christianity – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

The Prophetic Imagination: 40th Anniversary Edition

By Scott J. Pearson | September 4, 2024September 4, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

The Hebrew religion has an interesting role of a “prophet” (navi). Along with the Law and the Writings, it serves as one of the big three sections of the Hebrew Bible. Only a couple of other religions, usually Canaanite, have a similar personality type of ecstatic truth-tellers. Presbyterian theologian Walter Brueggemann, borrowing from Jewish rabbi Abraham Heschel, describes the essential prophetic feature as an imagination of an alternative reality. Prophets apply that imagination against a…

Biography-Memoir

John Lewis: A Life by David Greenberg

By Scott J. Pearson | August 10, 2024August 10, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Like many Americans, John Lewis’ casket coming across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 2020 evoked tears in me. He was one of the last great leaders of the 1960s civil rights movement to die. With the Black Lives Matter movement in the streets, the baton had been passed to a new generation. I grew up a white Republican in conservative South Carolina and did not knew who John Lewis was until much later…

Reading Through Rachel Held Evans’ Last Book Published in Her Lifetime

By Scott J. Pearson | June 3, 2024September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Setting: The 1925 Scopes Trial in East Tennessee Ninety-nine years ago in 1925, the famous Scopes trial occurred in Dayton, Tennessee, in the state’s eastern part, halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville. The state legislature had recently made it illegal to teach human evolution in public schools. The rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s genetic mechanism for evolution had brought these concepts to the front of the American mind. At the ACLU’s encouragement, one teacher John Scopes deliberately…

Biography-Memoir Religion-Philosophy

I Take My Coffee Black: Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith & Being Black in America

By Scott J. Pearson | February 25, 2024February 25, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

This book opens with a heavy moment of racial stereotyping of an innocent black male as suspect, even criminal. Then it introduces us to that man’s life story. Hardly nefarious, author Tyler Merritt has overcome numerous challenges to embrace life today. With loads of humor and empathy, he lets readers know what it feels to be him. He is entangled at times with fame, but in the long run, he learns to be authentically himself.…

Religion-Philosophy

Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water & Loving the Bible Again

By Scott J. Pearson | October 3, 2023October 20, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Fundamentalist and evangelical preachers often try to enforce a “literal” interpretation on the Christian Scriptures. That perspective often removes the affective, emotional, and wonder-filled components – precisely the original authors’ main points. The late Rachel Held Evans was raised an evangelical but became an outspoken mainline Protestant before her untimely death. Here, she tells her story alongside the Bible’s story. She tries to recapture some of the amazement that drew many to read the Christian…

Biography-Memoir Religion-Philosophy

Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Failed a Generation

By Scott J. Pearson | May 14, 2023May 14, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Evangelicalism grew popular in the 1980s-1990s, yet many, like myself and Jon Ward, were wounded by a movement that seemed more self-interested and self-absorbed than interested in bettering the real world. Ward’s memoir/”testimony” (a common term in evangelical religion) conveys this culture clearly. A pastor’s son, he describes how some of his one-time evangelical heroes fell in notable ways in the lead-up to and during the Trump administration. Ward himself has built a notable career…

Politics Religion-Philosophy

How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor

By Scott J. Pearson | January 28, 2023January 28, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

What does it mean to be simultaneously a devout Christian and an American citizen? Are such dual allegiances even possible? In this book, Mouw – a scholarly, religious expert on the Christian’s place in the (American) public square – offers a case that these domains can be compatible with each other… for the most part. He does so in a way that sides neither with the left nor the right, but instead welcomes warm-hearted debate…

Religion-Philosophy

Gravity & Grace by Simone Weil

By Scott J. Pearson | January 8, 2023January 8, 2023 by Scott J. Pearson

Simone Weil, a twentieth-century French philosopher and political activist, possessed excellent academic training and worked in the Spanish leftist political movements. Around the advent of World War II, however, she became disillusioned with the totalitarian politics of Europe and made a reflective move inward. She began to convert to a Roman Catholic form of Christianity. Unfortunately, she died in obscurity before the war’s end as a result of a longstanding struggle with anorexia. She had…

Religion-Philosophy

The Inconvenient Gospel: A Southern Prophet Tackles War, Wealth, Race, & Religion

By Scott J. Pearson | November 16, 2022November 16, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

The Baptist faith I grew up with, at its best, tries to transform the world by living out values alien to contemporary society. Clarence Jordan, a son of Georgia in the American South, paid attention to his Christian upbringing, but as an adult, realized that American society often did not follow Jesus Christ’s lead. Religion was often kept in the walls of the church instead of being practiced on the street. This collection of writings,…

Humanities Religion-Philosophy Society

Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole & Just

By Scott J. Pearson | June 25, 2022June 25, 2022 by Scott J. Pearson

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.…