Thread: The Dead Horses Book Repository Board: Dead Horses / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
I thought I’d see if we could produce a list of key books relating to Dead Horse topics.

Books are often referred to in the various debates, but it’s difficult to trawl through an entire thread searching for a book whose title you can’t quite remember. And while thread-reading is fun and instructive, books can be, too.

Here are a couple of suggested guidelines:And in an attempt to keep the thread from becoming a debate thread in its own right:The goal is to provide suggested reading, not discuss the issues – that can take place as usual, on dedicated threads.

I have a couple of ideas for books, but I’m happy to see whether anybody else is interested in picking up on the idea first.

So welcome to the Dead Horses Book Repository: have at it!
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
Seems strange to be recommending a book which was written in 1977, but in my opinion, although it is a bit dated here and there, it remains for me one of the best and certainly most readable analyses of biblical inerrancy.

Fundamentalism - by James Barr

The summary and the three customer reviews are helpful. And Barr's more pastoral "Escaping from Fundamentalism" is a good companion to this major work.
 
Posted by Jack the Lass (# 3415) on :
 
Re fundamentalism/inerrancy, I'd also recommend Keith Ward's "What the Bible Really Teaches: A Challenge for Fundamentalists". Meaty but very readable.

The other Dead Horses topic book I'd like to recommend is an ethnography, Gail Kligman's "The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania". A devastating account of the years in Romania when abortion was banned in all but the most restrictive of circumstances. It's a stunning and important book, and really helped crystallise my own thinking around abortion.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Thanks for contributing!

Women's ministry:

Women in the Church: a Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9-15, ed. Andreas Köstenberger: the book that I taught complementarianism from.

The Trinity and Subordinationism by Kevin Giles: the book that put the final nail in the complementarian coffin for me.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
A quote from Kastenberger when interviewed about his book
quote:
Paul here teaches that women will be preserved from falling into Eve’s error, namely straying from their God-ordained role centered on her family and her home, if they devote themselves to their proper sphere of primary involvement.
I think that is about as offensive towards and about women as one can find.
 
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
A quote from Kastenberger when interviewed about his book
quote:
Paul here teaches that women will be preserved from falling into Eve’s error, namely straying from their God-ordained role centered on her family and her home, if they devote themselves to their proper sphere of primary involvement.
I think that is about as offensive towards and about women as one can find.
It's offensive as all get-out, but it's also tautological. Women will be preserved from straying from their God-given role if they just devote themselves to their God-given role. Where one can only assume "devote themselves to" means "don't stray from." Um, yeah, so?
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
The Bible Unearthed by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman.

This describes the contrast between Old Testament history (Genesis through to 2 Kings) and what they see as the archaeological evidence. What's interesting is that although their view of the Bible's historicity is as low as you can get while still remaining mainstream (for example, they reject the idea that Israel and Judah were ever a united kingdom), they still clearly have a very great love and respect for the texts.


Quarks, Chaos and Christianity by John Polkinghorne, which does more or less what it says on the tin. I like this in that it is a useful contrast to the creationist debate - Polkinghorne is a particle physicist who became an Anglican priest, so he knows his stuff and has no time for creationism in the 'Genesis is literal' sense, but at the same time he does see evidence of creation in nature.
 
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
I think that is about as offensive towards and about women as one can find.
I know my rules for this thread are only suggestions, but I'd like to reiterate them:

- the idea is that posts on this thread should consist of a reference to a book you have read. If we get into simply posting our feelings about how books referred to treat the issues, we will have started an entire Dead Horse board within this thread...

- posting a book does not mean you agree with it, it means it is one you have read which you deem significant to understanding where various constituencies are coming from in the debate.

Mousethief and L'organist, I'm sure you must have read some books falling into that category. Fancy sharing them here?
 
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
On the subject of biblical inerrancy, I would cite Taking God at His Word by Kevin DeYoung.

My review of it is here, with a conservative response to my review here.

It's not at all a good book, but if you want to get an insight into how a biblical inerrantist thinks (or how they don't, as the case may be), then it's fairly clear.
 
Posted by Macrina (# 8807) on :
 
I read a very interesting book called: Building God's Kingdom

By: Julie Ingersoll.

Amazon link here: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Gods-Kingdom-Christian-Reconstruction/dp/0199913781

It's basically an ethnographic study of the Christian Reconstructionists in the US. I read it because I wanted to get my head around how the heck these people come to the views they have (know thine enemy etc) it was very illuminating and certainly helped me get inside their heads even if it wasn't a pleasant experience.
 
Posted by Snags (# 15351) on :
 
On issues surrounding the Bible and homosexuality I found The Good Book (Peter J Gomes) to be both interesting and helpful.

It's not a slam dunk definitive answer, and there are holes, but it's thought-provoking, and considerably more coherent than the refutations that I managed to locate after reading it (I was looking for balance).
 
