Book Review: Adios, America

While at times hard to read, Ann Coulter's 2015 bestseller Adios, America! is a powerful and thoroughly researched look at the immigration issue in America from a hardline position. Ann is in many ways the embodiment of Campaign Trump, not to be confused with President Trump. She daily posts a mocking tweet on the lack of progress on the border wall:

Today's BORDER WALL CONSTRUCTION UPDATE: Miles completed yesterday-Zero; Miles completed since Inauguration-- Zero. NEXT UPDATE TOMORROW.

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) February 24, 2018

No one is going to be confused as to where she stands on the question of immigration but even if you don't agree with her, her research ought to give you pause.

Ann Coulter does her level best to make herself someone you dislike and someone you dislike is someone that is easy to ignore. She is sarcastic almost to a fault, said as someone who is pretty sarcastic, and sometimes says things that are so acerbic as to make even a hardened reader cringe. It is her schitick and I get it but it also means that it can be easy to not take her seriously. This book, even with the over-the-top title and subtitle ("The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole") absolutely demands to be taken seriously because the topic it covers is so very important.

The number one problem with this book is that it came out in June of 2015. It came out before Trump announced and therefore it looked for all the world like the Republican nominee was going to be just another empty suit, pro-amnesty at the bidding of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce GOP-bot. Things have changed in this country since 2016 but there is still a lot of concern that mirrors what Ann is writing about.

For Coulter in this book, immigration is everything and she rightly recognizes an inconvenient truth: Democrats only care about immigration for one reason....

The reason Democrats support immigration is because of how they vote.

Coulter, Ann. Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (Kindle Locations 174-175). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Democrats only care about the children of lawbreakers when it will get them 30 million new voters. Convicted felons are next.

Coulter, Ann. Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (Kindle Locations 187-188). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.

That is the core of the immigration debate from legal immigrants to illegal aliens to amnesty for "Dreamers". It is all about electoral math. Democrats have abandoned the White vote and are relying mostly on minorities and immigrants to propel them to victory in the future. The GOP doesn't seem to get this but for Coulter every single other issue is secondary to immigration because once there are sufficient "new Americans" to reliably vote Democrat, states like Texas and Florida will become like California and never vote Republican again. That means no tax reform, no protection of 2nd Amendment rights, no conservative justices, no restrictions on abortion or the demands of the militant homosexual movement, no restraint on spending or the welfare state or job killing bureaucratic regulations. Lose on the immigration issue and you lose everything....

What happens with immigration will determine whether America continues to exist or becomes a Third World republic that will never elect another Republican—in other words, “California.” It’s more important than gun rights, right to life, taxes, or Iran’s nuclear program—or whatever other issue you care to cite, because immigration will decide all issues, once and for all, in favor of the Democrats.

Coulter, Ann. Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole (Kindle Locations 4711-4715). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition. 

It does seem a little callous to reduce people to electoral math but that is the reality of the immigration debate.

From liberal activists seeking new voters to rich Republicans that want cheap lawn care and nannies, there is a powerful cabal of people that want virtually limitless immigration. The Left needs new voters and the wealthy aren't impacted by mass immigration so we see what should be a weird alliance between Republican elites and far left loons. Left out of the equation are regular working Americans, especially minorities and low income workers that are displaced by an endless flow of workers that will do the same job for less and that turn around and send their wages out of the country, a massive outflow of at least $20 billion a year that in turn enriches the wealthiest in Mexico, like Carlos Slim, who in turn are incredibly influential over U.S. media sources like the New York Times. It seems odd but the only people that seem to care about the displaced workers in America are people like Ann Coulter. While "conservatives" like Bill Kristol casually advocate for the wholesale replacement of the current American workforce, people like Ann are not willing to go down without a fight. Perhaps it will be in vain, it probably will be, but at least some of us are trying and Ann, for all of her sometimes unpleasant rhetoric, is one of them.

Book Review: The Strange Death Of Europe

Nothing is more telling regarding the state of affairs in Europe that author Douglas Murray, an open homosexual, laments the loss of Christendom in his new book The Strange Death Of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. This is one of the most powerful books on the topic of mass immigration and cultural cohesion and perhaps Murray's status as a member of one protected class gives him some cover to criticize Islam and Europe's suicidal immigration policy, although that didn't save the life of Pim Fortuyn, an early sacrificial victim on the altar of cultural enrichment. Or perhaps he is like so many others and just no longer cares. Either way The Strange Death of Europe is a piercing clarion call for the slumbering and apathetic people of Europe to wake up and at least start asking the hard questions.

The question Murray himself ponders repeatedly is this: can you continue to flood Europe with people that do not share European liberal values and don't seem interested in adopting them and expect Europe to remain the same? The answer is obvious except to the Angela Merkel's of this world.

Murray spends a great deal of time examining the mindset of Europe in the century since the end of World War II and describe what I saw as a broken, exhausted people that are tired of fighting and just waiting to die a death they think they somehow deserve because of past sins of dead people, real and imagined. There is some truth to the evils that have occurred in Europe but it is not true that these were unique to or especially worse in Europe. Other cultures may not have been as efficient as Europeans but their relative lack of "success" is not for the absence of trying. Europe's basic problem is that too many European elites see nothing in Europe worth preserving so why not hand the keys over to new people? As I mentioned, the big problem with that mindset is that there is absolutely no reason to think that the features of Europe that make it so enticing will continue on in perpetuity when Europeans are a minority or extinct. If you look at a list of nations dominated by Islam you would be hard pressed to find even one you would want to live in thanks to oppressive laws and cultural norms. When Islam replaces Christendom why would you expect a different result simply because of a change in address?

One of the most troubling and infuriating aspects of the book are those places where Murray ponders why so many "leaders" insist on a suicidal policy of mass immigration in spite of the widespread disapproval of the people and the evidence that it is proving to be a disaster. Murray posits two possible initial explanations. One that it is a complete surprise to people that had no idea what would happen because they lacked any foresight. The other is that it is a calculated effort to replace Europeans. I am not sure which is more troubling, but I tend to lean toward the latter as closer to the truth. The question of why no one wants to do anything about it raises the notion that political leaders know it is a disaster but that it is too late to do anything about it so they just seek to maximize the political benefits to themselves for as long as they can.

Murray is a masterful story teller, even in places like late in the book where he discusses the sorry state of European art and culture by referencing stuff I haven't a clue about and where he tends to get a little esoteric. He weaves together the story from the end of the Second World War to today and puts a lot of the pieces together than I was unaware of. Along with lengthy expositions he also has a ton of quotable tidbits including these two exactly 300 pages apart at the beginning and near the end of the book.

Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself or even take its own side in an argument. Pg. 2

A continent which imports the world's people will also import the world's problems. Pg 302

Those two quotes pretty well sum up the issue. Europe has no sense of self-preservation even to the simplest degree of reproducing themselves and yet is engaged in a course which is importing the world's problems without a thought for what that will mean for the continent.

Douglas Murray has created an important work with The Strange Death of Europe. I just hope it is read by enough people in time to save Europe from herself. While Murray proposes a few possible scenarios for the future, I think there are only two. One that he suggests is that future Europe looks like a massive United Nations meeting and native Europeans retreat to enclaves and rural areas that immigrants shun. The other is something far worse rising up in response to mass immigration. Sooner or later I am afraid something really major is going to happen and terrorists in Europe will get their own "home run" like 9/11. The slow, almost daily, trickle of terror is easier to shrug off but what happens if the death toll is not in the dozens but the thousands? What will happen then? One way or the other Europe is going to be very different in the next ten years. Hopefully voices of reason like Murray will lead the way. The Strange Death of Europe by Douglas Murray is one of those rare absolute must-read books, especially for those concerned about the big questions of culture and civilization.

