John Adams, who spent hours on horseback during the American fight for independence, found pleasant diversion in poetry he read along the way. Maybe it’s a sign of age but I’ve come to find myself of a mind with Adams on this one. Currently, I’m reading through Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald. The Diary consists of 365 seven line poems, one for each day. They are devotional in character, and chronicle MacDonald’s honest struggle to love God as he would, and amazement that he is nevertheless loved.
I never made it through the Divine Comedy. In Dear Dante, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell offers poetic responses to Dante that inspire me to try again. And if you remember, I recently read a collection of poems by 95 year-old Luci Shaw. I wonder if writing poetry is a key to a long life. At very least, poems do remind us of our shared human experience, that we are not alone, as Adams observed.
Five Articles Worth Reading
I love a good mystery. There are classic writers I love. The question is finding new ones. “4 Great Fictional Detectives” gave me some good ideas of new writers to explore.
Barnes & Noble, which has experienced a major turnaround under CEO James Daunt has just rescued a venerable Denver institution, The Tattered Cover, whose parent company is in bankruptcy proceedings. “Tattered Cover will chart its own course, says Barnes & Noble CEO on bookstore’s sale” details Daunt’s recent visit to the store, his commitment to maintain the Tattered Cover name and ethos while providing the resources “to figure out how it becomes Tattered Cover again.”
Richard Hughes Gibson argues in “The New Verbal Economy” that reports of the death of the writer with the advent of generative AI are greatly exaggerated. The technology needs the creativity of human writers to continue to develop. Still, I wonder whether we will find a way in this new economy to reward human writers. And as AI improves, will people still prefer the works of humans?
I love keeping up with science writing. One way I do that is to subscribe to the daily newsletter of Nature. On many Fridays, Andrew Robinson reviews five of the best science picks recently published. Here is this week’s: “Blooming plants and sunken cities, Books in brief.”
Quote of the Week
Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose birthday we marked on July 4th, made this pithy observation:
“A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.”
How we could use more people like this!
Miscellaneous Musings
I’ve been reading The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home by Abigail Williams. She offers a fascinating study of reading practices in the 1700s. One tip: elocution was considered a valued skill! I wonder what a future cultural historian might write about reading practices in our century.
Here’s a reviewer’s dilemma. I love losing myself in a long book, but it also takes longer to finish such books. The best I’ve been able to figure out is to have several books going, including a mix of shorter ones.
I’ve just started Jessica Hooten Wilson’s annotated edition of an unfinished novel by Flannery O’Connor, Why Do The Heathen Rage? Apparently, O’Connor never saw how the story could come together, including how to organize the pieces of it. It seems that Jessica Hooten Wilson has taken on quite a challenge, one other scholars have passed up. I look forward to seeing how she does. But from the little I’ve read, it’s pure Flannery O’Connor!
Well, that’s The Weekly Wrap for this week!
Past editions of The Weekly Wrap may be accessed under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.
Summary: Volume one of a graphic novel rendering the tightening control over Polish Jews, portrayed as mice, which ends at the gates of Auschwitz.
Art Spiegelman’s Maus is one of the pioneering works of graphic literature. It has been celebrated with a Pulitzer Prize (1992) and banned in at least one Tennessee school district as well as in Russia, and subject to a book burning in Poland. The Tennessee board banned its use in an eighth grade class for an image of Jews who were hung, an image of Vladek’s wife in a bathtub (no private parts are visible), and a few instances of profanity (probably far less than could be heard in an eighth grade locker room).
It is a story within a story. It is the true story of Anja and Vladek Spiegelman, Polish Jews subject to increasing anti-Semitism in a confined ghetto while friends and relatives are transported to Auschwitz. And it is the story of the author’s interviews with his father in the late 1970’s, re-telling the experience. In this graphic history, the Jews are portrayed as mice, and the Germans as cats and Gentile Poles as pigs.
Vladek Spiegelman was an enterprising young man who built a textile business with the help of his wife’s family. During an affair, he meets Anja, leaves the other woman and marries. They have a child. Then the Germans invade. Vladek loses his business. The noose begins to tighten. He has to register as a Jew. People are forced into a ghetto, into shared quarters with other families. Food becomes scarce, only available on the black market. The hanging portrays those buying food on the black market.
Then the transports begin. Germans separate the Jews into those who do essential work and others who are never heard from again. Jews make efforts to smuggle their children to safer places. Anja and Vladek do this with Richieu, their son. Later, an aunt poisons Richieu to prevent the Germans from taking him.
