Summary: The story of this northeast Ohio/western Pennsylvania wedding tradition, its beginnings and a description of the ins and outs of cookie-baking, table set-up, types of cookies, and etiquette, and some of the uses of cookie tables beyond weddings.
Mike, a work colleague from Pittsburgh, and I were at a wedding of a mutual colleague taking place in Poland, Ohio when we fell to discussing where the cookie table tradition arose. Residents of both the Youngstown and Pittsburgh regions lay claim to the tradition as their own. We had already partaken of the ample cookie table running along one of the walls of the reception hall. Fueled by those cookies, and perhaps a few adult beverages, we decided to settle the matter with a good old-fashioned arm-wrestling match. And in this instance at least, Youngstown won the claim to the tradition.
Those memories came back when I received this book, written by school classmate Alice Crosetto, on cookie tables. Crosetto doesn’t settle this running dispute. It turns out that after extensive research she found accounts from eastern and southern European families throughout this region once known for its steelmaking, the Steel Valleys of Youngstown and Pittsburgh, going back at least to the 1920’s, of cookie tables at weddings. The common ethnic makeup of this larger region accounts for its common presence throughout, likely brought from Europe.
While Crosetto didn’t settle this question for me, she offers so much more about this wonderful tradition. Whether you are from Youngstown or Pittsburgh, you will find out so much about this tradition unknown to most other parts of the country unless someone from Youngstown or Pittsburgh has enlightened them. Among other things, I learned:
The history of the cookie
There are relatives of the cookie table elsewhere including the sweets table and the Venetian table
Cookie tables are family affairs and when an engagement is announced, all the relatives and family friends start baking.
We’re talking hundreds of dozens of cookies, cookies into the thousands. “We made too much” is a boast of pride.
Pizza boxes are great for transporting cookies (boxes that have never been used, that is).
Who arranges all those cookies? (In many cases, the caterers, for health reasons, do it, and in the Steel Valley, they are prepared for the job).
What’s the etiquette of cookie tables? There are differences about whether to serve before or after but the take-away bag or box is a non-negotiable. You must send wedding guests home with cookies!
There are bakeries, and Crosetto mentions a number, that also provide cookies, but for some families, it is a point of honor to provide them home-baked.
There is a growing business on Etsy and other sites selling cookie table decorations including Youngstown- or Pittsburgh-specific table coverings and plates and plaques celebrating the respective region’s tradition.
There are also a number of Facebook groups from these regions sharing recipes and other cookie table wisdom.
There are mouthwatering lists of cookies that appear on tables and a lavish center section of color photographs.
Finally, cookie tables aren’t just for weddings anymore–office parties, graduations, baby and wedding showers, retirements, and more are all celebrated with cookies. And cookie tables are a central feature of Steel Valley fundraisers, most notably the annual Cookie Table and Cocktails event for the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, their signature fundraising event.
This is just a “cookie sampler” of the delights to be found in this book. It is a labor both of meticulous research and love from Alice Crosetto, an educator and librarian and cookie baker. This is a book both for those who love cookie tables and those who have never heard of them. If the latter’s the case, I predict you will want to find a reason to get a group of family or friends together to bake cookies for a celebration once you’ve read the book.
[You can find this book easily through your local bookseller or through one of the online sites where books are sold. As a reviewer, I do not direct people to a particular bookseller.]
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Summary: A full-length biography of the twentieth president tracing his evolution from a Radical Republican to one who sought to unify his party and a country still riven by the Civil War.
I think for many of us, even fellow Ohioans, James A. Garfield is simply one of the mediocre presidents from our state. Largely, in Garfield’s case, it was because he was in office only five months, two of them spent slowly and painfully dying from a crazed assassin’s bullet and the unhygienic treatment of his doctors. Sadly, he spent most of his time in office dealing with office-seekers, leading, after his death, to the civil service reform he so ardently had sought. Left undone was so much work in solidifying Black civil rights jeopardized by the failures of Reconstruction, dealing with the rapid industrial expansion of the country and its economic institutions, and of course, leading in the extension of education opportunities.
This biography left me wondering “what if” Garfield had the opportunity to serve two terms. The arc of his life was one that combined capable leadership and the ability to bring people together across political differences. C. W. Goodyear’s account of Garfield’s life also reminded me of what a remarkable story was cut short by an assassin’s bullet. He was the last of our presidents born in a log cabin, in this case a rude one on Ohio’s Western Reserve. Growing up without the father who died in his infancy, he was raised by the strong-willed Eliza, who exerted an influence throughout his life and survived his death. At sixteen he left home to work briefly on the Ohio Canal before illness forced him to return home. His path lay in the direction of education, attending first the Geauga Seminary, and then after taking some teaching jobs, the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, which later became Hiram College, a Disciples of Christ school, the church body into which he’d been baptized. He met Lucretia Randolph while he was there, teaching her Greek. He then went on to Williams College, gaining the respect of students and faculty as he completed the final two years of his education.
On his return from a prestigious Eastern college in 1856, he was hired as a teacher, and a year later as the president of the Eclectic Institute. He also preached in churches throughout the Western Reserve, gaining the wide respect of local citizens. He married Lucretia in 1858, But even before then he’d married politics, supporting the candidacy of John C. Fremont for president. By 1860, he’d been elected a state legislator, while reading for the law, passing the bar exam in 1861.
The Civil War interrupted his political aspirations. He felt he had to lead by example, raising volunteers from the Western Reserve and his own Institute. As a colonel under Don Carlos Buell, he drove Confederates out of eastern Kentucky through savvy and courageous maneuvering and battlefield courage. He subsequently was appointed a Brigadier General. After service both in Mississippi and Tennessee, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the Western Reserve, an office he did not seek but accepted, a pattern later to be repeated.
