On Books

Haiti: The Aftershocks of History

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Haiti: The Aftershocks of History, Laurent Dubois. New York: Picador, 2013.

Summary: A history of Haiti, from colonial rule under France up to the earthquake of 2010.

If you are following world news you will have noticed the descent of Haiti into gang violence and a dissolution of its government with no president since the assassination of President Moise in 2021 and the resignation of acting Prime Minister of Ariel Henry in March 2024. Numerous citizens have been kidnapped, many have fled the country and the country is facing critical levels of food insecurity. With that in view, I picked up this history of the country to see if I might gain some understanding of the current events. Laurent Dubois narrates the history of the country from the colonial period under France up until 2010, although the period after the Duvaliers, father and son, is only briefly covered.

It is a history to make one weep. The country is the only country to gain independence through the revolt of a slave people, in this case against France. Slaves on the profitable sugar plantations rose under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture in a fight running from 1791 to 1804 for independence. Toussaint died as a prisoner of war during an attempt by the French to recapture the former colony. The French were finally defeated in 1804 under a coalition led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines who proclaimed himself emperor, re-established the plantation system rather than the small farms people wanted, and then died.

One element of this story is the instability, authoritarian character and corruption of leaders that goes back to the nation’s origins. Over its history, the country has experienced over 30 coups. Leaders re-wrote constitutions several time to protect their power, in one instance, for life. There was a reliance upon the military, or in the case of the Duvalier dynasty of 30 years, the employment of a private militia, the Tonton Macoutes to ruthlessly stifle opposition.

Another is the pattern of foreign interference throughout the country’s history, beginning with the colonial rule of France. After independence, France held the country in thrall through an onerous indemnity, that took the best part of a century to liquidate, setting up a destructive pattern of borrowing and debt that held a stranglehold on the country. For a period of time, the country’s treasury was a French bank!

The United States did not recognize Haiti for over fifty years, frightened by the idea of a successful slave revolt. Then with the expansion of U.S. Naval power Haiti first became attractive as a site for a coaling station. Later, business interests were interested in what could be extracted from the country. Internal order brought an invasion of U.S. Marines in 1915 to restore order, build roads and infrastructure, and promote agricultural reforms.

It was a high-handed paternalistic effort, with few bothering to learn the language and culture. When resistance was encountered, villages were destroyed and atrocities occurred for which there has never been a reckoning. Our Marines were only withdrawn in the 1930’s but our countries’ interests continue to be intertwined. In the Duvalier era, for example, Nelson Rockefeller can be seen in chummy photos with “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Dubois extends this paternalistic approach to many of the NGOs, aid and mission organizations working in the country, that often competed with local economies, supplanting local trades, draining resources, and often repeating the military’s mistake of not learning French or Creole, nor the indigenous culture.

Dubois presents a picture of a country in which the people often outshine the leaders, pressing to be free from plantation economies and foreign interests, and for government reforms. Sadly, the pattern of people rising to leadership, only to follow the corrupt, authoritarian models of their predecessors, is repeated again and again.

Finally, we see the natural devastation of the country, from monocultures that exhaust the soil, hillside erosions and the loss of topsoils, and deforestation, culminating in the devastating earthquake of 2010 (and another, after publication, in 2020). What is grievous is that this was a country once rich in natural resources that is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Amid all the devastation, Dubois still holds out hope that the people who rose from slavery can rise to build a new Haiti. I found myself far less certain, wondering how the habits of good civil government, the rule of law, ethical business practice and sustainable agriculture can be established and developed. Given the current descent into gang violence and anarchy, I wonder if we are watching a nation in the throes of self-destruction, one that could precipitate a terrible genocide. Is it not time for the international community to act to prevent great loss of life, provide critical aid, and to offer the breathing space to restore civil order? But only Haiti can do the rest.

Review: Jesus and the Disinherited

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Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman (Foreword by Vincent Harding. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996 (Originally published 1949, link is to 2022 edition).

Summary: Explores the significance of Jesus for the disenfranchised, the discriminated against, and those marginalized by various forms of injustice and equity.

It is said that this text was an inspiration to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the days leading up to it In just over 100 pages one of the great preachers of the twentieth century lays out the significance of Jesus for the disinherited, those who have suffered disadvantages due to discrimination, injustice, and race hatred. Thurman’s felt this rarely addressed and argues that this is not a flaw in Christianity but rather a failure to understand the person, the mission, and the message of Jesus

Thurman begins with consideration of Jesus as a Jew, shaped by the history of this people, by the poverty of his own background, and subject to the overlordship of Rome. He speaks as part of a disinherited people and addresses the question of how a people survives when resistance is futile, when there is no assurance of protection from authority. His answer is the “kingdom within” and the consequences he frames as follows:

“You must abandon your fear of each other and fear God only. You must not indulge in deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives. your word must be Yea–Nay; anything else is evil. Hatred is destructive to hated and hater alike. Love your enemy, that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven” (pp. 24-25).

