“Deep Below the Surface
of the Tragic Violence “

A Review of
When God Took Sides:
Religion and Identity in Ireland — Unfinished History.

by Marianne Elliott.

Reviewed by Mike Bowling.

When God Took Sides:
Religion and Identity in Ireland — Unfinished History.
Marianne Elliott.
Hardback: Oxford UP, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Personal identity dictates who our friends are in most cases, and who we think we are contributes in a powerful way to who we list as enemies. Our friends always seem better than they really are and our enemies are never as bad as we think them to be. Apply this rationale to the last 500 years of Ireland’s history and you have the essential premise of the recently released book written by Marianne Elliott entitled When God Took Sides. Elliott, who was born and raised in Northern Ireland, teaches Irish Studies at Liverpool University. As co-author of the report from the Opsahl Peace Commission in Northern Ireland (1993), she brings a wealth of experience and understanding of the peace process in Northern Ireland. Although the foundation of the book is lectures she delivered at Oxford University in 2005, Elliott’s work flows more like detailed (and well-documented) storytelling than academic analysis. She ventures deep below the surface of the tragic violence which has appeared as an ugly scar on the face of an otherwise beautiful people and place. Elliott does not settle for a simple recounting of the seemingly endless story of action and reaction, murder and revenge or blame and defend; she offers the reader an explanation of how this cycle began in Ireland, how it was perpetuated and how it continues to this day. The results are not only important for those who hope to understand existing tensions between Northern Ireland and Great Britain or the more subtle tensions between Catholics and Protestants in the Republic of Ireland, Elliott’s work provides a model for understanding other conflicts throughout the world, especially those rooted in religion.

Elliott follows a thematic format instead of the typical chronological order. For those unfamiliar with Irish history and for those with only a cursory knowledge of “the Troubles” in Ireland, the book may be hard to follow. However, if the reader keeps in mind that the purpose is not a history of religion in Ireland, “Rather it is about politicized religion and how it came to shape the identities of people in Ireland.”, then the thematic plan makes much more sense. Again, the order of the chapters could provide a model for analysis of other critical historic conflicts (i.e. India and Pakistan, the civil war in Nigeria or the tensions between Burmese and Thais).

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Two Books on Christian Ireland

A Review by Mike Bowling.

Empty Pulpits: Ireland’s Retreat from Religion.
Malachi O’Doherty
Gill & Macmillan, 2008
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Sun Dancing
Geoffrey Moorhouse.
Paperback: Harcourt, 1997.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

As Belfast based journalist and broadcaster Malachi O’Doherty reflects on the present state of affairs regarding religion in Ireland, one sentence captures both his mood and his assessment. This statement comes from the Introduction of his book Empty Pulpits: Ireland’s Retreat from Religion (Gill & Macmillan, 2008): “Where England appears to have lost its faith in two generations, we have done it in one.” O’Doherty does not write as a theologian, or clergy, or a lay leader; he writes as a keen observer of both culture and politics. Throughout the book, countless interviews and multitudes of examples create a mood of confidence for O’Doherty’s pessimistic assertions regarding Ireland’s religious climate. But there is more to this book than just doom and gloom; in very accessible language, the reader is led down the path which has resulted in a secularized Ireland. The first part (chapters 1 through 9) tells the story of a society whose dominant faith was Christian (and mostly Catholic), but one which by the 1950’s began to set their faith aside as if it were a toy of their childhood…cherished only as a fond remembrance. The second part (chapters 10 through 14) outlines the current debate in Ireland as both government leaders and officials within the Catholic Church try to understand the influence of “a la carte” Catholics, the growing element of liberalization and the crisis within the priesthood which has erased the traditional role of faith in Irish communities. Part Three (chapters 15, 16 and a conclusion) reminds the reader that there has been no triumph for atheism in all of this, just a growing apathy toward all things religious. O’Doherty concludes by suggesting there are possibilities for a comeback of religion in Ireland, but that it is highly unlikely. By the end of the book, it is abundantly clear that the author has little to no confidence in a sovereign God calling out a revived Church. Having made numerous trips to the Emerald Isle, I would suggest that only a sovereign move by God can save Ireland from the sure grip of its present secularization.

All of the above is made more puzzling by remembering the rich Christian heritage of Ireland. Celtic spirituality may be all but dead in Ireland, however in many other parts of the world it continues to inspire many on the frontiers of re-imagining Christian spirituality. Let me suggest for consideration a wonderful book published about 13 years ago entitled Sun Dancing (Harcourt Inc., 1997). The author, Geoffrey Moorhouse, tells the story behind the story of how Irish monks saved western civilization during the Middle Ages. Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization is entertaining history, but Moorhouse takes the well-known penciled sketches and fills them with captivating detail and spectacular color. Part One is an odd combination of historical fiction and spiritual meditations set in the saga of life on Skellig Michael, a Christian monastic community, from AD 588 to AD 1222. Skellig Michael is a severe piece of rock which rises dramatically out of the Atlantic Ocean a few miles out from the southwest coast of Ireland. The 44 acre island was home to a handful of monks who lived out an austere monastic vision which is both curious and inspiring. Part Two is the offer of historical evidence supporting the rich storytelling found in the first part. This work is masterfully done with 49 short chapters which are numbered according to the page numbers in Part One which they further illuminate. The effect is a deepening of understanding and an expansion of the imagination.

