Great new books

In between everything else I’ve been doing lately, I’ve read some great books. Two in particular I highly recommend — Judith Butler’s “Precarious life: the power of mourning and violence,” and Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Steve Kang and Greg Parrett’s “A many colored world: Multi-cultural dynamics for spiritual formation.” The first is a very thoughtful philosophical treatment of our national response to the 9/11 attacks — among other things Butler argues very persuasively that our (read: US white middle class folk) “loss of innocence” ought to awaken us to our interdependence, rather than send us off into vengeance. The second is a compelling and accessible entry point into Christian thought and Christian education in multicultural contexts. I especially recommend the second as a great introduction to Christian education, full of pragmatic advice.