Four Reviews Coming in Publishers Weekly on September 11

-- Publishers Weekly, 9/6/2006

Soul Cravings
Erwin McManus. Nelson Books, $19.99 (256p) ISBN 0-7852-1494-1

McManus’s collection of essays reads like a series of lively late-night college bull sessions about the meaning of life, with enough transitions and common threads to pull reader-participants from piece to piece. “We are all on the same quest,” he writes. “And our soul craving is to find something we can believe in.” McManus wants readers to come to know themselves, and meet God on the journey. “This thing that haunts you, that never seems satisfied, the cravings in your soul that you are unable to satiate through all the success that the world can bring—this is your soul screaming for God.” He spends many pages on love and its implications, and emphasizes grace while eschewing legalism and shaming. McManus also muses on ambition, the power of hope, the uniqueness of each person, the search for meaning and purpose, the need for trust, and death and the problem of evil. McManus (The Barbarian Way), the lead pastor of the Mosaic community in Los Angeles, has an unusually unself-conscious voice. Throughout the book, he seamlessly incorporates personal anecdotes, music lyrics, and movie snippets. Although the content isn’t particularly new and the book might have benefited from some tightening, McManus’ fresh presentation will do much to woo spiritual seekers and disenchanted Christians to a more authentic Christianity. (Nov. 14)

The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer: LDS News, Advice and Opinion
Edited by Christopher Kimball Bigelow. Pince-Nez Press [777 E. South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 81402; 415-218-0010], $17.95 paper (300p) ISBN 1-930074-17-0

If a mature religion is one that can laugh at itself, then Mormonism is growing up. The ranks of the heretofore slim world of LDS satirists (dominated by cartoonists Pat Bagley and Calvin Grondahl and columnist Robert Kirby) have been swelled by the next generation: this compilation of ruthlessly funny articles is as irreverent as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is decorous. The book is edited by Bigelow, co-author of Mormonism for Dummies and co-founder of The Sugar Beet (an LDS version of the satirical publication The Onion). Bigelow and his staff of Sugar Beet writers, whose identities are hidden behind ultra-Mormon pseudonyms, ferret out the delicious humor tucked away in Mormonism’s quirkiest doctrines and cultural extremes in articles like: “Gay polygamists make bid for legitimacy”; “Zions Bank offers financing for scrapbookers”; and “Elvis Presley accepts posthumous baptism.” The humor grows mostly out of the rich soil of Wasatch Front culture, so some of it may go over the heads of converts to the faith, and many stalwart Mormons would declare the writing dangerously “light-minded.” But a solid core of LDS (and LDS-raised) readers will find The Enquirer a tie-loosening, glue-gun melting pleasure—and an excellent Christmas gift for friends and family. (Nov. 6)

What Paul Meant
Gary Wills.Viking, $24.95 (208p) ISBN 0-670-03793-1

This slender volume is something of a sequel to Wills’s blockbuster What Jesus Meant. Here, Wills defends Paul from detractors who insist that the apostle corrupted Jesus’ radical message. Beginning with a reminder that Paul’s letters are older than the gospels, and therefore may represent the most authentic approximation of Jesus’ teachings, Wills argues that Paul was right in line with Jesus. Both men stressed love of God and love of one’s neighbor as the two principal commandments. Wills highlights the differences between the Pauline epistles and Luke’s later writing about Paul, arguing that the famous story of Paul’s road–to-Damascus conversion, which comes from Luke’s account in Acts, is flawed, and that Paul himself did not consider his convictions about Jesus a “conversion,” but part of his ongoing life as a Jew. Through a reading of Romans, Wills attempts to acquit Paul from the charges of anti-Semitism. And though Paul is often tarred as a misogynist, Wills shows that he “believed in women’s basic equality with men.” (Since Wills focuses only on the seven letters that most scholars agree were written by Paul himself, the egalitarian Paul becomes quite credible. Some of the most overtly sexist passages come from letters written later and ascribed to Paul.) Provocative yet helpful, this book is sure to create a buzz.(Nov. 6)

Zen Master Who?: A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen
James Ishmael Ford. Wisdom Publications, $15.95 paper (244p) ISBN 0-86171-509-8

Taxonomists rejoice: For all who have wondered about the difference between a roshi and a sensei, this book sorts these two kinds of Zen Buddhist teachers and offers lots more information about Zen schools and influences. A longtime Zen student and Unitarian minister, Ford is a sympathetic insider who knows much of his history firsthand, yet sees clearly enough to acknowledge abuses in the history of Zen as it came to this country. His delineations form a road map to persons and places in Zen in America. His eye is especially keen in appreciating the early teachers who brought Zen from Japan and adapted it to an audience growing in numbers and receptivity to Asian religious wisdom. End matter, including a guide to finding a teacher, is helpful; missing, however, is some graphic representation—a family tree, perhaps?—that could have summarized paragraphs of prose about lineages and who taught whom. The very existence of the book is evidence of the growth and maturation of a small but culturally significant group of what Ford rightly characterizes as religious believers. Beyond the obvious niche audience, this book holds interest for all curious about American Zen Buddhism and contemporary expressions of American spirituality. (Nov.)