Idolatry

By Stephen E. Fowl (Baylor University Press)

Stephen E. Fowl is professor of theology and dean of Loyola College of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University Maryland. Idolatry is his scholarly examination of what lies behind a Christian’s turning away from the one true God and toward a myriad of lesser things. It is not a light read.

Fowl’s interest in idolatry arose over several years of teaching Introduction to Theology. Though the majority of students identify as Roman Catholic, he admits “they have very little direct exposure to the Bible.” He noticed they tend to take the first five books of the Bible at face value and then react strongly when they get to the prophets.

The prophets frequently condemn Israel and Judah for their idolatry. The students in Fowl’s class struggle to understand how people who had seen and experienced God’s miracles could turn to idolatry. Fowl explains turning to idols is a subtle and incremental process “of seemingly benign or even prudent decisions” that “allows us to keep God in view, in our peripheral vision.”

Old Testament prophets were not particularly successful in turning their audiences away from idolatry. Fowl believes contemporary audiences are no different than their forebears on that score. As a result, he believes it is better to learn what draws a moth to a flame than to call it back after it already is blindly on its way to destruction.

To steer clear of the destructive flame, Fowl seeks to “locate, identify, unlearn, and repent of the habits and dispositions that lead to idolatry before they do so.”

One step leading to idolatry is the separating of ourselves from the production of the things we consume. The more alienated we become from the production of our food, clothing and other possessions, the more apt we become to forget God and to fail to “delight in God’s goodness.”

Another step that becomes a habit is wanting more than what God offers—greed. Greed moves beyond the boundaries of God-ordered desire. Thanksgiving is a way to move back within the boundaries.

Fear also can turn a Christian to idolatry, spurring suspicion, preemption and accumulation in an attempt to gain security ourselves, rather than trusting in God for our security. Countervailing virtues to the effects of fear are hospitality, peacemaking and generosity, which are three expressions of love.

A desire to know also can be a step toward idolatry. Desiring novelty, an unbounded curiosity and the thought of possessing knowledge become ends in themselves and divide the Christian’s attention. The antidote is a singular focus on God.

Fowl concludes with an examination of whiteness as an expression of idolatry in the United States today. While an apropos topic, it seems disjointed from the preceding chapters. Even so, the strong negative reactions of some in the United States to calls for racial justice may itself serve as confirmation of Fowl’s thesis.

Eric Black, executive director/editor/publisher
Baptist Standard. 

The Politics of Ministry: Navigating Power Dynamics and Negotiating Interests

By Bob Burns, Tasha D. Chapman and Donald C. Guthrie (InterVarsity Press)

Many despise the manipulative, coercive, unjust, conflictual and divisive bent all too common in church politics. The authors respond that “practicing leadership requires people to shun unethical and unbiblical gamesmanship.” But avoiding the give and take—and even disagreements—of politics is to forego benefits to ministry of such negotiation.

“Politics is the art of getting things done with others.” It involves relationships, power, influence, interests, ethics and the interplay of stakeholders in negotiation. “Interests are priority preferences … that fuel people’s emotions, motivations, and actions.”

As much as ministry is about spiritual leadership of people, people’s interests must be identified, recognized, understood and engaged. Four chapters are devoted to interests, and for good reason. Any resistance a leader faces will be due to a perceived threat to interests. Much profit can be gained by reading nothing more than these four chapters. A good companion to this section is Marshall Shelley’s Ministering to Problem People in Your Church: What to Do With Well-Intentioned Dragons.

The last half of The Politics of Ministry ties together power and interests. When a person or a group sees either an opportunity to realize interests or a need to defend them, they bring what power they have to the service of their interests. At this point, negotiation takes place, either formally or informally. The authors describe a four-cell grid of negotiation based on the degree to which the power and interests of the parties involved overlap. The fourth cell involves the most challenge and receives its own chapter well worth reading.

The book is full of actual examples of the dynamics at play in ministry politics. The fullest example is the case study at the end, which the authors admit presents only one party’s view on a set of negotiations.

The Politics of Ministry is written to four audiences: those already involved in Christian ministry, people hurt or confused by ministry, those just starting in ministry, and the larger context of politics.

The book is intended to be imminently practical and therefore reads like a textbook. As a result, the profit may be lost by those who lose interest.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher and editor
Baptist Standard

Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed For the Good Life

By Jonathan T. Pennington (Brazos Press)

Don’t be put off by the title. Some readers may expect a liberal look at Jesus of Nazareth as just a great teacher and moral philosopher. Have no fear: Jonathan Pennington, associate professor of New Testament interpretation at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is thoroughly biblical, evangelical and orthodox. Other readers may anticipate the kind of incomprehensible gobbledygook a boring professor attempted to force-feed them in a college Philosophy 101 class. On the contrary, this book is accessible, down-to-earth and even—more often than not—fun.

