, siblings, relatives, and friends of death-row inmates, and are forced to recognize that theirs is a different sort of pain.They navigate the murky waters of the criminal justice system from the other side.

Fortunately, most of us will never live through the shock of a midnight phone call or a radio report informing us that a family member has been arrested for murder. But as the title of the first chapter affirms, “It Could Happen to Anyone,” and through these nine stories we are able to experience something of the tragedy many families have been subjected to.

In the book’s prologue, Katherine Norgard, a psychologist whose son was on death row, writes that, like those who have lost their loved ones to violent crime, family members who have lost their loved ones to prisons are survivors, too. She says their experiences of stigmatization, social isolation, depression, grief, and guilt by association cut across any and all differences between them.

Once a family member is condemned

to death everyone in that family is changed forever.With passionate prose King reveals how these families are the unseen victims of capital punishment.

The cover of Capital Consequences shows a woman—elderly, forlorn, a blanket wrapped around her against the cold —standing in front of San Quentin the night of her son’s execution. It is a poignant reminder of what families of the condemned look like—ordinary people like you and me who love their children immeasurably. Reading these stories will change each of us in some way.

Hopefully, it will give us reason to continue questioning the misnomer of the “criminal justice system.” ■ Kathleen A. O’Shea is a social worker, human rights advocate, and writer who has published several books about women on death row. She is currently a scholar-in-residence in theWomen’s Studies Department at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario.

QUEST FOR HOPE IN THE SLUM COMMUNITY Scott Bessenecker (ed.)

Authentic & World Vision Reviewed by Gregory Pomrehn A new generation of young American Christians is graduating from college with a deeper awareness of global poverty.

Aware of our privilege and challenged

by Jesus’ strong words to the rich and his intimate identification with the poor, we are asking what role we can play to serve the world’s urban poor.

Quest for Hope: A Global Urban Reader is evidence that we are in the early stages of a movement by God to bring his people to live with him in the urban slums.

Exploring the spiritual, emotional, eco-

nomic, and physical needs of the poor, it simultaneously develops a theology of urban poverty while exploring how believers can bring—and indeed are already bringing—compassion and servanthood to the world’s most vulnerable neighborhoods.

As director of InterVarsity’s Global Projects, which places college students in various development projects and incarnational mission situations in the world’s poorest cities, Bessenecker is uniquely positioned to understand the concerns of young adults considering work in this area. As someone who is currently considering global urban ministry, I found this book helpful in naming and discussing issues I have observed and experienced firsthand but until now haven’t had the tools to understand.

Those with a desire to link their own needs with those of the poor will find this a great resource. It can also be a springboard for more in-depth study of particular issues, and readers may be stirred by how their abilities and passions may line up with the needs of the poor. Small communities who have relocated among the poor will find this a helpful reference as they encounter new challenges.

The global urban minister does not need to fit a cookie-cutter image. God is calling people with many different passions, backgrounds, and abilities. He is raising up indigenous leaders, to be sure, but he is also calling people of privilege to relocate to urban slums. There is a place for us “spoiled rich kids” in the slums, and I pray that many who read this book will discover their place in God’s work among the poor. ■

PRACTICING RECONCILIATION IN A VIOLENT WORLD

By Michael Battle Morehouse Publishing Reviewed by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

This slim and handsome book lay on my desk for weeks as “something I need to get to”—until I saw Paul Haggis’ 2006 film Crash. Then I felt compelled to read Michael Battle’s book. Lest this become a movie ad instead of a book review, let me just say quickly for those who haven’t seen it that Crash makes clear in two intense hours what many of us in America sense intuitively: We are a broken people, fragmented along lines of race, class, gender, and religion. We are a people separated by more fissures than we know. And yet, somehow, we know enough to sense this.

Despite being disunited, we long for touch—for a connection with others.

We recognize that the way things are is not the way they are supposed to be.

Practicing Reconciliation is a theologically informed and pastorally sensitive gift to those who know enough to know that something’s wrong. Battle, the newly appointed academic dean at Virginia Theological Seminary who worked with Desmond Tutu in South Africa, demonstrates the wisdom gained from practical experience in spiritual direction and conflict resolution. But this is no “how-to” manual. Though concise and highly accessible, it is a truly theological work—“a picture Gregory Pomrehn is an intern with Servant of what inhabiting God looks like.”

Partners and works professionally as an engineer.

Recognizing that part of the chalHe lives and serves with Northwest Neighbors lenge of reconciliation is our distortion of of Pasadena in Pasadena, Calif. created diversity, Battle begins by laying out four “spiritual types of nonviolence.”

As with any typology, these are ideals that get complicated when attempted by/

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applied to real people. Nevertheless, they serve to acknowledge that our real differences can be gifts, not obstacles. Since “reconciliation is the whole-hearted process of yielding negative conflict in exchange for God’s positive outcome,” Battle contends that we must learn the practices that make for peace between peoples who are not only different, but also inhabit histories of exclusion and oppression based on those differences.

“We can’t be reconcilers or facilitate reconciliation in our homes and communities and world without learning the practices and living them for ourselves,” says Battle.

These practices include “remembering God,” repentance and forgiveness, resisting stereotypes, seeking to understand others, and pilgrimage (an old practice of the church, well worth reviving).

But those who are interested in detailed descriptions of what these practices look like or how they become habits for communities will have to look elsewhere.

Despite his incarnational commitments, Battle does little fleshing out.

He does, however, make an important move in the last two chapters from practice to imagination. It is an acknowledgement that no practice stands on its own, but all human action finds its meaning and is interpreted in light of the end toward which it strives. “To think about heaven,” says Battle, “one must imagine a perfect environment of community without conflict and yet one comprised of the fullness of difference created by God.”According to Battle, we know what we strive for because God has already revealed it to us—the New Jerusalem, beloved community, the body of Christ.

“Therefore,” he says, “reconciliation is not so much what we choose to do as it is what we become—clean in God. In reconciliation, the wound of creation is slowly transfigured toward a new heaven and earth.”That’s good news for all of us who know that we live in a broken and violent world. ■

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove lives with his wife, Leah, and other friends at the Rutba House in Durham, N.C. He is the author of To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon (Cascade, 2006).

ways that God has patiently worked his redemption along multiple social fronts.

The issue that must be settled at the personal level is whether biblical passages should be interpreted as the “end” of the process of redemption (that is, how things should be) or as a “snapshot in time” (as a FINALLY FEMINIST historically and culturally based descripBy John G. Stackhouse Jr. tion) of God’s redemptive process.

Baker Academic As a Christian and a sociologist, I Reviewed by Edward J. Clarke am greatly encouraged by Stackhouse’s argument—to a Christian audience—for In his book Finally the equality of women. Having lived Feminist: A Pragmatic through the ’60s, I am uncomfortable with Christian Understand- a “wait and see” approach to addressing ing of Gender, John subordination and oppression. I have G. Stackhouse, Jr., waited too long for this issue to become develops a practical a serious Christian problem. If Christianity application of the is ever going to be central in addressing redemptive work of such issues it will ultimately require action Christ to the world explicitly contrary to social convention. of women and offers an explanation for In a sense, the book is a call to attend Christian participation in historical patri- to the inequality experienced by women archy. Issues related to gender equality around the world, regardless of culture or (synonymous with feminism as defined creed.The biggest barrier, however, is that

by Stackhouse) and the appropriate spheres those who need most to be convinced for men and women (complementary are those who experience the greatest gender roles) are far from settled among privilege, and privilege means comfort, Christians, but in Stackhouse’s frame- which is the enemy of change. ■ work these may be issues whose times have come. Stackhouse argues that patri- Edward J. Clarke is chair of the anthropology archy is no longer necessary and that /sociology department at Vanguard University societies, homes, and churches could all in Costa Mesa, Calif. benefit from the contributions of women given equal status. Central to the framework is the idea of “already but not yet”: “God’s direct and glorious rule is already and authentically here, through Jesus Christ, but it is not yet fully realized in this world still marred by sin.”

Stackhouse is careful in his attempt toward balance, showing that both egalitarians (those having too little “not yet”) and complementarians (those with too little “already”) have legitimate arguments and in the end are both right and wrong.

He includes extensive biblical passages, theological arguments, and popular criticisms. He asks us to consider the many

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BEHIND THE SCREEN Spencer Lewerenz and Barbara Nicolosi, eds.

Baker Books Reviewed by Kevin D. Hendricks It exploded with The Passion of the Christ. Christians and Hollywood had a strange relationship before its appearance on the screen, and while many other movies and TV shows have ventured to deal with faith issues, Mel Gibson’s multimillion-dollar success tore the separating curtain once and for all.While Christians have often bemoaned the immoral schlock that comes from Hollywood, the sleeping giant of the church is just beginning to realize what power it has.

Once upon a time motion pictures were forbidden fruit for many Christians.

Now Christians watch just as many movies as non-Christians. Of course, we still whine about the liberal movie industry and wish they’d make church-friendly films. A number of strategies have been employed to deal with Hollywood, but none have met with great success.

Enter Act One, a small nonprofit started in 1999 by a group of Christian writers and producers who wanted to transform Hollywood. Their goal is to train and support Christian missionaries in Hollywood—writers, directors, actors —professionals who can work throughout the movie business, bringing with them the gospel of Jesus Christ, salt and light to an entire industry.

Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture is an introduction to, defense of, and invitation to that group. Eighteen diverse Hollywood insiders share their perspectives. Their work includes TV shows like Joan of Arcadia, That 70s Show, Charmed, and

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and movies like X-Men, Batman Forever, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and Hellraiser: Inferno.

Though a bit disjointed, thanks to such a variety of voices, the book presents a new Christian mindset for dealing with Hollywood. For too long Christians have sent the wrong message to Hollywood, neglecting to follow our own commands about love when we rail about the latest filth at the theater. Rather than raising the hackles of the industry, which has only gotten us ignored, we’d do better to take the approach encouraged in Behind the Screen. Talented Christians should consider Hollywood as a career option, and the rest of us should support them, approaching Hollywood as a mission field—flooding it with prayer, writing letters (of support no less than of complaint), and spending our movie dollars wisely. ■ Kevin D. Hendricks (www.MonkeyOutta Nowhere.com), is a freelance writer living in St. Paul, Minn., with his wife and two dogs.

Among his favorite media productions are The Lord of the Rings, the original Star Wars trilogy, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series.

ON EARTH AS IT IS IN ADVERTISING?

By Sam Van Eman Brazos Press Reviewed by Aiden Enns I check the blurbs on the back. Sounds good:Jean Kilbourne, the queen of ad critique, writes that Van Eman does “a masterful job”; Tony Campolo, Ron Sider, and a personal favorite—Bill McKibben—also offer accolades. The subtitle, Moving from commercial

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hype to Gospel hope, sounds promising.

And author Van Eman does offer hope—but, for me, he doesn’t quite match the hype of the cover and backpage blurbs.

Sure, the book is a useful primer for mainstream evangelicals who need tools to mute the temptations of our advertising culture. But because it’s largely silent in its critique of mainstream America’s socioeconomic ambitions, it lacks the full weight of Christ’s countercultural message.

Van Eman’s core rhetorical method is to contrast the “authentic Gospel” with advertising’s simulated gospel, or “SimGospel.” His theological footing is straightforward. While the Garden of Eden was designed for harmony and pleasure, he writes, “we rejected God’s care for us, and sought a more immediate, cheaper form of fulfillment.” The SimGospel now tries to “reproduce samples of Eden for our tasting.”

Van Eman catalogs the mechanics of advertising’s deception: Give meaning through brands, instill a fear of being a loser, be slightly truthful, keep the bar just out of reach, and make the fantasy world seem real.

This misconstruction of reality—when the dreamy messages “just seem more and more normal”—is the most insidious and blasphemous aspect of advertising.

“Jesus had the kind of eyes that could see through the facade immediately,” says Van Eman.

“The more we become like Christ,” he concludes, “the more we become heretics of the SimGospel.” Become heretics? Social dissenters? Yes, indeed, he encourages individuals and groups, in private and public, to deconstruct television shows, promote TV Turnoff Week, and seek media guides. “To act like heretics, we must confront ease.”

My main critique of Van Eman’s book is simply this: It’s too nice. When I consider the global rich/poor gap,

North America’s cultural imperialism, and the posture of evangelicalism, I cringe.

We don’t just need to turn off the television, we need to dispossess—or at the very least downscale to some semblance of material solidarity with the majority world.

I’d like Van Eman to deconstruct the discourse of mainstream evangelicalism, especially that of the emergent church, and expose how our sanctuaries mimic the message of movie theatres and our marketing strategies are filled with commercial hype. When choirs become pop stars and preachers do it better on the big screen, the medium subverts the message, I fear. In spite of these shortcomings, the book is definitely worth reading. ■ Aiden Enns is publisher of Geez magazine geezmagazine.org, former managing editor of Adbusters magazine (adbusters.org), and a freelance writer living in Winnipeg, Ontario, Canada.

AMBASSADOR FAMILIES

By Mitali Perkins Brazos Press Reviewed by Carol R. Cool I like things black and white. I like right answers and wrong answers and five, 10, or 12 easy steps to anything.

I like a movie to have a happy ending and tie up the loose ends as well.

I should hate Mitali Perkins’ book.

But I don’t. I will admit that, after reading the first chapter’s “focus story,” I did search the back of the book for the correct answer as to what the parent should have done (don’t bother looking; it’s not there). But even without easy steps,

right answers, and story resolutions, Ambassador Families: Equipping Your Kids to Engage Popular Culture is a book I want every parent I know to read.

Perkins uses the mission and mindset of diplomats to illustrate how Christians should live in the world. But, she says, “as parents, we’re not only required to… become ambassadors ourselves. We’re also responsible to train a new crop of ambassadors who will be effective in their generation.”

Part one of the book covers Jesus’ diplomatic strategy and shows us how to use the same strategy to equip our kids to be ambassadors. Jesus used trips to Samaria to train his disciples, so they would know how to interact with people different from themselves. Part two covers four qualities—patriotism, savoirfaire, tenacity, and imagination—that help ambassadors excel. “[Christian ambassadors] have two vital tasks: to transform popular culture itself and to offer citizenship in the kingdom of heaven to the people we meet while journeying there,” says Perkins. Each chapter includes stories and discussion questions to encourage purposeful decisions about pop culture.The questions, especially, could open up candid interaction between parents and their tweens/teens.

This book is not about what to ban from our children’s iPods. Instead Perkins encourages us to be present and prayerful in our children’s forays into the world, looking for what is good and true while using our critical faculties to assess what is dangerous, evil, or just plain false. It involves learning the language of the culture and remaining gracious within that culture when other Christians judge our decisions. It’s about cultivating a love for the kingdom of heaven in our kids and about the difficult task of listening to them.

Ambassador Families is a kingdom call for “raising children who are equipped

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to transform pop culture instead of watching helplessly as they’re captured and molded by the mores of the day.”

And while there are no right answers, there are some thoughtful steps for bringing about a positive resolution to your family’s mission from God. ■ Carol R. Cool (www.carolcool.com) is a speaker and writer whose topics include winsome evangelism and global Christianity.

RENEWING THE CITY

By Bob Lupton InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Rachel Parker In Renewing the City: Reflections on Community Development and Urban Renewal,veteran urban minister Bob Lupton holds up the book of Nehemiah as a lens to reveal the biblical truths of leadership in urban ministry. Beginning with a thorough and sound exposition of Nehemiah, Lupton proceeds to discuss relevant themes such as leadership, gentrification, vision, and financial stewardship.

It may surprise some readers to learn that many of the contemporary challenges we face in urban America have existed for several millennia. While modern innovation, creativity, and adaptation are always necessary for problem-solving, God’s Word through Nehemiah provides a number of specific, tangible resources for addressing the issues that we tend to puzzle over today.

For example, when Jerusalem was destroyed and left without a protective wall, many of its wealthier residents chose to leave the city in favor of more secure rural environments. Upon the completion of the rebuilt wall, Nehemiah recognized that, while the city would

be protected against external forces, its internal safety would be compromised until the healthy, educated residents returned to the city and brought with them local civic activity. Lupton describes Nehemiah’s dilemma: Commuting clergy, merchants, and weekend worshipers could hardly restore the city to social and economic viability. Nehemiah was painfully aware that a vital urban center had to be filled with permanent, vested residents engaged with self-interest in every facet of city life...The city, in order to be a desirable place to live, had to be rich with educational and cultural interest and alive with vigorous commerce. Such vitality begins with an educated and resourced population.

Sound familiar? Readers will be refreshed by Lupton’s relevant analysis of Nehemiah’s role in Old Testament Jerusalem as well as its contemporary implications, and they will be encouraged by his hopeful and realistic recommendations. ■ Rachel Parker works for Starlight Ministries (www.egc.org/ministries/starlight) and lives in community with her husband and friends in Boston.

REAL SEX

By Lauren F. Winner Brazos Press Reviewed by Erika Bai Siebels Lauren Winner has read many books about sex. But whether Christian or not, she says, they seem out of touch with reality, naïve, and dishonest because they make chastity sound easy.

“The church is falling short somewhere,” Winner writes in her latest book, Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. “We say we care tremendously about premarital chastity, but somehow the tools we give people to live premarital chastity are not working as well as we might hope.”

Winner has previously written about her encounter with Jesus (Girl Meets God) and the wisdom she carries from her Jewish background to Christian practices like fasting (Mudhouse Sabbath). She wrote this book, she says, to challenge the way the church helps people practice Christian teachings about sex, singleness, and chastity.

She does this by talking first about the myths culture teaches about sex— among them, that good sex doesn’t happen in marriage—as well as those taught by the church—that our bodies are bad and premarital sex will leave you feeling guilty. She even touches upon thorny issues like whether how you dress matters (it does, Winner suggests, because our clothes tell stories and it would be irresponsible and naïve to pretend otherwise) and masturbation (which, like pornography, is damaging because it implies that it is acceptable for sex to exist outside of relationship, says Winner).

The key to combating sexual immorality, according to Winner, is to talk about sexuality in terms of community. Like most spiritual disciplines—and Winner considers chastity a spiritual discipline— chastity is better practiced in community than by oneself. Though celibacy and chastity are not the same,Winner believes that we can also learn something from nuns and monks who take vows of celibacy, for it is their communities that help them sustain their vows.

Those readers looking for concrete guidance on the practice of chastity— translated, practically, as abstinence among single Christians and fidelity among those who are married—will find much that is helpful in the last half of the book,

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entitled “Practicing Chastity.” For example, Winner challenges the thoughtful Christian to consider this when forming sexual boundaries:What expectations and habits does a given sexual behavior form in us? If it ultimately proves destructive to marital sexuality, it’s off-limits.

In the end, Christians who want to practice chastity should remember Winner’s wise counsel that chastity “is not the mere absence of sex but an active conforming of one’s body to the arc of the gospel.” ■ Erika Bai Siebels last wrote about restorative justice (March/April 2005) for PRISM. She and her family live in Troy, NY.

THE GREAT GIVEAWAY

By David E. Fitch Baker Books Reviewed by Doug Lee Is the view of justice advanced by evangelicals like Ron Sider distinctively Christian?

Or have evangelicals given away gospel justice for a justice that any American could embrace?

While the practice of justice is only one of several facets of evangelicalism that David Fitch critiques in The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business,Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies, his consistent message is that evangelicals have not taken seriously God’s call for the church to be the church. Fitch claims that the North American church has swallowed modernity’s values of individualism and efficiency and outsourced its fundamental identity and practices to modern culture and its institutions.

Fitch’s chapter on justice effectively

illustrates his concerns. Citing Sider’s articulation of a “holistic” salvation as representative of evangelical social justice, Fitch identifies the marginal role assigned to the church as symptomatic of evangelicalism’s crisis. Although local congregations perform numerous justice ministries in their communities, he questions whether these church-based ministries are as church-centered as those found in the New Testament. Evangelical social justice is primarily enacted by individuals toward other individuals in need.

Even most attempts at Christian community development and legislative advocacy —efforts that aim at tackling structural sin—still possess a fundamental commitment to economic self-sufficiency and individual rights.

While these values resonate for American Christians, isn’t the ultimate result that these ministries incorporate people into the American Dream rather than into the Body of Christ? What has been lost is God’s call to the church to be the foretaste of the kingdom, a wholly new kind of society with a distinctive practice of justice. Drawing on John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and many others, Fitch calls his evangelical brethren to embrace a more robust ecclesiology in which the church’s central practices form a distinctive identity. The Lord’s Supper becomes a place to reject a consumerist worldview and recognize the shared life that allows a congregation to demonstrate “unlimited liability” (a term he borrows from Sider) toward its needy members. Practicing distinctively Christian justice within the church allows Christians to recognize justice and to practice it outside the church’s walls.

BusinessWeek (May 23, 2005) described prominent elements of American evangelicalism by using categories that any capitalist could appreciate and applaud: increased market share, explosive marketing strategies, corporate culture, etc.

The Great Giveaway articulates why this

ought to unnerve us. If the church can be understood in terms that merely mirror the spirit of the age, then it has no hope to offer a world rent asunder by war and disaster. Fitch recognizes that Christ calls his church to far more than this. While his concrete prescriptions for the way forward will not satisfy everyone, this book succeeds at fueling conversation about what it really means to be the church in this time and place. ■

for us to try something new, to take risks with and for him.

According to Bundschuh, following the lead of the Holy Spirit sometimes moves us into uncomfortable church adventures. We discover that life on the edge is exciting and healthy for the church. Without once using the word “paradigm” (Bless you, Rick!), Bundschuh establishes a model for church ministry that fleshes out freedom in Christ. This freedom means change is normal, and it embraces church leaders raised up from Doug Lee serves as an associate pastor of the gutters of daily life. (Check out the Grace Fellowship Community Church in chapter called “Creature.”)

San Francisco, Calif.

The correct answer to the question “Whom is the church for?” is “for the next visitor” or “the next person you DON’T ROCK THE BOAT, run into along your daily adventure.”

CAPSIZE IT Bundschuh reminds us that, though we

By Rick Bundschuh are not to follow the ways of the world, NavPress it would be good (perhaps even vital) Reviewed by Les Cool to know how to speak into the lives of people who are of the world. Many After suffering from pastors have yet to realize that technical the intellectual indi- books and three-point sermons might gestion associated not be the best forms of communication. with a steady diet of Images drive our daily lives. The task of cutting-edge church- leading the church involves capturing growth resources, I the attention of sound-byte thinkers so found Don’t Rock the that our rich heritage of faith can be Boat,Capsize It:Loving passed along. the Church Too Much Some books must be read by everyto Leave It the Way It Is refreshing. Sifting one. Others shouldn’t be read at all. through chapters of interesting (some- This is one of those “everyone-shouldtimes, even weird) ideas that just might read-this” books that might irritate, work in my church left me hoping for upset, and unsettle church leaders detera volume two. mined to return the church to the way The ideas are from the adventures of it was at a time when whatever it was Bundschuh’s own church, and the book people were doing back then fit whatis conversational, not ivory-tower heavy. ever it was the church was doing that There are no “working models” to be made them comfortable. Bundschuh dismembered or critiqued. Rick challenges his readers to imagine a church Bundschuh merely walks the reader open to the lost, whether seekers or through a series of close encounters with non-seekers. ■ a God many church leaders would be uncomfortable serving. His God is cre- Les Cool is the founding pastor of HOPE ative, colorful, and big on forgiveness, Community Church in Newark, Del. trust, mercy, and grace. His God is eager (coolcopy43@comcast.net).

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he says, is a new way of looking at development.

By Jeffrey D. Sachs “In some ways,” writes Sachs,“today’s The Penguin Press development economics is like 18thcentury medicine, when doctors used Reviewed by Carol R. Cool leeches to draw blood from their patients, When I asked for a copy of The End of often killing them in the process.” Instead, Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time Sachs advocates for something he calls at the bookstore and was led to the eco- “clinical economics” because of its siminomics section, I almost cut and ran. I larity to good clinical medicine.

The five lessons the development expected it to be on the new release community must learn from the meditable, since it made the cover of Time cal community are these: (1) human bodmagazine, or maybe in the social issues ies (and national economies) are complex section. But economics? Remembering systems, and “one failure can lead to a the readability of the Time excerpt, I cascade of additional failures”; (2) “comswallowed my fear and bought the book. plexity requires a differential diagnosis,” The End of Poverty is an economics a search for the underlying cause of book, but it is also intelligible and engagsymptoms and an individually tailored ing. Buttressed by stories from his own remedy; (3) all medicine (or economics) economic missions around the world, Jeffrey Sachs defends well his central is family (or world) medicine, requiring premise:We can choose to end extreme an understanding of the “patient’s” interactions with others; (4) “monitoring and poverty by the year 2025.

Sachs’ prescription for ending pov- evaluation are essential to successful treaterty flows from his work as an adviser ment,” including a “rigorous comparison to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan of goals and outcomes”; and (5), medion the Millennium Development Goals cine (and the development community) (MDGs),“a series of quantified and time- requires strong professional standards bound goals to reduce extreme poverty, and ethics.

