RABBLE-ROUSER FOR PEACE:
THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY
OF DESMOND TUTU
by John Allen.
Published by Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, New York.
396 pages. Illustrated.
Reviewed by the Rt. Rev. Herbert A. Donovan, Jr.

Desmond Tutu, Nobel laureate, retired Archbishop and former Primate of the Anglican Church in South Africa, leader in the struggle against racial apartheid, is a renowned world figure
whose accomplishments make him larger than life. A person of short stature, he becomes a commanding presence by virtue of both reputation and ability to sense the significance
of an occasion and an audience.

Author John Allen says he first thought of writing this book 25 years ago when as a religion writer for a Johannesburg newspaper he saw that Tutu “was going places.” Allen served
Tutu as press officer from 1987 to 2000. He has researched his work thoroughly and has lived alongside Tutu as an intimate and a keen observer, especially seen in his description
of Tutu’s role as chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an experience that subjected Tutu to severe criticism and took a heavy toll on him emotionally. He has also gotten
to the heart and soul of this amazing man as, for example, when he says, “the foundations of Tutu’s stature and his moral authority are to be found in his spirituality and faith.”(p. 394).
He goes on to note the early influence on Tutu by Trevor Huddleston and the Community of the Resurrection where he learned “that the choice was not either prayer or social action: rather
prayer inevitably drove you off your knees into action.” (p. 395).

I have been privileged to be in Bishop Tutu’s presence off and on since 1982 and can agree wholeheartedly with Allen’s assessment of him. I treasure my memories of his sense of humor. Here are two examples
cited by Allen: After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Tutu observed, “One day no one was listening. The next, I was an oracle.” (p. 245). Earlier, Tutu quoted his wife, Leah, saying, “So
many things are happening to us lately” [Peace Prize and election as Bishop of Johannesburg] that “she might wake up one morning and find she’s sleeping with the Pope.” (p. 219).

Those of us who lived through the affairs of church and politics have our own stories to tell about the efforts to divest of the stock of companies doing business in South Africa and, later, of the move to impose sanctions
on its apartheid government. Tutu was instrumental in both of those matters. When President Reagan vetoed a sanctions measure (later over-ridden by Congress), Tutu observed, “Your President is the pits.” (p. 260).
Of hesitancy on sanctions in the United States, England and Germany, he stated that “the West . . . can go to Hell.” (p. 261).

Allen has included some priceless gems in his story, three of which I note: Tutu’s recounting of his days as a golf caddy (p. 38), awaiting the decision of the Nobel Prize committee while in residence
at New York’s General Theological Seminary in 1984 (pp. 211-2) and the emotion-filled reception in Cape Town after his election as Archbishop (pp. 267-68).

In retirement, Tutu continues to be a keen observer of contemporary issues, especially the church’s attitude toward homosexuality. Allen notes that Tutu’s attitude has evolved over the years from tolerance to advocacy.
He now finds it “outrageous that church leaders should be obsessed with issues of sexuality in the face of the challenges of AIDS and global poverty.” He has criticized Archbishop Rowan Williams for being
“too accommodating of conservatives” in the current debate in the Anglican Communion.(p. 373).

Tutu’s 75th birthday was celebrated last month. Surely we have not heard the last from him. Hopefully, John Allen will have many reasons to add more to this rich work on Desmond Tutu. Meanwhile, I am profoundly
grateful for what my friend, John Allen, has given us in this book.

Cooking With the Bible-Biblical Food, Feasts and Lore
Anthony Chiffolo and
Greenwood Press, 2006
386 Pages
Book Review by Neva Rae Fox

I love to cook. I love to read. I love the Bible. So it’s not a great surprise that I loved Cooking With The Bible: Biblical Food, Feasts and Lore.

But cooking, reading and the Bible are just some of the elements of this wonderful book. Anthony Chiffolo and Rusty Hesse have succeeded in bringing together aspects of our Christian heritage along with the foods that are at the core of our celebrations.

