This book is an exploration of polygamy – i.e., plural marriage – how it forms and how it operates. It’s an exploration of a topic that is controversial because of its place in early Mormon society and curious because it runs contrary to how much of society has organized itself. I live in the American South and am a Protestant Christian. Southern Christians would never deign to practice public plural marriages. (Polyamory is another matter,…
In Western and Middle-Eastern thought, undergirded by three monotheistic faiths, the Moses story carries overarching significance. It tells of liberation from bondage and the struggle of living with that freedom. It tells of the temptations to lapse into prior, seeming comforts of slavery. It tells how freedom, best exercised, consists of communing with a transcendent yet imminent God. This story is taught to children regularly in synagogues, churches, and mosques the world over. For those…
Howard Thurman is a name that scholars of twentieth-century Christianity and African-American culture know well, but few in the mainstream United States are familiar with it. However, more people should be, and Harvey writes this religious biography to bring his name to the fore. Thurman was known as “the mentor to the movement” and mentored dozens of civil rights’ leaders, including Martin Luther King. He laid the groundwork for the dismantling of Jim Crow and…
The year 2022 resides in an era where there is renewed interest in the African American experience. That experience, of course, is incredibly rich and deep and historically spans Slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights Movement. Atcho, a Christian pastor, brings out that spiritual depth by highlighting ten pieces of literature that illuminate the African American experience and the African American perspective on theology. This book in unabashedly in the Christian tradition.…
Academic and professional life can seem fragmented at times. After receiving a course of general education, we specialize and then sub-specialize. (Will we sub-sub-specialize in the future?) In particular, the humanities can seem vastly different from the natural sciences, which can seem vastly different from engineering. Into this fragmentation, Polanyi offers a comprehensive philosophy with humans at the center. Polanyi, a physical chemist with economic and philosophical interests, can speak with authority on such broad…
John Polkinghorne is a respected professor of physics at Cambridge University who became an Anglican priest. The President Emeritus of Queen’s College, he is well-known for his understanding of common terrain between science and religion. This book contains the text of the 1993-94 Gifford Lectures and describes his theological belief system. This belief system roughly aligns with Christian orthodoxy. This text explains how he studiously came to these beliefs as he explains why he eschewed…
As I write, Russian troops are invading the independent nation of Ukraine. This backdrop compelled me to hurry up to read this book for insight into the current conflict, and I am glad I did. It tells a complex tale of three generations of Ukrainian women trying to make a life amidst international strife. The coincidences are stultifying, but the author claims that the general narrative is true. The story reminds us of the enduring…
It’s easy for children to feel as if they are “good for nothing” because they do not commonly make as significant of societal contributions like adults. Sometimes, forgotten in a Christian, technological culture is that care and nurture are required for all things to bloom. This book, based on one of Jesus’ parables from Luke 13.6-9, reminds us all – children and adults alike – of the value of love so that things can grow.…
Religious belief and science are often put at odds with each other in contemporary society and popular culture. One needs only to listen to fundamentalist preachers or read newspapers about anti-vaccine protestors to think that these groups are forever at odds. Further, the histories of religious wars and persecutions turn many educated, reality-based citizens off of the religious path. To this situation, Polkinghorne offers a detente by suggesting that the two fields are cousins in…
To preface, my wife and I are involved in the organization that the authors helped to found in Nashville, Tennessee, but what this essay lacks in objectivity, I hope to regain in honest intimacy. This memoir relates the story of how Hartley’s family escaped the “Brentwood Bubble” (Brentwood is a well-to-do suburb of Nashville) while encountering the Mwizerwas. Having fled the genocide in Rwanda during the 1990s, the Mwizerwas became refugees in Nashville and rebuilt…