My Favorite Books for 2023: From Ancient Canaan to Galaxies Far Away

Here are ten of my favorite reads from 2023. They’ll take you from ancient Canaan to galaxy’s far away and long ago. Five of these books are fiction, and five are non-fiction. There is an emphasis on ancient religion in the latter—but ancient religion is fascinating, especially when many of us claim to still follow its “unchanging” truths in the present. Anyway, here’s my list.

Fiction

 

David Copperfield (Charles Dickens) and Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver). Irene and I listened to these two books on our winter drive from Kingston, Ontario to Florida and then California. Demon Copperhead was inspired by Dickens, so we listened to an abridged version of that first. And then Kingsolver’s book. 

Both were fantastic. The narrative voice in Demon Copperhead, in particular, is unforgettable. Demon is a character you will fall in love with as he falls in and out of trouble—but never drowns.

The Promise (Damon Gadget). I’ve read several books, both fiction and nonfiction, about South Africa this year, partly because I’m writing my own novel set there (be patient; it’s coming!). 

This one, full of the rusty sepia tones of my own ethnic and religious upbringing, was remarkable for . . . well, the promise and one person’s insistence that it mattered. Without making it the core of the story, this novel also illuminates the multiple realities of contemporary South Africa.

 

Americanah (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). So, you think moving from Nigeria to the West would be just the thing? Why? What really matters in life? Do we have it here? Among the topics Adichie explores are race (especially what it is to discover you’re black), class, education, poverty, corruption, and family. The heroine, Ifemelu, is especially lovely—smart but vulnerable. She’s always in search of love and connection in ways that are universal to us all. 

 

The Left Hand of Darkness (Ursula Le Guin). Published over fifty years ago, this novel is still relevant to and insightful to for today’s sexual mores and politics. It’s especially pertinent when it comes to gender. But it transcends the narrow focus of on “issue,” to embrace many others, especially commitment and friendship. An interesting look at the cultural functions of shame and status as well. It’s a great adventure story as well, set in a far-away, icy world is beautifully described. I’m going to reread more of Le Guin’s books!

 

Leviathan Wakes (James Corey, an alias for two other guys). Well, it isn’t great literature; it’s a space opera. Science-fiction is my go-to escape place—I read about a dozen of these a year. This is a really good one. It’s also the basis for the hit television series, “The Expanse.” Corey is especially good at English. It isn’t high art, but it’s coherent and sometimes evocative. The writing is fine, the pacing is about right, and (surprising for lots of sci-fi) the characters jump off the page. This is the first in a series of about a dozen books. I’ve read four this past month!

Non-Fiction

 

Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (Caroline Elkins). I grew up with maps of the British Empire (“our” territory marked in pink) hanging in my classroom. The teacher described the Empire as a noble endeavor, a civilizing force, and a bulwark against pagan religions and “bad” European powers. In fact, the British Empire, like every Empire before or since, was a violent enterprise run for the profit of a very select few, always in the national interest and never in the interest of those ruled. Elkins manages to tell this story without becoming preachy. She has a light touch in spite of the massive amount of material that she covers. Her book is especially good on the Belfour Declaration and the many ways in which Britain played a major role in messing up the Middle East today. The book is worth reading for that reason alone.

 

The Origins of Judaism (Yonatan Adler). Adler makes the case that some of the characteristic practices of Torah-Judaism should have left archeological and literary evidence in the record if they were practiced. So, for example, if ancient Jews didn’t eat pork, we shouldn’t find pork bones in ancient Jewish settlements. (He did). Besides pork remains, Adler examines ancient Judea’s synagogues, other dietary remains, art, tefillin and so on to determine their history in ancient Israel’s life. He concludes that there is very little evidence in the archeological record for anything like Judaism defined as awareness of and respect for the Torah until the second century BC, during the Hasmonean era. Loved it. Clarity, depth of scholarship, wide research--it's all here.

Yahweh Before Israel (Daniel Fleming) and The Origin and Character of God (Theodore Lewis). There is a lot of ferment in contemporary studies of the history of ancient Judah, Israel, and Canaan. A lot of it centers on the question, “What is the history of contemporary Judaism’s Yahweh?”  

The emerging consensus is that he was a Canaanite god (maybe from the South, maybe from the foothills in the North-East) who was worshipped as one of many such gods. But sometime late in Judah’s monarchy, Yahweh was adopted as Judah’s “special” god (among the many others). And after the exile, this adoption slowly evolved into the monotheistic religions of today. Certainly not the Evangelical take! Companion books to Adler’s (see above). Compelling, probably right, and to the degree it is, the occasion to rethink modern monotheisms, including their plausibility, from the bottom up.

