A not-nearly-next-to-last word on the recent splurge of faith & politics postings here. But I had to force myself to stroll through ye olde Barnes & Noble the other night. I left completely empty-handed and completely satisfied for doing so. There's just something similar to depriving a more normal person of oxygen when you bleed a bookworm of time to explore new lit. And with all due respect to the many online book retailers who have accepted a substantial chunk of my income, there's a much-needed place for the physical shopping experience that can't be beat.
Something that was new to me was a book by David Gushee - "The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center." I swore I wouldn't force 100 such books onto my reading list. In all honesty, it feels like 2 or 3 would have done, but that didn't stop me from going through 5 or 6. What made this more than a curiosity for me was that it explores the concept of what an "evangelical center" might be comprised of. Anyone with an ear to news over the last twenty years might know about the religious right. And there's a recent resurgence of interest in defining a religious left. By definition, it would seem there has to be a center ... somewhere.
From the skimming I managed to accomplish, Gushee does what seems to be a good job of defining it theologically instead of politically. What qualified as the most pleasant surprise of the book was the author's section on the music that exemplifies his definition of the evangelical center. Something like two or three pages devoted to Derek Webb were securely tucked into the conversation. That almost compelled me to head to the register and plunk down the university press-inflated sticker price for the book.
Gushee's book is mentioned in a lengthy list of similar books on the topic in USA Today. I'm increasingly confident that I'll wrap up my reading on the topic with Shane Claiborne's "Jesus for President" and leave it at that. But I'll confess that Domke's "The God Strategy" is tempting like few books could.
The somewhat short synopsis of what I might summarize the overall reading project would be is that I've found myself increasingly embracing Greg Boyd's thesis from "Myth of a Christian Nation." From a couple of posts back, I've just more fullness in his view where I've previously questioned it as seemingly incomplete.
