Shifting Faith: Modern Religion Going Rogue

Like everything else, religion is changing. New faiths are incorporated into society, and as people learn, their own views of God and Christianity change. In this collection of reviews, Henry L. Carrigan, Jr., Diane Gardner, and Virginia Konchan discuss books that look at modern religion. From a new look at sin to the latter-day trend toward small churches, these books help readers keep pace with religion in a fast-moving world.

Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies
Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung
BrazosPress
Softcover $14.99 (205pp)
978-1-58743-232-3

What differentiates DeYoung’s book from a brimstone preacher’s version of same is not the passion with which she investigates human failings, but her association of the seven deadly sins with pusillanimity. Citing Mary’s fiat at the Annunciation as an exam-ple of magnanimity of soul, “virtue” is not, according to DeYoung, an earned merit, but a response to God’s call, resulting in acts which “turn our thoughts to the glory of God because they obviously aren’t something anyone could have done without grace.”

In reading through the historiography of the seven deadly sins (Pope Gregory, Aquinas, Dante), one also recalls Hannah Ar-endt’s writings on “banality of evil.” As DeYoung shows through many examples, the problem isn’t that ne’er-do-wells aren’t aware of their viciousness and insufficiency—many don’t care enough to change. DeYoung traces the root of sloth to indiffer-ence, and “Schadenfreude” (joy in another’s misfortune) to hatred of self. Christian readers and readers of other deistic faiths will benefit from the reminder that a divinity is offended by those who act in loveless and other destructive ways; agnostic and atheist readers will be edified by this exhaustive compendium of the ways in which “vice” is glorified and even celebrated in media, litera-ture, and contemporary life. (Virginia Konchan)

Every Moment Matters: Savoring the Stuff of Life
John St. Augustine
Hampton Roads
Softcover $16.95 (192pp)
978-1-57174-589-7

“I wonder if we will ever learn that moments can be remembered—but not re-created once they have passed,” writes John St. Augustine in Every Moment Matters. The moments of our lives are all we have, he says, and we must live them fully and uncover the lessons they offer to us.

Through personal stories that reveal and inspire, St. Augustine reviews moments in his own life that have taught him and changed him in various ways. From the loss of his father to the simple kindness of a childhood hero to a walk that altered his life, readers join St. Augustine’s journey through the events that made him the man he is today. Along the way, they are challenged to pay attention to those transforming moments in life that bring personal growth and understanding.
St. Augustine, a veteran radio broadcaster who helped launched the careers of several of today’s most popular radio and television personalities, shares stories that range from the profound to the simple. Each shows how readers can embrace life-impacting events, big and small, to enrich their lives. Every Moment Matters offers a compelling perspective that challenges while remaining practical and achievable regardless of one’s circumstances. (Diane Gardner)

Muslims in America: A Short History
Edward E. Curtis, IV
Oxford University Press
Softcover $12.95 (168pp)
978-0-19-536756-0

In 2007, Curtis’s neighbor, a Baptist preacher, led a vocal protest against the installation of foot baths in a terminal in the Indian-apolis International Airport. Although the foot baths would have enabled the hundred-plus African-Muslim cabbies to wash their feet before their daily prayers, the preacher argued that the accommodation of the needs of these Muslims would be fraternizing with the enemy. In his thoughtful survey of the history of Muslims in America, Curtis, the Millennium Chair of the Liberal Arts and Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, provides a compelling overview of the ways in which Muslims have woven their lives and beliefs into the colorful tapestry of American Islam and its many strands. In fact, he observes, “the saga of Muslim America is an inextricable part of the American story.”

Curtis traces the presence of Muslims in America from the eighteenth century until the present, carefully sketching the broad range of political and religious beliefs held by Muslims in America. For example, he tells the story of Job Ben Solomon, a Muslim American slave who traveled from his native West Africa to North America, from America to England, and finally back to his home in Africa. After every chapter, Curtis includes a primary source from the period he has just covered to offer a glimpse of what Muslims thought of their relationship to their new land and their religion. Curtis’s book is a refreshing look at an important aspect of American history and culture. (Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.)

