Book Reviews – Page 13

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis by Karen Swallow Prior

August 8, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: An exploration of how images and metaphors influence Evangelical thought (or don’t.)

The Evangelical Imagination is the fourth of Karen Swallow Prior’s books I have read over the past 11 years, the sixth if you include the two classics in which she wrote the introduction. I have been in a private Facebook group and “friends” on social media for most of that time. I looked back, and basically, this is what I said to introduce the last books of hers that I read.

Part of what I appreciate about Karen’s writing is that her writing is personal. She is not just writing abstract “Christian Living” books, theology, or literary criticism; she is a character in the story she shares as she is writing theology, literary criticism, and moral formation. In large part, her work explores virtue, and she uses her work as a literature professor to give tools to that exploration.

I could write a thousand words discussing Prior’s past decade and the struggles she has been through, from very personal harassment by leaders within her denomination to leaving two jobs as a professor to literally being hit by a bus. (I understand everyone must include that line in a review of her work or an introduction to her in an interview.) I hope she will write a memoir sometime in the next 10 to 15 years, but I want people to read about The Evangelical Imagination, not my outsider’s perspective of her life so I won’t get into the personal stuff.

Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind will be 30 years old next year, and that is the book I think many will bring up as they discuss the Evangelical Imagination. Noll raised the question about whether there really was an Evangelical Mind and speculated about what it would take for proper attention to be paid to the life of the mind for the Evangelical. It was a book that almost everyone that wants to grapple with evangelicalism needs to have read. It is an important book, but James KA Smith’s work has indirectly questioned Noll’s thesis. It is not so much that Smith disagrees with Noll’s assessment but that Smith is raising questions about what we should do because we are not simply “brains on a stick” but individuals with a more complicated relationship to our minds.

Prior is extending Smith’s work and using Charles Taylor’s idea of the Social Imaginary to explore how a stunted imagination impacts our ability to address what it means to think and see the world around us. We all know Abraham Maslow’s quote, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” This rough idea of the Christian Imagination was explored more than 20 years ago in Emerson and Smith’s Divided by Faith. Emerson and Smith suggested that the reason Evangelicals cannot move past racial division is that their “toolkit” did not allow them to see the problem clearly but only through the lens of 1) freewill individualism, 2) relationalism, and 3) anti-structuralism. Smith and Emerson attempted to point out that the social imaginary of White Evangelicals impacted their ability to deal with race. Karen Swallow Prior is pointing out the social imaginary of Evangelicals more broadly and directly drawing parallels (for good and bad) to the Victorian age, where so much of the social imaginary of Evangelicals was developed. Most modern Evangelical do not know about those parallels and need someone to point them out.

Shroud for a Nightingale: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery by PD James

July 24, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: One mysterious death, and then another, among nurses-in-training, brings Adam Dalgliesh to the John Carpenter Hospital and the Nightingale House, where the nurses live and train.

I am continuing to work through the Adam Dalgliesh mystery series slowly. I am not sure how long PD James wrote the series, but the books I am working on how were written in the late 1960s. So far the books have been fairly out of time. You know they are in the 20th century, but no cell phones or computers exist. It is only at the very end that there is a cultural reference that dates the book. It matters to the story, so I will not reveal the reference, but I have appreciated the writing being somewhat out of time.

The series is less physiological than my current favorite mystery series, Inspector Gamache, but I am enjoying the very slow development of Dalgliesh as a character. Part of what I thought about with this book is that Dalgliesh’s moral and ethical character is essential. Moral and ethical character matter in almost every role in life, but particularly with positions of authority and justice, the person filling those roles matters. One of the officers working for Dalgliesh is a prominent character in this book, and that officer does not have exemplary character for the job. The comparison between them is being set up for what I assume with be a plot point in a later book.

Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction by Catherine Belsey

July 23, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: A brief exploration of a complicated topic.

I am not adequately trained to discuss poststructuralism (or any philosophical idea.) But that is one reason that I like these Very Short Introduction books. They give an introduction to the concept so that you have a broad idea of the concept, which allows you to pursue it more fully later (or not.)

Like most of these books, the main content is about 150 pages. I listened to this on audiobook, which may not have been the best choice, but it is what I had. I did not realize when I picked it up that a new edition had been published. In something as recent as Poststructuralism, the 20-year-old 1st edition was likely dated in ways I do not understand.

Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Nijay Gupta

July 22, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: A biblical exploration of women’s role in scripture.

