Robert L. Dilenschneider, editor. The Public Relations Handbook. Matt Holt, 2022.

We have reviewed a couple of books by Robert Dilenschneider, both of which were collections of motivational character sketches. This is different. We learn from this book that Mr. Dilenschneider runs a large public relations firm. He is a professional motivator, though perhaps of a slightly different type from his character sketches.

In this case, the editor has surrounded himself with a collection of experts—just as any wise corporate executive would do. This handbook consists of seventeen chapters written by as many different writers. Chapters are organized in a logical manner, beginning with an overview of PR, then various chapters giving some instruction on good PR. For example, there is a chapter on research, one on finding the audience, and, to this English teacher, and interesting one on word choices. We learn that to motivate someone, the word responsibility is more effective than the word duty.

The book ends with a number of chapters dealing with specific situations. These are some of the strongest and weakest chapters. The chapter “Going Forward with China” is an excellent introduction on how to understand the Chinese way of doing things, especially customs and behavior. When I taught in China, I was fortunately prepared by some friends who had lived there for years, but still I would have appreciated the observations made in this book.

On the other hand, the chapter on Japan appears much vaguer. The message seems to be “you have to have been there to get it.” Nevertheless, that chapter still alerts the reader that customs and expectations in that country are distinctive, even when compared to other Asian lands.

Some of the best parts are examples from real experiences, both things to do or not to do. Readers may recall an incident five years ago when a 69 year old paying passenger was forcibly carried off an airliner because his seat had been overbooked. While that incident gave United Airlines a black eye, we are told how the management handled the problem to minimize its effect. Other companies that made mistakes did not always take the high and honest road that United did after that incident.

There are chapters on working with the government, with the media, and with social media. There is an enlightening chapter titled “Internal Communications.” Many organizations have policies or have things happen that affect the people that work for them. This is often overlooked, but some PR wisdom can help make workers happier and more productive.

Public relations often involves a specific program for advertising, publicizing, or advocating a position. We are reminded, too, that wise PR can help people and groups navigate crises.

One author this reviewer recognized was Edward Rollins who coauthored the chapter on government relations. Rollins worked for Ronald Reagan and has been involved in a number of presidential campaigns since. Lest this appear that the book is right-leaning, other authors quote Saul Alinsky and Rahm Emanuel.

The chapter titled “Preparing the Communications Program” has a to-do list that could help us all get along better with others: (1) Speak the truth; (2) Leverage multiple vehicles; (3) Stick to your talking points; (4) Know your audience; and (5) Consider your critics. We can all consider these things as we try to associate with others regardless of the purpose, PR or otherwise.

With each chapter focused on a specific aspect, The Public Relations Handbook lives up to its name. Indeed, it would be easy to imagine this book being used in an introductory college class on public relations. It covers a lot of ground. It puts a lot of things into perspective for the PR professional and for others who find they have to work with the public, the government, or the various media out there.

Daniel Silva. The Cellist. Harper, 2021.

“…The Russian president is not a statesman, Isabel. He is the godfather of a nuclear-armed gangster regime. They are not ordinary, run-of-the-mill gangsters. They are Russian gangsters, which means they are among the cruelest, most violent people on earth.” (324)

I could not think of a timelier quotation—yet this was written before the Ukraine invasion this week.

The Cellist follows a plot line similar to Silva’s The Black Widow. The difference is that the female recruited by Israeli intelligence—the cellist of the title—helps to bring down a Russian money laundering scheme. She is recruited after a Russian living in England is poisoned. Isabel had worked for Rhine Bank in a division informally known as the Russian Laundromat until the news following the poisoning of the ex-pat Russian in England points to this division, and she loses her job.

Unlike Natalie, the heroine of The Black Widow, Isabel does not have to conceal her identity. She simply has to conceal the fact that she is helping bring down the money laundering scheme instead of promoting it. That is easier said than done when working with high-ranking Russians. Indeed, she gets in serious trouble when the Russian president appears in the tale. By the way, Natalie has a cameo here.

Israeli intelligence chief Gabriel Allon and Isabel, with the help of French, German, and Swiss intelligence services, they bring down at least one significant portion of the overseas investments of Russian politicians and oligarchs. Instead of infiltrating ISIS like Natalie, Isabel joins an ESG investor of questionable ethics whom the media seem to approve because he checks the correct “green” boxes. (ESG stands for Environmental, Governance, and Social corporate philosophy.)