They realize that the Germans are trying to eliminate all Jews. Spiegelman describes the hiding places they use–rooms behind coal cellars, rooms behind false walls in attics. But one mistake can lead to arrest and capture. Anja, portrayed as nervous, wants to stay. But Vladek hears of smugglers who can get them out for a price. They leave but are betrayed and arrested. Volume I of Maus ends here.
During the interviews with his father, we learn Anja survived the camp, gave birth to Art, but was marked for life with what we would call PTSD. In a tense scene, Vladek comes across an earlier comic Art had drawn, Prisoner on the Hell Planet. In it, Art tells the story of Anja’s suicide in 1968. He spent three months in a mental hospital, which he portrays as a prison. His father destroyed diaries that would have helped Art in his research.
Part of the story is one of Art and his father groping toward reconciliation, understanding how the Holocaust had marked each of their lives. Spiegelman also vividly portrays his father’s memory. As the subtitle states, he bleeds history. It just comes out of him. And the story Spiegelman tells of one family’s struggle, tells the story of many others. He vividly shows the brutality of the Germans. He chronicles the increasingly desperate conditions, the ingenious ways Jews sought to elude capture, and the heart-breaking betrayals. And all the while, there is this spark, call it hope or delusion, that they will escape the worst.
The graphic history approach couples narrative and visual in a way that removes the Holocaust from the realm of the abstract. Holocaust survivors are dwindling in number. At one time, they visited school classrooms. Maus is another means by which a Holocaust survivor can visit a classroom. This is history we cannot forget. That does not stop people from trying, whether in Russia or Poland or Tennessee. Antisemitism is on the rise. We can repeat this terrible history. Spiegelman’s graphic history is one way to say “always remember” and ‘never again.” But will we?
I’m not celebrating Independence Day. It’s not for lack of love for the United States. It is because I love this country. My father, who fought in World War II, taught me to love this country. He was proud of his service. But were he alive today, I think he might be asking, “is this what I fought for?” As much as I miss him, I’m glad he is not living through these days.
Two old men, unfit in my judgement to serve, running for the highest office of our land (is this the best we can do?). A high court that lacks an ethical compass and will not act to remedy its flaws. A congress engaged in endless partisan squabbling that rarely comes together to tackle the substantive issues facing our country.
Sadly, these institutions are just a reflection of us. We are a violent country, leading the high income countries of the world in firearm deaths. Students from other countries fear coming here because of gun violence. Increasingly people question the idea of the rule of law. Do we realize that the only alternatives are the rule of power or chaos? We allow our political leaders to persuade us it is right to demean whole groups of people, blaming the problems of the country on “them.”
I could go on and indulge my “cranky old man.” But it’s a holiday.
Not Independence Day for me. The idea of independence has become one of untrammeled personal freedom reflecting neither an appropriate fear of God, concern for the common good, nor care for the good land we’ve been given.
For me, it is Dependence Day. But not on our politicians. Not on our technology. Not on some dream of American greatness. It can be argued that all of these have demonstrably failed us. So why do we keep putting so much trust in them? Isn’t that a definition of insanity?
If you know me, you know that I am a follower of Jesus. Jesus gets my implicit trust and allegiance. It means that in life and death, I depend utterly on Jesus to sustain me and I take my marching orders for life from him. But what troubles me is that much of the Christian “tribe” of which I’m part seems to pay only lip service to this and seems more enamored with politics than Jesus. I agree with this assessment in an NPR interview by Christianity Today editor Russell Moore that we are in trouble:
“Well, it was the result of having multiple pastors tell me essentially the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount parenthetically in their preaching – turn the other cheek – to have someone come up after and to say, where did you get those liberal talking points? And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ, the response would not be, I apologize. The response would be, yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak. And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.“
This is the day I want to renew my dependence on Jesus. Not to make America anything, as much as I long for an awakening to God in our country. I want to renew my dependence on what he taught, even if it seems weak. My father had a watchword that seems important to remember today:
Read and pray;
Trust and obey;
Live God’s way.
My father lived in the faith that come what may, God sustained those who depended on him. I want to join my father in making this day, and every day, Dependence Day.
Paul and Time, L Ann Jervis. Baker Academic (iSBN: 9781540960788), 2023.
Summary: A proposal that believers live, not at the intersection and the age to come, but that we have been delivered from the present evil age to live in Christ, including living in his time.