Book Review: The Benedict Option

"The Benedict Option, is already the most discussed and most important religious book of the decade." David Brooks, The New York Times

Thus claims one reviewer, one who admittedly is not exactly my idea of an authority on what would constitute an important religious book, although I will concede that it is widely discussed. In spite of praise from Brooks and others including people as disparate as Gabe Lyons, Carl Trueman and Charles Chaput, the "Archbishop" of Philadelphia, I have to disagree. As a virtually every-day reader of Rod Dreher's primary media outlet, The American Conservative (TAC), I have had his new book, The Benedict Option (BenOp), on my radar for the better part of the year. As a reader of TAC it has been hard not to as much of 2016 featured endless previews of the BenOp and virtually every essay Dreher published somehow made reference to the Benedict Option, no matter how strained the connection. In spite of this, I still planned on reading the BenOp as soon as I could get it from the library as it touches on a topic I have been very interested in for a long time, namely how does the church respond to a changed world post-Christendom America style, and also because a lot of people are reading it and talking about it. So as soon as it showed up at our library I got my copy and dug in.

Admittedly I did so as a "hostile reviewer". Based on what I had read from Dreher already, and if I am honest out of more than a little irritation at his endless promoting of the book followed by angry denunciations of anyone who didn't respond to it positively after it came out, I was expecting to have a lot I would disagree with. I was not wrong on that count. What I also found that I was not expecting was that in spite of the hype, The BenOp was just not a very good book. I have read well written books that I disagreed with before but the BenOp was not just full of assertions I disagreed with but it was just not terribly interesting. As I wrote previously: "Far from a manifesto for the way forward, the Benedict Option has all the signs of being a flash in the pan that sells well for a month thanks to the endless hype and then fades rapidly into obscurity. Dreher has a medievalist fetish that puts Renaissance fair attendees and jousting LARPers to shame and it just doesn't translate well into our contemporary culture and he seems pretty oblivious to other, more pertinent examples from church history that point more faithfully to the way forward.". Apart from just being a generally forgettable book, the BenOp has a number of serious flaws.

Dreher puts his book forth as the way forward for Christians. The subtitle of the book right on the cover proclaims: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. The problem with this assertion is that what is missing most blatantly from The BenOp is the Gospel. The BenOp doesn't start and stop with the most important thing, the Gospel itself, and it doesn't seem from my reading of Dreher that he has any understanding of the Gospel at all, which isn't surprising since he is an Eastern Orthodox convert from Roman Catholicism. Rather than focusing on the Gospel as the cornerstone of living for the Kingdom, the BenOp instead it focuses on religion, ritual, tradition, and "Christian culture" with Dreher never seeming to connect the dots and see that those things traditionally are not the solution, they are one of the root causes of the problem.

Dreher also is entirely dependent on a very shaky premise, that of continued religious liberty in America to provide legal cover for religious folks to practice the Benedict Option in the first place. On page 84, Dreher writes: "Religious liberty is critically important to the Benedict Option. Without a robust and successful defense of First Amendment protections, Christians will not be able to build the communal institutions that are vital to maintaining our identity and values.". So Dreher proposes one the one hand what amounts to a withdrawal from political advocacy (a characterization he would angrily reject but what so many readers keep coming away from the BenOp with) but on the other admits that without robust religious liberty the BenOp won't work. The future is somewhat murky but there is one thing that is certain, religious liberty protections in this country are going to get weaker, not stronger in the future, and any strategy that fails to recognize this reality is deeply flawed at the outset. Anyone who thinks that the militant progressive secularists are going to just leave us alone if we promise to retreat into our communes is naive.

The third major flaw in the BenOp is Dreher's advocacy of what amounts to a one-sided ecumenism. Dreher has admitted in essays for TAC that he doesn't really understand evangelicalism and his commentary on various Protestant issues makes this amply clear. That doesn't stop him from presuming to declare for Evangelical Christians and other Protestants that the monastic rules from a 6th century monk are the only way to survive the future. Of course he also lists the Protestant Reformation as being on par with the 1960's Sexual Revolution for the most harmful events in Western history (pg. 23) so he clearly doesn't think much of Protestantism. I understand that, he is Eastern Orthodox after all but his prescriptions for the church seem to include lots of "smells and bells" in the form of liturgies, rituals, etc. He even at one point suggests that "beauty and goodness" are our best evangelistic tools (pg. 117), in echoes of the apocryphal "Preach the Gospel at all times, when necessary use words" nonsense attributed to Francis of Assisi. When you don't understand the Gospel I guess relying on "beauty and goodness" is your only resort.

In general, the Benedict Option is theologically confused and flaccid. Coming from the Eastern Orthodox tradition as Dreher does that is to be expected but someone who sees himself as a sort of post-Christendom Moses should take the time to flesh out the theological underpinnings and ramifications of what he is suggesting. I can't say I am surprised by the shallow theology, Dreher has in the past stated that he is not sure of the answer to the question of whether Muslims worship the same God as Christians and has never given it any thought and more recently described a Muslim reader as his brother apparently based on the Muslim reader agreeing with the Benedict Option. In other essays and several times in his book Dreher praises the "community" found in the mormon cult, including the "home teacher" program where each adult man is assigned to other adult men to check up on them regularly (pg. 135). As someone who came out of mormonism I can say without hesitation that their "community" is rigidly enforced and based on cultic control practices and is not something we ought to be emulating. To summarize, Dreher thinks that the Protestant Reformation was a disaster on par with the Sexual Revolution but he adores mormonism and feels a brotherly kinship with Muslims.

In closing, the Benedict Option is a generally uninteresting book based on a flawed premise and with more red flags that a May Day parade in Paris. Christians should be looking to the future and preparing for what that will bring but this is the wrong path. Instead of looking to a 6th century monk, we ought to be looking at the 16th century Anabaptists who thrived amid persecution. Many historic Anabaptist groups already practice intentional, close communities like the Amish, the Hutterites, the Bruderhof and others. They don't warrant a mention in the Benedict Option but mormons do. That kind of tells you why this is precisely the wrong path for the church. Many of us have been having these conversations long before the Benedict Option came on the scene and part of having a discerning mind about these questions is to be able to examine and when necessary reject flawed pathways. The Benedict Option is one of those paths that Christians need to reject.


(See also:  The Benedict Option And The Future Of The Church: We Should Look Back But Where And When Is The Real Question and The Anabaptist Option > The Benedict Option for starters)

Book Review: The Campus Rape Frenzy

"College education is perhaps the only product in the United States for which consumers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars without any clear sense of what they are purchasing"

- The Campus Rape Frenzy, pg. 267

It is not news that the state of the campus in America is generally reprehensible. From "safe spaces" where "adults" play with toys and watch videos of puppies to hide from opinions they find objectionable to the increasing willingness to squelch objectionable speech using violence, such as at Berkeley in response to Milo Yiannopoulos and at Middlebury during an attempted talk by Charles Murray, and of course the decades long nearly unanimous left-wing political indoctrination that passes for teaching, America's former point of pride, our college and university system, is an intellectual wasteland. What is worse, more and more young adults are being force-fed into the system to support the erroneous narrative that the only path to an even modestly successful life in modern America requires a four-year degree, even though many college bound high school seniors are not really benefited much by four years of additional school and the resulting tens of thousands in debt.

