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adamrshields's reviews
1937 reviews
Stop Fixing Yourself by Anthony de Mello
2.5
Summary: A book that is hard to recommend, because it needs a lot of caveating. The right person will find it helpful, most will not.
I have a ambivalent attitude toward reading the mystics. I value mystical thinking and practice, but I tend to find reading them an exercise in frustration. Mystics are often vague and contradictory. They often use language in unusual ways. But there is often still real help there.
Part of my ongoing reading about discernment is about how we apply what we learn even when there is not definitive directions. I was listening to a talk by Sean Rowe, the new presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and he said (my paraphrase) that we like to talk about discernment, and discernment is good, but the point of discernment is to eventually chose a path and follow it. That is a helpful point and one that I think DeMello needs to hear (or say).
What DeMello is doing here is not saying, "give up and stay where you are," but "acknowledge where you are and pay attention." His rough summary is that we don't change by trying to force ourselves to do hard things, but by paying attention and allowing the Holy Spirit to bring awareness to us.
A lot of the emphasis early in the book is not on changing to "get something" but to become content in all things. Again, this is both true and problematic. It is true to the extent that we should be content in all things, but not true to the extent that we simply accept injustice without complaint. I feel like this is similar to Dallas Willard's advice/comment that a mature person should be very hard to offend. And to the extent that you should not personally be offended, I agree. But to the extend that we are not offended about the things that offend God, I disagree.
The shift to part two raises a lot of concerns. In part one, his language is about beliving in yourself. He doesn't use the language of manifesting, but I think he is using some of the ideas that overlap with manifesting. I get concerned about that type of rhetoric because while there is some truth to needing to believe in yourself and be confident that something is possible, there are limits. Simply beliving that good things will happen will not make them true. But the rhetoric at the start of section two is even more problematic.
"What causes unhappiness...there is only one cause of unhappiness. The false beliefs in your head." I understand in context what he is trying to say. He isn’t explicitly denying that wrong things in the world exist. But he is framing unhappiness as how we respond. Stephen Covey’s point about our response is the space between the stimuli and our action is similar to what DeMello is trying to say. There is a need to help people see that the space between stimuli and response exists, but I don't think it is helpful to put everything on that space.
In particular now with the current administration's explicit plan to overwhelm the news media and the bureaucracy with a barrage of orders and news so that it is impossible to have an adequate response, we do need to emphasize that space between stimuli and action. But it feels like he is playing games with semantics, not unlike the “Sin of Empathy” discussion. Empathy has a common definition. But the “Sin of Empathy” crowd is redefining empathy to be sinful by defining it as a type of codependent enmeshment or abusive manipulation. It is entirely possible to have a discussion about codependent enmeshment or abusive manipulation without denigrating the virtue of empathy.
In that similar way, DeMello seems to be redefining Happiness not as an emotion or a type of joy or pleasure at the world, but solely as a divine gift of contentment. There is a God given gift of contentment that the mystics have told us about for a long time, but that isn’t usually described as “happiness” and to define it that way using that word seems to intentionally create confusion.
Much of the rest of the book has similar problems of either using words oddly, or asking us to withdraw from our emotional response to adopt a type of Buddhist-like detachment. I understand that some people may find that helpful. But I think many Chrsitians have already been taught to mistrust emotions and those Christians who already mistrust emotions do not need additional instruction about the problems of emotion. Emotion is part of how we were created. Emotions can be distorted because of sin and experience. But the solution to that is healing, not continued distrust of emotion.
I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/stop-fixing-yourself/
I have a ambivalent attitude toward reading the mystics. I value mystical thinking and practice, but I tend to find reading them an exercise in frustration. Mystics are often vague and contradictory. They often use language in unusual ways. But there is often still real help there.
Part of my ongoing reading about discernment is about how we apply what we learn even when there is not definitive directions. I was listening to a talk by Sean Rowe, the new presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and he said (my paraphrase) that we like to talk about discernment, and discernment is good, but the point of discernment is to eventually chose a path and follow it. That is a helpful point and one that I think DeMello needs to hear (or say).
What DeMello is doing here is not saying, "give up and stay where you are," but "acknowledge where you are and pay attention." His rough summary is that we don't change by trying to force ourselves to do hard things, but by paying attention and allowing the Holy Spirit to bring awareness to us.
A lot of the emphasis early in the book is not on changing to "get something" but to become content in all things. Again, this is both true and problematic. It is true to the extent that we should be content in all things, but not true to the extent that we simply accept injustice without complaint. I feel like this is similar to Dallas Willard's advice/comment that a mature person should be very hard to offend. And to the extent that you should not personally be offended, I agree. But to the extend that we are not offended about the things that offend God, I disagree.
The shift to part two raises a lot of concerns. In part one, his language is about beliving in yourself. He doesn't use the language of manifesting, but I think he is using some of the ideas that overlap with manifesting. I get concerned about that type of rhetoric because while there is some truth to needing to believe in yourself and be confident that something is possible, there are limits. Simply beliving that good things will happen will not make them true. But the rhetoric at the start of section two is even more problematic.
"What causes unhappiness...there is only one cause of unhappiness. The false beliefs in your head." I understand in context what he is trying to say. He isn’t explicitly denying that wrong things in the world exist. But he is framing unhappiness as how we respond. Stephen Covey’s point about our response is the space between the stimuli and our action is similar to what DeMello is trying to say. There is a need to help people see that the space between stimuli and response exists, but I don't think it is helpful to put everything on that space.
In particular now with the current administration's explicit plan to overwhelm the news media and the bureaucracy with a barrage of orders and news so that it is impossible to have an adequate response, we do need to emphasize that space between stimuli and action. But it feels like he is playing games with semantics, not unlike the “Sin of Empathy” discussion. Empathy has a common definition. But the “Sin of Empathy” crowd is redefining empathy to be sinful by defining it as a type of codependent enmeshment or abusive manipulation. It is entirely possible to have a discussion about codependent enmeshment or abusive manipulation without denigrating the virtue of empathy.
In that similar way, DeMello seems to be redefining Happiness not as an emotion or a type of joy or pleasure at the world, but solely as a divine gift of contentment. There is a God given gift of contentment that the mystics have told us about for a long time, but that isn’t usually described as “happiness” and to define it that way using that word seems to intentionally create confusion.
Much of the rest of the book has similar problems of either using words oddly, or asking us to withdraw from our emotional response to adopt a type of Buddhist-like detachment. I understand that some people may find that helpful. But I think many Chrsitians have already been taught to mistrust emotions and those Christians who already mistrust emotions do not need additional instruction about the problems of emotion. Emotion is part of how we were created. Emotions can be distorted because of sin and experience. But the solution to that is healing, not continued distrust of emotion.
I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/stop-fixing-yourself/
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
4.25
Summary: A black history textbook wrapped up in a comedic wrapper.
I am all about a good Black history book. And I also really appriciate history told by comedians because they are trying to get around the way that many people are resistant to dry dates and events presentations of history.
Black AF History is not a dry presentation. The humor mostly works to get to the heart of the presentation. I think some of the voice of his uncle sections fall a bit flat. But the vast majority works well.
I think on of the by products of the presenation is that this is not a universal Black presentation, but a particular black presentation. That should be obvious becuase there is no universal Black experience that is true of all Black peole at all times. Harriot grew up with a rural southern Black cultural experience. That experience will be differnet from an northern urban Black experience and different from a midwestern farmbelt experience and different from California suburban experience. And all of these are still stereotypical in some way which makes them also incomplete.
It is a very rare history book that doesn't give me new information or nuance that I have not heard before. There is just too much history for anyone to know it all and no book can present it all. I think this is a very good presentation, but part of the benefit of the comedy is that he can pull out little known aspects of history and focus on them, because he isn't trying to do a complete survey, but point out how the history is not known well enough.
One of those figures that was new to me here is Mary Ellen Pleasant, arguably the first Black woman to be a milionaire. And adjusted for inflation, she may be considered the first Black billionaire. But she was also an abolitionist and is reportedly the funder of John Brown's Harper's Ferry raid. If the evidence is accurate she donated more than a million dollars in today value toward the raid. She underwrote court cases around desegregation and was an active abolitionist before the civil war. But she is a figure that I didn't know existed prior to this book.
I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/black-af-history/
I am all about a good Black history book. And I also really appriciate history told by comedians because they are trying to get around the way that many people are resistant to dry dates and events presentations of history.
Black AF History is not a dry presentation. The humor mostly works to get to the heart of the presentation. I think some of the voice of his uncle sections fall a bit flat. But the vast majority works well.
I think on of the by products of the presenation is that this is not a universal Black presentation, but a particular black presentation. That should be obvious becuase there is no universal Black experience that is true of all Black peole at all times. Harriot grew up with a rural southern Black cultural experience. That experience will be differnet from an northern urban Black experience and different from a midwestern farmbelt experience and different from California suburban experience. And all of these are still stereotypical in some way which makes them also incomplete.
It is a very rare history book that doesn't give me new information or nuance that I have not heard before. There is just too much history for anyone to know it all and no book can present it all. I think this is a very good presentation, but part of the benefit of the comedy is that he can pull out little known aspects of history and focus on them, because he isn't trying to do a complete survey, but point out how the history is not known well enough.
One of those figures that was new to me here is Mary Ellen Pleasant, arguably the first Black woman to be a milionaire. And adjusted for inflation, she may be considered the first Black billionaire. But she was also an abolitionist and is reportedly the funder of John Brown's Harper's Ferry raid. If the evidence is accurate she donated more than a million dollars in today value toward the raid. She underwrote court cases around desegregation and was an active abolitionist before the civil war. But she is a figure that I didn't know existed prior to this book.
I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/black-af-history/
W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America by Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Britt Rusert
4.25
Summary: Short look at both the history of WEB Dubois 1900 World Fair project and how it predated much of the graphical data representation that became common later in the 20th century.