This outlines the program for the remainder of the book with successive chapters on fear, deception, hate, and love.

He describes fear as “one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the steps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited”–not the least the fear of violence that could be inflicted at any time. When a traffic stop or even a no-knock home invasion on a sleeping couple can result in death, Thurman’s statement is no exaggeration. He then turns to the teaching of Jesus and how he addresses similar fears of those under Roman occupation. He reminds them of God’s care that stems from their value before God, a powerful word for the downtrodden. When one is free of the fear of human beings that allows a new appraisal of one’s enemies, one that refuses to surrender one’s integrity to their supposed greatness. It all rests on the awareness that, before God, enemies can even take life but they can’t take away God’s eternal care.

Thurman addresses the deceptions the weak use to protect themselves from the strong and how it creates an expectation of honesty corrosive at once of relationships and of one’s personal integrity, where one does not merely tell lies but becomes the lie. Thurman, pointing to examples from Gandhi to Jesus, calls for “devastating sincerity.” Let your “yes” be “yes.” Sincerity destroys hypocrisy but may not defend against the strong. Rather, “in the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense, with the edge taken away from their prerogative, and from the status upon which the impregnability of their position rests.”

Hate is also a pervasive reality for the disinherited, both being hated and hating. But hate cannot be engaged without understanding its nature. It is relationships devoid of fellowship. It is understanding without sympathy. It is expressed in ill will, resulting in humans who become “hatred walking on earth.” In the end, hatred destroys the hater. In the end, hate kills and is antithetical to the life Jesus gives. To hate is to deny the life of Jesus in us.

Instead, the call of Jesus is utterly clear–the love of God and neighbor, with no escape clauses. It is loved of groups we are inclined to despise–like Samaritans. It is personal enemies with whom we are even to interrupt the act of worship to reconcile. It is loving those who shame and humiliate us, like the tax collector. It is to love the alien empire. Thurman argues that this cannot occur while segregation remains in force and emphasizes the challenge of segregation in the church that prevents people who believe in the same God from seeing the humanity in each other.

Thurman contends that when the disinherited, as well as those with privilege, turn from fear, deception and hate to love and forgive:

“The disinherited will know for themselves that there is a Spirit at work in life and in the hearts of men which is committed to overcoming the world. It is universal, knowing no age, no race, no culture, and no condition of men. For the privileged and the underprivileged alike, if the individual puts at the disposal of the Spirit the needful dedication and discipline, he can live effectively in the chaos of the presence the high destiny of a son of God” (pp. 98-99).

One sees so many elements of King’s message and practice in this work. But it also calls the question, do we really believe these things of Jesus, a life so counter-cultural? Or in our quest for political power have we forfeited the spiritual power of which Thurman testifies?

Review: Weathering

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Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society, Arline T. Geronimus. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2023.

Summary: A study of the chronic stress marginalized persons experience and the health impacts resulting in the earlier onset of debilitating diseases and shortened life expectancy.

According to Arline T. Geronimus, many marginalized persons not only weather extraordinary and chronic stress. They are also weathered by them, at a bodily level, resulting in earlier onset of the debilitating diseases of aging and shortened lifespans. One of the things that caught her attention was the discovery of much higher death rates from COVID among people of color in the same age cohorts of majority culture persons. Some may be the kinds of jobs that put people at greater risk. Some is due to less access to timely health care. But a significant factor was that many in their thirties and forties had risk factors one would expect to find in persons two decades older.

This is one instance of what Geronimus calls “age-washing” that ignores the impact of stresses that weather the bodies of those who face the injustices that are a constant threat for people marginalized because of race, cultural, and economic status. She shows how stress affects every system in the body resulting in earlier onset of cardiovascular disease including high cholesterol and hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. It is not unusual to enter one’s forties already suffering debilitating diseases that often lead to an early death. Both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are shortened.

Her findings challenge our conceptions. We might attribute these problems to diet and lifestyle. Yet she finds similar issues with fit, educated, and successful people of color including athletes like Arthur Ashe and Serena Williams. The chronic stress of threats from a racialized society actually may affect the successful more because they must constantly negotiate these. “John Henry-” like heroic efforts really can kill.

She also challenges our conceptions about teenage moms. For one thing, most are in their late teens, 18 or 19. She raises the issues that if weathering means the earlier death of women, having children early has a kind of logic not only in terms of their own life expectancy but also that of mothers and grandmothers who help with childcare. And in fact pregnancies with complications are higher in incidence from the late twenties on and lowest among those in their late teens and early twenties. This is not to say that delaying childbirth might be done for good reasons but simply to point up the logic of having children while young for stressed populations.

