Explore The Spirit

Across America, our eyes are locked on Hunger Games. Two new fantasies are debuting, Wrath of the Titans and Mirror Mirror, but media experts predict the Games will continue as the biggest spectacle. One reason: Fans are going back again. To conclude our coverage, veteran faith-and-film writer Edward McNulty returns for a second viewing and shares an even bigger list of must-see “dystopian” movies.

JUST CATCHING UP?
Here’s our earlier Hunger Games Coverage at a glance:

TWILIGHT-EXPERT JANE WELLS: Movie review of Hunger Games. AND: Hunger Games vs. Twilight.
Spiritual Wanderer RODNEY CURTIS: Why “dystopia” is my favorite word. AND: Mom may hate it!
EDWARD McNULTY: How to spark a great Hunger Games discussion. AND: What’s a movie “dystopia”?

Second Thoughts on Hunger Games By EDWARD McNULTY

WARNING: Spoiler alert. If you haven’t seen the movie, jump to the next section, below …
Hunger Games Gamemaker Seneca CranethanA second viewing of the film version of Suzanne Collins’ book brought into clearer focus for me the subplot concerning those responsible for the Games. As I wrote previously, the film includes more scenes involving President Snow and Gamemaker Seneca Cranethan than the book does. An important sequence is the one in which Haymitch, worried that his ward Katniss will be killed because she evinces a note of rebelliousness, convinces head Gamemaker Seneca that she should be spared because she and Peeta are underdogs and the public roots for the underdog.
Seneca talks with President Snow in his rose garden, and the latter is disdainful of the concept of underdog. He asks the Gamemaker, “Do you know why we hold the Games?” He cynically explains that the Games instill hope in the masses and thus keeps them submissive. However too much hope can be dangerous. Like a spark, it must be contained, lest it break into flame. The President’s displeasure with the way the current Games turn out leads to that brief scene in which Seneca is conducted by guards to a chamber where he finds a bowl of berries that will not promote his good health. Adding that to the filmmakers’ invention of the scene in which District 11, led by Rue’s father, break out in a riot against the Peacekeepers—and we are ready for a sequel. President Snow, like the shrewd politician that he is, is correct in perceiving in his new victors a dangerous spark that must be contained.
A NOTE TO CHRISTIAN VIEWERS: I should also add that as a Christian I found it unfortunate that Suzanne Collins shared the belief, fostered erroneously by so many science fiction writers, that the church is just another human institution that will die away if our civilization should be destroyed. There is no sign in the book of any form of religious practice or institution, Christian or otherwise, that opposes the barbaric games in the way that the Christians stood up and condemned the ancient Roman gladiatorial games. Because of this neglect, I felt that the world otherwise so graphically created by Ms. Collins was not a complete one. And yet I know that I will be watching this movie another time—and enjoying it.

THE “NEXT SECTION” … Seven More Great Dystopian Movies

Following up on Edward McNulty’s earlier list of great dystopian movies …

BLADE RUNNER

Possibly one of the best sci-fi films ever made, certainly any made by director Ridley Scott, and of all the host of movies made from a Phlip K. Dick story. The film is set on a future earth where it always seems to be raining. Most people who are able already have left the overcrowded planet. Harrison Ford is Deckard, a “blade runner,” a cop trained to run down and kill any replicants, androids created and programmed to work as slaves in the mines and other dangerous places on the outer planets. Several do escape, slaughtering a number of humans, and head for earth in order to find their maker. The replicants want their maker to extend their four-year life spans. Facing this challenge, Deckard is forced out of retirement to hunt them down. He apparently has retired because he realizes that he is becoming dehumanized in his work, whereas with each new generation androids, the replicants are becoming more human. The movie has prompted a multiude of interpretations, including debates about the way it ends (and multiple endings exist in various versions of the film). The film might have been made 30 years ago, but its special effects are still an eye-catching source of wonder, and its characters are far more rounded than those in most sci-fi films. More than a nail-biting thriller, Blade Runner raises lots of questions about humanity and the automated culture we continue to build in our quest for a better life.

CHILDREN OF MEN

The film is set in 2027 England where chaos reigns and humans have not been able to procreate for 18 years. Everyone lives in fear, except for a few of the wealthy or those able to find refuge in some overlooked section of the country. Europe and Africa have collapsed, their citizens trying to immigrate to Britain, but when they are caught, they are rounded up and placed in overcrowded detention camps. Central character Theo has tried to settle down into a bureaucratic government job, but his former wife Julian, still an activist, recruits him to escort a young pregnant woman named Kee to the coast through warring factions so that she can be smuggled out of the country. The goal apparently is a colony of scientists to whom she might be useful in their research to restore fertility to the human race. Hunting Theo and Kee are a brutal bunch who want to capture and use the woman and her coming child for their own purposes.

PLANET OF THE APES

In the far future Charlton Heston’s George Taylor is one of three astronauts who survive a crash on a planet similar to Earth. They discover that the planet is inhabited by intelligent chimpanzees, who kill one of them and capture the others. Taylor’s throat is damaged, so at first he cannot communicate. His companion dies when ape scientists perform experimental brain surgery on him. These are humans, but they are savages compared to the apes and are allowed to exist only as slaves. How Taylor befriends a female chimpanzee, escapes and makes a startling discovery about the identity of the planet makes for exciting viewing, while raising such issues as animal rights, religious differences, creationism vs. evolution and more.

THE MATRIX

In what has become a cult film, Keanu Reeves plays Neo a computer hacker who is introduced by a group of rebels led by Morpheus and told that his seemingly real world is the construct of machines. In the midst of a devastated wasteland they keep the bodies of humans in a suspended form so that they can use their heat and energy. The minds of the humans are imprisoned in the artificial reality known as the Matrix. Neo is given the choice of becoming the One who will lead the revolution against the machines or returning to his old humdrum way of life. Red Pill or Blue Pill?

PLEASANTVILLE

The dystopia in this intriguing 1998 film is not some political tyranny, but a black-and-white blandness that robs life of its vitality. In what can be seen as an attack on TV culture itself, the story features the TV-loving David and his more adventurous sister Jennifer who are mysterious transported into a TV series set in the 1950s. Once they are stuck inside this retro-TV world, they seem to have it all: loving parents and a crime-free society. But everything is in black and white. When Jennifer ventures to introduce changes, the residents resist. Eventually, intolerant citizens threaten violence—until at last the town is far from the utopia intended by its name.

DISTRICT 9

In this powerful film pleading for tolerance amidst the raging controversy over illegal immigrants, South Africa’s old Apartheid is replaced by a new one directed at real aliens. A large space ship of extraterrestrials fleeing from tyranny in their own civilization landed 28 years earlier at Johannesburg. At first, they were accepted kindly. But, by the time the film opens, they have been branded as “Prawns” and relegated to what amounts to one of the old black townships. A giant munitions corporation, which is contracted to remove the Prawns to a district far from any urban area, has placed Wikus van der Merwe in charge of the project. Soon, this otherwise mild-mannered civil servant finds himself transformed in shocking ways until he becomes an advocate for the aliens.

THE BOOK OF ELI

In this post-apocalyptic tale Denzil Washington is Eli, a lone man transporting an important book cross country. The ruthless boss of a town in the Southwest tries to take the book because of its power over the minds of people. The book, we gradually discover, is the Bible—the words of which have inspired people to great deeds. Eli’s martial skills and determination lead him to risk his life many times in order to deliver it into the safe keeping of a remaining outpost of civilization in California.

The above are but a few of the science fiction dystopias available on DVD. Also deserving of mention are Minority Report, Gattaca, Solyent Green, the Mad Max films, and a Japanese film that I have not seen but that some film writers claim was an inspiration for Hunger Games: Battle Royale.

Care to read more from Edward McNulty?

• Read Ed McNulty’s earlier series in ReadTheSpirit: TOP 10 JESUS MOVIES!
• Another series for ReadTheSpirit: ‘THE HELP’ and more movies on the civil rights struggle
• GET THE BOOK: Ed McNulty has written three books of reflections on movies that are great for sparking spirited small-group discussion. Praying the Movies, available via Amazon, includes McNulty’s look at Star Wars, Schindler’s List and Pulp Fiction. Praying the Movies II: More Daily Meditations from Classic Films, includes McNulty’s reflections on Gandhi, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harry Potter and O Brother, Whereart Thou? Faith and Film: A Guidebook for Leaders, includes Amistad, Erin Brockovich, the Matrix and Shawshank Redemption.
• CHECK OUT HIS WEBSITE: Ed’s own website is Visual Parables.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Today, we welcome the popular Bible scholar N.T. “Tom” Wright back to ReadTheSpirit to talk about his latest book, How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. Tom himself refers to the message of this book as “explosive,” and we are not alone in recommending this new book. Veteran religion columnist Bill Tammeus also praises this new book for the helpful balance it provides to often overlooked messages in the Gospels. As Bill Tammeus describes this new book, he sets it against the common evangelical message that the bulk of Jesus’ preaching about God’s Kingdom is lost in an exclusive focus on: “You’re a sinner. Jesus came to die for your sins. Believe in Jesus and you’ll go to heaven.” In our interview, when Tom Wright turns to his criticism of the beloved C.S. Lewis, readers will find that his critique focuses on this very point.
In Part 1 of our coverage, we reviewed the new book and provided brief excerpts from Tom Wright.
Today, ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm interviews Tom Wright …

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH N.T. “TOM” WRIGHT
ON HOW GOD BECAME KING

Click the Cover to visit the Amazon page.DAVID: In writing about your new book, I’m saying that you want to shift the questions that your readers are asking. Most Americans understand that you’re the scholar who says “Yes” to the question: Are the Gospels true? But you really want to talk about: What do the Gospels mean? Am I describing this correctly?

TOM: Yes, that’s a very fair way to make this distinction. One of the targets of this book is Christians who say: Yes, the Bible is true. It’s inerrant and so on. But, then, they pay no attention to what the Bible actually says. For too many Christians it seems sufficient to say Christ was born of a Virgin, died on a cross and was resurrected—but never did anything else in between. I’m saying: That’s not the way to understand the Gospels.

DAVID: There are real convergences between the passage in this new book about Christ and the Roman Empire—and what John Dominic Crossan writes about this point. For example, you both make the point that the Gospels use politically loaded phrases to describe Christ. Many of these phrases are taken directly from what ancient readers knew were claims about Caesar. Obviously, you and Dom Crossan disagree about many issues concerning the Gospels, but is it fair to say there is some agreement on these points?

TOM: That’s a very good question and it would be fun to sit down with Dom and try to tease out these points. I haven’t read all of Dom’s recent books because I’ve been so deep in my own research about Paul for this next big book that I really want to complete about Paul. So, I cannot claim to know everything Dom has been writing in the last few years.

