DWD's Reviews

Roman Emperor Constantine (272-337 AD) Published in 1992 by Reader's Digest. Back in the day, Reader's Digest was famous for taking a popular novel and editing it down without losing the essence of the story. They were so good at it that the phrase "the Reader's Digest version" was a common way of saying getting the short version of a story. In this case, Reader's Digest has provided a short, easy-to-read and easy-to-follow history of Christianity from the death of Christ to the rise of Islam in 321 pages. It is also a passable history of the Roman Empire for the same time period. Technically, this is a re-read for me. I enjoyed it thoroughly more than 20 years ago and to my surprise, i enjoyed it just as much the second time around. Look through 3 or 4 pages and you will see several full color photos of ancient art, artifacts or locations and, most importantly, get a solid rundown of the people, ideas and controversies of the era. The only weakness is

Published in 2010 by HarperAudio. Read by Paul Boehmer. Duration: 14 hours, 37 minutes. Unabridged. Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University. The purpose of the book is to inform the reader of the eight greatest world religions, their philosophies and their way of looking at the world. Prothero is very aware that choosing just eight religions is fraught with problems. How do you choose? Is it based on influence? Number of adherents? Importance of the countries it is in? He went through all of those questions again once again when he chose the order he would present the religions he picked. The religions he profiled are: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Yoruba religion, and Daoism. He spends about 90 minutes discussing each religion and includes nearly an hour on Atheism at the end, on the theory that militant Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens) behaves much like a religion, complete with evangelistic movements an

Published in January of 2016 by HarperAudio. Read by Tristan Morris. Duration: 10 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged. Stephen Prothero takes a look at American history through the lens of "culture wars". Culture wars, for Prothero, are more than the typical left-right discussion  - they are a left-right discussion with serious religious overtones. Prothero's thesis is that the major debates in American history have been those types of debates. He looks at 5 areas: 1) The fight over who would run the country after George Washington - the John Adams (1735-1826) inheritors of the Calvinistic Puritans (John Adams) or those with a vaguely defined faith (Thomas Jefferson); 2) Catholics vs. Protestants; 3) Everyone vs. Mormons; 4) Fundamentalism vs. Modernism as commonly typified by the Scopes Monkey Trial (which only gets a passing mention in this book); 5) Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority types vs. abortion, gay marriage, the Equal Rights Amendment and more. While h

Published by Penguin Audio in 2019. Read by the author, Timothy Egan. Duration: 12 hours, 42 minutes. Unabridged. At the beginning of this pilgrimage, author Timothy Egan describes himself as a lapsed Catholic, perhaps even an agnostic. He was raised Catholic in Washington State and decided to go on a long-established pilgrimage route called the Via Francigena to contemplate his faith and how the church has betrayed its own faithful with the ongoing sexual abuse scandal. The Via Francigena runs from the cathedral at Canterbury in England, through France and Switzerland into Italy and ends in Rome at the Vatican. It is one of the most established pilgrimage routes in Europe, but not as well known as the Pilgrimage of Compostela in Spain.  Egan gives the listener little history lessons as he tells the story of his own pilgrimage through Europe. Those are usually interesting and informative. He tells his thoughts about faith and Christianity as he travels as well. When possible, he

Originally published in 1994. Joseph F. Girzone (1930-2015) discusses faith, prayer and God in this short book. Girzone is best known for his book Joshua , a powerful and effective re-telling of the Jesus story in the modern world. NEVER ALONE: A PERSONAL WAY to GOD is a pleasant read, but it doesn't deliver the emotional impact of Joshua . For me, the strongest part of the book was his discussion of how the modern church is great on staking out positions on social issues, but they miss "...the fundamental purpose of religion, to foster and mold spirituality among its members..." and "...to teach their people the ways of prayer and how to develop a deeper intimacy with God." (p. 8) He continues, "We are brought up to follow unquestioningly the practices of our religion, whatever our denomination." This has value, but too often we "...are not familiar with the message as Jesus delivered it." Following the practices of a religion are a &q

Originally printed in 2001. One of my favorite people in history is Levi Coffin. I have visited the Levi Coffin House (an official Historic Site maintained by the state of Indiana) so many times that it feels like I am making a semi-annual pilgrimage when I go.  The thing is, I find myself inspired every time I visit - both as a history lover, a champion of individual rights and as a Christian. Levi Coffin was an instrumental figure in the Underground Railroad and the abolition movement. He was not simply  a theoretical supporter of the movement that wrote letters and collected donations. He helped more than a thousand slaves escape, many of them spending time in his own home. His home in Indiana was even modified so that he could hide ten or more people at a time, if necessary. Here is a picture that I took of a great quote from Levi Coffin that is on the wall of the visitors center at his house in Fountain City:  This short book tells an interesting story of his life fr

