Plough Spiritual Guides

Review: A Sure Way

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Cover image of "A Sure Way" by Edith Stein

A Sure Way

A Sure Way (Plough Spiritual Guides), Edith Stein, edited by Carolyn Brand, Introduction by Zena Hitz. Plough Publishing (ISBN: 9781636081762) 2026.

Summary: Essential writings on knowing God, the cross, the resurrection, women’s spirituality, and the way of the cross.

Edith Stein was born to an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Breslau, Prussia (now Wroclaw, Poland). An early feminist, Stein had a conversion experience while pursuing post-doctoral work with Edmund Husserl in 1916. After reading a biography of Saint Teresa of Avila, she sought baptism into the Catholic Church. Also, she sought to enter the monastic life but spiritual advisors encouraged her that she could best serve God in an academic career. However, the rise of Nazism led to the loss of her academic position. In 1935, she professed monastic vows at a Carmelite Monastery in Cologne. Later, as persecution against Jews intensified, she fled to the Netherlands. She was arrested on August 2, 1942, dying in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on August 9. Having adopted the name of Teresa Benedicta, She was beatified as a martyr in 1987 and canonized in 1998.

This Plough Spiritual Guide introduces a new generation to a collection of her essential writings, edited by Carolyn Brand. Zena Hitz introduces the collection, after a biography by Carolyn Brand. She contends that Stein addressed the sickness of her generation, affirming the “sure way” of following Christ on the way of the cross.

The rest of the book consists of Stein’s writings grouped under five headings. This is not a lightweight devotional but the substantive writing of a devote academic, a trained philosopher.

First, she addresses “Ways to Know God.” She allows for people to encounter God through nature, scripture, faith, and direct experience. Her passion is not for mere knowledge or faith but to encounter the living God, to see God. Yet often this involves the way of the cross, stillness and hiddenness. The final piece in this section offers her thoughts on the possibility of Christian philosophy.

The second subheading is “At the Foot of the Cross.” This includes a couple poetic reflections and her thoughts on the meaning of the cross. Specifically, she focuses on what it means for believers to take up the cross and die with Christ and to live by faith. Then the section concludes with two pieces on the dark night of the soul, paradoxically, an invitation for deeper communion with God.

“Light Breaks In” includes Stein’s writing on the two great holidays of Easter and Christmastide. “The Mystery of Sacrifice” traces the arc of Jesus Life from his Incarnation to the Sacrifice on the cross and ponders what it means to go the whole way with Jesus. She concludes with “The Summons of Christmas” which is to oneness with God, with others in God, and to extend that love to the world.

Stein did not cease to be a feminist upon conversion. However, “The Soul of Women” reveals relatively traditional distinctions between men whose essence is revealed in “action, work, and objective achievements. By contrast, women’s “deepest yearning is to achieve a loving union.” She argues in the final essay in this section that women will contribute most to the nation’s health in all areas of national life as they live into wholeness with God. I don’t think all women will agree with Stein’s gender distinctions and that these contribute to their flourishing.

Finally, “A World in Flames” reflects Stein’s response to the rise of Nazism. The first piece is noteworthy: her appeal to Pope Pius XI to advocate for the Jewish people. She wrote this when relieved from her academic position. The pope never responded. The title essay, “The World in Flames” once again expresses her confidence in the way of the cross. She writes:

“The world is in flames. The conflagration can also reach our house. But high above all flames towers the cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to heaven. It will lift the one who embraces it in faith, love, and hope into the bosom of the Trinity” (p. 123).

This was the faith Stein held onto when the flames indeed engulfed her house. Instead of fleeing Europe, she remained. These selections explained the mindset that met the horror of the holocaust, even Auschwitz by faith. This book is nothing more nor less than her call to discipleship, one worthy of standing alongside Bonhoeffer’s, The Call of Discipleship.

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

Review: Jesus Changes Everything

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Cover image of "Jesus Changes Everything" by Stanley Hauerwas

Jesus Changes Everything (Plough Spiritual Guides), Stanley Hauerwas, edited by Charles E. Moore with an Introduction by Tish Harrison Warren. Plough Publishing House (ISBN: 9781636081571) 2025.

