Finished reading, part the next

A rundown of recent book completions:

A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diana Butler Bass

Bass is clearly giving a nod to Zinn’s People’s History of the United States with her title and approach. It’s not a bad effort, but nothing really earth-shattering, either.

The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader by Mark Pierson

Pierson is an Australian who was writing from a very strong emergent perspective. While the worship experiences he describes are a long way from what would work in my midwestern US church, his perspective on the intent of and attitude toward leading worship was right on and gave me a lot to think about.

Khrushchev: The Man and His Era by William Taubman

A very readable biography of the Soviet leader. Still hard to get a grasp on how someone can be so human and yet so depraved.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

This was the first I’ve read of Butler. Won’t be the last. A wonderful voice in dystopian fiction.

Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness by Edward Kaplan

The first of two volumes of biography of a fascinating Jewish thinker from the early 20th century. Now I’ve gotta get volume two.

The Switch by Joseph Finder

I was wanting mindless entertainment, and this book overachieved at that. By which I mean it was even more mindless and boring than I was hoping for. Meh.

Andrew Peterson and Friends: The Ragamuffin Album, Live at the Ryman

Last Sunday night I had the privilege of attending an Andrew Peterson-organized and -led concert honoring the legacy of Rich Mullins at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Peterson and his cadre are roughly my age, and we share a deep debt to Mullins, who in his all-too-short musical career penned songs that showed that Christian music could be artistic, poetic, and honest in ways we hadn’t before seen. (Andrew wrote an essay for the concert booklet telling his Rich Mullins story that’s well worth a read. It’s posted on The Rabbit Room.)

This year is the 20th anniversary of Mullins’ death in a car accident, and served as an opportunity for Peterson to round up his friends and prepare the music. The Ryman was packed to capacity with an audience that clearly loves Rich’s music just as much as the musicians themselves do; the concert was punctuated with opportunities for the audience to sing along, starting from an impromptu acapella chorus of “Awesome God”, which Peterson led “just to get it out of the way”. (While it’s perhaps Mullins’ best known song to the general public, it’s certainly not his favorite among his more devoted fans.)

Peterson and friends followed a concert format that he has perfected over years of touring his Behold The Lamb of God Christmas tour. The first half of the concert rotated in each of the guest artists to sing a Mullins song of their choice, with AP sneaking a few of his own choices in along the way.

When we hit intermission I told my wife that I couldn’t think of another Rich song that I was disappointed that they hadn’t played in the first half. The set list:

  • “Awesome God” - AP
  • “Calling Out Your Name” - AP
  • “Boy Like Me/Man Like You” - AP
  • “Hard to Get” - Andy Gullahorn
  • “Cry The Name” - Jill Phillips
  • “What Susan Said” - Andrew Osenga
  • “The Howling” - Jeremy Casella
  • “Screen Door” (complete w/ cups) - Brandon Heath & Mitch McVicker
  • “You Did Not Have A Home” - Finnegan Bell
  • “Elijah” - Matt Giraud
  • “Buenos Noches from Nacogdoches” - Leigh Nash
  • “Bound to Come Some Trouble” - Mitch McVicker
  • “If I Stand” - AP

The second half of the concert brought each of those artists back out in turn to perform note-for-note versions of each song from Rich’s masterpiece A Liturgy, A Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band. A string section played the original string charts as provided by Rich’s producer Reed Arvin (who himself was present and played the piano on “Creed” midway through the second half).

To my critical ear they were indeed almost exactly note-for-note and lick-for-lick. Gabe Scott had his hammered dulcimer skills tested and found awesome. My specific criteria for this evaluation was the little turn from the second verse into the pre-chorus of “Peace” - there’s a drum fill, a bass slide, and a little guitar riff that come together in a sublime little moment that I’m probably the only person in the world who cares about. They nailed it. The only place they diverged was I think they gave Andy Osenga an extra couple choruses to play a smoking guitar solo on the end of “How To Grow Up Big and Strong”… but ain’t nobody gonna complain about that.