Published in 2009 by Blackstone Audio. Read by the author, Tamim Ansary Duration: 17 hours, 28 minutes. Unabridged. Tamim Ansary has done something that is very hard to do - he has written a long history of a complicated topic without making it boring and after more than 17 hours of discussion, he left me wishing that it was even longer. Ansary makes the observation that most histories that people in the West (Western Europe and the Americas) read are written from a Western perspective. That makes sense. But, the history of the world is not just the history of Western Civilization. There are multiple civilizations on the planet. Mesoamerica (the Mayas, Aztecs, Toltecs, etc.) is a separate civilization. China is the historic center of another civilization. So is India. And between the West and India and China is another one. Westerners usually refer to it as the Middle East. This book is a history of that civilization from the beginning of recorded history (empires like Bablyon) to

Published by Oasis Audio in 2013. Read by Dean Gallagher. Duration: 4 hours, 58 minutes. Unabridged. Brian Zahnd is an American pastor of a megachurch in Missouri. I had never heard of him before I ran across this book. I was intrigued by the topic because the election of President Trump has been an interesting experience for this lifelong member of a religiously conservative church. Over time, Zahnd has become convinced that pacifism is the way that Jesus would have us go. It is not a popular opinion, but Zahnd makes a strong argument for it. Zahnd's message is essentially that the church is at its best when it acts like the Old Testament prophet Nathan in 2nd Samuel chapter 12. Nathan comes to David to tell him he had done a great wrong and call him on it. Now, according to Zahnd, t he church went from being the accuser of wrong-doing - the one that holds it to a high standard - to being the defense attorney of the government. Zahnd describes it as  the church is the chapla

Published in 2015 by Franciscan Media. Read by the author, Richard Rohr. Duration: 7 hours, 34 minutes. Unabridged. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan Friar from Kansas who comes at Christianity with a little bit of a different take than most. He would argue that it is a truly Franciscan take, and it might very well be. I would not know because I am not a Catholic - but I did find this work to be very intriguing. He does not approach the text from a purely Catholic point of view - he praises and criticizes typical interpretations from Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox perspectives. This audiobook is actually a series of lectures given by Rohr as part of a tourist cruise of Greece. In reality, it should have been called "In the Footsteps of St. Paul and St. John" since they do make a stop at Patmos and see where St. John purportedly spent many years in exile. Nevertheless, Paul's writings and Rohr's take on them dominate the lectures. One of the more interesting obser

Originally published in 1991. John Shelby Spong is the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. He has written a series of books with themes similar to this one, but Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism is one of the earlier explorations into this topic. Seeing as how it is an early look, it is a little muddled. Sprong makes a compelling argument that the entire Bible is not actually literal written history. This is an easy argument to make with some books. Jonah, for example, clearly has a point about people valuing things and/or revenge over other people.  This does not mean that the book does not have value - it is my favorite book in the Bible because of the points it makes, regardless of the value of the book as a history text. Spong's embryonic thesis is that these stories had great value in their time period and had great meaning according to their world view but don't necessarily have to be real. He did not make this analogy, but I will. Compare them to

Museums, parking duty and the point of it all. This book was originally published in 2017 by Abingdon Press. I had a week off of school for fall break last week. During that week I had three experiences of a religious bent (beyond my weekly church attendance): 1) I read this book, 2) I helped park cars for my church's annual "Trunk or Treat" that we host for the community, 3) I visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I listed the activities in this order because that is the order of importance on a spiritual level. The Creation Museum is an impressive and beautiful 75,000 square foot facility that, to me, is just the wrong approach to Christianity. It is so bent on proving that every little sentence fragment in Genesis is accurate that it almost entirely misses the point of Christianity. I felt no love or comfort there. It reminded me of the passage from 1 Kings Chapter 19: " 11-12  Then he was told, “Go, stand on the mountain at attention before   God .   Go

Published by Brilliance Audio in 2018. Read by the author, Kevin Allison. Duration: 1 hour, 22 minutes. Unabridged. The author, Kevin Allison Kevin and Ben are best friends and have been since first grade. They are both a little different than the other guys. Both are more interested in singing and acting than in sports. Both have active imaginations, a wide-ranging knowledge of movie and Broadway soundtracks and both have quirky senses of humor. As they go through school together, they have sleep-overs, they start a theater club and they even write a play together that they perform in front of their Catholic school in Cincinnati. Ben even teaches Kevin all about the birds and the bees in a three day tutorial on the playground during recess (Surprisingly solid info considering that it was based on what the older neighbor boys told him). But, on the weekend before the beginning of seventh grade, everything changes when Kevin tells Ben his biggest secret... This audiobook was bri

Published in 2015. Packard and Hope set out to investigate why formerly active members of Christian churches (all denominations) leave and don't come back to any church at all. These are not members that leave and go to a new church - these are members that completely walk away from any church. He calls them "dechurched" or "dones", as in they are completely done with church. Every year, churches across the country lose active members. In this case, Packard and Hope are not talking about merely regularly attending members - they are talking about members who lead committees, music directors and even former clergy. These are part of the leadership of the church - the people that are committed enough to get things done. Packard and Hope assumed that these folks were simply "burnout" cases - people that just were tired and dropped out altogether.  "Instead, the dechurched are walking away from church work, but not the work of the church. They're

