Are we idol worshipers?

From Christian Century-

It is axiomatic in Jewish and Christian theological traditions that worship is reserved for the one true God alone. To flinch from this obligation in even the smallest way is tantamount to what the Bible calls idolatry. What James 2:10 says of the law—that to keep all of it except in a single point is to transgress against the whole—is true also of worship. The jealousy of Israel’s God is acute when it comes to worship: the Lord will brook no rivals, for in fact there are none.

Scripture affords a plethora of tropes depicting, diagnosing, and indicting idolatry. One trope is the preposterous polytheism of the nations, which manufacture miniature deities out of wood and use the excess material for the fire. Another is the challenge of living as God’s covenant people in alien lands saturated with literal idols and their attendant, abhorrent practices. A third is the fiery judgments of the prophets, who accuse Abraham’s children of forsaking Abraham’s God—of infidelity so great its only comparison is to a married person offering sex for sale to the first bidder.

More here-

https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/are-we-idol-worshipers

‘John Henry Newman’ Review: A Heart That Speaks to Hearts

From The Wall Street Journal-

John Henry Newman was and is an exceptional figure. This October he was declared a saint by the Catholic Church, the first English saint created in half a century. For much of Newman’s life, he struggled with unpopularity, misunderstanding and vilification from his various opponents. He was the most distinguished and the most original English theologian since the Middle Ages, but he was disliked and distrusted by many in the Catholic Church, as well as by the English Protestants and unbelievers whom he had horrified by his defection, in 1845, from the Church of England. Yet when he died, aged 89 in 1890, in an England still generally anti-Catholic, he had become, as Eamon Duffy says in this splendid book, an unlikely “national treasure” to whom Tennyson and Matthew Arnold —by no means Catholics—had written polite but puzzled tributes.

Newman wrote a great deal. He published half a dozen books, a number of essays that are central to the understanding of Catholic thought, three good hymns (including “Lead, Kindly Light”), a bad long poem (“The Dream of Gerontius,” later transformed by Edward Elgar’s music) and 32 volumes of letters and diaries. Anyone daunted by more weighty biographies, the best being Ian Ker’s (1988), should read Eamon Duffy’s short, fresh account. The Cambridge scholar of religion’s calm judgment expertly illuminates every aspect of Newman’s life, work and—until he was very old—unceasing mental and spiritual attention.

More here-

https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-henry-newman-review-a-heart-that-speaks-to-hearts-11576857796

A Christian and a Democrat: A Religious Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt

From Presbyterian Outlook-

This book contributes to the growing literature of religion and the presidents of the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a master politician, might not spring to mind when pondering the religious convictions of presidents, but this work makes a convincing argument that his political philosophy had roots in his religious background.

Roosevelt’s parents adhered to a liberal Episcopal form of Christianity that embraced the Social Gospel; that ideology was reinforced at Groton School, and headmaster Endicott Peabody remained influential in Roosevelt’s adult life. Roosevelt affirmed that God was involved in the world, ordering and guiding it for the betterment of the whole and for individuals.  There was a vision for a good society in that theology, which Roosevelt understood to promote such values as the common good, equity, justice, security (economic and otherwise) and the importance of each person. Roosevelt understood that government could play a role in that work of God, and the New Deal grew out of that conviction.

More here-

https://pres-outlook.org/2019/12/a-christian-and-a-democrat-a-religious-biography-of-franklin-d-roosevelt/

What is left to say about a new John Grisham novel? ‘The Guardians’ has something to add.

From The Washington Post-

What is there left to say about a new John Grisham novel?

Maybe only that Grisham has done it again.

“The Guardians” is Grisham’s 40th novel; he’s now 64 and has been writing suspense novels pretty much nonstop since “A Time to Kill” was published in 1989. Most of his novels are legal thrillers, but Grisham has also branched out into stories about rare books, sports and medicine. (His 2015 e-book, “The Tumor,” is about an experimental cancer treatment called focused ultrasound technology that Grisham champions.) Grisham has even written a YA legal series featuring a 13-year-old amateur legal eagle named “Theodore Boone.”

