Scroll down further for earlier postings on other items about people and issues of faith in the media.
YOU CAN NOW PURCHASE THE DVD OF WM. PAUL YOUNG'S APPEARANCE AT KINGSWAY-LAMBTON CHURCH. THe DVDS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE VOLUNTEER DESK AT THE WEST ENTRANCE, 9 A.M. TO NOON. (Posted Nov. 3 2009)
The novel The Shack has been a phenomenal best seller, and has touched the lives of millions.Recently, Kingsway-Lambton United Church was fortunate to host author Wm. Paul Young (he goes by the name Paul) to speak and to answer questions about his book, his life and his faith.
For those of you who didn’t hear Paul, or for those who did and want to know more, we’re offering some of the media coverage there has been about him and his book. From The New York Times, to the 700 Club, people are reading about and hearing his story.
Kingsway-Lambton will soon have CDs and DVDs of Paul Young's talk at the church available for sale.
Stay tuned to your church bulletin for details on how to purchase copies.
1. From the online newspaper The Examiner, Oct. 2009: a published interview that focuses on the novel’s portrayal of God as a woman.
TOP CANADIAN NOVELIST TAKES ON WRITERS, AND THE “NEW ATHEISTS”
Scroll down to click on the links for this. Scroll down further for earlier postings on other items about people and issues of faith in the media.
New Brunswick born David Adams Richards is one of this country’s most celebrated writers: he has won the Governor-General’s award for both fiction and non-fiction, Gemini awards for his screen writing, and the prestigious Giller Prize for his novel Mercy Among the Children.
Richards is also a Catholic who has found his way back to faith, and is described in one review as “a rare voice of moral and spiritual certainty in the Canadian literary scene” .In his latest non-fiction work, Richards analyses our culture’s stereotyping of people of faith, and takes on the so-called new atheists.
The book is called God Is: My Search for Faith in a Secular World.
The links below will take you to an excerpt from the book, as well as two reviews.The excerpt examines the way writers deride believers, and takes a few good whacks at Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and their ilk.
1. The excerpt: “Canada's literary community gets religion all wrong”, by David Adams Richards
Amazing Grace; A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris
Call Number 230.03
A series of short essays exploring some of the language of Christianity that distanced Norris from her faith. In these reflections she also tells of her gradual conversion, and how to find faith in our current culture.
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin
Call Number 261 New
How does theprevailing climate of opinion affect, perhaps infect, Christians' faith? Newbigin addresses such questions in this incisive analysis of contemporary culture, and he suggests how Christians can more confidently affirm their faith in such a context.
Of course, we like to think all the links we provide here are the best, but for your summer linking pleasure, here
are some from past postings you may not have had time to view before. Look under AUTHORS for interviews with best-selling fiction writers, under DEBATE for a unique argument against atheist Richard Dawkins, under LECTURES for a series of YaleUniversity videotaped lectures about the Old Testament and under THOUGHT for Margaret Visser’s thoughts on faith and thankfulness.
You can also keep scrolling down (or click on the links right in the right hand corner here) for this year’s latest materials, including letters from Jean Vanier, and the story of a man who found grace through hymns.
AUTHORS
Khaled Hosseini is the author of the best seller, The Kite Runner. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, revolves around the lives of two women in Afghanistan from before the Russians invaded to the present day. As one review noted, it returns to the same theme as Hosseini’s first book: “the strength of the human spirit in lives overwhelmed by cruelty.”(The Economist May 26, 2007)
In this BBC interview, Hosseini talks about growing up in Afghanistan, his first novel’s success, and about writing his second novel from the perspective of women.
In our library: A Thousand Splendid SunsCall number FIC Hos
Anne Rice has been best known for her vampire novels. But her latest book is a novel about Jesus: "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt". It tells the story, from 7-year-old Jesus' perspective, of his family's flight from Egypt and return to Nazareth.
In this interview, Rice talks about the book, and her return, about 10 years ago, to her Catholic faith.
Source: beliefnet.com (beliefnet.com is described as the world’s largest spiritual, multi-faith website) Length: 2 pages
In our library: Christ the Lord Call number FIC Ric
For an earlier interview with Anne Rice in which she talks about the writing of Christ the Lord (as well as Hurricane Katrina, as she is a former resident of New Orleans) you can also visit:
Terry Eagleton is a Professor of English Literature at ManchesterUniversity, as well as a Marxist and an atheist. This is his very critical review of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion
In our library: The God Delusion Call Number 200 Daw
The Dawkins Delusion, Alister McGrath Call number 211.8 McGrath
LECTURES
YaleUniversity lectures on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible
Many of the world’s top universities have begun to offer lectures from their most popular courses and professors online,forfree. YaleUniversity is one of these. Here is the description of the course on the Old Testament from Yale’s website:
This course examines the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) as an expression of the religious life and thought of ancient Israel, and a foundational document of Western civilization.
There are 24 lectures, about one hour in length, taught by Professor Christine Hayes, the Robert F. and Patricia Ross Weis Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale.
Essays on Old Testament Interpretation, Edited by Claus Westermann. In our Bible section.
