Galatians Study

This book (available for free online from that link) is a Bible study by Tim Keller working through Paul's letter to the Galatian church. I've been working through it with my dad over the last few months, and would highly recommend it as a small-group study resource. The Galatian epistle is a potent little depth-charge of a book anyway, but Keller's insightful commentary and selection of passages from other theologians (especially John Stott and Martin Luther) who have written about the letter make this study extremely edifying and fruitful for thinking through Christian discipleship in powerfully provocative and helpful ways.

Luther's Large Catechism

This book (available online for free from that link) is the fuller version* of Luther's catechism (i.e. the basic text for introducing the tenets of a faith), and as such is probably one of the most influential key texts in the history of Protestant thought and practice. Lutheran** readers will likely be intimately familiar with it already but anyone with an interest in Christian history would find a lot to gain by reading it, and Christians of other denominations will discover in it a rich orthodox statement of how we are called, nay, privileged, to live by faith in the clear simple light of truth. I have no substantive theological or ethical bones to pick here - it is, from my perspective, a faithful and trustworthy testament and valuable for introductory teaching. It is consistently scripturally-grounded and remarkably well-written; Luther was not one to mince words and lays out these reflections on the Christian life and basic theological support for them in direct, accessible language.

   Luther kicks the document off with a walk through the Ten Commandments, and here we come to our first quibble - he messes with them a bit for reasons that elude me. He has condensed the first and second commandments into one, so that we end up with it being a total statement of non-idolatrous monotheism, but with no discussion of the "who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" portion of these lines in the actual Bible (check it out); he has then kept the list counting to ten by separating the tenth commandment into two. Quite what he was doing in this I cannot say... I mean, so much for sola scriptura, right? But his actual reflections on the Ten are thoroughly helpful. A few minor quibbles - in the section on respecting one's mother and father he extends this commandment to political authority, which rankles me as an anarchist. Further on that point in the section on "thou shalt not kill" he seems to make the point that state authority is exempt from this particular moral absolute, which rankled my anarchism-senses even more. He does in this same section say that enabling death by privilege and neglect is just as condemnable as outright murder though, which is a take Peter Unger would heartily approve. In the section on adultery, we have this fascinating and disturbing quote when he is talking about the problematic outcome of Catholic insistence on clerical celibacy: "For no one has so little love and inclination to chastity as just those who because of great sanctity avoid marriage, and either indulge in open and shameless prostitution, or secretly do even worse, so that one dare not speak of it, as has, alas! been learned too fully." [italics mine.] We all know too well the Catholic Church's historical struggles with abusive paedophilia - part of me wonders whether this was already rearing its head five centuries ago to the point that it was unspoken but common knowledge. The section on theft is wonderfully expansive - a full Marxist analysis of this bit would yield some truly spectacular insights, I feel. The section on lying is morally robust but could be made a great deal stronger with the inclusion of some generally-considered epistemology and psychology. And the section[s] on envy take an unexpectedly objective, active view of this particular sin, which I was raised to think was more the mere subjective passive condition of indulging jealousy, but that Luther seems to say is when one makes actual decisive effort to acquire the property of another.

   The sections walking through the Creed I have very little to say about - this is just hardcore solid uplifting theology communicated with a depth and a deftness I have seldom found elsewhere. His linguistic nuances when talking about "churchness" in the bit about the Holy Spirit are helpful, though I found his maintenance of institutional borders in those same paragraphs less so.

   His opening reflections on the Lord's Prayer are just beautiful in style and empowering in substance. The discussion on the request for "our daily bread" furthermore is intriguingly and helpfully ecological and sociological in its scope.

   The final section, dealing with the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, are also highly moving in their depictions of the spiritual realities contained within these ritual practices, and as a Quaker I found these parts rather convicting (Quakers in general do not formally practice either of these sacraments, as we take a more holistic symbolic view of their intent), in ways that bear further consideration on my part.

   Overall this is an incredibly powerful statement of some of the basic tenets of a good Christian life, written by one of the most reputable sources thereupon. Definitely worth a read if that sounds like the kind of thing you'd benefit from. And who wouldn't? God's goodness shines through clearly on every page of this thing; it leaves one hungry for grace.

* Compare with the Small Catechism that I read yesterday. I gave minimal reflections on that as it made more sense to do that here when reading the principal longer document.

** I consider Lutheranism to be the burning bridge between the Catholic and Protestant communions - and this comes across in Luther's own doctrine, attitude and style.

Luther's Small Catechism

This book (available online for free from that link) is the short version of the Lutheran catechism,* specifically designed to be used by a father for the instruction of his children. As such this is a very short and theologically-minimal text** that I was able to breeze through in under half an hour.

   Luther deals with the Ten Commandments (and I really like how his explanatory givens for all of these ground them in our love for God), followed by the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and finally the sacraments of both baptism and the altar. He writes very simply and directly, with a clear strong rooting in the essentials of biblical literacy applied in accessible and helpful terms. If you're a Lutheran you're probably already highly familiar with this text - if you're not and you're curious about Protestant life and teaching, this could be an interesting read.

* Fancy word for the procedural texts by which young and new believers are to be introduced to the teachings of the faith in question; the Didache is a good example of this from early church history.

