MichaelHeggen’s Neighborhood

   
   

Well, in case any of you might possibly be wondering, here is the latest book I found on the "new books" shelf at my downtown public library. Alister McGrath's recent book Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth is a readable, accessible history of the early Church's encounters and reactions to heretical movements. McGrath, a former Oxford professor and now chair of theology, ministry and education at the University of London, is also co-author along with his wife Dianna of The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine.
    Writing from the standpoint of a Christian apologist representing what I call "enlightened orthodoxy", McGrath sets out to dispel what he sees is a myth perpetuated by Dan Brown and to a lesser degree Gnostic Christianity scholar and writer Elaine Pagels- that the early heresies such as Gnosticism were really dominant beliefs in the first few centuries of the early Church but were squashed by the religious leaders in Rome. McGrath shows the reader that the early heresies were not just fringe movements, but "dead end" developments which, due to various shortcomings of their respective core beliefs, probably in all likelihood would never have been adopted by Church. Marcian's Christianity, by removing Christianity from its Jewish roots, not only cast aside the Hebrew Bible but also denied Christianity its needed historical context. It was also dualistic and antisemitic. Gnosticism, besides also being dualistic, possessed an underlying current of misogyny, (as exemplified in the Gospel of Thomas which states that a "woman cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven"). And lastly, heresies like Donatism, were mainly the product of regional concerns and would probably lose their significance outside of their particular setting.
    McGrath also reasons that based on the historical evidence, prior to about the 4th Century, the Church in Rome was not powerful enough to stamp out heretical views, even if it wanted to. Many of the Church Fathers who wrote against the heresies of the day did so as individual Christians and not as appointed representatives of a dictatorial Catholic Church. According to McGrath, orthodoxy was a slow, decentralized, collaborative process. It was not a product of imperial decree.
    I enjoyed his book. While I do like the works of writers like Pagels, McGrath does a superb job taking arcane theological arguments and making them readable and understandable for lay people like myself. If you end up reading his book, feel free to check out two other books by traditionalists. Misquoting Truth by Timothy Paul Jones takes a critical look at the "historical Jesus" movement in modern Biblical scholarship. Another one to check out is Darrel L. Bock's 2006 The Missing Gospels:Unearthing the Truth Behind the Alternative Christianities.
    
 

Amartya Sen's 2006 book Identity and Violence:The Illusions of Destiny is one of those books you don't really like, but don't hate either. Sen, a Nobel prize winning economist and former Cambridge professor, spends the greater part of 200 pages writing about globalization, religious fundamentalism, terrorism and the "clash of civilizations" only to leave the reader, feeling, well slightly ripped off. Sen is at his best when he makes his points with dry humor, anecdotes and historical examples. Unfortunately he falters when he philosophizes. He also becomes repetitive, especially toward the end of the book.

   As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out regarding Amartya Sen. In the future I hope to read at least one more of his books. But to be honest, so far I'm not impressed.

    I'm more of a man than any liberal.
          -Ann Coulter
 
   I never meant to say that Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally
   conservative.
         -John Stewart Mill

    I thought this pair of recently read books complemented each other rather well. Like most of the books featured on this website, I found both of them on the shelves of my local public library. You know, considering just how many of the books I that I've read this year are library books, I starting to wonder if I can ever justify buying my own books. But, I'm sure I will be buying a book or two for myself before I know it. But enough talk about my shortcomings, on to the two books.
    First up is Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America by Eric Alterman. Alterman, a columnist for The Nation magazine, as well as author of What Liberal Media ?

