Summary: Draws on the wisdom of the Enneagram to help focus on our responses to stress, both as they reflect our dominant and repressed centers of intelligence intelligence.
Suzanne has written a couple very popular books on the Enneagram, The Road Back to You(review) and The Path Between Us(review). The first is an introduction to the Enneagram and how it contributes to self-understanding. The second discusses how persons who are different Enneagram types interact with each other. This book focuses in on how different Enneagram types respond under stress, and how one might grow into health.
The book focuses on two aspects of the Enneagram. The first has to do with what Enneagram Triad our type is within. There are three triads. The Feeling Triad includes those who are 2s, 3s, and 4s, the Thinking Triad includes those who 5s, 6s, and 7s, and the Doing Triad, those who are 8s, 9s, and 1s. For each type in the Triad, our response to stress will reflect our dominant intelligence–feeling, doing, thinking. We are inclined to ask, “what am I feeling?” or “what am I thinking?” or “what is to be done?” depending on our type. Of course, none of these responses alone are always enough, and healthy responses to stress draw upon the best of all three. This comes by understanding the numbers we move toward in stress and security for our particular type, and moving to the healthy sides of these numbers. Stabile offers introductions to each Triad and then a chapter for each type in the Triad. She begins with an illustrative story, how a particular type sees the world, the type’s response to stress, including the Enneagram type we move toward in stress, a key to healthy response, practices to try and the type we move toward in security.
The second part of the book focuses on our number’s “Stance” which has to do with which particular center we tend to repress in our stress responses. The stances are the Withdrawing Stance (represses doing), including those who are 4s, 5s, and 9s, the Aggressive Stance (represses feeling), including those who are 3s, 7s, and 8s, and the Dependent Stance (represses thinking), including the 1s, 2s, and 6s. What this means is that without work, we draw on only two of the three intelligences when we respond to stress. Again, Stabile offers an introduction to each stance, and a chapter for each type within a stance and resources for incorporating the repressed intelligence. Particularly helpful for each type are the Transformative Possibilities, a list of suggestions for one’s type.
I found that the material for my type made sense, as well as making sense of how colleagues and friends who are different types respond. I am one of those Withdrawing Types, and the encouragement to wade into discussions and to share my observations and thinking is especially helpful. Obviously, knowing one’s Enneagram type helps, so I would encourage reading The Road Back to You or another introduction to the Enneagram before, or along with, this book. What was uniquely helpful in this book was to understand my default responses to stress and to discover that I have options and am not stuck with the default.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
American Diplomacy, Expanded Edition, George Kennan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. (Link is to in-print 60th anniversary edition, 2012).
Summary: A compilation of Kennan’s six Charles R. Walgreen lectures, two articles on US-Soviet relations originally from Foreign Affairs, and two Grinnell lectures.
George F. Kennan (1904-2005) was one of the foremost thinkers, and at times, shapers of American foreign policy. He is perhaps most famous for the “long telegram” in 1946 from Moscow to the American Secretary of State, on how the U.S. should relate to post-war Stalinist Soviet Union. This telegram and two subsequent articles in Foreign Affairs which appear in this volume, served as the intellectual basis of the American policy of containment which prevailed until the end of the former Soviet Union in 1989.
This work actually consist of three parts. The first reviews American diplomacy from the Spanish-American War through World War 2 in six lectures sponsored by the Charles R. Walgreen Foundation. The second part reprints the two Foreign Affairs articles, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” and “America and the Russian Future.” The third part consists of two Grinnell lectures given in 1984, one a retrospective of the Walgreen lectures, and the other a review of American foreign policy in Korea and Vietnam and our present military-industrial complex.
One of the basic threads that runs through the Walgreen lectures is that our diplomacy flowed out of “legalistic-moralistic” foundations or situational, politically shaped responses that lacked “any accepted, enduring doctrine for relating military strength to political policy, and a persistent tendency to fashion our policy toward others with a view to feeding a pleasing image of ourselves rather than to achieving real, and desperately needed results in our relations with others. The lectures start with our war with Spain launched without any clear policy but shaped by popular mood. The second focuses on the “Open Door” policy with China where what appeared to be noble foreign policy poorly apprehended the material interests of the other powers involved. The third lecture looked at our pre-Maoist diplomacy with China and Japan, over-sentimentalizing China, over-vilifying Japan, and failing to work toward a balance of powers between Russia, China, and Japan that may have averted war, and possibly the rise of Communist China (I doubt this, given the corruption of the Chiang Kai-shek government).
In the fourth lecture, he observes the irony of our entering World War 1 because of the violation of our neutrality, and then rationalizing it as a great fight for the values of civilization when in fact we acceded to the gutting of Germany which led to the second war. With the second war, we allowed ourselves to begin at a place of weakness that created the necessity of dependency on Russia and then adopted an idealized vision of the post war future that failed to realistically face the price Russia would exact for its alliance. He concludes for a diplomacy of professionalism and realism rather than a moralistic-legalistic effort to project American ideals.
