Collected Miscellany

Despite the fact that he lives and preaches in my home town (well, town I was born in anyways) of Grand Rapids, Michigan – and I have always heard good things about him – I was never a big Rob Bell fan. There was something about him that put me off a bit – a little too hip, the religious left type language and attitude, a post-modern sensibility, I am not sure.

But I read Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile for our church’s summer book series and found myself enjoying it (more about that later).

So when the publisher offered Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith for free on Kindle I scooped it up (free is free after all) and started reading it on a recent trip (my Kindle is a lifesaver when I travel). And maybe Bell is winning me over because I really enjoyed this book too.

Here is the Bell’s blurb for his own book from the publisher:

We have to test everything.
I thank God for anybody anywhere who is pointing people to the mysteries of God.
But those people would all tell you to think long and hard about what they are saying and doing and creating.
Test it. Probe it.
Do that to this book.
Don’t swallow it uncritically. Think about it. Wrestle with it.
Just because I’m a Christian and I’m trying to articulate a Christian worldview doesn’t mean I’ve got it nailed. I’m contributing to the discussion.
God has spoken, and the rest is commentary, right?

My take below.

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I won The Messiah Formerly Known as Jesus: Dispatches from the Intersection of Christianity and Pop Culture by Tom Breen in a Facebook or Twitter giveaway from the good folks at Baylor Press. I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of it but is sounded interesting and it was a quick read. So I bumped it up the TBR pile.

I am afraid I am going to offer one of my truisms again. What you think of it will have a lot to do with what you expect and the attitudes you bring to it.

Here is Publishers Weekly:

In this entertaining gem of religious satire, Breen, an AP journalist, skewers American Christianity from every imaginable angle. Calling himself the ‘Internet Theologian,’ Breen romps through the Bible, religious history, denominational differences. Halloween, contemporary Christian music and spectator sports, among other topics. Some of the book is pure silliness, but other sections achieve that elusive ‘perfect storm’ where humor is sharpened by raw intelligence and a keen knowledge of history and theology. Even Breen’s glossary of terms is hilarious. Heck, even his endnotes are funny and not to be missed. (One says merely, ‘Seriously. Wasn’t Calvin a nut?’) Readers seeking irreverent, laugh-out-loud musings on the sometimes ludicrous intersections between faith and pop culture will want to read this insouciant guide.

If you want satire, there is plenty of satire. And there is lot of humor that I found quite funny – from laugh out loud to quiet chuckle. But the larger question is whether the satire and humor adds up to something more than entertaining reading.

My take after the jump …

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Regular readers will know that I have long had an interest in fiction that touches on issues of faith and religion.  On the other hand, I don’t read a lot of historical fiction; for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into right now.

But despite the countervailing habits when I heard about John The Baptizer by Brooks Hansen I was immediately intrigued. Here is the publishers description:

Traditionally, John the Baptist is seen as little more than an opening act—”the voice crying in the wilderness”—in the great Christian drama. In presenting the epic of John’s life, novelist Brooks Hansen draws on an extraordinary array of inspirations, from the works of Caravaggio, Bach, and Oscar Wilde to the histories of Josephus, the canonical gospels, the Gnostic gospels, and the sacred texts of those followers of John who never accepted Jesus as Messiah: the Mandeans.

Gripping as literary historical fiction, and fascinating as a diligent exploration of ancient and modern sources, this book brings to eye-opening life the richly textured world—populated by the magnificently sordid, calculating, and reckless Herods, their families, and their courts—into which both John and Jesus were born. John the Baptizer is a captivating tapestry of power and dissent, ambition and self-sacrifice, worldly and otherworldly desire, faith, and doubt.

A straightforward historical portrayal of John might be interesting in and of itself, but the unique and creative mix Hansen offered put this one on the top of my reading list.

Most of the time the publishers blurb has an element of hyperbole to it – depending on the quality of the book in question this can be annoying or flat out deceptive – but in my opinion this one really does capture the book.

More on why below. Read the rest of this entry »