Just as a Reminder:  We meet on the Second Sunday of each month, during the 10 o’clock service in the first floor lobby of Ecotrust.  Everybody is welcome (even if you didn’t get quite as far in the reading as you had hoped.)

August: Matthew B. Crawford, “Shop Class as Soulcraft”
Crawford, who both runs a motorcycle repair shop and also holds a PhD in Political Philosophy from University of Chicago, wonders how different types of work form us as persons in the world.  While this book is sometimes understood as a plea to return to manual, “blue-collar” forms of labor, Crawford raises more significant questions about our relationship to the material world as embodied in work and vocation.

September: Chaim Potok, “The Chosen”
In 1940s Brooklyn, New York, an accident throws Reuven Malther and Danny Saunders together. Despite their differences (Reuven is a Modern Orthodox Jew with an intellectual, Zionist father; Danny is the brilliant son and rightful heir to a Hasidic rebbe), the young men form a deep, if unlikely, friendship. Together they negotiate adolescence, family conflicts, the crisis of faith engendered when Holocaust stories begin to emerge in the U.S., loss, love, and the journey to adulthood. The intellectual and spiritual clashes between fathers, between each son and his own father, and between the two young men, provide a unique backdrop for this exploration of fathers, sons, faith, loyalty, and, ultimately, the power of love. (Exerpted from Amazon.com review)

October: Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (selections).
“There are few people I would rather read for the actual exposition of the New Testament than Richard Hays. This book is filled with wonderful readings that not only inform us about how to think better about the so-called ‘problem of the relation between the New Testament and ethics’ but, even more, speak of how our lives should be lived in the light of Christ’s cross.” -Stanley Hauerwas

November: Sophocles, “Antigone”
Sophocles’ classic play which explores the relationship between national and religious and family obligations.  Any translation is fine, I will be using Robert Fagles’.

December: Andy Crouch, “Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling”
We will be lead this month by Nate Barksdale, who worked with Andy Crouch on his website for the book as well as co-wrote the book’s study guide, and is an exemplary fellow.
January: NT Wright, “Simply Christian”