Summary: Describes the journey to life-giving sabbath practices as well as planning for and taking sabbaticals.
Ruth Haley Barton is a gifted speaker, writer, and Christian leader. And like many such people she pushed herself hard in a high-performance church culture and later as leader of her own ministry organization. She enjoyed reading books about sabbath, but that was for other people. Until she was in a bike accident. And she realized that God had given her a harder nudge that it was time to begin a journey of sabbath practice.
This book describes that journey and a further one of taking sabbaticals–extended sabbaths allowing a longer period of rest and transformation. She discovered that sabbath began with God, who wove rest into the fabric of creation with his own rhythm of six days of work, and then rest. Sabbath is participating in the rest that is already there, that we work and rest in rhythm with God. Sabbath is also an act of resistance. It was for the Hebrew ex-slaves who always had to work for Pharaoh. It is as well in our 24/7 culture.
Sabbath was meant as a community practice, enjoyed and shared together. We often try to figure this out for ourselves, and one of the unique contributions of this book is that it casts vision for churches and other communities to share in sabbath practice. She gives practical help in leading that culture change process, beginning with oneself, other leaders, and the congregation. She speaks of “no emergencies with God” and allowing the process of communal sabbath-keeping to take the time it needs. The book includes an appendix with a discussion guide for church leaders to use.
She addresses unplugging from our technology, acknowledging the hold it has on us, and ways we may be more present to God and each other when we include “unplugging” in our sabbath practice. She shares with us her delight in sabbath, particularly in just having time to “putz” around. It’s a time to be free to be neighborly, to allow the accumulated emotions of the week to bubble to the service, and to bring them to God without self-numbing. She speaks of sabbath in different seasons of life, as a student, with families, caring for parents. Then she pulls this together in helping us shape our sabbath practice.
There are times when sabbath is not enough. But the good news is that sabbath prepares us for sabbatical, for extended periods of rest. She addresses the temptation to be “productive” during sabbaticals and encourages beginning to plan a sabbatical by listening to what one’s soul is trying to say to God and ourselves about our longings for this time. She shares her own sabbatical journey–during a pandemic–and offers practical helps on how to plan a sabbatical and an appendix on re-entry from one. One of the basic insights that everyone I know affirms is that you don’t know how tired you are until the first weeks of a sabbatical and the importance of making allowance for this.
It is obvious that Ruth Haley Barton has “put her own mask on first” before trying to help us. Her delight in sabbath and rich experience of sabbath invite the reader to consider these for oneself. Sabbath and sabbatical are shared as gifts rather than obligations and burdens, practices that keep us even more than we keep them. Perhaps more, the language of embrace suggests sabbath as a welcome friend, or even a reminder that as we rest and trust, that the Lover of our Soul will embrace and hold and refresh us.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
It was the one bank whose name showed its connection to the Youngstown area. Its main offices graced the southwest part of Central Square, designed by one of the distinguished architects of the day. A fiscally sound institution, it operated 132 years until it merged with another bank. It was my mother-in-law’s bank, and at the end of her life, we had professional and efficient dealings with them as we helped her manage her finances. The tellers at her branch were like family to her and a number had worked there for years. That was the Mahoning National Bank many of us knew.
The Mahoning National Bank was established in 1868 as the Youngstown Savings and Loan Association. The founding directors were a veritable who’s who of business leaders in Youngstown: David Tod, Chauncey Andrews, W. J. Hitchcock, F.O. Arms, T. K. Hall, Joseph G. Butler, Jr., T. H. Wells, John Stambaugh, David Theobald, Richard Brown, A. B. Cornell, B. F. Hoffman, and William Powers formed the board of directors. David Tod was elected president but died two months later to be succeeded by F. O. Arms.
They first operated on the northwest part of Central Square until moving to the southwest part in 1873 in a building connected with Andrews and Hitchcock. In 1877, the association adopted a national bank charter under the name Mahoning National Bank. Then in 1909, the bank bought out the Andrews & Hitchcock interest in the property and razed the old structure to erect a modern high rise building.
The building was designed by Alfred Kahn, known at the time as one America’s foremost industrial architects. He also designed the Stambaugh Building and North Side Hospital. He designed a number of industrial facilities in Detroit including Ford’s Highland Park plant where the Model T was assembled. The building was completed in 1910. You will note that the building above is only part of the present day complex. A four story addition was added on the site of the old Opera House, and the building was extended southward by 72 feet. This video, produced by Metro Monthly shows the stately lobby of the bank as well as giving information about its architect:
The bank grew with Youngstown, opening branches as the city expanded and people moved into the surrounding suburban community. In 1924 the bank had assets of $6.3 million. By 2000, its assets had grown to 818 million and it had twenty-one offices.
