A thoughtful, well-argued defense of the central role of peacemaking in the lives of Christians.
A debut religion book calls for modern peace through a reflection of Scriptures and Christian traditions.
Reimer, the co-founder and former director of Fresno Pacific University’s Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies, analyzes the major stories found in Genesis and the New Testament Gospels through the lens of violence and peacemaking. According to the author, shalom, the Hebrew word for peace, is at the center of Abrahamic religions, even while many Jews, Christians, and Muslims since Cain’s murder of Abel have failed to live up to that guiding principle. Reimer sees aggression, including domestic abuse and genocide, as a central aspect of the human experience from Genesis through the 21st century. Most chapters begin with the juxtaposition of biblical stories of brutality with contemporary news headlines that demonstrate humanity’s embrace of bloodshed to solve disputes. While emphasizing this savage history, the book’s focus lies not on the depravity of humanity, but rather on finding guidance in Scriptures to discover pathways to peace in modern times. Though Cain killed Abel, another figure in Genesis, Jacob, eventually reconciled with his twin brother, Esau. Similarly, Joseph also made peace with his brothers, who sold him into slavery. This theme of reconciliation, even in situations where human nature would justify fierce, retributive justice, extends through the Gospels and Jesus’ blessing of the peacemakers. In this cogent book, Reimer’s tone is both scholarly and accessible. While he approaches the topic as a Christian, he respectfully includes complementary Jewish and Muslim perspectives on hostility and tranquility. As someone who grew up in the pacifist tradition of Mennonites and is affiliated with a Mennonite university, Reimer is distinctly steeped in that religion’s support of nonviolence and skepticism of organized government. In a work centered on cruelty and conflicts, there is a notable omission of a meaningful discussion, even a refutation, of the alternate Christian tradition of a “just war.” This would have led to an examination of Christians from other backgrounds who traditionally defend the use of force in certain situations.
A thoughtful, well-argued defense of the central role of peacemaking in the lives of Christians.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-984550-45-3
Page Count: 188
Publisher: XlibrisUS
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Bernstein and Woodward, the two Washington Post journalists who broke the Big Story, tell how they did it by old fashioned seat-of-the-pants reporting — in other words, lots of intuition and a thick stack of phone numbers. They've saved a few scoops for the occasion, the biggest being the name of their early inside source, the "sacrificial lamb" H**h Sl**n. But Washingtonians who talked will be most surprised by the admission that their rumored contacts in the FBI and elsewhere never existed; many who were telephoned for "confirmation" were revealing more than they realized. The real drama, and there's plenty of it, lies in the private-eye tactics employed by Bernstein and Woodward (they refer to themselves in the third person, strictly on a last name basis). The centerpiece of their own covert operation was an unnamed high government source they call Deep Throat, with whom Woodward arranged secret meetings by positioning the potted palm on his balcony and through codes scribbled in his morning newspaper. Woodward's wee hours meetings with Deep Throat in an underground parking garage are sheer cinema: we can just see Robert Redford (it has to be Robert Redford) watching warily for muggers and stubbing out endless cigarettes while Deep Throat spills the inside dope about the plumbers. Then too, they amass enough seamy detail to fascinate even the most avid Watergate wallower — what a drunken and abusive Mitchell threatened to do to Post publisher Katherine Graham's tit, and more on the Segretti connection — including the activities of a USC campus political group known as the Ratfuckers whose former members served as a recruiting pool for the Nixon White House. As the scandal goes public and out of their hands Bernstein and Woodward seem as stunned as the rest of us at where their search for the "head ratfucker" has led. You have to agree with what their City Editor Barry Sussman realized way back in the beginning — "We've never had a story like this. Just never."
Pub Date: June 18, 1974
ISBN: 0671894412
Page Count: 372
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1974
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