10 Books in 10 Weeks

Our Israel class is in full swing and I have quickly been made aware why I am getting 6 units of grad credit for this 3 week class! 10 hour days with about 4 hours of lecture and 5+ hours of field study. Super tuckered out, but super fun experience. It has been so fun to share with Janny as well. For some reason, we are having issues with our camera, so I am taking a pause in our Israel Diaries and giving a top 10 list that is really only a top 3 list. This last quarter, I read the following books for my seminary classes. Some were great, some were OK. After the top 3, they are in no particular order:

1. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat
Offers some of the best commentary on the idols of rationality and pluralism within Modernity and Postmodernity. Also, their words on Christians embodying a social alternative to Empire through succession, community, liberation and suffering brought me to tears.
2. The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder
Yoder offers a careful exegesis of the teachings of Jesus and argues (although in an extremely humble posture) that Jesus offers a relevant ethic that is to be embodied today. As a pacifist who wrote this in the early 70's, his words are all the more powerful and challenging.
3. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
What's for dinner? That question is constantly asked before sitting at the dinner table. What's in dinner and where did it come from? Those are questions that rarely get asked, but whose answers must be examined. I read this for a paper I wrote on Food Justice and it called into questions the justice that is/isn't found in our industrial food complex.

Rounding out the final 7 I have (in no particular order):

4. Kingdom Ethics by Glen Stassen and David Gushee
5. God's Politics by Jim Wallis
6. Missional Renaissance by Reggie Mcneal
7. Personal Faith, Public Policy by Harry Jackson and Tony Perkins
8. The Future of Faith in American Politics by David Gushee
9. The Culturally Savvy Christian by Dick Staub
10. The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch

Bonus Read
Artist, Citizens, Philosophers: Seeking the Peace of the City (still in progress)