Book Reviews

9 [1] Good morning congregation, let’s talk about women’s reproductive rights! Or maybe gun control? How about immigration?   [2] If a sermon or adult forum on these topics doesn’t elicit some nervousness for you as a pastor or layperson, I bet you can think of several other topics that would be controversial—and likely divisive—in […]

Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the United States is written by Lenny Duncan, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Duncan was a “free-agent Christian” until he met the ELCA through an open communion table. This revolutionary symbol of grace and welcome later led […]

​ [1] Scriptures and their interpretations are highly influential in forming the norms of a culture. The act of scriptural interpretation has long fallen into the hands of those who hold positions of privilege and power, yielding readings that either affirm the status quo or further benefit the privileged sectors of society. Those who are […]

[1] The very forces that bring living species into existence –including us!– also bring cancer into being. Specifically, the forces of chance (random occurrences) and necessity (law-like regularities) are required for human life, and they are also what make cancer possible. This unnerving finding from the biological sciences is the brutal fact explained and addressed […]

[1] Religious traditions build on an assessment of the human condition.  Each tradition takes a deep sense of ‘how we are’ as humans and outlines a path to something better, something that takes us beyond – that transcends – the condition that we find ourselves in. [2] What is easy to overlook is the extent […]

In Stewart Herman’s reviews of The End of Ice and The Uninhabitable Earth he writes of our “spirits yearn[ing] to grasp the totality of what climate change means for us.” In truth, it is probably ‘ungraspable.’ But we do yearn and we must try. Our survival depends on it. As we work to study, analyze, theologize, and comprehend this complex planet, our intellects may reach into overdrive. Feeling overwhelmed, perhaps leaning toward despair, we want to shut down and simply take a walk. Or (dare I say it?) watch TV. Paradoxically, today I will recommend TV. Our Planet, the Netflix series from David Attenborough offers an immersion into the wonders of our planet as well as the perils destroying it. While stimulating our brains, the documentary’s real brilliance shines forth in its capacity to meld solid science with visual and aural sensory absorption that opens our hearts. We are enveloped in the sights and sounds of a stunning and fragile world that, to-date, still sustains us.

“How to face up—theologically—to climate change? And in particular, how to interpret the literature which deploys science to predict the Anthropocene future of our species? Two Biblical terms come to mind: “spirit” and “apocalyptic”. “Spirit” is that aspect of our whole selves which, in Reinhold Niebuhr’s concise formula, has the capacity of indefinite transcendence (The Nature and Destiny of Man, I:13). It is our capacity to reach for, and understand, the whole by which we are enlivened—or crushed. While our bodies will be overheated by rising temperatures, battered by storms, drowned by floods, and scorched by wildfires, it is our spirits which yearn to grasp the totality of what climate change means for us.”

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond || “Evicted has won multiple book awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. Its author, sociologist Matthew Desmond, received his doctorate from UW Madison and currently teaches sociology at Princeton. The book centers around several characters and their search for safe, habitable housing, and a pair of landlords making a living by leasing units to low income renters in Milwaukee. Desmond grew up on the fringes of poverty, and when he was an adult his childhood home was repossessed by a bank. He and a friend helped his industrious and frugal parents move out, and it seems that this experience and the shame associated with it impelled his career choice.”

In Transfiguring Luther: The Planetary Promise of Luther’s Theology, the Lutheran theologian Vítor Westhelle invites us to engage with Martin Luther’s theology in a new way. For those who are not familiar with Westhelle’s work, Transfiguring Luther is an introduction into Westhelle’s innovative and challenging reading of Martin Luther’s theology. For those who are familiar with Westhelle’s work, Transfiguring Luther is a collection of twenty-three of Westhelle’s arguments about and journeys into Martin Luther’s theology and the significance of Lutheran identity in a globalized, post-colonial world. In this review, I will introduce the concept of ‘the figura,’ which Westhelle uses as a conceit in his “transfiguring” of Luther. Then, I will proceed to outline a number of key themes that are present throughout the work. And then, finally, given Dr. Westhelle’s death this spring, I will offer some comments on what he meant to me personally and on the challenge that he left for us to continue.

Holiday seasons are among the most difficult for those in mourning. Well-meaning platitudes fall short, leaving friends at a loss for words, not knowing how to accompany loved ones engulfed in sorrow or facing death.

Letters written by Rainer Maria Rilke from 1907 to 1925 offer an intimate glimpse into the great poet’s understanding of death and the process of mourning. His letters to bereaved friends address the particularity of individual loss and the great themes of transformation in death and life. This small collection of letters is edited and translated by Ulrich Baer whose own difficult journey through his father’s death was transformed by Rilke’s words.