Review: The Anxious Generation

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Cover image for "The Anxious Generation" by Jonathan Haidt.

The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt. Penguin Press (ISBN: 9780593655030), 2024.

Summary: Explores the connections between the decline in independent play in childhood, the advent of smartphones, and the sharp rise in anxiety and depression, among adolescents and young adults.

Everyone in higher education is talking about the mental health crisis, particularly the incidence of anxiety and depression among adolescents and young adults. Counseling centers on every campus are slammed with the demand. But why is this? Some trace it to COVID and the experience of isolation these youth went through. But in fact, COVID only accelerated a trend mental health professionals were seeing for the past decade.

Jonathan Haidt believes this may be traced to a shift from a play-based to a phone-based childhood, a transition that coincides with the rise in incidence in anxiety and depression. He contends that children have been over-protected in the world of embodied, independent play and under-protected in the disembodied, virtual world that they are connected to by the devices in their pockets.

In the first part of the book, Haidt offers a number of of graphs, all showing sharp increases during the 2010’s in the incidence of various mental health issues. What is most striking is that this is true for all Western nations and not just the United States–it’s not just American cultural factors. It is striking that girls have been hit the hardest, but boys have also shown increases in all of these indicators.

Part Two explorers the decline of the play-based childhood going back to the 1990’s, reflecting parental fearfulness and overprotection. Free play, not controlled by adults, is crucial for the development of social skills and attunement to others. Children become more resilient and antifragile with play in which there is an element of risk and where parents don’t immediately swoop in and rescue (unless there are actual injuries requiring attention). This makes children more inclined to operate in “discover” rather than “defend” mode and for children learning to care for themselves and assess risks. We’ve also eliminated rites of passage that build a ladder from childhood through puberty to adulthood. Haidt offers guidelines for age appropriate steps, including when (not until high school) children have smartphones. The advent of smartphones accelerated this decline, replacing embodied play with the unprotected virtual world online.

In Part Three, Haidt outlines the harms phone-based childhoods cause. He notes four foundational harms to both boys and girls: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. He then discusses the harms to girls, which are greater, as well as the harms to boys, Haidt shows the experimental evidence for how social media harms girls: visual media results in invidious physical comparisons, promotes aggression against other girls, promotes sharing of emotions resulting in “sociogenic” illness, and exposes girls to male predators urging sexting and other dangerous activities. Boys engage differently, engaging more with online porn and multi-player online games. While there are some positive aspects of the latter, Haidt traces the “failure to launch,” including problems of forming healthy relationships with real-life partners. Finally, Haidt explores how phones pull us downward in the spiritual or “elevation” aspect of our life, and suggests six practices, secular spiritual disciples as it were, to recover what we’ve lost.

The last part of the book explores what government and industry, what schools, and what parents can do. He advocates for four foundational reforms:

  1. No smartphones before high school, giving children only basic flip phones before then (up to about age 14).
  2. No social media before age 16, including more stringent age verification standards on social media platforms.
  3. Phone-free schools, where phones, smartwatches, and other devices are stored in phone lockers, to free up students attention.
  4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.

Haidt draws on the work of Lenore Skenazy, who wrote Free Range Kids for his guidance to parents about unsupervised play and independence. He commends the work of Let Grow, an organization Skenazy has served as president. He notes how working with other parents and needing to be aware of state laws (and in some cases, working to change them), around child supervision is important. A child exercising responsible independence can look like a neglected child in some eyes. I would have liked to see Haidt address more the real-world dangers that did not exist or were very rare in our childhoods and how parents address these while not lapsing into over-protection, as well as addressing the particular risks girls and women face.

I know smartphones have rewired my brain and have snared me with their addictive power. I’ve had to make decisions regarding my own use of them. What Haidt proposes seems both scientifically demonstrable and just plain common sense. Talking with mental health professionals, it is just not feasible from workforce or insurance factors, to significantly expand their services. Haidt proposes that we tackle the problem at its roots in our shift from play-based to phone-based childhoods. This will take concerted action on the part of parents, schools, and governments acting together, but actually seem relatively low cost by comparison. It just takes shared recognition of the problem and concerted action (and maybe resistance to the social media lobby claiming the safety of its products). In the end, we will all be the better for it.

