Adam Shields

Summary: Introduction to Jesuit discenrment.

I picked up two audio courses by Joseph Tetlow on discenment during a recent audible sale. Tetlow is now 95 years old. He mentions in this audio course, that he was 79 when it was recorded, so this course it about 16 years old. (Audible release date is 2017, so that isn't accurate.) I read one book on discerment and spiritual direction by Tetlow in my spiritual direction training and it was Tetlow's edition of Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises that was used in our program.

One of the useful parts of this course is that Tetlow distiguishes between conscious and discernment. He thinks we should work to develop a consious and that a conscious shaped by the Holy Spirit is part of discernment. But he also thinks that without reflection on our actions and our conscious, in conversation with the Holy Spirit, we are not doing discernment. For him, all three parts are required. I think that is helpful corrective to what I have been thinking of as two seperate parts.

In my conception of discernment up until this point, I have thought about the preconscious discernment that is shaped by becoming more Christlike. And then the conscious discerment which is ore shaped by a process of reflection and practices of decision making and prayer. When I starting paying attntion to the preconscious aspects, I was reacting against the movement that thought of discenrment simply as a set of decision making tools. I didn't want to remove all aspects of decision making and seeking after God's will from discerment, but I wanted reemphasize the ascpets of character that I think are essential to good discernment. I think post-Tetlow, I am going to be more balanced and I think his three parts is one good method of discussing that balance.

This audio course is attempting to introduce Jesuit thinking on discenrment but I am not sure it really was a good introduction. There were lots of examples and stories, but few practical tools. Most of the tools were introduced in the final session. The prayer of examen was not clearly introduced and Ignatius' Rules of Discernment were mentioned but not clearly taught. I think this was not a bad introduction, but it did not live up to the title. It was about discenrment, but the Jesuit part was largely in the background.

As much as there was value here, I think there was signficant weakness. The weaknesses were in three areas. First, in trying to avoid some of the more technical aspects (Rules of Discenrment, Examen, etc) that may put off some lay people, I think he didn't do enough to equip people for discenmernment. Second, I think that Tetlow's approach is spiritual and pastoral, which is important, but it did not have enough attention to cultural influences. That isn't to say there was no discussion. At one point he discusses growing up in a racist society and using the N word (he says it) without reflection because it was part of culture.

Part of the problem with his cultural approach is that I think he needed to be more clear about how we engage culture to understand how culture influences our view of what choices are viable. Charles Taylor and others decribe this as the Social Imaginary. Our social imaginary influences what we think are choices that can be made. There is always a limit by culture and we cannot fully remove ourselves from all cultural influences.

In another place, he talks favorably about how Bernard of Clarvoux discerned about whether he should preach to encourage people to support the third crusade. The main tools of discernment that Tetlow cited was the number of people who joined to support the crusade and the political support of the crusade. What he did not present as part of the evaluation is the antisemitism that was riled up by Bernard's sermons encouraging the crusades or the problems and abuses of the crusades.

In part this is related to Tetlow making a very Catholic presentation. As someone trained in a catholic spiritual direction program, I became comfortable translating in my head some thing that seemed wrong theologically but was more about langauge than about content. But there are other areas where there are differences.

One of those differences is the realtionship of the state to faith. In the last section, Tetlow raises a lot of concerns about the secularization of culture and how that influences our choices and discenrment. I think he is right to raise that question, but I was very uncomfortable with his answer. This must have been recorded around 2008-9 and he was concerned more about the new Athiests and the anti-religious bias of culture than he was reforming how Christians interact with the state. He proceeds to call for making culture Christian again in a way that today sounds very Christian Nationalist. Three seperate times he quote Thomas Jefferson (and he only cites Thomas Jefferson on this point) saying that the american experiment is rooted in Christianity. Jefferson wasn't a Christian by any orthodox standard. And if we want to consider Jefferson part of the Christian heritage, then that definition of Christian is so broad as to make me wonder about what it really means.

He conflates American and Christian in an unhelpful way. There are other places where he talks about obesity and laziness and what I would call trauma in ways that I also think are problematic because he seems to reject trauma as a category and equaites productivity and thinness with holiness in a way that I don't think he really believes.

This is a good example of yet another book on discenrment that I find somewhat helpful, but I am also concenred bout how the evidence of discenrment seems to be lacking in how it is lived out in practice. The steps here are largely helpful. The illustrations are mostly helpful. The final advice section I think is pretty much awful.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/discerning-gods-will/

Summary: A look at Roman religious practices and the how the early church was different from the religious practices of their surrounding culture.

It took me a decade or so, but eventually I came to see that the work of NT Wright and others were bringing attention to the Roman and Jewish cultural practices of the several centuries around Jesus. The good of that work continues in many others like Nijay Gupta’s recent books. Strange Religion and Tell Her Story are interrelated. Tell Her Story is an investigation into the role of women in the early church. The main insights was Gupta’s investigation into the role of women in broader Roman society. Women were marginalized in Roman society, but wealth and class meant that women could still participate in the patronage system even if there were only some women who had the privileges of wealth and class that allowed them that role.

