Book Reviews

Summary: An expansion of his 2014 Politico article.

This is a very short book that is an expansion of a well-known and controversial article. I listened to the book, and it was less than 2 hours. In paper, it is 128 pages, but those cannot be dense pages.

The rough thesis is that the rise of the religious right was not originally because of concern over abortion or gay rights as the story is sometimes told, but because of the IRS investigation or religious schools’ segregation stances. On the narrow thesis, I think that it is hard to argue against race playing a role. Segregation academies, as they are sometimes called, were a response to public school integration requirements, and these Christian schools, which just happened to usually be all white, just happened to appear in the years following Brown v Board. By 1970 (following an IRS rule change), the IRS started to research the rise of these schools and sent requests to the school to ask about their integration policies. Many schools obfuscated or allowed in a small group of minority students to avoid IRS investigation. But Bob Jones and a few others schools were vocal in their segregation. After several initial court cases, the IRS revoked Bob Jones’ tax exemption in 1976. Eventually, there was a Supreme Court case in 1983. (Ronald Reagan had a campaign stop at Bob Jones in 1980. George W Bush had a campaign stop in 2000. Also in 2000, Bob Jones University revoked its ban on interracial dating. In 2017, Bob Jones University regained its tax exemption.)

Up until the early 1970s, there was not a strong political movement within the religious right. Some Evangelicals were trying to raise concerns about abortion, but it was not a significant issue. The SBC had a weak resolution in support of allowing limited abortion in 1971. It was not until 1980 that the SBC had a resolution clearly opposing abortion.  The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern in the fall of 1973 did not mention abortion at all.

Balmer is broadly right in the basic thesis that racial concerns were one of the contributing factors that gave rise to the religious right. I think there was a bit more nuance and detail in Bad Faith than in the Politico article, but I think there should still have been more nuance and detail. This is a concise book, but if he was clearer about how limited his claims are, I think this would be a better book. I know that many understood the Politico article to have a more expansive thesis, something like, “abortion was never really a concern of the religious right, it was always just covert racism all along.” That more expansive thesis would be too strong, but I think that the more expansive thesis is a misreading of the article facilitated in part by Balmer not limiting his claims more clearly.

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Summary: Reckoning with history through its landmarks and locations.

It is no surprise to anyone that I like to read history. History gives us insight into our current realities by exposing the forces that shaped our reality. But history is also narrative, the stories that we tell ourselves about how the world came to be. Many historians are incredible writers. Clint Smith’s background as a poet is evident. His language is personal, evocative, and at times searing. I am not brand new to Clint Smith; he hosts the YouTube CrashCourse series on Black American History. During a road trip to visit my parents, my wife and I listened to podcasts and a 90-minute discussion between Clint Smith and Brené Brown. When the podcast was over, I immediately purchased the audiobook of How the World is Passed, and we only listened to this audiobook for the rest of the trip.

About 15 years ago, I listened to the audiobook of Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. With her trademark voice and humor, Vowell traveled through the country to visit sites of political violence. If you have read that book, How The Word is Passed is a more serious similar idea. Clint Smith starts in his hometown of New Orleans and explores monuments’ role in understanding the history of slavery. Then he visits Monticello and the Whitney Plantations and explores how plantations handle the story of slavery and the mythology of the plantation. That history of plantations naturally leads to Angola Prison, one of the country’s largest and most infamous prisons built on a plantation.

Blandford Cemetery has been a cemetery since 1702 but was significantly expanded after the Civil War battle of Petersburg and is now mostly a Confederate Cemetery. I will expand on this description a bit more because this chapter is a perfect illustration of what Clint Smith is attempting to do with the book. He initially goes on a tour of the cemetery and the church that was on site. Then, referencing the earlier discussions of how plantations told their story, he details the discussion with the tour guide and the cemetery director. During the discussion, he discovers a Confederate Memorial Day commemoration at the cemetery that the Sons of Confederate Veterans put on. Along with the narrative of the visit, Smith recounts the history of the Lost Cause, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans and their roles in shaping education, the memory of the Civil War, and southern identity. Finally, during the discussion of the program and recounting of interviews with participants in the program and attendees, Smith discusses how various forms of white nationalism and confederacy remembrance are often interlinked. All of this gives context and depth but feels natural; a visit leads to another visit, and talking to one person leads to an exploration of the person’s ideas.

