Not For Women Only ---Book Review of Lady of Milkweed Manor

Not more than a couple of weeks before I renounced my membership to the University of Illinois alumni association for the university's continued support of William Ayers, I read in the alumni magazine about a former classmate, former radio coworker, and old friend with whom I (until recently) lost touch after graduation named Julie Klassen who had published her first novel just last year. It's a Christian romance novel set in Regency England called Lady of Milkweed Manor, and it's gotten some very good reviews which can be found HERE and HERE.

It's a story of a vicar's fallen daughter who finds herself an unwed mother-to-be at a time in history when people were shunned for such mistakes. Her father, an unforgiving clergyman, is no exception and banishes her from home, forcing her to take refuge at a home for unwed mothers, a manor with a garden wrought with milkweeds. Later we learn the milkweeds are purposely grown for medicinal use, and become very symbolic throughout the book and consistent with the theme that things are not always as they seem.

It's basically a story about true love and sacrifice during a period when class, manners, snobbery, and hypocrisy seemed to rule the day. But the hope lies in the triumphing of the spirit, in patience, and in the Will of God. The period in which the story takes place was one in which very few thought so highly of themselves as to question the existence of God, though their behavior might oftentimes suggest a lack of God's influence. But while the sin of indifference to the least of us seems prevalent (snobbery running amok towards those far beyond unweds, wet-nurses, and fatherless babies), abortion is never an option.

One of the interesting examples of Julie Klassen's findings through extensive, on-site research in Britain of the historical period in question, was the practice of using goats as wet-nurses, in which the babies are straddled by the beasts and fed by direct contact in order to reduce the spreading of syphilis. Other items of note are excerpts from poems or other literature from that period that are usually about milkweeds or puerperal insanity (prenatal and/or postpartum depression) found at the start of each chapter. Plus, there is a lot of breastfeeding going on throughout the book, but tastefully described and in great detail.

As an author Julie (pictured at right) seems quite adept at plot flow, keeping my interest throughout and surprising me many times. Needless to say I found the book hard to put down. Perhaps it is her years of experience as a fictional editor (giving her such wonderful talent in writing) that makes this excellent debut offering so engrossing. It is an interesting and enjoyable read not just for women, but for any anglophile or lover of Christian literature.

Click HERE for an excerpt.



Picture of author and book cover borrowed from Julie Klassen.

LOST!!!

Movie Review of

SAVED *(out of four)
Starring Mandy Moore and Jena Malone


Before I saw this movie (for free on TNT) I was warned that it was anti-Christian, and that the writers of the screenplay didn’t have a clue as to what following Christ is really about. After seeing the movie I am convinced of the latter but only somewhat of the former.

Mandy Moore does a great job playing a legalistic, judgmental Christian named Hilary, who goes beyond “witnessing” in her attempts at converting others by using crisis intervention tactics—like blocking the hallways along with her friends, or attempting to kidnap the would-be convert and throwing him/her into their van for “treatment.” For Hilary, Christianity is all about behavior modification. It is clear that she lacks compassion for others, and at the end mires in bitterness. Her only hope at that point comes from her wheelchair bound brother, a nonbeliever, who offers to help her with her “problems.” One can only assume that rather than correcting her misperceptions of God’s grace, he will instead try to deprogram her of her faith, reasoning that you don’t have to be Christian to be nice to people.

Hilary’s nemesis, whom she constantly tries to convert, is Cassandra, played convincingly enough by Eva Amurri. Cassandra, a Jewish girl attending a Christian school but determined not to convert, brings to mind Matthew 13:19. She has heard the word and “understandeth it not” as a person who received the “seed” by the wayside. She becomes a hero in the end for having a big heart, though she still chooses the earthly path rather than the spiritual one, thinking she only has to rely on herself.

Mary, played wonderfully by Jena Malone for her innocence, seems to turn against God a bit too easily when in trouble (see Matthew 13:21). Blaming God for her pregnancy when it was she who encouraged her boyfriend to engage in sex without protection, seems a bit shortsighted for a girl with such strong-willed faith. But many young Christians do feel persecuted when they don’t get what they pray for—a sign of spiritual immaturity.

The main problem with this movie is that no one has spiritual maturity, especially the writers of the screenplay. Even the most sinful pastor will answer “YES” when asked by a teenage homosexual, “Does Jesus still love me?” The pastor in this movie stands speechless and clueless. Since there are no real answers given to the audience of this film, many of whom are looking for answers, I will give one here:

Saint Augustine said something that at first sounds irresponsible when not fully understood. He said “love God and then do as you please.” What he meant is that when we really love Jesus intensely for who He is and what He sacrificed for us, our hearts will change. Sinful behavior we used to commit no longer has the same appeal to us as before; while being obedient to God brings us pleasure when we have true love and devotion to Christ. We are still sinners, but no longer by desire. We are not perfect but forgiven. Would it have been so difficult to include just one character at a Christian school who mentions this? The difficulty lies in finding screenwriters in today’s Hollywood who have any knowledge or true understanding whatsoever about Christianity that isn’t stereotypically negative. They just don’t have a clue.

In defense of the movie I will say that most of the time it was funny and cleverly crafted. Each of the characters appears to be essential to the plot. The problem is that they forgot the most essential of them all.