I would say this: In the Gospels, we see the confrontation of Jesus with all the powers of evil, including the S-power: Satan. Now, it’s hard to even mention Satan or the Devil these days because people have so many strange notions about what those terms mean. But I would say that throughout Jesus’s clashes with temple authorities and with Roman authorities all the way through the Gospels, the big confrontation behind it all is Jesus’ confrontation with the dark power of evil itself—evil that uses human structures in various ways. The message of the Gospels is the defeat of the powers and principalities of evil and with it the ways that empire uses these powers. It’s more complicated, I am saying, than just picking out phrases A, B and C and saying that they refer to Caesar and Rome as the main target of the Gospels. I would say that the real target, as Paul says, is the powers and principalities of evil and ultimately sin and death itself and that, yes, empires do get sucked into all of this. I have not read Dom’s recent books on this, so I cannot say how I differ with the way he describes this whole process. But, I am saying that, yes, American readers need to realize that a lot of the language about Jesus in the New Testament is politically loaded and understanding this context is very important. I think Dom and I would be on the same page on that point. I think there’s a great discussion to be had on how we might agree—and how we differ—on these points.

BRIAN MCLAREN, FOX NEWS & POLARIZED LEFT AND RIGHT

DAVID: We’ve been covering books by Brian McLaren for years and Brian himself regularly stops by ReadTheSpirit for interviews. I was struck, in the middle of your book, that you actually take a shot at Fox News. That’s something Brian is doing this summer in some new e-books he is releasing.

TOM: Well, what I’m doing is making a broad-brush point for readers. I’m not talking about Fox News in any detailed way and I’m not claiming that everything they tell you is wrong. I’m just referring to the well-known political viewpoint that comes through Fox News and I’m saying: We should be careful about listening to that point of view exclusively. There is a striking, radical polarization between your Left and Right that I have to say is really disturbing because it distorts so many issues. This Left-Right polarization forces people to say: We are all on this side now! We must check off every box on this slate! We must keep in line!

In your country, for example, there seem to be Christian political voices saying that you shouldn’t have a national healthcare system. To us, in Britain, this is virtually unthinkable. Every other developed country from Norway to New Zealand has healthcare for all of its citizens. We don’t understand all of this opposition to it over here in the U.S. And, we should remember: In the ancient world, there wasn’t any healthcare system. It was the Christians, very early on, who introduced the idea that we should care for people beyond the circle of our own kin. Christians taught that we should care for the poor and disadvantaged. Christians eventually organized hospitals. To hear people standing up in your political debate and saying—“If you are followers of Jesus, you must reject universal healthcare coverage!”—and that’s unthinkable to us. Those of us who are Christians in other parts of the world are saying: We can’t understand this political language. It’s not our value in our countries. It’s not even in keeping with traditional Christian teaching on caring for others. We can’t understand what we are hearing from some of your politicians on this point. Yet, over here, some Christians are saying that it’s part of the list of boxes we all should check off to keep in line.

SMALL-GROUP IDEA: HOW C.S. LEWIS GOT IT WRONG

The statue of C. S. Lewis in front of the wardrobe from his book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in East Belfast, Northern Ireland. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.DAVID: Whenever I talk to people about their favorite authors, I hear you described with comparisons to C.S. Lewis. So far, you’ve never written fiction like Lewis, but I can see some obvious similarities. You come from across the Atlantic with a powerful, traditional Christian voice. And Lewis did proclaim that God’s involvement in the world was quite real and tangible. Here is one example of a basic point that readers might find similar: In Mere Christianity, Lewis writes, “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign …” In your book, you write: “In Jesus, the living God has become king of the whole world.” So, help us clarify this point. How do you compare Lewis’ work with your own work?

TOM: I have enormous admiration for Lewis, who I read in my teens and 20s voraciously. I read some passages so many times that I can recite them by heart. It’s not surprising that there are Lewis references in my own work. But on some key issues, I have to say: He didn’t actually understand how the first century world worked and he didn’t understand the role of Judaism and Israel. In The Screwtape Letters, at one point, he dismisses all of historical Jesus research. When he summarizes what he thinks he knows about this historical record, it turns out actually to be low-grade stuff. He had a highly attuned mind on so many other issues and so many other areas of scholarly research. But he wasn’t a scholar in this area. Because he didn’t understand this important context, I don’t think he understood some of the key points that the Gospels are making.

On the subject of the Kingdom coming into the world, I think I would sharply disagree with Lewis. Lewis was allergic to the idea that there might be ways that Christian leaders should actively engage with what is happening in the world today. In Mere Christianity, he argues that political questions should be left to political leaders and, in the Church, we should stick to issues of salvation.

On that point, I actually want to say to Lewis: No, I think the Christian Gospel raises important questions about the way we do democracy now. Precisely at the point of what Lewis says about social and political engagement—and in the content of what he writes about Bible scholarship and the context of Jesus coming from within Israel—I would quite significantly disagree with Lewis.

DAVID: You’ve just given church leaders a terrific idea for small-group discussion in which people who’ve loved Lewis over the years—and may already own the Lewis books you’ve just mentioned—could talk about what Lewis is saying versus what you’re arguing in this new book.

So, let me give those small-group leaders a little ammunition for sparking discussion. First, in Screwtape, they might start with Letter 23 in which Lewis dismisses anyone who does research into the historical Jesus as not worth “ten shillings in ordinary life.” He says Bible scholars who write books just want to produce best sellers for “every publisher’s autumn list.” Bible scholars who dig into the ancient record are threatening to “destroy the devotional life,” Lewis argues. Worse yet, Lewis writes, these writers can encourage Christians to work toward social justice in this world. That’s the work of the Devil, too, Lewis suggests. Only Jesus’ Resurrection and then Redemption really matter, he argues. There are obvious clashes with your own work.

Then, if readers turn to the “Adjusting the Volume” section of your new book, they will find your overview of how central themes in the Gospels flow from Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures. You explain a lot about the “explosive” message of Christianity in the ancient world.  You argue that understanding this context is essential to understanding the Gospels. In contrast, Lewis tends to dismiss Judaism as if it was curiously interesting that Jesus happened to come in the human form of a wise Jewish teacher—but not much else. You write that without fully appreciating the context of Judaism and Israel in which Jesus is teaching and acting in the world, then “we will never hear the proper harmony” of the Gospels’ message. Another clear clash between you two.

Finally, if readers turn to your section on “The Kingdom and The Cross,” they can compare your thoughts with Lewis’ own very dim view of taking political action from within the church. You criticize people who say that Christianity is “a beacon of light but without actually engaging with the world” on crucial issues. Compare that, for example, with Lewis’s section on Social Morality in Mere Christianity where he says that Christian clergy who speak out on political issues are “silly” and he argues that this is a “job for which they have not trained.”

So, count that as a brief Study Guide for a few weeks of spirited discussion comparing Lewis and Wright.

TOM: We do need to remember Lewis’ context. He was writing after having seen, first hand, the horrors of a particular war. He also had seen in Britain in the middle of the 20th century some rather naïve attempts to say that all Christians must unite behind a particular policy or party. And that kind of claim often is naïve and shallow. Lewis was perfectly right about a lot of things he was saying in his time. He was pleading for a space where Christians and the Church should properly operate and he was arguing against some things that he saw happening in his particular era. And, I would agree with Lewis that there are some issues on which the Church really doesn’t have much to say. Right now in Britain, for example, there’s a big debate going on about whether we should build a whole new airport. I’m not sure that’s an issue that the Church has much to say on. But there are, indeed, lots and lots of other very important issues today where the Church needs to speak. There is much that Lewis got right, especially if you read Lewis in the context in which he was writing. And, there is much in Lewis that I significantly disagree with today.

SEARCHING FOR HOPE IN A ‘CLEAR-HEADED’ NEXT GENERATION

DAVID: In the end, are you a hopeful writer and teacher? Should we read your books and hear your talks as dire warnings—or with an underlying hope for the future?

TOM: There is solid reason for hope, but that doesn’t mean I can look out at the world and say: Oh, yes, there are so many good signs that there’s nothing to worry about. I see lots of good signs, and I see lots of disturbing things. There’s the whole mess we’ve made in Iraq and Afghanistan and there’s the disturbing fact that some people are saying we ought to fly over and bomb Iran in the middle of this mess. People just don’t “get” how disastrous our policies have been in the Middle East. So, on those issues, I probably would sound like quite a liberal to many Americans. Then, I look at the state of sexual ethics and, when I talk about those issues, I probably seem like a right-wing conservative to many Americans.

The answer is complex. When I look across Africa and Asia, I see huge currents of thought and life, some of which are very life giving—and some of which are devastating. I’m now 63 and I do pray regularly for wise leadership in the next generation. We need clear-headed people to emerge to tell our story correctly to a new generation and to guide us all so that the world might develop in healthy ways.

Enjoy More of N.T. Wright’s Popular Works …

PART 1 of our coverage of N.T. Wright’s How God Became King includes our review and excerpts, along with a short video of Wright describing his new book.

BUY THE BOOK How God Became King is available at Amazon.

OTHER N.T. WRIGHT BOOKS are described in our Wright Small Group Resources page.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Read more here: http://billtammeus.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/03/3-2425-11.html#storylink=cpy

 

LENTEN VOICES is an occasional series reflecting on our journey through this season.
TODAY, we introduce blogger Lyda K. Hawes, the creator of See Lyda Run, who describes herself as an every-woman athlete sharing her adventures in running. She loves participating in endurance events and has learned, by ignoring the naysayers, that your age, weight, size, and speed do not have to get in the way of chasing your dreams. She also believes the path to God can be found in many places, including both the running path and being in community with fellow seekers in a more traditional church setting.

Bending with
Spring Winds By Lyda K. Hawes

In my early years of observing Lent, I was extremely strict with myself in regards to whatever sacrifice I happened to be making. There were no excuses, no loop holes, no skipping out on Sundays, no forgiveness, NO MERCY!  It was go big or go home, all or nothing, perfection or despair. Although I was always very clear that I never expected anyone else to follow suit or live by my Lenten restrictions, what I have learned over time is being around that version of me is incredibly annoying for everyone else. Others were constantly having to adjust their lives to meet my needs. I found that by marching around and trumpeting my “look at me and my Lenten goodness” others felt compelled to accommodate me. Even if I didn’t ask or want them to, some simply did it because they wanted to be supportive in the way that friends and family often give their support to whatever whack-o thing you’re up to at any given moment. (Forget Lent for a minute, I have quite a track record in taking up whack-o things.)

I like to think I have improved on this front, but I also know it’s an area where I still need work. Last year (where I gave up going out to eat), I thought I was being super clever for a work-related offsite event by offering to bring lunch and happy hour fixins. I learned later that the sandwiches that I brought were not on a colleague’s low carb diet, not to mention he had to make special arrangements with the location for me to bring my food, but he was gracious enough not to stand in my way. And I believe an element of this discipline is not to make a big fuss about what you are doing, so writing blog posts about the whole business probably doesn’t help my cause either.

