Book Reviews

Summary: A memoir of coming out of a fundamentalist, racist, and abusive upbringing. One reviewer described this as a prequel to his other books on grace and suffering. 

There are few names in Christian publishing that are more recognizable than Philip Yancey. He started his career writing for Campus Life and Christianity Today but became widely known for his books, most reflections on suffering and/or grace. Yancey has written about 30 books, depending on how you count books he contributed to or edited. And he has sold roughly 15 million copies of those books. He has been widely influential.

Philip Yancey is part of my parent’s generation, turning 72 next month, and I think it is natural for authors to think about memoirs and influences at that point. It is not that younger authors can’t also write memoirs; Danté Stewart’s Shoutin’ in the Fire is an excellent reflection of an author in his 30s. But memoirs that are written toward the end of life have a different type of reflective ability.

Where the Light Fell primarily deals with Yancey’s childhood and early adulthood before he became a writer. This is a book about what influenced him with a final chapter that grapples with that history, one that I read twice. The book is unflinching but charitable. There is a lot of pain here. And a clear view of the impact of generational trauma. Yancey is not a Christian author that tends to tie everything up in neat bows. At the end, there is still pain and disfunction.

Philip Yancey was the youngest of two children, born in 1949, three years after his older brother. His parents had what appears to be a storybook romance. His father was in the military at the end of WWII. He was invited to the home of a church member after attending church soon after becoming a Christians. His mother was living with that family while supporting herself through college to become a teacher. They met and soon married. He soon became wrapped up with her dream of becoming a missionary to Africa. They finished bible school, and he taught at a black bible college in Atlanta as they raised support. But soon after Philip was born, his father contracted polio and died before Philip had a conscious memory of him.

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Summary: A beautiful, poetic memoir of being Black in America. 

Without question, this is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. I know part of my love of it is because Danté Stewart read the audiobook with his beautiful voice. Shoutin’ in the Fire is a book of lyrical, poetic writing, and I can’t imagine another narrator could have captured it as well. The prose reminds me in the very best way of James Baldwin. I know that will be a standard comparison, not just because of how prominent Baldwin is but also because of how frequently Stewart references him. Baldwin is an author for this age, as Eddie Glaude has written. I don’t want to overplay that comparison, their life experiences are so very different, but also they are both Black in America, with a view of both history and the future and with an eye to the church that this country loves to pay lip service to, but not carry through as it should.

I remember thinking to myself, and maybe saying out loud, at some point years ago, early in my awakening to the racial realities of this world, that as much as they are accurate, I wished there were more books by Black authors that were happier, less wrapped up in pain. The pain is hard to process as a middle-aged white man because it creates an obligation. Observing pain and not responding is a type of pathology that some are commending these days, as some call for resistance to empathy. It took me time to learn and process not just that pain and trauma need recounting, but that the history of race in America means no story can be told by Black authors that does not have pain somewhere in the lens, even if not in the direct words. It took me much longer to see that the very act of writing was an act of hope. I didn’t understand the complaints of Ta’Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me being hopeless. Coates is not hopeless, as I think this video with Thabiti Anyabwile shows. But the hope does not always have to be centered if the presenting problem denies reality.

The other comparison I feel when I read Shoutin’ in the Fire is with Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black. Both books have a chapter on rage, and in both cases, I think the chapter is likely the most powerful in the book. That rage is not a denial of hope; both explicitly point to hope in other places and even in their rage. Both reference James Baldwin’s famous quote about rage that often is shortened to only the first sentence. But the more extended quote is essential:

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Summary: The subtitle “How Corporate America Invented Christian America” does not work, but the history is still fascinating. 

