The MBCC Book Group
DATE: Friday,April 4, 2008, 7:00-9:00
LOCATION: TBA
BOOK: Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion
FACILITATOR: Bruce
This is our monthly gathering to read, share in fellowship around the discussion of a common book. We will read a variety of books by a variety of authors, all in the hopes of growing in our understanding and experience of faith as individuals and a community.
HOSTS . . . if you are interested in hosting any of the dates please let me know. We will just ask that you provide some liquid refreshments and we'll have others bring snacks.
From Publishers Weekly
Where is it written that literary
women must move to coastal California (if they don't already live
there), become Episcopalians and write conversion memoirs? Miles, like
recent memoirists Diana Butler Bass, Nora Gallagher and Lindsey
Crittenden, loves Jesus and detests the religious right, though she is
also critical of "the sappy, Jesus-and-cookies tone of mild-mannered
liberal Christianity." Mild-mannered she is not. Converted at age 46
when she impulsively walked into a church and received communion for
the first time, the former war correspondent suddenly understood her
life's mission: to feed the hungry. What her parish needed, she
decided, was a food pantry—and within a year (and over opposition from
some fellow parishioners) she had started one that offered free cereal,
fruit and vegetables to hundreds of San Francisco's indigent every
Friday. Not willing to turn anyone away, she raised funds and helped
set up other food pantries in impoverished areas, occasionally
"crossing the line from self-righteous do-gooder to crusading zealot."
For Miles, Christianity "wasn't an argument I could win, or even
resolve. It wasn't a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally
willing to swallow." Grittier than many religious memoirs, Miles's
story is a perceptive account of one woman's wholehearted, activist
faith. (Feb. 20)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
A few Random Blog Posts/Reviews
- Internetmonk
Talk about your Purpose-Driven Life! Miles is converted from the most unlikely background. She finds out what a journey with Jesus is like in the company of a collection of left-edge-of-the-church Episcopalians. Her transformation from reluctant convert to innovative servant and subversive gospel grocer is way too much fun to easily put down. - Burnside Writers Collective
Miles does touch on how her faith and vocation affects her home life, but she keeps her personal life private. Rather, Miles deals with larger questions such as those she poses in her forward: “Why would any thinking person become a Christian? How can anyone reconcile the hateful politics of much contemporary Christianity with Jesus’ imperative to love? What are the deepest ideas of this contested religion, and what do they mean in real life?”
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