According to Sachs, the MDGs could disease, and deprivation.” What we need, be met, and extreme poverty eliminated, using only the resources already pledged by the developed world—0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) for official development assistance (ODA).The trick will be getting rich countries to fulfill that pledge; the United States is at the bottom of the donor list, currently giving 0.15 percent of GNP in development assistance. Sachs addresses the theory that “development assistance from private U.S. citizens and the nonprofit sector (faithbased organizations, philanthropies, foundations, NGOs) makes up for much of the shortfall in official aid.” Even with this assistance added to the calculations, the U.S. total rises to merely 0.18 percent.

I was disappointed that Sachs’ book made no reference to the work of faithbased poverty organizations. The only

THE END OF POVERTY

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references to people of faith acting on their principles, in fact, were mentions (including an allusion to the Left Behind books) of biblical prophecy and how it is dangerously influencing American foreign policy. In his closing argument, Sachs says, “In the end...it comes back to us as individuals. Individuals, working in unison, form and shape societies.”

True, but many of us want to do that as part of a community of faith. It would have been nice to have that acknowledged. ■ Carol R. Cool (www.carolcool.com) is a speaker and writer whose topics include winsome evangelism and global Christianity.

JESUS AND POLITICS: CONFRONTING THE POWERS

By Alan Storkey Baker Academic Reviewed by Michael T. Snarr As speculation about Jesus’ politics receives widespread attention, Alan Storkey’s scholarly yet accessible book, Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers, is an excellent and timely resource for those seeking to understand the political context of Jesus’ life and the dramatic political revolution he introduces.

However, not all will be excited to hear what Storkey has to say. One of several key themes in the book is that Jesus rejects all forms of political domination. Storkey argues that relationships built on oppression are not consistent with God’s rule. In contrast, Jesus ushers in a kingdom based on mercy, justice, and reconciliation. Individuals can freely choose to join this movement, live on God’s terms, and experience genuine liberation—a liberation in which not only are the oppressed released from bondage but the oppressor is freed as well.

Consequently, coercive worldly political systems such as fascism and Islam are

recognize the connections among them, when we see that our lives do not consist of isolated events but of experiences lovingly and eloquently interwoven

by God. She is refreshingly honest about her flaws—as an individual, a woman, a mother, and a Christian—and at times you think,“Nobody is really this crazy!”

And then you realize you really are that crazy, too, the difference being that you just don’t let yourself admit it very often. And Lamott gives herself grace: Rather than despairing over her failures, she acknowledges them, laughs at them, often eats chocolate over them, and moves on.

Michael Snarr is associate professor of social Lamott is a brilliant writer who uses and political studies at Wilmington College poignant metaphors to drive her stories in Wilmington, Ohio. home. When describing a writing workshop she facilitated with prison inmates, she says, “I...saw the beautiful rough glass, PLAN B: FURTHER tumbled in the turbulent and unrelenting streams of prison life. I saw that these THOUGHTS ON FAITH

by Anne Lamott men looked out for one another...I had Riverhead Books a sudden desire to send them all my books, all of my father’s and friends’ Reviewed by Rachel Parker books, as well. Also to donate my organs.

Why did these men make me feel like In a follow-up to her previous book, being so generous? Maybe it was all the Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, fresh air we’d brought in, the wind and Anne Lamott offers her readers an auto- the rain and ourselves. It was as if we’d biographical collection of stories that come with an accordion, and as we talked give hope and life, particularly to those and listened, the bellows filled, and let of us who sometimes feel like stranded breath, ours and theirs, in and out past misfits. the metal reeds.”

Lamott pays attention to the world Lamott’s faith is less than traditional, around her, and she is deeply aware of and rather than the standards of “the herself, her flaws, and the redemptive salvation experience” and “the authority presence of God in her and in the world. of Scripture” that many of us rigidly She turns everyday happenings into sto- cling to, her faith is experiential, groundries with purpose, humor, insight, and ed in the revelation of Jesus in the everygrace. Case in point: One entire chapter day stuff of life. There is no question is devoted to the day she won a ham in that her faith is sincere, and readers will the grocery store. be refreshed by her authenticity. ■ Each chapter could potentially stand as its own essay, but when compiled these Rachel Parker works for Starlight Ministries stories form a fabric in the same way (www.egc.org/ministries/starlight) and lives in our own lives do. Our everyday stories community with her husband, friends, and become more meaningful when we four pets in Boston.

key issues heard in discussions about religion and politics. For those that argue that the Bible is otherworldly and does not pertain to contemporary politics, reading this book will cure that misconception. Storkey also gives a thorough treatment of the oft-cited verse from Matthew 22, “Give unto Caesar...”

Storkey’s careful examination of Jesus and politics is essential reading, and not just for political junkies. Since Storkey defines politics broadly to include issues such as how Christians should deal with enemies, poverty, power, leadership, tolerance, and freedom, this book should interest all Christians. ■

to be eschewed. And while democracy reflects some aspects of Jesus’ political principles (e.g., justice and the rule of law) Storkey criticizes its focus on the will of the people rather than on God’s will. He also points to some of the negative results of democracy, such as arms races, consumerism, and poverty.

Jesus and Politics clearly reveals that the politics of Jesus differ from our traditional view of politics. Jesus directs our attention to God, rather than the State (which is accountable to God), and therefore adopts a much more interpersonal approach, focusing on friends, healings, parties, and weddings. Jesus tells us that when we have a conflict with our neighbor we should go to our neighbor and resolve the problem instead of going to court.

The crowds that heard Jesus speak (then as well as now) were surprised by this radical message. To wit, the Jewish people were disappointed when they realized Jesus had not come to liberate them from Rome and restore their national pride. Instead, Jesus deconstructed nationalism and called for reconciliation across ethnic and national boundaries.

Jesus and Politics addresses some of the

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SUBVERSIVE ORTHODOXY

By Robert Inchausti Brazos Press Reviewed by Joshua Andersen The modern church is smack in the middle of a postmodern crux. What many refer to as the “emerging church” is increasingly populated by Christians who find it difficult to resonate with the kind of faith articulated by televangelist programs or dispensationalist shock-novels. So who are the new role models? Who will become the champions of a largely out-of-the-box faith populated by seekers and cynics?

In Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise, Robert Inchausti sketches a colorful portrait of women and men who could very well be considered the mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers of the emerging church.

In four short sections—covering novelists, political activists, artists, and intellectuals/“macrohistorical Christian thinkers”—Inchausti assembles an impressive cadre of pioneers whose orthodoxy pushes relentlessly into the realm of avantgarde orthopraxis. From William Blake to Jack Kerouac to Rene Girard, Orthodoxy offers a peek into the oeuvres of the most important and inspiring mystics and misfits from the last century, all of whom found it impossible to separate their spiritual passions from the social, economic, or cultural issues in which they lived.

One of the great joys of this book lies in discovering the overlap of the modern world’s most unconventional Christian thinkers. Inchausti’s work is a tapestry of faithful outsiders whose visions warp and woof into one another across the centuries.The prophetic creativity of Blake dovetails seamlessly into the post-

know it now—immediately. By means of the Internet and 24-hour cable news, we are better informed than ever about our war-making. But what of the wisdom that makes for peace? Where do we turn for some perspective on the daily death toll—or, better, an alternative to it? We can be thankful for two books written before the present war—one just republished, the other now in print for the first time. Like voices crying from that wilderness we call history, they speak to us with a spiritual sanity that contemporary discourse so often lacks.

Thomas Merton intended Peace in the Post-Christian Era for publication in 1962. His monastic superiors, however, judged the work too political. Obedience meant letting the book go unpublished.

And Merton obeyed—except for circulating mimeographed copies of the manuscript, which was not, at least in Merton’s judgment, technically publishing. So to as many as would listen— peace activists, politicos, even President Kennedy’s sister-in-law—Merton argued that nuclearism meant death, that Christians were called to work against death, that a “just war” was beginning to Joshua Andersen is a freelance writer, an look like an oxymoron, all things conarborist, a student of journalism at Eastern sidered.

Though silenced, Merton did not go University in St. Davids, Pa., and (in his unheard.

“Thomas Merton from his editor’s opinion) a subversive Christian. monastery saw deeply and prophetically into the hardness of our hearts, then and now,” writes Merton’s friend and PEACE IN THE correspondent, Jim Douglass. From POST-CHRISTIAN ERA history of the just war to analysis of

By Thomas Merton Machiavelli, Merton drew on historical Orbis perspective and contemplative wisdom to say what could hardly be said in the THE TRUCE OF GOD early ’60s, what we can rarely say better

By Rowan Williams today: that “exceptional violence is now Wm. B. Eerdmans the norm of our thinking, while charReviewed by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove ity has become exotic.” In other words, that the gospel life is countercultural.

The present war in Iraq and Afghanistan, And faithfulness will be measured much like all war, schools us in obsession with more by what we do than what we say. the latest update, the breaking news “What is needed is a social action that from the frontlines. To know war is to will have the power to renew society Renaissance insight of Goethe. The radical foundation of Christian activism established by Dorothy Day links inextricably to the “Shakespearean” life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It feels as if Inchausti’s subjects are somehow collaborators in the same prophetic mission, “inherently suspicious of worldly power and actively working for a more just world.”

By the end of Orthodoxy, the reader has a sense of momentum, of a cohesive impatience with the status quo shared by women and men over generations, and spilling into our own contemporary world.

Perhaps the only shortcoming of Inchausti’s book is exactly that: It’s short.

Because of the succinct nature of his profiles and the complexity and importance of his subjects, each subversive snapshot begins to envelope the reader’s imagination just as it moves on to the next. But if his book is understood as a deftly written overview, in which each snapshot invites additional research and deeper study, then Orthodoxy should be on the shelf of anyone who has more in common with Jack Kerouac than with Jerry Falwell. ■

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because it springs from the inner renewal of the Christian and of his (sic) Church.”

One who heard Merton’s cry long before this most recent publication is Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury. “A lot of what I have written owes a great debt to the work of Thomas Merton,” he acknowledges in the introduction to his new book, The Truce of God. More than an acknowledgement, it is an indication that Williams has written from the same spiritual center as Merton. Good news for war-weary souls. Indeed, a balm in Gilead.

Beginning with an analysis of fantasy and fiction, Williams diagnoses our spiritual sickness as an impenitence rooted in fatalism. “We continue to see ourselves as victims, driven to threaten retaliation by the horror of our circumstances.” Unable to acknowledge our moral agency, we lack the basic conditions necessary for repentance. Which is to say, we are diminished as humans.

Williams looks beneath the disagreements of our warring to expose our fundamental fracture and proclaim the gospel’s hope: “Repentance is our refusal to close our ears and hearts to the other, our confession that we cannot live without them.”

To point to impenitence as the root of our war-making is also to confess that the peace movement is no more innocent than the governments that move armies or the companies that make bombs.

“If we pray for reconciliation in politics and industry we are—if we are theologically serious—praying for change and newness of life; not only changes of heart, but changes in the structure, the

dramatic script, the concrete possibilities in relations,” says Williams.

We are praying for a whole new world. The good news is that this is precisely the world that Christians believe God has made possible in Christ. The role of the church must be to disturb the false peace that is no peace at all and to imagine a peaceable kingdom. According to Williams, “If we are to answer the charge of fatalism, we must live creatively, showing that suspicion and the selfcritical questioning, even the penitence, that go with it are the doors to a wider vision.”

O Lord, open our eyes that we might see—and live—a new reality. ■

tells about Dacie, a 14-year-old Burmese girl who was tricked into leaving her home to pursue a job in Thailand. Instead, Dacie was handed over to a Thai brothel and on her first night as a sex slave was raped by seven men.

Sex trafficking is a profitable business, so instead of buying these girls’ freedom, as many other well-intentioned but shortsighted organizations do, IJM works with local officials to make it unprofitable—raising the cost to arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment for those who both supply and demand.

On the supply side, IJM agents gather evidence against pimps, brothel owners, and corrupt law enforcers, using the local legal systems that are already in place Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove lives with his (though rarely enforced) and working in wife, Leah, and other friends at the Rutba cooperation with local law enforcement House in Durham, N.C. (newmonasticism. officials to arrest the perpetrators and bring org). He is the author of To Baghdad & them to justice. In doing so, IJM hopes Beyond: How I Got Born Again in to encourage would-be perpetrators to Babylon (Wipf & Stock, 2005). find less risky ways to make a living.

On the demand side, in cooperation with enforcement agents in the United TERRIFY NO MORE States, IJM provides evidence of American

By Gary Haugen sex tourists’ violations overseas (which W Publishing are prosecutable under American extraterritorial jurisdiction laws).The fear and Reviewed by Rebecca Yael Miller shame of being caught and prosecuted at home keep an unknown number of Terrify No More is a poignant account of would-be violators at bay. the lives of young girls systematically sold As philosopher Edmund Burke wrote: into prostitution, and the role that Inter- “The only thing necessary for the triumph national Justice Mission (IJM), founded of evil is that good men do nothing.” by the author, plays in working for Haugen and his colleagues at IJM take their freedom.

Burke’s words to heart. Educated in law Despite its melodramatic subtitle, Young enforcement, social work, and legal studgirls held captive and the daring undercover ies, knowing the facts and seeing the stories operation to win their freedom, Gary Haugen’s firsthand, the good men and women at book is compellingly clear, well docu- IJM cannot stand by and do nothing. mented, and divided into over 50 short “O Lord, you will hear the desire of the chapters of straightforward, readable prose meek; you will strengthen their heart, you will —an important attribute in a book deal- incline your ear to do justice for the orphan ing with such intense subject matter. and the oppressed, so that those from earth may And the subject matter is just that. terrify no more.” (Psalm 10:17-18) ■ Rather than quoting a sterile, albeit staggering, statistic—a million girls are sold Rebecca Yael Miller writes the Washington into prostitution each year—Haugen Watch column for PRISM. PRISM 2005

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CREATION

GOD’S POLITICS

By Alister McGrath Fortress Press

By Jim Wallis HarperSanFrancisco

Reviewed by Janice E. Kirk

Reviewed by Jan Johnson

The Celts called it the “Great Cathedral”; early naturalists found God revealed in the “Book of Nature”; the Bible begins, “In the beginning.”Whatever our experience, the Creation is where the story begins. But when you pick up Alister McGrath’s Creation, don’t expect the standard theological format. This is a book about human response and does not dwell on origins or God’s attributes.

Instead, it invites the reader to venture into the woods, garden, seashore, or mountains to experience the natural world and seek God’s plan.

McGrath uses the words and images from the Western world’s treasury of poetry, art, and Christian writings to help define abiding principles of Christianity.Written for lay people and students, this is practical theology— theological principles combined with the experiences of those who have wrestled with God. Encountering creation triggers wonder and reveals the hand of God in an orderly world.To acknowledge that the earth is the Lord’s is to recognize its intrinsic value. Such a recognition, McGrath reminds us, should motivate human respect for the created order and elicit responsible stewardship of the earth.

We are to be guardians, not exploiters.

Jesus is Lord of Creation and has authority over the natural world. He used nature parables for teaching. The place of humanity in the created order is pivotal: Made in the image of God, we are to “till and keep” the earth. Although dependent upon God, we become distracted, or we defect. When we turn away, the earth suffers. Human failings call for redemption and restoration.

Our saving God sent his Son to redeem

Reading the subtitle of this book for the first time, I heaved a sigh of “Yes!” There in bold print was what I’d been thinking for years. In God’s Politics:Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, Jim Wallis guides our thinking about critical issues in light of God’s truths instead of the familiar either/or, conservative/liberal polarizations.

A faith-based activist and founder of Sojourners, Wallis applies mercy and justice in our response to war and terrorism; peace in the Middle East; global poverty (examining debt cancellation and free trade vs. fair trade); a consistent ethic of life (opposing abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, nuclear weapons, poverty, and racism); and materialism (including an analysis of the hedonism and strategic self-interest promoted by TV shows such as Survivor). Using picturesque stories, statistics, quotations, and solid research, he breaks the right/ left impasse, refusing to choose between personal ethics and social justice. With each topic, readers are reminded that faith should serve the common good instead of private interest or national or corporate self-interest.

Yet this book is much more than diagnoses or complaints. Wallis urges the American faith community to pursue the Old Testament prophetic role of offering clarity about societal problems and hope for the future. This is indeed our legacy, because history has most often been changed by social movements with a spiritual foundation—such as the abolition of slavery, child labor reform, the women’s suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement. Part of our prophetic role, says Wallis, involves moving beyond protest to offering

all creation, humans included.

Illustrated with seven paintings reproduced in full color, this handsome, 90-page book is the first volume in a series on great themes of the Christian faith.The timely text speaks to a faith culture eroded by cults, revived heresies, and cross-cultural trends. A restatement of Chr istian doctr ines is needed.

McGrath’s language is learned but accessible, his discussion engaging and to the point, offering a natural segue to the next topic in the series, the Incarnation.

Creation unfolds a rich fabric of faith and experience that enlarges the Christian walk. Poetry, art, and writing inspired

by Christian themes draw us into greater depths of spiritual encounter. The historical perspective informs and clarifies our own faith. God’s created world is acknowledged as relevant to the abundant Christian life that God planned “in the beginning.” ■ Janice Kirk is coauthor of Cherish the Earth: The Environment & Scripture (Herald Press, 1993) and illustrator of Wild Edible Plants of North America by D.R. Kirk (Naturegraph, 1970). She sketches and paints the American West on camping trips with her family.

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alternatives so that we have something to be for and not just against (such as the Six Point Plan offered by U.S. church leaders as an alternative to the war in Iraq). Instead of backing politicians who use abortion as a political symbol to gain votes, we can speak up for actions that actually reduce the abortion rate.

As a sometimes tongue-tied prophet, I find Wallis’ careful articulation of issues helpful. Because our culture is frankly puzzled by anyone who is not entrenched in the political left or right, we need finely tuned clarity in expressing ourselves, which may then result in others responding to us with that same “Yes!” Thankfully,Wallis also models this clarity without the rancor and self-satisfied, know-it-all attitude with which political ideas are often expressed. By learning to speak the truth with love, we will see this prophetic task become part of the spiritual formation of our soul. ■ Jan Johnson is a writer, speaker, and spiritual director living in Simi Valley, Calif. (www.janjohnson.org).

STREET SAINTS

By Barbara J. Elliott Templeton Foundation Press Reviewed by Heidi Unruh I was in a grumpy mood for some reason when I arrived at a Christian Community Development Association conference several years ago. But stepping into a hotel elevator filled with urban ministry leaders, pastors, and community activists, I was almost instantly transformed as Hebrews 12:1 came alive for me: I was surrounded by a host of witnesses.That experience was rekindled by reading Barbara Elliott’s remarkable labor of love, Street Saints: Renewing America’s Cities.

This hefty volume spotlights those “on the front lines of our communities, serving the broken, the forgotten, the abandoned, and the abused.” (A short companion text, Equipping the Saints: A Guide for Giving to Faith-Based Organizations, offers guidelines to donors and foundations for supporting the work of street saints.) The book’s narrative focus widens from individual “saints” to best-practice programs to city-reaching efforts, effectively conveying the breadth of faith-based social ministries without overwhelming the reader. Elliott spreads an inviting banquet of stories and makes it easy for readers to sample according to their ministry interests.

The emphasis throughout is on “what works and why.” Each case study concludes with a bulleted summary of best practices and results. Illuminating the accomplishments of seasoned activists without intimidating novice practitioners is a tricky balance.While the stories reveal the costliness of authentic compassion, it might have been helpful to include more of the learning curve involved in becoming a model ministry.

The book offers compelling evidence that “faith is a force to be reckoned

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with.” Elliott attends to the spiritual dynamics at the core of street saints’ work as well as the web of other essential factors: strategic vision, innovative program methodologies, dedicated and skilled staff, administrative savvy, a network of ministry partners, and sufficient resources.The case studies demonstrate the diversity of what it means to be “faith-based.” Profiled ministries range from “faith-saturated” programs like Teen Challenge, in which spiritual transformation is an integral component of the curriculum, to organizations in which the spiritual character is more implicit, such as Brookwood Community, a residential facility for persons with handicaps, where a staff member comments, “We don’t trumpet [faith]—we try to live it out.” The concluding chapter highlights different streams of Christian tradition that converge in the call to compassion, from Dallas Willard to Mother Teresa.

An underlying theme of the book is that faith-based organizations play a key role not only in relieving suffering but in sustaining civil society. According to Elliott,America was founded on Christian principles, but today, “The soul of America is in peril.” Elliott asserts that government has marginalized the faith factor in public life and abrogated the responsibility of the church and local community to care for the poor. Faithbased initiatives help to “revitalize a rapidly decaying culture” by encouraging the caring, spiritually grounded relationships that hold society together.

This analytical framework has several flaws.The premise that private faith-based benevolence has shriveled as public welfare expanded is factually questionable.

The argument that civil society is in jeopardy is less compelling after over 200 pages of descriptions of vibrant local charitable enterprises. Moreover, while “relational one-to-one” ministry is critical, Elliott inadequately confronts the

reality of structural injustices that call for prophetic engagement with government. Community organizers and political activists are notably absent from her roster of ministry heroes.

Ultimately, however, Street Saints is not about social policy but personal commitment:“Where the rubber hits the road is where we put our own convictions into action in our own communities, with our own time and money.”

If readers are drawn to the “humility, contagious joy, and invincible spirit” of these servants of God’s dawning kingdom, if reading their stories intensifies Christ’s call “to be vessels of love to people who hurt,” then the book has achieved its goal. ■ Heidi Rolland Unruh is associate director of the Congregations, Community Outreach, and Leadership Development Project, sponsored by Eastern Seminary and directed by Ron Sider.

SCHOOL(S) FOR CONVERSION

By Rutba House (ed.)

Cascade Book (Wipf&Stock)

edness among the people of God. Here, the word “community” has been watered down until it means no more than being an almost faceless member of the many teeming megachurches where the pastor/ visionary sets the goals and the rest of the workers “plug in” to a laundry list of ministries ranging from singles Bible study to Sunday morning parking lot duty.

By way of contrast, School(s) for C o n ve r s i o n : 1 2 M a r k s o f t h e N e w Monasticism, offers a call of true self-sacrificial community that cuts across the individualism, capitalism, and isolationistic currents of our age. In particular the book vehemently insists that our continued detachment from the poor, the alien, and the disenfranchised has caused us to drift further than ever from the voice of God who aligns himself with the least of these.

In 12 essays the members of the Rutba House in Durham, N.C.,—a Christian community founded on the values of hospitality, peacemaking, and discipleship—suggest ways in which this radical call to a monastic community might offer prophetic rebuttal to the currents that are leading us so far from the New Testament ideal. Commitments

to social justice, racial harmony, economic redistribution, and environmental stewardship are broached with a deeper than usual reading of the Scriptures.

My favorite suggestion is that western Christians need to develop a “theology of enough.” Utopic? Perhaps. But if you have ever lamented about the evangelical movement’s resemblance to a bunch of former used-car salesmen trying to develop yet another cult of personality (i.e. megachurch), if you’ve ever wondered how many more worship CDs could possibly be committed to silicon, if you’ve wondered whether there is something more to the Christian life than simply warming a pew, these folks might have some answers.

David Di Sabatino recently finished a documentary film on the life of the controversial evangelist Lonnie Frisbee (www.lonniefrisbee.com).

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO AMERICA

By David Dark Westminster John Knox Press Reviewed by Michael T. Snarr

Reviewed by David Di Sabatino Do Bob Dylan, Herman Melville, The Twilight Zone, David Lynch, Dorothy Day, and President Eisenhower belong together in one book? David Dark believes they do, and to his credit he manages to incorporate them into an engaging and insightful reflection on American culture in his latest work, The Gospel According to Amer ica: A Meditation on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea.Whether Dark is describing America’s prouder moments or its more humiliating ones, he teases out lessons for followers of Jesus.

Despite the many attractive qualities of the United States, Dark identifies some serious problems. One problem he sees is the tendency among Americans to view themselves as being on God’s side.

I write this review from the epicenter of evangelicalism. Orange County, Calif., is home to the Crystal Cathedral monument, the sprawling Calvary Chapel and Vineyard denominations, and Rick Warren’s burgeoning Saddleback Community Church. I regularly drive by the multi-million-dollar Trinity Broadcasting Network, where their “Happy Birthday, Jesus” sign greets onlookers from the 405 freeway. If you were to live and breathe and find your meaning as a Christian in Orange County, as I do presently, you might find yourself awash in a sea of Christian happenings—retreats, conferences, worship concerts, and youth rallies—and yet still wondering why there is such a lack of cohesion and connectPRISM 2005

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Despite the Bible’s frequent call for Christians to be humble and self-critical (especially those in power), Americans tend to view their motives and deeds as unquestionably just. This “groupthink” leads Christians to relinquish their prophetic role as social critics and instead become cheerleaders for American hegemony. “When the church is the blind, uncritical endorser or ‘spiritual’ chaplain of whatever the nation decides to do, it has largely renounced its vocation as the body of Christ,” Dark writes.