[As someone who loves Ireland, its history and its people, it fills me with sadness every time I consider the spiritual lethargy and aimlessness of the Irish people surrounded by the ruins of a once vibrant Christian faith. I cannot help but think that deep in the memory of Ireland’s sacred sites are the seeds of a spiritual revival rooted in devotion to God and the love of Christ. May God raise up a visible and peaceful community in the midst of that enchanted land.]

Other Excellent Ireland-related books from CBD…

	Celtic Daily Prayer: Prayers and Readings from the Northumbria Community By HarperOne
	Ireland’s Saint: The Essential Biography of St. Patrick By J.B. Bury, edited by Jon M. Sweeney / Paraclete Press
	How the Irish Saved Civilization By Thomas Cahill / Random House, Inc
	The Celtic Way of Evangelism By George Hunter / Abingdon Press
	Every Earthly Blessing: Resdiscovering the Celtic Tradition By Esther de Waal / Morehouse Publishing

“Finally Comes the Poet “

A Review of
Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings.
Selected and Introduced by John Dear.

Reviewed by Stephen Lawson.

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the
geologist, ethnologist,

Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.
- Walt Whitman

Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings.
Selected and Introduced by John Dear.
Paperback: Orbis Books, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

On May 17, 1968, in the midst of the Vietnam War, Daniel Berrigan, together with his brother Philip and seven others, walked into a draft office in Cantonsville, Maryland. They commandeered draft files, which contained the information for potential draftees, took them into the parking lot and burned them with homemade napalm. Daniel Berrigan issued an apology (read: defense) on behalf of the ‘Cantonsville Nine’ (as they came to be known): “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise” (105).

This prophetic action cause national controversy. In the midst of an already highly controversial war, the Cantonsville Nine brought religion into the discussion. How could priests and other peaceable people disrupt the status quo of in such a stark way? This action saw the imprisonment of Christians, clergy and laity alike, for living out what they believed was their faith. This witness is a challenge to other Christians who have so often been complicit in war and violence.
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“God’s Own Passion
for the Neighborhood “

A Review of
Journey to the Common Good.
by Walter Brueggemann.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Journey to the Common Good.
Walter Brueggemann.
Paperback: WJK Books.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

One of the things that we have worked really hard to do as Englewood Christian Church over the past two decades is to gather our neighbors for conversation on imagining what the common good for our neighborhood might look like.  So when the city of Indianapolis declared our neighborhood and the surrounding ones as a “redevelopment zone” several years ago, we played a key role in gathering neighbors to craft – over the course of a year – a specific plan for how we wanted to see our neighborhood improved in a way that would minimize gentrification and not drive out the neighbors who presently live here.  We work with our neighbors in this way because we believe that God is at work, redeeming creation, and that this work of redemption unfolds primarily through the faithfulness of church communities who imagine and discern God’s redemptive work in their specific places.  With these convictions and the experiences of our church community at the forefront of my mind, I was very eager to read Walter Brueggemann’s ideas in his newest book Journey to the Common Good.

I have read a number of Brueggemann’s previous works and have resonated with the basic points of his theological vision as expressed in these books.  In particular, I have a deep appreciation for his emphasis on the people of God (as a community) in God’s redemptive work, on the conversational relationships between God and the people of God (see his recent book An Unsettling God), on the importance of imagination in discerning God’s leading (see The Prophetic Imagination), and finally, on the significance that he places on land and place in the mission of God (see The Land).  All of these convictions are ones that are essential to our life together at Englewood Christian Church.

At the beginning of Journey to the Common Good, Brueggemann observes:  “We face a crisis about the common good [today] because there are powerful forces at work among us to resist the common good, to violate community solidarity, and to deny a common destiny.  Mature people, at their best, are people who are committed to the common good that reaches beyond private interest, transcends sectarian commitments, and offers human solidarity” (1).  From these initial convictions onward, I knew that this was going to be an important book.  Brueggemann structures the book around three Old Testament stories that he believes are essential to discerning our way forward as churches today toward the common good of God’s redemption.  These stories are that of the Exodus, of Jeremiah (and of Solomon and the Jerusalem establishment that Jeremiah would prophetically decry) and finally of Isaiah.

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“Leave More Tracks Than Necessary“

A Review of
Practice Resurrection:
A Conversation on
Growing Up in Christ.
by Eugene Peterson.