Garfield’s House career occupies the major part of this book. Goodyear traces the career of the emancipationist congressman from the abolitionist Western Reserve, his efforts to support Reconstruction, an increasingly futile fight with the rise of Southern Democrats, but one he never gave up. We see the rising leader, friend to all, even his political opponents, even more important in the Hayes administration, when Republicans were in the minority, and he gave up a Senate bid to serve as minority leader. Garfield even manages during this all to formulate a proof of the Pythagorean theorem, submitting it for publication in The Atlantic Monthly. The major blot on his career was a financial scandal, and Goodyear shows how Garfield, both needy of money for living expenses, and glad for help, got caught up in the Credit Mobilier scandal, for all of $329.
The other blot on Garfield, and a mark of Lucretia’s greatness, was Garfield’s affair with another woman during a time of separation. He confessed, she reconciled, and subsequently, as Garfield pursued legal practice to supplement his income, they moved to Washington during congressional sessions, along with Eliza. Goodyear portrays these two women as mainstays in his life, and Lucretia is described as “unstampedeable.” Garfield eventually realized what he had in her, but for a time, it appears he was trying to live free of her.
The last part of the book has to do with Garfield’s presidential campaign and brief presidency. In 1880, the two major candidates were James Blaine and Ulysses Grant, the latter supported by Boss Conkling of New York, with fellow Ohioan John Sherman an uninspiring third choice, but one Garfield supported. One has the sense in the deadlocked convention that Garfield was the one with presidential mettle, and after a string of ballots, the shift to Garfield, although he never sought the office. After the nomination, the challenge was to unify the party. Blaine was a friend who became his closest confidant and Secretary of State. The challenge was Boss Conkling. And here the question is how far Garfield the reformer would go to win Conkling, the epitome of machine politics in his age. His success brought dismay, but it was Conkling who was dismayed when, as President, Garfield refuses some key appointments, and Conkling overreaches in resigning, only to find the limb sawed out from under him.
Goodyear devotes briefer space to the assassination and death. He doesn’t name the assassin until after the deed, alluding to his delusional job-seeking several times before. He also describes the unhygienic treatment of Garfield’s doctors who probably introduced the infection that killed him. Candace Millard’s Destiny of the Republic (review), tells this part of the story in far more depth. In some ways the death paves the way for reforms enacted by Chester Arthur, that would have been far more difficult for Garfield–a surprise in some ways as Arthur was a product of the Conkling machine.
In the end, impressed as I was with Garfield’s life before he was president, I found myself wondering how much of a reformer Garfield would have been. Garfield’s reformist passions always seem to conflict with his ability to be well-spoken of by all and to avoid making enemies, to unify. He helped negotiate the compromises that won Hayes the presidency and put the nails in the coffin of Reconstruction. Yet he was unyielding to Conkling. He probably would have advanced a vision for education in the country. Working with Blaine, we may have had an enlightened foreign policy. He made several key civil rights appointments and I suspect he would have resisted the worst of Jim Crow. But we shall never know…
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.
Behold and Become, Jeremy M. Kimble. Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2023.
Summary: A classic yet contemporary evangelical account of the doctrine of scripture and how God works transformation through scripture in salvation and Christian growth and what this means for one’s engagement with scripture and its use in the life and leadership of the church.
This book is a winsome, straightforward discussion of the classic evangelical doctrine of scripture. It is neither tendentious toward others with a different understanding nor does it temporize about the difficulties critical scholarship has raised to this classic doctrine. It is a book rooted in the Bible’s testimony about itself and assumes the veracity of its testimony. Some may find that off-putting, but I found it fit the book’s purpose–to argue that God works his transforming work in the believer through the scriptures and to encourage its humble yet confident use by both the individual believer and those who pastor and lead congregations in a scripture-centered ministry.
Jeremy Kimble begins with the self-revealing character of God who speaks in creation and acts to show his redemptive purposes. It is entirely consistent that such a God would reveal his glory and purposes in scripture as he has in the world and that we do well to saturate our lives with this self-revelation of glory. He then turns to a theology of scripture affirming its inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility, clarity, necessity, sufficiency, and authority. He both cites scripture’s own testimony and that of those in the Reformed tradition. Accepting these things as true, the believer devotes his or her energy to diligent attention to scripture, not as a textbook, but as the speech of God meant to reveal God, God’s saving ways, and how we might live in the enjoyment of that salvation.
Kimble then turns, in chapter 3 to look at scripture’s testimony to itself, the intertextual character of scripture in later references to earlier texts in the OId Testament, to the New Testament’s use of the Old, and the symbols and patterns that recur that reflect the writers of scripture’s knowledge of and development of what has come before. All of this in the first three chapters builds to the conclusion of chapter 4, the efficacious character of scripture in the transformation of the believer, both from death to life and in progressing in holiness. He offers a study of a number of texts in both testaments that affirm both that scripture is efficacious in our lives and how this works out in the life of the believer. For me, this was one of the highlights of the book. And the focus is not, first of all, on scripture as an instruction manual, but rather as the disclosure of the Triune God and God’s workings in creation and redemption.
At the end of this as well as in the following chapter, Kimble argues that this calls the believer into a scripture-saturated life, giving ourselves to the reading, study, hearing, memory, and meditation of scripture. He also believes this calls us into the correlation of scripture, moving from careful reading to determining the biblical theology evident across a book or multiple books, learning historical theology, as we see how others have correlated the teaching of scripture into doctrine, moving to systematic theology, where we synthesize our learning across the whole of scripture. This forms our worldview and shapes our lives. He discusses how scripture transforms as we behold and become, experiencing renewal of mind that eventuates in lived trust and obedience. He speaks trenchantly about how scripture roots out sin, brings repentance, and the putting on of righteousness. He also encourages the use of scripture in the family, sharing some of his own practice.
