Review: The Beautiful Mystery

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The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2013.

Summary: While solving a case involving the murder of a prior in a remote monastery, Gamache must confront his arch-nemesis Chief Superintendent Sylvain Françoeur.

Things must be quiet in Three Pines. No murders there to solve. Instead, Gamache and Beauvoir are sent to a remote monastery, Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, of an order, The Gilbertines, thought to have died out. St. Gilbert’s distinction was his loyalty for Thomas à Becket. In consequence, the Gilbertines were chased across Europe, and a group, disguised as workers, find their way to a remote part of Canada, surviving for four centuries.

Two dozen monks led by an Abbot and a Prior who is also their choir director maintain a self-sustaining community and come together to sing the most beautiful Gregorian chant heard anywhere in the world. Gamache knows. He has heard the one recording of their chants that took the world by storm.

And now the Prior is dead, murdered by blows to the head, curled in a ball by the wall of the Abbot’s garden. It can be accessed only through a bookcase in the Abbot’s office. The only ones who typically do so are the Abbot, the Prior, and the Abbot’s secretary, Brother Simon, who had found the Prior.

Concealed in the Prior’s sleeves was a piece of parchment with musical notation in the character of chant, but unlike any chant, and with non-sensical words. What did all this mean? And how was it connected to the Prior’s death. And who of the other twenty-three brothers, seemingly one in song and community, did this? And what is the source of the particular beauty of the singing of these brothers, the beautiful mystery?

Gamache and Beauvoir set out to unravel all this in their patient, methodical fashion. They discover a deeply divided community, reflecting a divide between the Abbot and Prior, once the deepest of friends. The Prior wants to make another recording, and for the monks to be permitted to break their vow of silence to tour. The Abbot refuses even though a number of the monks oppose him. Even though one of them has shown him that the foundations of the monastery are crumbling and may not last another ten years. Another recording could save the building. But the Abbot fears it could destroy the order.

Amid the efforts to solve the murder, the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté, Sylvain Françoeur, arrives, ostensibly to take over the investigation. He has it in for Gamache, and has come to attack Gamache and Beauvoir at the points of their vulnerabilities. In Françoeur, Penny has created a formidable and subtle villain, one we love to hate.

Some of the promotional copy speaks of “the divine, the human, and the cracks in between” and this is indeed a theme running through this mystery. The transcendent beauty of the chants, even with a killer among them, captivates Gamache. These monks believe what they sing, have come to this place to sing what they believe. Yet they are human. Twenty-three distinct men. The cracks between have riven their community, in as great a danger as the walls of their monastery. But amid the noble work of the Sûreté to execute justice, there are cracks as well. Obviously between Gamache and Françoeur, but also between Gamache and Beauvoir, stemming from the ambush attack and the traumas that have never healed. There are the cracks within as well.

There is also a crack between faith and secularity. The tension between faithfulness to God and the vows of the order and the pull of secular fame and the money it could bring is one crack. There is also a contrast between the faith of the monks and the officers of the Sûreté who all have walked away from the church. The tension is greatest in Gamache, who prayed the last rites over his fallen officers amid a gun battle, who is captivated by the chants, and yet…. In the last words of dialogue, Gamache is asked, “Would you like me to hear your confession?” to which he replies, “Not just yet, I think, mon pere.” I’m intrigued with what Penny will do with this.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — We Dressed Up

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Palace Theater by Cinema Treasures licensed under CC BY 3.0

My wife and I went to the doctor the other day. Both of us put on nicer shirts and remarked that this was the old Youngstown coming out in us. When we were young, in the 1950’s and early 1960’s (and before that as well) people dressed up on a number of occasions.

To go to the doctor. That’s a little ironic because you often take off your clothes in the exam room. I guess we didn’t want people to think of us that way!

To go downtown. Women and girls in dresses, hats, and gloves, men in nicer slacks, shirt, tie, and jacket.

To go to the theater or a concert. Notice how everyone is dressed at the Palace. Most of the men even had hats! If it was a symphony concert at Stambaugh Auditorium, you really dressed up–evening wear for men, formal gowns for the women.

