“Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward” by Luke H. Davis

Until now, about the only thing I associated with the famous minister Jonathan Edwards was the sermon often mentioned (and often reprinted) in American history books. The title and the substance of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” gives an impression of a fiery sermon, with much shouting and a voice that was threatening and perhaps scary. The way it’s portrayed in history books certainly gives that impression. 

Then I read Renewal: The Church That Expands Outward by Luke H. Davis, and I discovered how wrong my understanding was. Edwards didn’t give fiery sermons; he spoke in a monotone and low-key voice because he believed the content didn’t need dressing up with theatrics. He faced concerns from his own church leaders. And Edwards eventually became a missionary to Native Americans in Massachusetts and president of Princeton University.

 

So much for the stereotype.

 

Renewal is the fourth in Davis’s series on church history for young people. It focuses on the years 1600 to 1900, what Davis calls the Age of Expansion. The chapters are generally organized around people; Davis writes an engaging story based on fact about each and then follows with a short factual paragraph. He also inserts “Fact File” chapters, where he provides more in-depth background on events, movements, and periods of church history. 

 

Luke H. Davis

The people covered include Edwards, John Bunyan. George Whitefield, William Wilberforce, Charles Spurgeon, Sojourner Truth. Hudson Taylor, Dwight Moody and several others. The structure is similar for each; I found myself particularly taken with the fictional stories based on real events.

 

Davis teaches at Westminster Christian Academy in St. Louis and chairs the Bible Department there. He’s also taught at schools in Louisiana, Florida, and Virginia. He describes himself as “Presbyterian body, Lutheran heart, Anglican blood, Orthodox spirit,” all of which have served him well in writing the Cameron Ballack mysteries. He has published three Ballack mysteries, Litany of Secrets (2013), The Broken Cross (2015), and A Shattered Peace (2017), and the first book of a new series, Joel: The Merivalkan Chronicles Book 1 (2017). He blogs at For Grace and Kingdom.

 

Renewal, like its predecessors, is aimed at young readers (roughly 10-14) but, as in my own case, even adults who think they know a lot can discovered they know – well, less that they thought. It’s an engaging way to teach church history and whet the interest for more.

 

Last Week: Reform: The Church at the Birth of Protestantism by Luke H. Davis.

 

Related:

 

My review of Redemption: The Church in Ancient Times.

 

My review of Reign: The Church in the Middle Ages.

 

Reading a Novel that Stars Your Hometown.

 

My review of Litany of Secrets.

 

My review of The Broken Cross.

 

My review of A Shattered Peace.

 

My review of Tough Issues, True Hope by Luke Davis.

The cancel crowd

After Galatians 4:8-20 

The cancel crowd

doesn’t want you

blessed. It wants

you cursed, tossed

out, locked out

from the light, from

what you know is

true. And they do

this not for you but

for themselves, to be

made much of, made

powerful, important.

They use your destruction

to elevate themselves.

Turn to the light you 

know, not the death

you left behind.

 

Photograph by Andre Hunter via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads - May 20, 2023

Four years in the making, the report by Special Prosecutor John Durham on “Russian collusion” was released this week. Predictably, the mainstream media (like The New York Times and The Atlantic, not to mention my own hometown newspaper) decided it amounted to nothing. If you’re still trying to deny your own culpability in promoting a hoax that tore the country apart, it’s a good position to take. Roger Kimball at The Spectator gives a better overall summary, while his colleague Peter Van Buren says the report unmasks the Deep State. Eli Lake at The Free Press says the FBI actually protected Hillary Clinton (four investigations were stopped from the top-down).  

If you don’t trust the pundits on either side (and pundits are all we have left), you can read the Durham report for yourself.

 

Would you like to be the Corporate Vice President of Belonging? Something is happening in the DEI industry: strategies and tactics are changing, writes Abe Greenwald at Commentary Magazine. Pushback is rising, and some corporate executives are realizing that many DEI programs at their companies are making matters worse.

 

I can remember when The Wizard of Oz finally made it to television. I was five years old, and my mother and I watched it together (she’d seen it when it was first released in movie theaters in 1939). Even on a black-and-white TV, it was magic. Mark Malvasi at The Imaginative Conservative says the movie is something more than a film – it’s a fable of modern America.

 

More Good Reads

 

Life and Culture

 

Christopher Lasch’s forgotten utopia – Ashley Colby at UnHerd. 

 

The Shattered Image of the Thirteenth Century – John Mark Reynolds at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

One Homeschool Year: A Local Story in Four Seasons – Nadya Williams at Front Porch Republic.

 

Anatomy of a medical scandal: How not thinking can infect a workplace, community or entire culture – Victoria Smith at The Critic Magazine.

 

We’re All Bored of Culture – William Deresiewicz at Tablet Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

The Girl of the Endless Summer: How ‘Gidget’ helped to put surfing on the map – Kevin Mims at Quillette. 

 

Ewell’s Letter to Grant in the Wake of Lincoln’s Death – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Are Americans Better Off? – Jon Schaff at Front Porch Republic.

 

Ukraine

 

An unreviewable album: The music is beautiful; the context is not – Norman Lebrecht at The Critic Magazine.

 

Beyond Metaphor: Inside the First Month of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine – Serhiy Zhadan at Literary Hub.

