John and Charles Wesley left a spiritual legacy that has touched every facet of Christianity.  Even those traditions that are non-Wesleyan have been affected by the fervor and warmth of the Wesleyan revivals in the eighteenth century and in the revivalists who followed in the Wesley’s footsteps.

Paul Wesley Chilcote, a professor of theology and Wesleyan studies at Ashland Theological Seminary, has given the interested reader a moving and helpful introduction to the sermons, hymns, and theological writings of these two brothers.  He begins with a brief but thorough sketch of the lives and influence of the Wesleys.  They grew up in an Anglican pastor’s home and never really cut their ties to the Anglican Church.  It was only after their deaths that what became known as Methodism moved away (or was pushed away) from the Church of England.

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To many Christians today the lack of unity among Christ’s followers scandalizes the church, but for many disciples of Jesus the depth of poverty across the globe and around the corner is equally scandalous.  It is quite natural that both realities give offense to Jesus’s followers as Paul’s lament in 1 Corinthians (“Is Christ divided?”) is later matched by his collection for the poor and his horror at people going hungry at the Lord’s Table while others feasted.  In Ecumenical Babel, a young Reformed scholar who edits the Journal of Markets and Morality for the free-market oriented Acton Institute, Jordan Ballor, looks at the ecumenical movement and shares the scandal of the division in the body of Christ, but disappointingly he seems as caught up in economic ideology as those he blasts with criticism.  While today’s ecumenical movement is undoubtedly sickly and I had guarded hopes when Ballor took Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s passionate confessional ecumenism as a point of departure, unfortunately Ballor cannot rise above a screed against his assessment of “neo-Marxism” and liberation theology with his equally ideological and baldly asserted free-market neo-liberalism (xvi, 4, 105).

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Well, here we are in 2012, another new year and another presidential election year.  The television and internet news media are already buzzing constantly about the run-up to the November elections. But with all this buzz, how often do we think about how or why we vote, or even – GASP! – if we should be voting at all.  Enter Jason Brennan’s recent book The Ethics of Voting.

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I love retellings of biblical stories, whether they be a fresh retelling of the actual story such as David Maine’s The Preservationist (about Noah) or reinventions like John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.  So I was excited when I received Cain by the Nobel winning Portuguese author Saramago.  Here was one of the world’s best writing about one of the world’s worst.  My excitement seemed warranted.

I was less excited than I was confused by the time I finished reading it,though.

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I’m a pastor at an evangelical church just 4 miles from Washington, DC. The majority of our people work for the federal government in one way or another. We never speak about politics from the pulpit, for two reasons. First—and most importantly—the purpose of preaching is to exhibit Christ, not talk policy. Second, we want both Republicans and Democrats to feel at home in our church.

Left, Right and Christ by Lisa Sharon Harper and D.C. Innes is a welcome book because it addresses that second point. Something is wrong if we don’t have an evangelical church in America where both Republicans and Democrats are represented. For that to happen, we have to be able to discuss political issues with grace-filled hearts and scripture-filled minds.

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Have you ever been to or been part of a church that seemed alive but yet something of life was missing? Welcome to Zombie church.  The author contends, and rightly so, that many of our churches today are ‘Zombie’ churches, i.e., churches that have the resemblance of life but are actually dead. From a distance they look as though they are alive, but upon closer inspection they have lost their connection to life: Jesus Christ.

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If you’ve ever been a middle schooler enduring a cafeteria lunch, if you’ve ever spent a recess wishing you could disappear into a brick wall, if you’ve ever longed for home — you may find something to relate to in this novel.

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Paulo Freire is one of the most important thinkers of the last half-century, although you may never have heard his name – unless of course, you have a background in education.  And even among educators, his seminal work Pedagogy of the Oppressed is widely recognized, but not so much is known about Freire, the man, and the context out of which this work emerged.  Enter James Kirylo’s new book, Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife, a work that utilizes a variety of styles (biography, interview, scholarly engagement) to depict aptly the diversity of Freire’s life and work. Engaging Freire on a number of different levels as Kirylo does here, is helpful in shaping a robust image of Freire’s life, but also may mean that parts of the book are less interesting to some readers than others.

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Few people would argue with Daniel Taylor’s fundamental premise: we all have a story to tell. Yet many who agree with that premise would also be reluctant to put that story into words on paper. To Dr. Taylor, this contradiction is regrettable and unnecessary. As well it should be to anyone who wishes they could write their own story and to anyone who might cherish a written story from their parents or grandparents.

To say we all have a story to tell is by now probably a platitude. Dr. Taylor, author of books such as Letters to My Children and cofounder of The Legacy Center, might call it a truism. Our lives are made up of stories, he points out. Each day is a narrative with all the elements of story: plot, character, setting, and sometimes irony, foreshadowing, and even symbolism. It is impossible not to have a story.

We glean Truth from these stories; we also ascribe Truth to them.
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Renee Wilkinson’s Modern Homestead: Grow, Raise, Create offers above all a spirit of accessibility. Around my urban setting of Detroit I’ve watched many a bearded soul roll up their sleeves, dig in, and turn over hard ground. I’ve looked from afar as raised beds go up, and wild flowers border good food grown by good communities – and I will admit it, I feel a little unwelcome. I think it’s partly my own fault. It just seems like a lot of hard work. But when I get over my laziness and make a few phone calls to the green movements looking for volunteers, I kind of don’t feel cool enough.

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