Book Reviews

Takeaway: A modern classic of what it means to be a Christian

I am on an NT Wright kick.  I was given a copy of Jesus, Paul and the People of God for review (a book of papers from Wheaton College Theology Conference).  The whole conference was a conversation with and about NT Wright.  I started reading it and realized that while I have read some of the more popular of NT Wright’s books, I have not read some of his more important academic books.

So I read The Challenge of Jesus, Scripture and the Authority of God and I have Paul in New Perspective, which I will read next.

I have read Simply Christian before, but I read it quickly right after it came out and other than the main themes I really did not remember much about it.  So I decided to revisit the book.  I am violating my rule of reading a book in a different format because I am trying to save a bit of money right now (so I am re-reading on audio instead of re-reading in paper or Kindle format.)  The main complaint that I have seen is about Wright’s prose.  He can occasionally write the half page sentence or the slightly too obtuse argument.  But I tend to listen to Wright first, get the structure of the argument and then read him more carefully later in a print format.

Read more

Takeaway: The story of American Politics, without God or Religion is an incomplete history.

I very much respect Mark Noll’s work as a historian.  So after re-reading The Civil War as Theological Crisis, I looked around to see if there were any audiobooks of Noll’s works.  I listen to a lot of audiobooks because a lot of my job is processing data.  As long as I don’t have to write, I can listen. (But I have to pause and audiobook to even write a 10 word email.)

The only book at Audible by Noll other than The Civil War as Theological Crisis was God and Race in American Politics.

Noll is primarily known as a historian of North American Evangelicalism.  But this is a natural followup to his Civil War as Theological Crisis.  Instead of looking at the theological response to issues of race and slavery (as he did in Civil War), Noll expands his view to take a quick survey at how Race and Religion interacted over the history of the US until the 2004 Presidential Election.

As you might expect a good historian to say, the reality is much more complicated than the traditional story that is told in your 4th grade US history class.  But Noll does a very good job surveying those complications in less than 200 pages.

Read more

Summary: A modern narrative form of catechesis teaching.

I have read several of Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s books previously (God’s Economy and The Wisdom of Stability).  So I picked up The Awakening of Hope without looking into what it was about when I saw that it was a free audiobook on Noisetrade.com (it is no longer free.)  That was a couple of months ago, and I had forgotten about it when I ran across it looking for another audiobook.

The Awakening of Hope: Why We Practice A Common Faith is an attempt at basic catechesis (basic Christian instruction).  Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is part of an intentional Christian community and has worked with Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, and some of the other “New Monastics.”

Read more

Summary: A woman starts having dreams about the future, and her estranged husband, a college Don, starts working with a secretive research organization called NICE.

Over the past couple months I have read the CS Lewis’ Space Trilogy (or Ransom Trilogy) for the first time.  And as a fan of CS Lewis, it is odd to me that I have not picked it up before.  Each of the three are quite different both in content and style.  The first feels like an early HG Wells science fiction novel. Professor Ransom is kidnapped and taken to Mars, where he discovers an ancient civilization that has never had sin introduced into it as the Earth has.

The second novel, Perelandra, continues with the same theme of sin being introduced into the world, but this time Ransom is taken to Venus to prevent an Eve-like character from falling prey to a human possessed by the devil and trying to get her disobey God and sin, just as he did with the original Eve on earth.  This book felt less like an HG Wells novel and more directly Christian fiction almost bordering on allegory, similar to a modern Pilgrims Progress.

The final novel of the trilogy includes Ransom, but only in the later part of the book.  Instead a young Don (British professor) and his wife and the main characters.  And from early on this feels like George Orwell’s 1984.  NICE is a secretive government research project that is trying to take over their local community and eventually the whole country.

Read more