We understand time in the light of Christ’s saving work. We understand that Christ’s coming inaugurated “the age to come” That age will reach its telos when Christ returns. Some explain it in terms of already and not yet. Others use the analogy of living between D-Day, the decisive battle of World War II and V-Day, the final victory. Those who believe live in an overlap of the ages.
L. Ann Jervis argues that this is not Paul’s view of time. For her, there is no overlap. Either we live in this present evil age, what she calls “death-time” or we live in Christ, in the time of the crucified, risen and exalted Son. She calls this “life-time.”
She begins with the two most popular approaches to Paul, the salvation historical or the more recent apocalyptic. While they differ in whether Christ represents fulfillment or he represents an in-breaking, both have in common the two age idea. She challenges this, arguing that believers live exclusively in Christ. They live in a time or temporality distinct from the present evil age, the temporality of Christ.
Christ’s time is different in at least two ways. As risen Lord, it is a time of life without end, that begins for the believer when they believe. Death is only a transition in that life. Hence, she calls this “life-time.” It is also different because it is in God, for whom past, present, and future are not discrete or sequential. Hence we experience both his past sufferings and anticipate resurrection in our present. The future only reveals the present of Christ’s life, already present to us. Jervis demonstrates this in studies of 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8, showing that what is chronologically future for us is in the present in Christ’s victory and glory.
Finally, she addresses the implications of this idea for how we understand sin, suffering, and death. She argues that for believers, these are not symptoms of a yet to be vanquished evil age, but are transformed by those who are in Christ. She writes:
“This knowledge has an existential power–believers can live in the embrace of transformative hope. Hope for Paul is the capacity through faith to be aware of what is. Believers’ knowledge that God through Christ shares God’s time and life with them means life now is transfused with the God-given capacity to hope and so to see the glory that is and will be forever….Lives lived without fear of physical death, in awareness that sinning is not obligatory and that suffering is in company with Christ, promise to be lives of creative and healing love for all” (p. 163).
Jervis challenges us to not reframe Paul’s “in Christ” language that so dominates his thought into a two age framework. She offers an approach that seems truer to Paul’s language. She denies we are in a battle with Satan or the powers who have been defeated in Christ, a point at which I would differ. I contend that even in her framework, we participate in Christ’s victory through battle, just as we do through suffering.
Jervis offers a fresh paradigm worth consideration and development. She proclaims a liberty and victory for believers in this present life instead of making concessions to the enemy. Jervis reminds us of what a powerful truth it is to say we are “in Christ.” She does this with concision and clarity in writing that is a pleasure to read. I look forward to reading more of this theologian!
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
The Fashion in Shrouds (Albert Campion #10), Margery Allingham. Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504088367), 2023 (originally published in 1938).
Summary: Albert Campion investigates three deaths connected to a fashionable actress, Georgia Wells, whose fashion designer is Campion’s sister Val.
I’ll admit it straight out. This was perhaps my least favorite Campion so far. Allingham always has complicated plots. This seemed just confusing. I only liked one character. I’ll get to her later.
In the course of the story, Campion investigates three deaths. All are connected to the alluring and fashionable actress Georgia Wells who seems to attract men as honey attracts bees. Campion’s sister Val, who works for a famous couturier, designs her dresses.
The first death occurred after Georgia’s former fiancé, a barrister, goes off hiking and never returns. This was three years earlier. Campion has been hired to find him. Until now, he has failed. Finally he explores an old haunt, finding his remains, his death apparently suicide.
Campion wants to know more about Georgia, and arranges through Val to meet her at a showing of the dresses for her new play. It’s a disaster all around. Alan Dell, an aircraft builder who has been seeing Val, is drawn to Georgia, even though she has married Raymond Ramillies, a governor of an African colony, who is also present. Then it comes out that the model, who closely resembles Georgia, Caroline Adamson, has leaked one of the designs, which has been copied. And when Georgia hears of her former fiancé’s suicide, she is overcome and asks Dell, to take her home.
Soon, Georgia has stolen Dell from Val, who is so furious she admits she could kill her. Meanwhile Dell’s company builds a gold-plated plane that Ramillies will take back to the colony for a local ruler. The night before, there is a party. Georgia brings Alan Dell. Then Ramillies appears with Caroline Adamson. Campion watches from a distance. Amanda Fitton accompanies him. She had invited him out of concern that Dell was neglecting the business. Georgia infatuates him. Amid a big scene, Amanda announces her engagement to Campion–the first he has heard of it.
