Book Reviews

Summary: A biblical exploration of women’s role in scripture. 

Again, as I have said before, I am approaching Tell Her Story as an egalitarian that supports women’s ordination. I do not need to be convinced of the biblical record supporting women’s ministry roles. But I picked up Tell Her Story for two reasons. One, I watched an interview on the Holy Post with Nijay Gupta, and I have wanted to read one of his books for a while (my father recommended a commentary he wrote, and I just have not gotten around to reading it yet.) Second, I want to understand what was different about this book so I can rightly recommend the right books to the right people. I am strongly oriented toward personalized book recommendations.

So I am writing here primarily about the purpose of Tell Her Story in the context of the other books I have read on overlapping themes. Tell Her Story is more focused on the broad biblical record of women. I had a class on women in the Bible a few years ago, and while the focus was different, there was not much new to me here. But I do think that many have not understood either the actual role of Deborah (where the book opens) or how many female names are part of Paul’s letters or the broader New Testament.

I (I think like many evangelicals of my age) was largely taught formally and informally that Deborah held a place as the judge of Israel (ruler before kings were instituted) because men of Israel were in sin. Deborah was placed as a judge to shame men who were in sin for not leading. That is a common but harmful reading of the relevant passages. I do not remember ever hearing that Deborah was called the Mother of Israel before the class I took. The church I grew up in (where my father was a pastor) was egalitarian. Still, the youth group I attended with a friend and my college and general Christian media were dominated by complementarian views. So even as someone who grew up egalitarian and for women’s ordination, I absorbed bad biblical teaching that undercut women in ministry.

Nijay Gupta (professor at Northern Seminary) opens the book with Deborah even though the book primarily focuses on the New Testament because she is an excellent example that while the cultures of the ancient near east where the Bible was set were predominately patriarchal, Deborah was a documented exception to that general trend.

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Summary: Scotland Yard Inspector Adam Dalgliesh visits his aunt at her remote home for a vacation after a long case, and he is confronted with another murder but isn’t in charge of the investigation.

I have been reading too much non-fiction, so while on vacation, I scanned through some of my books and decided to pick back up the PD James series about the Scotland Yard inspector. I read the first two about five years ago. I wouldn’t say I liked either of those as much as I liked her Children of Men book, but because I found a cheap edition with the first six books, I figured I should give them another try.

I do not really feel like I have enough of a sense of the main character, Adam Dalgliesh, going into this. First, it has been five years since I read the last book, but also, after reading back over those posts, I did not feel all that connected to the character. This was not much better, but it was an enjoyable enough mystery. Last year I re-read the whole Inspector Ganache series, and one of the things that stood out to me is that as much as I enjoy the series as a whole, a lot of the books need the rest of the series to make sense. Individually, especially in the early books, they can feel fairly weak regarding the characters. But over a series of nearly 20 books, the series becomes stronger because it is a long series that is allowed to develop over time. I cannot expect individual books to have the same characterization as a long series.

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Summary: A very Lutheran perspective on spiritual disciplines, which is helpful for non-Lutherans to read as a different perspective.

When I picked up Ragged, I knew nothing about the book or author other than several people I know recommended it.  I have been trying to prioritize reading women authors this year. And I have been trying to work through different language around spiritual disciplines because so much of the Evangelical orientation toward spiritual disciplines uses pragmatic self-improvement as a motivation.

The introduction was my favorite part of the book, not that I didn’t like the rest of the book, just that her framing of spiritual disciplines was precisely what I was looking for. Ronnevik is a homeschooling mother of six, wife of a farmer, and survivor of a severe car crash that has left her with chronic pain. She directly takes on the type of perfectionistic, strongly ordered approach to spiritual disciplines that deters too many from even attempting regular disciplines. Disciplines are to draw us toward God, not to prove ourselves worthy of God.

