processing: Summer 2010 Reading (I)

For The Beauty of the Church

Ed. David Taylor

Since meeting a popular songwriter we hosted in college and being told to check out Steve Turner's Imagine, I've maintained a detached interest in the merger of theology and the arts.  As my theological mind has expanded, so too has my appetite for this intersection.  Duke's (by way of Austin, TX) David Taylor writes and edits this wonderful volume replete with talented and interesting authors and a panoply of perspectives.  Besides Peterson, who can hardly do wrong by me, I was surprised, edified and provoked by John Witvliet Worship piece (I look forward to thinking about original songwriting & worship with some amazing songwriters in our community) and especially Jeremy Begbie's musing on Art and Eschatology.  I highly recommend this to anyone who's ever even considered the role of art in the life of the Church.

Practice Resurrection

Eugene Peterson

The capstone to his prolific Spiritual Theology series, Peterson embarks on a thorough and serious treatment of growing up, being the Church, and living in terms of the resurrection existence Christ inaugurated, as articulated by the letter to the Ephesians.  I really appreciated how constructive this work was.  While providing harsh and prophetic criticism towards the failed and unfaithful ways we North American Christians attempt to build, progress, and grow, the tone and timbre of the whole matches the exciting, creative, and counterintuitive character of the great biblical letter it explicates.

Resident Aliens

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon

About halfway through this book I really began to resent whoever chose our entrance reading requirements a couple years ago for Duke.  While Dean Well's Power and Passion was somewhat helpful, I can't really think of something else that could provide such a succinct and challenging primer to how things are thought and done at Duke than Prof. Hauerwas' and Bishop Willimon's landmark book.  I might have spoken louder, earlier, and more often in some precepts had I tackled this one prior to the summer before my final two semesters.  Spanning ecclesial ethics, the dangers of no-holds-barred modernism, and introing a Yoderian, post-Constantinian vision, these two master communicators also realize the importance of both eschatology and worship for the life of the Church in the world.  This work begs to be engaged with and achieves the provocation the cover advertises.

The Prodigal God

Tim Keller

I was really excited to dig into this one.  The final parable in the Luke 15 series has always been one of my favorites to read, preach, and re-evaluate.  This fall at Gathering Church, we're looking to focus on Keller's take.  His dealing stuck me as a bit unique, devoting a lot of space to the consideration of the older brother in the story (and going on to portray Jesus as True Elder Brother), going as far as to interpret him as but one of a couple of Lost Sons in the story.  I liked the accessibility and intrigue created by this.  It seems it will be a great entry point for those without a ton of study and small group experience as well as those, who know the story well.  It also made me go back to last summer's read: Volf's Exclusion and Embrace, to re-visit his brilliant exegesis of the characters within this keystone parable.  One main gripe I have is the  over-villianization of the Pharisee character in the story.  While I don't deny the teeth the the story has towards that crowd, the NPP-reader and Mel Gibson critic in me cringes at the careless portrayal of Jews as the epitome of flagrant unfaith.  All this said, I'll return back to Prodigal God (no spoiler alert: prodigal means extravagant, excessive) quite a bit more as a resource.

Deep Church

Jim Belcher
Anyone looking for some sort of positive assessment of the messy tangle encountering evangelical(-ish) church-life to come, should pick this one up.  Belcher offers an accessible and erudite survey of the landscape and painstakingly critiques and offers a way forward (which he, following CS Lewis coins the deep church).  This "third way," for him, is rarely a synthesis of the other two poles, though Belcher possesses all the charity, skill, and machinery to form such syntheses.  Belcher instead looks and, more often than not, finds a true new way.  This way of Orthodoxy and Engagement, truth and warmth, set-apartness and engagement must be the way forward and the type of leaders needed for such a grand endeavor must be committed to ecumenism, creativity, and generosity.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It accurately mapped and widely conversed un order to generate a gravitational vision around the Triune God in community.  Well done.

processing: The Wild Rose- Wendell Berry

The Wild Rose

(written by Wendell Berry for his wife)

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and in trust,

so that I live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart.

Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose blooming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade,

and once again I am blessed,

choosing again

what I chose before.

processing: Summer Reading: Part II

No Country For Old Men- Cormac McCarthy

If you can believe it, McCarthy's writing is more haunting than the on-screen portrayal by Javier Bardem. Per usual, his writing is grim, violent, graphic. We are left to ponder the futility of our 'good fight'. Is there even such a thing? The protagonist drifts into the territory of moral ambiguity and we are left feeling disoriented when we realize that the serial killing bounty hunter possesses a singularity and ethic not found in the so-called 'good guy'. Through all this, the narrator, Sheriff Bell seems to be the only one willing to acknowledge the worlds (and his own) decline. Along with, The Road, this book should be on everyone's required reading.

Our Endangered Values- Jimmy Carter

Former President Carter seems to have uniquely improved his legacy more with his post-White House career and tireless advocacy than by anything he did as president. This account is an interesting combination of what else- politics and religion- the two things not to bring up. Knowing both President Carter's devotion to peacemaking and justice (through Atlanta's Carter Center) and his ongoing mediation in Baptist life (New Baptist Covenant & CBF), it is nice to get a firsthand account of his motivations and presuppositions. While I don't agree with him on everything, I admire his courage, incredible endurance, and unwavering posture of engagement and dialogue.

Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World- A.J. Jacobs

I came across this one because I had read his A Year of Living Biblically and curiously enough picked it up at the same time as my friend Nick from church (and disc golf) was getting through it. Jacobs essentially chronicles his quest by picking out and occasionally revisiting the oddest, most profound, and down-right wackiest entries in the EB. What makes it interesting is his wit, candor, and occasional vulnerability when discussing insights from material as varied as Ecclesiastes and aquatic mating rituals. With Esquire-esque humour and agility, Jacobs manages to deftly weave his threads of familial relations, his wife and his struggle for fertility (and subsequent fatherhood), epistemology into a funny and reflective yearlong tapestry.

Jesus and Community- Gerhard Lohfink

Here are a couple insightful excerpts:
“If we ask Paul what significance the existence of the church has for pagan society in his writings...He says that God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself and that the church is now the place where reconciliation, which has already occurred in principle, is to be realized concretely. God has therefore charged the church with the service of reconciliation. The church is the place where, in a new creation, God has inaugurated reconciled society (pg 141).”

“Only in this gift of reconciliation, in the miracle of life newly won against all expectation, does what is here termed a contrast-society flourish. What is meant is not a church without guilt, but a church in which infinite hope emerges from forgiven guilt. What is meant is not a church in which there are no divisions, but a church which finds reconciliation despite all gulfs. What is meant is not a church without conflicts, but a church in which conflicts are settled in ways different from the rest of society. What is meant, finally, is not a church without the cross and without passion narratives, but a church always able to celebrate Easter because it both dies and rises with Christ (pg 147).”

unChristian:What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why it Matters- David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons

I must say my favorite parts of this book were some of the first-hand insights from contributors at the end of each chapter. These contributors were as diverse as Jim Wallis, Rick Warren, John Stott, Rick McKinley, Churck Colson, Andy Stanley, Andy Crouch, & Shane Claiborne. A wide variety of evangelical voices and a great representation of the polyphony and variance under the umbrella of evangelicism. I remember, however, while reading, being both thankful and disheartened. Thankful that this research was done and that this book was written and pushed through a channel whereby it gets received by the largest possible needed audience. Disheartened that money and time was spent researching and writing to let us, evangelicals, those supposedly most concerned with and incarnate in the "outside, secular world," understand that we have a bad reputation and that reputation is built more on "our" hypocrisy, imperialism, prejudice, sheltered disconnect, & politics rather than "Christ and Him crucified."

Perhaps the most telling statistic was the results from a poll that revealed the disconnect between how the church's hospitality is received by pastors, regular born-again attenders, sporadic attenders, and the un-churched outsider:

Christian churches accept and love people unconditionally, regardless of how people look or what they do. (% who strongly agree)
pastors: 76%
born-again Christians: 47%
Christian churchgoers: 41%
outsiders (all ages): 20%
(pg185)

Blessed Are the Peacemakers- Wendell Berry

This short work pulls out key peacemaking passages (most prominently Matthew's Sermon on the Mount) dealing with living peaceably. Finally there is an essay, previously published in the Christian Century, titled, "The Burden of the Gospels," that seeks to synthesize these passages.

