by Diana Butler Bass. HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. ISBN 0-06-083694-6. Hb., 336 pp. $23.95.
When I read Christianity for the Rest of Us by Diana Butler Bass I recommended it to all of our clergy, gave a book review, led a session retreat on its contents and bought it for a few good folks whose book budgets were stretched. The Presbytery of Mid-Kentucky then paid for eleven people to hear Diana at Columbia Theological Seminary at the end of January. Both the book and Diana made an impression not only on me but on our good people!
Over a three-year period, Bass studied 50 old Protestant churches that were renewing themselves in mission and identity while exhibiting a new spiritual vibrancy, often coming from dire circumstances of decline and crises. Ten of these congregations became the key to her research. The churches were theologically moderate to liberal and none was the largest in town, but they did range in size from 35 to 2,500. They were Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Methodist, Lutheran, and Episcopalian.
The following reflections will give away some key elements of the plot that the reader may wish to resist reading till completing the book!
The Boy-Who-Lived, and lived, and lived, and lived again, lives! After finishing the incredibly satisfying Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I went back and counted. At least nine times in the seven books Harry Potter survived direct personal attempts of Voldemort to capture and kill him. Four of those attempts come in the final volume. What is more, in none of those attempts does Harry ever attempt to do anything more than defend himself. Harry Potter never intentionally kills anyone... though admittedly he is sometimes tempted.
Many readers around the world have been rather stunned by the unmistakably Christian elements in the final showdown between Harry Potter and Voldemort. I must admit that I was not. Thanks to the insights provided though the various books and essays of John Granger -- no relation to Hermione -- I've been expecting this for several years. (See bibliography below.) As usual Joanne Rowling gets at least an "E" (Exceeds Expectations) on her "N.E.W.T." volume -- and I'd say she gets and "O" (Outstanding).
There are two sets of folks who will be seeing this film: the huge fans, who have read all the books and seen all the previous movies, and the casual acquaintances, who perhaps are being introduced to this series for the first time. Either group will enjoy the experience, but in different ways.
Those who are very familiar with the scriptures will always approach a bible movie with mixed feelings: the film, no matter how likeable, is never going to be completely faithful to scripture, without risking a literal woodenness, but if it takes liberties with the story, it risks the ire of those who would have preferred more authenticity. So it is with the avid Harry Potter devotees: the movie is good as far as it goes, but leaves out a significant amount of material (how could it not?), and takes a few (minor) liberties with the story.
Morgan Freeman as God? Well, why not? He has the advancing age and regal bearing and sonorous voice to be considered dignified, and possess sufficient gravitas, but he also has a sense of humor, laughs easily, and can even dance, on occasion.
Steve Carrell as Noah? Well, why not? As recently-elected Congressman Evan Baxter, he has the name recognition, organizational skills, and the personal charisma. He's lacking somewhat in the faith category, but that can be developed, because he's the kind of man who works hard, loves his family, tells the truth, can invest himself in the grandiose, and does not give up easily.
I have been a huge fan of Jimmy Carter for a long time and believe that he has set the gold standard for being a former president. Who else in recent generations can match his stewardship of the prestige that accompanies that position? Rather than retiring into a private world where he could lick the wounds he collected during his administration or going on the lucrative speaking circuit, Carter immediately threw himself into building homes for the poor and serving as an international ambassador for causes of peace and justice. He is widely respected for the moral authority he has earned over the last twenty-five years since leaving office. Like others, I just adore this man.
Over the last fifteen years, I have accompanied numerous church groups on pilgrimages to Palestine to visit the "living stones" of the church who are struggling for their very existence. We have helped to build homes, church facilities, ministries, and most of all, hope. Along the way, the Palestinian Christians found a very tender and abiding place in my heart.
'Knocked Up': If the title makes you cringe at its crudity, then the movie itself will make you apoplectic. But behind all the crusty repartee is a character with a good heart. Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) is a classless slacker who spends all his time getting high with a little help from his friends, carefully tracking porn. He happens to meet a nice girl named Alison (Katherine Heigl), who is actually on a career path, and otherwise wouldn't have given him the time of day, but well, she was a little tipsy from celebrating a promotion, and the next thing you know, they wake up together in the morning wondering who in the world is this person next to me in the bed. That would have been the end of it, except, you guessed it, eight weeks later she turns up pregnant. And then they have to try to figure out if they even like each other, much less can raise a child together. A thoroughly modern reverse love story, told with so much off-color off-handedness as to leave hardly a hint of saccharin aftertaste.
by Katharine Rhodes Henderson. Continuum, 2006. ISBN 0826418678. Hb., 247 pp., $24.95.
In an era when more women are entering seminary and fewer are rising to senior pastor positions, Katharine Rhodes Henderson's new book is both timely and important. It may help break the glass ceiling for women while also re-framing the idea of religious leadership in the 21st century.
