Why Can't We Be Friends, by Aimee Byrd

Aimee Byrd gets perturbed when men say they won't ride alone in a car or go out to dinner with a woman who is not his wife.  In Why Can't We Be Friends: Avoidance is Not Purity, she expounds on Christian friendship and the sibling nature of the body of Christ, but I'm not sure she gets any closer to bringing down the "Billy Graham rule."  Graham said he would not "travel, meet, or eat along with a woman other than [his] wife."

Byrd's problem is that the Billy Graham rule, followed by many others, pastors and laypeople alike (including Vice President Pence), sexualizes relationships according to the Billy Crystal rule.  In the movie When Harry Met Sally, Crystal's character says that "men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way."  Byrd argues that this idea that "all women are reduced to a means of sexual gratification for men, that a man cannot control himself from thinking about conquering every woman he is 'friends' with" has taken over culture and should be rejected.

The strength of Byrd's argument is that we are brothers and sisters with our fellow Christians, and should relate to each other as such.  Certainly the love and support of our siblings, as well as the permanent nature of our relationship, speak to the importance of intimacy and companionship that do not include sexual relationships or conquests.  But I'm still not comfortable with where she wants this to end up.  If I'm hundreds of miles from home on a business trip, a quiet dinner alone with my biological sister is perfectly appropriate.  We might even share a hotel room if we're on a trip together.  But with my sister in Christ--no way.  (I checked with my wife.  She does not want me to share a hotel room with any women from church.)

Similarly, Byrd talks about the importance of table fellowship, and the centrality of meal time to Christian fellowship, to friendship and to community.  She rightly points out that meal time has been used as a time to exclude others, and that Jesus used meal time to welcome others, for which he was criticized.  But I don't agree that choosing not to have a private meal with a person of the other sex reflects the same kind of prejudice or ignorance that other exclusions do.  We can eat meals at a church fellowship or with a group, sitting with and enjoying the company of people of the other sex, but one-on-one dining is a different thing.

Byrd doesn't completely ignore the reality of temptation that may arise when spending time along with a friend of the other sex.  She writes that "some adults are not in a good place to interact well within friendships. . . . Even people in your church may have become so caught up in sin and lust that they need pastoral care and accountability in their lives--maybe for a long period of time."  So if you're going to be friends with someone of the other sex, before you spend time alone with them, be sure to vet them, making sure they are not "caught up in sin and lust."  (Let me know how that works out for you.)  Again, I'm going with Billy Graham.  Byrd is right to say, as she does in the book's subtitle, that simply avoiding the other sex does not equate to purity.  But that doesn't mean that avoidance is sometimes appropriate.

Look, I have good female friends, at church and at work.  I enjoy conversation and interaction with them as my sisters in Christ.  But I'm not going to call one of those women up and ask her to meet me for dinner, or go camping for the weekend, or meet for drinks after work, just the two of us.  Byrd has some good material here on friendship and Christian community.  I agree with her that the Billy Crystal rule is absurd and should not guide our relationships.  But I (with my wife's support and insistence) will abide by the Billy Graham rule.  I think my Christian sisters, as well as their husbands, would agree and appreciate the boundaries and respect that engenders.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The Management Style of Supreme Beings, by Tom Holt

What if God decided to cash in and retire?  In The Management Style of Supreme Beings, God, after consulting with his son Jay, decides to sell out to the Venturi brothers, a sort of galactic holding company.  If this sounds like a silly set-up for a novel,  you're right.  If you think it sounds extremely blasphemous, well, it's all in good fun.  This is not a Christian novel, by any means, but I like to think even God might get a chuckle out of it.

Holt's characters include many we know, like God, Jay, the guy in the red suit at the North Pole (turns out he's a god of thunder), Uncle Gabe (the angel Gabriel), and, of course, the devil himself.  But the star of the show is Jay's little brother, Kevin, who lives in his famous brother's shadow and can't seem to do anything right.

The Venturis introduce a new cash-based moral code.  When you sin, a representative instantly appears and hands you a bill.  If you can't afford to pay the penalty, you wind up in their debtor's prison.  Needless to say, sinning (and crime) plummet, but people are miserable.  Kevin sets out to change things up, but not like his brother did.  Meanwhile, the red-suited guy isn't too happy with the current arrangement, either, and God and Jay question whether they should have retired in the first place.

