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Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.

This book was written by an Ohio boy who was in high school at roughly the same time as me. So we are to some extent peers. His family was originally from Kentucky and went Northward for factory jobs (a commonality with my own dad's family). They brought something of their culture with them but they also brought most of their problems with them.

The author was the first of his family to escape and achieve 'the American dream.' He joined the military and then used his veteran's benefits to pursue college education, eventually graduating from Yale Law. Now the story is getting really familiar. . . Change Law school to Seminary, etc. Except I wasn't the first in my family.

The title and premise reminded me of a study I participated in some years back. My hometown turned out some enterprising individual who eventually became a tenured faculty member at Harvard. He asked my graduating class to participate in a study on our opportunities for higher education, upward mobility, or even gainful employment. His hypothesis was that most of my class probably had a significantly more difficult road to success than his own graduating class in the 1950s. It created quite the stir amongst my former classmates, many of whom had to scratch and claw for everything they've got and some who succumbed to circumstances and have never really achieved anything other than a meth habit. The haves were up in arms and complained that he was making the town look bad, and the have nots were more of the mindset that the town does a fair job of making itself look bad.

I haven't finished yet but this book is probably only going to last me a couple of days.

 

I finished the Hillbilly Elegy and was reading some essays and such this evening when I encountered this pithy quote on the magnum opus of Dom Gregory Dix:

Since the essay by Holmes is the one that really shows how worship points the way, extended quotations therefrom are necessary to show what has really happened. He begins by telling how he and other liturgical scholars in this country [USA] were disappointed by what Dom Gregory Dix had to say in his Shape of the Liturgy. The scholarship of this prominent English liturgist is impugned and his definitive work, which is perhaps the greatest contribution in this field in this present century, is discounted:

“The Shape of the Liturgy by Dom Gregory Dix (was) published in 1945. I remember as a young, enthusiastic churchman eagerly awaiting the publication of this magnum opus. Dom Gregory Dix was the Anglo Catholic liturgical scholar, we thought, whose erudition would make inevitable of fulfillment the longings of the liturgical movement. The result was both impressive and disappointing. Dix wrote movingly, sometimes with no relation to the facts, occasionally drawing from sources which, as far as other scholars could tell, did not exist. His principal substantive contribution was the identification of the fourfold shape of the eucharistic action. His book met a reading public ready for solid liturgical fare. We were ready to move to the task outlined by Herbert, Ladd, Jones, and others; but Dix was to be more an inspiration than a resource for liturgical renewal."
(http://www.episcopalnet.org/TRACTS/...mZF9kpI6VHGbL7w-BYIK1y3Ioorv6MjqzgKUF6c6UiTDY)​

 

I am reading Dominion right now. It is supposed to talk about how the West is shaped and formed by Christian values even when we are secular. It has not really started making the case yet, even though I agree, and I am about 30 percent through it.

 

Thank you for that. What an amazing link, from 1981, a real message in a bottle for us, picking up the pieces:

"When the 1979 Book of Common Prayer was undergoing trial use in the Episcopal Church, its theological implications were seriously questioned by a large number of devout churchmen. It was charged that the basis of traditional Anglicanism was threatened thereby and would be eroded and finally undermined if the new book were to be adopted."

 

The 1981 article mentions “Logos Christology.” If true, that would mean the 1979 revisers of the BCP intended to take up the cause of the conservative (but also anti-Arian) opponents of the first Council of Nicea, a claim that seems rather strange on the surface. Would someone on this thread be kind enough to provide some definitive, concrete, positive examples of Logos Christology in the ‘79 BCP?

 

I just picked up J. I. Packer's posthumously-published The Heritage of Anglican Theology. It's based on lectures he gave at Regent College in Vancouver on Anglican history and theology. I haven't read far into it yet, but I'm already certain that this will become one of my favorite Packer books.

 

I am still working through his A Quest for Godliness, after which I hope to pick up the aforementioned.

 

Ian Ranking: "A Song for the Dark Times"

 

I stopped by a new local thrift store last night and found Charles Bridges' Study of Proverbs for $4.

 

I see the term 'thrift store' often, e.g. when reading a novel written by an American author and set in America. What is a thrift store?

I imagine them to be what we call charity shops in the UK. People donate items to the shop, e.g. used books, the shop then sells them and any profit made goes to support a specific charity. They may have a paid shop manager but very often the other staff in the shop are volunteers. They're very numerous now on UK high streets.

I've had some wonderful buys fom charity shops but it is very hit and miss. Most visitis do not produce anything great.

 

That would seem to be the equivalent. The chances of finding good books are indeed hit-and-miss, but often it's easier to find any books related to Christianity or theology at a thrift store than any other bookstore, and especially savings compared to shipping when purchasing online in Canada.

 

Has anyone read Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People? I keep seeing it crop up in my circles.

 

I have a wonderful used book store in town. It is called the Book Barn and is organized in two levels. Fiction and children's books are on the ground floor and nonfiction is on the second level. I suspect they have their wax shop in the loft (they fabricate a variety of scented wax products). I have found some great stuff in there but the jewel has to be the Lutheran Book of Worship that was new except for lacking the packaging - $5. It is the most common service book in NALC though I am not sure if they've standardized on it.

 

I have no book store in town but I try to avoid Amazon

 

I just started The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco finally. I've had it on myself for over a year and am now finally reading it. Recently finished Crime and Punishment for the first time as well. Fantastic! Also, going through The Forgotten Trinity by James White again. An old friend of mine just reached out to me and mentioned he is leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses (praise God!) but he is still holding to Unitarianism (Lord have mercy). So I am refreshing myself on the Trinity, and my goodness it has been such a blessing rereading this book. So immersed in the Biblical passages that are steeped in Trinitarian theology!

 

Did you watch the movie, with Sean Connery? Really well done.

 

I have seen that movie as well. Very good movie.

 

Eh. I wasn't a fan -- I don't think it's possible to make a movie from that book. Much of the wordplay and historical background is left out, as is much of the long theological discussions between Jorge of Burgos and Brother William (particularly the "Did Jesus laugh?" discourse).

There was a miniseries made from the book by (I think) an Italian/German production team. It aired on Starz! here in the states a while back. John Turturro plays Brother William, and while he wouldn't have been my first choice, he was much better in the role than Connery was in my opinion. But the miniseries also leaves out the most interesting stuff from the book, and really overloads some of the minor characters in the book with soap-opera drama (like the scullery maid that temps poor Adso -- she gets a major role in the miniseries as opposed to a page or so in the book -- I suppose to prevent the production from having a male-dominated cast).

 

Cool, I didn’t know the underlying book had so much more depth. Would you say that it’s the best novel/story about medieval monasticism/scholasticism?

 

The book is supposed to be an exercise in postmodernism.