There are some people who will probably read no further than the title of Red Letter Christians, the latest offering from Tony Campolo. The reference to Red Letters will no doubt convince people, even before they read the book, that it is a defense of ignoring the black letters of the Bible (which is to say, most of the Bible) in favor of the red words (the words actually spoken by Jesus). While I, too, am somewhat uncomfortable with the term, it is only fair to allow Campolo to define it before passing judgment!

"A group of us who are speakers and authors and who share an evangelical theology got together and confessed that we have a hard time applying the label [Evangelical] to ourselves anymore. Among those who gathered were Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr and Jim Wallis. They settled on the name "Red Letter Christians" as an alternative to evangelical. "In adopting the name, we are saying that we are committed to living out the things that Jesus taught."

Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Emasculated Theology…

Those of us who have been keeping a wary eye on the Emerging Church know that to understand the movement we must understand Brian McLaren. Though it is not quite fair to label him the movement’s leader, he certainly functions as its elder statesman and his writing seems to serve as a guide or compass for the movement. Where he leads, others follow. It is with interest, then, that I turned to his latest book Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope. It is a book that promises to electrify the Emerging Church and, if history is a reliable guide, to further polarize it from those who hold to more traditional Protestant beliefs. My plan in this review is simple: I’m going to give an outline of what the book teaches and then interact with it just a little bit.

The country of Rwanda has seen some of the worst violence and bloodshed the world has witnessed this side of the Holocaust. If ever a nation has been in need of God’s grace and favor, this is it. In 1994 the nation was devastated by a genocidal civil war that pitted the Hutus against the Tutsis. In just 100 days during April to July of that year, over one million people were killed, the vast majority of them Tutsis. There were countless massacres with thousands of people dying ever day during that period of time.

When the killing finally ended, the nation was destroyed. The economy was shattered, the nation’s infrastructure nearly ruined and the population decimated. And, of course, the people were traumatized, having seen former friends turn on each other, husbands kill wives and even the clergy willfully participating in the murder of thousands.

A Long Way Gone begins this way:

Mark Steyn is a brave guy. It takes a certain kind of bravado to write a book criticizing Islam. Just a few days ago I heard an author mention a book he has written dealing with Islam, but suggested that it will only be released posthumously. Other books on the subject have been released anonymously. This is a topic many people are concerned about but which they are afraid to address. Not so, it seems, for Mark Steyn.

Bemoaning the fact that Europe has fallen under the influence of Islam and is almost certainly too far gone to recover, Steyn suggests that if any Western nations are to survive, the future will belong to America standing alone against an Islamic world. The book’s central points go something like this (and I have borrowed these from another reviewer who managed to encapsulate them very neatly):

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon. … The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.” The story is from Newsweek. The year was 1975 and the threat was global cooling. A year later the magazine reported that “this trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.” But then global cooling went out of style and Newsweek and other media outlets went on to discuss other topics. Three decades later the same overstatements and hysteria are being broadcast about global warming. I have read a good deal about this topic and even took the time to read Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

I have a particular interest in books, written from a secular perspective, that say the same things Christians have been saying for years. I enjoy finding these little pears of wisdom, these little bits of common grace, that I can only hope will lead people to see and understand the the Bible truly does present the way humans can live best. One of these books is Unprotected, a book dealing with the problems inherent in campus counseling.

Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is a book I feel quite unequipped to review. And, indeed, it has been very widely reviewed by people far more qualified than I. The reviews, which I turned to only after I had finished reading the book, are mixed. Some people feel this book is groundbreaking while others feel it rehashes old arguments simply set in a new context. It seems that the more knowledgeable the reviewer, the less enthusiasm he has for the book. I was interested to see that many of the concerns of the experts are ones I shared as well.

The author’s main point is obvious and well-proven. The world is, indeed, flat. The gap between nations is quickly closing. Countless jobs from North America and other developed nations are being outsourced to China, India and beyond. Instant communication and speedy travel have made the world seem smaller and smaller. Friedman identifies ten forces that he feels are the most important contributors to this new, flat world:

Hurricane Katrina was a national disaster that was played out on an international stage. In this age of instant and graphic communication where there is an increasingly thin line between news and entertainment, the whole world watched while the hurricane bore down on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The world watched with sick fascination as pictures of death and devastation flashed across their television screens. Untold millions watched as the New Orleans levies let go, inundating the city with water. And the world saw the response which was both impressive in its speed and frustrating in its disorganization. In The Politics of Disaster, Marvin Olasky, professor of journalism at the University of Texas and editor-in-chief of World magazine, takes a look back at this disaster and looks forward to the inevitable “Katrinas” of the future. “This book examines incidents, some partially preventable, that have a major negative impact on the ability of an entire community to live peaceably.”

There is a great deal of controversy surrounding global warming. Some insist that it is a terrifying and imminent concern that portends worldwide disaster. Others scoff at the notion, accusing those who spread such dire predictions of using global warming as part of a larger, sinister agenda. Al Gore considers global warming to be an inconvenient truth and a pending planetary emergency. In his political career he was an advocate of measures to deal with this and other environmental crises, and in his post-political career he has accelerated these warnings. An Inconvenient Truth, an immediate New York Times bestseller, and the film that was released at around the same time, are his attempt to take this message to the masses.