The Weekly Wrap: June 2-8, 2024

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person wrapping a book
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Welcome to the first edition of The Weekly Wrap, a new feature at the Bob on Books blog. As I follow book news, review books, post articles at my Facebook page, it struck me that it might be fun for me and useful to you to share some of my personal gleanings from the past week. Hopefully, what I share here will enrich your own reading life without needing to go hunting all over the internet.

I expect this feature to evolve in the coming weeks. I’d like to hear what you think and what you’d enjoy seeing in a weekly digest like this. To begin:

Five Articles Worth Reading

One of the foremost theologians of the last century, Jürgen Moltmann died this past week at the age of 98. Coming to faith while housed in a British prisoner of war camp during World War II, his The Crucified God and Theology of Hope were landmark works. Died: Jürgen Moltmann, Theologian of Hope is Christianity Today’s obituary, offering a summary of the life and work of the man who taught that “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”

I was studying at our local library in 1986, a part-time graduate student. I came home for lunch when my wife greeted me with the news of the Challenger disaster. It left me wordless to watch the footage of the explosion, realizing I was watching the death of seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher. The Atlantic ran an review (“What the Challenger Disaster Proved“) this week of Adam Higgenbotham’s Challenger–A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space.

Fans of The Hunger Games will be excited to learn that Suzanne Collins will be publishing a new installment in 2025. Bookriot announced the new book this week in the article “Surprise! A New HUNGER GAMES Book Is Coming.”

“Kafkaesque” has become part of our vocabulary to describe anything “extremely unpleasant, frightening, and confusing” (Cambridge Dictionary). Claire Armitstead explore why Kafka has such a hold over our culture a century after he died in “Can’t get you out of my head: why pop culture is still under Kafka’s spell“

Have you kept a book for many years that had a profound influence in your life. Often, we see more than we did the first time, find depths we hadn’t discovered. But not always. Margaret Renkl explores the experience of re-reading and how the changes in our lives change our readings in “I Reread a Book That Changed My Life, but I’d Changed, Too.”

Quote of the Week

Children’s author Cynthia Rylant turned 70 on June 6. I loved this quote by her:

“It is when we are most lost that we sometimes find our truest friends.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation is a gripping and provocative read. He lays the blame squarely on the combination of the arrival of smartphone and the social media apps tailored to it and the decline of opportunities to engage in embodied play.

Over at my Facebook page, I’ve been running a series of images each evening until Father’s Day. Images of women reading probably outnumber those of men at least ten to one. This seemed a great practical application of my recent article “Real Men Read.” I care about this not only because I believe reading can enrich men’s lives but also that they can have a powerful influence with children, especially young boys.

I haven’t read many books in bed that keep me awake. William Kent Krueger’s Boundary Waters did. Krueger proves you can both write well and get people to turn the page. This is the fourth of Krueger’s works that I have read and none have disappointed, and I’m excited that there are so many more Cork O’Connors to read!

I’m going to leave it there. I’d love to know what you think. That’s a wrap.

Review: The Father of Modern India: William Carey

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Cover image of "The Father of Modern India" by Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi.

The Father of Modern India: William Carey, Vishal & Ruth Mangalwadi. Sought After Media (ISBN: 9798988783107), 2023

Summary: Proposes that missionary William Carey, and not Mahatma Gandhi, is rightly to be considered the father of modern India.

Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi make a bold proposal that is no doubt controversial in some quarters. This is that the English cobbler missionary to India, and not Mahatma Gandhi, should be reckoned the father of modern India. Their opening chapter makes the case for what a sweeping impact Carey had on India. Not only was he a missionary who brought the message of Jesus, he was a botanist after whom a variety of eucalyptus is named and he brought the English daisy to India. He introduced the steam engine, the savings bank to fight usury, humane treatment of leprosy patients, printing technology, agricultural societies that laid the groundwork for the Green Revolution of the 1960’s. He translated important works and taught indigenous languages, liberating lower castes from high caste dominance that functioned by keeping them in ignorance. This also worked against the interest of British colonizers. He introduced the science of astronomy, countering superstition. He established lending libraries, pioneered forest conservation and crusaded for women’s rights including the ending of the practice of sati. He was the catalyst of a cultural transformation.