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :
 
On the subject of the nature and interpretation of Scripture, I found the two volumes Models for Scripture and Models for Interpretation of Scripture by John Goldingay to be both thorough and readable. Probably addressing a more Evangelical audience than the Ship, but presenting a compelling case for a more nuanced (and more fruitful) approach than Inerrancy.
 
Posted by Stercus Tauri (# 16668) on :
 
I am not sure if this is the right place to note it, but I just read the obit for the nominal author of the Left Behind pot-boilers, Tim Lahaye.

In a Glasgow Herald review Ron Ferguson described his stuff thus: The material is based on the tired work of nineteenth-century English cleric J N Darby, who cobbled together disparate biblical prophecies and turned them into an influential system with the snappy title "pre-millennial dispensationalism". Left Behind presents the United Nations as a satanic world government - a popular theme on the American religious right. These same Christian right-wingers believe that Israel is entitled to fill the west bank with settlers, and that Jerusalem must be controlled exclusively by Israel.

Seems like current US Republicans may have found him to be a useful resource.
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Actually, I believe LaHaye died a couple days ago.

For an iMHO healthier view* of end times possibilities, try "The Coming Of God", by Sr. Maria Boulding, who was a Benedictine nun, hermit, and theologian at Stanbrook Abbey.

The last line is something like "We are unconditionally, irrevocably loved". I glanced at that in the store, and figured a book on the Second Coming that ended that way was worth reading--and it is.


*I say this as someone who grew up fundamentalist.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
WHY CATHOLICS CAN'T SING Theculture of Catholicism and the Triumph of Bad Taste by Thomas Day (Crossroad, New York 1990)

Well written and at times very funny. And he also has concise, practical advice for those seeking to establish or improve music in churches.

While he writes specifically about the RC church in the States, what he has to say is relevant across all denominations and outside the US.

I lend this to friends I can trust to give it back: 3 have gone on to buy a copy to give to their PP - 'nuff said?
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
Reminds me- small tangent- of conversation with RC housemate one evening, about the time that book was written. He'd just been to evening Mass and I'd been to Evensong.
Him: 'ood evensong?
Me: yes, thank you. We sang 'the day thou gavest' and 'the Church's one foundation'.
Him: Hmph. We had 'colours of day' and 'I see the sunrise'.

His explanation for the low standard of RC congregational music was the limited ability of most of the guitar-playing nuns upon which, he said, many parishes relied for their music.
 
Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
His explanation for the low standard of RC congregational music was the limited ability of most of the guitar-playing nuns.
This does not jibe with my recollection of growing up Catholic. There was a nun -- don't remember her name, but she was an excellent organist -- who played at the children's mass. Granted, she selected pure schlock for hymns, but her voluntaries were memorable. She also conducted a small children's choir for funerals -- the Gregorian Missa Pro Defunctis.

I recall reading the book many years ago. I no longer have a copy, but as I recall, the premise was that the music was basically unsingable.
 
Posted by Louise (# 30) on :
 
bumping up for housekeeping reasons
 
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :
 
l'Organiste:
quote:
WHY CATHOLICS CAN'T SING
Amen to that. Really good fun and interesting.
 
Posted by wabale (# 18715) on :
 
‘The construction of homosexuality’ by David F Greenberg
Pub. University of Chicago Press 1988

Greenberg traces the history of homosexuality from prehistoric to modern times, using the limited information that is available, drawing on anthropology and using sociological theory. Towards the end of a very long book he offers the opinion that the demonisation and outlawing of homosexuality towards the end of the Roman Empire could be predicted from its social and economic background - even if you knew nothing about its religion.

My own interest in this book was primarily historical, and Greenberg makes some very interesting adjustments to the historical account. Neither Jews nor Christians, he says, initiated the anti-hedonistic movement that engulfed the Roman Empire from the second century AD onwards. This movement included the belief that all sex was evil, and included the encouragement of celibacy as a higher good. Christians played their own part, also favouring celibacy, but, after a struggle, reluctantly admitted that marriage was acceptable. His point is that official laws that came in from the 3rd Century sharply regulating sexual behaviour were not primarily Christian in inspiration, since there simply weren’t enough Christians yet to wield that much influence.

The change in attitude which led in the 4th Century to homosexuality being declared illegal was therefore more the work of the state than that of the Church, though the Church increasingly went along with it wherever the state was able to maintain its power, which of course was rapidly shrinking at this time.

Gagnon quotes this book many times, while side-stepping the implications of much of its evidence.
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
No fiction? I understand, but for me, non-fiction informs my brain, while fiction opens my heart.

Two very old books that helped me, a straight person, see what life is like for people who have to hide their love.

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith

Maurice by E. M. Forster
 
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on :
 
Thanks for the titles, Twilight. Putting them on my list.

Other things helped me with understanding LGB folks a bit, given my fundamentalist background. They may seem silly, but they helped me see things from different angles--and that helped with gradual change.

--The life of female novelist George Sand. (Her pen name.) In the 70s, IIRC, there was a bio-drama mini-series about her on public television. She had a life of many bumps and phases. She was pushed into a marriage with a brutal, abusive guy--and she found comfort in a relationship with a woman. That made sense to me. (Later, she was involved with Chopin, which is a whole 'nuther Oprah.)

