Book Reviews

Takeaway: “Discipleship is about how we live; not just the decisions we make, not just the things we believe, but a state of being.”

I am a big fan of Rowan Williams’ little books. There are a lot of them. Most of them grew out of lectures and so are short (around 80-100 pages) and pack a lot of punch. Several of them would make excellent small-group discussion books because they could be covered in 4 to 6 sessions (what I think is an optimal length for small-group discussions).

Being Disciples is a follow-up to Being Christian. Being Christian focuses on four practices central to being Christian: baptism, bible, eucharist, and prayer. Being Disciples about attitudes or virtues or approaches to how we live. The chapter titles are Faith, Hope and Love, Forgiveness, Holiness, Faith in Society, and Life in the Spirit.

Williams is a real scholar and theologian, and I have had some difficulty with some of his longer, more academic books. But these shorter ones have a simple presentation without being simplistic. One of the reviewers of Being Disciples on Amazon said, “the simple presentations was made on the basis of deep understanding of theology and the human condition.”

Williams is a theologian, but a theologian who centers practice. He does not minimize theology but suggests that how we live as Christians really matters to becoming more like Christ. The knowledge of theology is not unimportant. But we do not become like Christ through our knowledge, we become like Christ through our practice. (I read this right after finishing the Dangers of Christian Practice, so that was on my mind, but I still think that Rowan Williams is right here.)

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Takeaway: Spiritual practices are not magic bullets. 

Over the past few years, I have become a disciple of spiritual practices. I have a spiritual director. I regularly use the Book of Common Prayer. I do think that the eucharist and baptism should be central to worship. This makes me the target audience of Lauren Winner’s new book, the Dangers of Christian Practice.

The rough thesis is that spiritual practices, while good, have weaknesses that need to be paid attention to. Just like the church is made up of human beings that are sinful and make every church community less than perfect, good practices that are commanded by God and advocated throughout history also have some weaknesses.

The easiest illustration and the best chapters is about prayer. Keziah Goodwin Hopkins Brevard is the main illustration. She is a 57 year old widowed owner of two plantations and over 200 slaves. She left extensive journals both of her thoughts and of her prayers as fodder for Winner’s discussion.

As Winner recounts, Brevard prays for pliant slaves, she prays for the death of slaves that lie to her, she prays that Heaven will have a separate location for abolitionists and slaves away from her. (Note the political and rhetorical implications of a separate heaven.) She prays to be a good master and for a heart open to God.

Winner notes that the subjects of our prayers have long been a concern for Christians. Aquinas and others cited have thought and written about praying for things that are sinful or out of distorted desires. But the very nature of prayer is part of the problem. It is not just intercessory prayer but teaching prayer to others and how public prayer is often not solely directed at God. Prayer can quickly become gossip, self-justification, or deception. But even out of lousy prayer, there can be good aspects.

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Summary: The final chapter. 

Writing about the final book of a series is always difficult. I assume most people reading this have not necessarily read the previous five books in the series. (But you should and they are The Six, The Oracle, The White Thread, The Enchanted, and The Scroll). I want to give enough detail to interest you in reading the series but not include many spoilers. So, like my review of The Scroll, I am splitting it into two parts. The first part is my general, non-spoiler thoughts. The second part will be more discussion about the book directly, and it assumes you have read the previous books.

After finishing the whole series, I am even more impressed with the construction of the books and the plotting. This series has layers, references, and subtleties so that can be read multiple times. The characters grow and mature, not suddenly because the plot suddenly needs them to, but naturally in a way we can see as readers. And while this book is written for young adults, as a well read adult, I was kept engaged throughout the series. There were no weak books.

The Bone Whistle is the final in the series. It reaches a conclusion. As a warning to the reader, this book is structured a bit differently. One of the plot points is that Darcy forgets something and only recovers her memories slowly later in the book. As readers, we do not know what that is, so there are places where we readers are a bit in the dark. I actually went back and re-read the end of the Scroll because it had been a few weeks since I had finished it, and based on what I was reading at the start of The Bone Whistle, I thought that I had forgotten the end of the Scroll. I had not. The Bone Whistle jumps into the middle of something, and we are supposed to be confused. That will happen a couple of times in the book. Go back and re-read if you need to (and I did in a couple of places), but then keep reading, the plot will resolve itself.

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Summary: Nuanced children’s history for a difficult figure.

A couple weeks ago a friend posted on facebook about a new graphic novel about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was interested and while looking at the author’s other books, I saw a used copy of John Brown: His Fight for Freedom. I had just finished reading the section on John Brown in the new biography of Frederick Douglass by David Blight and was interested.

John Brown is a difficult figure and I was interested how he would be handled in a children’s book. (Ted Olsen in a twitter response to this review, suggested that he thought of this an illustrated biography for adults and not a children’s book. Which does make sense. He also suggested that Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War as a follow up book.)

I have not read any extensive works on him, so the sections on John Brown from Frederick Douglass’ biography that I just read and the Harriet Tubman biography that I read earlier this year are my main sources outside of Hendrix’s book.

John Brown was a religious zealot and radical abolitionist. You cannot talk about John Brown without understanding that he felt it appropriate as a Christian to use violence on behalf to freeing slaves that he felt were being held sinfully in slavery.