Again, as I have said before, I am approaching Tell Her Story as an egalitarian that supports women’s ordination. I do not need to be convinced of the biblical record supporting women’s ministry roles. But I picked up Tell Her Story for two reasons. One, I watched an interview on the Holy Post with Nijay Gupta, and I have wanted to read one of his books for a while (my father recommended a commentary he wrote, and I just have not gotten around to reading it yet.) Second, I want to understand what was different about this book so I can rightly recommend the right books to the right people. I am strongly oriented toward personalized book recommendations.

So I am writing here primarily about the purpose of Tell Her Story in the context of the other books I have read on overlapping themes. Tell Her Story is more focused on the broad biblical record of women. I had a class on women in the Bible a few years ago, and while the focus was different, there was not much new to me here. But I do think that many have not understood either the actual role of Deborah (where the book opens) or how many female names are part of Paul’s letters or the broader New Testament.

I (I think like many evangelicals of my age) was largely taught formally and informally that Deborah held a place as the judge of Israel (ruler before kings were instituted) because men of Israel were in sin. Deborah was placed as a judge to shame men who were in sin for not leading. That is a common but harmful reading of the relevant passages. I do not remember ever hearing that Deborah was called the Mother of Israel before the class I took. The church I grew up in (where my father was a pastor) was egalitarian. Still, the youth group I attended with a friend and my college and general Christian media were dominated by complementarian views. So even as someone who grew up egalitarian and for women’s ordination, I absorbed bad biblical teaching that undercut women in ministry.

Nijay Gupta (professor at Northern Seminary) opens the book with Deborah even though the book primarily focuses on the New Testament because she is an excellent example that while the cultures of the ancient near east where the Bible was set were predominately patriarchal, Deborah was a documented exception to that general trend.

Unnatural Causes by PD James (Adam Dalgliesh Mystery #3)

July 8, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: Scotland Yard Inspector Adam Dalgliesh visits his aunt at her remote home for a vacation after a long case, and he is confronted with another murder but isn’t in charge of the investigation.

I have been reading too much non-fiction, so while on vacation, I scanned through some of my books and decided to pick back up the PD James series about the Scotland Yard inspector. I read the first two about five years ago. I wouldn’t say I liked either of those as much as I liked her Children of Men book, but because I found a cheap edition with the first six books, I figured I should give them another try.

I do not really feel like I have enough of a sense of the main character, Adam Dalgliesh, going into this. First, it has been five years since I read the last book, but also, after reading back over those posts, I did not feel all that connected to the character. This was not much better, but it was an enjoyable enough mystery. Last year I re-read the whole Inspector Ganache series, and one of the things that stood out to me is that as much as I enjoy the series as a whole, a lot of the books need the rest of the series to make sense. Individually, especially in the early books, they can feel fairly weak regarding the characters. But over a series of nearly 20 books, the series becomes stronger because it is a long series that is allowed to develop over time. I cannot expect individual books to have the same characterization as a long series.

Ragged: Spiritual Disciplines for the Spiritually Exhausted by Gretchen Ronnevik

July 7, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: A very Lutheran perspective on spiritual disciplines, which is helpful for non-Lutherans to read as a different perspective.

When I picked up Ragged, I knew nothing about the book or author other than several people I know recommended it. I have been trying to prioritize reading women authors this year. And I have been trying to work through different language around spiritual disciplines because so much of the Evangelical orientation toward spiritual disciplines uses pragmatic self-improvement as a motivation.

The introduction was my favorite part of the book, not that I didn’t like the rest of the book, just that her framing of spiritual disciplines was precisely what I was looking for. Ronnevik is a homeschooling mother of six, wife of a farmer, and survivor of a severe car crash that has left her with chronic pain. She directly takes on the type of perfectionistic, strongly ordered approach to spiritual disciplines that deters too many from even attempting regular disciplines. Disciplines are to draw us toward God, not to prove ourselves worthy of God.

After the helpful introduction, each chapter is a different discipline. I understand that approach, but it was not the best move. The positive of that approach is that you can go to disciplines that you are more interested in. The negative of that approach is that it is a type of list of disciplines that we are all familiar with. In many cases, Ronnevik reframes the discipline to make them more approachable, but I still feel like a knowledge presentation of disciplines. Each of those chapters are filled with stories to draw the reader in and be relatable. And I think this is a book that will be particularly helpful for people that struggle with disciplines as a competition to make themselves better.

A History of the Island by Eugene Vodolazkin

July 4, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: A novel that I am not sure I fully understood.