All of this was rooted in the conviction that India was a country to be loved rather than exploited. This led him to fight for practices like those above that contributed to cultural flourishing while opposing evil, exploitive, and unjust practices. He believed in the power of a gospel that proclaimed the dignity of all classes, of women as well as men as those loved by God and redeemed by Christ. This led to opposing practices of female infanticide, of language barriers that kept the poor in ignorance, and fostered female education, giving women increased economic power.

This work, while arguing for Carey’s influence on modern India, avoids hagiography. It can be argued that he used emotional manipulation to force his first wife against her will to come to India, threatening to leave her behind. She endured poor conditions and the loss of a child drove her into insanity, leading to a twelve year confinement until her death. It seems he was wiser in his second marriage to a Danish countess, who was much more in support of his efforts and a partner in them.

The book goes on to share how Carey’s faith provided the bedrock ideas of reform, contrasted with the humanists of his day. Carey saw this as a work of God accomplished through conversion. He also saw God as the source of all rationality, hence his focus on various disciplines of science education. As previously noted, he recognized how important was the language of the people, and not just that of the elite. His literacy efforts raised the status of Bengali, in which Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel winning work was written. His worldview offered the premises for a modern society. His belief in a creator led to the emphasis on science. His belief in human beings in God’s image led to treating all human life as precious. His comprehensive efforts reflected a comprehensive view of the world shaped by his faith.

The tendency today is to lump Carey into Western cultural imperialism. The Mangalwadis challenge this narrative by showing Carey’s love for the country that often put him at odds with both indigenous and British overlords as he sought the flourishing of the nation’s people. At the same time they argue that Carey’s theologically shaped convictions led him to seek to supplant practices, whether harmful superstitions or the oppression of women or practices of health and hygiene, that increased human suffering and damaged the land and its economy.

This gets at the heart of the challenge of cultural relativism. The Mangalwadis argue that Carey’s work did transform India’s culture. Dare we say there are things in every culture that are evil and ought be rooted out? Is it not love to do so if it helps a society to flourish? How, for example, can we say that female genital mutilation is wrong and should be stopped, even though such practice has long been part of some indigenous cultures? The Mangalwadis argue that the change Carey brought both addressed evil and the country’s flourishing and that efforts to repudiate his influence (and his worldview) can lead to the dissolution of democracy, of egalitarian advances, religious liberty, and economic development.

I found the book an illuminating treatment of a cobbler who eventually taught several languages and had a transformative influence in so many areas. It makes a compelling case for how Carey’s Christian beliefs and deep love for the people of India was the source of his impact. In our post-colonial mood, I hope scholars and other readers will have the discernment not to uncritically tar all western mission efforts with the same brush. At very least, the Mangalwadis make a case for a closer look at Carey.

____________________

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

Review: Humility

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Cover image of "Humility" by Michael W. Austin

Humility: Rediscovering the Way of Love and Life in Christ, Michael W. Austin. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802882103), 2024.

Summary: A study of the Christian virtue of humility understood as following Jesus, being formed in his character of humility and love through his people and through spiritually transformative practices.

Humility. We often associate this with weakness. The person who is a doormat. We might do better to think of humility as the person who is so taken with serving others that it’s apparent they are not thinking of themselves. They are people who look a bit like Jesus, probably because they have been walking in the way of Jesus. In his book, Humility, Michael W. Austin writes:

“What is the person like who follows Christ in his humility? The humble person fights to descend the social ladder, rather than climb it. The humble person makes the interests of others their priority, rather than their own. Instead of always grasping for what they want, the humble person serves others, for their good, often in sacrificial ways. The humble person focuses on God and others, rather than themselves. The humble person is steeped in the love of God, and that love flows from God through them to others” (p. 35).

Austin writes to explore the question of how humility may be formed in our lives. Keeping company with Jesus and the close association of humility with overflowing yet practical love runs through his book.