Part two reflects the working out of Kennan’s ideas in relation to the Soviet Union. He argues that it is vitally important to understand the ideology of the communist conflict with capitalism, the infallibility of the Kremlin and the concordant concentration of power in what amount to a dictatorship. It is here, that recognizing the difficulties of relating to Soviet power, that he contends for a policy of disciplined “containment.” He writes:
“In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to note, however, that such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with threats or blustering or superfluous gestures of outward ‘toughness’ ” (p. 119).
The second article he argues that America should not directly challenge the Soviet Union, but allow it to decay from within, a consequence we watched unfold in the 1980’s.
The first of the Grinnell lectures basically reprises the Walgreen lectures and then considers Korea and Vietnam. He contends that our assessment of Communist global expansionist ambitions to be flawed, especially in Vietnam where he assessed Ho to first of all be a nationalist. In Korea, we failed to reckon with how our military presence in Japan, shutting out the Soviet Union, would be perceived as a threat warranting “consolidation of its military-political position in Korea, with all our efforts costing 54,000 casualties to achieve merely the status quo ante. I find this a bit troubling as he seems to infer that it would be fine if all of the Korean peninsula were communist. I don’t suspect today’s South Koreans, as much as they would like to see the reunification of Korea, would prefer communist rule. But there is an interesting question of whether a different settlement was possible if we had settled things differently with Japan, a historic enemy of Russia.
The second lecture argues that the large scale militarization of the U.S. in the post war reflected mistaken notions of Soviet global conquest and the folly of the nuclear arms race. He argues that having made these dispositions we cannot walk back commitments either to Japan or to NATO. His call is simply for a greater humility in our diplomacy, and that example is more powerful than demand. He hoped a budget of over $250 billion for our military would not be necessary. (Now it is over $750 billion).
I am writing this on the eve of what may be a massive Russian invasion of Ukraine, once part of the former Soviet Union. I cannot help but think of Kennan’s observations about both the communist mindset in Russia, humiliated in 1989, but hardly extinguished, and our lack of steady, professional diplomacy in the years since while the Putin government has been an implacable constant. I’m troubled by the corrosion from within, not of Russia but our own country, and the danger that this could further undermine a steady realism in our foreign policy.
A larger issue that Kennan raises is whether it is possible to have a “moral” diplomacy. One the one hand we may often be deceived by our own claims to morality or blind to other factors in international situations. Yet humility is a moral virtue. The recognition of human dignity inherent in our commitments to democracy is moral. Perhaps this compact volume was not the place to unpack whether a moral, if not moralistic diplomacy is possible. Perhaps we need to turn to his spiritual mentor, Reinhold Niebuhr, to explore these arguments, elaborated in Moral Man andImmoral Society and other works. Whatever we might conclude, Kennan’s call for a professional, unpoliticized and unmilitarized diplomacy that takes develops a long term approach to American diplomacy is worth considering.
The Black Church, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Penguin Press, 2021.
Summary: A companion to the PBS series on the Black church, surveying the history of the Black church in America focusing on why the church has been central to the life of the Black community.
It is practically a truism that the church is a central reality in the Black experience, and in many local Black communities. But why is this? That is the question Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explores in this companion book to the PBS series, “The Black Church.”
Gates contends that the church provided a place, first of all, for refuge that they could control and find hope in, when they were brutally subjugated, whether under slavery or Jim Crow. It was fascinating to learn that Spanish Catholics were responsible for the conversions of African-Americans in the early year. Gates also traces the elements of Muslim and traditional religion back to the earliest periods of slavery. White slave owners often were resistant to the conversion of slaves, recognizing the liberating messages to be found in the Bible, Anglican missionaries persuaded slave owners that it could be taught in ways that supported their control. What they couldn’t control was the introduction of music and dance that reflected African heritage, including the “ring shout.” and the unofficial gatherings in “praise houses.”
Many more were converted during the Methodist revivals, but when they were segregated, Richard Allen led the formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Gates traces how the church increasingly becomes a force for abolition (and in the case of Nat Turner, for uprising) as well as renewal. Then with Emancipation, Gates traces the further growth of the churches of the south, the Bible women who helped spread the gospel message, and the “frenzy” that presaged Pentecostalism, which can trace its roots to William Joseph Seymour, who led the Azusa Street Revival, leading to the formation of the Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal body in the country.
With the Great Migration, Gates traces the growth of Black megachurches in northern cities like Chicago and New York, and with this the growth of Gospel music from the Fisk Jubilee Singers to Shirley Caesar, and from this, the development of blues and jazz. This led to a growing tension between the music of the clubs on Saturday night and the music of the service on Sunday. The music and the preaching connected, nowhere more so than at the March on Washington when Mahalia Jackson urged King to “Tell them about the dream.” The gospel songs morphed into the freedom songs and sustained the movement.