To this reader, the most entertaining part is not so much the plot, but the plot sidelines. Allon gets involved in part because he is an art restorer and someone has discovered that an unattributed Renaissance painting is likely the work of Artemesia Gentileschi, the most famous female Renaissance artist. Isabel is able to get connected because she is a skilled cellist who accompanies a world-renowned violinist at an affair at a Covid-restricted art gallery.

This is set during the time of Covid and the American elections, so Silva does include quite a bit of extraneous commentary about President Trump. Also in the novel, the “Q” behind QAnon is a Russian intelligence operative assigned to stir up discord in the United States.

Silva suggests that the accession of Putin to his position in Russia was backed by what had been the KGB. That was a long game that, perhaps, did not take as long as anticipated. Even more relevantly this week with the Ukraine invasion, Silva notes in several places that Putin is motivated by revenge. Vladimir Vladimirovich believes Russia had been mistreated by the rest of the world and wants to get even. (Was it an American or Western European who said, “We will bury you”?)

The plot of The Cellist reminded this reader of Tom Clancy: Commander in Chief which involved a complicated money laundering scheme launched by Russian politicians. In the “Clancy” case, the money went through Luxembourg rather than Switzerland, but the theme of Russian money laundering can be a popular and dangerous element in contemporary espionage novels.

Belfast. Directed and written by Kenneth Branagh, performances by Jude Hill, Caitríona Balfe, and Jamie Dornan, TKBC, 2021.

I believe we have only done only one other film review on these pages. We normally do literary reviews, but Belfast is a very literate film. It also spoke to the life experience of the reviewer. Do not miss it.

Belfast is one of the best films I have seen in a long time. It is not mere entertainment, though it is entertaining. It is speaking to us today.

The film focuses on nine-year-old Buddy in a working class street of row houses—a mixed Catholic and Protestant neighborhood—beginning in 1969. It brought back many personal memories of division, of joy, of hope.

I lived in a working class neighborhood just outside of Pittsburgh until I was eleven. Like Branagh, I was a baby boomer, so the streets and playgrounds were full of kids, and everyone pretty much knew everyone else. I am ten years older than Branagh, but the scene had not changed that much.

Just as Buddy’s family moved to England and a better job for his father when he was ten, so my family moved to New England to an upscale middle class town in New England when I was eleven. Based on Branagh’s own experiences, he says he still has some of Belfast in him. So I still have Pittsburgh in me.

Like Buddy in the film, I admired my paternal grandfather. He died less than two years after we moved, not unlike Buddy’s experience. Like Buddy, I did not want to move. I had my friends. In the long run, though, I made new friends and adjusted as kids do.

The biggest difference in the new place, as it may have been for Buddy, was that no one knew my family. In Pennsylvania my father was active in politics and respected and known by many people. Buddy’s father was not involved in politics, but everyone knew the family.

Because it is set in 1969, Belfast shows us the beginning of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Rioters on Buddy’s street attack the homes of the Catholics. They are led by a young man who is seeking to legitimize his hoodlum tendencies. Buddy’s Protestant parents reject that militancy. Even his widowed grandmother encourages them to move when his father is given the opportunity.

For me, 1969 was also a year of riots and protest. Though not quite as violent as Northern Ireland, the antiwar and pro-Communist movements were quite active. I worked in Detroit for a while that year and heard stories from both black and white people about he National Guard occupation during riots there in 1967. By 1969, though, most people there on both sides had some mistrust but were looking for reconciliation.

Not so back on campus where the radicals were hoping to start a revolution. The revolution ultimately failed then, but it would set the tone in academia where we see the fruits of class and racial division and intolerance. As in 1969 there have been riots and looting in recent years. In both the United States and Northern Ireland in 1969, the political protest was often joined or taken advantage of by criminal types.

In 1969 student radicals at my college took over the administration building. They were forcibly removed less than two days later by the state police. While about sixty percent of the student body back then was on some kind of financial aid, only one of the 110 students arrested had any kind of aid, and that was a $500 loan. In other words, these were the spoiled brats, the elitists, the one percenters.

Some years later, I got to know one of those office occupiers. He never graduated because of drug use. He died in his early thirties. Drugs took down a number of people in our generation.

