Book Reviews

Summary: A look at whole-brained discipleship which uses insights from recent neuroscience to help develop Christian maturity. 

A good friend recommended The Other Half of the Church to me about a year ago, and I have only recently gotten around to reading it. Many insights were not new to me because of work that either my wife or I have done regarding parenting, trauma, and attachment, or child development. I want to start with the fact that overall, I am glad that this book was written, and I commend it, even if I am going to spend most of my time discussing areas where I have concerns. The insights here into character development, group identity and its role in correction, and deep relationships are all important. Because of my training as a spiritual director and a couple of professional associations of spiritual directors which I am a member of, I know that more academic books in similar areas are being written. No book can address all of the nuance and potential areas of misunderstanding, so I am looking forward to reading more books to address different aspects.

This is a book that is co-written by Jim Wilder and Michael Hendricks. Much of the book is written in Hendrick’s voice, and he relates insights about spiritual formation and brain science from Jim Wilder. Part of what I appreciate about the framing of this book is that it is intentionally oriented toward a reader unfamiliar with the science. It is very accessible, and the authors know that stories are necessary to communicate not just the information but the meaning behind it.

Many will come to The Other Half of the Church with some background from gentle parenting (Whole Brained Child, Brain-Body Parenting, etc.) or insights from trauma, attachment, or adult emotional development. In many ways, I think discipleship is a bit late to the game with these insights. I also think that from my experience (which is obviously limited), many of my Gen X cohort or the Baby Boomers are less likely to have exposure to this type of whole-brained approach than the Millennial parents who have been at the forefront of the Gentle Parenting movement. Millennials are much more aware of trauma, abuse, and the science around those realities, which, again, have some overlap with the science discussed here.

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Summary: Exploring how our spiritual formation needs to be decoupled from western culture.

I am not sure I can describe Our Unforming better than an edited quote from the introduction.

“For all my life, I’ve read books on spiritual formation written by white authors and internalized their experiences of God as the norm and even as the authority. In recent centuries, our spiritual formation resources and teachings have primarily come from Western spiritual traditions. In that process, Western voices have generalized what spiritual formation is for all of us. The way we teach formation in the church is heavily influenced by Western values—such as individuality, dualism, and linear thinking—and Western history like colonialism, the Enlightenment, and industrialization. Even the African roots of early church fathers and mothers have often been ignored when interpreted through a white male lens…I want to untangle and de-westernize the ways my soul has been distorted by the disproportionate influence of Western authority in the church. This does not mean disregarding our long and rich history of Christian spiritual traditions. Rather, we need to recognize that our current understanding of spiritual formation is limited because it was developed under a dominant Western cultural tradition.

Our Unforming is largely written to racial minority Christians who are grappling with the ways that they have distorted themselves to fit into western or white molds. But Cindy Lee is also writing for people like me (a middle-aged, middle-class, white, male, heterosexual, seminary-trained spiritual director). She is pointing out areas where our language and practice of spiritual formation may be more culturally constrained than we understand. It complements books like Karen Swallow Prior’s Evangelical Imagination (about how many of our Evangelical norms are rooted in Victorian culture) or Barbara Holmes’Joy Unspeakable about the particular contemplative practices of the Black church. And if pastors or spiritual directors are going to work in diverse communities, they need to be aware of where their biases toward white or western normative ideas or practices are constraining their ability to serve the people they serve.

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Summary: A history of Dispensationalism from Darby to pop culture. 

I did not grow up in a strongly dispensationalist church. But as I reflected throughout the book, I was surprised to learn how many institutions, communities, and preachers who were important to me were influenced by dispensationalism. The strength of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism is that it does not fall into caricature but is carefully nuanced about the various streams of Christianity influenced by dispensationalism.

As someone who was a child and teen in the late 70s and early ’80s, I was aware of movies like The Thief in the Night, even if I was too young to be strongly influenced by them. I know several people who were freaked out by the scare tactics of that era of dispensationalism, but I tended toward questions or avoidance rather than direct fear. I was more attracted to “Scholastic Dispensationalism” than pop culture dispensationalism. A friend of mine’s was a pastor’s kid at a local Evangelical Free Church. I went to a lot of their youth group activities, and I can remember going to their annual “prophecy conferences” and can remember the charts and explanations of the details of the end times as a teen and preteen. That nearly gnostic idea of the secrets that you can learn if you only follow the right teachers were more of a temptation to me.

I am hesitant to simplify because the complex story is so interesting, but the overly simplified story is that from Darby to Moody to fundamentalism to the rise of the scholastic Dispensationalists to the pop culture dispensationalists, there was an almost continual simplification of the ideas of dispensationalism from a complex system of anti-institutionalist thought toward simpler and simpler premillennialism. That simplified story is too simple, but there is a thread there that as people found parts of the theological ideas to accept and parts to discard, the beloved parts by the earlier generation were usually discarded in favor of an easier-to-explain system.

