Wade’s back from his hiatus, and has some book recommendations:

Here are several books I’ve just read or am about to finish.

1. What Would Jesus Deconstruct? I loved this book. Caputo is sharp, funny, and able to explain deconstruction in a constructive way.

2. The Reason for God. This is a great book for me to read. I’m a doubter and every so often I need to read a book like this to help me doubt my doubts.

3. The Fidelity of Betrayal. I think Peter Rollins is a brilliant writer, thinker, and storyteller. If you loved How (Not) to Speak of God, you will love this as well. If you hated it, then you’ll hate this one even more. His discussion of Judas as one who faithfully betrays Jesus will either set your wheels to spinning or cause you to skid off the road.

(continue reading…)

I have a habit of forming opinions about books from reviews and never reading them, and of getting burnt up about the short quotes the reviewer offers. This actually kept me from reading NT Wright for a while, because I disagreed so much with the ways people used his writing that I didn’t want to read it for myself.

I have, however, read Doug Pagitt before, so I’m fairly confident that this quote is pretty representative, though I could be wrong. In any case, it’s a variation on a common argument about “modern” scriptural interpretation:

Today, he says, we’re still interpreting the story of Jesus through the lenses developed for a world dominated by Greek dualism and gods that needed to be appeased. Total depravity and substitutionary atonement are doctrinal byproducts of the combination of this ancient mentality mingled with the modern world of legal systems.

That was a paraphrase from a review at Progression of Faith, so I’ll say up front, that it may not be an exact quote from Pagitt. In any case, it’s all off in the wrong direction. (continue reading…)

John Wilson has some interesting thoughts about Brian McLaren’s new book, Everything Must Change.

McLaren is particularly misleading when he’s suggesting, as he does quite emphatically at times, that somehow the church went off the rails early on, and that only now are (some) Christians beginning to understand what Jesus was really saying. While McLaren occasionally adds nuances and qualifiers, this ahistorical account runs through the book. In this respect, his message is oddly reminiscent of the ahistorical narrative of church history that dominated the evangelical/fundamentalist churches of my youth. Between an idealized first-century church and the present moment, when the preacher was calling on you to make a decision for Christ, there loomed a great wasteland—all those centuries in which the church failed to heed the plain words of Scripture.

This reminds me of a story a friend told me in college. He was taking Church History at this tiny Christian school, and one day they came to a timeline in the textbook. The dates ranged from just before anno domini to the present day. At different point there were little flames which represented an explosive growth in the church or a revival of some sort. There were a dozen or so between 5 B.C. and A.D. 313. Then, apparently, the church just died. There were no expansions, no advances, no great teachers or movements. The church was in hibernation. Then, on a fine autumn day in 1517, the fire was back.

Yesterday someone posted a 12,000 word comment on my God Delusion Ch. 1 post.  I’m trying to decide what to do with it.  I guess I’ll read it eventually, but it’s a 20-page Word document, so it might be a while.  Anyway, I’m finally off to Borders to get What’s So Great About Christianity,  by Dinesh D’Souza, and The Supremacy of God, from John Piper, et al.  You’ll see them here soon.

November has been a rare month for me, in that I’ve just finished my fourth book in 3 weeks. This time around it’s Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. The premise is this, “After hundreds of consultations with local churches and a significant research project, we have concluded that church leaders need to simplify.” They acknowledge the rise of simplicity in business from Apple to Southwest Airlines. Then they discuss how they came to their conclusion.

The book is based on a survey of “vibrant” and “comparison” churches. If you choose, you can read that as “growing” and “stagnant or dying”. The authors compared the survey data and it’s pretty striking. The results showed that the vibrant churches were much more simple than the others. “The difference was so big that the probability of the results occuring with one church by chance is less than one in 1000.” Statistically, the results are “highly significant.”

Before any charts or graphs make their appearance, we see profiles of two churches that Rainer and Geiger have consulted with. This, to me, was the part that convinced me most that they had found something significant; not because they’re great storytellers, but because I’ve seen a copy of their complex church in action. (continue reading…)

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