The Month in Reviews: March 2017

April 3, 2017April 2, 2017 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Caring for Words

One theme I saw in this month’s readings concerned the question of how Christians ought engage a society, particularly American society. In the last month or so, two important books have been published with very different perspectives and approaches: Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option and Philip Gorski’s American Covenant. I reviewed both of these books in March and the “review” links below will take you to the reviews. John D. Wilsey’s American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion explored a similar theme, as does, on more of a note of praxis, David Gushee’s A Letter to My Anxious Christian Friends. Two books I read took a different approach, both along the theme of “care” and were among the most personally moving books I read this month: Makoto Fujimura’s recently published Culture Care, and an older work by Marilyn McEntyre on Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.

Then there was the eclectic mix of books that reflect my interests and “to be read” pile. Ed Larson’s Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory was my science read for the month–a surprisingly non-polemical work from a secular source. There was science fiction from Robert Silverberg, a novel by Canadian author Robertson Davies, and my re-reading (thanks to the Dead Theologians group) of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In presidential biographies, there is A. Scott Berg’s Wilson. On the theological side, I reviewed Kevin Van Hoozer’s important book on biblical authority, a very practical book on conflict resolution by Lou Priolo, a delightful discussion of “Jesus Behaving Badly” by Mark Strauss, and a wonderful set of sermons on the cross by Christopher J. H. Wright, just in time for Good Friday.

So here is the list of sixteen books reviewed in March with links in the titles to publisher’s web pages and a review link at the end of the summary if you want to read the whole review.

Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory, Edward J. Larson. New York: Modern Library Chronicles, 2004. A history of the development of evolutionary theory, including both the antecedents to Darwin and Russell and the extension of this theory, the controversies, both past and present that it provoked, and the genetic discoveries that have further revealed the theory’s mechanisms. (Review)

A Letter to My Anxious Christian Friends, David P. Gushee. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016. Written as a series of letters, this is an exploration of what it means as a Christian to both love and be anxious for one’s country as people of faith committed to the global kingdom of God. (Review)

Culture Care, Makoto Fujimura. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017. A call for a different kind of engagement with culture, one of care, of becoming generative, rather than engaging in war or battle, to foster beauty in our common life. (Review)

Biblical Authority After Babel, Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016. A proposal that the five Solas of “mere Protestant Christianity” provide a framework to check the interpretive anarchy for which Protestant Christianity is criticized. (Review)

Across a Billion Years, Robert Silverberg. New York: Open Road Integrated Media, 2013 (originally published in 1969). A group of space archaeologists from different planets make a discovery that puts them on the trail of an ancient, highly advanced race that disappeared nearly a billion years ago. (Review)

American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion, John D. Wilsey. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015. Explores the history of American exceptionalism, distinguishing two kinds of exceptionalism and considers them under five theological themes. (Review)

Wilson, A. Scott Berg. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013. A definitive biography of Woodrow Wilson, that traces the arc of his life from boyhood to professor to college president to U.S. president in biblical terms fitting for this deeply religious man. (Review)

Resolving Conflict, Lou Priolo. Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2016. A practical guidebook to the biblical prerequisites and principles of resolving conflicts between Christians both in home and church contexts. (Review)

Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn McEntyre. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Explores, in a culture of “spin” and poisoned discourse, practices for caring for our use of words, that they may be used well and true. (Review)

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (with an introduction by James M. McPherson). New York: Vintage Books/Library of America: 1991 (originally published 1852). Stowe’s classic novel depicting the evils of slavery, the complicity of North and South, and the aspirations and faith of slaves themselves. (Review)

American Covenant, Philip Gorski. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. Traces and argues for an American civil religious tradition combining prophetic religion and civic republicanism that avoids the extremes of religious nationalism and radical secularism. (Review)

Theology in the Flesh, John Sanders. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016. A survey of how the field of cognitive linguistics lends insight into how we understand theological matters ranging from morals to the nature of God to understanding the Bible. (Review)

