Always Remember, Charlie Mackesy. Penguin Life (ISBN: 9780593994825) 2025.
Summary: The boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse continue their journey together and learn what it takes to get through storms.
The boy, the mole, the fox and the horse are back! For those who loved the quill-written and illustrated story of four creatures who discover the beauty of mutual love, kindness to oneself, and the joys of cake, the journey continues! While they don’t know where they are going, they are not lost because they have each other.
The new element in this story is the storm and how one gets through. So much is remembering to take the next step, that love is stronger, and that the sky is always blue above the storm clouds. A crisis comes when the boy falls behind the other three. Was he at fault? Or were they? The turning point comes when he remembers who he is, that he is loved. He decides in their absence to be a friend to himself and to love himself. And then, one by one, the friends reappear. And the boy confesses another lesson: “When we are vulnerable to each other,” whispered the boy… “We are strong.” And the best thing about storms is that they end.
Throughout, the boy struggles with his own sense of inadequacy. He’s not good at anything, but he is kind, which is everything and he doesn’t give up. He discovers from mole that the answer to many of his questions is cake. And when the storm is inside, he can take shelter with his friends.
Beyond all this, Mackesy explores bravery. Sometimes bravery is admitting one doesn’t feel very brave. Sometimes it is taking the next step, or even the next breath. Then, for mole, it is fighting off a cake ambush by eating it! Most of all, bravery is the courage to love.
Mackesy mixes rough sketches with finely rendered paintings. The one that I thought the most beautiful renders a river valley in soft but lush colors with the four in the foreground. Mole says this is one of his favorite places. The boy asks, “Because it is so beautiful?” Mole replies, “Because we are all here.” I just stopped and savored that beautiful moment with them.
Mackesy would have us “always remember” that we are loved, to be gentle and kind both to others and ourselves, and the gift of friendship. But he presses into the harder side of the human journey–storms and aloneness–and how we make it through.
This is a wonderful gift for all ages and a story families will cherish together. Be kind both to yourself and to others and buy a few this holiday season!
Summary: Provides a framework of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation as a rubric for reading the Psalms.
A number of studies of the Psalms focus on particular genres to classify the Psalms. For example, they identify psalms of praise, of lament, or kingship psalms and others. They identify the format of each of these psalms. Walter Brueggemann does something very different in this work. He identifies three broad categories with five or six subtypes each. The categories are psalms of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation. They trace a movement from a sense of well-being rooted in creation and reflected in a stable sense of God’s provision, to seasons of anguish, suffering, loss and God’s “distance,” and finally in the emergence from despair into a transformed experience of God’s light on the other side of darkness.
For each of these categories, Brueggemann begins with a brief section explicating the category. Then, under each of the subcategories, Brueggemann walks us through representative Psalms. This is best read with the Psalms at hand, allowing you to follow Brueggemann’s explanations. This also helps you see the distinctive forms of each kind of psalm.
Psalms of Orientation include songs of creation, songs of Torah, wisdom psalms, songs or retribution, and occasions of well being. Then Psalms of Disorientation include personal laments, communal laments, two problem psalms (88, 109), two psalms where God is the speaker (50, 81), and a group of “seven psalms” (he focuses on 32, 51, 143, 130). He concludes Psalms of Disorientation with a “After the Deluge–Thou” on Psalms 49, 90, and 73. Finally, Psalms of New Orientation include personal and community thanksgiving, the once and future king, thanksgiving generalized to confidence, and hymns of praise.
Several emphases stood out to me. Firstly, he highlights lament at a time when this is absent in much of worship. Secondly, in the psalms where God speaks, he drives home the idea that when we fail to honor God (the first tablet of the commandments) we will also neglect the second tablet of our neighbor relations. Brueggemann roots his vision of justice in the proper fear of the Lord. Finally, he concludes his book by arguing that theodicy underlies this schema that shapes both our worship of God and our ordering of society (i.e. we cannot worship a God we claim is good and just and tolerate unjust evil in our society).
But the greatest strength of this work is that it traces an arc, or perhaps a spiral of spiritual life captured in the Psalms. Spiritual life is not static. We move from confident faith to anguished questions and doubts and hopefully emerge to a greater depth of love and trust. And we do this over and over again through our lives. Orientation, disorientation, and new orientation gives us a not only a rubric for the Psalms. It connects to and gives meaning to our experience of life.