The second half setlist:

  • “Here In America” - AP
  • “Isaiah 52:10” - Jill Phillips
  • “The Color Green” - AP
  • “Hold Me Jesus” - Brandon Heath
  • “Creed” - AP, Andy Gullahorn, and Jill Phillips
  • “Peace” - Andy Gullahorn
  • “78 Eatonwood Green” - Gabe Scott on the hammered dulcimer
  • “Hard” - Finnegan Bell
  • “I’ll Carry On” - Jeremy Casella
  • “You Gotta Get Up” - Leigh Nash
  • “How To Grow Up Big and Strong” - Andrew Osenga
  • “Land of My Sojourn” - AP

Even they they weren’t quite done. Peterson brought the full cast of musicians out and led the (now standing) audience in “Step By Step” (with guest vocals by Peterson’s daughter Skye) and the call-and-response of “I See You”, which itself leads back in to one final chorus of “Step By Step”. After some final applause, Peterson did his trademark exit, singing the first line of the Doxology, and then exiting the stage as the audience finished singing it. (1200 people singing the Doxology in the old Ryman auditorium: chills.)

Hearing so many of Rich’s songs in one sitting highlighted both the artistry and prophetic nature of his lyrics. For instance, the last few lines from “Hard”:

I am a good midwestern boy
I give an honest day’s work when I can get it
I don’t cheat on my taxes, I don’t cheat on my girl
I’ve got values that would make the White House jealous

Peterson wondered aloud (perhaps just as much as he dared) whether Rich had any idea those words would still resonate so loudly 25 years after he wrote them. But the lines that stood out even more loudly to me were from “Land of My Sojourn”:

And the lady in the harbor
She still holds her torch out
To those huddled masses who are
Yearning for a freedom that still eludes them
The immigrant’s children see their brightest dreams shattered
Here on the New Jersey shoreline in the
Greed and the glitter of those high-tech casinos
Some mendicants wander off into a cathedral
And they stoop in the silence
And there their prayers are still whispered
And I’ll sing their song, and I’ll sing their song
In the land of my sojourn

The list of concerts I’ve attended isn’t as long as I’d like - and shorter thanks to the U2 concert in St. Louis getting cancelled last weekend - but Sunday night at the Ryman has to be right up there at the top of the list. Peterson posted on Facebook the next day that it might have been his favorite concert ever. I’d be inclined to agree with him.

Liberty and Holiness

In a Facebook discussion recently on a mildly contentious topic, a friend brought out a line of argument that has me ruminating. Here’s what he said:

I think there is a lot to be said for the liberty we Christians have to partake of things, but there are certainly things the world has devised that are inherently unpleasing to God in any form. The question is - are we certain enough - do we have enough firm evidence that these [disputable] practices discussed above are absolutely not going to offend God that we can participate in them with a clean conscience? I know this - I have been bought with a very high price - the blood of Christ, and all too often, I do not reflect that in my conduct, but I should. I hope that we all are moved by that high price to think not of how far out to the boundaries of God’s permission we can roam in our conduct, but how near to Christ we can get.

This is a familiar argument in many ways. (How many times have I heard this as the preferred answer to lusting teens asking “how far is too far?”!) And indeed, it seems almost foolhardy to try to argue against the “how near to Christ can you get?” position. But on this question of liberty and holiness I think we could frame things up a little differently.

First, liberty and holiness are not two ends of the same spectrum. Here we need to distinguish between liberty in permissible things and freedom to sin. Freedom to sin using the excuse of abundant grace is clearly out of bounds (Romans 6:1). But liberty in matters of conscience is something different. When Paul instructs the Corinthians about meat sacrificed to idols, there is no suggestion that meat is OK, but not eating meat is more holy. There is holiness in exercising liberty.

Second, all good things come from God. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights…” (James 1:17). Paul tells us that “God… richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17). God has not called us to be dour ascetics. Rather, he has called us to explore and enjoy His goodness to us in His creation. Which leads me to my last thought.

While I can hardly criticize a desire for holiness, at times I wonder if people may stress this desire to hide an underlying sense of fear or unease: fear of God moving in unexplained ways, fear of the Holy Spirit speaking unexpectedly, fear of seeing things that look like God working outside of the careful boundaries we’ve come to expect He should work in. And while we need to be ever sensitive to the Spirit’s leading when some particular idea or practice might be truly too far, we can do ourselves a disservice if we approach each experience or opportunity with suspicion instead of expectation. If, for example, the steak from the pagan butcher or the unfamiliar lectio divina is partaken with a prayer of expectation and a request for God’s blessing, why should we fear it?

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:11-13)

My friend’s argument in questionable areas, if I can paraphrase, seems to be that “the default answer should be ’no’ unless you’re really, really sure that it can be ‘yes’”. What I’d like to advocate for, though, is to turn that around; that we can, without fear, start with a default answer of ‘yes’, trusting that the Holy Spirit will make clear when the answer should instead be ’no’.