This is further exacerbated by the experience of “giving birth while black” in which expressed concerns are often discounted and symptoms that would raise red flags are ignored with greater frequency. Geronimus argues for the importance of advocates, midwives, and birth doulas who will be attentive to these oversights and support women in getting necessary healthcare. Along with medical practices, she critiques social policies such as “welfare to work” policies and “no child left behind” education policies for increasing stress.

She proposes and unpacks five principles as a way forward, attending to health care, social policy and urban planning, the educational setting, and the family:

  1. Think biopsychosocially: address the stealth inequities that surround us.
  2. Think holistically and ecologically.
  3. Do not erase oppressed stakeholders: do “nothing about us without us.”
  4. Pay attention to the need of working- and reproductive-age adults.
  5. Recognize all our fates are linked.

I’ve written in the past about the necessity of developing a consistent pro-life ethic, concerned not merely with the unborn but the born throughout every stage of life and from every part of society. Taking into account the stresses on the bodies of those who face racial injustice is yet another way to be consistently pro-life. With this path-breaking account by Arline T. Geronimus, we no longer can say, “we didn’t know” but rather “what must be done?”

C. S. Lewis in America

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C. S. Lewis in America, Mark A. Noll with Karen J. Johnson, Kirk D. Farney, and Amy E. Black. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: An analysis of how C. S. Lewis’s works were received in the United States, considering Catholic, secular, and Protestant/evangelical critics evaluating his work between 1935 and 1947.

Even before the widespread interest in C.S. Lewis due to the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis was being read in both religious and secular circles in the United States from the mid-1930’s and through the 1940’s. In this latest in the Hansen Lectureship Series at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, American historian Mark A. Noll offers three lectures that analyzed the critical reception and growing interest in Lewis’s works of scholarship, fiction, and theology. Successively, he explores the reception Lewis received among Catholics, in the secular and mainstream media, and among both mainline Protestants and evangelicals, who were late but eventually enthusiastic adopters.

It came as a delightful surprise that Catholics in the U.S. were among his earliest and most appreciative readers. In part, Noll believes that Lewis was a fresh, yet for the most part, orthodox voice that offered a friendly path out of a certain stagnant isolation, reflecting the undercurrent of change developing in the church. Responses ranged from the early and effusive praise of The Pilgrim’s Regress by Fr. Conway, CSP in Catholic World to Philip Donnelly’s criticism of Lewis’s account of “adoptive sonship” in Beyond Personality (later part of Mere Christianity). Other critics had concerns about his doctrine of the church and his ideas about natural law put forth in The Abolition of Man. The high watermark of criticism came from Charles Brady of Canisius College, who read everything Lewis wrote, understood him as well as anyone in this era, and wrote two glowing essays for America that are reprinted at the end of this work.

With regard to secular critics, Noll considers in succession Lewis’s scholarly and imaginative works, and finally his works of Christian exposition. Lewis drew general praise for both The Allegory of Love and for his Preface to Paradise Lost. A number affirmed his argument against E. M. W. Tillyard in The Personal Heresy that in criticism of a poet’s work, the focus should be on the subject matter of the poem and not the poet. Regarding the imaginative works, Noll describes the public as responding “ecstatically.” Noll highlight’s W.H. Auden’s review of The Great Divorce in The Saturday Review combining general praise with fine-grained critique. The widest range of critical opinion was reserved for his works of Christian exposition, from the long-searching response of Charles Hartshorne to a review in the New York Herald Tribune from a young Beloit College professor, Chad Walsh, who would quickly become know as a leading exponent of his work.

Apart from a patronizing review in The Christian Century, Protestants joined their secular counterparts in their warm reception of Lewis. Substantial interest among evangelicals in Lewis first came from conservative Presbyterians in the Westminster seminary circle as well as the first substantive criticism, particularly from a young Edmund Clowney. Wheaton’s Clyde Kilby represented a much more positive response to Lewis as did Wheaton student Elizabeth Howard (Eliot). Kilby’s work led to the donation of Lewis’s letters to Wheaton, forming the core of what would become the Wade Center collection. InterVarsity’s His Magazine also contributed to the growing awareness of Lewis in evangelical circles when it published a lengthy excerpt from The Case For Christianity.

