Top religion and ethics books of 2008
What's on your list of the top religion and ethics books of the year? It could be a novel, a history, a biography, a collection of poems, or a grand analysis of the world we live in. I'll add my list shortly, but let's hear your picks. On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, the broadcaster Michelle Marken and Corrymeela community leader David Stevens will be sharing their books of the year.
David Stevens selected: David Park's The Truth Commissioner (Bloomsbury), Rowan Williams's Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction (Continuum), Marilynne Robinson's Home (Macmillan), and Margaret Atwood's Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth (Bloomsbury).
Michelle Marken selected: John O'Donohue's Benedictus (Bantam), Paula Gooder's The Meaning is in the Waiting (SCM), and A Second Glenstal Book of Prayer (Columba).
© MMX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~25~RS~)
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Sean Fagan's What Happened To Sin has to be up there....
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"Death by Love: Letters from the Cross" by Gerry Breshears & Mark Driscoll
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I have just started to read Colin Duriez’s, poignant biography of Francis Schaeffer, “an Authentic Life” as I have been reading it the words are jumping of the pages at me because of the similarities in are working class background and just like me he suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia, as I read this I felt the hairs on my neck stand up with tingling down my spine, this further sunk home as I read about him calling out to his youngest daughter Deborah Middlelmann for the spellings of simple words like who and which, when she was as young as five or six, the personal meaning this has for me hit my heart with excitement to read that I perform the same acts as this great man once did, for I would call out to my wife to spell simple words for me.
As I continue to read the moving story of Francis Schaeffer, and his family, going through the trials and tribulations of taking a stand against liberalism and modernism which had infected the church with its deadly virus and the turmoil of moving his family to a strange and foreign land, one can witness the hand of God in his life.During his time of exploration in Europe before moving to Europe one can see the hand of God in the providential care and protection of Francis Schaeffer, whilst he was traveling home to the USA the aeroplane that he was traveling on made a plunge for the sea when two of its engines failed on the one wing, leaving no hope for survival at this time his wife and family heard a news flash that a plane was in difficulty heading for the sea, Edith Schaeffer in response to the news flash gathered her young family together and started praying for the plane that was in dire straits across the Atlantic, Francis was also in prayer on the plane also and there is absolutely no doubt about it, the supernatural power of the Almighty answered their prayers and restarted the engines again preventing the plane from crashing into the sea, Francis give his answer to the astonished pilot why the engines restarted because the pilot could not explain what had happened, “God answered my pray” was the answer that Francis gave to the pilot. Spine tingling.
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Will, I take it by "Religion" and "Ethics" you are talking about two very separate lists?
H
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Helio:
I mean religion or ethics, or religion with ethics, or ir/religious ethics, or un/ethical religion, or anything you interpret as belonging on the list.
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Will - I know! Just playing. Actually, I don't think I have actually read any books in that category this year, that were published in 2008, although I did read "God's Undertaker" by Lennox (which is poor, but deviously so), and "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (which is harrowing, but too long and detailed - like wading through treacle), and "Ancient Egyptian Religion" by Stephen Quirke (an oldie, but a goodie - many parallels between AE religion and Christianity).
Cheers,
-H
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Helio:
You are quite right to play. Putting religion alongside ethics in a single book list is like choosing the best fiction and philosophy books. They are as alike as chalk and cheese, especially if we are referring to the Old Testament.
'The Secular Conscience' by Austin Dacey, 'Towards the Light' by A.C. Grayling and 'A Book of Atheist Spirituality' by Andre Comte-Sponville are worth a read.
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Thanks Brian. I'd say all your books qualify!
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"Religion and Ethics" is no more bizarre a combination of topics than "news and current affairs", "arts and culture", "science and mathematics", or the entire range of subjects described under the heading "social sciences".
Be nice, Brian!
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Augustine:
Being nice doesn't mean you have to agree, does it? As a non-believer, I resent the way in which ethics is continually hijacked by religion. And I will say so.
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Brian no one is saying humanists can't have their own systems of ethics, but it's just a fact that religion and ethics have for a very long time been related topics. So it's not strange to have a book list related to that combination.
I suppose the reason for the traditional combination is that religion is about how people live this life and prepare for the next. That makes life a moral project.
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Augustine:
It is strange if you think that ethics has no connection whatsoever with religion. Life is a 'moral project', whatever you belief in a god or lack of it.
Of course, the two things are linked because the programme is trying to reach a bit beyond its traditional religious remit. I say 'a bit' because the religious input still dominates, so that, for example, a discussion on the ETHICS of assisted suicide had two religious views and one secular view. The so-called 'human rights' lawyer offer a clearly stated Thomist view of the topic, not that of a lawyer defending the right of the individual over his own life and body.
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Brian I've no idea what you're on. Augustine didn't say religion has no connection with ethics. Re-read his comment.
As for the programme discussion on assisted suicide, that lawyer was the man named as NI's new attorney general! I'd say that's why he was on the panel along with a bishop and a pro-euthnasia guy.
The pro-euthanasia panellist failed to make any kind of case for his actions.
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Critique of Intelligent Design
Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present
by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York
This history of philosophical materialism
begins in antiquity with Epicurus and Lucretius and takes us through the eighteenth century rationalists, Darwin and Marx in the nineteenth century and Freud in the twentieth century. It also shows how while many theologians atempted to read God's mind from The Bible, others tried to find God's intentions from nature. Darwin, Marx and Freud represent the greatest intellectual threats to these Natural Theologians.
