Book Reviews

Have you ever criticized your own country – the government, the way Australians behave sometimes, the attitudes some people have?  Criticized it because you care about it and want it to be better.

In Re-Reading Paul: A fresh look at his attitude to Torah and to Judaism, Brendan Byrne suggests Paul is not so much saying that the Torah was no longer valid but that there was a need for revitalizing its core.  It was also not necessary for Gentiles to accept all elements of the Torah when they became Christian.

The Booklet has been given to all theological students in the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania of the Uniting Church in Australia.  In it many ideas taught about Paul in the past century have been shown to be biased and inaccurate if one reads Paul carefully and in the context of his time.  There is no disputing the fact that Paul’s certainty that Jesus is the Messiah is a major point of division between Christians and Jews.  Paul felt he was living in the end times and his understanding of who Jesus is changed his understanding as a Jew.  This book makes not attempt to suggest Christianity and Judaism are the same.

Have you ever wondered how we deal with the violent aspects of our faith traditions?  How do we hear the ‘good news’ in passages of scripture which are, when we are honest about it, gruesomely violent? It is not easy for many of us to accept that violence lies at the heart of scripture – whether that scripture is Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu or other religious traditions. Often instead of acknowledging and openly dealing with violence we ignore it, pretend it is not there, or explain it away as some sort of unfortunate aberration. In this book of collected papers by a range of Australian scholars some of these questions are addressed – from a variety of faith traditions.

When I was little, I had a new dress each year.  Then last year’s dress became the old dress.  One of my first theological questions (probably about the age of five) was ‘ what happens to the old testament when there is a new New Testament and the New Testament becomes the old Testament.

How do we read ‘The Old Testament’ as Christians without interpreting it through Christian eyes and seeing its only value in pointing to Jesus?  How do we read the New Testament without denigrating  the Jews?

As the Introduction to the booklet “Rightly Explaining the Word of Truth” says:

For many years it has been recognised by scholars - theologians, historians and philosophers - that there are passages in the New Testament which refer to Judaism and the Jews in terms of animosity. For almost two millennia those passages of the New Testament have caused misunderstandings of Judaism and provoked odium of Jews amongst Christian communities. More particularly those passages have been exploited throughout the ages and continue to be exploited by countless persons for political and social ends, and in some quarters for religious purposes. Hate and odium have led to and created antisemitism expressed by suspicion, mistrust, contempt, prejudice, false charges, discrimination of Jews by Christians, and by persecution, brutalities, forced conversions on pain of death, pogroms, murders and massacres of Jews as exemplified by the Crusades, the York Tower massacre, the Spanish inquisition, the Chmielnicki massacres, subsequent and countless pogroms in Eastern Europe. Those events were all overshadowed by the ultimate of all horrors in the history of mankind the Holocaust perpetrated by pagan Nazis with the full and active participation of, among others, German, Austrian, French, Polish and Hungarian Christians.

The Dignity of Difference: How to avoid the clash of civilizations
Jonathan Sacks, Continuum, 2nd Edition, London, 2003.

Jonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom since 1991. He is a well-known philosopher and theologian, writer and broadcaster.

In The Dignity of Difference Sacks reflects on the issue of the rapidly changing world, on globalisation and its impact. He argues that the economics and politics of globalisation have an inescapable moral dimension and that therefore great responsibility now lies with the world’s religious communities. Sacks goes further in that he argues that difference, and in particular religious difference, is God-given. It is God who created and honours the diversity.

Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think
John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Gallup Press, New York, 2007

There is no shortage of ways of finding out about Islam. Since the “September 11” attack in 2001, there have been numerous lectures, public forums, inter-faith dialogues, “Muslim Awareness Weeks,” Mosque Open Days and book launches. There is even a show on SBS.

This book is different.

Gallup, a name we associate with election polling, has undertaken a massive global research study, interviewing over a billion Muslims from every corner of the globe. Gallup claims it’s the largest study of its kind ever undertaken.

Jonah, Jesus and Other Good Coyotes
Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, Abingdon, 2007

During the Howard era, “People Smugglers” became part of the dirty vocabulary promulgated to justify border protection. It gained traction as part of a suite of fear-based “them-and-us” policies designed to keep “us” safe from people who might want to destroy our way of life. “People smugglers” were the bad guys ripping off “queue-jumpers” and leaving them to sink in leaky boats. The Ruddock idea was that if you could make our detention centres bad enough, this would deter the “illegals” in the first place and stop the “trade” of “people smuggling.” The word would get around and they wouldn’t come!

But what about good “people smugglers”? What if there are good people wanting to help those seeking to escape desperate situations? Surely they are unsung heroes! There are enough examples of good people hiding Jews and others facing certain death from the Nazi’s during the Second World War to give us pause for thought.

Transformation by Integration: How Inter-faith Encounter Changes Christianity
Perry Schmidt-Leukel, SCM, London, 2009

Perry Schmidt-Leukel has been writing and publishing on Christian theology and inter-faith relations for many years; unfortunately most of his writing has been in German, and has not been translated into English. Scmidt-Leukel has long proposed a (broadly) pluralist understanding of inter-faith relations. This book publishes for the first time in English some recent essays of Schmidt-Leukel which have previously appeared in German theological publications, as well as some new work.

The Quiet Revolution: The Emergence of Interfaith Consciousness

Peter Kirkwood, ABC Books, 2007

In The Quiet Revolution, past producer of the ABC program Compass Peter Kirkwood, surveys the course of pioneering leaders, local interfaith communities and international organisations as they chart their way through the new and rapidly changing religious landscape and spearhead the importance of interfaith dialogue. Quoting from Karen Armstrong, historian of religion, Kirkwood likens the current religious landscape we live in as another Axial period for religion. According to Armstrong, this ‘Axial period is on par with the first Axial Age when the great prophets and sages appeared who ushered in the major world faiths’ (p.7). These “great prophets” and “sages” are the current and emerging key thinkers, local interfaith communities and international organisations in our current time that Kirkwood explores in his book.

Interfaith Dialogue at the Grass Roots

Rebecca Kratz Mays, Editor
Ecumenical Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2008

In his contribution to ‘Interfaith Dialogue at the grass roots' Kahleel Mohammed asks the question - "Is what passes as interfaith dialogue in most cases WOMBAT?". For those of you over about 35, this is not a passing reference to Australian contributions to interfaith work, but rather another acronym - ‘Waste Of Money, Brains And Time'. It is a question I have come across often in my own journey in interfaith relations - sometimes from those comfortable in their own faith tradition who don't see any point in talking with ‘the other', and sometimes from those who are passionately involved in interfaith work.