Summary: The radical implications of Jesus’ call to follow him for every area of life from personal to societal.

Did answering the call of Jesus to follow him turn your life upside down (or rather right side up)? Stanley Hauerwas has maintained through all of his writing that Jesus changes everything. Following him isn’t about inspiring messages followed by polite chit-chat in the church lobby that has little effect on life Monday through Saturday. Rather, this collection of readings from his works demonstrates how Jesus indeed changes everything from our life orientation to our identification with God’s people to our money, our pursuit of peace, and even our politics.

The book is organized in six sections. What follows is a brief summary to highlight what you will find:

Part I: Following Jesus. Jesus call is a call to follow him, giving him our ultimate allegiance, even unto death, to get out of the boat far from shore and come to him. It’s not a call to an abstract kingdom but into relationship with the living, breathing king. But to follow this king is not a modification of the existing social order, but to become part of a new social order. While love is central to that life, it is love defined by the cross, where Jesus fully identifies with sin and suffering to raise us to new life.

Part II: Good News. The good news is that in Christ the impossible of the sermon on the mount becomes possible. There is really more to life than living for ourselves. Jesus means it when he calls us to be perfect because that perfection is already in effect in him, and may be in us as we look at and follow him. This way of living subverts the existing social order as it embraces a community of reconciliation and forgiveness.

Part III: God’s Alternative Society. At Pentecost, God created something new out of people from every language group. Specifically he created the alternative society called church. It is a society characterized by truth and charity. It is our first family through baptism. For Hauerwas, this has radical implications for marriage, which is supported and derived from our other commitments. Hauerwas contends, “You do not fall in love and then get married. You get married and then learn what real love requires.’

Part IV: Kingdom Economics. Hauerwas is blunt. We have a problem with wealth and we try to soften the radical teaching of Jesus. The issue is whether we see our goods voluntarily at the disposal of others and are able to say “enough” to ourselves. To not offer help we are able to give is theft. Even the prayer for daily bread is for our bread. He asks whether we are closer to the extravagant Mary or the grifting Judas.

Part V: Sowing Seeds of Peace. The way of Jesus is the way of peace. He made peace with God and with one another possible at the cross. He challenges Christians to practice this when we have grievances and he speaks a challenging word to divisive political partisanship. Any identification of Christianity with party or nation is idolatrous. Rather Christians are to “help the world find habits of peace.” He unflinchingly calls Christians to non-violence which may mean “that we and those we love cannot be spared death.” This is dangerous business, only to be contemplated with the hope of the resurrection. He makes the modest proposal that Christians begin by at least agreeing that they will not kill each other.

Part VI: The Politics of Witness. The question is not which party or policies ought the church support. Instead, Hauerwas argues,

“Put starkly, the first task of the church when it comes to social ethics is to be the church. Such a claim may well sound self-serving or irrelevant until we remember that what makes the church the church is its faithful manifestation of the peaceable kingdom in the world. As such, the church does not have a social ethic; the church is a social ethic.”

Jesus alone is king. Rather than killing for freedom, we are called to faithfulness, even unto death. Instead of seeking social status through political alliances, we pursue our freedom to be the church apart from any social order. Rather than the polite society of Sunday mornings being the church could actually get us in trouble, Hauerwas concludes; “By God, sisters and brothers, being Christian could turn out to be more interesting than we had imagined.”

More interesting indeed. This is an uncomfortable book. But it has the ring of truth as being faithful to the one who went to the cross and bids us die. Charles E. Moore captures the message of Hauerwas across the years, and articulates an alternate path to quiet discouragement or political captivity. He skillfully edits the readings to make this a seamless composition. He also offers a brief biography of Hauerwas complemented by an Introduction by former Times columnist Tish Harrison Warren.

I love these Plough Spiritual Guides. Each one I’ve read calls me into both an encounter with Christ, and to the life of following him. This one is no exception. If you are discouraged with the state of the contemporary church, pick this up. It will both challenge your heart and capture your imagination.

