Humankind a hopeful history by Rutger Bregman.
This is a fabulous read. The punchline is basically ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all be kind to each other for a change?’ Bregman goes through all those social-psychology experiments that have been done on us over the last century, especially looking closer at the ones that concluded that given half a chance we’re all nasty. He shows that that’s not actually what even those studies reveal. It’s not a Christian book as such but there’s a lot of goodness here.
The book is 400 pages but its so well written that you can’t skim read it and you’ll find yourself just wanting to turn the next page.
The book urges us to risk being kind because mostly this pays off and we will find that others are kind; that when we go at people on the presumption of fear and hatred that we provoke more of it, in others, in ourselves. The cure is to get more involved with people, get to know them, volunteer, be generous and hospitable. I can’t argue with that. It’s a call to practice loving your neighbour as you love yourself.
Still Evangelical?
Written by a variety of evangelicals, you might have heard of Shane Claibourne who wrote one chapter but I hadn’t heard of any of the others. It was cheap, in a remaindered pile of books at New Wine and hence made it to my birthday present pile. It’s an interesting read about what Americans are concerned about regarding the state of their evangelicalism. It would be interesting to come across an English, even a CofE version.
The first couple of chapters unpack the usual definition of evangelical as – Sola Scriptura … or in English: only scripture; only faith in Christ; only Grace for salvation; only Christ and his atonement. Amen to that. Another summarises this as: the centrality of the bible; of the atonement, of conversion, of activism. And another wants to add on that Wesleyan experience of the Holy Spirit (or should that be Pentecostal).
Lots of it is struggle to come to terms with knowing that 81% of white male evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. This word ‘evangelical’ clearly means something different over the pond. The word has been taken hostage (p3) by the toxic subculture on the evangelical right. The word has suffered identity theft (p154) so that when non-Christians were asked in a poll what they thought of Christians they said: Antigay, judgemental, hypocritical, too political, irrelevant.
The best two chapters are the one by Robert Chao Romero (who wrote an excellent book The Brown Church which is about the gospel in Mexico and Latin America). His challenge to us is to confront our silence and xenophobia and to see migration as a source of God’s good grace.
The other chapter would be Soong-Chan Rah who sees a dysfunctional theological imagination that has made us bias towards western cultural norms. This theology fails to serve us and provide a biblical view of reality. Consequently, we aspire to being the mega-churches with their big named celebrity leaders and forget, belittle, the Spanish-speaking storefront churches, the Korean, the Native American, African American Churches.
The book overall urges us towards a recovery of evangelical orthopraxy – activism – showing our faith by what we do as the epistle of James would put it. And to endeavour towards an ecumenical inclusiveness that sees Catholics, Orthodox, Pentecostals, even Nestorians (p103) as fellow Christians and pilgrims.
Hilda of Whitby Ray Simpson.
I didn’t get on with this book. You might. It tells the story of St Hild who shouldn’t have an ‘a’ in her name, that was added later, see also Thomas a Becket. This amazing saintly woman established a monastery in Whitby and over saw the Synod of 644 that brought the Celtic Church into the Catholic fold.
The book sort of does that and the further in you read the better it gets. However, I’m not so good when the author interweaves the history with his understanding of what God was up to in all of this mess. It makes for a good read but it makes it harder for my students to quote in an essay.
You are not writing an essay for me so it might work well for you. You might also like the reflections where the reader is invited to think about how God has used people like St Hild to bring about changes in the midst of struggle and strife and yet she kept the faith. We need more St Hilds.
The Reslilent Pastor by Glenn Packiam
You don’t need to buy this book either. The main thing is for you to pray for me and for all involved in pastoring in a church.
Packiam spoke well at New Wine this year. I thought this book might be good for me. Its very of its time. It reflects on Covid and how we as Christians as a Church might react in the light of the pandemic. The thrust of the whole book is for pastors to recognise that we’re tired but we’re not alone.
The bit I picked up from this was the importance of being gentle with each other, kind, and about the importance of praying for each other, gathering together for worship. It takes a church to make a Christian (p154).
I particularly liked his non-western reflections about how our modern syncretistic polytheistic Christianity would make no sense to a Buddhist in Asia, or a Muslim in Malaysia (p28). I would have liked him to have unpacked further the phrase about how we live in a “Post Christian but Christ haunted world”(p38). He quotes an excellent open question from Henri Nouwen: “Did becoming older bring me closer to Jesus” (p65). We should ask ourselves this question every birthday.
(Photo is of a selfie with me and Jesus at Well’s Cathedral)