Book Review - Songs of Resistance

R. Alan Streett's previous book, Caesar and the Sacrament: Baptism: A Rite of Resistance, demonstrated how Christian baptism functioned as an oath of a new allegiance toward King Jesus, forsaking former allegiances to other authority figures and structures such as Caesar and the Roman Empire.

Streett's new volume, Songs of Resistance: Challenging Caesar and Empire, takes the next step to demonstrate how the songs sung by characters in the four Gospels, and the portions of epistles often thought to be early hymns included by the apostolic authors, demonstrated resistance to and protest of the corrupt worldly power structures of the day.

Attitudes Toward Churches and Spiritual Leaders

This past Sunday, this line from my pastor's sermon stuck with me:

“Unresolved anger towards one spiritual authority leads to a bad attitude towards all spiritual authority." -- Rod Loy

Often, we see people who had a bad experience in a certain kind of church (progressive, Evangelical, Pentecostal/Charismatic, etc.) react to their bad experience with complete and total suspicion of anything and everything they were taught in their previous church. 

Someone who formerly went to a prosperity gospel church may end up seeing every discussion about tithes and offerings as an abusive attempt to promise financial blessings in exchange for giving to the church.

Is It of God?

For the past couple of weeks, we've all been seeing a lot of discussions on social media regarding what started on February 8 at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. Some have called it a revival, others have called it a spiritual renewal, and others have simply named it a surprising move of God. Debates over what to call it have often had to do with whether or not it fulfills certain definitional lists of characteristics, and usually the debaters' lists don't include all of the same elements.

But here, I want to go past the arguments over which term is most accurate, and get to a more fundamental question: Is what is happening from God?

2022 Reading Report

Below is a list of the books I read (or at least read a good part of as research for a seminar talk I gave) during 2022. The count of 19 is down a bit from 2021 (23 books), but I still managed to read more than a book a month.

 Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God's Heavenly Host by Michael S. Heiser

Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism by George Yancey

Hostile Environment: Understanding and Responding to Anti-Christian Bias by George Yancey

Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique edited by David L. Allen and Steve W. Lemke

The State of the Evangelical Mind edited by Todd C. Ream, Jerry Pattengale, and Christopher J. Devers

When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse by Chuck DeGroat