To go to weddings and funerals. We still do that to some extent. Dressing up honors the bridal couple. It honors the deceased.

To go to church. We believed we should dress in our best for God–and not just on Christmas and Easter! I remember that both my brother and I would polish our shoes on Saturday and we’d be in nice slacks, jacket and tie on Sunday. Of course there was the ritual of the Saturday night bath (whether you needed it or not!).

I remember staying dressed up to visit grandparents, which we did many Sundays. It was a sign of respect.

To go out to a restaurant. For one thing, going out to a restaurant was a big deal, usually for some special occasion. And many restaurants were owned by families and were fancier than today’s very casual, chain-owned dining establishments.

Things changed in the late 1960’s with hippies and protests. Jeans and a t-shirt became the uniform. Anything more was pretentious and “phony.” We criticized it as a show, one of keeping up with the Joneses. Maybe underneath it all, we just wanted to get comfortable.

We dressed up for the things we (or our parents) thought special. Our dress reminded us to act the part as well. We acted our best in our Sunday best.

Maybe coming out of the pandemic reminds us of this. We’ve lived our past year in sweatpants or yoga pants, untucked shirts and casual shoes. I had a work-related meeting recently at a restaurant and pulled out dress slacks, shirt and shoes that had been in the closet for the past year. It was another reminder of what we did on so many occasions.

Special occasions.

At a time when Youngstown was a special place.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: God Has Chosen

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God Has Chosen, Mark R. Lindsay. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: A survey of the development of the doctrine of election throughout Christian history, including discussions of human freedom, those who are not of the elect, and the status of Israel as chosen.

The idea of election, that God chooses a people for God’s self, is one precious to some, an assurance of belonging and of God having done something we could not do. It is threatening to others–how may I know I am among the elect, and how can God save some and not others?

From the writers of scripture to the present day, the church’s theologians have wrestled with these ideas. What Mark R. Lindsay does in this work is to trace the development of this doctrine throughout Christian history. After an introduction in which he differentiates his approach from other contemporary scholars, he begins with some of the key texts on election from both testaments, emphasizing that any idea of chosenness has to draw upon what this meant for Israel. This is followed by a consideration of the early fathers: Ignatius of Antioch, Origen, Cyprian, and Augustine. This was a formative period for the church’s doctrine and the corresponding question of who is “in” and who is “out” that reflect their convictions about election.

In subsequent chapters Lindsay considers two or three key thinkers in each chapter. Chapter three focuses on Aquinas and Duns Scotus, where the elect and citizens of the state were more or less one and the same. Chapter four focuses on three Reformation figures: Calvin, Beza, and Arminius. Striking here is the relatively limited space devoted to this by Calvin, the expansion and extension of Calvin’s thought by Beza, and the responses of Arminius regarding human agency and God’s salvation.

Chapter five addresses early modernity and Lindsay offers an interesting pairing of Schliermacher and J. N. Darby. On the face, they could not be more different but Lindsay argues for an expansive vision of God’s electing will as something they had in common. Chapter six focuses on Barth alone, and the development of his thought over the course of his career, particularly as his thought focused on Christ and the community formed in him, and its resistance to Nazi ideology. The final chapter then considers the Holocaust. If God chose the Jewish people in some way, what then do we make of the near extermination of that people? Does this deny the existence of God, or is the remnant that survives one more evidence of God’s continuing relation with this people? Or is this one more place to argue for a free will theodicy? And how ought Christians think of the Jewish people given the dangers of supercessionism?

Throughout the book, Lindsay explores the differing ways thinkers understood the elect and “the reprobate.” In his conclusion, he shows his own hand in expressing a tentative hopeful universalism grounded in our own incapacity to fully understand the mind of God. He cites Revelation 22:17: “Let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life” (Italics in the author’s citation of this verse). The author warns against “definitive pronouncements,” which is warranted. Given the testimony of the whole of scripture, and particularly that of our Lord, I think there might also be a caution against “speculative suggestions” that may soften the plain warnings of scripture. I believe we may hope and find comfort in the wideness of God’s electing grace while never presuming with regard to the warnings of judgment.

