Wait, you may be thinking, it’s not the end of the week already! And you’re right; it’s not. But the Williams crew is at Samford University in Birmingham, AL for the rest of the week, for the Conference on Faith and History. Heads up, friends: you are getting HUGGED!!!
In the meanwhile, a few Unicorns for you a day or two early, because with all the intense conferencing, this blog will take a brief break until Monday—oh, and Current’s Fall Books Week will also begin Monday, and you really don’t want to miss it.
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Bonnie Kristian reviews Jeremy Lundgren’s The Pursuit of Safety: A Theology of Danger, Risk, and Security in Christianity Today. A taste:
Lundgren rightly draws our attention to assumptions about safety so familiar we often fail to notice them, let alone consider their moral implications. He issues a timely call to churches to develop theologies of safety before they’re needed. And he effectively indicts modern bureaucrats who fiddle with past safety accomplishments but don’t consider the consequences.
But Pursuit also leaves key matters insufficiently addressed. One, about our culpability for unintentional harms, gets only a brief mention even though it could have far-reaching implications for day-to-day life. Another, about violence and other deliberate human harms, is part of a strange silence throughout the text. Lundgren attends primarily to safety from accidents…
Life’s risks, he advises, should not stop us “from doing what is good and right.” He reminds readers that “Christ’s disciples are called to give up physical well-being, even to the point of death, for his sake. When the call of Christ conflicts with the pursuit of safety, the call of Christ prevails.” And, crucially, Lundgren describes enemy love as “quite reasonable to those whose lives are held secure by the love of God.”
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Considering one type of risk/safety, over at Fairer Disputations Helen Roy weighs in on the disputes about different types of childbirth, presenting the case that “Freebirth Isn’t Natural.” A taste from her argument:
…perhaps the “natural” (home) vs. “unnatural” (hospital) debate is mired in the same false dichotomy as the modern art world. In abandoning the classical definition of nature, the contemporary art world has largely ceased to produce or promote art, properly understood. Having done away with the obligations that a classical view of “nature” and “art” impose on their craft, modern artists instead emphasize non-relational autonomy, prioritizing abstractions over technique and “genius” over training. That’s how we get Pollock over Rembrandt. As a result, the “artists” and the public alike are disconnected from the very notion of beauty.
In a similar way, it seems to me that those on both sides of the false dichotomy between “natural” birth and “artificial” medicine have forgotten the nature of birth and the female body. The naturalists have forgotten the meaning of “nature,” and the medicalists have forgotten their art.
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Speaking of Fairer Disputations, editor Serena Sigillito recently signed a book contract, and I’m very much looking forward to her book. A taste of what she is arguing:
My project focuses on the embodied experience of being a woman, and the most uniquely female experience of all is becoming a mother. A key part of my argument is that we need to attend carefully to pregnancy, birth, and early motherhood, because they have something important to tell us about what it means to be a human being—something that our culture often gets wrong, with disastrous results. Although I argue that these are truths that we all need to hear, the title I initially proposed—Listen to Your Motherhood—ran the risk of pigeonholing the book as being just for moms.
I was also trying to do too much in one book. The structure I proposed was divided into three main sections, each answering a different question: Who Am I? (which focused on philosophical anthropology), What Should I Do? (which focused on ethics/practical questions of discernment), and How Should We Live Together? (which focused on political questions about social justice and put forth a theory of how mothers can act as a powerful force for social change, through both building strong families and rebuilding the institutions of civil society).
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Speaking of valuing motherhood, my own book on this topic will be out on 10/15, and I appreciated John Wilson’s kind review of it in First Things and Lynneth Renberg’s insightful review/response at the Anxious Bench.
You can also catch this excerpt from the book’s introduction this week at Institute for Family Studies. A taste:
What is a human life worth? Are some lives more economically beneficial to society than others? And are there not ways of estimating the worth of a life that are not economically driven at all? As a historian of the ancient world and the early church, I am reminded of the way the earliest Christians challenged the longstanding values of the pagan world around them to display a love of all humanity that was utterly radical—and costly. The early Christians’ pro-life stance included, at the economic level, a radically different and selfless use of money for the benefit of others. That we do not do so in our society today is a powerful reminder that the values of our society at large, including those of many confessing Christians within it, are values of the post-Christian culture all around rather than the church.
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Stephen Kamm writes in Mockinbird this week about delighting in children and games. If you read this, you will smile–guaranteed. A taste:
While shopping for stocking stuffers this year, I found small bags of plastic parts that, when assembled, were little whimsical animals and creatures. They made no sense, at least none that we could tell, and my kids teased me about them until my oldest said, “Oh, but they delighted you, Dad. That’s why you got them.” Yes. Perhaps delight is the mustard seed that will save me and saves me even now. I feel it working when I hear my children giggle, or notice new green leaves on winter-tired trees, or feel the sun on my face when I run in the forest. And for just a moment I know all my maudlin mawkishness is a bad game, and I want to hoot and holler and whoop, and I think maybe Jesus would smile and be glad if I did.
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New Verse Review‘s Halloween 2024 Mini-Issue is out! Fall and Halloween-themed poetry by a very impressive roster of poets.
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Last but not least, it is book birthday week for Paul Putz, a historian of evangelicalism and sports! You can read a Preview from his book here at Current last week, and you should also read this moving essay he just wrote—a tribute to his Nebraska hometown. A taste:
There was no university in town, just a community college. In my own family, I was a first-generation college student; no one before me had ever graduated with a bachelor’s degree.
Still, McCook provided the foundation for the historian and scholar that I became.
First, I had parents who loved to read. Books, magazines, and newspapers were a constant in our house. My dad, who worked full-time as a UPS driver while also pastoring Cornerstone Fellowship, a small nondenominational church, subscribed to a monthly Christian book club and to Christianity Today. My mom was constantly reading evangelical devotional texts: Oswald Chambers, A.W. Tozer, Watchman Nee.
I learned to love books and reading from my parents. It was not just about knowledge and intellect. I saw it as an essential part of my spiritual life.
I also came to see reading as a pathway to transformation and growth.