Remaking the World | SL 5.2 (December 2023)
In this newsletter
- Remaking the World: My Top Eight Reads of 2023
- Work & Ministry Update
- Reading the New Testament in London: Crosslands Seminar Days
- Pray With Us
You can always read this newsletter in your browser.
From a recent Sunday afternoon walk, the Durham Cathedral cloister at dusk in November.
Remaking the World: My Top Eight Reads of 2023
Well, it's been a busy Autumn in the Northeast of England. Since I last wrote you all, I've completed my first class as a faculty member at Crosslands Seminary, I've been down to London and Southampton for six seminar days, and I traveled to San Antonio, TX to present a few papers at the Society for Biblical Literature annual meeting. Meanwhile, on the home front, from October 17 to December 5 we celebrated four out of our five birthdays (feels relentless!), and we are very much looking forward to traveling home for Christmas next Friday.
Earlier this week, I was part of an online book review panel that Crosslands hosted for Andrew Wilson's remarkable new book, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. I had a blast doing this. The goal was for the Crosslands faculty to highlight and assess an interesting resource that pastors and ministry leaders should be aware of. Inspired by our review panel and with your Christmas gift lists in mind, I thought I would run down some of may favorite reads from 2023. I didn't make it through quite enough books this year to warrant a top ten, but a top five would have excluded some gems and curiosities—so eight it is! Hope you find some joy or inspiration below.
My top eight reads of 2023.
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
I stumbled on this gorgeous and heart-rending collection of short stories at a bookstore in Lucknow, India last May. Lahiri's collection captures the experience of Bengali immigrants in America and Europe, especially those second-generation immigrants who have to make a break with their past and their parents to belong in their new home. Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize a few years back for her debut collection, Interpreter of Maladies, but I prefer these perfectly realized and (very) loosely connected stories. Although our experience in England is barely comparable to her characters', I was surprised how much I related to them. The opening story about a grandfather trying to connect with his daughter and his grandchildren across growing cultural divides is worth the price of the book. It stayed with me for weeks. After I read this collection, I immediately read two more books by Lahiri.
Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia
Ted Gioia is becoming an American institution of the new media with his insanely popular yet erudite Substack newsletter, The Honest Broker. This is his authoritative telling of the history of the Delta blues from its origins on sharecropping plantations in the 1880s and 90s through the careers of household names like B. B. King. The history here was routinely astounding and Gioia tells a very readable, character-based narrative to guide you through the major figures and eras. I most appreciated getting a sense for how the combination of resourceful and inventive musicians in the poverty of the Delta took African modes of music to create a whole new style, and how that style then influenced music the world over. Gioia brings incredible showmen like Howlin' Wolf to life, and takes you inside the tortured conscience of broken men like Son House. One of my favorite stories is how dedicated blues researchers discovered Mississippi Fred McDowell working as a gas station attendant in the 1960s. McDowell was an absolute blues master with his own distinctive sound, but he was past the prime of life when he was "discovered." Even after he had played the Newport Folk festival and signed major record deals, he always went back to his job pumping gas in rural Mississippi. He didn't trust the success. But the gas station became his office and he would do phone interviews with Rolling Stone from behind the counter in between serving customers. I made a ridiculous Spotify playlist off the back of this read and listened to it for months.
Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture by Peter Leithart
For the bible nerd on your list! This is not your standard book on hermenutics (the study of interpretation). Peter Leithart is one of the best and most imaginative biblical interpreters at work today, and in Deep Exegesis, Leithart makes a compelling argument for a way of interpreting Scripture that has more in common with the Church Fathers and medieval theologians than we are used to. Although he doesn't make much of it, Leithart is basically taking all the best lessons that we've learned from the twentieth-century post-modern philosophers and reworking them into a robustly biblical framework. The amazing thing about this book, though, is that Leithart helps to draw out the logic of such modes of reading and convinces you that "imaginative" reading is actually wise reading in keeping with the nature of reading and the text itself. His playful chapter titles give a taste of his method: "Texts are Events," "Words are Players," "The Text is a Joke," and "Texts are Music." This is an erudite book, but it is very readable given the subject matter. I couldn't put it down!
