Blogger Review Books

Summary: A reframing of the concept of racism, not as hatred on the basis of skin color, but as greed. 

Racial capitalism is a concept that I have been aware of, but not dived deeply into. I read part of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism by Jonathan Tran but put it aside when I had some other pressing things and never came back to it. I think, in part, I set it aside because I needed to grapple with some other things first. I have followed Malcolm Foley on social media (and his podcast) for a while. I have observed him from a distance coming across the concept of racial capitalism and how that shifted some of his language around racism. I pre-ordered The Anti-Greed Gospel a while ago precisely because I thought he could introduce the topic in a way that I could understand.

About a week before the book was released, Netgalley emailed and offered me an advance digital copy for review. The Anti-Greed Gospel fairly short. I read a chapter or so before bed and finished it in five days. (There are 8 chapters and the main text is about 165 pages. I had 55 highlights in my copy which you can see here.)

As I was reading I kept thinking that in some ways Critical Race Theory is centering how legal structures were the primary tool of racism while Racial Capitalism centered out greed and capitalism were the primary tool of racism. But that is both too simple and not nuanced enough. It is pretty well known that legal structures were essential to creating the concept of race. Race as we understand the modern category did not exist before the enlightenment when categorization became a mainstream tool of not just science, but also of economics and other areas of academics and culture. That is, of course, not to say that no one recognized that there were different skin colors, but to say that phenotypical skin color was not determinative of worth, value or identity in the way that scientific racism developed from the 18th to the 20th century.

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Summary: An exploration of the season of Epiphany, a celebration of the glory of Christ’s incarnation and revelation of himself to us.

I appreciate this book while also being a bit frustrated with it and I am not completely sure why. I started it last year during the Epiphany season and didn’t finish it. So I started it again right at the end of Christmas season so that I would have it done by the start of Epiphany. But again I didn’t finish and I really forced myself to finish. I have previously read Rutledge’s book on Advent, which is mostly a collection of sermons. And I read about 75% of Rutledge’s’ Crucifixion and I have dipped into several other of her sermon collections, but again, never finished them.

Sermon collections are not something that really are intended to read straight through. So dipping into them but not finishing is I think to be expected for the genre. But there is something else that I think feels off here. I very much appreciate Rutledge’s wisdom and attention to the tradition of the Episcopal church. She turns 87 later this year and we need to pay attention to elders who have seen changes in history. I also think that she is one of the best preachers I have ever heard. I have spent a lot of time watching her old sermons on youtube.

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Summary: An exploration of post-colonial practical theology in the Anglican world. 

I am a fan of reading widely, but in my wide ranging reading I do not always know how to really write about what I read. This is a book that I appreciated and recommend, but I also need to say up front I am not qualified to evaluate. I have some understanding of post-colonial theory, but my understanding is very cursory.

I grew up baptist and have always attended baptist or non-denominational churches until the past 18 months when I started attending an Episcopal church. I used the Book of Common Prayer for years, which is the pull part of moving toward the Anglican tradition. The push part of that decision is my practical and theological changes from autonomous local churches in the face of abuse scandals and leader misbehavior. Episcopal structures are not immune to abuse and leader misbehavior (see George Carey and Justin Welby‘s resignations and the variety of scandals in ANCA and TEC). But part of the differences is that episcopal systems of church governance have the theoretical possibility of addressing sinful leaders, autonomous non-denominational or baptist church systems often do not have any ability to address sinful leaders in a meaningful way.

One of the themes of The Anglican Tradition from a Postcolonial Perspective is that interaction is bidirectional. Yes, colonial harm went from the colonizer to the colonized, but there are other interactions. This is similar to the focus in David Swartz’s Facing West: American Evangelicals in an Age of World Christianity, which explores the ways that American Evangelicals were impacted by missions and interaction with world Christianity. Not all feedback is positive. In a complicated way, Swartz’s exploration of the Homogenous Unit Principle and the way that was brought back from the mission field and was used to uphold church segregation beyond when segregation in other cultural areas was frowned upon, is an example of how not all feedback is positive.

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Summary: How do you summarize a life like John Lewis’?

I am not new to the story of John Lewis, but this was the first full-length biography I have read about John Lewis. I have previously read the graphic novels (The March Trilogy and Run) and the short biography by Jon Meacham, as well as watching the documentary Good Trouble. And Lewis figures prominently in many biographies, memoirs, and Civil Rights era histories. But I had not read a full-length biography.

David Greenberg has previously written biographies of Nixon and Coolidge and two books about the presidency. This is a biography that used hundreds of interviews and personal papers. And I think perhaps most interesting to me is that the biography was only half finished when  Lewis was ousted from SNCC. The main difference is that everything I have previously watched or read primarily focused on Lewis’ early civil rights work prior to leaving SNCC.

