This book is well defined by its subtitle: An Appreciation of the History, Practice & Mystery of Ancient Faith. Sweeney is not a Catholic and isn't interested in becoming one. He is interested in how to adapt (not adopt) some Catholic practices into his faith life and there he finds much that he can use.

Unchristian : what a new generation really thinks about Christianity– and why it matters /by David Kinnaman.

I had mixed feelings about this book – on several levels. Despite its flaws this is a powerful and even important book.

The basis of the book is research on what people think about Christians. The results opened the eyes of the author, though they probably would be less surprising to non-Christians. Christians are thought to be unChristian, not only by those who don’t share their faith, but by many Christians under 30.

Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right by E. J., Jr. Dionne.

I have read a number of political and religious titles in the past year and this is among the best in both categories. Dionne is a political analyst of the first rank, not at all like the many talking/shouting heads that populate cable news. He is also both knowledgeable and even pastoral when he discusses religion.

The Party Faithful : How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap by Amy Sullivan [book review]

Some on-line progressives (e.g. many at DailyKos) to dismiss Amy Sullivan as a concern troll, mainly those who have managed to convince themselves that Democrats can somehow regain power without reconciling themselves to the vast majority of voters who take religion more seriously than they take politics. That they are wrong does not make Sullivan right on all counts, but she is certainly a voice worth hearing.

From last Sunday's reading - Acts of the Apostles
6:1 And in those days, when the number of the disciples was increasing, there arose a murmuring among the Hellenists against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution of food.
6:2 Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples to them, and said, It is not right that we should neglect the word of God to serve tables.

And then our troubles began

Wills is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian with a deep grounding in religion. This is more unusual than you might think. Most academics, even if they have the background, miss out on the conviction. Wills is also very well read, which is unusual in these days when bestsellers gloss over the complexities. To be really informative, rather than just an opinion piece, an author must fully understand and respect both (or more) sides of any issue and be able to explain them. Wills does. This is not to imply that Wills lacks opinions. He is forthright in delivering them, but it does not get in the way of the history.

Essential Torah : a complete guide to the five books of Moses by George Robinson

I have been through a number of books about the Bible, but they have mainly focused on the New Testament. As corrective, I picked up this, which looks at the Torah.

Jesus : a meditation on his stories and his relationships with women is a look at the parables of Jesus and the passages about his relations with women from a slightly different angle.  Greeley is a storyteller and so he analyzes them as stories. What do they say? What is the point of the story? Why was it written down and remembered when other events were not?

This is a good method to break open a story and see something fresh within it.  Many of us have read these texts as children, as young adults and as adults, have looked at them as sacred, as literature, as texts to be decoded.  Examining them as stories  takes us back to square one, where everything we have learned can still be applied. His comments about the parables (there are always three people in a parable, God, a person and a third party which is the audience/reader) are worth the price of admission by themselves.  Quirky and idiosyncratic as always, Greeley enlightens not despite that, but because of it.

The cover story is titled: Monkey business: why intelligent design is weird science. What might surprise some is the magazine.

US Catholic

Sadly too many Catholics are seduced by the Religious Right, drawn by anti-abortion rhetoric and swallowing the entire program. The official position, as covered in the article, is that reason and faith can not be in conflict. Too many on the right are cafeteria Catholics, supporting war, capital punishment. Yes, there is a lot in Catholic theology for progressives.

Cindy Sheehan has written today that she is retiring as the public face of the anti-war movement and will return to a more private life. I well understand her reasons and wish her the best, certain that she will be sorely missed.  I could not let this pass without gathering my thoughts and putting them down, since she changed my life.

I had the privilege of attending an ordination for two Catholic deacons recently and it was a very uplifting experience.

I was going to do a review of Gregory Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Nation as a stand alone, but realized that I was going to compare it to Jim Wallis' God's Politics. That being the case, I decided to throw in Faithful Citizenship, which is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' official statement on the same matter. There has been a lot of discussion of the Wallis book and his blog God's Politics, but Boyd's book is less well known and the Catholic document isn't even well known among Catholics.