“Rehabilitation, Redemption
and Ultimately Resurrection”

A Review of
The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.
by David Dark.

 Reviewed by Joshua Neds-Fox.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything.
David Dark.
Paperback: Zondervan, 2009.
Buy now: [ Doulos Christou Books $13 ] [ Amazon ]

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In attempting to reduce a book-length testimony to four or five paragraphs, there’s always the risk of perverting the author’s original intent (if, of course, he/she has something intentional to say).  When I say ‘perverting,’ I mean it in the sense that David Dark defines it in THE SACREDNESS OF QUESTIONING EVERYTHING: the object is “reduced to a thing… dispensed with, taken care of, filed away.”  “Perversion is pigeonholing,” he says, and I sincerely hope not to do this to Dark’s message, since I’m convinced he actually does have something to tell us.

In SACREDNESS, Dark champions the power — and the spiritual necessity — of the open mind.  Asking questions of our convictions, assumptions, perversions, religions, is the only way to let the light and air into them.  “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in,” he maintains, using Leonard Cohen’s words.  Questioning our God(s), our government, our eschatology, our language or our lusts, opens them to the possibility of rehabilitation, redemption and ultimately resurrection.

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“A Love Supreme”

A Review of
Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith.
by Robert Gelinas.

 Reviewed by Chad R. Abbott.

Finding the Groove:
Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith.
Robert Gelinas.
Paperback: Zondervan, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Doulos Christou Books $12 ] [ Amazon ]

One does not have to be a jazz enthusiast, play a trumpet or saxophone, or even know the full history of jazz to appreciate the wisdom that comes from Robert Gelinas’ new book Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith.  Suggesting himself to be a “jazz theologian,” Gelinas argues that it is the formula and culture-producing agency of jazz that can help people of faith understand the modern and ancient worlds through new lenses.  He writes, “A jazz shaped faith is not about liking the music or introducing smooth jazz versions of hymns into our worship services.  Rather, it is about understanding and incorporating the essence of jazz into the way we follow Jesus.”  Jazz is “more than music” and is instead a way of being, a way of seeing, or more importantly a sense of rhythm.

The rhythm of which Gelinas speaks that makes jazz relevant to faith comes in three ways: Syncopation, Improvisation and Call-and-Response.  Syncopation is the emphasis of the “off beat” in the rhythm of a 4/4 measured song.  Placing emphasis on the offbeat creates a swing and rhythm way of life, one that sees something that is present but often goes unnoticed.  Gelinas offers the suggestion that Jesus was a “master of noticing the unnoticed.”  Improvisation is a reinterpretation of old forms and structures by expressing a new creativity on the fly.  Improvisation works within the structure given, but interprets the ancient with a new twist.  Gelinas relates this to the attribute of God as a “Creator” and suggests that our relationship with God is not always the same and that interaction with the God of the Bible suggests improvisation as a model of interaction and faithfulness.  Finally, the call-and-response rhythm is a conversation taking place among the group.  Jazz musicians have this conversation regularly by allowing each instrument to have their turn in sharing a solo within the framework of the song that is playing.  Gelinas, again, relates this to God’s entrepreneurial way and creative demand of a dialectical response from creation.  The conversation creates new ways of being.  Gelinas, coming from the black church tradition, reminds the reader of the deep connection to the slave religion in the early Americas that enlisted this conversational style as a mode of being and continues to this day.  These three elements of jazz, essential elements that make it the only uniquely American music, tells the story not only of America, but of the way of the Christian faith. (more…)

A Brief Review of
Jesus, Interrupted:
Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible.
Bart Ehrman.
Hardcover: HarperOne, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Bart Ehrman’s most recent book JESUS, INTERRUPTED is one of the most popular  books today on Scripture and theology.  Ehrman, who by his own admission grew up conservative, and eventually as a result of his scholarly work was led away from the Christian faith and into agnosticism.  In this book, Ehrman details the “hidden” contradictions in the Bible that have been uncovered by historical-critical scholarship.  Although Ehrman’s tone overall is not overly combative (he repeatedly insists that one scriptural scholarship does not necessarily dictate a rejection of the Christian faith), one of his primary objectives is to debunk naive misconceptions about the Bible and its origins.  Indeed, JESUS, INTERRUPTED could be taken as a popular survey of the present state of scriptural studies.  There are, as Ehrman emphasizes, significant challenges to the idea of biblical inerrancy and the popular modernist notion that scripture is true according to Western scientific/philosophical standards of consistency, etc.