Summary: An account of the rise of techno-capitalism and the threat it poses to humanity and to the Earth.
“What Progress wants is to replace us.
“Perhaps the last remaining question is whether we will let it.”
That stark concluding heading and sentence in a chapter titled “What Progress Wants” stopped me dead in my tracks. It explained the urgency behind Paul Kingsnorth’s cultural and historical analysis in Against the Machine. He believes the advance of what he calls “the Machine,” the culturally embedded expression of techno-capitalism marks the death of a culture, threatens humanity, as well as the earth.
Kingsnorth refers to himself at points as a Luddite. But these are not the stark ravings of a mad man. Rather, he offer a thoughtful piece of cultural analysis drawing upon a range of voices from Simone Weil, Lewis Mumford, and Jacques Ellul and many others. But first, what does he mean by “the Machine”? This statement captures the essence:
“This then is the Machine. It is not simply the sum total of various individual technologies we have cleverly managed to rustle up–cars, laptops, robot mowers, and the rest. In fact, such ‘technics’, as Mumford calls them, are the product of the Machine, not its essence. The Machine is, rather, a tendency within us, made concrete by power and circumstance, which coalesces in a huge agglomeration of power, control, and ambition” (p. 37).
In part one of the book, Kingsnorth explores our need for roots and how the Machine has uprooted us from both nature and culture. Our “culture wars” are symptomatic of that rootlessness, Part two traces how the Machine evolved, particularly in the “disenchantment” of Enlightenment science, the rise of the cosmopolis, and the driving force of want.
Part three lays out the aspects of life Machine culture is eroding. He contrasts four “P’s” of traditional culture with four “S’s” of Machine culture
Past. Where a culture comes from vs.
Science. Where we come from, a non-mythic story.
People. Who a culture is. A sense of being ‘a people.” vs.
The Self. Who we are. The highest good is the self.
Place. Where a culture is. Nature in its local, particular manifestation vs.
Sex. What we do. A means of sacral pleasure and affirmation of individual identity (“sexuality”).
Prayer. Where a culture is going. Its religious tradition, relating to God or the gods. vs.
The Screen. Where we are going, both as distraction and interface for a post-human reality.
Finally, part four turns to the choice we face. He argues that the way of seeing that he calls “The West,” that gave birth to the machine must die. He calls for a kind of asceticism, either “cooked” (moderated) or “raw” (radical) with regard to technology. However, he doesn’t entertain “a two-edged sword” view. The Machine, as he’s construed it is destructive of both humanity and culture. He doesn’t believe we can escape the Machine, but he calls for a different vision that once again embraces the four “P’s” of past, people, place, and prayer. He speaks of building alternative communities in language reminiscent of Ron Dreher’s The Benedict Option. In his home in western Ireland, he is attempting to live out his ideas.
I had a couple responses as I read. Firstly, I was struck by his references to Weil, Mumford, and Ellul. He really wasn’t saying anything they had not already said, only chronicling how their ideas had played out. My generation was reading these thinkers fifty years ago–at least a few of us! I wonder why we didn’t pay them heed!
Secondly, it is interesting to me that Paul Kingsnorth is a recent convert (2020) to Christianity. His vision of the “two ways” starkly delineates the idolatry of techno-capitalism that leads to death and the four “P’s” that lead to life. His book, I believe, is a prophetic word to Christians as well as the wider culture caught up in the captivities of a dying culture, epitomized by the Machine. Will we turn back to what he calls “the eternal things” or will we let the Machine replace us?
Daughters of Palestine, Leyla R. King. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802884992) 2025.
Summary: A memoir of five generations of daughters of a Palestinian Christian family and a journey from Shafa ‘Amr to Texas.