Jesus Behaving Badly, Mark L. Strauss. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015. Explores some of the disturbing acts and statements of Jesus, that actually reveal his counter-cultural message and mission. (Review)

The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher. New York: Sentinel, 2017. A proposal that in the face of pervasive cultural decline that has led to political, theological, and moral compromise within the church, it is time for Christians to consider a kind of strategic withdrawal patterned on the monastic movement founded by St. Benedict. (Review)

To The Cross, Christopher J. H. Wright. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017. Transcripts of five expository messages on gospel passages pertaining to the passion and death of Christ. (Review)

The Lyre of Orpheus, Robertson Davies. New York: Penguin Books, 1988. The project of a gifted but difficult graduate student to realize an unfinished opera of E. T. A. Hoffman uncovers darker and hidden aspects in a number of the central characters who join in undertaking the project. (Review)

Best Book of the Month: Without question, it is Marilyn’s McEntyre’s Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. I appreciate my friend Byron Borger at Hearts and Minds Books for recommending (and selling) this book to me! In turn, I haven’t stopped telling people about it from the moment I started reading it. The topic of our care for words and for truth is certainly a top priority in our time if we are to preserve a just, free, and open culture. McEntyre addresses this with cogency and grace, and practices the care for words in her writing for which she advocates.

Best Quote of the Month: While reading Makoto Fujimura’s Culture Care I came to this personal statement of faith and calling that left me saying, “Yes! Yes! YES!”:

“I am not a Christian artist. I am a Christian, yes, and an artist. I dare not treat the powerful presence of Christ in my life as an adjective. I want Christ to be my whole being. Vincent van Gogh was not a Christian artist either, but in Christ he painted the heavens declaring the glory of God. Emily Dickinson was not a Christian poet, and yet through her honest wrestling, given wings in words, her works, like Vincent’s, like Harper Lee’s, like Mahalia Jackson’s–speak to all the world as integrated visions of beauty against injustice.

“It is time for followers of Christ to let Christ be the noun in our lives, to let our whole being ooze out like a painter’s colors with the splendor and the mystery of Christ, the inexhaustible beauty that draws people in. It is time to follow the Spirit into the margins and outside the doors of the church” (pp. 84-85).

Coming Soon: Tomorrow, I will be posting a review of Andrew Louth’s Modern Orthodox Thinkers, a collection of theological biographies of Orthodox thinkers over the last couple centuries. Recovering Classic Evangelicalism is a plea to return to the evangelicalism of Carl F. H. Henry. Not sure yet whether I buy the argument! I’m working my way through a long biography of Edward VII, the playboy son of Victoria as well as a fascinating account of the life of Hermann Rorschach, and the inkblot psychological test he developed. Because of our Dead Theologians group, I am re-reading C. S. Lewis’s The Problem of Pain. A few others on the TBR pile include Sandra Van Opstal’s The Next Worship, James Emery White’s Meet Generation Z, Michelle DeRusha’s Katharina and Martin Luther (It is the 500th anniversary of the nailing of the 95 Theses to the Wittenberg castle door), and Michael Wear’s Reclaiming Hope on lessons learned from his experiences in the Obama White House.

Here’s to a good month of reading!

The Month in Reviews: February 2017

March 1, 2017March 4, 2017 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

temple-and-tabernacle

There were books I read this month that fascinated me, like Hit Makers and others that scared the living daylights out of me, like Lights Out. Temple and Tabernacle warmed my heart while Confident Pluralism challenged me. I felt that several of the books I read challenged me in engaging with those who differ, whether in differing understandings of life’s meaning, differing faiths, or simply in reconciling across differences within our own faith. I delighted in the pithy essays in Richard Mouw’s Praying at Burger King and waded through a couple of books on higher education. One thing I discovered in looking over the list was that there was no fiction on it! Look for that to change next month. So here is what I read in February:

Confident Pluralism, John D. Inazu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Recognizing the deep fissures in American society and the necessity of maintaining some kind of civil union in the face of the scary alternatives, this book explores the constitutional commitments and civic practices that make that possible. (Review)

