Martha's Marvellous Munchies

"A church with an accessible culture makes sure a diverse community can participate in everything they do. That's not a burden on a church - it's a cultural shift that benefits everyone." "This is a book about justice." So reads the first sentence of At the Gates: Disability, Justice and the Churches . Written by Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson, who are themselves disabled, At the Gates  draws on interviews with dozens of Christians with disabilities to put together a picture of how they have been treated at church. In the book, the interviewees are called storytellers . All too often, the stories tell of lack of access, hurtful comments, and unfounded assumptions about their abilities and faith. This, the authors describe as ableism  - an ideology that gives power to those who are able-bodied and neurotypical, while regarding others as deficient. What is the book about? The first part of the book covers the issues that disabled people have in havin...

"Love is a sweet and pleasurable food because it gives rest to the tired, strength to the weak, and joy to the sorrowful. Love makes the yoke of truth easy to bear and its burden light." Bernard of Clairvaux was born in 1090. At the age of 22 he became a Cistercian monk, and persuaded about thirty of his relatives and friends to join him on this path. He became the abbot of Clairvaux when he was 25 years old. During his lifetime he founded many other monastic communities. This edition includes two of St Bernard's books: The Twelve Steps of Humility and Pride and On Loving God . They are short books, with very short chapters, often only a page or so long. The first was written for his fellow monks; the second for "the illustrious Lord Aimeric, Cardinal-Deacon and Chancellor of the Roman Church", who had apparently been asking Bernard questions about the faith. What is the book about? Twelve Steps spends its first half describing what the goal of humility is, b...

"God has ordained in his great wisdom and goodness that eating, and especially eating in company, should be one of the most profound and pleasurable aspects of being human." Miranda Harris had been intending to write a book for years. She'd got as far as a folder full of notes when she died suddenly in a car accident in 2019. When her daughter, Jo Swinney, found the notes, she decided to bring her mum's dream to fruition. A Place at the Table was the result. I thought this was going to be a nice friendly book about having people over for dinner. In one sense it is, but it's pretty hard-hitting as well. Miranda and her husband Peter co-founded the environmental charity A Rocha, so the book doesn't shy away from considering the environmental aspects of what we eat and how we live. They also travelled widely and encountered hunger at close quarters; the tension between seeing such poverty and believing in a generous God comes out clearly in A Place at the Table....

"We cannot enter by any efforts of our own; His Majesty must put us right into the centre of our soul, and must enter there Himself."   St Teresa of Avila reluctantly began to write Interior Castle (or The Mansions ) in 1577, complaining that "this writing under obedience tires me and makes my head worse". She set herself to the task of explaining her vision of the soul being like "a castle made of a single diamond... in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions".  Her writing is engaging but dense; I found it difficult to read more than about ten pages at a time. She also has a habit of introducing terms like favours or intellectual visions and talking about them for a while, before finally defining what they mean several chapters later. This gets confusing. On the other hand, St Teresa is good at thinking of illustrations to explain what she means. She frequently exclaims that these visions are impossible to describe to any...

"The affirmed life must not become either a lazy life or a happy-ever-after, easy life. The affirmed life is not a life of the power of positive thinking. To be affirmed by God means to live with danger and promise."   Kosuke Koyama's book Three Mile an Hour God was written out of the experience of the Second World War and its aftermath in Japan. As Koyama says in his preface, it is "a collection of biblical reflections by one who is seeking the source of healing from the wounds... inflicted by the destructive power of idolatry." The title speaks of a God who moves at walking pace - three miles an hour - and even, in Jesus, comes to a "full stop" - nailed to a cross. If we try to move faster than the love of God, says Koyama, we fall into idolatry. What is the book about? Three Mile an Hour God has 45 chapters, each a separate short reflection headed by a Bible verse. Some deal specifically with Japan, considering her role in WWII, the damage inflicte...