Noll concludes the work in considering Lewis in today’s much more fragmented setting and what might be learned from Lewis’s greater concern for the state of his soul as a writer than the success of his work. The work also includes responses to each lecture. I found most interesting in these Kirk Farney’s discussion of two American contemporaries of Lewis who were also intelligent spokespersons for Christianity: Walter A. Maier of The Lutheran Hour and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen of The Catholic Hour. and the wide interest from people outside the church they enjoyed, as did Lewis. I can’t help wonder if there remains a space for such folk today. I’m thinking for example of the broad impact of the late Timothy Keller and the younger voices like Esau McCaulley and writers like Tish Harrison Warren.

Noll offers an excellent resource (aided by his wife) chronicling the early reviews of Lewis’s work, which I’ve only highlighted here. I’m struck that Catholics were early adopters and evangelicals relative latecomers. I’m impressed with the theological and scholarly sophistication of the writers and the elegant style of reviewers like Brady. How different things are in the BookTok era! This is a great resource for Lewis scholars and fans and a marvelous addition to the Hansen Lectureship series on the seven authors in the Wade Collection.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Bible is not Enough

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The Bible is not Enough, Scot McKnight. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2023.

Summary: In reaction to the embrace by American Christians of “humane” approaches to war and Christian nationalism, calls for an imaginative and improvisational approach to living out the Bible’s vision of a peaceful world.

This book reflects a response of Scot McKnight both to the rise of an aggressive Christian nationalism and an embrace of “humane” approaches to war through high tech precision weaponry. His concern is the embrace by American Christians, of ideas approving war both upon culture and our enemies abroad, justified by saving America for God. But where does the idea of the Bible not being enough come in? He argues that if instead we are to be people following the Prince of Peace, we need a new beginning that our political founding documents can’t offer. He writes:

“The Bible offers some raw materials of a new beginning. But the Bible itself has been become [sic] another tool of the ‘humane.’ The audaciousness of the Bible has been tamed–tamed and then co-opted. All too often the Bible is weighed against itself, allowing extreme to mitigate extreme, sometimes even pushing the other end off the stage. But that is not how the Bible worked or works. The Bible did so because the times called for it. The Bible imagines a peaceful world and then insists upon improvisation to realize that peace” (pp. 5-6).

McKnight then proceeds to assert that peace is fundamental to the Christian’s calling. God has made peace with us through Christ and made peace possible between opposing peoples through Christ, breaking down every human division. Peace shapes the vision of Christians for their lives in the world, calling forth imagination of new possibilities where peace has been absent. Peace calls us to improvise beyond the text of scripture to realize that vision in present day society. The remaining four chapters unpack McKnight’s thoughts of the shape of this imaginative improvisation on the Bible.

First of all, he invites us to a prophetic Imagination. He elaborates the peaceful vision the prophets proclaimed describing the coming of God’s kingdom rule, longed for by Israel in exile, and later under Rome. The coming of Jesus represented a turning point where an imagined future becomes kingdom imagination. In Jesus, kingdom has come. But what kind of kingdom? It is one that precludes war in a call of discipleship lived for others, manifested in the righteousness of the Sermon on the Mount, wholehearted love for God, neighbors, and even enemies, and the cruciform life, a denial of self and sacrificiality for others.

The kingdom imagination is an improvisational imagination. McKnight notes how the law of scripture shows marks of improvisation from wilderness to settlement and kingship to the ministry of Jesus and the life of the church. He addresses divorce law, for example and the laxity that often affected women adversely, the high standard uttered by Jesus, with the Matthean addition and Paul’s further exception. Thus African-American Christians improvised in envisioning their own liberation and so we might improvise in the pursuit of peace, presumably even against structures and ideas rooted in some formulation of biblical law (for example, the use of “just” or “humane” means in war). Finally, this improvisation arises from a peaceful imagination. It is an imagination that refuses to kill either Christian or non-Christian for the sake of the state, that takes up only the sword of enemy love, that imitates Christ in the way of peacemaking as a person of peace in every sphere.

There is much that is compelling in what McKnight writes. The central idea of Jesus as the king of peace and what it means to be a person of peace as one of his followers is a defining character of what it means to call oneself Christian. This is how Christ’s kingdom works and grows. Justifying war or embracing culture war runs against all this. I found myself struggling at two points:

One was, how far are we to be engaged in bringing in the peaceable kingdom? And how much awaits the return of Christ? Sometimes, it seems that McKnight was simply urging us to seek peace and pursue it to whatever extent we can, employing peaceful imagination (and I would argue that this may accomplish far more than we expect). At times, it felt he was suggesting nations act this way. It felt like he was trying to replace Christian nationalism with a Christianized state. Can the ethic of Christians and that of states in a fallen world be the same? If states are ordained to restrain evil by both punishing law-breakers and providing for defense from aggressors, can those who lead and enact these functions abdicate their responsibilities? And must Christians refuse any position, civil or military, where force must be ordered or exercised? I think McKnight would say yes. But this leaves others to do the “dirty work.” I would have liked for McKnight to have addressed these questions.