After the helpful introduction, each chapter is a different discipline. I understand that approach, but it was not the best move. The positive of that approach is that you can go to disciplines that you are more interested in. The negative of that approach is that it is a type of list of disciplines that we are all familiar with. In many cases, Ronnevik reframes the discipline to make them more approachable, but I still feel like a knowledge presentation of disciplines. Each of those chapters are filled with stories to draw the reader in and be relatable. And I think this is a book that will be particularly helpful for people that struggle with disciplines as a competition to make themselves better.

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Summary: A novel that I am not sure I fully understood. 

I am a big fan of Vodolazkin’s earlier novel, Laurus, so when I heard the general positive buzz about this new novel, I picked it up soon after it came out because I was in the mood for some fiction. But I think this novel requires more background knowledge to understand the satire than I have. After I started the book, Current posted a review. I try to avoid reviews until after I finish a book, but I read this one because I was a bit bored with the novel and needed some motivation to finish.

It meandered, and I could tell it referenced historical events, but I was unsure what the references meant. At least a part of the target of the satire is the myth of the progress of history. There is progress; we do not have half of our children die before the age of five. And the rate of absolute subsistence poverty has dropped. But progress has not brought about some other promises, radical egalitarianism, an end to poverty, more just institutions, etc.

The book opens as a medieval history written by monks of an island kingdom. After reading for a while, we realize that the commentary on the history is from the King and Queen, who are eventually introduced into the story when their lives are prophecied. They are born, married, and begin to rule. This is a book that slowly unfolds. Parfeny and Ksenia were born in a medieval world, but they have remained alive for over 300 years to also live in the modern world. From the vantage point of their long life, they have perspective. They ruled, and they were ruled, they lived in splendor, and they lived in poverty.

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Summary: Historians take on mostly conservative talking points. 

Historians have been having an internal battle about their public role in current events. Much of the discussion is framed around Presentism, which is “an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences.” Part of the reality of history as a social science is that interpretation is a necessary part of what it means to “do history.” I am not a historian, although I do read a lot of history and respect historians who are on different sides of this debate.

Myth America has two problems, and presentism is one of them. Kevin Kruze and Julian Zelizer are Myth America’s editors, both historians of recent American history. The last book I read from them was Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, which was worth reading, but the problem with recent history is that it is harder to have a broad perspective on that history because it is so recent. Most of the essays are framed around current myths about history that impact current politics, which is precisely the concern over presentism.

Carol Anderson’s chapter on voter fraud takes the concerns around the 2020 election and frames them historically about why we have a current concern about election fraud. That historical framing is helpful to see why we have a current obsession with voter fraud without any evidence of it actually being a problem in most elections. But the book’s very nature is mostly to address current political concerns, leaving the book open to critique of political bias.

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Summary: An autobiography from Sojourner Truth as told to Olive Gilbert.

This year’s final book for the Renovaré Book Club was Narrative of Sojourner Truth. Because I did not really have any background with Sojourner Truth, I read the new We Will be Free: The Life and Faith of Sojourner Truth by Nacy Koester as background before starting the autobiography.

One of the parts of the Renovare Book Club that I most appreciate is the podcast/video interviews and weekly emails with links to information and background. In the first podcast, in preparation for reading Narrative of Sojourner Truth, the host suggested that we come at the Narrative without other background materiaial, so as to understand her words on their own terms. This is common advice and not entirely wrong. But at the same time, this advice is influenced by the “plain reading of the text.” And as much as I appreciate that advice, it needs to be tempered because there is real value in expertise, and experts can give you far more information and background than what is possible when reading without the assistance of experts.

In this case, I do not think reading the Narrative without any background would have been helpful for me. Sojourner Truth was a complex figure outside the standard Southern slave narrative. She spoke only Dutch until the age of 9 and spoke with a Dutch accent her whole life. Her most famous speech, Aint’ I A Woman, was transcribed with a Southern slave dialect and likely was significantly distorted in form because of that.

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Summary: A short history of the feminist movement, primarily focusing on first and second-wave feminism within England, with a follow-up chapter on feminism in other geographical areas.

