Books: March 19, 1997
A Gentle Jeremiad for a Politicized Age
A former dean of the Chapel steps beyond the pulpit to tackle social issues
Outrage and Hope: A Bishop's Reflections in Times of Change and Challenge
Frederick Houk Borsch '57
Trinity Press International, $15 paper
As a young man I looked to the robed members of our community-judges and priests-as special leaders. Their vestments seemed to promise a sage apartness from the world's shrill demands and daily habits-even a transcendence. They spoke for a higher authority.
Times have changed. Judges now invite cameras into their courts. Priests respond to the church's perceived obligation to micromassage its parishioners' needs, some of them spiritual, but a disproportionate number societal and political.
The recent collection of pieces by Frederick Houk Borsch '57, Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles, is eloquent testimony that responding to pressing daily social needs can be vital as faith in action but suspect as theology. The contents of Outrage and Hope: Reflections in Times of Change and Challenge vary widely from parochial and diocesan sermons to OpEd articles. They give frequent evidence of a sensitive man with an inquisitive mind, a product (one wants to believe) of his university and particularly of his years as Dean of the Chapel (1981-88).
But the pieces also include advice to clergy that, while often wisely humble ("I need to pray for others whose views and attitudes may be different from mine [and thereby] share a little of their suffering") is just as often pedestrian ("The healing effects of not reacting to others' anger ... involves active listening and careful efforts to understand what the issues are.").
There are also moving and probing analyses of our world, aimed not just at the faithful but to citizens of the diocese. Fred, as he occasionally refers to himself, writes as a good liberal man of his times, and fellow liberals will respond wholeheartedly to his fullthroated disapproval of poverty, racism, sexism, the tooeasy access to guns, and our government's winking support of Salvadoran deathsquads. But I found that the unvarying correctness of these political judgments began to gnaw and undermine this clergyman's claim to speak of other, more eternal matters.
Not for him Anglican Dean William Inge's warning that one who is married to the spirit of his age is doomed to be a widower. No, Bishop Borsch insists that "Christians in every aspect of their 1ives must show care and concern for that which God cares about." Most of these essays declare a firm conviction that God is both an activist and a progressive. That sort of political anthropomorphism has paved many a slippery slope.
Still, even for those who may reject Borsch's premise that God "calls us to participate as fully as possible in the governance of our communities and country," there is no denying the grace, the thought, articulation, and sensitivity that vivify his writings. It is not just Episcopalians who are lucky to have a man of his eloquence and vision at work, both in the pulpit and the diocese. A literate and gentle Jeremiah, Borsch calls us insistently to the things of the world; he is a perfect messenger for our informational, politicized age.
-Jamie Spencer '66
Jamie Spencer is an adjunct English instructor at several community colleges in the St. Louis, Missouri, area, a lay reader and member of the Adult Education Committee at the Episcopal Church of St. Michael and St. George, and president of the St. Louis Princeton Club.
Short Takes
The Book of
African-American Women:
150 Crusaders, Creators,
and Uplifters
Tonya Bolden '81
Adams Media Corporation, $16
Margaret Garner and Judith James are just a few of the forgotten African-American women revisited in Tonya Bolden '81's The Book of African-American Women: 150 Crusaders, Creators, and Uplifters. Garner, who killed one of her children in 1856 and regretted not killing the rest to "end their sufferings [rather] than have them taken back to slavery and murdered by piece-meal," is the real woman who inspired the character Sethe in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Judith James was president of an organization founded in 1831 to discourage buying products made by slaves.
Bolden introduces these and other women in a chatty, conversational way. The reason certain women are profiled is obscure. Why Aretha Franklin and not Toni Morrison? Bolden herself admits that the selection process was informal. Indeed, the tone of each entry is casual, brief, and often inspirational, highlighting each woman's accomplishments, sometimes despite horrendous circumstances. Even when one is familiar with the story of a woman's life, such as Harriet Tubman's, Bolden includes less well-known facts, incorporates quotes, and provides references for further reading.
Toxic Sludge Is Good for You!
Lies, Damn Lies and the Public
Relations Industry
John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton '82
Common Courage Press, $16.95 paper
"Biosolids," a public-relations term for the byproduct of sewage-treatment plants, raises a red flag for me now that I have read Toxic Sludge is Good for You!, John Stauber's and Sheldon Rampton '82's exposé of the public-relations industry. The word was created in the course of the industry's efforts to get the public to accept the byproduct as fertilizer on farms, regardless of the fact that much of the sludge is not from human waste but industrial waste and contains high levels of asbestos, DDT, and lead.
Stauber and Rampton describe the PR industry's work in other realms, such as the promotion of smoking and atomic energy. The authors reveal the reliance of journalists on video news releases-short videos produced as if they are news but which are really slanted clips with an agenda-supplied by PR professionals, many of whom are former journalists themselves.
Occasionally, you might disagree with the authors' level of disgust with the PR industry, but the book makes you more skeptical and alert to biases in reporting. In the end, the authors suggest combating the public-relations industry's power by recognizing its influence and scope; seeking alternative information sources; and becoming involved at the community level.
Science and Dissent in
Post-Mao China: The Politics
of Knowledge
H. Lyman Miller '66
University of Washington Press, $18.95 paper
"Without dissent, there is no science," wrote Li Xingmin in 1990, "and without dissenters there are basically no scientists." Li, astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, and other scientists in China in the 1980s came to political activism through their science, as carefully shown by H. Lyman Miller '66 in Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China: The Politics of Knowledge.
Miller, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, is primarily aiming at an academic audience with this work; however, his analysis of why scientists became dissidents is fascinating. For these scientists, quantum mechanics and the Big Bang theory raised doubts about Marxist stances on matter and space, and, in a time of reform and authorized openness among intellectuals, eventually led to a debate over Marxism's authority over science.
Quoting from many Chinese academic journals and newspapers, Miller shows how scientists began to express that Marxism should not judge science; rather Marxism is itself a science that should be studied. In the end, a few claimed that only in a democracy can true science be conducted. The drama in Tiananmen Square, which most Americans saw as a moving confrontation between individuals and the state, is placed in the context of China's complex history of its intelligentsia's struggle to practice science under an authoritarian regime.
-Jennifer Gennari Shepherd
Jennifer Gennari Shepherd is a freelance writer living in Natick, Massachusetts.
Books Received
War and Public Health
Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel '53, eds.
Oxford University Press, $55
The Burning Green (poetry)
John McKenna '57 and Nancy McKenna
Wipf & Stock Publishers, 790 E. 11th Ave., Eugene, OR 97407. $12 paper
The Roses of Pieria (poetry)
Gordon Walmsley '71 and Grethe Bagge
Orders to Rhodos International Science and Art Publishers, Strandgade 36, DK-1401 Copenhagen, Denmark. $26 paper
Wisdom of the Word:
Faith (sermons)
Rhinold Lamar Ponder '81 and Michele Tuck-Ponder, eds.
Crown Publishers, $17
Wisdom of the Word:
Love (sermons)
Rhinold Lamar Ponder '81 and Michele Tuck-Ponder, eds.
Crown Publishers, $17