Holt writes this as silly as you might expect, and has plenty of good lines that you might not expect.  Reflecting on the origin and current state of the world, Holt notes that "the eighth day, so legend has it, Dad, Jay, and Uncle Ghost spend hiding from the product liability lawyers."  Later, when Uncle Gabe is offering counsel to Kevin, he is offering parting words: "I was about to say, God be with you, but he's on Sinteraan [another planet where God is on a fishing trip with Jay], so you can forget that.  You're on your own now."  The book abounds with this sort of joke.

It's a romp, where the plot takes a back seat to the characters, and it's fun to read, even if it's rather shallow.  As a Christian, I felt a little bit like I should have been offended, but it is still pretty funny.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

How Not to Get Shot, by D.L. Hughley

Comedian D.L. Hughley has written a mostly unfunny book about race in America.  How Not to Get Shot and Other Advice from White People is a stinging rebuke to white people who have anything to say after a black person is shot by a police officer.  If his goal were to improve race relations, he would have failed miserably.  But his goal really was to commiserate with race activists in the Black Lives Matter mold.

As jarring and sometimes offensive as this book was to me, as a white man, it made me sad.  It's sad that, whether in reality or perception, black people in America don't agree with Michelle Obama, who Hughley quotes as saying "this right now is the greatest country on earth."  Unfortunately, the media is happy to focus on negative examples of race relations, and entertainers like Hughley perpetuate the idea in popular culture.

Hughley complains about popular stereotypes of black people, but he's happy to speak about white people as a group, making assumptions and accusations based on the behavior of a small number.  Citing statistics about unarmed black people being killed by the police, he writes, "when it comes to black people, [white people] believe this is the way the system was designed to work.  It's supposed to be this way."  He really thinks white people are glad when unarmed black people are killed by police.  And should a killing go to trial, forget about finding an objective jury, especially in the South: "It's gotta be hard to find twelve white people in South Carolina who don't hate black people."  Seriously?  He generously grants that not every Trump voter is a racist, but he says "I think that they all were comfortable with racism."  Oh, and don't even think about marrying or adopting a black person if you're white: "If you're white, there ain't no niggas in your family and never will be."

While Trump's big mouth (or big twitter feed) provides plenty of ammo for people who want to accuse him of racism, I wish Hughley and other critics would pay attention to his actions and policies.  Blacks are doing better under Trump than they have done in decades.  Hughley points out that early in his administration, Trump met with "a rapper, two football players, and a comedian. . . because those are the positions he's used to seeing us black folk in."  Hughley conveniently failed to mention that in the first month of his presidency, Trump met with the presidents of HBCUs and signed an executive order supporting HBCUs.  (Hughley never went to college so maybe, as an entertainer, he feels insecure about being in a position Trump is "used to seeing us black folk in.")

I was reminded of Hughley when I read a quote from Booker T. Washington in a recent column by Walter E. Williams.  (Maybe these two black writers, one from the 19th century and one from the 21st, are "black people [white people] like [who] aren't black people that black people like"?)  Washington wrote, "There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."  As long as the liberal media and their political enablers keep stoking the fires of racism, Hughley can keep making money selling books about race.



Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

Believe Me, by John Fea

John Fea, who teaches American history at Messiah College, is disgusted with his evangelical brothers and sisters.  Well, at least with the 81% of them who voted for Trump.  In Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, Fea explores the historical and theological reasons that evangelicals backed Trump.

He accuses American evangelicals of operating out of fear: xenophobia and racism were, to Fea, key factors.  He disparages the evangelical leaders who support Trump, particularly "The Court Evangelicals," pastors who are close to his administration.  And he impugns the thinking of anyone who thinks Trump was the best choice for America in 2016.

Once Trump began looking like the Republican choice, there was one thing and one thing only that got him elected: he was not Hillary.  Fea makes passing reference to this fact.  He writes, "It is impossible to understand why 81 percent of white American evangelicals turned to Donald Trump in November 2016 without grasping their strong antipathy toward Hilary Clinton."  After decades of seeing her in public life, many Americans could not stomach the thought of her in the Oval Office (again).

Fea takes great pains to take easy shots at Trump and his many moral failings, which are obvious and indisputable.  But he would have the reader think that the other choice in 2016 was a moral giant.  Besides her policy positions and actions, which many conservatives and Republicans find reprehensible, what about her enabling her husband's rape and harassment of multiple women?  What about her thinking herself above the law regarding a private server and her destruction of devices and data during that investigation?  What about her using her family foundation to curry political favor?