The two young men who most considered the leaders of the protest had careers which today typify two radical institutions. One became a college professor. The other one became a film actor in Hollywood. Political radicals in universities and movies? Imagine that!

The following year, after a large protest in downtown Boston, some of the protestors came to Harvard Square and began breaking windows and truly rioting. I got caught in the middle of another street riot when I was simply trying to return to my dormitory.

In both cases there was actual fighting with the police who used tear gas. An acquaintance who was sympathetic to the radicals said these rioters were hoodlums—like the neighborhood ringleader in Belfast. They reminded him of the guys in his urban high school who hung out at the boys’ rooms to shake down students for their lunch money.

Buddy gets swept up with some looters, and his mother comes in the middle of the rioters and soldiers to take him home. That reminded me of the iconic photo from a few years ago where the mother of a looter in Baltimore was pulling her son by the ear to take him home.

Throughout all this unrest, though, there was family love and neighborhood solidarity. His parents had some financial problems—apparently due to back taxes and gambling—and we could see a potential breakup. But ultimately they stuck it out together as the grandparents had, and so Buddy tries to maintain things with a cute Catholic classmate he has a crush on.

Today I still have a number of good friends I made in college. I know we have a variety of views on politics and religion. But we still respect each other and are still friends. I cherish these relationships. Ultimately, so does Buddy and his family.

Buddy’s school seating was according to the “head of the class” system. Those with good grades got to sit closer to the front. I heard about that from my grandparents, but it was rare in American schools by the 1950s. Still, teachers were pretty strict about learning and behavior. A couple of my teachers would post the rank of different work we did on bulletin boards.

Though set over fifty years ago, Belfast speaks today. Buddy liked movies. We see clips on the television from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and High Noon. In 1969 Belfast streets and some American campuses were not unlike the American Wild West.

There were also some clips from popular films in the late 1960s to remind us of what was going on in the culture. Buddy’s whole family enjoyed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, whose author also wrote the James Bond tales. Buddy’s mother is not sure that Raquel Welch’s animal skin bikini in One Million Years B.C. is appropriate for young Buddy to see, but his grandfather, who loved the movies, assured her that the material about prehistoric dinosaurs was educational.

At one point, Buddy is reading a Thor comic. I was reading Thor comics in 1969 and went to hear Stan Lee speak when he came to our campus. I was older, but I could see that the psychological conflicts in the Marvel comics made them more interesting than other superhero magazines back then.

We could also interpret that as a shameless plug by Kenneth Branagh the same way Hamlet‘s references to Julius Caesar have been seen as Shakespeare shilling another of his stories. Branagh directed the 2011 Thor film.

The framing, the action, the expressions, even the costumes are very effective. The film is exquisitely shot—mostly in black and white but with purposeful use of color. The acting is solid, and Buddy is an innocent and believable kid who loves people.

Besides the joy in the family enduring the Troubles, there is joy in the sound track. Much of the movie is accompanied by songs by Van Morrison, the most famous pop artist from Northern Ireland. At times I wanted to get up and dance.

The accompaniment is very appropriate. It starts with a song written for the movie by Morrison called “Down to Joy.” That title is a theme of the tale, joy in spite of the Troubles. But more significantly even, it ends with “And the Healing Has Begun.”

We see the beginning of healing within Buddy’s family. Eventually, there was healing after the Troubles. So we see Belfast today the way Charles Dickens saw Paris after the Terror:

I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from the abyss, and in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation of itself and wearing out.

So, Lord, may the healing of our present troubles begin.

Motus Dei. Edited by Warrick Farah, William Carey Publishing, 2021.

Motus Dei is Latin for “Movement of God.” In some ways, this is an expansion of Bhojpuri Breakthrough. That book told stories of the growth of Christianity in Northeast India through personal evangelism and the formation of what in the West are called cell groups or house churches.

This book is a collection of articles about similar movements in other places in the world, mostly Asia and North Africa. In a few of the chapters the author or location cannot be precisely identified for security reasons. It certainly appears that God is on the move. We read about some things the Lord was doing in A Wind in the House of Islam. This tells us how many people are going about it.