** It piqued further curiosity though, so I plan to read the Large Catechism next to dive deeper.

American Fascists

This book by Chris Hedges seemed topical for some reason.*

    If you are even halfway familiar with the actual biblical ethic of Jesus Christ and the actual political ethic of modern-day American 'Christianity', you do not need me to tell you how grossly divergent these things are. The roots of this go pretty far into the past but since the latter decades of the 20th century have metastasized into something truly dangerous and that I can only imagine how much God grieves over. Hedges, who studied at Harvard Divinity School before becoming a foreign correspondent, goes into great and granular detail about how the intricacies of personal faith are distorted and manipulated by the nationalist right-wing of American political actors, and just how far so-called 'Christian' leaders have either been complacent or wholeheartedly capitulated to this scheme of outright power-grabbing.

    This is not an easy read for a Christian as it so depressingly and thoroughly shows how the fabric of our faith can be manipulated for truly hateful ends. The lengthy anecdotal passages in this book are just as harrowing as the insightful theoretical explanations of what exactly is going on. I know I am too young and thus too late for a blogpost about this book to have any meaningful impact on future politics, as we have already swung far enough that I genuinely fear there may be no coming back for American democracy. The only way in which I would thus recommend this book is if you want to salve your confusion by knowing a bit more about how exactly the religion of the world's superpower became so co-opted by capitalism, racism, anti-intellectualism and so forth, that we now face ANOTHER FOUR FUCKING YEARS with the "leader of the free world" being a draft-dodging, tax-evading, bigoted rapist who prior to his entry into politics was most famous for telling people on reality TV that they were fired - ugh, but yeh, if you want a fragment more insight into how American Christianity became so horribly un-Christlike, this book would be a good place to start. If only my blog had a large-ish readership and I'd read this when it came out nearly twenty years ago - then at least this post would have maybe had some kind of impact. Now it just feels like a whinge.**

* I actually meant to read it the first time Orange Fraudster Man was running for president, but never quite got round to it. This time however I beasted the whole book in a day out of desperation to understand a bit more about how a country could be so utterly dumb.

** Assuming I have readers - which is a stretch in itself - but assuming any of you are American - if you have them, please take close care of your LGBTQ+ friends and family in the days to come. Their fears are by no means illegitimate. Remember even Hitler came for the trans community well before any concerted attack against the Jews.

the Didache

This book, by anonymous first-century Christian authors, is one of those key texts that were fundamental to the early church and it is thus often asked "why isn't it in the New Testament then?" and I can't answer that. If you're interested it's available as a free online .pdf at the link above and it's very short - I read the whole thing (appendix* included) in fifteen minutes.

    As to what this book is - it's essentially a practical guide for early Christians on how to do stuff. All manner of ecclesiastical practice as derived from the habits and insights of the apostles (the book is more widely known as "the teachings of the apostles") - from behavioural ethics, to church organisation, to appropriate liturgies and sacraments, with a final chapter dealing with how one is to think about eschatology (the end times). It's such a short and orthodox text that I don't think I have much to say about it that hasn't already been said many times on this blog in relation to Christianity and its history and practice. Though this is, I will say, a very interesting document if one is interested in delving deeper into the consistency and integrity of the early church.

* By appendix I mean a small collection of early Christian hymns and prayers.

Metanoia

This book by Alan Hirsch and Rob Kelly is, as its subtitle proclaims, a study of "how God radically transforms people, churches and organizations from the inside-out". The book is divided into two sections: why and how.

   The "why" section first deals with the potential problems that any church faces, and the grim apocalypse of failure in the face of such. We then dive into "metanoia" (a Greek word meaning roughly "to go into the Big Mind") as a practice of continually returning oneself to Godward sight and re-tuning our learned habits and ideas to better fit God's moulds. The next chapter looks deeper into the sinful, finite nature of human beings to explicate why this is such a necessary process. Then, a christological consideration of how only by decidedly and intuitively continuing to maintain our union with Christ is the kind of transformation metanoia brings possible. Finally a reflection on the human heart, and how only when in all its parts - mind, soul, and will - it is consciously and deliberatively united with Christ will we see the fruit we desire.

   The "how" section builds off of this seamlessly; after an introductory section emphasising the essentiality of being willing to unlearn and relearn things, we see how communities can be transformed by metanoia on three levels: at core a new paradigm (a fundamental kernel to "blow the collective mind"); built off which are new platforms (structural developments that help reshape and keep "the collective soul"); and lastly embodied in new practices (any practical habitual means of "engaging the collective will"). This section is littered with examples but insistent on its message that no single strategy can work conclusively in any context - our models of church must be Christ-centred and Christ-grounded, but beyond that everything we do that we think of as church must be open for question and evolution.

   I found this book eye-opening and liberating in many ways. Hirsch writes from experience as someone deeply involved in very innovative and effective church-planting/growing organisations - and that experience very much comes through in this text. Anyone involved in Christian leadership would benefit greatly from this profound little book.