For many Americans, when they hear the word “Palestinian” think “Arab” and “Muslim.” However while all Palestinians are Arabic, not all are Muslims. For centuries, there have been vibrant Palestinian communities in the land that once bore the name “Palestine” before it became Israel. Palestinians lived throughout the land, not simply in the current Palestinian territories. The family in this memoir lived for several generations around Haifa, almost due west of the Sea of Galilee on the Mediterranean coast. First they lived in Shafa ‘Amr, and then in Haifa. Jews, Muslims, and Christians peacefully co-existed. Until the nakba, the Arabic word for “catastrophe.” Then many fled their homes or were forcibly displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
This memoir came about when Leyla K. King, daughter of May, whose husband Joe was an American journalist, wanted to understand her Palestinian identity and her Palestinian family’s story. Her grandmother, Bahi, was still living, and she spent much of the summer one year recording her grandmother’s memories.
The story begins with Za’leh, Leyla’s great-great grandmother. She was widowed during the first World War when her husband died fighting for the Ottoman empire. After the war, the British arrived in the form of a protectorate. For Za’leh’s daughter Aniiseh, this meant education in British missionary schools. Then she was betrothed to Wadii. Bahi was her second daughter.
Much of the remainder of the story is Bahi’s story. After completing her schooling, she went to Teachers College in Ramallah. At her graduation, her mother gave her a necklace with a cross, to wear until she married. This necklace passed from one generation to the next. In 1948, Bahi married Fariid. They returned briefly to Haifa after their honeymoon, then fled. She recounts their life first in Damascus and then Beirut. As refugees, they struggled to find trust among fellow Christians as well as their Muslim neighbors. Among their children was a daughter May.
May met Joe, an American journalist, during her studies at the American University in Beirut. Again, it was a marriage in the midst of war. They had to flee the country, and eventually the family, including Bahi, located in Houston. Leyla was Joe and May second child. The final generation of daughters in this story is Leyla’s daughter Beatrice.
More than an intergenerational family story, it is a story of deepening faith through trial. The story has a fabric of faith woven through it, sometimes weaker, sometimes, especially in trial, strengthened. It is also a story of displacement, and seeking home. Bahi, upon becoming a U.S, citizen says:
“It was the wish of my heart to be an American. My prayers had been answered. I thank God always for this country; may God protect this country that accepted us and adopted us, for where else would we go? As Palestinian Christians, no one else accepted us. No one wanted us. So America became our homeland and I pray to God, ‘Please, God, please, God keep this country the land of plenty.’ This finally, is where we belonged. This country is our home.”
The whole book was a moving story of a family trusting God and seeking a home. Bahi’s prayer deeply touched me. The thought occurred to me that when we turn away refugees, we turn away many who would have blessed us with their prayers as well as their love for their new home. And I wonder if the greater loss is ours.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
Mid-Faith Crisis, Catherine McNeil and Jason Hague. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514010365) 2025.
Summary: When the foundations of one’s faith are shaken, it appears an endpoint, but may be a transforming experience.
You are the daughter of a pastor in a small town. Church was a wonderful place until it wasn’t, when dad was dismissed from his position and the family had to leave town on two week’s notice. Or you entered pastoral ministry after appearing on a national Christian television show and “stole the show.” But real life has been hard. A child with health difficulties, a bout with depression, and the untimely deaths of two friends. Combine that with disillusionment with the state of the church in your country. How does one write sermons when you are no longer sure of the things you are writing?
Those, in short, are the stories of the two authors of this book. Church hurt, disillusionment, existential doubt. While there are many paths, a number named in this book, to mid-faith crisis, the authors of this book write as fellow travelers. The question is, what does one do when the faith, once so central, no longer seems to address the challenges in one’s life? Or what does one do when that faith is a source of emotional pain, associated with hurtful experiences?
The authors begin by talking about stages of faith, that faith may grow and change as we do. The four they identify are inherited faith, confident faith, mid-faith crisis, and conscious faith. The latter emerges out of mid-faith crises, and usually at mid-life or later. It’s marked by a sense of coming home, finding peace, living with mystery and complexity.
But how does one move through the darkness of mid-faith crisis? Is it possible to emerge from this, not with a lost faith but a deeper one? Part Two of this book, “The Crisis” addresses the different forms of crises people most commonly experience. They address doubt, moving from intellectual uncertainty to relational trust and faithfulness. They address church hurt and stress the importance of naming the harms. But then the decision is one of courage, to trust even a few with these hurts, even if this doesn’t happen in a formal church structure. They explore when our heroes fall, betraying trust; when prayers fall silent; overwhelming suffering; the collapse of belief; the fading of feelings.