Ramillies storms off and only appears the next morning, hung over. Georgia, asks Val for a cachet, likely a pain reliever, which she gives her. When it is time for the flight, delayed for an hour, Ramillies fails to appear. It turns out he is on the plane–dead. A local doctor at the resort at which they are staying finds in a post mortem that he died of natural causes, a heart attack most likely.
Campion is in a tight spot. Georgia reveals she had given Val’s cachet to Ramillies. Even though the post mortem found nothing, there is a cloud over Val. Given what she’d said about killing Georgia, had she tried and killed Ramillies instead? Campion refuses to believe it but steps back for a time.
Then Caroline Adamson calls Campion, wanting to meet. She never shows up. Locals find her dead in a nearby wood. The plot takes a key turn at a party Amanda throws to announce the breaking off of her “engagement” with Campion.
Amanda Fitton is the one interesting person in the story. Campion is erratic. Georgia is a self-absorbed creature who measures herself by her allure to men. Val is capable but too swayed by others. The entourage around Georgia were all on the take. And amid them all, a killer lurked, involved in all three deaths.
I “soldiered on” to the end. I didn’t care that much who the killer was. But I thought Campion should hang on to Amanda. They’d make a great team!
I love writing about books. This month, I read and reviewed eighteen of them. Great reads, important topics, informative presentations, and beautiful writing. On this last, I loved a collection of poetry by 95 year-old Luci Shaw and a delightful short-story collection by Peter Kostoglou. Significant non-fiction reads: Jonathan Haidt on the devastating effects of smartphones on teens, Austin Knuppe on how ordinary Iraqis survived the Islamic State, and Charles Taylor’s magisterial analysis of secularity. John Fea makes a great case for why we should read history.
Then there were so many riveting fiction reads. Kristen Hannah’s The Women, like so many of her books was one I kept thinking about when I wasn’t reading it. I’m amazed at William Kent Krueger’s ability to write so well and make you turn the page in his Cork O’Connor stories. I continue to enjoy the Brother Cadfael stories, reading number 13 in the series this month.
I always read a selection of Christian books, both popular and serious. Nancy French and Curtis Chang have written a must read for anyone looking for a better approach to our politics in The After Party. I read a fascinating biography of William Carey and a tale of a recently discovered diary revealing the story of a group of Christian abolitionists centered around Oberlin College. Robert Cochran’s The Servant Lawyer is a great treatment of the calling of lawyers and the great good they may accomplish.
Here’s the whole list, with links to the publisher’s website in the title and a link to the full review at the end of each summary.
Boundary Waters (Cork O’Connor #2), William Kent Krueger. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9780671016999), 2000 (link is to a different edition in print). A young country-western singer hiding in seclusion in a Boundary Waters cabin is pursued by a man claiming to be her father, FBI agents, a father and son from an organized crime family–and a couple of cold-blooded killers for hire. Review
The Rose Rent (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael #13), Ellis Peters. Mysterious Press/Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9780446405331), 2014 (originally published in 1986). Two deaths and the abduction of a widow seem tied to a white rose bush from which the annual rent of a Foregate property is paid in the form of one white rose. Review
Humility: Rediscovering the Way of Love and Life in Christ, Michael W. Austin. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802882103), 2024. A study of the Christian virtue of humility understood as following Jesus, being formed in his character of humility and love through his people and through spiritually transformative practices. Review
The Father of Modern India: William Carey, Vishal & Ruth Mangalwadi. Sought After Media (ISBN: 9798988783107), 2023. Proposes that missionary William Carey, and not Mahatma Gandhi, is rightly to be considered the father of modern India. Review
The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt. Penguin Press (ISBN: 9780593655030), 2024. Explores the connections between the decline in independent play in childhood, the advent of smartphones, and the sharp rise in anxiety and depression, among adolescents and young adults. Review
Matthew Through Old Testament Eyes, David B. Capes. Kregel Academic (ISBN: 9780825444784), 2024. A commentary on the Gospel of Matthew showing both obvious and subtle references to the Old Testament of how the life and ministry of Jesus fulfilled the plan of God articulated in these passages. Review
Awakening to Justice, The Dialogue on Race and Faith Project, Jemar Tisby, Christopher P. Momany, Sègbégnon Mathieu Gnonhossou, David D. Daniels III, R. Matthew Sigler, Douglas M. Strong, Diane Leclerc, Esther Chung-Kim, Albert G. Miller, and Estrelda Y. Alexander. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514009185), 2024. How a long-forgotten journal led a team to recover the stories of three abolitionists and their times. Review