The Future of Evangelical Theology, Amos Yong. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014. An exploration of the contribution that has been made and could be made from
Asian-Americans to evangelical theology, with particular attention to context and the author’s Pentecostal perspective. (Review)

The Power of Meaning, Emily Esfahani Smith. New York: Crown Publishing, 2017. Explores the importance of meaning in one’s life, four pillars upon which meaning rests, and how we might cultivate cultures of meaning. (Review)

Outlaw Christian, Jacqueline A. Bussie. Nashville: Nelson Books, 2016. Challenges the “unwritten rules” of Christianity that respond with denial or cliches when faced with the hardest challenges of evil, pain, suffering, doubt, and death and invites both honest responses and offers reality-based hope. (Review)

From Bubble to Bridge, Marion H. Larson and Sara L.H. Shady. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017. Explores how to equip Christians for engagement in our religiously diverse multifaith environment, moving out of our Christian “bubbles” and building bridges of understanding without compromising the convictions of one’s own faith. (Review)

Awakenings, Oliver Sacks. London: Picador, 1991. Chronicles the experience of post-encephalitis patients existing as prisoners in their own bodies in a trance-like state, who, when treated with L-DOPA, experienced dramatic “awakenings” nearly always followed by debilitating side effects, often resulting with withdrawal of the drug, and a return to their former state. (Review)

The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education, Christopher Gehrz, ed. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015. The contributors to this volume consider the “usable past” in Pietist thought and practice that might serve in the “forming of whole and holy persons” in Christian colleges with a Pietist heritage. (Review)

The Faculty Factor, Martin J. Finkelstein, Valerie Martin Conley, and Jack H. Schuster. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. A data-rich study of the profile, experience, and influence of university faculty in the turbulent and rapidly changing landscape of higher education institutions in the United States. (Review)

Lights Out, Ted Koppel. New York: Broadway Books, 2016. Explores the vulnerabilities of our power grid to attack, the state of our preparedness for such an attack, and what it would take as individuals to survive such an attack. (Review)

The Temple and the Tabernacle, J. Daniel Hays. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2016. An exploration of God’s dwelling places as described throughout the Bible from Eden to tabernacle, to the first and second temples, the question of Ezekiel’s temple, and the temple in John’s Revelation. (Review)

Praying at Burger King, Richard J. Mouw. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Short essays on the life of faith in the world, originally appearing on beliefnet.com, and several other publications. (Review)

Roadmap to Reconciliation, Brenda Salter McNeil. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015. This veteran of racial reconciliation work shows us not only that reconciliation is necessary but the path individuals and groups must take to pursue that reconciliation. (Review)

Hit Makers, Derek Thompson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. Explores what makes a hit, and explodes some of the myths around hits such as the idea of something going “viral.” (Review)

Best book of the month: Perhaps because it might not get the notice of others, I would commend The Temple and the Tabernacle. This book was a delight of scholarship, clarity, and devotional richness, well-illustrated on good paper and excellent graphical layout. Hays made what could be a dry subject come to life.

Most significant book: I won’t include this every month but John Inazu’s Confident Pluralism is such an important book for our time. Inazu shows us both how to legally protect a robust diversity, and how to foster a civil yet substantive conversation and even collaboration across our differences. Shut the news off during Lent and read this book if you care about civic and political engagement!

Best Quote of the Month: I’m still pondering this observation from Derek Thompson in Hit Makers that captures the tension of artists living between the “feedback loops” of audience and their inner sense of artistic integrity:

“I’ve come to see that I need the feedback loop, the standing ovation and devastating silences that can greet an online article. But when I circle a pile of books at the Strand, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that perhaps the best writers also knew to just do the work and forget, for a moment, that anyone would ever read their reverie. They mounted a stage production in their minds, but just for them, something palatial and private, like a daydream” (pp. 280-281).