Gates describes the period after King as a “crisis of faith.” He describes the development of Black theology, including the thought of James Cone and Jeremiah Wright, the pastor who married the Obamas. He observes the tensions around sexuality, the patriarchy of churches, and the conservatism around LGBT sexuality as well as the ascent of Blacks into the middle class, the ministries of pastors like T.D. Jakes, and how Obama revealed different sides of the church to white America. The chapter concludes with the resurgent white nationalism and Black Lives Matter.
An epilogue traces Gates own religious journey, his decision to join the church, his fear of “the Frenzy” and speaking in tongues and the irony that DuBois “Talented Tenth” were less the missionaries of culture than the Pentecostals, whose experience did more to uplift the marginalized. Gates observes that the experiential connected back to the African religious roots of the Black church.
Gates gives us an account of the Black church that both traces history, and enriches it with interviews with contemporary Black leaders and celebrities, drawing out the experienced significance of the Black church. The church that emerges is one of refuge and uplift, of resistance and abolition, of music and ecstasy. It is also an account of Black pulpiteers and the development of Black preaching from Richard Allen to Raphael Warnock. The appendix includes an alphabetical list of the great preachers of the Black church. Here as throughout this history, Gates does not confine his account to Christians, including figures like Malcolm X.
As history, this is more popular survey than an in-depth, scholarly account. Gates use of contemporary interviews interlaced with his history creates a much richer sense of the ethos of the Black church than one might get from a historical narrative alone. He captures the various ways the church epitomizes and sustains the identity of Black people. He concludes:
“It’s that cultural space in which we can bathe freely in the comfort of our cultural heritage, and where everyone knows their part, and where everyone can judge everyone else’s performance of their part, often out loud with amens, with laughter, with clapping, or with silence. It’s the space that we created to find rest in the gathering storm. It’s the place where we made a way out of no way. It’s the place to which, after a long and wearisome journey, we can return and find rest before we cross the river. It’s the place we call, simply, the Black Church” (p. 219).
Summary: An layered approach to the meaning of Genesis 1, focusing on what this reveals about God and God’s intentions for the flourishing of his creation and the human beings created in God’s image.
Genesis 1 is often the focus of controversy over scientific theories of origins and how to reconcile these with the biblical account. The two authors of this book, a geologist and an Old Testament professor, think that in doing so, we miss the richness of this account, and more than that the glory of God and the wonder of God’s creation. More than that, they contend that this account is so meaning laden that it may only be fully grasped in a layered approach that approaches scripture from different angles or through different lenses. They defend the idea that this multi-layered approach is both consistent with biblical inerrancy and sound hermeneutics, arising as it does from exegesis of Genesis 1 itself.
They identify seven layers to which they devote a chapter to elaborate. The layers are:
Song. Many have noted the poetic character of Genesis 1, yet it defies poetic forms known elsewhere in scripture. The authors note the formlessness of creation and how days 1-3 give it form, and they note the emptiness of creation and how days 4-6 fill what God has given form. Noting all the repeated language in the days, they contend that this well may have been a sung account in which the beauty of the text reflects the beauty of the Maker.
Analogy. The form of a week of seven days, of work conceived, executed, and appraised, the bringing of order from disorder, and the rest on the seventh day serves as an analogy that teaches us the goodness of work, that celebrates creativity, and serves as the basis for keeping the sabbath rest.
Polemic. Genesis 1 is polemic. It shows there is no god like the LORD. The LORD has no backstory, no company of gods. Creation by intent and not accident. God sustains humans; they do not sustain him.
Covenant. While the word is not used, the framework of covenant is evident: a suzerain-vassal, a royal land grant, blessings and curses, and loss of the land grant for disobedience.
Temple. They note the many parallels with other Ancient Near East texts of gods and their temples in the language of Genesis: a garden on a mountain facing eastward, cherubim that guard the entrance, the tree of life (lampstand), the tree of knowledge, the mentions of lands with gold and gemstones, the source of rivers, and most of all, a place of God’s dwelling.
Calendar. In addition to the creation week structure, the mention of the luminaries in day four to be “for signs and appointed times,” and “for days and for years.” This look forward to the yearly calendar of festivals that follow planting and harvest and commemorate the great events of the Exodus.
Land. The land prepared for the first couple and lost, anticipate the land promises to Israel, their fulfillment, and the land lost in exile, and the hope of restoration.
Many of these layers are both rich in themselves and anticipatory of future works of God. The authors admit that not all the arguments for a particular layer are strong, but the cumulative case for the layers is. For me, the argument for “calendar” seemed the most tenuous, and yet not without basis.
I’ve long believed that to teach any important biblical truth, you have to start with the early chapters of Genesis. This book underscores this truth by demonstrating how so much that we see in the scriptures is evident in one or another of the layers of Genesis. The authors uncover rich treasures in Genesis that have nothing to do with origin controversies and everything to do with God and God’s ways. Manifold beauty indeed!