One Nation Under God is the third book of Kevin Kruse’s that I have read. I follow him on Twitter, and I appreciate his work. However, at this point, I wonder if Kruse’s niche is the history of the development of libertarianism in the US. The first book I read by Kevin Kruise, White Flight, was about Atlanta’s racial history and white flight and how white flight helped to encourage libertarian thought. The second book I read by Kruse was Fault Lines, a history of the US since 1974. Fault Lines was co-authored with Julian Zelizer, and while it is a comprehensive political history, its attention to the rise of political media was where it shined. It was not primarily about libertarianism, but you cannot tell the story of modern political history without the story of libertarian thought becoming mainstream within the GOP.

One Nation Under God is about how modern politics has become rhetorically religious in a different way from previous history. The primary history of the book is about how “One Nation Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” was added to our currency just a couple of years before the Supreme Court eliminated compulsory prayer and bible reading from schools. That story is commonly presented as a Cold War story. The US culturally understood itself as Christian in opposition to the USSR as an atheist country. So, it needed to demonstrate its religious nature publicly and self-identify as a country founded on religious principles. Kruse seeks to complicate that story by moving back to the 1920s and 1930s and showing how a conscious and planned work of corporate institutions and wealthy individuals used religious motivations and institutions to make a theological case for Christianity as an individualistic, pro-capitalist, and anti-government religion. Christian Libertarians were a category in the 1920s-30s, not just in the Tea Party movement. The epilogue of the book makes the case that these are connected movements.

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Summary: National interests may not be the primary driver of undercover and black-ops spying, but information will always have value. 

As a reader, I like to read a series together, or at least not too far apart. I started reading the Game of Thrones novels around 2002 or 2003. The first in the series came out in 1996. The next three books came out in 1998, 2000, and 2005.  Six years later when the fifth book of the still not completed series came out, I decided I would not read any further until the whole series was released. When there are five, ten or even more years between books in a closely related series, you really need to re-read the books in order to have a close enough memory of the details to understand subtle plot points. Especially in a spy novel like the ones that le Carré or Steinhauer write, those details matter.

I first read The Tourist, the first of this series in 2009 right after it came out. My memory is that it was a recommendation of John Wilson, editor of the then-active Books and Culture magazine. The next two books came out in 2010 and 2012. It is likely that I should have reread at least the third novel before reading the fourth. But I hoped that I would remember details as I read, and I think I mostly did.

Spy novels are in some ways an affirmation of the Christian theological concept of total depravity. It is not that there is no good in them, or no sense of virtue or loyalty or character. But that virtually all good spy novels know that even if a character is virtuous or loyal, there are temptations and a good spy has to assume that not everyone will maintain their virtue or character. It is a genre that lends itself to cynicism. It is why even though I really like le Carré’s writing, the cynicism means I limit my reading of his books.

This is a bit of a spoiler, but a fairly minor one. The early books grapple with how the US is no longer always the good guys. If anything, the US is largely the bad guys in this series. Being the primary superpower means that the access to power tempts the US to overreach and assume that their self-perceived ends will justify their means.

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Summary: A critique of the primary orientation of approaching racial issues within the church through relational unity, and an assertion that an approach of repair and restoration is more adequate. 

Anyone reading my reviews regularly knows I have been reading widely about racial issues within the church for years. I first became aware of Jennifer Harvey with her book on parenting white children. At some point in time after that, I picked up the first edition of Dear White Christians but did not read it until the audiobook for the second edition came out.

Dear White Christians, like I Bring the Voice of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation, has a clear critique of the friendship-oriented racial reconciliation that was popularized by Promise Keepers and the many books on cross-racial friendship that came out in the mid-1990s until now. Like Chanequa Walker-Barnes, Harvey’s complaint is not that friendship is not important, but that if the orientation is to friendship as the goal, then restoration will not be accomplished. Instead, there has to be an orientation toward restoration, and in the process, relational unity across racial and cultural, and class lines will be a byproduct.