Strange Religion is using similar tools and methods to explore Roman religious practices and with that base understanding explore how early Christian practices were similar or different from the culture of the time. Strange Religion is very readable, but some background knowledge in anthropology, culture, concept of honor/shame versus guilt/innocence will help you get the most out of the book. If you have read Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes or Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes, I think you will get more out of Strange Religion. That isn’t required pre-reading, but at least for me, getting my head wrapped around how the early church was significantly different in its thinking needed multiple angles and multiple books and I am sure I do not have it all.

I think the negative of this type of project is that it can make those who are new to the investigation of the early church mistrust their own ability to read scripture. That isn’t the point, but there is some value in giving us humility as we approach scripture and our faith. Christianity is complex. The early church culture was significantly different from our own. The various cultures presented throughout scripture were significantly different from each other, not just from then to now. It is not that reading scripture is impossible, but there are many ways to misread it.

I am not going to summarize the whole book but instead just offer a few take aways and commend the book. Strange Religion is really offering two types of strange. Early Christianity is strange to our eyes because it was in a completely different culture and used an entirely different social imaginary. But early Christianity was also strange to the culture it was in. Roman culture was “religious” in the sense that everyone participated. Almost all meat had been used in some sort of sacrifice or offering. Everyone wanted to appease the gods because it was the gods who controlled weather and luck and all of the things that were outside of the normal human areas of control.

What made Judaism and then Christianity different was their resistance to participate in those communal practices that would bring good to the community. This is not completely different from some versions of Christian nationalism or early Puritanism which believes in a covenant with God by a culture or state. In order to fulfill that covenant, everyone needs to participate in the religious practices that appease the god(s). Judaism did not believe in “the gods” but A God. To appease “the gods” was to deny the supremacy of their god. That was dangerous and different enough. But Christianity added to this by crossing ethnic and cultural boundaries.

Strange Religion fits well with NT Wright’s recent book on Acts. Wright suggests that part of what Paul was doing in going to the local synagogues before reaching out the local gentiles was to identify with Judaism’s exemption from communal sacrifices. The Roman government had allowed Jews to opt out of communal sacrifices as long as Jews would pray for Roman and community good. But Jews were physically marked with circumcision in addition to being primarily an ethnic group. Paul wanted to use that Jewish exemption but also wanted gentile Christians to not get physically marked in circumcision. That appeared to be dangerous both to Jews who wanted to maintain their exemption and to Romans who wanted to be able to identify who Jews were.

Gupta explores this and many other areas of Roman culture, especially religious culture so that we as readers can understand the two threads of strangeness. Private cults were common in the Roman era and Christianity was at times thought of as just being one of the many cults of the era. They maintained secrecy, they called one another brother and sister and to outsiders it appeared that they participated in incest and talked about eating flesh and drinking blood of their god. This is a strangeness that many others in the past have talked about. But Gupta adds to this basic idea of strangeness, why Rome allowed, but monitored cults. Rome was interested in communal stability. And Christianity with its boundary crossing encouraged its members to flout traditional communal roles. Women and slaves were giving places of leadership and authority.

There has been recent push to monoculture or mono-ethnic communities within a portion of Christianity recently. Danny Slavich, a pastor of a multiethnic SBC church, tweeted:

The kingdom of God is multiethnic.

The Church is multiethnic.

If you don't like multiethnicity, take it up with the Lord.

Because I have paid attention to his work, I know that he has received a lot of critique for his emphasis on multiethnicity as an important function of the church. When I am writing this, the tweet has over 100K views and about 1500 retweets, comments or likes. Many are supportive because they are aware of the context he is speaking into. But he also drew a number of overt white supremacists. There were three main types of negative responses: 1) those who said that the church was universal in its multiethnicity, but local churches should be segregated. 2) those who asserted that Christianity was white and/or European and others could only be Christian to the extent that they adopted white or European cultural norms. (One said that in heaven all people would become white because dark skin was a result of sin.) 3) Nation states should be monocultural or mono-ethnic and the churches within those nation states would then naturally be mono-ethnic and monocultural. Many of these people cited the Tower of Babel as God’s command to not allow ethnic or cultural mixing.

I don’t want to suggest that this type of thinking is widespread in the church, but it is present. And people who do think in this way are going to be resistant to a reading of scripture, especially Acts and Paul’s letters, which significantly pays attention to the importance of crossing boundaries of all sorts in the early church. (Amos Yong’s commentary on Acts is helpful if you want to understand how important boundary crossing was to reading Acts.) Skye Jehani interviewed NT Wright about his commentary on Acts and in the last 15 minutes cited the kinds of segregationist tendencies that Skye knew are a part of the church. (Go to 1:05 of this video to see the 10-12 minutes of discussion about this.) Books like The Myth of Colorblind Christians and The Bible Told Them So are histories that grapple with the role of the Homogenous Unit Principle played in the church growth movement and how that HUP worked to maintain segregation within churches when other institutions were moving away from segregation.

The importance of Strange Religion and NT Wright’s commentary on Acts is that we need to understand scripture and scriptural culture to understand how modern movements may be deviating from Christianity. It is harder to read scripture when you understand the obligation to pay attention to how different scripture is from our current context. But it is part of Christian maturity to see that scripture is for you but not necessarily written directly to you. And some people are resistant to doing that work to grow in Christian maturity.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/strange-religion/

Summary: A historical look at how Christian mystics understood mysticism and how that has changed.