Because women’s role in the church has been an active conversation lately, I have been thinking about feminism. A tweet (there were several in the same vein) suggested that part of the issue with the discussion today is that feminism has changed the discussion. Today all except a few want to assert that women are equal, but roles are different. Historically the church fathers, until recently, were influenced by Greek thought that understood women as flawed men or lesser creations. Feminism has changed the terms so that even though hard patriarchalists continue to exist and have influence, most will at least say women are equal in value and Imago Dei.

The book opens with a chapter on the religious roots of feminism starting in the middle ages. And then following is a chapter on secular approaches to feminism. This is followed by a chapter on 18th-century women writers. And then two chapters on the 19th century.

Because voting rights were so central to the women’s rights movement, there were two chapters on voting rights. The last three chapters are about first-wave feminism in the 20th century. Then second-wave feminism in the late 20th century. And then, a chapter on feminists worldwide lightly touches on the critiques of first and second-wave feminism. The afterward lightly touches on continued changes to feminism. Kaitlyn Schiess has a good video on her Getting Schooled series, Feminism 101, that covers similar material in about 40 minutes.

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Summary: Very good introduction to hermeneutics (how we understand scripture), the cultural background of scripture, and how our own culture impacts our reading and understanding of scripture.

I recently led a book group through Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. When I lead book discussions, I almost always read the book twice; once early in the week, I listen to it on audiobook. And then the day of the book club, I reread the same section in print and take notes and highlight the areas that I want to discuss. But this is not my first reading. My review on Audible has 196 likes. And on Amazon, the book description starts with saying that Bookwi.se (me) named it my favorite book of the year in 2015. So I believe that this is my 3rd and 4th reading of Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes.

What I like about leading book groups is seeing how others respond to a book. In virtually every book club meeting, one of the members held up the book and said a variation of, “I love this book.” By the end of the book club (which was about nine weeks), he had convinced his wife, his mother-in-law, two of his coworkers, and some others to read the book. This is a good book that really can help you see different perspectives on scripture. And that is very helpful in renewing interest in scripture.

This book group, which has been meeting on and off for about three years now, started as a church small group reading books about race. The group has expanded and changed, and because it has always been a Zoom group, it isn’t only local people or only people from one church. For several years I have been suggesting to anyone that will listen that one good way to raise consciousness about racial issues in the White Evangelical church is to start with Misreading Scripture because it is a helpful book that raises issues of culture and meaning. When we discover that other people, especially those that are from different cultures and times, have different understandings of how the world works, we can start to investigate how our understanding of the world may be culturally constructed. This isn’t “post-modernism”; this is just acknowledgment of reality, similar to the suggestion of CS Lewis about reading old books. I think, handled correctly, Misreading Scripture can be effective in introducing people who may be reluctant to discuss race and culture by concentrating on a book that is primarily about understanding scripture.

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Summary: A long lecture or short book on ways to prevent tyranny based on 20th-century history.

I have looked at but not read On Tyranny several times. It came out about six years ago. But I decided to pick it up after a tweet from Samuel Perry about regularly rereading it and teaching it. I looked it up again and saw the audiobook was on sale for $3 and was less than 2 hours. (It is $4.50 as I am writing this.)

This formatted too quickly read. Each chapter is only a few pages; the longest chapter is nine pages. While most sermons or commencement addresses won’t have 20 points, it is that type of approach. These are short pieces of advice with brief historical references. Chapter one is Do Not Obey in Advance. That may seem like it doesn’t need to be said, but if we look at history, there are many examples of trying to appease by preemptively doing what you think they would like done. Appeasement may work in some cases, but not in cases of tyranny. In cases of tyranny, it just cements power.

Many of the pieces of advice are about understanding truth or learning. These are always helpful whether we are talking about tyranny or not. Other is more specific like Make Eye Contact and Small Talk. This is primarily a “know your neighbors” idea.

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