Books, Films, Media Reviews--The Unconquerable World, God's Politics, Walter Mosely Winter 05

The Unconquerable World Jonathan Schell

Schell challenges the commonly held belief that warfare is an unfortunate necessity in the relationship between nations. He argues persuasively for a more practical and ethical approach to getting rid of unjust governments and regimes.

He looks carefully at the intellectual foundations of modern war--from Von Clausewitz to The Donald (Rumsfeld).

He also examines the uses of violence in the creation of empires and totalitarian regimes, liberal democracies and the many “peoples’” revolutionary struggles for self-determination in the 20th century.

While the neo-conservatives assume the rightness of aggressive international pre-emptive state violence, Schell challenges that thinking by rolling out a sharp and detailed take on the use of both state and revolutionary violence in the past 200 years.

He makes a very strong case that classical forms of warfare—and particularly pre-emptive forms of warfare--are hard to justify in light of the developments of the past few centuries.

He demonstrates that non-violent people’s movements have been more effective at overthrowing oppressive and ruthless regimes than wars have, at less cost, and with clearly more positive results.

Schell is writing from a Christian background and a grounding in the teachings of Jesus and the NT, though he lays out his argument in a way that anyone can appreciate and take seriously.

TUW will tax you and challenge you. I know that some folks now—even some of the brightest—tend to get their input from a few links and brief websites.

TUW is a pretty good reason to break out of that pattern. If you’re going to read a couple of serious books this year, this should be one of them. It's gotten a remarkable critical reception among people from across the spectrum of views on the use of violence. In my mind, this may be the strongest challenge ever written to the continued reliance on warfare. If you're a thoughtful Christian and you're going to support the use of warfare of any kind, and especially pre-emptive wars of choice, you need to deal with Schell's comprehensive argument.

God’s Politics Jim Wallis

I had a chance to talk to a lot of evangelicals before and after the last presidential election. Though they ranged from conservatives and progressives to Republicans and Democrats, almost all of them felt torn from a spiritual point of view.

If you’re one of those folks, you might enjoy and appreciate God’s Politics. It's a remarkable book.

GP recently spent significant time on the NY Times and Amazon best seller lists. I believe it’s selling well because many people are so desperate for a Christian political take that is authentically biblical and prophetic.

When was the last time a serious book about Christian politics and ethics became a best seller? Or at least, when was the last time that kind of book became a hit without focusing on the piles of shirts, pants and shoes left behind as conservative, white evangelicals rose up to meet Themselves In That Big Exurb In The Sky?

The subtitle of the book, Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, is a good guide to the gist of the book.

Wallis believes that the conservative religious right serves up only half a gospel while claiming to be the righteous, and that the political liberals—like the Good Samaritan in one of Jesus’ most significant parables—serve up a big portion of the other half through the best of their attitudes and actions even though some of them reject Christianity and traditional moral teachings.

He calls for a new movement among American Christians of all persuasions that will call both right and left to biblical accountability, and a more mature Christian voting population that doesn’t vote for a right wing agenda that is obviously un-Christian in many respects simply because that party talks God talk and verbally supports certain family values positions.

Wallis describes a coherent Christian politics that combines a commitment to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles and prophets, personal moral responsibility, and a biblical emphasis on social justice.

Or in other words, a politics and morality that neither current party comes close to representing, even though the conservative right claims that righteous distinction in a way that brings to mind a particular religious/political party that Jesus confronted in the harshest terms in his own day.

He believes a movement of Christian people from both left and right could come together and become a truly prophetic political force for good. I agree. May it be so. I think this is one of the more important Christian books on practical social ethics to come along in a while.

But whether a movement like this develops or not, the heart of the matter is the way Christians respond to all this. Will we develop the insight to recognize not only the weaknesses of the Samaritan, but also the more dangerous weaknesses of the self-righteous Pharisee? I hope so.

Little Scarlet Walter Mosely

If you like bullets and blondes detective novels you’ll enjoy the stories of Walter Mosely, though in this instance it’s a case of bullets and blacks.

I’ve been a fan of detective fiction, and especially noir writing and film, since I was a teenager.

Jan and I re-read all the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle about six months ago. We’ve been introducing Andrew to Holmes through the wonderful BBC film versions of those fascinating stories.

The Holmes stories--written in the 19th century--were some of the beginnings of detective fiction.

As a result of the senseless slaughter of WWI and the carnage of WWII, the detective genre evolved into noir fiction and film. Some creative and thoughtful people wanted to find a way to witness to the fact that a lot of life is righteous posturing which covers up the kinds of violence and lies which Christians think of as sinfulness and even wickedness. Noir is a form of fiction that’s all about stumbling onto and identifying, like Jesus, the whitened sepulchers everybody encounters in real life. So while it can seem dark and cynical, it’s really rooted in the deepest kind of moral consciousness and a kind of worldly wise idealism.

In noir (“black” in French) detective fiction, the anti-hero is normally a morally flawed inner-city detective or some regular guy who ends up in a downward spiral of events beyond his control. He starts on the sunny side of events and little by little descends into the heart of an increasingly darker mystery.

Los Angeles became the American heart of noir fiction and film through the writing of authors like Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) and Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye) and the many Humphrey Bogart “hard boiled detective” flicks.

Eventually the mood and formula of noir detective fiction were re-interpreted again and again. You may have seen Chinatown (70’s noir film set in 30’s LA), Blade Runner (80’s film noir set in the year 2200 in LA), LA Confidential (90’s LAPD film noir set in the 50’s), The Grifters (90’s film noir about contemporary con-men) and even The Name of the Rose (80’s film noir based in a medieval Italian monastery!).

Mosely is the latest--and one of the greatest--interpreters of noir detective fiction. His stories are about African-American LA in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.

His African American noir anti-heroes (Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, Paris Minton and Fearless Jones) are some of the most interesting fictional characters I’ve run across in a long while.

Mosely, who is an African-American born and raised in LA, has written a ton of these stories, so it will keep you occupied for a while. I’m only half way through and it’s taken me 4 months.

Little Scarlet is his most recent Easy Rawlins book which is set in LA just after the Watts Riots in the 60’s. I’m in the middle of it right now.

His other Easy Rawlins books include A Red Death (Easy ends up investigating the murder of a Jewish labor organizer in McCarthy era LA), Gone Fishin’ (Easy and his murderous friend “Mouse” return from LA to Louisiana to solve a mystery), Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy solves a mystery and tries to survive in 40’s LA—Denzel Washington played Easy in a 90’s movie version of this one), Black Betty (more Easy in early 60’s LA), and Bad Boy Brawly Brown (Easy uncovers corruption among African-American community leadership in Compton).

His Fearless Jones stories—which I like even better than the wonderful Easy Rawlins books—are Fear Itself (bookstore owner Paris Minton and his friend Fearless Jones do everything they can to stay alive while uncovering dark secrets among 50’s LA African-American nouveau-riche), and Fearless Jones (Paris and Fearless use their clear eyed understanding of how the world actually works—one of Mosely’s basic themes—to survive black gangsters, corrupt white police, and Israeli hit men in 50’s LA).

This is just great writing.