One lively discussion has to do with how people interpret the tenth chapter of Luke. In Luke 10:1-12, Jesus instructed seventy-two of His followers on how to share the Gospel with people in the places they visit. Luke 10:6 notes that they should look for a “person of peace.” There is even among those in these discipleship making movements (DMMs) some discussion about exactly what that means, but generally they look for someone who appears helpful or interested and is a part of the local population. This person may or may not be a convert or the first convert, but he or she is interested in at least helping the visitor or visitors.

One article noted how this has made a difference. Missionaries, whether foreign or local, often spent years presenting the claims of Jesus without gaining any followers. Someone specifically seeking a respected person of peace often succeeds in the same situation. One article attempting to do a statistical analysis of such work among Muslims in the Near East figured that about two and half percent of the population might be potential people of peace. When first arriving to a new village or city neighborhood, first finding such persons leads to quicker results.

Usually, the evangelist begins a Bible study to discuss who Jesus is. Eventually some will decide to become Jesus followers. Several writers note that this is very different from North America, say, where many people have a basic understanding of church teaching and what it means to commit to Christ. The “altar call” perhaps followed by baptism model is almost meaningless in a culture that knows no Christians.

Indeed, in some places the terms church and Christian are not used because of the cultural baggage associated with them. Christianity is often seen as foreign or Western. We could note that Communism and Socialism were actually invented in Europe, but that is not necessarily the perception even of those who live in Communist or Socialist countries on other continents.

I personally am reminded of a lady I know who belonged for many years to a nondenominational Christian church. She was from Ireland and said that she could never join a Protestant church because of what she had been told about Protestants, but since her church was unaffiliated, she had no problems with it.

Articles vary a little on how much contextualization is needed. Obviously, anyone bringing a message to a different culture has to understand the language and culture to some extent. In many places, the local people come up with their own teaching methods and hymns done in a manner that fits with the local styles of poetry and music. A few places, however, leaders have said those considerations are secondary, and some have succeeded using Western music and a more formal church style.

Even where that is done, for example in Thailand, there are still concessions made to the local culture. At least one Bible study that developed into a church met in Buddhist temple. In that culture, too, gifts to the dead are part of the religion. Converts will eventually give that practice up, but they have to do it in a way that is not offensive. Otherwise, it is an insult to one’s parents and ancestors.

One writer expressed difficulty in contextualizing the life of Jesus in a Muslim setting. This may have to do with the cultural baggage Muslims often carry about Jews since those are the people Jesus mainly served. Still, when we read the Gospels, the religious leaders who opposed Jesus believed and acted in many ways the way Muslim religious leaders do today. Their morals are similar, they are strict about dietary laws, they reject idolatry, they see someone calling himself the Son of God as blasphemous. Readers or hearers of the Word have to see these things for themselves as they learn Jesus’s story.

Obviously, there are going to be differences depending on whether the local culture is literate or not. Even many literate cultures value story telling, and the story of Jesus gets their attention.

Much is written here about church “generations,” meaning churches that plant or spawn other churches, usually in adjoining villages or neighborhoods. Since the 1990s some of these movement have created churches to the seventh generation.

There are other interesting discussions here. In most places there are no other churches, but in some locations there are already more traditional churches established. How do these cell groups relate to a Protestant church that has been there for fifty or a hundred years but has done little evangelizing?

There are also some articles on the character of not only the people of peace but of the evangelists and leaders. After all, the goal of most of these DMMs is to leave a cell to a local leader. Of course, there are also challenges when a local evangelist comes to a place which is culturally different. For example, an evangelist with a Hindu background comes to a village with a similar language and culture but is Muslim.

While most of these movements have arisen within the last thirty years, there are things more established and more Western churches can learn from. Bible discussion groups are often more meaningful than passively listening to a preacher. That model began in the Middle Ages when most people were illiterate and had to depend on someone who could read the Bible to tell them about God. Any belief tends to be more meaningful if the individual grasps it and makes it his own.

This comes to another repeating image from the Bible. Not only do people in DMMs point to Luke 10, they also point to the stories of Cornelius (Acts 10:1-11:17) or the Philippian jailer (Acts 16:11-40). In both cases, it was not just one person who converted—indeed, of the more than two dozen conversion stories in Acts, only two involve a single person. It was a family or a group of neighbors or a group of people studying the Bible together who converted together. That appears to be the usual biblical pattern.