 

The Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution that Made Our Modern Religious World (Philip Jenkins). Jenkins is almost always gold. This examination of what we used to call the Inter-testamentary era is a fascinating look at the diverse movements, scriptures, and people who made both modern Judaism and Christianity, in all their current and past variants, what they are today. 

A bit dense at the beginning as he lays out his argument and main players, but it gets more and more interesting as the book winds to its end. I wish I had something like this to read while I was in seminary! We’ve come a long way since John Bright.

 

How God Becomes Real (T.M. Luhrman).  In the past, I've written articles for Christian Century, The Banner, and a Christianity Today blog that argued one cannot have a personal relationship with God or Jesus--at least not in the common grammatical sense of such words. We can't share a glass of wine, or phone or email God, and then expect a similar response. We can't go to a church and hear Jesus preach and then ask questions after. We can’t shake hands.

 

People responded to these articles not by arguing the logic, but by describing their experiences of a personal relationships with the divine. In this book, Luhrmann explains the social practices, the settings, the psychology, the spiritual kindling and attunement that allows people to put their trust in these experiences regardless of whether or not there really is a god in that relationship. 

Whether or not you think you can have a personal relationship with God or Jesus, describing that relationship from below, as Luhrman does, makes any pastor a wiser, more thoughtful spiritual leader.

 

Bonus Book (for Tweeners and Younger)

 

Space Boy (Stephen McCranie). I read this graphic novel aloud with my eight-year-old grandson. It's not anime, though influenced by it, I think. He loved it. 

I appreciated how it wasn't about battles and death. No rough language. It’s a story about a girl's emotions and trials as she tries to fit into earth culture after moving to earth from a galaxy far away. 

She misses her old friends. She is lonely. She wants to fit in. She meets people, makes her way, becomes aware of how her preconceptions about earth culture were wrong. She shows empathy for people who, like her, don't seem to fit in. 

 

The tension in the book is real, keeps you on the edge of your seat, but doesn't overwhelm. It's a great opportunity to talk with about issues of friendship, loneliness, beauty, adventure, and otherness. The drawings are well done--cartoonish with a realistic bent. If you want to talk with your Tween about stuff that matters, try this!

Nostalgia, Star Wars, and Even a Bit of Church

 

         Not long ago, while watching Rise of Skywalker, I wept. Not just a bit around the edges, but big tears rolled down my face. Even though I wasn’t sad, really. Or especially happy. Why?

 

         Was it the movie? Probably not. No one, even in a galaxy far away, is ever going to tell you that any of the nine Star Wars movies were high art. 

 

         Mind you, Rise of Skywalker had three Oscar nominations: Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. But besides not actually winning an Oscar, it certainly didn’t get any acting or drama nominations.

Rise of Skywalker Poster

         You probably know Rise of Skywalker’s plot, more or less, even if you didn’t see the movie. It is very nearly the same plot the other eight Star Wars movies had. In brief, the Resistance—the good guys and gals—is once again down on its luck and hiding. The evil Emperor Palpatine is back with a new fleet of planet destroyers. The last and most beautiful Jedi knight, Rey, is the chosen one to save the universe. And after several light sabre duels and gun battles; after jumping from one moving space ship to another and sailing a tiny boat across a raging sea; after dying and rising from the dead; Rey Palpatine—for it turns out that Rey is actually the evil emperor’s granddaughter—Rey Palpatine defeats the evil emperor and decides to change her name to Rey Skywalker (the good). The universe is saved. The end.

         Was it silly? Yes. Was it cartoonish? Absolutely. 

 

         And yet. I wept.

 

         Why the tears?

 

         Nostalgia. It just seized me, there, in front of my TV, and wouldn’t let me go. Nostalgia.

 

         I saw the first Star Wars movie in the summer of 1977. I was just 20 years old. I went with three other guys, a few days before we all hopped in a car and drove across Canada and back on ten dollars a day. I was so carefree back then. I wasn’t taking my studies seriously. I wasn’t thinking about the future or my dreams. I had a loving family that blessed my wanderlust. Life was good.

 

         But now, as I watched the last Star Wars movie and remembered the first long ago, I realized that of the four who went on that road trip, one of us—maybe two—has already died. I’ve lost track of them. So right off, sitting before my TV, I’m thinking both about how good life can be, and also about how brief and full of loss it can be. Most of you have been there.

 

         Nostalgia. It is lovely, but it hurts. Nostalgia is this sense of the past as something both lost and precious that informs our hopes for the future.