The end of the twentieth century was marked by numerous bank mergers. In June of 1999, it merged with Sky Bank, part of Sky Financial Services, an upstart company formed in 1998 in northwest Ohio that grew rapidly through mergers. At the end of 2001, it changed its name to Sky Bank. Then in 2007, Sky Bank was acquired by Huntington Bank, based in Columbus.
Huntington Bank had offices in the old Mahoning National Bank building but has moved to smaller offices in the Stambaugh building. In December 2022, The Business Journalreported the sale of the building for $2.3 million to a New York based investment group operating under the name 22 Market Street Ohio LLC. The company intends to use the bottom four stories for office space and convert the upper nine floors to residential units, preserving the historic character of the building.
It sounds wonderful if it unfolds as promoted. There do seem to be the beginnings of a downtown renaissance. But I wonder if the Youngstown economy can yet sustain it and whether there is sufficient “draw” to live downtown. I, for one, would love to see historic buildings like this and the Stambaugh buildings (both Kahn designed) preserved and used well.
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.”Enjoy!
In honor of Women’s History Month, I thought it might be interesting to compile my reviews in recent years of Christian books on subjects related to women. I found everything from current issues to biblical studies. There are biographies and collections of writing by various Christian women in history. There is a discussion of a woman literary figure and one of women in literature. The books are ordered alphabetically by author. The list includes twenty-six reviews going back to January of 2018. This certainly doesn’t exhaust the good things that have been written (and there are reviews older than 2018 on this blog as well). If you are interested in reading some thoughtful books by and about women this offers some recent titles you might consider.
Reason to Return, Ericka Andersen. Colorado Springs: NavPress. Forthcoming, 2023. A book directed to believing women who have left the church looking at the reasons why they have left and reasons why they should consider returning, both for what they may gain and what they may give. Review
The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Beth Allison Barr. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021. A study of women in church history and the construction of the idea of “biblical womanhood which underwent a series of developments from the Reformation to the present. Review
A Week in the Life of a Greco-Roman Woman (A Week in the Life series), Holly Beers. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019. A creative rendering of what life was like for a woman from the lower free classes in Ephesus during the period when Paul was preaching in the city. Review
The Gospel According to Eve, Amanda W. Benckhuysen. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019. A history of women who have written on Genesis 1-3 since the fourth century, treating their worth, education, their roles as wives and mothers, whether they may teach and preach, and as advocates of social reforms. Review
A SubversiveGospel (Studies in Theology and the Arts),Michael Mears Bruner. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic, 2017. Proposes that the grotesque and violent character of Flannery O’Connor’s work reflects her understanding of the subversive character of the gospel and the challenge of awakening people in the Christ-haunted South to the beauty, goodness, and truth of the gospel. Review
That Way and No Other, Amy Carmichael (Introduction by Katelyn Beaty). Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2020. A curated collection of writings of Amy Carmichael, the missionary to India who became house mother to girls saved from sex trafficking. Review
The Reckless Way of Love, Dorothy Day, edited by Carolyn Kurtz, Introduction by D. L. Mayfield. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2017. A collection of Dorothy Day’s writings on following Jesus in the ways of faith, love, prayer, life, and community. Review
Together in Ministry, Rob Dixon (Foreword by Ruth Haley Barton). Downers Grove: IVP Academic/Missio Alliance, 2021. A field research-based approach to mixed-gender ministry collaboration identifying ten attributes for healthy partnerships. Review
The #MeToo Reckoning, Ruth Everhart. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. A discussion of sexual harassment and assault in the church, the impact on victims and the response of many churches more focused on institutional reputation than protecting victims and justice for the perpetrators. Review
Resisting the Marriage Plot(Studies in Theology and the Arts), Dalene Joy Fisher. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. Contrary to prevailing ideas of Christianity being an oppressive force in women’s lives in Victorian literature, looks at four instances in this literature where women resist cultural expectations around marriage due to the liberating and empowering quality of their faith. Review
Blessed Are The Nones, Stina Kielsmeier-Cook. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. A memoir of a Christian woman coming to terms, with the help of some Catholic nuns, with her husband’s de-conversion. Review
Women in God’s Mission, Mary T. Lederleitner. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018. An account of research into the many ways women are leading in God’s mission around the world, the distinctive traits in their service and leadership, the challenges they experience around gender discrimination, and the conditions under which they do their best work. Review