The last two chapters focus on the ministry of the scriptures in the church as a body formed by God through the gospel. He values the place of creeds and confessions as doctrinal guardrails. All this sets the context for applying ourselves diligently to listening to the scriptures read and preached, the scriptures taught in educative settings and studied in small groups and applied in discipleship, counseling, and evangelism. He then comes to the preacher, advocating text-driven teaching and preaching and then advises on the practices of study that allow one’s preaching to be driven by the text. Echoing John Piper, he describes preaching as exulting over the truth of the passage and exhortation to grace-empowered action. More briefly, he outlines his convictions about scripture-centeredness in the stewardship practiced by leaders. He concludes the work by summarizing his overall argument and then an appendix re-articulates this in a thesis and one sentence summary of each chapter.
Kimble does not deal with challenges to the doctrine of scripture, or problems that arise in its misuse or abuse in the context of the church. As I noted earlier, while these questions are not unimportant, they would have distracted from the purpose of this book. The idolization of politics and nationalism and the resort to ploys of power have persuaded me that broad swaths of the church have lost their confidence in the power of God, by his Spirit and centered in Christ to work through the ministry of the scriptures both for the transformation from death to life, and in the “breaking of the power of cancelled sin and the setting of sinners free.” We resort instead to gospels of sin management (e.g. purity culture) and self-help. I appreciated the winsomely portrayed vision of a scripture saturated life, devoted to reading and study instead of the 24/7 news cycle and scripture memory instead of social media memes. I long for the joyful confidence that comes, not from ourselves, but from soaking in and exulting in the story of scripture that Kemble portrays. What comes through is the rich joy of such a life, as we become enthralled and enchanted again with the character and work of God and swept into that work. That seems to me what it is to “behold and become.”
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
I read quite a number of books each month. But there are so many books I never get to when they first come out. Sometimes I didn’t know about them. Other times I knew but they didn’t attract my attention at the time. As I compiled this post, I noticed how many books there were that were not recent publications. I read and enjoyed my first Cadfael story. It won’t be my last. I thoroughly loved my second William Kent Krueger novel, written ten years ago. I keep working through series by Ngaio Marsh and Brian Jacques, finding new things to love about each author. I finally pulled out an old set of essays by Neil Postman-witty, incisive, and, at times, extremely prescient.
Then there were a number of fine new books in addition to Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory, a truly magisterial work. Jessica Hooten Wilson’s is a wonderful treatment of reading as a spiritual practice. François Clemmons, a fellow Youngstowner, offers a wonderful memoir of growing up there, coming out in college, and his time on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. One book offered hope for a renewal of people turning from atheism to faith and another points the way to post-pandemic renewal. Two others explored the failings of evangelicalism, including its early alliance with J. Edgar Hoover. Bob Katz offers a wonderful story of a teacher and class who “encircled” a dying classmate with love and presence and Kara Lawler’s delightful children’s book explores the presence of God in the changing seasons. Terence Lester helps us understand how an honest rendering of our nation’s history can promote solidarity and not enmity. And George Marsden helps us appreciate Jonathan Edwards at his best. Can you see why I like reading?
A Morbid Taste for Bones(Chronicles of Brother Cadfael #1), Ellis Peters. New York: Mysterious Press/Open Road, 2014 (originally published in 1977). Cadfael is part of a group commissioned to retrieve the bones of a Welsh saint. When the one leading landowner who opposes the removal is murdered, Cadfael helps his daughter find the murder, avenging his death. Review
Reading for the Love of God, Jessica Hooten Wilson. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023. An exploration of reading as a spiritual practice, including the reading practices of Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Sayers. Review
Elaine’s Circle, Bob Katz. Madison, NJ: Munn Avenue Press, 2022. Elaine views Circle Time as key to building a learning community with her students. When one of them is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Elaine and her circle of students, including the one dying find ways to make that fourth grade a most extraordinary year. Review
Officer Clemmons, Dr. François S. Clemmons. New York: Catapult, 2020. An autobiographical memoir of Dr. François S. Clemmons, from his earliest years in Alabama, his youth in Youngstown, Ohio through his college years when he accepted that he was gay, his relationship with Fred Rogers, and subsequent performing and teaching career. Review
God, Right Here: Meeting God in the Changing Seasons, Kara Lawler, illustrated by Jennie Poh. Downers Grove: IVP Kids, 2023. A walk through the changing seasons and a reminder that the unchanging God is always present, always near and may be seen wherever we look in his creation. Review
Mattimeo(Redwall #3), Brian Jacques. New York: Ace Books, 1989. Mattimeo, the spirited son of Matthias the Warrior, along with four other children, are kidnapped as an act of revenge by Slagar the Cruel. When Matthias and other warriors pursue, including the Sparra folk, Redwall’s remaining inhabitants must fight off an invasion of magpies and ravens. Review
Biblical Critical Theory, Christopher Watkin. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023. An attempt along the lines of Augustine’s City of Godto offer a comprehensive overview of how the biblical account from Genesis to Revelation to engage in a critique of late modern culture and the critical theories that have also attempted to analyze the culture. Review
A Clutch of Constables(Roderick Alleyn #25), Ngaio Marsh. New York: Felony & Mayhem, 2015 (originally published in 1968). Troy takes a spur-of-the-moment river cruise only to learn that her berth had belonged to a man murdered by an international criminal, who happens to be on the cruise with her! Review
The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, Justin Brierly. Carol Stream: Tyndale Elevate, 2023. A journalist and podcast host makes the case that we may be seeing a new wave of people coming to faith in God and why this is so. Review
Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation, Jon Ward. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2023. A national journalist who grew up in an influential evangelical movement describes his separation from this movement as he witnessed its embrace of control and power, both within churches, and in increasingly authoritarian politics, at the expense of both truth and character. Review
The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, Lerone A. Martin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023. A study of how J. Edgar Hoover worked in concert with sympathetic Christian leaders to foster his vision of a White Christian America. Review
From Pandemic to Renewal, Chris Rice. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023. Addresses eight global crises exposed by the COVID pandemic and how Christians may be agents of healing and transformation. Review
An Infinite Fountain of Light, George Marsden. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023. A brief introduction to the life and thought of Jonathan Edwards, setting him alongside two of his contemporaries, Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield. Review
Flood and Fury, Matthew J. Lynch. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023. A searching study of the biblical texts on the flood in Genesis and the conquest of Canaan, facing the issue of violence and God’s participation, against the backdrop of the shalom of God. Review
Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger. New York: Atria Books, 2013. Two boys in a rural Minnesota town encounter a series of deaths, including one within their family, and discover something of the “awful grace of God.” Review
Best of the Month. Chris Watkin’s Biblical Critical Theory has deservedly received a good deal of attention. Watkin shows how one might use the whole of scripture in a thoughtful critique of culture. It is wide-ranging, erudite and persuasive. Whether you agree with him in detail, he offers a challenge to engage our contemporary culture thoughtfully.