I also wonder about his improvisational approach to the Bible. How would he differentiate his improvisational approach to the Bible from that of Christian nationalists? I think this language is actually not helpful. The Bible, rightly handled, is enough to persuade me that the call of Christians is a call to peace, to shalom. McKnight makes that point for me by pointing to biblical texts, not by improvisation. Applying those texts in daily life certainly does take a biblically informed imagination but I think the language of improvisation, of the Bible not being enough, is reckless, and might open doors McKnight and I would rather see remain closed.

What McKnight challenges is our love of war and neglect of peace. If we are serious about Jesus, McKnight asks to what is our imagination devoted–to peace or to war, to defeating our enemies or loving them, to making one nation great, or proclaiming the Prince of Peace to the nations? And I would propose that the Bible is enough to answer that question.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Eve Isn’t Evil

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Eve Isn’t Evil, Julie Faith Parker. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023.

Summary: Feminist readings of biblical texts involving women, mostly from the Hebrew Bible. with one chapter on the New Testament.

I’ve benefited enormously in recent years from scholarship from women re-assessing the ways mostly male interpreters have interpreted passages about women, often allowing those passages to be used to the harm of women. While I haven’t agreed with everything in these works, I’ve also been convinced in numerous instances that I’ve read and and taught these passages wrongly. That was the case for me with this new work by Julie Faith Parker. She takes a number of Old Testament stories and offers feminist interpretive insights arising from close exegetical reading and unpacks this in a highly engaging fashion, combined with stories ranging from work with prisoners in Sing-Sing to encountering sexism in pastoral circles.

The title chapter offers a good example of the kind of insights arising from her work. She observes how Eve is often vilified in scripture in ways she believes unwarranted in the biblical account. She observes that Eve had yet to be created when the man had received the instruction not to eat of the tree (her response to the serpent might have reflected how he passed this along). Adam was with her (Genesis 3:6) accounting for the serpent’s use of the plural for “you” and Eve’s “we” in response. She notes that while the man blames both God and the woman, Eve tells the truth about the serpent and her own culpability, not blaming the man. Intriguingly, she observes that only the man (Genesis 3:23-24) is said to be banished from the garden–something that all the art I’ve seen of the expulsion of the first couple had obscured (she may well have left the garden to have children with Adam but only he is explicitly banished). Plainly, we vilify Eve more than the writer of Genesis does.

At the same time, I think Parker valorizes Eve more than is warranted in the text when she writes:

“She is a pioneering theologian who wrestles with the words of God. She is a thoughtful decision-maker who thinks before she acts. She is a curious seeker of knowledge who yearns to understand ethics so she can make her way in the world. She is the mythical mother of all discerning people” (p.22).

I think this goes too far, and supports a narrative that her and Adam’s partaking of the fruit is a triumph rather than a tragedy, something to be celebrated rather than lamented. I also wonder how “discerning” it is to credit the words of a talking serpent more than what God has said, or Adam, who had apparently passed on God’s instruction, even if he stood mutely by. But Parker makes the case for me that Eve (and other women) should not be singled out as evil. Adam’s part in the story, if anything, is far more problematic. The tragedy is that through this episode, we all learned the evil of breaking trust and disobeying God, and all of us are implicated.

Parker goes on to look at the family line of Abraham, the messed up character of this family, and how God affirms the worth of the women in these stories including Sarah and Hagar, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah. She challenges the ways we valorize Rahab, the sex worker, not unlike we do in Disney’s version of Pocahontas when both are faced with male conquest and slaughter. She notes the many women who function as prophets, although I would take exception to her valorizing the medium at Endor and including her in this company of women who speak for God. She challenges our understanding of Job’s wife and the statement “Curse God and die” when the Hebrew translated as “curse” is barak or “bless.” Could it be that this is a word of support rather than contempt?

She mixes feminist reading of the Psalms (including wondering about all the others sinned against when David claims to have sinned against God alone in Psalm 51) with an account of hitch-hiking in Central America, getting a ride with a truckload of soldiers, and their own interpretation with guns drawn of “I lift my eyes to the hills.” She recounts her love of prisoners as she teaches the Bible in Sing Sing and her restrained approach to teach the Song of Songs in a room full of male prisoners.

Her one chapter on the New Testament focuses on Jesus, her favorite feminist Jew. She notes the company of women who supported Jesus and ‘learned,” a word for disciple. We are reminded of Mary who gave him birth, who followed, and was with him at his death. We often disparage Martha but she is a diekonei or “minister” to Jesus. And, of course, women were the first witnesses to the resurrection. He also questions our portrayals of Mary Magdalene, observing that “Magdala” could mean “great.”

