Sweet Spots

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

By Bryan Stevenson

–Review by Paula Jones

I am a product of the Deep South where I’ve learned that insanity is sometimes heat-induced, that “Bless your heart,” can be both a prayer and an insult, that the worst thing you can possibly be is ‘tacky,’ and that using “law and order” rhetoric will automatically get you elected to public office. It will also keep you in office. In the 1980’s, with the politics of fear and anger spreading throughout the country, politicians were fueled to enact harsh new laws that resulted in unprecedented mass incarceration. Additional regulations prohibited probation or parole for those already imprisoned. The prison industrial complex was born with numerous lobbyists who helped create new crime categories while blocking sentencing reforms. That mindset is still alive and well. Only in recent years are some finally realizing that we are never going to build our way to safety by constructing more prisons. Bryan Stevenson learned that lesson decades before most of us. read more…

The Civil War as a Theological Crisis

by Mark A. Knoll

Review by Teri Hyrkas

“The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.” This famous saying of nineteenth-century French diplomat and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, was shown to be completely and uncomfortably true in Mark Knolls’ book, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2006).

Expanded from lectures he gave at the Civil War Study Center of Penn State University in 2003, Noll puts forward a well researched and unswerving look at particularly cherished tenets of faith held by Protestants in the US and how they are related to the theological crisis that developed around the time of the Civil War. From the early days of the country, two foundational Protestant beliefs — the right of every individual Christian to interpret scripture, and the view that scripture could be understood simply and directly — were practiced among Protestant believers. These cherished principles also caused a great deal of political and religious friction between Christians prior to and during the War Between the States. read more…