Calvin College Research Articles

We Are the Voice of the Grass: Interfaith Peace Activism in Northern Uganda

David Hoekema, professor of philosophy emeritus at Calvin College, portrays the history of the Acholi people from the late 1980s until 2006 as a struggle beneath two battling elephants in his book We Are the Voice of the Grass: Interfaith Peace Activism in Northern Uganda. Hoekema lifts the title from an interview with Bishop Matthew Odong, who uses the Acholi proverb, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers,” to identify the Acholi people’s suffering during years of civil war and life within the squalor of internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. Caught between the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by self-proclaimed spirit medium Joseph Kony and the Ugandan army led by (current) president Yoweri Museveni, the Acholi of northern Uganda endured dehumanization and slaughter from both sides. From this suffering emerged a group of Christian and Muslim religious leaders who—together as the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative (ARLPI)—voiced the pain of their people to the Ugandan government and the world. Not only did ARLPI successfully advocate for peace negotiations between enemy forces that led to the controversial Ugandan Amnesty Act of 2000, they also led the way for the LRA’s exit from Uganda. Today ARLPI continues the necessary work of reconciliation and development in Acholiland.Uganda’s complex history of colonialism, independence, and civil strife is re-examined from a postcolonial perspective in the first three chapters. Hoekema first dispels racist myths about the Acholi people, combatting their portrayal as helpless, underdeveloped, and inherently violent. The roots of such mischaracterizations originate from the 1800s and are still manifest in contemporary news reports, the infamous “Kony 2012” propaganda video, and in public statements by Ugandan president Museveni himself. With a corrected perspective, Hoekema then recounts Uganda’s religious history in chapter 4 to illustrate the tensions and demographics between Muslims and Christians (including their traditional religious practices) prior to the LRA insurgency. Throughout Voice of the Grass, Hoekema tells the history of Acholiland from below, extensively quoting Christians and Muslims on both sides of the conflict to correct misleading colonial and governmental narratives.The real heart of the book, chapters 5–8, details ARLPI’s formation and intervention in the war. Acholi priests, pastors, and imams banded together for their people, forming a nonpartisan organization that aimed to make known their people’s suffering to the international community, and bring the LRA and Ugandan army to the negotiating table. Within a month, they met with Museveni, reminding him of the need for forgiveness and reconciliation. Tangible changes came slowly, though. ARLPI had to gain the trust not only of their people, but of enemy forces. Years of botched peace talks, broken ceasefires, and worsening conditions did not sway religious leaders from advocating amnesty for LRA child-soldiers. Hoekema draws out the ethical questions of amnesty, asking whether justice must be sacrificed for reconciliation. Yet Hoekema also acknowledges that ARLPI’s efforts achieved their intended goal. In 2006 the LRA left Uganda and the religious leaders shifted their focus from nonviolent peacemaking to rebuilding Ugandan society in the aftermath of war. Hoekema analyzes what made ARLPI’s efforts at reconciliation successful and lays out the organization’s four pillars—advocacy, dialogue, reconciliation, and humanitarian support—as elements that peacemakers and religious leaders can uphold in their own communities.The LRA conflict was so complex that a book this comprehensive feels like an overview, albeit one that continuously gives voice to those who experienced the conflict firsthand. Hoekema excels in big-picture historiography, though the details of how ARLPI began remain unclear. Hoekema claims the religious leaders are hesitant to take credit for individual initiatives. However, the lack of clarity on how ARLPI began (rather than simply why) deprives the reader of answers to the pressing question, “How do I begin?” Did interfaith peacemaking begin as simply as sitting down to talk with another religious leader? How did ARLPI arrive at seemingly all the right principles from the start? Hoekema emphasizes ARLPI’s perseverance and boldness, but the reader hardly gets to know the leaders involved. Future work needs to be done examining specific Acholi communities through war and reconciliation. More, too, should be written on the dilemmas ARLPI encountered. It would seem, given Hoekema’s conclusions, that reconciliation is possible without justice. Such an ethical and theological conundrum deserves more ink.For peacemakers, peace scholars, religious leaders, and those interested in reconciliation, We Are the Voice of the Grass is a compelling narrative of how sustained interfaith activism helped end a civil war. ARLPI’s peacemaking principles may translate to other contexts, yet their specific activities are worth more extended ethical and theological analysis. Hoekema’s work on ARLPI is ripe for further study.

Judges and Ruth

Judges and Ruth

Calvin J. Verbrugge

Calvin J. Verbrugge, 81, died on March 10 in Racine, Wisconsin. “I always admired Uncle Cal’s dedication to his job and family. His innovative research as a polymer chemist at SC Johnson for 35 years inspired me to enter a career as a chemist. My first job after receiving my PhD started in July 1998, the same month Calvin retired. My goal is to carry on his enthusiasm for scientific research.”—Bryan Koene, nephew Most recent title: Research chemist, SC Johnson Education: BS, chemistry, Calvin College, 1959; PhD, chemistry, Purdue University, 1961 Survivors: Wife, Pauline; daughters, Helen Arkema and Susan Guck; son, Tim; six grandchildren; one great-grandchild To recognize your late loved one or colleague, submit obituary information at cenm.ag/obits.

Physiological competitiveness of common and glossy buckthorn compared with native woody shrubs in forest edge and understory habitats

Common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica L.) and glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus Mill.; or, Rhamnus frangula L.) are non-native, invasive plant species invading U.S. Midwest natural areas. Both are ubiquitous on the Calvin College campus in Southwest Michigan where they compete with native plants for light, water, and nutrients exceptionally well. We hypothesize that common buckthorn will assimilate carbon faster and use water more efficiently than glossy buckthorn and native co-habiting shrubs in relatively dry and bright edge and meadow habitats whereas glossy buckthorn will thrive in moist and thin forest canopies. These are habitats in which each buckthorn species is abundant and colonizes rapidly. The objective of this project was to compare light use efficiency (LUE), water use efficiency (WUE), chlorophyll content and stomatal characteristics of both buckthorn species with two locally common co-habiting native species, hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) and gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa Lam.), acclimated to forest edge and understory environments on the Calvin campus in 2016 and 2017. Between 380 and 480 light use efficiency curves were measured with a LI-6400XT Portable Photosynthesis System using common and glossy buckthorn, hawthorn and gray dogwood leaves during two growing seasons from plants acclimated to edge and understory habitats. Common buckthorn assimilated carbon faster than glossy buckthorn when leaves were exposed to moderate or high light intensities. Water use efficiency was advantageous to glossy buckthorn at low to moderate light intensities, potentially enabled by the high density of stomates on lower leaf surfaces. Shade-acclimated common buckthorn displayed only minor decreases in photosynthesis rate relative to leaves in sun-acclimated plants after exposure to a wide range of light intensities possibly because of its higher leaf chlorophyll content. Sun-acclimated hawthorn grew faster than both buckthorn species when exposed to higher light intensities and produced comparable growth rates to buckthorn species in the shaded understory. Gray dogwood produced the slowest growth rate of the four species in all environments. Restoration of buckthorn infested areas is problematic in both sunny edge and shaded understory habitats and will require continuous mitigation of common and glossy buckthorn along with the concomitant establishment of more competitive native species like hawthorn.