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
Matthew 6, verse 1

This year I decided to be more conscientious about not taking those around me through my personal journey of Lenten sacrifice. Okay, obviously writing this post invites people to go along the journey with me in some respects; so to clarify, I mean I am working hard not to inflict my offline, “real life,” Lenten choices on others. As far as my online presence goes, people can choose whether or not to read this post, or whether they even agree with my sentiments. Perhaps I really shouldn’t be writing about my experience with Lent—at least not on a blog, but that will have to be a struggle for another season.

What this really means is that I have to make a conscious choice to set aside perfect devotion to my sacrifice. Sometimes I have to live with my own inability to fulfill the commitment I have made. This past Friday we got together with friends we hadn’t seen in some months. Our usual tradition involves getting together for a meal and then watching a movie or catching up on the reality shows they know I like that are on cable, which we don’t have. I was very conflicted about how to handle this situation since I gave up TV for Lent. I initially suggested we get together on Sunday because there is a bit of a loophole with Lent on Sundays, but I actually keep to my discipline on Sundays, so I still would have felt like I was cheating in my heart. (As an aside, I do this because when I think of Jesus out in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted by Satan, I’m guessing he wasn’t taking Sundays off.) I considered telling them I had given up TV and movies for Lent, but it just felt like I would have been making them suffer for my choices which was exactly what I did not want to do. I also considered that perhaps I could have waited to see them until after Easter. In the end we did get together and we did watch TV—and, yes, I “inhaled”—and, yes, I had mixed feelings about that. But one of the things I also learned was the reason why we hadn’t heard from them in so long. They had been experiencing some personal challenges on a couple of different fronts and we were able to listen to them, give them our empathy and show that we cared about what was going on in their life by our presence.

Does that excuse my breaking my commitment not to watch TV?
Honestly, no, and I have to live with my own disappointment about that.
Am I glad we made the choice to go see them and not burden them with my TV-free life?
Absolutely.

The green reed that bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.
Confucius 

Care to read other Lenten Voices?

HEATHER JOSE: Why We Need Meals Together This Year
BENJAMIN PRATT: Charcoal, Cuba and Compassion
BETH MILLER: How Ash Wednesday Found Us in Kenya

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Click the cover to jump to the book’s Amazon page.Millions of Americans know former Bishop N.T. “Tom” Wright as the man who defends the Bible against skeptics. It helps that Wright does this in a wonderfully resonant British accent with the confident air of a latter-day C.S. Lewis, who in his own day was a famous media personality. However, through several recent books, Wright has been trying to change the focus of his message to something he considers much more urgent for our tumultuous times. Wright certainly is famous as the Bible scholar who answers a hearty “Yes” to the question:
Are the Gospels true?
But, the question he is eager to answer is: What do the Gospels mean?

In How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels,he answers that second question. What’s more, he deliberately uses the word “explosive” to convey the kind of passion and power he believes can be unlocked through the Christianity we discover in the Bible to this day. What may shock some of Wright’s long-time fans is that the meaning of the Gospel is similar in important ways to messages writers ranging from Shane Claiborne and Brian McLaren to Rob Bell and John Dominic Crossan are penning today. There are even echoes of the late Pope John Paul II’s writing about God’s Kingdom as opened to the world through Christ. The Gospels aren’t intended as merely chicken soup for the soul, Wright and these other voices are arguing. Rather, the Gospels reveal a Kingdom in which God’s principles truly shape the way we live together on this planet. We certainly hear that message from Claiborne and McLaren; it’s there if you wade through the dense encyclicals of John Paul II and it’s in the pages of books like Crossan’s God and Empire or The Challenge of Jesus. It’s certainly one of the messages in Lewis’ own work.

Then, what are the principles in this new Kingdom? Well, that’s where the firestorm starts. There are many applications of Kingdom principles that would set off a heated debate between the writers listed above. In simple, broad-brush terms, Wright as an Anglican is more liberal than John Paul II in his applications of Kingdom principles (women’s ordination as one example), but Wright is far more conservative (or traditional) than Crossan on a number of issues.

Here is how Wright describes his overall position in the middle of his new book (page 167): Americans, these days “have simply baptized the  right-wing and left-wing politics of a deeply divided society and claimed this or that one as Christian, to be implemented and if possible exported. Listening to the sub-Christian language on display among those exultant at the killing of Osama bin Laden in the early summer of 2011 was an example of the right-wing tendency; anything that advances the world-view of Fox News is assumed to be basically Christian, wise, and automatically justified. But listening to many on the left, I have a similar problem. The left claims the high Christian and moral ground of a concern for the poor and the marginalized, but again this regularly parrots the elements of liberal modernism, not least its new sexual ethic, without any attempt to scale the true heights of the gospel vision in the New Testament.” (Oh, and he’s not only targeting Americans. In the next paragraph, he shares his disdain toward what passes for Christianity among his countrymen in the UK.)

Come back later this week for ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm’s interview with N.T. Wright.

For coverage on Wright’s other books, check out our N.T. Wright Small Group Resource page.

N.T. Wright video: The Bible’s true message is ‘explosive’

Finally, let N.T. Wright speak for himself in the following brief video. Harper One Executive Editor Mickey Maudlin appears in this video, asking Wright to distill the new book’s central theme. In part, you will hear Wright say: Most Christians in the Western world have been puzzled without even knowing that they’re puzzled as to what the Gospels are there for. The way the modern age was asking questions over the last 200 years has driven wedges between different bits of the New Testament. Now, we really ought to say: It’s time to put that lot back together again. When you do, it’s explosive! A lot of Jesus’ parables are told precisely in order to say: No, the Kingdom isn’t what you thought it was. The story the Gospels tell, which is How God Became King, is one that I think the whole Western world has not only not wanted to hear—but it has forgotten that it was out there in the first place.

CLICK THIS VIDEO SCREEN to view the video. Or click this link to jump to YouTube for the video.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Faith-and-film author Edward McNulty began his coverage of Hunger Games with an intriguing list of top dystopian movies. That d-word is showing up in newspaper headlines this week, so millions are freshly reminded of its meaning: “an imaginary place where people live dehumanized lives” or “the opposite of utopia.” In this review of Hunger Games, McNulty helps us see how this movie can fit into spirited discussions about the important themes raised in dystopian tales.
ALSO NEW: Twilight expert Janes Wells is a longtime fan of Hunger Games and shares her film review.
AND: Rodney Curtis (a.k.a. Spiritual Wanderer) on Why Your Mom May Hate This Movie.
Spoiler Alert: McNulty’s analysis does contain spoilers for people who aren’t already familiar with the story.

Hunger Games stands proudly with WALL-E, Lorax, 1984 & Other Dystopias By EDWARD McNULTY

The wait for the film version of The Hunger Games is over, and the news is: There is a lot in this new film to spark discussion, prompt conversation in your congregation and draw fresh attention if you raise this subject in your newsletter, blog or message this week. In preparation for the debut, I wrote about the provocative genre of dystopian movies—and I would like to hear from you about other dystopian films we should write about. (Email us at ReadTheSpirit@gmail.com in coming days. I plan to publish another collection of tips on great dystopian films soon. Stay tuned!)

HOW ENTERTAINING IS HUNGER GAMES? VERY!

Hunger Games fans will judge the movie themselves. From what I saw—of the film and the enthusiastic reaction of the audience at an advance screening—the film will match the success of the novel. With the usual pruning down required for a two hour movie (actually 2 hours 12 minutes), some details are lost. For instance, Madge, the Mayor’s daughter who gave the heroine the mockingjay pin she wears is cut. Overall, though, the film presents well the essence of the novel. The major change made by director Gary Ross (and co-writers Suzanne Collins herself and veteran screenwriter Billy Ray) is the change of voice, the filmmaker’s opting for an omniscient camera view rather than the book’s first-person narration by Katniss.  Also we see far more scenes of the Game Master and others back in the Capitol: Their remarks fill in the information necessary to understand the predicament of a character or her action, information that Katniss supplies in the book’s first-person narrative.

For those in the audience who have not read the book, the film is prefaced by a few lines informing viewers  that in the future the nation of Panem survives the old nations of North America. Panem is divided into 12 districts with the Capitol (apparently situated in the Rocky Mountains) taking in the majority of the produce of the districts. As the penalty for a past revolt, each district is required to hold an annual lottery to select a girl and a boy between the ages of 12 and 16 as tributes. Thus 24 youth are sent to the Capitol where they are primped and pampered for four days and then set down in a huge arena where they are to fight and kill each other until just one is left. By means of what must be thousands of hidden cameras the combat is televised throughout Panem, with everyone required to watch.

The impoverished residents of the districts watch the Games with apprehension based on their concern for their own tributes, whereas the bewigged and effete residents of the Capitol, seeming to be a throwback to the audiences of Roman gladiators, delightedly watch the odds posted by each tribute’s name so they can place bets, some of them even joining together as sponsors to send a much needed item to their favorite tribute via a silver parachute guided to the recipient.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, a character somewhat similar to the tough Ozarks Mountain girl she portrayed in Winter’s Bone. Katniss lives with her 12 year-old sister Prim (Willow Shields) and their mother in District 12, obviously Appalachia, as we can tell by the too-familiar shacks and line of men wearing hardhats on their way to a coal mine. Ever since her father died in a mine explosion, sending her mother into an almost catatonic state of despair, Katniss has been the provider of food for her family. She and her male friend Gale (Liam Hemsworth), also about her age, 16, sneak through the electric fence surrounding their village almost every day in the search for edible roots, berries, and game in the nearby forest. In the process Katniss has become adept with the bow and arrow and at setting snares for small game.

Then comes the day of the Lottery and it is Prim, not Katniss or any of the other more mature girls, whose name is drawn. The older sister rushes after the guards escorting Prim to the podium as she yells that she will volunteer to take her place. She is accepted, and the drawing for the male volunteer results in the baker’s son Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) being selected. In a later flashback we learn of his kindness. He once tossed Katniss a loaf of bread when she had sat crying in the rain because neither hunting nor begging had garnered any food that day. Their Games mentor Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson), a victor in the Games many years before, is on the stage, but in the film he is not quite as buffoonish. In the movie, he drinks too much and looks unkempt, but he does not drunkenly fall off the stage. We also see a little more of him in the film version. When the kids are in the arena, for example, he approaches some Capitol denizens seeking their sponsorship for Katniss so that she will receive some medicine she badly needs.

Just as in many of the real-life competitions that vie for viewers in American prime-time TV these days, these Hunger Games competitors are groomed to appear telegenic. Then, they are transported to an arena that is essentially a dystopia within this larger dystopia: a vast area with forests, a lake, streams and mountains that is under the total control of the Game Master and his large corps of technicians who keep watch over each tribute through tracking devices and a myriad of cameras.

Each of the tributes is raised from beneath groundlevel and stands on a small platform until the signal is given for the Games to begin. They form a large semi-circle around a big metal Cornucopia that is filled with provisions. All kinds of foods and tools, even an archery set, lie before them. However, Haymitch has strictly told his charges not to run to the Corucopia because the strong tributes, some of whom have been training for the Games all their young lives, will turn that area into a killing field. That is precisely what happens, although Katniss makes a choice that gets her safely into the forest. A cannon booms for each death, and an image of the dead child is projected high up over the arena.