Anyone reading along with my reviews is probably aware that I am about 18 months into a reading project on the idea of Christian discernment. And while I have not ended that exploration of discernment, I am at the point of a deep dive where I need to explore the connected ideas to discernment so that I can better understand how to proceed.

A number of years ago I was exploring the trinity and I realized that in exploring the trinity I needed to better understand the concept of hermeneutics and I think I ended up reading more books about hermeneutics than I did about the trinity. That exploration of the trinity comes up because one of the most helpful books for me in exploring the trinity was The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church by Franz Dunzl. What made it so helpful was that it traced the early doctrine of the trinity but in doing so, Dunzl showed that part of the development of the language around the trinity was linguistic (there was a shift from Greek to Latin as the lingua franca) and part of the development of the langauge around the trinity was about shifts in philosophy and the language of philosophy.

If you have traced Christian doctrine over time, the way that cultural issues shift the way that we think of theology is common. Part of what mattered in the reformation was that thee was a shift in how we think of the state and how we think of legal realities and this corresponded to the increasing use of legal language in regard to the doctrines of salvation. In a more modern example, the shifts in understanding about gender and gender roles have shifted the language that some are using in regard to trinitarian theology with regard to the rise of supporters of the The Eternal Subordination of the Son or the The Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son and in a different area some of the changes in language and meaning of the economic trinity or social trinitarian theology.

I bring all of this up because Baxter's Introduction to Christian Mysticism has played a bit of a similar role as Dunzl for me. Mysticism is a notoriously difficult subject to discuss because the very nature of mysticism is discussion about what is "super natural" or what is above or outside of the natural realm. Because language is often referential, referring to something that is outside of nature makes it difficult to draw metaphors or analogy. Part of the differences in the way that we think of mysticism over time are differences of what is culturally being responded to as well as differences in philosophy and language. (The Mystery of God was a very helpful book on the right and wrong use of mystery within theological exploration.)

I picked up An Introduction to Christian Mysticism because I have recently read Baxter's book on CS Lewis and how his writing and thinking were influenced by medieval thinking. And as I think is appropriate, much of An Introduction to Christian Mysticism is concerned with the same broad time period. A short introduction like this cannot grapple with everything, but this is a good illustration as to how mysticism relates to knowledge, negative theology (or Apophatic theology), the role of action and contemplation with regard to mysticism. I think most importantly to my project, Baxter traces some of the ways that the changing understanding of the interiority of the human being (the inner self, personality, pyschology, etc.) influence the ways that we speak of mysticism. It is too strong to say that to know yourself is to know God, but that is how some mystics have come to see contemplation.

An Introduction to Christian Mysticism opens with a discussion of the rediscovery of mysticism in the 20th and 21st century. I have been reading The Celebration of Discipline and a book biography of Celebration of Disciple, Worth Celebrating by Miriam Dixon with the Renovare book club and they both also discuss this rediscovery. It has come in several waves, the Azuza revival brought a wave of interest in Pentecostal and charismatic worship and the Holy Spirit. Evelyn Underhill, Thomas Merton, and AW Tozer, among others prompted a revival of evangelical and protestant awareness of the history of the mystics. And Celebration of Discipline and other books in the spiritual formation movement has brought about increased attention to the practices of mysticism. Baxter is almost entirely focused on the intellectual history of mysticism. It is not that he is unaware of the role of the practices, but that while he acknowledges the practices and discussed the role of a type of muscular Christianity in his discussion of the desert fathers and of St Francis, that isn't his main focus.

After the introduction to the topic of mysticism and its revival, Baxter traces both thematically and temporally from Plato and other pagans of antiquity to Augustine, the mystics interested in negative theology (Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, and Meister Echhart), before returning to the desert fathers. And then returns to the later medieval world with lectio divina and the ways that Christian contemplation relates to God through contemplation of his word.

I listened to this as an audiobook and while the narrator was fine, this is a book that probably is not well suited to audio. Much of the book is oriented around ideas and Baxter is, as much as possible, oriented toward allowing earlier Christians to speak for themselves about mysticism. The sheer number of quotes and the way that Baxter mixes the quotes with his interpretive gloss means that it is very hard at times to know where the quote ends and where Baxter's commentary starts. And many of these quotes are either dense or coming from a very different cultural perspective and it would be helpful to read this in print so that you can go back and reread sections.

My plan is to watch the book price and pick it up the next time it goes on sale. But in the meantime, I am going to pick up some Evelyn Underhill and some of the older mystical books to read directly. I am still convinced that there is a very important role for understanding discernment in modern Christian discipleship. But I also think that without an understanding of mysticism and how we connect to a spiritual God, there is a limit to what we can say about discernment. Discernment involves understanding emotion, but it is not simply emotion. Discernment very much is interested in hearing from God and relating to God, but one of the important aspects of that is enough self awareness to grapple with what is ourselves and what is God. And then there is the ever-present question about what to do in the face of a God who appears distant or is not there when we feel like we want him to be there. All three of those questions and more have an aspect of mysticism in them.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/an-introduction-to-christian-mysticism/

Summary: An ethnographic study of an antiracism program in a Cincinnati evangelical megachurch.