Preface: Influence, Wayfaring, and the Catholic Novelist

PrefaceInfluence, Wayfaring, and the Catholic Novelist David Paul Deavel This past June marked the sixth annual Walker Percy Weekend held in St. Francisville, Louisiana, part of the West Feliciana Parish that was the fictionalized "Feliciana Parish" setting for some of Percy's greatest novels. Limited to four hundred tickets, the two-day festival starts with registration at a bookstore, a casual conversation with organizer Rod Dreher (of The Benedict Option fame), and an opening night party in the cemetery at Grace Episcopal Church, shaded by beautiful oak trees. The second day is the day of substantive intellectual engagement about Percy with nationally known speakers. Past Percy Weekend lecturers include Percy scholars Ralph Wood and biographers Jay Tolson and Patrick Samway, SJ. This year's speakers were perhaps even more up-market, with New York Times columnist David Brooks, best-selling Hillbilly Elegy author J. D. Vance, and journalist Walter Isaacson, best-selling biographer of Leonardo DaVinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Steve Jobs. The final events of the festival are—in the spirit of an author whose celebrated essay "Bourbon, Neat" proposed a few [End Page 5] bourbon shots in order to "warm the heart, reduce the anomie of the late twentieth century, to cut the cold phlegm of Wednesday afternoons"—a "progressive front porch and bourbon-tasting tour" and a "crawfish and craft beer celebration."1 With such a lineup of speakers, culinary offerings, and alcoholic delights in a romantic locale, selling four hundred tickets isn't hard. One could sell out four hundred tickets with a generic literary festival without mention of Percy. But my guess is that the hard-core enthusiasts who come to the Walker Percy Weekend would also consent to spending their weekend in the public library in Paducah, Kentucky, or a bomb shelter in Sheboygan to talk about Percy's life, work, and importance. For Percy is one of those writers who is valued not just for the purity of his art—like Homer, he nodded at times—but for the purity of his search for truth. Chesterton observed that one of the problems with news is often that we read about the death of persons we never knew lived. My own discovery of Percy was this way. I had begun reading Flannery O'Connor in high school and happened to read an article in my denominational magazine about another southern Catholic author who had just died in May 1990. While the author, later a professor of mine at Calvin College, "had me at 'Flannery O'Connor,'" I was doubly intrigued by the story of the writer who had come from a family of suicides, survived, and found strength in a Christian faith that didn't simply solve his problems but made them understandable as part of a journey. Given that my own father had a history of mental health issues, some of which had flared up again around the same time Percy died, my adolescent concern was that I too would inherit them. At one point in that summer of 1990 I had had a kind of small breakdown about my sanity that lasted several days. My Christian Reformed pastor, a saintly World War II veteran named Charles Terpstra, came over to the house on the second day with some information about mental health issues and some stories about his wife's family, who also had a history of mental illness. Pastor Terpstra's help got me out of the house on the third day. I was [End Page 6] ripe, however, for Percy, who, in the article I read, struck me as the kind of man and author who had faced down the crazy in the world and the crazy within. I immediately went to the library and picked up the Percy on hand, his 1980 novel, The Second Coming. Given that my own father's long-time diagnosis was schizophrenia, it was perhaps providential that I came upon this volume. The main character, Will Barrett, a retired widower who has tasted of life's successes but finds them wanting, is haunted both by the suspicion that life is meaningless, because God either doesn't exist or doesn't care, and...

Suffering in the Face of Death: The Epistle to the Hebrews and Its Context of Situation by Bryan R. Dyer

Reviewed by: Suffering in the Face of Death: The Epistle to the Hebrews and Its Context of Situationby Bryan R. Dyer Benjamin Rojas Yauri Dyer, Bryan R. 2017. Suffering in the Face of Death: The Epistle to the Hebrews and Its Context of Situation. The Library of New Testament Studies568. London and New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Hardback. ISBN 978-0567672353. Pp. 224. $117. Bryan R. Dyer is acquisitions editor at Baker Press, adjunct professor of religion at Calvin College and co-editor of the publications The Bible and Social Justice(2015) and Paul and Ancient Rhetoric(2016). He completed his Ph.D. at McMaster Divinity College under the guidance of Cynthia L. Westfall and Stanley E. Porter. This book is an edited revision of that thesis. The book starts with a word of recognition that provides information about all the contributors, as well as the stages through which the book passed before its publication. A very short introduction follows, where Dyer addresses the main topic of his book, which, in his words, is to identify and analyse "the wealth of terms and references to suffering and death in Hebrews" (2). [End Page 209] Chapter one is titled "Previous Studies on the Topics of Suffering and Death in Hebrews." It comprises fifteen pages in which Dyer considers ten authors, who, in some way, have dealt with the topic under discussion. His conclusion, after this literature review, is that "the author of Hebrews wrote to an audience presently facing some form of suffering and felt a substantial fear that death was likely on the horizon" (20). It is noteworthy that the book concludes with basically similar expressions: "The audience was experiencing actual suffering and were being confronted with the reality of their deaths" (181). It follows that at least in this respect the book serves to confirm the conclusions of various previous authors, even though Dyer treats the topic in a more comprehensive and systematic way. Chapter two is titled "History of Research on the Situation Addressed in Hebrews." It consists of twenty-six pages in which Dyer considers the situation addressed in Hebrews from different perspectives. According to Dyer, the initial audience of Hebrews could be "a group of Jewish Christians who were on the verge of relapsing to Judaism" (25) or perhaps a group of gentile Christians who were reverting to paganism. Essene Christians and former Qumran members have also been proposed. Alternatively, Dyer lists a number of social conditions that could be present in any community as possibly being representative of the situation in Hebrews. These situations are reflected in the letter's views of a "realized eschatology," of a response to the destruction of the temple, of loss of honour and social status and of persecution. However, it is important to note that there is no clear separation between communities, social conditions and philosophical conditions in the book. According to Dyer, each of the proposed situations address some element present in the text of Hebrews, which means that the author of Hebrews "seems to be addressing numerous issues in his epistle," which "is not limited to addressing just one particular concern." What seems an oversight in the book is that it does not grapple with the proposal made by Alexander Nairne, who argues that "the epistle is better understood as a theological treatise than a letter addressing a specific situation" (paraphrase of Nairne's argument in Dyer, 22). Dyer ends this chapter by asserting that it "is difficult to identify with any certainty the reality of the audience" (46), which means that perhaps there was not one specific audience, but rather an unspecified audience constituted by different populations, who grappled with some or all of the problems listed in the chapter. Chapter three is titled "Methodology: Moving from a Text to its Context." It comprises twenty-eight pages. In Dyer's own words, "the purpose of this chapter is to present the groundwork for a study of suffering [End Page 210]and death in Hebrews." This seems to be an error, for, at the end of the first part of this chapter, Dyer writes: "With these concerns in mind, I present five linguistic principles...

Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State by Ira Dworkin

Reviewed by: Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State by Ira Dworkin Eric M. Washington CONGO LOVE SONG: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State. By Ira Dworkin. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2017. In Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State, Ira Dworkin, assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University, presents a rich text about Black transnationalism building upon the important theoretical contribution of Paul Gilroy’s The Black Atlantic (1993). In this well-structured and well-argued book, Dworkin argues that African-American anti-colonialism found a straight channel to the Congo that also flowed to criticism of the whole of European colonialism during the twentieth century. The work begins with the writings of historian George Washington Williams and Presbyterian missionary William Sheppard, who both arrived in the Congo in 1890, thirteen years after Leopold II of Belgium claimed the Congo as his own personal real estate. Both men wrote of the atrocities committed under Leopold’s personal rule, namely the extraction of rubber using cruel means and punishment: chopping off of Congolese hands. The writings of Williams and Sheppard are the origins of African-American anti-colonial writing on the Congo. From this starting point, Dworkin masterfully analyzes Booker T. Washington’s protests of colonialism in the Congo, the translation work of missionary Edith Edmiston, the literature of Pauline E. Hopkins, the poetry of Langston Hughes, the African-American publication of the writings of Patrice Lumumba, and the speeches, interviews, and letters of Malcolm X. These sources all substantiate his argument that African Americans possessed transnational sensibilities when it came to protesting against colonialism in the Congo, and even the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in early 1961. One weakness in this study is Dworkin’s tentative engagement with Ethiopianism. In his chapter on Pauline E Hopkins, Dworkin discusses her use of the Ethiopian trope that reflects a tradition in African-American writing dating from the middle of the nineteenth century. Dworkin fails to define this literary tradition, though he relies somewhat on Wilson Jeremiah Moses’ The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, which includes a robust discussion of Ethiopiansim. The strengths of this work far outweigh the weakness. Quite significant is Dworkin’s treatment of Washington’s transnationalism. Not only did Washington write in protest to the atrocities committed in the Congo, but he envisioned the expansion of the “Tuskegee Model” there. These insights challenge recent scholarship that has argued that Washington’s interest in Africa was “secondary” to his Southern concerns. Dworkin provides convincing evidence that Washington’s Southern commitments and African concerns worked symbiotically. Another strength of the book is the chapter on Langston Hughes that centers on his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” Dworkin painstakingly engages a rich trove of evidence that leads to the conclusion that this famous poem contains anti-colonial references. This work adds to existing scholarship on African-American connections to Africa such as Campbell’s Songs of Zion and Middle Passages, and Kevin Gaines’ African Americans in Ghana. What this work does that is different from those historical monographs is that Dworkin is able to construct a corpus of African-American writings dedicated to the Congo crisis. This work should spark more scholarship on African-American discourse, both cultural and political, on Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [End Page 120] Eric M. Washington Calvin College Copyright © 2019 Mid-America American Studies Association

Providing Library Services to Prisoners

Libraries are necessary to the educational process. Access to resources for incarcerated students is a challenge. Hekman Library supports the Calvin Prison Initiative in ways that support the educational mission of Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary.

Sorting the Left from the Rest: The Communitarian Religious Perspective and Liberal Economic Attitudes

In this article, the argument is made that the religious activity generated by churches, which tends to focus an individual's attention either outward toward the larger community or inward toward one's self, can influence parishioners’ economic attitudes. Using survey data obtained during the 2008 presidential election cycle, this article tests the merits of that argument by examining the effect of multiple aspects of religion on economic attitudes. Evidence indicates that, along with some of the conventional religiosity measures, there is a previously noticed but understudied “communitarian” dimension of religion that explains variation in social welfare attitudes. Additional tests conducted on subsamples of denominational groups reveal that the communitarian religious perspective is a significant predictor of liberal welfare attitudes among Mainline Protestants. These findings shed light on characteristics associated with the “religious left,” and provide a clearer picture of how religion, in different measurable forms, is related to economic attitudes.Related Articles Rugeley, Cynthia R., and John David Gerlach. 2012. “.” Politics & Policy 40 (): 444‐470. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00352.x/full Butz, Adam M., and Jason E. Kehrberg. 2015. “.” Politics & Policy 43 (): 256‐286. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12115/full Ertas, Nevbahar. 2015. “.” Politics & Policy 43 (): 426‐451. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12120/abstract Related Media . n.d. “The Henry Institute National Survey of Religion and Public Life, 2008.” http://www.thearda.com/Archive/Files/Descriptions/NSRPL.asp . 2017. Calvin College. Home Page. https://calvin.edu/centers-institutes/henry-institute/

Introduction: 100 Years Completed!