Into the fray comes a new book on a very specific but also very telling topic, the assault on the foundational legal principle of due process in campus sexual assault disciplinary tribunals. Written by K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor, Jr, The Campus Rape Frenzy is an often uncomfortable but absolutely vital look at how the hysteria over "rape culture" and the use of bogus statistics has created a nationwide system of kangaroo courts where (overwhelmingly male) students are subjected to a deeply biased process in which they are essentially presumed guilty of sexual assault based on a risible definition of the term.

Johnson and Taylor make their case with a seemingly endless stream of discomforting case studies where, at the very least, male students have been subjected to a tribunal where the deck is stacked against them, tribunals that are secretive, unfair and seemingly designed more to advance a political narrative about "rape culture" than discover the truth. As the authors point out, people at the highest levels of academia and government, including Senators and even the former President of the United States, throw out statistics like the one-in-five college women will be sexually assaulted. If that were true, it would mean that college campuses are far more dangerous for women than even our most troubled inner-cities and in fact are more akin to war-torn third world nations than the cozy liberal cocoons that they really resemble. The authors do a very credible dismantling of that oft repeated statistic and then tie that statistic and other narratives into the lack of due process on our campuses.

What is at least as troubling about the lack of due process facing the primarily male students in our universities and colleges when it comes to sexual assault is that like the "hate crime" hoaxes that repeatedly crop up in our media's breathless reporting only to be debunked a day later and never mentioned again, the labelling of every ill-advised sexual encounter, often fueled for both parties by alcohol, is that it diminishes the impact of actual rape and sexual assault. Sex crimes are awful and need to be treated seriously as crimes, not opportunities to grandstand about "rape culture". From this book and from plain common sense it is obvious that crimes should be handled by the police, not by untrained, agenda-driven demagogues on campus.

If the case made in The Campus Rape Frenzy is accurate, it should give pause to the parents of any college-bound young man. If the book is wrong and our college campuses are actually awash in sexual assault, it would suggest that the parents of any college-bound young woman reconsider letting her go away to school. Anyone who is concerned about basic legal protection, fairness, academic freedom and the rule of law should read The Campus Rape and ask why we are subsidizing institutions that flaunt basic legal protections and specifically target male students.

Addendum: Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy

I haven't done this before but I wanted to offer an addendum to my recent book review of J.D. Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy.

In reading my review, Vance's book and the reviews of others you might come away with a completely pessimistic and negative view of these people we call hillbillies, sitting in their "hollers", complaining about the tough hand life has dealt them and shooting heroin. There is a lot of that. There are also some very real cow patty sammiches that they have been served outside of their own control.

Many blue collar jobs have been shipped overseas. Many industries and companies have been given preferential treatment because of political contributions. In many ways the game has been rigged against them. Union bosses have gotten rich pushing destructive demands on companies that just encourage them to take their jobs elsewhere. The Republican party has been raking in their votes with empty promises that are set aside as soon as they get in office. Working class people in Youngstown, Ohio are not really all that concerned about lowering the capital gains rate, which is a worthwhile idea, they just want their kids to be able to get jobs in their own home town. By insisting that every kid go a a four year college instead of encouraging them to consider trade schools, our society has created a brain drain where kids who can make it at a university leave and don't come back and those that can't are left looking for jobs at Taco Bell. Right or wrong they see a government that ignores them in favor of other people in poverty while cultural elites on the coasts sneer and look down their noses at the only subculture one is allowed to make fun of, accusing them of inherent racism and "white privilege" which sounds pretty laughable to a kid growing up in one of the homes described in Hillbilly Elegy.

None of that excuses the loser who knocks up a girl and then either sits on the couch while she works two jobs to support them or just flat out leaves. What it does mean is that there are real issues that are out of the control of a lot of these people, or at least they have been convinced is out of their control, and hopelessness is a lot easier to deal with when you are abusing prescription drugs or smoking pot. What J.D. Vance does so well in this book is take this entire population out of the shadows and the cliches and expose them as real people. If nothing else he deserves kudos for that.

Book Review: Hillbilly Elegy

We live in a world of Black Lives Matter, of constant harping about "white privilege" and a focus on the trials and tribulations of the nation's inner cities. What we rarely think about, except to sneer at it, is the huge population of Americans who inhabit the rural and semi-rural white working class that dwell in the Rust Belt, Appalachia and the South, a group of people who are falling behind at an alarming pace and who suffer from the same maladies as inner city blacks except for the astronomical homicide rate. They are a largely forgotten people and many of the opinion makers in America are glad to not have to think about them.

There are some who look at the problems in this group like Charles Murray and his fantastic book Coming Apart: The State Of White America, 1960-2010 but his work is a bit heavy for casual reading. Into this slow moving demographic train-wreck comes Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir Of A Family And Culture In Crisis by J.D. Vance. Vance comes from a world many people who live in the suburbs haven't a clue about but Vance's book comes out at a critical time in America. As I write this the Republican Party has rather reluctantly nominated Donald Trump to be President and much of his support comes ironically from this white lower class, people from coal towns in Kentucky and shuttered steel mills in Ohio who have found a champion in an East Coast billionaire. If you don't understand these people, you can't understand Trump's rise.

Vance tells his story in a simple, straight forward and pretty raw style. You won't find such salty language even in a George R.R. Martin book and it is all the more shocking because so much of it comes from his grandmother or as he calls her Mamaw. It is the story of an intensely proud, religious, patriotic people who praise the virtue of hard-work but who also seem loathe to engage in it. People who are religious but have no connection to a faith community and who show none of the signs of a believer. A people who are patriotic to a fault but who simultaneously hate the government that many of them are dependent on. Above all a people who think they lack agency, that all of their problems are being inflicted on them from outside and there is nothing they can do about it. From his unimaginably tumultuous childhood with only his extended family to watch over him as his mother engaged in a variety of self-destructive behavior and relationships, to his escape to the Marine Corps (for many kids in poor, rural areas the only path out is the military) to his admittance to Ohio State and then finally to his law degree from Yale of all places, Vance tells what is really an incredibly improbably story.

A hillbilly who almost flunked out of high school going to Yale Law School. That part of his life is the most puzzling to me. Anyone can get into Ohio State if they are from Ohio. I walked into a counselors office on a lark one summer day in Columbus with my future wife and was accepted without applying and registered for classes on the spot. What still seems odd to me is that he parlayed that into acceptance to Yale. Anyway.

I am a native Ohioan but I come from a little different background. Growing up in the Toledo area the son of a doctor meant that might experience as a kid was very different. It wasn't a question of if I could get into college but which college I would attend but even Toledo has it's share of hillbillies. Toledo used to be a white, working class, blue collar union town. My mom grew up in that part of Ohio east of Columbus and south of Cleveland that looks a lot more like Kentucky and West Virginia than Cincinnati. My dad grew up in a poor Polish family in Toledo. I remember visiting family with my maternal grandpa down in the hill country and thinking it was a whole different world. My wife's family still has a lot of those roots as well with many of the same issues that Vance describes in his book. Even where we lived in Ohio and now in Indiana we are just on the periphery of this culture Vance describes so vividly.

Hillbilly Elegy describes a world where about everything that could go wrong, does go wrong. In deep rural areas all around the South and Rustbelt Midwest heroin, meth and prescription drug abuse are rampant. Unwed mothers are common place. Welfare and food stamps sustain a lot of people. But what is most troubling, and if I am honest infuriating, is the fatalism so many people exhibit. Nothing is their fault, everything bad is being done to them rather than being the consequences of their own poor decisions. Boys grow up sneering at academic achievement. Girls seem drawn to absolute losers who knock them up and then move on to the next girl. A lot of people I grew up with mocked blacks for being dependent on the government, being lazy "welfare queens" while living in pretty much the same manner. Vance spins a compelling story that is hard to put down. Living in a home where books were always at hand, where classical music often was playing, where as a family we would watch The McLaughlin Group together for fun this world was completely foreign to me as much as the world portrayed in movies like Boyz n The Hood talked about a foreign world to me. The world J.D. describes is a bad situation and it is getting worse.