Mother of Modern Evangelicalism: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Mears, Arlin C. Migliazzo, Foreword by Kristen Kobes Du Mez. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2020. The first comprehensive biography on Henrietta Mears that focuses on her early life, her Christian Education ministry at Hollywood Presbyterian Church, and her national impact on a nascent evangelical network of leaders, on Christian publishing and retreat ministry. Review
The Samaritan Woman’s Story, Caryn A. Reeder. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022. Challenges the view of the Samaritan woman as a sexual sinner, considering how this has been read in the church, and the realities of the life of women and marriage that points to a very different reading. Review
The Gospel in Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy L. Sayers with an Appreciation by C. S. Lewis, edited by Carole Vanderhoof. Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2018. An anthology of Sayers’ work organized by theological topics, drawing on her detective fiction, plays, and essays. Review
Husband, Wife, Father, Child, Master, Slave, Kurt C Schaefer. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2018. In contrast to many biblical scholars who argue that the “household codes” of scripture do indeed, for various reasons, affirm cultural role expectations, this work argues that Peter’s version is actually a subtle satire that opposes the cultural norms of Greco-Roman culture. Review
Partners in Christ, John G. Stackhouse, Jr. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015. Acase by a convert to egalitarianism for why both complementarians and egalitarians find scriptural foundations for their views with a proposal for what can make the best sense of the diverse testimony of scripture. (Review)
Women Rising, Meghan Tschanz, Foreword by Carolyn Custis James. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021. A global mission trip awakens the author both to the injustices women face throughout the world and the patterns of subjection she learned in childhood that held her back and which she learned to name and use her voice to speak against. Review
The Way of Julian Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent, Sheila Upjohn. London: SPCK, 2020. Six meditations on the writings of Julian of Norwich that redirect our focus from sin and judgement to the greatness of God’s love revealed in Christ’s incarnation and death. Review
Sex and the City of God, Carolyn Weber. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2020. I wrote about this book: “This skillfully written narrative, punctuated with poetry and Augustine, invites us into the the aching wonder of human love shaped by the growing pursuit of the City of God. We are left wondering if God has something better on offer, even when it comes to human sexuality.” Review
With Fresh Eyes, Karen Wingate. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2021. Sixty reflections of a woman born legally blind, who gains significant sight in one eye, seeing not only the world, but also the world’s Creator with new eyes. Review
Priscilla, Ben Witherington III. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019. An imaginative rendering of the story of Priscilla, a companion of Paul, as a dictated narrative recorded by her adopted daughter Julia, as she faces possible trial before a Roman tribunal. Review
Power Women, Edited by Nancy Wang Yuen and Deshonna Collier-Goubil, Foreword by Shirley Hoogstra. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021. Fourteen women who are both mothers and academics write about how they navigate these callings as women of faith. Review
For other titles reviewed here on the blog, you can use “The Month in Reviews” and skim titles from 2017 and earlier or if you are looking for a particular title, enter it into the search box on this blog, which works very well with titles or topic searches.
Home is the Road, Diane Glancy. Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2022.
Summary: The traveling memoirs of a literature professor listening to the messages the land speaks and what within her answers these messages.
This is a book constantly on the move, as is its author. Diane Glancy is an emeritus literature and creative writing professor, still a visiting professor at various institutions across the country. She lives on the road, driving from place to place in an old Chevy with 180,000 miles on it. She believes the land has messages to which she listens as she drives. Her home is the road. She sleeps at rest stops, eats at roadside restaurants, and offers exquisite descriptions of what she sees.
She writes:
My creative scholarship is on the road by myself, sometimes within the shadow of other cars. When I am working on a project, I am following the trail of some historical character. The land has memory. It keeps a journal of what has passed upon it. It is in the elements–if I stand there long enough. There is something in the solitary that I find its shape and that I find its shape and connection to the past.
She is part Native American, raised in a fundamentalist Christian tradition where “everyone accepted Christ as their Savior.” As fashionable as it is in her circles to scorn Christianity and as problematic as it may be she states, “It has been foundational in my life–even its incomprehensible and off-setting parts. I believe in the Christ who was crucified.”
