by Lucien Bracquemont ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 17, 2015
An attempt to rally Christians against hypocrisy and greed that gets lost in political debates.
A debut book examines the increasing divide between conservatives and liberals among Christians and in the nation.
“The potential of Christianity for good has remained untapped and unrealized,” writes Bracquemont, as he dives into a critique of the religion that divvies up contemporary believers into two opposing sides. His central thesis is that “the Left gets it wrong, and the Right does not get it.” In his view, differing philosophies of internalism and externalism split liberals and conservatives, Christian or otherwise. Internalists believe their own choices, like sin, drive their situations, while externalists look to change all of society, radically reinterpreting the Bible in the process. For Bracquemont, both of these ideologies go too far and ignore what he deems “the true, radical equality and social justice of the Bible.” He focuses on dismantling liberal strategies of political correctness, in particular radical feminism (which he sees as counterproductive to equality among the sexes), but he also acknowledges the inherent greed of contemporary mega churches. He strives for a compelling synthesis of the two positions, calling them both out for their avarice and ignorance of the global poor, the truly oppressed in his estimation. It is a noble goal to try to find balance between so many hostile and competing views, but the majority of his argument is too imbalanced itself to be convincing. Bracquemont tries to address the various factions of the church and the political spheres simultaneously. Unfortunately, that ambition stretches his otherwise lucid and impactful writing too far from his central thesis and what he understands best: the church. He writes of his own negative experiences as a white male with autism in a politically correct seminary—a potentially powerful, emotional lesson for his target Christian audience—but it proves a weak tool for exposing hypocrisy in the larger frameworks of liberal rhetoric and abstract political theory. The end result is mostly a questionable takedown of leftist ideologies, with some added caveats for conservatives, instead of a more precise and balanced analysis of both sides.
An attempt to rally Christians against hypocrisy and greed that gets lost in political debates.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4908-9276-4
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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