A wonderful overview and defence of materialism, it reads like a thriller and makes Dawkins' "evolutionary psychology" of religion seem like the rantings of a petulant child in comparison.
Two Ulster connections in this American book. They discuss Tyndall's 1874 Belfast Address, a robust defence of rationalism and C S Lewis is shown to be a guiding light in the present-day intelligent design movement. As an atheist, I thoroughly enjoyed this book, but believers in God might find also it a bracing read.
http://www.critiqueofintelligentdesign.org/
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It was published in 2007 but I am only reading it now - Clive Stafford Smith's Bad Men - Guantanamo Bay and the Secret Prisons.
Written by one of the world's good men and surprisingly easy to read. The way it mixes the banality of life with shocking horror and evil is utterly compelling.
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I mean religion or ethics, or religion with ethics, or ir/religious ethics, or un/ethical religion, or anything you interpret as belonging on the list
Does:
"Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul"
By Professor Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University qualify William ?
I haven't read this book yet but if it's anything like Philip Kitcher's "Abusing science; the case against creationism" it'll be a good read.
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Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
- this book by Samantha Power (Irish-born and now back on Obama's transition team after resigning in March from his campaign team after her inopportune "monster" remarks about Hillary Clinton) tells the story of the UN career humanitarian and peace-maker de Mello from the late sixties until his untimely death in a Baghdad suicide bomb at the UN headquarters in Iraq in August 2003.
Through his story, she tells the story of the UN and its attempts to provide a vehicle for the internatinal community to respond to some of the world's biggest and bloodiest challenges over the last 30+ years.
De Mello emerges as a flawed hero, grappling with the effects of war and human rights abuses, often with a vague mandate sent down by the divided States of the UN security council.
If you want some real-world ethical challenges to get your head around, this is the book for you.
And its author is one to watch. Notwithstanding her Hillary comments, she's back at the centre of foreign policy-making and her take on world events matters. I recommend it strongly and have just reviewed the book over at Belfast and Beyond.
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Jovial:
The 'you' in my statement meant 'one', not Augustine. It is strange to see a link being made between religion and ethics if you are a non-believer and think that they are unrelated and have often been opposed. The 'ethics' of most religions are mostly lists of cultural prohibitions.
Many of he books listed on this thread are, in my view, far more interesting than the dreary and religious-biased selection made on the programme. In fact, ethics didn't get much of a look-in. It was mostly prayers and Rowan Williams.
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I'm ignoring Brian's rant. He's annoyed that a religion show would have a list of books about religion.
Also on the list on the show was David Park's novel the Truth Commissioner and Home, the sequel novel to Gilead.
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Maybe the and in "Top religion and ethics books of 2008" is a disjunctive and.
I think too that William gave enough flexibility in post 5 to allow any of us to interpret the list in whatever way we choose.
My choice, The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller.
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"God and the New Atheism" by John Haught is a fairly good critique of Dawkins et al. "Fabricating Jesus" by Craig Evans is a thorough critique of the media friendly Jesus' produced by the Jesus Seminar, Bart Ehrman etc.
"The Torah Story" by Gary Schnittjer and "An Old Testament Theology" by Bruce Waltke for a reading of the OT in it's own terms and through 21st century expectations.
G Veale
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Bradley Monton, an Atheistic philosopher of Science, will be publishing his defence of Intelligent Design theory next year "Making Room for God in Science". His blog is worth a look -
http://bradleymonton.wordpress.com/
For the record, he believes that the Universe is physically infinite, so no inference to a creator is necessary.
GV
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GV I am ahead of you. Watch this space!
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I would nominate "Godless" by Dan Barker. It is the story of how an evangelical preacher deconverted to become one of Americas leading atheists. In his book he deals at length with the qestion of ethics with a God versus ethics without a God. His personal journey is fascinating as well.
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Unashamedly.... the bible!
Pick your own translation...
The most debated and least read book in the west (and this blog) today...
People of the highest calibre dare to call it the word of God...
...the secret of the stability and greatness of nations..
...historicallly accurate and beyond question...
...a thorough knowledge of it being worth more than a college education;-
(Quotes in full here;-)
http://www.abcog.org/nh/bible.htm
http://www.bible-history.com/quotes/henry_h_haley_1.html
Arguably the best selling book in history;-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books
Will still be read (face to face) when all other books, bookshelves, walls, buildings, and earth have long since passed away...
yes folks the book you think you know...
Admired...quoted...hated...attacked...destroyed....banned....damned with faint praise...
Always living... as new today as it was thousands of years ago.
It is the book on which western civilisation is founded...
which has inspired much of the best art, music and literature in history...
Has inspired the British and US legal system, (via King Alfred)
...and the scientific revolution
Has spawned the wealthiest, most humane, most technologically advanced and most free nations in the world today...
Its very name is shorthand for authority in every field...
It is THE book which makes sense of every other book...
Yes...I dare to recommend the bible once again in 2008 as book of the year.
;-)
OT
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OT
I would also give my vote to 'The World's Best Seller'. Too many people treat the Bible like a 'classic': a book everyone has heard of but no-one reads!
On a more personal note (if I may), 'Under the Rainbow' is my wife's account of how God gave us His grace and help during and after the short lives of our two handicapped daughters. True, the book may not be so intellectually profound as some of those mentioned, but people going through a tough time in their lives may find it helpful.
(Catherine Campbell is the author; Ambassador the publisher...... and great value at £7.99!!!!!!!!)
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Thanks Pastor Phil
sounds like a very demanding journey you have been on...
OT
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