Dark digs deep into American culture for antidotes to the ills he identifies. For example, he portrays Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling as an artist eager to use television to challenge conventional thinking and make bold, albeit somewhat veiled, political statements which forced us to look at our shortcomings as a nation.

“Serling would keep the airwaves weird and wonderful while noting how effectively words that couldn’t be uttered by a Republican or a Democrat could be said loud and clear by a Martian,” says Dark.

To his credit, Dark goes beyond criticizing contemporary culture and offers brief portraits of four Christians

who exemplify Christ’s radical message: Dorothy Day, Bayard Rustin,Will Campbell, and Daniel Berrigan. Each fought for social justice, loved the marginalized, and, perhaps most importantly, refused to demonize those they opposed.

Even those in strong agreement with Dark’s criticism of contemporary Christianity will be challenged by his reminder that Christians need to see Jesus in our enemies and to remember that God loves them as much as us. If these reminders don’t make us uncomfortable, he also challenges us to be mindful of our own spin and to consider trying silence instead of giving an immediate response to a political adversary.

I hope that Dark’s broad study will draw the breadth of readership it deserves: Christians and non-Christians, popculture vultures and academicians, baby boomers and Generation Yers. ■ Michael Snarr is associate professor of social and political studies at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio.

TORTURED WONDERS

By Rodney Clapp Brazos Press Reviewed by David L. O'Hara Does God love your body? Does your body have anything to do with your spirituality? Rodney Clapp argues, in his book Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels, that our bodies have everything to do with our spirituality and that neglect of our bodies has led to spiritual impoverishment.

His solution? To revive the classical Christian tradition of “bodily Christian spirituality” that is exemplified in the sacraments.

Although we live in them, our bodies remain mysterious to us, says Clapp.

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love and hate our bodies.Theology often avoids the untidiness of bodies by giving preference to the soul. But is the gospel irrelevant to our bodily life?

When we try to practice what Clapp calls “spirituality for angels” (a faith that ignores the body), we miss out on the good God wants to show us in our bodily life.The surprising upshot of the book is that as we become open to God’s love for our whole person (body and soul) we reconnect with a world that has lost interest in disembodied Christianity.

One of the best features of the book is how Clapp relates bodies to a traditional view of the sacraments. Moving away from stiff and problematic formulations of the sacraments, Clapp shows instead how much the sacraments can mean if we allow Christ to minister through them to both our bodies and our souls.

Clapp’s work appears to be less of a book than a long essay, a word which comes from the French essayer, meaning “to attempt.” Making no pretense of writing the definitive Christian work on embodiment, Clapp instead draws on classics like Augustine and Luther, attempting the very difficult task of getting evangelicals to rediscover bodily Christian spirituality. The book may feel ungainly at first, but I think that’s evidence of how unaccustomed we are to thinking about the significance of the body for our spiritual lives.

Although Tortured Wonders is not a difficult read, it is best read slowly. From Elvis and Charles Mingus to Ash Wednesday and the Eucharist, Clapp’s reflections are like a long soak in a hot bath—good for body and soul alike. ■ David O’Hara is an assistant professor of religion, philosophy, and classics at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.Dak. He is editing The Religious Writings of Charles Peirce and is coauthor of a forthcoming book on understanding myth and fantastic literature.

OFF THE SHELF

SPIRIT AND RESISTANCE

By George E.Tinker Fortress Press Reviewed by Randy Woodley George Tinker is probably the best known Native American theologian in America today. Unfortunately, you can count the rest on one hand, and there are even fewer in the evangelical world. Indeed, there exists a great dearth of Native American leadership today, and Tinker’s Spirit and Resistance: Political Theology and American Indian Liberation guides readers through several key issues surrounding this crisis.

Tinker (Osage) writes from an authentic Native-American perspective, outlining the importance of the relationship between historic Christianity as a colonizing force and the traditional worldviews of the First Nations.

Because the relationship of the church has been intrinsically woven into the politics of U.S. Indian policy, Tinker’s political theology is sobering as he recounts this country’s thoughts and actions towards America’s most mar-

ginalized people.

Among the challenges to Christians in this book is the call to rethink ideas of development and sustainability, nationstate history and spirituality, place as a spiritual concept, and especially the contrast between Native-American worldviews and those of the dominant society.

Tinker’s insight to the concept of repentance as a spatial notion and his take on the reign of God are especially worthy of consideration. Tinker legitimately asks whether or not a person can live authentically as an Indian and a Christian (by some estimates as few as 5 percent of Native Americans are Christians).

Critiques of contemporary issues also emerge, such as liberation theology, environmental issues, and the New Age practice of co-opting Native traditions by those he calls “thin bloods”—people who wish to identify with their newfound tribal heritage. Perhaps the best aspect of this book is that Tinker does not get stuck in the atrocities of the past but moves the dialogue into current issues and considerations.

While it is unlikely that readers will buy every premise Tinker posits, it should not prohibit anyone from buying the book.

Spirit and Resistance is an important piece of the dialogue not only between Native Americans and Christianity,but also between any colonizing people and any indigenous people group. Put succinctly, this book may be asking many of the questions that Jesus is asking the church today. ■ Randy Woodley is a legally recognized descendent of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, president of Eagle’s Wings Ministry (check it out at www.eagleswingsministry.com), and cofounder (along with his Eastern Shoshone wife, Edith) of Eloheh Village for Indigenous Leadership & Ministry Development in Wilmore, Ky.Woodley is currently in the process of obtaining his Ph.D. in intercultural studies from Asbury Seminary.

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UNSPEAKABLE

by Os Guinness HarperSanFrancisco Reviewed by David L. O'Hara Outtakes at the end of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie show dazed survivors trying to explain the carnage they have just witnessed. Problem is, the carnage was caused by vampires, but the survivors refuse to believe vampires are real. As a result, they are unable to explain what happened, and everything they say is comically absurd.

Os Guinness’ new book, Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror, paints a similar picture of our plight.We are witnesses to the century that produced the bloodiest atrocities in history, but we have willfully lost the vocabulary to make sense of it. Many of us, daunted by the challenge of making sense of evil, bury our heads in the sand and hope violent horrors will pass us by.

Others try to make evil disappear by dressing evil up in the language of moral relativism, pop psychology, or progressivist hopes that we’re getting better every day in every way.

Guinness responds to both of these wrongheaded strategies by invoking the famous Socratic injunction,“The unexamined life is not worth living,” and then inviting us to develop an examined response to the undeniable reality of evil in our world.

The strategy of the book is also Socratic.At its heart are seven key questions, enriched by a treasure trove of anecdotes and quotes to provoke the reader to thought. Guinness is an excellent writer and storyteller, and his prose usually carries the eye along effortlessly.

Most inviting is the way he asks questions —not rhetorically, to disguise assertions in false humility, but in a genuine and compelling invitation to examine our lives.

THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

by Charles Marsh Basic Books Reviewed by Rachel Parker

As a philosopher and an academic, I disagreed with some of Guinness’s assertions, but remarkably this did not in the least impede my reading. Guinness is able to write strongly without being strident and to present his view without stinting in his respect for his readers’ ability to think for themselves. In this regard, Unspeakable reminded me of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.

Both books charitably aim to help us examine our lives and to help us ensure that evil does not come about through our action or inaction.

The writing and the content make this an ideal book for a discussion group.

Guinness’ questions are a welcome invitation to see the world as it is, without quailing at the sight, and to find our tongues—and our hearts. ■

When the phrase “civil rights movement” is mentioned, a variety of images might come to mind: dramatic speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr., demonstrations and sit-ins by students with grandiose dreams, bus boycotts, and the like.

However, one rarely discussed facet of the movement—or of any social justice movement—is the vital impact of the church and its prophetic voices. In The Beloved Community:How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, Charles Marsh tells this story which we rarely hear: that faith has been, and continues to be, an integral foundation to the work of activism.

Marsh borrows his title from a phrase that King used early in the civil rights movement to describe a goal that would move beyond changing segregation laws: “The end is reconciliation, the end is

David O'Hara is a doctoral student in Philosophy at Penn State University. He is editing The Religious Writings of Charles Peirce, and is coauthor of a book on understanding myth and fantastic literature, forthcoming from Brazos Press.

redemption, the end is beloved community.” King truly believed that the movement was divinely inspired and that the church was to be the source of the reconciliation that he wished to see in the secular world.

Clarence Jordan,founder of Koinonia Farm, also believed in the church as an agent of reconciliation and attempted to model his vision amongst the members of the farm. Knowing that the movement was only a temporary piece of history, he envisioned a church which, in its proper state, would provide the kind of long-term, redemptive healing that Jesus espoused.

Marsh traces the demise of the movement as it shifted away from its origins in the church and toward secular humanism. He argues that without a spiritual vision the movement had little grounding to sustain it.The goal shifted away from long-term reconciliation and focused instead on legalism alone.

Marsh proceeds into the more modern era and gives examples from the lives of John Perkins, Eugene Rivers, Bob Lupton, Amy Sherman, and others. In the lives of these current activists, we find continued evidence that faith is a necessary inspiration for activism.They acknowledge and commend their predecessors but know that the fight for true reconciliation and healing is far from over. They look with hope to the day when “beloved community” is truly established in our churches in such a way that it flows beyond our church walls and into our broken communities and neighborhoods. In this way, we will see the long-term vision of the early civil rights activists come to sustainable fruition. ■ Rachel Parker is the operations coordinator for Starlight Ministries of the Emmanuel Gospel Centerand and lives in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.

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GLOBALIZATION AND THE GOOD Peter Heslam, ed.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Steve Offutt & Amy Reynolds In Globalization and the Good, a diverse list of Christian leaders, mostly British, survey the globalized world in which they live. While their reactions are mixed, they share a concern for issues of inequality and poverty, and prophetic warnings outweigh hopeful possibilities.

The contributors address the deep structural problems of today’s global economic arrangement. Ann Pettifor (Jubilee 2000 movement), for example, charges global financial institutions with forcing unfair financial regulations upon developing countries, thus removing resources from the poor and putting them on the ledgers of the rich.Warnings are also aimed at globalization’s impact on local communities and individuals.

British theologian Timothy Gorringe states that the imperialistic march of globalization “carries with it a contemptible account of what it means to be human,” while other contributors discuss the troubling impact globalization has on social relationships.

But editor Peter Heslam also provides space for those who believe that good can indeed come from globalization.

Clive Mather, chairman of Shell UK Limited, represents this minority and argues that many transnational corporations, like Shell, act with a moral conscience. In doing so, these companies promote needed growth in impoverished countries—without committing exploitation.

As Heslam notes, globalism is “full of apparently contradictory trends,” and this book’s greatest strength is its ability to show how Christians of integrity apply the same worldview to this topic and arrive at different conclusions.

Unfortunately, a lack of focus accompanies this diversity of views, and certain weaknesses result. The analysis experiences some shallowness at times, but, more importantly, the authors are not forced to dialogue among themselves.

Rather than learning how a director at Shell and the founder of the Jubilee 2000 movement might reconcile their very different points of view, we are treated only to explanations of each position.

Other books are equally suited to that task (readers might be interested in Joseph Stiglitz’s Globalization and Its Discontents).

Globalization and the Good’s unique contribution is in showing how the diverse, globally engaged Christian community can learn to work together toward what professor of theology Michael Taylor states are all Christians’ common goals: resolving the larger problems of poverty and inequality.While the book makes this case strongly, opportunities to lead by example are missed.

In the end, however, Globalization and the Good leaves us hopeful that Christians are committed to change and that change can occur. It reveals glimpses of a movement that can make a difference and in which the reader can participate. ■ Husband and wife team Steve Offutt (Boston University) and Amy Reynolds (Princeton University) are currently Ph.D. students in sociology.

COMIC BOOK CHARACTER

by David A. Zimmerman InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Bryan J.L. Glass If Superman and Jesus Christ got into a fight, who would win?

With that delightfully provocative question, David Zimmerman sums up his potent essay on comic books and PRISM 2005

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Christianity, Comic Book Character: Unleashing the Hero in Us All, in which he reveals how pop-culture icons—reflections of the society that creates them— measure up to the biblical solution to ageold spiritual problems.

By the end of the introduction, it is obvious that the author loves comic books. By the conclusion of the first chapter, it is apparent the author cherishes his faith even more. And through this chronicle of his immersion in and meticulous study of the two, Zimmerman reveals he is eminently qualified to teach us something significant about both.

Throughout this brisk read of 160 pages, he introduces us to the history of the unique art form that first spawned the 20th century’s definition of “superhero” and how the struggle of every classic super-character, hero or villain, embodies the virtues or vices of Western culture as established by its JudeoChristian roots.

Each chapter individually examines the diverse issues afflicting the lives of the colorful characters who inhabit the world of comic book pages.And they’re

not the clichéd issues the uninitiated might expect—cookie-cutter morality, villains, damsels in distress, alien invasion, or the inevitably compromised secret identity—but deeper matters of responsibility, pain, vengeance, anger, loyalty, power, and the drive, fear, or need to don a metaphorical mask, to hide your true face or to masquerade as something you’re not. So insightful are the conclusions drawn that I was disappointed not to find study questions at the end of each section.

Comic Book Character exposes the already devoted comic fan to the basic Christian principles underpinning nearly all these classic tales.At the same time, it challenges the pretensions of the aesthetic elite who often categorize this diverse art form as juvenile male fantasy.

Lastly, it educates the uninformed and may possibly even reassure a concerned parent that this frequently misunderstood medium is not devoid of moral value at its core.

By exploring the only too human sides of these larger-than-life icons, Zimmerman reveals that their epic, sometimes cosmic struggles are but symbols of the universal human condition.

And to offer my own answer to the question posed at the start: Superman would honor the virtue and values he so valiantly defends by bowing his knees before the original Creator, because, as Zimmerman so brilliantly illustrates, even a Man of Steel needs a Savior. ■ Director of the mereBreath Drama Ministry (www.mereBreath.com) at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for 10 years, Bryan Glass has just published his first book, Quixote: A Novel, from Image Comics.

FINDING GOD IN THE MOVIES

By Catherine M. Barsotti & Robert K. Johnston Baker Books

FINDING FAITH AT THE MOVIES

By Barbara Marz Morehouse Publishing

USELESS BEAUTY

By Robert K. Johnston Baker Academic Reviewed by Rick Bonn As the theological discussion of film increases in classrooms and churches nationwide, two recently published books offer guidelines and examples for group leaders, while a third opens a window into the spiritual wisdom of a new generation of postmodern filmmakers.

Finding Faith at the Movies by Barbara Marz and Finding God in the Movies by Catherine M. Barsotti and Robert K. Johnston are heavily stacked toward the practical.They each examine a variety of films, offering Bible verses related to each, questions to pose to small groups, recommended clips, and related thoughts.

Chapters include extras such as background information gleaned from DVD commentaries or other sources that help tease out the films’ meanings.

After offering a helpful review of theological approaches to film, Finding God examines 33 films that exemplify “excellence in storytelling.”These films, according to Barsotti and Johnston, are not overt expressions of faith or faithbased alternatives but films that “allow us to see humanity with fresh eyes… [and] provide the possibility of encounters with God and his creation.” And, they note, they’re often made by nonChristians.

In Finding Faith, Marz interacts with 12 films so personally and devotionally that she stirs in the reader a new desire to see them.And, in titling chapters with a question, such as “American Beauty— Gratitude: How is Beauty a Gateway to Thankfulness?” she suggests an immediate approach to each film. She also PRISM 2005

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provides ideas to spur more vulnerability and interaction in group sharing.

While both books provide a welcome resource for class and church, Johnston’s Useless Beauty is the real treasure for film lovers. Coming on the heels of his successful book Reel Spirituality and out of his courses at Fuller Theological Seminary, Useless Beauty is a collection of essays putting a remarkable run of recent films —American Beauty, Magnolia, Run Lola Run, Monster’s Ball, Signs, and About Schmidt—into conversation with Ecclesiastes. It’s a rich work that yields new insights into the spiritual dimensions of each film and greater appreciation for the often elusive wisdom of this rewarding book.

Johnston plunges into the metaphysical soul of these films, weighing them with the fullness of his faith, humanity, and modernist mind. Few writers on film today are as incisive as Johnston, whose cinematic autopsies penetrate the surface of each, laying structure and symbol bare.

While acknowledging and appreciating the artistry of Kurosawa and the existentialism of Woody Allen, Johnston finds a fuller, more paradoxical examination of life’s meaning in this recent batch of brash,independent-minded films.

He’s one of the first critics to unearth the spiritual dialogue and questing that so intensely rage in the vision of postmodern, Gen X filmmaking. While his writing is clinical, rooted more in logic and labels than heart and gut, this book is an important addition to the religious critique of film and a must-buy for any film lover. ■ Formerly a development director for Reel Spirituality at Fuller Seminary and national marketing director for Art Within, Rick is currently a freelancer writing about the intersection of faith and art.

OFF THE SHELF

LIVING ON THE BORDERS

by Mark Griffin and Theron Walker Brazos Press Reviewed by Abner Ramos At a time when Christianity finds itself in the melting pot of consumerism and relativistic thought, Griffin and Walker call the church to humbly learn from immigrant cultures that have struggled with the loss of their identity in the last 200 years. Living on the Borders:What the Church Can Learn from Ethnic Immigrant Cultures boldly claims that Christianity has gone through its own assimilation process by secularizing to cater to the whims of America’s pluralistic crowds.

The authors suggest that much of Christianity rejected the world in similar fashion to immigrant cultures who responded to the melting pot by “ghettoizing” themselves—that is, moving away from all that is not ethnically pure —and that Christianity is now struggling to find a place from where to speak healing to a country that needs it more than ever. On the other extreme,

Griffin and Walker portray a church that has opened the doors to a “McWorld” culture of consumption, where the gospel is reduced to nothing more than WWJD bracelets and Thomas Kinkade paintings. Both options—the withdrawal and the secularization—offer us impure versions of Christianity and threaten to destroy the sacred traditions of faith we are called to pass down to the next generation.

Living on the Borders suggests an inbetween place as an alternative to the ghetto and McWorld; one where the church can be relevant to the culture and yet remain holy and true to its traditions. By deconstructing assimilation— and its inherent tendency to leave people lonely—we are asked to envision an ethereal borderland where both the sacred and secular exist without compromising Jesus’ call for the church to be a light to the world. Griffin and Walker begin their search of this borderland in their analysis of writings by some of the most influential ethnic minority authors of our time. We are given a glimpse of works by those who have embraced the melting pot, such as Richard Rodriguez, and by those who reject assimilation altogether, like Gloria Anzaldùa. They point to the novels of Sandra Cisneros, which, from borders to fiestas and from community to authorities, strike a balance between ghetto and McWorld. Griffin and Walker believe that Cisneros’ Caramelo (2002) encapsulates the harmony the church must find in order to arrive at the border.

In the end, however, while the authors’ thesis on Christianity’s assimilation has merit, the book lacks cohesion. And while the literary analysis is superb, they do not explain how the themes can be carried out tangibly in the church. The reader is therefore left feeling that the border is an attractive but merely imaginary place, without concrete applications in the real world.

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readers will leave the book with a strong desire to read the immigrant literature it critiques, and that in itself is a service. ■ Abner Ramos works with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at East Los Angeles College, Monterey Park, Calif.

FREEING GOD’S CHILDREN: THE UNLIKELY ALLIANCE FOR GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS.

by Allen D. Hertzke Rowman & Littlefield Reviewed by Rebecca Yael Miller Allen Hertzke’s Freeing God’s Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights is a wellresearched and highly readable book that charts the course of the faith-based movement, both in the United States and abroad, and its unique contribution to the fight for human rights. His thesis is that “the new faith-based movement is filling a void in human rights advocacy, raising issues previously slighted—or insufficiently pressed—by secular groups, the prestige press, and the foreign-policy establishment.”

Hertzke begins by detailing the nature and impact of the global faithbased movement, describing why the movement emerged when it did. He highlights the work of committed individuals who have made a difference— leaders such as Bob Fu, Gary Haugen, Michael Horowitz, Abe Rosenthal, and Robert Seiple, who are influential both in their own faith traditions and in the broader struggle for human rights.

While the American public and its policy-makers need to be made aware of the rise of the faith-based movement and its ability to mobilize activists and voters, and while the American government and the governments of secularized Western Europe need to begin accounting for religion in their halls, the faith-based community—and American evangelicals in particular—need to be wary that we don’t become overconfident in the work that has already been done.

Although issues such as sex-trafficking, slave labor, and especially religious freedom were barely on the public’s radar screen before the faith-based community brought attention to them, there is still much to be done in the global struggle for human rights and many ways to improve the work that is currently being done. Faith-based organizations, and churches in particular, easily become excited about pet issues, but very few work to create environments where contributions are sustainable. Our temptation to offer a quick fix clouds our longterm vision, and we often don’t consider the long-term implications of policies we support.

The voice of the church is becoming more audible as the world begins to take note of the growing influence of the faith-based movement. It is our responsibility to steward this influence to advance the work of God’s kingdom in a way that looks beyond easy solutions to sustainable ones. The role is great, and the promise is even g reater.

Hertzke’s book is a must-read for any person of faith interested in the role and promise of the church in the global human rights movement. ■ Rebecca Yael Miller is director of the Research Associate Program at the Institute for Global Engagement (www.globalengage.org), a faithbased “think tank with legs” that is dedicated to promoting religious freedom around the world.

RELIGION AND THE DEATH PENALTY: A CALL FOR RECKONING Erik Owens, John Carlson, and Eric Elshtain, eds.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Kathleen O’Shea Religion and the Death Penalty:A Call for Reckoning is a collection of essays edited by doctoral candidates in Religious Ethics, History, and Culture at the University of Chicago. With sponsorship from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, they asked theologians, leading public figures in law and politics, and individuals with criminal justice experience to address the issue of capital punishment. Contributors—among them Mario Cuomo, J. Budziszewski, Stanley Hauerwas, David Novak, Paul Simon, and Glen Stassen—were asked to explain how moral and ethical convictions intersect with legal and political convictions and thus inform public responsibility.

Part One, “Faith Traditions and the Death Penalty,” looks at scripture-based historical and contemporary teachings about capital punishment within Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. And Part Two, “Theological Reflections on the Death Penalty,” examines problems and considerations that arise in the capital punishment debate from a theological perspective.

Written by legislators, lawyers, and individuals who have firsthand experience with the criminal justice system, Part Three,“Personal Commitments and Public Responsibilities,” is the most reader-friendly segment and, for a longtime anti-death penalty advocate like me, the most interesting.

In the final chapter, Jeanne Bishop, a criminal-lawyer-turned-public-defender and one of three women featured in the book, addresses the experience of grief and the Christian message of forPRISM 2005

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giveness in light of events in her own life. She recounts the senseless murder of her sister, brother-in-law, and their unborn child, to which a 16-year-old intruder has confessed but never offered any explanation nor expressed any remorse. Bishop had defended many murderers in court before this tragedy struck her family, but after these murders she became a public defender, and, she says, it was her Christian faith that led her to this decision. “The notion that killing another human being—no matter how despicable his act—could somehow honor someone’s memory or heal someone else’s grief, is untrue...my sister does not require the death of another to vindicate her life; it stands unassisted in its beauty and integrity. Killing contradicts everything she stood for. How is justice served through a process that effaces the ideals she embodied?”

Citing the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definitions of justice as “the principle of ideal or moral rightness…the upholding of what is r ight: fairness” and vengeance as “the act of causing harm to another in retribution for wrong or injury,” Bishop questions which of these

definitions explains the death penalty today. In conclusion she asks, “Does healing require forgiveness?” For herself, she answers, “As a Christian I believe it does…. I forgive for the One who asked and taught me to—for God. I forgive for the Author and Perfecter of my faith, Jesus Christ.”

In a book whose intellectual and philosophical expressions can leave the reader questioning what exactly is being said, Jeanne Bishop speaks clearly to the relationship of the human and the divine on the issue of capital punishment. Her straightforward essay leaves no questions about whether capital punishment is right or wrong. Murder is wrong no matter who does it—and this includes the State. ■ Kathleen O’Shea is a social worker, writer, and activist. Her most recent book is Women on the Row:Revelations from Both Sides of the Bars (Firebrand Books, 2000). She is currently working on an anthology of stories of nuns who have befriended death row inmates.

SPIRIT IN THE CITIES edited by Kathryn Tanner Augsburg Fortress Reviewed by Rachel Parker It is unfortunate that a large number of Christians equate church growth only with suburban megachurches and are unaware of the revitalization taking place in the urban church. In Boston, for example, the number of churches has risen 50 percent over the past 30 years while the general population has remained stable. In many cities the Spirit of God is thriving in and expanding from storefront churches where members live in the ghetto and don’t speak English.

In Spirit in the Cities: Searching for Soul in the Urban Landscape, editor Kathryn

Tanner offers readers a hopeful glimpse of spiritual presence in the urban landscape.

Although this presence is often discovered in unexpected locations, it offers transformative potential.

The highlight of the book is Linda Mercadante’s essay in which she talks about the experience of being a citizen of Newark, N. J., a city with a longstanding reputation for crime and poverty. In her essay she reveals that the sense of shame she feels as a citizen of a reviled city has caused her to identify with Jesus, who hailed from Nazareth and was the subject of the biting words, “Nazareth!