Union with Christ

This book is a collection of essays by the Puritan thinker Thomas Boston, on a theme which the title probably makes clear enough. I've been reading this through with my dad and have found the experience soundly edifying and an effective mode of discipleship, intellectually and spiritually. Boston's prose, though old, is not archaic, and thus relatively easy to read and interpret. The points he makes are very gospel-grounded; I don't think anything in this book would be at all controversial to most orthodox Christians, and I do think that much of what is in here would be of great help to those same in the deepening of their conviction as regards their union with Christ, as is the gist of the New Testament.

Unapologetic

This book by Francis Spufford is, despite his claims that it isn't an apologetic as it makes zero effort to engage with classic philosophical arguments for or against any particular theological claims, by far and away the best Christian apologetic I've ever read. I've literally just read the whole book in a single sitting* it's that good. The subtitle proclaims it as an exploration of "why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense" - and to say it achieves the goal of making a case for this with aplomb would be a grand disservice to the word aplomb. It runs its course over eight perfectly-structured chapters:

1. a general introduction; statement of intent for the book
2. the existential experience of sin, or as he translates it the Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up
3. the frustrating ineffability of God in light of people's recurrent sense of needing, if not Him, then something to fill that gap
4. the confounding problem of suffering
5. the personality, teachings, mission and passion of one Yeshua from Nazareth
6. the historically improbable paradoxes surrounding the emergence of Christianity as a coherent religion
7. the complicated legacy and situational state of the Church
8. the subjective feeling entailed in having faith that one is forgiven, and the challenges and opportunity implied herein

   It's deeply insightfully clever without being scholarly**, bewilderingly matter-of-fact in what it says and completely down-to-earth in how it says it, balancing common-sense public presumption with personal but universally recognisable experiences and dazzlingly original points that lead him into compelling conclusions without ever making anything that so much as looks like a rational argument. Spufford not only doesn't avoid the prickly areas of conversation around Christianity in its contemporary context but actively leans into them and tries to give them as much benefit of the doubt as possible, and somehow still manages to wrangle cogent and meaningful ways of sidestepping or outright neutering them. He writes with a disarming simplicity and a refreshing honesty that if such style was wider emulated by Christian authors (and indeed everyday evangelising believers) I hazard to expect that we would see a great many more folks showing interest in the faith.

   Overall, this is a more-or-less perfect example of communicating Christianity effectively in a postmodern culture. If we are presumed by the world around us to be irrational, then give up on trying to convince people by reason - and talk about what it feels like to have one's messy spiritual life wrapped up in what never has been and never will be scientifically verifiable but is indisputably salient in its psychological cohesion to those who try to believe it. If you're a Christian, read this and be inspired to draw on your own emotional experience to communicate your own faith more fluidly, with less intellectual trumps and more confounding expressivity. If you're not a Christian - this book won't convince you to become one, but it may very well provoke you to give it a bloody good consideration.

* With minor breaks only to piss, smoke, and make more coffee.

** Spufford humbly boasts in a note at the end of the book that aside from checking to ensure the accuracy of certain factual claims and quotations used, he conducted exactly no research whatsoever throughout his writing process.

George Herbert - the Complete Works

This book is, as you probably inferred from the title, a complete collection of the works of the 17th-century poet George Herbert. I've been reading this very slowly for the past four years, having been gifted it by my second-eldest brother when he was very concerned about me (as I was having a psychotic episode at the time) and thought some archaic Christian poetry would break through to me, which it *kind of* did - I heavily annotated the first thirty or so pages of it in purple biro, emerged from the psychotic episode (after about a week) and then finished reading it bit by gratitude-debt bit in the time since then. It's a hard book to binge, being 17th-century poetry and so rather archaic and (sorry Josiah) stuffy in tone while also being deeply overtly deliberatively Christian in content, theme and message, which makes every poem, no matter how artful (and they are artful - the majority of the poems in this book are as technically well-constructed as their theology is orthodox-Anglican), feel somewhat like you're being sermonised at.

   The poetry is all lumped together in one big collection called The Church, with poems (mostly rather short, and often sonnets, which seem to be a particular specialty of Herbert's) unsurprisingly centring thematically around classic weighty Christian concepts, such as consciousness of one's own sin, prayer, confession, hope, grace, forgiveness, love, joy, peace, etc. This bulk of the book is prologued by a longer poem called The Church Porch which is much meatier in terms of a challenging mental/spiritual engagement as it explores the inner dynamics of a person weighing themselves up before entering a church (in both a day-to-day instance and in the lifelong sense), and epilogued by another longer poem called The Church Militant which is a triumphal hearty toot on the eschatological trumpet of what God's people look like from an eternal perspective.

   Alongside the poetry which forms the core backbone of the collected works, there is a 37 chapter prose piece called The Country Parson which is half essay, half sermon, half manual on how to be an effective parish priest (I will freely admit I somewhat skimmed this - it has a good deal of wisdom in it but nothing particularly groundbreaking), and a compiled list of 1,024 "Outlandish Proverbs", which initially I was rather excited by as I assumed George had come up with them all himself - however it seems more that he simply collected folksy wisdom from all over the place and put it all together in one big wodge (some of which is retained in proverb and idiom to this day, some of which is mere tautology or common-sensical to the point of banality, and some of which is downright impenetrable). Finally there is a small array of letters, lectures, translations, and his will, none of which I bothered to read at all.