Undivided was not a book on my radar. I had not planned on listening to the Holy Post Podcast which interviewed the author Hahrie Han. But then I got an email about a bonus segment which discussed the 2018 meeting at Wheaton College about what to do in response to Trump. I was well aware of that meeting and listened to that segment and then went back and listened to the whole podcast. If you are interested in just the interview, you can watch the YouTube video and skip to the 54 minute mark to get to the start of the interview.

Undivided in an ethnographic study of an antiracist training program in an evangelical megachurch. Hahrie Han became aware of it because of its involvement in passing a ballot initiative to provide free preK to Cincinnati students. She was told that the ballot initative was heavily influenced by a local megachurch. As she investigated she became intrigued because most DEI programs are not particularly effective at changing long term behavior. Han embedded herself in the church for nearly seven years to understand how the church and the program, which was eventually spun off to its organization, worked and what made it effective. Eventually the book discusses how it responded to the backlash to the program and the larger cultural backlash to antiracism programs within the US culture.

Undivided by Hahrie Han predominately traces four people while exploring the Undivided antiracism training program at Crossroads Church in Cincinnati. Han’s skill as a writer and researcher is evident throughout the book. Her four central characters are a Black male pastor (Chuck Mingo) who was the public face of the program. A white male participate in the initial program (Grant) who at the time worked for the Ohio Department of Corrections, eventually leading their social media team. Grant came to understand how much he didn’t understand about race, despite working in a racially diverse setting and having an adopted brother who was black. The third and fourth character are a Black woman (Sandra, a pseudonym) and a white woman (Jess). Undivided tells the story of these four characters of time and how they were changed by the program and by their relationships with one another. It is in large part the stickiness of the relationships with brought about the change within the characters.

I am a big fan of good ethnographic studies. Good ethnographic studies follow a group of individuals over a fairly long period of time to understand a context deeply. One of the best ethnographies I have read was Gang Leader for a Day, where a sociologist embedded himself in a Chicago housing project and local gang for years to understand how the culture and pressures of living in public housing and being within a gang worked. I was turned onto the model of ethnographic study after reading Slim's Table: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity

by Mitchell Duneier. I think I picked it up in the late 90s (it was published in ‘92) in part because I lived about two blocks from the restaurant at the center of that ethnography. Ethnography is inherently controversial because the act of embedding yourself into a community well enough to be able to report on the community impacts not just the community being studied (the observer effect) but also the researchers themselves are often changed because of the long term impact of the relationships. (At the end of the book, Hahrie Han say that her work with Undivided program and the people profiled and Crossroads church where the program was set drew her back to faith.)

I do not think I am an average reader for Undivided. I both have a good background in reading various ethnographies, but I am deeply invested in antiracism work in the evangelical world. I was interested in the book because I was well aware of a small meeting of Evangelical leaders which happened to be meeting at my Alma Mater, Wheaton College. Until recently I spent 15 years as a member of a different megachurch where I strongly advocated for racial awareness programs and called on the church to be more attuned to the need to center justice in their work. Throughout the 2016 to 2023 study of Undivided, I was involved in similar program in a different church and a different city. This story of Undivided is a largely positive one, but In 2021 I left my church after having lost faith that there could be change there.

There are a variety of reasons which I have mostly detailed in other places, but one aspect which I do not think got enough attention in Undivided, although it did get some, is that the megachurch model I think is inherently flawed. Even if I had full confidence in the leadership of my former church, I have come to believe that two aspects of the megachurch mean that I will never be satisfied. One, the megachurch model has been influenced by the Homogenous Unit Principle (HUP) of the church growth movement. Han mentions this in Undivided, but just in passing. The HUP was developed in a missionary context of India and then was brought back to the US and became part of a church planting and church growth movement in the 1970 to early 2000s. HUP suggests that the way to attract people to the church is to narrowly target a small demographic and cultural segment to meet the needs and attract just that group through culturally specific evangelism. A second aspect to the growth of the megachurch is not just HUP, but also targeting programming toward people who were not familiar with or uninterested in traditional church. My old church used to have the tag line, “A church for the unchurched.”

These two aspect matter to why predominately white evangelical megachurches are so bad at racial issues. The very DNA of most megachurches is a narrowly targeted cultural group. Willow Creek popularized Unchurched Harry and Mary as their target demographic and then proceeded to teach other churches to do the same. Part of my work in the late 1990s was working for a local association of churches and doing demographic reports for churches and church plants who were trying to find the narrow group they should be targeting in order to quickly grow. Once churches have this in their DNA, and then they prioritize being a comfortable place to go to church, avoidance of discomfort becomes the priority of the local church. A church that prioritizes avoidance of discomfort and who has a narrow cultural demographic as the base of its congregation, cannot address an inherently uncomfortable topic like race, which is not salient to most of the members because those members have been attracted because it is monocultural.