She chronicles her adventures with movers transporting her household from Kansas to California and her own parallel travels, who break and possibly abscond with some of her stuff, and yet she prays God’s mercy on men who brought fishing poles in their truck.
The book reads like the musings one has when driving alone on a long trip, watching a train in the distance, the slowing of trucks on a steep incline, the “shredding of self” that occurs as the miles pile up, the challenges of faith and the failures of her life, including a failed marriage. Will there be driving in the beyond? She thinks Jesus would have loved interstates (all this on two pages). Another chapter, “At Dawn, When You Drive Again,” consists of fragments of memory, mostly of childhood.
Her chapters on disenfranchisement are perhaps the most powerful. Once again, she holds terrible injustices and gospel truths in tension:
But I stayed. I have always stayed. I always will stay. I belong to Christ. I believe within the gospel is everlasting life. The missionaries came with soldiers to teach us this and to rid us of the desperate attacks of panic.
Movingly, she captures the tragedy of the Dakota Access Pipeline, once more, the imposition of American power over indigenous peoples during a visit to see what was taking place.
What made this travel memoir so powerful was this process of listening to the land, to its story and her own, often painful and yet held in tension with an unwavering belief, a hope that would not let her go any more than her love for the road. This is also an American story, in the grandeur of the landscape, the expanses we see from our network of highways, the spirituality that roots us, even as we wrestle with the pain of our own stories and the moral ambiguities of our national story. But will we listen? Will we stay?
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.
Third and Long, Bob Katz. Minneapolis: Trolley Car Press, 2010.
Summary: When a drifter, once a Notre Dame football star, shows up in Longview, Ohio, he quickly becomes the town’s hope to save its major factory, lead its football team to victory, and maybe save the town.
He’d drifted from town to town after a brief football career, dropping out of Notre Dame. With experience in clothing manufacturing, he got off the train in Longview, Ohio in 1997 to apply for a job as factory manager of the Made Right Clothing Company, the major business in this Ohio River county seat. He almost didn’t make the cut until Marie, the administrative assistant who had taken a shine to him let slip he had a football injury. His abbreviated career at Notre Dame, under the name of Nick Nocero was enough to change the owner’s mind.
It became clear he faced a challenge. There had already been layoffs. Foreign competition was making it more difficult to get contracts. Yet the change was noticeable. Nocero cared, and would help out wherever needed. Working with the union steward, they met some rush contracts and business was up. But that just appeared to make them more attractive to some visiting Korean businessmen discussing a “strategic partnership.”
Longview High School, playing at Made Right Stadium, had fielded a string of mediocre football teams, the Bobcats, under Coach Pruitt, who has just suffered a stroke. The assistant, Sherman, was a math teacher who could do stats but knew little of the game. The Made Right owners put the pressure on for Nick to help. He assists and then takes over, which Sherman was only too glad for him to do. And the team starts winning. Marie’s son Brian plays for them, and he not only plays better, but starts becoming a better student.
Suddenly he is in demand. To speak to the Chamber of Commerce. To swap stories at the American Legion. To get a celebrity to the town’s Christmas tree lighting event. Both for the town and for him, it’s “third and long” and everyone is hoping for a miracle. The company, the school, the town have been just hanging on. Marie, a single mom sees a man who is worthy of her.
It’s hopeful. The team’s winning, the company is making respectable gains, and romance is budding. But there is a secret in Nick’s past that could trip him, and the whole shebang, up, downing them all for a loss.
Bob Katz has captured life in an Ohio town. The cover even looks familiar, like I’ve been in this town. Nearly all the small county seats are just hanging on, if that. If that one big employer pulls out, it changes everything. It has for a number of them. He also captures how a winning team can lift a whole town. Nick both intrigues, with the sense of mystery surrounding his life, about which he say little, and his ability to lead and inspire. Katz understands what a famous pastor once observed, that people love to be led well. The people of the town did, the kids did, and I found myself rooting for Nick, as he tries to make the most of this “third and long” shot to show what he can do, who he can be. This is a finely written story speaking to the hopes we cling to for ourselves, and for the places we call home.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author.