How Katniss slowly is transformed from victim into victor is well told, with Peeta playing an important part in her development. Both book and film do a wonderful job of bringing out the humanity of the two. Early in the film, the two talk one night on a rooftop and Peeta tells Katniss, “I just keep wishing I could think of a way to show them that they don’t own me. If I’m gonna die, I wanna still be me. ” (For a fuller version of his desire to be “more than a piece in their game” see pp. 141-142 in the novel.)  I think Katniss begins to understand this more when she forges an all-too-brief alliance with Rue, the young girl from District 11 who had helped her elude a band of tributes that cornered her up a tree. During this sequence friendship takes the place of survival in the heart of Katniss. Then, when a further tragedy strikes, Katniss expresses her real love for this new friend. People back in Rue’s District 11 react with deep emotion as they watch what unfolds on their screens.

iDEAS FOR SPARKING DISCUSSION ABOUT HUNGER GAMES

At this point in the film, I wasn’t pleased with the filmmakers’ choice of an added scene that unfolds in District 11 and, instead, I wished that a missing scene from the novel, involving a gift of bread to Katniss, had been included in the movie. If you discuss this film with youth or adults who are familiar with the storyline or have just seen the movie, ask about this point in the film. Ask about the violent District 11 reactions we see in the movie vs. the passage in the novel where District 11 responds by sending bread. This is just one small example of the many moral and spiritual questions ripe for conversation.

Here is another example: In the book sequence chronicling the friendship between the two girls, I had hoped that Suzanne Collins  was heading toward an ending in which Rue, Katniss, and Peeta would sit down in front of the Cornucopia and refuse to fight each other. This would be a powerful way to follow up on Peeta’s thoughts (repeated on pp.236-237). This way of “saying no” to the Games’ rule that the victor must kill all opponents would be in the spirit of the peacemakers profiled in Daniel L. Buttry’s  ReadtheSpirit’s book Blessed Are the Peacemakers. The three would be like the early Christian martyrs tossed into the Roman Colliseum but who refused to pick up a weapon to defend themselves. For those martyrs this willingness to be killed rather than to kill was their way of showing that Caesar could not, in Peeta’s words, “change me in there. Turn me into some kind of a monster that I am not.” (p. 141) In case you are thinking that there would have been no sequels if the book had ended with Rue, Katniss, and Peeta’s martyrdom, I would contend that they might not have been executed. The audience had already been made to root for the District 12 pair by their handlers’ promoting them as star-crossed lovers. By including the elfin Rue in their pact not to kill, they would have projected to the audience a love transcending that of boy-girl, a selfless love that sometimes can persuade an enemy to change, as Blessed Are The Peacemakers shows in some of its mini-biographies.

Want more fuel for thought on this theme? Read Eric Frank Russell’s classic 1951 tale, “And Then There Were None.” Russell describes a Gandhian society resisting occupation by a Terran Empire force and the whole story is now available online.

Collins does venture just a little way in this direction with Katniss and Peeta. Their Romeo and Juliette-like act of resistance is a clever and emtionally satisfying denoument, maybe not as profound as the one I would have liked, but then Collins wrote a book to entertain, not to be a peacemaking tract.

The movie version of her dystopian tale is one of the best science fiction films to be released in a long time, well deserving to join the company of other great dystopian tales from Hollywood.

PLEASE, email us at ReadTheSpirit@gmail.com with your thoughts on dystopian films. Edward McNulty will return soon with another fascinating list of this genre’s best movies.

Care to read more from Edward McNulty?

• Read Ed McNulty’s earlier series in ReadTheSpirit: TOP 10 JESUS MOVIES!
• Another series for ReadTheSpirit: ‘THE HELP’ and more movies on the civil rights struggle
• GET THE BOOK: Ed McNulty has written three books of reflections on movies that are great for sparking spirited small-group discussion. Praying the Movies, available via Amazon, includes McNulty’s look at Star Wars, Schindler’s List and Pulp Fiction. Praying the Movies II: More Daily Meditations from Classic Films, includes McNulty’s reflections on Gandhi, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harry Potter and O Brother, Whereart Thou? Faith and Film: A Guidebook for Leaders, includes Amistad, Erin Brockovich, the Matrix and Shawshank Redemption.
• CHECK OUT HIS WEBSITE: Ed’s own website is Visual Parables.

(Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.)

FINALLY, after a year-long media campaign that the New York Times calls one of the most innovative social-networking efforts in Hollywood history:
Hunger Games is here!
Originally aimed at Young Adults, this series has crossed over to millions of adult fans who are buzzing about the central themes and the high adventure. ReadTheSpirit is publishing several viewpoints on this important cultural milestone.
Here is Twilight expert Jane Wells’ review …

Glimpsing Startling New Aspects in Hunger Games By JANE WELLS

Where to start? The amazing costumes? The violence you didn’t quite see, but shocked none-the-less? The superb cast and nuanced acting? The breathtaking special effects?

Let’s start here: The Hunger Games movie is not Twilight the movie.
Last week I explained why these two best-selling series of novels can’t be compared apples to apples. Turns out, the movies are also different animals. I’ve often described the Twilight movies as a form of shorthand for people who were already fans of the novels. Several times in the Twilight movies, a major theme on which an entire future plot point hangs is summed up in one sentence, which the fans catch, mentally acknowledge and move on. People who are introduced to Twilight in a movie theater sometimes miss those key little details from the novels as throw-away moments then find themselves broadsided later because the cues had been too subtle.

The Hunger Games, on the other hand, benefited from author Suzanne Collins background in scriptwriting and hands-on approach to converting her books to the big screen. Collins ruthlessly culled her own material, distilling it down to the most important elements so they could be fully developed.

For example, the Mockingjay pin, is an important symbol in the series. In the books it is given to heroine Katniss Everdeen by the mayor’s daughter, whose mother’s twin had worn it when she died in the Hunger Games 25 years earlier. Rather than try to preserve this minor plot line that weaves through all three novels, Collins cuts out the whole family but preserves the importance of the pin that symbolizes her hardscrabble coal-mining district, Katniss’s independence, and the love she and her sister have for each other.

What isn’t lost is the horror of violence. The Hunger Games is set in a dystopian future where the Capitol city of Panem rules the nation with an iron fist. The opening screens are a quote from the nation’s “constitution,” which states each of the 12 districts must provide an annual “tribute” of one teenage boy and one teenage girl, between the ages of 12 and 18, to be sent to the capitol where they will be put into an arena and will fight to the death. Only one can survive.

‘HOPE IS THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN FEAR’

It is, as President Snow explains to the Head Gamekeeper, a carrot and stick method of governing. That 23 of the 24 children must die reminds the outlying districts that their survival rests on the grace of the Powers that Be. But…

“Do you know why there is a survivor?” Snow asks the Gamekeeper.

The Gamekeeper is puzzled by the question.

“Hope,” Snow says. “Hope is the only thing more powerful than fear.”

That spark of hope, Snow explains, is what keeps the districts motivated. But this spark must be tightly controlled. If it ever gets out of control, the resulting fire could destroy everything. Unfortunately for Snow, and without any conscious intent on her part, Katniss comes to define hope for the entire nation.

‘CAREERS’: TURNING TEENS INTO KILLING MACHINES

Costumes define the stark differences between the lives enjoyed by the residents of the Capitol—and those suffered by residents in the outlying districts. When Katniss and her 12-year-old sister Primrose are preparing for the Reaping ceremony they scrub up and wear their very best clothes. The town square is filled with young women with braided hair and cotton dresses taken directly from Dorthea Lange’s Great Depression photos. In the Capitol, on the other hand, are people with brightly colored hair, impractical clothes and paint-like makeup—the most outrageous high fashion runway show on the sidewalk every day.

As one would expect in any gladiator movie, and that’s exactly what this is, the violence is unavoidable. Several of the districts actually train their children for the arena. Called “Careers”, they are taught from an early age that it is a privilege to be chosen and to bring honor to their district by winning. These teens are killing machines. The worst of this is kept off camera, but a lot of blood still spills across the screen. Even the survivors are bloody and injured most of the time. In the theater where I saw a midnight debut, one of the “Tributes” snaps the neck of a younger boy—and even those who had read the books and knew it was coming gasped in shock. I realize these books are read in Middle Schools across the country, but seeing it in full-color, larger than life, is a different thing. I don’t think the PG-13 rating is too harsh.

The casting is spot on. My only quibble is with Donald Sutherland as President Snow. I imagined someone smaller, oilier somehow. Yet, Sutherland brings to the role a layered personality that is at once warm, open and welcoming, yet deeply disturbing in his ruthless pursuit of control.

PLEASANT SURPRISES: THINGS WE’VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE

One of the coolest things brought into the film that wasn’t in the novel was the Gamekeeper’s control room. While in the novels we knew the gamekeepers had control of every aspect of the arena, even the weather, we didn’t get to see them make those decisions. Here we do and it is fascinating. We see how the Tributes are manipulated by the gamekeepers to force conflict and keep the Game “exciting.” Forest fires are set and extinguished, night falls and dawn comes in rapid sequence, and manufactured monsters are set loose to speed things up.

All in all, The Hunger Games movie opens our eyes to aspects of this terrific and deeply troubling saga that even long-time fans of the novels will admit: There are things here that we’ve never seen before.

Care to read Jane Wells’ book on spiritual themes in Twilight?

It’s called Glitter in the Sun and is guaranteed to spark lively discussion in small groups, especially since a new Twilight movie debuts later this year. Plan ahead for a spring, summer or fall series in your congregation with Jane, Twilight and Glitter.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

John Dominic “Dom” Crossan and his colleague Marcus Borg are among America’s most popular Bible scholars. Not long ago, we also recommended Crossan’s multi-media curriculum, called The Challenge of Jesus, which we refer to in today’s interview. This week, in Part 1 of our coverage of The Power of Parable, we provide an overview of this fascinating new book and brief examples from the text.
Here is Part 2 of our coverage of Crossan’s new book …

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH JOHN DOMINIC ‘DOM’ CROSSAN
ON HIS NEW BOOK, THE POWER OF PARABLE

Click the cover to jump to the book’s Amazon page.DAVID: Most weekends, you are crisscrossing the country, teaching in many different kinds of congregations. In your travels, are you currently teaching from this new book?

DOM: Yes, in some places. I was in Boston not long ago and lectured on this. I often use photos and videos as I teach, because it helps people to more easily understand some of these stories. In one of my lectures, I talked about a boat from the Sea of Galilee as a visual metaphor, for example, and showed the pictures of such a boat. People do start to think about these stories in fresh ways. I remember that someone asked me: “Could there also be physical parables in the things that Jesus did? Could his action with the temple moneychangers be considered a physical and visual parable?”
And I said: “Yes, exactly.” That’s how Jesus taught—by telling stories and showing people things they would remember. Nintey-eight percent of people in Jesus’s world weren’t getting their messages by reading things—they were picking up visual and verbal cues. One of the most powerful visual cues about social control in the Roman empire were the coins that showed everyone who was in charge and what that ruler’s message was for the people. The new emperor would put a word or phrase on his coins that would tell people about the social order. This is how people expected to learn about the world—from visual and physical and verbal sources.

