POSTCARDS from BABYLON: THE CHURCH in AMERICAN EXILE by BrIan Zahnd

 

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 who attack
their "enemies", smear feces on the wall, and threaten to
kidnap and kill politicians? Is that the message he taught?

The problem is this: "A church in bed with empire cannot credibly call the empire to repent. The loss of prophetic courage leads to a pathetic capitulation."

The church finds itself with two masters - America and Jesus. "We need to make it abundantly clear that 'America First' is incompatible with a global church whose mission is announce and embody the kingdom of Christ." (p. 47)

Zahnd is concerned with the conflation of political goals and ideals with religious goals and ideals. "What I see among evangelicals - especially among some of the most prominent evangelical leaders - is an enthusiastic, uncritical, carte blance support of Donald Trump that has more than a touch of religious aura to it...I'm profoundly uncomfortable when I see enthusiastic support for Donald Trump impinging upon allegiance to Jesus Christ and what he taught his followers." (p. 138-9)

Later on the same page he quotes Pat Robertson saying that opposing Donald Trump is "revolting against God's plan." 

Zahnd writes plenty of memorable quotes and also sometimes meanders around quoting old song lyrics and poetry that sometimes has only a tangential relationship to the topic at hand, but he has a point - the church serves Jesus, not a political leader (regardless of party).

The church's creation story has to be, at the very least, the one in the New Testament with Jesus, the cross, the empty tomb, the disciples and Pentecost. It cannot be the one with the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence and Benjamin Franklin. That is a fine story, but it doesn't offer the hope that Jesus does.

Zahnd has come to the conclusion that followers of Jesus should be non-violent and he works that in throughout the book. This is my second Zahnd book and he's starting to persuade me.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: POSTCARDS from BABYLON: THE CHURCH in AMERICAN EXILE by BrIan Zahnd.

AS YOU WISH: INCONCEIVABLE TALES from the MAKING of THE PRINCESS BRIDE (audiobook) by Cary Elwes

 

Published in 2014 by Simon and Schuster Audio
Multicast performance, mostly read by the author, Cary Elwes
Duration: 7 hours, 1 minute

Unabridged.

If you are a fan of the movie The Princess Bride, like I am, this is a must-read book (or must-listen if you are an audiobook listener like me). Cary Elwes, if you don't know, stars in the movie as Wesley/The Dread Pirate Roberts.

Elwes interviews all of the major actors in the movie who are still with us and tells the story of the creation of the movie from the writing of the original script by William Goldman all the way through the eventual success of the movie in the video rental market. Goldman is the author of the book that the movie is based and was an experienced and well-respected writer of screenplays, having written the Academy Award-winning scripts for All the President's Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He also said that The Princess Bride was his favorite script and he wouldn't trust it to just anyone.

Cary Elwes as the Dread Pirate Roberts

When he can, Elwes incudes audio clips for the quotes he included in the original book. If there are no audio clips available, he has the same actor consistently read the quotes. It is a nice touch, actually hearing things like director Rob Reiner describe the pitch he made to Golden and Wallace Shawn describe how nervous he was making the movie and how he never really understood the humor of his character Vizzini and never has no idea why everyone thinks this is an iconic role.

The book is a joy to listen to and I thoroughly enjoyed all of the little stories that made up this audiobook.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: AS YOU WISH: INCONCEIVABLE TALES from the MAKING of THE PRINCESS BRIDE (audiobook) by Cary Elwes.

MAHDIST WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published by Hourly History in 2020.

One of the nice things about the e-books that Hourly History publishes is that they offer free books every week and they cover a wide range of topics in a manageable size. This book is a great example. There is no way that I would have read a 400 page history of this war simply but I was perfectly willing to read about it for an hour while while waiting for an appointment.

If you have never heard of the Mahdist War, join the club. This is one of the seemingly never-ending series of colonial wars that Britain took up as the European powers divided up Africa in the 1800's. 

