Authors are generally a pretty nervous bunch when it comes to reviews. I suppose any writer or artist is that way about works they've poured themselves into and then let them go out into the public. What will people say, I wonder? Will they get what I hoped to communicate? Will people hate it? The first thing for a book is the publisher-procured blurbs from fellow writers. I had a tremendous blessing with my last book to be the recipient of lovely and strong endorsements from Rick Bliese, our president at Luther, Dorothy Bass, and Robert Bellah. Bellah was special as he is an academic mentor to be sure but also a major intellectual of the 20th century and one of the most important sociologists of his generation.
So having strong endorsements is a gift, but the truth is you tend to ask people who are likely to say good things, and if they don't the comments don't make it on the back of the book! It is, after all, about marketing as much as anything. Things are a bit more dicey out in the democracy of critics, esp. on Amazon.com where savage reviews can be posted with impunity. What a relief then to see a couple reviews appear on my new book, Faith as a Way of Life, written over the fall by (I think) students in various places who've had my book assigned for their seminary courses.
Here they are:
A Good Primer on Practical Theology,
| By | Christopher L. Dart "cultural ponderer" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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Inspired by the Yale Center for Faith & Culture's "Faith as a Way of Life Project" of 2003-07, this book is an attempt to summarize its findings; its main gist is to encourage Christian pastors with ways to help develop holistic faith and practice in their congregations. Scharen's biggest cultural critique falls upon the common compartmentalization of our lives, since people tend to place "religion" or "faith" into one of those many compartments, rather than letting it act as the overarching meta-narrative that guides one's life.
Challenging both the results-oriented "managerial" model and the felt-needs/highly individualistic "therapeutic" approach adopted by many American churches, Scharen builds his case for a faith that is trans-compartmental utilizing both established social theory (Weber, Bellah) and theology (predominately Lutheran/Reformed) to show how Christians can engage one another and the broader society in faithful and transformative ways. This isn't a how-to book in the classical sense, but Scharen does a good job at balancing theory and real-life examples to suggest how one can work towards his paradigm. I also appreciate the relative balance of his views; where many similar social-engagement books seem to be as captive to Leftist politics as others are to the Religious Right, Scharen's work seems to be more Christ-centered, allowing more room for alternate views and acknowledging "grey areas," and is thus more applicable to a broader audience, allowing for greater impact, especially among his diverse pastoral audience.
Gathering and Scattering as Pastoral Leadership,
The above editorial review gives a good overview of the topics covered however it misses the one thing that sets Scharen's book apart from others of its kind. What Scharen accomplishes that others do not is to display the "interconnection and coherence of the whole". By approaching the topic from an admittedly generalist viewpoint he is able to take the reader through a hermeneutical circle of 1) observing the obstacles that prevent faith from impacting daily lives in various spheres, 2) reflecting on these situations theologically and 3) sharing stories of Christian leaders who have tried out ideas with varying degrees of success. The image that Scharen uses to pull these activities together is that of gathering and scattering. Like the process of breathing, collecting inward in community and then expanding outward in daily life are not two separate activities that we do but rather God's life giving rhythm for our lives.
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