    However, Ehrman makes a grave error in basing his arguments on the false dichotomy between “devotional” readings of scripture (rooted in individual practice) and “scholarly” readings (rooted in the academy).  A hermeneutic practice that is rooted in the discernment of the church community and draws at times upon both devotional and scholarly readings is apparently unknown to Ehrman.  Such a practice of reading scripture together was common among the early Anabaptists (see Essays on Biblical Interpretation: Anabaptist-Mennonite Perspectives, W. Swartley, editor) and is likewise relevant in our postmodern age when modern squabbles about texts, their origins and meaning have taken a back seat to a holistic view of scripture as the broad historical story about the One who is the Truth (see Fowl and Jones READING IN COMMUNION or Scot McKnight’s THE BLUE PARAKEET).

    JESUS, INTERRUPTED is a fine book expositing as it does the challenges that historical-criticism poses to some modernist – and dare I say, idolatrous – views of scripture.  However, in the end, its value to the Church is limited because despite the broad cultural relevance that the Bible has found in modern, Western culture, it is primarily a book for the Church, the people of God.  Indeed, the Church is the stumbling block which topples Ehrman.  No wonder he has found frustration and ultimately rejection of the Christian faith, for it is only in the obedient, covenanted relationship to the church community – a relationship that is lacking in both the devotional and scholarly readings of scripture – that the Holy Spirit begins to reveal the meaning of scripture.

To Nobodaddy
William Blake
(1757 – 1827)
(HT: David Dark)

Why art thou silent & invisible
Father of jealousy
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye

Why darkness & obscurity
In all thy words & laws
That none dare eat the fruit but from
The wily serpents jaws
Or is it because Secresy
gains females loud applause.

A Brief Review of
The Way of the Dreamcatcher:
Spirit Lessons with Robert Lax: Poet, Peacemaker, Sage
by S.T. Georgiou
Paperback: Novalis, 2002.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Brent Aldrich.

Readers of Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain will be familiar with Robert Lax, the prophet-like best friend whom Merton describes therein as having “a kind of natural, instinctive spirituality, a kind of inborn direction to the living God.” For readers such as myself, this description was the first and last that I had heard of Lax until Steve Georgiou’s recent book The Way of the Dreamcatcher: Spirit Lessons with Robert Lax: Poet, Peacemaker, Sage, which picks up with Lax in his hermitage on the island of Patmos between 1993 and 2000, 50 years after the events in The Seven Storey Mountain. As it turns out, Lax has been writing fantastic minimalist poetry all along, and for those who have kept up with his work, Dreamcatcher must be a welcome insight into Lax’s thoughts; for the rest of us, this book of conversations between Lax and Georgiou is an invitation to the work of this thoughtful, peaceful man.

    The majority of the book is conversation, Georgiou throwing out anything and everything he can think of, and Lax calmly and wisely narrating his comprehensive vision of the peaceful kingdom of God: “Every day I come to see what makes me more peaceful. If I can find this out for myself, maybe my quest can eventually help others. There are so many points of connection between people, so many original sights and sounds that we share, as if we were one creation but didn’t really know it” (93-4).

    Dreamcatcher presents Lax as a wise hermit, full of a wisdom aware of the very immanence of God in all of creation, and most especially in other people; for all of Lax’s chosen solitude, his communion with and deep love of people is reinforced time and again, as is his submission to the way of the cross:

“When I was somewhere in my thirties, I made two lists – on one was what I wanted in life, and on the other I listed why I wasn’t getting it. Both lists eventually helped me to figure out what was really needed, what was essential.

And what was that?

Simply the grace and peace of heaven. Anything more just seemed to get in the way.

Well, that’s certainly getting down to basics!