Here are a couple excerpts:
"When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly, this, I think, is the life he means: a life that is not reducible by division, category or degree, but is one thing, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material, divided only insofar as it is embodied in distinct creatures. He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal. His offer of more abundant life, then, is not an invitation to declare ourselves as certified "Christians," but rather to become conscious, consenting and responsible participants in the one great life, a fulfillment hardly institutional at all."

"If we take the Gospels seriously, we are left, in our dire predicament, facing an utterly humbling question: How must we live and work so as not to be estranged from God’s presence in his work and in all his creatures? The answer, we may say, is given in Jesus’ teaching about love. But that answer raises another question that plunges us into the abyss of our ignorance, which is both human and peculiarly modern: How are we to make of that love an economic practice?"

God Has a Dream- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Like No Future Without Forgiveness only much, much lighter. Archbishop Tutu elaborates on the theology that roots his reconciliation efforts in South Africa over the past several decades. This theology enlists the African concept of Ubuntu, a shared humanity, the recognition of the image of God in the other. Endearing and self-deprecating at times, he begins each chapter, "Dear Child of God..." From then on you are engaged and edified by this wise, gentle, and incredibly experienced man. Catching a vision for "Hope in our Time," seems like a worthy pursuit, Tutu's contribution is helpful.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything- David Dark

I really enjoyed this one. A pleasure: well-written, witty, and penultimately relevant for current popular Christian discourse. Something like a Christian Chuck Klosterman. This is kind of a grown-up Blue Like Jazz, the book that you might loan to someone only peripherally interested in God and spirituality, but culturally, academically aware. From his detailed exegesis of Arcade Fire songs, to his unswerving devotion to Steven Colbert's prophetic truthiness, Dark manages to produce a work both religiously and culturally discerning, and at times critical. Dark bridges the gulfs of his current Vanderbilt PhD pursuit (and talks the talk quite nicely) and his gig teaching English at a conservative Nashville Presbyterian high school. What you get is an account that asks the right questions, provides only some of the answers, lets you do the work and prayer to come up with the rest, and hails the process of loving the Lord with our heart, soul, mind, strength, and questions.

Portrait of Calvin- T.H.L. Parker

[available for free digital download at Desiring God.]
I read this biography to celebrate JC's (the less famous/divine one) 500th birthday this month. I also thought it might be nice to get someone else's than Steinmetz' account of Calvin, after all the good Doctor is an unabashed Luther man. The most striking and personal note struck came in the first few pages in regard to Calvin's choice of education. It seemed obvious for him to go to Paris to study Theology at what was considered the orthodox and best option. Instead he chose to study law elsewhere. "...the intricacies and niceties of the law was gained which he could never have won from the University of Paris. At Orleans and Bourges, the intellectual atmosphere was more free. New ideas were not bogies, but food for interesting speculation. The classics...now seemed most desirable- calling, not to danger, but to delights." This portion both particularly resonates with me and the path I've taken in my graduate studies, and strikes me with a certain sad irony that Calvin's delight came in the freedom and curiosity not as widely afforded in some modern institutions that hail his thought.

Related: SUMMER READING: PART I.

processing: Summer Reading: Part I

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals- Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan writes a comprehensive account of 4 modes of eating. It is written smartly (sometimes snarkily so) and the quest-journalism side of me loves the humor and experiential vulnerability displayed. The 4 modes covered are: big box/industrial fast food, industrial organic, local, & hunter-gatherer. Highlights include his interview with Northern VA's Polyface celebrity Joel Salatin and his hunting/shrooming escapades in Northern California. It is interesting some of the conclusions reached here. There is not a free pass afforded to the Whole Foods lifestyle, nor is he regretfully idealistic about hunting wild boar and collecting sea salt and scallops in the Pacific. This book is a solid read, allowing you a philosophical, practical, economic, political, and culinary look at just what is going into your body and what it takes to get it there.


Same Kid of Different As Me- Ron Hall & Denver Moore
These two amateur authors combine for a decently constructed autobiographical narrative about reconciliation, God's providence amid both grinding poverty and rampant selfishness, and the ability of the Holy Spirit to form bonds and relationships that wouldn't be possibly through any other means. Ron is an international art dealer, rolling in cash, subjecting his marriage to the damage of infidelity and the hollowness of materialism. Denver is a former share-cropper (read: modern day slave) turned violent and psychotic homeless man. The two lives emerge through a long forming relationship at a shelter and like any good missions project, the "missionary" emerges changed and taught more than the "mission to be accomplished". If you can wade through some clumsy and often cheesy storytelling, this book is a helpful, touching, and at times heartbreaking tale.