Summary: An account of the People’s Republic of China’s suppression of the Uyghur minority within its borders, including its use of the U.S.-initiated Global War on Terror to pursue religious and political persecution, re-education, internment camps, and intermarriage to effect what the author calls “cultural genocide.“
The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim people of the Turkic linguistic family. The largest portion of the population lives in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the western part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). There are also Uyghur populations in several other Central Asian countries as well as a refugee community in Turkey. Since 2001 they have undergone increasingly repressive treatment. They have a long history in this part of the world, first becoming subject to China under the Qing dynasty.
Sean R. Roberts has spent the last several decades studying this people, first for his doctoral work. He has interviewed people both inside the XUAR, when this did not put them at risk, and lived in homes of Uyghurs in surrounding countries. In this work he recounts their history and describes the growth of increasing repressive treatment of the PRC’s Uyghur population in what amounts to what he calls “cultural genocide.” He begins by describing early colonial efforts of Qing and Han dynasties, rising nationalist hopes during the 1940’s under Soviet control, the early accommodation under Mao, with increasing efforts at assimilation during the Cultural Revolution. The 1980’s represented the last breath of accommodation before growing settler colonialism and efforts at integrating the XUAR into the rest of the PRC.
After disturbances in Baren in 1990 and Ghulja in 1997, resisting government policies, the PRC responded with increasing security crackdowns. Then 2001 came and with it, the U.S. led Global War on Terror (GWOT). Roberts traces how China used GWOT to designated a tiny group, the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement as a Uyghur terrorist organization, one operating outside its national boundaries but intent on terrorist acts within the country, with the aid of indigenous Uyghur populations. A good part of the book examines this claim, showing that the group and its successors typically consisted of 5 to 25 individuals more adept at creating threatening videos than any actual terrorist acts. Yet this justified further crackdowns on the PRC’s Uyghur population. Threats around the Beijing Olympics in 2008 including a bus bombing in Shanghai and a 2009 riot in Urumqi, within XUAR, served as further proof of “terrorist” threats.
All of this justified PRC’s efforts at settler colonialism to dilute Uyghur influence and counterterrorism efforts that involved increased surveillance, bans on religious practices, state-run schools, and the suppression of the Uyghur language. Much of this took place between 2002 and 2012.The next several years were a self-fulfilling prophecy, as Uyghur resistance rose in recognition that their cultural identity was under attack. Then came brutal measures from 2017 on to wipe out the Uyghur identity in what would become simply Xinjiang. Some were able to flee, Many men were sent to internment camps. Uyghur settlements were destroyed and replaced with apartment blocks settled by Han settlers. Due to male internment and “one child” policies among the Han, there were many “forced” intermarriages of Uyghur women to Han men. Internees were dispersed throughout China as factory workers.
Roberts’ account depends on two key concepts: his definition of terror as acts that are “violent, politically motivated, and deliberately target civilians” and his use of the idea of “cultural genocide” which is the cultural if not bodily destruction of a people. As to the first, he argues that there is scant evidence of a real Uyghur terrorist threat with only a few isolated incidents that are not a part of a premeditated scheme. Furthermore, almost none of the indigenous Uyghur population could in any way be associated with this threat, yet China’s use of the GWOT served as pretext for its campaign against this Muslim minority. “Cultural genocide” argues that there are more ways to eliminate people than mass killings and that the systematic campaign of settler colonialism, educational assimilation, interment, forced intermarriage, dispersion, and religious suppression is also genocidal even if there are few dead Uyghurs as a result.
Roberts’ conclusion is chilling. He argues that indifference to the fate of the Uyghurs gives permission for others to do the same. Where will it end? He points to three concerning global trends 1) the eclipse of privacy with the rise of electronic surveillance ubiquitous among all of us, 2) the decline of respect for human rights, a decline that during the GWOT includes the U.S., and 3) the re-emergence of settler colonialism and nationalism, justifying the suppression and assimilation of minorities. Do we really want a situation where it may be said, “First they came for the Uyghurs…”?
Summary: Rather than simply another treatment of the way science and religion ought relate, begins with creedal Christianity, develops a theology of science, and argues that Christians treat theology as their “first truth discourse.”
There have been many books written about theology and science. This is not one of them. The author proposes instead to develop a theology of science. He considers the existing theology and science discussion, marked by adaptation, withdrawal, and appropriation as a failed project. He begins with definitions, considering theology as prescriptive thinking about God and reality, and science as descriptive thinking of the physical universe. He notes for the first time here that science has largely taken the place of theology as a “first truth discourse” relegating theology to a largely supernatural “upper story,” in the process, eliminating grounds for both meaning and ethics.