He goes on to explore some of the qualities associated with humility and love in the lives of people on the way of Jesus: faith, relinquishing control, wisdom, compassion, justice. One of his most telling challenges, particularly as a remedy to sloth, is to live locally–for our town, church, and those we love–except in abusive situations. Leaving is often the easy way instead of going deeper in a place. He also considers the practices that form humility in us: community, scripture, prayer, solitude, service, just peace-making, and listening to the marginalized. He challenges us to commit ourselves to rhetorical nonviolence. What’s attractive about the humility Austin advocates is that he joins personal piety with seeking the just and peaceable society of the kingdom of Jesus.

Those who walk in the way of Jesus are also called to be preparers of the way, removing obstacles for others to join us in the way. For Austin, this means quitting the culture war, renouncing polarization, and being consistently pro-life.

Finally, humility means persevering in the way. Austin finds that memento mori, remembering we will die, helps us, because it leads us to embrace the daily joys along the way as well as living more deeply into our hope.

This seems fitting in a time where it seems many of us have been distracted from the way of Jesus to fight culture wars and pursue polarizing conversations. Austin helps us see both the path from which we have strayed and the ways we may walk in that path, as well as how good the way of Jesus is, and how central to any of us who identify ourselves with Christ. It’s not so much that Austin says anything strikingly new. It is rather that he reminds us of the ways we may have forgotten. He retrieves a conversation and language that has gone missing in many of our churches. There are times when we need again to hear “the old, old story, of Jesus and his love.”

____________________

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

Review: The Rose Rent

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Cover image of "The Rose Rent" by Ellis Peters

The Rose Rent (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael ), Ellis Peters. Mysterious Press/Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9780446405331), 2014 (originally published in 1986).

Summary: Two deaths and the abduction of a widow seem tied to a white rose bush from which the annual rent of a Foregate property is paid in the form of one white rose.

It is coming up on the anniversary of the celebration of the placing of St. Winifred’s reliquary on the abbey altar. The same day also marks the payment of an unusual rent. Judith Perle, heir of a prosperous weaving establishment lost both her husband and unborn child within three weeks. In her grief, she deeded their home in the Foregate to the abbey with the provision of a rent of one white rose from a bush on the property, paid on St. Winifred’s day. It involved about half her estate. The business, however, prospers under her cousin Miles’ management, so much so that she thinks of entering the convent, unhappy with the suitors who have sought her hand (and fortune).

Brother Eluric, a monk given over to the abbey as a child, is designated to deliver the rent. But in doing so in previous years, he found himself attracted to her and he pleads to be released from the obligation to keep his soul pure, and he is. Niall, the householder, a widower with a young daughter, is designated to take his place, a task he is delighted to accept, as he is also attracted to the widow. He is a bronzesmith and his feelings are further fostered when Judith brings him a girdle to be repaired–a buckle had torn away.

Niall’s daughter lived with his sister but he visited regularly. One night, shortly before the rose rent is due, he finds the bush has been mangled but not destroyed. There is a body at its base, Brother Eluric, dead of a knife wound. A bootprint is found nearby, that Cadfael takes a mold of. Later, as he discusses the death with Judith. Cadfael discloses Eluric’s attraction. Judith determines the next day to end the whole rose rent thing, giving the house fully to the abbey. She speaks of this to a servant, who share it in the kitchen, where this is overheard by a number.

The next morning she sets out for the abbey and is seen crossing the bridge but never arrrives at the abbey or returns home. It is concluded that she has been abducted, particularly after a boat is recovered and a buckle from the girdle Niall repaired is found. The town is turned out to search for her, including Bertred, on of her workers. He goes out that night on a secret errand and finds where Judith is being held. A mishap is heard by a neighboring watchman who sets the dogs on him. He escapes by jumping into the river, stunned when he hits his head. Then, as he comes to, a dark figure strikes another blow, and shoves him into deeper water, where Cadfael finds his body the next day. And he discover that the boots match the bootprint he found by Brother Eluric.

Was Bertred Eluric’s killer? And who killed Bertred? And is Judith’s abduction connected, and how will it all come right? Cadfael is not alone in the resolution of it all. Our old friend Sister Magdalen will play a role as does Niall, and Judith herself, with Cadfael himself uncovering the key clue pointing to the murderer. What’s most interesting in this story is we find ourselves pressed to keep in focus the murders as the story of Judith’s abduction unfolds, with all the possible implications this has.

