Book Notes Review of The Sacrifice of Africa

No further post on the chapter-by-chapter review today, but I did want to link to my brief review of the book, which is now posted on Books & Culture’s website.

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The Sacrifice of Africa – Chapter 1c, The Politics of Greed and Plunder

Continuing with Katongole we turn to his third point in chapter one: The Politics of Greed and Plunder. It will be easiest to illustrate the point with a couple anecdotes from Zambia’s history. (I spent two months in Zambia during the summer of 2007, which gave me a chance to hear the nation’s history from [...]

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Wine for the Sabbath

A few weeks ago I started working at a local wine shop here in St. Paul, which is mostly awesome but has put a damper on our Friday night pizza nights because I now have to work Friday night. So no pizza this week, though hopefully we’ll get going on those next week. So instead, [...]

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Craziest. Thing. Ever.

So a couple years ago a few friends of mine in Lincoln wrote and performed Jurassic Park: The Musical. They did it in the backyard of the house we affectionately knew as the Colonel Mustard because of its mustard colored exterior. This group had done several plays before for the enjoyment of the Lincoln community, [...]

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Give Amelia a Lift

One of the greatest blessings of my last two years in Nebraska was getting to know Steve and Jenn Allen and their two kids, Amelia and Miles. Steve was my campus pastor with RUF at UNL and over the two years we were in RUF together we became really close and I learned a ton [...]

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The Sacrifice of Africa – Chapter 1b, The Lies of Noble Ideals

Last time we left off with Katongole’s first sub-point in chapter one, the importance of social memory for the future of Africa. We’ll continue now with his second sub-point, The Lies of Noble Ideals. The basic premise of Katongole’s thought here is that human beings have an infinite capacity for self deception – and that [...]

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Nine Years Ago Today…

the Hound of Heaven chased me down and drug me into his Kingdom. On September 22, 2001 Jesus brought me to my knees and the Gospel became beautiful to me. It’s a day I remember every year. On the 58th anniversary of his conversion, one of my heroes, the great English evangelical preacher and abolitionist [...]

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When the Mob Rules, Law Doesn’t – How the GOP should respond to the Tea Partiers

One of the major points of tension between two of our nation’s most important founding fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, was their understandings of human nature. Jefferson – a good Enlightenment deist – assumed that human nature was inherently good while Adams, a Unitarian from New England, believed human beings had a natural proclivity [...]

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A Way of Seeing Autumn – Some Poetry from Galway Kinnell and Mark Strand

With Fall officially beginning this Wednesday, it seemed like a good time to post these poems. First, from Galway Kinnell: Blackberry Eating I love to go out in late September among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries to eat blackberries for breakfast, the stalks very prickly, a penalty they earn for knowing the black art [...]

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Food for the Sabbath

Something different this week, instead of pizza, stromboli. But the process is basically the same. Do everything the same way you would for pizza, making the dough, prepping ingredients, etc. Roll out the dough, then put your sauce and toppings on, but when you’re done with it, roll it up. Bake it for about 16 [...]

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