LOSING OUR RELIGION: AN ALTAR CALL for EVANGELICAL AMERICA (audiobook) by Russell Moore

 

Published in 2023 by Penguin Audio in July of 2023.
Read by the author, Russell Moore.
Duration: 6 hours, 46 minutes.
Unabridged.

Russell Moore is currently a theologian for the magazine Christianity Today, but he is more famous for being one of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for the last 20 years - both as a professor and at the national level. He's also a prolific author and very media friendly. In many ways, Moore was the perfect media face for the Southern Baptist Convention - smart, likable, pleasant and often funny.

But, he butted heads on a variety of topics with the rest of the leadership. He was against gay conversion therapy and he wanted the SBC to listen to women who accused men in church leadership of sexual abuse. He especially wanted Southern Baptists to talk about racism and its complicity in upholding Jim Crow laws and distance themselves from Confederate symbols like the flag. 

The biggest thing they disagreed about and the thing that really pushed him out started in the summer of 2015 - Donald Trump. He could not bring himself to support a man who was so clearly not in sync with the values of Evangelical Christians. Evangelicals could live with all of the other points of disagreement over religious doctrine, but they could not live with disagreement over a political figure.

People who are familiar the 80s/90s band REM know the song "Losing My Religion." The title comes from a Southern phrase that means someone got so exasperated that they forgot their religious training and did the wrong thing. He uses that as a launching point to discussing the difference between religion and faith. This is a discussion that I appreciate as I have come to a new understanding of the relationship between my formal religion and my Christian faith in my own way in the last few years. 

The title works in two ways. Moore is discussing how he has dropped his formal ties to the Southern Baptist Convention, but he is also talking to how so many of its Evangelicals (and cultural Evangelicals who very rarely go to church but who are fighting the culture wars in its name every day) have moved away from the principles of their faith as part of a trade for political power.

I thought this was a thoughtful and serious discussion, but there was a bit in the middle that just lost my interest. It got a little too far into the Evangelical weeds for me. It came back and closed in a very strong way, but it means that I am rating it 4 stars out of 5. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: LOSING OUR RELIGION: AN ALTAR CALL for EVANGELICAL AMERICA by Russell Moore.

ROY ORBISON: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

 

Published in July of 2023 by Hourly History.

Roy Orbison (1936-1988) was an early rock singer. As this book notes, the heart of his career is right after Elvis joined the Army and just before the Beatles broke it big. His hits include Pretty Woman and Only the Lonely. Also, he is one of my favorite singers so I was pretty excited to read this short biography.

I have no problems with the facts as laid out in this biography, although I was very disappointed by the disjointed and sometimes just plain old weird writing style. I have to wonder if this was written by an AI program. Because of the writing style I am going rate this e-book 3 stars out of 5.

This e-book can be found on Amazon.com here: ROY ORBISON: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END by Hourly History.

THE MAKING of BIBLICAL WOMANHOOD: HOW the SUBJUGATION of WOMEN BECAME GOSPEL TRUTH (audiobook) by Beth Allison Barr

 

Published by Christianaudio.com in 2021.

Read by Sarah Zimmerman.
Duration: 7 hours, 26 minutes.
Unabridged.

Beth Allison Barr is a professor of medieval and church history at Baylor University. She has written a lot about women in the medieval world. She is also an evangelical Christian and a youth pastor's wife. This puts her in a rather unique position to comment on the role of women in the evangelical church and topics like complementarianism in the more conservative churches.

Complementarianism is a church teaching that men and women have very distinct roles in family life, marriage, and the church. These roles are distinct, but of equal value, but men are given leadership roles. In more conservative churches, women are never put into any sort of leadership roles over men. They will not be pastors. They will not lead a board. They won't even teach older boys or men in Sunday school. In some interpretations, they will not teach men or older boys any topic at all.

The more Barr studied, the more she knew that this view was not the norm in the beginning years of the church (going back to Peter, Paul, and even Jesus), it was not the norm in Medieval times and it was not the norm in evangelical churches as late as the Great Depression/World War II era. 

Barr places the blame on at least three things. One is a lack of knowledge of church history. Some denominations offer lots of training in church history or their pastors/leadership. Some churches offer practically none - and it shows. Barr demonstrates a lack of knowledge of doctrines that go back nearly 1,700 years, such as the Athanasian Creed.

She also notes that over and over again women were allowed to teach, preach, and/or lead in the Western church. To be clear, the Western Church would be the Roman Catholic Church and, after the Reformation, the Protestant breakaways. It would not include the Orthodox Church or the Coptic Church. She notes these women throughout the book and tells their stories. To be fair, they were not half or anything close to half of the teachers, preachers, and/or leaders - but they were still there - she names the names, she quotes their writings. Denying their existence is simply willful ignorance.