With this issue, we bring to a close our year-long celebration of Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal. It is a significant achievement for a journal to reach 100 years of publication (even if under different names). And we are delighted to know that the journal is just as strong today as it has ever been.As our regular readers know, we have celebrated this 100th volume by re-publishing historically important essays from past issues—followed by new responses to those articles that put them in historical context and delineate the continuing significance of their ideas and arguments. We labelled these collections of pieces ReSoundings.In this last issue for the year, we focus ReSoundings in the area of ethics—certainly fitting given the connection between the journal and the Society for Values in Higher Education (SVHE). And the articles we are republishing could not be any more important. Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue is one of the most important books in moral theory written in the twentieth century—its impact moving beyond the academy and into public policy and political discourse (often in concealed, but powerful ways). In the spring 1984 issue of Soundings, we published a review of MacIntyre's book written by Richard J. Bernstein, who (like MacIntyre) is a powerful philosophical voice and a prolific writer. The Bernstein review (one of the most widely circulated reviews of MacIntyre's book) was followed by a rejoinder from MacIntyre. To have these two philosophical giants battle it out in the pages of Soundings was a real treat. We re-print both essays here in this issue.Revisiting that debate in this issue reveals the continuing relevance of the moral issues, problems, and arguments with which they engaged. We have two respondents whose work will help us further understand the debate. David Hoekema of Calvin College, former president of SVHE and current chair of the Editorial Board of Soundings, and Allen Dunn of the University of Tennessee, former editor of Soundings and current president of SVHE, each provide compelling insights about the debate and its continuing relevance.The ReSoundings section is followed by other contemporary work focused on issues in ethics. First, is an important piece by Luciana Lolich and Kathleen Lynch of University College Dublin. Their work on the ethics of palliative care gets to some central issues that must be considered in thinking about human autonomy, choice, and cultural values. Then, we feature two reviews on recent books in ethics: Stephen Bloch-Schulman of Elon University's review of Elizabeth Minnich's The Evil of Banality: On the Life and Death Importance of Thinking, and Thomas D. Kennedy of Berry College's response to Michael Banner's The Ethics of Everyday Life.We hope you enjoy this last issue of our celebratory 100th year. And many thanks to all of our readers who provided such positive feedback on our ReSoundings initiative this year.Happy reading!

Sensus Divinitatis or Divine Hiddenness? Alvin Plantinga and J. L. Schellenberg on Knowledge of God

Knowledge and Christian Belief. By Alvin Plantinga. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2015. vii + 129 pp. $16.00 (paper).The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy's New Challenge to Belief in God. By J. L. Schellenberg. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. vii + 142 pp. $35.00 (cloth).Both of the books under review present important arguments for a broader audience that the authors had previously made in a more technical manner for professional philosophers. Plantingas also summarizes a long, distinguished, and provocative contribution to epistemology and thus requires more background to appreciate fully, so the treatments are unequal in length but I hope equal in illumination.For the past fifty years-ever since the publication of his first book God and Other Minds in 1967-Alvin Plantinga has been considered one of the most influential philosophers of religion in the world.1 Bom in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1932 of Dutch parents and brought up in the Christian Church, Plantinga taught at Wayne State University, Calvin College, and the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in 2010. In the first of several volumes published over the past few decades engaging critically with various aspects of his thought, the editors write: Besides his landmark work in the philosophy of religion, Plantinga has authored many penetrating and beautifully crafted studies in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. In particular, his writings in the area of metaphysics concerned with necessity, possibility, essence and accident are of profound significance.2Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, Plantinga's primary research focus began to shift from metaphysics to epistemology-both in regard to the general theory of knowledge and the rationality of religious belief. Against the common objection that belief in God is only rational if supported by valid philosophical arguments, the main assertion of Plantinga's Reformed Epistemology is that belief in God is in fact properly basic-that is, entirely rational whether any arguments support it or not.3 Such proper basicality is not unique to religious belief but also holds for memory, sense perception, and a priori beliefs regarding logical or mathematical truths. Plantinga thus argues not simply against the evidentialist objection to belief in God but against the broader epistemological framework in which it belongs, namely the classical foundationalism derived from Descartes and Locke. Along with his colleague Nicholas Wolterstorff, Plantinga was thus a signal voice in directing our attention away from exclusive concern about the validity or invalidity of specific theistic arguments to meta-epistemology, and thus to a deeper awareness that there is more than one way in which we can (and should) think about our intellectual obligations, assumptions, and capacities.In 1993 Plantinga published two substantial contributions to the general theory of knowledge, Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function, which were then followed in 2000 by a massive, five-hundred-page magnum opus, Warranted Christian Belief, in which he sought to synthesize his broader epistemological concerns with his religious convictions.4 Indeed, he says that Warranted Christian Belief serves simultaneously as the third volume in his Warrant trilogy and as a sequel to God and Other Minds and his classic essay Reason and Belief in God.5 As the common element in the title of all three volumes indicates, Plantingas distinctive concern is not with the more familiar epistemological category of justification (which he believes is inevitably and unhelpfully limited to concerns about intellectual obligations) but with warrant, which he defines as the elusive further quality or quantity which, or enough of which, stands between knowledge and mere true belief.6 That is, what must be added to a given instance of true belief in order for it to constitute actual knowledge? …