The Mahdist flag

In this case, Sudan rose up and threw out their joint Ottoman/Egyptian overlords, which caused a lot uproar in the area. The British thought it would be a danger to their vassal state of Egypt and possibly Ethiopia, Somalia and may even threaten shipping along the Horn of Africa and access to India.

This was probably an overreaction, but the British decided to put the rebellion down. They sent in Egyptian troops, they tried to recruit local troops and, finally, they decided to send in soldiers from other parts of the British Empire. When they failed (due to some seriously bad choices by their officers), they did it again. At various points there were 3 or 4 different armies marching around fighting against each other. Eventually, they subdued Somalia. 

Looking back on this war more than 100 years later, it looks like a big waste of lives and money. The UK is no longer a presence in the area and Sudan continues to be in an uproar. 

I rate this ebook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  THE MAHDIST WAR: A HISTORY from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History.

UNCIVIL AGREEMENT: HOW POLITICS BECAME OUR IDENTITY (audiobook) by Lilliana Mason

 

Published by Tantor Audio in 2019.
Read by Rebecca Gibel.
Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.

Lilliana Mason is an associate research professor at Johns Hopkins University. She collects, analyzes and breaks down the raw data that tells us what we already know about American politics right now - we are polarized.

For me, the most interesting part in when she looks at what that means and who is actually being polarized here. If you are a true political junkie - the type of person that reads a lot of news, watches the Sunday morning talking head shows and the has clearly identifiable ideological positions you can be very partisan, but are unlikely to be truly polarized. 

The true insight in this book came from a deep look at the most polarized people - the people that truly believe that the other party is a clear and present danger to the country and that all Republicans are clearly Nazis or all Democrats are clearly communists. You run across the people in the comment sections on social media all of the time.

It turns out those people don't really have ideological positions. Instead, they simply identify with their "team" and will support it no matter what happens or even if they flip-flop ideologically. They are literally the most ignorant of the ideological positions their party takes, they just support the party - very similarly to sports fans that support their team no matter how badly it is managed or how badly it plays. However, it is not dangerous to the country if a fan continues to support the NFL's Detroit Lions (statistically the 2nd worst team over the last 20 years) despite their obvious incompetence. It can be dangerous to the entire country if "fans" always show up to support their party's nominee for any office if they are clearly incompetent and have no business being in office.

One sees this easily with those "man on the street" interviews at political rallies with people who are remarkably enthusiastic and also remarkably ill-informed (links to people on both sides of this polarized political landscape). The problem with these  types of political partisans is that they literally cannot be talked out of their positions because they have no positions outside of "My side is right and your side is evil and possibly demonic" (thank you Franklin Graham for that one).

Your party can literally flip-flop on major policy issues like international trade and people just roll with it like it's no big deal because they had no idea that their party stood for that policy to begin with. You can't argue them out of a policy position because they don't know any policy positions in the first place. Tell them their party is for a position and they are all in. Tell them that the position changed the next week and they are still all in because it is not about the position because there are no standards and no ideals - just supporting the brand no matter what the brand does.

I recently had an encounter online with an old friend who went to school to be an ordained youth minister and has served as one for a long time (25+ years.) We have lost track with one another and only came back into contact because of an online political discussion over the post of a mutual friend. He was totally for a political stunt that I was against on a religious basis (not abortion - another policy). When I brought up the religious perspective on what had happened, he admitted he hadn't considered that perspective at all (!), conceded that it was problematic on a religious basis and then went right back to defending it. I took a peek at his other posts and, thanks to this book, I knew that there was no point to continuing on with the conversation. He was going to root for his "team" no matter what - even though it went against the religious beliefs he literally taught for years.

The downside to this book is that it was mostly written in a more formal academic style that was just not very listener-friendly. Plus, there were a lot of references to charts that are available as pdf downloads - good luck looking at those charts if you are listening to this audiobook and driving!

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: UNCIVIL AGREEMENT: HOW POLITICS BECAME OUR IDENTITY (audiobook) by Lilliana Mason.

