“Distinctively Particular Ways of Thinking
About the Spaces We Inhabit”

A Review of
The First Six Books of The Elements of Euclid
By Oliver Byrne.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

The First Six Books of The Elements of Euclid
By Oliver Byrne.
Two Volume Set in Clamshell Case: Taschen, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

A dozen years ago this Fall, I was just starting my graduate studies in philosophy of science, working toward a PhD.  I was particularly interested in the ways that humankind has historically understood and talked about the spaces that we inhabit.  But as I got further and further into my research, I grew increasingly frustrated with the depth of layer upon layer of abstraction inherent in contemporary systems of geometry and physics.  Eventually, I got to the point at which I could no longer continue to be so heavily invested in these abstract worlds and I had to take a break from my graduate studies for my own sanity.

One hundred and fifty years before my graduate school experience, a little known Irish mathematician and surveyor by the name of Oliver Byrne had a similar experience.  Byrne’s frustrations – aimed particularly at the way geometry was taught – led him to craft one of the most elegant geometry books ever printed.  And now thanks to Taschen Books, Byrne’s book The First Six Books of The Elements of Euclid, is back in print. As its title implies, Byrne’s work is an adaptation of Euclid’s Elements, but its novelty lies in its use of color to identify specific figures.  Consider, for instance, the following proof which Byrne offers in the book’s along with its parallel in the traditional rendering of Euclid to demonstrate the contrast between the two methods:

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“Involved in Mankind”

A Review of

The Price of Altruism:
George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
By Oren Harman

Reviewed by David Anderson.

The Price of Altruism:
George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
Oren Harman.
Hardback: W.W. Norton, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

In a world driven by evolution to its relentless, inevitable conclusions, “No good deed goes unpunished/no act of charity goes unresented,” as they say in Oz. How can we account for altruism, that foolish doing unto others as we hope they will do unto us in return? After all, in evolutionary terms, altruism decreases the fitness of the individual while increasing the fitness of the group. Evolution can explain why someone would jump into the ocean to pull their child or even a sibling’s child out of the grip of a rip tide, but why would anyone risk their life to save a neighbor’s child? Darwin saw altruism as a major problem with his theory and was profoundly troubled by it.

Geneticists and evolutionary biologists for 100 years after Darwin struggled to figure out how altruism fits into the evolutionary scheme of things. The evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton (much admired by Richard Dawkins, but don’t hold that against him) made the first major breakthrough in 1964 with what is now called Hamilton’s rule:

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A Review of Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America. Mark R. Valeri. Hardback: Princeton UP, 2010. Buy now: [ Amazon ] Reviewed by Mark Eckel

How many of us form an opinion on something based on spurious evidence and then allow the idea to set concrete-like into fact?  If there is any historical point of reference to which this dictum may apply it has to do with America’s founding.  We tend to “cherry pick” quotes and ideas that suit our rock hard position.  Our tendency, then, is to use these lovely out-of-context-ideals to chip away at other points of view.  Might I suggest that we break out a jack hammer to all our hallowed—and sometimes hollow—positions.

Mark Valeri’s Heavenly Merchandize is a historical treatise which reinvestigates Puritan economic positions at the end of the 17^th and beginning of the 18^th centuries.  Key to the book is the dynamic of change that moves people over a short time within the Puritan movement.  Understood, yet not a focal point, is the way words changed meaning over time.  Moreover, Valeri notes what historical markers were allowed to lapse when the present pressures of commerce—including individual profit—meant more than principle itself.  In short, Puritan commitments to clear Scriptural standards were left behind when a better deal came along.

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A Review of Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There By Leonard Sweet. Hardback: David C. Cook, 2010. Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ] Reviewed by Chris Smith.

As one who grew up in the midst of the heyday of evangelicalism and who was never completely comfortable with notions of evangelism that amounted to little more than proselytizing, evangelism has come to be a dirty word.  However, in the concept of evangelism, like all dirty words (and I would argue all dirty people as well) there lies the possibility for redemption.  Leonard Sweet, in his new book Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There, offers a fresh, new take on evangelism that points us toward recovery of the language of evangelism in ways that are more consistent with the whole of the scriptural narrative than what passed for evangelism in the days of my youth.  In the book’s preface Sweet gives form to this new understanding of evangelism:

Evangelism for too long has been disconnected from discipleship.  In Nudge, evangelism is discipleship.  What yokes evangelism to discipleship, I propose is the art of attention, attending to life and attending to God (21).

