The Little Friar

Dale Fredrickson's spoken-word album, Blessed is the Man , is the audio recording of Fredrickson's inner dialogue on one of the most timely topics for the church these days:  Toxic masculinity.  Alternating between traditional musical pieces, purely spoken-word and a mix in-between, the album depicts a man very much wrestling with the question of how to be a Christian example in our current imperial patriarchy.  Some songs are immediately personal -- recounting the displays of love between the artist and his father, and how Fredrickson displays love to his own son.  Other songs are equally intimate but told from the perspective of biblical men like Joseph and Peter. The collection is thoughtful and well-written.  And thankfully, Fredrickson aims more to give us fodder for contemplation than ideas for solutions.  The music probably won't stand up alone, so this isn't an album for entertainment, but the instrumentals will help the hearer dig deep into t...

The roads to Zion softly mourn, her women raped beside; within the sanguine city square the dandled infant dies. In streets the ruthless sword unties the husband from his wife; in every house and every home it strips away all life. With fury and with burning wrath the Lord became our foe, to ruin every standing wall and render every woe until the sabbaths come to end, and all the feasts have failed, and law as coward flees away before the whip and flail, and prophet's visions surely cease (their lies the Lord detests), and babies' blood pours gushing out upon their mothers' breasts. The joy of all the endless earth has vanished in the flame. Completion of all beauty's life became a jeering name. A gnawing, biting, hungry void a ruthless need now gives as mothers boil bonny babes that other babes might live, and women eat their children sweet, the ones for whom they care, for none the aching famine leaves, and none the famine spares. On holy temple precin...

2020 has been a strange year.  Especially for those in ministry.  And doubly so for those just setting out in ministry.  You've written your exams, you've survived your psychologicals and every other interview before committee after committee.  Seminary is just behind you.  So now you face the daunting task of discerning who and Whose you are in ministry on the ground.  Where do you turn?  Here's my recommendation of those books you should read every year.  I'm listing a sort of book-of-the-month club for new clergy, but seasoned clergy might well consider this an annual tradition.  These are those books to which I personally turn year in and year out.  In the past, I've made the list assuming an simple annual rotation.  This time, I'm making a two-year rotation (year A and year B) Gregory the Great's Pastoral Rule (Year A) and George Herbert's Country Parson (Year B) Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline (Year A) and his The Humanit...

T. Wilson Dickinson's The Green Good News: Christ's Path to Sustainable and Joyful Life tells the story of the Gospel that is focused on firmly on Jesus, and told in a way that includes the entire world.  Reading this book in the middle of a global pandemic has been a balm, precisely because the world is in so much pain and groans for its own redemption in ways Dickinson has learned to hear.  He admits, quite early on, that he hasn't always had an ear for this "green" Gospel.  The damage we have already done to the earth -- at least from the perspective of scientists -- is already irreparable in so many ways.  With rising temperatures, water levels, weather extremes, carbon emissions and resource consumption, there has been very little good about the world's news.  But Wilkinson invites us to hear Jesus again, learning to listen to the Gospel -- the good news -- that is told in such a way that the world will hear its own redemption. Dickinson divides the boo...

Ragy Girgis's On Satan, Demons, and Psychiatry offers an in-depth analysis of one of the most neglected topics in biblical study -- the way in which mental illness is commonly associated with psychosis, and how that association often influences the way in which we read biblical narratives. The Bible is replete, according to Girgis, with narratives that speak to themes commonly associated with mental illness -- severe depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, for examples.  In Girgis' reading of the Jonah story, for one example, he finds Jonah suffering from symptoms often associated with narcissism personality disorder. Girgis is careful to see these mental disorders as part of the human story -- one that lives and breathes even in such an ancient text as the Bible.  Girgis therefore concludes by normalizing these disorders and finding support for their treatment in modern psychiatry.  It's a worthy endeavor, but I fear Girgis ends up using the biblical text for mo...