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Many of us have known about the work of Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center which tracks the activities of a host of white supremacist hate groups. This book spells out the story of a remarkable man. His journey as a southerner in the civil rights struggle is an amazing story. He took on the big boys (KKK) with their threats to his life and was able to bring them to their knees. He did not confine his activities to the south. One major case was in Portland, Oregon. Clearly the “civil rights struggle” is not ended and Dees continues his work with the assistance of some dedicated people. Dees and Millard Fuller were collaborators during the college and following. They were true entrepreneurs.

—Bernie Turner is a retired pastor living in McMinnville, OR.

In some ways this book is an encyclopedia of non-profit organizations around the world. The information was collected by a husband wife team, who have written other significant books.  I was greatly moved by their book Half the Sky, which speaks to the oppression of women. This book is a book about hope.  The “path” referenced in the title is a path of hope.  The authors have identified hundreds of organizations who are doing humanitarian work around the globe and given us information about those organizations and what we can do to join them. Those organizations offer hope to millions of people—they are providing a “path” which we may follow or join.  The authors say, “Our efforts at altruism have a mixed record of success at helping others, but they have an almost perfect record of helping ourselves.  They can also be a way of asserting our values, or responding to pain or horror by reaffirming a higher standard of humanity.”

—Bernie Turner is a retired pastor living in McMinnville, OR.

"In the West we have a long history of hostility towards Islam that seems as entrenched as our anti-Semitism,” but now “for the first time in Islamic history, Muslims have begun to cultivate a passionate hatred of the West. In part this is due to European and American behaviour in the Islamic world" (p.11). "It is as impossible to generalize about Islam as about Christianity; there is a whole range of ideas and ideals in both" (p.13). "We shall see that Muhammad's spiritual experience bears an arresting similarity to that of the prophets of Israel, St. Teresa of Avila and Dame Julian of Norwich" (p.15).           

Muhammad is in the tradition of the Old Testament heroes like Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah and Isaiah—flawed and passionate and complex. We see him sometimes laughing, playing with his children, trying to placate his wives, weeping over a friend's death.

He had almost no contact with Judaism or Christianity. His monotheism was a challenge to the tribal Arabs who had little reason to give up their gods.

In 610, on Mount Hira, Muhammad had a mystical experience in which he began speaking the Qu'ran. He was very afraid and resistant to the idea he was called to be a prophet. Only after interior struggles did he accept his mission from God. He began openly teaching that all men and women should strive to create a just society where the vulnerable were treated decently. And all blessings come from al'Llah whose House was the Ka'aba. So each must "surrender" ("islam”) to the will of this God.

Karen Armstrong details much of the struggles and political conflict Muhammad had to endure for his mission. He comes across as a passionate, convicted holy man, trusting in al'Lah to see him through it. This is a valuable book to help dissipate the pervasive ignorance of Christians and Jews regarding the largest religion in the world.

—Ray Berthiaume lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

I have been reading White’s work in preparation to teach a religious education class for youth. White, the former director of research for the Youth Theological Initiative at Candler School of Theology, speaks directly about the ways modern youth ministry has failed to effectively engage young people in the costly journey of discipleship. In response to youth ministry programs that, like many high schools, are concerned with preparing children to be good participants in the marketplace rather than risk-takers in the name of what is just and beneficial for creation, White lays out ways to engage youth in deep, serious discernment that accounts for their inherent gifts and insights. This last point, that youth are not incomplete adults but congregants with valuable offerings specific to their particular phase in life, changes not only how we must see youth ministry but how we must see all ministries. As White says at the outset of this book, “Congregations, adults and youth who engage each other in discernment…find that in discerning together, they are in fact doing much of the work of youth ministry (and adult ministry).”

—Hillary Brownsmith is the pastoral apprentice at Circle of Mercy Congregation, Asheville, NC.

The Jewish-Christian movements have not always exemplified high moral standards.  Horsley points out that the American founding ‘fathers’ ‘not only took the land away from the peoples already living on it, but they slaughtered those peoples’ (p x).   Exactly what the Jewish people did in Canaan!  Horsley then articulates the framework of covenant economics that stood over against the Egyptian empire, tracing that covenantal society through the monarchy (and its economic centralization) and the prophetic condemnation when the covenantal perspectives were forgotten or ignored.  He then summarizes the Roman imperial economy, and sketches the framework of covenantal renewal that Jesus sought to bring; he finishes with a good summary of covenantal renewal emphasis in Mark, Paul and Matthew.

The Jewish economy was based on covenantal law codes:  the land belonged to Yahweh, land allocated was inalienable, the poor were provided for (gleaning, sabbatical fallow years, generous lending principles—no interest, realistic collateral, periodic cancellation of debts.  The Roman system subverted this economic perspective, with their repeated wars, their demand for tribute and their use of client rulers with no economic limits (e.g. Herod).