Observers have also noted that people who were poorer or in a lower class or caste received more healings or miracles than those who were wealthier or from a higher class or caste. I have observed the same in churches and ministries in America. It is probably a reflection on dependency and God’s own compassion. See, for example, Jeremiah 9:23-24 and James 2:5.

It is exciting to read about and hear what the Holy Spirit is doing in places that have until recently been separated from the Gospel. Not only that, but there are things that those in the established or organized “Western” churches can learn from. God is not a respecter of persons (Acts 10:34).

Don Bentley. Tom Clancy: Target Acquired. Putnam, 2021.

The latest Jack Ryan, Jr., novel from the Clancy estate will keep readers turning its pages. The action is nearly nonstop. At most, the whole 419 pages covers three days in the life of Jack Ryan, Jr. It might only be two days because it is not really clear how long Ryan is sedated.

Except for the fact that Ryan is a trained spy, this has a Hitchcock ring to it. Hitchcock said that he liked stories in which an ordinary person meets up with extraordinary circumstances. That is sort of what happens to Ryan. He is minding his own business, more or less, at a café in Tel Aviv when he sees a man try to kill a mother and her seven-year-old son. He leaps into action and saves the woman, but the man gets away and Jack gets hustled into the offices of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service.

He is told that the best thing to do is leave. He plans to, but first he wants to return the Captain America action figure that the boy dropped in the scuffle. Guess what? A second time he manages to save the woman from the same Asian assassin. It is not enough. She and the boy get kidnapped by what looks likes a European gang.

He befriends a Shin Bet officer and is himself captured by Russians. Or are they Iranian? It seems the Chinese, the Russians, and the Iranians all have an interest in this American woman. What’s the deal?

We also meet some other American operatives who are in the Middle East on official business. There is a Special Forces group keeping an eye on a Syrian fortress. It has been set up to house a Shi’ite doomsday cult, but then a high ranking Iranian general appears on the scene. Gen. Farhad Ahmadi sounds like a fictional stand-in for General Soleimani, the Iranian mastermind and assassin who was himself assassinated in 2020.

The cult leader, like the title character from Rosenberg’s The Twelfth Imam, claims to be the reincarnation of the Shi’ite Twelfth Imam, but he is portrayed more like a sequestered David Koresh rather than the international Messiah figure of Rosenberg’s novel. Still, the Iranian general seems to believe in him, or at least in his usefulness to Tehran.

There is also a small F-35 fighter group from America involved in training exercises that suddenly become more real as Iranian surrogates launch missiles that ignore or pass through the famed Israeli Iron Dome.

Jack Ryan, Jr., may have turned into Jack Bauer, but the tale is a fun to read, even if the plotlines have become boilerplate. And alas, the politics may be all too real. As Jack Ryan observes after he is told that one of the men who attempted to kill the American woman is Chinese:

“The U.S. lobbied for the Chinese to be granted membership in the World Trade Organization back in the nineties. [N.B.: I was in China when China was admitted. Americans and Chinese alike were happy about this at the time.] It was supposed to lead them down the path to capitalism. Instead, China’s been buying, copying, bullying, or outright stealing intellectual property from other nations ever since. Far from normalizing the Chinese Communists, the free-trade nations have created an eight-hundred pound gorilla with the buying power of one-point-four billion people.” (160)

While there is a political backdrop, this is mostly a simple action adventure. Target Acquired is Mr. Bentley’s first contribution to the Clancy estate. He even mentions books by Mark Greaney, another Clancy collaborator. I suspect if the “Tom Clancy” novels keep coming, this will not be Mr. Bentley’s last. He knows what is going on and how to tell an entertaining story.

Mike Papantonio and Alan Russell. Inhuman Trafficking. Skyhorse, 2021.

A couple of years ago, we reviewed a legal potboiler by Mike Papantonio which not only told a harrowing and exciting tale, but presented some serious concerns about drug addiction. Inhuman Trafficking does the same. If anything, the story is more harrowing and more serious than Law and Addiction.

Inhuman Trafficking introduces us to the same Florida law firm as in the previous book. In this case, the lead attorney is Nick “Deke” Deketomis, a partner in the firm. Also involved is Jake Rutledge, the young and idealistic lawyer from West Virginia who gets in over his head in Law and Addiction. He was hired by the Bergman/Deketomis law firm at the end of the previous novel. He will have more adventures.