Lost Credibility

Book review

Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
By Bart D. Ehrman

When I purchased this book at Borders in Philadelphia during the summer of ’05, I had been looking for an analysis of the Gospel of Thomas and other apocrypha, because I was curious as to why some books were canonized into the Bible and some weren’t. I grabbed this one because it looked like a comprehensive study not only of different gospels, but of the different faiths surrounding them.

But as I read through this book I discovered some new truths. First, just because someone refers to himself as a “Bible scholar” doesn’t always mean that he believes in the Bible. Most people would be surprised to learn that many religious studies classes at public universities analyze the Holy Bible purely from a secular point of view. Second, no matter how hard the most educated scholar may try to sound objective, he will invariably give away his political position if he is allowed to espouse long enough. This author, in fact, does just that.

Let’s start with P52, which is a credit card sized piece of papyrus thought to be the oldest surviving scrap of scripture of the Gospel of John. Mr. Ehrman repeatedly declares that it was found in a “trash heap in Upper Egypt.” In fact, Mr. Ehrman declares this every time P52 is mentioned. To paraphrase Ralph Manheim, “It is the half educated writer, without clear ideas, who generally feels that to say a thing only once is rather slight.” Mr. Ehrman is much too intelligent to be doing this by accident. According to Dr. Bruce Metzger, to whom Mr. Ehrman dedicated his recent book, Misquoting Jesus, that fragment “was purchased in Egypt as early as 1920, but sat unnoticed for years among similar fragments of papyri” (see interview in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ). Hmmm, I thought a trash heap was a mountain of garbage one finds in a landfill with vermin crawling about and seagulls flying overhead. Mr. Ehrman has altered its definition to include any stack of papyri containing Holy Scripture.

While Mr. Ehrman gleefully tears apart any possibilities that most of the apocrypha could have any credibility (he claims nearly all of them are fakes or forgeries, and probably correctly), he nonchalantly mentions off the cuff that all but seven of the New Testament books are forged as well (those seven themselves also being tampered with). The latter is, I believe, the real purpose for writing this book. Lacking the courage to make this the focused topic, he covertly slips it in. Since then he has gathered enough courage to make it the focus of the afore mentioned Misquoting Jesus.

Another gutless tactic he employs is to present a hypothesis very distasteful to Christians, laying out all of the best arguments to solidify the point, then in the final sentence saying that he doesn’t actually believe it himself, without offering any facts to back up his late contradiction (which means he really does believe it!). It is truly a coward’s way of arguing a point, (pretending to disagree) which he does more than once. It is done most notably when relating the story behind the naked man in sack cloth who flees when Jesus is arrested (see Mark 14:51, 52). He presents the claim of some “Bible scholars” that “missing chapters” detail a relationship laced with homoerotic overtones between Jesus and the naked man. How can one take an author like this seriously?

The tendency for conspiracy theory to emanate from Mr. Ehrman is common. For instance, there can be many reasons why so many more recently hand copied manuscripts of the New Testament differ from the oldest ones. Mr. Ehrman points to large political movements most often while ignoring some more obvious reasons.

Case in point: the Gospel of Mark. He says the earliest copies show Jesus reacting angrily to just about everything that confronts Him. Reasoning that the oldest surviving versions must be the correct ones, Mr. Ehrman assumes the newer copies were purposely changed by scribes in order to sound more like the other three gospels. But could it be possible that these oldest copies survived because it was known back then that they were wrong? Consider the likely possibility that a scribe or two might’ve thought a “compassionate” Jesus was rather weak and so rewrote Him to be angry all the time to show a more powerful God. These “angry” copies were then set aside by church elders from the other more often handled “compassionate” copies and preserved for any number of reasons, perhaps as examples of bad behavior by “foolish knaves,” while the correct copies were handled so much they fell apart and were discarded. Just look at your own bookshelf. The books that last the longest are the ones read the least. It is an incorrect assumption on Ehrman’s part that the oldest known copies in existance today were the only copies written at the time.

Regarding the differences among the four Gospel accounts: If scribes were so prone to change the Gospels to make them more uniform, why after 2,000 years and countless hand copied manuscripts are there still differences in accounts of events, such as when Jesus died in relation to the timing of the Passover meal or what garments were found in the tomb after the resurrection?

Also, could some of those “lost Christianities” which competed with what Mr. Ehrman refers to as the prevailing “proto-orthodox” views (as shown in today’s Holy Bible), have failed the test of time simply because they were wrong? And if history is suspect anytime it is “written by the winners,” should we also be inclined to doubt the holocaust or the failure of Soviet Communism? Perhaps Mr. Ehrman thinks that slavery didn’t get its fair shake from an historical perspective. Maybe he’ll start rooting for the Chicago Cubs. One can only wonder.

In defense of Mr. Ehrman, I will say that his writing style is engaging and lively, and not totally without fact. And while he is no Dan Brown, who stands behind utter falsehoods to bring Jesus down to our level, Mr. Ehrman’s transparent agenda forces me to question his credibility. It is not uncommon these days for secular Bible scholars to attack the KJV simply to shake the foundation of the “religious right.” After reading this book and hearing him interviewed on NPR, I think that’s exactly what he’s doing.

On Amazon.com there are several glowing reports of this book submitted by “secular fundamentalists” who applaud anything that contradicts the New Testament, rejoicing in having NO God looking over their shoulders telling them with whom they can and cannot sleep.

I think it's quite possible that Mr. Ehrman may have committed apostasy since leaving the Moody Bible Institute. Only he and God know for sure. Mr. Ehrman needs our prayers (whether he wants them or not).