Can anything good come from there?”

Mercadante also discusses the concept of “spiritual geography,” suggesting that one’s context be considered a lens through which one experiences God.Therefore, all places—not just those labeled holy— have the potential to evoke the Spirit, although some places may nurture that Spirit while others may kill it.

In his essay on Philadelphia, Mark Lewis Taylor identifies two challenges that confront the contemporary city: alienation of people from the natural earth and alienation of people from each other. However, in the vision of “restorative urban utopia” that he espouses, these PRISM 2005

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threats will be resisted as relationships are restored.Therefore, urban theologians and religious communities are encouraged to take action against structural practices that promote class division and racial inequality (two forms of human alienation), as well as the estrangement of people from nature.

Although several of the essays in Tanner’s book are unfortunately not as well-written and relevant as the two mentioned here, Spirit in the Cities is worth reading for those looking for a hopeful glimpse of the life of the Spirit in the city.Whether readers live in a city, suburb, or rural area, they will be forced to reconsider the traditional ways of seeing and experiencing God and to examine their own surroundings as a potential dwelling for his Spirit. ■ Rachel Parker works for Starlight Ministries, serving men and women who are homeless in Boston.

SEARCHING FOR GOD KNOWS WHAT

By Donald Miller Thomas Nelson Reviewed by J. James DeConto Just a few days before I started reading Don Miller’s latest book, I was going through some of my old college papers so I could submit one along with a g raduate fellowship application. It was a reunion of sorts with some theologians whose ideas had so shaped me that I’d almost forgotten where they came from. In the papers I analyzed Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, George Lindbeck’s

The Nature of Doctrine, and Rodney Clapp’s A Peculiar People. This was my introduction to postliberal theology.To summarize: The postliberals convinced me to stop looking beyond the stories of Scripture and church history for some secret formula that would reconcile me to God and to start living within those stories, listening carefully to the community of characters that I find in the Bible, in the canon of saints, and sitting next to me in the pews.The glue that holds this community together is not a set of doctrines or a prayer repeated after a pastor, but a Person—Jesus Christ. Salvation is an eternity of getting to know this Person by living in his community.

All of this may seem obvious to you, but at one time it was liberating for me. My intellectual search for a foolproof theological system had left me in despair. Suddenly Christian spirituality seemed more like a road trip with friends (a perilous one, no doubt) than a distant destination. I found a kind of Christianity I could share with others, but today I still struggle with how to articulate it. I certainly can’t go around recommending Hans Frei to most people.The writing is so academic and difficult that, when my future wife would ask me what I was reading, I would just call it “The Purple Book” to avoid having to explain what the heck an eclipse of biblical narrative is.

Don Miller presents no such problem.

Searching for God Knows What expresses Frei’s love of narrative, Lindbeck’s suspicion of “propositional” theology, and Clapp’s thirst for community, though Miller gives no indication he’s read any of these guys. Rather than quoting established academic theologians, Miller embodies his own relational spirituality by sharing the wisdom he’s gleaned from his own friends, teachers, and mentors.

What I learned from reading “The Purple Book,” Miller picked up in train stations, coffee shops, and record stores;

somehow, it’s an education that seems more authentic, or at least more interesting to read about.

Aside from a provocative theological take on Romeo and Juliet, this book offers nothing new. It’s a guy trying to figure out his life, clearing away the cobwebs of a false gospel presented by those in the grip of comfort, money, and power.

He takes on self-help authors,TV evangelists, and moralist Republicans, and not with polemics but with gentle, selfdeprecating humor.This is a book I can recommend to friends, Christian or not, who appreciate witty prose and good storytelling but don’t have much use for the esoteric. For the serious academic student of Scripture,Frei is worth a few weeks of reading. For those of us just trying to figure out how to be Christian, spend a couple of hours with Miller. ■ J. James DeConto tries to figure out how to be Christian alongside his wife and daughters, Latino farmworkers, Ultimate Frisbee players, and the folks at the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill, N.C.

TRANSFORMING POWER

By Robert Linthicum Intervarsity Press Reviewed by Andrea Cumbo Dowdy Power. We almost always think something negative when we hear this word; “abuse of power,” “powerless,” even “powerful” connote something less than savory to our modern ears. But in his book Transforming Power: Biblical Strategies for Making a Difference in Your Community, Robert Linthicum turns these associations around and urges us—the church—to gain and use power to change our world.

Using the biblical examples of Ezekiel, Nehemiah, and Jesus, Linthicum shows us how these men obtained power in their communities and then empowered PRISM 2005

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those communities to “seek the shalom for their city.” Linthicum argues that our “calling as God’s people in whatever situation God might have us is to seek that community’s shalom.” Shalom is a Jewish concept that means “being in community with one another.…So when Jews wish each other ‘shalom,’ they are wishing for each other health, security, long life,prosperity,successful completion of an enterprise, [and] victory in war.”

The role of the church, then, is to bring these gifts to the places where God has placed us, and Linthicum gives us some clear direction about how to seek shalom in our own communities.

First, we must seek out relational power (in contrast to dictatorial power often used by governments and corporations) and utilize these new relationships to bring people together to work for a common goal and organize our communities for action.We can, Linthicum suggests, hold house meetings about issues of concern and then research the proper action to take, whether it is finding individuals who have power to change unjust situations in our communities or deciding upon appropriate protests or boycotts that need to take place. Finally, we can then take these actions to hold people accountable, to confront systems and structures that are contrary to the life of the shalom community, and to agitate for justice and peace in our cities.

This book presents a solid, profound, and inspiring case for why the church should take action in our communities.

Any church or small group that wants to know how we, as Christians, can change our world would greatly benefit by reading this book. If more of us take its lessons to heart and take action, we can begin to create a community where people thrive and live in peaceful relationship with one another—the shalom community. ■ Andrea Cumbo Dowdy is a freelance writer, living in San Francisco, Calif.

OFF THE SHELF

MAKING SENSE OF CHURCH

By Spencer Burke with Colleen Pepper Emergent/YS, Zondervan

HOPE AMONG THE FRAGMENTS

By Ephraim Radner Brazos Press Reviewed by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove It was amidst the rubble of the little chapel called St. Damiano that St. Francis heard God’s call:“Rebuild my church which is in ruins.”To obey meant both to acknowledge that the church was fragmented (not the sort of thing good church people ever want to hear) and to accept the task of staying put in the broken body of Christ. Making Sense of Church and Hope Among the Fragments are testimonies from two American Christians who have heard a similar call in the fragmentation of our own time.Their separate locations in a divided church and differing responses in word and action are an instructive introduction to the contemporary conversation about the future of the church in postmodern America.

Spencer Burke, a member of the Emergent Fellowship who worked in evangelical ministries for 22 years, quit his job at a prominent megachurch in the late ’90s to start TheOoze.com, an online message board for discussions about the emerging church in postmodern culture. Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping in Emerging Conversations about God, Community, and Culture is Burke’s “letter, of sorts, back to…the established church,” making sense of his own experience in evangelical America while also making an appeal for others to consider how the church might need to change in rapidly changing times.

The need for change, Burke insists, does

not arise from a simple attempt to be relevant (that ever-present evangelical temptation), but from the realization that “in many ways, the church is the last bastion of modernism in our culture.”

Taking a cue from postmodern deconstructionists (while resisting the urge to tear everything down), Burke wants to “unwrap” the gospel from its church growth packaging and ask again what it means to be church in this time and place called America.

Resisting the modern temptation to give answers in a single, authoritative voice, Burke invites his friends from TheOoze.com into the pages of Making Sense and lets a polyphony of voices ask questions, from “Why do evangelical churches look so much like lecture halls?” to “Where is the church in the AIDS crisis?” Burke doesn’t have all the answers, though he does offer metaphors for new ways of doing church, asserting that “metaphor has the power to help us identify ourselves in new, boundarybreaking ways—ways that facilitate conversation and help us relate to each other as individuals, not stereotypes.”

Just as questions far outweigh answers, metaphor trumps definition in this postmodern attempt to make sense of church in a postmodern culture.

Ephraim Radner’s Hope Among the Fragments: The Broken Church and Its Engagement of Scripture is an effort to resist the same modern illusions that Burke warns against through serious theological reflection on how the church reads Scripture (and finds herself in its narrative).Though Radner’s presentation

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demands a degree of familiarity with the language of theology (perhaps a degree in theology!), his critique of modernity’s handle upon the church is more radical than the debates between left and right usually allow. Hope Among the Fragments strikes at the very root of the church’s captivity to modernity by re-engaging, as Peter Maurin said, “ideas that are so old they seem new.”

“Despair over the Church is the great vice of modern Christianity,” Radner observes,“even (and perhaps especially) when harnessed to strategies of calculated and frustrated renewal.” To hope in the midst of the present crisis, then, is to be countercultural in the most fundamental sense. As an Episcopal priest, Radner sees the brokenness of the church manifested in debates about bad bishops, church marketing, and the definition of marriage. His focus on Anglican problems, though, serves as a window into the predicament of the broader church: “We now stand in the same condition as that of the first Christians after the resurrection.We have no articulated theology, we have no proven structures of authority, no experienced framework for the reading of Scripture that is common to us as a church.”

Yet we have hope.And hope, Radner insists, is not our blind refusal of reality but, instead, our chief means of resisting the ethos of modernity.“The providence of God rules the church,” Christians confess, “and its travails are given to us as justice and mission to be received in humility and repentance.” Radner displays how a figural reading of Scripture, such as we may learn from the church fathers, teaches us just this sort of perspective because it trains us to think of ourselves as Israel—sometimes in exile and sometimes in Zion, but always in the providential care of God.The “emerging church,” then, whatever metaphor we use to describe it, will be faithful to the extent that it patiently remembers the good news that God has reconciled the

world to himself in the “one new man,” Jesus Christ. Ultimately, to reject the hubris of modernity is to confess that the church’s only hope is that, in the end, God will resurrect us from the dead. ■ Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove lives at the Rutba House in Durham, N.C., and directs the New Monasticism Project (www.newmon asticism.org). He is the author of To Baghdad and Beyond: How I Got Born Again in Babylon (Cascade Books, forthcoming).

BREAKING THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

By Donald E. Messer Fortress Press Reviewed by Carol R. Cool If your goal, as Donald Messer states his in Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis, is “to motivate and challenge Christians…to take leadership and form partnerships with Christians around the world in the struggle against HIV/ AIDS,” it would seem wise not to alienate a large number of said Christians early on in your book. But that is a risk that Messer, professor of practical theology at Iliff School of Theology, is apparently willing to take.

First, Messer reveals his own theological understanding of homosexuality, which he admits is a “minority view within Christianity,” by quoting United Methodist Bishop Melvin E. Wheatly: Homosexuality, quite like heterosexuality, is neither a virtue nor an accomplishment. It is a mysterious gift of God’s grace communicated through an exceedingly complex set of chemical, biological, chromosomal, hormonal, environmental, developmental factors totally outside [the homosexual’s] control. His

or her homosexuality is a gift—neither a virtue or a sin. What she/he does with their homosexuality, however, is their personal, moral, and spiritual responsibility.Their behavior as a homosexual may therefore be very sinful—brutal, exploitative, selfish, promiscuous, superficial.

Their behavior on the other hand, may be beautiful—tender, considerate, loyal, other-centered, profound.

Since 66 percent of born-again Christians believe homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle, according to The Barna Group, many will put down the book right there.

But if Messer’s own perspective isn’t enough to put many evangelicals off, he also argues that saying you will “love the sinner while hating the sin” shows “moral superiority and exclusiveness” and is “a judgmental spirit [that] separates us from the very person with whom we want to stand in solidarity.” I found that a slap in the face not only to conservatives who want to help in the fight against AIDS but also to those who minister to murderers and rapists in prisons, loving them to Christ but never condoning their sin.

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It also condemns those who work with alcoholics, lovingly attempting to deliver them from their self-destructive behavior.

I’m afraid many will give up at that point and miss the important statistics and practical action steps Messer sets forth. Regardless of your position on homosexuality, make yourself read this book. Messer becomes more gracious as the book unfolds, encouraging churches and individuals to get involved in areas where they can do so without violating their values. He cites Samaritan’s Purse as a positive example. And he provides a game plan for mobilizing the church to fight this global scourge that is so much bigger than our stands on homosexuality.

Messer insists that we need to overcome our “it’s-not-my-problem” attitude.

People are dying, 7,000 a day, and there are 14 million orphans in our world because of HIV/AIDS. And the epidemic will only get worse—14,000 new people are infected every day.

We need to stop asking how someone got HIV/AIDS and start loving each person as Christ does, respecting his or her worth and dignity. As we seek to make personal connections with those suffering from this disease, we will begin to break down walls of stigmatization and discrimination that keep people from getting the help and comfort they need.

Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence contains chapters on women, children, and HIV/AIDS; the ABCs of prevention; the special needs in the developing world; and the need to ensure care, testing, counseling, and treatment. Messer outlines commitments each individual, each local church and denomination, as well as the worldwide church can make to begin to turn the tide on this disease.

And Messer is right. The global church needs to wake up and work to eradicate HIV/AIDS. We cannot sit in silence. Governments and health organ-

izations cannot fight this alone. And as we help, we have an opportunity to minister to Christ as we minister to people afflicted with HIV/AIDS. Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence can show us how to begin. ■ Carol R. Cool (coolcopygirl@comcast.net), from Bear, Del., is a writer and speaker focused on service and lifestyle evangelism.

SPEAKING MY MIND

By Tony Campolo W Publishing Group Reviewed by Vincent Bacote Agent provocateur Tony Campolo addresses primarily evangelical Christians in his latest book, Speaking My Mind: The Radical Evangelical Prophet Tackles the Tough Issues Christians Are Afraid to Face.

Campolo’s motivation springs from his belief that the most controversial issues —sexism, militarism, homosexuality, our responsibility to the poor, ChristianIslamic relations,the relationship between faith and science—must be addressed if evangelicalism is to be transformative

today and remain so into the future.

One potentially confusing aspect of the book comes from Campolo’s failure at the outset to distinguish sufficiently evangelicals from fundamentalists. He accurately portrays the distinction between the two groups in their initial historical development, but the advent of a fundamentalist social conscience leads him to find little to distinguish today’s evangelicals from their more rigid and legalistic forbears. More clarification of the very real remaining differences between the two groups would be helpful.

When addressing the various issues, readers will be provoked, challenged, and in some cases angered by Campolo’s approach to the issues.The chapter on sexism makes a good case for full equality for women in the church and society but would be more convincing to evangelical traditionalists and complementarians if the discussion on 1 Timothy 2 addressed the rooting of male authority in the church in Creation story. On homosexuality, Campolo opposes gay marriages and finds intentional celibate covenantal relationships insufficient but advocates compassionate Christian community for those who struggle with same-sex attraction.The chapter rightly calls evangelicals to repent of hateful behavior but needlessly emphasizes extreme examples of evangelicals at their worst on this issue.

Is there a second chance for those who die without Christ? Campolo asks.

While explicitly not a universalist, Campolo finds the view of George MacDonald (whose writings exerted great influence on C.S. Lewis) attractive because it allows a second chance without compromising God’s justice.Though attractive, MacDonald’s view is unconvincing, particularly when set against the totality of Scripture. More helpful are Campolo’s chapters on science (which carefully outlines the beneficial relationship it enjoys with faith) and on Islam (which explores that religion’s positives PRISM 2005

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and negatives and encourages charitable Muslim-Christian interaction).

Regardless of the extent to which one disagrees with Campolo, one cannot question his evangelical commitments.

He raises issues that no serious Christian can afford to circumvent, and, where disagreement exists, Campolo’s prophetic book will act as an excellent catalyst for further thoughtful evangelical engagement on vital concerns. ■ Vincent Bacote is assistant professor of theology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., and the coeditor of Evangelicals & Scripture (InterVarsity Press, 2004).

AN EXPENSIVE WAY TO MAKE BAD PEOPLE WORSE

By Jens Soering Lantern Books Reviewed by David L.O’Hara Two thieves recently requested that a federal judge give them longer jail terms.

They explained that longer terms would land them in federal prison where they could work on their college degrees and take part in the methadone program, both of which have been shown to decrease recidivism. Doesn’t it make you feel good to be part of a nation that seeks to help its prisoners live better lives?

It should—if you’re a Canadian. Bellerose presides over a court in Saskatchewan, not in the United States (“Two B.C.Men, So Impressed By Federal Services, Ask Judge For Lengthy Jail Terms,” in National Post, December 30, 2004).

Unfortunately, as Jens Soering argues in An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse:An Essay on Prison Reform from an Insider’s Perspective, we Americans prefer to incarcerate rather than rehabilitate our criminals.

Soering’s book is a lucid account of prison from the inside. Soering is both

Soering’s weakness. He can come across as overconfident in his own research and can be a bit flippant about attitudes held outside prison walls. Still, he writes clearly and powerfully, with the passion of a man sentenced to die in a cage. His book is not only an appeal to those on the outside to make a difference for those on the inside; it is also a starting point for those who are ready to wake up and do something about making bad people— and a bad prison system—better. ■ David O’Hara, a graduate student in philosophy at Penn State University,is doing research on restorative justice and incarceration.

erudite (his work has appeared in Sojourners, American Conservative, and National Catholic Reporter, as well as in this issue of PRISM) and profoundly spiritual (Soering’s first book was on the practice of centering prayer). He also happens to be serving two life sentences in Virginia.

Soering argues that the U.S. prison system has been built on the failed rhetoric of being tough on crime. We know how to reform criminals and truly reduce recidivism rates, but we prefer to lock people up, says Soering. We have 4.6 percent of the world’s population but 22 percent of its prisoners—the highest rate of incarceration on the planet. Our prisons breed disease and violence.

Sentences are increasingly long, and programs for rehabilitation are decreasingly helpful.Are we being tough on crime, or are we just being tough on criminals?

The great irony, Soering says, is that it costs us far more to incarcerate criminals than it would to prevent crime.

Soering is not above repeatedly provoking his American readers to shame by reminding us how far we lag behind other industrialized nations. Each page bulges with statistics to back up his points.

Sometimes this provocation is

LOVING HOMOSEXUALS AS JESUS WOULD

By Chad W.Thompson Brazos Press Reviewed by Andrea Cumbo Dowdy Chad W.Thompson’s new book Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would: A Fresh Approach challenges Christians to realize where we have failed to share Christ’s love with gay people in our community.

As Thompson says, “we must use not only our words but also our hands, feet, minds, hearts, voices, time, resources, and attention to show our love to people who identify as LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,Transgendered].”

Thompson beg ins his book by detailing his own struggle with homosexuality, explaining that he has been attracted to other men since the age of 12.

He then goes on to explain that, thanks to therapy and an opportunity for nonsexual love from Christian men, he is no longer gay. As an “ex-gay,” to use Thompson’s term, he understands the pain and loneliness that come from rejection, and he hopes this book will help Christians embrace with loving arms even those whose lifestyles may not PRISM 2005

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seem correct to us.

While Thompson’s message is certainly one Christians need to hear, this book reveals a limited perception that could cause damage in some areas even as it brings healing in others. While challenging the homophobia and judgmental spirit that Christians often exhibit in their relationships with homosexuals, Thompson’s book continues to reinforce many of the stereotypes and assumptions that Christians embrace.

Thompson argues that “anything that creates a sense of disconnection between a child and his or her gender can cause homosexuality.”This argument reinforces the idea that people are gay because they didn’t have a good relationship with their father (or mother), a view that many psychologists and homosexuals themselves wholly refute (although, admittedly, the jury is still out on genetic predisposition for homosexuality). Additionally, Thompson gives simplistic, and somewhat sexist, advice as to how a father can help “prevent” his son from growing up to be gay by encouraging gender-conforming behavior:“It’s okay for a boy to play with Barbie for a little while, but he should be given a gentle ‘nudge’ in the direction of the Ninja Turtles or G.I. Joe.” Uninformed statements such as this undermine Thompson’s deeper intention for the book.

Thompson took on a difficult subject with vulnerability and honesty, offering his own experience and thoughts on a topic with which the church has struggled for years, and his argument that the church should be more loving and open to homosexuals is one that the church needs to hear. However, his own simplistic ideas do more to reinforce Christian homophobia and separation than to help us see how we are like homosexual people and thereby help us to love them as Jesus would. ■ Andrea Cumbo Dowdy is a freelance writer living in San Francisco.

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BECOMING A WORLD CHANGING FAMILY

by Donna S.Thomas Baker Books Reviewed by Pamela Robinson In Becoming a World Changing Family: Fun and Innovative Ways to Spread the Good News, author Donna Thomas issues the clarion call for Christian families to participate in Jesus’ Great Commission:“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28: 19).

As founder of Christian Vision Ministries (www.cvministries.org), Thomas has followed Christ’s call since the 1960s, ministering and helping others to minister in the United States, China, India, Russia, Egypt, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and across Latin America.

Her book provides imaginative and heartfelt ideas for contr ibuting to Christian missions that any Christian family can apply.

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She encourages us, for example, to join in the mission field right at our doorstep. Since America is a multicultural nation,Thomas reminds us, we have the opportunity to witness to and befriend a wide range of ethnic groups, especially those devoted to Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. Simply inviting an international student from the local university into our home offers an exciting and rewarding occasion to respect another culture while sharing our own Christian way of life.

Likewise,Thomas advises us to visit the worship centers of religions other than Christianity to better understand the nature of that worship, hence opening a door for a reciprocal visit to our own church and, more important, to strengthen our conviction in the great, unique miracle of love with which Christ, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” blesses humans and meets our needs.

Thomas’ vision is multicultural without becoming ecumenical in the pejorative sense of the word. She writes: As you and your kids examine these religions, plus the New Age movement with its seeking for God in several different ways, your children will begin to understand the need for all people everywhere to know the one true God. This is an essential time to discuss the attributes of God, who is loving, unchanging, all knowing, and supreme, and yet who is personal and cares about us as individuals.

He cares so much that he adopts us into his family. No other religion can make that claim.

Chock-full of practical recommendations for Christian missions, each chapter ends with a series of suggestions and questions:“What You Can Do Today as a Family.”The book will also lend itself to study by adult Sunday school classes, since it offers a natural focal point for PRISM 2005

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mission projects taken on by small groups as well as families.

Countering the reluctance of many Christians to go outside our comfort zones to experience other cultures or to share our faith with people who may not be open to it,Thomas reveals what we have to gain—and enjoy—by obeying Christ’s commission. Stepping out, she affirms, enables us to clarify our own faith through exposure to those of other faiths and to gain friends and experiences that enrich us enormously along the way.The idea is that we win others to Christ by living our lives as a Christlike example: acceptance of, appreciation for, and love for all. She leads us with a clarity, simplicity, and humanity born of God’s grace.

Like her, we, too, can delight to “go and make disciples of all nations.” ■ Pamela Robinson is a freelance writer living in Mt.Vernon, Ind.

SPEAK WHAT WE FEEL

By Frederick Buechner HarperSanFrancisco Reviewed by Rick Bonn In Speak What We Feel: Not What We Ought t o S ay , Freder ick Buechner, author of more than 30 fiction and non-fiction works, tenderly traces the bleeding from life to page of four writers who have most influenced him.Turning from his own dark shadows, especially the suicide of his father 65 years ago, Buechner finds startling encouragement in their greatest works and suggests that “the profane is not always the antithesis of the sacred, but sometimes the bearer of it.”

This very personal literary study argues that only in honestly facing our

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grief can life spring from death.That Buechner does so himself, and that he leads us to writers who do the same, is a great gift in these times when rhetoric is built on denial, slogan, and cliché. His book is both wrenching and uplifting and becomes more poignant with each new sadness in our own world.

In his essay on William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Buechner concurs with the contention in the play’s concluding words, that nothing is more crucial than for us to take the sadness of our times into account without equivocation or subterfuge; in other words, to speak the truth rather than what we think we ought to say.

Writing about the latter sonnets of Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, Buechner states that he faced “the worst of his darkness with almost unbearable honesty.” In a “bent world where night is coming,” Hopkins spoke of Christ broken, as in a bird’s buckled flight.

Under temptation’s lure he wrote of baptism sparked by naked boys in a swimming hole. And out of crushing grief he proclaimed,“[L]et joy size / At God knows when to God knows what…”

In his meditations on Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Buechner points out that the American author and humorist was surrounded by death. As a youth he witnessed two murders; three of his siblings died later; and his daughter died in adulthood.

Though a world celebrity,Twain knew his white suit was “full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”And yet, says Buechner, speaking a truth that was simultaneously tragic and comic in Huckleberry Finn allowed Twain to avoid being swamped by loneliness and to pilot “a course around the darkness behind and ahead.”

In his essay on G. K. Chesterton’s detective fantasy, The Man Who Was Thursday, Buechner cites the author’s own recollections of the occult-darkened collegiate years when he “encountered horror…and managed to stare it down.”

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Far from friends and family, he nearly went mad. But the writings of Walt Whitman and Robert Louis Stevenson preserved his life, holding the fort until gladness came again.