I am a big fan of Vodolazkin’s earlier novel, Laurus, so when I heard the general positive buzz about this new novel, I picked it up soon after it came out because I was in the mood for some fiction. But I think this novel requires more background knowledge to understand the satire than I have. After I started the book, Current posted a review. I try to avoid reviews until after I finish a book, but I read this one because I was a bit bored with the novel and needed some motivation to finish.

It meandered, and I could tell it referenced historical events, but I was unsure what the references meant. At least a part of the target of the satire is the myth of the progress of history. There is progress; we do not have half of our children die before the age of five. And the rate of absolute subsistence poverty has dropped. But progress has not brought about some other promises, radical egalitarianism, an end to poverty, more just institutions, etc.

The book opens as a medieval history written by monks of an island kingdom. After reading for a while, we realize that the commentary on the history is from the King and Queen, who are eventually introduced into the story when their lives are prophecied. They are born, married, and begin to rule. This is a book that slowly unfolds. Parfeny and Ksenia were born in a medieval world, but they have remained alive for over 300 years to also live in the modern world. From the vantage point of their long life, they have perspective. They ruled, and they were ruled, they lived in splendor, and they lived in poverty.

Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past

January 7, 2024July 3, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: Historians take on mostly conservative talking points.

Historians have been having an internal battle about their public role in current events. Much of the discussion is framed around Presentism, which is “an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences.” Part of the reality of history as a social science is that interpretation is a necessary part of what it means to “do history.” I am not a historian, although I do read a lot of history and respect historians who are on different sides of this debate.

Myth America has two problems, and presentism is one of them. Kevin Kruze and Julian Zelizer are Myth America’s editors, both historians of recent American history. The last book I read from them was Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, which was worth reading, but the problem with recent history is that it is harder to have a broad perspective on that history because it is so recent. Most of the essays are framed around current myths about history that impact current politics, which is precisely the concern over presentism.

Carol Anderson’s chapter on voter fraud takes the concerns around the 2020 election and frames them historically about why we have a current concern about election fraud. That historical framing is helpful to see why we have a current obsession with voter fraud without any evidence of it actually being a problem in most elections. But the book’s very nature is mostly to address current political concerns, leaving the book open to critique of political bias.

Narrative of Sojourner Truth

June 19, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: An autobiography from Sojourner Truth as told to Olive Gilbert.

This year’s final book for the Renovaré Book Club was Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Because I did not really have any background with Sojourner Truth, I read the new We Will be Free: The Life and Faith of Sojourner Truth by Nacy Koester as background before starting the autobiography.

One of the parts of the Renovare Book Club that I most appreciate is the podcast/video interviews and weekly emails with links to information and background. In the first podcast, in preparation for reading Narrative of Sojourner Truth, the host suggested that we come at the Narrative without other background materiaial, so as to understand her words on their own terms. This is common advice and not entirely wrong. But at the same time, this advice is influenced by the “plain reading of the text.” And as much as I appreciate that advice, it needs to be tempered because there is real value in expertise, and experts can give you far more information and background than what is possible when reading without the assistance of experts.

In this case, I do not think reading the Narrative without any background would have been helpful for me. Sojourner Truth was a complex figure outside the standard Southern slave narrative. She spoke only Dutch until the age of 9 and spoke with a Dutch accent her whole life. Her most famous speech, Aint’ I A Woman, was transcribed with a Southern slave dialect and likely was significantly distorted in form because of that.

Feminism: A Very Short Introduction by Margaret Walters

June 14, 2023 by Adam Shields

Summary: A short history of the feminist movement, primarily focusing on first and second-wave feminism within England, with a follow-up chapter on feminism in other geographical areas.

Because women’s role in the church has been an active conversation lately, I have been thinking about feminism. A tweet (there were several in the same vein) suggested that part of the issue with the discussion today is that feminism has changed the discussion. Today all except a few want to assert that women are equal, but roles are different. Historically the church fathers, until recently, were influenced by Greek thought that understood women as flawed men or lesser creations. Feminism has changed the terms so that even though hard patriarchalists continue to exist and have influence, most will at least say women are equal in value and Imago Dei.

The book opens with a chapter on the religious roots of feminism starting in the middle ages. And then following is a chapter on secular approaches to feminism. This is followed by a chapter on 18th-century women writers. And then two chapters on the 19th century.

Because voting rights were so central to the women’s rights movement, there were two chapters on voting rights. The last three chapters are about first-wave feminism in the 20th century. Then second-wave feminism in the late 20th century. And then, a chapter on feminists worldwide lightly touches on the critiques of first and second-wave feminism. The afterward lightly touches on continued changes to feminism. Kaitlyn Schiess has a good video on her Getting Schooled series, Feminism 101, that covers similar material in about 40 minutes.