There are no glib answers. Often the question is moving from what one thought faith and the Christian life was like, beyond the tingles and the good feelings, to waiting, to trusting in the absence of feeling, to hanging on because the alternative is the abyss. The authors conclude with inviting us to exchange greatness for goodness. The crisis of faith really challenges our false conceptions of a great life, great church, great leaders, great experiences with God. Conscious faith is one without the illusions, where we recognize God’s quiet, hidden presence in a messed up world, and learn to walk in imperfect love, wandering steps and slow, in communities of flawed people like us slowly changing into the likeness of Jesus.
I appreciate the honesty of the authors throughout. We see how they are still on the way. For example, they offer no quick fixes to church hurt. Catherine still struggles with safety and acceptance in the church. But she still chooses community. She trusts friends with her struggle. Furthermore, the authors treat mid-faith crisis as a developmental step, not an aberration. They point to a faith for the second half of life, the opportunity to grow deeper rather than drop out.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
“Serendipity” was one of Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Day” offerings. They defined it as “luck in finding valuable or pleasant things unlooked for.” And that is why I love going to bookstores, or any book sale–even a box at a garage sale!
I asked this on my Facebook page this week: “When you visit a physical bookstore do you tend to be looking for particular books or do you prefer the “surprise me” approach?” From this poll, it appears I’m not alone. One person wrote, “it is very simple, I don’t find books, they find me.”
However, there were a number of “boths.” I’m also like that when I go to Barnes & Noble. I often have a book or two I’m looking for. But what I walk out with doesn’t always reflect that. For example, on my most recent trip, I had a book I was looking for, couldn’t find it but spotted two others that I bought. One was by a favorite author. The other was non-fiction that caught my fancy. I feel like those books found me!
But at a used bookstore or any other book sale, serendipity reigns supreme. I never know what I’m going to find. Here are examples of three of my favorite finds. First was Kenneth Latourette’s history of Christianity in one volume at an out of the way bookstore run by a former college professor. The second was Paige Smith’s two-volume biography of John Adams in a slip case. I honestly can’t remember where I found it. Finally, I found a like-new two volume set of Raymond Brown’s Death of the Messiah at our local Half Price when they used to have 50 percent off sales. Half price of half price–I think I saved $60!
But saving money is only part of it. Often, it is spotting one of those “I’ve always wanted to read that” books. And sometimes, it is just picking up something you’ve never heard of before. But it looks so intriguing. Valuable or pleasant things unlooked for–that’s one of the joys of bookstores!
Five Articles Worth Reading
Ever wonder what it was like to be the daughter of On the Road author Jack Kerouac? Jan Kerouac’s novel Baby Driver conveys much of that. It turns out he wasn’t much of a father. He didn’t even recognize her as his daughter until a paternity test made that unavoidable. This year NYRB Classics has reissued the book. “Father, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?” is Shane Devine’s review for the Hedgehog Review.
A trend in contemporary literature is the plotless novel. That is, it explores the inner life of its protagonist. If you are interested in character development but want a plot, M.L. Rio recommends “Eight Plot-Heavy Books That Will Keep You Turning Pages.”
Were you one of those like me who learned how to type at an actual typewriter? Some authors still swear by them. Somewhere we still have my wife’s college typewriter, the one on which she typed all my seminary papers, working from my hand-written text! She got a dinner out for every paper. If we were ever to break it out, I suspect it would need service. I came across this fascinating photo essay about one of the surviving repair shops that I thought you’d like: “How to Fix a Typewriter and Your Life.”
Remember the great foodies of the past? For example, Julia Child or Anthony Bourdain? “Who Was the Foodie?” explores what it means to be a food influencer in a social media age. And one of the interesting ideas is that good food is about more than preparation and taste. Rather it is about the source of that food.
Speaking of food, next Thursday is the celebration of Thanksgiving in the United States. JSTOR has put together a potpourri of “Thanksgiving Stories” with all the fixings. A veritable feast!