Pennington makes the compelling case that Jesus was a true philosopher in the ancient classical sense—not to be confused with a philosopher in the modern sense. Much of modern philosophy falls into one of two categories, the author observes. Some schools of thought offer a thoroughly useless abstract and depersonalized examination of deep questions that provide no meaningful answers. Others peddle self-help platitudes drawn from the shallow well of pop psychology.

Jesus the Great Philosopher examines the teachings of Jesus in light of competing and complementary ancient philosophies, particularly the Western philosophical traditions that shaped the Greco-Roman culture. Pennington explores how Jesus challenged his disciples to consider Life’s Big Questions—what is good, what is right, what is beautiful, and where to find lasting happiness and hope. And he points out how Jesus did it in ways that were both thoroughly grounded in day-to-day life and that pointed to transcendent truth in the kingdom of God.

Read this book and get acquainted with Jesus the great philosopher who taught his followers the kind of whole-life wisdom that leads to flourishing—not only in the sweet by and by, but also for the living of these days.

Ken Camp, managing editor

Baptist Standard. 

Desperately Seeking Asylum: Testimonies of Trauma, Courage, and Love

By Helen T. Boursier (Rowman & Littlefield)

Helen T. Boursier is a passionate advocate for women and children seeking asylum in the United States. While a pastor of a Presbyterian church plant north of San Antonio, she also served as a volunteer chaplain for asylum seekers being held in a for-profit immigrant detention facility.

Part of her ministry included “art as spiritual care,” and she includes some examples of art by immigrants throughout Part 1. Boursier’s ministry grew to include caring for immigrant families’ practical concerns and eventually to advocacy more broadly.

Desperately Seeking Asylum comes from her experience with thousands of immigrants. It is a thorough examination of the situation along the U.S.-Mexico border from 2014 to 2019. Though some policies have changed since then, the content still holds relevance for ongoing efforts to address immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The book’s arc begins with why people seek asylum in the United States, details the tangled mess of immigration policy and practice, and concludes with practical and hopeful chapters for those wanting to become involved in seeking justice for immigrants and asylum seekers.

Part 1 details a breakdown in justice leading people to seek asylum in the United States. Pulling from immigrant testimonies, Boursier describes a hopeless situation in a Central America overrun with gangs and government corruption. The suffering is enough to lead thousands to risk more suffering while traveling north. After being detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, they were detained in facilities they named hielera (cooler)—for the frigid air inside—and perrera (dog kennel)—for their similarity to a dog pound.

Part 2 outlines U.S. government attempts to address immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border. Boursier explains the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement and its relation to the Trump administration’s policies during 2018 and 2019. She also lays out changes in those policies and the struggle immigrants experience navigating them, what she considers a further breakdown in justice.

Part 3 describes Boursier’s own response, which is rooted in a theology of hospitality, love of neighbor and solidarity. She admits to her own new experiences, such as learning who her elected officials were and communicating with them for the first time. Her description of the breadth of advocacy for immigrants and asylum seekers is as thorough as the other sections of the book.

Boursier calls readers to be involved personally in seeking justice for immigrants and those seeking asylum. She points to the many ways to engage in hospitality, love of neighbor and solidarity for, toward and with men, women and children not all that unlike us.

Eric Black, executive director/editor/publisher
Baptist Standard 

Liberation is Here: Women Uncovering Hope in a Broken World

By Nikole Lim (InterVarsity Press)

Liberation is Here is a narrative of two worlds meeting. One world is made of girls raped by men in cultures that give more power to the powerful, take the innocence of girls, and leave these girls with no recourse. This world is told through the girls’ stories.

While these girls live in Kenya and Zambia, girls and women all over the world are in the same situations. The language, dress and culture are different, yet girls and women are treated the same all over the world.

The other world is Lim’s personal one. She tells some familial stories of trauma—none of which involve sexual trauma. Her need for justice and liberation are portrayed through her work with the girls in Kenya and Zambia. Lim’s desire to help them led her to start Freely in Hope.

Lim discovered that to have justice, it takes much more than money and education. She also discovered liberation is found in unexpected places through unexpected people.

Lim’s desire for justice for ‘her’ girls led to a change in herself. Her understanding of justice, liberation and what it means to believe in God was challenged, undone, strengthened and transformed.

Those with privilege in the United States and elsewhere can see through Liberation is Here what life is like for many people around the world.

