Library Recommended Reading: September

Church of the Redeemer Library
Recommended Reading
September

Visit our Library page to check out your books and arrange for home delivery.

During this pandemic, many musicians are playing previously recorded music. Church of the Redeemer offers our version of a rewind. The following books are by authors who have visited Redeemer and spoken or preached here. In case you missed them. . .

1. Michael Battle Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu
Portrays Tutu as a theologian who embraces Anglican orthodoxy and who has consistently applied that framework to issues of race in the South Africa. One reviewer called it a “much needed corrective to rampant individualism."

2. Tony Campolo and Michael Battle The Church Enslaved: A Spirituality of Racial Reconciliation
Two of the most vocal activists on racial issues in the church expose the sad history and present realities of racism in the churches and present a way toward reconciliation. Battle visited Church of the Redeemer in 2008. Also by Michael Battle is Practicing Reconciliation in a Violent World.

3. Shane Hipps The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith the Gospel and Church
Hipps analyzes the broad impact of technology and media on the church while engaging readers with questions such as how the church position should itself to take advantage of coming cultural trends. In 2013 Hipps visited Church of the Redeemer.

4. John Philip Newell Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality
A spirituality for today modeled on themes of Celtic spirituality such as the goodness of creation and of humanity made in the image of God, Newell led the 2005 pilgrimage of Redeemer folk to Iona in Scotland and visited Redeemer in 2007.

5. Desmond Tutu No Future Without Forgiveness
The master of racial reconciliation, Tutu is known for his leadership in the field of forgiveness. He visited Cincinnati, including Church of the Redeemer way back in 1990.

6. Walter Brueggemann Journey to the Common Good
The author is the foremost Old Testament scholar and after he retired to the Cincinnati area, he spoke at Church of the Redeemer a number of times from 2012-2013. (He also frequently went to the movies with the Rev. Charlie Brumbaugh, past Associate Priest at Church of the Redeemer). This book seeks to look at our current culture in Old Testament contexts and to restore our search for the common good through neighborliness. Although published in 2010, there are lessons here for our current world crisis as well.

7. Tony Jones The Sacred Way: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Life
Foreword by Phyllis Tickle (who visited Church of the Redeemer in 2009)
Are you seeking a spiritual practice that can change the meaning of your life and your relationship with the Holy One? This may be the book for you. Jones looks at contemplative approaches to spirituality such as centering prayer, the use of icons, and spiritual direction and bodily approaches such as pilgrimage, fasting and bodily prayers. Included is a useful list of resources in the back with both print and online entries. Reviewer Skye Jethani wrote that this book “effectively links past and present, scholarship and humor, high church and low church into a practical guide that takes the Christian deeper into his or her own soul to meet with God."

The following books are Becoming Beloved Community recommended.

8. Yaa Gyasi Homegoing
This novel follows two half-sisters born in Ghana ion the 18th century and their descendents. The Rev. Philip DeVaul says this is “easily my favorite novel that I have read in the past ten years.... It instilled in me a sense of just how personal, how intimate, and how spiritual systemic racism can be.” Another reviewer says, “The author’s descriptive narrative is both beautiful and disturbing. The book is rich in symbolism and examination of black experience.

Michael Battle see books listed above.

Desmond Tutu see book listed above.

9. Ernest J. Gaines A Lesson Before Dying
This award-winning novel is set in a small Cajun community in the late 1940's and deals with issues around the killing of three men and what happens to the survivor. It has been described as “enormously moving” and “an instant classic.” An Oprah’s Book Club selection.

10. Brittney Cooper Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers her Superpower
Cooper reminds the reader that black women’s anger can be a powerful source of energy, but that it is has been caricatured into a destructive force that threatened our social fabric. The author may be the boldest young feminist writing today and she gives us the uncensored truth.