| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
PT Media Picks: Books |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Oldie
but Goodie
My Utmost for His Highest
By Oswald Chambers, an updated edition in
today's language, edited by James Reimann (Discovery House, 1992;
365 pages; $13.95, hardcover; (800) 653-8333) |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
Presbyterian Ruth Bell Graham, wife of evangelist
Billy Graham, calls this Oswald Chambers book a rare devotional
classic. "It has been a source of challenge and blessing
in my own life for years," she says. "I don't think
anyone can read it consistently without being a better servant
of Christ."
Editor James Reimann worked 1,800 hours to produce this updated
edition, changing words and phrases to reflect current language
usage while maintaining the original intent of the author.
The basic format remains the same: a central thought based
upon a brief Scripture text and a meditation, one for each
day of the year. |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Chambers (1874–1917) grew up in Scotland and was greatly
influenced by Charles Haddon Spurgeon's preaching while
he was still a teenager. He studied at the University of Edinburgh
and became a Bible teacher and chaplain. A popular speaker,
he traveled throughout the United Kingdom, the United States
and Japan. Chambers died in 1917 following surgery for a ruptured
appendix. His wife, Gertrude, took shorthand notes of his teaching,
and had those notes published after his death. My Utmost for
His Highest was by far his most influential book.
Some may wish that the editor had used more inclusive language,
but on the whole, Reimann has made this devotional classic
more readable for the current generation.
—Richard Hasler,
a retired Presbyterian pastor
living in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
| |
Bound
to be human
Bound Together: A Theology for
Ecumenical Community Ministry
By David Bos (Pilgrim
Press, 2005; 146 pages; $23, paper) |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
Reading a book is like taking
a journey: You meet old friends and make new ones, track down
dusty roads and speed along superhighways, confront skeptics
and visionaries, and—if the book is a good one—travel
back to your own community, and yourself. This book took me
on such a journey.
I encountered old friends and mentors and
revisited familiar themes: enacting justice and mercy, caring
for the oppressed, empowering the poor, loving one's
neighbor—all in the context of community ministry. Author
David Bos recommends stumbling, on foot mind you, down a rocky
path of rigorous and honest truth-telling about our specific
problems. |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
We are inescapably embedded in societal structures
that oppress, he writes, adding in good Reformed theological
fashion that we must see those structures as redeemable. We
can call them and ourselves into covenant relationships, beginning,
not with Christology or Christian identity but with humanity
and our identity as creatures on a fragile planet. Our Christian
faith is crucial, he says, but it isn't the best basis
for community ministry—our common humanity serves us
better in that arena.
This wise and winsome book could be used
in seminary courses in theology and practical ministry alike;
it explores interfaith cooperation in community ministries
and presents a theology that can sustain such ministries. Pastors
and church educators also will find it helpful.
—Frances
S. Adeney,
William A. Benfield Jr. Professor of Evangelism
and Global Mission,
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Rest
and reflect
Sacred Space: The Prayer Book 2006
By the Jesuit Communication Centre,
Ireland (Ave Maria
Press, 2005; 377 pages; $12.95, paper) |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
If you haven't checked
out the Web site of Ireland's Jesuit
Communication Centre,
you're in for a treat. It's a rest-stop oasis on
the "information superhighway" that invites us
to slow to a stop, sit with Scripture and pray deeply.
This book extends a similar invitation to
people who aren't comfortable praying online or don't
have computers at hand. It offers the same daily invitation
to prayer—based on the same lectionary readings. The
book, an annual, was prompted by the popularity of the Web
site. If you prefer your meditations with the feel of paper
and the aroma of ink, and don't mind the $12.95, this
book is a great way to enjoy the feast that the Jesuits of
Ireland have set before you.
—Teresa
Blythe |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
A
singular spirituality
Restless Souls: The Making of American
Spirituality
By Leigh Eric Schmidt (HarperSanFrancisco,
2005; 352 pp; $26.95, hardcover)
The kind of do-it-yourself religion that Robert
Bellah and company dubbed "Sheilaism" in Habits
of the Heart (1985) is not a creation of the "Baby
Boomer" generation. Schmidt, a professor of religion at
Princeton University, found through historical research that
Americans have been chasing ephemeral and individualized spiritual
experiences since the dawn of the republic. |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
Growing weary of reading critiques
of Boomers as spiritually vacuous cafeteria-style seekers of
creedless mysticism and self-help spirituality, Schmidt traced
the roots of religious experimentation in the United States
and found that they run quite deep. Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman,
the Transcendentalists and Quakers are all precursors of Boomers
like Sheila Larson, the now-legendary nurse who answered Bellah's survey
about religion by saying it was "Sheilaism," something
she'd made up, an amalgam of all the great religions
of the world. The term soon became a code word for New Age
mish-mosh spirituality. |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Schmidt challenges critics
of "Sheilaism" to consider Larson and others of
her ilk part of what he calls the Spiritual Left, a group for
which "the primacy of individual experience is joined
to a whole web of spiritual practices and social commitments." He
contends that what we call the "new spirituality" is,
in fact, quite old, and includes many mainline Protestants,
Reform Jews and liberal Catholics, among others.
—Teresa
Blythe |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Faith:
No sure thing
Letters to a Young Doubter
By William Sloane Coffin (Westminster
John Knox Press, 2005; 185 pages; $14.95, hardcover) |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
Frederick Buechner once
called doubt the "ants in the pants of faith." Preacher
and activist William Sloane Coffin, inspired by Rainer Maria
Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, dedicates his
latest book to those of us who are plagued by these "ants." Coffin
addresses matters of life and faith in the belief-shattering
environment of a college campus, dispensing advice to an imagined
friend, a bright young student. He includes a quotation from
Rilke's famous correspondence with an aspiring young
poet: "Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your
heart and try to love the questions themselves. ... You will
live into the answers." |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Coffin writes on topics ranging
from professors "bent
on disproving your favorite proven facts" to some of
the things about which we all are uncertain at times: sin,
idolatry, self-righteousness, death, Biblical interpretation,
God's power and God's love. Readers who admire
Coffin for his social consciousness will be happy to discover
that the letters also address such matters as abortion, nuclear
weapons, homosexuality and terrorism.
"Doubts," Coffin writes, "move you forward,
not backward, just as long as you doubt out of love of the
truth." He quotes Emily Dickinson: "The unknown
is the mind's greatest need, and for it no one thinks
to thank God." He warns against demanding absolute intellectual
certainty, reminding his young correspondent that wisdom is
a matter of "heart, mind, and soul, all pulling together."
Coffin says he agrees with Tolstoy
that certain questions are put to humanity "not so much that we should answer
them, but that we should spend a lifetime wrestling with them." He
says that faith is no substitute for thinking, but faith makes
good thinking possible.
—Gary Luhr, executive
director
of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