So what is the solution? What is perhaps most troubling is that there isn't one. The "War On Poverty", the bottomless pit of "education" spending, a myriad of social safety nets, all of these programs so beloved in Washington have cost us untold tens of trillions of dollars and it can be argued have made things worse. Vance closes out his tale with this:

"I don't know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better." pg. 256

The hard truth that people in permanent underclasses need to realize is that at some point it is up to each individual community to make things better. People in Washington and New York and Boston can't really fix a problem that they don't understand and trillions of dollars in spending has proven that. It is up to the hillbillies to say enough is enough, enough with the refusal to work to support a family, enough with the constant turmoil and violence in families, enough with the dependency on government and drugs. It doesn't make for a storybook ending but it is the truth and in these times the hard truth is far more valuable than the comfortable lie. I can say without reserve that Hillbilly Elegy is one of the most compelling and most important books to have hit the scene for many years.

Book Review: Imbeciles

When you hear about a government using forced sterilization to eliminate "undesirable" traits in the population, your first thought would probably be that I am talking about Nazi Germany. You would be correct in that the Nazis were well know for their grotesque fascination with racial purity achieved by whatever means necessary, whether that means forced sterilizations or the outright murder of entire populations of people who had the misfortune of being born with a disability or being of a hated racial group like the Jews. What you might not realize is that when Adolf Hitler was still a young lad, eugenics was a hot topic in the land of the free and the home of the brave, even to the point of having the Supreme Court of these United States give an 8-1 decision that blessed the practice of forcibly sterilizing those deemed to be polluting the American population pool with their undesirable traits. In fact later on during the Nazi war trials after World War II, the Nazis pointed to America as leading the charge in eugenics well before the Nazis took power.

That Supreme Court decision and the simple young woman caught up in this legal precedent form the basis for a new book from Adam Cohen, Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. Adam Cohen details the parallel lives of Ms. Buck, her family, the legal and scientific authorities who created the foundation of forced sterilization and the nation herself during this time. As Cohen relates, Ms. Buck was considered the perfect individual to be used as a test case for Virginia's forced sterilization law. In a case reliant upon pretty sketchy science, dubious "evidence" and an utter lack of reasonable representation for Ms. Buck, the champions of eugenics found their ideal case to appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, where it received a warm welcome and most especially from liberal legal icon Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. While Cohen seems disheartened by a so-called "progressive" championing forced sterilization, Justice Holmes is in good company with other progressives like Planned Parenthood founder and heroine to Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Margaret Sanger seeing many people as less than human impediments to progress, especially blacks.

Imbeciles is a deeply researched work. I can only imagine how many boxes and boxes of irrelevant documentation he had to dig through to get the information he sought. He also is a pretty decent story teller, avoiding for the most part the tendency of historical works to drift into a dry recitation of names, dates and events. Most of all, Imbeciles is a chilling reminder of the power of an unrestrained government to wreak havoc on the lives of people it is supposed to be serving. The American courts have long been responsible for dehumanizing decisions that have decreed certain types of people (blacks, the "feebleminded", unborn children) as subhuman and worthy of being controlled, repressed or outright killed. We divest ourselves of our liberty at our peril as has been demonstrated over and over again. I do wish Cohen had dealt more with the topic of forced sterilizations in America post Buck v. Bell and that he had expanded on the chilling rise of a new form of eugenics in "designer babies" and the abortion of less than desirable babies. Buck v Bell is still the law of the land even if individual states no longer practice forced sterilizations.

Cohen stumbles in a couple of places. First he tends to do a lot of hypothesizing about what someone was thinking or feeling to help fill in his case. Certainly one can infer from other evidence what is likely to be thought in a particular case by a certain person, but that doesn't pass the sniff test for a painstakingly researched historical work. I also found that he tended to repeat himself, almost verbatim, in places making me wonder if I had not already read a page before. Finally he spends far too much time trying to prove that Ms. Buck was not "feebleminded". To me, her alleged lower intelligence or mental retardation is irrelevant to whether the United States government and the various state governments should be in the business of forcing people to be sterilized. In one telling passage Cohen recounts that Ms. Buck was sent home from a family she was staying with for using one of their dishes as a chamber pot. That seems to be a behavior that a person of normal intelligence wouldn't do. Overall though this is a worthwhile read and one that should inform your decision making well beyond questions of eugenics.

Book Review: Christianity & Liberalism

As a more or less fundamentalist Reformed guy I am ashamed to admit to having just now finished reading J. Gresham Machen's prophetic early 20th century masterpiece, Christianity & Liberalism. I don't use words like "prophetic" and "masterpiece" lightly but they apply in this case. This isn't a sweeping novel or a supremely deep theological treatise, it is just common sense that clearly became uncommon long before I was born. Machen could clearly see the direction that "Christianity" was taking even back then and the intervening years have validated his concern. His writing is not going to win awards for nuance or prose but they hit like a hammer on page after page.

The basic premise of the book, written at the beginning of the 20th century when the "mainline" denominations were starting to rot from the inside out, is that Christianity is not divided into conservatism and liberalism (or progressivism in today's parlance where liberal is a dirty word). Rather the divide is between Christianity and liberalism, and Machen is in no way subtle when he declares liberalism to be by definition not Christian and in fact a completely separate faith system. Here is Machen at his un-nuanced best:

But one thing is perfectly plain – whether or not liberals are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity. And that being the case, it is highly undesirable that liberalism and Christianity should continue to be propagated within the bounds of the same organization. A separation between the two parties in the Church is the crying need of the hour.  J. Gresham Machen (0100-12-31 17:00:00-07:00). Christianity & Liberalism (Kindle Locations 2201-2204)

Or as I like to put it, progressives might be Christians but if so it is in spite of, not because of, their progressive notions. Talk of separation over doctrine makes many religious people run for their security blanket but being unequally yoked is always destructive to the witness of the church.

Machen hits on the main topics that have led to the downfall and slow death of "mainline" Protestantism, topics like the denial of what the Bible teaches on issues like the nature of Christ, the atonement and the church and of course the main problem, a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the Bible itself. What continually stood out for me was that the same problems he pointed to almost a century ago are still infecting groups today. Not content with destroying some of the denominations that were early adopters of a functional universalism, evolution and a gender-less church, the same destructive ideas are infecting groups like the Mennonite Church-USA, and like other denominations the message is that the MC-USA must capitulate and adopt these errors or risk dying, even though the evidence suggests just the opposite.

The language used Christianity & Liberalism often sounds jarring to our tender ears, steeped in contemporary political correctness as they are. I would say that we need more talk like this, unashamed, unapologetically blunt and devoid of nuance. We as the church have been nuancing ourselves to death for a century and the result is a post-apocalyptic landscape of dying local congregations and toothless church leaders who are terrified of offending the people putting the money in the offering plate and emasculated by the thought of being mocked by the haughty learned in religious circles for clinging to a primitive religious system. 

Read Christianity & Liberalism today, the events Machen foretold are happening all around us and there is no time to waste.

Book Review: The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists

Featuring an eclectic mix of contributors from Rick Warren and Emir Caner to Malcolm Yarnell and Albert Mohler, The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists: Restoring New Testament Christianity, is a collection of essays giving us a solid look at important lessons for contemporary Baptists and others from the Anabaptists.

