[Oe List ...] Book(s) Review

[frank bremner]

Dear folks
 
Geoff Bridge, (lay) Uniting Church chaplain in the multi-faith chaplaincy with Oasis - Faith Spirit Community, formerly the Religious Centre, at Flinders University, sent me this attached book review(s).
 
"OMG!" I thought at first.  Then "Maybe in these times we need to bite the bullet on why 'religion', in the conventional sense, is seen as irrelevant", and just chat about it.  Maybe 'religion', in a nonconventional sense, or many non-conventional senses, is alive and well, and struggles for a vocabulary, a language.  Maybe this language or languages, and vocabulary or vocabularies, is already around us "if we have the eyes to see, and ears to hear", etc. 
 
As a Latin American priest, from the base communities, said in Adelaide about a  decade ago, maybe it's time to shut up and listen to the scriptures and languages of earth and society, and put "The Good Book" aside for a while.  he was probably quoting Thomas Berry.
 
I'm grateful for that phrase from former times: "The final up-against-ness".  Like the squeeeplay diagram, such images should not become idols in themselves but should point to something, or in langauge of former times, the No-Thing.
 
[An aside: a great Gahan Thomas cartoon from the 70s showed a crowd watching a procession of floats.  One float featured grotesque idol sittin on top of a cube with a large "N" on the side.  One spectator turns to another and says: "Is Nothing sacred?"]
 
I found the above three phrases in red useful when conversing with teenagers in a secondary school religion class (and elsewhere).  No matter what you see, think, hear, believe about the word G-O-D, those dynamics are still True (with an upper case "T").  I think the reply by M J Vincent is somehow pointing to this.  The "professional" and "lay" theologian, and "the folks in the trailer park" - they're all experiencing the same life dynamics - they're all "being your own theologian" (another great phrase from past times).
 
[And I'm speaking from a very non-religious, but deeply spiritual, culture.  Overt public religious display, such as being seen "at church" on Sunday, is not as politically important in Australia as in the USA.  
 
Our PM, Kevin Rudd, has come out as a Bonhoeffer fan, yet on a recent ABC-TV program Q & A backed off from saying anything about his connection of religion and politics.  He probably decided that within 1 hour he could not shift the goal-posts or framework of the discussion so the latter could be useful.  He may also have decided that within the ALP he should not appear to be a "Bible-basher".]
 
G & P
 
Frank
 
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