“Lews found himself, at age 26, with no job, unmarried and unsure what to do with his life. The movement to which he had devoted his adult life was veering away from the ideals that had animated it. To remain in the struggle, he would have to find another path.”

Part of what has always previously struck me about Lewis was how young he was when he was thrust into leadership. He was a leader of the Nashville Student Movement before he was 20. He was one of the speakers at the 1963 March on Washington when he was 23. Stokley Carmichael replaced him as chairman of SNCC when Lewis was 26. Everything I had previously read about Lewis was how his orientation toward a belief in nonviolence as a principle, not just a strategy paired with his maturity as a young man. He was not inclined to date or drink or parties, but he did draw people to him.

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Summary: A brief book about the problems of education reform.

I picked this up because it was by Jonathan Kozol. I read several of his books in the 1990s and was a bit surprised that he had a new book out. Kozol turns 88 in Sept 2024 and his work on social justice and education should be celebrated. I am glad I read this because it was by Jonathan Kozol, but at the same time, if you are interested in the problems of education reform and especially how it negatively impacts Black or other racial minorities or poor students of all races, I would recommend Bettina Love’s recent book Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. I read it last year but did not write up my thoughts at the time because I was in a busy season. But it is a very helpful book that I think should be more widely read, not just among educators, but also among politically active people of all types of backgrounds.

An End to Inequality covers a number of different problems with public education from the physical environment (lead in water or paint, poor air circulation, heating, air, etc.) to curriculum to problematic reforms. I think one of the main themes of Bettina Love’s book is handled well here. Generally, testing of educational reform programs is done at poor or minority schools. Any testing of educational reform at predominately white and higher income public schools are reforms that give students more options or freedom. While the reforms at lower-income and minority schools are reforms that are focused on more highly structured teaching models, narrower academic ranges of subjects, or economic efficiencies. Said another way, reforms at predominantly white and upper-income schools are designed to help students have more enjoyment at learning and reforms at lower-income and predominately minority schools tend to reduce educational enjoyment.

The main problem with this first third of the book is that the examples are presented anecdotally, not systemically. I completely believe that everything that he reports happened, but there isn’t a structure to tell the reader how widespread these problems are or if they really are disproportionately impacting low-income and minority students. I think they are, I think there is plenty of evidence available in other sources to show that they are, but Kozol’s standard format is to tell stories of particular students or teachers and that story-oriented structure tends to lack statistical underpinnings.

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Summary: High-control religious communities can create harm, but there are ways to move toward health

Harm from religious communities and individuals is not a new concept. However, recent increased attention to sexual abuse within the Protestant church and earlier public Catholic cases has drawn attention to the ways that church government and church systems can foster abuse of all sorts. Laura Anderson is primarily writing to help people recover from high-control religious communities, but there are principles here that are broader than that.

Anderson is not avoiding the term trauma (it is in the subtitle), but she is also trying to suggest that there are different levels of harm and that the response to that harm can be different. Two people can grow up and experience the same home, but one can be traumatized by practices that are not traumatizing to the other, even if the practices were applied to both. Part of the difficulty is that the word trauma has shifting meanings, so a more general “harm” can be helpful to apply to more than just legally documented abuse.

One of my takeaways from When Religion Hurts You is that high-control religious communities control as a means of protection and mission. There are evil people who are trying to control people and build their power for their own selfish purposes. But I think more often, people are attempting to help others and fulfill the church’s mission from their perspective. This happens by setting up boundaries to prevent harm, which becomes rigid rules that can themselves become harmful.

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Summary: A helpful, somewhat personal look at how Christian Nationalism is a type of idolatry that distorts Christianity. 

I am very much on board with the idea that Christian Nationalism is one of the more significant problems facing both the US political reality and the US church. But I also think that some critics of the idea of Christian Nationalism have a point when they suggest that some presentations are vague and unclear. Part of the problem is that many critics are not sociologists, and so are resistant to the reality of social science working in tendencies toward behavior. I have an undergrad degree in sociology and understand that sociology and other similar social sciences work with correlations that are often only partially explanatory. Other factors are always at play. And even two people with the same history, culture, and even biology (twins) may not believe or behave the same way. Social science broadly works in tendencies. All things being equal, if these factors apply, this result is more likely than if these factors do not apply.