This is not a "Trail of blood" style book that attempts to create a Baptist version of papal apostolic succession. It is more of a historic look back at a group with a lot of similarities to Baptists. The book argues, successfully in most ways, that Baptists today can learn from the Anabaptists and explains how they can speak to our contemporary setting, something I have advocated for over the course of the last few years amid seismic shifts in our religious culture and the church itself. These essays are, as noted by the title, written in honor of Paige Patterson and come from megachurch pastors as well as seminary teachers and students. I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed Rick Warren's chapter, I am not a big fan of his but taken on the merits of the chapter it was excellent although some of it was hokey as can be ("I want to build the bridge of love between my heart and theirs so that Jesus can walk across." (Kindle Locations 2113-2114) Save it for Hallmark!)

The chapters range from highly accessible to very academic. One of the greatest strength of this book is also often its greatest weakness. Some of the later chapters contain great information but are pretty deep, scholarly articles that I felt like I was wading through and they may not be as accessible to the average reader as some of the earlier, more popular level chapters. I admit to skimming a bit in these chapters, the academic minutiae was a bit much for me and I would imagine that is true for a lot of even above-average Baptists who are familiar with church history. 

This is book is especially well suited for those with minimal background in Anabaptism. Especially useful are the chapters dealing with Balthasar Hubmaier, a powerful theologian who gives us a glimpse into the thinking of the Anabaptists and, if I can be permitted an editorial comment, shows that the contemporary neo-Anabaptist movement has very little in common with the Anabaptists. We also see some of the more questionable theological notions of Anabaptists, something I give them a lot of latitude for since they were a little too busy being hunted, tortured and murdered to sit down and work out the niceties of theological positions. For the historic Anabaptists, their most powerful theological statements are read in the blood, not in their books.

Below are a couple of choice quotes:

The modern generation is largely rootless. They are fatherless and rootless, and so they get blown around like tumbleweeds. When I talk about Radical Reformers, I am talking about people who say, “We have to go back to the root.” The Magisterial Reformation did not go far enough. You must go back to the New Testament, to the apostolic church. The Anabaptists and other Radical Reformers were “radical” in the truest sense, not as being extreme but in the sense of returning to their roots. (Rick Warren)

The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists: Restoring New Testament Christianity (Kindle Locations 1993-1996). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Emphasis Mine

From 1520 to 1560 approximately three thousand legally sanctioned executions for heresy occurred. The Anabaptist movement accounted for almost two-thirds of those executed. (Thomas White)

The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists: Restoring New Testament Christianity (Kindle Locations 1788-1789)

That was staggering to read. Almost 2/3 of the executions were of Anabaptists. I knew the percentage would be significant but not that high.

In his discussion of the “church,” Hubmaier noted the importance of “love” in the practice of church discipline or fraternal admonition. He had Leonhart ask, “What authority do those in the church have over one another?” Hans replied, “The power of fraternal admonition.” Leonhart then inquired, “What is fraternal admonition?” Hans answered, “One who sees his brother sin goes to him in love [zu ˚ im geet auß liebe] and admonishes him fraternally and quietly [strafft in bru ˚ derlich in der still] to abandon such sin. If he desists, he has won his soul.” Hubmaier emphasized “fraternal admonition [bru ˚ > derlich straff]” or “brotherly love,” which instilled mutual accountability within the congregation. His Anabaptist ecclesiology was set apart from the priestly admonition in the Catholic Church, which lacked mutual accountability between clergy and laity.

The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists: Restoring New Testament Christianity (Kindle Locations 2770-2777), Emphasis Mine.

Living at a time of many changes and much duress in the ecclesiological sphere for someone of his convictions, Hubmaier saw moral laxity as the “besetting weakness of Protestantism.”(Simon Goncharenko)

The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists: Restoring New Testament Christianity (Kindle Locations 3557-3558)

Luther becomes a reformer because he cannot attain assurance of salvation in the system of the Roman Catholic Church; Oecolampad becomes a reformer because he cannot find the new creature in Christ sufficiently realized in the Roman Catholic Church. Luther deals with justification; Oecolampad, following 1 Thessalonians 4: 3, says voluntas Dei est sanctificatio nostra. For Luther, the focus is on faith; for Oecolampad, on that which flows from faith— Piety, holiness, love— as well with the individual as with the overall entity of the corpus Christi mysticum. Luther emphasizes a Christianity more affected by Paul; Oecolampad one more affected by John.

The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists: Restoring New Testament Christianity (Kindle Locations 4818-4822)  

That is pretty representative of what you should expect. For anyone who is a Baptist, Anabaptist or just a student of church history, The Anabaptists and Contemporary Baptists is a great resource to build those bridges we need to learn from the past and hopefully avoid repeating some failures.

Book Review: Clinton Cash

It is no revelation to point out that most politicians seem to be at least a little crooked. Maybe not overtly but certainly influenced by those who fund their campaigns and in turn those they extort money from for political favors. The entire American system of government is a huge cash cow and there are plenty of people lined up to get a piece. Even in a corrupt system there have always been those who have taken it to a new level, some who get caught and many others who never do. At the top of this festering pile of corruption there stands a pair of political hucksters like no other, one a former President and one who has a very decent chance to be the next President. No one has learned to game the system and avoid prosecution quite like Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Enter Peter Schweizer, author of Extortion (see my review here) with his new, heavily documented book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. This is a convoluted tale that reads like a somewhat predictable summer thriller, full of shady characters and international intrigue but sadly this is not fiction, it is the record of two people who claimed to be "dead broke" before parlaying their extensive influence, foreign fan base and continuing position of power in the heart of American politics to enrich themselves beyond the imagination of most people. Worse, as Schweizer shows conclusively, this personal enrichment came not from domestic sources but largely by using Hillary Clinton's position as Secretary of State to apparently trade U.S. foreign policy favors to foreign nationals, often of the most unsavory kind. As Schweizer alludes to, it hardly seems that there is a nefarious Third World dictator that didn't purchase influence from  the U.S. government by paying Bill Clinton exorbitant speaking fees (half a million dollars and up) or by enormous contributions to the Clinton's "charitable" foundation which appears to be little more than a way to funnel money around the world and provide employment to former Clinton staffers and loyalists.

What was perhaps the most infuriating was the chapter on Haiti. Having been to Haiti and caring deeply for the people there, I used to have some respect for the Clinton's for their apparent concern about the nation and people but from what I read in this book it looks like Haiti was just another way for the Clinton's to sell influence and gather wealth and power.

I doubt many people will care about this. Those who will read it already are unlikely to vote for Hillary anyway and her rabid "it's time for a woman president no matter how dishonest and corrupt!" fans in the media and popular culture will do their best to squelch this, just as they have so far managed to do with her Byzantine system of hiding and then selectively releasing emails sent and stored away from the prying eyes of the few reporters still out there and out of range of the Freedom of Information Act. I do hope that some people who think of Hillary as a champion of the middle-class and someone who can trusted to be the leader of the free world will at least give this book a chance. What is detailed is not surprising but it is still shocking and proof that the most powerful couple in politics have no shame and no concern over being caught. Thus far they have been proven correct as their corruption, influence and wealth spreads.