, writes a firm, comprehensive, but most perhaps most important an even-handed "refresher course" on American liberalism. Starting with a "post-mortum" on the failed policies of the Johnson administration, chief of which was the Vietnam war which divided the Democratic Party and for that matter, America as a whole. Another huge self-inflicted wound by the Democrats was their unwillingness to clearly articulate programs and policies that would be seen by all working class Americans, regardless of race, as being beneficial to them as a whole, and not merely a selective redress for the past injustices against non-white racial groups. Add to the mix years of perceived special interest politics, "stagflation", working and middle class economic wage stagnation and white flight/rust belt political dynamics and presto, you have the demise of the traditional working class affiliated Democratic Party. Of course enter the resurgent Republican Party headed by a charismatic former actor/California Governor turned President, coupled with the newfound political might of Conservative Evangelical Christians as well as dissatisfied working class whites, (many of them Southerners) and bingo, there you have it. Welcome to the recent Bush Administration.
    Perhaps though the best thing about Alterman's book isn't his criticism of the Democrats, it's his complete aniliation of the standard Fox News/Rush Limbaugh attacks on anything slightly left of the Republican Party. Alterman provides tons of well documented evidence which reveals the flaws in their arguments and above all, the shear hypocracy of their pundits.
    This is an excellent book and a strong candidate for my "Best Books Read in 2009" list. If Alterman hasn't already done it, I would like to see an updated version of this book with a chapter covering the recent Presidential election and the Republican/Conservative response to the efforts to reform health care and Sarah Palin's future role in the Party.
    Next up is Randall Balmer's 2006 book Thy Kindom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America-An Evengelical's Lament. I've liked Balmer ever since I read his Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into Evangelical Subculture a few years ago. Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Columbia University, uses his skills as a historian by showing the reader that the Founding Fathers despite what some New Right apologists might be saying, did specifically want a "wall of seperation" between church and state, with no one group or denomination being favored by the government. Remember, this nation was founded by religious refugees and Enlightenment-era thinkers who had seen enough of Europe's bloody religious wars. As a matter of fact, the ancestors of today's Evangelicals were actually a persecuted minority, the last thing they wanted was to be on the losing end of a theocratic arrangement. They too wanted a secular state to ensure their freedom.
    Balmer then shifts gears to more recent history, charting the use of Biblical "selective literalism". As the divorce epidemic started to hit the Church just as it was hammering the rest of America, suddently it became harder to preach endless sermons on the evils of divorce, (of course, having an Evangelical-friendly Republican President made it harder, too).  Eventually Evangelicals would turn their attentions to the new dangers of homosexuality and abortion. Both were seen as being problems outside the Church, and unlike divorce, "safer" ills to target their wrath. Of course, the irony being while there are a number of Biblical commands againts divorce, Jesus never once mentions either homosexuality or abortion in the Gospels. Abortion for that matter is never explicitly mentioned in either Testament. Of course the lesson here is, if you need to be literal in interpretation of the Bible, at least be selective about it.
    Balmer also goes on to the address the demise of public, especially urban education, contrasted with the rise of religious-based and increasingly tax payer supported charter schools, not to mention the growing number of Christian parents bypassing classrooms altogether and opting for homeschooling. Balmer points out role public education has had over the last few hundred years in not only in teaching our children a common language and shared citizenship but perhaps just as important the appropunity to meet children and young adults who are different from you in race, economic status and religious belief. This diversity of experience promotes respect of a wider culture and leads to tolerance and understanding.
    I said Alterman's book was one of the best books I've read this year and so is Balmer's book. And just as I recommended Alterman's book, I will of course recommend Balmer's.

Like the third estate, the Third World has nothing, and wants to be something.
      -French economist and demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952

    Early this morning before work I finally finished Vijay Prashad's 2007 comprehensive history of the developing world, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. This was yet another book I saw on display at my local bookstore that caught my eye. So, while I was rooting around the shelves at main branch of my public library not long ago I decided to finally take a chance and grab it. Well, I'm glad I did.
    Prashad, a professor of South Asian History at Trinity College in Connecticut, takes the Howard Zinn approach to a history of the world-from the perspective of the Global South, known also as the Third World. Starting with the 1927 conference in Brussels of the League Against Imperialism, Prashad traces the evolution of the NAM, (or Nonaligned Movement of nations) through the throes of decolonialism, the Cold War, the collapse of the Eastern Block, the ups and downs of "neoliberal" international economics, the late '90's Asian economic meltdown and ending with the failure of Pan-Arabism opening the door to Saudi-sponsored politcal Islam.
    Like any historian's text on history, Prashad the tells the story on his terms. Prashad's analysis of the last 60 years of the Third World is truly a leftist one, and all the good, bad and otherwise that comes with that. But Prashad is good. Damn good. Despite Prashad's biases his analysis of not just what happened but why things happened is quite impressive. While I feel he neglected a number of key things, (the rise of China as a world economic power due to its embracing of capitalism is completely neglected as is the Iranian Revolution as well as the emergence of regional powers India and Brazil) everything else he addressed in his book impressed me greatly. And perhaps above all, his research should not be taken lightly.
    Unless I come across anything better, Prashad's book is the definitive history of the Third World.