   Christian readers who enjoy neatly-constructed if somewhat repetitive and decidedly unadventurous poetry will find a lot of edifying stuff in this book. Non-Christian poetry enjoyers will probably find it coming on far too strong a moralising and proselytising voice to read past. And non-Christian non-poetry enjoyers probably have no reason whatsoever to engage with the works of George Herbert unless it's part of your current academic syllabus to whatever extent. All that said, receiving this book four years ago was a significant moment in helping me claw me way back to sanity, so I will forever owe it that at least.

What Would Jesus Post?

This book by David Robertson takes that classic wristband acronym WWJD* and transplants it into the chaotic modern context of social media - hence the title. It's a good question. Were history's most famous Nazarene to have accounts on one of those half-dozen websites that constitute today's internet, what kind of content would he be putting out? Would he be a TikTok influencer? Instagram inspirer? YouTube video essayist? Twitter rage-debater? Reddit helper-outer of strangers lost in Google searches? Verbose blogger? Tumblr sharer of unprompted unhinged angles on stuff? Facebook shitposter? Some combination of any or all of the above? We simply don't know.**

   That doesn't mean we can't take the lessons learned from him and try our best to apply them to the communications landscape in which we find ourselves today, and I think Robertson has done a pretty solid job in this book of applying 2000ish-year-old meta-ethical precepts to Very New Paradigms of Possibility. It's far from a comprehensive*** manual, but as a starting point offers some healthy and biblical broad principles we can bear in mind as we engage with online communities as Christians. I think this is a very helpful and well thought-out book, and I would highly recommend it as a resource - most especially for older generations who have immigrated to the internet after an analogue life, and so aren't as adept as The Youth at navigating the psychosocial turbulence that all online society entails.

   Before concluding this post, I will give a special mention to the format of the chapters in this book, as they're all broken down into the same sections that help lend flow and intentionality to the reading process. We open with an introductory overview of "the way it is", before digging deeper into some relevant theological concepts, then having a "pause for thought" in which what's just been discussed is thrown over to us to particularly consider, after which in a "joining the dots" section we consider contextual or social elements that apply what we've just read to the realities of contemporary internet use, then "a way forward" points us toward particular behaviours or attitudes that help us maintain Christian consistency on these issues, a Bible verse or two with an explanation of how it helps us navigate this, "wisdom from the Psalms" as far as I can tell being simply a nice balm to the soul to concentrate on the spiritual side of life rather than being prompted to relate everything back to the online, and finally a few questions to prompt further thought. The length and order of these sections varies chapter to chapter but overall they are consistent throughout the book and make it a much more engaging discipleship experience as a reader.

* "What Would Jesus Do?" for you heathens unfamiliar.

** My money's split between Facebook shitposting and completely out-of-left-field Tumblr dumps, both of which would be essentially parables converted to fit the format. If ministry responsibilities left him with enough free time he'd probably have a YouTube channel with over 10,000,000 views but only 372 subscribers, on which the Tumblr parables are delivered vocally (as you'd expect, the comments sections are full of confusion, people who only watched the first ten seconds, and a minority of people saying "this changed my life"). He'd probably have Twitter, but unless he had something that absolutely HAD to be said there and then, he'd only use it for ironically retweeting Pharisees and Roman officials. If anyone in Jesus's orbit has a blog it's probably Matthew, and Peter and John would have competing Instagram and TikTok accounts documenting the day-to-day doings of the disciples.

*** There are chapters on: the internet as a public arena, prayer, porn, confession, sowing seeds, our digital tongue, dwelling in God's presence, wisdom and discernment, humility, hospitality and generosity, the Sabbath, spiritual gifts, spiritual fruit, gossip, persecution, the footprints we leave, and community. For a pretty short book it covers a lot of ground, but with Christianity and the internet both being as diversely complexly themselves as they are, one can easily imagine entire books being written about any of these chapters. Which is what I mean when I say this is more of an introductory provocation text.

Just Living

This book by Ruth Valerio is a brilliant resource for furnishing a Christianity-shaped thought train about social, economic and environmental justice. Its ideas are presented with ample but not suffocating explanation, and plenty of pragmatic but not exhaustive pointers for further consideration or praxis.

   The first third of the book explores the fields of the issues at hand; the nature and complexities of both globalisation and consumerism, and then the specific economic-cultural context the modern Church finds itself in when relating to these - hegemonic as they are.

   The middle third is the meaty theory section, where we really dig into theological and philosophical groundings for the origin and trajectory of applicable ethics: Valerio first looks at how simply neglecting the Church's relationship to socioeconomic justice leads to a Christianity that is merely therapeutic and basically capitulates to consumer capitalism; next we consider how the Church should relate to money and property, with a look at the ascetic monastic traditions (with St Benedict and St Francis especially focused on); then finally how Aristotle conceived and Thomas Aquinas developed notions of the interrelation of justice and temperance as virtues, and how these uphold human flourishing when rightly understood and practiced.

   The final third of the book is given over to practical exhortation - prompting the reader to think of what they can do to put these ideas into practice, and making the case for doing so. This includes: reorienting our perspectives to be more cognizant of socioeconomic and environmental injustice; aligning our attitudes toward money and material goods to Biblical ethics, and following on from that seeking to consume as ethically as we plausibly can; engaging fruitfully with our local communities; stepping into activism to provoke change in unsustainable & unjust structures; and lastly making prayerful & fruitful use of the time that is given to us.