Coming Soon: I’ve already finished up a book by Ed Larson on evolution in the Modern Library series, and another by David Gushee, Letter to My Anxious Friends about what it means to choose faith in a fearful time. I recently began A. Scott Berg’s biography of President Woodrow Wilson and have been surprised to find what a fine scholar Wilson was. Makoto Fujimura’s Culture Care provides a fresh alternative to the culture wars we are so wont to fight. I’m waiting to see if Kevin Van Hoozer in After Babel can succeed in his argument for a “mere Protestant Christianity” over against the Roman Catholic criticism of the interpretive pluralism and anarchy of Protestantism. Our Dead Theologians group will soon finish Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which has felt so relevant to our present time. Finally, I just started Robert Silverberg’s Across a Billion Years, a classic science fiction work from 1969. All of these should appear in reviews over the next month. Until then, happy reading!

The Month in Reviews: January 2017

February 1, 2017January 31, 2017 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

slow-kingdom-coming

I began and ended the month with classic mysteries — a great way to turn aside from the concerns of the day that I would commend to any reader. I read one of the best explanations of the Enneagram and one of the best studies of the idea of “mystery” in the Bible. I read a history of Americans in Paris in the nineteenth century, and a fictional account of westerners in Haiti in the “Papa Doc” Duvalier era. I read books on civility and sensitivity. I explored the philosophical beginnings of the American republic, and what might be the brief history of the Affordable Care Act. Sprinkled into this mix was a delightful Oliver Saks book, Kent Annan’s wonderful Slow Kingdom Coming, and an exploration of the importance of relationships in Christian discipleship. Fourteen books reviewed in all summarized right here with links to the full reviews!

Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers. New York: HarperCollins, 2012 (originally published 1930). Harriet Vane is accused of murdering her lover with arsenic. Lord Peter Wimsey believes she is innocent despite damning evidence and sets about to prove it. (Review)

The Road Back to You, Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016. Describes the Enneagram and each of the nine types, and how these may be helpful in self-discovery, uncovering one’s true self and experiencing spiritual growth. (Review)

The Comedians, Graham Greene. New York: Penguin, 2005 (my edition 1976). Three men, Brown, Smith, and Jones meet on a ship bound for Haiti during the reign of terror of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. They are the “comedians” who must confront not only the tragedy of Haiti, but themselves. (Review)

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, David McCullough. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Vignettes of the waves of Americans who came to Paris as writers, artists, medical students, musicians, politicians, diplomats, and members of the cultured elite, and the profound impact the “City of Light” had on their lives. (Review)

Adventures in Evangelical Civility, Richard J. Mouw. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016. An intellectual memoir, tracing Mouw’s efforts to find common ground while maintaining reformed and evangelical convictions. (Review)

Sensitive Preaching to the Sexually Hurting, Dr. Sam Serio. Grand Rapids: Kregel Ministry, 2016. Explores the different kinds of issues that arise around sexuality in our post-sexual revolution society, and how pastors and others extending pastoral care might counsel and preach with sensitivity that may open the door to the healing of sexual wounds. (Review)

The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks. New York: Picador USA, 2010. Narratives of those who because of optical or neural issues experience distortions in or loss of sight, and how they adapt to such losses. (Review)

Rescuing Jesus: How People of Color, Women & Queer Christians Are Reclaiming Evangelicalism, Deborah Jian Lee. Boston: Beacon Press, 2016. An account of how three marginalized groups within American evangelicalism are finding increasing acceptance, and the struggles they have faced along the way. (Review)

Hidden But Now Revealed, G. K. Beale and Benjamin L. Gladd. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014. A study of the word mystery in scripture, particularly considering its use in the Old Testament book of Daniel, and how nearly all New Testament usages connect back to this book, and show the once hidden but now revealed realities surrounding the person of Christ, his kingdom, and the inclusion of the Gentiles. (Review)

Slow Kingdom Coming, Kent Annan. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016. From years of experience in justice work, Kent Annan commends five practices that both better enable us to serve and to sustain our efforts for the long haul. (Review)

Unraveled: Obamacare, Religious Liberty, and Executive Power, Josh Blackman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. A history of the writing, passage, and defense, both in the courts, and by the executive branch of the Affordable Care Act, against those who would attempt to unravel it and prevent it from becoming part of the fabric of American society. (Review)