The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul through Union with Christ by Leanne Payne
As far as spiritual theology goes, this has been the year of Leanne Payne for Meghan and I. Payne's hope-filled, expectant, Christ-centered, humble approach to prayer and living in the presence of God has been one of our more formative spiritual influences this year. Still, Payne is somewhat difficult to recommend because her approach to the Christian Faith is so remarkably different than what we are used to. She is a lay-theologian who ran a successful healing prayer ministry for many years. She is certainly charismatic and some of the stories she tells leave you with your jaw on the floor, but I think I believe all of it! Listening Prayer is probably her most approachable book, but The Healing Presence helps you understand what she's all about. In short, she's about retraining our imaginations and spiritual disciplines to rest in God and form a God-centered view of the world. In The Healing Presence, Payne teaches you how to pray and live in union with Christ to start to bring healing to all areas of life, physical, emotional, and spiritual. Understanding and applying her concept of "sinful introspection," where we give up obsessively focusing on ourselves and our failures through repentance and focus on God has been a gift to me.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
Each year I try to read a few classics that I've never read before—this year I had an itch to finally read Frankenstein. Published in 1818, Frankenstein is sometimes hailed as the first work of science fiction. At the turn of the nineteenth-century, industrialization was well underway and new scientific discoveries that opened up uncharted potential for the human race were happening year in and year out. In this context, Shelly—just eighteen when she wrote this book!—imagines that a young doctor creates a powerful but hideous monster in a laboratory. But just to give you a sense of how different the intellectual climate is, Frankenstein, upon announcing that he is obsessed with learning the secrets of metaphysics decides to study chemistry at university! Having never read it, the actual plot of the novel is much different than I imagined. In typical nineteenth-century fashion, a good amount of the book is spent watching the extremely wealthy wander sad all over the most beautiful parts of Europe. But the monster is what makes it—much of the book is actually narrated by him. He recounts his birth, his naivete, and a fall narrative worthy of Scripture or Milton. If science fiction is fundamentally about how naive moral idealism and human technological power combine to sow the seeds of our own destruction, then this is surely near the fount of the genre.
Light Perpetual and Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford
The major new find for me this year, in terms of fiction, was Francis Spufford. His novels are deeply Christian, yet gritty and non-simplistic. In Light Perpetual he imagines the lives of five children who are vaporized by a German bomb while shopping in a London department store in 1944. While that set up sounds primed for melodrama, the novel is a rich series of interwoven character studies showing all that is glorious and fallen about human life. One story in particular, the story with which Spufford ends the book, illustrates the hope of belonging, the healing of the gospel, and the presence of God as powerfully as anything I have read in recent fiction. The last pages are deeply British and perfectly transcendent.
As for his new novel, Cahokia Jazz, which isn't even released in the US yet (!), I hardly know where to begin. I picked up a copy because Alan Jacobs said he hadn't had so much fun reading a book in as long as he could remember. I second that. I mean, if the Coen brothers wrote an incredibly imaginative novel, this would be it. It's a noir detective story set in an alternative version of the year 1922 in a fictional American city called Cahokia that sits on the Mississippi river roughly where the city of St. Louis is today. In this alternative history, an unconquered Native American kingdom has been incorporated into the US as a state of the union. The religion they practice is Catholocism from the first Spanish missionaries but underpinned by some traditional Aztec beliefs. When a pair of odd-couple detectives, one Native American and the other white, get called into investigate a gruesome murder staged to look like an Aztec ritual, the plot is off. This is a riveting page-turner, but the writing is perfect and the themes run deep. Several scenes were so gripping and vivid that I can see them in my mind's eye and feel them now. Spufford's accomplishment in creating a fully realized and compelling alternative world is astounding. One of the more cinematic books I have ever read.
Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West by Andrew Wilson
Finally, last but not least, Andrew Wilson gives us a phenomenal history of what makes the modern Western world what it is. Using the acronym WEIRDER, he shows that we are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Romantic, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Rich. These seven features set us apart from nearly everyone in the history of the world and from many people the world over today. Wilson then takes us on an incredibly engaging historical tour to illustrate how key events in in the year 1776 were integral to making us who we are today. To give just a few examples, that one year gave us James Watt's steam engine (industrialized), Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (educated), Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (rich), Captin James Cook's third voyage (western/globalization), and, of course, the American Revolution (democratic). Wilson's writing style is highly engaging and this book is jam-packed with astounding historical anecdotes and figures. It is an intellectual history that just flies by in the most engaging way imaginable. But, Wilson is writing as a Christian pastor and so his goal is to help us understand the world we live in so that we can better inhabit it as Christians and reach it with the gospel. In a beautiful pair of closing chapters, Wilson steers us to consider Christian presence in 1776 and how we can learn from their example. This book has made a quite a few best of lists so far. TGC has a nice profile of the author, and there's a great little six-minute, mini-documentary that gives you a flavor for the book.
A beautiful paragraph about John Newton and grace from Andrew Wilson's Remaking the World.
Work & Ministry Update
- My first module (i.e., class) as a Crosslands faculty member is a wrap—from September to November we took about 150 pastors and ministry leaders in the UK and beyond through a course called New Testament Introduction.
- In October and November, I spent six days total down South in London and Southampton running seminar days for my NT introduction tutor groups. (Read about this in more detail below if you're interested.)
- I had a great time teaching on Proverbs 31 for the men's dinner at our church here in Durham, Christchurch Durham. While it's normally taught in the context of women's ministry I tried to argue that chapter 31 brings the whole book of Proverbs together and is every bit as important for men as for women. I really enjoyed this and I hope to write this up as a little essay/book in the future.
- In November, I presented two papers at the Society of Biblical Literate annual meeting in San Antonio, TX. One of the papers in particular, which will be a chapter in an upcoming book I'm editing, was well-received and generated a lot of discussion. This was gratifying and encouraging.
