Resources from the Trinity Forum

an introduction to Lord Shaftesbury, the great reformer

By John Pollock
Foreword by Os Guinness
(2008)

David Aikman narrates this exclusive Trinity Forum Reading selection that helps us think about the connection between privilege and responsibility.

“Poor Man’s Earl,” a Trinity Forum Reading exclusive, is an introduction to the life and work of the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the great reformer who lived during the Industrial Revolution. As one biographer writes, no one has “ever done more to lessen the extent of human misery or to add to the sum total of human happiness.”

The foreword by Os Guinness connects Shaftesbury’s times and our own, and locates his enduring legacy in his demonstration of the essential link between privilege and responsibility in a prosperous society.

This audio edition is narrated by David Aikman, a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum and an award-winning author and journalist. It is packaged in a handsome CD-sized case designed for safe shipping.

(65 minutes, 1 CD)

How Much Land Does a Man Need? (Audio)

By Leo Tolstoy
Foreword by Os Guinness
(2008)

David Aikman narrates this Trinity Forum Reading selection that helps us think about greed, money, and success.

“How Much Land Does a Man Need?,” a Trinity Forum Reading, features a short story by Leo Tolstoy with a Foreword by Os Guinness. Tolstoy’s timeless and entertaining short story about a Russian farmer driven by an endless quest for more land still strikes home today. Guinness helps us address questions about the meaning of money and success, and how much really is enough.

This audio edition is narrated by David Aikman, a Senior Fellow of The Trinity Forum and an award-winning author and journalist. It is packaged in a handsome CD-sized case designed for safe shipping.

(60 minutes, 1 CD)

Hannah and Nathan (Audio)

By Wendell Berry
Foreword by Gregory Wolfe
(2008)

Steve Brown narrates this Trinity Forum Reading selection that helps us think about love, marriage, and our place in the world.

“Hannah & Nathan,” a Trinity Forum Reading, features an excerpt from Hannah Coulter, a novel set in Wendell Berry’s fictional Port William, Kentucky, as Hannah narrates the events surrounding her courtship and marriage with Nathan Coulter after the death of her first husband in World War II. In the process, she welcomes the reader into a way of life different from our own, and into a vision for what a human life can be.

The Foreword by Gregory Wolfe, editor of the journal Image and director of the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University, introduces Berry and the story and helps us consider the public dimensions of love, marriage, and place.

This audio edition is narrated by Steve Brown, a talk-show host, seminary professor, and founder and president of Key Life Network. It is packaged in a handsome CD-sized case designed for safe shipping.

(88 minutes on 2 CDs)

Ex Tenebris (Audio)

By Russell Kirk
Foreword by Vigen Guroian
(2008)

Russell Kirk’s ghostly tale is narrated by David Schock in this 67-minute CD audio that helps us think about tradition and the role of governments and neighbors.

“Ex Tenebris,” a Trinity Forum Reading, features a ghostly tale by the social critic Russell Kirk with a Foreword by Vigen Guroian on the importance of place.

When Mrs. Oliver retires to a cottage in the abandoned village of her childhood, she is harassed by the local planning officer until someone comes from the shadows to intervene. This story will amuse you—and perhaps cause the hairs to rise on the back of your neck—and leave you thinking about architecture, tradition, what human beings really want, and how best to help our neighbors.

This audio edition is narrated by David Schock, a filmmaker who earned his doctorate in ghost stories under the direction of Russell Kirk. It is packaged in a handsome CD-sized case designed for safe shipping.

(67 minutes, 1 CD)

Audio Readings Collection

(2008)

A bundle of all six narrated Trinity Forum Readings on CD at a discounted price.

Includes:

* Ex Tenebris
* Hannah and Nathan
* How Much Land Does a Man Need?
* Joy Cometh in the Morning
* Poor Man’s Earl
* The Purchase of a Soul

Wrestling with God

By Simone Weil
Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald
(2008)

Discussion Guide Included.

A brief introduction to the spiritual journey and thinking of this great mystic and advocate for the oppressed.

Simone Weil (1909–1943) was a philosopher, activist, and later mystic whose writings have influenced thinkers as diverse as Albert Camus and Pope Paul VI. Her life was marked by rigorous intellectual integrity, profound identification with the poor and suffering, and an astonishing conversion from agnosticism to trust in Christ in the midst of the upheavals of World War II.

inside cover Weil’s account of finding the mercy and love of God in the midst of severe suffering is bracing and challenging. For her, ultimate concerns are never separated from practical concerns. Our selections include two longer letters where Weil tells a friend about her unexpected spiritual journey, as well as a journal entry about a mysterious encounter with Christ. McDonald’s foreword includes an overview of the broad range of her philosophical and practical interests illustrated with brief selections from her other writings on themes including friendship, justice, suffering, truth, calling, and human rights.

The booklet will be red, with gold embossed lettering and will be available at the end of November 2008.

The Future of Christian Learning

An Evangelical and Catholic Dialogue

By Mark A. Noll and James Turner
(Brazos Press, 2008)

Evangelicals and Roman Catholics have been responsible for the establishment of many colleges and universities in America. Until recently, however, they have taken very different approaches to the subject of education and have viewed one another’s traditions with suspicion. In this volume, Mark Noll and James Turner offer critical but appreciative reassessments of the two traditions. Noll, writing from an evangelical perspective, and Turner, from a Roman Catholic perspective, consider the respective strengths and weaknesses of each approach and what they might learn from the other. The authors then provide brief responses to each other’s essays. Thoughtful readers from both traditions will find insightful and challenging ideas regarding the importance of Christian learning and the role of faith in the modern college or university.

