A superb account of an increasingly important religious movement.
A debut book offers a concise introduction to Evangelicalism from an informed insider.
Coleman was originally drawn from the cultural Christianity of his parents to the fervent commitment of Pentecostalism, and this began a lifelong quest to refine and practice his faith. Eventually, he was born again into Evangelicalism, but he recalls that he slowly experienced doubts both about its core doctrinal components and its lack of inclusiveness, or openness to people of diverse backgrounds. The book is bifurcated into two parts: a scholarly account of the theology and history of Evangelicalism and a memoir recounting the author’s grappling with his own doubts about his faith. The first part is as lucid a précis as is available; Coleman patiently describes a widely misunderstood religious sect in accessible prose. What emerges is not only an unambiguous account of what it means to be Evangelical, but also a picture of a church much less monolithic than is commonly thought. Despite some basic theological commitments, Evangelicals are engaged in their own share of intramural disputes about scriptural exegesis, salvation, homosexuality and gay marriage, and a number of other significant topics. In the autobiographical portion of the book, Coleman candidly discusses the crisis of faith he experienced as he discovered differences between his view of the Bible and most Evangelicals’, and this interpretive dissonance ultimately birthed a philosophical skepticism that nearly destroyed his faith. He found his way back to God, though no longer as an Evangelical, and counsels that its members rethink their relations to non-Christians (“But as the world becomes smaller, and our communities become filled with people from differing backgrounds, there will be those that need alternative models of faith to that which Evangelicalism can provide”). The book concludes with an actual entry from the author’s journal that affectingly conveys the anguish he suffered from his trials of doubt. Coleman writes under a nom de guerre, apparently so as not to challenge the faith of the Evangelicals he knows, though it’s not entirely clear why writing anonymously will diminish the volume’s power to potentially nurture doubts. Nevertheless, this is a moving and educational book that will resonate with all of those in search of an authentically religious life.
A superb account of an increasingly important religious movement.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5151-6040-3
Page Count: 156
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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