Here are the books we will be reading this summer and fall:
July: Rowan Williams, “Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettles our Judgement”
“Bringing the biblical accounts of Jesus’ trial vividly to life, Rowan Williams highlights what can be learned about Jesus from each of the four Gospel portraits. Mark shows a mysterious figure revealed as the Son of God. Matthew describes the Wisdom of God tried by foolish men. Luke presents a divine stranger. John speaks of the paradox of divinity submitting to judgement. These illuminating discussions are followed by a reflection on Christian martyrdom and a meditation on tyranny, freedom, and truth. A set of discussion questions and a thought-provoking prayer after each chapter make “Christ on Trial” an ideal book for study groups.
August: Cormac McCarthy, “The Road”
“A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthys masterpiece. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they dont know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged foodand each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, each the others world entire, are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.”
September: Miroslav Volf, “The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World”
“Can one forget atrocities? Should one forgive abusers? Ought we not hope for the final reconciliation of all the wronged and all wrongdoers alike, even if it means spending eternity with perpetrators of evil? We live in an age when it is generally accepted that past wrongs—genocides, terrorist attacks, bald personal injustices—should be constantly remembered. But Miroslav Volf here proposes the radical idea that letting go of such memories—after a certain point and under certain conditions—may actually be the appropriate course of action.
While agreeing with the claim that to remember a wrongdoing is to struggle against it, Volf notes that there are too many ways to remember wrongly, perpetuating the evil committed rather than guarding against it. In this way, “the just sword of memory often severs the very good it seeks to defend.” He argues that remembering rightly has implications not only for the individual but also for the wrongdoer and for the larger community.
October: Neil Postman, “Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble about Language, Technology, and Education”
“In a series of feisty and ultimately hopeful essays, one of America’s sharpest social critics casts a shrewd eye over contemporary culture to reveal the worst—and the best—of our habits of discourse, tendencies in education, and obsessions with technological novelty. Readers will find themselves rethinking many of their bedrock assumptions: Should education transmit culture or defend us against it? Is technological innovation progress or a peculiarly American addiction? When everyone watches the same television programs—and television producers don’t discriminate between the audiences for Sesame Street and Dynasty—is childhood anything more than a sentimental concept? Writing in the traditions of Orwell and H.L. Mencken, Neil Postman sends shock waves of wit and critical intelligence through the cultural wasteland.”
November: Walter Bruggemann, “The Prophetic Imagination”
“In this challenging and enlightening treatment, Brueggemann traces the lines from the radical vision of Moses to the solidification of royal power in Solomon to the prophetic critique of that power with a new vision of freedom in the prophets. Here he traces the broad sweep from Exodus to Kings to Jeremiah to Jesus. He highlights that the prophetic vision not only embraces the pain of the people but creates an energy and amazement based on the new thing that God is doing.”
December: Marilynne Robinson, “Home”
“Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain.
Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake.
Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.”
(book descriptions taken from book covers)
I Look forward to talking about these books with you!
Christopher