Certainly, in our increasingly technological age, social critics have been denouncing our inability to pay attention (see for example, Maggie Jackson’s recent book Distracted LGT: our review), so it is refreshing to see the fundamental role that the recovery of attention plays in Sweet’s reframing of evangelism.  Another particularly refreshing facet of Sweet’s work here is the holistic way in which he describes evangelism using imagery connected to all five senses.

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Announcing our Brand New, Quarterly Print Edition.

As we continue to encourage the practices of reading and theological conversation in our churches, we will, starting this Fall, be supplementing our online edition with a print edition that contains more reviews, interviews and book news of note for missional church communities. Our first issue will feature reviews by Debra Dean Murphy, Brett Foster, Ragan Sutterfield and others, and will explore the work of Seamus Heaney, Gregory Jones, Mary Oliver, William Stringfellow, Slavoj Žižek, Willie Jennings, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and more! You won’t want to miss this exciting new venture!

[ CLICK HERE for more info and to subscribe! ]

We’re Giving Away 10 Free books from IVP !!!

Thanks to our friends at IVP Books, we are giving 10 free books in our Fall contest!!!

Invite your friends (or yourself) to a FREE email subscription to the online edition of The Englewood Review this September, and you and any friends who activate their subscription will be entered to win two free books from IVP!

[ Go here to enter to win! ]

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 Bargains:

	Church Dogmatics, 14 Volumes By Karl Barth / Hendrickson Publishers $99.99 – Save 90% Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics is, arguably, the most important theological publication of the 20th Century. Hendrickson is reproducing the original 14-volume set edited by T.F. Torrance and G.W. Bromiley first published more than forty years ago by T&T Clark. The Hendrickson edition will contain the entire 14-volume set and all its contents, or the entire Church Dogmatics as it was originally published by T&T Clark. This set is ideal for pastors, students, and scholars who have wanted to read Barth, but have been heretofore limited by the cost of such an endeavor.
	Westminster Dictionary of Early Christian Literature By David E. Aune, ed. / Westminster John Knox Press $12.99 – Save 74% This book details the variety of literary and rhetorical forms found in the New Testament and in the literature of the early Christian church. This authoritative reference source is a treasurey for understanding the methods employed by New Testament and early Christian writers. This encyclopedia will illuminate the ways words shaped the consciousness of those who encountered Christiam teaching.
	Paul and the Stoics By Troels Engberg-Pedersen / Westminster John Knox Press $4.99 – Save 88%!!! The most in-depth treatment of this topic ever done! Going through Paul’s major epistles, Engberg-Pedersen makes clear how much Paul was indebted to Stoic philosophy both for his theology and his ethics. The bold, original research has all the markings of a landmark publication.
	Jesus of Nazareth By Dorothee Soelle / Westminster John Knox Press $2.99 – Save 85%!!! In this popular yet academically grounded look at Jesus, liberation theologians Dorothee Soelle and Luise Schottroff offer a corrective to the “Jesus of history” research recently made popular through the works of the Jesus Seminar. By situating Jesus within this community of friends–who played a large part in his life, ministry, and movement–the authors show that the story of Jesus has not come to a close. Rather, this book demonstrates how his works, words, and inspired community pose timeless challenges for contemporary life. Includes sixty-seven color illustrations, a glossary, chronological table, map, and brief annotated bibliography.
	The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation By Margaret M. Mitchell / Westminster John Knox Press $4.99 – Save 89%!!! Arguing that all Pauline interpretation depends significantly upon the ways in which readers formulate their own images of the apostle, Margaret M. Mitchell posits that John Chrysostom, the most profilic interpreter of the Pauline epistles in the early church, exemplifies this phenomenon. Mitchell brings together Chrysostom’s copious portraits of Paul – of his body, his soul, and his life circumstances – and for the first time analyzes them as complex rhetorical compositions built open well-known conventions of Greco-Roman rhetoric. Two appendixes offer a fresh translation of Chrysostom’s seven homilies de laudibus sancti Pauli and a catalog of color plates of artistic representation that graphically represent the author/exegete dynamic this study explores.

Anne Jackson has gained quite a following at her flowerdust.net blog over the last few years with her honest, insightful writing. She specializes in flinch-free truth-telling about herself, the church, and the broken world around her.

A couple of years ago, she lobbed a great question at her blog readers: What is the one thing you feel you can’t say in the church? Permission To Speak Freely captures the flavor of their responses.  Jackson got hundreds of answers, ranging from “I had an affair on my wife and I still think about the other woman” to “Even though I’m a staff member at my church, most of my deep and significant relationships are with people I met online” to “I was raped by a counselor… I thought he was a friend”.