Quote of the Month: William Kent Krueger’s Pastor Drum, in Ordinary Grace, grieving for his murdered daughter, articulates the struggle of a person of faith to believe when facing such tragic loss:
“‘I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’…’When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken?
‘I will tell you what is left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even to the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them.“
What I’m reading. I’ve just finished Jeremy M. Kimble’s Behold and Become, a wonderful articulation of the transforming power of God through the scriptures. C. W. Goodyear’s President Garfield fills in the gaps in our knowledge of this president who sadly served only for months, leaving us to wonder what might have been if an assassin’s bullet and unenlightened medical practice had not taken his life. Timothée Joset’s The Priesthood of All Students studies the history of an idea that has shaped the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, a movement among college students in over 160 countries–namely that the best ones to minister to students are students. Your Body is a Revolution by Tara Teng critiques the ideas about the body she received in her evangelical upbringing and how her thinking has changed as an embodiment coach. While there is much I would take issue with, including the obliviousness of the book to older bodies, I recognize and grieve the defective theology against which she has revolted and would affirm aspects of her vision of the goodness of our bodies. American Idolatry is a concise study, drawing upon sociological research showingt the connection of Christian nationalism to white supremacy and xenophobia. as well as delineating the unbiblical falsehoods on which Christian nationalism is based. The Beginning and End of All Things explores the connections between creation and the new creation that we often miss in scripture. Night at the Vulcan is another Ngaio Marsh mystery set at theatre. I’m curious to see how this will differ from others she has written using this setting. And finally, Alice Crosetto, a classmate throughout my school years has written The Cookie Table: A Steel; Valley Tradition. If you are from Youngstown or Pittsburgh, you know that a proper wedding is not complete without a lavish cookie table with hundreds of dozens of cookies. If you are not, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about but you should, so read my review and buy Alice’s book!
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.
Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger. New York: Atria Books, 2013.
Summary: Two boys in a rural Minnesota town encounter a series of deaths, including one within their family, and discover something of the “awful grace of God.”
The writing of William Kent Krueger has been my discovery of this summer. How grateful I am for the person who recommended his work to me! Ordinary Grace is a standalone novel set in a rural Minnesota town in 1961. The story centers around Frank Drum, the narrator, and his younger brother, Jake. Jake stutters, and is often silent, but also always seeing and often insightful. Their father is a pastor, responsible for a three church charge. Their mother is a musician, once in love with the town’s music professor, Emil Brandt, who had returned from war blinded, physically and emotionally damaged, who lives with his sister Lise, a deaf spinster attached to Emil and to her garden. Instead, Ruth Drum ended up marrying Nathan Drum when he was ambitious to become a lawyer. War changed all that, a survivor of too many battles, having lost too many men, hearing a call from God amid the loss. Ruth tried to make the best of what she had not expected, living the life of a pastor’s life instead of being the spouse of an up and coming lawyer. Nathan came back with one of those he did not lose, Gus, who loves drink too much, gets into fights, lives in the church basement, getting by on odd jobs about the town. Surprisingly, Gus is a confidant of Nathan who he calls “Captain” and often advisor to the boys.
The other person in this circle is Ariel, the Drum’s daughter, just graduated from high school, a gifted singer and composer, headed to Juilliard, representing the unfulfilled dreams of her mother. She is dating Karl Brandt, nephew to Emil and son of the wealthy brewing family who live in a mansion at the top of the hill and drives a sporty convertible. At one point, Frank spots her slipping out in the middle of the night, returning before morning. Shortly after, she begins to reconsider her Juilliard plans.
The story spans a single summer, filled with a mixture of normal adventures, a scrap with Morris Engdahl, the town bully, at the quarry, where they get the best of him, and encounters with a mysterious Native American living in a shanty down by the river, Warren Redstone. It is also a story that progresses by a series of deaths to which Frank is a party–the first is Bobby Cole, a mentally challenged boy, struck by a train passing over a tressle near the town where Bobby was sitting. Then Frank spots the body of a mysterious stranger, an itinerant who had died. Redstone is nearby, but had nothing to do with the death.
The next death is the hardest. Ariel doesn’t come home after partying with friends following an event where a musical piece she wrote was performed. A desperate search follows but it is Frank who finds her spotting her body in the river. Engdahl, Redstone, and Emil all are suspects. For some mysterious reason Frank can’t explain, he lets Redstone escape when the authorities are in pursuit, probably saving his life.