Bearing the weight of his own sadness and bleeding his own agony onto the page, Buechner shows us the sacred to be found in writers who spoke their loss. “Take heart,” Buechner says, “even at the unlikeliest moments. Fear not. Be alive. Be merciful. Be human.And most unlikely of all: Even when you can’t believe, even if you don’t believe at all, even if you shy away at the sound of his name, be Christ.” ■ Most recently a national marketing director for Art Within in Atlanta, Rick Bonn is now a freelance writer based on the Oregon coast, focusing on the intersection of culture and faith.

THE FUTURE OF HOPE Miroslav Volf and William H. Katerberg, eds.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by David L. O’Hara The modern age was characterized by scientific optimism and concomitant “messianic” and utopian social hopes for a br ight f u t u re.

M o d e r n i t y p ro claimed the gospel of progress. But recent years have raised doubts about modern hopefulness.

Science has improved medicine, but it has also “improved” our weapons, and politics has failed to cure our social and economic ills.The future is uncertain, the present is ambiguous, and authority is increasingly suspect. Welcome to the postmodern age.

Miroslav Volf and William Katerberg’s PRISM 2005

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The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition Amid Modernity and Postmodernity is a collection of essays by 11 scholars that address the waning of hope in our slow shift from modernity to postmodern culture. Against the backdrop of this shift, The Future of Hope attempts to articulate Christian hope for a new generation.

Theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s essay alone is worth the price of the book.

Moltmann argues that Christian hope does not mean abandoning concern for this world while hoping the next will be better. Rather, invoking the original meaning of “ecumenism,”Moltmann says the church has the responsibility of “housekeeping”—that is, striving for the “goal of a habitable world for a humanity that is at home on this earth.”Yet modern thought is rife with tacit biases based on false hopes that impede such housekeeping. These false hopes reverberate in contemporary globalization, and thoughtful Christians must challenge them.

Other essayists include Nicholas Wolterstorff, who argues for a confident but humble Christian hope as the ground of social justice, and John Milbank, who contrasts “Augustine’s counter-empire, the city of God” to the forces of globalization. Philosopher James K.A. Smith argues that postmodern hopefulness, like that offered by postmodern philosophers Richard Rorty and Jacques Derrida, is really no hope at all. Daniel Johnson, a Gordon College sociologist, analyzes our “appetite for apocalyptic narrative” and the evangelical propensity to fear the decline of culture. Looking at the rhetoric of fear in evangelical literature and in American culture more broadly, Johnson wonders if we haven’t forgotten Christian hope altogether.

There are too many good essays in The Future of Hope to review them all here, so let these words from the preface suffice to entice you to read this book: “If Christians do not [rejuvenate their heritage of living hope], they will not

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only fail to explicate adequately their own sources of hope for today but also fail to adequately prepare communities of Christian conviction in their proper mission to the wider culture.” ■ David O’Hara is a graduate student in philosophy at Penn State University and coauthor of a book on understanding myth and fantastic literature (forthcoming from Brazos Press).

TREASURE IN CLAY JARS

By Lois Y. Barrett et al Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Steve Offut and Amy Reynolds A “missional church,” declare the authors of Treasure in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness, is one that both proclaims and embodies the gospel of Christ. But what, really, do they mean by this? In a subculture awash with similar declarations, it sounds suspiciously like a reinforcement of the evangelical status quo.

It is not. Far from supporting the current trends in church strategy, Lois Barrett and her colleagues argue for a

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redirection of the local church.They base this new direction on God’s call for the church to participate in his reconciling mission to the whole world.

How churches participate in this mission is critical. The authors avoid advocating values such as efficiency and resource maximization. They instead counsel churches to orient all aspects of their communal life toward God’s mission, focusing on such fundamental elements as discipleship, Bible study, and practices of worship.

God is the center of the missional church, but relationships and reconciliation are its primary organizing forces.

Normal church dualisms, such as evangelism versus social justice or outreach versus enriching congregational life, collapse in this paradigm. Because the purpose of the church includes crossing relational and social boundaries, evangelism and helping one’s neighbor become organically linked processes, while reaching out becomes a key component of a rich and vibrant congregation.

There is a strongly countercultural component to this vision of the church.

Because community (in the form of the church) is the unit through which God’s kingdom breaks into history, there is little room for individualism.As a result, ambitious church leaders desire less to be the next “hero of the faith” and more to be an enabler of the community he or she serves. Successful young professionals prioritize the local church over their jobs when career goals come into conflict with community needs. And church members become more willing to take on personal risk, financial and otherwise, in order to pursue the missional goals of the church.

Treasure in Clay Jars is the latest contribution to an ongoing dialogue within The Gospel and Our Culture Network (www.gocn.org), an entity that seeks innovative ministry techniques in a postmodern society.The missional church concept had been previously discussed by PRISM 2005

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these authors, but the important contribution of Treasure in Clay Jars is its unveiling of eight patterns that are now emerging in missional churches. These exciting new patterns are,perhaps,the first indications of how God will use this budding movement to shape his kingdom. ■ Steve Offutt (Boston University) and Amy Reynolds (Princeton University) are currently Ph.D. students in sociology.They are married and live in Princeton, N.J.

DOES CHRISTIANITY TEACH MALE HEADSHIP? David Blankenhorn, Don S. Browning, and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, eds.

Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by William Allison I remember a childhood visit to my grandparents, when I casually smashed a vase. My Presbyterian grandmother laid down her severest threat: “Your grandfather shall hear of this.”

I squirmed the rest of the afternoon until his return, whereupon the gentle man administered a mild spanking.That day I learned a valuable history lesson at Grandpa’s hand:Victorian couples practiced male headship.

Reading Does Christianity Teach Male Headship? brought back strong memories of that era of clear-cut gender roles.The first half of the book is composed of essays by six distinguished Protestant and Roman Catholic (both male and female) scholars who argue that authentic Christianity does not profess the spiritual superiority of men over their wives.

The second half of the book gives voice to five critics of “equal-regard marriage,”

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establishing a vigorous debate over gender roles today.

The book opens with Don Browning’s “The Problem of Men,” which defines equal-regard marriage as equal access to the privileges and responsibilities in both public and domestic spheres. Browning wrestles with the chronic issue of the disappearing father.

One-third of U.S. children live apart from their biological fathers. Browning asks if demotion from headship may contribute to loosening men’s commitment to marriage and family.

Less equivocal, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen (“Is Equal Regard in the Bible?”) believes that the old cultural mandate of male headship pandered to the “wor st impulses of our f allen natures.” As Paul wrote, “There is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

However,Van Leeuwen finds no biblical endorsement of undifferentiated androgyny either. “Gender is never a completely social construction,” she states. According to Van Leeuwen, conservative Christians, including many evangelicals, have no angst about gender roles; they demand that men take responsibility and swear allegiance to the family, and in exchange will be rewarded with a “soft patriarchy,” a form of benign male family headship.

Bonnie Miller-McLemore, writing in “A Feminist Looks (Askance) at Headship,” defends equal regard, countering that for victims of domestic abuse soft patriarchy is “too high a price to pay for maintaining ‘stable’ family life.”

Every writer finds a basis in Scripture.

Some find equal regard in Ephesians 5 and Galatians 3.A critic of equal regard, Robert Godfrey in “Headship and the Bible” argues,“The teaching of the Bible about male headship is… clear and consistent…Male leadership is pervasive.”

No apology there.

Ultimately, the question raised by the title remains open. Nevertheless, Male

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Headship is informative on the critical issues facing Christian marriages and families and is accessible to the lay reader.This book should be a focus for study groups around the nation, be they men’s, women’s, or—most stimulating —mixed. ■ A retired school administrator,William Allison writes about history, faith, and travel from his home in Narberth, Penn.

HOMAGE TO A BROKEN MAN

By Peter Mommsen Plough Publishing House Reviewed by Donya Coldwell Homage to a Broken Man:The Life of J.Heinrich Arnold is not only surprisingly well written and objective for a biography penned by the subject’s relative, but it is also the compelling life story of a singular man.

J. Heinrich Arnold (1913-1982) was the son of Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof (“place of Brothers”), a Christian community that has grown worldwide since its inception in Sannerz, Germany, more than 80 years ago. Peter Mommsen, a grandson of Heiner (as he was known to friends and family), delineates the tumultuous life of this deeply spiritual individual.

Courageous yet contemplative, J. Heinrich Arnold was an author, evangelist, and sometimes-reluctant spiritual leader. He loved his family, his community, and Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion,” but most of all he loved God. His dedication to living a Bible-based life would take him from Europe to South America to the United States.The absence of his father, death of his child, betrayal by colleagues, mysterious hallucinations, and work in a leper colony broke him both emotionally and physically—but never spiritually.As Thorton Wilder once wrote, PRISM 2005

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“In love’s service, only the wounded soldiers can serve.” In the case of J. Heinrich Arnold, the deeper the wound the harder he strove to live and share his faith.

Disappointingly, Homage contains few photographs. Mommsen explains this by saying that he didn’t want to “distract the reader from the main thrust of the book, the story of one man’s search to follow what God called him to.” But Mommsen’s narrative is so dynamic that the engaged reader yearns to “see” some of the people and places along J. Heinrich Arnold’s rich journey. ■ (To learn more about Bruderhof communities, go to www.bruderhof.com.)

Donya Coldwell is a consultant for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council. Well acquainted with the art of biography, she also presents one-woman dramatic programs, personifying “Phenomenal Women” such as Maria von Trapp and Marian Anderson (NewMuse@comcast.net).

THE HEART OF RACIAL JUSTICE

By Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Jenell Williams Paris Might God be calling you to be part of the reconciliation generation? The Heart of Racial Justice: How Soul Change Leads to Social Change inspires me to say, “Yes!” Brenda Salter McNeil and Rick Richardson offer a fresh vision of reconciliation, a state of “racial justice, built on reconciled relationships.”

Their “healing model” of racial reconciliation moves beyond two currently

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dominant Christian models: the relational model, which believes social change happens one life at a time as white people form friendships with people of color, and the institutional-change model,which focuses on altering power relations among social groups and institutions.The healing model includes the best from each of these models and adds a strong spiritual dimension. One chapter is devoted to each step of the healing model: worship, affirmation of true ethnic identity, receiving and giving forgiveness, renouncing idols,and developing ongoing changeoriented partnerships.

The second step, for example, is the affirmation of true ethnic identity, which involves understanding false identities that people carry. White people sometimes try to be “color-blind,”“hip whites,” or to carry white superiority. People of color

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sometimes develop rage-filled, victim, or model-minority identities. McNeil and Richardson say ethnic identity is part of God’s creation and each person may thank God for the “goodness, beauty, and dignity” of his or her cultural background.

Identity in Christ is even more important than ethnic identity, however, and God helps us embrace and live out true human identity—as a child of God living on this earth within a particular ethnicity.This chapter ends, like the others, with discussion questions and prayer directed at taking personal action.

The book ends with a “Reconciliation Generation Commitment” that calls individual readers to sign a pledge of commitment toward racial reconciliation and the healing model. It begins, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to bridge the dividing walls

of hostility that are tearing our world apart.” This commitment, especially if made in a church or small group, will help people bond around a specific set of practices and commitments. Bible studies, in an appendix, will help make connections between Scripture and the healing model.

The Heart of Racial Justice is true to its subtitle, How Soul Change Leads to Social Change.The book is holistic and is both challenging and gentle. It calls the reader to receive personal healing from God and then to bless our broken world by living in healing ways. ■ Jenell Williams Paris is associate professor of anthropology at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn. She is author of Urban Disciples (Judson, 2000) and Birth Control for Christians (Baker, 2003).

discussions.

Then I think what has to happen is that it can’t be up to pastors. Church members have to speak up and say, “I see things differently than you, and I hope you can love and respect me and I’ll treat you with love and respect.”We need to create space for dialogue. When there’s only monologue nothing changes.

It starts with some loving diversity. This is one of our great problems in the conservative Protestant churches. We have long doctrinal statements about every little thing that people agree with—otherwise they can’t belong—but then as a result we don’t have much practice in diversity. It was really necessary in the early church.With Jews and gentiles, people of all cultures coming together, they had to deal with eating meat sacrificed to idols, circumcision. They were dealing with diversity.That’s what 1 Corinthians 13 is about: not marriages, but about Christians getting along with diversity. This is a chance to grow up and mature in our faith. For starters it might be good for us all to start reading 1 Corinthians 13, but let’s actually take this seriously in the way we treat one another. ■

Practicing and Loving Diversity continued from page 30.

There’s deep theology involved in this, because, first of all, a Muslim or a Buddhist or an atheist is part of our Christian story.They belong here—they’re part of creation—it’s not a mistake that they’re here. They’re our neighbors. From the biblical doctrine of creation we understand that we have neighbors who are different from us—whoever we are.

Then from the message of the Old Testament—which has so much to say about treating the alien, the stranger, the person who’s different—the Jewish people were told again and again, “You were once aliens and strangers in Egypt, so you better treat people well.” So then when Jesus comes on the scene, he has so much to say about how we treat the least, the last, and the lost.

If I’m Joe Pastor from the corner church, what can I do to foster a generous orthodoxy?

The preaching part of it is not easy. Because our congregations are so trained by radio orthodoxy, if they hear anything that sounds different, it sounds heretical. So it calls for great patience and wisdom on behalf of pastors.That’s one reason that I hope books like mine and others can help get discussions going that will make it easier for pastors to have those

Kevin D. Hendricks (www.MonkeyOuttaNowhere.com) helped launch ChurchMarketingSucks.com, a website whose goal is to “frustrate, educate, and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ.”

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SACRED LEGACY

By Myrna Grant Baker Book House Reviewed by Mimi Haddad Cicero once said that those who know only their own generation “remain always a child.” In Sacred Legacy:Ancient Writings from Nine Women of Strength and Honor, Myrna Grant rallies a handful of female builders of Christ’s church and shows how each one courageously embraced Christ’s ecstatic call to “Come, follow me,” thus bringing the experience of ancient generations to speak to the challenges of people today. These were indeed brave-hearted women, and Grant allows their bravery to mentor our lives.

Those easily bored by history will enjoy the fresh approach of Sacred Legacy.

Grant introduces each historical woman by identifying a modern problem that they, too, encountered. Once the human context is established, Grant allows their writings and life work to flow naturally into our own situation, forming a natural friendship across the centuries.

The chapter on Dhuoda (803-847),

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for example, begins with a description of Grant’s own mother, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis and quarantined in a sanitarium, where eventually she died.

Grant recalls her childhood visits to the sanitarium, where she would stand on the front lawn and wave to her mother, a tiny figure on a distant balcony. Now a mother herself, Grant understands the devastation any mother would face when isolated from her children, unable to protect or guide them. In the 9th century Dhuoda, too, was separated from her children, but by political intrigue. Eager to protect her son, she wrote a manual on “how to live [a] faithful Christian life at court.” Grant’s chapter includes selections from Dhuoda’s manual to her son, complete with advice on prayer, on kindness to those great and small, on reconciliation of sin, and on reciting the Psalms. One can imagine Dhuoda writing her manual, just as one can imagine Grant’s mother writing her daughter from the sanitarium, infusing each sentence with the self-sacrificial love of Christ as he faced the cross.

Grant’s sweep of church history includes Perpetua and Egeria from the early church; Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Germany, Marguerite of France, Julian of England, and Catherine of Sienna from the Middle Ages; and Teresa of Avila from the CounterReformation. The roll call of women represents reformers, mystics, theologians, and scholars.

While at times Grant’s work lacks theological critique (for example, her selection from the writings of Marguerite Porete exhibits elements of Quietism, a tradition that was eventually condemned by the church), it is whimsical, personal, and profoundly spiritual.

Each woman is celebrated in all her humanity, as a unique saint and as a flawed human. Each carried her cross and followed Jesus with courage and grace. Like Mechthild of Germany, they often confronted barriers to the gospel PRISM 2004

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—even when those barriers were erected by the church itself.And each woman presents us with a challenge: How can the power of the gospel within our own lives deepen our humanity and service to others? Grant illustrates how these women resisted patriarchal culture and the greed and domination of their rulers, believing instead, as the Beguines did, that true authority rests in a pure spirit, on the power of Christ and his call to evangelism.Their life and writings nourish our souls,sharpen our minds,and steel our courage. ■ Mimi Haddad is president of Christians for Biblical Equality, a nonprofit organization with members from over 80 denominations who believe that the Bible, properly interpreted, teaches the fundamental equality of men and women of all racial and ethnic groups and all economic classes (www.cbeinternational.org).

Sacred Legacy is available through CBE’s book service at www.equalityDepot.com.

IT TAKES A CHURCH TO RAISE A CHRISTIAN

By Tod E. Bolsinger Brazos Press Reviewed by Pamela Robinson King Solomon may have asserted that there is nothing new under the sun, but author Tod E. Bolsinger has succeeded in creating something new out of the latest buzz word in religious practice: community. It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian: How the Community of God Transforms Lives is a challenging read, rendering a close examination of a complex theological idea.

A Presbyterian minister reared in Catholicism, Bolsinger takes a universalist approach to Calvinist theology, interpreting “election” as a blessing on all.

From there, he explores worship through the lens of the Trinity, revealing how

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vision, which makes him “deeply uncomfortable with the harsh language of the Reformers toward the Catholicism of their day,”evokes relevant warnings toward many facets of popular Christianity today.

In particular, Bolsinger cautions against viewing a personal relationship with Jesus as a strictly private matter.

It Takes a Church to Raise a Christian is certain to refresh stale worship practices for anyone who reads it. ■ Pamela Robinson is a freelance writer and college composition instructor living in Mt. Vernon, Ind.

THE CROSS IN OUR CONTEXT true worship depends on our relationship with others. Bolsinger writes, “Worship always includes gathering with God’s people and participating in ‘spirit and in truth’ (John 4:24). Biblically speaking, there is no such thing as passive worship or individual worship.All worship is participatory and corporate.”

After working through his interpretation of Calvin in the first half of the book, Bolsinger applies this theology to “the central practices of the faith, namely, worship, word, and witness.”

He insists on worship as God-centered, as “fundamentally about praising and honoring God, revealing God’s grace and love.” Bolsinger maintains that as God’s character is revealed in worship, especially in the sacraments (and most notably, Holy Communion), worshippers will seek to conform their character to God’s, leading to “exceptional lives.”

Such a witness to God will draw any seeker to Christianity “through the presence of God as a display to the world.”

Bolsinger’s vision of worship—where sincere devotion to God is practiced in community and where we discover God’s presence—is accessible to Protestant and Catholic alike. Bolsinger’s universalist

By Douglas John Hall Augsburg Fortress Reviewed by Rachel Parker Though the title sounds grim, The Cross in Our Context: Jesus and the Suffering World is a book of hope for those looking for meaning on a planet plagued by violence, poverty, hate, and fear. And though many in our world—even in our churches—seek refuge in such things as yoga, meditation, and silent retreats— Douglas Hall offers another solution: coming to a theological understanding of the cross of Jesus Christ.

The “theology of the cross,” a concept coined by Martin Luther in 1518, is one centered on the relentless love of God for his created order. Through Jesus’ death on the cross, God expresses not that his creation is evil and worthy of hell, but rather that it is so lovely and beautiful that it is worthy of his son’s death.

Hall argues that, because the theology of the cross demonstrates God’s love for his creation, we as his Body are to respond not by removing ourselves but by engaging ourselves in this beloved PRISM 2004

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world—hence, a fresh look at the classic “in the world, but not of the world” dilemma. Just when the reader is beginning to wonder when this brilliant exposition is ever going to turn practical, Hall transitions from theory to application.

As we are challenged to reconstruct our beliefs about the cross, we are simultaneously challenged to reform our actions.

As evidenced in the title, Hall recognizes the world as one which suffers.

Although suffering is an age-old phenomenon, it seems to be exaggerated in our current age of terror, abandonment, loneliness, and oppression; therefore, the cross is particularly relevant to us today. He writes, “If, in the word of dereliction from the cross (‘Why have you forsaken me?’), we cannot hear the anguished cries of millions of our contemporary abandoned and our own deeply repressed cries as well, how shall we ever expect to find in this person one who takes our despair upon himself and gives us in return hope?”

The Cross in Our Context is a complex and challenging work, but not inaccessible. Hall outlines theology in meticulous detail,referencing such varied sources as Luther, Kierkegaard, Dorothy Day,

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Wendell Berry, Oscar Romero, Jonathan Edwards, Marx, and Dostoyevsky.Asking hard questions of the faith and challenging our assumptions, Hall offers a refreshingly deep examination of the cross in an age of quick information bytes. ■ Rachel Parker works for Starlight Ministries, serving men and women who are homeless in Boston. See article on page 24.

THE ULTIMATE BLESSING

By Jo Anne Lyon Wesleyan Publishing House Reviewed by Andrea Cumbo Dowdy Jo Anne Lyon feels the way all of us do sometimes—depressed, bitter, lonely, helpless. But she also remembers what we often forget—that through the pain and frustration of human existence, we are blessed by a transcendent God who loves us and promises to be with us always.

In The Ultimate Blessing: Rediscovering the Power of God’s Presence, Lyon tells her own story, the tale of a working mother who has struggled with everything from

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laundry to infertility and from reconciliation to world hunger. Through a combination of personal vignettes,quotes from Christian thinkers (Desmond Tutu, Henri Nouwen, Catherine Marshall), and deep reflection on God’s mysterious ways, Lyon crafts a work that tells of God’s powerful presence in her life. God’s blessings, she argues, are not the things we usually call to mind when we think of the word “blessed.”You’ll find here no stress-free job, ideal family, or sudden inheritance. Instead, Lyon challenges us to see the immaterial elements of our lives as the areas where God’s blessings rain down abundantly. In the pain of a toxic workplace, the relinquishment of power in a relationship, or the practice of being present with a person as he cries, we find God reaching down to bless us.

Lyon examines the blessings of presence, suffering, power, purpose, holiness, reconciliation, loss, and possibility, studying the way these particular things have changed her life and those around her.

In one of the book’s most powerful scenes, Lyon stands in a field outside a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, surrounded by starving people who sit silently staring at her. Lyon looks down into their faces and despairs at her helplessness, knowing she has neither food nor medical aid to offer them. But then she remembers Matthew’s description of Christ who, upon seeing a crowd, had “great compassion on them for they were helpless.” In that apparently Godforsaken place, Lyon suddenly sees the world as Jesus sees it. She tells the people that, while she has nothing tangible to offer them, she is committed to sharing their story with the outside world.Grateful for the simple gift of being acknowledged and heard, the refugees smile and touch their gaunt cheeks to hers, sharing the blessing of their presence with her in return.

Those who read this book will be blessed—with knowledge and honesty, courage and hope, as they discover in PRISM 2004

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Lyon a companion who shares God’s story of love, our story, with the world. ■ Andrea Cumbo Dowdy works as a researcher for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University.

WHY THE REST HATES THE WEST

By Meic Pearse InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Richard V. Pierard In Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage, British writer and ecclesiastical historian Meic Pearse seeks to explain to evangelicals why there is such a deep divide between the West and the so-called Two-Thirds or non-Western world. He argues that the common values of Western society are greatly at odds with values held by people from other cultural traditions, who regard Westerners as dangerously seductive and morally contemptible barbarians.The primary cause of most conflicts today, asserts Pearse, is not religion or foreign policy but Western cultural imperialism. His charge against the West is that it despises tradition, treats religion lightly,is marked by sexual shamelessness, does not respect the family/tribe, is interested only in acquiring wealth, and has no sense of honor. The nonWest wants to modernize without becoming westernized in the process, but this is difficult because Westerners—through their superior economic, political, and military power—destroy the cultures of the non-Western people.Terrorism, they believe, is the only effective weapon they have to fight back against the cultural assault of the West.

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The author marshals historical arguments to trace Western decline from an earlier age of absolutes where revealed religion, tradition, and the principle of obligation determined human activity.

Along the way, he brings up that old bugaboo of evangelical social critics, the Enlightenment, which he believes undermined the traditional and authoritarian basis for ethical behavior. It broke down all the durable institutions bigger than the individual and smaller than the state and, in tandem with Romanticism, created the myth of the sovereign, autonomous individual. Rights were no longer related to one’s obligations to society but were seen as inherent in nature.The concept of progress further alienated people from the power of tradition and religious ideas.

Freed from a tyrannous God and patriarchal tradition, people no longer had to wrestle with such concepts as evil and immorality. Other illustrations of this departure were the impersonal authority of the state and the rule of law.What now exists in the contemporary West, asserts Pearse, are “antivalues” and “anticulture.”

Pearse scores a few good hits in his cultural critique, such as revealing the sham of present-day “multiculturalism” (it idealizes traditional cultures but fits them into the mold of the politically correct) and dissecting the “self-loathing” of many on the Western left, and his central thesis—that the West has diverged further and further from the common values of all previous societies through the processes of industrialization, urbanization, and modernization—is quite convincing. He also has some good ideas on how we in the West can relate more positively to others.However,he goes too far in downplaying the benefits of the West, particularly in the area of human rights, rule of law, economic growth, communication technology, and liberation of women from patriarchal control. His apocalyptic vision of Western decline due to hedonism and low birthrates does not take into account the

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possibility that Christians, energized by their faith, may bring about changes in the “system” which will result in the extension of the benefits of prosperity and freedom to all people rather than just to those who hold power. ■ Richard V. Pierard is Stephen Phillips Professor of History at Gordon College in Wenham,Mass.

