Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

I liked the movie 1917 because the focus is on what look like ordinary young English lads tasked with an extraordinary mission at a crucial time in the history of the Great War. Lance Corporals Schofield and Blake must cross several miles of dangerous terrain to warn others not to attack a faux German retreat. If successful, they could save over 1,000 soldiers, including Blake's older brother. 1917 is a Homeric odyssey for our time. And the historical context is rich with meaning. The story begins on 6 April 1917--the day when the United States enters the war. Of course it will take some time before Americans arrive. Meanwhile, the Germans feign retreat, but it's a trap to draw British troops into the open. The plot is simple and familiar. But the movie engages us in a realism that could only be enhanced by giving us uncomfortable cold wet muddy seats and a whiff of the overwhelming stench confronting the two messengers. As with any such terror plot, there is a race a...

ETHICS IN THE AGE OF THE SPIRIT:  RACE, WOMEN, WAR,  AND THE ASSEMBLIES OF GOD      by Howard N. Kenyon.       Reviewed by          Geoffrey W. Sutton               The topics of race, women, and war, in Kenyon’s subtitle, are certainly timely issues. In 2016, the son of a Black father and White mother neared the end of his two terms as the 44th U.S. president while a woman campaigned to replace him. Meanwhile, the U.S. was at war, as it has been for 222 years since 1776 ( Charpentier, 2017) . Drawing on archival data, Howard N. Kenyon examines Pentecostals’ ethical response to racism, sexism, and war in the context of their fundamentalist roots and the historic cultural changes that have occurred in the past one hundred years. Howard N. Kenyon is a fourth-generation Pentecostal. He earned his Ph.D. in Ethics from Bay...

CHRISTOBIOGRAPHY:  MEMORY, HISTORY,  AND  THE RELIABILITY OF  THE GOSPELS  Author: Craig S. Keener Reviewed by  Geoffrey W. Sutton It’s the second word in the title, memory , that first grabbed my attention. Then I noticed the word, reliability . Like many clinicians, I’ve administered many memory tests and discovered an incredible range of memory capacity. I've tested preschool children and senior adults. I used the best available tests covering a wide range of human memory. And, as a Christian thinker about integration, I wondered about the scant attention given to the role of memory and reliability in understanding the interplay between biblical texts and psychological science. So, I come to Keener’s latest cornucopia with considerable curiosity. Craig S. Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary . Together, his works have sold over a million copies. He describes his scholarly vantage point as to the right of c...

UNPROTECTED TEXTS The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions   about Sex and Desire Author:   Jennifer Wright Knust Date: 2011 Reviewed by   Geoffrey W. Sutton Knust’s book, Unprotected Texts , has an intriguing title for anyone thinking about the sex-related moral issues constantly in the news. I purchased a copy of her book as I was writing A House Divided: Sexuality, Morality, and Christian Cultures , and I’m glad I did because I referenced some of her insights. Knust has impressive credentials. At the time she wrote Unprotected Texts , Knust had a Ph.D., from Columbia University and was an Associate Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Boston University School of Theology. She’s also an ordained American Baptist pastor. Unprotected Texts is a well written book, which addresses biblical sex in six chapters with primary titles that do not easily identify the subject matter until you’ve read a few pages.  ...

A Review of Marcus Borg’s  Reading the Bible Again for the First Time :  Taking the Bible Seriously but Not literally . By Geoffrey W. Sutton   My earliest memory of a conflict between the Bible and the observable world happened sometime in late childhood when I learned that the moon was not a light as it plainly said in my King James Version of Genesis 1:16. It was downhill from there. Like many of my friends, we learned a near literal interpretation of the Bible from parents with a limited education and churches where teachers shared a blend of fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Their application of select biblical laws, commandments, and rules to contemporary life seemed strangely arbitrary and unnecessarily restrictive. I should like to think Marcus Borg’s, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time , would have saved me considerable puzzlement—and likely some distress. I’ll say more later but first, a summary of Reading the Bible Again for the First T...