I reviewed this novel earlier in this blog. I also wrote a lengthier review at the Englewood Review of Books that was just published. I’d be honored if you checked it out!
Anyone who attempts to biography Jesus is bound to fail. An author is bound to project herself or himself onto the narrative. That’s why all theology eventually turns into autobiography. In Parini’s work, clearly, both the object (Jesus of Nazareth) and the subject (Parini the author) are worth learning from, and the reader can find much to aspire to. Much of late twentieth and early twenty-first century studies on the Jesus of history devolve into…
A Novel of Saint Paulby Jay PariniCopyright (c) 2019.ISBN13: 9780385522786Page count: 349Genre: Historical Fiction, Religious Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to hear an honest account of Saint Paul’s life? I mean, one can only glean so much from the theology of the New Testament; I’m left wondering: What would Paul say if I had a beer with him? Jay Parini, a Guggenheim Fellow, pursues creative writing in the form of poetry, biography,…
by Nathaniel HawthorneWritten 1850. I originally read this book in high school. I reread it now, with two more decades of life experience. I’ve lived among Christians who revere the Puritan era. I’ve experienced social shunning. I’m a male living in the #MeToo era where one sin of sexual harassment can lead to career demise. In all of these situations, however, I side with Hawthorne’s sympathies towards those who bear the brunt of social shunning.…
by Ziauddin Yousafzai (father of Malala)Copyright (c) 2018 Malala, Ziauddin’s daughter, is an awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize for advocating for girls’ education. She paid for this cause by being shot in the face by the Taliban. Her father, living in the midst of a highly patriarchal culture, sought to lead his family in an egalitarian manner while running a school for girls in Pakistan. Malala’s story has been well-told in her best-selling book…
by Peter Ackroyd Copyright (c) 1998 Thomas More is one of the few beatified English lay-persons in history. He was beheaded for resisting the coming Protestant Reformation. What comes around, goes around, however; More, in the years before King Henry’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, oversaw the exercise of the death penalty to several Protestant heretics. He stood, as Ackroyd tells it, for the old way of medieval Christendom. He was unwilling to accommodate the…
Translated by Charles H. WrightFifth century C.E. Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was a British heathen-turned-missionary who spent his life “civilizing” or “Christianizing” the Irish. Though affiliated with the Roman church, Patrick was remarkably free of scholastic learning. As such, he represents a distinct wing of the church’s intellectual tradition. While the Western church was becoming other-worldly (and overbearing), Patrick and his Irish converts emphasized the worldly usefulness of faith. This confession was…
by William Montgomery WattCopyright (c) 1967, 1994. It’s interesting to become a voyeur into other religions. I see how much of Islam is quite similar to Christian fundamentalism – subjugation to a text, promises or threats of an afterlife, and a general lack of humanism. Perhaps this belies my Christian theological orientation more. I don’t really like Christian fundamentalism, nor do I like the Koran much. I respect Muslims, and I mean them no harm.…
by Eric MetaxasCopyright (c) 2017.AudiobookMartin Luther’s life is controversial any way you cut it. Fundamentalists (with whom Metaxas is sympathetic) like to claim Luther as one of their own because of his insistence on Scriptural primacy. (They like to call it Scriptural authority, but such concepts were not present within Luther’s writings.) Liberals like to claim him because he broke free from institutional chains to usher in the freedom which founded to modern world. Unfortunately,…
by Eric MetaxasCopyright (c) 2011.Audiobook. This book has been on my to-read list for a while, and it feels good to finally cross it off. Bonhoeffer’s story is worth sharing. Educated as a theologian, raised as a scientist under a German psychiatrist, Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived his life in rejection of the German state-church which was coopted under Adolf Hitler. He is a reminder of what living a life in the Resistance is like. Along the…