However one sorts these things out, this work is helpful in offering incisive summaries and comparisons of the thought of different key figures as well as an extensive bibliography. For a survey of two thousand years of thought, Lindsay has presented the reader with a work that is at once introductory and of significant depth on this important doctrine.

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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.

Review: Mixed Blessing

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Mixed Blessing, Chandra Crane, Foreward by Jemar Tisby. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020.

Summary: The author describes her own challenges and blessings of being a person of mixed ethnic and cultural identity, and how the Christian can affirm and include the growing number of mixed identity persons.

“So what are you?” can be one of the most difficult questions for a person born of parents of different ethnicities or raised in a home with those of different ethnicities. The author has experienced this dilemma as a child of a Thai father and European-American mother raised in a home with an adoptive Black father.

Answering the question can be hard for oneself and much depends on how one has grown up. It may also depend on one’s physical appearance and the degree to which a person might pass for a particular ethnicity or represent a blend of ethnicities.

Equally difficult is how one identifies oneself to others. Some contexts do not even have a category for mixed persons. She describes a time when the ministry she works for (the same one in which I work) offered breakouts by ethnicity. She did not know where to go because there was no group for her. Eventually, an organizer who was also a mixed ethnicity person recognized her dilemma and invite her to the Asian American staff group she was a part of. And she reports how ten years later in a similar setting, there was a group for her and others like her.

One of the strengths of this work is that Crane doesn’t make her experience normative for all, nor suggest that one must stick to a particular way of framing one’s identity. She recognizes the opportunities to identify with monoethnic groups that are part of one’s ethno-cultural heritage while avoiding cultural appropriation. She suggests four different postures, any of which may be appropriate:

  1. Solidarity identity. Particularly if we may look like a person of that identity, although this carries with it responsibilities to deal with privilege if one is identifying with the dominant culture.
  2. Shifting identity. This especially makes sense if one has been raised bi-lingually or bi-culturally (or multiple cultures or languages). The big question is whether each identity is genuinely who one is. Such people may be real bridgebuilders.
  3. Substitute identity. Sometimes the healthy choice may be in finding identity in something other than ethnicity, for example as a musician.
  4. Singular identity. Some live with a both/and identity in which these blend fully. This might only be fully realized in eternity.

Crane proposes a discipleship process incorporating these postures in a three step process of prayer about ethnic formation, of exploring our ethnic identity, and of applying truths learned to one’s the Christian life.

The work centers on Christ, and observes that our incarnate Lord was of mixed descent. His family line includes Rahab the Canaanite, Bathsheba the Hittite, and Ruth the Moabite. To be in Christ as one of mixed heritage is to recognize that this indeed a blessing, that one is uniquely made and gifted by God. She deals with the critique that we should just find our identity in Christ by contending that Jesus does not submerge mixed identities but brings out their full beauty.

The book strikes a good balance of description, instruction, advocacy, and pastoral care. It reflects to me a wise person who has been on this journey for some time offering counsel and grace, especially for all who like her, are “mixed blessings” or are the parents of “mixed blessing” children. It’s an important book for me as a European American on a journey to understand and affirm and celebrate the multi-ethnic tapestry that is God’s intent for the church. Crane helps me better understand what it is like when multiple threads of that tapestry run though the life of one person. And she offers me a better question than “so what are you?” From now on I can ask “tell me about your family and how you grew up.”

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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.

Real Fathers

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Photo by Tatiana Syrikova on Pexels.com

Father’s Day is approaching and I suspect there is good cause for ambivalence in celebrating this holiday. We have too many reports of men, including biological fathers who are abusers of their spouses, children, or other women. To make matters worse, many institutions dominated by men have covered for and defended the abusers. Sadly, we see this even in churches from Catholic to Southern Baptist. More than outright abuse, part of the problem is the use of power to uphold abusive and subordinating regimes, treating women as a lesser form of human, not unlike what we’ve tried to do with many of the people of color in this country.

I have to admit to being deeply disturbed as a man and as a father with what I see. It cuts across the grain of my deepest convictions and aspirations as both man and father. I find myself deeply angry with the men who perpetrate these wrongs, and perhaps even more angry with those who have tried to cover them and blame the victims instead of protect them. This was not how I was taught to be a man.