DAVID: Hearing you talk about Rome, which you also covered extensively in your earlier Challenge of Jesus curriculum—I am reminded of how much religious content we’re seeing in the 2012 U.S. campaigns. As a religion news writer, I’ve covered faith in politics for decades, and I have to say: This year’s campaign is remarkable.

DOM: Yes, we are hearing a lot about what religion should mean from some of these politicians, aren’t we? We’re hearing so much from Rick Santorum that he sounds like he’s running for Demander in Chief. He likes to tell us what all normal Christians must think, which usually amounts to what Rick Santorum thinks. But, that’s not all that different than what political leaders claimed in earlier eras of history.

DAVID: What we’re discussing here relates directly to your new book, of course, because in the second half you raise some of the same issues you covered at greater length in The Challenge of Jesus.

DOM: Oh, yes, and this theme goes back even further in my work. There’s a direct continuity going back at least to God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now. It’s also an important part of a book I’m doing for Harper in 2013 about the question of divine violence. I’m asking: Is God violent? The subtitle of the book will be something like: How to Read the Christian Bible and Still be a Christian.

‘HOW DO YOU SQUARE JESUS’S NONVIOLENCE WITH THE BIBLE?’

DAVID: You’re not stomping on a soap box, though. You’re writing about the big questions that lots of men and women are raising, especially after a decade of American warfare.

DOM: Oh, yes! This question comes up wherever I travel. I’ll be talking about the historical Jesus being non-violent and someone will raise a hand. They’ll say, “Come on! That sounds nice but how do you square this nonviolence with all of the violence in a book like Revelation? What about Jesus calling people a brood of vipers? That’s at least verbally violent.”

After hearing this over and over again from people, I have gone back through the New Testament and looked carefully at this question. And, there is a steady increase in the rhetorical violence of Jesus as you move from Mark and to Matthew, Luke and finally to John. This direction in the level of rhetorical violence does connect to the larger question: Is God violent? The whole Bible—beginning to end—is really violent. That’s not just my judgment. As I travel and teach, I hear this point raised by so many people.

Now, let me be clear: I don’t think that Jesus was a violent figure. But I haven’t written much about this issue in my past books. As I explore this more fully, this raises an important question for Christians: If Jesus is the revelation and image of God—and if Jesus is not violent—then what do we do with the fact that God does seem violent in so much of the Bible?

DAVID: You’re touching on an important point that runs throughout your writing and teaching: For Christians, the focus is on Jesus first and primarily. It’s not on the specific words of every Bible verse. Am I saying that right?

DOM: For Christians, Jesus is the norm of the Bible. I say it that way. We say that we are Christians—not Biblians. The revelation of Jesus is the norm and the criterion for the way we approach the entire Bible. Yes, that’s important, because so many of the debates we’re hearing today center on this question of the authority of the Bible.

As Christians, we’re supposed to believe in the incarnation, right? The incarnation is about Jesus. And, as a Christian, Jesus is the way I read the Bible. Now, I’m not saying that the Old Testament is violent and then this nice Jesus fellow comes along and changes things. I’m saying that the entire thrust of the Bible should be seen through Jesus for followers of Jesus, for Christians. That affects the way we think of the violence that also is there in the Bible.

‘WHO IS THE SOWER?’ LURING PEOPLE INTO STORIES

DAVID: In Part 1 of our coverage of your new book, we will point out to readers that you are not saying Jesus is a fictional figure. Some readers, glancing at your book cover, may jump to the conclusion.

DOM: I say clearly that Jesus is a historical figure. I don’t think most people disagree on that point. And, I think we all agree that the Good Samaritan is not a real person; he’s a character in a parable. But, here is what I want people to think about: What is a parable? How is a parable a part of the Good News of the Gospels? Jesus wanted his stories to say very important things to people—and he wanted them to remember these stories and keep thinking about them for a long time. Even more than that, he wanted them to enter into these stories as they kept thinking.

Jesus’ teaching method was to lure people into participating in the stories—in the same way that many good stories get us to participate in them. You remember it and you carrying it home with you, still thinking about that story. You hear Jesus talking about a sower and you wonder: Who is this sower? Why did he cast the seed in this way? Imagine if you were among the people who heard these parables for the first time from Jesus. In the Bible we read today, the Gospel writers usually try to neatly explain the meaning after each parable, but Jesus used these participatory stories to leave people hanging as they went away.

So, we know that Jesus taught by making up these parables, these stories. Were the people and details in these parables what we would call non-fiction? No, the parables were fiction. But they were very important in the way Jesus taught about the Good News. And the word Gospel means Good News. So, what is this genre of a Gospel? What are these Gospels? And, can we have parables about real persons in a Gospel? These are the kinds of questions I am raising.

DAVID: I was intrigued by the various categories of parables you describe in the first half of your book. You’re suggesting fresh ways to think about these stories that we’ve heard so many times over the years. So, let’s talk about one example of a genre of parables that you call “challenge parables.”

DOM: Let me begin with the picture on the book’s cover, which I love. It’s this sort of Art Deco image of a sower. Then, you look a second time and you realize: Oh, that’s a woman! Wasn’t the sower supposed to be a man? That visual double take is an example of how parables work. The stories stay with you and you participate in them to the point that you begin thinking about the details in new ways.

A challenge parable makes you hesitate for a moment in the way you think about the absolutes you assume are true. Imagine a pin that is held too close to a big balloon. The pin has not popped the balloon, but just the thought of this sharp pin very close to a big balloon makes you nervous. Can we be sure of what’s about to happen? A challenge parable makes you uneasy. It takes your absolute political, economic, religious and social assumptions and tells you a story in the opposite direction that forces you to think. We all know the story of the Good Samaritan. Now, if Jesus had just wanted a nice little story about the value of helping people who are hurt, then he could have put the Samaritan in the ditch. Then, the story might have had this kind Jewish man coming along and reaching out to help even this Samaritan down in the ditch. The point might have been: We all should be nice and help everyone, even if we see that it’s someone like a Samaritan who has been injured.

But, no, Jesus puts the Jewish man in the ditch and it’s the Samaritan who is the helper. That makes it a challenge parable. People would have heard that story and it would have unsettled their assumptions about the way the world is supposed to work.

DAVID: In Part 1 of our coverage of your book, we’re going to point out that you are not alone in urging Christians to loosen up their assumptions about how they read the Bible. Other important authors, today, are also warning Christians that we may have backed ourselves into a corner of literal readings. So, you’re not out on a limb, all alone. As I see it, you’re on the cutting edge of what many churches are discussing these days—but you’re not alone. Do you feel that way in your talks to churches?

DOM: I’m telling people that we need to remember what we believe as Christians. I’m saying that Jesus is a person, not a book. The Gospel of John doesn’t say: For God so loved the world that He sent us a book. No, God sent us Jesus. That’s the point of the incarnation at the heart of Christianity. The Bible is not the criterion for Jesus. That begins to make Christ irrelevant. He’s just a part of a text. No, Jesus is the criterion for the Bible. And that is a very challenging message because Jesus’ teachings are so challenging, to this day.

Jump back and read Part 1 of our coverage of Crossan’s Power of Parable.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

World-famous Bible scholar John Dominic Crossan, a popular guide in TV documentaries about the ancient world, hopes his newest book will free more people from the trap of trying to believe that everything in the Bible is literally true. As we follow him in this new tour through the Gospels, Crossan promises a bonus: If we free up our expectations about how the Bible teaches God’s truth, we may discover fresh inspiration in these time-worn stories.

CLICK the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.In a nutshell, here’s how he takes us down this path: What if the world-famous parables of Jesus—the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son and all the rest—weren’t the only parables in the New Testament? What if Jesus’s approach to teaching by telling provocative stories became the over-arching style of early Christian teaching? What if the four Gospel writers actually weren’t trying to nail down every single historical detail about Jesus like modern archaeologists in scientific reports? Instead, what if the Gospel writers’ goal was to tell the most important stories about Jesus in the most memorable and thought-provoking way? After all, that’s how Jesus told his parables. What if the Gospel writers were inspired to shape some of the details in their stories about Jesus to make them the most effective parables about Jesus that they could give to future generations?

At this point, some Christians will be upset with Crossan. If so, you are likely to have trouble with his new The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus. If you are a Christian who believes the Bible is true in a literal reading, then this kind of analysis is disturbing. But, before you dismiss this book out of hand, consider this: Crossan is regularly invited into mainline congregations almost every weekend throughout the year, where big crowds of people show up to hear him teach and preach about fresh approaches to understanding the Bible. Through public appearances, television and a long string of books, Crossan’s message has reached millions. It’s worth checking out what he’s saying, this year.

NO QUESTION: JESUS WAS REAL

Let me clarify one central point: This new book is not claiming that Jesus is pure fiction. In fact, Crossan clarifies this point himself and adds italics so no one misses the point. He writes: “Did Jesus ever exist as a historical figure in time and place? Is he like Julius Caesar—a factual figure, but enveloped in clouds of parable? Or is he like the Good Samaritan—an entirely fictional character of Christianity’s parabolic imagination? My answer is that Jesus did exist as a historical figure.” Crossan sets that final line in italics to leave no confusion: He’s not trying to deny the truth of Jesus as a real-life figure in history.

WHERE CROSSAN STANDS WITH OTHER EMERGING VOICES

CLICK to visit this book’s Amazon page.Crossan is not alone in his aggressive questioning of the purpose of Bible stories, right now. Christian Smith, a favorite evangelical scholar who converted to Catholicism, will be visiting the pages of ReadTheSpirit soon to talk about his new book, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Smith is Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. He’s a highly respected voice as a Christian conservative—yet even Christian Smith is saying: Enough! The American evangelical quest to try to defend the literal, historical truth of every passage of scripture is forcing smart people to turn mental back flips. The truth of the Bible is becoming obscured by debates over details that the original writers never intended as literal.

Of course, Crossan and Smith differ greatly in which details they regard as metaphorical and which are concrete historical details. But, the growing restlessness across American Christianity these days is obvious. In coming weeks, leading historian Diana Butler Bass will visit ReadTheSpirit for an interview about her latest book Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening. She is warning church leaders that they must take seriously this rising rejection of pat answers from the past.

Are you a fan of popular Bible scholar Bart Ehrman? Of course, like the other writers we’ve mentioned, Crossan and Ehrman disagree on many points. Ehrman, these days, tends to be even more critical of the reliability of the biblical record, for example. But one thing they both affirm: Jesus was a real figure who truly did reshape world history. Later this spring, ReadTheSpirit will welcome Bart Ehrman back into our pages, as well, to talk about his new book that makes this very point: Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth.

Bottom line: Crossan is far from alone on this horizon line of contemporary Christian teaching.