The personal stories of Lim and the girls leave a longing for true justice and healing, while acknowledging the inability to rid evil from this world in which we live. There is an underlying current in Lim’s writing that we cannot fix the world, but we can work to make it a better place where every person is safe, loved and valued.

Caution is strongly advised for anyone who has experienced sexual trauma.

Dalese Black
Plano, Texas

The Tony Evans Bible Commentary

By Tony Evans (Holman Bible Publishers)

The Tony Evans Bible Commentary was published in 2019 to much fanfare—and rightfully so. Evans was “the first African American to graduate with a doctoral degree from Dallas Theological Seminary.” He founded Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in 1976 and continues as its senior pastor. He has written more than 100 books, and his radio ministry—The Alternative with Dr. Tony Evans—is broadcast in more than 130 countries. He was the chaplain for the Dallas Cowboys and is the chaplain for the Dallas Mavericks, a position he has held more than 30 years.

And now, besides being one of the most influential pastors in the world, Evans is the first African American to write a study Bible and a one-volume Bible commentary.

As with any commentary, the reader should begin with the “Introduction.” Here, the editor(s)—or in this case, the author—states the theological position, philosophy and approach to interpreting Scripture. Unlike most academic commentaries, Evans writes to a general audience and answers questions in his introduction a general audience is likely to ask. For example, he assumes readers will ask, “How do I even approach this thing?”  In response, he offers five practical keys for studying Scripture.

For Evans, the “unifying central theme throughout the Bible is the glory of God and the advancement of his kingdom.” Everything within the Bible, then, is in service of that central theme and is worked out in individuals, families, churches and communities.

The reader will want to be familiar with the entire “General Information” section, in which Evans states his positions on key points of theology and interpretation. This section also includes practical helps like “How to Study the Bible,” which ties back to the five keys for studying Scripture stated in the “Introduction.”

From the “Definition of Key Terms,” the reader will learn Evans understands election as relating specifically to service in God’s kingdom and not to salvation. In another set of definitions, Evans provides his understanding of time as being divided into dispensations, or “progressive stages in God’s revelation.” According to Evans, the church’s presence on Earth during the latter stage ends with the rapture.

“General Information” also includes: “Theology Overview;” “Attributes of the Triune God;” “Bibliology”—or the nature of the Bible; “Names of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit;” “Doctrinal Outlines of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit;” a section on spiritual growth; and a general topical index—which usually is placed at the end of a book.

QR codes in the introductory sections for the commentary and each book of the Bible take the reader to additional resource videos.

Since this is a one-volume commentary, Evans does not expand on Scripture verse-by-verse, but rather passage-by-passage—a handful of verses at a time. His style is direct and familiar. For example, in commenting on Hosea 9:11-17, he writes: “At first, God was pleased with Israel, but they soon worshiped pagan gods (Numbers 25:1-9). That they became abhorrent like the thing they loved (9:10) is a principle you can take to the bank.”

In commenting on the letter to Philemon—a man who owned slaves—Evans paraphrases Paul’s words in verse 18 by writing: “Charge Onesimus’ debt to me. I love him so much that I will stand in his place. You can put what he owes on my tab.” Commenting on verses 19-20, he ties this letter to his kingdom emphasis: “… following Jesus Christ means submitting to his kingdom agenda for reconciliation.”

The Tony Evans Bible Commentary provides a unique and practical view on Scripture that can round out any pastor’s or Bible teacher’s library.

Eric Black, executive director/editor/publisher

Baptist Standard

Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

By Esau McCaulley (InterVarsity Academic)

Reading While Black is a book for today. Not only does Esau McCaulley take on current pressing topics, but he is just beginning an illustrious career readers will want to follow.

White evangelicals and progressives long have debated methods of biblical interpretation and how much culture plays into accurate readings of gender and sexuality in the Bible.

Black readers often are left alienated by these debates, not because they don’t share evangelical or progressive views, but because they navigate additional layers long ignored by these debates.

Black readers of the Bible find themselves responding to “Black secularists” and other non-Christians in the Black community who criticize Christianity as a slaveholder—or white—religion.

From this angle, when Black evangelicals agree with their white counterparts, they are accused of colluding with the oppressors. When they agree with Black progressives on matters of justice, they are accused by white evangelicals of unorthodoxy.

McCaulley offers a Black reading of Scripture that unashamedly holds to that difficult position amid all the layers. In academic terms, it is the “Black ecclesial interpretive model.” In lay terms, McCaulley describes a means of understanding the Bible rooted in the Black church and its oral tradition.