The book is peppered with these confessions in the form of full-color pages that must have been fun for the graphic designer(s) tasked with properly honoring these anonymous words. But the bulk of the book is simple text featuring Jackson’s reflections and free-verse poetry on the subject of fear and confession. She lays out the mess of the struggles she’s had including the confusion in the wake of the sexual abuse she experienced as a teen, her addictions, her square peg experience as a church staffer and more in order to give readers, as a friend of hers called it, “the gift of going second”:

“Whenever somebody confesses something, and they’re the first to do it, its usually a pretty hard step to take. They don’t know how people will respond. They fear all the judgment and isolation. But they do it anyway.

“What happens on the other side of that confession is something beautiful. When you confess, there somebody on the other side of that confession who could very well be keeping a secret too. So when you go first, you’re opening up this amazing opportunity to trust. You’re saying, ‘I’m broken’. That trust carries so much power with it…”

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If you want a book that inspires, encourages, and stirs the imagination then Keith Meyer’s new book, Whole Life Transformation is just the book for you. Keith Meyer has both an MDiv and DMin degree and has been a pastor for over thirty years. He started the Church of the Open Door in Maple Grove, MN and currently serves as a senior fellow with the Renovare Spiritual Formation Institute. Meyer is also a contributing editor to Leadership Journal as well as an editor of the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care.

Many books deal either with spirituality or ministry but Whole Life Transformation includes the best of both these worlds. Meyer shows his readers that ministry leaders must be proactive in their own spiritual journey, seeking mental, physical, and spiritual health so that they can go out and serve God’s people. Meyer notes that many pastors, himself included, have lived, breathed, and preached a very active and “busy” ministry which included Church growth, high-energy evangelism, and increasing membership in their churches. However, after hitting bottom with his own personal demons as well as the repercussions of family dysfunction, Meyer sought help. Throughout this book Meyer includes personal stories from his therapy which included not just visiting with a pastoral counselor but also seeking out a spiritual director. After time in deep contemplation: reading the scriptures prayerfully, taking time away from parish life in order to spend more time with family, maintaining safe personal and family boundaries, Meyer felt equipped to re-enter ministry.

Whole Life Transformation is a book that every pastor and seminarian must read at least once a year. All too often pastors fall into the trap that our job is to be the CEO of our congregations, focusing our attention on what Meyer’s calls the “externals” buildings, budgets, increasing memberships, and so forth. Due to high stress from Church authorities and from parishioners pastors succumb to high demands and pressures which often result in some sort of addictive or toxic behaviors. Meyer’s shows us that if pastors are grounded in the person and ministry of Christ, a ministry focused on prayer, rest, proper mental and physical health, then we can best serve our flocks. I congratulate Mr. Meyer for his ruthless honesty about himself and about the Church at large and his boldness to take on the many demons that are plaguing the Church today.

Do yourself a favor and “take and read” Whole Life Transformation, you won’t be disappointed.

**** Less than 2 weeks of Early Registration Left!!! *****

A Rooted People:
Church, Place and Agriculture
in an Urban World

Registration and more info:

http://englewoodcc.com/rooted/

Spread the word with
the Facebook e-vite…

Ours is a world in which transportation is becoming extremely costly (as was highlighted by the massive costs of the BP Oil Spill) and yet at the same time is a world that is becoming increasingly urban. Common sense would seem to indicate that these trends will impact in a major way our food systems and the way we eat. Given these factors, what is the church’s redemptive role in caring for the health and wholeness (shalom) of not just humanity, but all creation? Englewood Christian Church has invited several speakers with rich experiences in sustainable agriculture to lead a conversation reflecting on this question and related ones about church, place, food, community and agriculture, and we invite you to join us.

Speakers:
* Fred Bahnson: Writer and Co-founder of Anathoth Community Garden

* Claudio Oliver:
Pastor and community developer from urban Curitiba, Brazil.

* Martin Price:
Former Director of Educational Concerns For Hunger Organization (ECHO)

* Ragan Sutterfield:
Arkansas Farmer/Writer, Author of FARMING AS A SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE

Workshops Lead By :
Will Samson and others TBA

When: Friday Oct. 29 and Saturday Oct. 30, 2010

Where: Englewood Christian Church / Indianapolis

An excerpt from one of the books to be featured in our
first print edition…  (Have you subscribed? )

America’s Four Gods:
What We Say about God–and What That Says about Us.
Paul Froese and Christopher Bader.
Hardback: Oxford UP, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Edna St.Vincent Millay

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.