This is not a long book. There are really only a handful of essays. Those essays give context to the 1900 Paris World Exposition, WEB DuBois and his experience up until this point, and the data that was being presented. A final section discusses how innovative the presentation of the data was and how it predated later similar graphical data presentations.
I have known about this book since it came out but just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. I have an undergrad degree in sociology and part of an early job was using GIS demographics to help churches and church plants with planning. So I have a fair amount of background to know how important this event was in regard to data presentation.
But this matters in part because of what WEB DuBois and the others who participated were trying to do. 1900 was 35 years after the end of slavery. Contextually, 35 yeas ago was 1990, and the first Iraq War hadn’t happened yet. George HW Bush was president and the http protocol was being developed but the first real web browser would not be released widely until 1994. In other words, slavery was recent. It wasn’t just that slavery was recent but that there was widespread perception that Black Americans (and all from African decent) were “less than” those from European decent. The presentation, and WEB DuBois himself, were proof of the falsity of that belief.
This is a fairly niche book, but in a time where there less celebration of minority accomplishments, this is just another datapoint that needs to be widely known. If you want to see some of the graphics from the presentation, the Museum of African American History and Culture has a good webpage about it.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/visualizing-black-a...
This is not a long book. There are really only a handful of essays. Those essays give context to the 1900 Paris World Exposition, WEB DuBois and his experience up until this point, and the data that was being presented. A final section discusses how innovative the presentation of the data was and how it predated later similar graphical data presentations.
I have known about this book since it came out but just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. I have an undergrad degree in sociology and part of an early job was using GIS demographics to help churches and church plants with planning. So I have a fair amount of background to know how important this event was in regard to data presentation.
But this matters in part because of what WEB DuBois and the others who participated were trying to do. 1900 was 35 years after the end of slavery. Contextually, 35 yeas ago was 1990, and the first Iraq War hadn’t happened yet. George HW Bush was president and the http protocol was being developed but the first real web browser would not be released widely until 1994. In other words, slavery was recent. It wasn’t just that slavery was recent but that there was widespread perception that Black Americans (and all from African decent) were “less than” those from European decent. The presentation, and WEB DuBois himself, were proof of the falsity of that belief.
This is a fairly niche book, but in a time where there less celebration of minority accomplishments, this is just another datapoint that needs to be widely known. If you want to see some of the graphics from the presentation, the Museum of African American History and Culture has a good webpage about it.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/visualizing-black-a...
Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams
4.5
Summary: An orphan who aged out of foster care breaks his (chosen, not biological) brother out of an abusive foster care family, and that starts his discovery of his magical roots, a family he didn't know he had, and a magical HBCU.
I have been trying to intentionally read more fiction this year. That has mostly been young adult fiction because it is what has drawn me in so far.
Blood At the Root was published last year and I have seen it on the shelves of a few friends on Goodreads or seen social media posts about it. As I try to generally do, I avoided reading anything about it other than seeing that people I trusted recommended it.
Malik is 17 and petitioned to be released from the foster care system. His mother died when he was seven and people around him, blamed him for her death. He doesn't really understand what happened. But he knows it has to do with his magic. Since the day of her death, he has magic. But it is mostly uncontrolled and comes out when he is angry or emotional. So he tries to repress his emotions to stay in control. (He is not always in control.)
The book opens with Malik stealing a car so that he can break his (chosen, not biological) 12 year old foster brother out of an abusive foster home. They have grown up in a small predominately Black Alabama town and they dream of going to California to get away from everything. I won't give away too much more than spoilers from opening chapters, but in the midst of running away, they run into trouble and that leads them to find Malik's grandmother who he didn't know he had. She and all those around her also have magic and Malik finds an underground world of magic and Black community which he is not sure he can trust. He has been on his own for 10 years without anyone watching out for him. And it is hard to trust that there could be family that is trustworthy if they had not come for him earlier.
Part of what is revealed is that there is an HBCU which is designed to train students like him to use their magic. Almost immediately after finding his family, he is invited to go to a summer program to prepare him to enter the school in the fall. And that sets up the rest of the book.
Part of what I love about young adult novels is that they are explorations of what it means to grow up. Part of what I hate about young adult novels is the angst and mistrust of family and mentors that are trying to help those young adult grow up. The angst may be cliché, but it is based on a common reality. I very much remember going to a pretty angry phase. And Malik both has some reason for anger, but also quite a bit of developmental trauma. That is openly discussed in the novel and I think the normalization of the discussion of trauma in realistic terms is a good trend in young adult literature.
Blood at the Root is a very consciously culturally Black book. The magic system is rooted in Black culture and history. The HBCU makes complete sense with the magic system and history of the story. The geography of Alabama and Louisiana matters to the book's development. This is not Harry Potter with a culturally Black gloss. The book is pitched to a late teen audience. There is language and some violence and sexuality, but it is appropriate to a late teen audience that matches the age of the characters.
I was disappointed to learn that the sequel will not be released until late July 2025. But I will pre-order it and wait expectantly for it.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/blood-at-the-root-2/
I have been trying to intentionally read more fiction this year. That has mostly been young adult fiction because it is what has drawn me in so far.
Blood At the Root was published last year and I have seen it on the shelves of a few friends on Goodreads or seen social media posts about it. As I try to generally do, I avoided reading anything about it other than seeing that people I trusted recommended it.
Malik is 17 and petitioned to be released from the foster care system. His mother died when he was seven and people around him, blamed him for her death. He doesn't really understand what happened. But he knows it has to do with his magic. Since the day of her death, he has magic. But it is mostly uncontrolled and comes out when he is angry or emotional. So he tries to repress his emotions to stay in control. (He is not always in control.)
The book opens with Malik stealing a car so that he can break his (chosen, not biological) 12 year old foster brother out of an abusive foster home. They have grown up in a small predominately Black Alabama town and they dream of going to California to get away from everything. I won't give away too much more than spoilers from opening chapters, but in the midst of running away, they run into trouble and that leads them to find Malik's grandmother who he didn't know he had. She and all those around her also have magic and Malik finds an underground world of magic and Black community which he is not sure he can trust. He has been on his own for 10 years without anyone watching out for him. And it is hard to trust that there could be family that is trustworthy if they had not come for him earlier.
Part of what is revealed is that there is an HBCU which is designed to train students like him to use their magic. Almost immediately after finding his family, he is invited to go to a summer program to prepare him to enter the school in the fall. And that sets up the rest of the book.
Part of what I love about young adult novels is that they are explorations of what it means to grow up. Part of what I hate about young adult novels is the angst and mistrust of family and mentors that are trying to help those young adult grow up. The angst may be cliché, but it is based on a common reality. I very much remember going to a pretty angry phase. And Malik both has some reason for anger, but also quite a bit of developmental trauma. That is openly discussed in the novel and I think the normalization of the discussion of trauma in realistic terms is a good trend in young adult literature.
Blood at the Root is a very consciously culturally Black book. The magic system is rooted in Black culture and history. The HBCU makes complete sense with the magic system and history of the story. The geography of Alabama and Louisiana matters to the book's development. This is not Harry Potter with a culturally Black gloss. The book is pitched to a late teen audience. There is language and some violence and sexuality, but it is appropriate to a late teen audience that matches the age of the characters.
I was disappointed to learn that the sequel will not be released until late July 2025. But I will pre-order it and wait expectantly for it.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/blood-at-the-root-2/
Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Mark Thiessen Nation
Part of what attracts people about Bonhoffer is his unwavering vision. Nation quotes Bonhoeffer as saying, "Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.” Part of the method of ethics is standing with the vulnerable. There is a good discussion about how Bonhoeffer's understanding of four ideas, responsibility, vicarious representation, talking on guilt, and freedom, were worked out with regard to our "concrete neighbor."
These chapters again build on the earlier chapters that emphasize that Bonhoeffer was not attempting to gain power to overthrow Hitler, but to love people around him and care for justice in the face of a church that mostly ignored the injustice around them. The traditional story of the outline of his book that was compiled into Ethics is that Bonhoeffer was justifying his participation in the resistance. Nation believes this is a misreading and in fact what Bonhoeffer is doing is writing Ethics to help his former students, most of whom were drafted into the military to see how there could be resistance and how to view their Christian life in that context. Violation of the draft was an capital offense. And as Nation previously made the case, according to court records, Bonhoeffer's work in Abwehr was viewed as a violation of the draft and therefore the main reason why he was executed. The court records show that there was no connection to participation with any assassination attempts.
I think the key section of this chapter is this quote:
The final main chapter is about Bonhoeffer's prison spiritual disiplines and how he continued to think about his pacifism. I think Nation makes a lot of sense in this chapter, but Nation is also clear that he is doing a lot of speculation here because we cannot know all of the answers. The center of this chapter is using an essay from Barth scholar John Webster about Barth and applying it to Bonhoeffer. Again, another long quote and one of about a half dozen that I could choose:
The epilogue discsses the people of Le Chambon, a village of about 5000 people who worked together to save 3000-5000 refugees, mostly Jewish, that Nation suggests was largely the result of the discipleship of a pastor who also was a committed pacifist.
I am not sure that Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis will change many minds. The very concept of a "Bonhoeffer moment" seems to suggest that at some point we can no longer just follow normal Christian ethics and we are now free to do things that at other points in time would not be justifiable. I have read plenty enough Bonhoeffer to know that he was far from perfect. He was a complex man who was inconsistent but in ways that I think Nation attempts to make sense of. One of the common tactics that Nation is using is to suggest that as a teacher and spiritual guide, Bonhoeffer would take positions that were not his own, but for the purpose of helping others to work through ideas. Or as I regularly do in my work as a spiritual director I become a conversation partner for the purpose of helping to explore a topic, not because I am taking a position of my own direct beliefs. Whether that is enough to move the terms of the conversation I am not rooted enough in the academic study of Bonhoeffer to be able to speculate about.
I have about 35 published highlights that you can read here.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/discipleship-in-a-w...
4.5
Summary: An assessment of Bonhoeffer as a pacifist and how that pacifism remained unchanged throughout the 1940s, in opposition to how Bonhoeffer's story is often presented.
Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis is intentionally trying to reframe the story of Bonhoeffer. The common story is that Bonhoeffer after his time studying in NYC in 1930-31 came to see the Sermon on the Mount as the central teaching of Christianity. Bonhoeffer focused his teaching in the underground seminary on the Sermon on the Mount and that is reflected in his book Discipleship. But starting at some point in the late 1930s or early 1940s, there was a shift in Bonhoeffer and he came to see that his peace ethic was no longer a viable means of operating. This traditional version of Bonhoeffer shifts into a couple of variations, either Bonhoeffer kept his peace ethnic but violated his own teaching and particpated in the assassination attempt anyway, or he moved toward a type of Nebuhrian realism that justified his participation in the assassination attempt.
Mark Nation says that is all wrong. He directly challenges Bethge's presenation of Bonhoeffer as changing and instead suggests that Bonhoeffer remained fully and conscously a pacifist until the end. The book is essentially a collection of six main essays about different aspects of why Nation thinks this reframing best makes sense of the evidence that we have and then four appendix essays.
The first essay is summarized by this quote: "Bonhoeffer, let it be said over and over, was not arrested for participating in any assassination attempts. He was arrested for helping to save the lives of fourteen Jews and was imprisoned for subverting the military’s power to conscript him into service." Part of this discussion is about how Nation doesn't think there is much, if any, evidence that Bonhoeffer did anything other that communicate with the ecumentical church that there was a movement in Germany trying to remove Hitler from power.
The second essay is about the importance of the "Jewish question". It is nearly 40 pages and both points out how Bonheffer saw the the problem of overt antisemitism, but how Bonhoeffer was still supersessionist in his treatment of the question and how Bonhoeffer's method was primarily to talk about the ability of Jewish Christians to be part of the church. Nation suggests that this was at least in part a strategy to get the church to recognize that if Jewish people are unable to be recognized within the church then the very concept of evangelism and the universality of the church was at stake. Germany was only about 1% Jewish and of those about 1 in 6 ethnically Jewish people were Christians.
The third essay makes the argument that we should use the word pacifist to describe Bonhoeffer's beliefs. That isn't just controversial in regard to Metaxas' presentation of Bonhoeffer, but much of the consensus around Bonhoeffer, but I think that Nation shows in detail that Bonhoeffer not only used the word to describe himeself, but consistantly taught his students to be pacifists, even if most of them rejected the teaching. Part of the method here is that Nation is challenging the reader to ask if Bonhoeffer was a pacifist by the mid 1930s, then when did that change, if it did. Nation believes that he took the job with Abwehr to avoid conscription into the army, not with the express purpose of being a part of the resistance.
The fourth essay is about how Bonhoeffer understood the work of discipleship, but in his framing of his book named Discipleship but also that broader concept. I have an ongoing reading project on the concept of Christian Discernment and this essay and the next one, on Bonhoeffer's understanding of Ethics bounce around the idea of discernment. Nation quotes Bonhoeffer as saying, "Discipleship in essence never consists in a decision for this or that specific action; it is always a decision for or against Jesus Christ." That concept is essentially describing discipleship as a type of discernment process. The chapter on Ethics makes clear that Bonhoeffer rejected ethics as a set of principles, but rather viewed ethics as essentially following Christ.
Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis is intentionally trying to reframe the story of Bonhoeffer. The common story is that Bonhoeffer after his time studying in NYC in 1930-31 came to see the Sermon on the Mount as the central teaching of Christianity. Bonhoeffer focused his teaching in the underground seminary on the Sermon on the Mount and that is reflected in his book Discipleship. But starting at some point in the late 1930s or early 1940s, there was a shift in Bonhoeffer and he came to see that his peace ethic was no longer a viable means of operating. This traditional version of Bonhoeffer shifts into a couple of variations, either Bonhoeffer kept his peace ethnic but violated his own teaching and particpated in the assassination attempt anyway, or he moved toward a type of Nebuhrian realism that justified his participation in the assassination attempt.
Mark Nation says that is all wrong. He directly challenges Bethge's presenation of Bonhoeffer as changing and instead suggests that Bonhoeffer remained fully and conscously a pacifist until the end. The book is essentially a collection of six main essays about different aspects of why Nation thinks this reframing best makes sense of the evidence that we have and then four appendix essays.
The first essay is summarized by this quote: "Bonhoeffer, let it be said over and over, was not arrested for participating in any assassination attempts. He was arrested for helping to save the lives of fourteen Jews and was imprisoned for subverting the military’s power to conscript him into service." Part of this discussion is about how Nation doesn't think there is much, if any, evidence that Bonhoeffer did anything other that communicate with the ecumentical church that there was a movement in Germany trying to remove Hitler from power.
The second essay is about the importance of the "Jewish question". It is nearly 40 pages and both points out how Bonheffer saw the the problem of overt antisemitism, but how Bonhoeffer was still supersessionist in his treatment of the question and how Bonhoeffer's method was primarily to talk about the ability of Jewish Christians to be part of the church. Nation suggests that this was at least in part a strategy to get the church to recognize that if Jewish people are unable to be recognized within the church then the very concept of evangelism and the universality of the church was at stake. Germany was only about 1% Jewish and of those about 1 in 6 ethnically Jewish people were Christians.
The third essay makes the argument that we should use the word pacifist to describe Bonhoeffer's beliefs. That isn't just controversial in regard to Metaxas' presentation of Bonhoeffer, but much of the consensus around Bonhoeffer, but I think that Nation shows in detail that Bonhoeffer not only used the word to describe himeself, but consistantly taught his students to be pacifists, even if most of them rejected the teaching. Part of the method here is that Nation is challenging the reader to ask if Bonhoeffer was a pacifist by the mid 1930s, then when did that change, if it did. Nation believes that he took the job with Abwehr to avoid conscription into the army, not with the express purpose of being a part of the resistance.
The fourth essay is about how Bonhoeffer understood the work of discipleship, but in his framing of his book named Discipleship but also that broader concept. I have an ongoing reading project on the concept of Christian Discernment and this essay and the next one, on Bonhoeffer's understanding of Ethics bounce around the idea of discernment. Nation quotes Bonhoeffer as saying, "Discipleship in essence never consists in a decision for this or that specific action; it is always a decision for or against Jesus Christ." That concept is essentially describing discipleship as a type of discernment process. The chapter on Ethics makes clear that Bonhoeffer rejected ethics as a set of principles, but rather viewed ethics as essentially following Christ.
"Moral weapons of the past simply will not do, says Bonhoeffer; “we must replace rusty weapons with bright steel” (81). The central—and defining—weapon in our arsenal is “the living, creating God” (81). In fact, if we are grounded “in the reality of the world reconciled with God in Jesus Christ, the command of Jesus gains meaning and reality” (82). Then we will realize: The world will be overcome not by destruction but by reconciliation. Not ideals or programs, not conscience, duty, responsibility or virtue, but only the consummate love of God can meet and overcome reality. Again, this is accomplished not by a general idea of love, but by the love of God really lived in Jesus Christ. This love of God for the world does not withdraw from reality into noble souls detached from the world, but experiences and suffers the reality of the world at its worst. The world exhausts its rage on the body of Jesus Christ. But the martyred one forgives the world its sins. Thus reconciliation takes place."
Part of what attracts people about Bonhoffer is his unwavering vision. Nation quotes Bonhoeffer as saying, "Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.” Part of the method of ethics is standing with the vulnerable. There is a good discussion about how Bonhoeffer's understanding of four ideas, responsibility, vicarious representation, talking on guilt, and freedom, were worked out with regard to our "concrete neighbor."
These chapters again build on the earlier chapters that emphasize that Bonhoeffer was not attempting to gain power to overthrow Hitler, but to love people around him and care for justice in the face of a church that mostly ignored the injustice around them. The traditional story of the outline of his book that was compiled into Ethics is that Bonhoeffer was justifying his participation in the resistance. Nation believes this is a misreading and in fact what Bonhoeffer is doing is writing Ethics to help his former students, most of whom were drafted into the military to see how there could be resistance and how to view their Christian life in that context. Violation of the draft was an capital offense. And as Nation previously made the case, according to court records, Bonhoeffer's work in Abwehr was viewed as a violation of the draft and therefore the main reason why he was executed. The court records show that there was no connection to participation with any assassination attempts.
I think the key section of this chapter is this quote:
Bonhoeffer follows these extraordinary claims by offering ten pages of argument for why the Sermon on the Mount is crucial for understanding our Christian actions within real human history. Toward the end of these reflections—written in 1942 Germany—he says: “The Sermon on the Mount is either valid as the word of God’s world-reconciling love everywhere and at all times, or it is not really relevant for us at all” (243). “The responsibility of Jesus Christ for all human beings has love as its content and freedom as its form. . . . The commandments of God’s righteousness are fulfilled in vicarious representation, which means in concrete, responsible action of love for all human beings” (232). Very specifically he says, “by grounding responsible action in Jesus Christ we reaffirm precisely the limits of such action” (224). We must keep such comments in mind when he says that “the essence of responsible action intrinsically involves the sinless becoming guilty.” For he begins this sentence by saying: “Because of Jesus Christ . . .” Moreover, he follows it by saying, “It is a sacrilege and an outrageous perversion to extrapolate from this statement a blanket license to commit evil acts.
