DWD's Reviews

Published in October of 2024 by eChristian. Read by James R. Cheatham. Duration: 7 hours, 28 minutes. Unabridged. Have you ever listened to someone speak, agreed wholeheartedly with almost everything the person said, but still felt underwhelmed by the presentation? That's where I am with this book. Bezner is the pastor of a church in Houston and he discusses how the church needs to stop being a cheerleader for both America and Jesus. Oftentimes, America comes first - especially as churches make political power a priority.  As the title says, Bezner says the church has to return to honoring Kingdom Values over American Values. Bezner is not anti-American, but he does not that American popular culture and American political do not really align with Kingdom Values - and that should be the goal. He goes on to tell about things he's done wrong in this area of his ministry and things that he believes are working out well now. Like I said at the outset, I liked what Bezner had to say,...

Published in October of 2024 by Worthy Books. Read by the author, April Ajoy. Duration: 8 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. Star-Spangled Jesus is the story of April Ajoy and her spiritual evolution since the political appearance of Donald Trump in 2015-2016.  Is it weird that a politician caused a spiritual evolution?  No, not in a world of Christian Nationalism. For the most basic definition, I am going to say that it is a belief that a person can't truly be an American if they aren't Christian and their rights as an American should reflect that. Also, this is precisely what happened to me, so I get it. Trump shocked me out of the Republican = Good Christian mindset because of the simple reason that he is so overtly antithetical to so many Christian ideals and is proud of it. If the previous paragraph offends or confuses you, you will hate this book.  Ajoy's pre-2015 Christian experience was much more conservative than mine and more intense. Her father was a conservative p...

Published in 2020 by ChristianAudio. Read by Neil Shah. Duration: 8 hours, 5 minutes. Unabridged. I heard about The Other Side of the Wall on The Holy Post podcast . I knew that there were Palestinian Christians in Gaza, but I hadn't given it much thought. Generally, I find the Palestinian/Israeli conflict too intractable to think about. It's not that I don't care, it's that simple solutions (or even insanely complicated solutions) don't even seem to be on the horizon at all and in a world with so many problems close at hand, it's easy not to think about problems half a world away. My bandwidth is just not that big. But, the interview was good - it came from an unexpected source in this conflict. The podcast host interviewed Munther Isaac, a Lutheran pastor and teacher. He is also a Palestinian from Gaza. There has been a continual Christian presence in Gaza as long as anyone can tell, although it is dwindling as Palestinian Christians opt out of the conflict z...

Published in 2024 by HarperAudio. Read by the author, Bakari Sellers. Duration: 4 hours, 33 minutes. Unabridged. The Moment that Bakari Sellers refers to in his book is the so-called moment of racial reckoning that came with the murder of George Floyd and the protests all around the country that followed. Sellers discusses a lot of relevant things that lead up to this moment including the murder of 9 African Americans by a young White supremacist in Charleston in 2015 and Covid-19. But, events like the Buffalo shooting  of 2022, continued questionable acts of  and media and political-types discussing the Great Replacement Theory from 2017 until the present day have shown that moment of reckoning was not a big a moment that people supposed it was. Or, it demonstrates that the racist elements in America are pushing back hard. I have run across Sellers as a guest on a couple of different podcasts that I follow and have always found him to be thoughtful and engaging. I have to ...

  Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.con Read by the author, Alan Noble. Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes. Unabridged. Alan Noble is a college professor and a Christian writer who writes for Christian and non-Christian publications.  He also struggles with a mental illness that he does not identify in this short book. On Getting Out of Bed is all about dealing with the depression and struggles that come with mental illness, thus the title. Noble's powerful description of overwhelming depression demonstrates that he understands the issue and how it effects people well. This is important because it shows that he is coming from a place of understanding and that is vitally important. His advice is not easy advice, but it is realistic advice. One of my relatives was advised by well-meaning church members that the best way to deal with depression and suicidal ideation was prayer for God to help with these thoughts. I cannot stress enough that this was sincerely intended to be helpfu...

Published by Zondervan in August of 2013. Read by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge. Duration: 7 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. America's church members are dropping out of church at a record pace - millions upon millions over the last 2 decades and, according to the stats, the only thing that will slow the pace is the fact that Christianity in America will be so much smaller that it will statistically impossible to lose so many people without completely emptying the pews. The authors started out to identify a number of things such as: a) Who is leaving - is it the old, the young, the middle-aged? b) Who is staying? c) Why are they leaving? Is it toxic politics? Sex scandals? Abuse? Lost interest? No connection? d) Will they be willing to come back? What would it take? This book draws heavily from a religious attitude survey administered by Baylor University from time to time. I recently r ead another book on Christian Nationalism that used the same surveys and these boo...

