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Monday 2 July 2012

10 Books That Changed My Faith

Let us do this 10 Book Week thing. Here on Tumblr. First up, 10 books that changed my faith.

  1. The Upside-Down Kingdom by Donald Kraybill — The Jesus story examined from the perspective of what the culture looked like at the time. At the time I read it (over a decade ago), it really shattered my beliefs about Christianity and what it meant to be a “Christian” (especially in context of growing up Greek Orthodox, and then being exposed to evangelical church in Arizona). The historical backdrop and its relevance explained, illustrating how upside down the kingdom Jesus advanced. Considered in the context, Jesus was more radical than is commonly conceived. Down is up, rich is poor, poverty is luxurious, triumph is gained by losing. Love replaces hate, shalom overcomes revenge, enemies are to be loved, a basin replaces the sword, etc…. This book was a big force in how I was transformed from Christian in word to Christian in deed.

  2. Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster — I am due for a reread of this classic. A compendium of inner practice “disciplines” for the practicing Christian.

  3. Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright — It blew my mind and I was compelled to read chapters and passages repeatedly, as it shattered my views of heaven and the afterlife. I found myself going back to scripture and other sources (and even to the point of learning Koine Greek) to puzzle out what Wright is espousing in this truly transformative text. And I am now convinced that most people (including most Christians) hold gnostic and unscriptural viewpoints on heaven.

  4. The Great Turning by David Korten — Not a spiritual, religious or faith book by any stretch, but one that has profoundly influenced my faith. A volume I have read at least a half-dozen times too. Korten sketches out the true 21st century civilization conflict — a struggle of Empire v. Earth Community. One that pits those of an advanced level of “other oriented” consciousness against more fear minded, reciprocity driven folk, with those in the middle tipping the scale. Or to strive to lift the level of consciousness of all. And as I age, no barometer is a better gauge than how many sources from the bibliography I follow up and explore to learn more.

  5. The Powers That Be by Walter Wink — Walter Wink, recently passed away, in this accessible volume (by all means, also explore the entire three volume trilogy — Engaging the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Naming the Powers — though the further you go back in time, the more theological nerdy the reading gets) captures and defines “principalities and powers” and serves up a brilliant nonviolent sketch of Jesus and the Kingdom Jesus pronounces. It is absolutely, as the tagline on the book proclaims, theology for the new millennium (originally written in late 1990s). It gave me moorings and language in seeing the Gospel in the light of nonviolence and power under v. power over.

  6. The Jesus Creed by Scot McKnight — Scot McKnight distills Jesus down to a simple “commandment” — to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, but also to love others as themselves.

  7. Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne — Written during the 2008 election cycle, and presented in an edgy, wonderful publication package (though some of the page backgrounds might be a tad too dark), it offers a journey, both historically and in present times, through the intersection politics of empire and followers of Jesus. As I stated earlier in this missive, I judge the merit of a book largely on the bibliography follow-up, and this volume shines in that respect. I believe I have traversed nearly all the volumes referenced and my faith has certainly been impacted in a positive fashion.

  8. The Mystery of Christ by Robert Farrar Capon — I cannot believe I did not discover the fantabulous Robert Farrar Capon until I reached the end of a Rob Bell book (Love Wins, an OK book (do not see what all the fanfare, hoopla and controversy was about, seemed a bit timid) I had no intention of reading, that Mrs. Naum had left on the coffee table) where I was intrigued with this description “On Jesus in every square inch of creation” of Capon’s book. Over the past year, I have been leading a Bible study of parables of Jesus with Capon’s Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus and it has been faith-altering or faith-evolving. It is one of those things that once you see you cannot un-see. And I just finished Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace and can pronounce it just as amazing as The Mystery of Christ.

  9. The Naked Now by Richard Rohr — Christian mysticism from a Franciscan monk, like Capon, also infused with total grace. Followup reads referenced in his notes and bibliography, however, were not as fruitful for me as other books in this list. Not all, mind you. Especially the discovery of historic saints and mystics.