Dr. Henderson, executive vice president of Auburn Theological Seminary (N.Y.), introduces us to non-traditional entrepreneurs who lead not "from above" but from "behind, within and beneath." These brave women of faith have a contagious fervor for doing justice in new and creative ways. Many of them who are more "spiritual" than they are "religious" teach those of us in leadership positions how to analyze conflicted situations and move, as she says, "organically and intuitively" from the center out and the ground up instead of from the top down. They teach us how to broker new partnerships and re-think conventional ways of addressing problems.
by Anne Tyler. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. ISBN: 0-307-26394-0. Hb., 277 pp., $24.95.
In Digging to America, Anne Tyler returns to the themes of longing and healing. The story begins in the Baltimore airport as two families wait for their adopted daughters to arrive from Korea. One family, the Donaldsons, is out in full force with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in attendance. The other family, the Yazdans, is an Iranian-American family composed of three people. The Yazdans are quiet and private, while Bitsy Donaldson habitually turns occasions into celebrations. As both families are leaving the airport, Bitsy invites the Yazdans to join their family party at her home. Thus begins the relationship between the two families, who have little in common besides their adopted daughters.
The Presbyterian Outlook invited pastors and leaders from across the church to share with us their hopes for summer reading. Here are their responses:
Betty Meadows, general presbyter, Mid-Kentucky Presbytery:
Christianity for the Rest of Us, by Diana Butler Bass
Scott Black Johnston, pastor, Trinity Church, Atlanta, Ga.:
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling
Portions of Calvin's Institutes (the 500th anniversary of his birth is approaching fast)
A Time to Embrace: Same-Gender Relationships in Religion, Law, and Politics by William Stacy Johnson
For the past few months, I have been conducting a very unscientific survey among PWPAs (Persons With a Presbyterian Affiliation). I think I've talked with around a hundred folks. I asked: "What does it mean to be a Presbyterian today?" The most frequent response is a glazing over of the eyes, a couple of mumbles, followed by, "Gee, I wish I knew." I often have followed this up by asking, "Then why do you stay?" The most frequent response? "I don't know. (Sigh) I just don't know."
Lately, I've been asking a third question of people who seem receptive: "How would you describe being a Christian these days?" Puzzled looks and slow, rueful headshakes are very common. "You got me. I don't know how to describe that. (Pause.) Y'know, I don't think about it all that much."
Admittedly it is an unscientific sample, but thinking back over the years it rings way too true. Folks like this are not simply missing a denominational identity, they are missing a core Christian identity as well. For these folks, "faith" is a series of very blurry, abstract concepts that have nothing to do with "real life." Church is strictly an "if convenient" proposition that has to do with social contacts and "feeling good" more than anything else.
Christian book top sellers for late 2006 and early 2007 from the following publishers:
by Michael Jinkins. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2006. ISBN 0802827519. Pb., 186 pp. $15.
For almost five years we were privileged to be in a program developed by the Office of Theology and Worship entitled "Excellence from the Start." The design of the program was to put new pastors in groups of seven or eight under the leadership of experienced pastor/mentors. Groups met twice a year for theological reflection on ministry in light of assigned readings.
by Phil Noble. Montgomery: NewSouth, 2003. ISBN 158838120X. Hb., 168 pp. $24.95
Growing up in north Alabama, I vividly remember riding in the back seat of my father's Mercury and hearing him and a friend of his, an insurance salesman from Cullman, talk with some pride about the fact that Cullman, Ala., did not have any African-American residents. My father's friend said he called on one elderly woman regularly in Cullman who had a small arsenal in a bedroom in the back of her house which was ready to be used by several men in that small town to intimidate any African-American who thought to try moving into the city limits. The conversation between my father and this man was filled with the kind of racial epithets that I routinely heard in my childhood. This was 1978.
(fully revised and updated), by the Society of Biblical Literature, Harold W. Attridge, general editor. HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN 006078685X. Hb., 2272 pp. $44.95.
In these days of hitormiss Hollywood sequels, one picks up a "revised and updated" work in fear and trembling. The new edition may fail to rise to the level of the original. Something of the essential character of the original may be removed or replaced in an effort to make the new edition somehow "better."
Such fears are unfounded here.
I was a seminary student when the first edition of The HarperCollins Study Bible came out in 1993, and have found it to be an indispensable tool both in the classroom and in the church. As a student, I realized that it reflected well the insights and interpretive methods of the biblical scholars whose works were among my seminary readings (much as the Oxford Annotated RSV did for previous generations). As a pastor, I have found it to be a useful way to bring the fruit of current biblical scholarship into Bible studies without having to lug around numerous volumes of commentary. The pages of my original edition are underlined, dogeared, torn, worn, and crumpled; alas, one section has even fallen out. I hope my copy of this new edition will be similarly worn in a few years--except for loose section!