Jesus sought to restore the covenantal community (Matthew 5 and Luke 6 are covenant renewal speeches).  “Jesus and his envoys were building a movement village by village, not just calling individual followers” (p 109).  And Mark particularly articulates the characteristics of covenant community: marriage and family, children as models (westerners have romantic notions of children; for the ANE, children were the human beings with lowest status; for Jesus to declare that ‘the kingdom of G-d belongs to children emphasizes that the kingdom of G-d is present for the poor villagers, as opposed to the wealthy and powerful’ (p 119).  And Jesus’ declaration of principles governing community relations (leadership, Mark 10:42-45), constitutes a covenantal charter for the community of the Markan Jesus movement (p 123).

A wonderful book!

—Vern Ratzlaff, pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

From Marcion on, the church has wrestled with the concept of G-d that emerges from the Jewish-Christian scriptures:  the vengeful/violent G-d and the peace-committed vulnerable G-d.  Crossan focuses the issue well:  the story of Noah and the story of Abraham represent the two models given as G-d’s solution to a rebellious creation.  In the Noachic solution, G-d destroys the empire; G-d’s solution is to kill everyone except the family of Noah (p 64).  But the Noachic solution doesn’t work and so a new divine solution appears in Genesis 12;  the covenant of love that will invite all to the new family of faith.  Noah exterminates, Abraham converts.’  The solution of extermination by force and violence, and the Abrahamic solution of conversion to justice and peace, are never reconciled anywhere in the biblical tradition.  They are together from one end of it to the other.  Do we take them both and worship a G-d of both violence and nonviolence, or must we choose between them and recognize that the Bible proposes the radicality of a nonviolent G-d struggling with the normalcy of a violent civilization?’ (p 88)

The difference is underscored even more in the biblical hospitality eschatology:  the Noachic solution ends in a cannibalistic feast (Rev 19:17-21), the Abrahamic solution ends with a reconciling and peaceable society of food and grace.  Crossan chooses not the violence but the non-violent G-d revealed by Jesus.

 A crucial contribution to hermeneutical faithfulness.

—Vern Ratzlaff, pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

The concept of “empire” has emerged as a crucial key in interpreting biblical stuff, and Horsley is one of the most insightful writers in this area.  Jesus and Empire documents how practises and effects of Roman imperialism decisively shaped the conditions of life in Galilee and Jerusalem.  These included the global subjugation of people, the emperor cult for theology, the need for feeding large unproductive segments of the population (“bread and circuses”), military violence as a control mechanism (eg crucifixion as intimidation, slaughter and mass enslavement, display of Roman army standards), indirect rule through client kings and religious priests (the threefold level of oppressive taxation in the Jewish territories: tribute to Romans, taxes to Herod, offerings and levies to the temple state).

Against this, “Jesus launched a mission not only to heal the debilitating effects of Roman military violence and economic exploitation, but   revitalize and rebuild the people’s cultural spirit and communal vitality….  In his offering the kingdom of G-d to the poor, hungry and despairing people, Jesus instilled hope in a seemingly hopeless situation, through his renewal of covenantal community, calling the people to common cooperative action to arrest the disintegration of their communities” (pp 126,127).

Horsley ends his book with a comparison of the Christian Empire and the American Empire, and the latter resembles the Roman Empire.  “Paul was building an international anti-imperial movement of an alternative society based in local communities” (p 133).

A wonderful read about the pressures on the church by empires, then and now.

 —Vern Ratzlaff, pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

It is tempting to read the New Testament, especially the stories of Jesus, as  nice little reflections on spiritual concerns—how to get along with our neighbours, how to live respectable lives of non-threatening piety. Oakman presents the culture Jesus lived in, an agrarian, a marginalized life, of peasant economics and values. But Oakman’s approach is wider than simply casting Jesus as a peasant; Jesus’ ideology is quite worldly’ (p 3).  Ancient economics is deeply implicated in ancient politics, so Jesus’ peasant aims were both profoundly political and entirely social, which helps explain why first century scribes recorded sayings and memories of a crucified, illiterate peasant with such care and diligence.

Oakman focuses on debt as one of the keys to understanding Jesus’ concerns.  When debtors defaulted, sale of assets (land), imprisonment or slavery were the usual consequences.  Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness, the abolition of debt, was a subversive revolutionary agenda (p 39); Jesus’ vision of liberation coming with the reign of G-d attacked the principle elements of the Roman order in Galilee.  G-d’s rule was a power opposed to the social order established by Rome; Jesus spoke on behalf of a politics of liberation and compassion, not of the issues of debts and defaulting.

The two most gripping sections of Oakman’s writing are his discussion of the Lord’s Prayer (the concept of debt) and the story of the “Foolish Samaritan” that sees the story as more than simply a model for good behaviour; G-d’s reign is “revealed in the wilds of bandits and inns….  The Samaritan indebts himself and the injured Jerusamelite into the power of the innkeeper” (p 179), giving the innkeeper (a notoriously bad lot by peasant standards) a blank cheque.

Oakman helps us read the Jesus story with new cultural eyes.

—Vern Ratzlaff, pastor and professor of historical theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada