I’ve been going through a spiritual crisis for a while because of my son’s health and my own health. I decided to read religious books published before the 1950s, books whose theologies were free from American priorities. I wanted to understand suffering and endurance and read many books by Asian Christians, imprisoned martyrs, and missionaries.
Evidence Not Seen has tons of suffering and perseverance. The human soul needs books about heroes or people who triumph – especially for a spiritual, personal, or religious cause.
I knew little about the war’s effects on people in New Guinea and next to nothing about how the Japanese mistreated the white, native, and foreign communities on the island. Darlene Deibler Rose was a young missionary there, and her account is just plain harrowing.
I kept thinking, “I could not endure any of this. Wow, some folks definitely have it worse than I do.”
Newlywed American missionary Darlene Deibler Rose survived four years in a notorious Japanese prison camp set deep in the jungles of New Guinea. Thinking she was never to see her husband again, Darlene Rose was forced to sign a false confession and face the executioner's sword, only to be miraculously spared.
I am a total geek for the history of things. Whether it’s the history of some food like the eel or the nutmeg or the history of rubber, I’m always ready to settle into a book that gives me an almost obsessive detail of something I hadn’t thought much about.
I now know more than I ever wanted to know about zeppelins, airships, dirigibles, world war weaponry, and the power of relentless, nationalistic, narcissistic marketing.
I read this a few weeks after the implosion of the Titan near the Titanic wreck. All I could think was, “Dang, if only sane folks could market themselves as well as these types!”
From the bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Empire of the Summer Moon comes a stunning historical tale of the rise and fall of the world’s largest airship—and the doomed love story between an ambitious British officer and a married Romanian Princess at its heart.
The tragic story of the British airship R101—which went down in a spectacular hydrogen-fueled fireball in 1930, killing more people than died in the Hindenburg disaster seven years later—has been largely forgotten. In His Majesty’s Airship, historian S.C. Gwynne resurrects it in vivid detail, telling the epic story of great ambition gone terribly wrong.…
Although I’m Jamaican-American, I hang out weekly with Chinese, East Indian, Singaporean, and Malaysian Christians. I figured I would enlighten myself on some of the differences between Asian Christian Theologies and Western, specifically American, theology.
I took philosophy in college, and even then, my eyes glazed over. To say this book was a slog through semantics is an understatement because Kosuke Koyama is a Japanese intellectual in addition to being a Christian.
However, once you begin riding on Koyama’s eccentric stream of consciousness, you leave the book with a sense of the subtle way national attitudes, religion, and folklore affect Christianity. Philosophers and missionaries should read this book – if they are patient enough to get through it.
Water Buffalo Theology marked the emergence of a self-conscious Asian Christian theology, on the world scene when it was published in 1974. In this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, Koyama thoroughly updates the original, adding an retrospective introduction that records how he has changed his mind on many topics but maintained his position on others. In addition to eliminating several chapters, Koyama also adds one on his "pilgrimage in mission."
A fantasy romance where imperialism meets religion and folklore, Wind Follower is about the cultural and demonic battle that begins when a fourth tribe has come to the land of the three tribes.
Although the three native tribes have lived in harmony for centuries, respecting each other’s religion, the light-skinned newcomers are fated to change the tribes' way of life and religion. Satha, a dark-skinned woman from a poor Theseni clan, and Loic, her wealthy young Doreni husband, are at first too busy forging their new life together to pay much heed.
Although Loic finds the new religion intriguing, when Satha is dishonored he must avenge her and battle both his enemy and the spirits that challenge the new religion.
One of the hardest books to write is a spiritual book for kids, which isn’t cheesy, easy, or maudlin. This book is about the fourth wise man who didn’t manage to make the trip to the manger. It has a folkloric melancholy to it and reads like a fairytale. It’s short and is Christmassy.
I gave this book to my neighbor’s grand-niece on her birthday. The kid loved it. It really boosted her confidence and made her feel as if she could make her way around in the world.
She carried the book around with her, smiling and reading it as if it had opened some great adult wisdom to her.
I felt she was understanding the dynamics of how life worked and was beginning to figure out where she went wrong in some of her relationships. It seemed to be a tool for her.
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It's a paradox familiar to parents everywhere: girls are achieving like never before, yet they're consumed with…
