Reviews
Book and Film Reviews
Citizens of the World Unite?
Wed 11 Feb 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Pete Peterson
Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy by Natan Sharansky (New York: PublicAffairs, 2008), 304 pages.
Seed Corn and Spiritual Capital
Thu 05 Feb 2009 by John Seel
Remembering the Prerequisites to Wealth
John Seel offers a review essay on Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Business by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch, which speaks to the root of the world economic crisis.
Democracy and the Intelligentsia
Wed 26 Nov 2008 by Micah Mattix
Charles Kurzman, Democracy Denied, 1905–1915: Intellectuals and the Fate of Democracy, Harvard University Press, November 2008. 405 pages, $49.95
When I was a teaching assistant at one of Switzerland’s cantonal universities, one of my colleagues once told his students that they, as the intellectual elite of the country, were responsible for protecting Switzerland’s liberal democracy against dangerous attacks on individual freedom from the extreme right. The face of that extreme right was Christoph Blocher, who became a member of the Swiss Federal Council in 2004, and who took a number of public positions that encouraged xenophobia and racism. As my colleague spoke, however, he seemed to lump religious conservatives with Blocher as potential enemies of liberal democracies worldwide. The reasoning, it seems, was that religious conservatives too worked to limit individual freedom, in particular with respect to moral issues such as gay rights and abortion.
Christianity, Democracy, and the European Constitution
Tue 21 Oct 2008 by Paul Vanderbroeck
Le Christ philosophe, by Frédéric Lenoir. Paris: Plon, 2007, 306pp., € 19.
The publication of a book on the link between our modern values and Christianity is most welcome during a time and age, when in Europe we seem to have lost the ideological basis of our society. The French philosopher, scholar of the History of Religions, and Director of the prestigious Le Monde des Religions Frédéric Lenoir joins nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in putting forward the thesis that the churches have obscured the real message of the Gospels in their communication with their congregations. Lenoir believes that the modern appearance of separation of church and state, human rights, freedom of conscience—everything that has been done during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries against the will of the clerics—happened only by implicitly or explicitly resorting to the original message of the Gospels.1
Strategic Cultural Thinking
Fri 10 Oct 2008 • Responses: 1 • by John Seel
On Culture Making, Artifacts, Discernment—and Elites
John Seel takes a critical look at Andy Crouch’s important new book, Culture Making, affirming his call for getting busy making more culture, but suggesting that his view of culture is too narrow—and oddly materialist.
Facing Up to Differences
Mon 14 Jul 2008 by Fred Harburg
The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It, by Os Guinness (HarperOne, 2008), cloth, 224 pages, $23.95.
Os Guinness opens his richly packed book, The Case for Civility, with the bleak assessment that “It would be a safe but sad bet that someone, somewhere in the world, is killing someone else at this very moment in the name of religion or ideology.”
In 1949, as the 7-year-old son of an Irish missionary in Nanking, China, Os received his first, and life-changing, lesson on the politics of “civility”—or the lack thereof—when his family was caught up in the Maoist Revolution. (Although Os was spirited out of the country by fellow missionaries, his parents were not allowed to flee until three years later.) In this experience he learned what it means to be “different” in a very personal way. Building on this experience, he writes, “How we live with our deepest differences is a question that lives at the heart of American freedom, and soon it may be a matter of survival for the planet” (19).
Failure is Not a Sin
Thu 10 Jul 2008 by T. M. Moore
Flesh-and-Blood Jesus: Learning to be Fully Human from the Son of Man, by Dan Russ (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 192 pages, $14.99.
Reading Dan Russ’s excellent and provocative new book about Jesus I was reminded of an incident in which I was involved during my preparation for ministry.
I went to seminary a complete theological novice. I’d been a Christian for only a few years and had never read any theology nor had any introduction to the theological traditions of the Christian heritage. On the advice of trusted pastors, I enrolled in a seminary in the reformed tradition, where it immediately became apparent to me that how one articulates what one believes is just as important as what one actually believes.
The Benefits of Conflict
Fri 06 Jun 2008 by Jo Kadlecek
Learning to Listen, Ready to Talk: A Pilgrimage Toward Peacemaking
by Harold Heie
(iUniverse, 2007), $19.95
A Cultural Manifesto and Showcase
Thu 15 May 2008 by William Edgar
T. M. Moore, Culture Matters: A Call for Consensus on Christian Cultural Engagement, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2007. 172 pp.
Christians have not been silent on the issue of faith and culture. Among the major initiatives of recent times we can mention at least four, though there are many more.1
The first is the Neo-Thomist movement of the twentieth century. Etienne Gilson (1884–1978) and especially Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) brought a fresh approach to culture into a struggling and fatigued Europe. Though raised in Protestant circles, Maritain converted to Roman Catholicism in 1906 under the influence of Charles Péguy, Henri Bergson, and especially Léon Bloy. A defender of metaphysics and natural law ethics, he was out of step with the prevailing critical schools and language philosophies. Maritain advocated an “integral humanism,” which was based on a high view of human nature, which in turn is derived by analogy from God the Creator. He was a principal architect of Christian Democracy, believing that a new Christendom could be achieved on condition it fully recognized diversity. He also thought deeply about the arts. Many belong to this family, including David Burrell, Bernard Lonergan, Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, and even some Protestants.
A Life Worth Emulating
Fri 07 Mar 2008 by Luder G. Whitlock, Jr.
John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, by Jonathan Aitken (Crossway, 2007), 400pp., $22.
Jonathan Aitken, a skilled biographer and author of the award-winning Nixon: A Life and, more recently, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed, has produced a valuable biography of John Newton illumined by important, unpublished letters and diary entries. He embellishes a compelling narrative by inserting thoughtful assessments of Newton’s life and ministry at appropriate points.
A flurry of books, articles, and films about William Wilberforce have been published recently in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Appropriately so, for in addition to his pivotal role in Parliament leading to decisive action against the slave trade, Wilberforce was an extraordinary figure of great influence in England.