    The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West is one of those books I started, then set aside for several months before restarting it. Written by Lee Harris, a frequent Wall Street Journal contributor, this 2007 book is part philosophy of history and part extended op-ed piece. Harris challenges the Western assumption that all peoples around the world aspire for democracy and are slowly moving towards it. If anything, Harris believes that democratic regimes are relatively speaking rare in the world, and are mostly found in Anglo-American nations or nations directly shaped by them.  While I'm not sure I bought all of his arguments, this book did raise some interesting points. And it did get me thinking, which is never a bad thing.

    Ever since I read The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria I've been wanting to read more by this talented editor of Newsweek. His latest book The Post-American World, is quite good. Zakaria is a fine writer and thinker,(not long ago he was a guest speaker here in Portland and spoke for over an hour and a half without notes or a teleprompter) and does a superb job looking at the "big picture" when it comes to the state of the world. According to Zakaria, while some might say that America is in decline, what we are really experiencing is a "rise of the rest". Other nations, especially China and India are experiencing incredible economic growth.  As these upstart nations of the world grow economically, the US must respond to their newfound political clout and respond appropriately. I highly recommend Zakaria's book.

Next up are two books dealing in way or another with Islam. Carl W. Ernst's 2003 book Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World is an attempt to show the rich and multidimensional world of Islam. Ernst, a Professor of Religious Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, tries to break the stereotype of Islam as being a terrorist-promoting faith practiced by puritanical Arabs by showing the reader that in fact, with the largest Muslim countries being Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Iran and Nigeria, most Muslims aren't even Arabs. Egypt, with about 60 million is the only Arab county with a significant Muslim population. According to Ernst, "Saudi Arabia, despite its economic and political prominence, has only about 15 million people." Ernst goes on to give the reader a brief outline of Islamic history in hopes of proving that today's Bin Ladens are the exception. Moreover, they dream of an early period of Islamic purity that quite frankly, never really existed.
    I found Ernst's book an OK book at best. He came across a bit dry at times. And to be honest, I wonder if he needs to be a bit more critical in assessing the tensions that arise when those who adhere to pre-Enlightment/secularist viewpoints encounter our "Western" world. With some reservations, I might possibly recommend this book as a introductory text, but only in a supporting role.
    The other book would be Samir Kassir's brief 2006 book Being Arab. And yes, it was yet another one of those books I saw languishing unread at the public library that caught my eye. Kassir was a respected Lebanese journalist who was assassinated by a car bomb in 2005. His short book could be considered a manifesto looking at why the Arab world lags behind the West in political freedom and economic potency. It too could be considered an extended op-ed piece. Will Hobson must have done a great job translating the book from Arabic into English because I enjoyed reading Kassir's book. On the whole, I found it pretty good.

Every so often I will grab a book from the "new books" section at my local public library.  Many times these are books I've never heard of written by authors completely unknown to me. And every so often, one of those books will be a winner. This my friends, was one of them.

   Kris Hollington's 2008 book Wolves, Jackals and Foxes: The Assassins Who Changed History was an utter delight to read. Hollington, an investigative journalist from the United Kingdom, chronicles the history of assassinations and assassination attempts from the nearly successful assassination attempt on President Truman to the killing of Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, (who's murder would trigger one of the worst genocides in recent history) and pretty much everything in between. Light yet fascinating, Hollington's quick writing style sucked me in and as a result, his book was hard to put down. While, as one online reviewer observed that Hollington "didn't meet a conspiracy theory he didn't like", I learned a million interesting little factoids from his book. For example, who knew that actor Woody Harrelson's father was a contract killer ? Who knew that pornographer Larry Flynt was shot not by some puritanical zealot angry at Flynt's moral turpitude but a racist white supremacist angry at Flynt's use of African American models in his magazine Hustler ? And of course, in an ironic twist of fate, Harrelson would play Flynt in a motion picture.
    While some amazon reviewers thought this book was nothing special, I completely enjoyed it. It goes to show, if a person takes a chance on a unknown book, sometimes it pays off.
 

