It’s Christmas Eve and time for the second installment of my new monthly book and culture review. (You’re welcome to read the first installment, as well.) I hope you find something here that piques your interest:
- Insurrection: To Believe is Human, To Doubt Divine by Peter Rollins — According to this proponent of “pyro-theology,” the reform movements that harken back to the ethos of the “early church” should go further back to the still-present “event” that gave birth to the early church — namely, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. A different and challenging take on Christian doubt and belief and how our perspective on both inform our interaction with the world around us.
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Photo by Marrton Dormish The Network is Your Customer: Five Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age by David L. Rogers — The more technology changes our social dynamics, the more we need to understand how to leverage technology and the Internet to serve neighbors in need.
- A Song in the Night: A Memoir of Resilience by Bob Massie — The author grew up with a grim prognosis due to his hemophilia. He later contracted hepatitis and HIV from a blood transfusion. But that didn’t stop him from attending Princeton, becoming an ordained minister, getting his doctorate from Harvard Business School and creating the world’s leading standard for corporate sustainability.
- Confessions: The Making of a Postdenominational Priest by Matthew Fox — Opens with a quote from Elie Wiesel, “Whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story.” Fox was an altar boy, a Dominican for 34 years and a Catholic priest for 25, before being dismissed from his order and received into the Episcopal church. His is a unique voice from the pre- and post-Vatican II Catholic Church, and from the more recent post-denominational and creation spirituality movement that is growing in its influence on churches of all denominations today.
- God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross by Douglas John Hall — A particularly poignant topic in light of the recent Sandy Hook Shootings in Connecticut. Hall refers to the great risk of creation as the freedom to love or not to love. He writes, “Because God’s own face is set against that which negates life, suffering does not and must not have the last word…”
