BOOK REVIEWS
Just before I entered the House of Lords, I enjoyed a brief few years reviewing major books of interest to the worlds of theology and spirituality. The following are just a handful of the titles I reviewed in those years. My entry to parliament limited the time I had available to continue with this activity.
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“The Good Book: a secular bible” by A. C. Grayling [Bloomsbury]
Grayling is an atheist and brought this book out in 2011 just as the 400th anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible was being celebrated.
“The good man JESUS and the scoundrel CHRIST” by Phillip Pullman [Canongate]
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Phillip Pullman is a first-rate novelist and known as being critical of organised Christianity. It was Rowan Williams whose challenge to Pullman resulted in the writing of this book.
“Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction” by Rowan Williams [Continuum]
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This volume appeared in 2008, a year when the then Archbishop of Canterbury was facing meetings that threatened to do lasting damage to the worldwide Anglican communion.
“A Brand from the Burning: a life of John Wesley” by Roy Hattersley [Little Brown] – with two other titles all published in 2002
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Hattersley was always a fine writer but is at time out of his depth with this book and yet some of his insights and observations are quite brilliant.
“Holocaust Politics” by John Roth [John Knox Press] and one other volume.
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A full-frontal yet accessible presentation of the Shoah and the way it is so often used by those wanting to press their own particular angle of view.
"A History of Christianity” by Diarmaid McCulloch [Allen Lane]
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This massive tome was the companion volume to a lengthy television series in 2009.
“Just as I am” the autobiography of Billy Graham [Harper and Collins]
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The most famous evangelist of them all offers a rounded picture of his life and achievements – an leaves himself open to a certain amount of criticism.
"The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech” by Don Cupitt [SCM]
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Here is the architect of ‘SoFa’ (Sea of Faith) thinking – a kind of Christian atheism. Cupitt’s 1999 little book seeks to bring thinking about faith back from its other-worldly and dogmatic dimensions into the world of everyday life.
“Doubts and Loves: What is left of Christianity?” by Richard Holloway [Canongate]
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Like Don Cupitt (above), here is a writer who wanted to demystify and to anchor the Christian faith in the language and life of the contemporary world.
“The Autobiography of Martin Luther King”; and “The Sermons of Martin Luther King”; edited by Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran [Little, Brown and Company].
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Twin volumes that get the quintessential qualities of King just right without playing down his faults.