Well, you probably thought I've entered the Witness Protection Program or something. Sorry about the lack of posts. Fortunately, while I haven't been posting, at least I've been doing some reading. So without further ado, here's what I've been reading.
    Ever since reading about NEST in the Christian Science Monitor newspaper a few years back I've wanted to read more about it. NEST, for those who don't know, stands for Nuclear Emergency Search (now Support) Team. This high level government team is entrusted with preventing terrorists or similar groups from detonating a nuclear or radiological bomb on US soil. So, when I came across Jeffrey T. Richeleson's recent book in the new books section of my public library I grabbed it so I can learn more about this vital anti-terrorist organization. Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America's Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad

tells the story of this team, from its origins in 1974 to the present. I found the book pretty straightforward in its handling of the team's history. Richelson's book is readable and interesting, but nothing fancy.
    Joshua Kurlantzick's 2007 book Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World was yet another one of those books I've seen in bookstore display windows that caught my eye. And of course, like the cheap bastard I am, instead of buying this book at the local bookstore I borrowed it from my public library. No wonder independent bookstores are suffering these days.
    While some of the reviewers writing on Amazon are a little hard on Kurlantzick, I liked his book. I thought Charm Offensive was a very readable and informative look at China's concerted effort to gain political and economic influence, especially within the developing world. I would recommend this book to any readers interested in international relations and/or the global economy. 

Gentlemen, we're history.
     -Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

    I don't what made me pick up not one but two MORE history books at the library not long ago, but for whatever reason, I did. The two books take contrasting approaches to how one looks at history. The first book, 1688: A Global History looks at how the entire world looked during one year in the late 17th Century. The other book, The Way of the World, is a sweeping look from the first stirrings of civilization to the present age. And I must say, while I found neither book to be incredibly spectacular, I enjoyed them both.
  In 1688: A Global History by John E. Wills, Wills picks one year and travels all over the world to give us a idea of what was going on during that pivotal period in the late 17th century. I liked how Wills focused on specific people from this era to show us the world almost through their eyes. Unlike many traditional historians, Willis covered the entire earth, detailing events and personalities in China, Japan, South America and the Muslim world. His scope as well as his writing style made for interesting reading and kept this book from being a dry history textbook. I liked it.
   David Fromkin's The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Eve of the Twenty-Third Century is a nice, well-written history of the last five thousand years. Fromkin, known also as the author of the well respected A Peace to End All Peace, takes on the thankless job of writing a history of everything and pulls it off

.It won't win any awards, but it give you a nice, readable introduction to the history of the world. No complaints-I liked it.

    

Tomas Halik's book Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing In Us was another one of those books I saw sitting on the "new books" shelf at my public library that, after a cursory inspection I decided to take home with me to read. Halik, a Czech Catholic priest, Professor and adviser to former Czech President Vaclav Havel in his book tries to reach out those outside creedal belief, people like atheists, skeptics and agnostics. To Halik, these are the modern heirs of the New Testament figure of Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus of course according to Gospels was the Jewish tax collector who while perched in a tree watched Jesus preach to the crowd. Since Zacchaeus was not actively participating, he was nevertheless curious and to a degree engaged by what he saw going on around him. Today while many of those individuals are not in the Church, they might be hanging outside listening, or more likely engaged in intellectual discovery or doing admirable deeds.
    In a sense, Halik advocates a new ecumenicism. He calls on the Church to reach out those whose intellectual honesty and commitment to the Greater Good make them admirable in the eyes of God. To make his point Halik uses numerous examples from Liberation Theology, literature, philosophy, the writings of St. Paul and the lives of the Saints.
    While this is a good book, alas it is not a great book. I suspect Halik, is a better thinker than a writer. And for all his sincerity, many of the modern Zacchaeuses will strongly disagree with his opinions. I do think however, his book has contributed nicely to the ongoing debate between belief and nonbelief. Some might think his book is a bit muddled, but then again, so is the middle ground when it comes to the classic argument between belief in God and the denial of God's existence.