Paperback, 144 pages.

Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960

The Soul of Containment

By William Inboden
(Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Trinity Forum Board of Advisors member William Inboden argues that the poor response of churches to the Cold War led Truman and Eisenhower to construct a new civil religion.

The Cold War was in many ways a religious war. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and other American leaders believed that human rights and freedoms were endowed by God, that God had called the United States to defend liberty in the world, and that Soviet communism was especially evil because of its atheism and its enmity to religion. Along with security and economic concerns, these religious convictions also helped determine both how the United States defined the enemy and how it fought the conflict. Meanwhile, American Protestant churches failed to seize the moment. Internal differences over theology and politics, and resistance to cooperation with Catholics and Jews, hindered Protestant leaders domestically and internationally. Frustrated by these internecine disputes, Truman and Eisenhower attempted instead to construct a new civil religion. This public theology was used to mobilize domestic support for Cold War measures, to determine the strategic boundaries of containment, to appeal to people of all religious faiths around the world to unite against communism, and to undermine the authority of communist governments within their own countries.

Hardcover: 348 pages (publishers’ page)

On Being Human

By Woodrow Wilson
Foreword by David Aikman
(2008)

Discussion Guide Included

The future President sets out his vision for the good life in this personal essay, which also offers insight into his later policies and illustrates how a leader’s assumptions can change a nation—and the world.

inside cover image As an educator—and a person of deep faith—Woodrow Wilson held strong convictions on the centrality of the humanities to human flourishing and freedom. His exultation in a broad and liberal democratic education stands in marked contrast to the current academic emphasis on hyper-specialization—and sheds some insight on his later enthusiasm, as President, for spreading democracy around the world.

The piece was written for the Atlantic Monthly in 1897, just after Wilson had achieved tenure as a professor at Princeton and thus before he assumed the burdens of public office. “On Being Human” is among the most personal of Wilson’s public writings and reveals an enthusiastic nature not often associated with the former President. While it makes little direct reference to faith, the essay opens a window on Wilson’s view of the good life, which is both hopeful and historical, drawing upon both Aristotle’s notion of “the golden mean” and Augustine’s view of the ordo amorum (the order of the loves)—specifically, that the good life consists largely in a well-balanced, harmonious ordering of one’s passions and priorities. As the reader will see, Wilson’s ideal is “the truly human man: a man in whom there is a just balance of faculties, a catholic sympathy—no brawler, no fanatic, no Pharisee, not too credulous in hope, not too desperate in purpose, warm, but not hasty, ardent, and full of definite power, but not running about to be pleased and deceived by every new thing.”

The coming decades would test Wilson’s hopes and ideals. Whether he was credulous in his hopes or mistaken in his reasoning may be debated, but the sympathies and effervescence on display in this little-known piece give insight into how the formation of a leader’s view of human nature and the world can eventually flower into large-scale initiatives, institutions, and movements. Had Wilson’s view of human nature differed, so would his conception of the League of Nations. Above all else, “On Being Human” illustrates the manner in which an emerging leader’s assumptions may be imprinted on national and international policy.

The foreword by Senior Fellow David Aikman, a journalist and professor of history, sets the reading in the context of Wilson’s life and accomplishments. A discussion guide helps the reader consider the implications and assumptions of the article and the appeal of its vision more than a century later.

Flesh-and-Blood Jesus

Learning to Be Fully Human from the Son of Man

By Dan Russ
(Baker Books, 2008)

Dan Russ helps readers get to know Jesus Christ more fully through reflecting on his humanity.

It’s easy for most Christians to accept the Jesus who walked on water and rose from the dead. But what about the Jesus who got angry, doubted, struggled with fears, and faced tension with his mother? Flesh-and-Blood Jesus carefully examines the humanity of Jesus throughout his childhood, adulthood, death, and resurrection, exploring themes such as frailty, the need for companionship, feasting, dying, living with wounds, and responding to authority. By delving into areas of Jesus’s life that are often overlooked, you will emerge with a deeper understanding of how Jesus embraced his humanity. And you will learn how to embrace your own humanity with all its messiness and joy.

The Historical Foundations of World Order

The Tower and the Arena

By Douglas M. Johnston
(Hotei Publishing, 2008)

A detailed and insightful account of the history of international law.

Faith-Based Diplomacy

Trumping Realpolitik

By Douglas M. Johnston
(Oxford University Press, 2008)

This book looks at five intractable conflicts and explores the possibility of drawing on religion as a force for peace, building upon the insights of Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft.

Sovereignty

God, State, and Self

By Jean Bethke Elshtain
(Basic Books, 2008)

Elshtain examines the origins and meanings of “sovereignty” as it relates to the ways we attempt to explain our world: God, state, and self.

Examining the early modern ideas of God which formed the basis for the modern sovereign state, Elshtain carries her research from theology and philosophy into psychology, showing that political theories of state sovereignty fuel contemporary understandings of sovereignty of the self. As the basis of sovereign power shifts from God, to the state, to the self, Elshtain uncovers startling realities often hidden from view. Her thesis consists in nothing less than a thorough-going rethinking of our intellectual history through its keystone concept.

Based on her 2005–06 Gifford Lectures, this book is the culmination of over thirty years of critically applauded work in feminism, international relations, political thought, and religion and could open new ground for our understanding of our own culture and its past, present, and future.

Awaken the Dragon

A Novel

By David Aikman
(B&H Books, 2008)

This novel follows a reporter's investigation of a missing American in Hong Kong.