Jun
29th
ChristianityToday.com has a review (”How Old Is the Old-Time Religion? Scholars challenge David Bebbington on The Advent of Evangelicalism“) of The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (B&H, 2009). This is the U.S. edition of the U.K. book, The Emergence of Evangelicalism, which came out last year.
The book examines the historical issues behind the origins of the Evangelical movement. David Bebbington’s 1989 thesis of its Enlightenment origins forms the center of the book’s discussion and is re-evaluated. Dr. Douglas A. Sweeney (Trinity International University) and I have a chapter in this book on Jonathan Edwards. On Bebbington’s thesis, we take a sort of, both/and approach; Bebbington hits on some important connections, but we find room for seeing more historical precedence. Some others call for greater revision of Bebbington’s ideas.
For those interested in understanding how Evangelicalism took shape historically, it is a good book to have. The review is helpful for understanding the questions involved, though I was disappointed that more of the contributions did not get much attention. And yes, that means me, of course. When discussing Edwards in the review, the one explicit chapter which was dedicated to Edwards (ours), didn’t get a mention. Oh well. I’m am glad to see that it is getting some attention. Read the entire review at ChristianityToday.com.
Jun
20th
Karyn Traphagen tagged me earlier this week with a meme. I was asked to “Name 5 books or scholars that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible.” I delayed due to a busy week and, something for which she understands, the need for exclusive writing time. So better late than never, I’m going to finally respond.
I’m not easily able to reduce books down to a top five list. This list is in constant flux. If I like a book it is because something in it rang true with something else in other books, and in this way I see them as working together for me. They become part of my web of belief and are not always simply on the subject to which they are relevant. I’ll do my best to keep it to the subject here.
1. Pete Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005).
I’ve never been happy with the standard Evangelical approach of “see no evil, hear no evil” when it comes to Scripture and its relationship to its sources, culture, and context, so I fully appreciate Pete’s honesty with Scriptural difficulties and his ability to allow for nuancing a position, rather than arguing for an all-or-nothing approach. He seeks to keep the text sacred while recognizing the issues involved. Pete took a huge blow for this book, even by his colleagues. He allows for the place of myth and borrowing in Scripture that made many entirely uncomfortable. Information regarding the controversy over his book can be found at Art Boulet’s blog.
2. C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).
Speaking of myth, Lewis introduced me (and so many others) to a better view of myth (and so many other things)—rather than the idea of myth equaling “untrue”—and to the idea of just letting Scripture be what it is, rather than trying to harmonize and modernize it. I’d recommend his essay, “Myth Became Fact,” which appears in God in the Dock. I would also recommend Michael J. Christensen’s C.S. Lewis on Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002). Christensen’s book is short (largely because Lewis’ ideas on Scripture were not found in a single volume). It also includes some helpful letters from Lewis on the subject.
3. James L. Kugel, The Bible as it Was (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999).
I’d recommend everything Kugel’s written and I particularly enjoyed his The Bible as it Was. Kugel gives one a glimpse into Scripture’s connection with its existing context. Scripture looks less like a book that suddenly fell out of heaven in one piece without reference to the world around it. There is a lot to get from this book, but perhaps the most obvious is that there are interpretive trajectories which pre-exist the New Testament and which inform the perspective of the New Testament writers and early Christians. To pick up on Lewis’ view—that one needs to let the Bible be what it is—this book helps get the “what it is” part.
4. Miguel A. De La Torre, Reading the Bible from the Margins, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002).
Not only should the Bible be understood for what it was when written, readers should be understood for who they are when they read it. Most recently, my interest is in areas of the phenomenology of reading and the marginalized. I found Miguel A. De La Torre’s book, Reading the Bible from the Margins, to be very interesting and good at making the point of how readers understand the text from the margins. Try reading the Jesus’ parable of the vineyard owner in Matthew 20 from the perspective of a day laborer, particularly the undocumented. Understanding reader response and what we bring to the text is paramount in reading the Bible and for understanding why others disagree over the meaning of the text.
5. Mark Allen Powell, Chasing the Eastern Star (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001).
Where Torre spends time on marginal readings, Powell’s text is interested in the idea of Reader-Response Criticism in general. Last year in my hermeneutics course, I required this text. In this book, Powell makes an important case for never underestimating the baggage of the reader. After introducing the subject, Powell takes a very familiar story, the biblical story of the magi, and uses it as a case study for how readers can approach the text differently. What I like about this book, besides its very practical nature, is the way he also brings in Narrative Criticism. The age old idea of authorial intent really isn’t possible.
