Tag: religion

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#BookReview: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

Does NOT Predict July 2024 Assassination Attempt of President Trump. This is a book I’ve had for a few years now – apparently I purchased my copy in 2020, several years after it had been out, and I just this month read it after an Acton Institute Fellow claimed on Twitter that this book “predicted in 2012” that something like the assassination attempt of President Trump would occur. (Screenshot of tweet in question is below. Link is here: https://x.com/drantbradley/status/1812266568140628252.)

To be clear, if there is any indication at all of such a prediction, I must have missed it somehow.

Instead, what this book *does* do is show Haidt’s own work as a psychology based sociologist, studying both societies and how the brain gets to the decisions it makes. Here, Haidt actually has a lot of seemingly solid ideas… though it is clear in looking through the one star reviews that few on the left appreciate his candor, despite his own admitted background (and presumptive leanings at the time of writing this, at minimum, back in 2011 or so) being as a leftist himself.

Yet Haidt makes his points clearly and logically, and actively builds concepts up rather than just expecting the reader to understand complex points from the get-go. The narrative is well laid out, and the overall writing is such that nearly anyone should be able to follow along reasonably well.

I can’t speak to the bibliography, as I listened to the Audible form of this book and thus don’t have access to that particular information.

Thus, all that I can see here, all that I experienced here, was a reasonably well written, clearly thought out narrative structure that made clear Haidt’s own work and the work of others in his field in a way that proves particularly illuminating and worthy of conisderation.

Indeed, in the points Haidt actually makes within this text, we can all learn to understand each other quite a bit better… which actually leans to this book *not* predicting any assassination attempts on current or former Presidents.

Still, I’m glad I finally got around to reading this book, and I absolutely recommend you do too… just don’t think it makes any predictions on current events. (It doesn’t.)

Very much recommended.

This review of The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt was originally written on July 31, 2024.

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#BookReview: The Understory By Lore Ferguson Wilbert

Better Sipped Than Shot, Intense Political “Flavor” Means Taste Will Vary With Reader. There are times when you’re drinking (even non-alcoholic beverages) where you just plow through them. Maybe it is your first coffee of the day and you need that caffeine NOW! Maybe it is a hot summer day and that glass of lemonade disappeared *real* quick. Or maybe you just broke up with your significant other, and yeah, that tequila hit the spot.

A lot of books are like this. Action thrillers where reading at a frenetic pace to match the action being shown is part of the fun, for example.

This… is not that book.

This, instead, is one of those fine bourbons where you’re going to lose a lot of the nuance if you shoot it down too fast. One of those women’s fiction tales that feels like it is taking forever to have any real plot at all, but feels so *immersive* in the tale even still. One of those quasi-memoir/ quasi-religious pondering books (exactly what this is) where you really need to, as Wilbert did in taking inspiration for the overall narrative here, sit at your window and ponder the forest outside.

Read in such a manner, Wilbert’s struggles are more understandable and even relatable, as you consider your own similar struggles – and here, the things Wilbert struggles with really are things most all of us do at some level. The overarching forest narrative is a genuinely good guide for such contemplation, at least as Wilbert has written it here.

But what could ruin the taste – or make it truly exquisite – is the intense politics that are never far from the narrative, to the point that if there isn’t a political comment on *every* page, it certainly feels like at least some comment is made on at least the *majority* of pages. And yes, Wilbert’s politics are, to put it mildly, “left of center”. So know that going in.

This noted, where Wilbert eventually arrives… is a place we all probably need to, even if, again depending on your own political tastes, perhaps she arrives there a bit condesceningly.

Overall an intriguing read that truly urges us to slow down in this hectic world, it is one that we should all likely ponder – though I suppose few enough actually will.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Understory by Lore Ferguson Wilbert was originally written on May 25, 2024.

