
Review: The Problem of God
The secularization of North America seems to attract ever-increasing attention…
New on The Christian Chronicle’s website:
Memoirs are supposed to inspire and encourage.
They share true stories of how a person overcame great obstacles to become the strong, interesting person he or she is today.
Most of all, they examine a life, so that readers are inspired to examine their own.
A new memoir by Mike Allen, son of prominent, now retired, Church of Christ evangelist Jimmy Allen, has the potential to do all these things, but it ultimately fails.
In “Growing Up Church of Christ,” self-published this year, the author presents a string of snapshots from his life, some almost short enough to be nothing more than a photo caption, all conversational enough to be a blog entry.
Brevity and casual tone are fine, but these memories fail to achieve what personal writing must do: show the significance of the memory in shaping the person the writer is now.
There’s simply not enough examination of each memory to add up to anything meaningful.
Read the full review.
Subscribe today to receive more inspiring articles like this one delivered straight to your inbox twice a month.
Your donation helps us not only keep our quality of journalism high, but helps us continue to reach more people in the Churches of Christ community.
If the Reviewer wishes for memoirs to “inspire and encourage” then this needs to be stated. However, to make the blanket assertion is to mislead those in the readership who take “newspapers” at face value.
Such statements do a disservice to Truth. They lower any esteem outsiders might have for the objectivity and scholarship “in the Lord’s Church.” In short, they are irresponsible.
A memoir, by its categorization, is to accurately reflect the author. Not all authors write with the flowing expression of a gifted rhetorician. So, while it may be “thin” in many places (which the reviewer seems to imply), and the reviewer may wish for greater detail and expression which “inspires and encourages”, still the reviewer leaves unstated whether this is an honest effort by its author.
The book may be thin, but if it is honest then the question is “does this book help or hurt the cause of Christ.” Unfortunately, the reviewer failed to touch on this vital matter.