- On Wednesday, December 6th, I took part in a book review panel for Andrew Wilson's Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. It was great fun and the book is highly recommended. Andrew Wilson has a new podcast called "Post-Christianity?" along with leading UK evangelist, Glen Scrivener, which you might find valuable.
- I am very much looking forward to being home for a few weeks and "in residence" at Christ Community Church, Daytona. The whole family will be there for dad's retirement party (!), and I will be preaching on Psalm 101 on New Year's Eve. We'll also be there for a bit of a Q&A after the service—it would be lovely to see you all.
In London, walking to one of our seminar days.
Reading the New Testament in London: Crosslands Seminar Days
If you walk around London these days it is an incredible blend of of cultures—British business men and men in traditional Muslim dress flow past each other under gray skies and over grimy sidewalks. The clash of old and new, christian and post-Christian, confronts you at each turn. On my walk to a seminar day through Northwest London last week, I peered between two Victorian buildings and caught a glimpse of both the Shard and St. Paul's Cathedral framed against a foggy horizon; monuments to the historic Christian faith and to business and development side-by side. Although it has shrunk dramatically in recent years, the church is not dead here—my students studying with Crosslands Seminary represent a faithful presence who are seeking to serve and evangelize this great city.
We recently concluded the first module, or class, of the 2023–24 academic year at Crosslands. The class was an introduction to the New Testament and as the faculty member for biblical studies, I was the module "owner." That is, it was my module to run and moderate. In a nutshell, the way it works is that the students have a week of teaching at the beginning of September and then they go away for ten more weeks of dedicated study on the topic. What I love about Crosslands, though, is that we don't just leave them to go at it. We stay in close touch and guide them on the way. In particular, we didivde the students up into geographically concentrated tutor groups of 5–7 students, then we have seminar days where the students come together with their tutor (that's me!) to present papers, discuss class material, and get guidance and feedback on their studies.
Three students at a Crosslands seminar day
I have three tutor groups this year and all of them are down South in London and Southampton. This has made for a fairly intense schedule of traveling this term, but it has been a ton of fun to pup up in different neighborhoods in London and spend a day discussing the beauty and power of the New Testament for our lives today with students who are actively serving in ministry. The scene above is a typical seminar day set up, with the seven of us crowded into someone's living room, plenty of tea and coffee going, and us all trying to explain concepts from the New Testament that we've been studying.
My favorite moment of any of the seminar days came when, Bisi (pictured above with the black sweatshirt) gave her book report. She read a book called Reading Backwards by Richard Hays which studies the ways that the four Gospels draw on and re-interpret the Old Testament. Ultimately, Hays does an incredible job showing us how "reading backwards" from the Gospels to the Old Testament helps us to understand how the Old Testament points forwards to Jesus Christ. As Bisi shared her report, her passion for the Scriptures was infectious. She was blown away by a whole new dimension in God's word that she'd not seen before. "Jesus is saying that this is how we ought to read the Old Testament," she concluded.
One of my London tutor groups gathered for a seminar day in late November.
The schedule of seminar days allows each student a chance to present the paper they wrote for the class and get feedback, both from their fellow students and from me. This process is an integral part of the academic experience, it makes it communal, and it gives me a chance to teach critical thinking and faithful interpretation "live," as it were. I had students present papers on Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 Corinthians 15, Paul's doctrine of resurrection, and how 1 Corinthians 14 informs our understanding of worship ministry, just to give you a sampling.
Almost all of my students are already serving in some type of church ministry, some are worship pastors, some are serving in women's ministry roles, a few are lead pastors, and perhaps most are ministry trainees or pastoral interns who are learning how to go about pastoral ministry on the job. Crosslands is offering training that is relevant and attainable to them in their context. Because the program is part-time it is both affordable and achievable for these students. Because they are already in ministry, they are able to appropriate and apply what they are learning immediately, this week as they prepare teachings for youth, song sets for worship, evangelistic events, or meet to counsel someone struggling in the faith.
I am honored to be walking alongside these students as they study bible, doctrine, and Christian ministry in order to serve the church in London and the UK better. Thank you for helping to make this possible.
My girls! Rue (6), Willa (4), and Janie (2) with Meghan on a gorgeous Autumn day in Gateshead, England.
Pray with Us
- Pray for our upcoming week and travel back to FL. We're excited, but at the minute Meghan and I are both sick and there's a lot to do before we travel next Friday. Please pray for health, strength, and for Rue, Willa, and Janie to travel well.
- Pray for my teaching with Crosslands in the New Year. Upon our return in January things will be "full on" leading up to Crosslands Winter conference. Not only will I be running my three tutor groups as usual, but I will be teaching a short course on the book of Ecclesiastes twice.
- Meghan and I would appreciate prayer as we think through settling down long term, lots of decisions here from buying a house to picking schools to church involvement, and we have some flexibility as to where we live in the UK—it's a lot to weigh out. We need wisdom and perspective.
Thank you. Your prayers and support empower everything we do.