Tyson will eventually discuss the theological roots of modern science, but first he begins with how science as a first truth discourse assesses historic creedal Christianity, particularly the incarnation, the virgin birth, the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. By scientific criteria of rationalism and empiricism, only the historic death of Christ may survive. Tyson notes how this has influenced historical-critical reading of the Bible, de-supernaturalizing the text. He then turns the tables and considers science through the lens of theology as a first truth discourse.
He begins with God as source of all created essence and existence. This distinguishes theology as theocentric ontological foundationalism (TOF) as opposed to science’s egocentric epistemological foundationalism (EEF). The first believes in order to know, the latter must first know in order to believe. He notes how after Kant, the EEF project is subject to radical skepticism. How can we be certain we know anything? By contrast, TOF believes both in a God who creates the world and “communicates actively with our own minds” bridging the object-subject divide making at least the partial and progressive understanding of truth about all of reality, metaphysical and physical, possible, and giving warrant to the scientific enterprise. He goes on to critique nominal and voluntarist reductionism.
He then revisits the history, and how theology and the science birthed out of it grew increasingly apart, to the point of a great reversal in which science became privileged as the first truth discourse. He notes the philosophical challenges of Voltaire, Hume, Wolff, and Kant, as well as the advent of historical-critical studies in the seventeenth century which eroded confidence in the supernatural creedal elements of Christianity. The year 1870 demarcates a significant turning point as empiricist accounts of origins and the cosmos supplant a supernatural account already weakened from within. He then recounts efforts to reconcile science and Christianity: functional demarcations that do not overlap, Polkinghorne’s autonomous overlap, and integration approaches (which suffer a double truth problem).
Tyson considers what it means to think “after” science but not “after” theology. He notes the problems that have resulted from science’s hegemony in the environmental devastation, and the threats of nuclear destruction, the capabilities of surveillance capitalism, and more and begins to develop a theology of science as first truth discourse. He begins with theological epistemology, that is “Christian philosophical theologies concerning the matrix of divine grace, human sin, an intelligible and ordered world, sensory perception, mental illumination, meaning, and scientific and other truth” (p. 100). He does this by elaborating Plato’s four levels of awareness within a Christian framework: noesis, dianoia, pistis, and eikasis.
This is followed by a case study argument of myth and history around the Edenic fall, contending that while the tension cannot be eliminated, affirmation of the biblical doctrine of the fall, cannot be jettisoned. He deals with the tension by being agnostic about the natural history, that one cannot know from the natural history whether there was a fall, which does not warrant dismissing such a belief.
He concludes, arguing for an integrative zone of knowledge (science) and understanding (theology) based on the theological epistemology already discussed. He contends that this approach, both undergirding and informing science within a wisdom framework can be vital in addressing everything from the framing of theory to the uses (technology) to which science is put. I would like to have seen some discussion of the apprehensions scientists have that granting theology a first truth discourse status would lead to declaring certain areas of research “off limits” beyond the current internal processes of institutional review boards, particularly in our current (US) context where political power yoked to religious interests are used to constrain certain avenues of investigation.
I appreciated the author’s commitment to theology as a first truth discourse, and what this would look like vis a vis science. I was gladdened when seeing so many Christians deny the fall of Adam in light of evolutionary theories that Tyson affirmed this and other elements of the creed, modelling how this might be done in a theology of science framework. The work on theological epistemology addresses the skepticism faced by egocentric epistemological foundationalism and complements methodological naturalism with a theological perspective that accounts for meaning and ethics and informs empirical research and rationalist deductions. He helps move the conversation beyond our current theology and science models, encouraging a proper and humble confidence in Christian truth that may actually renew science and protect it from some of its worst excesses.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
It all started with my morning walk yesterday. I locked up the house, enjoyed a pleasant walk and went to put the key in the front door and I couldn’t unlock the door. After various efforts were successful, it was time to replace this thirty-seven year old lockset from when our house was built, which led to getting some extra keys made and making sure some other locks worked smoothly–you know how it goes!