   I have to say, as someone who has already put a great deal of thought into the nature & necessity of Christian work for ethical, justice-oriented living, I didn't personally learn a lot from this book. However I did find it edifying & encouraging, and it helped strengthen & deepen my understanding of the shared space my faith & my social/political inclinations occupy. Valerio's credentials as a theologian are just as valid as her credentials as an activist and from reading this book you will be left with an indelible sense of engaging with the wisdom & insight of someone who really does their best to walk the walk they talk. It is also highly readable, and though dealing with some relatively complex topics (especially in chapter six) it skilfully explains everything with minimal jargon, of both the theological & the socio-political kinds. I'd highly recommend this as a book to give to Christians who take following Jesus seriously but don't seem all that fussed about justice; it might serve to tip them over the fence.

Renewal as a Way of Life

This book by Richard Lovelace is a guidebook for Christian spiritual growth. It is a condensed version of Lovelace's prior book Dynamics of Spiritual Life, but also entails an extra seven years-worth of reflections and learning around individual and corporate renewal, so it goes beyond the original in many regards.

   The book is split into three main chunks. Firstly, in exploring the normal Christian life, we consider how our lives are to be centred on God and His Kingdom; here we are given the "preconditions for renewal", those being an awareness of God's holiness, expressed in His love and His justice, and a complementary awareness of the depth of sin both in oneself and in the world. Orienting one's heart and mind in these ways is the root of sustainable and renewable spiritual life.

   Secondly, we look at the unholy trifecta of phenomena which constitute the "dynamics of spiritual death": those being the flesh, the world, and the devil. This middle section of the book is chock-full of practical insights into discerning when & where these are at play, and then navigating around or through them as we continue living under & for God.

   The third and final section explores the dynamics of spiritual life. The first chapter in this part dives into the Messianic victory of Christ and its explosively potent implications for followers of Jesus; the next two chapters dig deeper into how living out these implications manifests in firstly individual and secondly corporate (church) renewal. In these chapters we are introduced to the primary and secondary elements of renewal. Primarily, through faith in Christ as individuals we can be assured that we are accepted by God (justification), free from bondage to sin (sanctification), not alone thanks to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and granted authority over the spiritual powers of evil. Secondarily as we live in the light of these assurances we can follow Jesus into the world, presenting his gospel in proclamation & social demonstration (mission); we can depend on the power of the risen Christ in solitary & corporate prayer; we can enjoy community in the united body of Christ on micro- & macro- levels; and we can ever-more-progressively have the mind of Christ toward both revealed truth & our own cultural contexts by integrating theological learning & practice.

   I got a lot out of this book. It's accessibly written & consistently focused, leaning on the orthodox essentials without getting bogged down in theological corners; it's thoroughly Biblical throughout (with a Scripture quote or two on almost every page) & never tries to do more than it claims to be aiming to. Each chapter is closed off with a half-dozen or so discussion questions, as Lovelace does mention in the introduction that this would be an ideal book to work through with a small group of fellow disciples, and I imagine that doing so would be an incredibly fruitful experience, but so is just reading it to yourself. This is a book that does not make light of how difficult the Christian path can be at times, but it steadfastly instils confidence that if we have our eyes, hearts & minds attuned to God-in-Christ we will continue down the path of renewal until we are called home.

the Damnation Document

This book is - well, it's actually a report from the organisation called thirty-one eight - who are specialized in investigating abuses within churches. I'm including it on this blog as it was at least as long as many books I've read and has far more content. As regular readers will know, I am a committed Christian - and as more attentive readers may know, my relationship with the church I grew up in deteriorated quite viciously toward my exit from that congregation.

   I'm not going to make a huge song-and-dance about everything in this post. I left The Crowded House for my own reasons, though I'm sure they were folded into manifold other factors going on within that church that made it spiritually unsustainable for me to stay. Anyway, the title of this post is simply what I've been thinking of this report as - I read the first quarter of it way back when it came out and broke down in tears, but I've finally psyched myself up to read the whole thing so I could have a coherent backwards opinion. And I am sure I made the right choice in leaving. This is a book review blog, not a church-dissection blog, so I'm going to eschew any personal commentary here; if you are interested in what was awry in my home church the link is right there above.

Chameleon or Tribe?

This book by Richard Keyes is one of the most insightful books about church I've read in a while. He takes the fundamental that we are to be "in the world but not of the world" - and yet recognisable to the world; so where does that leave us as a community of Christians? Do we distinguish our own culture and cut ourselves off from all outside contact? Or do we adopt as many of the surrounding customs as we can to try to make ourselves more amenable to contact so that evangelism can occur?

   Well, both, and neither.

   Though this is a very short book its arguments are dense and wiry, and I don't think I could do half as good a job at summarising them as you could at understanding them by reading this book. It's a genuine life-raft in a post-Christian culture where half the church seems to becoming secular clubs with praise sessions and the other half insular Puritanical communities hostile to outsiders. Keyes does a great job of integrating the biblical theology of what church is and is meant to be with the practicalities of Christian life, and also the apologetic factors of how we make these very elements appealing and coherent to those people outside the Church - those we are called to win for Christ.

