I started out looking for a gift for some of our graduating youth and discovered this phenomenal book written by teens for teens! Its basic premise - supported by engaging stories, studies, history lessons, and Scripture - is that the idea of adolescence is a relatively recent creation (only since the 19th c.) which created an awkward transitional period for teenagers with low cultural expectations. The authors challenge their fellow youth to rebel against these low expectations. Along the way they share about their own remarkable experiences, and those of other fellow teens. They point out that the teen years are a training ground and an investment, that we become who we strive to be. I can't think of a message our youth need to hear more beyond the gospel itself. Living out of low expectations that are imposed on them by everyone around them is a major struggle for our youth (and increasingly adults), particularly in an urban context.

The authors then share about five kinds of hard things that they encourage youth to do (and adults would do well to take heed as well) - doing things outside our comfort zones as the hardest but most essential step, measuring success by raising the bar for ourselves rather than settling for good enough by others' standards, seeking collaboration instead of giving up when things seem too big, recognizing the importance of small and seemingly inconsequential things when dreaming of making a big impact, and taking a stand even when it's unpopular. All of these are approached in very thoughtful and provocative ways with illustrations, examples, pitfalls, and helpful steps.

The last section of the book focuses not on individuals but on creating a counterculture and on illustrating the necessary critical values to succeed in this "rebelution" - Christ-like character, God-honoring competence, and world-spanning collaboration. They share some powerful stories of real-life teens and what they have been able to accomplish, illustrate some positive and practical ways to move from the big idea of doing hard things to actually making meaningful change, and close with a powerful appendix that presents the gospel worldview that forms the basis behind the entire book.

Definitely an academic book, Walls' collection of essays is brilliant and informative, and makes me want to dive into even more sources to learn about the themes he reveals here about Western missionary history and the trends for global Christianity. His first section focuses on the transmission of Christian faith, in which he considers certain theological tests we can make of Christian expansion (church, kingdom, gospel) and discusses how the serial nature of Christian expansion (advance and regression) is partially due to Christian engagement with vernacular culture (the use of translation as an example). In contrast, Islam's continuous progression can partially be tied to its fixed cultural element. Walls illustrates how the missionary movement led to the separation of Christianity from the political ideals of Christendom, and how cross-cultural diffusion was what enabled the church to survive. He considers how we are at the intersection of an Ephesian moment in which various cultures and lifestyles come together to experience Christ and require creative theology that does not extend to extremes, either of treating one's own tradition as normative or of relativizing all approaches while remaining in isolation.

His second section details perspectives on Christian history in Africa and how the representative Christianity of the 21st century is shaped by events and processes in Africa - both because of the demographic shift that has already taken place and led to a "post-Christian West" and "post-Western Christianity" and because of questions concerning nationhood and the nation-state. He challenges the accepted wisdom that the early Christian history of Africa is disassociated from contemporary history, or that Christianity is a Western import. African religion and Christianity are not mutually opposing self-contained systems; African Christianity is truly in continuity with both its African and Christian heritages, functioning out of a distinctly African worldview including various ways of engaging God, divinities, ancestors, and objects of power. What is important is that those areas are appropriated under a new Christian worldview instead of with tribal connotations. Africa is also a main point of engagement with Islam, though mission history largely failed to engage with it in the 19th century due to views of cultural incompatibility (and the lack of threat to Western society) as well as social evolutionary theories that treated Islam as beneficial for the development of the "other".

The last section is devoted to snapshots of the W. missionary movement - from the British perspective of missions as the white man's burden, to the often unrecognized Pietist-Evangelical beginnings on the European Continent for a mission endeavor that was only later joined and restructured by British involvement, to developments in society that changed missions from ordained activity to lay ministry - including medical missions, the increasing importance of women missionaries, and the involvement of lay subscription societies who supported missions. Walls highlights the importance of education and how missionaries were forced to recognize new dimensions to the missionary task as they adapted to the missionary model of living on another's terms - from taking the indigenous population seriously, to enlarging the work to include a Christian response to human suffering, to identifying the cause of suffering and the means to remove them, to recognition that God had already been at work in the cultures and languages to which they were sent. Even in the midst of all this, as missionaries contributed to various fields of learning, the one unchangeable norm remained theology. Finally, there is the recognition that Western theological categories are often irrelevant to the concerns of the mission field - meant to address historical concerns or categories of thought that are of no moment to their current context.

That was a fly-by snapshot of some very in-depth historical surveys. Really a deep read.

Carl Trueman's Republocrat: Confessions of a Liberal Conservative was a brilliant read - incisive (even hilarious) commentary on American Christians and our (lack of critical) engagement in the political process. The Christian establishment, especially on the conservative end, needs to read and interact with this book. Unfortunately, the people who could benefit the most from it are likely to unthinkingly reject it out of hand. The premise is simple: "Conservative Christianity does not require conservative politics or conservative cultural agendas." The underlying idea is that Americans, of which Christians cannot be exempted, have largely fallen prey to uncritical, partisan politics to a ridiculous degree.

Trueman addresses this from various angles: how the Left has shifted from its original concern with economic poverty to identity politics (so the focus on abortion and gay marriage), how the overtly religious political discourse of America masks a secularization that has crept even into conservative Christian culture (so the foci on prosperity, personalities, and patriotism), how Christians uncritically accept their favorite media outlets and commentators (Fox) without questioning problematic associations (i.e. Murdoch's media empire, the Simpsons as a prime time show on the same network) while equally uncritically rejecting others (MSNBC), how we link Capitalism with Christianity in a form of American triumphalism and act as if there is morality to the free market beyond profit, and how aesthetics and story-telling have trumped reasoned argument and critical discourse in a party-based system that encourages oversimplification.

Trueman's summary point is that Christians especially need to be good citizens, participating in the political process in a thoughtful, pragmatic, non-partisan way. We should be able to think critically about particular issues instead of oversimplified party packages. We should be able to disagree in politics yet stand united in faith and worship. But we don't. Still, it is something to aspire to.