The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small is the New Big for Today’s Church
Tony and Felicity Dale, George Barna
BarnaBooks / Tyndale House
Hardcover $17.95 (234pp)
978-1-4143-2553-8

What happens when you lock two elephants — a male and a female — in a room for three years? At the end of that time you may have one baby elephant. If you lock two rabbits in a room for the same amount of time, you may end up with thousands of baby rabbits. The Dales, planters of small churches across the world, and Barna, one of America’s most acclaimed researchers into religious practice, tell this story as a way of introducing a new way of thinking about the nature of church and church growth. The elephant is a symbol of the megachurch while the rabbits symbolize those small churches that grow exponentially and transform the landscape through their growth.

Drawing on their own experience, the Dales offer insights into the methods by which various Christian religious communities can grow from simple single churches into a network of simple churches. The ideal simple church is small, with no more than fifteen to twenty attendees. A network of churches is established when a group of simple churches relate together and when a single simple church multiplies out into several churches.

This book will be most useful to Evangelical Christian communities that are striving to establish meaningful new models of Christianity in contemporary culture. (Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.)

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: With “On My Religion”
John Rawls
Harvard University Press
Hardcover $27.95 (278pp)
978-0-674-03331-3

After his death in 2002, friends of the late philosopher John Rawls discovered a brief treatise “On My Religion” among his papers. Al-though his friends knew that he had contemplated the Episcopal priesthood as an undergraduate, they were surprised to find this document. Not long after, a Princeton religion professor, Eric Gregory, discovered Rawls’s undergraduate thesis, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation of the Concept of Community in the archives of the Princeton University library. Thanks to a number of his friends, both documents are now available in this edition, edited by NYU philosophy professor Thomas Nagel and with an introduction by Nagel and Stanford political scientist Joshua Cohen, and commentary by Yale philosophy professor Robert Merrihew Adams.

Rawls explains that his thesis has two aims: to protest against naturalism—the worldview in which all relations are natural and in which spiritual life is reduced to the level of desire and appetition, leading inevitably to individualism—and to attack a specific problem (like that of sin and faith) using concepts which are derived from Biblical thought. He suggests that the reconstruction of theology must take place by using concepts such as that of community and personality. As Cohen and Nagel point out so helpfully in their introduc-tion, Rawls’s thesis contains the seeds of his A Theory of Justice including, among other ideas, an “endorsement of a morality defined by interpersonal relations rather than by pursuit of the highest good and rejection of the concept of society as a contract or bargain among egoistic individuals.” Anyone interested in Rawls’s philosophy or in contemporary moral and political philosophy will benefit from reading this book.
(Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.)

Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World
Gary A. Haugen
InterVarsity Press
Softcover $16.00 (272pp)
978-0-8308-3710-6

Ten years ago, Haugen, the president and CEO of International Justice Mission (IJM), wrote this poignant account of his struggles to end injustice and oppression in various corners of the world, from Rwanda to East Asia. A decade later, in this tenth-anniversary edi-tion of the book, Haugen offers stories of the dramatic ways that his organization’s work has dramatically changed the lives of thou-sands of individuals caught in oppressive political or social situations.

Haugen points out that the Biblical tradition continually inveighs against injustice, and IJM founds its work on this Biblical tradition as it seeks to end injustice in the world. For example, IJM has seen a child scrawl Bible verses on the walls of the brothel where she was being serially raped and praying to Jesus for rescue. IJM has seen Jesus rescue this child and restore her to her family; she has graduated from college and now she speaks courageously to crowds of thousands about ending sex trafficking.

Haugen testifies to four principles that underlie his and IJM’s work: there is a God of justice who is active in the world; the Word of God has the power to change lives; God redeems and restores the victims of injustice; Christians are embracing the bib-lical call to justice.

