When one writes a book suggesting that an important Christian thinker might best be understood as heterodox, one expects a swift and strong response. In these respects, Branson Parler has not disappointed with his thirty-eight page ebook—The Forest and the Trees: Engaging Paul Martens’ The Heterodox Yoder—that appeared a mere two and a half months after the publication of my The Heterodox Yoder.[1] I sincerely appreciate the conviction evident in Parler’s engagement. Although the length of his review is oddly flattering, it is absolutely clear that his ebook is an energetic attempt to reject my rendering of Yoder:[2] following a brief summary of my argument, it provides a lengthy explication of three central elements of Yoder’s authorship—politics, Christian particularity, and sacraments—that allegedly undermine my argument, ultimately leading to a pithy (and rather brazen) conclusion that not only overturns my application of the proverbial “forest for the trees” imagery but also appropriates and extends my invocation of heterodoxy in order to claim that my reading of Yoder is analogous to heresy.
Parler correctly observes that I view Yoder’s thought as a sort of cautionary tale and that I believe it is important to avoid reducing Christianity to ethics (not, however, because of my experience in Anabaptism but simply because reducing Christianity to ethics is problematic theologically – my experience in Anabaptism has simply illustrated this problem). Yet, Parler also claims that The Heterodox Yoder “only confuses rather than clarifies things” because I do not account for the “whole forest” of Yoder’s corpus (37). At the gracious invitation of The Englewood Review of Books, I offer the following comments of response in order to clarify what I take to be (a) missing from Parler’s analysis; and (b) misleading in Parler’s description of three central elements—very significant trees, to continue the metaphor—of Yoder’s thought.
One of my favorite quotes is by David Lipscomb. He once wrote, “We are satisfied that voting does much more harm to the church than dancing does.” I love that quote because I believe it to be true, but also because it has probably been perceived differently by every generation since it was first written. The Christian generation before mine viewed dancing as a great evil, and voting as part of a Christianʼs duty. Nowadays you would be hard pressed to find a Christian of my generation who believes in the evils of dancing, and voting is no longer an essential element of the Christian faith. This monumental change is documented in Jonathan Merrittʼs new book, A Faith of Our Own.
Opening the pages of The Orphan Master’s Son whisks the reader far away from the comforts and familiarity of modern day America to North Korea. As this setting is unfamiliar to most readers, author Adam Johnson takes his time to paint the scenes depicting this culture in order to draw in the reader and demonstrating the amount of research good writing demands. The Orphan Master’s Son has two distinct sections. The first sets the stage for the story and introduces readers to the customs and government of North Korea. The second section includes several unexpected twists and turns before bringing resolution to the story.
Well, I admit it. I never had to read The Scarlet Letter in high school. Consequently, I didn’t read The Scarlet Letter in high school- or college, or after. I imagine that my initial reaction to the book- when I finally did read it – was similar to many others’: a vague sense of appreciation for Hawthorne’s multi-dimensional treatment of his characters coupled with a vague sense of confusion as to what, if anything, he was ultimately getting at. Luckily, the high-school student whose book I inherited had understood perfectly well and had written very succinctly on the last page “Theme: human beings should not judge others. Moral: Be true to yourself.” There you have it, as easy as pie, the exact same moral contained in every single Disney movie ever released!
Enter Marilyn Chandler McEntyre with her book, Reading Like a Serpent. After years of coaxing college students through Hawthorne’s novel, she feels compelled to provide the public with an opportunity to read this American classic again and to draw from it not only a critical understanding of Hawthorne’s purposes in his own storytelling, but also insights that come from scripture. McEntyre, like Hawthorne, writes to a Christian audience and urges them on toward a more full and true reading of scripture. Each chapter in McEntyre’s book expounds upon a biblical theme that is elemental to The Scarlet Letter, such as confession, childlikeness and children, judgment, and love of neighbor. Central also are ideas related to the use and misuse of language, and the roles of civilization and wildness.
As Christians, we believe we are created in the image of the Creator, meaning we ourselves are creators, instilled with seemingly endless creative potential. Unfortunately, we often think of only a select few as the “creative types,” and we do essentially the same pigeonholing to creativity itself, assigning it as a character trait of writers and artists—rather than as a necessary and inherent ability that is not only God-given but is also a fundamental building block of faith.
One of the primary tenets of Jonah Lehrer in his latest book Imagine: How Creativity Works is that we are all creative. It is not that some of us are endowed with inventive imaginations and a propensity for insights and inspirations. Rather, he argues, we are all blessed with much the same mental hardware (from the familiar right and left brains to the more obscure Anterior Superior Temporal Gyrus), and thus the differences in creative output are more a result of nurturing, environment, and the recognition of problems to be solved. There are, he explains, even beneficial side effects to creativity associated with conditions like ADHD. Read the rest of this entry »
This response is directed at the longer ebook version of Branson Parler’s review.