LETTERS to MY WHITE MALE FRIENDS by Dax-Devlon Ross

 

Published by Macmillan Audio in 2021.
Read by the author, Dax-Devlon Ross.
Duration: 5 hours, 4 minutes.
Unabridged.

Dax-Devlon Ross makes a simple observation that it is entirely possible to participate in a racist system and not be racist. Not only is it possible, it is quite common. A person can participate in a system that looks fair on the surface, but somehow always results in the same kinds of people and the same kinds of people at the bottom. 

He notes that this is not a particularly popular idea among white Americans, especially white male Americans. But, he also noted that the death of George Floyd caused a lot of white people to reconsider what they thought they knew. 

This book offers an explanation of structural racism and gives concrete examples from the author's life and recent American history and offers some suggestions as to how to identify structural racism and break it up. That is good.

On the other hand, there is some Human Resources jargon that I had to look up and a lot of open-ended suggestions of something along the line of "do better."  Maybe that is a good thing - in the end, the corrections have to come from the people who have been imposing the old racist rules because they have to fix it.  If the rules are imposed on them from the outside and they will just find ways to work around them. If a new understanding of the problems is reached, the solutions just might come right along.

Hopefully.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: LETTERS to MY WHITE MALE FRIENDS by Dax-Devlon Ross.

SO COLD the RIVER (audiobook) by Michael Koryta

 

Published in 2010 by Hachette Audio.
Read by Robert Petkoff.
Duration: 13 hours, 33 minutes.
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

Eric Shaw is a down on his luck film maker who has moved back to Chicago from Hollywood. His marriage is on the rocks, he feels sorry for himself and he is making ends meet by making little movies out of family photos for funerals. He is good at his job - so good at it that he is offered a special job.

A woman asks him to travel to French Lick, Indiana and research the early years of her father-in-law, an eccentric billionaire. The only clue he has is a strange bottle of Pluto brand mineral water, bottled in French decades earlier. The bottle seems to be forever cold and the water inside looks strange.

Once Shaw arrives in French Lick the water is not the only strange thing he encounters...

*******

My Review:

This is good supernatural thriller. I did not realize this when I started listening because I had picked out this book because it was set in the French Lick area. I have vacationed in the area a few times over the years and wanted to read what this author had to say about the area. This author is from nearby Bloomington, Indiana and he absolutely captures the over-the-top beauty and splendor of the West Baden Springs Hotel (see picture.) 

All of his Indiana references are spot-on perfect, which made the book all the more enjoyable for this lifelong Hoosier.

The audiobook is enhanced with a violin music and other occasional sound effects. 

This book was adapted into a movie on 2022.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: So Cold the River by Michael Koryta.

MYTHS, LIES, and HALF-TRUTHS of LANGUAGE USAGE (audiobook) by John McWhorter

Originally Published by
The Great Courses in 2012.
This version published by
The Great Courses in 2013.
Read by the author, John McWhorter.
Unabridged.

Linguist John McWhorter takes a look at the history of the English language in this 24 lecture presentation. He includes the origins of some of our more unique features and also the origins of some of our "rules" that aren't really rules at all.

The author,
John McWhorter

McWhorter takes a long view, going all of the way back to English's roots in proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European language from the Caucus mountains region that spread all over the place and eventually became lots and lots of modern languages, including English.

For me, the most interesting theory was based on English's relative lack of verb endings. If you have ever studied Spanish, like me, than you remember the endless verb charts and verb endings. The same goes with French and German. Why doesn't English have all of those endings? We used to, but they disappeared - perhaps thanks to the Vikings!

The first half of this audiobook was an absolute joy to listen to. It was interesting and presented well - 5 stars. However, somewhere in the middle, the lectures became less interesting and somewhat repetitive - sometimes it became . It would have been better to have tightened up a few of the presentations and cut down the 24 lectures to 18 or 20 very lean and effective lectures.

So, the final result is 4 stars out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here:  MYTHS, LIES, and HALF-TRUTHS of LANGUAGE USAGE (audiobook) by John McWhorter.