Finished reading: several more

It’s been a while since I’ve put a post together, but I haven’t stopped reading… recent books:

Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings by Josh Larsen

Larsen is the co-host of the essential Filmspotting podcast, as well as being an editor at Think Christian. Larsen explores the overlap of his two interests with an insightful look at how movies can be expressions of prayer. Larsen goes deeper into the theology of prayer than I expected, with insightful results. As also happens when I listen to Filmspotting, I came away from Movies are Prayers with a bunch of movies to add to my to-watch list.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham

Bauckham explores the Gospels and makes the case that their content was primarily from eyewitness testimony. He spends quite a bit of time exploring how oral histories were passed down through various cultures, and how the gospels bear many of the hallmarks of such oral tradition based on eyewitness information. He also suggests that part of the reason some characters (including some very minor characters) are explicitly named in the Gospels is because they were known living people who could be referenced as eyewitnesses. (What a fascinating thought!) This definitely gives me a new perspective when reading the Gospels.

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich

A winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Alexievich interviewed hundreds of Soviet women who fought (often as teenage girls) in the Soviet army during WWII. The details are made even more horrific by the narrative telling. War is hell. Terrible, real, and heartbreaking.

A Colony in A Nation by Chris Hayes

A short volume documenting the discrepancy in policing and justice between blacks and whites in America. Not exceptionally surprising after all that I’ve read the past couple years, but tragic and infuriating none the less.

Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, & Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama by Kenneth L. Woodward

Woodward was the religion editor of Newsweek for decades, in which role he had opportunity to interview many of the major religious figures of the 20th century. A devout Catholic, Woodward provides a measured view of Billy Graham and other early evangelists, the rise of Evangelicalism and its political efforts, the changes in the Catholic church after Vatican II, and the evolution of the Protestant mainline. Woodward’s easy prose felt familiar in some way; finally I realized it must be the deft touch of a newsman similar to that of the late Steve Buttry who I read regularly for nearly a decade until his untimely death last year. All told, a good history of religion in America.

Book Blame, Volume 1

I write regularly about the books that I have finished reading. What I don’t often do is assign blame credit to those who (often unknowingly) prompted me to buy or borrow the books in the first place.

So with this post I will start assigning, with much appreciation, Book Blame. (Because hey, “Book Credit” doesn’t have the same appealing alliterative ring to it.)

The most recent book to travel from Amazon’s warehouse to my to-read pile is A History of Modern Palestine by Ilan Pappe. For this one I have Chuck Pearson (@ShorterPearson) to thank, via this tweet:

twitter.com/ShorterPe…

My most recent purchase (still on its way from Amazon to me) is thanks to Kenneth L. Woodward, who in his book Getting Religion recommends Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness, a biography of the 20th century rabbi by Edward Kaplan. Heschel sounded like such a fascinating figure that I couldn’t really pass up a used copy of his biography.

If you, dear reader, have books you think I would be interested in, by all means let me know! One day you, too, could be gratefully mentioned in an edition of Book Blame.

A little random follow-up

Nearly a year ago I wrote a post dismayed about a church looking for a part-time Director of Music with almost unbelievable qualifications. Just to recap, they were looking for:

Significant musical experience in performing and directing a contemporary band along with experience in songwriting and production. Must be able to incorporate strings, percussion, and other instruments into contemporary-band driven arrangements Ability to work with and train vocalists in singing of parts Ability to incorporate backing tracks and loops into regular Sunday and special services Minimum of bachelor’s degree in music and/or 5 years’ related church or industry experience. Possessing an MDiv or MA in theology is ideal.

All that in a part-time, pay commensurate with experience position.

I ran across my old post at random this morning and decided to revisit that church’s website to see if they had ever found such a Director of Music.

So far as I can tell, the position remains empty; the job posting is still there, with only one small edit from last year: the “Possessing an MDiv or MA in theology”, while ideal, was perhaps a lot to ask, so it has been removed.

I wonder how long they’ll have to keep looking?