Book Review: Of Dice And Men

For those who know me mostly by my online scribbling it might come as a surprise (or perhaps not) that I do more than rant about theological lib'rals and the institutional church. I read books about stuff other than the Anabaptists and ecclesiology. In fact I read a ton of fiction works, almost exclusively fantasy and science fiction. This goes way back to my childhood and even though I have had times when my love of adventure and fantasy was set aside, I still retained both my passion for them and also the historic artifacts that were the focus of my younger days. If you doubt that, stop over some time and I can show you my pretty complete set of first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rule books, modules, early edition Dragon magazines and a vast collection of fantasy and science fiction novels from the 70's and 80's. Keep in mind that I didn't move out of my parent's house and into my current home in Indiana. My wife and I have moved over and over again, from Ohio to Wyoming to New Hampshire back to Michigan with a number of other states in-between (my 8 children were born in 5 different states and only the last two were born at the same hospital consecutively). Throughout all of these moves it would have been easy to ditch this stuff but my loving helpmeet never let me. In a time of multiple thorns in the flesh I have found myself once more delving into this world that formed who I am as a person and provided my main outlet for creative thought long before blogs. Into this time of crisis I came across a book that delighted me like few have recently, David Ewalt's Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It.

At this point let me stop and offer a bit of friendly advice. If you are someone who is still caught up in the hysteria of the 80's that painted Dungeons & Dragons as a satanic plot that led to kids murdering their families and killing themselves, please stop reading and go elsewhere. If you are fixin' to wag your finger at me for such a worldly waste of time, same thing. Take your SEC football jersey and foam finger and hit the road.

Still here? OK, on with the review!

Of Dice and Men, ODM from here out, is not a deep read. It isn't going to give earth-shattering insight to people who have played D&D for any length of time. It is a pretty lightweight introduction for those unfamiliar with Role Playing Games. It still was so much fun to read. I also learned quite a lot about the history of this game. I was born in 1971 and started with D&D when I was in middle school if I recall correctly but I was into fantasy and sci-fi long before that. I was an early reader and read books like the Lord of the Rings when other kids were struggling with Dick and Jane books. As with most of my family I was always with my nose in a book: in the car, at the dinner table, before bed, on vacation. I would go to northern Michigan on the shores of a beautiful lake and sit inside and read. Those books were almost always a fantasy or sci-fi novel. When I started getting into D&D it opened a new world for me. No longer was I restricted to the world created for me by the author, as amazing as the world of Tolkien and others might be. I could create my own world and boy did I ever. I actually rarely played the game with others, for me the joy came in creation even if no one else ever saw it. As I grew older, D&D got to be a social liability and it was boxed away but those books were always there. Even as someone who is by most accounts an ultra-conservative fundamentalist, I love the world and adventure creating that goes on in role playing games, whether D&D or a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) like Eve Online (I am too awesome to play World of Warcraft) where I play as a character with a name derived from my favorite childhood elven character in D&D.

This is a similar story to David Ewalt, the author of ODM who is also a journalist writing for Forbes. He was a D&D guy back in the heyday like me, although a little younger, who moved away from the game but also kept a lot of his old stuff. ODM is his story of rediscovery as much as it is a history of D&D but I still learned a lot. As a middle-schooler I didn't see the  turmoil that rocked the founders of D&D and TSR, Inc. I just loved new stuff coming out. ODM helped fill in the blanks for me. It also served to give me a crash course on what has happened since I stepped away from the game although a lot of the details of the ill-fated editions is left out. I mostly enjoyed his own personal journey back into the game. Like David I have a spouse who is pretty much supportive of my weird habit and that has made a ton of difference in my life (in a lot of ways not related to gaming as well).

ODM provides a look at what happens when a game played in the basement becomes a world-wide phenomena and the subsequent squabbles over money and control that would ultimately lead to founder Gary Gygax losing control of his own creation. The game has gone through a lot of struggles but with the latest iteration described in ODM it might be posed for a comeback.

I don't know if many (any) people who frequent my blog would find this book interesting. I kind of suspect more might than you would think. If you share some secret, closeted geek street cred give this book a shot. There is some colorful language but the story is a fun one and well told. Who knows, you might want to try your hand at being a half-orc or gnome with some local nerds!

Book Review: Separated Unto God

As I mentioned yesterday, I read a lot while on vacation. One book I finished up was pretty meh but the second was mostly irritating and disquieting, not because it was wrong but because it struck a little too close to home. Below is my review.

The main failing of much of Christendom today, however, is not the development of a neolegalism, but of unvarnished worldliness. 

- J.C. Wenger, Separated Unto God, p 144

Nestled in a lengthy book, the above quote from John C. Wenger in 1951, makes a point that was true in the middle of the 20th century and is even more true today. In spite of frequent dire warnings of the "legalism" boogeyman, the greater danger in the church is and has always been a compromised posture toward the world, an attitude that sees progressive surrender to stay one step ahead of the world's displeasure as the safest path. For the vast majority of the church the time to make a stand has passed but in some places there still is a healthy appreciation for the need for the church to be a separate and distinct people who do not look, think or act like the world.

J.C. Wenger's comprehensive look at separation, Separated Unto God, is perhaps the gold standard on the topic from an Anabaptist perspective. Granted that many contemporary "Anabaptists" would be shocked and horrified at what he describes, I nevertheless find far more of value in what Wenger wrote six decades ago than I do in most of what passes for Anabaptist literature today. While some of what he wrote seems archaic and even quaint in our "enlightened" culture, even in the church, I found virtually every page to be convicting. I also found it unsettling because too often I recognized where I was likewise engaged in cultural compromise, often without giving it much thought.

For virtually every subject from how we dress to involvement in war, Wenger goes to the Bible and makes a compelling case for simple non-conformity. It is a refreshing change in an era of compromise at breakneck speed from most corners of the church apart from those that are still trying to tilt at the windmills of the culture wars. It is important to note that Wenger approaches this entire topic as a positive separation toward God rather than away from the world. The difference might seem quibbling but it is an important difference to understand.

Wenger also touches on one of the (or perhaps the) major weaknesses of the separated, conservative Anabaptist tribe, namely their tendency to bunker up, rely on tradition and eschew the evangelistic zeal of their Anabaptist forefather. Speaking of the Pennsylvania Mennonites, Wenger quotes the following:

Their Christianity was not that of "radical" Christians; it had settled down to a comfortable, conventional, denominational type. There was no thought of evangelistic work, no need of any kind of mission work, or occasion to alter any of the set patterns of worship. The faith and practice of the immigrants was good and satisfying, why change?

From Mennonite Life, quoted in Separated Unto God, p. 80

That rings true even today and it is a major issue but compared to having conversations on accepting "gay marriage" it pales in comparison and is an issue that can be fixed.

If there are weak points they come when Wenger turns to certain church traditions like close (although not closed) communion and church membership. In spite of these flaws I found very little to disagree with. The writing style is a bit archaic and dated but that is quite common among books written in the middle of the 20th century. It is not an easy read but it certainly is a worthwhile one, not just for Christians who embrace Biblical separation but for any Christian who looks around at the race to compromise and wonders if that is what God really has in mind for His church.

Amid the confusion of the church culture we live in and a redefinition of "Anabaptism" that looks suspiciously like run of the mill "progressive evangelicalism", Wenger's writings from so many years ago is a refreshing change and even more necessary today than it was in the 1950's. May God's people recover a healthy separation, not so much from the world but unto God along with a vigorous zeal for evangelism. The world desperately needs it.

Book Review: A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

While I was in Florida for the last week I read. A lot. I finished two books and made decent progress on a couple of others, here is my first review.

Given that I am an orthodox, evangelical believer who holds to a position of non-resistance, I came at Brian Zahnd's book, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace with a mix of hope and trepidation. I was hopeful because it purported to be written from a viewpoint I am sympathetic to, one of a more traditional evangelical coming to a place where support and advocacy of militarism and violence was not compatible with the Kingdom. I was cautious because of some of the things I had seen about Zahnd in social media. I came away with pretty disappointed.