More here-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/what-is-left-to-say-about-a-new-john-grisham-novel-the-guardians-has-something-to-add/2019/10/21/a7d0a998-f1db-11e9-8693-f487e46784aa_story.html

John Grisham works his narrative magic in newest legal thriller

From Maryland-

When an attorney takes on a matter of life and death, the client is usually the only person in peril.

But not in John Grisham’s new legal thriller, “The Guardians.” Danger stalks lawyer Cullen Post and the inmate he represents.

Post—an attorney-turned-Episcopal priest—combines those roles for Guardian Ministries, a four-person operation that investigates the cases of prisoners who might have been wrongly convicted.

With several successes in hand and five ongoing investigations, Post and his colleagues—founder Vicki Gourley, litigation chief Mazy Ruffin and investigator-exoneree Francois “Frankie” Tatum—accept the case of Quincy Miller. An African American convicted of murdering white lawyer Keith Russo of fictional Seabrook—a small town in the north Florida backwoods—Miller is in the 23rd year of a life sentence.

More here-

https://www.fredericksburg.com/entertainment/arts/book-review-john-grisham-works-his-narrative-magic-in-newest/article_88a8a64a-d4f9-5793-adc0-4c571491e0b7.html

All Things Anglican: Who we are and what we believe, by Marcus Throup

From The Church Times-

“THE Anglican position is that anyone can believe anything they like,” an uncharitable relation of mine said recently. Well, we don’t employ thought police. More positively, my late wife Denise often observed how greatly she appreciated what she referred to as “the spaciousness of Anglicanism”.

Within that space, Anglicanism does have a very clear approach to things, and the author of this book sets out to provide “a textbook on Anglicanism that would cover essentials in a way that readers would find accessible, practical, informative and engaging”.

Articulating what is distinctive about Anglicanism in a way that is clear and accessible is not easy. The author points out that people new to Anglicanism find that Anglican jargon can be “not only unfamiliar, it can feel alienating, archaic and even a bit wacky!” Anyone who has tried explaining the difference between a priest, deacon, curate, vicar, and rector will resonate with that.

More here-

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2018/12-october/books-arts/book-reviews/all-things-anglican-who-we-are-and-what-we-believe-marcus-throup

The Trinity is not our social program(me)

From Psephizo

There are moments of the year which all preachers dread. Perhaps ‘dread’ is too strong a word; but there is a definite sinking of the shoulders as we, once again, think about finding something new to say on the occasion of the major festivals. Christmas and Easter are, of course, the regular challenges—yet in both biblical stories there is so much rich material that finding a new insight or angle isn’t that hard. Where dread really does descend is as we approach Trinity Sunday.

Fortunately for us, there has been a remarkable revival in Trinitarian thinking in the last 70 years or so—so we no longer need to feel like Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run (‘The Trinity is like a clover.’ ‘What, you mean it is green?’). In the opening chapter of his excellent exploration of The Quest for the Trinity, Stephen Holmes traces the shape of this revival. If the scholasticism of the middle ages had made the doctrine of the Trinity speculative and obscure, the rationalism of the 18th and 19th centuries had (in effect) rejected the doctrine as implausible. Karl Barth rejected this rationalist approach, and aimed to reinstate the Trinity as the centre of Christian theology.

More here-

https://www.psephizo.com/life-ministry/the-trinity-is-not-our-social-programme-2/

Reimagining Britain by Justin Welby review – praiseworthy vision

From The Guardian-

Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has brought about two miracles. First, he unblocked the road that led to female bishops and quickly ensured they were appointed, including to the third most senior position in the Church of England, bishop of London. Second, through his challenge to Wonga, the payday lender, and interventions on banking, he got the press writing about the church and money rather than gay sex.

Is he able to bring about a third miracle, by giving demoralised Britain new hope and a fresh vision for the future? Reimagining Britain – a great title – is a brave attempt. Detailing the vast changes since 1945, he argues that the present, like 1945, can be a turning point in our history.

Welby is critical of the government’s narrow focus on “British values” brought into schools as part of the Prevent programme and looks for a wider and deeper set of moral convictions. He begins with community, courage and stability, unpicking each one in more detail. On community, for example, he draws on the excellent body of Catholic social teaching with its stress on solidarity, subsidiarity, the universal destiny of all goods, gratuity and the common good.

More here-


https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/05/reimagining-britain-justin-welby-praiseworthy-vision-of-uk

Taking the Bible seriously means reading it figurally

From Christian Century-

Because I had recently become a Christian, I enrolled in a New Testament studies course during my first year as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia. Our guiding textbook was Bart Ehrman’s The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. I recall one stuffy fall afternoon when the teaching assistant for our precept group (who happened to be a clergyman) explained that we would investigate the Christian scriptures as though they were no different from any other historical document or work of literature. “We’ll be reading and studying the New Testament the same way they’ll approach Beowulf down the hall from us.”

His comment about Beowulf sticks in both my memory and my craw because it ignited a small rebellion among my evangelical classmates, who resisted the idea of reckoning with scripture the way one would any other historical document. I also recall the titters of patronizing laughter set off by one classmate’s protest: “But it’s not like the Iliad; it’s God’s Word.”

More here-


https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/taking-bible-seriously-means-reading-it-figurally

A Catholic priest pens the Anglican Archbishop’s prayer book

From Crux-

For those that have followed the close collaboration and friendship between Pope Francis and Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, it will come as no surprise that the spiritual head of the Church of England selected a Roman Catholic priest’s manuscript for his 2018 Lenten prayer book.

Luigi Gioia, a Benedictine priest and academic scholar, has spent the past two decades bringing together ecumenical thought and spirituality in both the Church and the classroom.

Gioia is a professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical University of Sant’Anselmo in Rome and also a research associate at the Von Hügel Institute in Cambridge, England. Along with his academic work, he has also given retreats around the world. His new book, Say it to God: In Search of Prayer, was just released last month and offers practical reflections particularly designed for the Lenten season.

He spoke with Crux about what monastics offer the modern age and how “the more we grow in authentic prayer, the greater our compassion grows.”

More here-

https://cruxnow.com/faith/2018/02/14/catholic-priest-pens-anglican-archbishops-prayer-book/

God’s Own Music

From The New York Review of Books-

The Anglican choral tradition is one of the great successes of English cultural diffusion, to rank with Association Football (soccer), cricket, and the works of William Shakespeare. It has a cultural heft way beyond its parochial and very specific origins, and it turns up in the oddest places. The most incongruous example must surely be the upmarket gloss that Thomas Tallis’s forty-part motet Spem in Alium lends to a down-and-dirty scene in the film Fifty Shades of Grey.

I’m often surprised by how far this music travels. The transposition of the Anglican sound world into the urban jungle of New York seemed rather miraculous the first time I walked into Saint Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue to bathe in the glories of stained glass–inflected light and English-inflected harmonies. On another occasion, I was in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, for a concert, arriving just after a school shooting in next-door Jacksonville that had made me preternaturally alert to the cultural differences between the Old and the New Worlds. But it turned out that the concert was in St. Paul’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church. Our greenroom was the church vestry, and I felt strangely at home among the cassocks and surplices, The Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems (some nice Tallis there), and the familiar hardcovers of Hymns Ancient and Modern and The English Hymnal, the red and the green.

More here-

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/02/22/english-songs-gods-own-music/

The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation

From Parabola-

“We must begin with Trinity if we are to rebuild Christianity from the bottom up. The Trinity is absolutely foundational to Christianity because it reveals the heart of the nature of God.”
–Fr. Richard Rohr1

In his foreword to this new book from Roman Catholic priest and author Father Richard Rohr, William Paul Young, author of “The Shack,” refers to communities of intelligent mystics who summon us to participate more consciously “in this divine dance of loving and being loved.” Rohr leads such a band, and in The Divine Dance he sets out to overturn what he considers a static image of God, inviting us to see Him not as “the Eternal Threatener,” but as “the Ultimate Participant—in everything—both the good and the painful.” For Rohr, God is “a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between three—a circle dance of love.”

Thus begins his latest book of 224 pages in three parts—not a lot of space in which to challenge millennial ideas or evoke cosmic perspectives around the Christian concept of the Trinity. The first section explains the need for what he calls a Trinitarian Revolution. In the second, Rohr explores the many difficulties that come between us and the experience of the presence of God, as he asks (or rather tells us), Why the Trinity? Why Now? In the third part, by far the shortest, he addresses the Holy Spirit.