ROCK STARS ON GOD Edited by Doug Van Pelt Relevant Books Reviewed by Jesse DeConto Rock Stars on God: 20 Artists Speak Their Minds About Faith— sounds compelling, right? Unfortunately, the book fails to deliver on the promise implicit in its tantalizing title.Many of the musicians have as little to say to the interviewers about God as they might to Entertainment Tonight, and some of them actually appear to go out of their way to avoid speaking their minds about faith.

Others simply ramble, doing their best to answer questions that don’t seem particularly pertinent to their lives and work.

Potentially provocative interviews— such as those with A Perfect Circle,The Misfits,The Get Up Kids, and Static X— are interrupted by the out-of-left-field “What do you think about Jesus?” Rather than following the flow of the subjects’ answers and skillfully teasing out their thoughts on God,Van Pelt’s interviews often follow his own narrow agenda, sometimes devolving into theological arguments with the musicians.

All of the interviews in the book were originally published in HM magazine, which covers Christian hard rock, and writers other than Van Pelt are representPRISM 2004

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ed.Among the few interviews that succeed in exploring the subject of faith are the religious discussions that David Jenison of HM eases into with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and Bad Religion frontman Greg Gaffin.

The highlight of the book is the Alice Cooper interview, not only because it reveals the spiritual man behind Cooper’s devilish persona but also because Vincent Furnier (a.k.a.Alice) actually wants to talk about God and truly does speak his mind.

Cooper, who single-handedly makes the book worth its purchase price,is the exception, however. Reading most of the interviews is more like eavesdropping on an insecure evangelist who is trying to convert an obviously guarded stranger. ■ Jesse DeConto is a 2004-2005 Phillips Journalism Fellow and lives in Carrboro,N.C.

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THE WORKING POOR

By David K. Shipler Alfred A. Knopf Reviewed by Carol R. Cool “Each person’s life is the mixed product of bad choices and bad fortune, of roads not taken and roads cut off by the accident of birth or circumstance,” begins The Working Poor: Invisible in America.

Rather than blaming society for the woes of the poor or insisting that the poor themselves are solely responsible for their plight, David Shipler offers a balanced view, recognizing that the two almost always conspire together to put people into poverty and to keep them there.

Shipler covers all the factors that contribute to poverty, including low wages, lack of skills, inadequate housing, ineffective schools, poor parenting, and unwise choices. His premise is:“If the problems are interlocking, then so must solutions be.” To flesh out the problems, Shipler shares with the reader the brave individuals who have shared their lives with him.As he puts it,“The first step is to see the problems, and the first problem is the failure to see the people.”

Shipler tells his subjects’ stories so eloquently and with such brutal honesty that I found myself wondering about them with an intensely personal concern: Is Caroline’s daughter Amber in the special education program she needs?

Will Zach ever get to college, and how is his little sister surviving since their mother’s death? Are Peaches and Wendy still moving up in their jobs? Has Leary been reconciled to her child?

These people’s lives are intriguing and complex, and their problems are not easily solved by either money or individual programs.“Working poverty is a constellation of difficulties that magnify one another,” writes Shipler. Even something as remote as inaccessibility to

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dental care can work to keep someone poor. Caroline’s lack of dental care cost her her teeth and, while no one would admit it, probably kept her from being promoted by the same manager who called her “self-driven” and “willing to learn.”

Because the problems are complex and so intertwined, Shipler recommends holistic remedies. He proposes “gateways” —places to address “a family’s range of handicaps”—and says, “They are best established at intersections through which working poor families are likely to travel.”Why shouldn’t this be the church? Shipler never mentions it (in fact, he seems to have a distaste for anything faith-based), and yet he describes the help and connections some families have received through their churches.

If churches worked together, so that those in economically depressed areas were not so overwhelmed, couldn’t we take on the task of helping to sort out the various needs and provide solutions?

Churches possess a volunteer base that could run parenting classes and budgeting workshops, provide the facilities to run childcare programs as a ministry to the working poor, teach skills, and share business connections.We can learn what

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resources are available in our communities and train advocates to help the poor get the services to which they are entitled. If we take seriously the stories and suggestions Shipler offers, we can be the gateway the poor need to a more secure life, and, in so doing, we may be their gateway to Jesus. ■ Carol R. Cool is a freelance writer and editor, as well as a pastor’s wife and church planter, from Bear, Del.

GETTING MARRIAGE RIGHT

By David P. Gushee Baker Book House Reviewed by Peter Larson Among evangelicals today there is an outcry against gay marriage.We’re told that same-sex unions, if they become legal, will destroy the sanctity of marriage. What no one seems to notice is that the sanctity of marriage was trashed a long time ago by millions of heterosexuals filing for no-fault divorces. On this subject the church is silent. As Jesus said, it’s easier to criticize the speck in your brother’s eye than to remove the log from your own.

In his disturbing book, Getting Marriage Right: Realistic Counsel for Saving and Strengthening Relationships, David P. Gushee confronts the injustice of divorce. What we have witnessed in our lifetime, says Gushee, is the near collapse of marriage as a social institution.

In a single generation, we have torn apart the sacred relationship that God created for the good of humankind. In its place we have created a culture of mass divorce. As a result, today there is one divorce for every two marriages, 33 percent of children are born to unmarried parents, and up to 60 percent of all couples live together outside of marriage.

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If we think Christians are immune from this divorce epidemic, we are mistaken.According to studies by the Barna Research Group,people identifying themselves as “born-again” Christians experience divorce at the same rate as nonChristians.What’s more, Christians have become adept at justifying divorce.

Gushee describes a televised interview on ABC’s Primetime with Christian singer Amy Grant and country singer Vince Gill, who married after they each divorced their former spouse. Explaining her decision, Grant said she felt compelled by “fate” to abandon her spouse in favor of her “soulmate.”

For Grant and millions like her, the biblical concept of marriage has been trumped by the sort of pagan psychobabble you would expect to find in Cosmopolitan or on Oprah. Commenting on this interview, Gushee observes: “The displacement of the biblical language of covenant permanence with the pagan language of fate and destiny is particularly telling. Covenants are freely made and bind their makers for life; fate and destiny are, on the other hand, things that happen to us that are beyond our control.No one can prevent them;no one is responsible; no one is to blame.”

Our culture has conditioned us to believe that divorce is merely a choice made by consenting adults, with no moral blame and no victims. In truth, however, there are millions of victims: the children of divorce. As a college professor, Gushee spent five years interviewing students who came from divorced families. In many cases, their parents were ministers, deacons, and church-going Christians. The stories of these young people, reported by Gushee, are filled with grief and rage: “[My father] lived five miles from us, and he had to drive by our house to get to his house…a lot of times I would be out in the yard playing, and he would drive by,

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I deal with it now in the dating relationship I am in—the day I ask my wife to marry me, I will deal with it…”

and he wouldn’t look or wave or honk or anything, like we didn’t even exist.”

“I was taking care of my dad. My mom was trying to fulfill her desires.And I was just kind of sitting there in the middle hoping somebody would pay attention to me …I feel cheated. I absolutely do, because I had no childhood. I went from being a third-grader to being a mother, basically.”

“I wear my dad’s abandoned wedding ring as a reminder of my commitment… that I would not have a marriage like my parents.’ It says…that the cycle stops here…it’s not going to happen to me.

It’s not an option.”

“I don’t know if there is fury and wrath in nature that would be as devastating as divorce. [It’s like] an earthquake… one that would make rivers flow backwards and just totally change the face of the earth where you can’t recognize it anymore.”

“There’s not any closure—I will always be dealing with this, one way or another.

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After listening for many hours to such conversations, Gushee came to the conclusion that divorce is a justice issue.

He was struck with the biblical mandate: “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed” (Ps. 82:3). Like drugaddition, crime, or abortion, divorce is an evil that does tremendous violence both to individual lives and to the fabric of society. Gushee realized that if he accomplished nothing else in his professional career, he must provide a platform for these children to be heard, “Not just so that they can shout their sorrow into the wind, but so other children might be spared having to suffer as these children have.”

If divorce is a justice issue, then you would expect the church to do everything in its power to prevent it. But instead, the church has gone along with the drift of culture. As the divorce rate exploded in the 1970s and ’80s, many influential Christian moral thinkers weakened their opposition to divorce or remained silent. In our desire to be nonjudgmental, the church has focused its efforts on divorce recovery rather than divorce prevention. We have adopted a therapeutic model that provides healing but no discipline. Forty years ago a pastor who divorced his wife would have been required to step down from ministry.

Today that stigma is gone: Pastors get divorced like everyone else and nobody seems to care.

But God cares.The God of the Bible declares, “I hate divorce!”

So what can we do to save marriage?

On this question Gushee is both realistic and helpful. First of all, we need to recover the biblical idea that marriage exists not for our own personal pleasure but to achieve God’s creation purposes:

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the welfare of human beings, the nurture of children, the preservation of society, and the establishment of the kingdom of God. In our never-ending quest for self-actualization we have lost this larger view of marriage, says Gushee.

Also, we should stop listening to all the misguided advice on marriage that is being dispensed by our culture. Gushee calls this “Love Incorporated”—the industry of seminars and workshops that offer “Seven Principles,” “Eight Steps,” or “Ten Secrets” that lead to lasting love.

Successful marriage does not depend on finding the perfect match or a compatible partner, says Gushee. Rather, it depends on mastering a set of virtues and skills.

(One of the best ways to teach these skills is by using the PREPARE program developed by David Olson, which is based on solid research, clinical practice, and proven experience with one million couples).

Finally, we need to lower our expectations of marriage.The problem today, says Gushee, is that we are simultaneously demanding more and less of marriage: more satisfaction and less permanence.

What we need to do is ratchet our expectations down,“…from overly hyped cultural romantic notions to more sober biblical hopes.” According to Gushee, this requires “…humility about our own adorableness; sobriety about what can be expected from others;…patience with human frailty; self-control when expectations go unmet for a season; and above all, love, which is not self-seeking, not easily angered, and keeps no record of wrongs.”

The Protestant Reformer Martin Luther once described marriage as a school for character.The tragedy today is that so many Christians are dropping out of this school, never learning the lessons that God would teach them. It is, after all, easier to change our partners than it is to change ourselves.With this book Gushee exposes the fatal narcissism

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in our souls that would trade the lifelong relationship of marriage with the pseudo-intimacy of hooking up. ■ Peter Larson is pastor of Lebanon Presbyterian Church in Lebanon, Ohio, and a contributing editor to PRISM. He can be reached at Peter@LebanonPresbyterian.org

FAITH WORTH BELIEVING

By Tom Stella HarperSanFrancisco Reviewed by Kevin D. Hendricks Like so many postmodern and emergent thinkers, Tom Stella wants to nudge Christians beyond a rigid faith towards a more joyful and grace-filled understanding of God. Unfortunately, however, his efforts to do so lead him to some heretical interpretations of the Bible, draining off much of its power and truth.

Stella, a practicing Catholic priest, takes a significant departure from orthodoxy in A Faith Worth Believing: Finding New Life Beyond the Rules of Religion.

While critical of the ways in which the practice of Christianity has been corrupted—with specific emphasis on the restrictive, guilt-filled religion of his youth—Stella himself, in an effort to answer some of the difficult questions Christians face today, corrupts the truth in order to make it palatable.

Stella takes on a different aspect of faith (God, Jesus, grace, sin, sacraments, prayer, etc.) in each chapter, using the Baltimore Catechism and a refuting quote as a starting point.He reflects on his understanding of each doctrine as he learned it as a child, explaining what he considers to

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be its strengths and flaws and describing how his own beliefs have changed over the years. Stella’s style is self-effacing and approachable, making it easy to chew on even while difficult to swallow.

He calls believers away from a stringent following of the Ten Commandments, promoting a faith that focuses more on the present than on the great hereafter. He writes that he “can no longer hold as literally true the religious stories and teachings that in the past may have gone unquestioned.”

But while Stella says he yearns for an ever-present God who exists in mystery and majesty, he fails to recognize that it is just such a God that we learn about in the Bible. He is right to reject the easy answers served up to him in Sunday school, but he wrongly assumes that rejecting those leaves him with a Bible whose value is exclusively symbolic and mythical. And while Stella is right to wrestle with God in search of truth and blessing—which is, after all, modeled for us in Jacob’s midnight match with the Angel—he wrongly assumes that by doubting the most basic precepts of the faith (the Virgin Birth, the physical resurrection of Christ) he will find liberation and peace.As Paul so poignantly expressed it, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins...If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 17-19).

Stella earnestly tries to reconnect the reader with faith, but in the process unfortunately succeeds in shedding the foundations of the Christian faith. Of course, Stella is by no means alone in his pick-and-choose approach to the gospel. Christians throughout history and, most notably today, on both sides of the political spectrum have highlighted their favorite values while deemphasizing (and even excluding) other integral parts of the gospel. Perhaps the most important lesson we can take away from

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Stella’s book is a reminder that we are all at risk of editing the truth to our own liking and advantage, and whenever we do so it is just as iniquitous and misguided as Stella’s dangerous recasting of the biblical message.

While Stella’s perspective might stimulate in some believers the kind of soulsearching that will help them wrestle with the misrepresented faith of their youth, discernment is needed to recognize which ideas are bold but faith-affirming, and which ideas cross into heresy. ■ Kevin D. Hendricks is a freelance writer living in St. Paul, Minn.

THE GOOD LIFE

By David Matzko McCarthy Brazos Press Reviewed by Elaine Anne MacGregor How is an individual to live in a market-driven economy, be part of the world, a n d ye t u p h o l d Christian values and relationships? Does faithful living require a rejection of material goods? How are middle-class American Christians to participate in God’s love for the individual, for neighbor, and for the earth?

In The Good Life: Genuine Christianity for the Middle Class, theology professor David Matzko McCarthy calls into question the values that make up the legendary “good life” in America.

Speaking from the vantage point of middle-class America, he contends that Christian faith requires us to pay attention to our relationships to both other people and our things. McCarthy concludes that God’s love does not require us to reject

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possessions but rather to be bound together in relationship with God and with one another, responding to God’s call to be in community, to be hospitable, and to share.

Current market-economy strategies work against the very thing God most wants for us and foster dissatisfaction and alienation rather than community.

We try to satisfy our sense of longing, incompleteness, and anxiety with the consumption of goods, but this only leads to a deeper hunger that not only can never be fully satiated by consumption but also drives us from the one source that can truly satisfy.This happens when people strive to be self-made and are disengaged from one another.

McCarthy sees God’s friendship as an antidote to this anxiety and detachment.

God’s friendship calls for a reworking of how Christians relate to the world and one another. Home, kinship, and community are found in the Christian’s first family—the church community.

Envisioning the church as an open, hospitable place of sharing rather than a private, individual place of retreat, McCarthy calls Christians to live simply and with moderation so that they can be receptive to finding fulfillment in the church. Christians will then become good and generous hosts, living out the friendship and hospitality of God. For clues on how best to view material possessions and our relationship with the world, McCarthy looks to Scripture, to the writings of the early church fathers, to the lives of other Christians, and to his own experience.

While his ideas unfortunately do not flow smoothly, there is value in the questions McCarthy raises and the insights he provides for Christians grappling with their role as consumers in contemporary American society. ■ Elaine Anne MacGregor recently graduated from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary with an MTS in contemporary theology.

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AN EXAMINED FAITH

By James M. Gustafson Fortress Press Reviewed by Myron B. Penner Christian ethicist James Gustafson has a definite agenda in An Examined Faith: The Grace of SelfDoubt.He challenges a set of ideas gaining popularity both inside and outside evangelical circles and opposes all those “theological fashions” that smack of postmodernism or seek in any way to avoid serious engagement with secular scientific scholarship. In other words, Gustafson remains, in many respects, a good old-fashioned liberal—something not always easy to pull off in today’s academic environment.

Gustafson’s main grouse in An Examined Faith concerns those sectors of the Christian church which, in his estimation, attempt to cope with naturalistic and scientific accounts by avoiding or averting their force (read: post-liberal, evangelical, and radical orthodox theologians). He poses the question,“How do I, as a theologian and ethicist, relate [secular science and scholarship] both to Christian theology and ethics as disciplines, and to my own beliefs and living?”

Gustafson pursues this question by relating theological explanations of “the human” to scientific accounts, ending with Abraham Lincoln’s theology of politics.

This book is a call—a plea—for Christians, to call a spade a spade and to allow the interdisciplinary cacophony of the modern university to be heard.

According to Gustafson, there is no other way to cope honestly with the challenges of making Christian sense of the world and having faith in the 21st century. In

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ALWAYS ENOUGH

By Rolland and Heidi Baker Chosen Books

NO ROOM AT THE TABLE

By Donald H. Dunson Orbis Books Reviewed by Bradshaw Frey The plight of Earth’s poorest children is of great concern to God and the church, and two recent books make sure that this concern remains in our sight. One focusing on Mozambique and the other surveying the globe, both provide firsthand accounts of suffering beyond imagination and heroic ministry attempting to find in these children a “treasure.”

In Always Enough: God’s Miraculous Provision Among the Poorest Children on Earth, Rolland and Heidi Baker use their Pentecostal theology as the lens through which to understand their ministry in Mozambique. They first narrate their call to missions and the circuitous route by which they ended up in Mozambique.

Their strategy was simple: to find those

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children who most need the love of Christ and then pour it on. The children they found were both those who live in the streets and scavenge from the dump and those who live in a state-run orphanage. The first time the Bakers saw the orphanage, its rooms were stripped bare and children were sleeping on cement floors without sheets, pillows, or even mats. They possessed only the clothes on their backs, ate from a trough, and required significant medical attention.Thousands upon thousands of children still share this plight.

But the Bakers went out, “treasure hunting in the dump and on the streets, looking for each and every desperate child,” taking in hundreds until the facilities could hold no more. Their ministry has since grown to encompass a national crusade and an aggressive system of church planting, but the children have remained at the center of the Bakers’ work. Peter Berger, an eminent sociologist who has studied the global church, says that Pentecostal Christianity, along with Islam, is the fastest growing religion worldwide. If readers are unfamiliar with how and why this is the case, the Bakers provide a poignant glimpse at one of the strategies that explains this phenomenon.

In No Room at the Table: Earth’s Most Vulnerable Children,Father Donald Dunson offers a different but equally compelling agenda.While the Bakers display a simple, “love every kid we can” strategy, Dunson wants to find out why children are suffering at such unprecedented levels.What are the systemic causes? He grounds his investigation in theology, stating,“In the human family there have always been those who have perceived frailty and vulnerability solely as a burden.Yet for the believing Christian, the face of the vulnerable other can never be simply the source of an unavoidable moral demand that we might otherwise shun. No, in the first instance, the other comes to us as a gift of God, a treasure PRISM 2004

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bearing a mysterious likeness to the Creator.”

Dunson’s study masterfully weaves important statistics with firsthand accounts, primarily from Uganda, Kenya, and El Salvador. For instance, he cites the International Labor Organization’s estimate that 250 million children are forced to work worldwide and the U.N. estimate that as many as 8.6 million people are currently threatened by the hunger crisis in Central America alone. He then recounts his experiences of sharing a meal with an El Salvadoran campesino too devastated by his wife’s death in an earthquake to eat, and taking a young Ugandan into a restaurant only to be told to leave if he were going to bring “these sorts of children” to the table.

In the midst of such desperate circumstances, the Bakers and Dunson plead with believers to respond to these injustices. But their stories—ultimately of hope, telling of courageous people loving and meeting the needs of the world’s poorest children—invite us not on a guilt trip but rather on an adventure of partnering with Jesus. ■ Bradshaw Frey is professor of sociology at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa.

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DIRTY FAITH

By Audio Adrenaline Navpress Reviewed by Lesa Engelthaler Christian-pop band Audio Adrenaline has written their first book, Dirty Faith: Becoming the Hands and Feet of Jesus. Although crafted in paper and ink rather than their habitual medium of sound waves, the latest work by the Grammy Awards nominee and multiple Dove Awards winner expresses the same passion for missions and outreach that has characterized their music.

“Accept the challenge,” writes the band, to “go to the hard places, the poor places, the dangerous places, serve the brokenhearted, the close-minded, the down-and-out. Do what you can: where you are, when you’re there. Get bruised, get used, get dirty. Be like Jesus.”

Part of Navpress’ TH1NK series of books tailored for students, Dirty Faith is written in an easy, conversational style that will appeal to young people without alienating older readers. At the beginning of each chapter, readers get a chance to assess what they know about Jesus, about servanthood, and about various other down-and-dirty topics. The bulk of the book looks at Jesus as a role model whose involvement in the lives of real people got him “dirty” on many occasions. The authors propose that before we can be Jesus’ hands and feet in our corner of the world, we must know what Jesus himself did while he walked the earth. Scattered throughout the book are engaging stories of modernday saints who “roll up their sleeves and get dirty” for God. The closing chapters are particularly

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practical, providing specific and doable ways to reach out to our world, including lists of “50 Ways to be Jesus’ Hands and Feet” in our neighborhood, family, and school.

Those readers who enjoy Audio Adrenaline’s music will want to check out the album Worldwide, which the band produced in conjunction with Dirty Faith. ■ Lesa Engelthaler is a freelance writer and leader of a mentoring program in Garland,Tex.

A MATRIX OF MEANINGS: FINDING GOD IN POP CULTURE

By Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor Baker Academic Reviewed by Rick Bonn Like a traffic cop, Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor’s book, A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture, holds up a hand— demanding that we stop, look, and proceed with new assumptions.We won’t begin by condemning pop culture, they say; we’ll search there for revival. We won’t shun pop culture’s creations; we’ll celebrate them. We won’t erect barriers; we’ll cross bridges.

Detweiler and Taylor lay it all out there—the mysterious mess and paradox of pop-culture creation that others want to box or burn.Their view is new and important: a postmodern critique from within pop culture, not a modern treatise from without.They suggest that a religious awakening is upon us and insist that we pay attention to the marketplace of pop culture where children PRISM 2004

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sing funeral marches and wisdom pours from those labeled demons or drunks.

Listen to the cries of their preface: “God shines through even the most debased pop cultural products”; “Pop music has helped us hear the Psalms as prayers, formed in frustration, offered to a sometimes hidden God.” Where some see doom and many see caution, these writers see “...a renaissance, a new dawn, the stirrings of a profound spiritual renewal.”

We can’t ignore the crucial debates in pop culture, they contend.Whether it’s fashion or film, we must be present on the front lines, watching and responding, learning and reinventing—not just because lost ones need to be found, but because a healthy spiritual debate often rages without us.

The book outlines 10 arenas of pop culture that present a challenge to traditional theology and offer insight for emerging theology. Among the 10 are the following: celebrity is about hungering for the eternal; advertising addresses the question of what it means to be human in ways that theologians often fail to do; developing a theology out of television would help us better connect with culture; contemporary fashion is sacramental, reflecting the pain and suffering of those on the outside; and extreme sports were created by kids as a subversive form of worship.

A primer rather than an exhaustive study, this is a book to crawl into and experience, not a pill to ingest. It’s like an art gallery with hundreds of works —though you may not connect with or care about every one of them, there’s something here for all. The 44-page introduction alone has enough wisdom and passion to make it worth reading.

Though some may criticize the book for a lack of analytical rigor, to condemn it solely on this basis is to miss its uniqueness and renewing call. This is a new view of old lands and a prophetic pronouncement of hope. This book

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looks to the future with joy.Things are changing, the authors say, but for the good.The issues are challenging and they do raise tough questions, but our future theological survival hinges on how we understand and interact with pop culture—even in all its gaudy and glorious forms—today. Otherwise, we might be the ones Jesus condemns in Luke 7:32, the ones who ignore the children in the marketplace who are saying “We have piped, and you did not dance.We have mourned, and you did not weep.” ■ Former development director for Reel Spirituality, Rick Bonn is a freelance writer living on the Oregon Coast.

HEALING BODIES AND SOULS

By W. Daniel Hale and Harold G. Koenig Fortress Press Reviewed by Lois Wilson In a day when many Amer ican Christians wrestle with the question of whether or not the church is capable of having a relevant place in the life of the community, W. Daniel Hale and Harold G. Koenig offer a viable option. Healing Bodies and Souls is a persuasive and practical guide for churches who would like to establish health ministries to serve the congregation and community in a life-changing way.

The authors argue that healing has always been part of the gospel message and ministry of the church. They also state statistics that reveal the need for increased medical information and

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screening, especially among aging and “minority” congregations. Further, they give examples of how the health ministries of several congregations have saved lives through education and intervention.

Finally, they make the case that churchbased health ministries are a practical and important means of outreach to the wider community.

The book tells the stories of a number of churches that have begun various types of health ministries in recent years.