The final main chapter is about Bonhoeffer's prison spiritual disiplines and how he continued to think about his pacifism. I think Nation makes a lot of sense in this chapter, but Nation is also clear that he is doing a lot of speculation here because we cannot know all of the answers. The center of this chapter is using an essay from Barth scholar John Webster about Barth and applying it to Bonhoeffer. Again, another long quote and one of about a half dozen that I could choose:
“More than anything else,” therefore, this gospel entails “a matter of disorientation.” There is an immediate consequence to be drawn here for the church’s social and cultural witness: that witness must not proceed by transmuting the gospel into a stable, measurable, quantifiable social or cultural value. We can no more do that than we can channel a volcano into a domestic heating system. The gospel is no mere “principle” which can then be “applied” to issues about forms of common life or political economy. The gospel is about death and resurrection, new creation, and it is that new order of reality, rather than any immediate social applicability, which is the burden of the church’s testimony. (27) All of this has implications for how we think about the church. “Most fundamentally, it means that the church is what it is because of the gospel” (27). If this is to have any meaning then we must be “very strict to allow the gospel to exercise in an immediate way a controlling and critical influence” within our Christian communities (28). “‘Church’ is the event of gathering around the magnetic centre of the good news of Jesus Christ” (28). But since the church is possessed by rather than itself possessing the gospel, then “it will be most basically characterized by astonishment at the good news of Jesus” (29). The church is church both in its activities of gathering together and being dispersed into its daily life beyond the gathered community.
The epilogue discsses the people of Le Chambon, a village of about 5000 people who worked together to save 3000-5000 refugees, mostly Jewish, that Nation suggests was largely the result of the discipleship of a pastor who also was a committed pacifist.
I am not sure that Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis will change many minds. The very concept of a "Bonhoeffer moment" seems to suggest that at some point we can no longer just follow normal Christian ethics and we are now free to do things that at other points in time would not be justifiable. I have read plenty enough Bonhoeffer to know that he was far from perfect. He was a complex man who was inconsistent but in ways that I think Nation attempts to make sense of. One of the common tactics that Nation is using is to suggest that as a teacher and spiritual guide, Bonhoeffer would take positions that were not his own, but for the purpose of helping others to work through ideas. Or as I regularly do in my work as a spiritual director I become a conversation partner for the purpose of helping to explore a topic, not because I am taking a position of my own direct beliefs. Whether that is enough to move the terms of the conversation I am not rooted enough in the academic study of Bonhoeffer to be able to speculate about.
I have about 35 published highlights that you can read here.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/discipleship-in-a-w...
The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward by Malcolm Foley
The early chapters are likely where most people will be doing the most highlighting. It is where the very nature of what racism is doing is being challenged. This is not a 100% change in approach, but I think a helpful refocus. Because it is an explicitly Christian presentation, it brings into play the role of distorted thinking and ethics brings into our larger societal systems. For Foley, the fact that slave owners must dehumanize to justify slavery or segregation means that other areas of ethical thinking are also distorted. Personal ethnics matters, but also so does systemic reasoning. The very nature of "efficiency" can be about minimizing waste, but once your ethics have been distorted, efficiency can use the loss of the concept of all being made in the image of God to justify profit over people.
There are other books that lay out some of the history of how Christianity and business interests intersected in unhelpful ways. Kevin Kruse points out that business interests used Christian rhetoric and institutions to mobilize Christians politically. Jesse Curtis talks about how business principle snuck into church planting and church growth models to maintain segregated churches. Sean McGever talksabout how evangelism and mission of the church blinded the 17th and 18th century church to slavery’s evil. There are a lot of other books I have not gotten to about how extractive industries, particularly oil interests influenced modern evangelicalism. The development of capitalism has definitely impacted Christianity's understanding of the role of economics.
Foley's PhD dissertation was about lynching and his background in the historical study of lynching is central to The Anti-Greed Gospel. After the introduction and two chapters laying how the idea of racial capitalism and how it is engrained in our society, Foley lays out three examples of how we tend to respond to racism in the case of lynching. Two of those are mostly inadequate examples and one is a more positive examples. Francis Grimké and Atticus Haygood are the two negative examples. Grimke sees the problem of lynching as domination and exploitation. But his response as a pastor starts with black self improvement and white education. “Grimké falls into the same trap that many of us do: we see the material effects of racism, yet we address only the spiritual and mental remedies.” (p62) Later Grimké shifts to accepting violence when he sees that racial uplift and white education are not stopping lynching. (Grimké came to understand what many have learned, that information alone will not stop racism.)
Atticus Haygood also is opposed to lynching and, as the president of Emory University, was viewed as a racial progressive. But as with many white progressives before and after the civil war, he opposed the structures of slavery or Jim Crow, but not the underlying cultural assumption of racial hierarchy.
Foley's third figure, Ida B Wells, understands the structural nature of lynching and probably most importantly, that the surface level blame on black men raping white women was almost never the actual precipitating factor. In most cases, lynching was primarily about terrorism for the purpose of maintaining economic superiority. Whether it was individuals or communities, lynching was more likely to happen in communities where there was increasing Black economic self sufficiency. The KKK is one factor but at the time of most of Wells' work, the larger KKK movement had been pushed underground. The KKK from the 1880s until the 1920 less important structurally than it was before or after that period. Foley is pointing out here that Wells saw that economic independence was the center of lynching and how she maintained her Christian faith, about repentance and grace, while also drawing attention to how the lies of lynching worked to hide its actual reality.
Lynching no longer worked as a wide spread reality when economic systems changed and federal and state officials were no longer allowed to just look away from the problems. One of the point of her writing was that racial hierarchy placed the blame of lynching on the black victim's "crime." But the actual "burden was on white communities not to lynch but rather to be faithful to the faith that they claimed because, rather simply, one could not lynch and be Christian at the same time. As simple as that declaration may sound to us, it yielded death threats for Ida." (p 85)
After the end of the introduction of the concept of racial capitalism and the exploration of the idea in history through the model of lynching, Foley spends the last third of the book grappling with how Christianity understands the problem of greed and how solidarity is a solution to that problem. A full chapter is spent on how Christianity grapples with violence as a response to oppression before moving onto another chapter about the role of truth in opposing sin. The final chapter call on the reader to look at a new vision of the kingdom of God to inspire creative thinking about how we can oppose racism (and greed) in a church that values truth and love and lives out that truth and love in solidarity with the vulnerable.
I think there are a number of reasons why at least on this initial introduction to racial capitalism, the concept of racism as primarily a problem of greed is more convicting than racism as a problem of individual hatred. First, basically no one self identifies as racist at this point. Even George Wallace after his overtly segregationist run for president in 1968 denied that he was a racist. But it is pretty hard to deny that greed does not have influence in our lives.
Second, I think that what I find most helpful about CRT is that it thinks about the problems of race in systemic terms not individual terms. For the purposes of CRT it does matter if you have racial animus as an individual, CRT is really only looking at systems. Racial capitalism maintains that systems oriented view, while having space for personal introspection. David French (I am paraphrasing from memory) says something like, "many non-racist people uphold racist policies for non-racist reasons." What French is pointing out is that systems do not fix themselves and once in place there are many reasons why those systems perpetuate themselves without individual motivations. Racial capitalism makes sense of school boundaries maintaining segregation for economics reasons. The impact is still segregation and still needs to be opposed. But I think a lot of white moderates or progressives are far more interested in maintaining their economic position than they are in addressing racism.
I think a third potential for racial capitalism is the history of Christian thinking about wealth. There are a number of other illustrations in The Anti-Greed Gospel, but this quote talking about Basil hints at the larger tools of Christianity to deal with greed.
4.75
Summary: A reframing of the concept of racism, not as hatred on the basis of skin color, but as greed.
Racial capitalism is a concept that I have been aware of, but not dived deeply into. I read part of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism by Jonathan Tran but put it aside when I had some other pressing things and never came back to it. I think, in part, I set it aside because I needed to grapple with some other things first. I have followed Malcolm Foley on social media (and his podcast) for a while. I have observed him from a distance coming across the concept of racial capitalism and how that shifted some of his language around racism. I pre-ordered The Anti-Greed Gospel a while ago precisely because I thought he could introduce the topic in a way that I could understand.
About a week before the book was released, Netgalley emailed and offered me an advance digital copy for review. The Anti-Greed Gospel fairly short. I read a chapter or so before bed and finished it in five days. (There are 8 chapters and the main text is about 165 pages. I had 55 highlights in my copy which you can see here.)
As I was reading I kept thinking that in some ways Critical Race Theory is centering how legal structures were the primary tool of racism while Racial Capitalism centered out greed and capitalism were the primary tool of racism. But that is both too simple and not nuanced enough. It is pretty well known that legal structures were essential to creating the concept of race. Race as we understand the modern category did not exist before the enlightenment when categorization became a mainstream tool of not just science, but also of economics and other areas of academics and culture. That is, of course, not to say that no one recognized that there were different skin colors, but to say that phenotypical skin color was not determinative of worth, value or identity in the way that scientific racism developed from the 18th to the 20th century.
Racial Capitalism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) both agree that legal structures were essential to creating a racial caste system in the US. And CRT and Racial Capitalism both agree that racial categories are a social reality, not a biological reality. There are other overlaps, but one of the common objections to CRT is that it believes that racism doesn't go away, it shifts. I think there are some nuances in how I (in my very non-expert way) see how some of the nuances of Racial Capitalism agree with that point, but shifts the view in a way that can be more helpful than CRT is broadly.
If racism is primarily an issue of greed and the oppression or subjugation of others for the purpose of wealth creation, then that approach is different from looking at legal structures that CRT does. Both of my introductions to Racial Capitalism were from Christians, so I do need to read a secular presentation to balance that out. But Foley and Tran are willing to talk about greed and the underlying capitalist system with a spiritual lens. (Similar to how some Christian presentations of CRT also can do that.) In spite of using a Christian lens, I think you can see that part of what racial capitalism is pointing out is that culture and systemic structures (law, capitalism, eduction, etc) work together to maintain the structures of racism so that neither interpersonal attacks not systemic attacks apart from one another get at the core problems of racism. Foley draws on the MLK and the civil rights movement for descriptive language.
Racial capitalism is a concept that I have been aware of, but not dived deeply into. I read part of Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism by Jonathan Tran but put it aside when I had some other pressing things and never came back to it. I think, in part, I set it aside because I needed to grapple with some other things first. I have followed Malcolm Foley on social media (and his podcast) for a while. I have observed him from a distance coming across the concept of racial capitalism and how that shifted some of his language around racism. I pre-ordered The Anti-Greed Gospel a while ago precisely because I thought he could introduce the topic in a way that I could understand.