Jules and Augusta Dejerine: Crossing biographies

Jules and Augusta Dejerine: Crossing biographies

The Ninety-Ninth Floor by Michelle Hartman

over the woes of his defeat. But what makes Arjen remarkable is that he finally refuses to accept defeat. In retirement he finds himself irresistibly drawn back to his roots, searching for the home he never really had, like Hesling Alberda in Sykjend nei it lêste hûs (Searching for the last home), driven by “a desire to have something of my own, something I could call mine, that would make me feel safe and salvaged and human, yes, maybe something that rises above the material , something you cannot touch, but that gives emotional comfort, something you carry with you in your heart, something that looks like love.” It’s that quest for wholeness Arjen’s been pursuing his whole life which, in the end, saves him. Through constant flashbacks, past and present are inextricably intertwined in this novel, as, we come to realize, they are indeed in our own real lives. Here Van der Ploeg proves himself once again master of the human drama of ordinary people who often turn out most extraordinary, striving for significance against forces that would diminish, defeat, and destroy. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Jana Fawaz Elhassan. The NinetyNinth Floor. Trans. Michelle Hartman. Northampton, Massachusetts. Interlink Books. 2017. 288 pages. In Jana Fawaz Elhassan’s first translated novel, she explores the entwinement of passion and affection with despair and anger through children of the Lebanese Civil War when revisiting one of the Levant’s bloodiest eras. Set between the year 2000 in New York and early 1980s Lebanon, this multiple narrative penetrates the complexities of Arab identity in both the East and West. The Ninety-Ninth Floor, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2015, follows Palestinian Majd, a young man living in New York City as a gaming designer, and his Lebanese lover Hilda—a dancer from a right-wing Christian family. Majd’s traumatic upbringing included the murder of his pregnant mother, while he was left severely physically impaired from a vicious attack during the war. “Under the New York sky, even if I am using my cane as I walk through the streets, feelings of freedom sometimes overwhelm me. I walk at a slow, unhurried pace, and for a few moments absolute weightlessness envelops me: I am this nobody, a stranger, a transient on an anonymous path no one knows a thing about.” Sitting in his ninety-ninth-floor New York City office, Majd reflects on his present -day life and somber childhood at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp, where 3,500 civilians were massacred in 1982 by a Lebanese Christian militia. Hindered by the remnants of the war, his paranoia and inner conflicts begin to surface while contemplating his lost Palestinian identity alongside his romance with Hilda; a romance that blossomed under a toxic cloud, partly due to them once standing on opposing politico-religious sides of the civil war. Elhassan’s narrative alternates between the two lovers, offering a panoramic view of an unorthodox relationship. We also meet Majd’s mate, Mohsan, or Mike as he prefers in the US; a lecherous Lebanese lad who revels in Western liberties. Through Majd, Hilda, and Mike, Elhassan traverses the complex and often-clashing Lebanese/Palestinian generations, cultures, and religions. Detachment/displacement from homeland and the pressure this puts on Arab identity take center stage in the novel. To a degree, Elhassan follows suit with themes explored in Hoda Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter, Ghada Samman’s Beirut ’75, and Rabih Alameddine’s I, the Divine: A Novel in First Chapters, but at times the overly sentimental language smothers the story’s potential. Paul Robert Magocsi & Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern Jews and Ukrainians: A Millennium of Co-Existence University of Toronto Press Through a variety of different media, Jews and Ukrainians explores the political, societal, and economic arms within the coexisting but rarely converging Eastern European Jewish and Ukrainian communities. Embedded within various detailed chapters on a range of cultural topics, Jews and Ukrainians holds a wealth of knowledge that transcends academic writing to engage the audience. Baret Magarian The Fabrications Pleasure Boat Studio The Fabrications explores one writer’s ability to spin fiction into reality as...

American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History ed. by Darren Dochuk et al.

Reviewed by: American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History ed. by Darren Dochuk et al. Joel Carpenter American Evangelicalism: George Marsden and the State of American Religious History. Edited by Darren Dochuk, Thomas S. Kidd, and Kurt W. Peterson. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2014. Pp. xvi, 518. $66.00. ISBN 978-0-268-03842-7; e-ISBN 978-0-268-08988-7.) George Marsden, the topic and inspiration of this book of essays, is one of the most accomplished and influential historians in America. Over a teaching career that spanned forty-three years, Marsden’s work has reshaped American religious history. Marsden first made waves when he published Fundamentalism in American Culture (Oxford, 1980). This study came just in time to help observers puzzle out the religious commitments and cultural outlook that mobilized the Religious Right. Marsden’s next work, Reforming Fundamentalism (Grand Rapids, 1987), was a history of Fuller Theological Seminary, which became one of the most influential evangelical institutions. It is an elegant, witty, and finely nuanced account of how fundamentalists and other evangelical Protestants were shaping and being shaped by postwar American culture. For many historians these accomplishments would be enough to provide a solid reputation and career. Marsden’s intellectual curiosity was winding up, however, not down. His abiding interest in American higher education, the intellectual life it harbored, and what religion had to do with them yielded a trio of books, most notably The Soul of the American University (Oxford, 1994). Marsden’s longtime quest to understand Jonathan Edwards and his times finally bore fruit in Jonathan [End Page 639] Edwards: A Life (New Haven, 2003), a multiple prize-winner in the profession and beyond. Even in retirement Marsden continues to ruminate over aspects of American life and thought, notably The Twilight of the American Enlightenment: The 1950s and the Crisis of Liberal Belief (New York, 2014), and a forthcoming study of the American impact of C. S. Lewis’s classic, Mere Christianity (New York, 1952). Not the least of Marsden’s accomplishments has been his mentoring of doctoral students, first at Duke University and then at Notre Dame. Three of his protégés—Darren Dochuk of Notre Dame, Thomas Kidd of Baylor, and Kurt Peterson of Loyola University—organized this book. It might look like a Festschrift, they admit, but they aim to do more than memorialize their professor and show off their skills. So they structured the book to address a “wider discussion about … the history of evangelicalism and American religion, the challenges and opportunities facing the next wave of religious historians, and the unchanging virtues of good historical writing” (p. 9). Each section represents one of Marsden’s major works and provides readers with three features: a guide to the topic’s historical literature and arguments, a reckoning with Marsden’s accomplishments, and some “new directions” that build on or contest Marsden’s approach. This book needs to be on the reading list of anyone who has an interest in this field. It is tailor-made for a seminar in the history of American evangelicalism. It includes some of the best historiographic chapters that one can find in American religious history, notably Douglass Sweeney on religion in colonial America, Margaret Bendroth on “The Evangelical Mind and the Historians” since the nineteenth century, and Barry Hankins on historians’ debates over fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Likewise, the “new directions” essays are a remarkable display of talent and interpretive verve. They include Jay Case’s arresting account of an “African American Great Awakening” following the Civil War, Kristin Kobes DuMez’s case study of how world Christianity should be “reorienting” American religious history, Timothy Gloege on the liberal theologians in fundamentalist Reuben Torrey’s mental closet, John Turner on the impact of evangelical campus ministries, Kathryn Long on the impact of evangelical missionaries on 1950s popular culture, and David Swartz on the rise and dissipation of the Evangelical Left in the 1970s. If the quality of scholarship on display in this book is any indication of George Marsden’s influence, it has been powerful indeed. Joel Carpenter Nagel Institute, Calvin College Grand Rapids, MI Copyright © 2016 The Catholic...

