Gary Haugen & Victor Boutros: The Locust Effect. Why the end of poverty requires the end of violence.
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The Locust Effect. Why the end of poverty requires the end of violence. Gary Haugen & Victor Boutros. OUP 2014. ISBN 9780199937875
This Review was first published in Essentials Autumn 2015
In 1875 trillions of locusts weighing 27 million tons bore down on 200,000 square miles of the American Midwest and wiped out every living plant. Gary Haugen and Victor Boutros show that a similar effect is happening to the world’s poor. As much as they try to work, save for their children’s education, buy small houses (or rooms) to live in, their efforts are consistently and effectively thwarted by an epidemic of violence.
The authors don’t focus on war zones or civil conflicts, although these are devastating enough. They illustrate in pitiful detail the ordinary criminal violence that afflicts the world’s poor – especially in developing countries.
Sexual violence (a “medical emergency” according to Medicine Sans Frontiers), slavery (there are more slaves in the world now than there were during the whole period of the 18th century slave trade), land grabbing, arbitrary detention and torture are some of the features of this violence.
Simon Chan: Grassroots Asian Theology. Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up.
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Grassroots Asian Theology. Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up. Simon Chan. IVP Academic. 2014. ISBN 9780830840489 [eBook 9780830895441].
This Review was first published in Essentials Autumn 2015
Simon Chan is Earnest Lau Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Theological College in Singapore.
This book is an attempt to identify and discuss grassroots theologies in Asia. In doing so Chan aims to draw from Catholic and Orthodox sources because “they offer a broader and more solid basis for contextual theologies compared with what goes on in much of mainline Protestantism and evangelicalism today.” (8). His method is to use traditional theological loci and sketch elitist theologies and compare with them the writings found in sermons and other grassroots sources. This opening statement gives a clue to the critique he offers of the old European liberal theology that sometimes seems to masquerade as Asian.
Chan dislikes the terms 'Western' and 'Eastern'. Too often they just disguise one's likes or dislikes. His presupposition is that “an Asian theology is about the Christian faith in Asia.” (10). This means that the apostolic tradition is normative. To start a new trajectory apart from this tradition produces a gnostic church which, while appearing open and tolerant to other faiths is incapable of serious dialogue with them.
Read more: Simon Chan: Grassroots Asian Theology. Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up.
Grant Lock: Shoot Me First. A cattleman in Taliban Country. Twenty-four years in the hotspots of Pakistan and Afghanistan
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Shoot Me First. A cattleman in Taliban Country. Twenty-four years in the hotspots of Pakistan and Afghanistan. By Grant Lock. Broad Continent Publishing 2012 ISBN 9780980526417 Also available as an eBook and on CD
This Review was first published in Essentials Summer 2014
Someone once told me that if I wanted to understand the troubles in Palestine I should read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). It was good advice. I think if anyone wants to understand better the events in Pakistan and Afghanistan they should read Shoot Me First.
Here is an amazing testimony of God at work in places where you wouldn't think God was present at all.
John Thew (former CMS Federal Secretary) said, “It's a missiological book but it reads like a thriller." It is certainly a great a read. Short chapters, lots of action, tension, humour, threat. In some ways the book is like an anthropologist's road movie with story after story describing in fascinating detail the interactions, confrontations and heart-warming love of an Aussie couple attempting to cross cultural and language divides.
In this book you will also get up close, on the ground, insights into Islam for ordinary Pakistanis and Afghans.
Janet Soskice: Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found The Hidden Gospels.
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Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found The Hidden Gospels. Janet Soskice. Vintage Books 2010. ISBN 9780099546542.
This Review was first published in Essentials Spring 2014
Janet Soskice is Professor of Philosophical Theology in the University of Cambridge. She is the first Roman Catholic woman to be a Professor of Theology at one of the ancient British Universities. She has written a ripping story of two Presbyterian Scottish sisters who were awarded Honorary Doctorates by European Universities before Cambridge was awarding any kind of degrees to women.
Agnes and Margaret Smith were twins. Their mother died two weeks after their birth in 1843. Their father, a lawyer, brought them up in the tradition of strict Scots Calvinism, and encouraged their education, independence and foreign travel. He promised to take them to each country whose language they learnt. So they mastered French, German and Italian while still young. He died while they were still single and left them an enormous fortune. So they decided to travel down the Nile.
Soskice tells an entertaining story of their year away in Egypt and the Holy Land, being ripped off by their tour guide and being fed up with all the “true” shrines of Jesus. Their lesson from the trip was always learn the language before you visit the country. Returning to England they learnt Spanish and Greek (from JS Blackie Professor of Greek in Edinburgh). They travelled to Greece where they spoke to the tour guides and locals in Greek. Margaret married and while she was on her honeymoon, Agnes started to study Arabic. She wanted to visit Cyprus, and to go to St Catherine's monastery in Sinai (where they spoke Greek) on the way. They got to Cyprus but not Sinai this time.
Read more: Janet Soskice: Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found The Hidden Gospels.
DC Parker: Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World's Oldest Bible
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Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World's Oldest Bible. DC Parker. The British Library/Hendrickson 2010. ISBN 9780712358033
This Review was first published in Essentials Spring 2014
One of the moving experiences I remember well is seeing Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library some years ago. What it is, why it is important, and how it got to the Library is told in this very interesting book.
In one way the book is the report and promotion of the collaboration of four groups in the research, and making available to the world, of Codex Sinaiticus. The project came together in 2005 when the Archbishop of Sinai, the British Library, the Leipzig Library and the National Library of Russia, St Petersburg agreed to collaborate in making their different portions of the Codex available to the world.
This book is a report of the collaboration and an introduction to the Digital Project which now has the whole of the Codex viewable by anyone with access the World Wide Web [codexsinaiticus.org].
At present the Codex is found in Leipzig (eighty six pages); in the British Library (694 pages); St Petersburg (parts of eight pages); and St Catherine's (parts or all of thirty six ages – found along with other manuscripts in a room in the monastery in 1975).
Read more: DC Parker: Codex Sinaiticus: The Story of the World's Oldest Bible
Call him Jesus – and ...
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Call him Jesus – and ... [..continued]
If the creator has joined himself to his creation in the birth of Jesus, it suggests that God was quite serious in being with us. In fact if Jesus is God with us in this sense, then it is possible that something completely and outstandingly new has occurred. But in what way are God and humanity together in the person of Jesus? Maybe Jesus was just two personalities living together in the one body?
There seems to be no evidence that Jesus is a kind of split or multiple personality, as though sometimes the God personality comes to the fore and sometimes the human is the one people are dealing with. As the gospels report it, Jesus seems to be a stable integrated person.
God Joins Us Matthew 1.18-25
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{podcast id=317}
God Joins Us Matthew 1.18-25
Series: The King is Here Broome 2015
Sermon preached at Broome Anglican Church on 20 December 2015
Bible Readings: Jeremiah 23.1-8; Matthew 1.18-25
Three stories: Joseph and Mary; God and Israel; Messiah and us. Why did God have to become human, and what benefit is it to us?
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