  10. How to Read the Bible by James Kugel — Mis-titled, not really “how to read the bible” but more an examination of the Hebrew Bible (“old testament” for Christians) and the contrast between ancient interpreters and modern biblical scholarship — which rifts against fundamentalist (and many conservative evangelicals I think too) literalism. An orthodox Jewish scholar elucidates the clashes of biblical scholarship against traditional biblical memes. Scholarly writing, but comprehensible to all. Faith reverberations in the sense that respected Bible scholars really do not line up on the stuff that most Christians believe are as plain as the nose on a face.

Some honorable mentions for some titles that just elude cracking this list: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (or just about any title by C.S. Lewis) squeezed off by newer titles; The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevski which all of faith (or non-believers too) should read; The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder but the writing style of Yoder is just so theologically dense for me; Christian Anarchism by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos offers a digest and survey of Christian anarchist thought; The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul (or any title by Ellul) where Ellul, in the anarchist vein, looks how the state tainted the church; Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics by Jonathan Dudley, a recent read that examines evangelicals and church history.

In composing this list, it is striking the preponderance of newer titles. It is not as if I am not acquainted with the classics — working my way through St. Vladimir’s popular patristics series now, even. But writing bridged by centuries (and often language translation, or idioms from centuries ago) has a hard time speaking to a me placed in 21st century America. When I read St. John of the Cross, or Jonathan Edwards, or Julian of Norwich, or John Calvin, or even G.K. Chesterton, I strain at extracting a cohesive narrative. Yes, there are sentences and passages that shine with brilliance, but on the whole, I seem so preoccupied with the toil of comprehending what exactly is being relayed.

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Wednesday 30 May 2012

The Great Divergence is a concise, lucidly argued study of rising inequality in the United States, one which starts with the premise that such escalating levels of inequity are unhealthy in a democracy. However, despite having a clear moral point of view, Noah does what all too few polemicists do these days (particularly fatuous clowns on the right like Jonah Goldberg) — he argues using solid facts and sound history, he doesn’t overreach, and he doesn’t pretend to have comprehensive answers to a complex and, in some respects, a global problem. Noah traces the history of studying income and inequality in the U.S., something that began with a handful of sociologists in the Progressive Era. It is an interesting and informative chapter and one of which I knew little. Noah also discussed why he has chosen to focus on income rather than wealth, arguing that the former rather than the latter is the more important aspect of economic life over the last hundred or so years. (I understand this decision but I do not think wealth should be understated as a matter of importance, especially in an age in which pensions are becoming things of the past — the accumulation of wealth is going to have to be part of achieving some security in old age. Moreover, the ability of a small segment of society to accumulate and then pass on wealth — exempt from estate taxes — is likely to further exacerbate inequality.) The Great Divergence

Tuesday 29 May 2012

Nobody doubts that some groups survive better than others. What is controversial is the idea that differential group survival drives evolution, as differential individual survival does. The American grey squirrel is driving our native red squirrel to extinction, no doubt because it happens to have certain advantages. That’s differential group survival. But you’d never say of any part of a squirrel that it evolved to promote the welfare of the grey squirrel over the red. Wilson wouldn’t say anything so silly about squirrels. He doesn’t realise that what he does say, if you examine it carefully, is as implausible and as unsupported by evidence. The descent of Edward Wilson

Tuesday 31 January 2012
Why publishers should give away ebooks

I used to buy a lot of MP3s. I don’t anymore. That’s not to say I don’t listen to MP3s. I have about 10,000 of the little guys squeezed like vienna sausages into my iTunes music folder, and I listen to them a lot. But when I buy music today I buy it on vinyl. I’m no audiophile, no retro hepcat, but my ears tell me that music sounds better on vinyl - warmer, more nuanced, less shrill - and I make it a point to listen to my ears. Also, I’ve rediscovered the pleasures of looking at the art work on record jackets. Thumbnail images are pretty weak substitutes. In fact, they suck.