I found this book to be a total delight on many levels. It’s rich in all aspects: rich in relaying the sagas of our religious ancestors and making their stories come alive; rich in the foods that were a part of their traditions and are a part of our traditions; rich in its tone and presentation.
Cooking With The Bible provided tome a real, tangible link with our biblical brothers and sisters – their lives and their experiences, their stories and their foods. What a delight!

The authors take extra steps to include history, geography and traditions of the ancient peoples. This allowed me to learn a lot about the places in the Bible whose names have become second nature for me. For example, on page 200 there is an account of the fish which inhabited the Sea of Galilee in the times of the Bible and what’s there now.

Each chapter is presented in three distinct sections, and I felt that I was reading three different books. The opening is a passage from the Bible. That’s followed by a detailed narrative of the meaning of that passage – why it’s important, who is who, where is the significance, etc. The third section is the food part, which is dedicated to the particular feast featured in the Biblical passage, followed by recipes fit for that feast.

I learned about the feast for the return of the Prodigal Son and what was probably served at the Wedding Feast of Cana.

In the recipes, some concessions have been made to our modern way of cooking, like the lamb with figs, which starts out “in an electric frying pan” (page 88), something that our forbearers didn’t have in the Sinai. Fish, poultry, vegetables, fruits are all included, plus some recipes that are closely identified with cooking of the greater Mediterranean area, like humus (page 99).

But Cooking With The Bible doesn’t stop there. Part II of the book, another treat on many levels, begins on page 205, with details about foods, grains, fruits, vegetables and spices. Another true delight.

Congratulations to Chiffolo and Hesse (who is pastor of St. John’s Wilmot in New Rochelle) on the presentation of an excellent book. I know I will cherish my copy and I will refer to it often for many reasons.

MIDDLE CHURCH: RECLAIMING THE MORAL VALUES
OF THE FAITHFUL MAJORITY FROM THE RELIGIOUS
RIGHT
By Bob Edgar
New York: Simon & Schuster,2006
Book Review by Dall Forsythe

From the center and from the left, resurgent forces are mounting a counterattack against the religious right. Their goal is to regain the high ground now occupied by the activists in the fundamentalist camp, who have been reinforced and organized by leaders from the Republican Party. Bob Edgar, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, has entered the fray with the publication of Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right. Other warriors on the battlefield include Jim Wallis, publisher of Sojourners, and John Danforth, former senator from Missouri.

Edgar has a background that gives him standing and strength in the battle. He is an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church, was a member of Congress from Pennsylvania for six terms, and served as the dean of the Claremont School of Theology, a seminary in California.

One theme in the book is his own personal story, which he tells his with energy and eloquence, but he saves most of his passion for politics. And a passionate warrior he is!

Edgar has positions on most of the great issues of the day, and, as his subtitle states, he believes those positions are the moral – indeed, the godly – stance. He opines on: global warming and the environment; war and peace; the war on terrorism; torture and human rights; the Middle East; poverty and the living wage; and global health and poverty. Hebelieves that the religious center – what he calls Middle Church – can and should mobilize around these issues, and retake the moral initiative now held by the religious right. His concept of Middle Church is broad, including people from Middle Synagogue and Middle Mosque as well from as the mainline churches. Many Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians might also feel comfortable in this coalition, so long as abortion was not a prominent focus of the discussion.

Indeed, the abortion question raises an important tactical point for Edgar and others contesting the dominance of the religious right. Wallis, for example, has gone to some lengths to find common ground with more conservative Christians, and Edgar points out in passing that some evangelicals have positions on global warming and the environment that are congruent with his. On the whole, however, Edgar seems less interested in coalescing with some of the conservative Christians on specific issues than in mobilizing liberal (and perhaps a few centrist) Christians to outvote and out-shout them. From time to time, I worried that the book was an effort to persuade the Democratic Party that they could beat the Republicans by reinforcing the liberal agenda with religious rhetoric. To that end, the book abounds in proof texts and sermon snippets, showing how Edgar’s position on the issues can be buttressed with God-talk.

Please don’t misunderstand my position. I am a liberal Democratic, too, and I cherish the words of Jesus and all of scripture. But I am very hesitant about grafting the language of scripture onto my political positions, and proclaiming them the godly stance on these issues. Some of that hesitancy comes from watching the religious right at work overthe last decade or two. The fundamentalists
seem very certain how God would vote in presidential races, referenda and other political conflicts. I have always thought they were wrong, not because God was a liberal Democrat, but because Jesus, Paul and the early Christians were so hesitant about involving the church and church people in politics. We all remember Jesus telling his listeners that they should “give the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and [give] to God the things that are God’s.” The Pharisees who heard this comment were amazed and fell silent. Perhaps we should stop to think, too, before dragging God into the center of the political battlefield.

The separation between church and state in the United States, permeable though it may be, still has great value. It helps protect people in small churches –and the Episcopal Church is small and getting smaller – from the imposition of the religious values of other more activist groups of faithful people. It protects us all from the ancient danger of theocracy, which Jesus specifically rejected, telling Pilate and all of us that his kingdom was not of this world. It gives church people the right to run their own organizations with very little interference from government, a right to be cherished and protected. We put all that in jeopardy when we summon the battalions of Middle Church or any other church onto the political battleground.

A final concern. Bob Edgar is one of the most important church leaders in the United States, perhaps in the world. If he is going to use his considerable energy and passion to exhort, I confess that I wish the subject matter had been church development and growth. From time to time, he does write about how his policy ideas were put into practice by the churches he pastored in the communities they served, and I found those the most compelling parts of his book. Doing the work of God’s Kingdom in our communities makes much better sense to me than trying to take control of the secular kingdom in God’s name. And local outreach work builds vital churches as well as just communities.
Middle Church in America, including the Episcopal Church, is stagnant or shrinking. We need ideas from our church leaders and organization about how to reverse those trends more than we need a call to church people to organize and vote for liberal policy positions. Indeed, I fear that church leaders who follow Bob Edgar’s advice and try to mobilize their congregants around these issues will simply hasten their churches’ fragmentation and decline.

DENNING’S POINT: A HUDSON
RIVER HISTORY
By The Rev. Jim Heron
Black Dome Press,
Hensonville, NY 2006
210 pp.

Jim Heron has found a new career, after 28 years as a parish priest. He’s been appointed the Project Historian of the newly-created Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, which he describes as a multidisciplinary center for the study of the riverine environment. Jim was hired to research and write an historical study of the proposed site, “Denning’s Point,” a peninsula jutting out into the Hudson River near what is now the city of Beacon, in Dutchess County.

Heron found much more than he expected. His research leads him to conclude that the history of Dennings Point is a microcosm of the history of the region. He starts with archeology, to reconstruct the aboriginal beginnings, and then moves on to recorded history, tracing the Point’s story from a possible landing by Henry Hudson’s crew, through the first European settlement in the early 1600s, the gradual evolution of a settled Dutchess County in the 1700s and its gentrification in the early 1800s.

Heron describes the building of the first mansion on the Point about 1817 by a wealthy descendant of the founder of Allentown, PA, who became “financially embarrassed” around 1820 and sold the property to the first Denning, William, after whose family name the Point was named. Heron spends many pages tracing the Denning family’s associationswith notable Revolutionary-era personalities, including Washington and Hamilton, placing some historical events on the Point itself. Without disclosing his evidence, Heron asserts that “...it is certain that Washington, Denning (William’s father) and Hamilton must have walked together on the Point many times.” He cites evidence that Hamilton actually resided at the Point during the war.

Heron’s well-researched story follows the ups and downs of the Denning family through the 19th Century, and the gradual industrialization of the Point (the coming of the railroad sealed the Point’s fate) as the Denning family fortunes wane. By 1872, most of the Point (except the Denning mansion) is in the hands of the odious Homer Ramsdell, whose industrial piracy is colorfully recounted by Heron. Ramsdell makes his fortune in bricks, and turns the Point into a vast brick factory, which survived his death in 1894 and thrived until 1939, when the Point ran out of mineable clay.

After a series of post-WW II industrial flops, the Point was sold to New York State for use as a park in 1988, and designated as the site for the Rivers and Estuaries Center in 2003.