Jane Jacobs. Dark Age Ahead. Vintage, 2004.

Jane Jacobs, like Studs Terkel and John Kenneth Galbraith, was one of the wonders of the world, a source of powerful inspiration.  All three of these prophets lived nearly to or beyond their 90s as productive, perceptive analysts of the human condition–and purveyors of affirmative, humanistic values to the end–even amidst sharply critical and perceptive evaluations of the modern world.

Jacobs, author of the classic, The Life and Death of Great American Cities, published her final book when she was 88, just two years before her death.  Dark Age Ahead has a grim title. Jacobs argues that our modern, technology-worshiping Western culture is heading into decline–identifying five key areas where she sees this: community and family, higher education, the effective practice of science, taxation and government, and the self-regulation of the learned professions. Most thoughtful readers could easily add to her list.

The several years since this book came out have only reinforced her dire warnings. She does not ultimately despair, though. Throughout her career, Jacobs was able to identify important ways in which human societies do manifest a resilience and inclination toward adaptation that makes humane responses to crises possible. She does so here in her final writings as well. This isn’t exactly a book of big hope, but we do find glimmers. Jacobs’ challenge to us–for which we should be grateful, along with our gratitude for her entire body of work–is to cultivate those glimmers of hope in the belief that humanity is inclined toward healing its problem.

Peace Theology Book Review Index

Christopher Browning. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. HarperPerennial, 1998.

This fascinating and disturbing book has been out a while, but I just lately got around to reading it. It addresses a big issue–trying to gain some understanding of how German people could have participated in mass murder in the Nazi era–in a helpful way by focusing on just one small part of the story. Browning looks at a single group of German soldiers and their process of becoming ever more involved in genocide.

Part of what is disturbing in this story is that, as the title states, these were “ordinary men.” They were not professional soldiers but rather a reserve unit of civilians pressed into service, sent to Poland, and ultimately ordered do kill thousands of Jews in cold blood. A number of men in the unit did resist, a little (there was only one who successfully evaded the call to kill), but most–in Browning’s telling–initially drug their feet but in time simply “obeyed orders.”

As a theologian, what I note to be missing is any sense that these church-going men might have found anything in their faith tradition that might have pushed them to stand between the obviously, horrifically, sinful commands from their leaders and the helpless victims they were being called upon to slaughter. Another sad element of the story is the on-going denial characteristic of most of the participants in the years following these events.

Browning challenges the argument of well-known author Daniel Goldhagen that “pent-up anti-Semitism” that simply was waiting for a Hitler to serve as a catalyst  (and was in some sense distinctive to Germany) explains these events. “The fundamental problem is not to explain why ordinary Germans, as members of a people utterly different from us and shaped by a culture that permitted them to think and act in no other way than to want to be genocidal executioners, eagerly killed Jews when the opportunity offered. The fundamental problem is to explain why ordinary men–shaped by a culture that had its own peculiarities but was nonetheless within the mainstream of western Christian, and Enlightenment traditions–under specific circumstances willingly carried out the most extreme genocide in human history” (page 222).

“It would be very comforting if Goldhagen were correct, that very few societies have the long-term, cultural-cognitive prerequisites to commit genocide, and that regimes can only do so when the population is overwhelmingly of one mind about its priority, justice,and necessity. We would live in a safer world if he were right, but I am not so optimistic. I fear that we live in a world in which war and racism are ubiquitous, in which the powers of government mobilization and legitimization are powerful and increasing, in which a sense of personal responsibility is increasingly attenuated by specialization and bureaucratization, and in which the peer group exerts tremendous pressures on behavior and sets moral norms. In such a world, I fear, modern governments that wish to commit mass murder will seldom fail in their efforts for being unable to induce ‘ordinary men’ to become their ‘willing executioners'” (pages 222-23).

I highly recommend this book.

Peace Theology Book Review Index

Naomi Wolf. The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007.

I found many things to like about this book, a best-seller written by a leading American feminist social critic. Wolf presents her polemic against American social and political trends in recent years as reflecting her one “conservative” (as in affirming the democratic traditions pioneered in the U.S. and reflected in our Constitution and Bill of Rights). She sees herself in the long tradition of dissent against oppressive government dating back to colonial days, especially evoking Thomas Paine.

Wolf gives us a clear and carefully thought through portrayal of how recent trends in our country, when looked at carefully, put us clearly on the road to fascism–this is a persuasive argument, I think. Her writing is accessible, well-reasoned, logical, and passionate.

I also like how Wolf, already a very prominent figure and sure of selling a lot of books, chose to publish with a truly independent publisher rather than making money for the very corporations that are underwriting our journey away from democracy.

I haven’t read any of Wolf’s reflections following the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. I would expect she would draw some hope from that election–our democracy may still have some vitality. But I would hope she would also raise some strong words of caution. We are far from out of the woods. The temptations facing Obama to live too comfortably with the perks of the imperial presidency will be powerful. Citizens must sustain, even heighten, their efforts to make sure we decisively turn from the path toward fascism.

Robert S. McElvaine. Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America. Crown Publishers, 2008.

For people like myself, practicing Christians horrified at the general image of Christianity as a violent, intolerant, right-wing religion widespread in our culture, this book comes as a kind of relief. McElvaine is a professor of history at a Bible Belt church-related college (Millsaps in Jackson, Mississippi). His basic argument, presented in a lively, in-your-face style, is that the Christian Right in America has profoundly corrupted the basic Christian message and needs to be called to account.

The author is a political and theological liberal, but places himself in the mainstream of biblical Christianity. He names names and minces few words in his harsh critique. He is not so much setting out to find common ground and persuade those on the Right to moderate their views as to rally the troops among Progressive Christians and to help those outside the churches to see a different perspective on the core values of Christianity.

I find myself quite sympathetic with McElvaine’s basic perspective. I like his constructive suggestions and agree with just about all of his criticisms. And I think it is good and important to have such criticisms. At times his take no prisoners style made me smile, but mostly I did find it a bit off-putting. Maybe it’s good to have someone write such an attention-getting polemic, but one wonders a bit whether such bitter sarcasm is fully consistent with McElvaine’s portrayal of Christianity as a faith centered on love. I don’t think Christ-like love is incompatible with sharp criticism, but I do miss a more compassionate, gentle sensibility that probably would have actually made the critique more powerful.

If you are unhappy with the general portrayal of Christianity in cahoots with the political Right in 21st century America and you don’t feel like you know enough about those who presence has set the tone for this portrayal, this would be a good book to read. And for many of us, it may serve as an encouragement to do something about this portrayal.