More here-

https://parabola.org/2018/01/31/divine-dance-trinity-transformation/

Understanding Grief

From The New York Times-

Although many of us are able to speak frankly about death, we still have a lot to learn about dealing wisely with its aftermath: grief, the natural reaction to loss of a loved one.

Relatively few of us know what to say or do that can be truly helpful to a relative, friend or acquaintance who is grieving. In fact, relatively few who have suffered a painful loss know how to be most helpful to themselves.

Two new books by psychotherapists who have worked extensively in the field of loss and grief are replete with stories and guidance that can help both those in mourning and the people they encounter avoid many of the common pitfalls and misunderstandings associated with grief. Both books attempt to correct false assumptions about how and how long grief might be experienced.

More here-

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/well/live/understanding-grief.html

Was He a Theologian?

From Commonweal-

Forty-three years after his untimely death, Thomas Merton remains one of the most compelling American Catholics of the past century. Most of his important books are in print, and he continues to attract new readers who identify with his journey to faith and to the monastic life. In the taxonomy of publishers and booksellers, however, his classification as a “spiritual writer” has tended to suggest that, while his writings might bring spiritual insight, they do not constitute heavy theological lifting. As a result, since his death numerous theologians have taken up the challenge of demonstrating the substance and merit of Merton’s work.

Christopher Pramuk’s Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton is the latest important contribution to this field. It began as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Notre Dame under the tutelage of Lawrence S. Cunningham, a longtime Commonweal contributor and the author of several books on Merton, including Thomas Merton and the Monastic Vision, perhaps the best theological introduction to Merton’s life and writings. Pramuk describes his project as one that “looks to Thomas Merton as a classic theologian of the mystical tradition from East to West, and offers a retrieval and interpretation of his mature Christology.” He frames Merton’s distinctive Christology (the monk of Gethsemani was by no means a systematic theologian) as “a unifying thread to be discerned in the larger tapestry of his life.”

More here-

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/was-he-theologian

A Mind-Bending Translation of the New Testament

From Atlantic Monthly-

In the beginning was … well, what? A clap of the divine hands and a poetic shock wave? Or an itchy node of nothingness inconceivably scratching itself into somethingness? In the beginning was the Word, says the Gospel according to John—a lovely statement of the case, as it’s always seemed to me. A pre-temporal syllable swelling to utterance in the mouth of the universe, spoken once and heard forever: God’s power chord, if you like. For David Bentley Hart, however, whose mind-bending translation of the New Testament was published in October, the Word—as a word—does not suffice: He finds it to be “a curiously bland and impenetrable designation” for the heady concept expressed in the original Greek of the Gospels as Logos. The Chinese word Tao might get at it, Hart tells us, but English has nothing with quite the metaphysical flavor of Logos, the particular sense of a formative moral energy diffusing itself, without diminution, through space and time. So he throws up his hands and leaves it where it is: “In the origin there was the Logos …”

More here-

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/the-new-testament-a-translation-david-bentley-hart/546551/?utm_source=atlfb

New N.T. Wright Biography on Paul

From Patheos-

Coming out in Feb 2018, N.T. Wright’s biography on Paul, a readable narrative of Paul’s life and thought.

In this definitive biography, renowned Bible scholar, Anglican bishop, and bestselling author N. T. Wright offers a radical look at the apostle Paul, illuminating the humanity and remarkable achievements of this intellectual who invented Christian theology—transforming a faith and changing the world.

For centuries, Paul, the apostle who “saw the light on the Road to Damascus” and made a miraculous conversion from zealous Pharisee persecutor to devoted follower of Christ, has been one of the church’s most widely cited saints. While his influence on Christianity has been profound, N. T. Wright argues that Bible scholars and pastors have focused so much attention on Paul’s letters and theology that they have too often overlooked the essence of the man’s life and the extreme unlikelihood of what he achieved.


Read more at

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2017/11/new-n-t-wright-biography-paul/#ID7X1LplOjHKgT69.99

What’s behind the New Testament?