Again, it is mentioned, but the added layer to the problem is the increasing role of Christian Nationalism which has been empowered by the increasing reliance of fear of the other by the religious right. There have been whole books about the relationship of Christian nationalism to the rise of the religious right and how race is inherently tied into the very concept of Christian nationalism and to a lesser extent the development of the white evangelical movement. Books like Bad Faith by Randall Balmer and Religion of Whiteness by Emerson and Bracey approach the history and sociology of race within the evangelical church world.

The real draw to the book Undivided is how much the writing is centered on the characters. The reader learns about the program and about the issues of race within the evangelical world as the characters come to understand themselves and one another through the program and their relationships with others. These are not simply stories. As I hinted above in introducing the characters, each of them had significant changes in their life as a result of their connection to the program and one another. In many ways those changes were positive, but not all of them were. Undivided is in part about the cost that it takes to address race in a system that discourages the directness.

One of the difficulties of discussing race or economics or other topics that are “just in the water” is that language is difficult. For instance, Han occasionally uses the word “Whiteness” to describe the cultural belief in a system of racialization and hierarchy. Some readers view “whiteness” as meaning “all white people,” but the sociological definition does not mean all white people. Jonathan Waltonlikes to use the phrase “White American Folk Religion” instead of Christian Nationalism even if they have overlapping meanings because he wants to use language that is less fraught. The two different approaches of using whiteness to specifically name a problem with a name that can be misunderstood, or using a name like "White American Folk Religion" which needs to be defined but has less initial baggage is a topic that repeatedly comes up in Undivided. Studying the culture, something that people don't directly talk about because it is assumed to be understood, is necessary in a pluralistic world where people do not necessarily mean the same thing when using the same language.

The idea of ethnography centers the experience of the focus characters both as particular people, but also models who stand in for larger groups. The pastor, Chuck, grew up in the Black church and intially left Crossroads because of frustration over racial issues. But he came back and was hired and the social capital he earned through long term relationship with the church leadership allowed him some leeway to press in on difficult issues. But the tension on maintaining those relationships means that he was always wondering if he was not pushing enough or was pushing too much and if he was self censoring so that he could maintain relationship. Grant was a young white man who thought he knew it all because he had a black friend and a black brother. As he explored racial issues and the way that race played a role within his work at the Department of Corrections he became an activist. He started a prison ministry group at the church. And he work in his role as a social media manager to profile inmates through podcast interview and written profiles. But eventually he left the Department of Corrections because of backlash against his activism. Becoming a church staff members who continued his activism around racial issues there.

Sandra was a Black woman who was married to a white man. She grew up being taught by her father to not trust white people. After an early divorce and a young child, she was brought back to faith through Crossroads church. She eventually remarried a white man and had three additional children. Again, the book skillfully tells the story of how racial identity matters not just to white racism, but also the racial identity of those who are not black. It takes years and many small steps, but he comes to find her voice and understand how gender and race both play a role in her marriage struggles.

Jess is the youngest character in the book. She grew up in a family that was overt white supremacist, her father (who died when she was 11) had "White Power" and other similar tattoos and her uncle had a swastika tattooed on his chest while in prison. Jess also spent time in prison after a felony conviction and a serious drug addiction. While in prison she became a Christian and upon release she found Crossroads, regained custody of her son, and was just getting settled when she started participating in Undivided. She eventually completed college and becomes a social worker and presses back against the racism of her family and the systems she works and lives in.

It is very clear in Undivided that struggle is central to growth. The point is growth, not a particular destination. Even as the book is very clear about the struggle I think it may be too positively framed. The backlash, which is clearly the focus of the second half of the book I think is stronger than what just what is talked about. The book was published in September, 2024, which means it was largely finished in 2023 and written about events that were mostly 2022 or before. The reelection of Trump, the continuing overt Christian nationalism within the christian community and the backlash against DEI, immigration, and other topics I do not think have reached their zenith yet.

One of the strengths of Undivided is that Hahrie Han is not an evangelical insider. She is coming at the story with a different lens and different assumptions. But her not being an insider means that there are a lot of minor issues which I see as an insider. Some are minor fact problems like identifying Charlie Dates as the pastor of Progressive Baptist Church of Chicago starting in 2023. He actually became pastor of Progressive Baptist in 2011, but in 2023 also became senior pastor of Salem Baptist, jointly pastoring two different churches. The unusualness of the situation can be a part of why the detail was wrong. But there were a dozen or so similar minor errors that I think show a lack of evangelical editorial input. She also had some framing issues with describing people as "in the faith" in a way that felt very unevangelical. When she talks about Bebbington's evangelical quadrilateral and the National Evangelical Association, she incorrectly identifies them as nondenominational.

I think some of the lack of detail in the backlash section also is attributable to her outsider status. While she details the 2018 Wheaton meeting, she doesn't detail the 2018 MLK 50 or the 2018 T4G meeting which were both very much concerned with race in the Evangelical world. MLK 50 was jointly sponsored by the Southern Baptist ELRC and The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and is arguably part of the impetus of the national anti CRT movement. MLK 50 is regularly cited as evidence of those very conservative evangelical organization being "woke". TGC in 2019 published The Incompatibility of Critical Theory and Christianity, which directly identified the language being used in antiracism programs like MLK 50 or Undivided as being incompatible with Christianity. That eventually morphed into opposition to Critical Race Theory and the SBC's resolution about CRT and SBC seminary presidents unequivocally opposing CRT.That anti CRT eventually spread to school and political world with Trump's anti CRT statement in the fall of 2020. Part of the reality of the problem of race and Trump is that those who are opposing Trump and those who are trying to address race often, but not necessarily overlap.