Fundamentally, I was taught respect. Respect for my elders and every elderly person on my street. I was taught respect for women, beginning with my mother. I was taught to respect women of my own age as I would want my own sister to be respected. I was taught that children were special in God’s sight.

I was taught partnership and not patriarchy. It is not about power, but about seeking to outdo each other as servants. I was stunned as I read St. Paul’s injunction that I was to love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Christ died for the church. Sometimes the hardest dying is to listen to another and give up what you want because what they want or think is needful is more important.

I was taught responsibility. Not sole responsibility but shared responsibility–for finances, home, children. I was taught that real men neither are irresponsible or controlling, but co-responsible. And there is no off-loading the blame when things don’t work out.

I was taught fidelity. There was no one else in the lives of either of my parents. Fidelity has meant for me that I don’t go with another woman even in my thoughts. That doesn’t mean I don’t notice other women. It is simply that there is no other woman for me. It is actually a joy as we celebrated our 43rd anniversary recently to revel in what we have been for each other, and each other alone. I’ve sometimes joked that any man can love a lot of women. It takes a real man to love one woman thoroughly and deeply and passionately for a lifetime. I want to be that man.

I was taught that parenting was a job for both a father and mother, if both are present. I recognize there are many single-parent families which exist for many reasons, where the parent does an excellent job raising a child and nothing I say here should detract from that. Children learn from the models of each gender both about themselves and those of the other gender and how we treat each other in ways that enable us to flourish. The reward is cherished memories. I cherish memories of early morning feedings, story times, school projects, campouts and hikes, and long drives together with my son getting his driving hours on his temp permit.

There are real husbands and fathers out there doing this work. Part of what angers me about the men who have forsaken this noble calling and have abused and demeaned women, who have abused or just walked away from children, as well as those who cover over these egregious transgressions, is that you have drawn away the attention from the real men who are doing the work of being real fathers. You cast disgrace on all of us even as you disgrace yourselves. What is worse is that some of you have clothed this in the robes of sacred work. You not only disgrace other men but also dishonor the God you claim to serve.

Instead of protecting each other as men and blaming women for our behavior, it’s time for us to call one another out for this ignoble and unmanly behavior. We say “boys will be boys” and that is exactly what so much of this is, boys in men’s bodies. It’s past time for this to stop. It’s past time to let this behavior go with silence, or an uneasy laugh. If you are an abuser, or one who must put women down to raise yourself up or if you cover for those who do these things, be enough of a man to admit it and get help. Find men who will be ruthlessly honest with you who will call you into the respectful and responsible manhood you’ve not yet learned.

It is a good and honorable thing to be a father. For those men who are not yet fathers, are you working to develop the character of a good father? For those of us who witness the demeaning of women and other abuses in institutions we are part of, will we stand against this and with those who are abused? We must not put the onus on the victims to do this but stand with them. This is the work of real fathers. Perhaps this is the work to which we can dedicate ourselves as men this Father’s Day.

Bookselling Heroes

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Jeff Garrett, who helped his wife Nina Barrett launch Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston, Illinois. Photo by Robert C. Trube, all rights reserved.

They don’t look like our idea of heroes. They are not frontline healthcare workers. The aren’t military service men and women or public safety officers who put their lives at risk for a higher cause. But they also contribute to preserving the fabric of society, the richness of our communities, and the intellectual and emotional health of our citizens. They are booksellers.

If they are independent booksellers, this means they are small business owners who have assumed both the risks and benefits of owning a business, having to pay rent, vendors, and employees. It means long hours and lots of unglamorous work. Everything from cleaning the sidewalks and toilets, lifting and unpacking boxes of books and getting them onto shelves.