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#BookReview: The Party Crasher by Joshua Ryan Butler

Transformative Yet Still A Touch Myopic. In centering this book around a grid that combines the traditional left/ right spectrum with “Modernity” and “Post-Modernity” as its up and down, Butler does an interesting and even transformative job of showing Americans that no matter what they think about politics and the church… they likely have some form of idolatry at play. The weakness here is the exact framing – in limiting himself to just the traditional left vs right and modern vs post-modern, Butler does in fact speak to a large swath of the majority. However, as Jason Blakley’s Lost In Ideology – which will release almost a full month *after* this particular book hits bookshelves – shows, there is actually quite a bit more nuance and flux within the “traditional” ideologies than many – including, clearly, Butler here – think. So one can’t really fault Butler for not having read a book at the time of writing this one that won’t even be published until *after* this book itself is. 😉 But the point remains, for those of us able to read both books close together, as I have been even months before either releases to the public. (Yes, making these Advance Reader Copies.) Furthermore, this framing also largely excludes more minority political views that don’t abide by the usual L/R spectrum nor the up/ down system Butler uses here.

Overall though, this is yet another of those books that, particularly going into a Presidential election year with all of the hand-wringing, arguments, and outright vitriol that includes in the modern era of American politics (and every era, according to other works I reviewed a few years ago such as James Morone’s Republic Of Wrath), every single member of every single American Church – no matter the individual’s politics or the church’s faith traditions – *needs* to read. Short at just 220 or so pages – over 22% of that being bibliography and discussion questions – this is written in a fairly conversational style such that one could easily envision Butler speaking this entire book into existence over the course of probably a couple of months or so of sermons. The included discussion questions, both at the end of each chapter and at the end of the book, foster a great deal of introspection and, in the case of groups, discussion, and could genuinely go quite a way to at least moderating the vitriol of this and hopefully future campaigns.

Ultimately truly a remarkable work, one that sadly will likely be review bombed by haters of Butler’s (also excellent, fwiw) prior work (and indeed already has a one star on Goodreads from a known review bomber who could not possibly have read this book, yet which Goodreads refuses to remove for several weeks now prior to the writing of this review). But read it for yourself, and make your own conclusions. Very much recommended.

This review of The Party Crasher by Joshua Ryan Butler was originally written on December 26, 2023.

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#BookReview: The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory by Tim Alberta

Deep Look At American Evangelicalism Falls Just Short In Being All That It Could Have Been. Up front: I too am a former Southern Baptist Convention evangelical. My own sojourn of the last 20+ yrs has taken me from a child raised by a Deacon under the pastorage of a man through my teens who would later become a President of the Georgia Baptist Convention to a wanderer searching for a truly Christian (as the First Church would have truly understood it) community. As politics fails the Church – as Alberta documents well here – I have become ever more solid in my belief that the Church should have absolutely nothing at all to do with politics – which Alberta is less solid on here.

Structured in the wake of Alberta’s father’s death – a prominent megachurch pastor in Michigan – and some rather nasty political comments some Alberta had known for many years made to him in those darkest of moments, this book travels the United States – and even goes briefly abroad – examining the ways American Evangelicals have allowed the lure of politics to sway them, how some are fighting back, and what others are doing in response. It is a darkly hopeful tale of somehow, someway, potentially maybe clawing back to some semblance of historical Christianity that the American Church has long lost, and the overall narrative here is actually rather solid.

With a *few* holes. One is the complete lack of any documentation whatsoever in the ARC copy I read. Indeed, the ARC copy was so incomplete as to not even have the epilogue to the tale – which alone was an error that I nearly “will not reviewed” the book over, but I was able to obtain an Audible copy instead to at least be able to complete this review. However, the lack of documentation in the ARC was a single star deduction, as I normally expect to see around 20-30% documentation in nonfiction books in my vast experience reading nonfiction ARCs over the years. The other star deduction is the book’s intense focus on Jerry Falwell Sr and his progeny – both biologically (Jerry Falwell Jr and his siblings) and ideologically (Liberty University), a focus that nearly derails the book in taking up such a seemingly large chunk of it.

The final hole, which didn’t rise to the level of necessitating a star deduction but *did* rise to the level of necessitating commentary within the review, were the several times Albert used common mythologies – such as guns being the “leading cause of death of children” – without supporting documentation. (Indeed, when one checks the CDC’s own data, guns are not the leading cause of death for *any* single age grouping of legal children. It is only when legal adults aged 18-19 are included – legal adults who *can and do serve in the US military* – when guns become a leading cause of death according to CDC data.) The presence of such known and easily disproven myths detracts from the reliability of the overall narrative, which is a shame, since for the most part Alberta’s reporting seems to be pretty damn solid, at least from my own part of the world.