Link to Movie Review article, Mar 12, 2007
Advance Work:
1) Ask one member of the group to research the life of William Wilberforce, and how the movie emphasized certain parts (his opposition to slavery) and omitted others (his views on 'The 'Trouble in The Colonies,' the American Revolution). He served 45 years in Parliament. What American politicians have enjoyed such a breadth of service in Congress, and what legacy did they leave?
by Edith M. Humphrey. Eerdmans, 2006. ISBN 0-8028-3147-8. Pb., 295 pp. $21.
This is an exciting book. It links the doctrine of the Trinity with the spirituality of ordinary Christians. Humphrey, who teaches New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, organized her book around three triads: love, light and life. In keeping with the Trinitarian motif, each triad has three sections.
The heart of Humphrey's work is her understanding of the Triune God and how this God relates to believers. For her, the Trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit living in a perfect community of love and sharing. The Triune God is not self-contained but stands outside the divine self. This is the meaning of ecstasy. The purpose of this ecstasy or standing outside of the divine self is to have an intimate relationship with men and women. This is the "holy tryst" that Humphrey defines as "a holy meeting in which God, through his very own love, brings humanity (spirit, soul, body) to himself" (p. 17). This occurs especially through the action of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, for Humphrey, Christian spirituality is "the study of what happens when the Holy Spirit meets the human spirit" (p. 17).
by William G. McAtee. Martha Gilliss, editor. Louisville: Witherspoon Press, 2006. ISBN 1571530657. Pb, 434 pp. $24.95.
Dreams Where Have You Gone? is several things: a survey of Presbyterian history, a chronicle of the Union Presbytery Movement, an oral history of that movement, a memoir of a Presbyterian pastor, and a probing assessment of where the Presbyterian reunion of 1983 came from with questions about where we are going. It is a wonderful book that can be read at several levels and will provide wisdom and insight for all its readers.
Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) had it all: he was a star athlete, young, handsome, and charming. He's driving a convertible at night along a country road, and wants to show his date, and his best friend in the back (with his date), how amazing it is to drive with the lights out and watch the luminescent fireflies. They are at once enchanted, thrilled, and frightened. As he speeds up to heighten the sense of danger, the others start "freaking out," begging him to turn on the headlights, and as he does, they all see the combine inexplicably parked on the road, just before they hit it head-on.
by Fleming Rutledge. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005. ISBN 0-8028-2786-1. Pb. 81 pp. $12.00.
One of the great traditions of the Christian Church is to take time, during Holy Week, to reflect upon the words Jesus spoke from the Cross. Sometimes this happens in a three- hour service on Good Friday, in which the combination of the crucifixion accounts in the four Gospels are read and interpreted in turn. Out of this tradition, Fleming Rutledge has created a series of mediations that are helpful for personal reading, reflection, and devotional use at any time of the year.
by N. T. Wright. Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 2006. ISBN 0-8308-3398-6. Hb., 176 pp. $18.
Every pastor and every politician should read N.T. Wright's newest book, Evil and the Justice of God. It serves as both a concise explanation of what the Christian faith has to say about evil and also as a way of understanding all of the terrible things happening in the world around us.
Wright starts by discussing the problem of evil, which is not only a philosophical riddle but a terrible reality in our world today. Wright says that most of us in the West have accepted the Enlightenment myth of progress. Thus we tend to ignore evil in the world for as long as we can, and when it slaps us in the face, we respond to its existence in immature and inappropriate ways.
This is the fascinating story of the life of William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), the late-eighteenth century member of the British Parliament whose life work was finally succeeding in getting a provision passed that banned the slave trade in Great Britain. (OK, so historically, it just moved to other places during the next century, like the Indies and the Americas, but it was still a heroic struggle.)
Outlook: How has your faith helped you in your whole journey?
JD: My faith has been central to me. From the very beginning, in Sudan, I was baptized when I was two years, or one year. And later, in the camp, when we formed into 93 groups, of about a thousand each, every group had a covenant box, like the people of Israel on their journey. And the box was in the middle of the gathering, and we would pray together every day, from 6 in the evening until 9 in the evening, singing songs to the Almighty in our native language, though in the camp they taught us English. Then, on Sundays, we would all gather together, outdoors, with just the fence around us, and worship the Lord. We are the Gentiles, not the Jews, and we believe that Jesus Christ is for all people.
Theodore J. Wardlaw reviews Barbara Brown Taylor's "Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith."
After reviewing scores of films in 2006, these are my selections for the best in their categories. We will see which films and performances win honors at the 2007 Academy Awards on February 25.
Both are about people dealing with grief and emotional displacement. Both are about how easy it is to say, 'You need to move on with your life,' and how difficult that is to do. In both, the hardship comes in unexpected places, and so does the relief. In both, the redemptive part is how people love one another.
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