One bookseller I know has not been able to open his business during COVID, nor sell books at conferences where he makes a good deal of his profit. He works hard to publicize good books through his online reviews and special offers. His books are meticulously packed, and often order acknowledgements are accompanied by personal notes. In other seasons, I’ve seen pictures of him unloading a truckload of books and then arranging them all meticulously by topics on tables, spending hours over several days interacting with buyers to help them find the right book, and then re-packing and unloading them back at his store. I first met him at a conference and it was a joy to watch him in action, recommending books I’d never heard of, or some which I couldn’t call to mind. It was like watching a virtuoso musician performing. My bookselling friend didn’t just sell books–he knew and loved books and cared deeply about connecting the right book and each of his customers.

And he and his wife work very hard at this, day after day.

While booksellers are all unique individuals, I would say they all have this in common–the work and the love. So, is it right to be considered a hero for doing work one loves? I think so. Having models of people who work hard with excellence to serve others, usually at minimal financial benefit, are worth noting. Beyond this, many of these people see their work as part of the civic fabric of their “main street” or whatever other street on which they work. They participate in community events. They host events from author appearances to readings for children. They highlight the voices of distinctive parts of their communities, whether of women, of people of color, of LGBTQ persons, or those of different religions.

Living in a bigger city, I love visiting small towns. I especially love the ones with a rich mix of shops and restaurants that my wife can spend an afternoon browsing–antique shops, boutiques, hardware stores, and bookstores. It’s the mix that makes it fun. What we don’t often appreciate his how hard all these business owners work to create this magic. But when we visit one of the forgettable small towns that are little more than civic buildings, a convenience store and a gas station, we begin to appreciate the value booksellers and others offer.

Sometimes these heroes have to give up their businesses. Maybe the finances just don’t work out, despite pouring time, energy, and in many instances, personal resources into the venture. More often, the challenge is just time, and the lack of another hero to pick up the mantle. I’ve seen more than one bookseller whose stores I really enjoyed visiting and who did great work for many years come to the realization that they no longer had the energy for that work, or that they wanted to use what remained to see and do things they had denied themselves for many years.

Sometimes, the community is blessed when someone younger comes along who shares the passion of the bookseller and takes over the business, often breathing new life into that business while preserving what brought a reliable clientele through the door. I’ve watched that happen with a store in a small town about 30 miles from us, and how that store is a community gathering place.

I hope these heroes survive the challenges of the pandemic. The books they’ve sent me have tided me and many of my friends through this time. I don’t think these heroes are looking for any acclaim. What would mean the most, particularly if you live in their town is that you would give them your trade, come to a few of their events and buy books, and tell your friends what a grand place their store is.

Review: The Hidden Wound

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The Hidden Wound, Wendell Berry. Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2010 (Original edition 1968, with Afterword 1988).

Summary: An extended essay on racism in America, our collective attempts to conceal this wound upon American life, and its connections to our deformed ideas of work.

Wendell Berry wrote words that would be exceptional for most whites today. These were written in 1968 by a white man of the South, making them all the more exceptional:

“If white people have suffered less obviously from racism than black people, they have nevertheless suffered greatly; the cost has been greater perhaps than we can yet know. If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of the wound into himself. As the master, or as a member of the dominant race, he has felt little compulsion to acknowledge it or speak of it; the more painful it has grown the more deeply he has hidden it within himself. But the wound is there, and it is a profound disorder, as great a damage in his mind as it is in his society.

This wound is in me….I want to know, as fully and exactly as I can, what the wound is and how much I am suffering from it….”

Berry begins by acknowledging the story of his family as a slaveholding family, one that sold as well as acquired slaves. He acknowledges a family that went to church with its slaves but inured itself to the teachings about moral obligations that would have unraveled slavery.

He then turns to a childhood memory of Nick, a Black man who worked for his grandfather. He spoke of the racist structures that assigned Nick a place of being a worker and tenant and the dignity with which Nick accepted these but also the dignity of Nick’s work–his careful study of saddle horses, of the requirements of the land. Nick took Berry under his wing and taught him about the work of the farm. But the wound was there, evident in Nick not being able to accept the invitation to Berry’s birthday party, and Berry deciding that the only decent thing to do was to sit with Nick outside.

