An engaging primer on the fundamentals of Christianity.
Heitz urges a return to the basics of faith in this nonfiction book.
As a former Roman Catholic and an altar boy, the author recalls his desire to follow the nuanced rules of his denomination, which at the time deemed attending Protestant church services or missing Sunday Mass as sins. While maintaining his belief in a Christian God, Heitz found this emphasis on complex religious statutes more of a barrier that separated him from God than a path that led to a meaningful spiritual relationship with his creator. After exploring other denominations, he found that many had their own sets of rules that “leave people confused and often lead us away from the original teaching of Jesus.” In this concise handbook to a more simplified, authentic approach to faith, the author offers five guiding principles that break away from hierarchies and regulations to refocus on Christianity’s core values. Tellingly, the first principle (“Simplify for God”) urges Christians to follow Jesus’s example in keeping “things simple enough for anyone to understand.” Other principles remind the faithful to remain thankful to God, to trust in and listen to God, and to “Act for God” by loving their neighbors. At just under 100 pages, this is an intentionally easy and accessible book, with straightforward text offset by inspirational Bible verses and full-color images. Designed for individual reading or small group discussion, the guide offers sample prayers and reflective questions that call on readers to think of ways to put their faith into action. Heitz balances his theological commentary with practical tips on how to deepen one’s faith, such as having morning “coffee with the Holy Spirit” or keeping a prayer book beside daily medications as a way to habitualize an active prayer life. While critical of Catholicism, the book is otherwise ecumenical, calling on Christians to shed their denominational rivalries for a more unified, simplified faith.
An engaging primer on the fundamentals of Christianity.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781950943289
Page Count: 110
Publisher: 102nd Place
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
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