A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am A...Christian- Brian McLaren
This one was one of those nagging reads that you feel you need to take a peak at, glean some really positive things, be displeased with some others, but generally come out the better for having powered through. I'll be honest, my first skepticism came from the repeated assurance that the Emergent Church (dunno if caps are needed) need not rely on personalities while McLaren's neutral post-modern mug peers at you from the cover. Then I remember not to judge a book by its cover but rather by its overly long and pretentious subtitle (that's fair don't you think?). There were several parts (in fact most of the book) that I really enjoyed, lined up well with, and feel confident in though. Brian's emphasis on balance, a health patristic appreciation and ecclesial unity and generosity rang loud and clear. I'll continue to keep an eye on McLaren, he seems to be on to something and deserves the hermeneutical generosity he demands.


Durham Tales: The Morris Street Maple, the Plastic Cow, the Durham Day That Was & More- Jim Wise
Only a town as self-conscious, wacky, and unique as Durham could have a history of such equal qualities. Wise attempts a folky and at times humorous incomplete history of our beloved stepchild of a city. By choosing diverse, minor, and utterly absurd episodes, he, like any good historian, demonstrates exactly why things are the way the are. Bright spots include the geographic beacon of the Morris St maple, the trainspotting recurring throughout the pages, minor characters ranging from the neighborhood mom to the sportsmanship-touting coach, and of course all of the standard players (Dukes, Watts, etc.) that clue us in what has made and continues to make the Bull City tick. If you don't live in or around Durham, do some work and find somehting like this for your town, it will further embed you in it and certainly increase your appreciation and/or sympathy for your surroundings.


The Memory of Old Jack- Wendell Berry
I would recommend one of Berry's Port William Township novels to anyone looking for beautiful prose describing menial happenings. By menial I mean there are no dramatic twists and turns, the characters are common folk in a small town, the novels are not sequels because there's not a plot to advance. Instead these memoirs (of the town more than the actual characters) display tragically, vividly, and carefully the depth of the membership. The Memory of Old Jack narrates the senile patriarch's past and present in heart-breaking terms detailing his doomed marriage, the devastation of a still born child, the awkward relations in a tenant labor system, and everything else that comes with growing old. Like his brilliant essays, Berry displays his passion and penchant for teaching and transmitting difficult topics and subjects in homey, endearing, and provocative terms. This particular book proved valuable to me in my start of field ed, while it describes rural KY, the dynamics parallel Roxboro, NC closely, and the care and respect given to the characters fosters likewise respect for the hardworking simple folk I encounter daily.

Becoming The Answer To Our Prayers- Shane Claiborne & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Shane & Jonathan have a precious gift for presenting practical teaching in a candid, comical, and subversive tone. Like their previous works/appearences, they use plenteous personal experiences and interactions to share the counterintuitive good news of Christ and the discipleship required of his followers. Having been over to Rutba and hearing both of these gentleman, you immediately understand a depth in their testamony beyond their words. Their words are secondary to their daily authenticity. If you have a chance, meet them. They are humble, funny and hospitable: as advertized. In this short volume, they tackle prayer: the Lord's Prayer & Jesus' Prayer for unity (Jn 17). Not unlike the exhortation in Jame's Epistle, they teach a seemless and inextricable bond between our prayers and the action resulting from our prayers (think less 'self-fulfilling prophesy' and more of an intergrated 'active spirituality'). The goal then is not to pray our way out of this world, but rather praying to become (and then actually becoming) a part of God's work for the redemption of the world. These prayers are subversive and dangerous prayers, but neccessary and powerful.

A Sabbath Poem by Wendell Berry

To sit and look at light-filled leaves
May let us see, or seem to see,
Far backward as through clearer eyes
To what unsighted hope believes:
The blessed conviviality
That sang Creation's seventh sunrise,

Time when the Maker's radiant sight
Made radiant every thing He saw,
And every thing He saw was filled
With perfect joy and life and light.
His perfect pleasure was sole law;
No pleasure had become self-willed.

For all His creatures were His pleasures
And their whole pleasure was to be
What He made them; they sought no gain
Or growth beyond their proper measures,
Nor longed for change or novelty.
The only new thing could be pain.