John Erik Pattison
Serving the Common Good: An Interview with Miroslav Volf
Chris and I recently collaborated on an article about the political role of the local church for the upcoming February/March issue of Neue Magazine. In preparation for writing the article, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Miroslav Volf about politics, the local church, promoting human flourishing, and his most recent book, A Public Faith: How [...]
A Tale of Two Manifestos
In February 1909, the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his Futurist Manifesto in the French newspaper Le Figaro. The manifesto exalted the future over the past, violence and aggression over peace and ecstasy, immorality over morality, men over women, the young over the old, the machine over the land, and the known over the [...]
Further Thoughts about Malcolm X’s Life of Reinvention
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I am reading the late Dr. Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, which the New York Times chose as one of its Ten Best Books of 2011. One of the things that has been so striking for me is how “in process” Malcolm X was. Today I [...]
What I’m Reading Now: “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention”
The audiobook I’ve been listening to on my commute – and every other chance I get – is Dr. Manning Marable’s riveting biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. I’m over two-thirds of the way through the book. I’m at the point in Malcolm’s life when he was been pushed out of the Nation of [...]
Relevant Magazine: Does Voting Matter?
I wrote an essay on politics for for the January/February issue of Relevant Magazine. It was cross-posted today on Relevant’s website: I cried myself to sleep the night Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992. I was 14—too young to vote but old enough to know America had, at the ballot, formally turned its back on [...]
Relevant Magazine: Remembering Dr. King
In recognition of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Relevant Magazine just posted a short essay of mine about Dr. King: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. published five books in his lifetime; a sixth was released after he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. They are all seminal works for American [...]
On the Origins of Books
Sometimes when I’m reading a good book, I come to a particular sentence or phrase that seems to have around it an aura of origin-ality. I can’t help but wonder if this line might have sparked the creative fire that ended up as the book in my hands. I’m struggling this morning to come up [...]
iCEO: Part One
The last great book I read in 2011 will be Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. This is the first of two planned posts about Steve Jobs, consisting mostly of random thoughts about the book. Part Two will come next week. 1. Steve Jobs is a valuable book, if we let it be. For all sorts of folks: [...]
Top 10 Books of 2011
Some friends and I put together a list for Relevant Magazine of the Top 10 Books of 2011. Here is that list. Maybe the only things better than reading a great book are talking about a great book with someone who has read it too, and recommending a great book to someone you just know will [...]
