A meticulously researched educational tool, particularly for readers with a casual interest in Christian Science and LGBT...
A lifelong gay Christian Scientist explores his religion’s history and its largely uncharted, turbulent relationship with sexual minorities.
Mexico-based American journalist Stores (The Isthmus, 2009) looks at the controversial Church of Christ, Scientist, from the 1950s to the present day. Specifically, he tells of how the church, once devoted to outdated, exclusionary practices regarding gays, has come around to adopting a policy of leniency. Stores includes numerous profiles of intrepid, trailblazing gay activists who advocated changes within the church, such as defrocked Pentecostal Rev. Troy Perry Jr., who established the Metropolitan Community Church in the 1960s, and Chris Madsen, an outspoken lesbian cub reporter who was terminated from her position at the Christian Science Monitor in the 1980s due to her sexual orientation. Madsen’s story ignited a momentous scandal and lawsuit, which would rock the church’s steely foundation. Stores also presents profiles of several other people who wished to exclude sexual minorities from church membership, such as the staunchly anti-gay letter-writer Reginald Kerry and singer and LGBT rights opponent Anita Bryant. By offering such divergent viewpoints, Stores’ intelligent, thought-provoking narrative strives to “provide new frameworks in defining the place of sexual minorities in ecclesiastical institutions.” The author’s closing notes reflect the latest positive inroads, including pro–gay-equality activism by the author’s own son on the Christian Scientist Principia College campus. Ultimately, Stores’ narrative coalesces into a fair-minded look at the evolution of Christian Science’s stance on gay rights, the responses of its leadership and followers, and the hope for change.
A meticulously researched educational tool, particularly for readers with a casual interest in Christian Science and LGBT issues.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2004
ISBN: 978-0595666584
Page Count: 274
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
With poetic prose and vivid watercolors, Yang has created a rich portrait of life in China during the 1930s and '40s. Yang chronicles her Baba's (or Daddy's) boyhood and adolescence in 20 tales, each preceded by a watercolor. Baba was the fourth son in the eighth generation of the wealthy House of Yang, and his landscape teems with physical and spiritual dangers. He's threatened by torrential rains, ravenous wolves, red-bearded bandits, famines, demons, Japanese bombs, Russian troops, Communists, Nationalists, even an arranged marriage. When Baba is six, his family is forced out of their Manchurian homeland after the Japanese invasion. They move to China proper, then return five years later when Baba's father loses his job with a mining company. They live under the protective patronage of the family Patriarch until a bloody tug-of-war between followers of Mao and Chiang Kai- shek rends the family and country apart. Ancient legends, political upheavals, and religious ceremonies define Baba's youth. Storytellers teach him about gods and demons, prodigal sons, and the ghosts of the improperly buried. Their wisdom then plays out in his own life as Baba witnesses the goddess of Mercy protect his mother from marauding invaders; the troubled ways of one of his older brothers; and a 49-day funeral ceremony ensuring his great- great-grandfather safe passage to Heaven. Yang's prose feels ancient and foreign; for instance, she describes the effects of the first Japanese bombs: ``The glass windowpanes inhaled and exhaled, but the paper panes heaved a sigh and suddenly gave way, cracking like white porcelain.'' The tension between ancient rituals and modern reality elevates these tales from the merely beautiful into an astonishing personal vision, and a unique portrait emerges of a culture straddling thousands of years. Yang's work is like a lovely painted scroll swimming with wild souls, beasts, birds, flowers, day and night sky, tragedy, and hope.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-15-100063-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
A welcome pinprick in the bloated hot air balloon of management advice–should accompany The 8th Habit or Raving Fans in the...
A necessary icy dash of pessimism in the warm sea of feckless optimism that is the business management genre.
Like Machiavelli's The Prince or Swift's Gulliver's Travels, this parody of "Business Inspiration" contains more verisimilitude on one page than does an entire library penned by Steven Covey. Remaining a shadowy figure throughout, Kersten looks out from the author photo–rendered as a Wall Street Journal pen-and-ink portrait–with a heavenward gaze that rivals that of Ralph Reed seeking divine guidance. Credit him with the ability to couch the actual facts of most business organizations in jargon that even a Ph.D. would understand. Kersten’s essential point is that most businesses, seduced by the pernicious myth of the "Noble Employee," waste precious time and ungodly sums of money attempting to transform mediocre wage slaves into superstars. This is wrongthink, he avers. Not only can you not teach a pig to sing, but in so attempting, you sacrifice a lot of bacon. Passive, dependent, unmotivated employees are easier to exploit and require relatively low maintenance. Accordingly, managers who spoil employees by boosting their self-esteem are only contributing to employee narcissism. Employees must be put squarely in their place–in Kersten’s world, this falls somewhere between medieval serfdom and indentured servitude. Radically demotivating employees includes such techniques as creative amnesia–"forgetting" employees’ names and contributions; also, managers should respond impersonally to employees, refraining from sharing or engaging in eye contact or emotional displays. Kersten even advocates physical "cleansing" after employee contact–make sure to apply antibacterial liquid after an employee handshake.
A welcome pinprick in the bloated hot air balloon of management advice–should accompany The 8th Habit or Raving Fans in the same manner that The Wealth of Nations should accompany Das Kapital.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 1-892503-40-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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