WHAT IS CROSSAN SAYING ABOUT GOSPELS AS PARABLES?

What exactly is Crossan saying about the Gospel writers turning details from Jesus’ life into parables about his life? Here’s an example from the book: “I consider it a historical fact that Jesus was executed by Pilate on a Roman cross. But Mark records that Jesus’s death occurred on the day after the Passover meal (Mark 14:12-16), while John records it on the day of the Passover meal (John 18:28). Only one of those is history, the other is parable—and probably both are parable: Last Supper as Passover meal for Mark, and Jesus as Pascal Lamb for John. All history might be able to tell us is that Jesus died sometime in the week-long preparation for Passover.”

Right there, most evangelical Bible readers will part company with Crossan. Arguing that details in the final chapters of the Gospels were revised slightly by the authors to make larger points about Jesus’s life is anathema to more traditional readers of scripture. Yet, Crossan has made an important point here: If details of the crucifixion’s date could be adjusted slightly, as they clearly appear to be in these two Gospels, then why not other details as well?

Still uncomfortable with this line of thinking? Well, consider this: Crossan’s analysis of the Gospel authors’ use of the parable genre forms the second half of this book. Crossan’s analysis of Jesus’s own parables—the ones we all know by heart—fills the first half of the book. Whatever your impression of his overall conclusion, Crossan’s analysis of Jesus’s parables is fresh and thought provoking. I won’t spoil the book by trying to list his examples, but Crossan argues that Jesus was one of the best teachers the world has ever known and had a talent for using various forms of parable. In other words, “parable” isn’t a single type of story. There are several genres of parable, Crossan argues. Three big categories he explores are: Riddle Parables, Example Parables and Challenge Parables.

Even if you reject the second half of Crossan’s book, where he argues that the Gospel writers also felt it was important to write their Good News in parable formats, you still may find yourself inspired by the book’s first half. So, our strong recommendation is: Give this book a chance. You’ll find that, in addition to personal inspiration, The Power of Parable is guaranteed to spark spirited discussion in your Sunday School class, Bible study series, or book discussion group.

Come back later this week to meet John Dominic Crossan in our weekly author interview.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

Hunger Games! Hunger Games!

The haunting futuristic world with the attractive young heroes—also known as Hunger Games—is everywhere we look in the days leading up to the March 30 debut. ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm gave a series of lectures to a couple hundred high school students this week and asked: “Anyone here going to see Hunger Games?” The whoosh of rising hands was audible.
This week, ReadTheSpirit is running a wide range of viewpoints on this blockbuster:
Faith-and-film critic Ed McNulty writes about the many dystopias Hollywood has produced.

For this story, we asked Twilight expert Jane Wells to write about the distinction between the super-popular Twilight franchise and this series of novels and films that many adults are just discovering.

Hunger Games:
A Different Message
Than Twilight By Jane Wells

I doubt many have escaped the relentless buzz surrounding Hunger Games the movie, opening March 23 here in the U.S. At the very least you’ve probably been exposed to the television ads featuring teenagers with weapons, a lot of fire and grownups with strange-colored hair. And, if you pay any attention at all to the relentless noise produced by the Hollywood hype machine, you’ve heard comparisons made between The Hunger Games and Twilight, as if setting up for some Battle Royal/Rumble in the Jungle.

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN TWILIGHT AND HUNGER GAMES

For clarity’s sake, these are the points these two series have in common.
1) They both started as popular book series written for young adults, but both have enjoyed a huge crossover audience.
2) They feature a teenage girl and two teenage boys between whom she feels she must choose.
3) Ummmm… yeah. I think that’s about it.

WHAT ARE THE BASIC STORY LINES?

TWILIGHT AT A GLANCE: In the four-book Twilight Saga, modern-day human girl Bella Swan finds herself torn between the enigmatic vampire Edward Cullen and the dangerously passionate werewolf Jacob Black. Thematically, her choice is between Edward’s eternal love and Jacob’s unconditional love. And for four books, Bella, Edward and Jacob work out their futures. Side themes include loyalty and family.

Why has the Twilight Saga struck such a deep chord among its mostly female audience? It’s all about the love. Some have analyzed The Hunger Games the same way, calling the charismatic hunter Gale Hawthorn the embodiment of Eros (romantic) love and the gentle baker Peeta Mellark the representative of Agape (unconditional) love. While I do like that analogy—love is a very minor theme in the series, otherwise we would not keep reading the hundreds of pages where neither of the young men is involved.

HUNGER GAMES AT A GLANCE: The Hunger Games books are set in a dystopic future, 75 years after America has been destroyed by civil war. The resulting nation is divided into 13 districts ruled with an iron hand by the capitol city called Panem. Each year two teenagers are selected from each district to compete in the Hunger Games as “tributes.” The winner is the one who survives. District residents are required to watch their children die in the arena while residents of Panem make lavish bets on their favorites. Katniss Everdeen volunteers to replace her younger sister who had been pulled in the drawing. She leaves behind her sister, widowed mother and Gale, her best friend and hunting partner. The male “tribute” is the baker’s son, Peeta, whom she barely knows. Peeta, however, knows Katniss and has loved her from afar since childhood. Yet in order to survive they will have to see each other as enemies.

When I read the Hunger Games series, the pieces of popular culture that kept coming to mind were not love stories. Twilight was the furthest thing from my mind. They were pieces of literature like Orwell’s 1984, Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, and the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man, in which criminals could earn their freedom by competing to the death through a deadly maze. I was reminded of stories in which violence and resistance defined and refined the characters.

Care to read more about dystopias in Hollywood movies? Check out faith-and-film critic Edward McNulty’s overview of famous films sharing this theme.

WHAT WAS SUZANNE COLLINS THINKING IN HUNGER GAMES?

Popular culture inspired author Suzanne Collins to write these stories. “I was channel surfing between reality TV programming and actual war coverage when Katniss’s story came to me,” she said in an interview with Powell’s Books. “One night I’m sitting there flipping around and on one channel there’s a group of young people competing for, I don’t know, money maybe? And on the next, there’s a group of young people fighting an actual war. And I was tired, and the lines began to blur in this very unsettling way, and I thought of this story.”

Mennonite pastor Marty Troyer nails the pacifist theme throughout The Hunger Games trilogy in this excellent Pangea Blog post. He explains how Collins drags us through the pain inflicted by Dominant Violence, used by those in power to keep their power. And how the resulting Resistant or Revolutionary Violence can become just as bad. The problem with Resistant Violence, as our heroine Katniss learns, is that it very easily can become Dominant Violence itself.

In fact, the most jarring scenes in the series are when Katniss acts out violently against the powers manipulating her: shooting Coin instead of President Snow and voting for a final Hunger Game featuring the formerly exempt children of the privileged Capital residents.

HUNGER GAMES AND TODAY’S HEADLINES

We don’t have to look far to find real-life echoes of these themes. Last summer, we saw the rise of The 99%, protesting against corporate rule and cultural inequalities. Just this past week the Kony 2012 campaign against a revolutionary fighter whose violence surpasses inhumane, became a cultural phenomenon of its own calling for action.

But what action is most appropriate in the face of violence? The strength of peaceful resistance has been on my mind lately since reading Blessed are the Peacemakers by Daniel Buttry. This collection of biographies demonstrates exactly how dangerous intentional peacemaking can be, but how very worth the sacrifice and difficult choices can be in the end.  Some of the biographies are well known and have been made into movies themselves, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. But others, the many stories of ordinary people who made a difference, also deserve to be remembered and emulated as well.

I will let you know later this week what I think of the movie, but I’m hoping the take-home lesson of both the book series and the movie will be that violence begets violence. Waging peace is much harder, but so much more worth it in the end.

Care to read Jane Wells’ book on spiritual themes in Twilight? It’s called Glitter in the Sun and is guaranteed to spark lively discussion in small groups, especially since a new Twilight movie debuts later this year. Plan ahead for a spring, summer or fall series in your congregation with Jane, Twilight and Glitter.

Care to read more about worldwide peacemakers?

Jimmy Carter is among the dozens of global peacemakers profiled in ReadTheSpirit’s “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” by Daniel Butty. The book is a collection of real-life stories about the men, women and children who are taking great risks around the world to counter violence with efforts to promote healthier, peaceful, diverse communities. Like Carter, Buttry is a Baptist who works on peacemaking projects around the world.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

The Bible is full of violence from bloody battles in the opening books of the Bible through Jesus’ own death at the hands of the Roman empire, yet former President Jimmy Carter opens this book and finds great insight shaping his own worldwide work as a peacemaker. In the third and final part of our interview with Carter, ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm asks about these connections Carter sees in scripture.

You’ll also want to read:
Part 1: How the Bible can help us find peace
And, Part 2: How the Bible inspires millions of caregivers

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH JIMMY CARTER, PART 3

Click the Bible cover to visit its Amazon page.CRUMM: Your new devotional Bible might have been called The Humble Bible. I didn’t actually count the references, but I’ll bet the inspirational materials you’ve added here use the word “humble” more than any other devotional Bible we’ve seen. You’re a famous and influential man. You once were the most powerful man in the world as president. Why so much emphasis on “humble”?

CARTER: In the broad sketch of things, pride is probably the most insidious and damaging sins that we can have. Elements of arrogance, of superiority, of believing that people who differ from us are inferior implies that we think some people don’t deserve to enjoy the blessings of God as we do. I think that almost every other sinful trait of a human being can be traced directly or indirectly to a lack of humility. When we become proud, arrogant and superior—and then begin to derogate others—this results in the violation of basic human rights. It can result in going to war when war is not necessary.

Now, of course, we have some people in our country who have substituted the mistreatment of African-Americans with the derogation of immigrants. In my boyhood days, even when I was a young adult, the major prejudice not only in the South but in the rest of the country as well was against African Americans. Then, we also developed an animosity in the aftermath of 9/11 toward Muslims or people who are from Arab countries. That has now been transferred to a major degree to people from Latin America who have come to this country. That prejudice applies in various actions we have seen by legislatures that primarily are aimed against people who speak the Spanish language.

So, it seems that human beings, even in societies like our American society, want to have some adversary who we believe is inferior to us in some way. It’s a sin that needs to be avoided and I don’t think it’s an accident that a lot of the biblical analyses I have added to this book refer to that sin.

None of us should feel superior over—or inferior to—others. God provides ways that we all can be successful in the eyes of God, wherever we live, whatever our wealth may be, or whatever education we are able to accumulate. Remember that Jesus didn’t have any advantages like riches or a home and, of course, he didn’t live a long life on earth, and still he was a perfect example for what we ought to be. When we elevate secular things like wealth or self aggrandizement and take pride in our status in society—all of these are counter to the demands of Christ to be humble and to serve others. Christ calls us to love people who are not really loveable, to love people who may not love us back, to love people when we don’t get credit for it. That’s the essence of Christian agape love, I think.

CRUMM: You’re well aware of the risks of peacemaking. You write about it a number of times in the pages of this new devotional Bible. ReadTheSpirit actually publishes a book, Blessed Are the Peacemakers, that contains a whole chapter about your life as a model for this kind of risk taking. You’re even willing to risk the world’s scorn for your work, right?