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
A Grave Mistake (Roderick Alleyn #30), Ngaio Marsh. New York, Felony & Mayhem Press, 2016 (originally published in 1978).
Summary: A wealthy widow in a small English village dies of an apparent suicide at an exclusive spa, but clues point to murder with a circle of suspects with motives.
The Honorable Sybil Foster of Quintern Place in the village of Upper Quintern is hosting a gathering at her home that serves to introduce a number of characters who will figure in this mystery. Verity Preston, another wealthy resident and playwright, is godmother to Sybil’s daughter Prunella, who we learn is romantically involved with Gideon Markos, an accomplished and well-mannered suitor, the son of nouveaux rich Nikolas Markos, the occupant of Mardling Manor, and an owner of a Troy painting (Troy is Chief Superintendent Alleyn’s wife and accomplished artist), who has his sights set on Quintern Place.
The gathering is broken up when the gardener, McBride, is noticed to have not moved for some time. He has died at his work, which seem to trigger a number of new arrivals. The first, turning up in the village shortly after McBride’s death is Bruce Gardener, who true to his name, is a gardener, who rapidly endears himself to Mrs. Foster, and Verity as well, despite his suspiciously thick Scottish accent. We learn later he was the close companion of Maurice Carter, Sybil’s first husband, who died in a wartime bombing that marked the disappearance of a rare stamp that had been in his possession but was never found.
At a dinner party Nikolas Markos introduces Dr. Basil Schramm, the new house physician at nearby Greengages Hotel. Verity realizes he is Basil Smythe, a student of her father’s, with whom she had an affair until he ditched her. She keeps her own counsels and gives him a wide berth. Completing the ensemble is Claude Carter, Sybil’s son by Maurice, a ne’er do well who seemed to be in perpetual debt and just one step ahead of the law.
All this is enough to send Sybil, who might be characterized as “high strung” to take the cure at Greengages, only to fall under the attentions of Dr. Schramm, provoking the jealousy of Sister Jackson, his assistant. Things come to a head when Prunella asks Verity’s help with her mother. She and Gideon want to get engaged and ask Verity to prepare their way with Sybil. They all go to Greengages, Verity first. To no avail. Sybil wants Prunella to marry John Swingletree, the son of a peer. Gideon exerts his charms but Sybil wants to be escorted to her room, where she remains the rest of the day. That night, about 9 p.m., Dr. Schramm looks in on her when her TV is heard blaring after the hour she usually turns in. She is in her bed, dead from an apparent overdose of barbiturates.
Chief Superintendent Alleyn is assigned to investigate, to ensure there was no foul play. And soon, he finds cause to believe there is–unswallowed pills on the back of her tongue, a pillow beside the bed with a facial impression and tears suggesting it was bitten. Then there is the new will, donating half her fortune to Dr. Schramm, who we learn may not be a doctor at all, if Prunella does not marry Swingletree. Plus there is a tidy bequest to Bruce Gardener.
Needless to say, there is a raft of suspects, chief of whom is Claude Carter, who under the guise of an electrician, took flowers left for Sybil up to her room where he was to “replace” a light bulb that plainly wasn’t replaced. Then Carter disappears. Three locations figure prominently–the room at Greengages where Sybil died, a heart at Quintern Place, and the graveyard behind the village church, where the murderer, and more will be uncovered.
This is one of Marsh’s later works, number 30 in the series, and by this time Alleyn is Chief Superintendent. It was delightful to find that, if anything, her plots were twistier, even in this cozy village. As in other works, it seems that only a few of her characters are fully drawn, the others remaining caricatures. In this case, it is Alleyn and Verity Preston, and oddly enough, Basil Schramm who are the most interesting and complex. The others seem to fill a role.
It seems curious to me that so many of Marsh’s books are set among the upper crust, who rarely come out looking good, aside from a few of the more circumspect, like Verity Preston. Alleyn also is from among the gentry, and one wonders if his presence reflects something of a conscience that offsets those behaving badly, either trivially or immorally or as outright villains. Is there social commentary behind the cozy mystery? Perhaps, but at there is also a well-crafted story that still reads well nearly fifty years later.
Summary: A virtual world quest created as the last act of a gaming programmer in which a real prize of $240 billion is at stake pits Wade Watts and a rag tag group of “gunters” against a ruthless corporation.
I might be one of the last people to come to this ten year old story since made into a motion picture. I have to admit, dystopian novels with a gaming theme are not my thing. If it weren’t for the fact that the author was born in Ohio, I may not have given it a second thought. But as a lifelong Buckeye, Ohio authors, whether they still live here or not, are my thing. So here goes.