But the decisive factor in the transformation of my purchasing behavior, as a marketer would say, wasn’t aesthetic. It was the decision by record companies to start giving away a free digital copy of an album when you buy the vinyl version. Hidden inside the sleeve of a new record, like a Cracker Jack prize, is a little card with a code on it that let’s you download the digital files of the songs, often in a lossless format, from the record company. So I no longer have to choose between the superior sound and packaging of vinyl and the superior mobility of digital. When I’m near my turntable, I spin the platter. When I’m not, I fire up the MP3s.

Buy the atoms, get the bits free. That just feels right - in tune with the universe, somehow.

There’s a lesson here, I think, for book publishers. In fact, bundling a free electronic copy with a physical product would have a much bigger impact in the book business than in the music business. After all, in order to play vinyl you have to buy a turntable, and most people aren’t going to do that. So vinyl may be a bright spot for record companies, but it’s not likely to become an enormous bright spot. The only technology you need to read a print book is the eyes you were born with, and print continues, for the moment, to be the leading format for books. If you start giving away downloads with print copies, you shake things up in a pretty big way.

(via ayjay)

Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough. Jonathan Franzen

Sunday 29 January 2012
America's Most Literate Cities 2011

Glendale, Arizona ranks 68th (out of 75 total). :(

Tuesday 13 December 2011

The point is that when you read a book as long as 1Q84, you don’t just read it: you live with it for a while. If the book is good, you look forward to spending time alone with it. You sneak away from this or that, steal a few minutes here and there, find opportunities to get a few more pages in. Instead of life getting in the way of reading, the reading starts to get in the way of life. A very long book can even come to define a a kind of personal era, albeit a short one, a piece of time that you can look back on and remember as having a particular texture: from the global (ups and downs in the stock market, political unrest) to the personal (what was going on at the office, the songs that were on the radio). Whatever happened during that month gets woven into the experience. And the converse may also happen: The book inserts itself into your consciousness. It becomes associated with, and even part of, what happened to you during that period of your life. To read a novel of this length is to be immersed, to move back and forth between the fictional world and the real one, and in so doing, to see the latter through a point of view invented in the former. World-Shifting

(Source: lareviewofbooks)

Monday 25 July 2011
Three Golden Rules for book reviewing

  1. The review must tell what the book is about.
  2. The review must tell what the book’s author says about that thing the book is about.
  3. The review must tell what the reviewer thinks about what the book’s author says about that thing the book is about.

Milt Priggee

Milt Priggee

Monday 18 July 2011

Some people go to antique stores. Others drop in the random bike shop. When I’m on the road, I visit bookstores, in search of some unexpected treasure. Karen Spears Zacharias

Sunday 12 June 2011
Epilogue to a Moment

Some books purport to be about a thing (Al Qaeda, or salt) and then are actually about that thing (Al Qaeda, or salt); other books purport to be about one thing (horses, or photography, or cocaine) and are rather about a different thing (tradition, or decency, or experiment). The best books purport to be about one thing and are rather about all other things, about tradition and decency and experiment. The Anatomy of a Moment, by the Spanish novelist Javier Cercas, falls into this last category. It purports to be about one thing—a miscarried coup d’etat, or golpe de estado, staged as a hostage-taking at the Cortes, the Spanish legislative assembly, in February of 1981, which was broadcast live on the radio and later shown on television—or, even more specifically, not even about the coup itself but about a single moment at the beginning of the coup, but is secretly and not so secretly about so many things it seems to verge on the inexhaustible.

