The End of Religion: Encountering the Subversive Spirituality of Jesus is a book written by Bruxy Cavey
The End of Religion is a great book. It’s fantastic! It’s challenging but dedicatedly Biblical. Put this one on your shelf and read it through a few times!
My rating: stars
Life After Church: God’s Call to Disillusioned Christians is a book written by Brian Sanders.
We don’t need one more book screaming about all that is wrong with the church. We all already know that much. Those folk need to find some new material, and soon. Until they do figure out how to maturely assess contemporary ecclesiology and reflect this newfound maturity in their writing, check out Brian Sanders’ Life after Church. It offers readers a mature summarization of current trends - good and bad - in ecclesiology and challenges readers to decide for themselves if they should stay or leave by asking themselves which action would be better for the kingdom of God. This is a great little book.
My rating: stars
Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How to Talk about It
Speaking of Faith is paperback book written by public radio host Krista Tippett.
If you are interested in brushing up on a postmodern, pluralistic, North American Religious Liberalism, then grab Tippett’s Speaking of Faith. You will walk away from this book feeling as though you read a lot, but have little to actually apply to real life and living. It’s an exercise in religious intellectualism, at best. If your desire is to dive deep into authentic Interfaith conversation, keep checking the shelves. This book will not do it for you.
My rating: stars
I have no less than eight books sitting on my desk waiting to be reviewed. These books have been sent to me by publishers and/or web marketers specifically for review on Tribe. So, expect a flurry of reviews as I work hard to read and review each of these works over the next two weeks or so. Expect serious reviews for the following titles: Life After Church, by Sanders; Consuming Jesus, by Metzger; Take This Bread, by Miles; The End of Religion, by Cavey; Rising from the Ashes, by Garrison; Surprised by Hope, by N.T. Wright; Thank God for Evolution, by Dowd; Speaking of Faith, by Tippett. Stay tuned!
An EP by Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken
I nonchalantly clicked over to the AmpersandEP.com, and listened to the song samples. I wasn’t really expecting too much. To my pleasant surprise, the listen changed my entire evening! I love the EP. I am a big, big fan of Caedmon’s Call, Webb, etc., but I already dig Ampersand more than anything either has previously produced. It’s really beautiful, melodic music. It made for a wonderful, peaceful, and relaxing background soundtrack for my late evening of prayerful work and contemplation. I love great music.
My rating: stars
I was recently sent a great little paperback titled Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters - and How to Talk About It, by author and NPR talk show host Krista Tippett. I will be reviewing the book in its entirety as soon as I am finished reading it. I’m halfway through it at this point. It is a refreshingly personal, religiously smart, and spiritually enlightening read. I’m spending a bit of extra time reading it, because it is that good. So, while I complete my read, and work on a proper review, I’ll leave you with a really great excerpt in the meanwhile.
Watch for the review and an interview with the author later this week! Read More
Dying Stars is an EP released by Jake Bouma
Now I have something to add to my short list of music for those rare times when I’m not listening to classical or various film scores and/or soundtracks. I was planning on including snippets of each track in this post, but I think iTunes does a much better job of providing snippets. So, check out Dying Stars over at iTunes.
My rating: stars
The Books of the Bible project not only offers readers an alternative to the overtly-complex, cluttered, and supplementary-heavy Bibles peddled in any local Christian bookstore USA, but also challenges us all to take Biblical literacy seriously. It is all about immersion in the story. TBoTB actually encourages readers to aim their focus and devotion towards the larger story being transmitted by the books, rather than a random chunk of three or four mere verses. So, readers, because of TBoTB’s presentation, are naturally guided towards immersion, and entire books are engaged in a way that celebrates the story of Scripture.
The Books of the Bible (TBoTB), an International Bible Society literary project and Today’s New International Version presentation, is a refreshing expression of God’s Word. In a world full of Bibles, it’s difficult to understand why one would need a “refreshing” presentation or “new” expression of God’s Word, but it is nonetheless the case. No! We have no shortage of Bibles in America! We have all sorts of Bibles! We have too many Bibles! There are Bibles for “Elementary School Children,” “Teens,” “Teens with Special Issues,” “Adults,” “Adults Parenting Teens,” “Adults Parenting Teens with Special Issues,” and “Seminarians who Someday want to Minister to Adults are Parenting Teens with Special Issues Concerning Elementary School Children!” I jest, but only slightly. We do have plenty of Bibles, and many of them are overtly complicated. The pages of our Bibles are laden with excessive translation and supplementary notes, chapter and verse numbers, section headings, commentary materials, multi-column formatting, pictures, and a plethora of other sidebar-like filler and hard-to-label oddities aimed at more topics and issues than can be counted. Simplicity is not a feature in many - if any - of our many, many Bibles.
My rating: stars
Any proceeding notes, thoughts, and/or brief commentary concern chapter one of a must-read book titled Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class in a Consumer Church, by Paul Louis Metzger. Read More
Mike (Mike Morrell of Zoecarnate) and the good people behind The Ooze Select Bloggers Network just shipped this month’s batch of books for review. This month’s titles are pretty exciting, to say the least. They are: A Short and Easy Method of Prayer: Praying the Heart of the Father by Madame Jeanne-Marie and Bouvier De La Motte-Guyon; Consuming Jesus: Beyond Race and Class Divisions in Consumer Church by Paul Louis Metzger; Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion will Transform Your Life and Our World by Michael Dowd.
A great bunch of titles, all of them. I am especially excited to read Consuming Jesus and Thank God for Evolution. I am most excited about Thank God for Evolution. The fact that this book, as Mike says in his included monthly communique, “… has endorsements from 5 Nobel prize-winning scientists and more than a hundred other scientific, religious, and cultural leaders is pretty amazing.” Yes, it is amazing indeed. I look forward to reading this book. In fact, I’ll be starting with it first.
Watch for the reviews of these three works coming sometime in December.