A surprisingly relevant and thorough look at why tithing may not be a legitimate choice for churches and for Christians.
A comprehensive refutation of the modern concept of tithing.
In this unique debut work, brothers Michael L. Webb and Mitchell T. Webb take on a sacred cow of Christian praxis—the tithe. Despite innumerable divisions in Christianity over theology, styles of worship, and almost every other aspect of religious life, virtually no one seems to have seriously (or, at least, openly) argued against the practice of tithing. The Webbs change that with this lengthy book, in which they leave no stone unturned in their refutation of the tithe as a practice for raising church money. The authors show a keen awareness of the fact that too many churches make the subject of tithing an uncomfortable and unwelcoming focus of their teachings. The idea that generosity only begins after an obligatory tithe has been paid, they say, serves only to discourage heartfelt giving. “Christians should be liberal and cheerful givers,” the authors note, but they assert that a system of tithes and offerings “does more harm than good.” The Webbs make a simple, straightforward argument in this thorough work, saying that, from a biblical perspective, the tithe has nothing to do with money. Old Testament tithing referred to crops and livestock, they say, and never to monetary wages. (Similarly, the idea of “firstfruits” is said to be agricultural in nature, not economical.) The Webbs also assert that Christians aren’t required to follow such Old Testament rules. Quite to the contrary, they say that tithing, as a budgeting structure for local churches, takes assistance away from the sick and needy. Overall, this work is strikingly well-researched and documented. However, the authors’ tendency to hint at major themes without revealing them outright can be frustrating. For instance, readers are forced to wait for more than 300 pages before they learn why the authors feel that tithing inhibits the overall giving of a church community.
A surprisingly relevant and thorough look at why tithing may not be a legitimate choice for churches and for Christians.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5413-1247-0
Page Count: 414
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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