McCaulley prescribes “a hermeneutic of trust in which we are patient with the text (of the Bible) in the belief that when interpreted properly it will bring a blessing and not a curse. This means that we do the hard work of reading the text closely, attending to historical context, grammar, and structure.”

Acknowledging that the Black ecclesial interpretive model is not new with him, McCaulley goes back to the earliest teachings of Black pastors and theologians in the United States. He demonstrates their belief that Scripture offered both eternal and temporal salvation—freedom from sin and freedom from physical enslavement—not only spiritual freedom beyond earthly life.

He addresses the role of policing, the political witness of the church, justice, race in the Bible, what to do with anger, and slavery and freedom. Based on his treatment of just this set of topics, McCaulley has much more to teach us.

McCaulley studied under the direction of N.T. Wright while a doctoral student at the University of St. Andrews. Those who have read Wright’s books will recognize the tutor in the student.

Reading While Black is written to Black readers. White readers are guests who will come away blessed with an expanded view of Scripture and God’s people.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher and editor

Baptist Standard

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration 

By Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

Isabel Wilkerson tells the story of the Great Migration, which included 6 million African Americans from about 1915 until around 1970 who left the American South. Wilkerson focuses on three families: Ida Mae Brandon Gladley of Chickasaw County, Miss., beginning in late October 1937; George Swanson Starling of Eustis, Fla., in 1931; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster of Monroe, La., in 1933. She tells the stories of these three families, scattered as they were from different parts of the South, as they chose to migrate from the Jim Crow South to the northern and western United States. In that way, she personalizes the Great Migration, putting faces on an innumerable mass of people.

With extensive research and powerful interviews, she gives us a history of decisions, choices, realities and acceptance of life that often was less than ideal even in the promised lands of the North or California. We also learn the poison of the South’s slavery and Jim Crow years metastasized to the North, Midwest and West as whites migrated from the South ahead of the African American migration. The reader also is introduced to structural/institutional racism and its costs to African American families who simply wanted to work, live free and raise a family.

I found it sad at times, sometimes even tragic, but a helpful beginning to gather an understanding of the African American experience in America.

For believers who want to know more about what lies beneath the racism of our nation, this is a good and timely book.

Michael R. Chancellor 

Round Rock

Does God Really Like Me? Discovering the God Who Wants to Be With Us

By Cyd and Geoff Holsclaw (InterVarsity Press)

Sometimes parents remind siblings: “You don’t have to like them. You just have to love them.” Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” He doesn’t say “like.” The Bible teaches that God loves the world, but does he really like us—individually? Cyd and Geoff Holsclaw, copastors of youth and families at Vineyard North in Grand Rapids, Michigan, answer that question in Does God Really Like Me?

The authors divide their response into four sections: God’s Idols (his plan), God’s House (his presence), God’s Body (his purpose), and God’s Movement (our place). The copastors fill the pages with biblical and personal stories and illustrations, applications and encouragement, practice, reflection, songs to hear, questions and diagrams. They explain how past events, positive or negative, “color our experience of God.” Being constantly ignored, shamed or reprimanded leads to feelings of rejection and the question, “Is God just putting up with me?” Cyd and Geoff describe how the joy of wanting to be with someone and their feeling the same way offers assurance they both love and like us, and God clearly wants to be with us in prayer, worship, his word and silence.

Does God Really Like Me? should be required reading for any Christian who feels undesirable, inadequate or unliked. As with human relationships, time spent with God in special places of joy gives confidence in how much he loves us, likes us, wants to be with us and desires to bless us. After all, God invites us into his family and into “the family business.”

Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco

Companions in Suffering: Comfort for Times of Loss and Loneliness

By Wendy Alsup (InterVarsity Press)

If you have suffered or are suffering, you might roll your eyes at the title.

“Yeah, right. I’ll bet. I’ve heard that before,” you might think.

You might also wonder what Wendy Alsup knows about suffering that she can write a whole book with sufficient authority.

You might also wonder if this is going to be one more “suck it up and get over it” kind of book.

As it turns out, Alsup is well-acquainted with suffering, so much that she doesn’t have time to be anything less than honest about it.

In her 30s, she miscarried and then struggled to get pregnant again. After giving birth to two sons, her marriage ended in divorce. As a single mother, she moved from the West Coast to the East Coast to be closer to her aging parents and soon after was diagnosed with cancer. During her cancer treatment, her father nearly died of chronic heart failure.

None of these things were supposed to happen to those who followed the rules of “the prosperity gospel of conservative evangelicals.” According to that gospel, a person can avoid trouble by making good decisions. But what happens when suffering comes at no fault of one’s own?