Sillies, Fancies, & Trifles, Peter Kostoglou. Resource Publications (ISBN: 9798385207695), 2024. Summary: A collection of seven short stories, all with an element of the fantastic, inviting us into the mystery of beauty, the deep joy in the world, and the power of love. Review
Why Study History?(Second Edition), John Fea. Baker Academic (ISBN: 9781540966605), 2024. A Christian historian explains why the study of history is important to us, what historians do, and helpful and unhelpful ways to relate our faith to the study of history. Review
Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions, Nicholas A. Elder. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802879219), 2024. Addresses myths and generalizations about reading, writing, and publication in the Greco-Roman world shaping ideas of how the gospels were composed, used, and circulated. Review
The Women, Kristin Hannah. St Martin’s Press (ISBN: 9781250178633), 2024. A historical fiction account of the experiences of women nurses who served in Vietnam war combat areas and what it was like to come home. Review
Reversing Entropy, Luci Shaw. Paraclete Press (ISBN: 9781640608702), 2024. Poems that address the decay in the physical world and how human creativity and transcendent hope reverses entropy. Review
Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. William Morrow (ASIN: B00796E7CA), 2012 (originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1980). A collection of stories, many in unfinished state, by J.R.R. Tolkien providing background information on the three ages of Numenor and Middle Earth, edited by his son. Review
Say Good, Ashlee Eiland. NavPress (ISBN: 9781641587006), 2024. Offers a four-part process for finding one’s voice to navigate the tightrope of challenging public discussions, using one’s voice to “say good.” Review
Surviving the Islamic State, Austin J. Knuppe. Columbia University Press (ISBN: 9780231213875), 2024. A comprehensive study of how civilians survived Islamic State occupation in various communities throughout Iraq. Review
A Secular Age, Charles Taylor. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (ISBN: 9780674026766), 2007. How Western society moved from a shared belief in God to a secular age in which belief was one option of many. Review
Book of the Month. As I mentioned above Kristin Hannah’s The Women is a powerful book on the women nurses who served in combat areas of Vietnam. Through the experiences of Frankie McGrath, we learn of the traumatizing experiences nurses faced on the battlefield and the hostility and lack of recognition and PTSD they experienced at home. Like all her women characters, McGrath is a character who discovers her strength, but also her vulnerability.
Quote of the Month. Humility is a quality not often aspired to. Michael Austin’s wonderful little book on humility as following Jesus had this quote that caught my attention:
“What is the person like who follows Christ in his humility? The humble person fights to descend the social ladder, rather than climb it. The humble person makes the interests of others their priority, rather than their own. Instead of always grasping for what they want, the humble person serves others, for their good, often in sacrificial ways. The humble person focuses on God and others, rather than themselves. The humble person is steeped in the love of God, and that love flows from God through them to others” (p. 35).
What I’m Reading. I just finished Margery Allingham’s The Fashion in Shrouds, the tenth in her Campion series. It was not my favorite–I didn’t like any of the characters, even Campion’s sister. I picked up Maus after it was banned for use in eighth grade classes in a Tennessee school district. Why don’t we want eighth graders to read this account of the Holocaust? I haven’t found anything inappropriate for adolescent readers. Paul and Time by Ann Jervis is a fascinating proposal challenging the ” this age/the age to come” paradigm. She proposes instead that we live either in the present evil age or we live in Christ, and to be in Christ is to be in his time, the time of the resurrection. She calls this “life time.”
Righteousness by Jeffrey J. Niehaus is the first of a three-part study on this biblical idea in which he lays out his proposal and does a survey of other theologians. He proposes that righteousness is conformity to God’s being and doing. I’m on to the third Cork O’Connor, Purgatory Ridge, just as riveting as the first two. Finally, I always enjoy books on books and reading. The Social Life of Reading is a study of how people read together in the home in the eighteenth century. It makes me wonder what we lose when we no longer read aloud to each other.
Well, I hope I’ve offered you a few ideas of some good things to read on those hot summer days.
The Month in Reviews is my monthly review summary going back to 2014!It’s a great way to browse what I’ve reviewed. The search box on this blog also works well if you are looking for a review of a particular book.