Einum by Froon Akker (pseudonym for Koos Tiemersma)

Fiction Froon Akker (pseudonym for Koos Tiemersma). Einum. Ljouwert, Netherlands. Elikser Uitgeverij. 2015. 311 pages. In 2010 Koos Tiemersma intimated that Under Water would be his last published novel. Fortunately, and to the delight of his appreciative readers, he changed his mind. Each of his novels has been distinctively different from the previous one, and Einum follows the pattern. In fact, it is more a collection of stories than a traditional novel, though all eighteen stories interconnect through place and persons. Remarkably, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The reader enters a nearly forgotten and mostly disregarded dump of a town, Einum, its neglected old dwellings ready to be razed. But by the time the reader exits and closes the book, the dilapidated neighborhood with its motley assortment of residents has memorably entered the mind and imagination as if the scenes and events had been projected on a screen. Here we have not just the life of a family but of eighteen individuals, connected closely or remotely but memorably rendered. None of the main characters is forgettable . Not Walburg, the old widowed farmer who’s been deprived of sex too long and savors the chance to satisfy his lust. Not Lidy, the greedy conniver who offers sex to Walburg as a means of gaining his property . Not Casper, the pedophile who’s trying to escape his past and finally succeeds through suicide. Not Jente, the teenage birder who discovers the North American thrush that winged its way across lands and ocean all the way from Newfoundland to Einum, an event that suddenly thrusts forsaken Einum into the glaring spotlight of fellow birders and the media. Not Jan and Alie, the aging couple who can barely hold on, the burden of Alie’s dementia slowly but surely depleting Jan’s ability and will to take care of her. These are among the Einum neighborhood residents whose interrelated stories weave together into the tapestry that provides the book with a unique reading experience. Unique not only because these simple, ordinary-seeming people come so vividly and multidimensionally alive but also because of the author’s decision to cast much of his prose in an unusual style of minimal punctuation. At first somewhat confusing, the reader quickly adjusts to the cascading thoughts and observations and details that flow into the verbal stream and carry the reader along toward a more participatory and intimate experience of character and action. The book comes to a most satisfying expression in the poignant concluding story, where Jan, at Alie’s insistence, drives her to the water’s edge to meet that rare visitor from Newfoundland. He embraces and kisses her, as his internal battle rages. Then he lets her go, Alie striding in the dark toward the water. But she comes back; “she looks up at him and true heartedly says the little bird is gone Jan.” The wondrous little thrush from a faraway land that anchored these stories has gone, but Einum lives on, for the reader has come to realize that its people are all around us. The author was awarded Friesland’s most prestigious literary honor for this book, the Gysbert Japicx Prize. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Laurent Binet. La septième fonction du langage. Paris. Grasset. 2015. 494 pages. In 2010 Laurent Binet published a very promising first novel, HHhH, which recounted the 1942 assassination of Nazi general Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance fighters. While Binet’s new novel is very different in terms of content and tone, it also reflects the author’s preoccupation with the interaction between narrative fiction and historical events. A learned exercise in satire, the “Seventh Function of Language” turns Roland Barthes’s accidental death in 1980 into a mind-boggling murder investigation that uncovers a vast conspiracy, set against the backdrop of Parisian literary life, during World Literature in Review 82 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2016 ...

La septième fonction du langage by Laurent Binet

Fiction Froon Akker (pseudonym for Koos Tiemersma). Einum. Ljouwert, Netherlands. Elikser Uitgeverij. 2015. 311 pages. In 2010 Koos Tiemersma intimated that Under Water would be his last published novel. Fortunately, and to the delight of his appreciative readers, he changed his mind. Each of his novels has been distinctively different from the previous one, and Einum follows the pattern. In fact, it is more a collection of stories than a traditional novel, though all eighteen stories interconnect through place and persons. Remarkably, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The reader enters a nearly forgotten and mostly disregarded dump of a town, Einum, its neglected old dwellings ready to be razed. But by the time the reader exits and closes the book, the dilapidated neighborhood with its motley assortment of residents has memorably entered the mind and imagination as if the scenes and events had been projected on a screen. Here we have not just the life of a family but of eighteen individuals, connected closely or remotely but memorably rendered. None of the main characters is forgettable . Not Walburg, the old widowed farmer who’s been deprived of sex too long and savors the chance to satisfy his lust. Not Lidy, the greedy conniver who offers sex to Walburg as a means of gaining his property . Not Casper, the pedophile who’s trying to escape his past and finally succeeds through suicide. Not Jente, the teenage birder who discovers the North American thrush that winged its way across lands and ocean all the way from Newfoundland to Einum, an event that suddenly thrusts forsaken Einum into the glaring spotlight of fellow birders and the media. Not Jan and Alie, the aging couple who can barely hold on, the burden of Alie’s dementia slowly but surely depleting Jan’s ability and will to take care of her. These are among the Einum neighborhood residents whose interrelated stories weave together into the tapestry that provides the book with a unique reading experience. Unique not only because these simple, ordinary-seeming people come so vividly and multidimensionally alive but also because of the author’s decision to cast much of his prose in an unusual style of minimal punctuation. At first somewhat confusing, the reader quickly adjusts to the cascading thoughts and observations and details that flow into the verbal stream and carry the reader along toward a more participatory and intimate experience of character and action. The book comes to a most satisfying expression in the poignant concluding story, where Jan, at Alie’s insistence, drives her to the water’s edge to meet that rare visitor from Newfoundland. He embraces and kisses her, as his internal battle rages. Then he lets her go, Alie striding in the dark toward the water. But she comes back; “she looks up at him and true heartedly says the little bird is gone Jan.” The wondrous little thrush from a faraway land that anchored these stories has gone, but Einum lives on, for the reader has come to realize that its people are all around us. The author was awarded Friesland’s most prestigious literary honor for this book, the Gysbert Japicx Prize. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Laurent Binet. La septième fonction du langage. Paris. Grasset. 2015. 494 pages. In 2010 Laurent Binet published a very promising first novel, HHhH, which recounted the 1942 assassination of Nazi general Reinhard Heydrich by Czech resistance fighters. While Binet’s new novel is very different in terms of content and tone, it also reflects the author’s preoccupation with the interaction between narrative fiction and historical events. A learned exercise in satire, the “Seventh Function of Language” turns Roland Barthes’s accidental death in 1980 into a mind-boggling murder investigation that uncovers a vast conspiracy, set against the backdrop of Parisian literary life, during World Literature in Review 82 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2016 the heyday of what came to be known in the United States as “French Theory.” Since the seasoned detective assigned to the case is less than familiar with postmodernist jargon, he recruits a young professor to guide him through a maze of literary as well as investigative...

Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas by Christian Kracht

as the ending of the fox and raven fable, in which an ant with a violin teams up with an opera-singing human shark and they play havoc together. The author is both an award-winning painter and poet. The vivid details, poetic touches, and allusions in these stories attest to that: Kandinsky, Ensor, Munch, Hoffmann , Goethe, Grimm, Pushkin, Doctor Zhivago, and others. He is currently under nomination for the 2015 Gysbert Japicx Prize for fiction. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Amitav Ghosh. Flood of Fire. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2015. isbn 9780374174248 Throughout his work, Amitav Ghosh considers the ramifications of commercial, political, historical, and personal networks that span the globe. In the final novel of his Ibis trilogy , Ghosh interweaves the storylines of the preceding novels in a manner that underscores the plot-driven quality of these novels and Ghosh’s penchant for thinking in global terms. In Flood of Fire, Ghosh reacquaints readers with several characters introduced in Sea of Poppies, including Neel Rattan Halder, Zachary Reid, Paulette Lambert, and Baboo Nob Kissin. Amid romance plots and battle scenes on land and water, Ghosh continues to probe the historical implications of a messianic free-trade doctrine in language that applies to contemporary critiques of capitalism’s excesses. As the back matter in the Ibis novels indicates, Ghosh has profound respect for archival sources. At times Ghosh’s love of detail gets the better of his storytelling acumen and mundane information bogs down the narrative. Fortunately , more frequently, Ghosh imbues his descriptive passages with a brio that entertains and intrigues: “Few were the tamashas that could compare with the spectacle of the Bengal Native Infantry on the march. Every member of the paltan was aware of this—dandia-wallahs, naach-girls, bangyburdars, syces, mess-consummers, berry-wallahs, bhisties—but none more so than Havildar Kesri Singh, whose face served as the battalion’s figurehead when he rode at the head of the column.” Among the new characters introduced in Flood of Fire, Kesri Singh is the most compelling. Kesri, Deeti’s older brother, leaves his village to join a regiment in the East India Company, serving with honor in what Kesri increasingly realizes is a dishonorable enterprise. Not only does Kesri recognize that “in a lifetime of soldiering he had never known what it was to fight . . . for something that tied you to your fathers and mothers,” he also realizes that “doing his job” in the service of the East India Company makes him little different from “hired murderers.” Kesri’s eventual disenchantment with the system he serves is contrasted with the development of Zachary Reid from “an ingenuous, good-natured boy” into what Baboo Nob Kissin considers “a perfect embodiment of the Kali-yuga,” the age of vice in Hindu cosmology. While Ghosh often treats his characters with generosity and empathy, the portrayal of Zachary steadily turns unsympathetic: “I have become . . . a man of the times . . . a man who wants more and more and more; a man who does not know the meaning of ‘enough.’ Anyone who tries to thwart my desires is the enemy of liberty.” In the Ibis trilogy, Ghosh shows us a different kind of liberty built upon a love of language, an unflinching appraisal of human folly, and the hope that telling stories can bring us a better, perhaps more benevolent , future. Jim Hannan Le Moyne College Christian Kracht. Imperium: A Fiction of the South Seas. Daniel Bowles, tr. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2015. isbn 9780374175245 The “imperium” of the title refers, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to Germany at the “global zenith of [its] influence” around the beginning of the last century when it actually boasted colonies, including this one in the South Seas. It also suggests the heavenly utopia Kracht’s hero aspires to create here. The story is that of an overzealous pursuit of an idealism so ludicrous that it could come only from actual history—typical of that era of fads and fanaticisms. It is an idealism whose extremism Kracht admits has undeniable parallels to that of another “romantic vegetarian” whose dystopia became tragic historical reality all too soon after this one. This is the story of August...

The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons by Goli Taraghi

eager to break the silence. I always kept it to myself, and it was as if I had built a wall around myself. But at last the wall collapses .” And the painful memories surface: of mass killings, including women and children; beheadings; finding the shallow graves of thousands of fallen young soldiers ; officers without a conscience sending their men into war-crime scenarios; seeing best buddies die; leaving behind lovers and their children when a political settlement was finally reached and they returned home. But what happened in the jungles of Indonesia came home with them, and they would never be the same. More than five thousand did not come home. Speerstra visits those stories, too, of bereaved parents whose grief never went away, or of fiancées who waited in vain. And though there is an inevitable similarity running through these stories, no two are the same. Speerstra’s storytelling powers are fully exercised here by varying the narrative techniques and by letting each subject tell his story in his own unique way. Characteristically, the author allows the stories their emotional dimension. In many of these stories, he listens to the heartbeat of a lost generation; in recording them, he makes sure that the war and its cost are no longer forgotten. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Goli Taraghi. The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons. Sara Khalili, tr. New York. W. W. Norton. 2015 (©2013). isbn 9780393063332 Goli Taraghi, a renowned Iranian female author, now in her seventies, has lived in Iran, the US, and France and has written and published both before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and after. Her latest collection, published in English, The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons, includes ten short stories that cover various moments and eras in the span of her life, taking place in Tehran, Paris, and other cities in between and beyond. These stories seem to be mainly based on either Taraghi’s own life or on other women she has met throughout her life and journeys. Some of her themes include three generations of women, a thief, a ballet class, neighborhood young loves, a coup d’état, grandmothers, the intertwined lives of maids, nannies, and their employers. Of the stories in the collection, only three are primarily about male characters; interestingly , they are entitled “In Another Place,” “The Great Lady of My Soul,” and “The Other One,” and even these are, in one way or another, stories with a female center. Taraghi writes of the world around her, allowing her to indulge herself and her readers in the well-represented familiar world but limiting her ability to take her readers beyond her immediate surroundings , beyond her social class and lifestyle. Her stories are strongest when she delves into (re)creating a world with its events and characters, and when she stays within the bounds of simple storytelling, rather than trying to use intricate plot devices that might be more harmful than helpful to the story. On another note, the stories are not the strongest with regard to rhythm and pacing, tone and voice, as these do not change much from one story to another, from one context to another. Goli Taraghi is a storyteller who reminds you of a grandmother who gathers her grandkids around her at night and tells stories of a life, a life wished for and gone by, struggled for and let go of, remembered and recounted. Her stories are simple and accessible, yet they revive peoples who are not simple and accessible. Her stories are happy, hopeful, and humane while simultaneously sad, dark, and heartbreaking. Without any forced gestures, they invite you to sit, listen, imagine, and think about these lives. It is for these very reasons that Sheniz Janmohamed Firesmoke TSAR This collection of poems from Sheniz Janmohamed spans three poetic forms in its quest to uncover both truths about the soul and the life cycle of fire. Using images of nature and combining them with references to history and the tenets of her cultural heritage to evoke beautiful examinations into life, Janmohamed’s writing is wonderfully complex in its simplicity. C Fong Hsiung Picture Bride TSAR This novel about a Chinese Indian girl forced...