“Curious, Like Eve” is a chapter of “excurses” from previous chapters. A number are fascinating, raising intriguing ideas. I do question the exegesis of Genesis 1 to support non-binary sexuality based on the use of merisms throughout the account (“evening and morning,” for example, include everything in between) to offer warrant for male and female also including everything in between. This seems to be an argument from silence whereas the so-called “clobber verses” do proscribe certain forms of sexual behavior, which include incest and bestiality, although they say nothing about sexual orientation or gender identity. Can we not affirm what scripture affirms without “clobbering”? Might we not tread carefully where scripture remains silent? I would affirm with the author that in all things, we emulate “the love, generosity, courage, compassion” we find in scripture.

The book closes with two appendices. One on Bible Basics is a help to those trying to make sense of the Bible, and evidences the author’s deep love of the Bible. The other is an annotated bibliography for further study. Each chapter also includes reflection/discussion questions for personal or group use.

I loved reading this author for her ability to translate textual study for the lay reader. I bet she is a great teacher. She continued my education as a white, cisgender male on reading scripture through women’s eyes. Even in the places where I wasn’t convinced or where I took exception, she made me think–always a gift.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Flowers for the Judge

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Flowers for the Judge, Margery Allingham. Avarang Books, 2023 (Originally published in 1936).

Summary: Campion is called in when a member of a publishing family disappears, only for him to be found dead in the firm’s vault, with all the evidence pointing toward younger cousin Mike as the murderer.

Twenty years before Tom Barnabas, the nephew of the founder of Barnabas publishing house of London, just vanished one morning, literally seen one moment and gone the next, with no one around. Now, another family member has been missing several days. Paul Brande was expected to meet up with his wife Gina on a Friday night and the family learned of it at a party on Sunday when Gina mentioned it. This was not unusual for Paul, but as a precaution, they ask their family friend for Albert Campion for help.

On Monday, a secretary goes to the vault to get papers for the eldest cousin, John Widdowson, and finds Paul lying dead by the door to the vault. It was discovered that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning. As Campion investigate, he finds a broken ventilator at the rear of the vault, exposed to the garage. A sooty tube is found nearby. A neighbor testifies that she had heard Mike’s car running on Friday evening, when it was established that Paul died.

Attention begins to focus in on Mike, culminating at the coroner’s inquest. We learn that Gina and Paul were in an unhappy marriage and that their appointment on Friday was to discuss a divorce, which Gina could not pursue on her own. Earlier, Paul and Mike had been heard fighting, presumably about Gina, with whom Mike had been very friendly. During the early part of Friday evening, Mike claims that he was out walking, something he usually did not do. Then he returned to warm up his car to go out, interrupted by Gina wanting to go out because Paul had not come home. Also, on Sunday, Mike had gone down to the vault but said nothing about finding Paul’s body, even though it was found by the door of the vault. At the conclusion of the inquest Mike is arrested for the murder.

Campion is not convinced although it appears others have good alibis. His attention focuses on an unpublished manuscript of a play by William Congreve, that forms a substantial part of the firm’s assets. Campion discovers that it is a facsimile. But what of the original? Could its absence be connected to the murder?

And what of the the first man to disappear twenty years ago? He’s not an irrelevant plot detail (though not the murderer).

I think this is one of the best Campions I’ve read so far, including an interesting couple of plot twists at the end, including a dramatic conclusion to Mike’s trial. It is interesting that in least in this story, Campion seems less a quirky presence and more of a detective than in previous stories. A good read!

Review: Strange Religion

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Strange Religion, Nijay K. Gupta. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2024.

Summary: Roman society thought Christians weird for both their beliefs and practices, and yet oddly compelling.

The early Christians in Roman society were weird. Strange. They weren’t trying to be. But their faith resulted in them standing apart from others in Roman society. Their beliefs and practices broke with religious conventions. Yet some found them strangely compelling and their movement kept growing. nijay K. Gupta transports us back to first and second century Roman culture to help us see why they were thought so strange.

He breaks his study into four parts. The first shows how strange becoming Christian was. In Roman society, the gods just were, and there were lots of them. One didn’t choose to believe in a god so much as did the things to stay on good terms with the gods, pax deorum, or “peace with the gods.” There were regular practices to appease the gods. No one thought about friendship with the gods, just staying on their good side. Then Christians came along talking about believing–that there was one God, that Jesus came as the image of God in human flesh, and thus they made no images. Faith had both content and was personal–people trusted in God because of Jesus, saw them in a covenant friendship with God. What’s more, this Jesus who they worshipped as the image of God died a despised death on a Roman cross and his followers claimed that he physically rose and, because of this, they believed they would one day bodily be resurrected. Strange, huh? They also thought it was dangerous, not a religion but a superstition that could endanger the social order. It was innovative rather than ancient, ecstatic rather than ritualized, individual rather than corporate, and desperate, as in intense in devotion, rather than ritually effective.

