MacCulloch has bitten off more than most readers will want to chew.
MacCulloch (History of the Church/Oxford Univ.; Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 2011, etc.) takes on the difficult task of discovering the history of silence in the Christian faith.
The author takes an unusual approach to his topic, allowing it a wide array of definitions and also plumbing both history and the absence of history in crafting his work. He begins as any scholar of the New Testament should, with the Old Testament, and concludes that, overall, the Hebrew Scriptures are not overt advocates of silence. Nevertheless, the religion of Christianity would indeed find great meaning in silence from the very beginning, even in Jesus’ refusal to proclaim his identity with openness or to argue with his accusers before the cross. Silence found its chief expression in the early church through contemplative worship, namely in monasticism. Here, MacCulloch provides an interesting history of the ups and downs of silence in monasticism for the many centuries leading to and through the “three reformations” (iconoclasm, papal reforms and the Protestant Reformation). Quiet medieval Catholicism contrasts tremendously with the noise and din of Protestantism, a wellspring of preaching and music. Yet with Protestantism firmly in place, the author finds yet another type of silence to catalog: silence for the sake of survival. Under this heading, the author examines closet Christian sects and peoples forced into silence in order to survive. Finally, he examines history forgotten and turned into silence, from the forgotten roles of women to clerical sex abuse. MacCulloch covers some intriguing historical ground and raises many points of reflection for Christians. However, he fails to produce a cohesive and convincing history of silence. Discussing everything from strict monastic orders to the rewriting of Holocaust history as being about “silence” stretches the term to a state of near-meaninglessness.
MacCulloch has bitten off more than most readers will want to chew.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-670-02556-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
A poor contribution to a serious subject, this may indeed illustrate just how badly Catholic religious life misshapes one’s...
A short and rather smarmy reconsideration of the traditional Catholic doctrines regarding marriage and celibacy, written by ex-priest Kennedy (My Brother Joseph, 1997, etc.).
The universal overthrow of sexual taboos that took place during the latter half of the 20th century, anticipated by Freudian psychology and made possible by the development of chemical contraceptives and penicillin, came as a great surprise to just about everybody. Religious leaders, in particular, were caught with their pants down by this turn of events: Most of them (and especially the Catholics, who were predominantly celibate) had never bothered to devote a great deal of thought to sexuality from a specifically religious perspective—relying instead on appeals to natural law (among Catholics), tribal custom (for Muslims), or purification rites (within Judaism). The sexual revolution pulled the rug out from beneath all of these authorities, however, leaving many of the clergy with no idea where they were now to stand. Kennedy, who left the Catholic priesthood in the late 1960s, displays this disorientation (from which he has apparently never recovered) on every page of his study. Although he is quite specific in his condemnation of the traditional Catholic approach (to contraception, masturbation, divorce, etc.), his rage seems to be fueled by mists: He never bothers to articulate the grounds (either intellectual or religious) upon which his dissent is based, and he seems equally unable to put forward any “positive” approach to the subject—beyond vague talk of “unhealed wounds” and some silly, postmodern analogizing (e.g., Pope John Paul as the Fisher King) that sounds like a Leo Buscaglia script written by Joseph Campbell. “The priest is the wounded mythic figure, the wounded seeker of the Grail . . . whose infection and pain arise from that deep and unattended estrangement in the spiritual institution—the Church from this world, Spirit from Nature, the terrible price of a divided image of personality.”
A poor contribution to a serious subject, this may indeed illustrate just how badly Catholic religious life misshapes one’s understanding of sexual life—although probably not in the way the author intended.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26637-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Discussion of the role of religion in the formation of the Republic becomes a soapbox for right-wing reimagining of American history by the chairman of the National Journalism Center. In his introduction, Evans lists among the titles his friends suggested for the project ``Everything You Were Ever Taught Was Wrong''—a situation he sets out to remedy. The so-called liberal version of US history distorts the role of religion, in particular Christianity, in the founding of the nation, he asserts; America was, and is, a Christian nation. The founders of our liberty were in his view deeply religious men (yes, men!) who sought to embody their faith in the principles of the new country, believing that religious precept was essential to freedom. Among his other points: Liberals, who would deny this nexus between religious values and our political system, distort the Bill of Rights provision that forbids a state-established church into a rigid wall of separation between church and state that allows them to ban prayer in public schools and to deride those who would seek to inject faith into public discourse. Such a distortion of the historical record also permits government intervention in economic affairs despite the fact that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were firm supporters of private property and free enterprise. Far from being radicals, says Evans, those who engineered American independence were true conservatives, seeking to preserve the best elements of their Anglo-Saxon heritage while achieving political sovereignty. The great achievement of that heritage, to the author's mind, has been the imposition of limits on state power, a trend he claims modern liberals would reverse. This selective reading of history, complete with attacks on multiculturalism, will doubtless infuriate women, minorities, and those who consider themselves liberals. The religious right and true believers in Reaganomics, however, will cheer Evans on every step of the way.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-89526-497-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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