About a week before the book was released, Netgalley emailed and offered me an advance digital copy for review. The Anti-Greed Gospel fairly short. I read a chapter or so before bed and finished it in five days. (There are 8 chapters and the main text is about 165 pages. I had 55 highlights in my copy which you can see here.)
As I was reading I kept thinking that in some ways Critical Race Theory is centering how legal structures were the primary tool of racism while Racial Capitalism centered out greed and capitalism were the primary tool of racism. But that is both too simple and not nuanced enough. It is pretty well known that legal structures were essential to creating the concept of race. Race as we understand the modern category did not exist before the enlightenment when categorization became a mainstream tool of not just science, but also of economics and other areas of academics and culture. That is, of course, not to say that no one recognized that there were different skin colors, but to say that phenotypical skin color was not determinative of worth, value or identity in the way that scientific racism developed from the 18th to the 20th century.
Racial Capitalism and Critical Race Theory (CRT) both agree that legal structures were essential to creating a racial caste system in the US. And CRT and Racial Capitalism both agree that racial categories are a social reality, not a biological reality. There are other overlaps, but one of the common objections to CRT is that it believes that racism doesn't go away, it shifts. I think there are some nuances in how I (in my very non-expert way) see how some of the nuances of Racial Capitalism agree with that point, but shifts the view in a way that can be more helpful than CRT is broadly.
If racism is primarily an issue of greed and the oppression or subjugation of others for the purpose of wealth creation, then that approach is different from looking at legal structures that CRT does. Both of my introductions to Racial Capitalism were from Christians, so I do need to read a secular presentation to balance that out. But Foley and Tran are willing to talk about greed and the underlying capitalist system with a spiritual lens. (Similar to how some Christian presentations of CRT also can do that.) In spite of using a Christian lens, I think you can see that part of what racial capitalism is pointing out is that culture and systemic structures (law, capitalism, eduction, etc) work together to maintain the structures of racism so that neither interpersonal attacks not systemic attacks apart from one another get at the core problems of racism. Foley draws on the MLK and the civil rights movement for descriptive language.
"Race is not about hate and ignorance. It’s about greed. It always has been. And the purpose of this book is that you might understand the unholy relationship between race and greed, best understood not as a marriage but in terms of parentage: race and racism are children of Mammon....At its center is the claim that hate and ignorance are not at the root of race; rather, that root is greed. Notably, King, especially in the last few years of his life, drew attention to the three-headed evil that has plagued Western civilization: racism, materialism, and militarism. More pointedly, however, he drew attention to them in their most violent and common instantiations: white supremacy, capitalism, and war. These have been the inextricable evils of our day; we cannot address one of them apart from the two others. After revisiting King’s framework, I realized that self-interest binds these three evils together. This led me to recognize the three evils for what they really are: a demonic feedback loop of self-interest." (p1 and 6)
The early chapters are likely where most people will be doing the most highlighting. It is where the very nature of what racism is doing is being challenged. This is not a 100% change in approach, but I think a helpful refocus. Because it is an explicitly Christian presentation, it brings into play the role of distorted thinking and ethics brings into our larger societal systems. For Foley, the fact that slave owners must dehumanize to justify slavery or segregation means that other areas of ethical thinking are also distorted. Personal ethnics matters, but also so does systemic reasoning. The very nature of "efficiency" can be about minimizing waste, but once your ethics have been distorted, efficiency can use the loss of the concept of all being made in the image of God to justify profit over people.
There are other books that lay out some of the history of how Christianity and business interests intersected in unhelpful ways. Kevin Kruse points out that business interests used Christian rhetoric and institutions to mobilize Christians politically. Jesse Curtis talks about how business principle snuck into church planting and church growth models to maintain segregated churches. Sean McGever talksabout how evangelism and mission of the church blinded the 17th and 18th century church to slavery’s evil. There are a lot of other books I have not gotten to about how extractive industries, particularly oil interests influenced modern evangelicalism. The development of capitalism has definitely impacted Christianity's understanding of the role of economics.
Foley's PhD dissertation was about lynching and his background in the historical study of lynching is central to The Anti-Greed Gospel. After the introduction and two chapters laying how the idea of racial capitalism and how it is engrained in our society, Foley lays out three examples of how we tend to respond to racism in the case of lynching. Two of those are mostly inadequate examples and one is a more positive examples. Francis Grimké and Atticus Haygood are the two negative examples. Grimke sees the problem of lynching as domination and exploitation. But his response as a pastor starts with black self improvement and white education. “Grimké falls into the same trap that many of us do: we see the material effects of racism, yet we address only the spiritual and mental remedies.” (p62) Later Grimké shifts to accepting violence when he sees that racial uplift and white education are not stopping lynching. (Grimké came to understand what many have learned, that information alone will not stop racism.)
Atticus Haygood also is opposed to lynching and, as the president of Emory University, was viewed as a racial progressive. But as with many white progressives before and after the civil war, he opposed the structures of slavery or Jim Crow, but not the underlying cultural assumption of racial hierarchy.
"Haygood’s theological and ethical imagination had atrophied to the point that he could claim that Black Americans were “brothers and sisters” and yet deny racial equality in every sense of the word. As much as he called for Black education and so-called brotherhood, Haygood still categorized Black people as a “national problem.” The point at which people themselves become a problem rather than the injustices that they are subjected to is the point at which ethical thought dies." (p72)
Foley's third figure, Ida B Wells, understands the structural nature of lynching and probably most importantly, that the surface level blame on black men raping white women was almost never the actual precipitating factor. In most cases, lynching was primarily about terrorism for the purpose of maintaining economic superiority. Whether it was individuals or communities, lynching was more likely to happen in communities where there was increasing Black economic self sufficiency. The KKK is one factor but at the time of most of Wells' work, the larger KKK movement had been pushed underground. The KKK from the 1880s until the 1920 less important structurally than it was before or after that period. Foley is pointing out here that Wells saw that economic independence was the center of lynching and how she maintained her Christian faith, about repentance and grace, while also drawing attention to how the lies of lynching worked to hide its actual reality.
Lynching no longer worked as a wide spread reality when economic systems changed and federal and state officials were no longer allowed to just look away from the problems. One of the point of her writing was that racial hierarchy placed the blame of lynching on the black victim's "crime." But the actual "burden was on white communities not to lynch but rather to be faithful to the faith that they claimed because, rather simply, one could not lynch and be Christian at the same time. As simple as that declaration may sound to us, it yielded death threats for Ida." (p 85)
"When lynching was conceived of as punishment, the only question that some asked was whether victims did something to deserve it. The proper moral imagination saw the brutality of lynching and concluded that no human being was worthy of it. Wells not only readjudicated every lynching but also indicted the very system that made lynchings appear reasonable." (p 87)
After the end of the introduction of the concept of racial capitalism and the exploration of the idea in history through the model of lynching, Foley spends the last third of the book grappling with how Christianity understands the problem of greed and how solidarity is a solution to that problem. A full chapter is spent on how Christianity grapples with violence as a response to oppression before moving onto another chapter about the role of truth in opposing sin. The final chapter call on the reader to look at a new vision of the kingdom of God to inspire creative thinking about how we can oppose racism (and greed) in a church that values truth and love and lives out that truth and love in solidarity with the vulnerable.
I think there are a number of reasons why at least on this initial introduction to racial capitalism, the concept of racism as primarily a problem of greed is more convicting than racism as a problem of individual hatred. First, basically no one self identifies as racist at this point. Even George Wallace after his overtly segregationist run for president in 1968 denied that he was a racist. But it is pretty hard to deny that greed does not have influence in our lives.
Second, I think that what I find most helpful about CRT is that it thinks about the problems of race in systemic terms not individual terms. For the purposes of CRT it does matter if you have racial animus as an individual, CRT is really only looking at systems. Racial capitalism maintains that systems oriented view, while having space for personal introspection. David French (I am paraphrasing from memory) says something like, "many non-racist people uphold racist policies for non-racist reasons." What French is pointing out is that systems do not fix themselves and once in place there are many reasons why those systems perpetuate themselves without individual motivations. Racial capitalism makes sense of school boundaries maintaining segregation for economics reasons. The impact is still segregation and still needs to be opposed. But I think a lot of white moderates or progressives are far more interested in maintaining their economic position than they are in addressing racism.
I think a third potential for racial capitalism is the history of Christian thinking about wealth. There are a number of other illustrations in The Anti-Greed Gospel, but this quote talking about Basil hints at the larger tools of Christianity to deal with greed.
"Basil utters a heart-stopping line in his sermon, aptly titled To the Rich: “The more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.” Basil, in his particular context, sees that the Scriptures frame a world in which accumulation almost always happens at someone else’s expense, and that person is often needy. Thus, the more you have and hold, the less you love your neighbor.
Basil here gives the reason for Christian generosity: it is not an extra nice-to-have element of the Christian life; rather, it is a fundamental act of obedience to the Great Commandments and, particularly, to the eighth and tenth commandments. It is difficult to steal and covet when your primary relationship with goods is thinking of how they can be redistributed to meet needs. None of this denies familial obligation, but it does remind us that love of neighbor requires redistribution, not just a different attitude about money." (p 20)
The Battle for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi
4.25
This is a single review for the whole trilogy. I am cross posting on all three books.
Summary: Twelve year old Eva has grown up in an underground shelter, all alone with just a robot who has cared for her from birth. When the shelter is breached, Eva confronts a world unlike anything she could have imagined.
Young adult fiction is a comfort food of books, but I have not kept my finger on new books coming out, so I am frequently finding books that are new to me, but not new books. I stumbled on Wondla because it is a cartoon series on Apple TV+. I hadn’t seen anything about it before I stumbled one it, but I was looking for something that that I could watch with my kids and my teenage nieces. My kids are starting to get old enough to be able to watch things that have some tension in them.