The other thing she blames is translation. I am going to add to her thesis a bit. I am a Spanish teacher. There is always wiggle room when you translate. Translators can emphasize certain things and de-emphasize others. This is the "art" of translation. This happens all of the time when translating from English to Spanish and Spanish to English because the two languages don't always match up perfectly even though they co-exist at the same time and oftentimes in the same place and have bumped into each other on a regular basis for centuries.

Barr argues that where translation is unclear but allows for including women, the translators have consistently chosen translations that exclude women in Paul's New Testament letters.  Sometimes, they make a comment in the notes. Sometimes, they don't. In at least one case some translators appear to have changed the gender of a person who was in a leadership role. In another case, the leadership role a woman played in a local church was changed to a lesser role so the translators can support the complementarian theological position. They just changed the word to make it fit their theology and that is a bad habit to get into if you want people to read the Bible and take it seriously.

And that last point - the point about changing history, the translations, and the Bible itself to fit a pre-determined theology that does not match with the Bible or past practice - that is the part that hurts the church in the short run and the long run. 

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE MAKING of BIBLICAL WOMANHOOD: HOW the SUBJUGATION of WOMEN BECAME GOSPEL TRUTH by Beth Allison Barr.

RED LETTER REVOLUTION: WHAT IF JESUS REALLY MEANT WHAT HE SAID? by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo

 

Published in 2012 by Thomas Nelson.

Very simply put, the two authors are advocates of Christians focusing their attention of the Red Letter verses in the Bible and endeavoring to live their lives by those verses. If you are not familiar, since 1899 some publishers have decided to print the words of Jesus in red ink. Claiborne and Campolo have decided to take those words very seriously - Jesus is the model of how they try to live. 

This emphasis on the Red Letters means that their version of Christianity has a lot of emphasis on verses like Matthew 25: 31-46:

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: 43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. 44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? 45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. 46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (King James Version)

When texts like this one become your guiding model, there is more emphasis on action. They are clear that the action is not what brings salvation - as Campolo says on page 11, "Being saved is trusting what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us." On page 17 he notes that this will always be a constant work in progress: "I'm promoting this movement, but to what extent am I actually living out those red letters? My only defense is that I'm not as unfaithful today as I was yesterday."

The authors, Claiborne (left) and Campolo (right)

The balance of the book consists of 26 dialogues between Campolo and Claiborne about three broad topics: Red Letter Theology, Red Letter Living, and Red Letter World. Topics include: On Community, On Hell, On Family, On Racism, On Being Pro-Life, On Civil Disobedience, On Politics, On War and Violence, On Reconciliation, and more.

I mostly found this book to be interesting. I was not interested in every topic of dialogue, but the discussions are all fairly short. The book was hurt by the fact that it was published in 2012 and that means it completely misses the personality that has warped the political and (often) the religious world around himself since 2015: Donald Trump. Some of the discussions simply seemed dated because there was no discussion of Trump or the MAGA movement.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: RED LETTER REVOLUTION: WHAT IF JESUS REALLY MEANT WHAT HE SAID? by Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo.

AMERICAN REBOOT: AN IDEALIST'S GUIDE TO GETTING BIG THINGS DONE (audiobook) by Will Hurd

 

Published in March of 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio.
Read by the author, Will Hurd.

Duration: 8 hours, 47 minutes.
Unabridged.

Will Hurd has done a lot of things in his 45 years. He has been an operations analyst for the CIA (working in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan), he was worked in high-tech (including cyber-security and artificial intelligence), has served 6 years as a member of the House of Representatives from Texas, and is now a Republican candidate for President in 2024.

This book was undoubtedly an attempt to introduce Will Hurd to a larger audience. I follow politics pretty well and I had never heard of Will Hurd until he announced his campaign for President in June of 2023 (to be fair, there are 535 members of Congress and most are not well known outside of their districts.) I heard about this book in a political podcast and, lo and behold, it turns out that my library had it.

Just to let you know where I am coming from as I review this book, I am a Never Trump Republican and have been since 2015. I am anti-MAGA. Hurd got my attention because he says a lot of the same things.

That being said, his audiobook was a mixed bag for me. It has real moments of clarity and inspiration but it also has sections that are kind of boring (discussions of old political fights and debates, for example.) I am going to end up giving the book 3 stars our of 5 because it was not a bad listen, but also not an amazing listen.

What it all comes down to is this - while this is not the most exciting book, listening to him speak about a wide variety of topics for almost 9 hours did help me decide to look into Will Hurd more seriously (

The author. I freely admit that I 
stole this picture from
 his campaign website.

here is his campaign website) and at this time he is my choice in the GOP primary. What does that mean? Probably nothing - I was a Ted Cruz man in 2015 and I've been nothing but disappointed in him since 2016. But, it's good to know that I have an option in the Republican Party after feeling 100% left out since the summer of 2016.