Quote of the Week
Feminist novelist (The Women’s Room) Nancy French was born November 21, 1929. Here’s something she said that offers much to ponder:
“Fear is a question. What are you afraid of and why? Our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them.“
Miscellaneous Musings
Titles are meant to grab attention as well as give a hint of what a book is about. How the Rhino Lost His Horn by Jack Rathmell caught mine. It’s a narrative of the author’s travels from Appalachia to Africa. It was one of those rare books I accept for review because the author pitched the book personally. That’s always an adventure in itself!
I received another book recently titled In Guns We Trust. It is subtitled “The Unholy Trinity of White Evangelicals, Politics, and Firearms.” The cover also shows an image of Jesus holding an assault style rifle. The book compares its work to that of Tim Alberta in The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory as an effort to understand pro-firearm evangelicals from the inside. I hope it is an honest effort to understand, but the cover came across as polemical to me. But authors don’t always have a lot of control over these things. I don’t think polemics will get us to constructive measures to address the pervasiveness of guns and gun violence in American culture.
Next week I’ll be reviewing Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine, a trenchant critique of techno-capitalism. One thing that struck me is how much he mentions Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford, who foresaw these things more than a half-century ago. And what arrived today? Questioning Technology with Jacques Ellul. It is a collection of essays co-edited by a good friend and Ellul scholar, David W. Gill. What a treat!
Next Week’s Reviews
Monday: Catherine McNeil and Jason Hague, Mid-Faith Crisis.
Tuesday: Leyla K King, Daughters of Palestine.
Wednesday: Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine.
Thursday: Charlie Mackesy, Always Remember: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm.
Friday: Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms.
So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for November 16-22.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends in the United States!
Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page
The Divine Dramatist(Library of Religious Biography), Harry S., Stout. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802801548) 1991.
Summary: A biography of George Whitefield focusing on the drama of his preaching and his impact on American religious life.
The Library of Religious Biography is a series of scholarly but accessible biographies published by Wm. B. Eerdmans since 1991. This volume was one of the first of the series and helped set the standard for combining careful scholarship and readable prose that has marked this series. Harry S. Stout is an American religious historian at Yale Divinity School.
George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England to parents who were innkeepers. His youth reflected a conflict between love of the theatre and a call to preach. For a long time, it looked like theatre would win, but in the end ministry did. A central theme of the biography was that the dramatist was always present in his preaching. In fact, this was so much so that Whitefield struggled to separate his private self from the public persona.
Whitefield, while ordained within the Anglican Church, was not cut out for parish ministry. Stout traces the development of his itinerant ministry, and the distinctive aspect of open air preaching, when pulpits were closed to him. While modeling his work on Howell Harris, a Welsh preacher, the combination of his preaching gifts and skills at self-promotion enabled him to exercise a far more extensive ministry on both sides of the Atlantic.
His skill at promotion was another distinctive. He leveraged clerical refusals to let him preach to draw larger crowds. In America, he partnered with a young printer, Ben Franklin to promote his revivals through both newspapers and printed sermons. This led to a lifelong friendship between these two men, very unalike. However, each commanded the deep respect and affection of the other.
He came to America, sent to establish a mission in Georgia. This led to an orphanage and school that became a lifelong cause for which he raised money. On most of his speaking engagements, offerings were designated for the orphanage and he raised huge sums. He was a model of integrity, living modestly and conveying the funds for their intended purpose.
Stout also notes Whitefield’s profound Calvinism. Although at points he associated with lowercase methodism, he disagreed with and eventually distanced himself from John Wesley. They only reconciled toward the end of his life.
Finally. Stout traces how Whitefield’s itinerant preaching gave rise to evangelicalism, from his preaching of the new birth, to open air work, to the means of promotion. Sadly, he destroyed his own health in the process and died while itinerating.
Stout thus portrays both Whitefield’s life and larger significance, particularly for American religious history. This is an important book for American evangelicals, for better or worse, to understand their roots.
Kingdom Racial Change, Michael A. Evans, David L. McFadden, and Michael O. Emerson. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802883728) 2025.
Summary: Three men tell their stories, analyze them using sociology, and propose strategies for Christians pursuing justice.