A simple chart or image is more attractive than a complex multi-page chart. But the thicker theological thinking went in the opposite direction. Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind, but that does seem to be what is shown here. While movements tried to take the more theological seriously, the dominant streams of dispensationalism were the imagery of an imminent return of Christ, which contributed to a passion to evangelize and reach the world for Christ.

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Summary: Tracking the history of how Lewis was received in the United States.

Not using these words, it seems that Noll is making the case that while Evangelicals may be defined as those who love Billy Graham, ecumenicals may be defined as those who love CS Lewis. Noll traces the response in the United States over three chapters. US Catholics first promoted (and published) Lewis in the US. The secular media and academy also responded to Lewis. And then mainline Protestants and finally, the Fundamentalists and Neo-Orthodox. Noll didn’t explicitly say that ecumenical Christians are the ones who like Lewis, but that does seem to be his point. Within Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and fundamentalists, some are less interested in moving outside of their own circle of Christians. But in some ways, the Neo-Evangelicals that were breaking away from Fundamentalists were, as a movement, more ecumenical, and while they found Lewis later, their embrace was in some ways because of Lewis’ ecumenical approach that sought to use common reasoning and logic and public intellectual resources to make the case for Christianity.

Again, this was not a part of Noll’s book, but I do think that it is relevant to talk about the recent movements within SBC, PCA, and ANCA to adopt more theologically conservative positions on women in ministry as an example of a movement toward fundamentalist positions. I had Noll for three classes between college and seminary. When I was in seminary, working for a local SBC association and going to a mainline seminary, there was a discussion about whether SBC should be considered Evangelical or Fundamentalist. Even in the mid-90s, some people in SBC embraced the term fundamentalist. Many of the sociologists of religion who were commenting on the question at the time (as I remember it) were noting the tensions between those SBC Evangelicals who were more ecumenical in orientation and those SBC fundamentalists who were not sure of the Christianity of those outside of SBC.

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Summary: A very pregnant Georgie hosts her first dinner party with her new chef and that leads to a new mystery. 

I enjoy reading long series as long as I do not get too bored with the characters. The Royal Spyness series is in the 17th book, similar to the Inspector Gamache series. They are very different types of mysteries. The Royal Spyness series is very much a light cozy mystery series. There is almost always a murder, but Bowen leans into cozy feel of the series. The series took a long time to get from Georgie having a romantic interest to marriage and now her first baby. I am enjoying a more confident Georgie.

Rhys Bowen has referenced classic mysteries before, there are several references to Dorothy Sayers books. And this one both references Agatha Christie’s books and has Agatha Christie as a dinner party guest who helps to solve the mystery. That could feel gimmicky, but it is handled well here, and I thought it helped move Georgie to a more healthy, maturing adult. She is not in her early 20s anymore. She is married and will have a baby by the end of this book (that is really not a spoiler).

I appriciate that Darcy (her husband who works as an off the books spy for the British Foreign Office) does not try to protect her and keep her away from murder here, but instead encourages her to solve the crime. There is a balance between realism of a woman in the 1930s and the reality of a modern reader who expects women to be able to act without supervision at all times.

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Summary: An introduction to hermeneutics through the lens of Womanist Biblical methods.

Generally, when I read a book, I try to write about it within a few days. This has become a spiritual practice of mine, not just because I like to encourage reading but also because I want to incorporate what I am learning. Part of that incorporation is writing about the book so that I can put on paper what was important to me. But sometimes, I get busy with my paying work or other aspects of life, and at some point, I am just too far away from a book to do it justice. In the case of If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? I read it in February 2022 and then again in December 2022. It was certainly one of my favorite books of 2022, but because I hadn’t written about it, it was hard to talk about why succinctly.

I have had a running book club since 2020 or 2021, depending on whether you count the Be the Bridge groups that it grew out of or the later discussion of Color of Compromise that started an actual book club. Since then, I am told we have discussed 12 books. I have wanted to get a group to talk about If God Still Breathes for a while, and this spring seemed like a good time.

If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? is a fairly short book, only 128 pages and about 3 hours. But there is some weight to it. It was the most challenging book we have tackled so far. Most of the group was new to Womanist thought, so there was that aspect of difficulty. Only a couple of other group members had taken formal college-level Bible classes either. Mixing womanist thinking and biblical hermeneutics introduced many in the group to a lot of new vocabulary. One of the members expressed how happy he was to be reading on Kindle because there is a built-in dictionary.

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