 

Faith

 

Why is the SBC Membership Declining? – Ryan Burge at The Gospel Coalition.

 

The Doom of Choice – Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

People Walking Away? We Are NOT in Unprecedented Times – Eric Geiger.

 

He Drew Me Through Agony: My Painful Path to Faith – Kathryn Butler at Desiring God.

 

Poetry

 

The Power of One – Roy E. Peterson at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Writing and Literature

 

What recent publishing controversies say about the industry – Nathan Bransford.

 

Readers Aren't Flocking to Chatbot Novels Just Yet – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Take Heart – 20schemes Music

 Painting: Reading the Scriptures, oil on canvas by Thomas Waterton Wood (1823-1903). 

The siren's call

After Galatians 4:8-20

 

You walk through the door

and stood in the light, free,

turning your back on the weak,

worthless beliefs of the world,

free at last. Yet now you turn

back to slavery, back to what

you left behind, back to what

is worthless and destructive.

This is not about adherence

to ceremonies and laws and

incense and requirements. This

is about freedom, breaking free

from slavery. Don’t turn back.

Go forward, into the light.

 

Photograph by Leandro Mazzuquini via Unsplash, Used with permission. 

“A Christmas Shadow” by H.L. Marsay

It’s the Advent season, a few weeks before Christmas. Detective Chief Inspector John Shadow finds himself, rather grumpily, at an Advent worship service at York Minster. He’s with friends and colleagues; his assistant, Detective Sergeant Jimmy Chang, is getting married in a few days to the assistant medical examiner.  

The Minster has a new dean, a woman, which hasn’t set well with some in the York community; the dean’s been receiving hate mail. At the reception following the service, she collapses after drinking some wine; her husband recognizes an allergic reaction to nuts and uses the EpiPen he always keeps nearby. The dean recovers, but DCI Shadow also noticed something off about the wine.

 

The wine itself is something that is personally painful for Shadow. It’s made the family of the girl he loved and lost in a pedestrian traffic fatality decades earlier. Shadow never married; he was never even much interested in relationships at all after the death of his fiancée. He’d left London after her death and moved to York; he still lives in the boat they shared.

 

He and DS Chang investigate where the wine came from – a relatively new shop run by two young men who seem to know little about the wine business. Then a young woman from Slovenia who worked at the shop as a cleaner is found dead, the investigation of watered down or fake wine became a murder inquiry. And this one seems to have ties to organized crime.

 

H L Marsay

A Christmas Shadow is the sixth and, so far, last in the DCI John Shadow series by British author H L Marsay. It has all the elements of its predecessors – an interesting mystery, a DCI who likes his food (he eats out a lot), an overly enthusiastic assistant who often drives Shadow to distraction, and an abundance of suspects. It also has more of the back story on Shadow’s ill-fated romance, with his former fiancee’s younger brother coming to York to help deal with what is happening with his wine. And there’s a hint of a future mystery, with Shadow accepting the brother’s invitation to spend Christmas in Italy with his family.

 

Marsay is the author of six mystery novels in the DCI John Shadow series. Set in York, the characteristic features of each of the stories are a curmudgeonly DCI, his irrepressibly cheerful sergeant, a culinary tour of the city restaurants, café, and pubs (some of which actually exist), and an introduction to York’s colorful history and present. A member of the Crime Writers Association, she lives with her family in the city of York in England. 

 

Related: 

 

A Long Shadow by H L Marsay.

 

A Viking’s Shadow by H L Marsay.

 

A Ghostly Shadow by H L Marsay.

 

A Roman Shadow by H.L. Marsay.

 

A Forgotten Shadow by H L Marsay.

Why Poetry Can Make You a Better Writer

Like most of my generation, I read poetry in English classes in high school. It wasn’t until I was a high school senior that I read poetry that stuck in my head. And it was T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Four Quartets.” I read poetry in college as well, but my English literature professor gave brutal tests that put me off poetry for years. 

My professional career eventually led me to corporate speechwriting. I enjoyed the work, the executives I wrote for liked what I did, and I had that sense of “this is what I was meant to do.” It was a good friend, one who wasn’t a speechwriter, who suggested that if I were really serious about it, then I needed to read poetry. He sent me three books – the collected poems of T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and Dylan Thomas. He told me to read them and others on a regular basis.

 

And I thought, seriously? No speechwriter I knew read poetry regularly. Most then and now would read books about current events, developments in science, politics, and a lot of speeches written by others. But poetry? Really?

To continue reading, please see my post today at the American Christian Fiction Writers blog.

Photograph by Nick Fewings via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Poets and Poems: Catherine Esposito Prescott and “Accidental Garden”

It’s an age-old question – are we here as part of a cosmic or divine plan, or did all of what we call life and existence happen by accident? Or as Catherine Esposito Prescott asks in the title poem of her new collection, “Did we plant a butterfly garden or did monarchs stumble on  / the heirloom tomatoes that needed pollen to transfer from pistol to stamen?”  

Perhaps because, as she writes, she was “raised in a religion with many answers,” Prescott doesn’t come to a conclusive answer to the question. But she explores it in a wide array of ways in the 42 poems of Accidental Garden.

 

The title itself suggests the question. A garden, any garden, is planned; otherwise, it would be wildness. “Garden” suggests design and stewardship. But can such a creation happen by accident?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.