You bet.”    (151)

A Brief Review of
God Does Not…: Entertain, Play Matchmaker,
Hurry, Demand Blood, Cure Every Illness.
Brent Laytham, editor.
Paperback: Brazos Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ Doulos Christou Books $15 ]  [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Kevin Book-Satterlee.

The opening line of an apophatic statement is, “God is not…”.  Apophatism suggests that God cannot be known, by anything other than what God is not.  The verb “is” in an apophatic statement is essential for the concept.  One cannot know who God is, just what God isn’t.  D. Brent Laytham, however, edits the book titled, God Does Not…Entertain, Play “Matchmaker”, Hurry, Demand Blood, Cure Every Illness, and in his concluding essay remarks that the apophatic statement “God is not…” can also be stated, “God does not…”  To Laytham God is as God does.

This collection of essays was written to dispel popular Christian beliefs of what God does, and thus who God is.  Contrary to true apophatism, the authors of each essay do in fact describe what God does after debunking a skewed myth about God.  The authors don’t just combat a few specific myths of what God does, but in fact, together they combat a false image of God found in popular Christian subculture.  Nearly every one of the myths espoused suggests that God is the servant of an individual, doing the bidding of the individual as though God was an enslaved genie granting everyone their three (or more) greatest wishes.

But God does not follow these rules.  God is not an indentured servant having been paid by a believer’s faith thus acting as the believer sees fit.  God just is, as noted fervently to Moses in the Exodus story, with the statement “I Am”.

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Book Forum: “What Would Jesus Buy?”
Two Books on Consumerism and Evangelical Culture

http://bookforum.com/inprint/016_02/3848

Books claiming to decipher evangelical Christianity for the secular reader are nothing new, but the Bush years ushered in the genre’s golden age. Following the 2000 election, scores of pundits sought to explain the rise of the Christian right, and some of their efforts were worthwhile. For The Great Derangement, Matt Taibbi went undercover at a fundamentalist retreat that culminated with a mass exorcism where he was encouraged to vomit up demons, and he walked away understanding how easy it could be to “bury your ‘sinful’ self far under the skin of your outer Christian.” D. Michael Lindsay conducted interviews with evangelicals in business and politics for Faith in the Halls of Power and (perhaps to a fault) allowed them to speak for themselves.

…

Read the full review:
http://bookforum.com/inprint/016_02/3848

Witnessing Suburbia:
Conservatives and Christian Youth Culture.
Eileen Luhr.
Paperback: U of Calif. Press, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

To Serve God and Wal-Mart:
The Making of Christian Free Enterprise.
Bethany Moreton.
Hardcover: Harvard U.P., 2009.
Buy now:  [ Doulos Christou Books $22 ] [ Amazon ]

Why should Christian radicals – ordinary and otherwise – read Brennan Manning’s books?

…

We need to read Brennan Manning — a former Franciscan priest and self-described ragamuffin — because, while affirming both community and action, he calls us back to that which is the universe’s lone life source: intimacy with God. In Manning’s latest release, The Furious Longing of God, he reminds us that ours is not an egotistical deity who sits back and smugly fields the praise of indebted subjects, but one who chases after creation with a fury unlike the universe has ever seen.

…

Read the full review:

http://www.jesusmanifesto.com/2009/05/radicals-resting-in-god%E2%80%99s-fury-brennan-manning%E2%80%99s-the-furious-longing-of-god/

THE FURIOUS LONGING OF GOD.
Brennan Manning.
Hardcover: David C. Cook, 2009
Buy now:  [ Doulos Christou Books $15 ] [ Amazon ]

In his book The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, Paul Evdokimov compares the Creator God to a divine poet who brings the world into being from nothingness, each creative act summed up with these words, “[H]e saw that it was beautiful.” Evdokimov contends that in the Greek text, the word used for what God sees is kalon (beautiful) and not agathon (good), and the word used in the Hebrew text can sustain both meanings simultaneously. What God has created, he has made beautiful; creation is fundamentally beautiful. As Evdokimov continues his narrative on the creation text, he demonstrates that in Genesis “the Hebrew word to create is conjugated in the completed mood (Genesis 1). That is to say, the world ‘has been created, is created, and will be created’ until its fulfilment.” Here we feel the pulse in language of the process of becoming: God in his divine wisdom began a drama in which he created in the “completed mood,” and in so doing, he invited the participation of his creation in its own fulfilment. As the twentieth-century Russian theologian Sergii Bulgakov teaches, all creation is longing to be revealed as what it is, as fundamentally beautiful, and “all things press towards beauty.”

