ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

This may become  a permanent [lame] feature on my blog so long as I’m in school. It screams “I’m desperate for content but too lazy to write anything original, so I’ll just blog about the boring stuff that I’m doing day in and day out.” Then again, someone out there may actually be interested to hear about some of these books, so here goes.

CH 8455 ~ For my class on the history of Christianity in China, I just finished China’s Christian Millions by Tony Lambert (2006). I felt like Lambert relied a little too heavily on anecdotal evidence and not enough on outside sources, and his image of the church in China was a little pristine for my taste. I guess it’s the cynic in me, but I felt like he only gave potential problems a passing mention and then moved on. Nevertheless, it was an intriguing and exciting overview of the growth of Christianity in China and I learned a lot of things about Chinese Christianity in addition to Chinese culture and government that I never knew. Plus Lambert mentioned a few female pastors in China, which is always +1 awesome with me.

Next up for the class I have Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman (2006) on the way.

CH 9000 ~ The required text that I have to read by Monday is After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in the Delta, 1875-1915 by John M. Giggie. So far I’m loving it. I just finished the chapter on the black fraternal orders, which taught me a lot about late 19th century freemasonry. I’m saving some of the sections I have read to blog about in February for Black History Month.

I’m also reading Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. It’s one of the alternate texts for the next meeting, and as the lone master’s student in the class I’m not required to read it, but since I’m interested in women’s religious history, I wanted to. It’s been very educational, but so far I’m not falling in love with it like I am After Redemption. I feel like it contains lots of numbers and statistics and names and places and dates, but very few personal accounts of what life was actually like for these women (which may not be Higginbotham’s fault; the sources may not have been available). Giggie seems to do a better job bringing the people to life for me. Still, I’m only a few chapters into it and there’s still plenty of time to fall in love with it.

ST 5102 ~ For my theology class next week, I’m supposed to read the following chapters from Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology (1998):

I like Millard Erickson, but so far the text is too simplified for my liking. Perhaps I’ve picked up more about theology over the years than I thought I had.

Other ~ After our discussion of The Shack by William Paul Young (2007) over at Tim’s blog, I finally picked it up to read. I’ve heard a ton about it and read plenty of complaints and debate about it, but hadn’t read it yet because I’m something of a snob about evangelical fads. I have many thoughts on it so far, but I’ll probably save them for Tim’s blog when I finish it.

So ends the book notes for this week. See ya next week!