From a stylistic standpoint I found Farewell to Mars to be a disjointed and rambling book. Brian didn't seem to have thought through what we wanted to say other than war is bad. I also found it excessively self-referential. I understand that it is a book about his own personal journey but it would have been a little more useful in convincing a skeptical reader of the value of the non-violence position if he spent less time talking about himself and more in engaging the text. Not that he doesn't but his engagement was not terrible strong in my opinion.

I intentionally didn't do much studying of Zahnd before I read Farewell to Mars but I found his constant allusion to politics and his incessant references to "empire" and Jesus as a "victim" really undermined the book. I know it is hip to talk about "empire" and I guess it is integral to his thesis but it rang hollow to me and made the book less about non-violence for the Christian and more about trying to be a contemporary John Howard Yoder. To reach an audience of evangelicals with the message of Jesus on non-violence it is not helpful to bury non-violence in your own political agenda. Maybe that is not what he was after, if he was looking for affirmation from people already in his camp then perhaps he succeeded but as a message to the broader church on a critical and misunderstood topic it missed the mark by a wide margin.

For a better treatment of this topic without all of the less than subtle progressive talking points, check out Preston Sprinkle's book Fight. You can read my review of Fight here.

Book Review: The Legacy of Michael Sattler

I recently finished John Howard Yoder's compilation The Legacy of Michael Sattler. Yoder compiles all of the known documents attributed to the Anabaptist martyr Michael Sattler, one of the most prominent thinkers and leaders of early Anabaptism, especially the Swiss Anabaptist movement. Sattler is someone I have written about before and as one of the lead authors of the Schleitheim Confession he can be arguably labelled the most well-known Anabaptist theologian.

Yoder includes in his work a number of letters and formal writings attributed to Sattler, accounts of his trial and execution, letters written by him from prison and on his behalf from others, notably the Reformer Wolfgang Capito. Also included are two hymns thought to have been written by Sattler that are still in use today by the Amish in their Ausbund, or German hymnbook. Some of my Amish friends recognized his name from the book when I was reading it and confirmed the use of those hymns. Also included is a rather difficult to interpret set of scriptural references seeking to refute infant baptism.

For the student of historic Anabaptism this is an invaluable addition of primary documents, which stands in contrast to the more typical "survey" books like Verduin's The Reformers and their Stepchildren. We get the chance to look at these early writings and see the nascent theology of those who rejected Roman doctrine and many Lutheran/Reformed adaptations alike. Some of the writings exhibit a fairly primitive attempt on a topic but Sattler, like so many others, didn't live long enough to work out his theological positions in great detail. Still The Legacy of Michael Sattler is like a brief step back into history and one I found to be fascinating and encouraging, even though it is overshadowed in places by the gruesome, anti-Christian murder of Sattler.

As an aside, the more I read of the historic Anabaptists the more it seems to me that contemporary "Anabaptists" don't look, think or act much like them on either side of the spectrum. While I feel far more affinity toward the "conservative" contemporary Anabaptists, their insistence on external uniformity and lack of evangelistic zeal indicate that they turned inward and never turned back somewhere along the line. The contemporary "progressive Anabaptist" movement shares a desire for peacemaking with the historic Anabaptists and that is about it, having co-opted the name as a groovy sounding name to dress up run of the mill progressive theology. I think a lot of this stems from general ignorance and indifference to what the men and women who first carried the name Anabaptists thought, taught and did. I think conservative Anabaptists would rediscover the zeal for evangelism that marked their forefathers and perhaps progressive Anabaptists would realize that you can be a peacemaker without embracing every leftist political idea and aberrant theology that comes along.

If you are interested in the Anabaptists and have read over some of the popular level surveys of Anabapist history, The Legacy of Michael Sattler is a great way to get deeper and meet from afar some of our brothers and sisters who paid with their life in order to serve our Lord.

Book Review: Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity

I have posted a few times about a writing project I have been involved in and I am excited to say that Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity releases tomorrow! It was a project a long time in the making and unlike other books from the simple/house/organic church system, Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity is intentionally focused on what we are for rather than what we are against, where and how we find agreement on critical principles of the church.

I can say I agree in principle with almost everything written and in practice with most. Certainly there are places I disagree, some pretty strenuously, but even though there are some portions that I found disagreement that is sort of the point of this book. We don't all agree on everything but on many issues, some of the most critical, we do agree and seek unity in spite of those other differences. The church as it exists right now suffers from an overabundance of homogeneity. The Reformed huddle together with the Reformed, the Pentecostals with other Pentecostals, the Lutherans with one another, etc. We tend to lump actual Christians we disagree with in almost the same category as people who don't believe at all and at the same time lurk around in echo chambers where we all talk about how much we agree about the things we agree on. Theological in-breeding is unhealthy and dangerous. It is good and healthy to examine what others think and to reexamine our positions. While I didn't find much that really caused me to question any positions I hold, it was still a profitable exercise to read and hear from others.

An honest and open discussion of the church is long overdue but too often these conversations devolve into accusations over disagreement. It is my hope that this book and other conversations like it serve as a baseline for substantive discussion. As we exit, and not a moment too soon, the era of Western Christendom, we find ourselves desperately in need of a new way to talk about the church, a way beyond more of the same and into the simple expression of community we see in the New Testament. I encourage you to give Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity a read and even if you don't agree with everything (or perhaps especially if you don't!), add your voice to the conversation.

You can also order Simple Church: Unity Within Diversity directly from the publisher, Redeeming Press!

Book Review: Elders in the Life of the Church

If there is a topic that needs a lot more study and discussion in the church, it is elders. What are they for?

How do they function? How should they be chosen? How many should a local congregation have? Many churchgoers have no idea what elders are all about or that they appear so frequently in the New Testament and our lack of understanding is crippling to much of the church.

Phil Newton and Matt Schmucker attempt to answer these questions from a decidedly baptistic perspective in their joint effort, Elders in the Life of the Church: Rediscovering the Biblical Model for Church Leadership from Kregel Publications. That they are Baptists is critical to understand as elders are usually thought of as a "Presbyterian thing". Many Baptist, especially Southern Baptist, churches operate with a "Senior Pastor and a bunch of deacons" style of governance, so the advocacy for a plural elders style is quite unusual and often seen as a threat. They tackle the topic with a back and forth style, alternating chapters between Phil and Matt with Phil penning more "theoretical" chapters that dig into the Scriptures more heavily with Matt providing more "practical" chapters on how this looks at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in D.C. where he is on staff and home to Mark Dever and 9 Marks Ministries. Phil Newton is someone I am quite familiar with, back in the day when I was doing a series "preaching" through the book of Acts I turned to his series on Acts before I completed a single sermon as he had far and away the best treatment of the book from a Reformed and Baptist perspective. I am pretty familiar with Matt as well, mostly from disagreeing with what he publishes online! More on that in a moment. The "back and forth" style rarely works well but I thought this book pulled it off. I did find myself starting to skim Matt's chapters to get back to Phil but even so the transitions were pretty smooth. Even a cursory reading would show that these two brothers in Christ are earnest and serious about this topic and did a great job in making their argument. However, even a great argument can be wrong on many levels.

This is a book I would summarize as "oh so close and yet so far away". So close because both Matt and Phil (mostly Phil as he has the more substantive chapters) understand the importance of elders and have done the hard work of both deeply researching this topic from Scripture as well as living out life in a plural elder setting. So far away because they simply seem incapable or perhaps unwilling to step away from the institutional church paradigm. They never address, much less challenge, the notion that some elders are "called to preach", i.e. deliver a weekly sermon or two, and that they should be paid while others should labor in the church free of charge like Paul. They assume that a paid "senior pastor" can be "first among equals" when that very idea is self-contradictory. I can't imagine anyone at Capitol Hill Baptist confusing who has more authority, some random guy on the elder board or famous pastor Mark Dever. So much of the book caused me to furiously jot notes in the margins to the point that I found myself looking more for what was wrong than what they were trying to say. Elders in the church should be the very antithesis of the institutional style of religion rather than key players in perpetuating the system.