As the title suggests, this novel is about human trafficking. We sometimes think of families selling their children as is done in some Asian countries or Central America, and then their daughters (mostly) and sons are sold as shrine prostitutes or simply prostitutes. Either way, they are kept as virtual slaves. Indeed, one point this novel makes is that slavery in the United States has been illegal since 1865, but the Thirteenth Amendment is rarely used to prosecute pimps and people smugglers.

Inhuman Trafficking makes this more than merely theoretical. Deke’s fifteen-year-old goddaughter runs away with an older boyfriend. He, then, uses her to pay off a debt he owes some criminals. She has disappeared, and no one seems to know anything. Carlos, the boyfriend, says he gave her to guy known as Tío Leo. He also seems to have disappeared.

At the same time, the law firm has been involved in a class action lawsuit against a motel chain that allegedly allows a prostitution ring use of its facilities. After this lawsuit makes the news, an office assistant at the firm gets a call from a young woman named Karina looking for help. She says that she came to the United States on a work visa legally, but instead of just working in a hotel as a housekeeper, she was forced into prostitution. She is now kept virtually imprisoned and expected to obey her handler, an older woman who may be from Eastern Europe as Karina is.

Tracing her call takes Jake and legal assistant Michael into a world they may not have known existed: strip clubs, booze cruises, and private hotels that are really bordellos. Then Karina’s body is washed ashore on the Florida Gulf Coast near where the law offices are.

It gets complicated and dangerous. Needless to say, part of the action takes place in Las Vegas, a city where prostitution is legal, but even there sex slavery exists. We are reminded of Papantonio’s Law and Addiction. The opioids may be legally produced but the distribution leaves something to be desired. So in Vegas the prostitutes are not all in the business willingly.

Michael has an interesting backstory. He was an Air Force pararescuer (PJ) until he was injured in the spine in the Middle East on a mission. His awareness of his surroundings, his Air force connections, and his pararescue skills all come into play. In other words, there is a lot of adventurous action. Even if some of the events seem a little far fetched, we are invested enough in the story that we have to say that it could happen this way.

This book is not for everyone. There are characters that are not only evil but creepily so. But we have to figure that anyone who treats girls and young women as sexual commodities has to have been twisted in some way. If we follow the news at all, we know that sex trafficking can happen at the highest political and economic levels. Those reports remind us that the creepy fictional characters in this novel are no more creepy than some of the men and women in our all-too-real world.

Inhuman Trafficking can open our eyes to the evils of human smuggling and prostitution. That is what Law and Addiction did with opioid abuse. Perhaps there is something we can do. It might be a dangerous call, but there are things that can be done even by lawyers. Yes, sadly, there are lawyers, who are more interested in power and money than justice (see a warning in James 5:6), but some are helping people who really need it.

I recall years ago sharing in one of my classes a joke comparing lawyers to sharks. Here is what this book says about that:

Deke knew Robin was just kidding with his shark reference, but the lawyer stereotypes still grew old. The powerful forces that lawyers opposed had done a pretty good job of painting the legal profession as rapacious and predatory. Having worked in the trenches as long as he had, Deke knew just how influential and deep-rooted the opposition was. There were plenty of forces allied against the rule of law. If lawyers were to fail, autocracy and corporatocracy would win the day. (130)

One of the students in that class is now a lawyer who has been in the news. He has bravely stood up to powerful politicians who make no apologies about being autocrats. I am grateful he has kept his integrity. Hopefully, all who read this book will consider their own integrity. Just because we can get away with something does not mean it is what we should do. Does might make right?

Gina Birkmeier. Generations Deep. Out Loud Publishing, 2021.

Thirty years ago, if you had told me that today I would be a licensed therapist, writing this book, after graduating with a master’s degree from a seminary, working with all kinds of people to help find freedom and healing (in the name of Jesus, nonetheless!), most likely I would have laughed in your face and told you to pass me another shot of tequila. (236)

Generations Deep in some ways reminded this reviewer of That One Person, a book we recently reviewed. Both are autobiographies of women brought up in a dysfunctional family with drugs, alcohol, and emotional indifference. However, this one is more effective. It has a purpose.

In that previous review I noted that the Seventies was a time when such books sold well. I mentioned testimonies by Corrie ten Boom, Brother Andrew, and Chuck Colson as examples. Generations Deep is more like those because not only is there an intense story, but the reader can take away some useful and important lessons from these accounts.