This week I finished a nearly-three-month reading project, wading through Charles Taylor’s massive A Secular Age. It’s a brilliant and dense book, the kind we often shy away from because reading it is an investment. This one sat on my TBR pile for years, so much so that it needed a good dusting before I began reading it. In my review, I summarize the main argument of the book, what I thought important and questions it left me with. I also offered reading tips for working through the book that might apply to other big, dense and important books. I try to read one of these at least a year.
And while I was reading, I learned that Taylor, now in his 80’s has just published a new book, Cosmic Connections. In it, he looks at some of the issues raised in A Secular Age through the lens of the poetry of the Romantics. “How Poetry Responds to a Disenchanted World” is a review of the book in The National Review.
Five Articles Worth Reading
It’s the season for camping. And what is a campout without some good campfire stories? In “How to Tell a Great Campfire Story,” Atlas Obscura asked some great storytellers for their tips for telling a good campfire story. This is great advice for writers as well.
Do you use any method to keep track of the books you read? Some of us just look at our shelves. “94-Year-Old Grandmother Kept Meticulous Book Log for 80 Years” tells the story with a pictures of a woman who began keeping a reading log at age 14, logging 1658 books over 80 years!
Many people do at least some of their reading with audiobooks. Maybe that’s something you’d like to try for that long drive or while exercising. Bookriot posted “Libro.fm’s Bestselling Audiobooks of All Time.” What’s great about this list is that it includes the narrator for each book.
Traditionally, authors are encouraged to promote books through social media platforms, book tours, and readings. Emily Smith has done none of that and she’s had five number one best sellers in a row. The New York Times covered how she does it in “Emily Henry on Writing Best-Sellers Without Tours and TikTok.”
Speaking of TikTok, the controversial video sharing platform owned in China. The hashtag #BookTok has become a powerful tool for promoting books, by authors, media influencers, and publishers. And what’s not to like about selling more books? Jackie Jennings explores a possible dark side of all this in “The Problem With BookTok Isn’t the Pretty Influencers or the Fantasy Books.”
Quote of the Week
I came across this quote from Louisa May Alcott that seems good life advice for all of us:
“Keep good company, read good books, love good things, and cultivate soul and body as faithfully as you can.”
Miscellaneous Musings
Augustine wrote The City of God following the sack of Rome in 410, evidence of the declining Roman empire.. I’ve been wondering if it is time for me to re-read this great work in light of our political and cultural landscape.
On a lighter note, I’m 80 pages into Purgatory Ridge, the third of William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor books. Like previous books, his writing evokes the landscape of northern Minnesota and he makes you turn the page. Louise Penny got me through the pandemic. I’m thinking William Kent Krueger will get me through the 2024 election!
This was a banner week at my mailbox. The Willie Mays biography I mentioned last week arrived. Two books of readings, one on gratitude and an early arrival for Advent came from the good folks at Paraclete Press. The second Maus book arrived (I fail to see the fuss, at least in the first book, which I’m reading, unless you want to deny the Holocaust). I was also pleased to get a copy of a new edition of George MacDonald’s Diary of An Old Soul from InterVarsity Press. I love MacDonald. And there were a few others you will hear about down the road. I really need to treat my mail carrier well!
A Secular Age, Charles Taylor. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (ISBN: 9780674026766), 2007.
Summary: How Western society moved from a shared belief in God to a secular age in which belief was one option of many.
Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age, has become a primary source of sorts for anyone trying to understand our present time. On a regular basis, I come across writers invoking “disenchantment, “social imaginaries,” “the buffered self,” and “the immanent frame.” All of these concepts come out of Taylor.
Like many primary sources, reading Charles Taylor is daunting for most of us. There are 776 pages of dense text that introduce us not only to a breadth of intellectual and cultural history spanning 500 years. We also encounter a truly erudite mind, who quotes literature in several European languages (usually offering translations and weaves a number of people, events and schools of thought in an analysis that seeks to answer one question: how did we move from a world, indeed a cosmos, of shared belief in God to a secular age where belief in God was merely one option of many?
I’ll be honest. I don’t have the learning to offer a detailed analysis of this book. What I will try to do is offer a summary of the major contours of his argument. Following this, I will comment on what I thought the most significant contributions of the book. I’ll note a few questions I have. And I’ll make several suggestions for intrepid souls who want to tackle this book.