We binged six of the seven episodes in a weekend and then watched the last a few days later. Season one of the TV series is the first book of the trilogy. And presumably the second season (which is coming but doesn't have a release date) will be the second book. In print, each of the books is roughly 450 pages. I read all three in less than 2 weeks. The first I read as an ebook from Kindle Unlimited, the next two I was able to check out from our local library in print. The Kindle editions were fine, but the print has great art in color that does not come out as well in a black and white kindle file.
A rough rule of thumb is that the intended audience of a book is the same approximate age as the main protagonist. In this case, Eva is 12 and she turns 13 in the context of the story. The cartoon has moved Eva to 16 years old and that shifts the cartoon story just a bit. In many ways, I think 12-13 is the better target. While Eva is very mature for her age, shifting her to 16 changes the story a bit for the 2nd and 3rd books. I haven't seen the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the show, but my guess is that there will be a bit of a romance in them, which doesn't make sense for a 12 year old. But more importantly the younger age makes more sense of Rovender Kitt (Rovee), the wise Alien who finds Eva and teaches her about the forest and becomes a father figure to her. It is not that older teens do not also need father figures, but I think the connection and the dependence works better with the younger age.
I do not want to give away too much of the story. But when Eva escapes the "Sanctuary" (similar to the underground silos in Hugh Howley's books, also on Apple TV+), the world she finds is not the world she was expecting. Eva has been prepared for a high tech human world. Fabrics can heat or cool and heal. Robots have personality and significant capacity. Everyone has a digital assistant that records their life, connects to others and provides information. But the world she finds is alien in every way. There are plants and animals that can't be identified and they are often dangerous. And multiple different kinds of alien species, one of which is hunting her and was the one who destroyed the sanctuary.
A plot point which is never explained in a way that I thought made any sense, is that Eva learns that she can speak telepathically to the animals and plants. That becomes very important to the story as it progresses, but it is unclear to me as a reader, if this was because she was chosen in particular in some way, or because there is something different in her. It would make sense for her to discover that gift in the second book at an event that will be clear when you read it, but that isn't what happens.
In most ways I think this should be considered a post-apocalyptic fantasy book. As becomes apparent, the reason that the sanctuaries exist is because humanity was in trouble and this was their backup plan. So the whole story is post-apocalyptic. As in many other cases, it also becomes dystopian because a leader arises out of the apocalypse. That is the case here. I suggest it is really fantasy more than science fiction because while there is technology, it is more magic than advanced science. Eva never really understands or cares to understand the tech. Instead it is her (magical) ability to talk to the animals and plants and the connection to the land that matters, which feels more magical than science.
As is my preference, this is book that keeps moving, but the characters are important. Several characters are a bit too one dimensional, but most are pretty well developed There is space to make mistakes and correct them. Part of that is Rovee's advice throughout the book to listen to what people do more than what they say. He understands that there are different perspectives. He also understands that people lie. And not all differences in perspective are lies or deception. The attention to the action more than the words matters to the book. Rovee is teaching Eva to discern what matters. Sometimes aliens are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes what you perceive as good or bad is wrong with greater understanding and context. And maybe more important, those around you that seem good, can also do bad things.
This is a middle grade leaning young adult book which is helping the reader to see the world around. The world can be hard. You may get frustrated approaching with your situation or the tasks at hand. But you still have to keep moving on when there is a discernible next step.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/wondla-trilogy-by-t...
Summary: Twelve year old Eva has grown up in an underground shelter, all alone with just a robot who has cared for her from birth. When the shelter is breached, Eva confronts a world unlike anything she could have imagined.
Young adult fiction is a comfort food of books, but I have not kept my finger on new books coming out, so I am frequently finding books that are new to me, but not new books. I stumbled on Wondla because it is a cartoon series on Apple TV+. I hadn’t seen anything about it before I stumbled one it, but I was looking for something that that I could watch with my kids and my teenage nieces. My kids are starting to get old enough to be able to watch things that have some tension in them.
We binged six of the seven episodes in a weekend and then watched the last a few days later. Season one of the TV series is the first book of the trilogy. And presumably the second season (which is coming but doesn't have a release date) will be the second book. In print, each of the books is roughly 450 pages. I read all three in less than 2 weeks. The first I read as an ebook from Kindle Unlimited, the next two I was able to check out from our local library in print. The Kindle editions were fine, but the print has great art in color that does not come out as well in a black and white kindle file.
A rough rule of thumb is that the intended audience of a book is the same approximate age as the main protagonist. In this case, Eva is 12 and she turns 13 in the context of the story. The cartoon has moved Eva to 16 years old and that shifts the cartoon story just a bit. In many ways, I think 12-13 is the better target. While Eva is very mature for her age, shifting her to 16 changes the story a bit for the 2nd and 3rd books. I haven't seen the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the show, but my guess is that there will be a bit of a romance in them, which doesn't make sense for a 12 year old. But more importantly the younger age makes more sense of Rovender Kitt (Rovee), the wise Alien who finds Eva and teaches her about the forest and becomes a father figure to her. It is not that older teens do not also need father figures, but I think the connection and the dependence works better with the younger age.
I do not want to give away too much of the story. But when Eva escapes the "Sanctuary" (similar to the underground silos in Hugh Howley's books, also on Apple TV+), the world she finds is not the world she was expecting. Eva has been prepared for a high tech human world. Fabrics can heat or cool and heal. Robots have personality and significant capacity. Everyone has a digital assistant that records their life, connects to others and provides information. But the world she finds is alien in every way. There are plants and animals that can't be identified and they are often dangerous. And multiple different kinds of alien species, one of which is hunting her and was the one who destroyed the sanctuary.
A plot point which is never explained in a way that I thought made any sense, is that Eva learns that she can speak telepathically to the animals and plants. That becomes very important to the story as it progresses, but it is unclear to me as a reader, if this was because she was chosen in particular in some way, or because there is something different in her. It would make sense for her to discover that gift in the second book at an event that will be clear when you read it, but that isn't what happens.
In most ways I think this should be considered a post-apocalyptic fantasy book. As becomes apparent, the reason that the sanctuaries exist is because humanity was in trouble and this was their backup plan. So the whole story is post-apocalyptic. As in many other cases, it also becomes dystopian because a leader arises out of the apocalypse. That is the case here. I suggest it is really fantasy more than science fiction because while there is technology, it is more magic than advanced science. Eva never really understands or cares to understand the tech. Instead it is her (magical) ability to talk to the animals and plants and the connection to the land that matters, which feels more magical than science.
As is my preference, this is book that keeps moving, but the characters are important. Several characters are a bit too one dimensional, but most are pretty well developed There is space to make mistakes and correct them. Part of that is Rovee's advice throughout the book to listen to what people do more than what they say. He understands that there are different perspectives. He also understands that people lie. And not all differences in perspective are lies or deception. The attention to the action more than the words matters to the book. Rovee is teaching Eva to discern what matters. Sometimes aliens are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes what you perceive as good or bad is wrong with greater understanding and context. And maybe more important, those around you that seem good, can also do bad things.
This is a middle grade leaning young adult book which is helping the reader to see the world around. The world can be hard. You may get frustrated approaching with your situation or the tasks at hand. But you still have to keep moving on when there is a discernible next step.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/wondla-trilogy-by-t...
A Hero For WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi
4.25
This is a single review for the whole trilogy. I am cross posting on all three books.
Summary: Twelve year old Eva has grown up in an underground shelter, all alone with just a robot who has cared for her from birth. When the shelter is breached, Eva confronts a world unlike anything she could have imagined.
Young adult fiction is a comfort food of books, but I have not kept my finger on new books coming out, so I am frequently finding books that are new to me, but not new books. I stumbled on Wondla because it is a cartoon series on Apple TV+. I hadn’t seen anything about it before I stumbled one it, but I was looking for something that that I could watch with my kids and my teenage nieces. My kids are starting to get old enough to be able to watch things that have some tension in them.
We binged six of the seven episodes in a weekend and then watched the last a few days later. Season one of the TV series is the first book of the trilogy. And presumably the second season (which is coming but doesn't have a release date) will be the second book. In print, each of the books is roughly 450 pages. I read all three in less than 2 weeks. The first I read as an ebook from Kindle Unlimited, the next two I was able to check out from our local library in print. The Kindle editions were fine, but the print has great art in color that does not come out as well in a black and white kindle file.
A rough rule of thumb is that the intended audience of a book is the same approximate age as the main protagonist. In this case, Eva is 12 and she turns 13 in the context of the story. The cartoon has moved Eva to 16 years old and that shifts the cartoon story just a bit. In many ways, I think 12-13 is the better target. While Eva is very mature for her age, shifting her to 16 changes the story a bit for the 2nd and 3rd books. I haven't seen the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the show, but my guess is that there will be a bit of a romance in them, which doesn't make sense for a 12 year old. But more importantly the younger age makes more sense of Rovender Kitt (Rovee), the wise Alien who finds Eva and teaches her about the forest and becomes a father figure to her. It is not that older teens do not also need father figures, but I think the connection and the dependence works better with the younger age.
I do not want to give away too much of the story. But when Eva escapes the "Sanctuary" (similar to the underground silos in Hugh Howley's books, also on Apple TV+), the world she finds is not the world she was expecting. Eva has been prepared for a high tech human world. Fabrics can heat or cool and heal. Robots have personality and significant capacity. Everyone has a digital assistant that records their life, connects to others and provides information. But the world she finds is alien in every way. There are plants and animals that can't be identified and they are often dangerous. And multiple different kinds of alien species, one of which is hunting her and was the one who destroyed the sanctuary.
A plot point which is never explained in a way that I thought made any sense, is that Eva learns that she can speak telepathically to the animals and plants. That becomes very important to the story as it progresses, but it is unclear to me as a reader, if this was because she was chosen in particular in some way, or because there is something different in her. It would make sense for her to discover that gift in the second book at an event that will be clear when you read it, but that isn't what happens.