The tragedy hits them all hard. Jake gives up on God. Ruth separates from Nathan, who represents the God with whom she is angry. The tragedy deepens with the results of the autopsy and the events that follow. The words of Aeschylus are used at one point, “the awful grace of God” and it is this Nathan wrestles with as he tries to grapple with this death and guide his broken family and flock. He says,
“‘I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’…’When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken?
‘I will tell you what is left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even to the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them.“
We see people wrestling with the hardest of tragedies and struggling to hold onto the ordinary graces of God as they face this “awful” grace–these seemingly inexplicable ways of God. People practice ordinary grace in all their brokenness–Gus and officer Doyle fighting and then forgiving, an outing on horses at Gus’s girlfriend Ginger’s farm, congregation members providing food, music, prayers. A moment when Ruth and Frank sit together on the tressle where he’d spotted Ariel’s body, and grieve and extend comfort to each other.
The phrase “ordinary grace” is actually used only once in the book. At a reception after the funeral services, Nathan is unable to offer a grace before the dinner, wordless in his own grief. People look at one another wondering who will pray. Jake, who has turned away from God, says he will. And he prays without stuttering. Frank recalls:
“That was it. That was all of it. A grace so ordinary there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.”
Jake never stuttered again, finding the miracle he needed to believe again.
Krueger plumbs the depths of the darkness of inexplicable tragedy, those places we are inclined to wonder where God is and to rail against God. In one sense, there are no answers to dispel the darkness. Yet Krueger leads us to believe that for those who hold on, there is the ordinary grace to go on, holding to faith, hope, and love. There is no grace to make life go smoothly and tragedy-free. Life is not like that. But Krueger, in these ordinary, broken people in a small town, reveals the unconditional love of God in the love they give each other, and the faith that turns to God in anger, grief, hope, and a prayer before a meal, in which a quiet miracle takes place.
The Rayen School ca 1912. Public Domain via Wikipedia
Having written about several other high schools in Youngstown, it is time for me to write about Youngstown’s first high school, The Rayen School. While it is referred to as Rayen High School, including in the image above from 1912, proud alumni have told me that the real name is “The Rayen School” and so that is the name I will use in this article.
The Rayen School’s name and origins go back to Judge William Rayen, one of Youngstown’s early founders, who died childless in 1854. Regretting his own lack of education in his youth, he left a gift for the youth of Youngstown in his will, where he wrote:
“As this school is designed for the benefit of all youth of the township, without regard to religious denominations or differences, and none may be excluded for such or the like reasons or grounds, I hereby prohibit the teachings therein of the peculiars religions, tenets, or doctrine, of any denomination or sect whatever; at the same time I enjoin that no others be employed as teachers than persons of good moral character and habit who by precept and example will instill into the minds of those under their charge the importance of industry, morality, and integrity in all the relations of life.”
He left a sizable bequest for his day, $31,390 which would be $1,140,163.27 in 2023. In 1866, The Rayen School was opened at Wood and Wick. The distinctive red brick was the work of Youngstown’s premiere bricklayer of the day, P. Ross Berry, a Black bricklayer and architect. The original building was expanded over the years and served as Youngstown’s only public high school until South High School was opened in 1911.
The continued growth of the city led to the need for a new, larger facility, and The Rayen School moved to its new building at 250 Benita Avenue in 1922. The old structure served for a time as an elementary school and the home of the Rayen School of Engineering for what was then Youngstown College. Later, it was purchased by the Youngstown City School District for its headquarters, which were moved to the new East High School when it opened. The superintendent’s office is still in the original Rayen building and it serves as the home of the Youngstown Rayen Early College High School.
According to Wikipedia, The Rayen School continued to operate on funds generated from the Rayen, and the name “The Rayen School” became the popular name for the school in the 1940’s. The school was widely known during this period for the quality of its teachers and its rigorous academic standards. Edward Manning, from the class of 1933, in an oral history interview stated:
“We were very fortunate; we had all of the teachers that had taught at the old Rayen. Those were some of the best teachers in Northeastern Ohio. The teachers at Rayen would lecture and we had to take notes just as in college. We had one teacher, Miss Wallis, an English teacher she was a world traveler. She could tell you about England, France and other European countries. She has been to the Louvre in France and any of those big art galleries in Italy. She brought that outside information into the class, just the same as the college professors. Most of the teachers we had there were way above average.“
Over its history, The Rayen School had 19 principals and graduated over 50,000 students. Some of the graduates about whom I’ve written include William Stewart, the first black legislator from Youngstown, Joe Flynn, most famous for his role in McHale’s Navy, and François Clemmons, the talented singer and Officer Clemmons on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. Albert Warner, one of the four Warner Brothers, also graduated from The Rayen School.
Rayen Stadium was built in 1924, and also served as the home field for Ursuline High School and for Youngstown State until Stambaugh Stadium was built. It was the site of football history when Dike Beede first implemented the use of the penalty flag on October 17, 1941 in a game against Oklahoma City University. The stadium fell into disuse in the 1980’s and was restored as Jack Antonucci Field in 2012, honoring another Rayen alumnus.
The school did not survive that long, closing and being razed in 2007, due to declining enrollments. Before closure, a 65 foot mural commemorating Rayen history, painted by art instructor John Benninger and his students in the 1958-59 academic year, was removed, originally destined for Rayen Middle School, which was never built. Instead, it has been cleaned and resides at the Tyler Mahoning Valley History Center.
The Rayen School had a great 141 year history as Youngstown’s first high school. If you went to Rayen, I’d love to hear of your memories of the school.
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.”Enjoy!
Flood and Fury, Matthew J. Lynch. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.
Summary: A searching study of the biblical texts on the flood in Genesis and the conquest of Canaan, facing the issue of violence and God’s participation, against the backdrop of the shalom of God.