Review: Boundary Waters

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Cover image of "Boundary Waters" by William Kent Krueger

Boundary Waters (Cork O’Connor ), William Kent Krueger. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9780671016999), 2000 (link is to a different edition in print).

Summary: A young country-western singer hiding in seclusion in a Boundary Waters cabin is pursued by a man claiming to be her father, FBI agents, a father and son from an organized crime family–and a couple of cold-blooded killers for hire.

Cork O’Connor is living in Sam’s old house, running Sam’s burger concession. His girls help in the summer but he and Jo remain apart. Unbeknown to him, a country-western singer, Shilohm, whose mother and Cork had been friends has used an Anishinaabe guide to hide away in a remote cabin in the Boundary Waters to seek clarity about her life.

A man known as Arkansas Willie Ray, who raised her and helped her build Ozark Records, shows up and hires Cork to help find her. She had been communicating and all communication had stopped. Then the FBI shows up at Sheriff Schanno’s office, also searching for her. They use strong arm tactics to compel Cork to help them along with Stormy Two Knives and his ten-year old son Louis, whose uncle, Wendell Two Knives had taken him when he brought supplies to Shiloh. Louis is the only one with any idea where she is.

They set out on a journey into the Boundary Waters as the weather transitions from fall to winter. Meanwhile, back in town, another “father” arrives, an aging organized crime boss and his son, also wanting to find her. Meanwhile, the search party doesn’t realize two other ruthless hired killers are also hunting for Shiloh. Already, they have tortured and killed Wendell Two Knives, without extracting any information. They also don’t know that Shiloh, tired of waiting for Wendell, has started back, using a map Wendell gave her. Something else is following Shiloh–a mysterious wolf who doesn’t attack.

While Cork and his party hunt Shiloh and realize they are also being hunted, Jo and the Sheriff figure out that all is not as it seems with the party that went out. Danger may not only be stalking Cork and the others but traveling with them. All this makes for a page-turning account where we wonder whether anyone but the killers will come out alive.

Meanwhile Jo struggles to believe with the support of her sister Rose, that all will come right, even as bodies are found (but not Cork). One senses that though their relationship was badly damaged, there is love that remains, to be explored if Cork survives. All this, along with Krueger’s well-drawn descriptions of the wilderness, make for a novel rich in its character relationships, setting, and thrilling plot.

The Month in Reviews: May 2024

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Cover image of "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse" by Charles Mackesy

I always love the places one may travel in books. I went from Neverwhere to an inside look at the lives of librarians and booksellers (a fun book for any bibliophile). I traveled with Israel, learning about their Tabernacle and followed the life and concert tours of Tina Turner. I got an insider look at the White House of the Kennedy and Johnson years and watched a couple of sleuths solve murders in rural English villages. I went on a journey with Saint Augustine and another with a boy, a mole, a fox, and a horse. There were journeys through worlds of ideas as well: catholicity, faith, our growing mental health crisis, getting beyond stalemated conversations, humility and hospitality, and chastity. Dr. Suess was right: “Oh, the places you will go!” All it takes is a few good books!

That I May Dwell Among Them, Gary A. Anderson. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802883063), 2023. A study of the tabernacle and sacrifice connections drawing out the idea of the incarnational presence of God in the physical structure of the tabernacle and the significance of the daily sacrifices for our understanding of atonement. Review

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman. Avon Fiction (ISBN: 0380789019), 1996 (Link is to 2016 edition). When Richard Mayhew rescues a bleeding girl in the streets of London, he finds himself drawn into a world under London, the quest she is on and the evil forces set against her. Review

What is Faith?, J. Gresham Machen. Banner of Truth (ISBN: 9781800403598), 2023 (First published in 1925). An exposition of the Bible’s teaching on what constitutes vibrant and saving Christian faith. Review

Taken at the Flood, Agatha Christie. HarperCollins (ISBN: 9780062073846), 2011 (originally published in 1948). A young widow and her brother inherit a family fortune, stirring family resentments until a mysterious figure threatens blackmail and is found dead. Review

My Life as a Prayer, Elizabeth Cunningham. Monkfish Book Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9781958972106), 2023. A spiritual memoir describing the author’s journey from daughter of an Episcopal priest, through a variety of communities as a writer and multi-faith minister. Review