CARTER: That’s a mandate for all Christians, I think. We worship the Prince of Peace. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said those words: Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be considered the children of God. And that’s a part of my current life as well as when I was in the White House. We always try to reach out to others with whom we are estranged, sometimes in unpopular ways. For example, Rosalyn and I regularly go to places like Cuba. We’ve been to North Korea three times. We go to countries where the US government considers leaders to be terrorists. We meet with everyone. I wouldn’t use the word “dangerous” to describe this approach of talking to everyone in pursuit of peace. But it can be an unpopular thing. When I went to Korea, at one point—and I do believe that I helped to prevent a war between North and South Korea as part of our Carter Center work—we were looked upon as appeasers and criticized by some.

So far, I’ve been talking about peacemaking in international affairs but I think that we must look for ways to make peace in our relationships inside America, with our neighbors down the street—or even within our own families. The mandate from Christ is to promote peace, harmony, understanding, forgiveness and grace. One of my favorite Bible verses is: Be ye kind to one another as God through Christ has been kind to us. That’s such a prevalent all-pervasive instruction throughout the Bible that it’s inescapable.

PHOTO CREDIT: The photo at top today shows former President Jimmy Carter volunteering at a clinic in Ghana. Photo taken in 2007 by Louise Gubb, used courtesy of The Carter Center.

Care to read more about devotional Bibles?

Stay tuned to ReadTheSpirit for ongoing reviews and news about special Bibles!
We recommend a new C.S. Lewis devotional Bible using the NRSV translation.
In January 2012, popular Bible scholar Eugene Peterson released a devotional Bible.
We also recommend two new editions of Thomas Jefferson’s Bible.

Care to read more about worldwide peacemakers?

Jimmy Carter is among the dozens of global peacemakers profiled in ReadTheSpirit’s “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” by Daniel Butty. The book is a collection of real-life stories about the men, women and children who are taking great risks around the world to counter violence with efforts to promote healthier, peaceful, diverse communities. Like Carter, Buttry is a Baptist who works on peacemaking projects around the world.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

This week, ReadTheSpirit is proud to welcome former President Jimmy Carter, talking with Editor David Crumm about the vital importance of the Blble today. As a president from 1977 to 1981, Carter and his wife Rosalyn read the Bible nearly every night. For more than half a century, Carter has taught Sunday school at his church in Plains, Georgia. Thousands of Americans have traveled to Plains to sit in the large visitors’ seating area during his classes.

Now, as part of his current work around the world on behalf of peace and as a life-long Bible-study teacher, Carter is releasing a new devotional edition of the Bible packed with hundreds of excerpts from his own writings about inspiring and challenging passages of scripture. The book is called NIV Lessons from Life Bible: Personal Reflections with Jimmy Carter, and is available now from Amazon. David Crumm interviewed the former president last week and ReadTheSpirit will publish the interview in three parts.
Today, Part 1: How the Bible can help us find peace
Later this week, Part 2: Why the Bible inspires millions of caregivers
And, Part 3: How a ‘Violent’ Bible Can Train Peacemakers Today

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH JIMMY CARTER, PART 1

Click the cover to visit the new Bible’s Amazon page.CRUMM: Your new Bible is a window into the depth of your personal faith. Your notations also show clearly how powerful these ancient scriptures are in our modern world—especially in a 2012 presidential campaign with as much angry feuding as we’ve seen this year. Tell us, when you were president, how did you read the Bible in those years?

CARTER: For more than 40 years, my wife and I have read the Bible aloud every night.
One night, she reads; the next night, I read. We go all the way through the Bible, then we go back and start over again. In the last 15 or 20 years, we have read the Bible aloud in Spanish, just to practice our second language.
When I was president, we did the same thing. I have to say that I really read it with much more deep attention and thoughtfulness when I was president, because I felt such great responsibility on me. And the most critical time was when the hostages were being held and I was being advised by all sides to go to war and to attack Iran because they were holding our hostages. But, I remembered that we worship the Prince of Peace and so I was able, during my term in office, through prayer and commitment, to preserve the peace. We never dropped a bomb. We never launched a missile at another country. And, we also tried to bring peace to other people, like Egypt and Israel, who had been at war four times in the previous 25 years.

Those kinds of applications of biblical teachings were important to me—and so were the ones calling for justice between rich and poor. The Bible teaches us that all people are created equal as Paul wrote to the Galatians: Whether we are rich or poor, male or female, black or white, it doesn’t matter—we are all equal in the eyes of God. So, those kinds of basic principles apply to my life not only as a president, but also when I was a submarine officer, a farmer, a governor—and to this day.

CRUMM: Let’s be honest, though! I spent a long time reading through your additions to this new edition of the Bible, including your prayers and your Bible-study lessons. Among the pages I marked: In Genesis, you remind us that leaders should be servants. You provide a prayer in those pages, asking us to set aside any sense of superiority and domination over others. In Deuteronomy, you single out for criticism people “who have an air of arrogance and who use their position to divide.” In James, you criticize anyone who would “speak ill of others” in order to “destroy or damage the reputation of others.” Honestly, now, in the savagery of the 2012 campaign, you must be quite disappointed!

CARTER: (Laughs, then says …) Well, this just shows us how applicable the teachings in the Old Testament and the New Testament are to everyday life!

When we depart from these basic principles that never change, despite the rapid changes in world politics and technology, we’re in error. I think it’s particularly applicable now to point out those basic facts. As you know, Jesus—the leader of the entire Christian world—always referred to himself as a servant and said that the greatest among you will be servants of all and he emphasized humility. These same principles apply in the Hebrew texts of the Bible. And they apply to everyday life today.

The teachings that readers will find added to the pages of this new Bible came from my many years of Bible teaching. Most of them were not written in the last few months for this edition. Every Sunday that I teach, we have about 30 members in our little church who come—and we also have several hundred visitors who quite often come to hear me teach. What I try to do is use the first 10 or 15 minutes of my 45-minute lesson for the headlines of the day, or things that have happened to me or I know have happened to someone in the audience. That’s how I bring the biblical teachings to life. It’s not an accident that we continue to see how these basic Bible principles, which I taught about for so many years, still apply today.

COME BACK LATER THIS WEEK FOR …
Part 2 of our interview with Carter: Why the Bible Inspires Millions of Caregivers
And, Part 3: How a ‘Violent’ Bible Can Inspire Peacemakers Today

PHOTO CREDIT: The photograph of Jimmy Carter, at top today, was taken by Rick Diamond in 1993 and is used courtesy of The Carter Center.

Care to read more about devotional Bibles?

Stay tuned to ReadTheSpirit for ongoing reviews and news about special Bibles!
We recommend a new C.S. Lewis devotional Bible using the NRSV translation.
In January 2012, popular Bible scholar Eugene Peterson released a devotional Bible.
We also recommend two new editions of Thomas Jefferson’s Bible.

Care to read more about worldwide peacemakers?

Jimmy Carter is among the dozens of global peacemakers profiled in ReadTheSpirit’s “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” by Daniel Butty. The book is a collection of real-life stories about the men, women and children who are taking great risks around the world to counter violence with efforts to promote healthier, peaceful, diverse communities. Like Carter, Buttry is a Baptist who works on peacemaking projects around the world.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

In Part 1 of our coverage of Mei-Ling Hopgood’s terrific new book on global parenting, we told readers about her life and we shared some surprising examples from her book about parenting ideas, unusual foods and popular toys around the world. TODAY, we introduce Mei-Ling in our weekly author interview with ReadTheSpirit Editor David Crumm.

Note on photos, today: We asked Mei-Ling to provide us with more than the typical author photos. Since she’s now the author of what critics are calling the kinder-gentler global parenting book, we asked for family snapshots—so we could see her in action. Above, today, Mei-Ling and her husband Monte toted Sofia in a backpack during an Asian trip. Below, you’ll see that, as the family lived in Buenos Aires for a number of years, they regularly cheered on the home team—like families around the world. Sofia wanted her Mom to deck her out in Argentina soccer regalia during a world cup competition. The blue-and-white banner they’re displaying is a headband that Sofia proudly wore around the apartment.

HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH MEI-LING HOPGOOD
ON ‘HOW ESKIMOS KEEP THEIR BABIES WARM’

DAVID: Your book appears at a perfect time, because newspapers and magazines nationwide are paying front-page attention to the Tiger Mom and Bebe books. Now, top publications are saying that your book is the kinder-gentler alternative to learning about global parenting. What did you think of the Tiger Mom book?

MEI-LING: I thought it was entertaining and funny. I read it when I was finished writing my own book, so it didn’t affect anything I wrote. I considered writing about it in my book, but then I thought: No, that’s not what I’m doing in my book. Her book reflects some of what I found in Asian parents, too, but she wrote about this in her own memoir-ish voice. Now, I know, people either love her book or hate her book. I think that’s because she took these things that do happen in Asian culture and showed them going to extremes. She was concerned that her own children weren’t right in their own mother culture. I like her book, and I think a lot of people who are debating it probably haven’t read it.

DAVID: How about the Bebe book? Your thoughts?

MEI-LING: The difference between their books and what I’m trying to do is that their focus is on asking: Who is the better parent? What kind of parenting is superior? As a result, those are the headlines that jump out of their books. That doesn’t mean their actual books, if people stop and actually read them, say that the French are the only superior parents or the Chinese are superior. in fact, Amy Chau says that it was the headline, not the book, that touched off this firestorm about what she wrote.

In my book, I tried to look at how parents around the world do these things and my question is: What can we learn from each other? It’s way too short sighted and unhealthy to say that one culture has it nailed when it comes to parenting because we’re talking about a lot of factors that form our styles of parenting—society, culture and history. That’s one reason my book is very different than the other two. In my journeys and investigations, I learned that there are a million ways to raise a happy and healthy child. We don’t have to claim that one culture is superior. We can learn from each other.

DAVID: The Washington Post wrote that parents today face “a minefield of insecurity and doubt.” Your book “should put any uptight mom at ease and convince her once and for all that there is no one right way to raise children.” Your book, in that sense, is the “no guilt” parenting book. Do you agree?

ONE-WAY APPROACHES TO PARENTING ARE NOT HEALTHY

MEI-LING: I was very conscious as I was working on this book that there were people who wanted me to write a book that said: This is the best way to do things. In marketing a parenting book, that makes things easier. A lot of parenting books do say: This is how to put your baby to bed. There’s one way. Or, this is why the French do better. Or, this is how to make your family life better. But I think that’s just too simplified in our complex world. Each family and each culture has a different belief system and environment. Sweeping statements about a single way to do things are not healthy.

DAVID: But your book certainly isn’t just a lot of colorful stories. You do draw some conclusions and share some pointed critiques, right?