Violence has been a sad part of the human story since the fall, and its continued existence and the havoc it wreaks in human lives is something any thoughtful person wrestles with. What is also troubling to many thoughtful, believing or not, is the violence in scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, that is either God-sanctioned or God-perpetrated.
Some approaches to this defend the violence as necessary, as God’s warranted judgment. Others are basically arguments that try to eliminate the problem by saying it didn’t really happen that way. Matthew J. Lynch takes a somewhat different approach in this book, one that at some points says there is more (or perhaps less) to the perception of violence than meets the eye, and yet does not deny the reality of violence but also tries to set in a larger context of God’s shalom and God’s great compassion.
Lynch begins by contending that we need to face the problem without “burning down the house.” which he argues Marcion did in trying to excise violence from scripture. To do so is to eliminate a tension that leads to greater insight. He then briefly surveys the different approaches to the violence in scripture and then contends that we need an approach that reads slowly and carefully, reads problematic texts in light of the whole, that is willing to be surprised and shocked, that continues to allow the Bible to “bite back,” speaking into our own situation, and that keeps wrestling.
The next two parts take two major concerning passages on violence–the flood narratives in Genesis and the conquest of Canaan including the practice of herem. First, in Genesis 1-8, he explores the theme of shalom and its shattering. In contrast to other origins narratives, he notes the shalom that is part of the DNA of creation–of wholeness, of harmony, of human rule causing all to flourish. This ended when sin entered in. He traces the development of violence, not only against Abel, but against women through polygamy, military and political violence. He develops the idea of the spread of creation-destroying violence and God’s conclusion to bring it to an end through the flood to restore shalom through returning the world to the formlessness at the beginning of creation. It should be noted that he does allow questions both about the universality and historicity of the flood, opening the way to treating this as story of how God pursues shalom.
He then turns to the conquest narratives. Perhaps the most interesting thing in his discussion here is that he shows that there are two “reports” in Joshua, and we usually hear only one. The Majority Report focuses on the utter destruction of cities and their inhabitants. The Minority Report is of the settlement of Canaan little by little, sometimes settling with the peoples around them, sometimes displacing them, and sometimes enslaving them, all of which are far more merciful. He shows how both are in the text, but often only the more violent texts are focused on, and these may in fact have been limited to key military outposts and political cities, some with relatively small populations. At times, he allows for hyperbole in the accounts. More controversial, and less grounded in the biblical text, he allows for the possibility of not a “conquest” but a gradual “infiltration” consisting of some coming from outside and others already in the land. Also, he suggests that Joshua’s conquests of the “kings” of Canaan completes the Exodus, as these kings would have been vassals of Egypt–an intriguing idea. What he proposes is that the literary art of Joshua is to display Joshua as a second Moses, who completes what Moses began. This allows us to resolve discrepancies between biblical accounts of Jericho and the archaeological evidence (or lack thereof) of a conquest.
The concluding section, perhaps was the most helpful. He sets these accounts against the larger Old Testament narrative in which he believes the covenant-keeping love and faithfulness of God predominates. He does argue that accounts of wrath and judgment are embedded in this larger picture and that this is a “wicked” problem, one he would deem “irresolvable.” There is mystery here, and as he has observed earlier, to try to pull out violence and judgment diminishes, yet its presence troubles.
I particularly appreciate in this work the way he looks closely at the biblical text while reading it within larger themes–the shalom of God in Genesis, the love and mercy of God, evident even in many places in Joshua (e.g. Rahab). His insistence that we credit both the majority and minority reports in Joshua and ask what is the larger narrative purpose of incorporating both is important. His willingness to not settle for simple answers and even to allow scripture to question us–for example about our own ecological violence and exploitation of others for our benefit–is a strength of the book. I do find unsettling his willingness to go along with scholarship that basically concludes that some texts really can’t be read as they would most plainly be understood, or that history really didn’t happen the way it is rendered in Joshua. I realize these pose challenges. I’d rather live with the discrepancies than deny the biblical text, and hope for further illumination.
However one comes down on these questions, Lynch has written a thought-provoking study of two important sections of the Old Testament dealing with God-sanctioned or -perpetrated violence. If you are looking for a resolution, it is not here. But you will find valuable insights along the way, and a posture in approaching the questions that, apart from concessions to critical scholarship, is one worthy of imitation.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
“Books — helping introverts avoid conversations since 1454.” (Quote from a meme, source unknown)
I’ve been thinking about the stereotype that most readers are introverts. It’s one that I think I became aware of in Susan Cain’s Quiet. In both the book and her TED talk video on the power of introverts, she talks about going off to camp with a duffle bag full of books and being surprised when that was not the idea of being at camp shared by the other girls. (Here is the video if you have not seen it.)
I can identify with Susan Cain. Even as an adult at business meetings, I find I have to squirrel away at some point and retreat to my books. Fitting the character of introverts, interacting with lots of people exhausts me and being alone with a book recharges me. It’s said that introverts don’t get ready for a party; they gather strength for a party. That would be me.
But is a love of reading exclusively an introvert characteristic? I’m not sure and I have not found any scientific studies of the matter. Anecdotally, I sense that many of the people who visit my Bob on Books Facebook page are introverts. One of the memes I posted recently that “blew up” showed a girl with glasses reading in what looks like a library with the statement “I was the kid that was actually excited when the teacher told us to read silently.” Over 54,000 have liked it with over 1.4 thousand leaving comments, all in sympathy with that idea. Typically, I’ll get ten to one hundred comments and several hundred likes. This struck a cord. There are plainly enough of us out there to justify the stereotype.
But I think part of the issue is that introverts and extroverts who read engage with reading differently, and we don’t hear about the extrovert part as much (as least as introverts).
Introverts feel recharged when they have a long time to read. Extroverts just need a short time with an interesting book.
Introverts enjoy thinking about a book. Extroverts enjoy talking about a book.
