#BookReview: Disarming Scripture by Derek Flood

Solid Trajectory, But Not Far Enough. I’m not completely sold that the “trajectory” reading of the Bible Flood bases his premise on is entirely correct, but for now let’s go with it. Flood raises a lot of good points that will, as the title implies, “step on toes” across “both” sides of the American political divide. But there are certainly times where he contradicts himself and others where he reveals his own cloudy understanding of violence, choosing to view violence only as genocide, murder, explicit assault, and the like. But in the end, Flood doesn’t go quite far enough in his own line of reasoning and instead tends to embrace certain forms of “acceptable” violence, in ways reminiscent of the very blatantly antiquated notions he is attacking in this book. Absolutely recommended for those that either openly embrace the wanton slaughter of the Old Testament or those that fully reject it, as this will at least open you to the basic concepts of nonviolence.

This review of Disarming Scripture by Derek Flood was originally published on November 23, 2018.

#BookReview: Defenseless Christianity by Gerald J. Mast

Made many great assertions. With little evidence to back any of them up. Suffers from the same problem of many in academia in that it dramatically widens the scope of what it calls “violence” to include many scores of topics that are not actually violent, and many of which demonstrably do not exist, at least not in the ways their proponents argue. But very well written, despite its problems in certain particular topics.

This review of Defenseless Christianity by Gerald J. Mast and J. Denny Weaver was originally published on January 8, 2018.