MEI-LING: By turning a critical eye on my own parenting and parenting ideas, I’m also turning a critical eye on the larger American dialogue on parenting. I wouldn’t say that my book is all that “kind.” I’m not trying to give us a touchy-feely picture of everyone linking hands and singing: We are the world! I’m arguing that we should put our experiences into a global context. No, I’m not up there at the level of Tiger Mom in the tone of what I’m writing, but you will find a real critique of the American culture of parenting.

MARCH OF U.S. PARENTING: DIAPERS IN CHINA, TOYS IN AFRICA

Click the book’s cover to visit its Amazon page.DAVID: One of those critical points you raise—and readers will find this conclusion drawn in other press coverage of your new book, as well—is about the dominance of American culture around the world. Readers may think that our culture is somehow on the ropes, especially after the other books have made headlines, but the truth is that American culture and products and parenting assumptions are marching their way all around this planet.

MEI-LING: American voices and ideas and products related to parenting are resonating everywhere, as I say in my book. One of the most striking conclusions I draw after all of my research is that this idea of a globalization in parenting is very, very real. At this point, it’s mostly driven by American voices and Western marketing—and it’s reaching every corner of the globe. Our products, our advice, our diapers—all of it is reaching places you couldn’t imagine. In China, for example, I was struck by how Chinese parents traditionally handle potty training. In the past, they’ve handled all of that differently than American families, but now? Western-style diapers are booming and China is becoming one of the world’s biggest markets for diapers. Strollers now are popular in places that have never had strollers. Little tribes in Africa now have manufactured children’s toys.

DAVID: I recall a reporting trip I made to Bangladesh some years ago. I was part of a group of journalists who went way up the main river to visit a world heritage site—a village that produces a beautiful, traditional fabric on hand-operated looms. This place was a little Eden. But, when we talked informally with parents there, they immediately said that they hope for a day when they can own microwaves and TV sets. And I assume disposable diapers, too.

MEI-LING: That’s it exactly! People around the world still have distinct, traditional views about parenting, but those assumptions and practices are changing. People everywhere are willing to listen to other voices, to try other products.

AMERICA’S OWN PATCHWORK QUILT OF PARENTING

DAVID: This diversity of parenting styles isn’t simply in remote villages in Africa and Asia. It’s right here in our American communities, right?

MEI-LING: Yes. I was doing a radio interview about the book and they opened the phone lines to listeners. The callers were wonderful and some of those calls came from immigrants to the U.S. and the next-generation sons and daughters of immigrants, too. They shared with us some of the things they do differently in their homes. When we talk about different global perspectives on parenting, we’re talking about millions of families right here in our own country, as well.

DAVID: Our readers know this, if they pause for a moment to think about it. We just published a new story about the Amish, for example. That’s a fairly extreme example of a different culture within the U.S. But, stop to think about all of the religious and ethnic communities across our patchwork quilt of a country.

MEI-LING: Even within a single small city in America, there are so many different populations if we look closely. I’m living in Evanston north of Chicago now, and in my building two Israeli families live above me and an English family lives beneath me. There are people of nearly every ethnicity in my daughter’s preschool. Lots of different languages are spoken. Our country is extremely diverse—more diverse than most of us realize. This new book isn’t just about exploring the world; it’s also about appreciating the diversity all around us.

Read Part 1 of our coverage of Mei-Ling Hopgood’s global parenting book.

Remember: How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm: And Other Adventures in Parenting (from Argentina to Tanzania and everywhere in between) is on sale now at Amazon.

You’ll also want a free copy of Seth Godin’s new book about revolutionizing education.

Care to read more about worldwide peacemakers?

ReadTheSpirit publishes “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” by Daniel Buttry, a collection of real-life stories about the men, women and children who are taking great risks around the world to counter violence with efforts to promote healthier, peaceful, diverse communities.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
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Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.

FROM THE TOP: Mei-Ling Hopgood’s new book; Inuit Moms with a baby (Mom on left wears traditional sealskin and Mom on right wears caribou); a fish head delicacy for dinner in Asia; a huge dragon-shaped kite; boys playing marbles in Vietnam; and Ache children in the rainforest of Paraguay. Photos from Wikimedia Commons.You’ll Have Fun with Mei-Ling
as Your Global Guide

Mei-Ling Hopgood is a top journalist who now teaches at the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. That means she’s a lifelong storyteller, which you’ll discover when you dip into this book of stories circling the globe.

She is famous in her own right. Born in Taiwan and adopted by an American family at an early age, the bittersweet story of her reunion with her Taiwanese family as an adult appears in her earlier book, Lucky Girl. For most of her early life, Mei-Ling was a typical American: She grew up as a smart, enthusiastic Midwest school kid and even got a spot on her high school pom pom squad. When she became a journalist, her award-winning work appeared in newspapers and magazines nationwide. Before moving with her husband and children to the Chicago area recently, they lived for years in Buenos Aires. Given her global wealth of family experiences, Mei-Ling was fascinated by the vast differences in parenting choices as she circled the planet.

As she was completing her new book, How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm: And Other Adventures in Parenting (from Argentina to Tanzania and everywhere in between), two other controversial best sellers in this niche began making headlines and burning up websites: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting.
Given Mei-Ling’s background as a journalist, always seeking accuracy and balance, it’s not surprising that Mei-Ling’s book on global parenting now is widely compared by reviewers to Tiger and Bebe as the kinder, gentler book in this trio. Or, as Mei-Ling herself puts it in the conclusion of her book:

“I’ve reached a pretty optimistic conclusion after observing the adaptability and resilience of families in many circumstances and environments. Despite vast differences in beliefs, religion and culture, moms, dads and caregivers in most societies share a common desire: to raise children who can thrive in the reality in which they live. While no culture can claim to be the best at any one given aspect of parenting, each has its own gems of wisdom to add to the discussion.”

If you’ve read Tiger or Bebe, then you know that viewpoint marks Mei-Ling’s book as a distinctively different voice. As a parent myself and as editor of ReadTheSpirit, I was struck by how much fun I had flipping the pages of her new book. Among her journalistic talents, Mei-Ling has an eye for overall pacing, which means delivering those special gems that she promises at regular intervals to keep readers flipping page after page. Among those gems are little sections between chapters that are packed with fun facts. If you’re drawn to this book, it’s because you want to discover a whole Noah’s ark of fascinating stories about families. Mei-Ling understands that desire and delivers lots of gee-whiz stories.

We are publishing our coverage of Mei-Ling’s new book—this opening overview and, later this week, an author interview with Mei-Ling—in the same week that globally celebrated marketing guru Seth Godin has dropped his own new bombshell book about revolutionizing education. Seth’s book is more about rethinking our public schools, but it’s also really a book about parenting—how to raise kids who know more than a collection of facts, how to spark creative thinking in our children and how to make the world a more adaptable and compassionate place for future generations. In her book, Mei-Ling really is doing the same thing from a parent’s point of view.

What’s fascinating in comparing the two new books is that there are many converging conclusions. One of them is Mei-Ling’s and Seth’s recommendation that parents go back to some tried-and-true conclusions in global parenting. We’ll write about one of Seth’s conclusions—about toys and the nature of play—in a separate story today. But here are a few gems from Mei-Ling’s book …

KIDS TRULY WILL EAT ANYTHING
(AND THAT’S NOT A BAD THING)

American parents lose sleep over kids’ picky eating habits, but that’s something they’ve picked up from our culture. In fact, kids around the world eat nearly anything. Mei-Ling gives these examples:

IN THE ARCTIC: Aboriginal children in the Arctic traditionally start at a young age eating the raw meat and blood of deer, seal and other animals their parents kill. On frigid nights, when food supply and preparation is limited, families eat their kill as is in order to survive; raw meat has more vitamins than cooked meat. Anthropologist Nelson Graburn observed the efforts of Inuit parents, who now go to the grocery store as often as they hunt, as they tried to introduce children to niqituinak, an Inuit diet, which includes maktak (whale skin and blubber), qisaruaq (chewed cud in a caribou’s stomach), and foods fermented in oil or served raw. “Inuit uniformly reported that if you do not get a child to eat raw meat by the age of three, they never learn to like it,” he wrote.

IN TAIWAN: Friends and family from my birthplace recall some childhood favorites: fish eyes, salted watermelon seeds, dried cuttlefish, fried anchovies, wasabi peas, bean pops, lotus seeds, jellyfish, sea cucumber and eel.

AROUND THE WORLD, THE OLD TOYS ARE THE BEST TOYS

Seth Godin and Mei-Ling both put in a plug for toys that have circled the globe for thousands of years. One reason, Seth points out, is that these toys are far less structured than the step-by-step games and kits American children often receive from parents today. Mei Ling reports on several toys, including:

KITES: The exact origin of the kite is unknown, but some legends say that a Chinese farmer tied string to his hat to keep it from being blown by the wind. Around 200 BCE, General Han Hsin of the Han Dynasty flew a kite over the walls of a city he was attacking, according to the American Kitefliers Association. The kite, which has been used by adults for everything ranging from carrying bait out to sea in Micronesia to flying military banners and studying weather, remains a popular toy in many countries and cultures today.

MARBLES: Historians believe that this toy dates back to the Harappan civilization in the western part of South Asia (which flourished around 2500 BCE and is one of the earliest-known civilizations); stone marbles were found in an excavation site near Mohenjo-Daro. In ancient Greece and Rome, children played games with round nuts, and Jewish children played games with filberts at Passover, according to iMarbles.com.

TALENTS OF TOTS AROUND THE WORLD WILL SURPRISE YOU

Both Seth and Mei-Ling argue that kids can do far more than parents allow them to do in typical American households and schools. Mei-Ling has a section of her book, called “Talents of Tots,” which includes these examples:

Ache children by the age of eight can find their way in the seemingly impenetrable (to outsiders) trails (consisting of “bent leaves, twigs and shrubs”) in the rain forests of Paraguay. They also get their first bow and arrow at the age of two, though they won’t master the hunt until around ten years old.

Zapotec kids in Oaxaca, Mexico, can name many of the hundreds of local flora as well as some seasoned ethnobotanists.

In the grasslands of Tibet, kids as young as six tend to herds of dzo (a type of cattle), yaks sheep, and other animals.

Come back later this week for our author interview with Mei-Ling Hopgood.

Remember: How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm: And Other Adventures in Parenting (from Argentina to Tanzania and everywhere in between) is on sale now at Amazon.

You’ll also want a free copy of Seth Godin’s new book about revolutionizing education.

Care to read more about worldwide peacemakers?

ReadTheSpirit publishes   ‘Blessed Are the Peacemakers’ by Daniel Buttry, a collection of real-life stories about the men, women and children who are taking great risks around the world to counter violence with efforts to promote healthier, peaceful, diverse communities.

Please help us to reach a wider audience

We welcome your Emails at ReadTheSpirit@Gmail.com
We’re also reachable on Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Huffington Post, YouTube and other social-networking sites. You also can Subscribe to our articles via Email or RSS feed.
Plus, there’s a free Monday morning Planner newsletter you may enjoy.

Originally published at www.ReadTheSpirit.com, an online magazine covering religion and cultural diversity.