Reviewed by Ragan Sutterfield.

Practice Resurrection:
A Conversation on
Growing Up in Christ.
Eugene Peterson.
Hardback: Eerdmans, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Looking at the church today we may well wonder what God was thinking.  Our congregations are filled with lax believers, pulled by the world, this way and that.  Looking around at the group of people filling the pews on a Sunday morning we think, surely this isn’t what God had in mind.  If only we could be like the early Church, we say, when Christianity was vibrant and authentic and not nearly so lazy and messy.

Eugene Peterson’s new book, Practice Resurrection, answers exactly these sorts of concerns and he does it by wiping away any of our ideas about some authentic, pure Christianity in the early church.  His task is to show us what it means to grow up in Christ, in the churches we have, and his guide for how we do this is Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.  The question is how Paul could say such grand things about the work of the Holy Spirit in that Ephesus when the church was clearly a mess?  “Obviously, the church is not an ideal community that everyone takes one look at and asks, ‘How do I get in?’” Peterson writes, “Clearly, the church is not making much headway in eliminating what is wrong in the world and making everything right.  So what’s left?”  What, indeed.

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“Possibilities Deeply Seeded Within the World“

A Review of
Bird Watching
by Paula McCartney

and

Urbanisms
by Steven Holl.

Reviewed by Brent Aldrich.

Bird Watching.
Paula McCartney.
Hardback: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

Urbanisms: Working With Doubt.
Steven Holl.
Hardback: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

I first saw Paula McCartney’s Bird Watching images as large prints, framed with their identification cards (including the birds’ name, location, date, size, coloring, and remarks) and I was hooked with the Spotted Wren, photographed on the Southern Oregon Coast, “golden crown, spotted back and wings” with “a field of daisies was the perfect backdrop for this little bird.” The image is saturated green, interspersed with the yellow and white daisy heads, and the matching yellow and white of the wren. It is as perfect an image as I might hope for. By the second photograph, something was awry, and looking back again at the wren, it was clear: these are model birds, wires holding them onto their perches, painted feathers, glued-on eyes. And having realized this artifice, the images are all the more enticing. First, there is the simple joy of recognition, which is a result of careful looking, and not afforded to anyone breezing past the surface of the photographs. Furthermore, though, there is a significant conceptual shift that complicates these images, asking questions about photography and looking at nature.

Bird Watching has also existed as an edition of hand-made books by McCartney, and has just been published as a full monograph of these clever and beautiful prints, with identification texts and accompanying essays. Located in several locations in the US, McCartney’s birds exist in immaculate landscapes in which the birds complete the scene, and are often described in language questioning our own expectations of ‘nature,’ or the conventions we might expect nature to offer up to our looking (e.g., the sublime, the picturesque). To that end, two Barn Swallows “elegantly turn their heads toward the camera,” Vermillion Flycatchers are “enjoying the view by the lake,” and an Aqua Tanager “stopped and patiently posed for his portrait.”

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A Review of

Worshiping With the Church Fathers.
Christopher Hall.
Paperback: IVP Academic, 2010.
Buy now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

[ Read an excerpt of this book here... ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Worshiping with the Church Fathers is the third volume of Christopher Hall’s four volume work on the Church in its earliest centuries.  This new volume, looks specifically at the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, the practice of prayer and the spirituality of the desert fathers.  His objective is:

To present as clearly as possible the fathers’ understanding of what worship is and what it isn’t.  I have tried to allow them to speak for themselves, to present their case and then to encourage readers to make their own decisions as to the validity of the particular patristic viewpoints.

Hall does a fine job both of achieving his stated goal of letting the Church Fathers speak for themselves and of providing enough context through which the reader can understand the writings of the Fathers.  The book’s first two chapters explore the roles of baptism and the Eucharist respectively, with a particular emphasis on the sacramental (and material) nature of both practices.  Hall explains that the material nature of the sacraments is rooted in the incarnation of Christ:

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“Hearing the Stories of the Women of the Bible
in Their Own Contexts“

A Review of
Women in the World of the Earliest Christians:
Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life
by Lynn Cohick.

Reviewed by Chase Roden.

Women in the World of the Earliest Christians:
Illuminating Ancient Ways of Life.
Lynn Cohick.
Paperback: Baker, 2010.
Buy now:  [ ChristianBook.com ]

Think of the Samaritan woman at the well from John 4 — the one who has had five husbands and who is, at the time of meeting Jesus, living with a man who is not her husband.  What is your mental image of her?  If you’re like many Bible-readers, you may think of her as a “loose woman.”  Some interpreters have even called her an outcast in her community, forced to go to the well by herself because no reputable woman would want to be seen with her.  This characterization is dead wrong, argues Lynn Cohick in Women in the World of the Earliest Christians.