Berry recognizes in both what he learned from Nick in all his dignity and the underlying social divisions between them a picture of the deformities of our American society that defined success as distancing oneself from the physical labor of the farm and that used knowledge and status to make money off of the labors of others. So we have diminished ourselves, even as we had to diminish the personhood of Blacks to enslave them, something we have done since 1619. In doing so, we have alienated ourselves from good work and from the land upon which our lives depend. We have considered that work to be “n***** work” (Berry’s terminology, objectionable today but reflecting the demeaning character of its historical usage). By this we have not only demeaned persons but also lost our connection to the pleasures of good physical work and the land where this work is done.

Berry’s argument isn’t for legislation or structural change (and I believe this may be a weakness in ignoring the goods that can be done by addressing unjust structures). He argues that we need one another to heal the wounds racism has inflicted. Just as Nick taught Berry the wisdom of the farm and good work while Berry bridged the divide by sitting with Nick rather than staying with the white folks during his birthday, Berry argues that the task is not so much for whites to “free” Blacks but rather to “recognize the full strength and grace of their distinctive humanity” and that “they possess a knowledge for the lack of which we are incomplete and in pain.”

In his Afterword, written twenty years later, Berry addresses the displacement of racism from rural to urban settings and the decline of family farms, including Black farms. What has happened is simply a shift of the deformed ideas of work from the farm to the city with high paid executives and others who do “menial” work. Overcoming racism means no longer perpetuating these destructive ideas of work but paying just wages for all good and necessary work. Berry, drawing on his deep values of community also argues that integration without the restoration of the fabric of community is inadequate.

Perhaps the most significant thing in this extended essay, which I felt stands well on its own without the Afterword, is Berry’s courageous acknowledgement of the wound of racism on our national body. It is a wound caused by whites, but one from which whites suffer as well as Blacks. A strength of this work is that he owns his own complicity and his own learning with no “yes, buts.” It is vintage Berry, utterly consistent with other works of his on the dignity of manual work, of knowledge of the land, of caring for place, and of membership in community. What is striking is that Berry here offers a generous vision of community and membership that includes Black and white and the value in the humanity of each person. While Berry downplays systemic issues and may be faulted for this, his integration of issues of race into the larger themes of his work makes this more than merely a writing of place by a rural agriculturalist. It is an essay that discerns the fabric of society we are weaving, the rents in that fabric, and the crucial threads needed for a durable and useful garment.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Charles P. Henderson

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I grew up hearing that he was one of the best mayors Youngstown ever had up to that point. He was the grandson of William Henderson, an iron worker at Brown-Bonnell Iron Works. Charles P. Henderson was born March 3, 1911. He graduated from Princeton in the class of ’32. He went on to receive his law degree from the University of Michigan and returned to practice law. He was elected a municipal court judge in 1941. His political career was interrupted by World War 2. He served four years in the army then returned to Youngstown.

He found a city rife with crime and racketeering and decided to run for Mayor on an anti-corruption platform. In 1947, he defeated incumbent Ralph O’Neill by 3671 votes. Some think he won because voters were fed up with three City Council members who stayed away from meetings to block appointment of a councilman for the third ward. One of his first acts was to appoint FBI trained J. Edward Allen as police chief with a mission to clear out organized vice and crime. He appointed a new, ten man vice squad. Operators of the “bug,” and bookies were arrested. Much of the action shifted over the county line centered on the Jungle Inn, in Liberty Township.

Henderson worked to reduce smoke and smog, eliminate dumps, and improve housing. His efforts won him national attention and in 1950 he won the American All-City award for progressive attention. He won his 1951 campaign by 7,000 votes. However, resistance to his anti-corruption measures was growing and he was defeated in 1953 in his attempt to win a fourth term by Frank X. Kryzan. Meanwhile, Henderson was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a member of the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, an effort to coordinate federal and state government efforts.

In 1965, he was appointed by Governor James Rhodes as a Probate Court judge. He participated in a number of organizations related to the practice of law: Mahoning County. and Ohio State Bar Associations, Ohio State Municipal League, the Association of Probate judges the Judicial Conference, and Judicial College. He also participated on the boards of the Public Library of Youngstown, and the county Boards of Mental Health and Elections. In the late 1960’s, after a series of failed school levies threatened to, Henderson headed up a citizens committee spearhead an effort for the levy passage. It failed but the seventh try finally passed.

