Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero

This is one of the most courageous books I have read ever. It confronts the failure of many Christian evangelicals and congregations to truly mature with joy. Scazzero blames the failure on our refusal to allow God to deal with our emotions, saying that spiritual maturity is impossible without emotional maturity. He details how our theology can negate the validity of our emotions and how that theology has allowed many of us to perpetuate the flawed emotional habits that we learned from our families of origin. Not only that, he makes an eloquent case for Christians to incorporate reflection and other spiritual disciplines we tend to associate with monasticism into our personal walk to allow space in our lives for true integrated emotionally healthy spirituality to emerge in each of us. He emphasizes that we are the objects of God's lavish love, indeed that we have been adopted into His family. Then he provides the counterpoint quoting Richard Rohr: "Life is hard. You are not that important. Your life is not about you. You are not in control. You are going to die." This book has teeth and Christians who want to grow should consider reading it.


Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality 2006

Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Mark Hatfield

The pages have yellowed and whole sections of the book have detached from the paperback binding since the first time I read it in 1976. Then, the former governor and senator from Oregon, Senator Mark Hatfield was attempting to reconcile his anti-Vietnam War convictions with the expectations that his fellow evangelical Christians imposed as a litmus test for his faith. I picked it up again in the days just prior to the election of Senator Barack Obama to become the 44th president of the United States. The issues and agony that Hatfield's faith provoked are eerily relevant today. His decision to serve the people of Oregon in the senate as an expression of his authentic commitment to Jesus Christ but without necessarily subscribing to the agenda of what we now call the religious right caused a lot of soul searching. He describes the research, counsel, prayer, reflection that grew to a rejection of a utilitarian civic religion. Here is an authentic wrestling to come up with a faith-filled political position with which I wish more believers would find the courage it takes to struggle.

Hatfield, Mark. Between A Rock And A Hard Place. Word Books. Waco, Texas. c. 1976.

Salem Witch Judge by Eve Laplante

Samuel Sewall's descendant, Eve Laplante, is the author of this biography. She relies on the many pages of journals and published text that Samuel Sewall produced during his life as well as on family oral history. She attempts to interpret the worldview of this Puritan graduate of Harvard and judge whose thought life hinged on a daily interaction with Biblical text, prayer, and the association of regular events with prophetic import. This approach leads the reader to understand how Sewall first participated as a judge during the Salem witch trials and later repented for his role. Laplante assumes that Sewall's internal compass and way of understanding the world through a Biblical lens was a historic phase of American culture. However, those of us who are privy to conservative evangelical contemporary Americans may recognize ourselves or our friends in Sewall's agonizing reflections and fearful awareness of the watchful eyes of God. What has changed about how American conservative evangelicals may be that we are not touched by death as constantly nor do we live daily with the prospect of our own mortality in center focus. Of Sewall's 14 children, only 11 outlived him. This book is an often uncomfortable description of the thinking that informed the foundations of our American realpolitik and culture.

Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall, by Eve Laplante, (c) 2007, Harper Collins Publishers, New York