Generations Deep has a long subtitle which does reveal its overall purpose: Unmasking Inherited Dysfunction and Trauma to Rewrite Our Stories Through Faith and Therapy. That is what Birkmeier does. Her story of her childhood is intense. She bounced around between various relatives, not even really knowing who her birth mother was until she was older—she had been told the woman was a cousin.

However, Generations Deep has a focus. The author notes that this family behavior was rooted in the past. She goes back, as best she can, three generations to describe her great-grandparents and how they began an unstable relationship and addictive behaviors that became magnified in each subsequent generation.

She notes near the beginning that the Bible tells us that God describes Himself as:

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

People often understand this to mean that God punishes people for sin to the third and fourth generations of their descendants. Other verses say something different than that, that God does not punish parents for the sins of their children or children for the sins of their parents (see, for example, Ezekiel 18:20). What this is really saying is that sins of one generation “visit” or arrive in the next generation unless there is some factor to stop them.

We cannot do anything about the things—both good and evil—that our ancestors did. Often we continue in their habits and behavioral patterns. Often that is all we know. As has been said, hurt people hurt people. And those personal family hurts can be the hardest to overcome or reconcile.

By the time things get to Birkmeier’s generation, the family situation is complicated. The story begins with two lines that suggest how this is so:

My mother gave me up for adoption.

Twice. (19)

But we are kept in suspense as she tells of her great grandparents’ awkward marriage, her grandparents’ difficulties in coping with life, and a complicated story about her own birth mother and various relatives who adopted her and took her in at various times. Just as some editions of long Russian novels have a list of characters with short descriptions to help the reader keep everyone straight, Generations Deep has an appendix with a chart of the names of some of the main figures with four columns: Name, Relationship, Adopted Relationship, and Step Relationship. Get the idea?

The author tells her story in an intimate and effective manner. Even if the reader has had very different experiences, it becomes easy enough to imagine how different people reacted and why they did what they did. For example, in describing her birth mother, she says:

Chaos can become a way of life, a place of familiarity and comfort. For Cathy [her birth mother], I think this was the case. In a bizarre way, I think the chaos of that wild life felt safe for Cathy. At the very least familiar, something she knew how to navigate. She had learned to find function in the dysfunction of her homelife as a child, so even if there had been stability with her dad and stepmom, it would have felt foreign and unsafe. After all, you only trust what you know, even if all you know is unhealthy.

…After a while, not fitting in becomes your identity. Everything you do is rooted in the belief that you are different in the most broken sense of the word. (50)

As I read this, I thought of a couple of families that I knew who took in foster children or who adopted older children. There were some serious struggles, no doubt partly because the kids they took in may not have known how to cope with an attentive, faithful, and stable family life.

If there is hope, part of it comes from the author’s own tenacity. She wants to learn who people really are. She is looking for some real relationships. She focuses on her upbringing and does not become lurid. Indeed, she passes over her late teens and early twenties other than to say in general terms, she experimented with sex, drugs, and alcohol—things that at this point had been going on in her family for most of the century. She says she does not want to “glamorize” these things.

There are two parts to this book, then. The first two thirds or so is her story of dysfunction and redemption. I am not a terribly emotional person, but at one point I confess I was getting misty as she described a discovery made in a medical laboratory. She said that other patients who did not know her were crying. Yes, most of us would.

Indeed, she notes how God did play an important part in her redemption. Some things that happened appear to most readers as more than just a mere coincidence. Such behaviors that cause children to rebel or hate or fear or escape “grieve the heart of God.” As she began to understand not only herself, but her mother, her ancestors, her various aunts and uncles and stepparents, she saw how she could rise above these behaviors and start over. She could even become a positive force in the life of her own children when she had been mostly a negative influence before.

The last third begins with a chapter titled “Turning Towards Healing.” But it is not just about her own healing. Generations Deep shares how the reader can become free in spite of parental abuse or other inherited poor behaviors. She emphasizes that it may take time. It requires forgiveness. She reminds us, for example, that forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. We can forgive people, even those who do not apologize or who do not change themselves. She recognizes that this can be hard, a real battle.

I had to go through the battle inside of me that the choice to forgive created. And it was a battle. So, My Dear Friend, if you’re going through a struggle with forgiveness today, let me encourage you to lean in. The freedom it will bring you is worth the fight.

