A worthwhile addition to the existing group of books on Christian leadership.
Impressive, though at times imposing, exploration of incorporating biblical precepts into the study of leadership.
Faulhaber explains leadership as “an outcome or manifestation of [a] person’s character.” As such, from the Christian perspective, as a person’s character becomes more Christlike, that person becomes a more effective leader. Faulhaber encourages leadership based upon love of others, rather than love of self. Ultimately, she promotes “virtuous” leadership, which she argues counters modern concepts of leadership. She writes that today’s society focuses upon “values,” which are relativistic, whereas virtue is tied to objective moral truths. Hence a Christlike leadership is more interested in virtue than values. Faulhaber continues to explore examples of Christ’s leadership, and how it ran counter to the idea of leadership-as-power in biblical times and still runs counter to such a view. She also explores the role of grace in developing biblical leadership, arguing that such a role can only be gained through hard work and diligence, supported by God’s grace, for only grace helps leaders grow in the midst of so many obstacles. In the final analysis, Faulhaber hopes that virtuous leadership will be a “transformative leadership” as well, changing the paradigms which leaders are called upon to reform and, basically, turning the structure of power on its head. Faulhaber’s book is extremely well-researched and is brimming with quotations from figures as diverse as C.S. Lewis and Nietzsche. However, the number of outside references becomes slightly intimidating, acting as a barrier to what is otherwise a rather clear message. Likewise, visual diagrams throughout the book fail to simplify the material and are unnecessarily complex. Nevertheless the book provides beneficial advice on how Christian readers can put their beliefs into practice.
A worthwhile addition to the existing group of books on Christian leadership.Pub Date: July 21, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4363-4179-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
American schools at every level, from kindergarten to postgraduate programs, have substituted ideological indoctrination for education, charges conservative think-tanker Sowell (Senior Fellow/Hoover Institution; Preferential Polices, 1990, etc.) in this aggressive attack on the contemporary educational establishment. Sowell's quarrel with "values clarification" programs (like sex education, death-sensitizing, and antiwar "brainwashing") isn't that he disagrees with their positions but, rather, that they divert time and resources from the kind of training in intellectual analysis that makes students capable of reasoning for themselves. Contending that the values clarification programs inspired by his archvillain, psychotherapist Carl Rogers, actually inculcate values confusion, Sowell argues that the universal demand for relevance and sensitivity to the whole student has led public schools to abdicate their responsibility to such educational ideals as experience and maturity. On the subject of higher education, Sowell moves to more familiar ground, ascribing the declining quality of classroom instruction to the insatiable appetite of tangentially related research budgets and bloated athletic programs (to which an entire chapter, largely irrelevant to the book's broader argument, is devoted). The evidence offered for these propositions isn't likely to change many minds, since it's so inveterately anecdotal (for example, a call for more stringent curriculum requirements is bolstered by the news that Brooke Shields graduated from Princeton without taking any courses in economics, math, biology, chemistry, history, sociology, or government) and injudiciously applied (Sowell's dismissal of student evaluations as responsible data in judging a professor's classroom performance immediately follows his use of comments from student evaluations to document the general inadequacy of college teaching). All in all, the details of Sowell's indictment—that not only can't Johnny think, but "Johnny doesn't know what thinking is"—are more entertaining than persuasive or new.
Pub Date: Jan. 4, 1993
ISBN: 0-02-930330-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The sub-title of this book is "Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools." But one finds in it little about education, and less about the teaching of English. Nor is this volume a defense of the Christian faith similar to other books from the pen of C. S. Lewis. The three lectures comprising the book are rather rambling talks about life and literature and philosophy. Those who have come to expect from Lewis penetrating satire and a subtle sense of humor, used to buttress a real Christian faith, will be disappointed.
Pub Date: April 8, 1947
ISBN: 1609421477
Page Count: -
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1947
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