Mediaculture: Reflections on the effect of media and culture on our faith

Books engage us. They inform, challenge and often change us, for the better, we hope.
Trust: Martin Marty addresses one of the greatest needs in our world today, capture in the title of his book Building Cultures of Trust (Eerdmans, 2010, $22.99). He argues that “developing cultures of trust will hold more promise and can draw on the energies of more citizens if there is concentration on the building blocks of a society.”

Worship: Two recent books take different approaches to worship—one Calvinist, the other Eastern Orthodox. In Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation (BakerAcademic, 2009, $21.99), James K.A. Smith sees worship as a practice that trains us to love. Worship forms us as disciples who desire God’s kingdom.
The Melody of Faith: Theology in an Orthodox Key by Vigen Guroian (Eerdmans, 2010, $14) draws on early Christian writings to see theology as music. God is “like a cantor who chants his creation into existence.” Guroian sees creation as “a Trinitarian love song” and resurrection as “a triumph of communion over isolation.”

Bible: For those of a more scholarly bent, two important books in biblical studies are Constructing Jesus:Memory, Imagination and History by Dale C. Allison Jr. (BakerAcademic, 2010, $54.99) and Come Out, My People: God’s Call out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond by Wes Howard-Brook (Orbis Books, 2010, $30).
Allison, who’s been called one of the leading Jesus scholars in the world, questions some standard critical assumptions and considers collective memory in getting at a more nuanced construction of who Jesus was and what he did.

Howard-Brook looks at the Bible and world history “from the perspective of the ongoing struggle between the ‘religion of empire’ and the ‘religion of creation.'” He sees “the Way of Jesus [as] a path that calls us out of ’empire’ and into the immediately available beauty and power of the Creator God’s realm of overflowing abundance.” His cogent treatment of Scripture is full of insights.

Ecology: The Bible and Ecology:Rediscovering the Community of Creation by Richard Bauckham (Baylor University Press, 2010, $24.95) is a careful biblical study that overturns the typical view of human stewardship over creation and places the Genesis concept of dominion within its wider biblical context. He also looks at New Testament themes on ecology.

The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth by Thomas Berry (Orbis Books, 2009, $22) collects essays from 1987-2000 by a renowned historian of world religions and cultures. Berry presents a vision of the sacredness of the universe and the interrelatedness of the Earth community.

Literature: A pair of valuable books from Baylor University Press look at literature from different angles. Between Truth and Fiction: A Narrative Reader in Literature and Theology, edited by David Jasper and Allen Smith (2010, $29.95), includes excerpts from various texts—novels, poems, plays, autobiography, essays—and adds introductions, discussion questions, notes and lists for further reading. It’s sure to spur readers to pursue some of the works that are excerpted.

Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television by Douglas E. Cowan (2010, $24.95) writes that science fiction often reflects “the quest for transcendence of human limitations.” He considers such works as Contact, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Stargate SG-1, Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica.

Gordon Houser is associate editor of The Mennonite.