Book Notes: How to Approach Christianity

    Our last reading introduced us to some pretty compelling reasons as to why a god must exist.  This weeks reading makes the argument that this god is the Christian God, and lays out some of the expectations God has for us.  I want to spend my time this week covering something Lewis says that I personally struggle with:  how to approach Christianity and obedience to | Read More »

    Book Notes: Mere Christianity

    On the back of my copy of  Mere Christianity, the publisher describes it as “One of the most popular introductions to Christian faith ever written..”  So far, I think this has been an entirely accurate description.  In the assignment this week, C. S. Lewis walks us step by step up to a faith in some god, though not necessarily the Christian God.  He arrives at | Read More »

    Book Notes: The Conclusion of Witness

    This has been an incredible book, and I think it will stay with me for a long time to come.  I was amazed at how much this book was a testimony to Chambers faith.  I expected an  inside look into Communism in the United States.  I didn’t expect a description of Chambers conversion from Communism to Christianity. I think there are two messages that we | Read More »

    Book Notes: “The Lesson” from Witness

    With 50 pages left in Witness, it may be a little premature to claim to know the one lesson we should learn from this book.  There are a number of incredible themes and lessons from this book I will take with me.    However, during this week’s reading, I found what I think should be the lesson we take from this book as part of the | Read More »

    Book Notes: Chambers Witness of Faith

    I want to focus in on Chapter 12 this week.  I was really impressed by what Chambers says in this section about himself and his faith.  I also highlighted most of this section in my own copy, so I thought it was only appropriate to use it for my writing this week.  After the August 25th testimony, Chambers writes: By then, I began to grasp | Read More »

    Booknotes: Witness and the Press

    In this weeks reading, I felt there were two really interesting sections that talked about the role of the press in the Hiss Case.  I also thought these were important because we still see the press doing the same thing in today’s world. The first example occurs very early in this section.  During the August 25th hearing Hiss was able to read ten questions into | Read More »

    Book Notes: Senator Richard Nixon

    This weeks reading gets into the details of the first Hiss case.  Richard Nixon features very prominently in that story.  Chambers goes so far  as to state that without Richard Nixon and Judge Thomas Murphy, the Hiss case may not have been possible: That the committee did not act on its fears is a fact of history that no one can take from it.  Its | Read More »

    Book Notes: And Now For Something Completely Different..

    This weeks reading gets into the Alger Hiss Case.  However, in setting that up, Chambers talks about his time working for Time and Life magazines.  In this week and last weeks reading, Chambers mentions a few articles by name that he wrote during this time.  Turns out, Time’s online archives still have these articles.  I wanted to discuss two specific articles he references that I | Read More »

    Book Notes: A “Hard Look at the New Deal”

    “I saw that the New Deal was only superficially a reform movement.  I had to acknowledge the truth of what its more forthright protagonists, sometimes unwarily, sometimes defiantly, averred:  The New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social, and above all, the power relationships within the nation.”{emphasis mine} In this | Read More »

    Book Notes: A Warning from Witness

    I am getting to this a day late, but I hope everyone had a great weekend. I am still enjoying Witness.  There is an important warning in this weeks reading.  Chambers is recounting how he explains that he  and others were so willing to engage in espionage.  He says he is often asked if people who engage in espionage suffer a “crisis of conscience”.  He | Read More »