Introverts think of a good book as a conversation with the author. Extroverts think of good books sparking conversations with others.
Introverts don’t like external stimuli when reading. Extroverts don’t mind the stimuli–if the book is good it keeps your attention and if not, the breaks are good.
Introverts don’t want to read something because “everyone is reading it.” Extroverts like a popular book because it helps start conversations.
I realize these are generalizations and may not apply to all. But this gives you the sense that the two types are wired differently in their reading habits (for more on this, visit “Are You an Introverted or Extroverted Reader?” from which these contrasts were drawn). But extroverts can be readers. Oprah Winfrey is an outstanding example, sharing her love of reading with millions.
Nevertheless, reading lends itself to introverts. Some studies indicate that introverts and extroverts experience sound differently. No wonder the quiet of reading is restorative! Introverts like to focus on the inner world of their thoughts. Reading allows us to do that, but in a quiet conversation with other minds that also draws us out of ourselves, which can be healthy. Stories allow us to step out of ourselves and see things from another perspective, which may afford us fresh insights for the situations we inhabit in real life. Sometimes, introverts struggle to put into words with others what we are experiencing in our inner worlds. Books may give us those words, those “Aha” moments where we find someone giving voice to the inchoate within us.
The differences between introverts and extroverts do suggest some important things for helping us be both better readers and better humans. One is that we need to be sure to include reflection time for introverts when they read. Writing reviews, and the reflective thought that goes into that is important to me. For extroverts, making sure there are opportunties to talk about books is important. We also need to respect the different ways we read–how long we like to read, what we like to read, and the settings in which we talk with others about what we are reading. Maybe this is why introverts sometimes have a hard time sharing their love of reading with extroverts. We come to reading looking for different things and what interests me may be a non-starter for others.
The other thing about appreciating difference? Sometimes when we understand and respect differences, our worlds are enlarged. Others see things we do not, and our reflectiveness as introverts, when shared, may enrich the world of others and not just our own. Vive la difference!
Summary: A brief introduction to the life and thought of Jonathan Edwards, setting him alongside two of his contemporaries, Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield.
George Marsden is one of the outstanding scholars we have in the area of American religious history, His biography of Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, won the Bancroft Prize in 2004, a prize recognizing outstanding works of American history and diplomacy. This work, much briefer, introduces us to some key ideas of Edwards, setting him alongside two contemporaries, Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield. The chapters began as the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2008 and have been developed in subsequent presentations.
What Marsden hopes to do here, as he explains in his first lecture, is to translate Edwards, who spoke and wrote for his time, for us, at least a few of his profound ideas about the beauty of God who is light and love, and about how we might recognize rightly ordered love of God in the life of one who claims to be in Christ. He then offers a short biography of Edwards focusing on his pastoral ministry and oversight of revivals, his role as an apologist for the “New Light” movement and his publication of the Religious Affections.. He briefly covers his alienation from his congregation in Northampton over who may participate in communion, his ministry with Native peoples in Stockbridge, and his presidency at Princeton and connections to the Burr family.
The second lecture considers Benjamin Franklin and how his ideas cleared the way for the modern/post-modern immanent framing of life, focused on a material universe, human initiative and activity, the autonomous individual. While Franklin and Edwards were acquainted they were worlds apart. Franklin held to vaguely theistic beliefs and believed religion played an important role in motivating the moral life necessary for the democratic ordering of society. Yet his vision of the self made person anticipated Charles Taylor’s “buffered self.”
I thought the third chapter was worth the price of admission in elucidating Edwards ideas of the “new light” of God’s beauty Edwards apprehended in his conversion. In contrast to Franklin’s materialist outlook, Edwards saw “that the universe is most essentially an ongoing expression of a loving God [that] offered a dramatically radical alternative to the emerging perspective on the universe shared by Franklin and others in the era following the work of Isaac Newton” (p. 48). Far from a distant deity, Edwards saw all of this as a personal expression of the Triune God. Edwards was enthralled with the beauty of this love both in creation and the sacrificial work of Christ. He further saw the beauty of God’s love and joy in creation and salvation as a “fountain of light” illumining and transforming the life of one who believes, leading to a life of love ordered by the One whose loving light has shown into the believer’s life.
In Chapter Four, Marsden considers Edwards’ other contemporary, George Whitefield. Edwards welcomed and defended Whitefield’s preaching in New England, hoping that he would stir the revival fires that had died down. While Edwards defended New Light ideas within an establishment shaped by the Reformers, Whitefield innovated both in message and methods of promotion that anticipated modern evangelicalism, anticipating the Wesleyan movement and those which followed. His conversionist message would be recognizable to evangelicals today, and its core paved the way for movements with far less stress on education than that which Edwards and Whitefield shared. It also paved the way for the diversity of churches dotting the American landscape.
The concluding chapter considers the Religious Affections or as Marsden translates the term, the rightly order loves that distinguish those who are truly regenerate from the falsity of those who are not. Such love begins with the indwelling Holy Spirit who makes real God’s love in the believer. This results in love centered on the loving God rather than the self. Such love is drawn to the moral beauty of God. This is more than rational knowledge of the love and beauty of God; it is a heart enthralled by that love and beauty. Yet rightly ordered love also involves right understanding shaped by the scriptures. Such love is humble. It is lamb-like, not proud, arrogant, or self-asserting. It is tender of spirit. The true believer’s life will be one of symmetry and proportion, reflecting an eigthteenth century idea of beauty. Rather than fading, the appetite for the beloved grows, and finally eventuates in a life of actively growing in grace. Against the shallow spirituality and cults of personality in the present day church, Marsden sees the vision of the “infinite fountain of light and love” and the “rightly ordered loves” of Edwards offering profound insight for the growth of believers in Christ.