The strongest chapter by far was the last full chapter on the topic of Leadership Development in Hard Places, looking at elders in the church in the "less Christian" parts of the world where the supposed "benefits" of our Western religious system (like professional clerical training via seminaries) are absent. The ideas presented in this chapter were largely on target. There is a real danger in trying to replicate Western style "church" in developing nations where it makes no sense. When I was in Haiti it was jarring to see a pastor wearing a suit and tie when in their culture that was so incredibly out of place. On the other hand they also recognize the serious danger of the frenetic church planting movement, where "converts" by the hundreds are made and left to fend for themselves, devolving inevitably into syncretism and heresy. Recognizing, training and supporting indigenous leaders is critical to healthy evangelism but "spent three months ministering alongside 5 men to help them understand critical doctrines" is not nearly as sexy as "487 baptized in one day!" reports back to the states, and those reports are what keep the money flowing.

If you are comfortable with the institutional church paradigm and curious about elders, especially in a plural setting, you will find this book very useful. I would rather see a plural elder led institutional church where godly men labor side by side in the ministry than I would a single pastor "one man show" institutional church. Plural elders is a step in the right direction. Having said that I believe the same study methods used to arrive at plural elders, taken to their natural conclusion, lead one to reject institutionalism as a man-made religious invention. Not many who read this book will agree and sadly not many who reject institutionalism in the church will read this book. In spite of the flaws it is still a well researched and thought-out book. As the church we need more discussion and study on this topic so my appreciation goes out to both Matt and Phil for their effort.

Perhaps Dave Black could pen a new book on this very topic as a follow-up to his Seven Marks of a New Testament Church? What say you Dr. Black?!

I received a copy of Elders in the Life of the Church free of charge and with no compensation from Kregal Academic in return for publishing an unbiased review.

Book Review: Seven Marks of a New Testament Church

There are no lack of books on the topic of the church. Most, and I say this with no hesitation, are garbage and consist of feel good malarkey and repackaged business wisdom applied to religious organizations. It therefore was a welcome change to read Dr. David Black's newest work from Energion Publications, Seven Marks of a New Testament Church. These are the seven marks he chose to look at (with the disclaimer that these are not the only seven marks, an important note)....

1. Evangelistic preaching 
2. Christian baptism 
3. Apostolic teaching 
4. Genuine relationships
5. Christ-centered gatherings 
6. Fervent prayer 
7. Sacrificial living

It is probably inevitable given my background that I compare Dr. Black's book with the well known 9 Marks of a Healthy Church put out by Mark Dever and the aptly named 9 Marks ministries. Mark and company are some of the most prolific writers out there on the topic of ecclesiology and come from a reformed, baptistic, plural elder viewpoint. While I disagree with a lot of what Dever writes, I appreciate the thought and the Scriptural study that have gone into their works. Nevertheless I found far more to commend in Dr. Black's compilation than Mark Dever's.

The thing I liked best about Seven Marks versus 9 Marks is that it is believer-centric rather than clergy-centric. 9 Marks is designed as a "top down" system, get the right elders leading the right way and preaching the right sermons and teaching the right theology and you have a "healthy church". Members will follow. Dr. Black starts at the ground floor with an "every member shared ministry" that far more closely follows the apostolic pattern. The church is built from individuals working as a community for the mission of God. Leaders are enablers who help others be prepared for the work of ministry:

The essence of all New Testament teaching about church leadership is that leaders are to be enablers. They are not to do the work of the ministry as much as they are to prepare others to do that work (see Eph. 4: 11-12).

Black, David Alan, Seven Marks of a New Testament Church: A Guide for Christians of All Ages (Kindle Locations 338-340). Energion Publications. Kindle Edition.

That is the sort of plain wisdom we need a lot more of in discussing the church in the waning days of Christendom. Top down leadership and top down centered ecclesiology is great for creating top heavy organizations but for the church we need to flip that order around as Dr. Black has done here.

One thing that sort of confused me. While Dr. Black talks a lot about love in every chapter, love doesn't get a chapter of its own. Jesus said that all men will know we are His disciples by our love for one another ( John 13:35 ). Love is the key, foundational mark of the church. Indeed without it the church cannot be the church. I am not sure why it was not given a chapter but if I were rewriting the book I would add at the top of the list!

In spite of my one quibble this is a book I can unreservedly recommend for anyone studying the church, whether one is seeking to reform an existing group and starting a new group from scratch. It is not long and it tends to raise a lot of questions, making it perfect as a study guide or introduction to ecclesiology. Get a copy, read it and then pass a copy or three on to your church friends. They might be surprised by what they read!

(You can also get Seven Marks from Amazon for the Kindle, that is what I did because I like to be able to electronically mark important passages)

Book Review: Bonhoeffer the Assassin?: Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking

The German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Third Reich in the waning days of World War II, is enjoying something of a posthumous renaissance in the evangelical world even though he might not really qualify as an evangelical. Much of this is attributable to the risible but wildly popular biography of Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas. Unfortunately this renewal of interest in Bonhoeffer presents as an ironclad fact his supposed involvement in one of the myriad plots within the Third Reich to assassinate Hitler.

The narrative of Bonhoeffer as an active participant in the plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler is a commonly referenced trump card in discussions of redemptive violence. This is especially true with the contemporary co-opting of Bonhoeffer as an honorary American evangelical hero. That is why this book, Bonhoeffer the Assassin?: Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony Siegrist and Daniel Umbel, is such an important counter-balance to the Bonhoeffer as assassin narrative.

The great strength of this book is the systematic dismantling of the "facts" that form the evidence for Bonhoeffer as a participant in the assassination plots. By first unraveling the flimsy historical evidence. notable mostly for what is not there, namely any concrete evidence that directly supports the contention that he was involved directly in assassination plots, what is left is an examination of what we do have, his writings. When you read Bonhoeffer, and note the entire scope of his writing, what you are left with is a man who is hardly the model of a would-be assassin.

The great weakness of this book, in my opinion, is the pretty technical nature of several chapters. For someone unfamiliar with Bonhoeffer's works as well as unfamiliar with philosophical fundamentals and writers such as Karl Barth, several chapters will be difficult slogs to get through. I am more comfortable with theology proper than I am what I consider more esoteric philosophical conversations and while important I am not sure that the average reader will benefit much from these chapters.

More fundamentally it is important to remember that while the alleged evidence of Bonhoeffer's involvement in the assassination plotting is pretty flimsy, even if he were involved it really doesn't matter because our standard is Scripture, the example of Christ and the witness of the Biblical teaching. Bonhoeffer, whether he did or did not actively seek to be involved in the assassination attempt, is still just a redeemed sinner and while he was brilliant he was also still very much a work in progress when it came to his own theological positions. In spite of that caveat this is still an important book that serves as a serious, scholarly corrective to the "heroic assassin that justifies killing" paradigm that surrounds Bonhoeffer in popular literature. When a man who was as brilliant as Bonhoeffer and still has so much to teach the church is primarily known as the pastor who plotted to kill Hitler in spite of a decided lack of concrete evidence, something is wrong and I believe Bonhoeffer himself would be aghast. You might not find the argument compelling but it at the very least deserves examination.