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

Review: The Inconvenient Gospel

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The Inconvenient Gospel (Plough Spiritual Guides), Clarence Jordan, edited by Frederick L. Downing, Introduction by Starlette Thomas. Walden, NY: Plough Books, 2022.

Summary: A collection of the talks and writings of Clarence Jordan, rooted in the teaching of Jesus, drawing out the radical implications this has for war, wealth disparity, civil rights, and true community.

I’ve known of Clarence Jordan for many years but it wasn’t until this collection of his writings crossed my path that I read him. I knew he was a Baptist preacher in the south, that he wrote his own paraphrase of the gospels, The Cotton Patch Gospels, and that he helped form an integrated farming community, Koinonia Farms, in the face of great opposition. One can learn all this and more in Frederick Downing’s fine introduction to this collection.

What I learned in reading this collection was that here was a man who really was formed more by his reading of the gospels than the culture and I think this comes through in every piece in this collection. He makes this radical claim in the first piece, “Impractical Christianity”: “For Christianity is not a system you work–it is a Person who works you. You don’t get it; he gets you.” In “The Meaning of Christian Fellowship,” he elaborates the meaning of koinonia: common ownership, distribution according to need, and the complete equality and freedom of every believer. In “What is the Word of God,” he emphasizes the priority of the living Word and that scripture must never be a prison for the living Word but rather a witness to him. He forcefully challenges White Supremacy in “White Southern Christians and Race” by contending 1) there is no scientific basis for inferiority or superiority of any race over the other, 2) there is no biblical evidence that God has favorite children, and 3) differences are differences, not signs of superiority or inferiority.

“No Promised Land without the Wilderness” sets out the challenge every true leader of God’s people will face–criticism when things are harder or don’t go the way people expected. In his talk at Goshen College on the Ten Commandments, he stresses the idea that the laws were given out of love–that we not so much break laws but break ourselves upon them. He emphasizes, in “Jesus, Leader of the Poor,” the kind of king Jesus was in sitting on a “mule whereon no man had ever sat,” humorously remarking on his own attempts to sit on such a mule, concluding that he was still “a mule whereon no man had ever sat”! Yet Jesus sits on this lowly yet recalcitrant animal. In “Love Your Enemies,” he recounts a confrontation with the insults of a segregationist with whom he could have easily mopped the floor. Asked why he didn’t, he said that he was trying to obey the command to love his enemies–or at least do him no harm, leading to a conversation on what it means to be a Christian.

“Jesus and Possessions” talks about the distorting power of possessions over us. “Metamorphosis” speaks of the transforming power of the gospel, one that takes two people who would have been at each other’s throats, Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot and turns them into brothers. In “The Man from Gadara,” he explores how this demoniac could have come to lose his own self to a legion of demons. He raises questions about societal hypocrisy–why pigs in a land where no one is supposed to eat pigs?–and raises questions about teaching children not to kill and then sending them to war, and what that does to one, anticipating the traumas of PTSD we see with so many war veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. “Things Needed for our Peace” was a talk given four weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and draws on Jesus’ words approaching Jerusalem, speaking to the needs for racial humility, for an understanding of violence, and that Christian faithfulness may lead, not to success, but the cross, and, if we survive, to a new attitude of servanthood and identification with the hurts of others.

The last in this collection, “The Humanity of God,” returns to the person of Jesus, the concern of Jordan throughout his ministry. He speaks of the attempts of Mary and his earthly family to control him and Mary’s relinquishment of Jesus at the cross, allowing him fully, and finally, to be about his Father’s business. From start to finish, the pieces in this collection face us with the uniqueness of Christ as fully God and human, his authority, and flowing from that his radical call for those who would follow.

This book is part of the Plough Spiritual Guides series. This, as well as the others acquaint us with the best of spiritual reading, which is always to take us into the heart of God to see both great love and unequaled authority. They remind us that there are really only two ways to live and that we can’t have it both ways and that the only good way is the way of the good news, as strange from a worldly view, as it seems. Jordan reminds us that it is both strange and good.

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