I have been wanting to tell my blog friends about the February column over at the website, which, as you can see here, is mostly about William Wilberforce. I hope the Wilberforce movie, Amazing Grace, is still around your town, or coming to your town, and I hope you like the essay I wrote for the local paper, which I reprint there at the website, and the follow-up bibliography. (Look closely for the free book offer!) Why not send it out to somebody you know?
My good friend Steve Garber remains not only a faithful bud and Hearts & Minds booster, but remains an author that we should read and re-read. I’ve linked to his essays at his website, before, and in the February website column, I tell of the new edition of Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior. I hate to sound like such a groupie, but I truly think the remarkable forward and the exquistely inspirational afterward that are added to the new edition make it worth having, even if you have the old one. (The new cover is an improvement, too, eh?) Please check out my hat-tipping and all that. It is a book I enjoy writing about, and there are reasons I wrote about it in the Wilberforce review. Steve has been shown interest in Wilby for years, and has been a friend and encourager to some of the key players who cooked up the idea for the film. So I’m not being dramatic or trying to connect dots that aren’t there.
The picture, by the way, is of Steve at Jubilee ’07, in front of 2200 college students, telling of how a Wilberforce weekend impacted his life, decades ago, in Pittsburgh. I was honored to introduce him at Jubilee. He then interviewed Mark Rogers, a significant Senate staffer, who is now doing PR work for Amazing Grace and is one of the most important guys relating faith and art and culture and policy in North America today, and Isaac Slade, frontman of the band, The Fray. Garber always brings others into the conversation.
Perhaps it was from his time with Francis Schaeffer, or from taking in the novels and short-stories of Wendell Berry, or from his long study of the dualisms that plague our worldviews, but his motto these days is “come and see.” That is, his pedagogy is embodied, and he spends much time highlighting the work of others, showing how the gospel can be lived out in meaningful ways. Fabric…of course is loaded with stories, so even as he researched it, he was wanting to tell about the lives of others. It is an important emphasis, though, which I believe you see even more strongly in the new essays in the book; he doesn’t want the spotlight on himself, but on those who are engaging in life-long, good work for God’s glory.
Do check out the February review. The March one will be up soon, too, so don’t wait.