Henderson retired in 1985 and passed after a sudden heart attack on September 15, 1990. He was survived by his wife, the former Margaret Arms. Henderson was probably one of the most trusted people in Youngstown. While the city didn’t always want its politicians to be good, Henderson was one of those people came to when the public trust was important. I’ll leave others to decide who was Youngstown’s best mayor. But it’s clear to me he was one of the good ones.

To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.” Enjoy!

Review: Mother of Modern Evangelicalism

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Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears, Arlin C. Migliazzo, Foreword by Kristen Kobes Du Mez. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020.

Summary: The first comprehensive biography on Henrietta Mears that focuses on her early life, her Christian Education ministry at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and her national impact on a nascent evangelical network of leaders, on Christian publishing and retreat ministry.

She had been dead for almost a decade when I received a copy of What the Bible is All About. I was a young Christian, still in high school, trying to read the Bible. The book started me on a lifelong habit of reading scripture through its clear explanations of the layout of the Bible, the world of the Bible, and the central figure of scripture, the Lord Jesus. In a small way at least, I was one more person in whose life Henrietta Mears had an impact. I had no notion of the breadth of impact the grandmotherly woman on the back cover had during her life on American evangelicalism.

The edition of What the Bible is All About that helped me begin reading the Bible.

Mears established the largest Sunday School in the country and headed up the National Sunday School Association, raising the standards of Christian education throughout the country. She hosted a ministry to some of the leading men and women in Hollywood during the 1950’s. She was a catalyst in the ministries of Bill Bright, Dawson Trotman, and Billy Graham as well as many others. The need for Christ-centered and biblically sound Sunday School materials led to establish Gospel Light Publishing, which she headed up for many years. She purchased a Christian conference center, Forest Home. Her college class turned out a generation of leaders who became pastors, missionaries, and leaders in a number of professions across the country, creating a network that served for the expansion of a theologically conservative but culturally engaging evangelicalism.

All this in spite of a very obvious fact. Mears was a woman in an era where gender roles were very well defined and men preached and led. She never challenged this gender framework. She simply led with excellence and expected that of those around her. She sought out men especially for her college ministry who would be leaders, mentored them, sometimes in demanding terms. She poured herself into others with a kind of tough and yet utterly supportive love that led to their blossoming.

Working at the intersection of the entertainment industry and a center of education, she both hued to theological orthodoxy and adopted an open and generous stance to the intellectual and entertainment world of her day, establishing a model for a culturally winsome evangelicalism that contrasted with the fortress mentality of some fundamentalists (though not all, as Migliazzo notes).

While the work of Mears between 1928 and her death in 1963 was fairly well known, Arlin Migliazzo draws on various archival materials and interviews to show the depth and breadth of that work. He also introduces us to the young Henrietta Mears, growing up in the upper Midwest. She grew up in a devout Baptist family. Her father traveled extensively for his business and so her mother Margaret played a significant role in her upbringing, imparting her faith, as well as a keen work ethic, and high standards of responsibility.

He also traces her college training in education and early teaching experience, where almost immediately, she was made principal of a small rural Minnesota high school. Returning to Minneapolis, she took up leadership of the Sunday School under leading fundamentalist pastor William Bell Riley. She built a girls ministry called Fidelis that reached over 500 in number. She turned her back on marriage. After almost ten years came the call to Hollywood Presbyterian Church.

She had a husky voice, weak eyes, and was described as “built like a fireplug.” She could be demanding. When she felt betrayed, she could be unforgiving. She liked the finer things, including fur collars. Migliazzo notes her weak record on issues of race. Yet when she began to speak in a class or convention, she commanded attention for the clarity of her teaching and passion for Christ. How else to account for her influence on the likes of Graham, Bright, and others?

Migliazzo’s outstanding biography not only helps us to take the measure of her life in full but also sets her in the larger framework of the emergence of evangelicalism from its fundamentalist roots. She played a vital role in that emergence, and “showed” the capabilities of women given over to Christ in a time when “telling” wasn’t possible.