Overall, this is a truly strong and truly sobering look at the state of American Evangelicalism circa the late 2010s/ early 2020s, and a clarion call for needed change within the American Church overall. Will anything actually change? Alberta seems hopeful. I too am *hopeful*… if slightly more pessimistic on the actual realities. Filled with case study after case study after case study and interview after interview after interview, Alberta truly does a mostly strong job making his case, with the caveats noted above.

Finally, to be clear, the Audible version (and presumably the fully released text version) does include the epilogue and *hopefully* the also-missing bibliography.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory by Tim Alberta was originally written on December 26, 2023.

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#BookReview: The Overlooked Americans by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

Wokeism (n): The Tendency Towards Social Justice Turned Toxic. Got your attention with the headline here, right? Good. Now sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how “it’s done”.

When you get beyond David Auerbach’s Meganets, when you get beyond Tobias Rose-Stockwell’s Outrage Machine, when you get to the *person* you think you so adamantly oppose…

… what happens when you find out that while they may come from a different culture than you, the human condition remains the same across cultures, and ultimately they share quite a bit of commonality with you?

What happens when you find out the monster at your door, the horrid kaiju that is threatening your children and your very way of life…

… is just another person who is just trying to protect his own way of life and his own kids, who thinks that *you* are the horrid kaiju threatening *his* kids and way of life?

What happens when you stop shooting at each other for just one minute…

… and find out that you had far more in common than you ever had different all along?

Don’t get me wrong, this book has a few problems. Currid-Halkett still tends to be at least somewhat elitist and/ or condescending to those opinions she disagrees with, and there is quite a lot of discussion of COVID here – the latter point being the star deduction, as even in 2023 I remain adamant in my one-man war against any book that mentions COVID, and the single star deduction is my only “real” “weapon” there.

Overall though, it is on the higher end of normally well documented, at 29% bibliography, and fairly well reasoned overall. For those that want to avoid the fates shown in David French’s Divided We Fall… this book is one that so very many people will need to read and take to heart.

Very much recommended.

This review of The Overlooked Americans by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett was originally written on May 9, 2023.

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#BookReview: The Ballot And The Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess

No Matter What You Think About The Bible In American Politics – You’re Wrong. This is one of the better books I’ve ever come across in showing just how the Bible has been debated throughout American history, from its earliest days through Trump, January 6, and even into how Biden is currently using it. And it does a phenomenal job of showing just what I said in the title here – no matter what you think you know about the Bible in American politics, no matter what you personally think about how it has been applied and should currently be applied… you’re wrong. While having perhaps a slight tinge of anti-whiteness here (in that the most heavy criticism tends to land squarely on the actions of white people), Schiess really does do quite a remarkable – and remarkably even – job of showing that no one is truly “evil” or even “uneducated” about the Bible (well, specific people in specific circumstances may be), they simply have different methods of understanding and interpreting it which lead to divergent conclusions based on both the text *and those extra-text methods*. And the sides have flipped and flopped throughout even somewhat recent American history such that neither can go more than a few decades without having to explain some prior interpretation from “their” side away.

The documentation here comes in at a slightly low yet still respectable 21%, and while Bible verses are cited throughout the text, there is no actual “prooftexting” here – verses are cited not to prove a point, but to cite which elements of which passages different groups were interpreting different ways at different points in American history.

Indeed, perhaps the only real valid complaint here is that I’m fairly certain this book could be a few times is barely 200 pages… and *still* not cover the topic in true depth. And yet, the depth it does manage to pull off in these pages is still quite remarkable indeed. Very much recommended.

This review of The Ballot And The Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess was originally written on April 21, 2023.

