A Brief Review of

Why Boys Fail:
Saving Our Sons from an Educational System
That’s Leaving Them Behind.
Richard Whitmire.
Hardback: AMA.com,  2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Reviewed by Michelle Van Loon.

Most of us relax into “conventional wisdom” about the way the world works until someone comes along and yanks us out of the metaphorical mental easy chair. Author Richard Whitmire has confronted the conventional wisdom that boys have all the advantages in the classroom with a yank meant to jolt educators and parents into re-thinking their assumptions.

Whitmire, an education writer with an solid resume, marshaled an impressive amount of research to support the central thesis of his book: “The world has gotten more verbal, boys haven’t”. Whether it is an early focus on reading or writing or a shift in math instruction from crunching numbers to solving word problems, Whitmire insists that current instructional trends heavily favor female students.

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“Marvel”
Liberty Hyde Bailey

(From WIND AND WEATHER: POEMS
Doulos Christou Press, 2008 edition)

Ah, the wonders I have seen
At dawn and sunset and between!

The ocean beach on wild midnights
Deep steaming swamps and northern bights
The cirrhus clouds in high moonlights
The magic calm of tropic seas
The nameless sails at distant quays
The long long walks on lonely strands
Dead vacantness of desert lands
The constellations in new skies
The rounding landscape’s million dyes

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NY TIMES Obituary for
Ralph McInerny
1929-2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/arts/16mcinerny.html

Ralph McInerny, a scholar of Roman Catholicism who taught at the University of Notre Dame for more than half a century and a prolific novelist whose books included the Father Dowling mystery series, died Jan. 29 in Mishawaka, Ind., near South Bend. He was 80.

The cause was complications of esophageal cancer, said his son Daniel.

Mr. McInerny, who taught philosophy and medieval studies at Notre Dame, was an expert on Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Catholic theologian and philosopher; much of his published scholarship included biographical and exegetical texts on Aquinas, and he edited a volume of Aquinas translations for Penguin Classics. He also wrote on the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, the 12th-century Spanish Arabic scholar Averroes and later thinkers and theologians, including Cardinal Newman, Kierkegaard, Pascal and Descartes.

He was far better known, however, as a novelist, and especially as the creator of Roger Dowling, a former canon lawyer whose career was derailed by drink and who has become, in his rehabilitation, a parish priest in a Midwestern town called Fox River, where he runs across an inordinate number of murders and shows an unusual gift for solving them.

…
Read the full obituary:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/arts/16mcinerny.html

http://www.powells.com/review/2010_02_15.html

Alain Badiou, often billed as France’s leading radical thinker, here collects a group of tributes he has written to philosophers who are no longer with us. Most of these names — all French-speaking, all but one male — will be familiar to American readers: Lacan, Sarte, Foucault, Derrida. But others will be less familiar: Georges Canguilhem, Francoise Proust. In the “Overture,” Badiou refers to the subjects of these eulogies as “friends, enemies and partners,” categories which are not impermeable. Even those he thought of as friends or teachers are subject to criticism from his Maoist, revisionist-Marxist position.

Badiou tells us that these pieces are his way of calling these thinkers as “witnesses for the prosecution” in his dispute with those who would prostitute philosophy — that is, those who propose the maxim, “Cling to your illusions, prepare to surrender.” Badiou and his absent allies for their part insist that we “cast away illusions, prepare for struggle.” Badiou’s readings of this pantheon are illuminated by this particular slant of light. The first essay, a very short piece on Jacques Lacan, is a fairly standard eulogy which becomes an attack on Lacan’s critics: “All those psychoanalytic dwarves, all those gossip columnists amplifying the mean cry of ‘He was standing in my way, and now he’s dead at last. Now pay some attention to ME!” This confrontational tone, modulated to suit but never totally absent, permeates all the pieces here. At one point he asks his audience to allow him to be “absolutely anecdotal and completely superficial,” but there is no noticeable drop in intensity anywhere.

…
Read the full review:
http://www.powells.com/review/2010_02_15.html

Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy.
Alain Badiou
Paperback: Verso, 2009.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/2010/02/reboot-review.html

We live in a world that is increasingly impacted by technology.  The speed at which life is lived seemingly increases exponentially every day.  As Peggy Kendall, author of Reboot puts it: “As we become hyperconnected, overstimulated, multitasked, hyperinformed, hectically scheduled, and manically entertained, we wonder why feel so tired at night” (p. 3).  I do believe most of us can identify with that statement.  Even as life in general becomes more complex and fast paced, those of us who have walked through life for a few decades wonder about the decreasing attention span of young people.  Many of us who preach for a living wonder whether we are an endangered species – ready to be replaced by multimedia shows.  And yet, even I, a middle-aged man, who didn’t purchase a computer until beginning a Ph.D. program in my late 20s (and that computer was rather primitive by today’s standards), find it difficult to live for even a few hours without checking email or Facebook.  Yes, we have become dependent on technology that only a few decades back was the stuff of dreams.  The innocence of Beaver Cleaver or Opie Taylor is a thing of the past – at least for most of us.