It’s 2044. Climate change and the attendant breakdown of civil society has rendered much of the planet, and much of the United States a dangerous wasteland. Wade Watts lives in a ghetto in Oklahoma, consisting of trailers “stacked” on scaffolding. While he lives with his aunt, he spends most of his time in a secret hideaway in which he has connected his computer rig and “haptic” gear, in a virtual world called OASIS, created by perhaps the greatest of all game programmers, James Halliday. He attends virtual school here, and when not in school pursues a quest that not everyone thinks is real. He is a “gunter,” a serious gamer looking for the “egg” Halliday left behind as his last bequest five years ago. The prize? $240 billion in real world currency. The quest involves obtaining finding three keys, entering three gates, and successfully competing three contests. No one has even found the first key.
Wade, whose avatar is Parzifal, has spent the past five years immersing himself in everything he can learn about Halliday, all the games he created and played, the movies he loved, the places he lived, the music he listened to, to try to even find a clue to where the first key is located. The ‘Bible’ of the gunters is The Almanac. Wade discovers the first clue by noticing 112 notched letters that give him the information he needs to find the first key. And that leads to him being the first to complete the first challenge, beating a formidable foe, at an ancient arcade game. But he wasn’t the first to find the key. Another avatar, a female, Art3mis, was there first, but Wade won first. And in the informal code of gamers, he gives her a clue that helps her win and be the second to have collected the first key and pass through the first gate.
He’s not the only one in the small group of rivals. There is his best online friend “Aech” (pronounced “H”), and later Daito and Shoto, who become the fourth and fifth to pass the first gate after Parzifal, Art3mis, and Aech. Each is working on their own to win. Yet each will come to depend more and more on the others. And Wade as Parzifal and Art3mis (“Samantha” in the real world) develop an interest in each other–at least as they get to know one another through their avatars.
Parzifal becomes instantly famous in the gunter world. The treasures he wins afford him the chance to “level” up and acquire even more. The endorsements he acquires gives him real world funds. He will need them. The gunters aren’t the only ones after the Egg. So is a group called Innovative Online Industries who not only want to win the Egg, but gain control of the OASIS. They are known as the “sixers” for the six digit employee numbers that identify them. The chief of these is Nolan Sorrento, who tries to lure Parzifal to work with them. When lures fail, he resorts to threats to blow up Wade’s stack and kill him. Wade considers it a bluff, and were it not for his hideaway, he would have been. The stack where his aunt lives is bombed. It’s not a game anymore, and more people will die before it is over.
Wade uses his endorsement money to move from Oklahoma to Columbus, Ohio to be near where the main OASIS servers are and creates a state of the art setup to pursue the quest. The remainder of the book describes the pursuit of the second and third keys and gates, the tension between rivalry and friendship with his small circle of “gunters” who have to outwit the massive resources of the sixers.
The book is full of gamers lore, from Dungeons and Dragons and some of the earliest computer games to the highest tech in a virtual reality world. A non-gamer like me could have done with a bit less. But the plot is twisty enough to keep it interesting, with moments where it looks like all was lost, and then other surprises we would not have anticipated, and of course, the resourcefulness of Parzifal and the other gunters.
The backdrop to this plot is interesting as well. The immersive experience of this virtual world becomes the place where everyone spends time, because of OASIS, which facilitates education and commerce as well as massive multi-player online role playing games. It is a world with its own politics as well as actors who want to dominate the environment for their own profit. It sounds eerily like what Facebook’s re-branding as Meta would like to do.
As Cline’s plot unfolds, his characters begin to face the question of whether there might be more to the relationships they have and maybe the life they live in the “real” world, as dystopian as it is, than they have considered so far. Yet the irony is that all of these are formed online in a far more attractive world. Real neighboring in the stacks, except for passing conversations, is dead. If the eco-disasters and breakdowns in public order that some foresee come to pass, the book raises the interesting question of whether the resilience will be left to resist and try to restore or preserve the best of our culture or whether most will opt for escape to some virtual “oasis.”
Summary: Rather than an argument about what the Bible says about LGBTQ persons, a discussion of the ways LGBTQ Christians, regardless of their beliefs, have suffered under heavy, and the author would argue, needless burdens.
This is not one more book arguing about what the Bible says about LGBTQ issues. Bridget Eileen Rivera, a celibate, lesbian Christian committed to the church’s traditional teaching about sexuality and marriage (often labeled Side B in this discussion) offers a much needed account of how the church often wounds young men and women struggling both with their faith and sexuality, often driving them away from faith, and sometimes to the point of suicide. One of the sobering truths this book talks about is that, unlike any other demographic group, religious involvement of LGBTQ persons actually increases their likelihood to commit suicide. Equally troubling, these burdens have nothing to do with what we believe the Bible says about sexuality.
The first of these is the double standard around celibacy. On the one hand, much of the church glorifies sex within marriage and has little to say about celibacy–except for gay persons–even though the Bible commends both celibacy and marriage.