David Bentley Hart, from The Doors of the Sea

A lovely passage from the conclusion of The Doors of the Sea, wherein David Bentley Hart addresses the how can a good God allow suffering? question:

[W]e Christians are not obliged (and perhaps not even allowed) to look upon the devastation of that day - to look, that is, upon the entire littoral rim of the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal and upper Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children - and to attempt to console ourselves or others with vacuous cant about the ultimate meaning or purpose residing in all that misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces - whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance - that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. And we are not only permitted but required to believe that cosmic time as we know it, through all the immensity of its geological ages and historical epochs, is only a shadow of true time, and this world only a shadow of the fuller, richer, more substantial, more glorious creation that God intends; and to believe also that all of nature is a shattered mirror of divine beauty, still full of light, but riven by darkness… When, however, we learn in Christ the nature of our first estate, and the divine destiny to which we are called, we begin to see - more clearly the more we are able to look upon the world with the eye of charity - that there is in all the things of earth a hidden glory waiting to be revealed, more radiant than a million suns, more beautiful than the most generous imagination or most ardent desire can now conceive. Or, rather, it is a glory not entirely hidden: veiled, rather, but shining in and through and upon all things… At [disastrous] times, to see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labor of vision that only a faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both a promise of the Kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty.

Finished reading: some history, some sci-fi, some theology

The history:

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough

An interesting read about Paris - astonishingly vibrant in the mid-1800s - and the notable Americans who visited or migrated there. McCullough paints a portrait of art, science, and culture flourishing in ways that inspired the visiting Americans. It’s not the most engaging book I’ve read from McCullough - it particularly seems to drift off in the last third - but it was still an interesting look into a time I was unfamiliar with.

The sci-fi:

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

The follow-up to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet which I reviewed earlier. A Closed and Common Orbit follows a sentient Artificial Intelligence program, designed to inhabit and run a spaceship, as it adapts to being in a body and interacting with the world around it in a more limited way. This is a great little book that I had a very hard time putting down.

The theology:

The Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart

This little volume is an expansion of a couple essays that Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart wrote as a response to the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. How could a good and loving God - if such exists - allow such suffering?

I’ve been steeped in Calvinist teaching on this sort of question for a couple decades now and always really struggled with it. Hart, certainly no Calvinist, here provides an alternate view: a God so expansive and powerful that He is willing to give His creation autonomy and yet still work through and around their mess to work out His ultimate purpose. This gives us the freedom to truly rage at the brokenness of the world while at the same time hoping for its restoration.

And with apologies to my Reformed brethren who are reading this and itching to provide me with corrections to Hart, in about 50 small pages Hart has drawn for me an answer to the “How can a good God allow suffering?” question than I’ve heard in 20 years of Calvinist teaching. I’ll post separately with a couple excerpts.

Happiness as Human Flourishing: Matthieu Ricard on On Being

I’ve read Christian authors from time to time who seem to be flirting with Buddhism - I guess I’m thinking primarily of Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr - and I’ve never really understood the appeal.

Then yesterday while mowing the lawn I listened to Krista Tippett’s interview with Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard and was captivated. In an hour discussion (I listen to On Being’s unedited versions, always) Ricard shared thought after thought about human flourishing and connectedness and joy and contentment that, with just the tweaking of a few phrases, could’ve been directly from Christian teaching.

Now, nobody freak out, I’m not off to shave my head buy a robe and become a monk. But if you have a spare hour, this interview was well worth listening to.

Yep, still reading...

A few more books I’ve completed lately:

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Stevenson tells the stories of many death row inmates he has represented over the years. He makes a compelling case that the justice system is broken for many of these people, documenting gross negligence of counsel, biased law enforcement and judicial systems, and abhorrent treatment inside of prisons. While the inmate whose story forms the through line of the book has a positive outcome, many, many do not. Sobering.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

A workmanlike path through the immense de facto segregation endorsed by the US government in the early part of the 20th century. It is stunning to understand how zoning laws and public financing were used as weapons to ensure that African Americans were kept out of white neighborhoods. America still has a lot of history to own up to.

Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones

Completing my bleak trilogy is this account of the rise of OxyContin and heroin addiction over the past decade. The parallels of aggressive heroin marketing by drug producers from one small location in Mexico and the aggressive OxyContin marketing to doctors and patients even after serious concerns were raised about addiction are remarkable. Quite a horror.

OK, so my reading hasn’t all been bleak reading on social issues…

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow

A near-future sci-fi in which Doctorow explores the benefits of a communal maker culture. Interesting ideas, but reminds me a little too much of Heinlein - characters having long conversations about the ins and outs of the philosophical position, too much unnecessary sex.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Now this is a fun little fantasy novel. Space adventure in a ship with a diverse, multi-species crew. Easy and fun to read. I have the second book in the series on reserve at the library… any time now, folks.