Adam Shields

James Baldwin and the 1980s: Witnessing the Reagan Era by Joseph Vogel

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Summary: Baldwin continued to grow and think keeping into the 1980s. 

As someone born in the early 1970s, I am aware of the 1980s, I lived the 1980s, but I have not studied well the 1980s. James Baldwin and the 1980s was helpful, not just in better understanding James Baldwin, but helping me think about the 1980s as history.

Baldwin has become the historic voice of the Black Lives Matters moment. The new documentary I am Not Your Negro and the rise of Ta’Nehisi Coates means that book on Baldwin will get attention that they may not have previously. James Baldwin is mostly known for his earlier work. But he continued to write and teach and create into the 1980s.

James Baldwin and the 1980s has five main chapters, each mostly focused on exploring one of the works that Baldwin created in the 1980s.

The most interesting part for me was the cultural/religious history of the 1980s in the 4th chapter. As someone that identifies as Christian and has been through seminary and reads about theology for fun, I am not sure that I agree with all of the assertions about the Religious Right and James Baldwin. But the important, and interesting part, is that this was written at all. I think that part of what is interesting to me is that the religious right got a significant amount of Christianity wrong. And I think that James Baldwin misunderstood Christianity, in a similar way, as many in the religious right.

His critique of televangelists and the moral majority I think has the least sway, not because it is wrong, but because it is at least partially right theologically. But I also think it is wrong in significant ways. As a Christian, I agree that the implicit racism of the Religious Right and the Moral Majority was contrary to Christ’s teachings. But I also think the his misunderstands part of the church’s teaching. Confining sex to marriage and monogamous relationships is not denying the body as the book, and Baldwin asserts, but a part of what it means to hold sexuality as sacred.

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City of Illusions by Ursula Le Guin (Hainish Cycle)

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City of Illusions by Ursula Le GuinSummary: A man who appears to have had his brain completely erased is found in the woods in a future post-apocalyptic Earth.

I have been very slowly working through Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle. These are a series of science fiction books that are only very loosely related. Most within the series have almost no connection to any other book in the series. But they all are set in a future where hundreds of worlds have been settled by humanity. But due to genetic manipulation and isolation due to war or other reasons there have been evolutionary shifts that have altered humanity to be a number of different species. This has allowed Le Guin to explore a number of features of what it means to be human or in society. Although they are considered a series, Le Guin says they are not intended to have internal cohesion and form a single story or even have a suggested reading order.

The Disposessed explored how societies organize politically and socially as a scientist moved from an anarchist utopia (described as non-authoritarian communism’ to a repressive capitalist system that permits a type of slavery. The Left Hand of Darkness is a more physical exploration of what gender means. An outsider comes to a isolated world to attempt to bring them into an intergalactic United Nations style system. But this isolated world does not have fixed gender. Everyone is genderless except once a month when they create gender to mate, each person sometimes becoming male and sometimes becoming female. Most people will be both fathers and mothers at different times and in general mating is temporary and not a permanent marriage arrangement. Children after infancy are raised communally.

The City of Illusions was the third published book in 1967. The Earth has been reduced to a small fraction of its population, most of whom live in small villages or in nomadic tribal system. There is very little trust of outsiders, but a man is found without memory and with the bodily control of an newborn. He is nursed to health and taught so that after about 5 years he has developed the skills and understanding of an adult, but without any knowledge of where he came from or how he came to be in the woods near the community that found him.

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The Third Man by Graham Greene

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The Third Man by Graham GreeneSummary: A post WWII mystery set in Vienna. 

In general I like to know almost nothing about fiction books going into them. I picked up the audiobook during an Audible sale almost two years ago because of the comparisons between Graham Green and Shusaku Endo. Prior to picking this up I had listened to the excellent End of the Affair only because it was narrated by Colin Firth. (After picking this up original I also listened to the Comedians, which was good, but not as good.)

The Third Man is a mystery set soon after the end of the Second World War. A novelist specializing in pulp westerns is invited to Vienna to visit a old school friend and arrives just in time to attend his funeral. What appears to be an accidental death (hit by a car while crossing the street) eventually grows into something bigger.

The Third Man was originally written as a screen play and only turned into novella after the movie was completed. I have not seen the movie (or either of the movies of the End of the Affair). This feels like a screen play and I think may have been a better screen play than novel. The jumping narration was not enhanced in audiobook (although the narrator was fine, it was difficult to figure out who was narrating the story for much of the early parts of the book.) The narration alternates between the novelist and an British military detective working in Vienna.