In most ways I think this should be considered a post-apocalyptic fantasy book. As becomes apparent, the reason that the sanctuaries exist is because humanity was in trouble and this was their backup plan. So the whole story is post-apocalyptic. As in many other cases, it also becomes dystopian because a leader arises out of the apocalypse. That is the case here. I suggest it is really fantasy more than science fiction because while there is technology, it is more magic than advanced science. Eva never really understands or cares to understand the tech. Instead it is her (magical) ability to talk to the animals and plants and the connection to the land that matters, which feels more magical than science.
As is my preference, this is book that keeps moving, but the characters are important. Several characters are a bit too one dimensional, but most are pretty well developed There is space to make mistakes and correct them. Part of that is Rovee's advice throughout the book to listen to what people do more than what they say. He understands that there are different perspectives. He also understands that people lie. And not all differences in perspective are lies or deception. The attention to the action more than the words matters to the book. Rovee is teaching Eva to discern what matters. Sometimes aliens are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes what you perceive as good or bad is wrong with greater understanding and context. And maybe more important, those around you that seem good, can also do bad things.
This is a middle grade leaning young adult book which is helping the reader to see the world around. The world can be hard. You may get frustrated approaching with your situation or the tasks at hand. But you still have to keep moving on when there is a discernible next step.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/wondla-trilogy-by-t...
Summary: Twelve year old Eva has grown up in an underground shelter, all alone with just a robot who has cared for her from birth. When the shelter is breached, Eva confronts a world unlike anything she could have imagined.
Young adult fiction is a comfort food of books, but I have not kept my finger on new books coming out, so I am frequently finding books that are new to me, but not new books. I stumbled on Wondla because it is a cartoon series on Apple TV+. I hadn’t seen anything about it before I stumbled one it, but I was looking for something that that I could watch with my kids and my teenage nieces. My kids are starting to get old enough to be able to watch things that have some tension in them.
We binged six of the seven episodes in a weekend and then watched the last a few days later. Season one of the TV series is the first book of the trilogy. And presumably the second season (which is coming but doesn't have a release date) will be the second book. In print, each of the books is roughly 450 pages. I read all three in less than 2 weeks. The first I read as an ebook from Kindle Unlimited, the next two I was able to check out from our local library in print. The Kindle editions were fine, but the print has great art in color that does not come out as well in a black and white kindle file.
A rough rule of thumb is that the intended audience of a book is the same approximate age as the main protagonist. In this case, Eva is 12 and she turns 13 in the context of the story. The cartoon has moved Eva to 16 years old and that shifts the cartoon story just a bit. In many ways, I think 12-13 is the better target. While Eva is very mature for her age, shifting her to 16 changes the story a bit for the 2nd and 3rd books. I haven't seen the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the show, but my guess is that there will be a bit of a romance in them, which doesn't make sense for a 12 year old. But more importantly the younger age makes more sense of Rovender Kitt (Rovee), the wise Alien who finds Eva and teaches her about the forest and becomes a father figure to her. It is not that older teens do not also need father figures, but I think the connection and the dependence works better with the younger age.
I do not want to give away too much of the story. But when Eva escapes the "Sanctuary" (similar to the underground silos in Hugh Howley's books, also on Apple TV+), the world she finds is not the world she was expecting. Eva has been prepared for a high tech human world. Fabrics can heat or cool and heal. Robots have personality and significant capacity. Everyone has a digital assistant that records their life, connects to others and provides information. But the world she finds is alien in every way. There are plants and animals that can't be identified and they are often dangerous. And multiple different kinds of alien species, one of which is hunting her and was the one who destroyed the sanctuary.
A plot point which is never explained in a way that I thought made any sense, is that Eva learns that she can speak telepathically to the animals and plants. That becomes very important to the story as it progresses, but it is unclear to me as a reader, if this was because she was chosen in particular in some way, or because there is something different in her. It would make sense for her to discover that gift in the second book at an event that will be clear when you read it, but that isn't what happens.
In most ways I think this should be considered a post-apocalyptic fantasy book. As becomes apparent, the reason that the sanctuaries exist is because humanity was in trouble and this was their backup plan. So the whole story is post-apocalyptic. As in many other cases, it also becomes dystopian because a leader arises out of the apocalypse. That is the case here. I suggest it is really fantasy more than science fiction because while there is technology, it is more magic than advanced science. Eva never really understands or cares to understand the tech. Instead it is her (magical) ability to talk to the animals and plants and the connection to the land that matters, which feels more magical than science.
As is my preference, this is book that keeps moving, but the characters are important. Several characters are a bit too one dimensional, but most are pretty well developed There is space to make mistakes and correct them. Part of that is Rovee's advice throughout the book to listen to what people do more than what they say. He understands that there are different perspectives. He also understands that people lie. And not all differences in perspective are lies or deception. The attention to the action more than the words matters to the book. Rovee is teaching Eva to discern what matters. Sometimes aliens are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes what you perceive as good or bad is wrong with greater understanding and context. And maybe more important, those around you that seem good, can also do bad things.
This is a middle grade leaning young adult book which is helping the reader to see the world around. The world can be hard. You may get frustrated approaching with your situation or the tasks at hand. But you still have to keep moving on when there is a discernible next step.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/wondla-trilogy-by-t...
The Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi
4.25
This is a single review for the whole trilogy. I am cross posting on all three books.
Summary: Twelve year old Eva has grown up in an underground shelter, all alone with just a robot who has cared for her from birth. When the shelter is breached, Eva confronts a world unlike anything she could have imagined.
Young adult fiction is a comfort food of books, but I have not kept my finger on new books coming out, so I am frequently finding books that are new to me, but not new books. I stumbled on Wondla because it is a cartoon series on Apple TV+. I hadn’t seen anything about it before I stumbled one it, but I was looking for something that that I could watch with my kids and my teenage nieces. My kids are starting to get old enough to be able to watch things that have some tension in them.
We binged six of the seven episodes in a weekend and then watched the last a few days later. Season one of the TV series is the first book of the trilogy. And presumably the second season (which is coming but doesn't have a release date) will be the second book. In print, each of the books is roughly 450 pages. I read all three in less than 2 weeks. The first I read as an ebook from Kindle Unlimited, the next two I was able to check out from our local library in print. The Kindle editions were fine, but the print has great art in color that does not come out as well in a black and white kindle file.
A rough rule of thumb is that the intended audience of a book is the same approximate age as the main protagonist. In this case, Eva is 12 and she turns 13 in the context of the story. The cartoon has moved Eva to 16 years old and that shifts the cartoon story just a bit. In many ways, I think 12-13 is the better target. While Eva is very mature for her age, shifting her to 16 changes the story a bit for the 2nd and 3rd books. I haven't seen the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the show, but my guess is that there will be a bit of a romance in them, which doesn't make sense for a 12 year old. But more importantly the younger age makes more sense of Rovender Kitt (Rovee), the wise Alien who finds Eva and teaches her about the forest and becomes a father figure to her. It is not that older teens do not also need father figures, but I think the connection and the dependence works better with the younger age.
I do not want to give away too much of the story. But when Eva escapes the "Sanctuary" (similar to the underground silos in Hugh Howley's books, also on Apple TV+), the world she finds is not the world she was expecting. Eva has been prepared for a high tech human world. Fabrics can heat or cool and heal. Robots have personality and significant capacity. Everyone has a digital assistant that records their life, connects to others and provides information. But the world she finds is alien in every way. There are plants and animals that can't be identified and they are often dangerous. And multiple different kinds of alien species, one of which is hunting her and was the one who destroyed the sanctuary.
A plot point which is never explained in a way that I thought made any sense, is that Eva learns that she can speak telepathically to the animals and plants. That becomes very important to the story as it progresses, but it is unclear to me as a reader, if this was because she was chosen in particular in some way, or because there is something different in her. It would make sense for her to discover that gift in the second book at an event that will be clear when you read it, but that isn't what happens.
In most ways I think this should be considered a post-apocalyptic fantasy book. As becomes apparent, the reason that the sanctuaries exist is because humanity was in trouble and this was their backup plan. So the whole story is post-apocalyptic. As in many other cases, it also becomes dystopian because a leader arises out of the apocalypse. That is the case here. I suggest it is really fantasy more than science fiction because while there is technology, it is more magic than advanced science. Eva never really understands or cares to understand the tech. Instead it is her (magical) ability to talk to the animals and plants and the connection to the land that matters, which feels more magical than science.
As is my preference, this is book that keeps moving, but the characters are important. Several characters are a bit too one dimensional, but most are pretty well developed There is space to make mistakes and correct them. Part of that is Rovee's advice throughout the book to listen to what people do more than what they say. He understands that there are different perspectives. He also understands that people lie. And not all differences in perspective are lies or deception. The attention to the action more than the words matters to the book. Rovee is teaching Eva to discern what matters. Sometimes aliens are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes what you perceive as good or bad is wrong with greater understanding and context. And maybe more important, those around you that seem good, can also do bad things.
This is a middle grade leaning young adult book which is helping the reader to see the world around. The world can be hard. You may get frustrated approaching with your situation or the tasks at hand. But you still have to keep moving on when there is a discernible next step.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/wondla-trilogy-by-t...
Summary: Twelve year old Eva has grown up in an underground shelter, all alone with just a robot who has cared for her from birth. When the shelter is breached, Eva confronts a world unlike anything she could have imagined.
Young adult fiction is a comfort food of books, but I have not kept my finger on new books coming out, so I am frequently finding books that are new to me, but not new books. I stumbled on Wondla because it is a cartoon series on Apple TV+. I hadn’t seen anything about it before I stumbled one it, but I was looking for something that that I could watch with my kids and my teenage nieces. My kids are starting to get old enough to be able to watch things that have some tension in them.
We binged six of the seven episodes in a weekend and then watched the last a few days later. Season one of the TV series is the first book of the trilogy. And presumably the second season (which is coming but doesn't have a release date) will be the second book. In print, each of the books is roughly 450 pages. I read all three in less than 2 weeks. The first I read as an ebook from Kindle Unlimited, the next two I was able to check out from our local library in print. The Kindle editions were fine, but the print has great art in color that does not come out as well in a black and white kindle file.
