"95 percent of political commentary, whether spoken or written, is now polluted by the very politics it’s supposed to be about. Meaning it’s become totally ideological and reductive: The writer/speaker has certain political convictions or affiliations, and proceeds to filter all reality and spin all assertion according to those convictions and loyalties. Everybody’s pissed off and exasperated and impervious to argument from any other side. Opposing viewpoints are not just incorrect but contemptible, corrupt, evil. Conservative thinkers are balder about this kind of attitude: Limbaugh, Hannity, that horrific O’Reilly person. Coulter, Kristol, etc. But the Left’s been infected, too. Have you read this new Al Franken book? Parts of it are funny, but it’s totally venomous (like, what possible response can rightist pundits have to Franken’s broadsides but further rage and return-venom?). Or see also e.g. Lapham’s latest Harper’s columns, or most of the stuff in the Nation, or even Rolling Stone. It’s all become like Zinn and Chomsky but without the immense bodies of hard data these older guys use to back up their screeds. There’s no more complex, messy, community-wide argument (or “dialogue”); political discourse is now a formulaic matter of preaching to one’s own choir and demonizing the opposition. Everything’s relentlessly black-and-whitened. Since the truth is way, way more gray and complicated than any one ideology can capture, the whole thing seems to me not just stupid but stupefying. Watching O’Reilly v. Franken is watching bloodsport. How can any of this possibly help me, the average citizen, deliberate about whom to choose to decide my country’s macroeconomic policy, or how even to conceive for myself what that policy’s outlines should be, or how to minimize the chances of North Korea nuking the DMZ and pulling us into a ghastly foreign war, or how to balance domestic security concerns with civil liberties? Questions like these are all massively complicated, and much of the complication is not sexy, and well over 90 percent of political commentary now simply abets the uncomplicatedly sexy delusion that one side is Right and Just and the other Wrong and Dangerous. Which is of course a pleasant delusion, in a way—as is the belief that every last person you’re in conflict with is an [expletive]—but it’s childish, and totally unconducive to hard thought, give and take, compromise, or the ability of grown-ups to function as any kind of community."

As many of you will recall, Robinson's second novel was the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gilead in which we hear the elderly voice of a Congregationalist minister, John Ames, writing a letter to his young son. He is giving the account of his family, particularly the deep divide that existed between his abolitionist father and grandfather who supported the inclusion of Kansas into the United States as a slave state. Gilead also introduces us to Ames' best friend, the Presbyterian minister, Robert Boughton.

Home is an independent novel that takes place concurrently with Gilead but the focus shifts to the Boughton family. Glory and Jack, two of Robert's adult children have returned home for reasons unique to each. Glory is caring for her dying father and Jack has come home to reconcile with his past. There are many reasons to recommend this book, but none greater than Jack. Always the black sheep, Jack is a complex character who struggles to reconcile his deep knowledge of the Christian faith and his personal and familial experience.

Home is a beautiful work about families, faith, forgiveness, the cultivation of intimacy and the vapor of life. It is Robinson's masterpiece. I encourage you to order it now and set aside some time when it arrives.

If you are starting the fall wistfully remembering life in the burbs, then pick up a copy of Sidewalks in the Kingdom. Jacobsen is a Presbyterian minister and member of the Congress for New Urbanism. Now I'm not personally a huge fan of the examples of New Urbansim that I've seen (they seem way too contrived to me), but Jacobsen has constructed a biblical and theological argument for the significance of cities to the human community. From a biblical perspective, Christians have as much reason as anyone to invest themselves in the city and pay attention to the shape of the environments that in turn shape us.

If you are interested in reading this book, let me recommend that you check out the website, access the discussion questions, and read it with a friend.

Scot McKnight in Christianity Today

Mark D. Roberts has provided us a nice introduction to the Christian year that begins with Advent. If you are unfamiliar with the Christian calendar, you will find this easy reading. Also, if you are looking for ways to celebrate the Christian year with your family, be sure to download his chart for liturgical colors and use them in your home.

Flannery O'Connor delivered these words in two separate addresses during the last year of her life. She was emphasizing the importance of place in shaping both writers and their stories. O'Connor believed to ignore the particular people, sights, sounds, smells and textures that have shaped a writer removes him from life itself. Therefore, if a story doesn't connect somewhere in particular, it can't connect anywhere.

Though these words ring true today in affluent postmodern cultures that prize the particular over the universal by thinking local, eating seasonal and shopping at Mom & Pop stores over multi-national conglomerates, O'Connor was not advocating a more sophisticated consumerism. Instead, she was applying deep theological truths to her craft. As a committed Christian, O'Connor understood that salvation is a universal story about God reconciling all things to himself told through particular people and places. Therefore, to fully understand the mission of God, we must familiarize ourselves with places like Egypt,Palestine, Babylon and Rome and with people like Abraham, Moses, Pharaoh, David and Jesus.

But the story of salvation is not just told in the past tense. Since Jesus walked the dusty roads of Israel and talked with Simon, Philip, Matthew, Thomas, Martha and Nicodemus, the story has continued to unfold in the lives of men, women and children from every tribe, language and nation. The Gospel is Good News about what God has done and is still doing through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It has been told in homes and on streets, in the marketplace and theatres and studios. It is being told today in Park Slope, Brooklyn by school teachers and writers, architects and bankers, neighbors and friends. And when the story is told, people and places are transformed. Therefore, we must pay attention to what is happening around us.

"If you believe in the Redemption, your ultimate vision is one of hope, so in what you see you must be true to this ultimate vision: you must pass over the evil you see and look for the good because the good is there; the good is the ultimate reality." —Flannery O'Connor