The book demonstrated that you can have Conservative principles and not be MAGA in today's GOP. You can argue and not be unpleasant and demeaning. You can argue and learn new things and change your mind. You can have friends in the other party because they're not evil - they just see the world differently than you. Also, you don't have to participate in the culture wars to win. 

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICAN REBOOT: AN IDEALIST'S GUIDE TO GETTING BIG THINGS DONE by Will Hurd.

BOMBS AWAY (audiobook) by John Steinbeck

 

Originally published in 1942.
Published in 2016 by Penguin Audio.
Read by Scott Aiello.
Duration: 4 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

1942 was a rough year for America in World War II, especially in the early months. The Pacific Fleet was devastated and American troops were barely involved in the European Theater.

As part of a total war effort, every resource had to be tapped, including pulling in famous authors like John Steinbeck to write books that assured the American public that the Army Air Corps/Air Force (he uses both terms interchangeably) had a plan, was implementing the plan, and it was going to be a successful plan. 

Steinbeck was a bold choice to write what is basically a piece of American propaganda. His novels Of Mice and Men and Grapes of Wrath caused quite an uproar just a few years earlier with their criticism of the American capitalism. I think the reasoning was that if Steinbeck approves of what the Army Air Corps/Air Force was doing, it must be okay.

A B-17 (left) and a B-24 (right)

Steinbeck starts with an overview of the history of airplanes in the U.S. military. Then, he looks at 2 kinds of bombers - the B-17 and the B-24 and discusses the jobs of the men that flew those planes. Finally, he looks at a pretend recruit class and follows a crew through their individual training. Finally, he puts them all together in a plane and the reader gets to see them finish their training. The book ends with the crew on the runway. The crew opens their orders to an undisclosed location, the navigator lays in a course and they fly off to join the fighting.

Generally speaking, this book does not feel like a Steinbeck book. It spends a lot of time talking about the unique characteristics of America and Americans that will help them win the war. It has an element of truth, of course, but it also is very, very obvious.

The book does have the Steinbeck characteristic of being about regular people. There are few high level officers in the book and they have few lines. There are no big shots - no quotes from FDR, not sweeping pronouncements from MacArthur. Just young men from regular, almost boring, places being trained to go off and do extraordinary things.

I cannot say that this was a good book. It's too obvious and doesn't really have a plot. But, it is an outstanding record of how America trained its bomber crews in a palatable form. 

I rate this audibook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Bomb's Away by John Steinbeck.

THE BIG BREAK: THE GAMBLERS, PARTY ANIMALS, and TRUE BELIEVERS TRYING to WIN in WASHINGTON WHILE AMERICA LOSES ITS MIND (audiobook) by Ben Terris

 

Published in June of 2023 by Twelve.
Read by Tim Andres Pabon.
Duration: 9 hours, 32 minutes.
Unabridged.

Ben Terris offers up a collection of stories about a few of the people that casual political observers have never heard of. I regularly watch the Sunday morning political shows and listen to political podcasts and I'd only heard of 4 of the people featured in this book, and only 1 of them by name. 

That, of course, is the point of the book - a look at the movers and shakers below the obvious level of movers and shakers. Some move and shake a whole lot in the world of Washington politics, some barely do any moving at all, and some used to move and shake a whole lot but now have been sidelined by scandal.

Terris looks at people like Matt Schlapp, who is the head of the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) - the travelling roadshow of right wing politics. Schlapp is an example of a hyper-connected mover and shaker in the book. But, he also looks at people with less influence like a person that runs a website for staff members on Capitol Hill who want to complain about pay and working hours, members of Congress that fart during staff meetings and some that are a little too grabby with the help.

Some of these are compelling stories, some are not. For example, I was not particularly impressed with one of the stories that he started with - a young, idealistic staff member who thought he would make a profound political statement by resigning and then sneaking back into his boss's office (Diane Feinstein) at night and smoking a joint in her chair while recording himself on video. I thought this was a fairly pathetic attempt at protest and I felt pity this young former staffer rather than being impressed by his actions.

The only person that I knew by name was Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and advisor. Luntsz's specialty is coming up with more politically advantageous wording. He is credited with coming up with the renaming of the estate tax as the "death tax" and global warming as "climate change." Luntz used to do a lot on work on TV on CBS and Fox discussing his polls.

The first part of the book was okay (3 stars), the middle part drug a bit (2 stars) and the last part was pretty good (4 stars.) Do all of the math and that makes it a 3 star book for me.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: THE BIG BREAK: THE GAMBLERS, PARTY ANIMALS, and TRUE BELIEVERS TRYING to WIN in WASHINGTON WHILE AMERICA LOSES ITS MIND by Ben Terris.