A timely message, though Wallis is preaching to the choir.
A spirited attack on white Christian nationalism.
In an occasionally vitriolic work, Wallis, founder of Sojourners magazine and author of America’s Original Sin and On God’s Side, espouses a politically progressive view of scripture and of the role of the Christian church in society. In the past couple of decades, he argues, the white American church has fallen prey to ill-intentioned conservative political forces, which seek to privatize faith as a relationship between the believer and God. In contrast, the author believes that Christian faith is incomplete without deep civic and social engagement, a belief that many progressive Christians share. Wallis devotes the core of the book to “six basic and iconic biblical texts,” which he uses as springboards for discussions of political and social issues. For instance, scripture stating that humans are formed in the image of God opens a chapter on voting rights, and scripture stating, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God,” opens a chapter about police violence, gun use, and related problems. This is less a work of theology than of politics and current events. Wallis frequently attacks Donald Trump and his followers, arguing that democracy, and especially a multiracial democracy, is at stake in 2024. He is adamant that his writing is a call to action, both political and social, and warns that another Trump presidency will mean fascism. His hope is to awaken a “remnant church” among white Americans, in which “faith and justice will be inseparable”—and which will be “characterized by the pillars of repentance, return, and restoration.” Though Wallis invites others to dialogue concerning these matters, he won’t win many new converts. However, Christians who are devoted to social justice will find important moments of insight.
A timely message, though Wallis is preaching to the choir.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250291899
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's Essentials
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2024
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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