The second is that no matter what an LGBTQ person does (or doesn’t) do, they are often treated as pathological sinners. Actually, in doing so, the church follows Freud and not scripture, which only speaks about acts rather than orientation. Freud helped construct the idea of “homosexual identity.” Many in the church brand members who simply admit attractions or struggles with gender identification as “perverted,” sometimes banning them from working with children (even though they usually pose no danger to children) or expelling them from families or congregations. We define them as sinners beyond grace.
Third, the church has often branded all LGBTQ people as folk devils and moral enemies when our real enemies are not flesh and blood and we are called always to embody the grace and truth of the gospel. Even more troubling is that many of those so branded and consigned to hell are still teenagers and may not have even acted upon their inclinations. Remember trying to figure out your sexuality in middle and high school? And sometimes we made poor decisions. What if on top of this we were branded enemies of the church and consigned to hell?
Fourth, Rivera shares the complexities in the texts applied to LGBTQ persons that are often described as clear, even while passages referring to adultery, divorce, and the church’s case for or against contraception are often described as complicated. She points to figures like John Piper, who speak of allowing others grace, even though he would disagree with them on matters like divorce. But no grace for LGBTQ persons.
Rather than go into the other burdens in detail, I will note that Rivera discusses issues of how masculinity and femininity are defined, sometimes expressed toward gay men as bullying to get them to “man up,” and the gender essentialism that galvanizes opposition to transexuality, which she argues is rooted in Aristotelianism rather than scripture. Finally, she pleads for as much grace for LGBTQ Christians as is extended to cisgendered straight Christians in all their sexual sins.
I do wonder if there is a tendency toward making the Side A/Side B discussion merely adiaphora–a matter of personal conviction over which Christians disagree and extend grace toward each other. But this does not take away from her powerful witness to the destructive burdens laid upon LGBTQ persons that are not a necessary corollary of the church’s historic beliefs around sexuality and contrary to the gospel.
Rivera and I would agree on our understanding of scripture’s teaching about sexuality, though I suspect her arrival at her convictions was probably harder won than mine. Furthermore, she gives language to my dis-ease about what has seemed an obsession of the church’s focus on the sins of LGBTQ persons, a minority, while blithely ignoring or covering up sexual abuse, pre- and extra-marital sex among Christians, pornography addiction and domestic violence in marriages. She also raises important questions about the extra-biblical material we have imported into Christianity concerning orientation and gender roles. She reminds us that there is much more to the identity and personhood and sexuality of all of us than sex. She touches on something I’ve wondered–what would happen if we began to ask how LGBTQ people may be gifts rather than problems for the church? She leaves me hoping for the day LGBTQ people will not feel they need to leave the church to preserve and find their lives.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Summary: Beginning with the metaphors for the Holy Spirit, articulates a theology of the Holy Spirit that spans theological traditions and invites readers to be receptive to a deeper experience of the Spirit’s work.
When we confess “I believe in the Holy Spirit,” we often have little idea of what we are confessing. Gordon T. Smith thinks there are four important questions to ask about the Holy Spirit: the relation of the Spirit and Jesus, the relation between the Spirit and the created order, the relation between the Spirit and the scriptures, and the relation between the Spirit and the church.
In this work, Smith articulates a theology of the Holy Spirit that seeks to span the major traditions of Christianity in answering these questions. He goes further. He invites us to consider our own tradition, experience, and what it might mean to welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives in a deeper and transforming way.
He begins by reviewing our metaphors for the Holy Spirit as wind or breath, oil or anointing, fire, running water, and hovering dove. He notes that all of these are images of movement and life. The images emphasize the dynamic rather than static character of the Spirit, but do not fully capture the personal character of the Spirit’s being.
He turns to two chapters on the Spirit in specific books of the Bible. He looks at the link between the ascension and Pentecost in Luke and Acts. We often focus on one at the expense of the other and make it all about Jesus but fail to live in the power of the Spirit, or all about the Spirit but leaving Jesus “in the rearview mirror.” He then turns to the gospel of John and exploring the person of Holy Spirit and the Triune God and both the wisdom and heresies of the early church.
He then moves back to creation and the interesting idea of materiality infused with the breath of God and the hope that the one who brought creation to life will also be the one by whom creation is renewed. He concludes the chapter beautifully by inviting those of us who walk in the Spirit to tend the garden. From bringing life to creation, Smith turns to the work of the Spirit in bringing us to new life in Christ and how this might be reflected in our rites of initiation. He notes the two views of the coming of the Holy Spirit as either a two stage process, or integral with new life in Christ. Rather than argue for one or the other, he argues for incorporating rites of Spirit initiation along with water baptism. Along with this, our catechesis ought to prepare new believers for the work of the Triune God in their lives, including continuing receptivity to the Spirit’s indwelling fullness. In an interlude chapter, he warns against idolizing experience rather than the transformative work of the Holy Spirit in the ordinary practices of our lives.
Smith traces this process and the importance of casting vision for growth toward maturity, realizing we are both dependent on the grace of the Spirit to grow and that the ultimate fulfillment of this comes when we meet Christ face to face. We learn step by step to walk in the Spirit and pray in the Spirit, attending to the Spirit’s promptings in our life. This takes us into the question of the Spirit and the Word. He invites us into reading the Spirit-inspired text with both careful study and dependence on the Spirit for illumination, being neither wooden biblicists nor sentimentalists.
Finally he considers the Spirit and the church, both local and global. He articulates a Spirit ecclesiology that emphasizes unity, the ordered expression of the Spirit’s gifts in worship that occurs in song, word, and sacrament. He presses home the work of the Spirit in discerning church governance and that we ought be open to the immediacy of the Spirit’s guidance. He suggests some intriguing ideas of what it means for the Spirit to go before the church in mission and the need to be attentive to the Spirit’s presence in the cultures and even other religions that we engage. While in every situation there will be discontinuity between gospel and culture, we are also wise to look for how the way has been prepared. The Spirit can give discernment, pointing toward Christ, expressing the winsome fruit of his presence, and helping us to “remember the poor.”
As Smith summarizes, all this is a call to both intentionality in understanding the person and work of the Holy Spirit and receptive attentiveness to welcome Him into our lives. This book is a wonderful primer that helps accomplish what it advocates. Smith, as always, writes with clarity and precision and warmth, constantly moving from theological truth to implications for the life of the believer and the church. There is ecumenicity at its best, focusing both on common ground truths we may all embrace, and complementary insights from different traditions, including that of Pentecostalism, and his own tradition in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, reacquainting a new generation with some of the works of A. W. Tozer. In all of this, Smith’s intent would be for us to understand how we may experience the work of the Spirit as we grow in holiness, learn to pray, worship and work with God’s people, and engage in God’s mission. I concluded the book with his prayer, “Welcome, Holy Spirit!”
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Faithful Antiracism, Christina Barland Edmondson and Chad Brennan, foreword by Korie Little Edwards and Michael O. Emerson. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022.
Summary: Drawing upon the Race, Religion, and Justice Project, offers biblical and practical recommendations to engage racism personally and with one’s faith community.
The resurgence of white supremacy movements, police-involved shootings or other measures resulting in the deaths of a disproportionate number of Blacks, and efforts to suppress the history of slavery and racism in our country is, to be frank, discouraging. With the election of the first Black president, many of us had hopes that we had turned a corner in our racial history.
This book is one both of realism, rooted in the recent research findings of the Race, Religion, and Justice Project, and hope, rooted in the scriptures and the God in whom we trust. Indeed, the title, Faithful Antiracism, is a ringing challenge both to trust God and keep showing up to work against the forces that sustain racism.
The authors both come from long experiences of working with churches and other organizations in developing policies and practices fostering greater racial equity in their midst and greater effectiveness in addressing racism in society. Chad directed the Race, Religion, and Justice Project that studied the racial dynamics in U.S. Christianity, interviewing 115 leaders and experts, and involving 119 congregations with 3260 congregants. They also use research from Renew Partnerships Campus Climate Survey and Barna Research.
The first chapter of the group shares some of their research findings. It turns out that Christians often have less accurate racial views and are less motivated to address racial injustice. They attribute this to a “cultural toolkit” that emphasizes accountable freewill individualism, relationalism, and antistructuralism that hinder recognizing societal and economic differences, and embedded structures that account for disparities in things such as household wealth by race.
They then turn to scripture showing the structures of racial hostility evident in Ephesians 2 and the significance of the work of Christ in bringing both peace and justice. They survey the concerns of the prophets regarding the unjust structures in Israelite society that oppressed the poor. They note that while Christians attest to being committed to scripture, this is often qualified by the talking points of political culture which takes precedence. They elaborate a variety of principles that apply to racial justice from denunciations of greed, to making things right when we’ve benefited from unjust racial hierarchies. They then turn to biblical and historical figures who stood for justice.
They also emphasize how understanding the past is critical if we are to understand the pain of those who lived through these realities or bear the traumas of parents and grandparents who suffered them. They offer an outline of that history. They turn to the importance of understanding the present as well, pointing out key events from the 1960’s to the present, the forms of opposition, the superficial support that often covers this, and the ways political allegiance have taken precedence over biblical teaching. One of the most trenchant observations was the strategy of “label, mischaracterize, dismiss” to oppose pursuit of racial justice, calling actions of people of goodwill “a movement” (labelling), describing it as Marxist or Socialist when it is motivated by biblical concerns (mischaracterizing), and warning people to avoid such stuff (dismiss).