But how are we to understand beauty, and what does it mean that God has invoked the synergistic and historically bound participation of his creation into its consummation? In this essay, I consider these questions using the theology of Charles Williams, an early twentieth century lay theologian and poet. As I pursue the idea of beauty within Williams, I will invoke other authors whose thinking might fructify and enhance Williams’s thought. Then I will turn to the question of sanctification. If beauty is our fundamental nature and that to which we are pressed, then we must seek to know how “beauty saves the world,” as Fydor Dostoevsky once said. To explore this question, I will examine Williams’s understanding of the poetic and its relationship to the life of the church.

…

http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=780

Registration Now Open!!!

THROUGH THE CONSUMING FIRE:
ECONOMIC FAITHFULNESS IN AN AGE OF CONSUMERISM
COMMUNITY – CONTENTMENT – CREATIVITY
Friday Nov. 13 and Saturday Nov. 14
Englewood Christian Church
57 N. Rural St. Indianapolis
Main Speakers:
Shane Claiborne   –   Will Samson    –  Kelly Johnson

The website is now up and registration is open!
http://www.englewoodcc.com/consumingfire/  

Consumerism is one of the greatest challenges facing the church in North America today.  Ultimately, consumerism is a form of self-indulgence that does great harm to our brothers and sisters around the world and indeed to all of Creation.  At the Through the Consuming Fire conference, we will explore what economic faithfulness would look like – particularly as shaped by denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Jesus. 

Facebook Invite and More details:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=73979927805&ref=share#/event.php?eid=70646854370

TheNewCulture.org has an excellent video interview with Soong-Chan Rah, the author of The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (IVP Books, 2009).  This interview is offered in five parts and is a total of 40 minutes in length.

Part One:

Part Two:

Links to the remaining parts of the interview are here.

The Next Evangelicalism:
Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.
Soong-Chan Rah.
Paperback: IVP Books, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

A Brief Review of  SAINT JOSEPH: THE FATHER OF JESUS IN A FATHERLESS SOCIETY 

by Leonardo Boff.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

I’ll be honest, I don’t believe I’ve ever read a book on St. Joseph, the father of Jesus, before, or even really thought too much about him.  But now, thanks to Leonardo Boff’s new book SAINT JOSEPH: THE FATHER OF JESUS IN A FATHERLESS SOCIETY (Cascade Books 2009), I realize that Joseph is a significant figure in the life of the Church.  Boff overviews the place of Joseph in the roles he played, in the text of the Gospels and Apocryphal literature and in the history of theology (there was basically no theological reflection on Joseph in the first 1500 years of the Church!).  Having laid this foundation, Boff offers up and defends his thesis that Joseph is a “shadow” representation of God the Father, and thus that in the holy family, we have a representation (on different levels) of God the Father (Joseph), God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit (Mary).  I’m not sure that I completely buy this thesis, but Boff has done his research well, argues persuasively for it and leaves me mulling it over.  Certainly, there are reasons that his argument is compelling: viz., providing vivid imagery for the Trinity and the Church as family and defending the significance of families in human culture.  Boff concludes with a striking “Prayer to St. Joseph,” which is worth quoting (in part) as an eloquent and concise summary of the book:

… Dear St. Joseph,
In your human face we see portrayed the face of the divine Father.
May He welcome us, protect us, and provide us with the assurance
that we walk in the palm of his hand.

Show us, St. Joseph, the power of your fatherhood:
Give us the determination in the face of problems,
courage in the face of peril,
awareness of the limits of our powers,
and infinite trust in the celestial Father.

SAINT JOSEPH:
THE FATHER OF JESUS IN A FATHERLESS SOCIETY.
Leonardo Boff.
Paperback: Cascade Books, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]