A more appropriate title for this would be The Politics of Hendricks.
This study of Jesus turns into a statement on American politics.
Hendricks (Biblical Interpretation/New York Theological Seminary) begins with the questionable assertion that Jesus has not been viewed by the church as a political figure or as having a political message. He characterizes Christian views of Jesus as somewhat meekly emphasizing personal moral lessons. Though this argument is largely irrefutable, his claim that viewing Jesus in political terms is new and revolutionary is simply far-fetched. He seems not to have considered entire schools of thought, such as liberation theology, or the fact that his own book’s title is borrowed directly from John Howard Yoder, who brought a similar message to the foreground more than three decades ago, in his own The Politics of Jesus. Hendricks argues that Jesus was a political revolutionary whose teachings and actions were aimed at alleviating the suffering of his people at the hands of Roman occupiers. He doesn’t simply portray Jesus in general political terms; he contends that Jesus was an adept political activist who utilized specific tactics and techniques that we can emulate today. Inserting references to contemporary politics throughout, Hendricks turns in Part Three to his own analysis of how such modern political figures as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush fail to live up to Jesus’ political teachings and example. He goes on to compare “conservatism” and “liberalism,” concluding that though both theories are flawed, liberalism is more closely aligned with Jesus’ own politics. Hendricks’s strength is in theology, not political theory, about which he displays a pedestrian level of understanding. Attempting to press political points, he allows his original arguments about Jesus to trail off into the realm of afterthought.
A more appropriate title for this would be The Politics of Hendricks.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51664-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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