Tag: Books

Summer Reading List

Summer Reading List 2019

The Memorial Day celebrations have ended. That means it’s time for a new summer reading list!

The books on this year’s list run contrary to popular headlines, which daily magnify the real and growing division Americans encounter in all corners of our culture.

The truth is, we have a trust issue. Confidence in the nation’s leading societal institutions has been waning for decades. According to a Gallup survey, between 1998 and 2018, government, education, the media, and big business all have received persistently low confidence ratings.

The church in particular has succumbed to this trend. In 1998, nearly 60% of respondents said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church or organized religion. By 2018, that number plunged to 38%.

In this climate, it is getting harder to discern what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent and praiseworthy. The works profiled on this year’s summer reading list draw us back to that path, not to dismiss our current challenges, but to confront them head on.  These books remind us much remains in our culture that is worthy of our trust and deserving of our nurture.

So pull up a beach chair, slap on some suntan lotion, and let’s start reading. Here’s the list! Continue reading “Summer Reading List”

BOOK REVIEW: In Defense of Democracy: Condoleezza Rice Explores the Long (and Worthy) Road to Freedom

In her new book, Democracy, Condoleezza Rice reminds us that “Freedom has not lost its appeal.”

(This article originally appeared at Philos Project)

Tomorrow, America will celebrate its 241st birthday. As in years past, July 4 festivities across the nation will stir our collective sense of patriotism. There will be parades and marching bands. Spectacular fireworks will light up the night sky from New York to Los Angeles. In towns and cities across the land, Old Glory will wave and remind us that because we are steeped in a tradition of democracy, we remain a country where all men are created equal – that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But the contentious political climate in America circa 2017, combined with an apparent upsurge in popularity of autocrats abroad – Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey and Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, to name a few – has many observers wondering if the American experiment has timed out. Could this generation be witness to the worldwide decline of democracy?

In her new book Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice abjures the skeptics and dispels the myth that democracy is in retreat. On the contrary, she argued that democracy – while inherently flawed and always imperfect – remains the best means to promote peace and ensure human freedom, dignity and progress around the world.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: In Defense of Democracy: Condoleezza Rice Explores the Long (and Worthy) Road to Freedom”

BOOK REVIEW: Christianity on the Brink: They Say We are Infidels

Mindy Belz chronicles the persecution of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community in her newly released, first-hand account, They Say We Are Infidels.

(This article originally appeared at The Philos Project)

The door for Christians in Iraq is closing. That is the grim message received from Knox Thames, U.S. Department of State’s Special Advisor for Religious Minorities in the Near East and South Central Asia, speaking on the systematic campaign by ISIS militants to eliminate ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East. A new urgency may be attached to this headline, but persecution of Iraq’s indigenous Christian community has been building for more than a decade. Mindy Belz chronicles this in her newly released, first-hand account, They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run from ISIS with Persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

A seasoned war reporter and editor of World magazine, Belz provides more than a sterile accounting of the atrocities meted out against the Christian community in Iraq and Syria after more than a decade of war. They Say We Are Infidels introduces the real faces of conflict, the human predicament attached to a region afflicted by deeply rooted sectarian hatred and violence.

Continue reading “BOOK REVIEW: Christianity on the Brink: They Say We are Infidels”