I think Walker-Barnes and Jennifer Harvey’s books are a good pairing because they have a similar purpose, but are written to different audiences and from different backgrounds. Harvey is a white ethicist and clergy in the American Baptist denomination. Walker-Barnes is Black, a Womanist theologian and a professor of practical theology at Mercer, but her doctoral work is in clinical psychology. The orientation toward ethics and psychology comes out in their writing. But these books are also written to different audiences. Walker-Barnes is pitched to the evangelical and non-denominational Christians who looked favorably on Promise Keepers. Harvey’s book is written to the mainline Protestant world of American Baptists, United Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopal churches, which are more theologically, socially, and politically liberal, but still very racially white. Womanist critique is the heart of both books, although Harvey does not claim to be a womanist theologian, but only influenced by womanist theology and ethics.

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Summary: A second reading of this wonderful modern novel about a 15th century Russian healer.

Like the last reading, I am still unsure how to describe the book and talk about it. So if you do not want any spoilers, read my first post. But this time, I am going to give some spoilers because they matter to the discussion. 

This novel is about Arseny in four stages of life. His name changes in each stage, and the last name, Laurus, becomes the book’s title. If there is a central theme, it is the changes of life and how those changes cannot be skipped or circumvented. At the same time, more in this reading than the last, I wonder if there could have been alternate means of healing and wholeness. Arseny is the grandson of a healer and holy man. As a young child, he plays with his grandfather and absorbs the knowledge of medicine and healing methods available in the 14th century. Eventually, his parents die of the plague, and his grandfather more directly teaches him healing skills. When his grandfather dies, and he is left alone, the community essentially treats him as a stand-in for his grandfather and not his own person. 

Not too long after his grandfather dies, an orphaned teen girl, Ustina, finds her way to Arseny, and he nurses her back to health. In part because of their loneliness, they bond and become that family for one another. But Arseny hides her from the community. He does not want to share her. He is afraid that she will be taken from him, which includes preventing her from being baptized and partaking in communion because he is afraid of the implications of the child they conceived. He tells himself that once the child is born, no one can separate them. His pride prevents him from seeking out the midwife, even though he has never delivered a child. And while he does love her, his love is selfish. Depending on what version of the book summary you read, you may know that she and the baby die in childbirth. Because he prevented her from being baptized, she cannot be buried in the consecrated cemetery. 

The rest of the book is about his life, but that life is never alone. From that point until his death, his life is primarily concerned with living a life that can be for Ustina and his unnamed child. At the death of his wife and child, he feels like he must leave his home, and in the next phase of his life, he intentionally seeks out plague victims to do what he can. With care, many more survive than would have without his care. When he saves a local noble’s wife and daughter, he is pressed into service but allowed to serve all in that city. Here, he falls in love, and she with him, one of the residents that he heals. A widowed woman and her son could have become the “replacement” to the family that he lost, but he feels that that would violate the penance that he put upon himself. So he abandons another family situation and escapes out of the city in the middle of the night. 

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Summary: A theological history of the Black church and its relationship to liberation theology. 

If Raphael Warnock had not been my Senator, I am not sure I would have picked up The Divided Mind of the Black Church. I am interested in the history and theology of the black church, but there is also a reputation for pastors who are writing, and it is a mixed bag. Many pastors are writing versions of their sermons or lightweight content that can be helpful but not essential. This is a serious book of theological history, and I was surprised at how good it was. I cannot think of another politician with a serious theology book.

That being said, there are going to be many who will not be fans of this book and its conclusions. The central thesis is that what Warnock calls Black Theology did not arise until the start of the civil rights era and, even then, did not fully develop until what he calls the fourth stage of development of Black theology, the rise of Womanist contributions. Warnock is part of a progressive wing of the Black Church, and he is pointing to Black Theology as a liberationist theology. He is not denying the Christianity of those whose gospel is now primarily a liberationist theology. Still, he is saying that the focus on liberation has made what is now called Black Theology distinctive. In his third stage are James Cone and others writing a theology that fully embraced liberation and God’s priority for the poor and marginalized.