There you go, 5 books. If I were to add more I’d put N.T. Wright in there or more specific texts on the ancient near east, but these represent the kinds of shifts in my thinking over the last few years. For Karyn’s list, see her blog. The others tagged include Art Boulet, Daniel Kirk, Ben Byerly, and Ros Clark.
Jun
19th
I’ve noticed that I’ve been linking to several Chronicle articles lately, but hey, when it’s interesting, it’s interesting. The discussion of the future of book publishing—particularly, traditional print media versus options like Kindle or Scribd—is everywhere at the moment and it has my interest. The following article, “A Manifesto for Scholarly Publishing” by Peter J. Dougherty, addresses that issue for the scholarly world.
And while university presses grapple with the economic and technological challenges now affecting how we publish our books — the subject of a thousand and one AAUP conference sessions, e-mail-list debates, and news articles — discussion of what we publish seems to have taken a back seat. And understandably so. Why obsess about content if books as we know them are about to become obsolete in favor of some yet-to-evolve form? Has creative destruction spelled the end of books?… Continue reading at Chronicle.com
Jun
15th
My publisher for Katherine Parr: A Guided Tour of the Life and Thought of a Reformation Queen (2009) has put up PDFs of the table of contents and a sample of the book. This book was written for their Guided Tour series, which includes several other books in religious history.
Table of Contents: PDF
Sample Chapters: PDF
Amazon.com
Barnes and Noble
Target.com
Westminster Bookstore
For those of you who liked Katherine Parr, Heidi Nichols book on poet Anne Bradstreet, which also appears in this series, is very good. I should also note that Showtime’s The Tudors has one more season and we all know that Katherine Parr will be there. So, bone-up on her life, writings, and beliefs now.
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Jun
12th
The Chronicle Review has a great Q&A with several university press editors and directors on the direction of scholarly publishing (”The Future of Scholarly Publishing“). Publishing in general is rapidly changing and many publishers are trying to avoid what has happened in little time with the print news media. Cutting costs by opening up a department for digital books and avoiding those books which, while they may be interesting, still tend to be risky in the sales and marketing department, is a large part of the process. As The New York Times reported this week, Simon & Schuster is Read more…
Jun
10th
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a good commentary this week by Deborah Louis on the plight of adjunct labor in America (”Adjuncts: Solutions for a Mistreated Majority“). It is a very interesting look at the problems facing adjunct labor and what many have been saying is the creation of a new servant class in the academic world.
The adjunct status is a very complicated and often frustrating one, for both the school and for those that entered the academic life in pursuit of a full-time position. How complicated? For example, for many schools, the economy has demanded a reduction in full-time faculty and adjuncts are what keep the schools alive. One might add that adjuncting can have its benefits for the adjunct as well. It can (though rarely) be a door into the world of full-time faculty (which has been my case). It can give new graduates opportunities for experience and it can serve as extra income (particularly if you are one of the many Ph.D.s who have to work at Walmart in this economy).
This picture, however, can mask other, very real and big issues. It does not take into account the majority of situations in the adjuncting world. As Louis points out, “few fit the common perception of adjunct faculty members as ‘fresh out of school’ or retired and working to add experience to their résumés, meaning to their lives, or extra income to otherwise adequate bank accounts.” In other words, our perception of who we are employing needs adjusting. Not all are simply newbies working like interns.
Additionally, the number of adjuncts out there far outweigh the number of positions available and the pay is rarely commensurate with the work involved. (At some point those school loans have to be paid back.) It could also be argued that the economic benefits for schools do not usually make up for the issues they end up having as a result of hiring mainly adjuncts; part time pay does not allow faculty members to give teaching their full attention and this effects the quality of a student’s education and the reputation of the school.
How to we find a fair solution? Perhaps we cannot live in a world where everyone has a full-time teaching gig, but we should explore ways for making it equitable and Louis has some ideas:
According to best estimates, some 800,000 faculty members, close to two-thirds of the total nationwide, are adjunct, “contingent,” or “lecturer.” The severity of their plight, rapidly worsening in today’s economic crisis, intersects the interrelated domains of human rights, fair employment, and the future of higher education. Read full article at Chronicle