The Power of Together, Jim Putnam. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2016. A pastor of a thriving church explores what he believes to be the key to both spiritual maturity and the ministry effectiveness of his church–the fostering of relationships of depth between believers throughout the church. (Review)

And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie. New York: Harper Collins, 2011 (first published 1939). Ten strangers are invited to an island by a mysterious U.N. Owen, accused by murder, and one by one are murdered following a rhyme found in each of their rooms, Ten Little Soldier Boys. (Review)

Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic, Matthew Stewart. New York: W.W. Norton, 2014. An argument that the key ideas at the foundations of our country were not Christian but rather traceable back to Lucretius and to European thinkers, the foremost of whom was Spinoza, whose ideas were shaped by Enlightenment reason resulting more in a materialist atheism or nature pantheism/deism. (Review)

Best of the Month: Kent Annan’s Slow Kingdom Coming is my choice because he delineates the practices that sustain anyone pursuing God’s kingdom, particularly those pursuing advocacy work. The book is real, clear, and concise and reflects the authenticity of Annan’s own “long obedience” in these things. I haven’t seen this book get much notice but believe it can serve as a kind of manual for our times.

Best Quote of the Month: This is from Oliver Saks The Mind’s Eye describing the adjustments a concert pianist made when she lost the ability to read music due to a progressing neurological problem and gives you a taste of his wonderful writing:

“Lilian had been ingenious and resilient in the eleven or twelve years since her illness started. She had brought inner resources of every kind to her own aid: visual, musical, emotional, intellectual. Her family, her friends, her husband and daughter, and above all, but also her students and colleagues, helpful people in the supermarket or on the street–everyone had helped her cope. Her adaptations to the agnosia were extraordinary–a lesson in what could be done to hold together a life in the face of ever-advancing perceptual and cognitive challenge. But it was in her art, her music, that Lilian not only coped with disease but transcended it. This was clear when she played the piano, an art that both demands and provides a sort of superintegration, a total integration of sense and muscle, of body and mind, of memory and fantasy, of intellect and emotion, of one’s whole self, of being alive. Her musical powers, mercifully, remained untouched by her disease.”

Coming soon: Look for a review of John Inazu’s Confident Pluralism tomorrow, another important book in how we engage the conversations of our time. I’ve just started a book, From Bubble to Bridge that also explores these conversation virtues in the context of interfaith conversations. The Power of Meaning explores the role of connection, purpose, story and transcendence in a meaningful life, and strikes me could be a great book for discussions in an interfaith context. I’m also reading a book looking at the future of evangelical theology from a pentecostal Asian American perspective–the last four words of which are decidedly not my own perspective but actually quite stretching. The Faculty Factor explores the changes in the career paths of university faculty in the last decade. And I’m thoroughly enjoying a re-reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, having just finished reading that memorable scene of Eliza and her son escaping across moving chunks of ice on the Ohio River. Having seen the Ohio River like that, my heart was racing!

The Month in Reviews: December 2016

January 2, 2017January 1, 2017 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

liturgy-of-the-ordinary

This will be my last “look back” at 2016–a year many of us are glad to have in the rear view mirror. But this last month was a great month for books. I read biographies of a President and a First Lady, both with the same last name (but associated with different presidencies). I finished a classic of Russian literature, and lesser known works of fiction writers Madeleine L’Engle and Walter Wangerin, Jr. I read books on America’s original sin, and on American grace and the “very good gospel.” There were a couple of books on economics with different perspectives. I read an outstanding book connecting liturgy and our ordinary lives. So, if I’ve piqued your curiosity about these books, here is the list:

The River of Doubt, Candice Millard. New York: Doubleday, 2005. Narrates Roosevelt’s exploratory expedition to South America, the decision to navigate “The River of Doubt”, and the harrowing journey that nearly cost Roosevelt his life. (Review)

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky). New York: Penguin, 2000. The classic work exploring the illicit loves and lives of Russian nobility against the backdrop of nineteenth century Russian class struggles and philosophical speculation. (Review)

America’s Original Sin, Jim Wallis. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016. Explores our nation’s deeply ingrained history of racism and particularly the challenges facing white Christians in bridging these racial divides. (Review)

The Church in Exile, Lee Beach. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015. Accepting the premise that we are in a post-Christendom world, the book explores how the biblical theme of exile can be helpful for how the church conceives of its life and presence in the world. (Review)

American Grace, Robert D. Putnam, David E. Campbell. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2012. A sociological study of the landscape of American religion, the connections between religious and political attitudes, and changes between 2006 and 2011, when the newest edition of this work was published. (Review)

The Very Good Gospel, Lisa Sharon Harper (foreward by Walter Brueggemann). New York: Waterbrook, 2016. Through a study of the early chapters of Genesis with application to contemporary life, Harper explores the theme of shalom and how this enlarges our understanding of the good news. (Review)

Certain Women, Madeleine L’Engle. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992. As actor David Wheaton dies of cancer, his daughter joins him on the Portia and as they re-read the unfinished script of Emma’s estranged husband Nik on King David, they consider the parallels with their own lives, and struggle to come to terms with life in its brokenness, and its joys. (Review)

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, William T. Cavanaugh. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008. An extended essay in theological reflection from a Catholic perspective on the economic realities of the free market, consumer culture, globalization, and scarcity. (Review)

Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren (foreword by Andy Crouch). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016. Walking through the common events of an ordinary day from waking to sleeping, Warren explores how we encounter in these ordinary things the Christ we worship each Sunday. (Review)

Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, Blanche Wiesen Cook. New York: Viking, 2016. The third and final volume in this biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, covering her advocacy, friendships, and relationship with Franklin during the war years, and briefly, her accomplishments after his death. (Review)

Just Capitalism, Brent Waters. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016. A theological defense of capitalism and particularly economic globalization as the best means, through exchange, of providing an preferential option for the poor and promoting human flourishing, albeit shaped by different goals for exchange, and the promotion of human community. (Review)

The Crying for a Vision, Walter Wangerin, Jr. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2003. A tale of conflict between an orphan boy, Moves Walking, and a ruthless warrior, Fire Thunder over the life of their people, set in Lakota culture. (Review)

One of the Few, Jason B. Ladd. Wasilla, AK: Boone Shepherd, 2015. A Marine’s story of coming to faith, his “reconnaissance of the Christian worldview”, and challenging words as one trained in warfare about the nature of the spiritual warfare in which we find ourselves. (Review)

Best of the Month: This month, I would give the nod to Tish Harrison Warren’s Liturgy of the Ordinary. Warren writes compellingly about the connection between the truths we celebrate each Sunday, and the ordinary activities of life throughout the week.

Best Quote of the Month: Jim Wallis, in his book America’s Original Sin recounts a dialogue with a class of elementary school children who asked him why Congress was afraid to change the immigration system:

“I paused to consider their honest question and looked around the room–the classroom of a public school fifth-grade class in Washington DC. I looked at their quizzical and concerned faces, a group of African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and European American children. Then it hit me.

‘They are afraid of you,’ I replied

‘Why would they be afraid of us?’ the shocked students asked, totally perplexed. I had to tell them.

‘They are afraid you are the future of America. They’re afraid their country will someday look like this class–that you represent what our nation is becoming.’”

Coming Soon: My first review of 2017 will be of Strong Poison, a classic Dorothy L. Sayers mystery, in which we are first introduced to Harriet Vane, on trial for murder. I am thoroughly enjoying David McCullough’s The Greater Journey about the many American culture-shapers who traveled to Paris in the 19th century. Unraveled explores the drafting of and legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act. Fans of the Enneagram will look forward to my review of The Road Back to You. I am also reading a Graham Greene novel, The Comedians, chronicling life in Haiti under “Papa Doc” Duvalier. And Richard Mouw has written a wonderful new memoir that follows his life as a theologian and public intellectual.

I’m enjoying some great reads, and I hope you do the same in 2017!