Dancing in My Dreams (Library of Religious Biography), Ralph H. Craig, III. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802878632), 2023. A biography of the life of Tina Turner, centering on how her embrace of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism was transformative in the fulfillment of her dreams, including that of becoming a religious teacher. Review

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy. HarperOne (ISBN: 9781529105100), 2019. A graphic novel of the friendship of these four creatures who affirm the basic values of friendship, kindness, self-worth, and the love of cake! Review

Beyond the Clinical Hour, James N. Sells, Amy Trout & Heather C. Sells. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514001042), 2024. A proposal for collaborative efforts between mental health professionals and congregations to multiply the resources available to address the burgeoning mental health crisis. Review

Dancers in Mourning (Albert Campion #9), Margery Allingham. Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504087315), 2023 (originally published in 1937). Mean-spirited pranks against the star actor-dancer in a musical becomes something more when as has-been actresses body is thrown of a bridge in front of the actor at his home. Review

Local and Universal: A Free Church Account of Ecclesial Catholicity (Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture), C. Ryan Fields. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514006719), 2024. A theological exploration of the contribution of churches in the free church, locally governed tradition, to the wider church’s understanding of catholicity. Review

From Broken Boy to Mended Man, Patrick Morley. Tyndale Momentum (ISBN: 9781496479860) 2024. The author takes us through his own journey of healing childhood wounds and leads through a process of reflection to identify childhood wounds, the ways they manifest in destructive behaviors, to finding healing and to shift perspective toward parents, other adults and one’s own children. Review

End the Stalemate, Sean McDowell and Tim Muehlhoff. Tyndale Elevate (ISBN: 9781496481153), 2024. Addresses how we move past impasses around disagreements to have meaningful conversations. Review

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians, James Patterson and Matt Eversmann. Little, Brown, and Company (ISBN: 9780316567534), 2024. A collection of first-person accounts from booksellers and librarians about why they love doing what they do. Review

Humility and Hospitality, Naaman Wood and Sean Connable, editors. Integratio Press (ISBN: 9780999146354), 2022. Conference papers responding to a proposal that the virtues necessary for civility are humility and hospitality, particularly considering the qualifications that may be placed on this idea. Review

Chastity and the Soul: You Are Holy Ground, Ronald Rolheiser. Paraclete Press (ISBN: 9781640609471) 2024. An exploration of the meaning of chastity which has to do with far more than sex. Review

Remembering America: A Voice From the Sixties, Richard N. Goodwin. HarperCollins (ISBN: 9780060972417) 1995. A personal history of the 1960’s, written by an adviser to President’s Kennedy and Johnson. Review

On the Road with Saint Augustine, James K. A. Smith. Brazos Press (ISBN: 9781587434464) 2023. A “travelogue of the heart” exploring human longings and the heart’s true home. Review

What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture?, Dru Johnson. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514003619) 2023. A study of Genesis identifying both remarkable continuities and important discontinuities with Darwinian and modern evolutionary theory. Review

Book of the Month: A group I was with in April raved about The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse, and after reading it I understand why. Handwritten and illustrated by an illustrator who doesn’t like reading (!), the conversations between the four creatures remind us of the qualities to which humans at their best aspire. It’s a book that can be read in minutes and lingered over for the rest of one’s life.

Quote of the Month. Ronald Rolheiser’s book, Chastity and the Soul: You Are Holy Ground, is about far more than sex, as this quote proposes:

“In essence, chastity is proper reverence, respect, and patience. And in a culture that is often characterized by irreverence, disrespect, and impatience, it is much needed. To be chaste is to experience people, things, places, entertainment, the phases of life, life’s opportunities, and sex, in a way that does not violate them or us. In brief, I am chaste when I relate to others in a way that does not violate their moral, psychological, emotional, sexual, or aesthetic contours. I am chaste when I do not let irreverence or impatience denigrate what is a gift, and when I let life, others, and sex, unfold according to their proper dictates” (p. 4)

This book is a gem, speaking joyfully of the recovery of a long-dismissed virtue.