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Summary: Historical exploration of the modern concept of Biblical Womanhood. 

Right off from the start, I was not planning on picking up The Making of Biblical Womanhood. I am an egalitarian concerning women in Church leadership. I am for full ordination and full participation of women in the church in all areas. I do not need to be convinced that the modern emphasis on gender roles is modern or problematic. I have read fairly widely in this area and don’t need to be convinced.

But there was a sale at audible and I needed to buy one more book, so I picked up the audiobook. I was frankly surprised by how much new information I learned. I think where The Making of Biblical Womanhood is the best is when Barr is pointing out the history of women serving in roles that today some consider inappropriate for women. By pointing out how there has been a constriction of role, or in the sections on the bible and theology, how earlier generations understood the bible or theology differently, Barr is rightly making the cases that while women have not previously been equally able to teach or preach or lead, the fact that some have means that it is not a universal proscription from various roles.

At the end of the book, I think it is unsurprising that many critiques are of what the book did not do. Barr is not primarily a biblical scholar and she does not primarily make the case for women in ministry from that background. There are plenty of other books that do that. It is a bit of a catch-22 situation. Many that are opposed to women in ministry cite the history of Christianity and a flat reading of a couple of passages as all that is necessary to make the case. To counter that case, there needs to be a much more nuanced reading of the scripture (which isn’t the main focus here) and a retelling of the history of Christianity to show that there has been a history of women playing a larger role in the public ministry of Christianity. Barr focuses on the latter and the critiques are often that she does not do the former. But the former has many other examples and when those authors point out alternative readings of scripture, they are met with charges that, “well that is not how the church has historically read those passages and women have never served in that way.”

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Summary: Some lessons need to be experientially learned. 

It would be wonderful if there were some curriculum, or better yet, some magic trick, where everyone would completely learn wisdom. But that is not how wisdom or life work. Many lessons, as frustrating as it is to many parents, have to be experienced.

Carl McColman has had a lot of experiences. And with himself as the primary subject, he recounts how even when he theoretically could see the wisdom in the distance, he still often had to experientially learn before he was able to start to put these lessons into practice.

The book opens with his introduction to a 7-year-old girl that would become his stepdaughter. She was significantly disabled from a stroke and other congenital disabilities. McColman had to learn how to be a husband and father experientially. Some mistakenly suggest that things like marriage or parenting are the only ways to learn maturity. McColman doesn’t do that, but he does show how those roles did force him to think differently about his life and how to reorient his priorities.

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Summary: Basic introduction to the concept of Spiritual Direction and what to expect before you get started as a spiritual director.

I am not completely sure how I picked up a copy of this. I think maybe it was a giveaway from the author. I don’t think I agreed to review it. But as I was glancing through my books and looking for something else, I found a copy of the PDF and quickly read through it last week. I am one three-page paper short of finishing my certification as a spiritual director, so I am interested in how different people present the concept.

Most protestants are not really familiar with the concept. Generally, I say it is a form of discipleship. Loosely connected to the early desert fathers and how older monks led younger monks into contemplative work once the monastic system was more established. Generally, most Catholic and Episcopal/Anglican priests must have a spiritual director. This is someone who helps pay attention to spiritual matters. Post-Vatican II, a new emphasis arose on spiritual direction and more attention to spiritual direction for laypeople.

I was trained in spiritual direction through an Ignatian stream of spiritual direction. Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises, designed initially as a 30-day retreat for people to grow closer to God, often as part of discerning a vocation. I think the best simple definition I have commonly heard is that spiritual direction is a regular relationship with someone who helps to serve as a second set of ears to hear God’s direction for your life.

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Summary: A wonderful memoir of a philosopher who has attempted to live his Christian life well.

