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An amazing conference is happening among some of the leading social theorists globally gathering to both consider and, I think, assist Robert Bellah in his work on religious evolution and the key concept of the axial age. Something to watch, for sure, as it has profound implications on our understand of the present (just see Charles Taylor's A Secular Age, for example, to see that).
Stephen J. Nichols: Getting the Blues: What Blues Music Teaches Us about Suffering and Salvation
Well, in order to get closer to the theology of the blues, and that'd be theology in a minor key, that doesn't skip past Good Friday because it knows Sunday's coming, plan on checking out Nichols compelling new book Getting the Blues. Brazos sent it to me to read so that I can offer a pre-publication endorsement. So far, I like it a lot.
Robert Palmer: Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta
A rich rewarding journey into America's gift to the music of the world, and the root of so much of what I love musically speaking: jazz, gospels, rock and roll, and more. A great starting place even if he is not that interested in the question of theology of the blues, a question I'd very much like to explore
David F. Ford: Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge Studies in Christian Doctrine)
David Ford has become one of the most important theologians writing today, and he has been mulling this one for more than a decade. I heard him speak at Yale in 2003 in response to Miroslav and Dorothy Bass' book Practicing Theology and many of these themes regarding wisdom come up. Especially powerful engagement with scripture from which he draws the idea of "wisdom cries." A practical theologian at his best. Read!
Mary Oliver: Why I Wake Early: New Poems
Here I find a carnal theology, so deeply enmeshed in the glory of the ordinary. finitum capax infiniti. read her and you will not look at an ordinary day as ordinary again. Try, for starters, "This World," on page 27. It begins thus: "I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it nothing fancy./ But it seems impossible./ Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it./"
Charles Taylor: A Secular Age
My teacher, the sociologist Robert Bellah, says: "This is one of the most important books written in my lifetime." Okay, enough. Rush out and get this book, just out, from one of the best living philosophers and certainly the most important for Christians.
Love the blog
Would love to hear how Taylor's book has changed your own conscious understanding of your religious beliefs (rather than an understanding of our societies approach to religion in general). In reading Taylor's book, I have found his book to be profoundly shaping of my own understanding and approach to my religion/ spirituality, but I am still not quite capable yet in the articulation of the shape or direction of that shift. For me, this is the difference between knowing that something happened, and knowing exactly what it was that took place!
peter
Posted by: Peter Boumgarden | May 19, 2008 at 09:15 AM