Michael A. Evans and David L. McFadden are Black and grew up in the same neighborhood and are friends from childhood. Michael is a pastor and director of the Developing Communities Project. David is a nephrologist serving Black community with a disproportionate level of kidney disease. Both men faced significant barriers in pursuing their call. For economic reasons Michael had to drop out of college to work, supporting his family. Despite being a gifted leader, he watched others promoted and paid better than he was. David struggled first to get accepted in a medical school, and then to convince those who supervised him of his ability, and later to obtain loans as he began his career.
Meanwhile, Michael O. Emerson grew up in a nearby, predominantly White community. It was expected that he would go to college, and when financial challenges arose, a mentor made it possible to complete an accelerated doctoral program. His life took a sharp turn at a Promise Keeper’s event that focused on racial reconciliation. He came to the unmistakable conclusion that his family was to live in a neighborhood where they were a racial minority, a commitment he and his family have kept over several decades in several academic appointments. When he came to Chicago, he joined Michael and David in the Unity Men’s Group of Chicago (appearing online as UnityInTheChurch.Org).
The first half of the book consists of the personal stories of the three men. They bring sociological analysis to bear, identifying systemic instances of racial power, the social location of each that played such an important part in their stories, Black advantages and other sociological factors illustrated by their lives.
The second part of the book reflects their thinking about pursuing kingdom racial change. Successive chapters consider this at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels. At the macro level, they address changing systemic systems, overcoming the link between race and class, and any factors creating inequality between God’s people. They explore the systemic issues around housing and education, proposing alternative loan systems and everything from pre-K to access to post secondary education for all, crucial for today’s workplace.
However, without repentance and repairing of wrongs, this fails to racism as a historic systemic reality. They even broach the explosive issue of reparations. The authors propose limits on the wealth that can be passed from one generation to the next that could easily meet the estimated cost of reparations (estimated at $14.3 trillion). They estimate that the current generation will pass along nearly $70 trillion to the next. A portion could cover that while still passing along ample wealth by limits to exemptions to estate taxes.
However churches, local schools and workplaces operate at the meso level. Thus the authors identify appropriate “building blocks” for change at this level. For example, they advocate leveraging Black advantages as well as White advantages, while rooting out the religion of whiteness. Then Christians can leverage their common faith to build networks across racial lines to help others thrive. They also address leveraging work in community organizations to achieve kingdom racial change. They illustrate this through the work of Unity in the Church.
Finally, they address the micro level. Paradoxically it is not about me and God’s will for my life but rather God’s will for the world, in which we are invited to participate. This calls for a renewal of the mind that begins with identifying deformed thinking centered around personal autonomy and that it’s all about us. Rather, the call is to loving obedience to Jesus.
The book at various points identifies Building Blocks of Racial Change but only lists all of these at the end of the book. A graphic employed in each chapter could have helped embed the building blocks more clearly in the reader’s mind. Also, the chapter on macro level change is honest about how hard this is and suggests focusing on one issue. But models of how meso level movements have networked to pursue macro level change, if such exist, would be helpful.
The strength of the book is the work of Unity in the Church and the examples of how it is working to pursue kingdom racial change in Chicago. They’ve helped renew minds, and leveraged community assets to promote flourishing. And while the three authors won’t directly admit it, they’ve modeled a ‘long obedience” and resilience in their own pursuit of the just and peaceable kingdom. While there are questions unanswered and much work to be done, the authors model the possible. And that is no small thing.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
Beyond Evolution, Sy Garte. Tyndale | Refresh (ISBN: 9798400501364) 2025.
Summary: Rather than evolution hindering belief, observes a reluctance in biology to follow evidence warranting belief in a Creator.
Sy Garte believes it is time to move on from controversies surrounding evolution. He doesn’t reject evolutionary theory. Rather he argues that there are more foundational matters to be considered as well as new developments that suggest that biology could be on the brink of a paradigm shift. On the biology side, a commitment to reductionism has hindered thinking about purpose, agency, and decision-making even at the cellular level and a teleology behind evolutionary development. To open the door to these ideas might offer warrants for a belief in a Creator God. Likewise, on the religion side, Garte has observed the needless controversy and division among Christians fighting about evolution.
Behind Garte’s contention for a paradigm shift are several factors. One is the absence of any mathematical models for evolution, and particularly an account for the non-random nature of many mutations. A second is that highly accurate self replication of cells is antecedent to any evolution, and is highly complex, and unique in separating living from all non-living things. Even more foundational is how a living and self-replicating cell originated from non-living material (abiogenesis). We haven’t explained why there is life in a universe unfriendly to its origins.