--Ellen DeGeneres, both in her own life and in her sitcom "Ellen". She and her character both came out as gay (her preferred term, then, rather than lesbian) at around the same time. All hell broke loose. She got a lot of support, too. But her series was cancelled; and her career was wrecked for many years. Televangelist Jerry Falwell said, Oh, that nice young woman? I don't believe it".

It hit Ellen hard. After a lot of trauma, she finally got her own talk show, "Ellen". Both are very, very popular and beloved.

--"Fried Green Tomatoes", both the movie and the novel. Really, really good.

[ 16. December 2017, 02:37: Message edited by: Golden Key ]
 
Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
The great books about gay life I remember are the Mary Renault novels -- The Last of the Wine for a Greek historical, or The Carhioteer set in the 20th Century.
 
Posted by MaryLouise (# 18697) on :
 
This is home territory for me: looking back on 35+ years of reading LGBTI literature, decade by decade.

As a teen I read Mary Renault's historical fictions showing a society in which homosexuality was accepted and admired (she and her partner Julie Mullard lived in Cape Town in the 1950s), then stumbled across Proust and Oscar Wilde, then studied Andre Gide and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice at university. Christopher Isherwood, Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story. Sitting with Virginia Woolf's gender-switching Orlando when Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness got too depressing. Discovering Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons and Djuna Barnes writing about lesbian women on the Left Bank of Paris in the 1920s. James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, EM Forster's Maurice.

Then the lesbian-feminist surge: Adrienne Rich, poet and theorist, Audre Lorde, Kate Millett's Sita, Jane Rule, Desert of the Heart, Rita Mae Brown Rubyfruit Jungle, the wildly funny Jeanette Winterson's Oranges are Not the Only Fruit (a memoir taken over by the crazy Pentecostal mother). Alice Walker's The Colour Purple, the poetry of June Jordan. The butch-femme histories of Joan Nestle, transgender activist Lesley Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues.

The AIDS writings of the 1980s: Randy Schiltz' And The Band Played On, Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance, Armistead Maupins' San Francisco series Tales from the City. Paul Monette's memoir Borrowed Time.

More literary fiction: Alan Hollinghurst The Swimmingpool Library, Sylvia Molloy's Certificate of Absence, Colom Toibin's The Master (Henry James), Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, Sarah Schulman's Empathy, Maggie Nelson The Argonauts.

And if I wandered around and just looked at all the books on my shelves, I could come up with a few dozen more.
 
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
I don't know if his books qualify as 'LGBT literature' but the works of Michael Carson are wonderful - sort of like a modernised, younger Tom Sharpe? Anyway, my sons loved Sucking Sherbet Lemons and, particularly, Friends and Infidels. If you haven't tried them, seek them out in a library.
 
Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :
 
MaryLouise:
Can't believe you've missed Monopolies of Loss by Adam Mars-Jones. One of the best books (short-stories actually) I've read.

In trying to sort out my own views on the current debate (if that's not too fine a word) over Gay equality in the CofE, I've enjoyed the works of Dale B Martin, notably: Sex and the Single Saviour.
 
Posted by MaryLouise (# 18697) on :
 
Bookmarked for my 2018 reading list, Anteater. I'm a fan of Adam Mars-Jones.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
I don't know if his books qualify as 'LGBT literature' but the works of Michael Carson are wonderful - sort of like a modernised, younger Tom Sharpe? Anyway, my sons loved Sucking Sherbet Lemons and, particularly, Friends and Infidels. If you haven't tried them, seek them out in a library.
Carson 'went off' in later years - maybe a casualty of his obssessive RCism and the damage it did him.
 
Posted by Callan (# 525) on :
 
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.

Written before he jumped the shark. One of the best expositions of evolutionary theory ever written and (ironically) the book that convinced me that evolution and theism are not incompatible. Which, tbf, was not what the author had in mind.
 
Posted by leo (# 1458) on :
 
A brilliant book which helped me when teaching 'Science and religion' to A' level - but it doesn't follow that God doesn't exist, simply that he needn't.
 
Posted by ArachnidinElmet (# 17346) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Reminds me- small tangent- of conversation with RC housemate one evening, about the time that book was written. He'd just been to evening Mass and I'd been to Evensong.
Him: 'ood evensong?
Me: yes, thank you. We sang 'the day thou gavest' and 'the Church's one foundation'.
Him: Hmph. We had 'colours of day' and 'I see the sunrise'.

His explanation for the low standard of RC congregational music was the limited ability of most of the guitar-playing nuns upon which, he said, many parishes relied for their music.
The unintended consequence of this thread was that I picked 'I watch the sunrise' for yesterday's mass. The congregation, already pretty good singers, sang their hearts out. We had a number of compliments and a spontaneous round of applause from an older lady in the back seats.

Many thanks, Albertus [Biased]
 


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