An unconventional, thought-provoking organizational scheme for pondering Christianity via a fundamentalist lens.
An approach to scriptural devotions using acronyms.
Oliver’s nonfiction debut features a unique, inviting approach to thinking about the Christian life. He arranges acronyms in alphabetical order (with many letters repeated), and after each one is given, Oliver expounds at varying lengths on their meanings and his thinking behind creating them. Entries range in length from brief, like “ALL” (Agape: Lingering Love), to middle length (“GOSPEL”: God’s only Son Provides Eternal Life) to slightly longer and more involved (“IMMANUEL”: Immaculate, Marvelous Messiah’s Atonement Necessary, Uniting Elohim’s Love). Some of the repetition in letters and acronyms is clearly intended to underscore thematic significance—such as “JESUS” (Justifying Eternal Salvation unto Sinners). In a short Foreword, Oliver claims divine inspiration for his conception of these acronyms, and throughout the text, he strikes an evangelical tone that many Christian readers will find bracing, for instance, “there are so many ways we can sin and not be aware of it.” In the text sections explaining his acronyms, Oliver sketches a theodicy of fundamentalist basics. “We must let God be true and every person a liar to be anchored believers, immovable and determined eternally to see the victory God has for us as we overcome the world,” he writes. Oliver doesn’t shy away from fire-and-brimstone warnings. He touches repeatedly on the fact that finding Jesus is the only path to avoiding the eternal torment of damnation (you don’t just die and that’s that, he writes—you suffer forever). Jesus, he writes, is the answer to everything in life, the standing offer of God to reconcile with the faithful. Some of Oliver’s concepts will strike many as just too absolutist; he writes that “all the problems we experience in life are a result of evil in this world” (bad phone reception? Car trouble? Liver cancer?). But Oliver is good at his central conceit: some of these acronyms are bound to stick in readers’ minds after they’ve put the book down.
An unconventional, thought-provoking organizational scheme for pondering Christianity via a fundamentalist lens.Pub Date: April 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-7765-9
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A markedly contemporary study that navigates the New Testament scholar past the perils of Pauline theology. Boyarin (Talmudic Culture/Univ. of Calif., Berkeley; Carnal Israel, not reviewed) attempts to ``reclaim Paul as an important Jewish thinker.'' He goes on to establish this primary apostle as a Hellenized Jew whose Platonic sensibility calls for a universal sameness that negates the divisions separating Jew from Gentile and man from woman. The disembodied spirituality of Platonic dualism allows females (especially virgins) to be equal to men under Christ, and allows an uncircumcised Christian of any gender to ``circumcise the foreskin of her [sic] heart'' with Hebrew Bible commandments universalized and allegorized. Boyarin does not glibly valorize Paul as a champion of feminism and an opponent of Jewish exclusivist chauvinism. After crediting Paul for being a radical social critic, the author makes clear how the apostle's pre-Marxist universalism too easily slid into violent coercion in the later, blood-soaked chapters of Christian history. Boyarin analyzes the work of many Christian scholars in concluding that Lutheran misinterpretations of Paul allow us to consider the apostle to be far more antagonistic to Jews and Judaism than he really was. The benefit of Boyarin's Jewish defense against hermeneutical Christian anti-Semitism is tempered by his disdain for a Judaic ``tendency towards contemptuous neglect for human solidarity'' and his anti- Zionism (``modern Jewish statist nationalism has been...very violent and exclusionary''). Sometimes he confuses Christian ``salvation'' theology with Jewish belief, and he fails to find any similarity between Pauline Platonism and the allegorical and universal levels of Torah laws. The final chapter digresses to a personal view of the ``essentialist/social constructionist dichotomy,'' but the book does end with ample notes and bibliography. A rewarding read for students of Christian theology willing to be challenged by today's multicultural, poststructuralist, postfeminist scholarship.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-520-08592-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing look at an unusual religious and medical phenomenon. Harrison, a former religious affairs correspondent for the BBC, investigates historical and contemporary reports of stigmata, the strange bleeding marks that are said to resemble the wounds suffered by Jesus at the Crucifixion. Having interviewed both physicians and those who suffer from the stigmata, he tells us that the marks appear most often on the hands and feet but can appear as stripes on the back, where Jesus was supposed to have been scourged, or on the side where, according to the Gospels, he was pierced by a spear. The first documented case of the lesions happened to St. Francis of Assisi in 1224. Since then, it is estimated, 300 or more people have suffered the wounds. Are these the result of excessive religious fervor and mental imbalance manifesting itself physically? Or are the wounds a gift from God, a sign of blessing given to the truly faithful? Almost all the reported cases have come from poor Catholics living in Mediterranean countries. Officially, the Vatican admits the possibility that the marks are miraculous in origin while looking skeptically on any individual case. Medical science has scrutinized reported cases for 200 years. According to the scientific view, the wounds are the product of emotional stress. Women afflicted outnumber men by a ratio of seven to one. The wounds are more common in religious communities and monasteries. Recent years have witnessed an increase of cases in England and Latin America. The phenomenon is no longer confined to Catholics. And the United States has produced the first non-Caucasian sufferers as Native Americans and African-Americans have experienced the phenomenon. The author believes that global conditions (poverty, stress, a rise in charismatic Christianity) are right for an increase in reported cases. Fascinating and well told, this tale of religious fervor will appeal to believers and skeptics alike.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11372-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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