Perhaps most interesting and still quite new to me is Garte’s discussion of agency, cognition, and teleology at the cellular level. Cells act to sustain and protect themselves. This involves at some level cognition of both internal and external environments. And the agency of living things suggests purpose or teleology: to live and to reproduce. This is true of single-celled bacteria and human beings. The main difference is complexity. Above all is the complexity of human consciousness, which Garte believes continues to defy purely materialist explanations. He also raises the question of consciousness not being selectively advantageous, so how then account for it.
However, Garte is not arguing for a “God of the gaps” theory. He is open to discoveries that address currently open questions. Rather, he argues for following the evidence and that randomness may not be the best explanation of the evidence. He believes there is too much evidence of non-random, purposeful occurrences in biology to dismiss purpose and teleology and even design. He would contend that there is a willful effort to ignore this because it provides warrants (not proof) for belief a designer.
There were several things I loved about this book. It brought me up to date on the developments in biology since my college courses a long while ago. I appreciated the call to stop the needless squabbling about evolution and Garte’s reasons for moving on. However, most striking was his vision of a new paradigm for biology, following the evidence for agency, cognition, and teleology. Setting aside the question of belief in a Creator, it raises the question of a paradigm shift in biology. This is worth conversation and investigation among all biologists, Christian or not. Finally, on every page, Garte offers material for what one friend calls “doxological fascination.” As one who believes in a Creator, Garte gave me lots of material for worship.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
Summary; A story spanning three generations beginning Marce’s disastrous experience of selling his tobacco at a loss in 1906.
The story begins on an evening in 1906 when Marce Catlett and a neighbor rode horseback part of the way, and train the rest, to Louisville to witness the sale of their tobacco. Tobacco that had been carefully tended, sorted, and packed for shipping. Burley tobacco of the highest quality. Marce had hopes of paying off expenses, and paying down the mortgage on the farm. There was one problem. James B. Duke’s American Tobacco Company held a monopoly on the market and the price they paid out barely covered the cost of shipping to Louisville.
It was a terrible blow. There were few words to be said on the journey. “Long day” about summed it up. But that long day became a story with force to shape a family over three generations. It became a story for Marce of a way of farming by which a family sustained its life upon its land. It marked the beginning of Burley Tobacco Growers Co-operative Association. Then Marce’s son Wheeler, who had risen to a position as a Washington lawyer in the Roosevelt administration, walked away from it all to lead the Association in negotiating fair prices for the growers. His efforts bought a space for several decades for growers to make a decent living off their efforts.
But the times were changing. Mechanized agriculture came in after the war. However, many of the children went off to college and it changed them. Children like Wheeler’s son Andy, for a time. Yet his work after college on an ag publication made him long for the old ways. And so he returned to a hillside farm in Port William. That meant returning to a community where each helped the other when they needed help at harvest. That meant hours telling stories as they stripped and sorted the tobacco..
Then times changed more. Tobacco farming ended as the cancer risks of smoking came out. Then farms were turned over to tenants instead of being passed to children. Andy, living the story, carried on as long as he could. But Port William had changed. Increasingly, those who lived in Port William didn’t work there. Not only did many yield to a changing way of life. They also forfeited a way of living on the land that had been the Catlett story. And they forfeited membership in a community that made life there so rich.
At 91, one wonders whether this is Wendell Berry’s valedictory statement (though I hope it is not the last of the works we will see from his pen). One has the sense of Berry saying this of his own life as Andy reflects:
“He gives thanks for life continuing on the earth, and for the earth continuing alive. He gives thanks for the continuing so far of his own life, the story of which is longer than his life.”
Andy speaks of “the breakages of broken times.” But he ends not in despair but in hope that somehow the story that carried him and the generations before him will outlive him.
Berry moves me to reflect on the stories of my family and the community we also called home through three generations. Although urban, rather than rural, similar changes to those of Port William ravaged my community. For that community, I can’t help but think that remembering and building on their communal story has been, and will be key to their survival and flourishing anew. Likewise for our nation, community by community, family story by family story.