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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.

Review: Unstoppable

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Unstoppable, Joshua M. Greene. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2021.

Summary: The biography of Siggi Wilzig, an Auschwitz Holocaust survivor who arrived in the U.S. with $240 and built a fortune in both the oil and banking industries while speaking out against the Holocaust.

His mother immediately went to the gas chamber. His father was beaten to death. In all, he lost 57 extended family members in the Holocaust. He survived by his wits, and he believes, the hand of God. This biography tells the story of Siggi Wilzig, who was not stopped by the brutalities of Auschwitz and a forced march to Mauthausen. Starvation did not stop him. He was not stopped by having only a couple of hundred dollars to his name and sweatshop labor. Nor was he stopped by the anti-Semitic character of both the oil and banking industries through which he made his fortune. He did not let the Fed stop him.

He made three vows. This biography describes how he fulfilled them. He vowed never again to starve. He vowed to raise healthy, productive Jewish children and help his people. And he vowed to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.

When he arrived, his first job was to shovel snow in front of a Jewish store front. In the late 40’s and 1950’s he worked in sweatshops and various traveling sales jobs. He figured out how to sell anything. He started investing in stocks, including Wilshire Oil. At a party, he met Sol Diamond, another Wilshire investor, and together they hatched a plan to take over the company with Siggi as president. They eventually acquired a significant enough share to influence the board, which accepted Siggi’s proposals to turn around the company. This began the company’s meteoric rise and a subsequent purchase of an East coast electronics firm. The challenge was to find adequate cash without exorbitant loans to fund the continued growth of the oil company.

The solution that presented itself was to acquire a bank and “upstream” the profits. His chosen target was the Trust Company of New Jersey (TCNJ). It was a small but profitable bank in which Wilshire eventually acquired an 87 percent interest. Some of the most fascinating aspects of this book are the accounts of how Wilzig ran the bank. He personally courted customers alternately wooing and cudgeling them to bring all their business to him. Much was highly unconventional, and woe to the person, even a family member, who crossed him! A portrait develops of a highly driven man relentlessly pursuing success, unwilling to take no for an answer. He eventually built a bank with $100 million in assets to one with $4 billion. When the Fed tells him that Wilshire must divest of the bank, he takes them to court. Forced to divest, he develops a scheme where his daughter runs the oil company with his “advice” and he runs the bank.

This brings us to family, and particularly his three children. Sherry is most like him in business savvy, and at 23 runs the oil company. Ivan, who Siggi wants to become a lawyer for the bank, and heir apparent, wants nothing of it, but submerges his desire for a music career for twenty years in the bank. Eventually he achieves his dream with a Billboard hit and second career on Broadway, finally making his peace with his father. Third son Alan eventually takes over the bank. Naomi never breaks with Siggi, although she is distant from a man married first to his work. What all understand and struggle with is the survivor who is never truly free of Auschwitz, plagued with nightmares and traumatic memories.

Finally, Wilzig was devoted to perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust. He was the first survivor to speak to West Point Cadets. He was named to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Council during Jimmy Carter’s presidency and helped the Council work through a thicket of issues before the Museum was finally opened in 1993. He spoke forcefully against Reagan’s visit to the SS cemetery at Bitburg and Reagan’s unintended equating of the German soldiers there with the Jews who died in the Holocaust. Dying of multiple myeloma, through the special efforts of Ivan, he records testimony of his Holocaust experience.

Nothing stopped him from keeping his vows. Joshua Greene renders a complex, multi-faceted person. His genuine interest in customers, his ability to crack one liners one minute, only to launch into a tirade the next, his shrewd ability to assess a balance sheet, his love of his children and grandchildren, his loyalty to friends and employees like partner in survival Larry Martel, and his effort to utterly control their destinies, and his undying commitment to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust all combine in this man who was small of stature, with thick, coiffed hair. This is a fascinating biography of a man I’d never heard of who carried the trauma of the Holocaust but was never stopped by it. Greene’s biography also succeeds in doing what Siggi himself sought to do, keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust as the survivors pass into blessed memory.

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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.