While the Christian quest to end injustice has taken many forms over the past forty years, most of these attempts have fo-cused on ending systemic abuses by the governments and churches of particular countries and regions of the world. Haugen and his colleagues — and those who embrace his work — begin with individuals trapped in unjust or oppressive situations and work to extricate them from their oppression, thereby changing one life at a time in hopes of changing entire systems of oppressions.

Five appendices provide a reflection and discussion guide, a list of suggested Internet sites, a book resource guide, a list of scripture verses that deal with justice, and advice to students considering a career in international human rights. The tenth-anniversary edition of his book indicates how enduring and inspirational Haugen’s work continues to be for many Christian groups. (Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.)

Churchmorph: How Megatrends are Reshaping Christian Communities
Eddie Gibbs
Baker Academic
Softcover $17.99 (222pp)
978-0-8010-3762-7

Will the Christian church survive in the twenty-first century? Will the church’s mission in the future resemble the church’s mission of the past? How has the church’s mission changed over two thousand years, and has the church been open to change in order to adapt to new models of culture? Can the church, in Gibbs’s terms, morph into a vital organization that can respond effectively to cultural trends? In his carefully researched and insightful book, Gibbs attempts to answer these and other questions regarding the future shape of Christian churches.

Gibbs identifies five megatrends to which the church must be attentive if it is to play any role at all in contemporary society. “These are the transition from modernity to postmodernity; the transition from the industrial to the information age; the transition from Christendom to post-Christendom contexts; the transition from production initiatives to consumer awareness; and the transi-tion from religious identity to spiritual exploration.” For example, for a Christian community to morph into a post-Christendom con-text, Gibbs observes, the community must learn to operate from the margins of society much like the earliest Christian communi-ties did. Churches can no longer count on playing a major role in a post-Christendom society. Instead, churches must practice incarnational presence and community if they hope to transform their own practices and the communities in which they find themselves.

Gibbs’s useful survey of approaches to the emerging missional church will find its largest audience in seminaries and churches where discussions regarding the future of the church continue to be vital and engaging. (Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.)

Accompany Them With Singing: The Christian Funeral
Thomas G. Long
Westminster John Knox Press
Hardcover $24.95 (224pp)
978-0-664-23319-8

Funerals provide an occasion for mourners to gather to remember, celebrate, and mourn a relative, friend, or neighbor. The funeral ritual may vary across the different Christian religious traditions, but the purpose of the ritual remains very similar: to partici-pate with the communion of saints in enacting the story of the gospel about life and death and to accompany this departed saint on the last portion of his or her journey. In contemporary society, however, the funeral, or memorial service, tends to focus not on the deceased but on the mourner, or the individuals “left behind” by death of the departed. “In our therapeutically inclined culture, funerals have shifted toward being defined as occasions of grief management, so quite naturally people begin to think of their main role as providing emotional comfort.”

In his compulsively readable and engaging book, Long, the Bandy Professor of Preaching at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, combines an overview of the history of funerals (Part One) with detailed and thorough practical reflections on the shape of a good Christian funeral (Part Two) as he seeks to recover the funeral as worshipful drama in Christian communi-ties. Thus, “planning for and presiding at a funeral becomes more than simply choosing the right Scripture readings, selecting suitable music, and composing a fitting homily.”

After discussing the eight purposes of a good funeral (kerygmatic, oblational, ecclesial, therapeutic, Eucharistic, com-memorative, missional, educational), Long offers his reflections on the practical matters involved in planning the funeral as a worshipful drama. In an appendix, he provides thoughtful meditations on difficult funerals: funerals for those outside the faith, funerals for those who have committed suicide, and funerals for children. Long’s book is not only an excellent resource for Christian ministers, but it is also lively reading for anyone interested about the nature and practice of funerals in America both today and in the past. (Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.)