Published by Tantor Audio in 2020. Read by Tom Parks. Duration: 6 hours, 44 minutes. Unabridged. Whitehead and Perry are the first sociologists who set out to do an in-depth study of Christian Nationalism and Christian Nationalists. Whitehead (Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis) and Perry (University of Oklahoma) both hail from states where Christian Nationalism plays a strong role in the political and cultural realms. First, you need a working definition of Christian Nationalism. Whitehead describes it as:    "a cultural framework that is all about trying to advocate for a fusion between Christianity — as they define it — and American civic life." I also like this description by a completely unrelated person,  Rev. Skye Jethani :  "Christians participating in politics or influencing society with their values is NOT Christian Nationalism.  Christians believing they have a God-given right to dominate the government & society by excludi...

  Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in 2019. Read by Arthur Morey. Duration: 12 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged. Barry Strauss is a professor of the history of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. As the title clearly says, Strauss tells his reader/listeners about what he judges to be the ten most important Roman emperors and ends up telling a decent political history of the Roman Empire along the way. Bronze statue erected c.175 AD of  Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), one of the Roman Emperors featured in  this book. When I say he chose the ten most important emperors, that doesn't mean he chose the ten best emperors. He has more than one emperor that demonstrates how a bad leader can abuse the political consensus, damage the political system, and leave a lot of confusion in his/her wake. But, change is not necessarily a bad thing - especially when handled by talented leaders like Augustus and Constantine.  This was an interesting listen and well-read by Arthur Morey. I...

  Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in October of 2022. Read by Shamaan Casey. Duration: 10 hours, 57 minutes. Unabridged. Jackie Robinson.  He is an icon of sports. And politics. And American history. All fans of baseball know at least the broad strokes of the story of Jackie Robinson (1919-1972) and how he integrated baseball. This book offers a detailed re-telling of that story with a twist - a look at how Jackie Robinson's faith led him to this path and helped sustain him. Robinson's early life, his time in service during World War II and his college sports career and his relationship with his wife are all covered. The biggest single part of the book is, appropriately, the story of how he and Branch Rickey (the head of the Brooklyn Dodgers) worked together to integrate Major League Baseball in 1947. The book also looks at how Rickey's faith led him to act to make the world a more just place by acting in such a symbolic manner. Jackie Robinson stealing hom...

  Published by Spello Press in 2019. Brian Zahnd is a pastor in Missouri and he is concerned with American Christianity. American Christianity is in trouble because it has stopped doing what it is supposed to do. For so many Christians, Christianity has stopped being a counter-cultural force preaching love and grace. Instead, it has become, at best indifferent to the flaws in American culture. At worst, it is a cheerleader for American culture, as though Jesus was born in America, drank Coca-Cola and ate Chick-fil-A at least twice a week. Zahnd points out on page 34 that this is not a new thing - it has happened over and over again in history. "Rome. Byzantium, Russia, Spain, France, England and Germany have all done it. Seventeen centuries ago the Roman church got tangled up in imperial purple. In the 1930s, the German evangelical church got tangled up in Nazi red and black." A Christian flag at the January 6 riot. Is the place for a symbol of Christ on the side of rioters w...

  Published in 2022 by Zondervan. Read by the author, Andy Stanley. Duration: 5 hours, 11 minutes. Unabridged. Andy Stanley brings a warning to churches across the United States: Do not become involved in partisan politics. Jesus is not a Republican and he is not a Democrat. He did not come to rule this world and he did not make his church a government for this world. Nevertheless, Stanley has been criticized by church members he has known for years for not taking splashy political stands. . Stanley goes on to detail very practical reasons not to get involved in partisan politics, such as ticking off 40% of your potential mission field by endorsing a certain candidate and being known as a Democrat or Republican church.  The answer? Neither.  By identifying with a political candidate or a party, you are rejecting your fellow Christians who disagree with you by identifying with a party more than identifying with the body of Christ. This is literally a heresy. The body of Ch...

  Published in 2019 by Hourly History Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) is the founder of the controversial Christian sect knows as Christian Science or The Church of Christ, Scientist in the late 1800s. I picked this short biography because I know something of the teachings of Christian Science, I knew next to nothing about its founder. Mary Baker Eddy grew up in small town New Hampshire and was often sickly as a child and young adult. It is unclear whether her illnesses were due to physical or nervous problems. As was typical for the time, life was hard and there were many tragic deaths in the early part of her life, including an older brother who served as a mentor, her husband while she was pregnant, a fiance and her mother. Her family took over raising her son and did not let her see him for years. Her son's caretakers moved away and let him believe that Mary Baker Eddy was dead. They did not speak to one another again until he was 34 years old. None of this, of course, make Mary Ba...

  Published by eChristian in November of 2021. Read by the author, John Pavlovitz Duration: 6 hours, 19 minutes Unabridged. John Pavlovitz is a minister who has done a lot of thinking about how Jesus told us to act and how formal "name brand" Christianity often acts to those that it deems as "less". We all know that thinking of people as "less" is not really a thing Christ endorses, but it is still an all too often sad reality. Who are the less that have been in the news lately? Immigrants, LGTBQ people, Muslims...and more.  Pavlovitz asks: "If God is love and if you're emulating that God, then you should be loving. If you claim a religious worldview or have spiritual aspirations, those should yield more compassion, not less; more decency, not less; more generosity, not less. If not, what's the point of having them?" Great question. What's the point? I've had these thoughts more than once in the last 6 years, coinciding with the c...

Published in August of 2015 by Tantor Audio. Read by the author, Brant Hansen. Duration: 4 hours, 21 minutes. Unabridged. Brant Hansen came to a realization that righteous anger, an emotion that a lot of my fellow Christians seem to adore should not actually be a tool in the Christian toolbox. It's on display all over social media and at public events like the current spate of contentious school board meetings. For example, recently a former member of 2 Contemporary Christian bands was seen at the forefront of a mob that was menacing people in the parking lot after a school board meeting. He yelling, "You can live freely, but we will find you!" at medical personnel who testified in favor of masks. He became the story and all Christians got a black eye as Taliban-type extremists.  The author, Brant Hansen Instead, Hansen is trying his best to take the words of God seriously when he says  to avoid anger. Here are 20 verses that give that counsel. He describes the change i...

Published in 1999 by Nan A. Talese, an imprint of Doubleday. The Desire of the Everlasting Hills  is the third book in  The Hinges of History Series  by  Thomas Cahill.  It is a series of histories that look at important long term movements in history that helped create Western Civilization.  Nearly 20 years ago I read this book and the second book in this series,  The Gifts of the Jews   and then parked them on a bookshelf. I never read more books in the series and simply forgot all about them. With the pandemic quarantine came a purging of the bookshelves and these books returned to the to-be-read pile.  Overall, I enjoyed The Gifts of the Jews , despite some slow spots. I had high hopes for this book because I thought it would fit in well with the strongest parts of its predecessor. But, I found this book to be a mostly plodding history with an absolutely excellent and inspiring last chapter attached to it.  And, I have solved the mys...

  Originally published in 1998 by Nan A. Talese/Anchor Books in 1998. The Gifts of the Jews is the second book in The Hinges of History Series by Thomas Cahill.  It is a series of histories that look at important long term movements in history that helped create Western Civilization.  I read this book when it was first published and I placed it on my shelf and did not touch it for more than 20 years. Over time, I remembered it as  remembered it as a dense tome and continued to keep it on my shelf  as more of a trophy to my ability to read through difficult books than for any desire to go back and consult it or even re-read it. That changed when we stuck at home during the pandemic quarantine and we came to realize that our extensive bookshelves were overwhelmed and a purge was in order. This book was "purged" from the shelves, but went in to my to-be-read pile after I leafed though it. I don't know why I remembered this book as hard to read. Cahill has a real g...

Published in 2019 by Fortress Press Lenny Duncan, as noted in the title, is a black pastor in a very white church body - the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I belong to a different Lutheran denomination, but I recognize the congregations and the issues he is talking about. I found out about Dear Church from an interview on the morning news on NPR. Duncan took a unique route to becoming a pastor. He was a homeless teen, he was a prostitute, he served time in jail and he was seeking something spiritual when he attended an ELCA church and heard the Lutheran teachings on God's grace and his life was changed. Now, he is a pastor telling this church that he loves that it must do better. To be fair to the ELCA, this letter is not just applicable to that denomination, it is applicable to most of the mostly white mainline protestant denominations. But, comments like this one are more than fair for all Lutheran churches: " People are deciding not to come to our churche...

  Published on July 14, 2020 by Kalorama. Read by Suzie Althens. Duration: 12 hours, 3 minutes. Unabridged. Kristen Kobes du Mez comes to Jesus and John Wayne from the perspective of a person of faith. This is important because this book is highly critical of a certain strand of Christianity. This strand of Christianity has replaced the values of Jesus with the values personified by John Wayne. Don't get me wrong - I have watched my fair share of John Wayne movies. I always stop to watch "The Cowboys" and the big muddy fistfight scene in "McClintock!" "Rooster Cogburn and the Lady" is one of my favorite westerns, even if it isn't a favorite of most John Wayne fans. But, the lessons taught in most John Wayne movies are not the lessons taught by Christ. His movies rarely model turning the other cheek and often endorse revenge. They are escapist entertainment, but hardly the basis of a religious movement. Or, are they? There is a movement in evangeli...