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#BookReview: Reorganized Religion by Bob Smietana

Mostly Solid Examination – If From A Single Worldview. This is one of those examinations of an issue where the examination seems mostly solid, but is also clear that it is from a particular worldview – and the reader’s own feelings about that worldview will likely determine how much the reader enjoys or agrees with the author’s reasonings and recommendations. Specifically, Smeitana’s ultimate point is that older white churches are out, and younger multi-ethnic churches are in. Mostly using a more case study approach with a few more general facts thrown in (and with a scant bibliography of just about 12% of the text, rather than the 25-33% or so that is more typical of more scholarly based examinations in my experience), this book tells the tale of where the American Church finds itself now, what Smietana thinks got it here, and how he believes it can adapt into the future. And again, all of this seems objectively pretty reasonable, and how you view his particular slant will likely determine whether you agree more or less with it.

Ultimately the two stars deducted here – while I considered a third star deduction for the scant bibliography, I ultimately leaned against it due to the power of the case studies and clear direct investigations – were for proof texting and for large discussions of COVID. The proof texting was a complete brain fart, as he really only does it twice (vs other “Christian Living” books doing it *far* more often), but it is an automatic star deduction *every* time I see it, in my own personal war against the practice. The discussions of COVID largely couldn’t be avoided for anyone writing a book about where the American Church is in 2022, with the COVID disruptions of the past couple of years shifting the landscape in this arena at least as much as within any other, and objectively I can acknowledge this. However, *I DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT COVID*. Period. And therefore I wage a one man war against any and every book that mentions it as well.

Ultimately this is a book that I think it is important for anyone interesting in American Christianity and where it is and can go to consider, as there really are a lot of interesting and compelling discussions within it and points to consider, no matter your own religious or political persuasions. For this reason, it is very much recommended.

This review of Reorganized Religion by Bob Smietana was originally written on August 31, 2022.

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#BookReview: This Earthly Frame by David Sehat

Mostly Solid History Of Official Religious Life In The United States. Sehat manages to trace the history of official religious life in the US fairly well from its pre-Founding roots through its current fights over religious liberty. There are a couple of glaring weaknesses – the largest being his claim that Natural Rights theory originated in the Christian Church (it was actually created outside of the Church as a challenge to the Church’s position that rights come from God). But as with that particular case, most of these tend to only exist in areas where a rare person might actually know the particular topic particularly well – as this former Libertarian Party of Georgia official and candidate happens to do re: Natural Rights theory. 🙂 Otherwise, a solid if slightly dry – though nowhere *near* as dry as other treatises of its type – history that would be beneficial for many Americans (or those seeking to understand America) to read. Recommended.

This review of This Earthly Frame by David Sehat was originally written on February 18, 2022.

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Featured New Release Of The Week: The Truth About Lies by Aja Raden

This week we’re looking at an in-depth look at how and why we lie to each other via scams from history through modern times. This week we’re looking at The Truth About Lies by Aja Raden.

Thought Provoking, But Could Have Used More Documentation. This is a very thought provoking book that looks at lies and how we deceive both ourselves and others, using scams from prehistory all the way through the 2010s. In its examinations of how we deceive both ourselves and each other, it seems to this reader to be very well reasoned, very well thought out, and very well written. Lots of education, a fair degree of humor, and (warning to those “sensitive” to it), a few F-bombs to boot. Indeed, the one main weakness here is the dearth of its bibliography – coming it at just 6% ish of the text rather than the more common 25-30% of well-documented nonfiction texts. Also, the cover – I don’t believe Washington and the (very likely apocryphal, and thus… a lie) story of his childhood cherry tree is ever mentioned in the text. So the cover lies… which may be the point. 😉 Overall a superb book, but the bibliography issue knocks it down a star. Very much recommended.

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#BookReview: What Are The Chances by Barbara Blatchley

The Chances Are Good That This Is A Solid Book. Blatchley does an excellent job of looking at the various reasons why we believe in luck, from the societal to the social to the psychological and even the biological. And she does it with enough precision to do justice to the mathematics involved, but with enough generality to be enjoyable to a non-mathematics-oriented public. Overall an excellent “popular science” level look at the subject at hand, and very much recommended.

This review of What Are The Chances by Barbara Blatchley was originally written on March 10, 2021.