Book Reviews
Book Review: Undomesticated Dissent by Curtis Freeman.
The theme of Freeman’s book is dissent and its critical place in both the formation and thriving of democracy. He focuses on three of the early pioneers of this dissent in 17th and 18th century British social life, that period of time when England was thrust into social upheaval...
‘Practices for the Refounding of God’s People.’ Part 1: Modernity’s Wager.
To engage the modern west with the gospel we need to understand that it has been shaped by ‘modernity’s wager’: the belief that life can be lived well without God. According to Alan Roxburgh and Martin Robinson in this conversation...
‘Practices for the Refounding of God’s People’: Part 2: Practices for Refounding.
The British and European church has benefitted from the arrival of Christian migrants from Africa and Asia, a ‘blessed reflex’ from the early days of mission. According to Alan Roxburgh the Canadian church has benefitted from the wisdom of First Nations indigenous peoples who have embodied an appreciation of the land...
Book review: Faithful Presence by David Fitch
This conversation between David Fitch and Alan Roxburgh revolves around David’s recent book Faithful Presence[1] and his life in a church plant near Chicago. David describes his book under three headings: The Presence of God at work in localities, discerned through Practices such as Eucharist, shared meals and reconciliation. We are located in Places where sometimes we will be gathered with other Christians and sometimes...
The End of Liberalism? What the Euro-tribal churches are missing.
The books mentioned propose that the modern, liberal Western imagination is at the root of our current crises and malaise. Liberalism isn’t something that needs to be fixed or adjusted; it is the problem. The challenge isn’t fixing but the construction of a fundamentally different imagination rooted in the Christian and Classic understandings of virtue and the Good. Liberalism is an ideology...
Books in conversation: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy and the book of Acts
It's a serendipitous experience to read books across different genres and make connections that stretch you. Two books by Edward Luce have done this for me recently: Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012) and The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Little, Brown Book Group, 2017). These books articulate a concern about the crisis of Western democracy apparent in many books and articles. While reading these I was also reading C Kavin Rowe’s’ The World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age (OUP, 2009) which made some connections which go beyond the familiar frameworks of the twentieth century.
Book review: ‘The Wages of Rebellion’ by Chris Hedges.
The Wages of Rebellion is shaped initially by an analysis of Western revolutionary theory from the 19th century forward. Revolutions, Hedges proposes, are not fermented by ideas promulgated by elites. They occur when intolerable gaps develop between ordinary people and the reigning narratives of the state, its economics and its elites.
Alan Roxburgh reviews this book and introduces a number of other books on a similar theme.
Book Review: ‘Between the World and Me’ by Ta-Nehisis Coates.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a self-proclaimed atheist who rejects the Christian God, and yet his book, Between the World and Me, is what happens when God draws the curtains to unveil the evil of racism that prevails across the world. This book is a critical social commentary on life in the United States that should inform every conversation concerned with mission in places that live with racial and economic oppression.
Extended Book Review: ‘Together for the Common Good’ edited by Nicholas Sagovsky and Peter McGrail.
Together for the Common Good was written by an Anglican priest and a Roman Catholic priest and is part of a wider conversation. Both the book and the conversation are a product of discussions, meetings, action and prayer which seek to encourage people to work together towards change for the common good by overcoming differences, growing in respect for each other, as well as by learning from different cultural and religious traditions.
Book Review: ‘Subterranean’ by Dan White Jr.
Church planter Dan White has an appreciation for the ways in which Euro-tribal, evangelical churches and their leaders remain deeply enmeshed in rationalisms, techniques, notions of success and power that so deeply infect Christian life on this continent. In the early chapters he dives into these issues. He travels a road many of us have taken by pointing out these captivities in order to show their inadequacy. The hope is that readers will see this and, in so doing, want to travel with him...