Then there was the matter of what they believed–unbelievable things! They believed in the supremacy of Jesus as Lord over all, not one of a company of gods. There was no smoke and blood of sacrifices but simply worship. Rather than believing in shrines and temples as “spiritual hot spots” to connect with the God, they believed themselves indwelt with God through the Holy Spirit, enabling them to worship and connect with God anywhere. Finally, they thought differently about time, not as an annual calendar of festivals to the gods, but in terms of what has been fulfilled in time and what is yet to be fulfilled–is it time yet?

They were strange in how they gathered to worship–privately in houses rather than at appointed times in public at temples. It led to a lot of rumors. There was the language of family–brother and sister. Instead of priest, the were led by the head of the household, who presumably managed his own household well. And these gatherings broke social conventions with rich and poor, slave and free, men and women at table together. It was also a priestless gathering, with Christ their priest, whose sacrifice for them was remembered in the bread and cup of shared meals. They responded to him in offered lives, songs of praise, and prayers as he had taught them. All in these private household gatherings.

Apart from the mystery cults, Romans didn’t want to get too close to their gods. By contrast, Christians sought to become like Christ, to imitate Christ. And what they imitated stood out. They sought to follow Christ in his humility, his love, righteousness, and purity–not qualities sought after by the Romans. The status-toppling life of Jesus from Son to despised servant who died upturned all social hierarchies, leading to a radical equality, as already noted. But Gupta pauses at this point to observe their imperfections. They fought and split. They did not protest the institution of slavery. and they slandered each other and spoke judgmentally, making statements that would later be used to justify anti-Semitism.

So what made these strange people so compelling? Gupta speculates:

“Some say it was the promise of immortality. Some say it was the networking savvy of spreading the religion in an organized across the whole empire. Some say it was the attraction of monotheism. Some say it was the teaching on morality. I am sure all of these are factors. But I can’t help but believe it was the people, the Christians themselves. In the first century a Roman encounter with Jesus was probably going to happen through a small community of Christians. This community had to be compelling.”

One can’t help but reflect on the parallels and differences in our own social setting. It makes me wonder if we are thought strange and weird and dangerous and compelling in ways that reflect the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus. Are we thought strange because we impoverish ourselves to help those with even greater needs in our midst? Are we thought weird because renounce consumerism and unsustainable living on our planet as well as self-promotion for ways of hidden service? Are we thought dangerous because we challenge national pretensions to imperial greatness for the sake of the advance of God’s transnational kingdom, and because we welcome the “others” that our politicians consider dangerous? Are we thought compelling in a society of epic loneliness because we really function as family, especially for those who have none? What troubles me as I write this is that by and large, I don’t think these are the ways we are found to be strange, weird, and dangerous. And I wonder if we are found compelling in consequence?

What strikes me in Gupta’s account is that the early believers weren’t trying to be strange, weird, dangerous, or compelling. They were struggling, imperfectly to be sure, to follow Jesus, to become like him. Their lives, their practices, including their transformed social relationships, were shaped by what they believed, by who they believed. And this makes me ask, quite simply, are we?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Delicate Storm

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The Delicate Storm (John Cardinal and Lise DeLorme #2), Giles Blunt. London: HarperCollins, 2004.

Summary: A gruesome murder in the woods is soon followed by another, leading to an international investigation, a terrorist plot from the ’70’s, and a shrewd murderer on the loose, climaxed by an epic ice storm.

The call comes for John Cardinal when a local living near the woods reports a gruesome discovery. His dog has retrieved a severed human arm. The investigators retrieve more parts traced back to a cabin where the body was hacked apart to be eaten by bears. It’s an American scouting out ice fishing possibilities. The Mounties, are called in, including a former nemesis of Cardinal’s.

Meanwhile, Cardinal’s father’s heart condition is worsening. The one bright spot is a young woman doctor, Winter Cates, recently arrived and quickly embraced for her ability to connect with patients, including Cardinal’s father. Then she goes missing. Soon her naked body is found in the woods. That case goes to DeLorme, but they soon begin to wonder if the murders are connected. They wonder more when they discover a fifteen year old case of a woman murdered under similar circumstances, strangled with signs that made it look like she had been raped.

The only evidence they have is that Cates’ murderer apparently sought her out to treat a gunshot wound, leaving signs of type AB blood in her office, but nothing else. Then Cardinal goes to New York where the first murder victim lived to learn that the supposed victim is very much alive and that the real victim is a former CIA agent using his identity. But what was he doing in Canada? And why are Canadian Security Intelligence Services making it hard to track down the story behind this man?