As an example from Christian Nationalism, those that rank higher on the Christian Nationalism scale tend to view the world through a lens of racial hierarchy. But if a person who ranks higher on the Christian Nationalism scale has a significant relationship with others of a different race (maybe through adoption or marriage or in a church setting), that individual may agree with many tenants of Christian Nationalism but not view the world through a lens of racial hierarchy. That individual does not mean that the correlation between Christian Nationalism and belief in the racial hierarchy is false more broadly; it just means that they have other factors in their life that combat that aspect of Christian Nationalism. This year, Justice Jackson wrote in a concurrence (highlighted by Sarah Isgur), “Other cases presenting different allegations and different records may lead to different conclusions.” Jackson’s phrase is precisely the point here, while tendencies remain, individual cases may not be the same because no two cases are perfectly identical; however, there is value in exploring the ways that the tendencies work.

I am also reading American Idolatry in light of two books and a podcast. I read American Idolatry in print and overlapped it with the audiobook of Mark Noll’s history of the bible in the US from 1794 to 1911. Many of the uses of the bible in history would lend themselves to Christian Nationalist uses today. Some of those should be considered Christian Nationalism, and some should not. What is helpful about reading American Idolatry in light of America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911, is that longer trends both support and give pause to how we think of Christian Nationalism in this particular political moment. There have been points in US history that have had concerning Christian behavior. And the bible has long been used for political purposes (that is the point of Noll’s book).

Andrew Whitehead is careful throughout the book not to label those that tend toward Christian Nationalism as something other than Christian. He wants to say that there may be “an idolatry” that is a problem in the use of Christian Nationalism for control and power, but that these people are still Christian. And I largely applaud him for that and think that “othering people” can dismiss the problem or our role in the problem. That is where the podcast I referenced comes in. I have long followed Michael Emerson and listened to his interview on the Know It, Own It, Change It podcast. Emerson has repeatedly said in several interviews and articles that his research indicates that many White Christians have ceased to be Christians and have begun following a Religion of Whiteness. And having read much from Emerson on this point, I agree that his evidence is persuasive (similar to Robert Jones.) Still, while I want to take seriously Emerson’s (and Jones’) points that there does seem to be a line across which you cease to be practicing Christianity and instead are practicing a different religion, the bias should be to consider these differences within Christianity.

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Summary: An exploration of how images and metaphors influence Evangelical thought (or don’t.)

The Evangelical Imagination is the fourth of Karen Swallow Prior’s books I have read over the past 11 years, the sixth if you include the two classics in which she wrote the introduction. I have been in a private Facebook group and “friends” on social media for most of that time. I looked back, and basically, this is what I said to introduce the last books of hers that I read.

Part of what I appreciate about Karen’s writing is that her writing is personal. She is not just writing abstract “Christian Living” books, theology, or literary criticism; she is a character in the story she shares as she is writing theology, literary criticism, and moral formation. In large part, her work explores virtue, and she uses her work as a literature professor to give tools to that exploration.

I could write a thousand words discussing Prior’s past decade and the struggles she has been through, from very personal harassment by leaders within her denomination to leaving two jobs as a professor to literally being hit by a bus. (I understand everyone must include that line in a review of her work or an introduction to her in an interview.) I hope she will write a memoir sometime in the next 10 to 15 years, but I want people to read about The Evangelical Imagination, not my outsider’s perspective of her life so I won’t get into the personal stuff.

Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind will be 30 years old next year, and that is the book I think many will bring up as they discuss the Evangelical Imagination. Noll raised the question about whether there really was an Evangelical Mind and speculated about what it would take for proper attention to be paid to the life of the mind for the Evangelical. It was a book that almost everyone that wants to grapple with evangelicalism needs to have read. It is an important book, but James KA Smith’s work has indirectly questioned Noll’s thesis. It is not so much that Smith disagrees with Noll’s assessment but that Smith is raising questions about what we should do because we are not simply “brains on a stick” but individuals with a more complicated relationship to our minds.

Prior is extending Smith’s work and using Charles Taylor’s idea of the Social Imaginary to explore how a stunted imagination impacts our ability to address what it means to think and see the world around us. We all know Abraham Maslow’s quote, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” This rough idea of the Christian Imagination was explored more than 20 years ago in Emerson and Smith’s Divided by Faith. Emerson and Smith suggested that the reason Evangelicals cannot move past racial division is that their “toolkit” did not allow them to see the problem clearly but only through the lens of 1) freewill individualism, 2) relationalism, and 3) anti-structuralism. Smith and Emerson attempted to point out that the social imaginary of White Evangelicals impacted their ability to deal with race. Karen Swallow Prior is pointing out the social imaginary of Evangelicals more broadly and directly drawing parallels (for good and bad) to the Victorian age, where so much of the social imaginary of Evangelicals was developed. Most modern Evangelical do not know about those parallels and need someone to point them out.

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