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…
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…
Despite the academic publisher, this book is essentially a defense of (a conservative version of the) Christian faith to skeptics. Stackhouse deals with defending religion in general, but he obviously addresses Christianity in the most detail. Despite his expertise in teaching world religions, these other religions receive only superficial treatment. I take issue with Stackhouse’s description of Christianity in chapter 2. It contains a description of conservative Western Christianity. He does not describe progressive and…