My reading often goes in trends; I have gone back to reading biographies and memoirs right now. I have often complained about the distortions of hagiography, the old saint stories that were often stripped of the real humanity of the subjects to create an exemplar that we can follow. Of course, there is value in seeing the stories of our elders and the saints who have come before us. But I also think there is real value in seeing the person’s full humanity because the life of the Christian is not perfection. Memoirs are notorious for only presenting part of the story in ways that serve the author. That will always be a danger, but memoirs can also reveal internal realities that are difficult for biographies to handle. That is why I want to read Eugene Peterson’s memoir, the Pastor, and his biography, A Burning in My Bones, because of the distance of the biography and the intimateness of the memoir complement one another. But most people will not have biographers.

Nicholas Wolterstorff is not a household name. He is a philosopher who taught for 30 years at Calvin before moving to Yale and various other part-time positions before retiring. He is well enough known and important enough in the philosophy world to justify a Wikipedia page, but as a non-philosopher, I probably would not know of him except through his book on grief, Lament for a Son. Lament for a Son is a classic book on grief, written in the wake of the death of his son Eric in a climbing accident when he was 25. Eric lived in Europe and near the end of his Ph.D. work, with his younger brother on his way to stay with him for the summer, when he passed away. The section of In This World of Wonders about Eric’s death and the book Lament for a Son was such a good example of the memoir’s strength. Wolterstorff admits errors and shortcomings and his blindness, because of grief, to the needs of those around him. But he also reflects well from a distance on how that time has impacted him and his work from that time.

Much of the value of In This World of Wonders is the story of how Wolterstorff’s academic work was related to his life story. The repeated discussion of the interaction of art and craft is related to his father’s art (pen drawing) and the craft of his woodworking. The role of justice and love is related to his work’s real-world experience of Apartheid, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and other areas of injustice. Wolterstorff’s work on the liturgy was related to his work in the local church. His work on the philosophy of education is related to his own work at the college level in understanding the curriculum of the liberal arts and his work in private Christian schooling for younger students.

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Summary: A brief biography of Harriet Tubman, not dumbed down, just brief.

A couple of years ago, the movie Harriet came out and helped raise the status of Harriet Tubman. There has also been the ongoing discussion of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, which will have taken 16 years from the start of the process to the actual bills being produced if the current timeline holds.

In 2003-2004 there were two good academic biographies, Bound for the Promise Land and Harriet Tubman: Road to Freedom. But outside of those two biographies, most writings about Harriet Tubman were children’s picture books or short low-quality biographies. She Came to Slay fills the void by being a short biography (less than 200 pages) while being really well written and historically current in its research. Erica Armstrong Dunbar is a history professor at Rutgers and knows her craft. She Came to Slay’s description references Notorious RBG, a similarly short but high-quality biography.

There is much about Harriet Tubman that we do not know, but much that we do. She likely helped around 70 people escape slavery through the underground railroad and supported the planning of others. Her work in the civil war supporting the formerly enslaved that escaped to the Union lines and saved many. And she led a military raid during the civil war that freed many more enslaved people through military intervention than her work in the Underground Railroad.

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Summary: Most extensive biography of Howard Thurman to date. 

I have been on a project to understand Howard Thurman over the past several years. I have read two collections of his sermons, his autobiography, a shorter religious biography, and his Jesus and the Disinherited twice. Peter Eisenstadt is well qualified to write this biography. He has an earlier book on Thurman’s trip to India and meeting Gandhi and, with Walter Fluker, is the editor of the Papers of Howard Thruman project. They have released five volumes of Thurman’s papers, and the second volume of his sermons will release next month. I am slowly working through the first book of his sermons from that collection.

Howard Thurman is one of the most important figures in 20th-century Black history that many people have not heard of. Thurman was born in 1899. His grandmother, who played an important role in raising Thurman, had been enslaved. Thurman was extraordinary, a mystic, called one of the best preachers of the 20th century by Time Magazine in the 1950s, an academic, a popularizer of non-violence, and a mentor and spiritual director to many. One of the reasons that many do not know of Thurman is that he resisted public leadership within the civil rights movement. Thurman was at Morehouse with MLK Sr, and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman was roommates at Spellman with Alberta Williams King. Similar to his role as mentor to MLK, much of his most influential work was private mentoring and spiritual direction to students or friends.

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