What I’m Reading. I’m still plodding away at Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, a book that demands to be read slowly, even as a charts our transition from a world framed by the transcendent to the disenchanted world of our age. Hope I can finish it this month. I’m enjoying reading and discussing The After Party by Nancy French and Curtis Chang, exploring how we might get to a better conversation about politics. I have a couple mysteries awaiting review: William Kent Krueger’s Boundary Waters, with a truly dark killer, and another Brother Cadfael. It seems I’m reading a number of books about humility of late including Michael W. Austin’s Humility: Rediscovering the Way of Love and Life in Christ. I’m finally sinking my teeth into David Cape’s Matthew Through Old Testament Eyes. I’ve loved this commentary series. Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi sent me The Father of Modern India: William Carey and I am amazed at what this shoe cobbler accomplished as a pioneering missionary in India (and yes, they take on the question of colonizing, wait for my review). Jonathan Haidt’s new The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness makes a case for how the limiting of play and the uncontrolled use of smartphones is directly correlated to the steep rise in anxiety and depression we are seeing among Generation Z youth. Finally, I’ve just picked up Christopher Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle–Earth. Lots of background to things alluded to in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

I always love to hear what others are reading, or what you thought of a book you read after reading about it at Bob on Books–even if you didn’t like it. Leave a comment!

The Month in Reviews is my monthly review summary going back to 2014! It’s a great way to browse what I’ve reviewed. The search box on this blog also works well if you are looking for a review of a particular book.

Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown — Time for a Break

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Author's photograph of Mahoning Avenue between Maryland and Portland Avenues, looking east toward downtown, a glimpse of the Mahoning Valley
The view from where I grew up in working class Youngstown. © Robert C. Trube, 2019.

Just over ten years ago, I wrote an article on what it was like to grow up in working class Youngstown. Little did I expect at the time that this one article would turn into a series that has run to over 500 articles, published weekly, for ten years. I’ve explored our favorite foods, restaurants, our love for Mill Creek Park and all the other iconic places of our shared youth. I’ve written about events in our history, stories of the people who contributed to making Youngstown a great city, and the stories of people who went on from Youngstown to do great things. I’ve learned so much more about Youngstown than I ever knew during the 22 years I lived there.

I’ve decided that it is time to take a break. I’m in the final months of my working life and finding there is a lot to this transition. It has been harder to find the time to research articles. Maybe this will change in retirement. I think this is a good time for a breather. I’m not sure how long a breather yet, but at least three months, the time I have remaining before retirement.

I am amazed how much I’ve learned from my readers, who have filled in so many gaps for me. At the same time, you have confirmed for me what a great and good place Youngstown was to grow up in. There is so much more to the story than car bombs and closing mills. We grew up in a city rich in traditions of food, faith, and family. Working class did not mean cultural desert–not with the Butler, the symphony, the Youngstown Playhouse and so much more.

I’ve loved telling the stories of people who should not be forgotten, from fallen soldiers to city founders. A dominant theme I found in so many of the stories is a deep sense of civic responsibility. Many devoted their adult lives to making Youngstown a better place.

This blog will continue. I started this as a book blog and have many books awaiting review as I write. I am deeply concerned that we may be raising a generation of children who can’t read. How thankful I am for my parents, for good teachers in Youngstown’s schools and good libraries for fostering the love of reading in my life and I want to do all I can to pass it along.

The other good news of continuing the blog is that all the Youngstown articles are still here. Just click “On Youngstown” on the menu bar to see them all. Looking for something in particular? Just enter it under “Search my Posts” and there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find what you are looking for. Back in December, I wrote “Ten Years of Your Favorites” linking to the top viewed posts of each year from 2014 to 2023. And if you can’t find it? Drop me a note. I’ll be collecting ideas for new articles.

Wrapping it all up, I am so thankful for what have really been ten years of conversations about the city we love. I’m always amazed that people read what I write. I feel a profound debt of gratitude to all of you. Thank you.

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

Review: What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture?

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Cover image of "What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture?"

What Hath Darwin to Do with Scripture?, Dru Johnson. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514003619) 2023.

Summary: A study of Genesis identifying both remarkable continuities and important discontinuities with Darwinian and modern evolutionary theory.

Dru Johnson takes a very different approach to how we read Genesis in light of Darwinian evolution. He takes the key concepts of scarcity, fit, and sex in Darwin and explores how these selection pressures are evident in scripture, as well as asking important questions about how the accounts diverge.