As detailed more in the discussion on the Holy Post than in the book, many who were willing to speak out about racial issues are no longer willing or able to speak out because of the identification of discussion of race with political issues. One of the issues that led to my leaving from my church was the church's unwillingness to simply say that Marjorie Taylor Greene was not an active attender of the church. She was baptized in 2011, but according to staff who I have talked to, there is no evidence that she had any church involvement after 2013. In 2020, when she ran for congress she identified the church as her church and that she was involved in small group ministry there. The church was at the same time trying to address racial issues through small group and larger groups not unlike Undivided. In direct conversations with leaders at the church I told them that they could not be taken seriously as addressing race while avoiding other discussions trying not to offend. The problem is not conservative members of the church who are republicans, but the rhetoric being used.

I think Undivided made the very good point that to help people changes over time requires relationship. And that withdrawing from relationship precludes the ability to speak into people's lives. Undivided talks about how Jess' continued involvement with her uncle led to him having his swastika tattoo removed. And that she was able to discuss the problems of race within policing with officers who she regularly worked with in her role as a social worker. But the book also talks about how eventually Sandra and her husband divorced in part because of issues of race and his attraction to Christian Nationalism and how that impacted their relationship. There just are not simple solutions and what works in one case will not work in another.

What is helpful about Undivided, the book, is that is shows how slow on-going change through relationship matters. It also show why the context of a program matters as much as the program. It was not the six weeks as much as the context of putting people in settings where they can both build relationship and workout the ideas and context of what they were learning in settings where that matters. But the systems of white evangelicals and megachurches are not long term conducive toward addressing either race or broader justice issues. Isaac Sharp's The Other Evangelicals is in part about how choices have been made and are hard to unmake.

I do have some issues with some of the framing and there are some things that are mistakes more than framing problems. But I do think this is a very helpful book that I want to recommend to be read widely.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/undivided/

Summary: An overview of the book of Acts, paying particular attention to the temple and how the early church integrated gentiles into it while maintaining integration with its Jewish background.

I may not have picked up The Challenge of Acts if I had not watched the last 15 minutes of an episode of the Holy Postwhere Skye Jehani was interviewing NT Wright about The Challenge of Acts. Skye asked about what NT Wright would say in response to churches who pragmatically say that you should narrow-cast to a narrow cultural group and not seek to be more inclusive because churches grow more quickly that way. (This has been the argument from the church growth movement who advocated for the Homogenous Unit Principle, which I have written about before here.)

NT Wright suggests in that video that part of the message of Acts is that the church is not really the church if it isn't grappling with the integration of the entire body of Christ. To narrow cast to a homogeneous cultural group is to distort the idea of the church so much that it ceases to be the church.

Other commentaries on Acts like Amos Yong's have suggested that much of the action of the book of Acts is the expansion of the church to a larger and larger group of people and each expansion had a sense of conflict that had to be dealt with. And Willie James Jenning's commentary on Acts spent a lot of time grappling with the role of empire, violence and prison.

NT Wright has several main points he is communicating with his book on Acts. First, he raises attention to temple motifs in Acts. That attention to temple motifs is part of what Wright's larger project with the New Perspectives on Paul movement is doing in trying to pay attention to Paul's Jewishness and not make Paul into an antisemite as some commenters on Paul have done historically. Wright instead suggests that Paul is trying to integrate Jew and gentile into the body of Christ, not as s replacement of the Jewish religious practice (supersessionism) but as an integrated reality.

Something I have not heard before that I do think is an interesting point is that Wright is suggesting that part of why Paul is seen in Acts as going first to Jewish synagogues is that he is trying to appropriate the Roman exception to communal idol worship that Jewish people had to Christians. Generally all people who were under the subjection of Rome had to come together to offer sacrifices together to appease the gods. Jews had been given an exception to that requirement. Wright suggests that Paul was trying to use that exemption, but he wanted to use it in a way that violated Jewish self-understanding.

Paul says that the gentile Christians did not need to be circumcised. If Paul had asked gentile Christians to be circumcised then it would have been easy to say to Roman officials that these gentile Christians were Jewish coverts and therefore not subject to Roman idol worship requirements. But Paul wanted to claim the exception while not making the gentile Christians live under full Jewish religious requirements. That both endangered Jewish exemptions from Roman law, and didn't given enough attachment for the gentile Christians to make them recognizably Jewish. This framing makes a lot of sense of the way Luke structures Acts' storytelling.

The Challenge of Acts was based on a series of lectures in 2022. The last book I read by NT Wright was Into the Heart of Romans, which was a whole book focused on a single chapter of Romans. The Challenge of Acts is the opposite approach, it is a broad overview of a whole book of the Bible, drawing connections to both Old Testament references, New Testament self understanding and the second temple culture of the era. Generally, Wright is taking about four chapters of Acts at a time. He gives quick overview of how Luke is structuring the story in the section and then highlights several points more thoroughly before moving on to the next section.

