We readers of the Bible often have our favorite translations. I am partial to translations that emerge from committees, like the NRSV and CEB. Others like the more personal translations like Eugene Peterson's The Message. Debates can get heated, as we engage in conversation about which underlying texts should be used and whether to go in a more formal or dynamic direction. While I've not engaged in much reading of the new translation from David Bentley Hart, apparently N.T. Wright doesn't like it very much (as seen in his scathing review in the Christian Century). According to Martin Marty, Hart pushes back with great vigor and perhaps a bit of vitriol. But then, is this really new? Anyway, Marty lays things out nicely. If you've read Hart's self described wild and repellent "formal" translation with an Orthodox twist, I'd love to hear your reactions.
PREACHING IN THE ERAOF TRUMP. By O. Wesley Allen, Jr. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2017. 117 pages.
I read a lot of books in the past year. Most of the books I read during the year are sent to me by publishers to be reviewed on this blog or elsewhere. All the books in the list below were published in 2017, and except for a few, were read in 2017. Most of the books on the list below were provided by the publisher, and to them I offer my thanks. I have been offering a Best Book List for several years. I started out with top ten lists, along with a Book of the Year Selection. In recent years I’ve found it difficult to limit the list to ten books, so you will find seventeen books. Two of them are named Best Book of 2017. The remaining fifteen are divided into four rather loose categories. All seventeen books are excellent and worthy of reading. Links to reviews are provided (click on the title).
If the reports are true, and I believe they are, the President spoke offensive and derogatory words about persons from the Caribbean and African nations who have come to our nation. The words are ripe with racism. Rather than writing my own reflection, I have decided to share the message published by the Rev. Dr. Teresa Hord Owens, the General Minister and President of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Unfortunately, fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, we must continue to address the racism and nativism in our midst.
As a follower of Jesus Christ, as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I must speak to repudiate the comments from the President of the United States on Jan. 11, 2018. As Christians, we believe that all humans are made in the image of God and therefore worth of dignity and respect. We are called to love, and Jesus tells us that we will be known as his disciples if we have love for one another. (John 13:35).
STILL CHRISTIAN: Following Jesus out of American Evangelicalism. By David P. Gushee. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017. Xvi + 151 pages.
I am four years older than David Gushee, which means I've traveled similar terrain, even if we grew up in opposite sides of the country and in different denominational traditions. He was raised Catholic. I was raised Episcopalian. He left the Catholics for the Southern Baptists. I left the Episcopalians for Pentecostalism. We both felt the call to ministry and academia. He went to a large Southern Baptist Seminary and then a very liberal seminary for doctoral work. I went to a very large multi-denominational evangelical seminary, earning both my masters and doctorate at the same institution. Unlike David, I have spent most of my life as a pastor, and likely because I took up an area of academic interest (historical theology) that was less controversial, I never found myself in the public eye in quite the same way as was true for him.
It is a new year, and Martin Marty is out and about sighting things religious and secular. In his opening salvo for the year, he takes note of those who seek to find some sense of meaning in the region between secularist partisans on one side who see anything religious being foolishness, and those on the other end of the spectrum who allow nothing that is not "sacred." He takes note of several expressions of religious sensibility living within the broader culture, bearing witness to the transcendent. I invite you to take a read and consider what it means to live in this middle space. I want to commend the Martin Marty Center and the University of Chicago Divinity School for making these columns available --- and allow we bloggers to repost!
Death, Immortality, and Resurrection (Edward Vick) -- A Review.
DEATH, IMMORTALITY,AND RESURRECTION. By Edward W. H. Vick. Gonzalez, FL: Energion Publications, 2017. X + 130 pages.
Yesterday was the Day of Epiphany, which marked the end of the Christmas season for both east and west. Yesterday was the appropriate day to sing “We Three Kings” to remember the visit of the magi to the home of the Holy Family. Yes, if we still had our creche scene out, yesterday would have been the appropriate day to add the “three wise men.” Of course, if we follow scripture the Holy Family would have taken residence in a house, and the shepherds and the sheep would have gone back to their fields.
The Twelve Days of Christmas conclude today with the coming of the magi to the little town of Bethlehem. On this day, with the magi, we come to bear homage to Jesus, the one in whom God's light shines upon us, revealing to us the fullness of God's love and presence. On this day, I simply invite you to attend to the reading of this story from Matthew. Yes, in the verses that follow the holy family will flee to Egypt and Herod's soldiers will slaughter the innocents, but can we for a moment simply join with the magi and be overwhelmed with joy as the star leads us to the presence of the holy one?
STRANGER GOD: Meeting Jesus in Disguise. By Richard Beck. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017. 245 pages (Kindle Edition).
BETTER: Waking Up to Who We Could Be. By Melvin Bray. Foreword by Brittney Cooper. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2017. Xiv + 169 pages.
Christians—and people of faith in general—live by our stories. For Christians and Jews, these include the biblical story. We also have other stories that describe and define our identities. Some of these stories are good and some are not. Some empower, and others disempower. The way we tell and retell the stories have implications for our lives and for our world. Melvin Bray invites us to tell “better” stories. He invites us to deconstruct many of our stories, taking them apart, but not leaving them in that state. Moving beyond deconstruction, he invites us to reconstruct our stories so that our lives and the world itself might be transformed.