While this is all going on, Cardinal is getting veiled death threats from a criminal he put away, due to be released from prison soon. They are coming to his home. A buried secret connected to the case is putting his family in jeopardy.

Further clues from the case of the murdered CIA agent lead to Montreal and a terrorist plot that resulted in the death of a hostage in the 1970’s and a mysterious figure, Yves Grenelle, who disappeared after the death. Could Grenelle be the killer who has left three bodies in the forests of Algonquin Bay, perhaps under another identity? Who is he and why Algonquin Bay?

An artist skilled in taking images and “aging” them gives DeLorme and Cardinal a clue to the identity of the killer, but there is not enough evidence to make an arrest, let alone convict, leading Cardinal to make a risky move to confront the suspected murderer amid a hundred year ice storm.

DeLorme and Cardinal work well while respecting boundaries. But they clearly notice each other–she appreciating Cardinal’s maturity and integrity, he noticing her attractiveness. Then they are thrown together, sharing a hotel room but in separate beds, when DeLorme’s room is flooded and none are available. Nothing happens, except in Cardinal’s mind, as he struggled to sleep. It’s awkward, and we’re left wondering how the two will work it out. At least Cardinal doesn’t keep it secret from his wife.

The book is one you don’t want to put down. There are threads left dangling for future books in the series. And having lived through ice storms with power outages, and frigid weather, Blunt captures the creeping dread one has in these kind of storms and the deeper frustration and ominous foreboding when one knows who a killer is but cannot find the way to prove it.

Review: Being Here

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Being Here: Prayers for Curiosity, Justice, and Love, Pádraig Ó Tuama. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024.

Summary: A book of essays and prayers, including 31 days of readings and prayers, focused on being in communion with God as we seek to live lovingly and justly in our own places.

Pádraig Ó Tuama is an Irish poet-theologian invited for a writer-in-residence program at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan during 2020. The essays, poems, and prayers of this book arose out of the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns of this annus horribilis. The work opens with this prayer that seemed to express the longings of many of us in that year:

     Turning to the light
     the light turns to us.
     Moving toward the source
     the source moves toward us.
     Holding on to hope
     hope holds on to us.

The book opens with asking, “What is Prayer?” and answers “It’s not a passport to heaven. If anything, it’s a way of seeing here, a way, of being here.” After a short essay on the uses of the book, Pádraig Ó Tuama offers a fascinating essay on the Collect, a form he uses through the thirty-one days of prayer to follow. His most succinct summary is:

  1. Address
  2. Say more
  3. Ask one thing
  4. Say more
  5. End

Then he practices that kind of succinctness over the 31 prayers and readings that follow. For each day, there is:

  • Opening Prayer
  • Reading (drawn from literature)
  • Scripture
  • Silence
  • Collect of the Day
  • A Remembering Prayer

The opening prayer and remembering prayer are the same throughout. I found myself centering on different phrases each day. The prayers for generosity, encounter, stories, new beginnings and mutual confession in the opening are gathered up in this wonderful closing: “Because this is a way of living/That’s worth living daily.” Being here. The remembering prayer recalls the glory of our creation as very good as we look about our city and then “pray for our city/and for the cities we are” and that God would breathe renewal into us throughout our days and all their encounters. What a wonderful prayer to pray in the midst of Manhattan or any of our cities! Being here.

Between the opening and remembering prayers were literary and scripture readings, a time for silence, and a collect, often thematically related. For example, from day 18, he pairs Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, with its tale of dying aspirations and the call of Life, with Matthew 20:32, where Jesus asks the question “What do you want me to do for you?” He follows with this collect:

     Questioning Jesus,
     we do not always know what we want.
     Yet what we want
     can drive us
     even when we do not know it.
     Help us find the moments to come in contact
     with those deep drives
     so that we can be moved
     toward what will
     create
     and not destroy.
     Amen.

The thirty one days follow the course of Jesus’s life from genealogy and birth to death and resurrection.

The book concludes with several brief essays and poems including one on the power of stories during the author’s struggle with vertigo amid our collective disorientation of COVID, and one on the spirituality of conflict. There is also a thought-provoking essay on Mary questioning the ways we shroud her with a kind of saccharine piety when her life, and the life she bears, is a form of resistance to Rome. And he offers a wonderful prayer for times after pandemic, asking, “Help us help us/with the time needed for integration;/with the time needed for risk;/with the time for recovery/and honor and trying old things again/and trying new things again, too.”

What Pádraig Ó Tuama brings us in these prayers is an invitation to be present both to Christ and to our lives, and the lives around us. Indeed, this is praying that opens our eyes to the presence of the unseen kingdom in our midst. Being here.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.