As people of faith, at that is the intended audience for this book, the question is – how do we live with this technology without it controlling our lives?  Peggy Kendall, a self-described middle-aged communication professor at a Christian college, writes in the hope that this book will help Christians look at “how our unexamined choices regarding technology may unintentionally be altering our fundamental operating system” (p. 7).  The areas that may be affected include our values, our relationships, and the way we view “our Creator.”  The author writes as one who embraces technology, including the ways in which it makes life more productive and efficient, but she recognizes that there is a dark side present that needs to be addressed.

…
Read the full review:
http://pastorbobcornwall.blogspot.com/2010/02/reboot-review.html

REBOOT: Refreshing Your Faith in a High-Tech World.
Peggy Kendall.
Paperback: Judson Press, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

A Brief Review of

Living the Christian Year:
Time to Inhabit the Story of God.
Bobby Gross.
Paperback: IVP Books, 2007.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

As tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the Church’s season of Lent, my mind turns again to the calendar of the Church year and my own struggles to submit my life to be formed by the calendar of Church and not the secular, consumerist calendars of mainstream culture.  I know in my head that the way in which we mark time is a function of the primary stories that give meaning to our lives, and yet it never seems to work out so simply in my own life or that of our church community.  As I was reflecting on these struggles, I encountered Bobby Gross’s recent book Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God (IVP Books 2007).  Gross’s book is a grace-full introduction to the church calendar, particular for people like the author and myself, who did not grow up with any sense of time marked in remembrance of God’s story of redemption.  After introducing the book by telling a little bit of his own story of struggling to submit to the church calendar, Gross steps season-by-season through the church’s calendar, introducing each of the seasons and then going week-by-week through each season offering prayers that challenge us to submit ourselves to the story of God’s redemptive work, as well as brief but thought-provoking reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary passages for that week.

Maybe your church already has practices in place that point people in the direction of the church calendar, but for those churches out there, who don’t, or who are only beginning to re-encounter the seasons of the Church year, Bobby Gross’s Living The Christian Year is a great resource to be read and discussed in your church community. To get a flavor of this wonderful book, you can enjoy the following excerpts that IVP has posted on Google Books:

[ Click Here for the excerpt of LIVING THE CHRISTIAN YEAR ]

This week as we enter the season of Lent, we are giving away a FREE copy of two recent books from IVP: Living the Christian Year by Bobby Gross (which is reviewed above ) and The Ancient Christian Devotional edited by Thomas Oden and Cindy Crosby (Courtesy of IVP Books).

How to enter to win one of these two books:

1. Announce the contest on Twitter, Facebook or your blog: I just entered to win a FREE book on the Christian Year from The Englewood Review.  You can enter too:  http://ow.ly/180Je
2. Post a comment to this announcement with your name and a link to your post for #1.
3. You may enter one time per day for the duration of the contest.
4. We will pick two winners at random and notify them this weekend.

The contest will end at 4PM ET on this Friday February 19.

Brian McLaren’s newest book A NEW KIND OF CHRISTIANITY (HarperOne, BUY NOW from ChristianBook.com) was just released last week, and now TheOoze.tv is featuring a series of videos with Brian that engage the content of the book.

Here is the first of these videos.  Stay tuned to TheOoze.tv for the subsequent episodes.  Watch for a review of ANKOC coming soon in the ERB!

In our continuing effort to fund the publication and free distribution of The Englewood Review, we are going to be collaborating more intentionally with Christian Book Distributors. Primarily, we will be offering you the opportunity to buy bargain books from CBD that we think of are interest. Buying books this way is a win / win / win proposition. You get great books for a great price, CBD gets the sale and we get an excellent referral fee from CBD.

This week’s bargain books (Click to learn more/purchase):

Three books for Lent:

	The Story of the Christ By Scot McKnight / Baker $1.99 – Save 85%!!! For two thousand years the figure of Jesus has been the most powerful and pervasive influence on Western culture, not only in religion and ethics but also in politics, literature, music, and the visual arts. This book features insights from Scot McKnight, author of the bestselling book The Jesus Creed. McKnight’s compelling introduction provides helpful background information on the sources of our information (the Gospels), the religious setting of Jesus’ life, the heart of Jesus’ teaching, and a summation of what kind of person Jesus was. The book then offers a continuous narrative account of the life and words of Jesus, woven together from the four canonical Gospels. All who seek to know more about Jesus and his message for people today will enjoy this book.
	Clothed in Nothingness: Consolation for Suffering By Leonard M. Hummel / Augsburg Fortress $1.99 – Save 90%!!! Where is God when one suffers? How may one be consoled? How do people understand their religious beliefs in relation to suffering? When they encounter genuine travail, do their religious convictions come into play? How are they modified or asserted? Leonard Hummel takes three of the most important insights of the Reformation–the doctrine of justification, the theology of the Cross, and the priesthood of believers–to see how they have been reappropriated by Christians in contemporary pastoral settings. He examines the theology of consolation as formulated in the early Lutheran tradition and as practiced by Lutherans. He describes the “religious coping” of six believers who have suffered personal or social ills and how their capacity to cope was enhanced or affected by their belief. These vivid case studies are then used to illuminate how pastoral theology and caregivers might bring traditional theological beliefs into a distinctive “lived theology.”
	Story: Recapture the Mystery By Steven James / Baker $7.49 – Save 50%!!! Using the power of imagery and the drama of narrative, Steven leads you through a journey into the mystery of faith. From creation to Christ’s birth, from his first miracle to eternity and everything in between, you will see familiar scenes from the Bible like you never have before. They will wake you up spiritually. They will re-inspire your faith journey. They will jolt you into action.

