Culture

Darton, Longman and Todd 2011, RRP $26.95 Reviewed by Rev Dr Clive Ayre, Eco-Mission Consultant for Qld Synod. At first thought one may wonder what the writings of a Trappist monk who died in 1968 may have to do with us, but Thomas Merton is well known to scholars of religion; one of his main contentions which is reflected in ...

Text Publishing, 2012, RRP $32.95 Reviewed by Rodney Eivers. In some respects this is a sad book, as typified by the author quoting a number of times, "For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world" (2 Timothy 4:10). Yet the autobiography of Richard Holloway (formerly Bishop of Edinburgh and Primate of the Anglican Church in Scotland) is a ...

Baylor University Press 2010, RRP $43.95 Reviewed by Rev Peter Harvey. Shirl James Hoffman has grown up in and around sport and church, and so is well-suited to bring this academic style critique to the marriage of the Christian faith and sport. In Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports, he asks the reader to take a hard look ...

RRP $40, 2011 Reviewed by Bruce Dingle, Elder and Lay Preacher at Maroochydore Uniting Church. WHAT a wonderful book of memoir, imagination, history and strong Christian faith! It's the story of Rev Reg Delbridge, his wife May, their family and ancestors. Rev Reg Delbridge was born in 1888 and died in 1964. His memoirs of life in Kent, adolescence, conversion ...

Orbis Books, 2010, RRP $57.95 Reviewed by Rev Alan Renton. I am interested in mission. This book attempts, I believe successfully, to show how the church shares the holistic gospel not only with her own people but also with those who live in entirely different cultures. By holistic I mean witnessing both by spoken words and by the Word speaking ...

Penguin UK, 2012, RRP $35 Reviewed by Owen Ronalds. ALAIN De Botton does not propose a kind of cranky "new atheism" like Dawkins or Hitchens. Neither is he quite like older philosophers such as Bertrand Russell in his style and outlook. Religion for Atheists is a warm and positive appreciation of much that different religions have to give to humanity. ...

Templeton Press, 2011, RRP $23.95 Reviewed by Karyl Davison. IF you don't understand this book's title, you're definitely not part of this generation, and are not part of its intended readership. For the uninitiated, generation WTF are 18 to 25 years old and "WTF" is an exclamation of frustration and anger at the world in which young adults find themselves, ...

Swedenborg Foundation Press, 2011 Reviewed by Jocelyn Braddock. THIS little book illustrates and describes the seven stained-glass windows commissioned from the Tiffany Company in 1902 by one Swedenborgian Church in the United States as a gift to another. I had never heard of Emanuel Swedenborg, an eighteenth century Swedish philosopher, engineer and Christian mystic. This is not the place to ...

Dover Publications, 2011 RRP $69.95 Reviewed by Barb Bailey. WHILE most readers know the story of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, not all would have consumed the full text of Alice's many adventures. This volume gives that complete text alongside 92 illustrated watercolours, many of which are full page. Harry Rountree is an acknowledged master of quaint drawings in this ...

Paulist Press, 2010 Reviewed by Karyl Davison. THIS short book is a review itself. Written by Fr Gerald O'Collins SJ, it reviews Philip Pullman's fictional book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, also published in 2010. Pullman's book, it seems, does not doubt the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, nor much of his life or teaching. The primary ...