Summary
Charles Taylor makes the case that secularization is not a matter of subtracting religion from society. Rather, he traces the beginnings to the Reformation that removed hierarchy, elevating the individual. With this comes the disciplinary society, using practices to elevate the spiritual and moral life of all. In time, discipline was separated from devotion to God to stand on its own as a form of incipient humanism. Belief in God wasn’t jettisoned but relegated to a providential Deism. In turn, enlightenment science reduced a cosmos filled with God’s grandeur to an impersonal mechanism and this way of thinking spread to different aspects of society. A shift occurred from the “porous self” exposed to the workings of God and the cosmos to the “buffered self” insulated from such supernatural forces.
These developments created the conditions for what Taylor calls “the nova effect,” an explosion of different ways of believing (or not believing). They range from a theistic or deistic humanism, to a humanism without God, embracing moral virtues. Nietzsche and his followers rejected the quest for truth and morality as camouflages for the will to power. For others, the disconnect of the material world from the supernatural led to the embrace of materialist and atheist belief.
This hardly led to the eradication of belief in God. Taylor describes the era from 1800 to 1960 as “The Age of Mobilization” where movements like Catholic Action in France and Methodists and revivalists in England and North America succeeded in recruiting large numbers of people. Taylor believes that the cultural revolution of the 1960’s introduced an “Age of Authenticity” introducing a variety of religious experiences, designer belief, and the celebration of bodily pleasure.
Having lost connection with the transcendent, we live in the immanent frame, and yet we struggle to find a basis in it for some of our deepest longings, and to deal with the ultimate reality of death. We live amid cross pressures and dilemmas, including the troubling presence of human violence. He concludes the work with narratives of those who believe, often out of some sense of the transcendent. He has strong words to say about the church’s rediscovery of an incarnational life and connects this to an re-consideration of the erotic and its connection to divine love.
Significant Insights
Perhaps the most significant insight is that secularization does not mean the subtraction of religion from our view of the world. Instead, belief in God and Christianity, once shared by all, becomes one of many options.
Second, science isn’t the enemy, according to Taylor. The Reformation created the milieu leading to the eclipse of the transcendent. It’s fascinating that Taylor doesn’t think much of the atheist scientists who challenge belief.
He helps us see how radically our world has shifted, including the eclipse of the supernatural and the rise of the autonomous self.
He shows the inadequacy of humanism to address many of our deepest questions and the challenge of Nietzsche as an alternative that seems to be attractive to many embracing authoritarian leaders in our day.
Questions
While we cannot return to pre-modern times, can believing people find a way to live in a supernatural, transcendent frame? It seems that the church, pre-Christendom, and perhaps in parts of the world outside the West, faced or faces the same conditions.
This raises the question of the nearly exclusive focus on the West. What might be learned from other societies and cultures? By the same token, it could be argued that secularization has become a global phenomenon.
His comments on incarnation versus excarnation and sexuality come at the very end. I would love to know if he has developed these further.
Reading Taylor
For most of us, Taylor is a tough read. I read most books in about a week. It took me nearly three months to read A Secular Age. At the suggestion of my reading buddy, I reduced my pace to 10 pages of a day, which is about all I felt I could absorb. I wish I had kept some notes along the way, which would have made tracking Taylor’s thought easier.
Read this with a reading buddy or group. It helped me keep going and we helped each other understand Taylor’s dense prose. I had this book for years, collecting dust. I wouldn’t have finished it without my friend.
This seems to be one of those books where one reading isn’t enough. Yet, I find myself wondering if I want to set aside that much time. Ah…time will tell.
Summary: A comprehensive study of how civilians survived Islamic State occupation in various communities throughout Iraq.
The current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have foregrounded the experience of civilians under enemy occupation. We tend to hear more about war-time deaths, injuries, and atrocities. But how do the rest of the population survive? For current conflicts, the answers are still emerging. But a case study of the recent Islamic State (IS) occupation in Iraq offers a wealth of data on the repertoire of survival strategies used by civilians during the time the insurgents were in control. This work represents a comprehensive attempt to study civilian responses both in areas under insurgent control and others, like Baghdad, under insurgent attack but government control.
The work begins with an overview of survival repertoires. Community membership and the degree of shared identity is a crucial factor in assessing threat. This determines whether one flees or stays. For those who stay, many will try to stay under the radar. When this is not possible, they must choose between neutrality, cooperation, and contention, sometimes blending approaches such as complying with religious rules while informing to the government or otherwise covertly, and sometimes overtly, resisting. Knuppe then traces the rise and fall of the Islamic State beginning with the US withdrawal in 2011, the rise and spread of IS control from 2012 to 2014, and the anti-IS offensive by a coalition of forces leading to their defeat from 2014 to 2017.