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The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

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The Color of LawSummary: One of the enduring realities of racism in the United States is the persistence of housing segregation. Many believe that housing segregation today is largely a result of personal preference. But the historic role of government in creating and maintaining segregation has been largely ignored.

In the United States homeownership is one of the most significant methods of wealth creation and generational wealth transfer. Because of that, differences in rates of home ownership plays a significant role in the difference in personal wealth between racial groups and the transfer of that wealth from one generation to the next.

Discussion of race in the US often will eventually come to a question similar to, “˜slavery ended over 150 years ago and the Civil Rights era was 50 years ago, how can the aggregate differences between economic and social realities continue to be persistent.’ The Color of Law attempts to tell part of the story about how persistence of economic and social realities is at least partially dependent upon historic (and sometimes recent) role of government.

Color of Law is not an anti or pro-government book, but an attempt at an honest accounting of the role of government. Throughout the book there is a continual question of whether particular actions were the responsibility of individual actors that happened to have government positions or if the actions were part of an intentional or unintentional action of a branch or level of government as a whole.

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Paul: A Biography by NT Wright

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Paul: A biography by NT WrightSummary: Known primarily for his theological and biblical writing, NT Wright’s biographical work on Paul may be more helpful to understanding Wright’s perspective on Paul than anything else I have read.

I have read a lot of NT Wright; none of the really big Paul books, but much of his books that are targeted outside of the academy. Because of how Wright thinks and writes, the same themes come up over and over again in slight variations. I find most of Wright’s books really helpful, but I was surprised how much I found this biography, in part because it was a biography and not straight theology, really helpful to understanding Wright’s project with Paul.

Our ability to know ancient figures is limited. But we probably know about as much about Paul as we do about almost any other ancient figure. First we have relatively large amount of his own writing. But we also have the book of Acts, which was written either toward the end of Paul’s life or soon after he died.

There is a clear limit to what we can and cannot know about who Paul was. Wright has to speculate about a number of things in ways that would not have to be done in a biography of a modern figure. But Wright is clear in the text when he is speculating and with what data he is speculating. And he is clear about what is fairly firm historical ground.

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North or Be Eaten and Monster in the Hollows by Andrew Peterson

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Summary: Books 2 and 3 develop characters and move the story along well.

I am quite late to the Wingfeather series. The books were published between 2008 and 2014 and while I have owned them from 2011 for the first three and 2014 for the last, I didn’t start reading them, until a couple weeks ago.

I am not surprised that I like them as much as I do, too many people that I know and respect have praised them enough that I knew they would be good. But I have been interested in how they develop the story.

The first was introductory and mostly action based. I was engaged fairly quickly. The second was really focused around character development, and much of that was showing weaknesses and motivations. Not everything thought or action is based in purely noble motives, even if we find out that the main characters are actually nobility. That nobility is not genetic, but developed. It is part of why the theme of humble origins of great kings and leaders is so common.

Personal growth and development often comes through struggle. The second books has lots of struggle. Some of it works out well. Some shows that not all struggle comes out well.

Monster in the Hollows by Andrew PetersonThe third book, Monster in the Hollows, is about development in a different way. I can’t talk about it without revealing that at the end of the second book the family is back together after being separated. They are living in a relatively normal community that has been impacted by the problems of the world around them, but is still relatively safe and without being ruled by the Fangs. The children are able to go to school, although are clearly outsiders. They are able to learn not only normal school subjects, but because of the culture of the community they are in, they learn to fight and develop that way as well.

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One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race by John Perkins

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Summary: At 87 years old, the message John Perkins will be focusing on the rest of his life is the importance of racial reconciliation within the church.

One Blood is John Perkins’ last book. So I read it conscious of several of several others books that I have read that were consciously the last books written. John Stott’s last book was about discipleship. Johnny Cash’s last album was about death and regret. This book is about racial issues within the church.

I wish that everyone was familiar with John Perkins. (If you are familiar with him you can skip to the second half where I actually get to the book.) He grew up the son of a sharecropper. His mother died when he was two years old of Pellagra, which is a disease that is most often caused by such a poor diet that the person is essentially starving to death. When he was 16 his older brother, after returning from serving in the military during World War II was killed by a local police officer. Perkins was sent to California because his family feared that he would be killed as well.