Alsup writes candidly of loneliness, alienation, depression, envy and a general struggle with faith. She reflects on passages of Scripture that ask the hard questions without giving easy answers.

Those with deep or prolonged suffering know all the well-intentioned advice about how to get free of the pain. Alsup doesn’t offer that. Instead, she offers fellowship and companionship—“suffering with.”

Woven with her own story and questions are the struggles of the psalmists David and Asaph, Jesus, Mary and Martha, and Job. Alsup draws from a deep well in her reflections on these stories.

Companions in Suffering is rich and hopeful. It is written directly to those who know suffering well. For those who wish to offer companionship, the appendix provides good counsel for doing so well.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher and editor
Baptist Standard

Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery

By Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah (InterVarsity)

An alien species invades Earth and threatens to take over the planet. The Americans rise up against the invaders and save, well, everything—except for the invaders, of course.

That’s the basic plot line of numerous TV shows, cartoons and movies—like Independence Day and Mars Attacks!, both released in 1996. Some are comical; some are terrifying. And generally speaking, America wins.

Mark Charles tells of another alien invasion, but this one didn’t involve creatures from outer space, and the Americans didn’t win—though they did rise up. The story Charles tells is that of Europeans colonizing North America and essentially decimating the native populations.

From the beginning, we know this story about America is going to be different. The first paragraph is written in Navajo. If that’s not enough of a clue, in the second paragraph, Charles tells us his people, or Diné (pronounced di-NEH), are matrilineal; they take their identity from their mother’s mother.

Charles’ mother’s mother and father were Dutch; his father’s mother and father were Navajo.

The story gets more difficult.

Charles, along with Soong-Chan Rah—a professor of church growth and evangelism at North Park Theological Seminary and a Korean immigrant—tell the history of the Doctrine of Discovery. For those who have not encountered this history before, the first several chapters of the book may require slow reading.

The Doctrine of Discovery, the beginnings of which reach back to Pope Nicholas V in 1452, sanctioned the conquering of pagan lands by European Catholics under the guise of Christianizing those lands. The conquered people, seen as “enemies of Christ,” could be reduced to “perpetual slavery.” This sanction later was extended to “discovered lands.”

The rest, as they say, is history. Except it’s a history not told in the United States, a nation Charles and many others charge as being built on the removal of so-called discovered people.

The latter half of the book explains how the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court decisions were based on the Doctrine of Discovery, so much so that the removal of Native Americans from their lands was blessed by that doctrine. In many cases, the doctrine even took precedence over treaties the United States signed with various native tribes. It now serves to undergird land titles held by millions of Americans.

Unsettling Truths is not an easy book to read, and many likely will take issue with at least some of Charles’ assertions. Many readers will find the contents—and the bridled anger—unsettling. Yet, in a year when even an NFL team can change its name, certainly those of us who value the truth can consider the rest of the story, no matter how unsettling it may be.

Eric Black, executive director, publisher and editor

Baptist Standard

Aging: Growing Old in Church

By Will Willimon (Baker Academic)

Will Willimon quotes John Wesley as saying, “Christianity is a social religion; to turn it into a solitary affair is to destroy it.” These timely words, however, are not about quarantines or shutting down churches due to a pandemic. Instead, they refer to just one of the many challenging realities of our retirement years—and Aging wants to take on all of them.

Willimon, the retired dean of the chapel at Duke Divinity school, tells it like it is. He’s like a doctor who walks into the exam room and bluntly tells you some unfortunate diagnosis: “You’re old!” He delves into a long list of crises, including health, finances, isolation and faith. Aging tells many stories from literature and life to make some very difficult, even harsh, observations about the last chapters of life.

Then, like the doctor in the exam room, Willimon follows up with a realistic list of possible and hopeful options. He doesn’t rely on simple, canned Bible answers, though he does use the Bible extensively. He even includes several of his sermons. He also calls upon the Christian faith, exclusively.

How we maintain our own spiritual health, and how churches can help to minister to the elderly, are important themes of the book—with the author placing the responsibility to act on each individual and church. Willimon knows. He has researched, he’s observed, and he’s living out the journey through the retirement years.

The reader will get the clear picture that growing old, especially as we get older and older, is hard work—both for the individual and the church. But there is much promise and reward in the hard work for those who will do it.

Whatever your age, this book—part of Baker’s “Pastoring for Life” series—is not too late (or too early) for you to read—not as a devotional but as a guidebook. I believe its best use is for those who are preparing for, or approaching, retirement years. Additionally, churches that need to “up their game” in providing ministry for retirees will also greatly benefit.

Karl Fickling, coordinator

Texas Baptists’ Interim Church Services