   It's a relatively old book, this, so it might be hard to find - but if one pops up online for less than forty quid, or you stumble across a copy in a second-hand Christian bookstore - this is a must-buy! (and needless to say also then a must-read...)

the Divine Dance

This book by Richard Rohr (same author as this gem) is a deep, circular meditation on the Trinity and its mysteries. I honestly don't really know what to say. It's about God. His nature, his ineffable Being, his goodness and eternity and light and givingness-of-life. Rohr manages to blend a thoroughly ecumenical scholarship in simple language through a lens a pragmatic, humanly-livable concepts and frameworks, so that we can start to grasp how God moves and how we can try to join in once we accept the call. This is a marvellous, beautiful book. One thing I will say as a plausible downside is that it doesn't really have much of an apologetic bent - but that's fine, this is a book for believers who want to draw themselves further into the divine dance anyway. If you are looking for ways to share the glorious mysteries of the Trinity with non-Christians in your life, then this book will probably be of use anyway, as it may be so fruitful to your spirit that your come closer in your soul the the heart of the heavenly rhythms and find the things to say or do that will bear appropriate witness anyway. I am somewhat hesitant about marking this in the category of "Christian theology" even though I know it is - but it just feels so messy and casual, like the Holy Spirit has just charged through my lounge with muddy boots and tossed a fishing-rod onto my couch and said "got nothing! gonna check the raccoons have got out of the well, see you in a bit" and stomped straight back out through the back door - what do you even do with that? That's this kind of book. It shows you a glimpse of how big and active God is and invites you to be part of that. It's the kind of book that makes Trinitarian theology not some abstract philosophical exercise but an exhilarating spiritual ride that takes you from Yes Please to Eternity and wherever in-between. I would highly recommend this book to any and all Christian readers.

Jesus Feminist

This book by Sarah Bessey was a breath of truly fresh air. Although I have read several great sources on Christian feminism before, never before have I seen so many coherent and powerful arguments put together in one place, and not to say the least all tied together through the lived Gospel experiences of Christ himself in the women he interacted with. I'm saying very little about this book because I want you to go and read it yourself. If you are a Christian with concerns about feminism for whatever reason - I implore you to read this book and pray deeply about how Christ might be speaking to us about what gender is and is for. If you are not a Christian and may even hate the faith for ways in which it treats women - I also implore you to read this book so you can come closer to the heart of Christ who knows and loves all, and so that you can be better equipped to throw rebuttals at your Christian friends next time you have an argument about gender. A brilliant must-read.

Tramp for the Lord

This book by Corrie ten Boom is an unexpected delight. I grew up on occasional stories about Corrie ten Boom; how she and her Christian Dutch family sheltered Jewish families throughout the Holocaust for years, right up until the end where they were captured and she and her sister Betsy were taken to a concentration camp, where Betsy died, but Corrie survived just long enough to see the camp's liberation at the end of the war. They were inspiring stories, and form the backbone of her more famous work The Hiding Place - but I'd never read that myself. But somehow I found myself drawn to what she found herself doing with her life after so much trauma. And man, is it remarkable.

   The autobiographical chapters in this book span decades, recounting historical events as she grows up through and past them, all with an unshakeable faith in Christ that carries her through everything as she persists in a singular quest to share the joy and hope she has in Jesus with as many people in as many place as she can. It's truly inspiring. And not just the task of it - the bulk of these chapters is comprised of a variety of hindrances, from lost airline tickets to localised epidemics to terrorist attacks to you-name-it - but Corrie's immediate instinct is always to retreat and to pray, and to continue doing so, while blessing those around her however she can, until something rights itself. And in these chapters, it always seems to. A cynic may easily say these are the miraculous wishings of a senile woman with nothing in her head but the dregs of a meaningless faith. But I do not think a woman of her calibre could have been what she had without developing a hard shell of robustness and fortitude in telling what is mere coincidence or genuine miracle or both; and more often than not, both IS both - that's the point. Her faith and her prayer and her patience sees her through so many strange and stressful situations in this book that she not only makes her global tour appointments as a speaker to congregations more or less on time, but she touches and brightens the lives of many random folks around the world as she does so. I found this a genuinely inspiring book - if not necessarily for how I think my life could ever go, then insofar as I may have faith, patience and prayerfulness. Lord give me the strength to be the kind of tramp Corrie was.

Charles Spurgeon's sermons on Proverbs

This isn't so much a book as it is a collection (available from that link as a pdf - free) of sermons, by the great Victorian preacher Charles Spurgeon, on the biblical wisdom book of Proverbs; I've been devotionally reading it one sermon at a time along with my dad for over a year. Rather than working meticulously through the whole book, Spurgeon selects one or two proverbs from each chapter and reflectively spins these out into biblically-rich, theologically-sound and spiritually-edifying sermons. He manages to walk a fine line incredibly well indeed - both developing the inner concepts of the proverbs to demonstrate their wisdom, and extrapolating from them ways that such wisdom can and should lead us deeper into the realities of the gospel. He was very clearly an amazing preacher and thus is in my view deserving of his reputation; erudite in his speech yet accessible to common language and sensibility. The "Victorian-ness" of the prose is a minor gripe but read aloud, as me and my dad did, this evaporates; you are left with Spurgeon in all his intellectual heft weaving points and leading you into Christian exhortation. While I can't definitively say so, I strongly suspect most of his other sermons to be of equal value, and loads of them are online - so check them out. If you're particularly interested in the gospel-centred application of Solomonic wisdom, check this one out specifically.