 

         Nostalgia is usually scorned because it is seen as a yearning for something that really never was and contempt for the present. Sort of like President Trump’s notion that America was great, once upon a time, in the long-ago past, but not now—or at least, not unless he is reelected. Nostalgia used to be scorned as a dreamy inability to face up to present reality by romantically inflating the past. 

 

         And there is some truth to this concern with nostalgia, because on the whole, the past was not always as wonderful as we imagine it was. In fact, on the whole, the past was pretty rough.

 

​         Not quite fifty years ago, mortgage rates were 18 percent and unemployment over 13 percent. The Vietnam war raged. Decade after decade, famines raged throughout the world. Not long ago most cancers could not be beaten, the cold war filled us with fear, labour strikes were regular occurrences, and acid rain had killed many of our lakes. Residential schools sundered children from parents and tribes. Looking a bit deeper into the past, infectious diseases were the number one killer, as many as twenty million people were starved to death by the Soviets in Ukraine, there was WWII, the Holocaust, slavery Jim Crow, and we lived, on average, twenty years less than we do now. 

 

         We should not idealize a past that never was.

 

         And yet, as with many things, there are two sides to this story. In fact, there is also a more personal, more positive aspect to Nostalgia.

 

         Contemporary Psychologists explain. For them, nostalgia is not a malady, but a powerful stimulant to feel optimistic about the future. What is past, even if lost, can fuel hope for the future. Constantine Sedikides recounts how concentration camp survivors often told stories to each other about past meals and gatherings. “This is what we did,” one survivor said. “We used our memories [of past feasts] to temporarily alter our perception of the state we were in. It was not a solution, but the temporary change in perception allowed you to persevere just a bit longer. And that could be crucial.” Nostalgia need not lead us down a rabbit hole of regret and anger. Nostalgia can encourage perseverance.

 

         Such nostalgia—let’s say, nostalgia around personal experiences, nostalgia at its best—may serve as an emotional anchor chain. Nostalgia may ground tomorrow’s challenging voyage in yesterday’s safe harbour, in good memories, in refuge and shelter, so that we can face what’s coming at us with hope for better times, and the energy to strive for them.

 

         Nostalgia, then—my tears at the Star Wars movie—need not be a sign of weakness, but a harbinger of tomorrow’s possibilities. Sure, nostalgia marks the loss of a past we can’t truly relive, but it may also serve as fuel for a life lived out of gratitude rather than bitterness; nostalgia is an invitation to more adventures rather than a decision to set down roots in the land of loss. 

 

         As usual, I tend to look at these memorable moments through the lens of my experience as a minister. Churches of every stripe—liberal ones first, though now the evangelicals are following hard on our heels—are struggling with membership decline and all of its attendant troubles. In my last, liberal, congregation, I sometimes heard people describe a Sunday school that years ago had two hundred kids or a sanctuary packed with five hundred adults. 

 

         That must have been nice. Those were the best of times and those kids and adults went on to help make Canada and the world what it is today. Amazing stuff, really. We should be thankful for those memories and those people.

 

         But what I’ve also heard, once or twice, is a longing for the past not balanced by hope for the future, as if this past is a reproach of the present, a criticism of what we have become. I have heard what I think of as a weaponized past that stands in judgement on what we could be for each other, a "make our churches great again," fighting words refrain.

 

         But I’m not for the weaponized past. At its best, nostalgia, as I said moments ago, is fuel for a life lived out of gratitude rather than bitterness. Memories that help us navigate the present in order to seize the future. Nostalgia is an invitation to adventure rather than inertia. Nostalgia is an invitation to carry on, hope for—work for—more and better and tomorrow.

 

         The churches I served were all safe, encouraging, holy places in times of trouble or uncertainty or change. And now,  our liberal churches are hidden treasures just waiting to be found and brought into the light again, so that the world will remember that Jesus’ example, courage, and vision are not now merely dim reminiscences, but a roadmap for tomorrow.

 

         For us, it’s very exciting. I could almost cry. Which I did. At the last Star Wars movie.

Church and Empire: A Deadly Dance

 

         I have a theory about one of the important root causes for the church’s amazing decline in the Europe and North America. It doesn’t explain everything, but it is probably a factor. But before I can get to my theory, I need to tell a difficult story that reaches from the far past to the present: the story of the British Empire.

 

         I've been reading "Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire." It is a sad, Pulitzer-Prize-winning book that lays bare what most of us suspect: the only way to acquire and maintain empire is through extreme violence. Think Babylon, the Aztecs, Rome, and so, on. Empires are created through superior armed conflict and once won, are kept in line through the use of violence by the occupiers.