In the weird way my mind works, it took me back to junior high and high school and the days of putting padlocks on our lockers at the beginning of each school year. At West and Chaney, I remember being told that they had to be combination locks, not key locks. I guess they were afraid keys would get lost more easily than combinations. I know that when I would get a new lock, I’d practice opening it about a dozen times to get the combination ingrained in my head. After a few days, you didn’t really think but it was as if the dials turned themselves to your combination
Lockers. The one space at school we could call ours. Some did really fancy jobs decorating their lockers. I think the most I ever did was tack a poster from a record album inside the door of mine one year. Supposedly lockers weren’t actually that secure. It was said you could bust one of those locks open with a well-placed blow with the heel of a shoe. I never tried it and don’t ever recall getting my locker broken into. But I wasn’t exactly a fashion pacesetter and didn’t keep much in the locker but a jacket, a sack lunch, maybe a gym bag, and whatever books I didn’t need for that part of the day. As I think about it, I probably didn’t need to put a lock on the locker, but probably better safe than sorry.
It always seemed your locker was at the other end of the school from where your next class was, and so it was a dash to make it before the bell–a controlled dash that is because we couldn’t run in the hallways. There were those tales of kids getting stuffed in lockers. I was probably too big to stuff and I can’t think of anyone I knew who had this happen–of course, would they admit it?
Then there were gym lockers. These weren’t assigned, you just grabbed an empty one. I think they all smelled of sweaty socks! You stripped off street clothes, donned gym clothes (including those embarrassingly short shorts!), and locked up your things before lining up in front of Mr. Angelo. For me, the most precious thing I locked up was my glasses–we weren’t allowed to wear them during gym. That was fine when we had to run laps or do calisthenics. But then as now, I’m pretty near-sighted and that was a distinct disadvantage in any competition with a ball. Mostly, people learned pretty quickly that it was a disaster to pass to me, so I would just stay on the move, defending, looking busy–the trick was not to look like a slacker. When I went to shower and change, I had to get within a foot to see the combination–I wasn’t trying to keep others from seeing the combination so much as seeing it myself in my glassless state!
I’ve noticed that the lockers these days tend to be brighter colors (I recall ours being pretty drab) and they have locks built in. It makes me wonder, do the schools change the combination each year. I wonder how that works. It’s been a long time since I put a lock on a locker–I’m surprised we still had one around the house! It was my wife’s and she even remembered the combination. I can’t say that I remember any of the combinations of my locks.
It’s funny how memories are triggered. Now you are probably thinking back to getting a lock at the beginning of school for your locker. Maybe you can still see that locker in your head. Maybe, like my wife, you remember the combination of your lock. I’d love to hear your locker stories. They were so much a part of our school days but probably not the first thing you remember.
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.”Enjoy!
Enjoying the Bible, Matthew Mullins. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021.
Summary: Explores how learning to read literature helps us love the Bible rather than just reading it as a divine instruction manual.
Sometimes, people come to the Bible, say a passage in the Psalms, and come away baffled. Shouldn’t we be able to just read it and get the message? Yet this is not always our experience. We walk away saying, “I don’t get it.” Or we treat the Bible as a divine instruction manual, looking for the answer to particular challenges in our lives. Or perhaps, from our Bible quiz days, if we did such a thing, we treat the Bible as an information source. But Matthew Mullins wonders whether such ways of engaging the Bible help us love the scriptures, and in turn the Triune God to whom they point.
Mullins teaches English, and he finds that for many of the same reasons, people hate poetry. They read it and don’t get it, the message isn’t straightforward. He contends that our difficulty is reading with Cartesian eyes, looking for information: who is the author and what is the author trying to say? When was it written? What is the main idea? He encourages instead, a hermeneutic of love, where we enter deeply into the passage, allowing it “to captivate, entice, comfort, shock, and even sicken” to allow ourselves to experience the emotional weight of the passage, not just the information within.
He contends that the Bible is literature and to be read literarily, recognizing the various forms that make up scripture. He contends that the literary parts of scripture, like the Psalms don’t just tell us something but invite us to inhabit a world. Psalm 23, for example, not unlike Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” elicits emotions, feelings, the sense of a world. The Psalm invites us to see what a relationship with God is like, in both times of peace and danger.
He invites us to read with our guts rather than “studying.” He encourages us to slow down, even, in the words of Alan Jacobs, to read at whim. Using poetry alongside scripture, he takes us through a number of exercises that allow us to enter into the world of the text–standing in front of it and looking, asking questions based on what we see. Three chapter follow on how we read, looking for the general sense, the central emotion, and the formal means (that is, the forms, like metaphor, used to convey meaning). He uses Paul Laurence Dunbar’s powerfully evocative “We Wear the Mask” alongside Psalm 119. He follows the chapter on the formal means with an explanation of some of the forms we encounter in scripture.