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Summary: What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the Relationship between faith and art?

Walking on Water is a book that it is hard not to hear about if you are in circles where you interact with Christian who write professionally. I have been hearing about the book for years, but Sarah Arthur’s recent biography of L’Engle reminded me again about how many writers (and other artists as well) were impacted not just by L’Engle’s art, but by her speaking and writing about the role of art in the Christian life.

In many ways Walking on Water is like a fifth volume of the Crosswick Journals. It is not as full of personal stories as the Crosswick Journals, but it was first published in 1982, between books three and four of the Crosswick Journals (Irrational Season in 1977 and Two-Part Invention in 1988). Walking on Water has a similar sense of listening to an older friend share wisdom about life. It is more focused on writing, but there are definitely overlapping themes with A Circle of Quiet (first book in Crosswick Journals).

Writing is more of a means of processing than as an art form for me. I do not edit as much as I should. So the thoughts on writing were not really my focus. This is a book that was written to be read and re-read. There is wisdom here, but like a lot of books of wisdom, there is some vagueness where the reader has to read into the text.

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Takeaway: Only similar to the movie in the very broadest outlines.

It has been a while, but I really liked the 2006 movie version of The Children of Men with Clive Owen. I picked up the audiobook of Children of Men recently because I had read two of PD James’ mysteries and wanted to see her approach to a dystopian scifi thriller might be different. Other than the broadest outlines, the book and the movie are very different. I am not really going to compare them (because it has been too long since I have watched the movie), but I will note a few things.

The main character, Theo Faron in the book is a 50 something academic. He is the cousin of the dictator and a former informal advisor. The book is set in a dystopian UK. For an unknown reason, there have not been any children born for nearly 20 years anywhere in the world. The UK, because of its governmental system and relative wealth is broadly comfortable, but the population is aging and there is a broad hopelessness. Foreigners are uses as servants that are little better than slaves. The shrinking population (both because of natural aging and large numbers of suicides) is being moved toward population centers.

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Summary: How we tell stories matters to how we see the world.

Just a little over a year ago Dick Gregory passed away. Defining Moments in Black History was his last book. Dick Gregory was most well known as a comedian. His comedy albums in the 1960s and 1970s as well as his comedy tours and TV appearances made him nationally known. But Gregory was also a political activist. He ran for Chicago mayor against Richard J Daley in 1967. He was signficantly involved in the Civil Rights movement.

And as you hear throughout this book, he was at or participated in or knew personally many of the people or events that he is talking about.

I have no idea how to really talk about this book. Much of it is just standard recounting of the parts of history that are routinely ignored or white washed. But other parts are just crazy town conspiracy theories. I think that is part of what Gregory is known for. What is hard to talk about is that not all of the conspiracy theories he is talking about are simply theories. Plots against MLK by the FBI are not conspiracy theories. Cointelpro and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment are not conspiracy theories.

And then there are the parts that may have some validity, but are unlikely. Coretta Scott King and many others believe that there was a broader conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King Jr. From what I can tell, there is circumstantial evidence, but not definitive proof that the FBI, the Memphis Police or other government agencies played a role in MLK’s assassination. But there is enough evidence for the discussion.

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Takeaway: Well-crafted stories are a joy!

The Scroll is the fifth book in the series. Discussing the book without giving away some spoilers from earlier books is impossible. So, if you have not read the earlier books, you may want to stop and read my reviews (in order) of The Six, The Oracle, The White Thread, and The Enchanted.

Part of what I like about good fiction, and this series is a great example of good fiction, is that there is more than surface-level meaning. Real ideas are being discussed. Hoyle is a Christian, but this is not being written as “Christian fiction” in the sense of pat answers and veiled presentations of the gospel. However, Tolkien wrote Christian fiction, with well-written, complex stories that present the world well but are influenced by the Christianity of the author.

The most obvious top-level idea in the book, which is likely influenced by Christianity, is the prophecy. The Six were called Alitheia. Almost as soon as they arrived, they learned of the prophecy that they were thought to be the fulfillment of. That prophecy included the marriage of Darcy (from our world) to Tellius (then Prince, now King Alitheia). As young teens, neither Tellius nor Darcy were interested in marriage or being told who they had to marry. The Christian concept of election and God’s action in the world through prophecy has a long and complicated history. But as Darcy and Tellius are around one another over a couple of books, they realize they actually love one another. They do want to get married. And even if it was foretold, they have made the choice on their own as part of who they are.

In the first book, Darcy is tricked and captured by Tselloch, the bad guy of the series. Tselloch is from a third world, not Earth or Alitheia. He is trying to control Earth and Alitheia by building gateways between the world and gaining control. Humans can give themselves over to Tselloch and become Tsellochim. After months of torture, Darcy had decided to give herself over and touch Tselloch, but was rescued at the last second. However, in the immediate seconds before rescue, she did touch Tscelloch, and that touch, normally enough for her to have become a Tsellochim instantly, has haunted her since. Most people become Tsellochim immediately, but Darcy has spent the next four books feeling effects as the touch crawls up her arm, but not fully being given over to the change.

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