But it starts with a moment. That moment contained three gestures—hence the prospect of anatomy—that began with one simple act of defiance on the part of a politically finished and personally broken man, the outgoing prime minister Adolfo Suárez, who remained in his seat in the Cortes as everyone else, mostly everyone else, cowered under the benches. The book spirals upward and outward and backward from this one gesture, one single gesture of defiance that illuminates thirty-five recorded minutes of a near-successful coup against a fledgling regime, thirty-five minutes of a failed coup that illuminate seventeen-and-a-half hours of a near-successful coup against an upstart and unlikely democracy, seventeen-and-a-half hours of a failed coup that illuminate the political situation in Spain in the apocalyptic late autumn of 1980, a political situation in Spain in the apocalyptic late autumn of 1980 that illuminates the history of Spain’s hasty and improvised and successful transition from Francoism to democracy, an improvised transition from Francoism to democracy that illuminates the legacies of authoritarianism and the challenges of its dismantling, legacies of authoritarianism and its dismantling that illuminate the responsibilities of citizens and the performances of their leaders, the peculiarities of heroism, the vice of politics, the ingratitude of democracy, the courage of bourgeois decency, and the final irrelevance of motive.

Saturday 4 June 2011
Practical Tips on Writing a Book from 23 Brilliant Authors
Thursday 19 May 2011

A Book Lover’s Survey

Rachel Held Evans:

Can you name…

  1. A book you threw across the room in anger
  2. A book in which you underlined nearly every sentence.
  3. A book you were surprised to love.
  4. A book you can’t wait to read.

My answers:

  1. Threw across the room: Slouching Towards Gomorrah by Robert Bork. Not even Ann Coulter was this infuriating — I totally went into this with an open mind, but the pretzel twisting logic Bork, what I perceived to be an intelligent fellow, contorts to back his assessments was truly boggling.

  2. Underlined nearly every sentence: The Naked Now by Richard Rohr. Blew my mind…

  3. Surprised to love: A tossup between Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion by Jan Heinrichs and Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism by Eric Burns. Thank You for Arguing was a repeat library checkout and reread, and then I purchased and have read multiple times, while I see reviews that critique it for its littering of over-aged pop references, and it’s written in annoying bullet point style, it truly was a gem that also inspired me to go deeper and explore the ancient writings on rhetoric. Infamous Scribblers was a fascinating read for me, focused on the intersection of journalism in early colonial and subsequent newly independent America.

  4. Cannot wait to read: this title by Richard Rohr that has now vanished from Amazon, this three-in-one volume titled Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus that I just received, and finally, Word Hero: What Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Chris Rock Can Teach You about Dazzling Phrasecraft by Jay Heinrichs

Your turn! How about you?

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Saturday 14 May 2011

I love looking at books. There is so much information packed into each little offering. Careful attention is rewarded — the cover art, the blurb on the back, the copyright page, the frontispiece. If it’s a hardcover, I always remove the dust jacket to examine the obsessiveness with which the coverboards were decorated — I have a theory that better books get more design attention. I pay attention to how “the curtain rises” as you flip past the frontispiece — do you encounter a map, a preface, an introduction, or dive right in? I love the smell of books, especially old ones on cheap paper. I love the differences in paper, from the Bible paper of old dictionaries to the acid-free pristine stuff used in top-shelf design books. I love cheap old paperbacks and how they hang on to their integrity against all odds, aging slowly and reflecting a place in aesthetic and cultural time. Mourning the Printed Book — The Aesthetic and Sensory Deprivation of E-books

And we take for granted – more often than not – the utter richness of the experience of reading a book. The simplest of activities, yes, but one that appeals to every one of our senses, even if only subtly, peripherally. The art of the cover draws us first, and its connection to the time of its publication is as telling as the subject matter, the details, of the words inside. Living history, it changes with each new printing and offers us, when we’re lucky enough to find a decades-old copy in a used book store, a tangible bit of the past we can take home with us. We open the cover and are intrigued by who may have owned it before and run a finger over the name written in cursive on the inside cover, then wonder what might have happened to her. Who she was, this woman who for some reason included the year beside her name, and where she lived, how her book found its way to the store. The looming extinction of everyday art & history

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