Published in 2015 by Brilliance Audio. Read by the author, Karen Armstrong. Duration: 5 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged. Karen Armstrong is a multiple award-winning author of more than 25 books, the great majority of them exploring religion. She is particularly interested in Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  Born c. AD 5. Died c. AD 64-67 This book is aimed at the informed layman - not at other historians or religious experts. I read A LOT of history and have gone to church my entire life, but I can get lost in the weeds pretty quickly if too much professional jargon is used. Armstrong assumes a basic knowledge of the Christianity and of the New Testament. Nothing too complicated or deep and most of my Bible knowledge comes from Sunday school and small group Bible studies led by layman with a workbook. Armstrong takes care to explain things along the way because she is not out to impress the intellectuals - she has written a history for regular folks. Paul has always been i

First Published in 1973. Denial of Peter by Rembrandt (1606-1669) Shusaku Endo was a rare thing - a Christian from Japan. He also grew up mostly away from Japan (in China) and spent a considerable amount of his young adult life in France. When he was in Japan, he was different because of his religion. When he was in France, he was different because of his ethnicity. This re-telling of the Jesus' life emphasizes this idea of being an outsider. Jesus is never want people want him to be. John the Baptist's followers want him to continue to teach like John the Baptist. His early followers want him to perform miracles all of the time. His later followers want him to overthrow the king and drive out the Romans. Meanwhile, Jesus is teaching lessons about love and forgiveness that no one seems to want to hear. Endo's Jesus is a melancholy man - who wouldn't be when your main message is ignored and everyone wants to you be something you can't be? Endo chooses to pass ov

Published by Penguin Audio in 2016. Read by Sean Pratt. Duration: 3 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. This short book takes a fresh look at Christmas by going back to its roots. Keller correctly notes that Christmas is unique in that it is our most popular secular holiday and our most popular religious holiday. And, the secular holiday focuses on Christmas as a moment of hope - "Peace on Earth and Good Will Towards Men" can happen. Keller asserts that the religious tradition of Christmas says just the opposite - mankind is irredeemable and God had to come to mankind and provide the way out of its mess - through Christ. He tells it with a lot of eloquence.  The  best part of the book, though, is the discussion of Jesus' pedigree in the Book of Matthew. Keller looks at why certain people were mentioned and why others were not. For example, " David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife" points out the fact that David (Israel's gr

Published in 2018 by HarperAudio. Read by the author, Rob Schenck. Duration: 11 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. Rob Schenck tells the story of his life as a story of three conversions. His first conversion was a conversion from Judaism to Christianity as a teenager. Soon after graduating high school he married and began to work to his certification to join the ministry. He first worked in a shelter for junkies but he found that to be a little too dangerous for his wife. Plus, he longed for something with a larger impact. He became a pastor with a church but still felt that wasn't enough. He participated in joint missions in Mexico to help those that live in the garbage dumps and scrounge them for food and recyclables. After one of his trips he found that his twin brother (also a pastor) had become involved in Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion movement that encouraged protesters to block the entrances to abortion clinics and use non-violent resistance to stop women from gett

Published in 2008 by Thomas Nelson. Dan Merchant went on a cross-country trip in an effort to discuss why it is that so many people have a negative view of Christians and Christianity. He often dons a set of coveralls covered in religious-themed bumper stickers (both for and against religion) and then engages random people on the street in a short conversation about religion. His goal is to find out why a religion that is supposed to be based on a message of love is dividing people? Isn't that oxymoronic? Merchant's strength is his congenial nature. He takes criticism very well - he actually listens to the answers he gets to his questions and takes them to heart. The answers are pretty predictable. If Christians came even halfway close to their ideals, it would be a different story. But, the experience of too many people, especially in certain communities, is that Christians do nothing but condemn and maybe even rejoice at their misfortunes as punishments from God.  Ear

Published by Tantor Audio in 2016. Read by Guy Bethell. Duration: 7 hours, 20 minutes. Julius Caesar (100 B.C. to 44 B.C.) Unabridged. The entire history of the world is less than 7 and 1/2 hours? Yep, that's what Christopher Lascelles purports to offer in his A Short History of the World . He acknowledges that this is not a complete history - he never intended it to be. Instead, his aim is to connect some of the dots that the average reader may have picked up in history class, movies and History Channel documentaries (and hopefully spark a bit more interest). Lascelles does succeed in hitting many of the high points and certainly does a better job at not being as Eurocentric as other short world histories have been, such as A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. Lascelles spends quite a bit of time discussing China, Japan, India and Mongolia. All that being said, there are entire civilizations that are ignored or get nothing more than a passing nod. That is al