Often superficial efforts have focused around the “magic” of relationships, helping people become Christians, of “colorblindness, “of being welcoming, or even being “woke.” Often, these obscure deeper issues both in our own lives and in the organizational structures of our churches and other organizations. Rather, we ought take a page from a study of Acts, as the church overcame racial barriers. We also need mentors and solidarity with others beyond our own groups and should seek out coaches as we engage this work. We learn to measure change with substantive rather than superficial measures. And we learn both how to partner with those facing injustice and use our presence and economic and political resources to withdraw support from those acting unjustly.
As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a hopeful, though grittily realistic book. It grounds our efforts to stand against racial injustice in scripture while refusing superficial window dressing. But it also names practical steps individuals and groups can take. This is a handbook churches can use, with discussion questions and prayer that help bring truths before God for his illumination, leading to actions of substance instead of a world of talk.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Breaking Ground, Anne Snyder and Susannah Black. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing 2021.
Summary: A collection of essays written through four seasons beginning in the summer of 2020 on what it might take to restore common ground for the common good in a society deeply divided by the pandemic, race, economic, and political divisions.
The summer of 2020 came in the depths of the pandemic, punctuated by the police-involved death of George Floyd, painfully caught live on camera, resulting in massive demonstrations and disorder in many cities. Two magazine editors, Anne Snyder of Comment, a Canadian-based magazine, and Susannah Black, at the Bruderhof sponsored publication, PloughQuarterly came together to invite a number of Christian thinkers engaged in public square discourse to write articles that attempted to analyze what was happening in our society, draw upon the past, and think imaginatively about the future, renewal, and the role followers of Christ might play in fostering a hopeful future drawing together a fragmented body of Christ and wider society.
The collection brings together an impressive list of thinkers whose essays were written over the four seasons beginning in the summer of 2020 through the spring of 2021. Some of the better known contributors include Mark Noll, N.T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Wear, Jeffrey Bilbro, Doug Sikkema, Amy Julia Becker, Oliver O’Donovan, Peter Wehner, and Jonathan Haidt. All told, there are nearly fifty essays in this collection.
The discussion ranges from Mark Noll’s analysis of epidemics past to essays exploring the breakdown of public trust to an interview between Cherie Harder of The Trinity Forum and Marilynne Robinson ranging from Calvin to the common good. Michael Wear, an adviser in the Obama White House surveys our political landscape and profiles Joseph Lowery, one of the last survivors of the Civil Rights movement, who walked with King under the shadow of death, and our call to walk with Jesus even as we engage all the perils of the political in this time. Oliver O’Donovan explores politics and political service.
The essays talk about the importance of place, the local, and the spiritual practices that sustain us. Amy Julia Becker talks about how congregations like hers may fight racism at the local level. Anthony M Barr contributed some of the clearest thinking on the nature of policing and police reform that could be a starting point for many local conversations. Irena Dragas Jansen offers one of the more interesting essays describing what our country looks like through the eyes of a new citizen. Katherine Boyle, an entrepreneur describes the death of Silicon Valley–the eco-disasters, the hopelessness that claims more lives than COVID, the failure of the tech world to save us, and yet the way of being it has promoted as Silicon Valley becomes everywhere.
Aryana Petrosky Roberts describes coming home to the political conflicts in her own family, the inability to hear one another and the breakthrough of praying together, inviting Jesus into the political mess. Stuart McAlpine takes us deeper into prayer, into the prayers of repentance and lament we desperately need to engage and are so hard for us. Michael Lamb explores the implications of Joe Biden’s call for an Augustinian Concord in his inaugural address.
The book includes interview transcripts, some of the best from interviews with Cherie Harder of The Trinity Forum, one of the organizations that joined the Breaking Ground project. One of the very best of these was with Jonathan Haidt and Peter Wehner on “Arguments of the Sake of Heaven.” They explore our contemporary epistemic crisis and polarization, recall the passion of the Inklings for truth that led to vociferous argument, and what is required to foster good arguments in our public squares. Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson combine to contribute an essay on the call of the American church to own its own responsibility for our nation’s racial history–our love of gain and our failure to make recompense for slavery’s injuries. Charles C. Camosy explores the horror of our nursing homes which the pandemic revealed and the challenge of an ethic of life that includes dignified elder care.
Amid the serious and important conversations, Tara Isabella Burton’s “On Good Parties” comes as a ray of light. Tara loves parties and sees good ones as “a practice for living.” They teach us how to love well and see ourselves as part of a community, they celebrate events in our real lives and the appreciation of one another. She made me look forward to good parties once again.
Even with all that I’ve written here, I’ve but skimmed the surface of all the good and imaginative thinking in this collection. I’m impressed with the wide array of people from police officers to theologians who contribute to this collection. But isn’t this what is needed in our communities across the land–for a coming together of a wide array of people who care about the rents in our social fabric who talk and listen and pray and think and imagine what could be?
I would not only commend this book but at least three of the organizations mentioned here whose publications and initiatives are worth attending to and supporting as we seek to pursue Christ for the glory of God and the common good:
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
