Books I Read in April
I Am America (And So Can You!)
Stephen Colbert
Funny book, pretty much what you would expect, The Colbert Report in book form. Nothing mind blowing, but when I finished it, I wished that it was longer.
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
Bart D. Ehrman
A very informative and engaging read, although it helps to have read Misquoting Jesus first, Jesus Interrupted seeks to bring mainstream biblical scholarship to the layman audience. Ehrman shows us, with numerous relevant examples, that the New Testament is a very human book (or more accurately, a collection of books), written by many different authors (most of whom are not who tradition says they are) with many different points of view and that those viewpoints are best understood when we don't think of the New Testament as a single, unified whole, and don't try to force every book in it to conform to one another.
The sections I enjoyed the most were the one that compared the theological viewpoints of the gospels, the one that explored the evolution of the concept of Jesus' divinity, and the one that reconstructed the actual beliefs of the historical Jesus.
I was surprised to learn that the historical/critial approach to the bible isn't just taught in all those godless, liberal universities, but in most seminaries and divinity schools. I find it unsettling that priests and ministers so often teach the bible to their congregations as a perfect, unified whole when they know that not to be the case.
God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped
Andrea Moore-Emmett
Religiously mandated polygamy is rife with abuse and exploitation of women and children, and God's Brothel illustrates that through 18 personal stories of women who escaped. It tells the tales of how they entered polygamist cults (some were born into it and some entered into it voluntarily), the abuses they suffered and how they escaped, as well as the abuses of others they were witness to.
I'm not sure how I feel about polygamy in general (I mean whether it should be illegal or not. It's definitely not for me), but the religiously mandated variety is clearly a bad idea. It seems to me that even secular polygamous marriages/relationships are just asking for trouble, with jealousy, favoritism, power dynamics, etc. but then again, I don't think its the government's place to tell consenting adults who they can and cannot have a relationship with.
Although the polygamists of these cults always claim that abuse in their communities is rare and perpetrated by a few bad apples, it's clear from the women's stories that abuse and oppression are systematic and widespread (At least in the specific cults featured). The treatment of the wives is terrible, what bothers me most is the physical and sexual abuse of children.
Stephen Colbert
Funny book, pretty much what you would expect, The Colbert Report in book form. Nothing mind blowing, but when I finished it, I wished that it was longer.
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them)
Bart D. Ehrman
A very informative and engaging read, although it helps to have read Misquoting Jesus first, Jesus Interrupted seeks to bring mainstream biblical scholarship to the layman audience. Ehrman shows us, with numerous relevant examples, that the New Testament is a very human book (or more accurately, a collection of books), written by many different authors (most of whom are not who tradition says they are) with many different points of view and that those viewpoints are best understood when we don't think of the New Testament as a single, unified whole, and don't try to force every book in it to conform to one another.
The sections I enjoyed the most were the one that compared the theological viewpoints of the gospels, the one that explored the evolution of the concept of Jesus' divinity, and the one that reconstructed the actual beliefs of the historical Jesus.
I was surprised to learn that the historical/critial approach to the bible isn't just taught in all those godless, liberal universities, but in most seminaries and divinity schools. I find it unsettling that priests and ministers so often teach the bible to their congregations as a perfect, unified whole when they know that not to be the case.
God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped
Andrea Moore-Emmett
Religiously mandated polygamy is rife with abuse and exploitation of women and children, and God's Brothel illustrates that through 18 personal stories of women who escaped. It tells the tales of how they entered polygamist cults (some were born into it and some entered into it voluntarily), the abuses they suffered and how they escaped, as well as the abuses of others they were witness to.
I'm not sure how I feel about polygamy in general (I mean whether it should be illegal or not. It's definitely not for me), but the religiously mandated variety is clearly a bad idea. It seems to me that even secular polygamous marriages/relationships are just asking for trouble, with jealousy, favoritism, power dynamics, etc. but then again, I don't think its the government's place to tell consenting adults who they can and cannot have a relationship with.
Although the polygamists of these cults always claim that abuse in their communities is rare and perpetrated by a few bad apples, it's clear from the women's stories that abuse and oppression are systematic and widespread (At least in the specific cults featured). The treatment of the wives is terrible, what bothers me most is the physical and sexual abuse of children.