There are a couple of exceptions to this general approach. The introduction of the book of Acts takes a little more time as you might expect. And then Wright spends a whole chapter on Paul's sermon in Athens at the Areopagus. Wright suggests that this sermon has largely been misunderstood because it has been presented as if the Areopagus was a debating society and not a trial. Where Wright is often very helpful is drawing cultural connections that the average reader would not see, but the original readers would have assumed were clear. In this case, Luke seems to be referencing Socrates. Both Paul and Socrates were on trial for sacrilege or impiety. This is a connection that I have never heard before, but makes a lot of sense to the text. Paul was not simply using the altar to the unknown God as a way to build a bridge between them, but as a defense to show that Paul was not an atheist or impious person.

Much of the focus on The Challenge of Acts is on Paul as you might expect from a scholar who has specialized in Pauline studies. Wright suggests that the book of Acts may have been written as part of Paul's defense in Rome, which may be part of the reason that there are so many court scenes in it. Even before Paul, Peter and the other disciples were brought before officials to get them to stop preaching. And while John and Stephen were put to death, those deaths are shown as unjust punishments. The other courts scenes were largely showing that the officials did not find the early church guilty of sedition or impiety, even if the people continue to misunderstand them and kept bringing them before the local officials and courts.

Like pretty much all of Wright's books, this is one that I listened to on first pass. (And unusually, Wright narrates the audiobook himself.) I tend to pick up the print version later and take a slower second pass. I have read well over a dozen of Wright's books, many of them two or three times. Wright's strength and weakness is that he keeps coming back to similar themes over and over again. Part of the strength here is that in discussing Acts, he moves outside of his main areas of work on the Pauline letters and shows how the implications of his work in Paul matters to other aspects of New Testament study. The weakness is that some of these themes have been well covered in other books. But I think that is less of a problem here than in some other books because while there are overlapping themes here with Wright's other books, the setting of the book of Acts and the method of a quicker overview of an entire book, brings a lot of new insight into why Wright's traditional themes of study matter in new ways.

This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/the-challenge-of-acts/

So I am having a hard time deciding what I think about this book. On the one hand it wasn't bad writing. The story was fine and I probably will read the next in the series. I bought it on Kindle for a dollar and it was well worth that. But I also was somewhat irritated with the overt preaching that was a part of the book. It felt like Dostoyevsky, where there was a story and then all the sudden someone in the book started preaching. The preaching in this book was a libertarian variety. Now I am not opposed to libertarians. In fact, I have a lot of leanings to libertarians but this was just over the top preaching. So those parts I was just irritated about.

Short review: this is one of the best short biographies I have read in a long while. Some people's lives are just better than fiction. This was much better than the movies made about CS Lewis (Shadowlands, and the BBC one). Both used this book as part of the inspiration, but it is so much better.

Full review at http://www.mrshields.com/and-god-came-in-the-extraordinary-story-of-joy-davidman-by-lyle-w-dorsett/

Short review: After reading the cover story in Christianity Today in August on Beth Moore, I thought I should probably read something by her. I had a copy of Praying God's Word in audiobook that my mother had purchased on our shared Audible.com account a couple years ago. So I started listening to it. It was great content. If you have heard about praying by using scripture, but have never done it or would like more instruction, this is a great place to do it. But DO NOT get this on audiobook. It is designed to be used, not listened to. Much of the book is re-writing of scripture into prayer and organized into topical sections for regular prayer use. You cannot do that with an audiobook. So I am back to needing to find a good book by Moore to check out. If anyone has a suggestion, let me know. I gave up about 2/3 of the way through because it just didn't make sense to continue a book that I could not really process as it was intended.

Full review on my blog http://www.mrshields.com/praying-gods-word-breaking-free-from-spiritual-strongholds-by-beth-moore/

Short Review: I am working through several books by reformed authors to try to better understand reformed theology. With each of the ones I have read so far, I appreciate much of what is being said and the focus on scripture and the intellect. But I also confirm that in the end I am not reformed.

This book is about 25 years old but reads more modern and very well. I have not read anything by Sproul before and I think this was probably a good introduction. If you are looking for a book on the theology of God this is a good one. I think it is a bit one sided in its presentation, but it is particularly about the Holiness of God, not just the general theology of God, so that is to be expected. Overall enjoyed it.

Full review is on my blog at http://www.mrshields.com/the-holiness-of-god-by-rc-sproul/

Short review: Good basic overview of Calvin's thinking. Not much biography, really just this theology. This is a good book for someone that does not know much about Calvin. More along the line of “Calvin for Dummies”. A bit of humor in a good way.

Full review at http://www.mrshields.com/calving-for-armchair-theologians-by-christopher-elwood/

So it took me a while to get through this book. Not because it wasn't good, but because it is a hard book to get through if you are serious about it. It is about real health and what it takes to get there. It is hard stuff. If you are concerned about burnout, or if you are concerned that others you know are burning out it is worth the effort. I have read it twice in the past couple months and probably will read it again in another couple months.