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Summary: A theological vision for vocation and creativity and the connection between our work and our vision of the eschaton. 

I really love Mako Fujimura’s art and his artistic vision. Every time I read one of his books or listen to one of his talks, I dream about buying one of his pieces of art. I am not new to his writing. I have read his book Silence and Beauty twice and his book Culture Care once. I have listened to a huge number of his talks and interviews. If you want an introduction, I think his discussion with Mark Labberton at Fuller Seminary is a good place to start.

Many of the themes of this book are touched on in his other books or in his interviews or talks. I think this is a good place to start if you are new to his work, and then I would encourage you to go back to his book Silence and Beauty as building on some of the themes developed in Art and Faith. The forward by NT Wright is a natural choice. Wright’s theological vision, especially the ideas from Surprised by Hope are deeply worked out in Fujimura’s vision of what it means to create and live in the world. This quote I think summarizes that thought.

“In my experience, when we surrender all to the greatest Artist, that Artist fills us with the Spirit and makes us even more. creative and aware of the greater reality all about us. By “giving up” our “art,” we are, paradoxically, made into true artists of the Kingdom. This is the paradox Blake was addressing. Unless we become makers in the image of the Maker, we labor in vain. Whether we are plumbers, garbage collectors, taxi drivers, or CEOs, we are called by the Great Artist to co-create. The Artist calls us little-‘a’ artists to co-create, to share in the “heavenly breaking in” to the broken earth.”

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Summary: A prequel with Nicholas Benedict being transferred to a new orphanage when he was nine. 

After the initial trilogy, I quickly picked up the prequel. Nicholas Benedict, the adult/parent figure for the original series was once a child himself. And like the children of the main series, he was brilliant and an orphan.

The book opens on a train with the staff person on a closing orphanage delivering Nicholas to a different orphanage. With the original series, I thought of the series of books by John Fitzgerald based around The Great Brain. Tom, the Great Brain, is a genius 10 year old who is always seeking to acquire more money. Many of his schemes do not work out well, and some harm his brother, who narrates the books. The difference between these books and those Great Brain books is that while both have genius children, the Benedict books are rooted in children looking out for the best for others. The Great Brain books were oriented toward selfish interest for the most part.

Nicholas is not perfect, although he is very nearly perfect. He realizes that he does need others and he has a responsibility to use his genius for others. And that is really the tipping point for him in this book. In someways I like I may have liked this book even more, although I think the range of characters in the main series is more enjoyable. I was glad to have read these books.

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Summary: After Covid, a researcher proposes mandated euthanasia and eugenics as an economic response, and Gamache is asked to protect her and then solve a murder that may be related.

I do not know how authors will deal with the reality of Covid over the coming years. Of course, such a globally important event will find its way into many books of fiction and non-fiction, but what about as Covid is still very active? In the 17th book of this series, Louise Penny, a series that comes out annually in early fall, had to have written The Madness of Crowds as Covid was raging. But the Madness of Crowds is a consciously post-Covid book. The book opens with the town of Three Pines holding a memorial and the first real gathering after vaccines became widespread. And if only that were how Covid really had ended, cleanly without additional varients and outbreaks and widespread vaccine rejections. However, the Madness of Crowds is fiction, and in this fictional world that is not real in many different ways, Covid had a clean ending, albeit one that was still filled with trauma, grief, and loss.

Covid matters in another plot point. At the start of the book, Gamache is asked to provide security for a lecture at a small college near Three Pines. The Canadian government commissioned Abigail Robinson, a statistician, to prepare a report about shoring up the national health system in response to the widespread cost and devastation as a result of Covid. Dr. Robinson’s report is rejected before it was released, and a cult following develops around Dr. Robinson as she independently presents her findings. Violence has erupted at several earlier lectures as both supporters and protesters grapple with her call to mandate euthanasia for the elderly and disabled as a means to protect the economy and the national health system from economic ruin.

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