Op klompen troch de dessa by Hylke Speerstra

68 WLT SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2015 There are several technical points that mar this work, the first of which can be attributed to neither the author nor the translator. Columbia University Press made the inexplicable decision to set the work in a sans serif font, which is difficult to read. Second, each page has a light gray circle in the center, echoing the one formed by the cover, that further distracts from the text. Third, each of the six chapters has, sequentially at the top of the first page, several of the steps necessary to fold an origami crane. There is certainly a connection between the atomic bombings and origami cranes, but this seems overly precious and disconnected from the literature. Erik R. Lofgren Bucknell University Hylke Speerstra. Op klompen troch de dessa. Gorredijk, Netherlands. Bornmeer. 2014. isbn 9789056153359 Friesland’s best-selling author has done it again; this time a collection of stories from survivors of the ill-advised and illfated attempt by the Dutch government to maintain colonial control of Indonesia. Shortly after the end of World War II, the Dutch sent one hundred thousand of their young men, many of them still in their teens, to gruesome combat in the jungles and rice fields of Indonesia. They went illprepared and ill-equipped. (The book’s title alludes to that: In wooden shoes through the rice fields.) They left behind siblings, parents, girlfriends, fiancées, and dreams of a future. Led to believe that they were fighting for a just cause, they discovered that they had been betrayed, that they were rather engaged in a guerilla warfare that would continue to haunt them with its shame and guilt. Hylke Speerstra, as he had done with Dutch emigrants who after World War II scattered across the globe (Cruel Paradise, 2005), searched out survivors of this dark chapter in Dutch history and gathered their stories. The story, for example, of Ale van der Meer who in the Depression years worked for a pittance, was picked up by the Germans in World War II and sent to a forced-labor camp (from which he walked back at war’s end weighing less than a hundred pounds), was pressed into military service and sent to Indonesia not long after that, became part of a firing squad carrying out executions, and shot a suspected sniper who turned out to be a young lad of twelve or thirteen: memories that tore at his soul the rest of his life. Survivors break their long silence in these stories. In the words of one: “I’m World Literature in Review eager to break the silence. I always kept it to myself, and it was as if I had built a wall around myself. But at last the wall collapses .” And the painful memories surface: of mass killings, including women and children; beheadings; finding the shallow graves of thousands of fallen young soldiers ; officers without a conscience sending their men into war-crime scenarios; seeing best buddies die; leaving behind lovers and their children when a political settlement was finally reached and they returned home. But what happened in the jungles of Indonesia came home with them, and they would never be the same. More than five thousand did not come home. Speerstra visits those stories, too, of bereaved parents whose grief never went away, or of fiancées who waited in vain. And though there is an inevitable similarity running through these stories, no two are the same. Speerstra’s storytelling powers are fully exercised here by varying the narrative techniques and by letting each subject tell his story in his own unique way. Characteristically, the author allows the stories their emotional dimension. In many of these stories, he listens to the heartbeat of a lost generation; in recording them, he makes sure that the war and its cost are no longer forgotten. Henry J. Baron Calvin College Goli Taraghi. The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons. Sara Khalili, tr. New York. W. W. Norton. 2015 (©2013). isbn 9780393063332 Goli Taraghi, a renowned Iranian female author, now in her seventies, has lived in Iran, the US, and France and has written and published both before the Islamic Revolution...

Interview with Jonathan Wilson‐Hartgrove

Interview with Jonathan Wilson‐Hartgrove Pamela D. Winfield Jonathan Wilson‐Hartgrove is a founding member of Rutba House, a New Monastic community in Durham, NC. He is author of Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, The Awakening of Hope, The Wisdom of Stability, and The New Monasticism. As a leader in the New Monastic movement, he speaks often about emerging Christianity to churches and conferences across the denominational spectrum and has given lectures at dozens of universities, including Calvin College, Bethel University, Duke University, Swarthmore College, St. John's University, DePaul University, and Baylor University. When you say “New Monasticism,” please explain your terms. First, what does it mean to be “new?” Well, first of all, let me thank you for the chance to reflect on this. This is kind of a reflection after ten years for me, because it was ten years ago in 2004 when we invited representatives from about thirty different communities around the United States to gather in North Carolina for a time of reflection. Out of that, we came to name what our communities have in common as a New Monasticism. Why “new?” Because we knew, as we talked with one another, that we weren't overwhelmingly Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. We certainly had a few folks from those traditions with us, but we were lots of us Baptist and Methodist and Presbyterian and non‐denominational evangelical. This is a very ecumenical group, and so the established orders as they exist within those traditions—well, we didn't quite fit. And we knew that we were single people and married people, and while there's some of that in the monastic tradition, it certainly hasn't become the norm. So, we knew that that was something that was “new.” And I think the only thing I would say about the “new” in New Monasticism is that from the very beginning, we always said that this wasn't about being novel, because novelty seems to be one of the temptations of our kind of consumerist culture. We didn't want to do anything new because it would be novel, but we just wanted to acknowledge that we were at least experiencing a new expression of the monastic impulse. So when we started talking to Benedictines and Franciscans and folks like that, they said to us, “We would prefer not to be called ‘the old monastics.’ But maybe you could call us ‘the classic monastics.' ” What does it mean to be “monastic?” I think what we found hopeful in monasticism was this ancient, longstanding tradition in the church of small groups of people relocating to marginal places to experiment in a new way of being Christian, and to do that in relationship with the church. I grew up Baptist in North Carolina and one of the things—well, many of the things I was struggling with—were just the tensions around American individualism, the way materialism has shaped church culture, the way nationalism so defines identity for many Christians in America, [and] the way race has shaped identity for many folks in and outside of the church. All of those are really issues about identity and about what kind of practices shape us into who we understand ourselves to be. What we talked about that week here in Durham was how these little communities were experimenting in rhythms of life, and ways of being together, that allowed us to be challenged by the gospel, and to be essentially re‐formed personally by everyday practices and by our lives together. So that's why “monasticism.” How is this different from or similar to other Christian renewal movements? What we noted is that in American Christianity, so often, reform movements end up producing new denominations—a new kind of church. And so the great American idea is that whoever wants to reform is going to be the “true” church for the first time. And we thought that that was—well—we thought that that had happened enough times—and that we probably didn't need to, you know, start the “Real Real Christian Church of North America” or something like that. Monasticism gave us a pattern by...