In remembrance of Ash Wednesday (tomorrow), we offer you two poems related to Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday
T.S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

[ Read the full poem here ]

Marked by Ashes
Walter Brueggemann

Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day . . .
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments,
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.

[ Read the full poem here,
courtesy of our friends at Journey With Jesus ]

“The Difficult Work of Obedience”

A Review of
How to Inherit the Earth:
Submitting Ourselves to a Servant Savior
by Scott A. Bessenecker.

Reviewed by Ragan Sutterfield.

How to Inherit the Earth:
Submitting Ourselves to a Servant Savior
Scott A. Bessenecker.
Paperback: IVP Books, 2009.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

When I first began reading Scott Bessenecker’s How to Inherit the Earth: Submitting Ourselves to a Servant Savior I kept asking the question, “What would Nietzsche say?”  Bessenecker’s book is about servanthood and meekness, and Nietzsche is brilliant at helping unmask all of the ways we use service and meekness as power plays.  When Bessenecker talks about those who “could live in mansions” and “instead live in shacks” I wondered, “what would Nietzsche say?”  When he talks about people turning down “illustrious careers to care for someone in need” I wonder, “what would Nietzsche say?”  I wondered this not because I don’t think that meekness and servanthood are unimportant, but because I know my own tendency to turn meekness and servanthood into a means by which to gain power and pride.  Becoming CEO of a multinational or owner of a newly built McMansion are not interesting to me (and probably not a temptation for most of Bessenecker’s readers), but being known as someone who has given it all up for the poor certainly is.  Nietzsche would have us ask if meekness isn’t really just a clever and deceptive way to gain power.  I think we must answer that it certainly is and that Bessenecker’s book doesn’t do enough to unmask all of the ways in which we might use our meekness to feed our egos.  Thankfully, though, as I read on through the book the Nietzsche questions began to recede and Bessenecker’s words began to penetrate my heart with a critique of my own pride-filled ego.  His central question gets far beyond Nietzsche because it isn’t a question of whether or not I want to be a servant, but whether or not I am willing to truly, fundamentally submit.  To that question my mind says yes, and my heart says very loudly, no!

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“A Prime Season for Yoder Studies”

A Review of
The War of the Lamb:
The Ethics of Nonviolence and Peacemaking
by John Howard Yoder
and
The New Yoder
Peter Dula and Chris Huebner, eds.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

The War of the Lamb:
The Ethics of Nonviolence and Peacemaking
John Howard Yoder.
Paperback: Brazos Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

The New Yoder.
Peter Dula and Chris Huebner, eds.
Paperback: Cascade Books, 201o.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

We are apparently in a prime season for the release of books by and about John Howard Yoder.  In the year beginning with the release of his Christian Attitudes Toward War, Peace and Revolution last spring (our review is here), there will be about ten new books on Yoder that hit bookstore shelves.  I have recently had the opportunity to read two of these books, and also have played host to the conference that produced a third (see an exclusive excerpt of this book below and watch for a thorough review of it coming soon in the ERB).  The two books that I have been working my way through of late are The War of the Lamb, an exploration of “the ethics of peacemaking”, which Yoder intended to be his final book (but he died before he could finish it), and The New Yoder, a diverse collection of engagements with Yoder’s work from Cascade Books.

The War of the Lamb is a wonderful supplement to Christian Attitudes Toward War, Peace and Revolution (both are recent publications of Brazos Press), which takes a historical look at Christian theology related to war and peace.  The War of the Lamb, extends this project by exploring how Christians committed to nonviolence can exist in dialogue both with other Christians who hold Just-War perspectives and with the (presumably violent) nation-state.  One of the major themes of the work, as highlighted by Glen Stassen in the book’s introduction is that the ethics that Yoder is proposing here is not sectarian.  Ultimately, I think Stassen and Yoder are correct in that the ethics of Jesus are for all humanity.  However, for those of us entrenched in deeply domesticated churches, some level of sectarianism will be needed in order to form our identity – as Phil Kenneson has poignantly argued in his little book Beyond Sectarianism.

Yoder’s text begins with a “theological critique of violence.”  His critique here is – as is characteristic of his work – distinctively Christological, namely that the sacrifice of the cross is necessary in overcoming our penchant to return violence for violence.  Violence, he observes, “is not a sin like any other,” but rather the fundamental nature of power in a fallen world, which must be overcome:  He says:

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