He explores first of all the question of scarcity and how it may lead either to competition and violence, or collaboration. Johnson notes continuities with the murder of Abel, the violence of Lamech, the violence leading to flood, and urban Babel as a buffer against scarcity. At the same time, in Abraham, the man of faith, and in the pre-fall Eden, there is abundance where scarcity is prevalent, under God’s care. Johnson carries this study beyond Genesis noting scarcity, competition, and violence and the providential care of God when his people trust God.

Second, he considers the idea of fittedness to habitat. He surveys a variety of evolutionary examples of fittedness and again turns to Genesis. We consider the habitats of the first three days and the creatures that fill them during the second three. He notes the name of the man is “dirtling” because he arises from the dirt. He notes the fittedness of the garden and this dislocation of exile and the arc of the biblical story toward new creation.

Finally, he considers sex. And here he notes a disjunct between evolution, where the focus is on males copulating with as many females as possible, a focus on reproduction, and the concern in Genesis, especially among women, for generation, the perpetuation of a family through one’s descendants. Certainly, there are examples of profligacy and even rape as evolution would predict, but also a distinctive focus upon a family line, and family lines, reflecting the promise of God.

In his conclusion, Johnson proposes that these continuities and discontinuities only make sense if there is some intersection of the metaphysical with the physical, which is the deeper issue between Darwin and scripture. He is hopeful that evolutionary and Hebraic conceptual worlds might be reconciled. The strength of what he proposes is that the approach takes both seriously as well as the expectation that if there is the possibility of reconciliation, continuities will be found. Yet Johnson also shows the anomalous in Genesis and throughout scripture that evolution-only explanations cannot reckon with. Might this help lead to a paradigm shift to a different and better faith-science conversation? One can only hope.

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

Review: On the Road with Saint Augustine

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Cover of On the Road with Saint Augustine by James K. A. Smith

On the Road with Saint Augustine, James K. A. Smith. Brazos Press (ISBN: 9781587434464) 2023.

Summary: A “travelogue of the heart” exploring human longings and the heart’s true home.

James K. A. Smith encountered an interesting detour in his doctoral studies in philosophy. Setting out to study Heidegger, he found Heidegger and his contemporaries pointing him back to Saint Augustine and the discovery that the questions and the longings of our time are the very ones Augustine addressed in his time in Confessions, captured most succinctly in his statement “You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

He draws on the restlessness of the characters in Kerouac’s On the Road that impelled their travels. He follows Augustine’s route, both in terms of places, and in the longings expressed in Confessions, recounting his own travels on Augustine’s “road trip.” Smith argues that this is an authentic word to our generation, addressing ten longings: freedom, ambition, sex, mothers, friendship, enlightenment, story, justice, fathers, and death. Finally he addresses the possibility of homecoming.

Smith contends that Augustine understood that we “practice our way into freedom” by joining in the practices of Christ’s body in worship and surrender. Augustine admitted that we will do most things with mixed motives but as we are rooted in God’s love ambition is fueled with a different fire. He addresses Augustine’s flawed understanding that only celibacy could remedy promiscuity and yet recognizes that there is a freedom in not being dominated by libido and that marriage may protect us from the excesses and abuses of sexuality while offering us longed-for covenantal relationship.

It seems as each of these longings are explored on Augustine’s journey, there is a kind of transformative turn that Smith observes in Augustine. Enlightenment comes not by scaling intellectual mountains but in humbling oneself. It is in brokenness that we become good fathers.

Many think, as in Kerouac, that “the road is life.” We’ve been told, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. But deep down we do long to arrive home. But, Smith writes:

“You can’t get there from here. But what if someone came to get you? You can’t get to that last thing, but what if it came to you? And what if that thing turned out to be a someone? And what if that someone not only knows where the end of the road is but promises to accompany you the rest of the way, to never leave you or forsake you until you arrive?”

Smith reminds us that God has come to get each of us through the cross of Jesus who has bridged our unbridgeable void.

Reading Smith makes me want to pull out Confessions again. He reminds me that for all our differences across history, we have restless hearts and deep longings in common, and we are “on the road” because we long for home.