When John Perkins was 27, his son Spencer invited him to church and he first became a Christian. Three years later (in 1960) he and his family moved back to Mendenhall, Mississippi to start Voice of Calvary. That ministry expanded to include an early Head Start program, social services and bible training program. In 1965, John Perkins started registering African Americans to vote and helped form a food cooperative to care for people that were blocked out of their jobs as a result of registering to vote. In 1967, his children were the first to desegregate the local high school. In 1969, he lead an economic boycott of White owned businesses, which directly lead to his false arrest and torture at the hands of local police officers. That torture required the removal of part of his stomach and life long health problems.

Later John Perkins and his wife Vera Mae started similar ministries in Jackson, Mississippi and then in Pasadena California. In 1989, he co-founded the Christian Community Development Association which gathered together similar organizations around the country that were mostly evangelical leaning theologically and agreed on the basic principles of the 3 Rs (relocation, reconciliation, and redistribution). Most recently the John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation was created as a training center for Christian community development and leadership.

Although Perkins only formally completed third grade, One Blood is his 11th book that he wrote or co-wrote. I recommend his Let Justice Roll Down, a 2006 memoir as the best place to start with his books.

John Perkins is an elder statesman of both Christian Community Development and the Civil Rights era. We should listen to what he has to say because he has earned the right to say it through his life’s work. This is not an abstract theorizing about racial issues. We do not have many civil rights icons left.

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The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

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The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der KolkSummary: Trauma is varied, but that variation in how trauma occurs or its treatment, does not mean that it is not important.

The Body Keeps Score is one of those books that I don’t know how to write a post about. Trauma is a difficult subject. Everyone knows someone that has lived through trauma, if you have not yourself lived through trauma. And trauma impacts different people differently and may impact the same person differently over time.

Dr van der Kolk started his medical career working for the Veteran’s Administration with Vietnam vets. There was virtually nothing really known about trauma at the time. The concept of shell shock or similar ideas was present, but not really understood. Although as the book points out, early psychologists have understood some of the impacts of trauma for over a century. Over the past 30 or 40 years, the medical and psychological research into trauma, its cause, and treatment has significantly expanded the understanding.

The Body Keeps Score tracks the growth of that knowledge, partially through van der Kolk’s own career and research, but also through the story of many trauma survivors. This is frequently a difficult book to read because in order to discuss trauma it is necessary to discuss traumatic events. And even in the first 200 pages that established the concept and history of the understanding of trauma, the stories of war, rape, molestation, neglect, abuse, and accidents can be difficult to process as and outsider, let alone for the person that they actually happened to.

Trauma is common. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) studies (fact sheet) I think are the easiest place for many people to think about the importance of studying and dealing with trauma. The initial big ACE study showed that a number of different traumatic events as children, when combined, are correlated with not just physical or psychological effects into adulthood, but also diverse effects in a range of areas such as life time income, potential for abusing or neglecting their own children, early death, having premature births, autoimmune diseases, drug or alcohol dependencies, and being a victim or perpetrator of violence, and more. 60 Minutes had a good 11 minute story on what treatment of ACE looks like and its importance.

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Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower by Gary Moon

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Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower by Gary MoonSummary: Spiritual maturity requires growth and formation.

I have been intentionally reading a number of Christian biographies over the past year or two. Christian biographies for me are about spiritual formation. I do want to know about the people I am reading about. The story is important. But I read good Christian biography/memoir to learn about spiritual formation.

Becoming Dallas Willard is exactly that type of biography. Dallas Willard helped to spark the modern Christian formation movement so it is not surprising that Gary Moon wrote a biography that was oriented toward tracing his spiritual formation. We are never finished with spiritual formation. Spiritual formation in some ways becomes more important as we age and mature spiritually because ending well and passing on the faith requires a level of humility and graciousness that invites those that are younger to the path of spiritual formation.

I have previously read three books by Dallas Willard. So I was roughly familiar with Willard’s writing but I did not know anything about his life other than his relationship to Richard Foster early in Foster’s pastoral career. Investing in others was a theme of Becoming Dallas Willard. I know Willard more through his intentional investment in Richard Foster, John Ortberg, Jan Johnson, James Bryan Smith and others than I knew of him. Having read Becoming Dallas Willard I can see the influence that he had in the writings of these others that I have been more directly influenced by.

Willard had a fascinating life. The lives of earlier generations are often fascinating because they are so different from our own. Willard was a child of the late depression and early World War II days, roughly the age of my younger set of grandparents. He went to Tennessee Temple for his undergrad degree, where my grandmother’s brother was a long time professor. And I know many that went to either  Baylor (his masters) or University of Wisconsin (his PhD in Philosophy), but no one that went to both. Despite the differences in generations and life experience, Willard’s life was not so different that I cannot relate to him.

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