the Holy Bible

This book* is, you probably need no explanation, the foundational Scripture of Christianity, the world's biggest (and my primary) religion. It is the most widely-translated and best-selling book in human history. I haven't listed an author for this book for three main reasons:

1. It's not "a book" so much as sixty-six texts, some a page long, others spanning large chunks, all organised together into what is more like a library
2. Many of the texts in the book are either anonymously composed or their authorship (as attested by Judeo-Christian tradition) is contested by scholarship
3. As a Christian it is my belief that the Bible is the divinely-inspired word of God, but it feels odd to list my Creator as a mere author

   What's it all about then? In a nutshell, God's liberation of humanity. In less-of-a-nutshell though, I will try to give a succinct and satisfying summary of the overarching narrative found in this book. Hold onto your hats, this is going to be a long paragraph. You probably know the rough shape of how it starts - "in the beginning" God creates the universe, including humanity. The first humans, Adam and Eve, live in total harmony with God, each other, and the world; that is, until a serpent persuades them to do the one thing they have been told they cannot do - eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil - and in punishment they are pushed out into a world that now suffers, as they do. They have children and populate the Earth, etc. The next big things that happen are that God, in frustration at the evil humanity is perpetrating, decides to wipe out humankind with a flood - survived only by Noah and his family, and two of every animal to repopulate the wild; next is again humanity acting out of a sense of cosmic superiority and trying to build a tower to Heaven, which results in God scattering them into a whole host of differing nations and languages. Then we meet a man called Abraham, to whom God promises land, innumerable descendants, and great blessings: so we follow him for a bit, then his son Isaac, then Isaac's son Jacob, who meets and literally wrestles with God and is thus renamed Israel (and yes, I did hear the Bible-novices among you just go "ohhh!"). Jacob's dozen sons settle in Egypt, where they multiply to such an extent that they are made slaves by the Egyptian state. With the help of God sending ten plagues on the Egyptians, a man called Moses liberates the Israelites from slavery and leads them into the wilderness on their journey to the land promised to Abraham: along the way, God legislates a system of laws for them, including the Ten Commandments (which I'm assuming you've heard of) alongside a meticulous programme for appropriate sacrifices and such. Moses dies, but under the leadership of his second, a man called Joshua, the Israelites conquer and settle the promised land. Then things fall apart a bit. Everyone starts eroding in their respect for God's law, and even under the stewardship of a string of prophetic/military leaders called judges, they rebel against it again and again. Eventually the Israelites decide they want a king to lead them, like the other nations; God says this isn't a great idea but nevertheless concedes, but (aside from a short but high-impact Golden Age under the reigns of David, who wrote a great number of poems about the God-ward life, and wise thinker Solomon, who built the temple) the Israelites, just as under the judges, fall into cyclical patterns of rebellion and repentance - with even their kings becoming [a-bit-more-than]-occasional idolaters, tyrants and so on. To nudge Israel back onto the right track, God starts sending prophets - some, like the early Elijah, to confront ungodly kings directly; others like the later Ezekiel and Jeremiah to mourn the godlessness of Israel and expound messages of redemptive hope. In the prophets we read of God's judgement against the nations surrounding Israel as well as against Israel herself - in fact, several of the prophets foretold that Israel would be colonized by the Babylonians and Assyrians, which she was.** Prophets like Daniel continued their work of realizing God's plans for them even during this period of exile; and we begin to see the emergence within God's speeches the specific promise of a messiah, a redeemer, who would wholly and totally liberate Israel from sin and death. Eventually the Israelites are allowed to return home and rebuild their temple, and this more-or-less concludes the Jewish section of the Bible, known in Christianity as the Old Testament - called such because here comes the New Testament. This next (much shorter) Christian section of the Bible begins with the coming in Bethlehem of a man called Jesus, whose birth had been promised to a woman named Mary, a faithful virgin. Jesus grows up and becomes a radical peripatetic rabbi - accruing an enormous number of followers (a core twelve hand-picked by him at the start of his ministry and many more just following him as he goes along because they were intrigued and liberated by what he had to say), healing people, casting out demons, telling parables, pissing off the religious authorities, etc. In a bizarre twist, despite their devotion to him, Jesus's followers didn't really understand who he was - that is to say, the messiah promised in the prophets; especially in the prophetic writings of Isaiah, who had foretold that Israel's messiah would be misunderstood and rejected by them, and ultimately killed. Next, you guessed it - Jesus is killed: betrayed by one of his disciples, taken before the religious and political leaders (at this time in Israel's history it was a Roman colony) and condemned to crucifixion. However our story continues; three days after his death several female followers of Jesus find his tomb empty, and sure enough he then reappears, resurrected from the dead, to his disciples - with the express intent of assuring their conviction that yes he was and eternally is the messiah, and sin has been defeated, and the disciples are to kick-start the task of bringing this good news to the world. Jesus ascends into heaven and the disciples go about their God-given task, only to be heavily persecuted by the Jewish religious authorities and met with ridicule by the predominant Hellenistic culture surrounding Israel. A member of the suppressive class, a man who came to be known as Paul, was challenged by a vision of Jesus, and became a co-worker with the disciples in spreading the good news of Jesus's death and resurrection. Most of the rest of the New Testament is letters written by Paul and other disciples like Peter to various churches around the Roman Empire, exhorting them to continue the work of spreading the good news and developing the huge theological points implied by Jesus's teaching, life, death, and undeath. Finally we close off the whole thing with an apocalyptic series of visions revealed to Jesus's disciple John about the consummation of God's plans for world history.

