Informative and well-informed documentation of how faith is made to fit.
Documentary filmmaker Ault unearths the everyday codes that direct the lives of a conservative Christian community and the intensity of emotions embodied in their concept of being “born again.”
This grew out of the author’s experiences while making the award-winning documentary Born Again in the mid-1980s. His sojourn with the members of the Shawmut River Baptist Church (not its real name) in Worcester, Massachusetts, took a long time to write about, Ault states, primarily because it prompted a personal journey to a level of Christian conviction that he, raised the son of a mainstream Methodist minister, had not known before. But the text also sprang from his concern that intellectuals were often dealing with the fundamentalist movement, and dismissing it as flawed scholarship, without any exposure to its interaction with local communities. How do believers at the ground level, Ault asked himself, stand so firmly on concepts like inerrancy of Scripture and moral absolutism against the onslaught of scientific discovery and the drift toward freedom of individual thought in this country? The power of this work comes from the details based on Ault’s depth of immersion and freedom to observe social interaction among the Shawmut members, for whom an oral tradition of biblical bytes for every occasion reinforces total rejection of “phoolosophy” (secular learning) and a close support group that knits together a community to help any member struggling with a broken marriage, unemployment, sickness, etc. Revelations? Fundamentalists do change their thinking, Ault observes, but always veil the changes. For example, “interpretations of Noah’s cursing the descendants of Ham, in Genesis, as biblical justification [for] racial segregation fell . . . quietly out of sight in the Seventies.” His conclusion: fundamentalist movements (not mentioning Islam by name) based on sacred texts can survive in the modern world indefinitely.
Informative and well-informed documentation of how faith is made to fit.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-40242-X
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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