The following chapters offer empirical analysis of the responses to IS threats in different regions. The author begins (chapter 4) with Baghdad, drawing on his own data gathering from a representative sample of Baghdad residents, many who were Shia. He shows shifts from government support to neutrality or even collaboration with US forces as the threat shifted from IS attacks to neighborhood militias.
Chapter 5 covers the Sunnis in the cities of Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit in Anbar province. These people had been politically excluded by the Shia government. As a result, many sought to remain neutral or acquiesce to IS control to survive. Chapter 6 turns to the Ninewa Governate of the north. Here, ethnoreligious minorities of Assyrians, Kurds, and Yazidis faced brutal suppression or genocide, necessitating flight by many. Knuppe traces the internal displacement and return of these people. He examines the strategies of neutrality and cooperation of those who remained.
The final chapter considers the argument of this book. It is that civilians survival strategies reflect their evaluation of the threat. They consider whether they share an identity with the insurgent. People evaluate the insurgents reputation to determine how they will be treated. Finally, the level of coercive behavior and indiscriminate violence helps people decide when to leave. Threat evaluation determines whether they try to remain neutral, cooperate, or contend if they stay.
One distinction of this book is the resourceful and ethical research methods used by the author both in the study of Baghdad’s population and the informant-based work that complemented the use of data sets in Anbar. He offers a far more nuanced and pragmatic array of threat responses that involves fine-grained analysis of the diverse peoples of Iraq. And he sets these responses within the context of Iraq’s complex politics since the fall of Hussein. This makes the work a valuable resource for not only Iraq and Middle East scholars but for others studying the impact on civilian populations of wartime occupation.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
Say Good, Ashlee Eiland. NavPress (ISBN: 9781641587006), 2024.
Summary: Offers a four-part process for finding one’s voice to navigate the tightrope of challenging public discussions, using one’s voice to “say good.”
Engaging in public discussions, online or in-person, often feels like walking a tightrope. Ashlee Eiland says it begins with balance, finding one’s center in Christ. In walking a tight rope, it means fine-tuning that starts low and short and goes slow. Don’t try to walk over Niagara Falls without a lot of training. Likewise, with public engagement.
Eiland outlines a four part, four pillar process of finding one’s voice, using the acronym PAIR:
Passion
It begins with discerning our passion. It is figuring out what we love enough to suffer for it. What is something you are willing to devote enough time to gain the experience you need to accomplish your goal? Our passion is that for which we’ve wept at its absence. Are we willing to identify with the Savior who wept?
Accountability
Accountability is the discipline of consistently showing up with others. It means character and integrity, boundaries we will not cross, having others to hold us to our commitments. It means learning to take initiative, with all its risks–and discerning when not to take initiative. Facing hard truth is another aspect of accountability. Who will we trust to tell us the truth? Will we take the posture of a learner and listener? Eilund recounts the parting advice of dean in graduate school.
Influence
We all have influence. the question is, how will we leverage it? But we can’t influence everything. We need to know our place and space and stay in it. It is learning to use our voice with authenticity, I liked this description of authenticity:
“Authenticity is about discerning the intersection of what’s real and true, both in what we are speaking into and in what we’re speaking out of, for the health and wholeness of the entire body”
You can’t talk about influence without talking about power. She talks about sources of power, power dynamics, and how we use power well. Eilund describes how Steve, a white, dynamic leader, empowered her, a Black woman, in public speaking.
Relationship.
Relationship reminds us that we use our voice with people. Confession is an important part of the use of our voice, sharing with trusted others who we truly are. The author describes confessing to her friends her deep struggle, as a pastor, with depression. Eilund challenges us to know people by name–the pharmacist, the clerk, the wait staff–and not just close acquaintances, or the ‘important.” It’s all about affording dignity to every person. In turn, she asks us to reflect on what we would hope they would say of us in our eulogy. By asking this, she invites us to consider who will see our work and how we will steward our voice to “say good” in light of that. And how we use our voice with people will determine whether we leave chasms or build bridges.
Many people use their voices in ways that widen the chasms that separate us. Sometimes this is intentional. But for others, the question is learning to use one’s voice for good. It means discerning what we truly care about. It means being accountable rather than a loose cannon. We need to learn how to use influence well. And all of this occurs in the context of relationships. Ashlee Eilund charts a clear path toward the better use of our voice. By using her voice and her journey, she shows us how her four pillars integrate into a life of “saying good.”
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