Marsden appends to this material an edited version of Edwards’ sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light” from 1733, in which we can see how Edwards develops the ideas Marsden has discussed. If only this were the preferred sermon rather than “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as representative of Edwards.
This is a delightful little book that both introduces the reader to some important strands of Edwards’ thought, worthy of translation into our contemporary context, and considers the shaping influence of his contemporaries Franklin and Whitefield on both secular belief and evangelical practice. This left me reflecting why the latter have had far greater influence, it seems, than Edwards, when he is often deemed America’s foremost theologian. Perhaps it is this matter of translation. We seem to be better at translating Edwards flaws, whether they be the “Sinners” sermon or his slave holding, than his striking insights into the nature of God and how this bears on true spirituality. Perhaps this book and the renaissance of Edwards studies will help redress this balance, if we keep the necessity of translating well, as Marsden has done, in mind.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
Summary: Addresses eight global crises exposed by the COVID pandemic and how Christians may be agents of healing and transformation.
We’ve been through a crisis unlike what most of us have ever faced. Not just some of us in some places. But all of us. In every place. It’s one that has left its marks in our bodies, in our families and social networks, in our politics. Even where the marks are not visible, there are scars on our psyches. That’s what a deadly global pandemic does. And it exposed other crises in our world–political polarization, inequities, corruption, international tensions and a crisis of truth. For many, it exposed a poverty of spiritual resources, evident as much as anything in what seems our frantic effort just to move on and put the pandemic behind us. But the marks remain, and the crises the pandemic exposed remain. Christians are a people who don’t believe in moving on, but in renewal and transformation, often out of suffering, deep pain, and crisis. That’s because we believe in a God who has entered the world’s suffering, pain, and death in his Son, and who brought life, renewal, and transformation out of the darkest hour. But the question is, how does this bear on our experience of the last years and the crises we continue to face?
Chris Rice has lived a life at the intersection of the world’s pain and the gospel’s renewing power, from interracial community development efforts in Mississippi, to the halls of academia, to international relief efforts, and to pleading the cause of the world’s poor at the United Nations. Then the pandemic isolated him for a time in New England with his father and gave him to think about the challenges and opportunities of renewal in a post-pandemic world. In this book he identifies eight crises exposed more clearly during the pandemic and transformative Christian practices to address these crises. His eight chapters dealing with these are:
1. Bearing Joy for a World of Frantic Anxiety. In a world of rising anxiety expressed in a focus on activity, excessive positivism and activism turned to violence, Rice proposes the virtue of joy born out of a life of contemplating being the beloved of God.
2. Centering the Vulnerable for a World of Rising Disparity. The pandemic, thought to be the great equalizer, exposed inequities in death rates, high stock values and long food lines, and great inequalities in the distribution of vaccines. The way of the gospel is the way of the Samaritan on the Jericho road, taking costly steps to focus on the world’s vulnerable.
3. Being Peacemakers for a World of Surging Polarization. Rice recounts some of the unhealed wrongs he has encountered among those with whom he works and the power of the word “we” as we think of who “our” people are. He speaks of the Antioch moment where the gospel crosses boundaries of hostility, of the church’s peacemaking mission as we pursue restorative justice and hold truth and love together in these efforts.
4. Redeeming Power for a World of Political Mediocrity. Rice assesses both the potential for great good and great evil in the exercise of political power. He considers our contemporary polarization, paralysis, and pessimism, and the value of political love in action for the sake of the vulnerable, practiced in prayer, pursuing “purple” spaces, and local opportunities to pursue the common good.
5. Making Transnational Disciples for a World of American Blinders. Rice talks about the American blinders of both how we may believe ourselves saviors of the world and our lack of perception of how American power is perceived elsewhere in the world. He invites us to grow as transnational disciples through expanding what we read, through empowering majority world leaders, and pursuing international friendships.
6. Pursuing Private Integrity for a World of Public Validation. For many of us, what we do, what we have, and what others think of us is the focus of our lives. Rice calls Christians to private integrity, who we are out of public view, through personal examination, vulnerability with others, and communal safeguarding.
7. Cultivating Moral Imagination for a World of Unprecedented Dangers. Amid the dangers of technological disruption, environmental degradation, and the bi-polar China-US conflict, he bids us to imagine a moral world yet to be through forsaking our reliance on technological solutions and our lust for dominion, through instilling hope, through “thinking little,” through practicing non-violent communication, and making climate change personal. He also advises that more Americans might spend time learning Chinese! I thought this perhaps the most prescient chapter in the book.
8. Renewing the Church for a World Longing for Hope. The pandemic, in Rice’s view, has been a time of pruning for the church, a prelude to its renewal. He believes renewal consists in knowing our destination, reforming Christian formation, going deep into congregational life, creating new wineskins for mission, learning to function as ambassadors in the public square, and rooting our lives in intimacy with Christ.
What is striking as I look over this list is that it is about the formation and renewal of Christian character. Joy. Vulnerability. Peacemaking. Political love. Discipleship. Integrity. Moral Imagination. All of this is woven in the context of ecclesial communities. Rice makes a compelling case that this renewal of Christian character has far-reaching consequences, extending to the anxious, the poor, those at enmity, to our politics, to the nations, to our social lives, and to the existential dangers of our time–whether technological, environmental, or nuclear apocalypses.
Chris Rice opens a conversation we desperately need to have. There is no getting back to life before the pandemic. We live in a different, and in many ways, scarier world. How then will the people of God live? Will we bring spiritual understanding to what we have been through, and to how we might live amid the dangers and challenges and opportunities of our new situation? Will we stop fighting old battles and resist the temptation to simply return to our old patterns? This book, including the discussion guide provided for groups, can be an instrument for Christian communities to take stock and discern what it can mean to hope for renewal out of the ruins of these last years.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