The sample of churches vary in denomination, size, and socio-economic resources. Most of the ministries are led by lay leadership and are staffed by a core of volunteers.The authors emphasize that the lives of those who serve in health ministries are as transformed as the lives of those who receive service.

One of the most powerful aspects of this ministry is how it empowers people to use their gifts in a meaningful, life-changing way.

Written in a readable, practical style, Healing Bodies and Souls can be used as a guide by any English-speaking congregation. Although the examples tend to lean in the direction of aging congregations, one chapter is devoted to “minor ity” populations, and a few examples are scattered throughout the book that suggest options for a younger population. The authors also provide contact information and a brief description of a number of resources in the appendix.

Overall, Healing Bodies and Souls is a useful and encouraging guide to congregations that are considering health ministries, and are searching for the way to begin. ■ Lois Wilson served as a midwife and childbirth educator in Philadelphia for 13 years.

She is currently serving as a retreat leader, workshop facilitator, teacher, storyteller, and artist with Servant’s Heart Ministries.

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FIELDS OF THE FATHERLESS

By C.Thomas Davis Navpress American Global Publishing As Christians we long to know the heart of God and to measure our steps by its rhythm. In response to this longing, C.Thomas Davis directs us to the fields of the fatherless, where we may join the divine dance. Mentioned 61 times throughout Scripture, orphans, widows, and outsiders move God to his deepest compassion, and it is in service to these “fatherless” that we discover the joy of compassionate living.

Davis takes the context of his beautiful little book from Proverbs 23:10-11: Do not move an ancient boundary stone, or encroach on the fields of the fatherless. For their Defender is strong; He will take up their case against you. He explains that the ancient boundary stone once marked the portion of a field dedicated to feed the fatherless in the agrarian society of our spiritual ancestors. Care of the father-

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less wasn’t reserved for those times when there was a little something left over: It was a portion required by God from each person’s livelihood. In return God promised to bless those who cared for the fatherless—and to curse those who did not.

Moreover, as evidenced in the story of Ruth, care of the fatherless went beyond the provision of material goods.

It called for an involvement in the lives of the fatherless and their inclusion as members of one’s own family.

In his exposition of New Testament Scriptures, Davis shows that God requires no less from us today.“If we are to please Him,” he writes,“we must recover what

has become a lost cause—the fatherless. … It doesn’t mean you have to become a missionary or take a vow of poverty!

In some very practical ways, you can participate in the lives of those God is so passionate about and make differences that will last an eternity.”

Sponsoring an orphan abroad; inviting and keeping in touch with foreign students at your local university; babysitting or sharing groceries with a single mother on your street; mowing the lawn or running errands for a neighborhood widow, or just inviting her over for a cup of tea: these are the ways we can make a powerful difference in the life of the fatherless.

“Your creative energy could be the very thing that helps him or her keep going and even experience God’s love for the first time,” writes Davis. “Will you plant a seed of hope in lives that have been stripped bare by the misery of this world?”

This book brings power and urgency to the saying, “To the world, you may be just one person. But to one person, you might just be the world.”To mean that much to someone is itself blessing enough. ■

Postcards from the Road continued from page 26.

Art & Soul continued from page 27.

Ron Sider continued from page 36.

internships, and/or witness weekends (see Network 9:35’s free resource, Congregation2Congregation, at www.net work935.org).

And the final component? Keep praying. Prayer needs to be more than an occasional activity in worship or meetings. “Pray without ceasing” for future leaders. Last year, while serving a congregation whose pastor was on sabbatical, I helped their staff and leadership brainstorm about potential leaders, developed a prayer list of those names, and encouraged current leaders to look for ways to mentor future leaders in a prayerful way.

If your congregation wants to “hit the road,” they must create an efficient leadership-development plan for effective outreach. Let me know how I can be of help as you undertake this exciting process. ■

You get the idea. Not only does each artistic act bring a touch of beauty to an increasingly hard world, but by engaging with those creative folks in their artistic venues, we create new opportunities for friendship and truth.

Because whatever we think of the film, it wasn’t that long ago when “The Passion of the Christ” was merely an idea for a movie that required a whole lot of creative planning and financial backing before it could ever be made.

And since so many Christians paid to see it, couldn’t we be equally passionate about investing in the lives of artists of faith who show us God’s kingdom from a thousand different perspectives?

Shouldn’t God’s extravagant grace in our lives motivate such generosity?

Imagine what will happen if it doesn’t. ■

Both Bush and Kerry have a political philosophy that calls for some government taxation and spending to help the poor. But Bush favors huge tax cuts for the rich, and Kerry wants to reduce those tax cuts for the richest in order to have more resources to assist the needy.

(My analysis supports Kerry here.)

The choices are not easy. I find that in virtually every presidential election, each candidate is better on some issues and worse on others. In my next column, I will try to evaluate the Bush and Kerry platforms in light of what I consider a biblically informed evangelical political philosophy. But no mathematical calculus exists that allows one to reach an easy, certain conclusion. One must think hard, pray hard, and then vote, knowing one may be wrong. Politics remains a messy, uncertain art—even with a good evangelical political philosophy. ■

Pamela Robinson is a freelance writer and college composition instructor living in Mt. Vernon, Ind.

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DAUGHTERS OF HOPE

By Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Andrea Cumbo Dowdy The Chinese authorities stomped on Zhang Yuan’s feet so she couldn’t continue to travel and share the gospel.Tanina had to flee from her own family after they threatened to kill her because of her conversion from Islam to Christianity.

These and other stories in Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett’s book, Daughters of Hope: Stories of Witness and Courage in the Face of Persecution, give faces to the sometimes amorphous and otherworldly suffering that only occasionally reaches the ears of American Christians.

Strom, an accomplished author, and Rickett, president of a ministry that serves local women around the world, have compiled a book that details the persecution of Christian women. Each section begins with a brief list of figures about population, literacy rates, type of government, and religious makeup in each country and then continues with a brief overview of the position of Christians in that country. This data is followed by the women’s tales, small glimpses into the tragic and faithcrushing worlds in which they live.

Their accounts oblige readers to acknowledge the persecution that is commonplace in much of our world, and the inclusion of prayer and action points at the end of each section provides us with concrete ways to address the wrongs observed in the lives of these women.

While the stories are compelling,

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the authors’ decision to recount them in the third person rather than allowing each woman to give her own first-person account means that some of their force, urgency, and poignancy is inevitably lost. We don’t see Songa’s children standing in the doorway as she leaves them in order to save her life and theirs; we see only her, sitting in a room, telling her tale to two writers. A more direct narrative style combined with more substantial statistical data (such as the fact that 42 percent of North Korea’s children suffer from chronic malnutrition) would help the reader better grasp the enormity of the trials that these women survive.

In spite of these weaknesses, Strom and Rickett’s work is a valuable contribution to the literature of persecution.

When used in discussion groups or book clubs and coupled with a resource such as Amnesty International’s data on human rights abuses,this book will provide many Christians with a fresh, compelling way of learning about and taking action to protect our Christian sisters. ■ Andrea Cumbo Dowdy works as a researcher for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University.

MERE DISCIPLESHIP

By Lee C. Camp Brazos Press Reviewed by Erika Bai Siebels In a book that challenges Christians— A m e r i c a n Christians in particular—to rediscover the soul of discipleship, Lee C. Camp, assistant professor of PRISM 2004

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Christian ethics at Lipscomb University in Nashville, tells us that discipleship means servanthood.

Camp paints a picture of failed Christianity—Christendom, he calls it —in which people pledge their allegiance first to their nation-states and secondly to Christ. It happened in Rwanda, which missionaries dubbed a “Christian country” before those same “Christian” brothers and sisters started massacring each other, Hutus killing Tutsis, in the genocide of 1994. And it happens today in the United States, when people ask themselves and their leaders, “What should we do about terrorism? Homelessness? Inner-city poverty?” What if, Camp suggests, we answered those questions first as disciples of Christ rather than as citizens of America?

Discipleship, like Christianity itself, contends Camp, should not be compartmentalized to the interior:a sphere distinct from things like politics, society, and culture. Instead, Lee calls upon disciples of Christ to follow Christ as “the Way,” as a lifestyle rather than a religion.

What does it mean then to become a disciple? To those who think waiting on the kingdom of God means either withdrawing from the world or seizing the mantle of power, Camp offers a radical third way.Taking his cue from Jesus, Camp affirms that the way of Jesus is to be found in a cross and a towel.Take up your cross and wash others’ feet, Jesus said—and did.That is Camp’s call to his readers: Seek the Lord, reconcile with each other, serve your neighbor, love your enemies, forgive others their debts—in short, live as if you believe what you say.

Being a disciple should change the way we live our lives.

“The point of imitation of Jesus is found in the cross,” Camp writes. Later he says,“The God revealed in Jesus Christ is a God who wins, who engages with and ultimately overcomes enemies, not through might but through suffering,

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not with a sword but with a towel.”

As Camp cautions his audience, “We are not called to be the Messiah, but to follow the Messiah.” Camp’s got it right: Let’s follow his advice and follow Christ. ■ Erika Bai Siebels is a freelance writer living in Troy, N.Y.

THE UNCONQUERABLE WORLD

By Jonathan Schell Metropolitan Books

VIOLENCE IN GOD’S NAME

By Oliver McTernan Orbis Books

MUST CHRISTIANITY BE VIOLENT? Kenneth R. Chase & Alan Jacobs, eds.

Brazos Press Reviewed by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove The problem of violence may be as old as Cain and as ingrained as sin, but an abundance of books dealing with the possibility of nonviolence are proof that humanity is not ready to abandon its search for alternative ways to resolve conflict. Three recent treatments, from both secular and Christian thinkers, are considered in this review.

At a time when political pundits are constrained to rehearse the pros and cons of extending America’s “war on terrorism” to Iran or North Korea, Jonathan Schell’s straightforward case for a global nonviolent future will strike many people as unrealistic at best. However, anyone who reads The Unconquerable World: Power,Nonviolence,and the Will of the People, Schell’s analysis of the 20th century, will

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have to deal with the substantial evidence he offers to back his claim that “the century of total violence was, however discreetly, also a century of nonviolent action.” To see this is to know that another way is possible.

Schell begins his case for the viability of nonviolence by looking at how war changed in the 20th century.

Through the lens of the great 19thcentury philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, Schell demonstrates that “the modern war machines, once built, had to be used to the full or left unused.”

In the Cold War era, the prospect of total war became unthinkable, forcing those in the political sphere to imagine alternatives. The parallel rise of the “people’s war” in developing nations further pressed the question,“What was the resort when the ‘last resort’ had bankrupted itself?”The answer, Schell contends, was nonviolent revolution.

From Gandhi’s defeat of the British Empire to the fall of the U.S.S.R., Schell chronicles the numerous nonviolent victories of the 20th century, giving particular attention to ways in which they confound the conventional wisdom of political analysis. Having done this, he is able to reach further back in history—even to the American and French revolutions—to demonstrate that, while violent, each of them possessed elements that mitigated the necessity of violence.

Identifying the political key to nonviolence as “cooperative power,” Schell insists that America must today give up its “war on terror” and begin a list of specific initiatives that would make for a nonviolent and, he contends,“unconquerable” world. To refuse this world, he asserts, is to choose nonexistence.

True as that might be, Schell fails to recognize that any movement based on survival cannot be nonviolent. Though he has read Gandhi, Schell has not understood him because he refuses to acknowledge the necessity of God as a basis for nonviolence. This is all the PRISM 2004

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clearer to me, perhaps, because I have also been reading Oliver McTernan’s Violence in God’s Name: Religion in an Age of Conflict. A Catholic pr iest, McTernan is sensitive both to the role of religion in politics (violent and non-violent) and to the “secularization hypothesis” that pervades so much political analysis (including Schell’s, for the most part). “I fear that part of the problem in the present discourse on religiously motivated violence is that few political and social scientists have…the language to analyze accurately what is happening in the world of religion,” McTernan writes. His book is an introductory course in the grammar and usage of that language.

From more than three decades of exper ience in conflict situations, McTernan sees clearly that all religions have within them the potential for both violence and nonviolence. His point is historical, not theological.Whatever the “true” interpretation of any religion, the fact of the matter is that a history of violence exists in every tradition.

McTernan’s third chapter, “Religion and the Legitimization of Violence,” is a concise but very helpful narrative of the violent and pacifist traditions in each of the major world religions.

In his final chapter,“Struggle for the Global Soul,” McTernan advocates for a greater emphasis on grassroots reconciliation efforts, a consistent affirmation of human dignity by all religious leaders, an open dialogue within and between religious communities on the question of interpretation, and a recognition that “no single tradition is capable of comprehending the truth alone.”The pluralism that is needed, McTernan maintains, does not require any group to forsake its tradition. Evangelicals may be somewhat disappointed, however, that Jesus is not considered necessary to win the “global soul.” I know I am.

Still, I can understand McTernan’s reluctance to proclaim Christianity as

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the hope of the world. It is rooted, I think, in the issues behind the question posed in Must Christianity Be Violent?

Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology.

This collection of essays came out of a conference convened before September 11, 2001, by the Center for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE) at Wheaton College.The historians are, perhaps, the most forthright of the authors, highlighting some particular scenes in the very mixed history of the church.

(I found Joseph Lynch’s reading of an anonymous knight’s journal from the 11th-century crusade fascinating.) That Christianity has been extremely violent in certain times and places is reason enough for the church to consider what practices might make for peace.

From political action to an alternative way to teach history, the breadth of options offered in this book is refreshing; it offers some hope that the whole people of God might indeed one day be peacemakers.

In the end, the question of peaceableness is, necessarily, a theological issue.

The sort of debate that McTernan encourages within a religious community is modeled by John Milbank and Stanley Hauerwas at the conclusion of this volume, with Hauerwas explaining that Chr istian nonviolence cannot be explained (only lived) and Milbank condemning the violence of passivity (looking on while violence is being perpetrated). It is not the sort of conversation that can be summarized, but it is just the sort of conversation that is worth reading and participating in.

Perhaps we can find hope in the simple fact that, while the various authors take different routes to arrive at their conclusion, all three of the books reviewed here agree that nonviolence is at once desirable, difficult, and possible. ■ JonathanWilson-Hartgrove (jwh16@duke.edu) and his wife, Leah, live at Rutba House in Durham, N.C., where they are experimenting

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with a “new monasticism” in the company of friends.

CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE CRUSADE AGAINST EVIL

By Robert Jewett & John Shelton Lawrence Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Michael Snarr This very ambitious and timely book about the dilemma of zealous nationalism serves as a balance to the abuses of civil religion in the United States since the tragedy of September 11th. The authors critically analyze zealous nationalism, which “seeks to redeem the world by destroying enemies.”They explain the concept, expose its biblical origin, and then illustrate how it has been used throughout U. S. history.

Placing the abuses of America’s civil religion in historical perspective aptly serves to contextualize the assertions by President George W. Bush, Billy Graham, Ralph Reed, and others that God is on the side of the United States.This view is dramatically illustrated by Ann Coulter’s National Review quote. In response to the September 11th attacks, she said the United States should “‘…invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity… We carpetbombed German cities; we killed civilians.That’s war.This is war.’”

To demonstrate that Christianity does not possess a monopoly on zealous nationalism, Jewett and Lawrence document unsettling parallels in Islam and Judaism.

The authors then contrast zealous nationalism with their preferred biblical tradition, which they call “prophetic realism.”This tradition rejects simplistic views of right and wrong and the notion that God favors individual countries.

Building on Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, the authors call for a new “globally focused civil religion.”They cite Isaiah’s words PRISM 2004

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inscribed on the United Nations’ walls (swords into ploughshares) as a basis for the beginning of a more “realistic” approach to relations among nations, an approach that relies on the rule of law (and a reduction of the use of violence) to resolve disputes.The authors deserve credit here for going beyond extensive criticism to present an alternative global future that they claim would bring about not only a more peaceful world, but a more biblical one as well.

Captain America should be required reading for churches weighing in on the international political scene. The book will not convince all readers, however.

Many will reject the authors’ ideal world future, which relies on the restraining threat of military power, while others will object to the world-government aspect of the proposal, preferring instead a theology that supports violent unilateralism. Churches that identify with Christian pacifism may simply be uninterested in a world future that proposes a militarized United Nations. ■ Michael Snarr is associate professor of social and political studies at Wilmington College in Wilmington, Ohio.

SCRIPTURE ON THE SILVER SCREEN

By Adele Reinhartz Westminster John Knox Press Reviewed by Rick Bonn The Bible is more prevalent in popular film than most imagine, according to a new book by Adele Reinhartz, Scripture on the Silver Screen. Showing up in a host of unexpected and creative ways, it is quoted verbally and visually, alluded to, and used as a prop. It also forms basic character models and narrative structures.

Reinhartz’s analysis of 12 contemporary films illustrates the Bible’s con-

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tinued validity as source and inspiration for cinematic storytellers, offers discerning theological insight, and calls us back to our faith’s primary text as an examining window.

In linking films as divergent as Pulp Fiction and Fried Green Tomatoes with parallel texts in Ezekiel and Ruth, she champions the Bible’s diversity in content and approach. It is helpful to be reminded that not every Bible story is the gospel. She also builds a list of Bible uses in film, a potential checklist for any writers seeking its direct inclusion in their work. For the average churchgoer, she suggests new films to study in small groups.And for students and teachers of theology/film, she offers discerning angles on films like Magnolia, Pleasantville, and The Apostle.

The study is not without deficiencies, however.To begin with, Reinhartz’ critical method, though the favored one of many film/theology texts, shortchanges several films. Viewing film through Scripture rather than “reversing the hermeneutical flow” and viewing Scripture through film (as argued in the recently published A Matrix of Meaning: Finding God in Popular Culture by Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor [Baker Books, 2003]) can lead to narrow interpretations. One example is her judgment of The Truman Show as a parallel to the exit from Eden in Genesis.There’s little evidence the filmmakers intended this (a better parallel would be Pleasantville, where the film creators use imagery and symbolism to suggest this motif directly), and it vastly colors how the film is viewed and what we feel about it.

Instead of seeing a trapped soul finding freedom from a false world, Reinhartz’s reading sees a defiant self triumphantly escaping from Eden and God.The former nuances freedom, new life, and truth, while the latter suggests rebellion and sin.

It is here that the author’s lack of film scholarship is revealed (though it must

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be noted her cinematic detective work on The Sixth Sense is most rewarding).

Besides failing to pick up on some of the clearer authorial intents in her films, she is content to single out one interpretation while barely mentioning others.

Even with clear authorial intent, many of these films are too subjective and complex to inspire a single, unambiguous reading. And the community who discusses them is richer for having several options to consider. Finally, it’s better to have seen the films she discusses first.

She recounts too much of the story and dissects plots so ably that one has little motive to see the film.

But the value of this study far outweighs its lack.Reinhartz does more than achieve her stated goal of increasing biblical literacy; she contributes to a growing field of theological reflection on film with discernment and wisdom. ■ Former development director for ReelSpirituality, Rick Bonn is a freelance writer living on the Oregon Coast.

ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE

By Carol Bergman Orbis Books Reviewed by Steve Offutt In Carol Bergman’s Another Day in Paradise, the i n t ro s p e c t ive testimonies of humanitar ianaid workers draw readers into otherwise foreign and inaccessible settings. It is a compelling synthesis.As we labor to read about the carnage that envelops Bergman’s contributors, we must consider life’s most profound issues: PRISM 2004

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Is there hope for a world and a race capable of such evil?

For the literary device of testimony to successfully navigate such heavy issues, the contributors must be both authentic and vulnerable.They are. Readers are given accounts of the greatest atrocities of our time: the Rwanda genocide, the ceaseless wars of western Africa, refugee camps in Cambodia and Somalia.We feel the hot African sun and hear the buzz of mosquitoes.We experience life’s slow pace, until the days are unavoidably, matter-of-factly punctured by pornographic scenes and grotesque acts of violence.

We know then that the authors have reconstructed experiences that exploded their own sense of meaning and significance.We watch infants die in fly-infested areas of southern Sudan. We peer into the eyes of an orphaned teenage soldier in Sierra Leone, who “seemed dead—on a level far beyond indifference, at a depth from which I doubt he can ever resurface.”We visit refugee camps 50,000strong in Somalia, so rife with epidemics that “the unburied dead were piling up like cordwood along with tons of raw sewage.”

Bergman considers humanitarian workers the great heroes of our time.

But as brave as they are, most of her contributors crumble physically and psychologically in the midst of such overwhelming surroundings. They return home broken and defeated; only a few maintain guarded optimism.

Why, then, do they go? The contributors struggle for coherent answers. In the book’s foreword, John le Carré repeats a question posed by a fearful refugee in war-torn Sarajevo:“Did you feed us so we can die with a fat belly?”The only feasible response, le Carré suggests, is that it was better than not feeding them at all.

As a humanitarian aid worker, I share similar memories and thoughts. I stood, one afternoon, on top of what just hours before had been a neighborhood. The Continued on page 38.

Building a Bridge of Hope continued from page 15. tion to answer.That’s when mentors can be the hands and feet of Christ. They can say, ‘We don’t know why this happened to you, but we don’t want it to happen again.’”

“I thought I was one of God’s lost children,” explains Carol.“How could I talk to him? I was so far down that I really believed this. But I started reading my Bible and praying again. I started coming back.” She remembers sitting in church one day, realizing,“God is cleansing me.”

Yoder reports that about 25 percent of their families integrate into their sponsoring churches. Many others return to churches they had attended in the past.

While the Bridge of Hope commitment ends after a year and a half, the friendships developed between the families do not.Yoder recounts the story of a young graduate of the program who now attends church regularly with one of the older couples from her mentor group. Many people in the church just assume that she is the couple’s daughter, unaware of how the original connection was established.

Another graduate still enjoys a monthly “girl’s night out” with some of Off the Shelf continued from page 35. side of the mountain, jarred free by an earthquake, had crashed down over it, killing hundreds instantaneously. I dug feverishly, but I could offer even less than a fat belly.The open blisters on my hands would uncover only mangled bodies; it would not bring any of them back.

Bergman admits her contributors, heroic as they are, do not change the world, but she clings to the plausible idea that there is a cumulative long-range hope provided by the collective humanitarian industry.As a Christian, I ask,“A

her former mentors. Others stay con- Postcards nected through occasional babysitting, continued from page 28. frequent phone chats, and email.

And then there are the risks inherent Carol, Penny, and Karen say it’s been much easier to develop their relationship at the very foundation of holistic minthan they expected. “It’s very comfort- istry: that we might do evangelism to the neglect of social ministry or vice versa; able,” says Penny.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s help in the that we might concentrate on individual change to the neglect of systemic change; sense that I’m needy,” adds Carol.

Penny thinks for minute, then holds that we might focus so much on the her hands together, chest-high, palms “doing” that we neglect the “being”; that down, her fingers aimed outward to we might spend so much time building illustrate her point. She says of their up individuals that we forget to build an relationship,“It’s like this. It feels smooth alternative community.

These and many others are the risks and even.”

“Exactly!” Carol exclaims. “It feels we run, but, as Helen Keller reminds us, it’s all part of the daring adventure even!”

Although BOH often links families of life—and holistic ministry. ■ to government services, affiliates receive no government funding. About half of their funds come from committed individuals; the other 50 percent comes from churches,businesses,grants,and fundraisers.

If you are interested in supporting Bridge of Hope or would like information on starting an affiliate in your area, you can reach them at www.bridgeofhopeinc.org or 866-670-HOPE. ■

“Loose the chains of

A freelance writer living in western New York, Amy Durkee is a regular contributor to PRISM. hope for what?” and diverge from the way these courageous colleagues often respond. My search for redemption of structures, and of souls, takes a turn toward the supernatural. The weakness exposed in the contributors is every bit as present in me. But I nonetheless have hope. It rests in a God that does care, and whose justice will, ultimately, prevail. ■ Steve Offutt recently completed service as World Relief’s country representative in El Salvador and is currently earning his doctoral degree in sociology at Boston University.

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injustice...”

–Isaiah 58:6

Stand with us as a voice for the poor and oppressed.

Advocate for justice.

www.seekjustice.org

World Vision is an international Christian humanitarian organization serving the world’s poorest children and families in nearly 100 countries.

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THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SUPERHERO

By John Shelton Lawrence & Robert Jewett Wm. B. Eerdmans Reviewed by Rick Bonn “We cannot afford to wring our hands waiting for a Superman or Heidi to fix our problems,” admonish Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence in their new book, The Myth of the American Superhero. In fact, they say, these popular heroes and others may be dangerous to our democratic and religious health.

They’re examples of the American monomyth, a unique reworking of the traditional monomyth where an Edenlike community faces an “evil other” and must depend on an outsider’s “extralegal violence” or “controlling love” to restore them. Beginning with The Virginian, a novel that was published in 1902 and was later adapted into numerous film and television versions, the authors show how new technology keeps an old myth alive.They argue that the myth robs our

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national will to seek peace and social progress.They also boldly link it to social policy, lamenting its harm, and call for a new, more responsible myth.