A rough rule of thumb is that the intended audience of a book is the same approximate age as the main protagonist. In this case, Eva is 12 and she turns 13 in the context of the story. The cartoon has moved Eva to 16 years old and that shifts the cartoon story just a bit. In many ways, I think 12-13 is the better target. While Eva is very mature for her age, shifting her to 16 changes the story a bit for the 2nd and 3rd books. I haven't seen the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the show, but my guess is that there will be a bit of a romance in them, which doesn't make sense for a 12 year old. But more importantly the younger age makes more sense of Rovender Kitt (Rovee), the wise Alien who finds Eva and teaches her about the forest and becomes a father figure to her. It is not that older teens do not also need father figures, but I think the connection and the dependence works better with the younger age.
I do not want to give away too much of the story. But when Eva escapes the "Sanctuary" (similar to the underground silos in Hugh Howley's books, also on Apple TV+), the world she finds is not the world she was expecting. Eva has been prepared for a high tech human world. Fabrics can heat or cool and heal. Robots have personality and significant capacity. Everyone has a digital assistant that records their life, connects to others and provides information. But the world she finds is alien in every way. There are plants and animals that can't be identified and they are often dangerous. And multiple different kinds of alien species, one of which is hunting her and was the one who destroyed the sanctuary.
A plot point which is never explained in a way that I thought made any sense, is that Eva learns that she can speak telepathically to the animals and plants. That becomes very important to the story as it progresses, but it is unclear to me as a reader, if this was because she was chosen in particular in some way, or because there is something different in her. It would make sense for her to discover that gift in the second book at an event that will be clear when you read it, but that isn't what happens.
In most ways I think this should be considered a post-apocalyptic fantasy book. As becomes apparent, the reason that the sanctuaries exist is because humanity was in trouble and this was their backup plan. So the whole story is post-apocalyptic. As in many other cases, it also becomes dystopian because a leader arises out of the apocalypse. That is the case here. I suggest it is really fantasy more than science fiction because while there is technology, it is more magic than advanced science. Eva never really understands or cares to understand the tech. Instead it is her (magical) ability to talk to the animals and plants and the connection to the land that matters, which feels more magical than science.
As is my preference, this is book that keeps moving, but the characters are important. Several characters are a bit too one dimensional, but most are pretty well developed There is space to make mistakes and correct them. Part of that is Rovee's advice throughout the book to listen to what people do more than what they say. He understands that there are different perspectives. He also understands that people lie. And not all differences in perspective are lies or deception. The attention to the action more than the words matters to the book. Rovee is teaching Eva to discern what matters. Sometimes aliens are good, sometimes bad. Sometimes what you perceive as good or bad is wrong with greater understanding and context. And maybe more important, those around you that seem good, can also do bad things.
This is a middle grade leaning young adult book which is helping the reader to see the world around. The world can be hard. You may get frustrated approaching with your situation or the tasks at hand. But you still have to keep moving on when there is a discernible next step.
This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/wondla-trilogy-by-t...
Epiphany: The Season of Glory by Fleming Rutledge, Fleming Rutledge
3.25
Summary: An exploration of the season of Epiphany, a celebration of the glory of Christ's incarnation and revelation of himself to us.
I appreciate this book while also being a bit frustrated with it and I am not completely sure why. I started it last year during the Epiphany season and didn't finish it. So I started it again right at the end of Christmas season so that I would have it done by the start of Epiphany. But again I didn't finish and I really forced myself to finish. I have previously read Rutledge's book on Advent, which is mostly a collection of sermons. And I read about 75% of Rutledge's' Crucifixion and I have dipped into several other of her sermon collections, but again, never finished them.
Sermon collections are not something that really are intended to read straight through. So dipping into them but not finishing is I think to be expected for the genre. But there is something else that I think feels off here. I very much appreciate Rutledge's wisdom and attention to the tradition of the Episcopal church. She turns 87 later this year and we need to pay attention to elders who have seen changes in history. I also think that she is one of the best preachers I have ever heard. I have spent a lot of time watching her old sermons on youtube.
The third things I really appreciate about Rutledge that is in full force here is her attention to Jesus. Rutledge was part of the first generation of women to be ordained in the Episcopal church. That Episcopal church has not always centered Jesus and I think at times she is preaching to a sliver of the church that hasn't centered Jesus. But at the same time, I am not part of that part of the church. I do think there is a need to pay attention to Jesus and his humanity and his death and resurrection. But as much as I did appreciate learning about the season (she is pointing out that Epiphany is a season, not just a single day feast) that centers on Christ's incarnation and glory the attention felt more like retrieval of tradition instead of attention to the need for a season of epiphany.
Maybe I am just the wrong reader for this book, because part of the conception of the whole series is new attention to the liturgical calendar. I want to understand tradition and why the liturgical seasons are as they are, but I didn't feel connected to the great tradition for the purpose of the future. I don't remember where I read it, but somewhere in James KA Smith's work, he talks about the problems of participating in the liturgy while in a culture that doesn't either believe in Christianity or recognize the liturgy. Based on my memory, I think he was talking about the problems of fasting or participating in lent and other seasons that were intended to be communal, solely as an individual. Smith is pointing out that we are not Christians on our own, but in community even as that community is not reflected in broader culture.
Part of Smith's critique of The Benedict Option was that Dreher was advocating retreat from culture when Smith believes that Augustine and others were calling for engagement with culture. What we have seen from Dreher and a significant part of the American church is a reliance on a strongman to get his own way, instead of seeking creative ways to live out the life of Christ within a culture that is no longer designed for you.
I think both Lent and Christmas were writing consciously to help the reader understand how to celebrate the liturgical seasons within a culture that is not designed for us. And in particular how to celebrate when many cultural values are overtly opposed to the underlying values of the season we are celebrating. I don't want to be too strong here, because Rutledge is focusing on glory, in a way that is very cross cultural. I think she is right that the church doesn't understand glory in the way that earlier generations of the church did. But I also didn't feel like I was given much more than just the reality of that lack. Maybe part of the problem is that for Lent and Christmas the problem is that the culture isn't celebrating what the season is celebrating, but Rutlege is pointing out that the church isn't celebrating what the season is celebrating. Those are different problems.
It feels contradictory to both say that this book was too long and didn't do enough, but that is what I am left with. It is about 50 percent longer than Lent (although only about 10 pages longer than Christmas) and I think it either needed to cut 30-50 pages, or pivot to a different lens to look at Epiphany. It isn't that I think anything here is bad or heretical or wrong. It is that either it should have been shorter or covered more ground.
This originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/epiphany/
I appreciate this book while also being a bit frustrated with it and I am not completely sure why. I started it last year during the Epiphany season and didn't finish it. So I started it again right at the end of Christmas season so that I would have it done by the start of Epiphany. But again I didn't finish and I really forced myself to finish. I have previously read Rutledge's book on Advent, which is mostly a collection of sermons. And I read about 75% of Rutledge's' Crucifixion and I have dipped into several other of her sermon collections, but again, never finished them.
Sermon collections are not something that really are intended to read straight through. So dipping into them but not finishing is I think to be expected for the genre. But there is something else that I think feels off here. I very much appreciate Rutledge's wisdom and attention to the tradition of the Episcopal church. She turns 87 later this year and we need to pay attention to elders who have seen changes in history. I also think that she is one of the best preachers I have ever heard. I have spent a lot of time watching her old sermons on youtube.
The third things I really appreciate about Rutledge that is in full force here is her attention to Jesus. Rutledge was part of the first generation of women to be ordained in the Episcopal church. That Episcopal church has not always centered Jesus and I think at times she is preaching to a sliver of the church that hasn't centered Jesus. But at the same time, I am not part of that part of the church. I do think there is a need to pay attention to Jesus and his humanity and his death and resurrection. But as much as I did appreciate learning about the season (she is pointing out that Epiphany is a season, not just a single day feast) that centers on Christ's incarnation and glory the attention felt more like retrieval of tradition instead of attention to the need for a season of epiphany.
Maybe I am just the wrong reader for this book, because part of the conception of the whole series is new attention to the liturgical calendar. I want to understand tradition and why the liturgical seasons are as they are, but I didn't feel connected to the great tradition for the purpose of the future. I don't remember where I read it, but somewhere in James KA Smith's work, he talks about the problems of participating in the liturgy while in a culture that doesn't either believe in Christianity or recognize the liturgy. Based on my memory, I think he was talking about the problems of fasting or participating in lent and other seasons that were intended to be communal, solely as an individual. Smith is pointing out that we are not Christians on our own, but in community even as that community is not reflected in broader culture.
Part of Smith's critique of The Benedict Option was that Dreher was advocating retreat from culture when Smith believes that Augustine and others were calling for engagement with culture. What we have seen from Dreher and a significant part of the American church is a reliance on a strongman to get his own way, instead of seeking creative ways to live out the life of Christ within a culture that is no longer designed for you.
I think both Lent and Christmas were writing consciously to help the reader understand how to celebrate the liturgical seasons within a culture that is not designed for us. And in particular how to celebrate when many cultural values are overtly opposed to the underlying values of the season we are celebrating. I don't want to be too strong here, because Rutledge is focusing on glory, in a way that is very cross cultural. I think she is right that the church doesn't understand glory in the way that earlier generations of the church did. But I also didn't feel like I was given much more than just the reality of that lack. Maybe part of the problem is that for Lent and Christmas the problem is that the culture isn't celebrating what the season is celebrating, but Rutlege is pointing out that the church isn't celebrating what the season is celebrating. Those are different problems.
It feels contradictory to both say that this book was too long and didn't do enough, but that is what I am left with. It is about 50 percent longer than Lent (although only about 10 pages longer than Christmas) and I think it either needed to cut 30-50 pages, or pivot to a different lens to look at Epiphany. It isn't that I think anything here is bad or heretical or wrong. It is that either it should have been shorter or covered more ground.
This originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/epiphany/