As any responsible Biblical interpreter knows, it is frighteningly easy to read our own culture and values into the Bible, even with extensive practice.  The best way to combat this eisegetical tendency is to learn the true historical background of scripture, and Cohick nobly takes on the task, focusing specifically on painting a picture of the everyday life of women in the time and setting of the early church.  In doing so, she reveals a world vastly different from what most modern readers will expect.

Although the voice of women in antiquity has often been hushed to the faintest whisper, Cohick presents a mix of original research and adept synthesis of current academic work on a wide-ranging variety of topics to dig deep into historical sources to uncover echoes of these women’s stories.  Her sources are wide-ranging and often clever; she works with not only the traditional mainstays of historians such as epigraphs, civic inscriptions, marriage contracts, and contemporary accounts, but also pays close attention to small details in surprising sources, often with great reward.  For instance, when examining Jewish marriage customs, Cohick examines the way that key terms are translated from the Hebrew Bible into Septuagint Greek; specifically, she notes that the Hebrew word mohar, for “bride price” (money or valuables paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s family) is translated into Septuagint Greek as pherne or “dowry.”  This detail could easily be passed over, but Cohick notes that it represents a major change of custom from the time and setting of the composition of the Hebrew sources to that of the Septuagint audience.

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“Crippled by Bureaucracy?“

A Review of
Doomed Edifice:
The Eclipse of the Prophetic Ministry And
The Spiritual Captivity of the Church
by P.W. Baker.

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

Doomed Edifice:
The Eclipse of the Prophetic Ministry And
The Spiritual Captivity of the Church
P.W. Baker.
Paperback: Wipf and Stock, 2010.
Buy now:  [ Amazon ]

The new book, Doomed Edifice: The Eclipse of the Prophetic Ministry and the Spiritual Captivity of the Church by P.W. Baker piqued my interest with its promise of reflection on early Church history from a viewpoint influenced by the late social critic  Ivan Illich (click here for a delightful introduction to Illich’s life and work).  Baker is primarily interested here with the institutionalization of the Church: “the fruit of the human attempt to remedy what is considered imperfect or vulnerable… Christians [thus] chose predictable order, rule and authority instead of the spontaneous, convivial and organic” (123).  The power structures of the Church therefore came to overshadow shadow what Baker refers to as the “prophetic ministry”, a role he traces back to the nation of Israel in the Old Testament era.  Prophecy, Baker notes was the role of providing divine guidance to the people of  God.  He emphasizes that prophecy was balanced by the crucial work of discernment, a responsibility he argues that rested squarely on the local church congregation as a  whole, and not on “any single individual or to any select group of spiritual leaders” (21).

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“Putting the American Dream to Death”

A Review of

The Hole in Our Gospel.
Richard Stearns.
Hardback: Thomas Nelson, 2009.
Buy Now: [ ChristianBook.com ]

Reviewed by Chris Smith.

[ Win a FREE copy of this book!!! ]

Richard Stearns’ recent book, The Hole is our Gospel is a testimony in the old-fashioned sense of the word, the story of a life transformed by the good news of Jesus.  Stearns recounts how he rose to prominence in corporate America, and eventually – after much resistance – became the president of World Vision.  In parallel with the story of his career, Stearns also tells the story our how his understanding of the Gospel was transformed.  He explains this shift in the book’s introduction:

[B]eing a Christian, or follower of Jesus Christ, requires much more than just having a personal and transforming relationship with God.  It also entails a public and transforming relationship with the world (italics retained from the original).

Stearns proceeds to describe the Gospel in terms of feeding the hungry, healing the sick, clothing the naked and liberating the slaves, and draws upon the rich biblical tradition of justice in order to do so.  When Stearns went on at length about his own story in the opening chapters of the book, I was worried that the Gospel that he would eventually describe while arguing for social justice would still leave much leeway for individualism and consumerism, which are themselves at the roots of widespread injustice in the world.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not the case!  Stearns is convinced that churches (and not just individual Christians) are essential to God’s redemptive work of restoring justice to all creation.  He says, for instance: “I love the Church and truly believe that it is at the center of God’s plan for world.”  And indeed, in his final section of the book, which is written for churches, he pulls no punches, even going so far as to proclaim death to the American dream.  Stearns speaks powerfully and prophetically of the sins that impede churches in the United States, and I pray that his message will be heard.  However, I wish he would have fleshed out in more detail a practical vision of what it would look like for churches to repent of these sins and to move forward in obedience to our call to be the tangible body of Christ in the world.  The Hole in Our Gospel is clearly intended for evangelical audiences, and I pray that it will be read and prayerfully reflected upon, especially Stearns’ insistence that Jesus’s Gospel of Justice is not just for individuals, but churches.  Its message of repentance makes it perfect reading for this season of Lent.  May Stearns’ prophetic words lead us to our knees, to tears, but ultimately to transformation!