Sigh

[tree_and_leaf]

I was in Borders this afternoon, looking for a chocolate croissant, and noticed that Sarah Paretsky was coming to speak about her new novel tonight. Too late for me, alas.

On the other hand, I did get a very good book about the history of doctrine. But Border's 'Religion' section drives me up the wall. They jumble together Bibles and liturgy, academic theology, popular theology, devotional books (mostly American), utter rubbish of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail type, some books on magic that I suspect were misfiled, and ghastly novels like the Left Behind series, which certainly shouldn't be in the non-fiction section. You can't find anything. Blackwells is much better: a far bigger selection and categorised by someone who knows something about the subject (and no Baigent and Leigh or LeHay, or whatever the guy is called, which is a good thing). On the other hand, they do sometimes have good books, particularly from American publishers, which Blackwells sometimes don't - such as Pelikan's history of Christian Doctrine.

/rant...

Comments

[mrs-wolf.livejournal.com]

Tracking these End Times prophecies is a form of escapism -- something to keep the idle faithful from getting bored until they finally escape for good.

***sigh***

Why can't there be good pop lit?

[aervir.livejournal.com]

But aren't there just dozens of books which one could consider good pop lit (e.g. lots of genre fiction)? It just happens that none of them was written by Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye. :D

[mrs-wolf.livejournal.com]

I guess you're right! I keep thinking Christian pop, but I could even name some good Christian pop. (Though there are some that are quite bad. I hate the DaVinci Code, for instance.)

[tree_and_leaf]

I think calling the Da Vinci Code Christian is, er, a tad controversial...

[mrs-wolf.livejournal.com]

True that.

And I'm not sure I do. I was going by Borders placement, and the fact that it is quite religious. Christianity is a broad term, all you've really got to do is worship Christ, so technically, I am one, which would put half of Christendom in arms, and I don't call myself that.

It entirely depends on definition, I guess.

[tree_and_leaf]

It entirely depends on definition, I guess.

True. I mean, you can even debate about how you define 'worship' (as I believe there are Hindus who regard Christ as a god, as opposed to God.

I'm afraid my instinct is to go with the mediaeval Catholics and say those who are baptised are Christians, and if they no longer believe they are lapsed, but still Christian. That, however, would probably make me very unpopular :)

On the other hand, it does have the advantage of having a degree of objectivity and thus being a definition one can work with (especially as any other may well turn into 'Christian = someone whose ideas I approve of', or 'person at church whose ideas/ life I disapprove of = Not-Christian'...)

[tree_and_leaf]

Or, alternatively, that anyone who percieves themselves as being part of the Church or following Christ, is a Christian. That's my fuzzy liberal Anglican side coming out... But it's not much use as a practical definition, should you want one.

of course, the 'Baptism' definition doesn't work with books...