Moses;The Revelation and The Covenant, by Martin Buber. Call number 221.92 Bub
The Bible Jesus Read, by Philip Yancey. Call number 221.6 Yan
THOUGHT
Margaret Visser is well known to many Canadians. The 2002 Massey lecturer’s latest book is The Gift of Thanks. Visser is a Christian, who has said she had a strong conversion experience. She has a doctorate in classics from the University of Toronto, and says she returned to the Catholic church through understanding how Christianity radically changed the world.
In this article, Visser talks about her new book, the importance of gratitude, and also some of the reactions she’s received to her Christianity.
This next article is a reprint of an interview from the Catholic New Times about her Massey Lectures, called Beyond Fate, in which Visser discusses her views of Christianity and the ancients at more length.
Scroll down to click on the link for this item. Scroll down further for earlier postings on everything from Jean Vanier to Anglican priest and physicist John Polkinghorne
Bill Henderson had left his church, and faith, behind him many years ago. Then, he took his daughter to see a church pageant and, as he says, “grace hit”. It came through the hymns. Henderson, who was an author and owned a publishing company, began to research the history of Christian hymns. In this interview, he talks to CBC Radio’s music expert Robert Harris about
his faith experience, and hymns, especially Amazing Grace and the Shaker hymn played at U.S. President Barack Obama’s inauguration, A Gift to be Simple.
http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/archives/2009/012509.html(When you get to this web page, simply click on the pod-shaped button. And don’t worry – while it says they can’t play music in their podcasts, this recording DOES include the actual hymns)
Scroll down for links to the Globe and Mail's published letters between Jean Vanier and Ian Brown, and articles about Vanier, as well as
information about books by Vanier in our church library.
Ian Brown is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and book author.He has also been called a “master of personal journalism”.None of his work has been more personal than the articles published in The Globe and Mail called “The Boy in the Moon”. They are deeply honest and heart-rending stories of his son, Walker, who suffers from a rare genetic disorder that severely impairs him mentally and physically.
Jean Vanier is the well-known Canadian founder of l’Arche, an international organization of communities for the developmentally disabled.Last year, Brown met with Vanier, and then began a correspondence with him about everything from the issues he faced with his son, to fears about aging , disease and death. These letters have been published on a regular basis in The Globe and Mail.They are a touching and honest exchange. Brown freely states, “I am not religious”, and that when it comes to faith, he agrees with the English novelist E.M. Forster who said, “I dislike the stuff.”Vanier responds with comfort and warmth, and his faith, identifying in Brown a place of loneliness, while also gently asserting his beliefs (and correcting the views of E.M. Forster).
These letters do not need to be read all at once, or even in order.But they open up conflicts with which many people struggle, and provide Vanier’s words of wisdom and inspiration for all.
The links also include an article about Vanier when he was awarded the Globe’s 2008 Nation Builder of the Year as well as an editorial about his work.
Just a few of the accomplishments of the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne include being knighted by the Queen, and winning the prestigous Templeton prize for religion. A mathematical physicist who became an Anglican priest, he is also the author of over 30 books on science and religion.
Polkinghorne is an engaging and provocative speaker who has said, when comparing his two fields of study, “Theology is much more difficult. Physics, at least at the undergraduate level, is a subject on which the dust has settled. In theology the dust never settles."
In describing Polkinghorne’s impact with respect to his 2002 prize, the Templeton Foundation said, “his extensive writings and lectures have consistently applied scientific habits to Christianity, resulting in a modern and compelling, new exploration of the faith…using the habits of a rigorous scientific mind have brought him international recognition as a unique voice for understanding the Bible…”
This interview with Polkinghorne was broadcast on the program “Tapestry” on CBC Radio on Nov. 30, 2008. It runs about 54 minutes.
The stories of the son of Abraham and the servant woman Hagar, and the son of Abraham and his wife Sarah, who had been barren, are at the root of three religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Charlotte Gordon is an English professor at Endicott University who explores the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar in her forthcoming book, The Woman who Named God. In this interview, Professor Gordon talks about her own family’s religious traditions and choices (some are Jewish, some Christian) and, in her words, focuses on “the essential elements of the story — Hagar’s bravery, Sarah’s intelligence, Abraham’s divided loyalties, the dark history of the conflict between the two women, and the hope that by grappling with these complexities we can work toward peace.”
In a time of conflict (at current writing, in Gaza and Israel), this item looks back to a story the author says was, eventually ,a hopeful one, as the two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, came together to bury their father.
The item is in Part Two of the program. Scroll down the web page you’ll find with the link below, and click on the arrow on the bar “Listen to Part Two”.
Related reading in our library: Please note you can now look up books in the Kingsway-Lambton Library through our online catalogue!
Roiphe, Anne. Water From The Well /Call number: 222.11 ROI Mastro, M. All The Women Of The Bible /Call number: 220.92 MAS Frank, Harry T. Discovering The Biblical World /Call number: 220.95 Fra Muggeridge, Malcolm. End of Christendom / Call number: 270 Mug
2. United Church videos on YouTube
The United Church of Canada recently launched its own channel on YouTube. According to the church’s multimedia producer, Catherine Rodd, it will include local, regional and international stories to showcase the United Church and its work. Some examples of the videos available include messages from the Moderator, work done through the Mission and Service Fund, and reports on groups such as Project Ploughshares, which works to control small arms used in conflicts. The site can be found at: www.youtube.ca/unitedchurchofcanada
