GAMES CHRISTIANS PLAY

This guided missal, while a little scrappier in development than Charles M. Smith's How to Become a Bishop Without Really Trying (Doubleday-1964), should be for that audience as well as the one the title suggests they are really trying to appropriate. Most of it deals with devious devotional ploys, from avoiding cooperative ventures (unmolding the jello) to resisting gossip and heresy to achieving status (buy Eternity not Time magazine, Guideposts rather than Consumer's Union). The authors are pretty expert at not only putting people down but keeping them in their place and they append a not too soul-searching, self-testing questionnaire, What Kind of a Christian are You as well as A Christian's Vocabulary (""I...Word rarely used in the speech of the redeemed."") It's fun, in spots, without ever hitting below the Bible belt.