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.