In concluding, he discusses “negative capability,” our ability to wrestle with and rest in uncertainty. Entering the world of a biblical text takes time and if we are uncomfortable with lots of questions and uncertainty, we will never get to the other side of its complexity, of encountering and loving God in the text. He invites us into habituation, taking regular time to sit with texts of scripture. Then, in the afterword, he invites us into one further practice–reading aloud. Reading aloud slows us down and helps us hear the rhythm of the language. It enables us to listen to the sound and sense of the text. Done communally we hear and speak the word of God with each other, and love the One who speaks.
I found much to commend and a few sticking points. The biggest sticking point was that I felt he created a straw man of Cartesian reading. Perhaps this is a reality in his own circles, but much more common in my experience is the lost art of reading observantly, contemplatively and literarily. Many have spoken of how the internet has “broken” our brains when it comes to attending to more complex forms of writing, whether poetry or the Bible. The other issue is the focus on poetry. There is a lot of poetry in scripture to be sure, but also a lot else, with relatively less guidance for how to read these genres or forms other than to be aware of them.
Having noted these criticisms, I found much of value in his approaches to paying attention to the general sense, central emotion, and formal means of the text. I loved setting poetry alongside scripture to show similar reading strategies with each. I appreciated his encouragements that we become comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty, similar to what his students (and perhaps all of us) have felt before a poem like The Wasteland. I’ve often asked graduate students why they are comfortable spending months or years studying a challenging text, trying to accurately render a historical event, understand a physical phenomena, or solve a math problem but are uncomfortable that they still have questions after studying a Bible passage for 45 minutes.
Many people don’t love scripture. They think they should but often walk away frustrated. This work can help, particularly if read slowly, working through the exercises the author gives the reader. To begin with, he leads us into some familiar texts and helps us love them. He offers strategies for reading that, if they become habits, may help us “in-habit” the text and come to love it as we encounter in it the God who loves us. And, who knows, reading Mullen might whet our appetite to try our hand at other poetry, which would not be a bad thing.
Hangdog Souls, Marc Joan. London: Deixis Press, 2022.
Summary: A fugitive English soldier in southern India makes a Faustian bargain winning endless life at the cost of countless others over three centuries.
John Saunders is a fugitive English soldier in the Dravidian highlands of southern India as the British colonials are invading. He has a beautiful wife and an adorable son, who has captured the eye of the corrupt ruler with a mysterious machine in the dome of his castle complex. John is feigning that he is Portuguese and has brought seeds of eucalyptus trees that he hopes to establish in the highlands, making his fortune. As the British lay siege, he plans an escape for himself and huis family, but is found out by the ruler, who offers him a Faustian bargain, to become the “bridge” for souls, offering them a better world for their lives.
His trees are saved, and recur throughout the succeeding vignettes. But his wife and son are not. But John cannot die, even from a wound that nearly beheads him. He must live with his shame while ushering others to their fate. The story unfolds as a series of vignettes over 300 years. A priest burdened with the death of his wife Emma who encounters John. A butterfly enthusiast seeking the Black Papilio, and finding so much more. A functionary of the Sarpal Tea Company sent to the Kalisholi estates to investigate accounts ends up offering himself to a snake at a time when the local gods demand five garlands, five lives. A tourist glimpsing the mysterious woman in a blue sari, An embalmer who must create images of three gods using human corpses. A boy indentured to an uncle who immolates himself after listening to John’s story.
On it goes until three hundred years later, a Keralan particle physicist, Chandy John, involved in an experiment that has driven the previous scientist mad. Will he succumb to the burden of his own losses and griefs, having lost his wife in a tragic accident or will he break the cycle?
The book revolves around the question: What weight can balance the death of an innocent? How much grief must John bear for the grief he causes, and for how long? When will the scales be balanced? John is able to do what he does because of the griefs others bear. The appeal of escape through death, perhaps atoning for one’s guilt and shame. But the question makes us wonder if in fact whether there is any human counterweight to the death of an innocent?
I’ve seen this book classified in the horror genre. It seemed to me to have elements of horror, historical fiction, and magical realism about it. I’m not sure I know what it is. For the first hundred pages or so, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Yet as story after story unfolded, variations on a theme I found myself wondering how or whether this would all end, and drawn into the storytelling to find out.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.