I wasn't sure whether to read another set of theology books this year. Could the time I spend on it be better spent on something else? At what point does it become reading for the sake of it, without having much impact on my wider life? It's difficult to tell. However, as usual, I had a growing list of books I wanted to read. I do need to think about what I'm doing as well as what I'm reading, and I don't expect to continue this specific discipline indefinitely. But I decided there was space for at least one more year of Reading for Spiritual Formation. So, without further soul-searching: The Books. Three Mile an Hour God Kosuke Koyama Japanese theologians are few and far between; Christianity is still very much a niche religion in Japan. Kosuke Koyama was Japanese and appears to be both influential and accessible. Not every theologian is both! So I'm excited to read his recently republished book Three Mile an Hour God. It was originally written in 1979, and is ...

"I do indeed fear God, and so I try to say only what he wants me to say, even if people don't want me to say what I'm saying." Oscar Romero was archbishop of San Salvador, capital of El Salvador, at a time when murder and torture were widespread in the country. After his friend and fellow priest Father Grande was killed by the government, Romero took a stand against the violence. Week after week, he used his pulpit and radio broadcasts to report the murders and disappearances; to call for the church to work for peace and justice; and to preach repentance and forgiveness even for the killers. He did this knowing that it would certainly lead to his death. In March 1980 he was shot as he celebrated Mass in the cathedral. The Scandal of Redemption collects together extracts from Romero's sermons and diaries. The chapter headings are short - The Church, The Call, Redemption, Liberation - and each chapter gives a flavour of Romero's thinking on the topic. A remarka...

"I studied Theology... Despite the fact that most of the world's religious people are not white, we learnt very little about the theological thinking and experiences of Black and brown people." Chine McDonald is director of Theos, an organisation which provides research and opinion on the place of religion in society. She moved to the UK from Nigeria at the age of four. McDonald has been involved with the Evangelical Alliance, Christian Aid, and Greenbelt, as well as working as a journalist, so she has some wide-ranging experiences within the Christian and secular culture. This book uses stories from her own life, and historical examples, to illustrate the problem of racism in the church. She focuses on the British church in particular, although she refers to American events too. What are the main themes of this book? McDonald's argument is that white people - men in particular - have been assumed to be superior. They are regarded as more intelligent, more authoritati...

"A theology that neither issues forth in action nor takes account of the way one lives one's life can hardly be theology that is worth very much." Models of Contextual Theology looks like the most boring book in the world. Dry academic title, weird geometric cover design - you'd definitely only pick this up if you were required to write an essay on it, wouldn't you? Well, I wish the outside did it justice, because the contents are much more exciting than the cover. It asks some very interesting and important questions about how our faith relates to the world around us. Is culture mostly good or bad? Is there such a thing as the "naked gospel", free of context? Do you have to be a trained academic to theologize, or can anyone do it? How much does theology from one culture transfer to a different culture? Bevans describes six models of theology which offer different answers to these questions. All are valid, he says, but they all understand the gospel an...

"To our reading of the Scriptures we bring our reason, experience, and the traditions of our faith, feeling down into the truth we trust is there waiting for us." Equality is Biblical is the only book I've read where the questions have been as good as the main text. Usually study questions range from mediocre to dire, with a distinct feeling that they are only there because someone suggested it at the last minute. Penelope Wilcock, on the other hand, provides questions like surgical tools, probing deeply into what you believe and why. The book's main topic is the place of women in the church, but the questions cover everything from how we visualise God to the power of shame in society. What are the main themes of this book? The subtitle of Equality is Biblical is Lifting the Curse of Eve , and a large chunk of the book focuses on Genesis, analysing how the story has traditionally been interpreted, and offering alternative readings of the text. Then there is a look at...

"They [Christian saints] do not stand aside wrapped in delightful prayers and feeling pure and agreeable to God. They go right down into the mess; and there, right down in the mess, they are able to radiate God because they possess Him." As a long-standing Christian, I thought I had the definitions of things like faith, hope, love and prayer pretty well understood - in principle if not in practice. Evelyn Underhill manages to describe them in ways I'd never come across before. She writes with imagination, clarity, and a fearsomely large knowledge of her subject. She also opens up wide vistas across the spiritual life, but gives very concrete and practical steps in how to achieve the same view. Concerning the Inner Life contains three chapters written to parish priests, to encourage them to build up their prayer life and connection with God. The House of the Soul is for a more general readership. It uses the metaphor of a house to explore the ways in which Christians can...