We Americans were faced with a binary choice between two candidates with a wide array of moral and ethical failures.  For anyone who supported a conservative Republican agenda, Trump was the obvious choice.  A year and a half into his presidency, that has been affirmed over and over.  On one issue Fea himself acknowledges that "it may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the future of Liberty University . . . may have been in jeopardy had Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2016.  With the Trump victory, Christian colleges are breathing a bit easier these days."  On many issues, conservatives and many Christians can breathe easier with Trump in the White House.

I'm sure Fea is a great guy and a wonderful teacher, but as a white evangelical who voted for Trump, I tired of his telling me that I am racist, xenophobic, irrationally fearful, unjustly nostalgic, hypocritical and unchristian to have voted for Trump.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

The Judge Hunter, by Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley made a name for himself writing political satire.  For his last couple of books, he's take a turn toward comedic historical fiction.  The Judge Hunter is set in 17th century England and the American colonies.  Samuel Pepys is trying to get his good-for-nothing brother-in-law out of his hair, so sends him on a wild goose chase in the American colonies.  Ostensibly, he is there to hunt the judges who executed Charles I.  But he gets caught up in political maneuverings that will impact the direction of history in the New World.

Buckley pairs the hapless Englishman with a seasoned colonist in a classic buddy set up: the rugged, world-wise tough guy who assists the young, naive, hapless main character.  They have adventures, they run into trouble, they nearly get killed, they get lucky.  Buckley has fun playing with the colonial-era history and setting.  But the story didn't click for me.  It was entertaining, but I just kept wondering what happened to the brilliant satirist who lampooned modern American politics.  I liked that Buckley better.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

We Own This Game, by Robert Andrew Powell

In the black neighborhoods of Miami, there's one game in town.  Miami journalist Robert Andrew Powell opens the curtain on the huge subculture of youth football in We Own This Game: A Season in the Adult World of Youth Football.  If you, like me, have not been exposed to this scene, you're in for an eye-opener.

These kids, post-toddler to teen, play football in a league that's as competitive and elaborate as many high school teams.  Some of their games have higher attendance than college games I've seen.  They tailgate, have DJs and snack bars, travel to games in charter buses, have corporate sponsors.  It sounds like a spectacle.

Powell follows on team through a season, introducing us to the coaches, players, parents, and sponsors who make it all happen.  As the subtitle suggests, the league gets so adult that I had to constantly remind myself that the players are little children.  It frequently seemed to me that the coaches could have used a reminder as well.  The way they push the kids, the language they use, the weight they place on the games all seem too intense.  I know I wouldn't want my kid in this environment.

Rapper and producer Luther Campbell, whose cash has bankrolled the league, talks about the importance of youth football to the black community: "We own this game.  I mean, you can take whatever you want to take—our land, our housing, our jobs, whatever.  But we got our dignity and our pride.  We might not have ever had any leader to lead us to the promised land, but at least we got our football. We own football."

The larger story in Campbell's quote, and in the book as a whole, is the story of blacks in Miami.  Despite being the oldest minority group in Miami, through discrimination and unjust treatment, poverty and segregation persist.  In spite of the success of Campbell and a few others, Miami has a very small black middle class.  In between the football games, Powell tells the story of segregation and injustice.

Yes, it's a book about youth football.  But on a greater level, Powell writes about the history and culture of blacks living in Miami.  It's an enjoyable, enlightening book.

Messy Grace, by Caleb Kalenbach

Caleb Kalenbach certainly has a unique story to tell.  His parents divorced when he was very young, and both his parents turned out to be gay.  In Messy Grace: How a Pastor with Gay Parents Learned to Love Others Without Sacrificing Conviction, Kalenbach tells his story.  Through his insights and experiences, Christians can gain a more compassionate, informed, and grace-ful perspective on their gay friends and neighbors.

From the start, when Kalenbach became a Christian as a teen, he had no doubt that homosexuality was not in God's plan.  This became a huge source of tension between him and his mother and her live-in female partner.  But even as a young Christian, and even more now as a pastor, he has maintained an attitude and openness, not to homosexuality but to homosexual individuals.

Kalenbach writes: "Christians need to stop trying to convert people's sexuality.  It isn't our job to change someone's sexual orientation. . . . It is our job to lead anyone and everyone to Christ.  I believe God is big enough to deal with a person's sexuality."  The problem is that many Christians see the sexuality before they see the person.  "We focus on people's morality instead of their spirituality--their sex life instead of their faith life."

This people-centered, gospel-centered approach sets Kalenbach apart from so many Christians who end up placing condemnation higher than love.  If we would look at people with the question "Does he know Jesus?" in mind rather than "I wonder who he is attracted to," we will come a lot closer to the character and compassion of Jesus.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!