Catalyst - Book Review Archives
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May 2008
The Episcopal Church Annual 2008
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
Details: 772 pages, hardcover, c. 2008, $39.95
Description: The most comprehensive, updated reference book available on the Episcopal Church.
-Listings for some 7,200 Episcopal churches, with addresses, size of congregation, clergy, and phone numbers. -Names and addresses of 17,000 Episcopal clergy.
-Names of national church committee and commission members.
-Fax, e-mail, and website addresses for church-related organizations.
-Listings for Episcopal schools, church periodicals, Episcopal camps and conference centers and much more.
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John Calvin: A Biography
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Details: 224 pages, paperback, c. 2006, $19.95
Description: John Calvin was one of the most important leaders of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation. In this revision of his major biography, T. H. L. Parker explores Calvin's achievement against the backdrop of the turbulent times in which he lived. With clear and concise explanations of Calvin's theology, analyses of his major works, and insights into his preaching, this definitive work brings this crucially important reformer and his world to life for today's readers.
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Disciples of the Street: the Promise of a Hip Hop Church
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
Details: 180 pages, hardcover, c. 2008, $20
Description: "This is a stunner. Eric Gutierrez opens closed windows of the soul and delivers an utterly challenging, refreshingly original work. Read it." --Malcolm Boyd, author of Are You Running with me, Jesus?
What would cause a small, 140 year-old, Episcopal Church in the heart of the South Bronx to begin offering hip-hop services? How would the church, both locally and nationally, react? Utilizing scores or interviews and months of research, Disciples of the Street, is the story of one Church's engagement with hip-hop religion, the conflicts that ensued, and the resulting birth of something much larger. Following the start of that small hip hop religious movement from its inception in the summer of 2004, through its building of a national profile, in a story that moves from the birthplace of rap to youth detention facilities in Virginia to the New South and all manner of places in between, Gutierrez looks deeply into the questions of what hip-hop has to say to the traditional church and what the church might say to hip-hop culture. Disciples of the Street is a compelling story well told and the definitive look at the issues facing a movement that's growing in popularity and gaining traction around the country.
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Richard Dawkins:why Richard Dawkins is wrong about God
Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
Details: 221 pages, paperback, c. 2007, $14.99
Description: In his influential book, The God Delusion, currently Amazon's 8th bestselling title, the atheist Richard Dawkins argues forcefully that the world would be a far happier place without religion, all versions of which are a massive delusion, founded on lies and hypocrisy. His writings do challenge Christians (and people of other faiths) to think more deeply about their beliefs and shake them out of any complacency. Christians need to hear some of the uncomfortable things he says and to know how to answer his alluring claims. Here is a robust and informed challenge to Dawkin's gospel of atheism
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Steeped in the Holy: Preaching as a Spiritual Practice
Publisher: Cowley Publications
Details: 151 pages, paperback, c. 2008, $19.95
Description: Preaching is a central task in the lives of clergy, and yet it sometimes seems as though the pressure to produce, combined with other duties of parish life, becomes a burden and contributes to the busyness that squeezes out time for spiritual practices. Steeped in the Holy seeks to reclaim the spiritual foundations for preaching, inviting clergy and students to see preparation and preaching not as an intrusion, but as an opportunity to engage with God and to develop practices that deepen a relationship with God and feed preaching.
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How to Believe: Teachers and Seekers Show the Way to a Modern, Life-Changing Faith
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Details: 209 pages, hardcover, c. 2008, $25
Description: After seeing Christianity become increasingly defined in the media as a narrow and punitive political movement, Spayde began to wonder: Are religions now just combatants in the culture wars? Should he leave the organized church? How are ordinary people using faith positively to search for the truth and improve their lives?
Spayde takes a journey across America that introduces him to an array of believers, eminent and obscure, who relate their personal stories of active and living faith-how they balance Jesus's love and judgment, the church's dictates, and their own free will-to live and love completely while on Earth. Spayde's odyssey brought him to a new understanding of why action is more important than the intellect in faith, how true solace is found in forging a personal relationship with God, and why worrying about one's own "worthiness" is always beside the point.
This is a crucial book that reveals the different paths that can lead to the same inspiring place, a book that teaches "how to believe" in ways that honor individuality, allow for personal journeys, and spiritually enrich not just our own lives but the lives of those around us.
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Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Details: 310 pages, hardcover, c. 2008, $28
Description: In a quiet town of Seneca Falls, New York, over the course of two days in July, 1848, a small group of women and men, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, held a convention that would launch the woman's rights movement and change the course of history. The implications of that remarkable convention would be felt around the world and indeed are still being felt today.
In Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Woman's Rights Movement, the latest contribution to Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments in American History series, Sally McMillen unpacks, for the first time, the full significance of that revolutionary convention and the enormous changes it produced. The book covers 50 years of women's activism, from 1840-1890, focusing on four extraordinary figures--Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. McMillen tells the stories of their lives, how they came to take up the cause of women's rights, the astonishing advances they made during their lifetimes, and the lasting and transformative effects of the work they did. At the convention they asserted full equality with men, argued for greater legal rights, greater professional and education opportunities, and the right to vote--ideas considered wildly radical at the time. Indeed, looking back at the convention two years later, Anthony called it "the grandest and greatest reform of all time--and destined to be thus regarded by the future historian." In this lively and warmly written study, Sally McMillen may well be the future historian Anthony was hoping to find.
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Evil and the Justice of God
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Details: 176 pages, hardcover, c. 2006, $18
Description: With every earthquake and war, understanding the nature of evil and our response to it becomes more urgent. Evil is no longer the concern just of ministers and theologians but also of politicians and the media.
We hear of child abuse, ethnic cleansing, AIDS, torture and terrorism, and rightfully we are shocked. But, N. T. Wright says, we should not be surprised. For too long we have naively believed in the modern idea of human progress. In contrast, postmodern thinkers have rightly argued that evil is real, powerful and important, but they give no real clue as to what we should do about it.
In fact, evil is more serious than either our culture or our theology has supposed. How then might Jesus' death be the culmination of the Old Testament solution to evil but on a wider and deeper scale than most imagine? Can we possibly envision a world in which we are delivered from evil? How might we work toward such a future through prayer and justice in the present?
These are the powerful and pressing themes that N. T. Wright addresses in this book that is at once timely and timeless.
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Intelligent Design
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress
Details: 257 pages, paperback, c. 2007, $22
Description: The subject of intelligent design has been much in the news in recent months but is often treated in a piecemeal fashion or one-sidedly. This volume highlights points of agreement and disagreement between two leading intellectuals on the subject: William A. Dembski, senior fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and Michael Ruse, an internationally known philosopher of science. Each of the contributors presents his or her position in light of the other's, providing readers with a fair and balanced case for both sides and allowing readers to decide for themselves.
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The God Box
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Details: 248 pages, hardcover, c. 2007, $16.99
Description: How could I choose betwen my sexuality and my spirituality, two of the most important parts that made me whole?
High school senior Paul has dated Angie since middle school, and they're good together. They have a lot of the same interests, like singing in their church choir and being active in Bible club. But when Manuel transfers to their school, Paul has to rethink his life. Manuel is the first openly gay teen anyone in their small town has ever met, and yet he says he's also a committed Christian. Talking to Manuel makes Paul reconsider thoughts he has kept hidden, and listening to Manuel's interpretation of Biblical passages on homosexuality causes Paul to reevaluate everything he believed. Manuel's outspokenness triggers dramatic consequences at school, culminating in a terrifying situation that leads Paul to take a stand.
Lambda Literary Award-winning author Alex Sanchez tackles a subject ripped from the headlines in this exciting and thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be both religious and gay.
"Alex Sanchez evokes the crucifying experience of adolescents wrestling with their sexual identity and their identity as Christians. This book is a gift not just to teenagers, but to those who love and work with them." -- The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church
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Noah's Ark
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Details: 48 pages, paperback, c. 1978, $7.99
Description: The story of Noah and his ark, his family, and all their many guests is here retold almost entirely in pictures of great charm and intricate detail. The bee and the fox, the sheep and the ox--two of each kind trudged aboard Noah's famous vessel. Peter Spier uses his own translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch poem about this most famous menagerie.
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The First to Follow: the Apostles of Jesus
Publisher: Church Publishing, Inc.
Details: 148 pages, hardcover, c. 2008, $18
Description: One of the first things that Jesus did in his ministry was to reach out to twelve individuals and draw them into a circle of close companionship with him. This series is about those twelve apostles, their relationships with Jesus and with each other, and what the dynamics of that community can teach us. By studying those whom Jesus selected and what he did for them, to them, with them, and through them, we can learn much about how we can we experience the Holy in our own day. Jesus did not wait for people to be perfect in order to call them into the circle of God's love. As we look at those that Jesus called, and consider ourselves as part of that enlarging circle, we gain not only a deeper sense of our own reality, but also a deeper sense of how Christ would like to work with us..
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2007
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