         The British Empire was no different, although it tried hard to bury this truth by promoting the myth of itself beneficent guide charged with "civilizing savages." Yet, the empire sucked its conquered lands dry of resources, and killed (through war or famine or other means) millions of people for the profit of rich Britons and their royals. Read the book for endless examples of this inhuman violence.

 

          Personally, I am most familiar with the British conquest of the independent Boer Republics at the turn of the last century in the so-called “Boer War,” which was actually fought on the backs and what should have been the territory of black Africans. I know of this war first hand since I had a relative (some generations removed!) who died fighting that war. During the Boer War, the British perfected their invention of concentration camps. After first burning their homes to the ground, the English piled Blacks, Boer women, and children onto wagons, brought them to camps, then intentionally starved them in unhygienic conditions. Tens of thousands of Boer women and children and black Africans died in those camps. The Nazis were impressed. 

 

         This war, by the way, was also Canada’s first foreign war. And as brave and patriotic as Canadian soldiers were, it was nevertheless an absolutely unjust war fought solely for the economic gain of the British Empire and especially its ruling class. At root, you see, the Boers, had discovered gold and diamonds in their republics, right next door to British Territory. And so, the British and their allies took it. For profit and because they could.

 

         I remember, from my primary schooling in Canada, classroom walls festooned with world maps marked by British Empire pink. Such a pretty color to remind us that the empire was benevolent. The Empire was educating its “savage,” and “uncivilized,” and “barbarian,” subjects. They were to be brought up to white, British standards, for which they would one day, so the story went, give the British thanks. Ironically, the British never admitted to actually accomplishing this goal anywhere except in its three white colonies! 

 

         We Christians, one and all, drank the myth up. The missionary and explorer David Livingston's famous rallying cry, "Christianity, commerce, and civilization," in defense of empire is typical. Think proselytization, residential schools, and the many ways Western culture has been  enforced as “the way.” And all the while the rich in Britain benefited most. 

 

         And it continues. This past week, King Charles sent his personal chaplain to the First Nation reservation of Tyendinaga, not far from my home, to celebrate the fact that the Mohawks exiled from the United States found shelter there during the American Revolutionary War (I live in Loyalist Township on Loyalist Parkway!). Even the last surviving student of the residential school that used to be there was on hand for the ceremony—why, I cannot imagine. No mention was made of how the First Nations were drawn into these European settler wars, and then abandoned and discriminated after, for hundreds of years.

 

         At the ceremony, the chaplain, Rev. Canon Paul Wright, (his official title is “sub-dean of the Chapel Royal” and “Deputy Clerk of the Closet," which sounds as hilariously impressive as his robes looked ostentatious) went on to note that the king would promote “faith, community, commonwealth, and environment.” After nearly two-hundred years, the royals are still echoing David Livingston. Here, the British church is sticking to the sickbed of British Royalty even while  the Empire’s sick follow-up, the Commonwealth, is in decline. Mentioning the environment is one of those nice, civilized things that just has to be said in this day and age, I suppose.

 

         But now the church decline theory. There is not much to it really. I think that the church's complicity with the whole Beneficent Empire myth, even now, is just another brick in the wall for its decline. As the colonies fought their revolutions all around the world; and as British citizens became more and more aware of the violence and coercion and pain that Empire caused, not to mention their own casualties; and as the scale of the church's absolute complicity in the Empire's horrors became more and more clear, people--consciously or not—rejected the church for its complicity. And they left it. After all, they could not leave Britain, unless it was for another “white,” country, probably equally complicit in empire, one way or another.

 

         The same disgust for national sins with which the churches were complicit contributed to similar church declines in all the major European colonial powers: the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France come especially to mind. 

 

         Felicité de La Mennais was a French-Revolution-era reformer, philosopher, and one-time priest before he himself left the church. He championed the separation of church and state. In doing so, he once remarked that the French Catholic church had lost three generations of believers because it allied itself with the French monarchy rather than the people. As a result of this alliance, he said, the people rejected the church, just as they violently rejected the monarchy, at least in France. People all around the world have often rightly projected their distaste and anger at the State by rejecting its ally, the church.

 

         So what do we modern-day Christians take from all this? Well, while it is fair—and important—for Christians, as citizens, to participate in the body politic just like everyone else, the church needs to go to great lengths not to identify itself with the coercive power of the state, and to refrain from drinking from the trough of any state’s (always short-term) approval or support. It’s a self-destructive behaviour.