   I hope that was enough of an introductory overview. Whether you're an ardent Christian fundamentalist who thinks everything I've just talked about is the utterly-literally-true history of our world, or a hardcore skeptic who thinks some (or quite a lot maybe) of it is little more than fanciful myth; it cannot be denied that in the Bible is a wealth of wisdom and historical reflection that can deepen and sharpen our hearts and minds. Reading the Bible is ideally an inherently radical act of self-emptying submission to the truth of God, in our efforts to make sense of its narratives and teachings.

   So, there's an excellent Christian quote by I-forget-whom; "one should visit many good books, but live in the Bible," and I hold to this as an approach to literature. I read parts of the Bible as a regular part of both my devotional life in relationship with God and my philosophical life in all my seeking for a satisfyingly-developed and coherent worldview. The reason I'm doing a post about it now is that I finished reading it cover-to-cover - and while throughout my life I've probably read most of the Bible multiple times or at least once, this was the first time I've worked through the whole thing as a singular entity.

   Would I recommend this book then, verily the book of books? Yes, cautiously, with caveats. It is a complicated library, that spans a narrative of over two-thousand years, and many parts are pretty impenetrable even to people who have devoted their entire lives to studying them; to get the most out of the Bible it is probably recommended (certainly is by me) that you read it alongside commentary, theology and doxology.*** And while I do believe that engaging with the Bible can, in the hopeful light of the Holy Spirit, lead one into a real meaningful relationship with our God - it has to be approached with a certain degree of humility and open-mindedness; as a non-believer who is diving in to try to find justificatory ammunition in their efforts to repudiate Christianity will likely be able to find a lot in there for their purposes, but this would be a misuse/misunderstanding of the text.**** This book is neither a moral rulebook nor a philosophical treatise on reality - it is primarily an account of God's relationship with humanity through the specific lens of ancient Israel, coming to its climax in the life and person of Jesus, who was God incarnate. Come to the Bible with an expectancy that God will meet you halfway and testify to you about Himself, breaking into your heart with liberating conviction, and you're on the right track.

* Over 150 translations of the Bible are available for free from that link. The version I finished was the New King James Version, though for the majority of my reading I tend to use either the English Standard Version or the New Living Translation; as I'm not familiar enough with the breadth of versions out there I can't make any solid recommendations as to exactly what would be the best fit for you, so try out a variety, but for newcomers who have never read the Bible and would like something both accessible and accurate to the ancient texts from which our modern forms are translated, I'd go with the New International Version.

** A quick note on "prophets" - the contemporary understanding of this term has been boiled down to a bastardisation that merely conveys predictions about the future, in a similar kind of category to "seer" or even "wizard". But in the biblical sense, a prophet is someone with a particularly close relationship to God who seeks to share this relationship with those around them by both denouncing the godlessness of others' lives and pointing to the hopes of redemption and true betterness when people return to right relation with God; visions of the future are merely the means by which God's promises and goodness are mediated from eternity into humankind's experience of time.

*** For starters, though there are many theological and doxological texts that I've reviewed for this blog, I wouldn't highlight any one book as I don't know how or where you're going to start your Bible journey - but this YouTube channel, the Bible Project, has some truly fantastic resources for getting to grips with particular books and concepts.

**** Any problems, intellectual or moral or otherwise, that you have with either the Bible or Christianity, are too wide-ranging for me to address here - but if you have a bone to pick do so in the comments and I'll do my best to reply with honesty and humility.

the Soul of Wine

This book by Gisela Kreglinger is an entertainingly readable, life-affirming and impressively moderation-levelled introduction to the spirituality of wine. She - coming from a winemaking family - has a deep and rich appreciation for the dimensions of life that the juice of the vine can bring out in human social relations, and she has shared with us in this short book a powerful testimony of what this can look and feel like. I was shocked at some of her theological statements but taken poetically I don't think there's anything in here that all but the most ardent of teetotaller-Puritan Christians should really be bridling at. Jesus loved wine enough to not only develop "a reputation" among the Pharisees but even instituted the sharing of wine as part of his own disciples' maintenance of their relations with him and each other - i.e. the Communion - and as such we should think not drunkenly but drinkingly of the Spirit as the gift of life that it is, given to us to share in the abundance of all good things that God has given His Creation - and call me Bernard Black but I've always held good old fermented grape juice as being one of those higher gifts. You know, like cheese, with crackers and olive paté. A recommended gift book to Christians who like a glass or two. Not a recommended gift book to those struggling with over-drinking, as it will likely just send them into Rasputin mode.