Title: Faith, Philosophy, Scripture
Author: James E. Faulconer
Publisher: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship
Genre: Philosophy/Theology
Year: 2010
Pages: 254
ISBN13: 9780842527781
Binding: Paperback

In the 1983 film “A Christmas Story,” little Ralphie wants nothing more than a Red Ryder carbine-action two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and “a thing which tells time.” Parents, teachers, even Santa Claus himself respond to his pleading with the same refrain: “You’ll shoot yer eye out!” LDS Church members who are interested in philosophy might encounter a similar refrain from other members who see philosophy as the Red Ryder of religion.

Reticent to mingle the philosophies of men with scripture, Mormon thinkers haven’t produced a wide offering of philosophical texts during the Church’s first 180 years. Orson and Parley Pratt’s early theological works are seldom read by contemporary church members. Today’s General Authorities aren’t likely to produce something like B.H. Roberts’s Seventy’s Course in Theology or John A. Widtsoe’s A Rational Theology. More recent LDS philosophers have been likelier to publish devotional style books like Truman Madsen’s Eternal Man or Dennis Rasmussen’s The Lord’s Question. Sterling McMurrin and Blake Ostler have produced a few academically-minded but seldom read volumes. David Paulsen, Erich Robert Paul and others have written various articles which make for great reading. The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology holds annual conferences and publishes a journal, but few books on Mormonism have resulted thus far. BYU Professor of philosophy James E. Faulconer has undertaken to explain Mormonism’s apparent lack of philosophical texts by adding his own to the short stack. [Read more...]

Title: In Defense of Civility: How Religion Can Unite America on Seven Moral Issues that Divide Us
Author: James Calvin Davis
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Genre: Religion/Politics
Year: 2010
Pages: 198
ISBN13: 9780664235444
Binding: Paperback
Price: 19.95

The subtitle of James Calvin Davis’s new book In Defense of Civility describes an audacious pipe dream. If the book aims to tell readers “How Religion can Unite America on Seven Moral Issues That Divide Us” I would be satisfied with a book that resolves a single divisive issue! Nevertheless, given the recently heated political climate I thought it might be well to think about a less-discussed virtue of civic engagement: civility.

As it turns out, Davis is not offering simple resolutions for divisive issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and environmentalism. To the contrary, he bluntly states that “civility cannot guarantee consensus on any issue” (160). Instead, Davis seeks first to describe and justify an ethic of civil public dialog and second, to embody the ethic by describing seven particularly sticky moral/political issues. Above all Davis underscores not merely the legitimacy, but also the potential benefits of recognizing religious perspectives in the public sphere. My review of his book comes too late to assist in the recent political hullabaloo; things tend to get especially rancorous during election season. However, the book provides crucial food for thought for those reflecting on the tone of political dialog generally, those who aren’t waiting for another election year to care about the political process, and those who think religion deserves either a stronger or weaker presence in political discussions. [Read more...]

Title: God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens
Author: John F. Haught
Publisher: Westminster John Knox
Genre: Religion
Year: 2008
Pages: 124
ISBN13: 9780664233044
Binding: Paperback
Price: 16.95

Responses to the claims of the so-called “new atheism” vary according to the interests of each particular respondent. John F. Haught, Senior Fellow in Science and Religion at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University is touted as “one of the world’s leading thinkers in the field of theology and science”, and his book reflects that focus. Specifically, he calls his book a “theological response” to the underlying assumptions of the “science-inspired atheism” promulgated by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and others (xi). To Haught, the intellectual undergirding of atheism has seen better days, he confesses his “disappointment in witnessing the recent surge of interest in atheism” because he finds it “so theologically unchallenging” (xi). Nevertheless, he took up the pen to help not only “specialists, teachers, and students, but also…the general reading public” become better acquainted with the way faith informs reason and vice versa (xi). [Read more...]

Title: Early Mormon Missionary Activities in Japan, 1901-1924
Author: Reid L. Neilson
Publisher: University of Utah Press
Genre: Mormon Studies
Year: 2010
Pages: 214
ISBN13: 9780874809893
Binding: Paperback

Heber J. Grant, Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had disappointing news to share at the Church’s October 1903 General Conference. “I know that the Latter-day Saints have been greatly interested in the mission I was called to preside over, and I regret I am not able to tell you that we have done something wonderful over in Japan,” Grant lamented. The Japanese mission had opened with great excitement in 1901 but progress did not match expectations. “To be perfectly frank with you,” Grant added, “ I acknowledge I have accomplished very little indeed, as the president of that mission; and very little has been accomplished—so far as conversions are concerned” (120). Grant held out hope that “there will yet be a great and important labor accomplished in that land.” But it wouldn’t come in his lifetime, as Grant himself directed the “temporary closing of the mission and withdrawal of the missionaries” in 1924, shortly before World War II (120). Eighty-eight missionaries over twenty-three years claimed only 166 baptized converts, only around a dozen remaining active at the time the mission closed (146). [Read more...]

Title: Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate
Author: Terry Eagleton
Publisher: Yale University Press
Genre: Religion
Year: 2009
Pages: 185
ISBN13: 9780300164534
Binding: Soft cover (2010)
Price: 16.00

“Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology. I therefore have a good deal of sympathy with its rationalist and humanist critics” (xi).

So Terry Eagleton begins his critique of the so-called New Atheist movement. Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Lancaster, England, clearly is not advocating an uncritical acceptance of religion. In fact, his stinging analysis of the “Polyanna-ish” faith in human progress manifested by New Atheists like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins (whom he humorously lumps together as “Ditchkins”) is balanced by his just-as-stinging indictment of a Christianity he feels has largely betrayed its initial ideal of social justice and human transformation. [Read more...]