Short review: Most long series have some weak spots. Even Bujold has some weak spots in some of her other series. I haven't yet read a book that I thought was really all that weak with the Vorkosigan series. This one is formated a bit differently than some, but it is still classic Miles. Set up is that Miles is investigating a business deal that might be trying some political moves, or illegal business moves. But as always it turns out to be much more. There is a twist at the end that will re-start the series again. Only complaint is that his family was basically out of scene throughout the book.

Full review on my blog at http://www.mrshields.com/cryoburn_by_lois_mcmaster_bujold/

Short review: I am not done with this, but I think it is worth writing some on it because it is the start of advent and I think some might want to join in with the the preparation for the season.

I strongly appreciate the role of fixed hour prayer and even if I do not follow strictly I really do benefit from separating myself from daily life and setting aside time to be with God during my regular day. Advent started recently so you can still get this and join in this year.

My full thoughts (until I finish the season's prayer) are at my blog at http://www.mrshields.com/christmastide-prayers-for-advent-through-epiphany-from-the-divine-hours-by-phyllis-tickle/

Used this as part of my daily devotional. There are 80 short chapters on prayer, most just 3 or 4 pages. It is just perfect to help inspire you to more prayer.

I spent months slowly working through it. I know about six or eight of the authors. But there is pretty wide range of quality and insight in the book. It is an attempt at creating a real textbook on prayer. I think it was a valiant attempt. The weakness is both the wide range of writing (creating a lack of cohesion)and the lack of depth into any of the particular areas.

Unfortunately my dogs ate the book a few chapters before I finished.

Short review: this is a relatively short, dense and interesting series of lectures of what is means to be a theologian from one of the most important theologians of the 20th century. I am sure I missed more than I got because it very dense (and I listened to it). I plan on reading it again in print form later.

I do think it is important to actually read theologians, not just read what other people say about them. Many people will have heard of Karl Barth but very few will have actually read him.

My full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/evangelical-theology-an-introduction-by-karl-barth/

Short review: This is a fairly standard theme science fiction book. Aliens make contact, world goes into some chaos. Bad aliens try to take over. Brilliant underdog human ends up doing really well, but has to race against time to defeat the bad aliens. That sounds more trite than it really is. But the basic theme really isn't all that original. But it is good writing and I really enjoyed it.

Full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/live-free-or-die-book-1-of-troy-rising-by-john-ringo/

This was a great book about how to change prayer in your church from what is usually is (small attendance and prayer request based) to what it can be (worship based, focused on the Lord and hearing from him. I have met the author and think this book is better than his presentations in person. I really think that the church needs to take this seriously. The main issue is that the US church often acts as if they don't need God. The focus on prayer really submits the church to the Lord's will.

A longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/two-books-on-prayer-by-daniel-henderson/

Short review: This is traditionally Christopher Buckley. Great satire, good writing. This time the set up is a group of wine making monks. They realize they are broke and start getting desprerate. The abbot reads Deepak Chopra and decides that the monks need to start following the lead of the self help gurus.

This is a great skewering of self help books, Wall Street, and a bit of the Catholic Church. The best scene is when the monks take up sides with all the different self help gurus and the Chopraites, the Coveyites, the Robbinites, etc. all debate the best ways to find wealth and solve their problems.

It looks like the book is out of print and I listened to an abridge audiobook (only one that was available). But if you find it, it is well worth reading.

Full review at http://bookwi.se/god-is-my-broker-a-monk-tycoon-reveals-the-7-12-laws-of-spiritual-and-financial-growth-by-christopher-buckley-and-john-tierney/

Short review: This was on sale on Amazon over the weekend ($0.44). It is a short book. Fred Roger's wife edited it together from his articles and speeches. Each page has a couple sentances or a paragraph about parenting or children or something.

He really does have a lot of good advice. But the price is back up to $10 and it is not worth that.

Full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/many-ways-to-say-i-love-you-wisdom-for-parents-and-children-from-mr-rogers/

Short review: I think this is a great book that really takes on the need for deep friendships in a modern world and set aside as a special need cross gender friendships. It is so good that I am going to host a blog discussion on it starting April 18, 2011.

I have a couple more books that I will send you free if you participate.

I will update this when the blog discussion is over.

My post about the blog discussion http://bookwi.se/sacred-union-sacred-passions-book-discussion/
My fuller review on my blog http://bookwi.se/sacred-unions-brennan/

Short review: This is my second attempt through this book. So I have to knock it down a bit for being a bit unstructured and meandering. But I did “get it” this time. Overall I think the last (of 3) sections was the best. It is focused on the alternative ways Jesus could have lead using the other political, social and religious movements of Jesus' day.

Full review on my blog at http://bookwi.se/jesus-way-peterson/

Short review: I think the most important idea from this book is that we need to be open to questioning our ideas because we desire to be in relationships. If we are unable to question then we are unable to relate to those that are unlike us. Another very good section was on how we need to be able to laugh at ourselves and our beliefs. If we cannot laugh then we cannot really get to a point where we can look at what those beliefs really mean. It has 10 chapters, each about how to question a different area (government, future, history, interpretation, God, religion, offendedness, passion, media and language). Some chapters were better than others, but on the whole this was very good.

Longer review on my blog at http://www.mrshields.com/the-sacredness-of-questioning-everything-by-david-dark/