Hundreds of examples, from Little House on the Prairie to The Matrix, illustrate how this myth prevents us from accepting communal responsibility for the world. In promising “...that super agencies will solve our problems and make us happy,” little room is left for democratic involvement.Their critique doesn’t even spare the superheroic presidents, lethal patriots, melodious lions, or cheerful saints often headlining our contemporary narratives.

In many ways, their case is compelling. It challenges a routine acceptance of the traditional hero model, flies in the face of those who claim no connection between entertainment and social ills, and stumps for discussing, not banning, these popular fantasies.

In restricting comment to the political arena, though, they say little about the myth’s continuing appeal and popularity. Nor do they identify and analyze a fair sampling of the heroes and stories that don’t fit this formula, making this study feel generalized. It slants, then, more towards those already pessimistic about popular culture and risks repelling the new storytellers it depends on to write a new myth.

It winds down with some hope, however, in citing examples of what a “democratic heroism” might look like.

Michael Straight’s novel Carrington, showing reconciler as hero, and the film Dead Man Walking are two of them. And the actions of Americans on September 11th, when various communities saved lives, acted within the law, and honored institutions, gives a portrait of what a new and truer myth might look like. ■ Former development director for ReelSpirituality, Rick Bonn is a freelance writer living on the Oregon Coast.

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THE PURSUIT OF GOD IN THE COMPANY OF FRIENDS

By Richard Lamb InterVarsity Press Reviewed by Kevin D. Hendricks Despite our culture of individualism, we weren’t meant to walk alone. God invented community,and it’s not just a neighborly sense of goodwill among people living on the same block.

Community is that sense of group belonging, fostered by people who genuinely know and care for one another.

Richard Lamb argues that these kinds of relationships are really what bring people closer to God. The Pursuit of God in the Company of Friends is all about forging community.

Lamb scours the life of Jesus for examples of relational ministry and backs up the Bible lesson with real-life stories from his 20 years as a non-people-person campus minister. Lamb has been learning how to build community by trial and error, and this book is the simplified how-to.

Of course it’s easy to read about community, but overcoming those awkward social moments is a different story. Lamb offers help in overcoming the challenges, often citing the benefits of honest community as the carrot stick to keep us going. But the fact that someone as analytical as Lamb (his figures, tables, and key concepts would be more at home in a textbook) can be successful at forming intentional relationships is the best argument for this book.

While Lamb never hints at it, what he’s really describing sounds a lot like what many of us hope church could be.

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For many of us, church and our church relationships are a lot like the Sunday morning meet-’n’-greet.We shake hands and exchange pleasantries, but when we ask “How are you?” we’re not expecting a confessional. But as Lamb points out, the command to love one another necessitates more than pleasantries.

Community is not always pleasant; in fact, it can be downright dirty. No one ever said the Christian life was clean and easy.

The Pursuit of God in the Company of Friends underscores the need to get out of our comfort zones and be valuable partners in relationships and then shows us how it’s done. ■ Kevin D. Hendricks is a freelance writer living in St. Paul, Minn. (www.monkeyouttano where.com/thoughts/).

BLUE LIKE JAZZ

By Donald Miller Thomas Nelson Reviewed by Jesse J. DeConto In a nonfictionwriting workshop at college, I learned that “essay” meant an “attempt” and that an essayist shouldn’t start with a concrete conclusion but rather should spar with a topic until some insight emerged or at least until the personal stories and musings convinced her readers she just wasn’t ready to form an opinion yet and neither should they. In this sense, Blue Like Jazz: Non-religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality is a 240-page essay.

Though his provocative title might suggest some revolutionary approach

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to Christian faith, Donald Miller’s suggestions are subtle. He doesn’t make arguments but instead reflects on his life and the exper iences of those around him and tries to reconcile them with the Sunday-school lessons of his past.

Blue Like Jazz is a book both for people who trust in Christ (and sometimes think themselves crazy for it) and for people who don’t believe (and sometimes think themselves crazy for it).

Most of the book centers on Miller’s life on the “Left Coast,” specifically in Portland, Oreg., and more specifically on the campus of Reed College, which the book calls “one of the most intellectual and…godless colleges in the country.” Describing the students’ leftist politics, humanitarian conscience, atheistic or agnostic outlook, and sexual and narcotic experimentation, Miller explains that, just as jazz music doesn’t resolve, neither did God. He writes of typical intellectual barriers to accepting the gospel: creation vs. evolution, miracles vs. naturalism, faith vs. reason. But the sustained discord in Miller’s life is more personal than philosophical: If the gospel has the power to change lives, why do so many nonbelievers seem to embody God’s love more fully than Christians do? Here Miller articulates a question that trips up those both drawn to and repulsed by the church, and those both inside and outside the church.

During my sophomore year at a Christian college, I attended a gay drama student’s senior recital at a secular college: a one-man play he’d written to express his anger at the Christian Right for their hatred of homosexuals. How was it that he could receive love from those “pagans” at his college but only condemnation from those supposedly known by their love? How was it that secular-college students cared about political injustice, world hunger, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa, yet my

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Christian schoolmates and I hardly noticed these problems existed?

These questions remain “blue like jazz”—unresolved—but instead of being paralyzed by fear and doubt Miller uses personal anecdotes to reveal his tandem techniques for moving forward: (1) Be honest about the sins committed by Christians; and (2) love people because they are God’s creatures, not because they share your faith or can serve as a charity case. Miller knew that the hippies he camped with for a month in a Colorado forest shared more love than the church people he knew, and he couldn’t say otherwise.

Miller and his fellow Christians at Reed went so far as to construct a makeshift confessional booth on campus, not to receive confessions but to apologize to anyone willing to listen about the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the televangelists.

Blue Like Jazz is the story of how Miller learned not to worry about whether befriending nonbelievers meant condoning their unbelief. “Instead of withholding love to change somebody, I poured it on, lavishly,” he writes in one of the book’s rare prescriptive passages.

“I hoped that love would work like a magnet, pulling people from the mire and toward healing. I knew this was the way God loved me. God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson. …

Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them. If a person senses that you do not like them, that you do not approve of their existence, then your religion and your political ideas will all seem wrong to them. If they sense that you like them, then they are open to what you have to say.” ■ J e s s e J. D e C o n t o i s e d i t o r o f t h e Rockingham News and a writer with the Herald Sunday in Portsmouth, NH.

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THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM

By William Greider Simon & Schuster Reviewed by Donald A. Stolmeier “Curiosity and doubt are the first steps toward action, especially when accompanied by well-earned anger at the way things are,” writes William Greider in The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy.

At what point in your life did you begin to realize that things are not always as they are presented? Has a fiery passion ever driven you to challenge something you instinctively sensed was wrong?

Greider believes that individual citizens not only possess the ability to bring about change where needed but also are obligated to do so by their existence on this planet. This belief is the cornerstone of the reformation that Greider hopes will reshape American capitalism.

According to the author, now is the time for Americans to begin asking the questions that challenge the foundations of our national convictions.

The Soul of Capitalism is a carefully considered analysis of the current state of American capitalism as well as a projection of its future from an ever-developing global perspective. The author’s meticulous research reveals the not-sopopular truths about the negative aspects and origins of our daily behaviors. One case in point is the assumption we make about our freedom, which Greider questions in light of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, an event that removed blissful ignorance as an option within an expanding global community.

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According to Greider, our current understanding of productivity, gain, and consumption—which has long dominated the daily thought patterns of capitalistic American citizens—must be relinquished. Instead, he says,Americans must once again walk as pioneers—this time on issues such as true-cost analysis that takes into account the effects on the environment, fair distribution of gain that spreads the wealth to workers rather than to CEOs, and the development of the kind of government that allows everyone equal access to America’s abundance.

Greider hopes that his motivational analysis will lead his readers to open their minds enough to “ask some questions that possess a little more doubt in the system.” ■ A teacher in Lawrence, Mass., Donald A. Stolmeier is passionate about educating people around the globe in how to live practically in God’s love.

WHAT DID JESUS DO?

By F. Scott Spencer Trinity Press Reviewed by Matt Donnelly We’re all familiar with the famous question, “What would Jesus do?”

Millions of Christians have adopted it as the guiding ethical principle of their lives.The problem with such a question, however, is that it puts the cart before the horse. If we don’t know how Jesus himself lived out commandments such as “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we are necessarily

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engaging in guesswork when we want to make truly ethical decisions.

As F. Scott Spencer points out in his book, rather than asking, “What would Jesus do?” it is more logical to begin with, “What did Jesus do?” Once we know what Jesus actually did, we will have greater insight into the decisions we’re called to make in our own lives.

By his own admission, Spencer is not attempting a “how-to” book on making ethical decisions. Instead he is looking for examples of how Jesus lived out his message on earth, leaving for others the task of writing about application.

Spencer is quick to joke, however, about the problem of making one-to-one associations between Jesus cursing a barren fruit tree and Christians today cursing an empty fruit basket at the grocery store.

What Did Jesus Do? is a balanced and perceptive book that provides a detailed examination of Jesus’ behavior as recorded in the four Gospels. Spencer offers numerous insights into the mind of the most fully human being that has ever lived.To cite one example, Spencer suggests that some of Jesus’ teaching in areas such as marriage and divorce may have been delivered in part to support the work of his cousin and friend John the Baptist, who was imprisoned and later beheaded for speaking out against the adulterous practices of the Herodians.

Spencer discusses how Jesus acted with a variety of people and what his actions reveal about the value he placed on family, friendship, the physical body, possessions, work, reputation, and so on —actions that defy hasty generalizations.

Later in the book, while discussing Jesus’ views on work and money, readers are asked to ponder the rarely asked question of whether Christ had a good work ethic. In the chapter on the body, we are treated to a fascinating discussion of Christ’s views on physical cleanliness.A thought experiment on Christ’s physical contact with women, which liberal

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scholars could have taken in a heretical direction, becomes in Spencer’s treatment a profound meditation on the meaning of human sexuality.

The highest compliment one can pay to any writer of a book about Jesus is that it brings us closer to its subject.

What Did Jesus Do? is scholarly yet surprisingly pastoral. No reader can fail to be enriched and enlightened by Spencer’s easy prose and fearless probing into the perfect life that Christ lived. ■

LIVING THE STORY: BIBLICAL SPIRITUALITY FOR EVERYDAY CHRISTIANS

By R. Paul Stevens & Michael Green Wm. B.Eerdmans Reviewed by Matt Donnelly In case you haven’t noticed, spirituality is in vogue.

Bookstores are overflowing with titles that promise to help us break with the past and get in touch with o u r real selves, typically the “god within” us. From Thich Nhat Hanh to Fritjof Capra, our modern-day gurus urge us to plug into the spiritual energy that pulsates around us and to release our minds from the shackles of time and space. None of these spiritual leaders mention Christ as anything other than a Zen master.

In the face of false spiritualities, what can a Christian do? How can we demonstrate an authentic brand of spirituality that shows a marked contrast between darkness and light? In short, what does it mean to believe in a personal God rather than an impersonal Brahman?

According to R. Paul Stevens and

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Michael Green, biblical spirituality is based upon a personal relationship with a personal, triune God. “The life I live in the body,” wrote St. Paul, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

This relationship involves living a life of faith that is expressed in acts of worship.As we worship, we come to see that our individual life story is intimately bound up with a far greater story that gives our own its only possible source of meaning.

Living the Story: Biblical Spirituality for Everyday Christians is an extended Bible study and meditation on what it means for Christians to have a vibrant spiritual life. Stevens and Green take their readers on a dizzying ride through both the Old and New Testaments in search of biblical characters who model for us how to live a life infused with divine meaning and purpose.The authors note that Christians should walk through this world in hopeful anticipation of eternity and that keeping this heavenly horizon in view focuses our minds on serving God in the here and now.

One of the most important insights in Living the Story is the reminder that the world is constantly watching and labeling us. In the early church, the reason that followers of Jesus were called Christians by those outside the church was that a ragtag bunch of men and women were not ashamed to identify themselves fully and truly with the risen Lord. The implication is that we are Christ’s ambassadors, sent to share a lifegiving message about the kingdom of God. If readers follow the counsel in Living the Story, the church can begin to show the world that true spirituality starts and ends with a personal relationship with a personal God. ■

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THE BIBLICAL CASE FOR EQUALITY GUARDIAN BOOKS

BY ARDEN THIESSEN

MEN

WOMEN CHURCH

AND

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INTERVARSITY PRESS

BY SARAH SUMNER

Reviewed by Susan Finck-Lockhart Two new books join the array of current perspectives on the women-in-the-church issue, one by a male Canadian pastor and the other by a female American professor.

While both have drawbacks in terms of style and “packaging,” both reach the same bottom-line conclusion: Scripture, when rightly interpreted, supports—rather than limits—the ministry of women.

The old adage that you can’t judge a book by its cover certainly holds true for these two books. Sumner’s cover features the words “Men” and “in the Church”

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in a serif typeface that exudes stability and seriousness while the word “Women” appears in an embellished cursive script.

The implication, however subliminal, is that men in the church are to be taken seriously while women are lightweight and decorative.This is a shame, because the exterior design sends a vastly different message from that of the content, which consists of excellent, detailed scholarship and conclusions which affirm that women are to be taken seriously at all levels within the Body of Christ.

Thiessen’s cover features cartoonish depictions of a man and woman hanging on swings from opposite ends of a giant cross.The graphics mask the seriousness and insightful nature of the author’s arguments and the grand scope of the issue, which he describes concisely and simply for a broad audience.

Getting past the covers, the books are quite different in style,approach,and intellectual appeal.The most striking difference in argument centers around the Holy Spirit’s role.While Sumner rarely mentions the Holy Spirit,Thiessen equates affirming the ministry of women with “opening our churches to the work of the Spirit.”

Thiessen’s argument is built on three points: Men and women are created equal (at creation), redeemed to be equal (crucifixion/resurrection of Christ), and confirmed to be equal (Pentecost and subsequent empowering by the Holy Spirit). After dealing briefly with the reality of inequality and oppression in the world, and how this has affected women, he paints a picture of God’s intention for the church. He then moves to a discussion of Biblical interpretation, setting forth an interesting logical point from the Genesis 3 narrative of the “curse”: “If the view is taken that from now on women must be subordinate, logically one should also insist that we must sweat when we work, that we must let thorns

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and thistles grow, and that women must suffer when they give birth…Those who still believe that the ‘curse’ of Genesis 3 means women must remain subordinate to men need to demonstrate that they also uphold all the other elements of that announcement. If they cannot, then they need to explain on what basis they perpetuate one part and not the other.”

He deals briefly with what he calls “the divergent texts,” giving a passable explanation of the so-called “problem passages.” Here is a glimpse of the most insightful section, titled “The Varieties of Inequality”: People who have studied dominate/ subordinate relationships point out that the dominants always make the rules.The dominant group decides …what relationship it will have with the subordinate group. [Soon] it becomes difficult for the dominants to even imagine that the subordinates could be capable of the functions from which they have been excluded…What has been established and accepted begins to seem morally right

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…such situations are difficult to change because the dominants hold the power and have a vested interest in controlling the kind of power the subordinates have.

Thiessen’s writing style borders on the simplistic and the book contains several grammatical and stylistic errors which I found distracting. But with a good editor and a new cover design, I can see this book being used effectively by churches seeking to study this issue. As it is, it might make a good resource for youth directors and Sunday school teachers who want to introduce the issue, or for working-class churches that are wrestling with the role of women.

Sumner’s book is structured in two parts. Part One contains chapters on discussions of women and personhood, masculinity and femininity, the definition of a “weaker vessel,” what it means for a man to be the “head” of the wife, and the order of creation. Part Two, entitled “Building Consensus in Christian Leadership,” begins with a discussion of the various mysteries within Christian doctrine which must be held in tension and concludes with a selection of vignettes of struggles with sexual issues.

The chief drawback of Sumner’s book is that it seems to contain every thought, sub-point, and feeling the author has ever studied or wrestled with concerning the subject of men and women. Her ability to dissect minute points may make her a great scholar, but the average layperson might find this level of detail cumbersome. Discussion questions are included at the end of each chapter, a format that suggests use with small groups, but only the most dedicated of small groups would make its way through 26 chapters of small type and extensive footnotes. Conversely, the mixture of personal narrative with high-powered scholarship may turn off

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serious intellectuals or seminary professors who might want to use this book.

Sumner describes how one of her professors once advised her,“Don’t show the full color of your plume; it will intimidate the men.” It is clear from this book that she hasn’t heeded the advice.

In spite of overreaching at times, Sumner refutes complementarian arguments with salient and fresh points, and both her scholarship and her writing are outstanding.This book would be good for an intellectual, conservative audience of believers who are willing to blaze a trail slowly and painstakingly in their churches for the full acceptance of women into ministry.

After reading both books, I found myself wishing for a user-friendly hybrid of the two—one that would combine the scholarship, excellent use of language, and discussion-question format in Sumner’s book with the conciseness, practicality, and emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s role and the dynamics of power found in Thiessen’s book. Oh, and did I mention a new cover? ■ Susan Finck-Lockhart is a pastor and freelance writer living near Waco,Tex.

WHAT JESUS MEANT: THE BEATITUDES AND A MEANINGFUL LIFE WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS

BY ERIK KOLBELL

Reviewed by Pam Robinson “This is a book that can be meaningful to people of any or no religious persuasion,” notes Jane Pauley on the book jacket of What Jesus Meant, an eloquently written exploration of how spiritual

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convictions affect our everyday decisions.

Indeed, while author Erik Kolbell is clearly inspired by Jesus, we sense that Christ and the Beatitudes serve merely as a scaffold upon which Kolbell structures his own social-activist agenda rather than a resounding call to a life of faith.

Devoting one chapter to each of the eight Beatitudes, Kolbell connects each verse to an Old Testament companion verse.Thereafter, however, he quotes as much from literary and theological giants as from the Scriptures to reveal what Jesus meant.

Not that the revelation isn’t often in keeping with Christian orthodoxy.Who among us would contradict Kolbell, former minister of social justice at New York’s Riverside Church, as he advocates for fighting political, racial, sexist, and social-class oppression? Some of us may also champion Kolbell’s no-exceptions pacifism. But when Kolbell speaks up for gay marriages and gay ordination, many Christians will wonder which translation of the Bible the author is using.

To his credit, Kolbell keeps the reader “hooked” until his fight for gay rights, which is not mentioned until the final

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pages. Few will remain untouched by his rousing call to move out of complacency and into action amidst the suffering world around us. But when we read to the end, we wonder if Kolbell admires Jesus any more than he does Gandhi. It is then that we recall that Kolbell’s title promises to point us only to a meaningful life, not necessarily a meaningful Christian life. ■ Pam Robinson is a freelance writer and college composition instructor living in Mt.Vernon,Ind.

UNITED BY FAITH: THE MULTIRACIAL CONGREGATION AS AN ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM OF RACE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

BY CURTISS PAUL DEYOUNG (WITH MICHAEL O. EMERSON, G E O R G E Y A N C E Y, K A R E N CHAI KIM, EDS.)

Reviewed by Abner Amos From introduction to epilogue, United by Faith challenges the way we view our role as agents of reconciliation in a society that has for centuries been plagued by racial tensions. By arguing that “Christian congregations, when possible, should be multiracial,” Curtiss Paul DeYoung and company have demanded nothing less than a movement in the church’s stance concerning the problem of race in America: a clear, bold call for Christians to follow Jesus’ example of bringing people of every ethnicity, nationality, and culture together in fellowship as a demonstration of God’s healing power to the world.

One can only wonder if multiracial congregations are even possible in a church

atmosphere which is, for the most part, segregated by race. DeYoung’s argument immediately tackles this issue by taking us into the life of Jesus and the congregations of the early church and providing evidence for God’s commitment to make his temple a house of prayer for all nations.

With their newfound unity in Christ, the peoples of the New Testament church were able to overcome their ethnocentrism and reach across ethnic, cultural, and racial barriers. Clearly, this has been a major failing in the American church.

Perhaps the most interesting reason for this shortcoming is revealed when DeYoung presents the theological arguments against multiracial churches.With a brief overview of African-American, Asian-American, and Latino theologies, we gain a deeper understanding of why faithful congregations continue to remain uniracial. As churches struggle to keep their theological purity, they close themselves off to the views of outsiders who might otherwise join their congregation.

It is only when we develop a theology of unity, in which we thrive for reconcili-

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ation without assimilating and compromising our unique differences, that we can anticipate a revolutionary change in race relations in the church. It is essential that the church in America learns from the New Testament church if multiracial congregations are to become a reality.

United by Faith does much to explain where we have gone wrong in our dealings with race throughout church history in the United States. More importantly, it provides an alternative to our failures, presenting hope in God’s ability to faithfully carry out God’s mission of racial reconciliation within the church. If Divided by Faith—Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith’s book (Oxford University Press, 2001)—showed that the very structure of religious organizations divides Christians along color lines, United by Faith declares that God has the power to overcome our failures to love across racial divides, the power to break down dividing walls of hostility. Overall this is a great read for those who have a passion for racial reconciliation and a must-read for anyone who is considering braving the waters of establishing a multiethnic church in America. ■ Abner Ramos works for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at East Los Angeles College.

HAMMERS & NAILS: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF MARK HEARD CORNERSTONE PRESS B Y M AT T H E W D I C K E R S O N

Reviewed by David Di Sabatino Like Mark Heard’s album Mosaics, Matthew Dickerson’s recent book about the singer-songwriter presents a montage of anecdotes, music lyrics, and reflections by friends rather than a linear biography.

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Heard was a talented musician who possessed the vocal lilt of James Taylor and wrote lyrics that deeply probe the mysteries of the human condition, and the author presents him positioned on the periphery of the Christian music industry, someone who intuitively knew that his gifts deserved a wider hearing yet was unwilling to make the compromises necessary to obtain acceptance.

Heard’s father refused to allow his son to sign a mainstream recording deal with Columbia Records back in 1972, feeling that the then 20-year-old should continue his education rather than launch out into the murky waters of a music career.

Despite his father’s protestations, the young artist eventually signed record deals in the contemporary Christian recording industry with Larry Norman of Solid Rock Records in the mid-’70s and Chris Christian of Home Sweet Home Records in the ’80s. But neither of these were particularly fruitful relationships.The interplay between artists and proprietors of intellectual property has always been strained, each of them feeling they bring more to the table than the other. And while in time Mark Heard gained understanding of the “game,” it disillusioned him, and he ultimately refused to play on the terms that were offered him.

Dickerson should be praised for not following in the footsteps of those biographers of Christian artists (like those who have written about Keith Green, for example) who opt for hagiography rather than deal with the complex realities of their subject. Heard is portrayed as a deeply contemplative artist overtly contemptuous of anything superficial.

Friends wonder aloud whether they were really liked or how such a softspoken man could sometimes be so brusque with them.The author wrestles with Heard’s decision to sidestep regular church attendance, preferring instead the embrace of a loose gathering of likeminded musicians.

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But as much as I enjoyed this book, I craved a more cohesive and topical (or at least chronological) approach, one that would tease out the obvious themes that emerge from Heard’s catalogue of music and would support them with a sound biographical sketch. Regardless, this is a good first foray into the life of an important artist whose musical legacy will be

discovered again and again by thirsty spiritual pilgrims, uncovering water in the parched desert of a banal Christian subculture. ■ David Di Sabatino is the editor of The Jesus People Movement: An Annotated Bibliography and General Resource (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999).

Postcards continued from page 26. ations of leaders, incorporating interns from other ministries, churches, and theological schools, and moving people into key leadership positions who have demonstrated Christ-like servanthood in “the little things” (Luke 16:10a).

Finally,“long-haul” churches understand that it is often necessary to go after root causes rather simply treat symptoms.

Churches that not only survive but also thrive for longer periods find it’s important (and biblically mandated) to go

beyond acts of mercy, charity, compassion, and relief to ministries of empowerment (both personal and communal), development (community and economic), justice (individual and system), and advocacy (being a voice for the voiceless).

What has been your congregation’s experience over the long haul? What would you add to or change on my list?

I’d love to hear from you (phil@esaonline.org) so I can better answer the question next time I’m asked. ■

Ron Sider continued from page 36.

Unfaithful evangelical lifestyles are a blatant denial of Jesus’ gospel. If the gospel were merely the forgiveness of sins, then we could accept the gospel and go on living in the same racist, adulterous, materialistic way. But if the gospel is the Good News of the Christ’s kingdom, as Jesus taught, and if part of the good news is that right now a new redeemed community of transformed persons living in the power of the Holy Spirit is breaking into history, then whenever so-called Christians live as the world does, their very lives are evidence against Jesus’ teaching.

We need to recover the biblical truth that God is blazing holiness as well as overwhelming love.We need to recover

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the biblical teaching on the egregiousness of sin and the necessity of repentance and sanctification.We need to turn away from American individualism and recover the New Testament understanding of mutual accountability.We need to bring all our people into small discipleship groups of genuine accountability so we can, as John Wesley said,“watch over one another in love.”We need to rediscover the almost totally neglected biblical teaching on church discipline.

The scandal of the evangelical conscience today mocks our evangelistic efforts and breaks the heart of our Savior.

If we will not repent and change, we should admit that the whole thing is a fraud. ■