From Christian Century-

When I took my first New Testament course at Fuller Theologi­cal Seminary, the professor, Robert Guelich, opened the first class by asking who, after Jesus and Paul, was most responsible for the spread of Chris­tianity. Eager students raised their hands and offered various answers: Peter, Mary, Augustine.

“No,” Professor Guelich countered, “It was Alexander the Great.” He went on to explain how the young conqueror, dead for three centuries by the time Jesus was born, had laid the roads upon which the Roman Empire was built, and over which the gospel was subsequently spread. “Without Alexander the Great,” he told us, “no missionary journeys for Paul, and no Christianity.”

If Alexandrian roads provide a geographical map for the promulgation of Christianity, Philip Jenkins has provided us with a political-spiritual-textual map in his outstanding new book. Jenkins, a trusted historian and observer of the ebbs and flows of Christendom, has set his sights on a little-known period, which he dubs the “Crucible Era,” 250–50 BCE. It was in these two centuries, he argues, that the table was set for the emergence of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. (He says it paved the way for Islam, too, but here I think he’s stretching his thesis a bit.)

More here-

https://www.christiancentury.org/review/books/whats-behind-new-testament

The Life of Pauli Murray: An Interview with Rosalind Rosenberg

From African American Intellectual History Society-

In today’s post, Alyssa Collins, PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Virginia, interviews Rosalind Rosenberg on her new book Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray, which was recently published by Oxford University Press. Dr. Rosalind Rosenberg is Professor Emerita of History at Barnard College, where she joined the faculty in 1984. Professor Rosenberg specializes in American history with a focus on women’s, social, and legal history. Related to her most recent book, she is the author of “Conjunctions: Race and Gender in the Work of Pauli Murray” in the Journal of Women’s History (2002), Divided Lives: American Women in the 20th Century (1992), and “Pauli Murray and the Killing of Jane Crow” in Forgotten Heroes From America’s Past (1998) amongst many other publications. Professor Rosenberg is also a member of the Executive Board of the Society of American Historians.


More here-


http://www.aaihs.org/the-life-of-pauli-murray-an-interview-with-rosalind-rosenberg/

Dialogue With God

From The New York Review of Books-

In 2012, Sarah Ruden brought us, in a crackling translation, the second-century-AD Latin novel known as The Golden Ass of Apuleius. The Golden Ass is full of impudent incongruities. A topsy-turvy tale about a hapless young man turned into a donkey is combined with a love story (of Cupid and Psyche) as bright and delightful as the tapestries that would illustrate it throughout the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Utterly unexpectedly, the book ends with the vision of a goddess rising from the swell of a moonlit sea.

Ruden now leads us to a yet more incongruous masterpiece. A little over two centuries after The Golden Ass, we discover a person who appears to be a highly Latinate North African such as Apuleius had been—a product, indeed, of a school established in Apuleius’s own hometown, Madauros (modern M’Daourouch, in Algeria, near the tense border with Tunisia)—only to learn that he was a middle-aged Christian bishop, with his back turned to us, speaking endlessly, urgently to his God.

More here-

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/26/sarah-ruden-augustine-dialogue-god/

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DAVID BENTLEY HART

From First Things-

David Bentley Hart’s new single-handed translation of the New Testament will strike the fair-minded reader by turns as startling, incisive, audacious, smug, shrewd, and quirky to the point of exasperation: everything, in short, the author intended it to be. The book sets out to be provocative and succeeds. A philosopher, theologian, scholar of patristics and mythology, and frequent contributor to First Things, Hart maintains that his dissatisfaction with the standard renderings of the Bible—each the product of committees and therefore of numberless harmful compromises—convinced him of the value of starting from scratch and making a one-man job of it.

The work consists of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, transmitted in what Hart calls his “almost pitilessly literal” translation. Framing the translation itself are a lengthy introduction and a “Concluding Scientific Postscript,” written with the lucidity and cheery truculence characteristic of Hart’s essays. In these sections he sets out the purposes of his project, explains his strategy of translation, declares independence from a priori doctrinal and theological constraints, and provides a discussion of his more controversial renderings of key words that, somewhat paradoxically, amounts to an original theology of the New Testament in miniature.

More here-

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/11/the-gospel-according-to-david-bentley