You may be thinking, “But Gina, you have no idea what I’ve suffered.” And you know what? You’re right. I absolutely do not. But, right here, right now, I want to tell you that I’m sorry you went through it. Whatever “it” was or is. It breaks my heart that you’ve not only suffered, but that you’ve continued to carry the weight of it. (224, italics in original)

While it is clear that the Lord had much to do with the author’s healing, she notes that certain therapeutic techniques work even if people have different beliefs. Above all, this book encourages the reader. Even someone who grew up in a stable environment can learn from this and perhaps make some changes. It certainly can help us understand the behavior of others.

The author herself has become a Licensed Professional Counselor. She, then, shares techniques and various counseling approaches that can help. There is not only a moving story, but a wealth of wisdom and knowledge in this book. This book will minister to many people, especially those raised in broken homes and dysfunctional families. It could be helpful to those who counsel them as well. This is the way autobiographies should be done.

E. H. Broadbent. The Pilgrim Church. 1931. Edited by Paul A. Norman et al, Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2020.

I received a recommendation about this book though, to be honest, I cannot recall whom from. It might have been something I read or it might have come from a conversation. The Pilgrim Church is rooted in history. At the same time it involves some historical detective work.

The author’s basic premise tells us that historically there have been six different ways Christian churches have been organized and operate, especially in how they view Scripture and the Bible’s history of the early church. One is typical of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. They acknowledge the truth of the Bible but add tradition which, they believe, makes their practice an improvement over the original Christian churches.

The second has been typified by some churches in the last two centuries that emphasize rationalism. Since man is the measure of all things, to go back to earlier forms of belief is a “retrogression.” Scriptures are historically interesting but of no “abiding authority.”

The third involves a rediscovery of Biblical truth followed by an attempt to reform existing churches and follow their patterns. Broadbent often uses Lutherans and Anglicans as examples of this.

The fourth Broadbent calls the Mystics. They emphasized personal communion with God in spite of what churches may say or do. This includes a variety of people from Mme. Guyon, to the Quakers, to Darby. Some monastic orders began this way.

The fifth type of church rediscovers the Gospel and emphasizes conversion and meeting practical needs. This type would include the Wesley Methodist Societies or the Salvation Army. If the book were written later it might have included other evangelistic organizations like those of Billy Graham or Joyce Meyer.

The sixth—and clearly the one Broadbent claims is the most authentic—are the congregations of people who “have been one in their faithful endeavour to act upon the New Testament and to follow the example of the New Testament churches.” This is the “pilgrim church” of the title.

The Pilgrim Church focuses on the Old World. American and sub-Saharan African churches and movements are only mentioned as they affected European or Asian Christianity. For example, when discussing the Wesleys, we learn much about their mother as well as their ministries. America is mentioned because John Wesley went to America and was impressed by the Moravian missionaries there.

It does mention the Plymouth Pilgrims, who were a separatist group, but mostly it discusses their experiences in England and Holland. New England is beyond the scope of the book. So are the Puritans, generally, because they were working within the established Church of England.

This, then, is a history of the Christian movements apart from the “established” churches. In many cases they were persecuted, either by other Christians or by the governments. In some cases, Broadbent defends groups that have traditionally been seen as heretical. This is especially true of older movements before the invention of the printing press. History is written by the winning side, they say. So the non-established movements often are dismissed or castigated.

For example, people of a certain age remember the unusual hit song “Dominique” about St. Dominic, the founder of an order of friars and nuns. One of the lines says, “Dominique, notre père, combattit les Albigeois”: Dominic, our father, fought the Albigenses. This Christian sect persisted in Northern Italy and Southern France and some bordering states in spite of the persecution by both religious and secular authorities.

Since virtually all my understanding of them came from that one line in the song, I assumed they were some kind of heterodox group. While there are few remaining writings from them, Broadbent makes a case from their writings and testimonies of others that they were more like the Pilgrims. They emphasized the Bible and biblical practices and operated outside the established Catholic Church.

So were other groups including the Nestorians. I was reminded of The Lost History of Christianity which also emphasized the orthodoxy of Nestorian beliefs, but that group ultimately was also on the wrong side of history.

In Asia and the Near East, for example, the iconoclasts seriously attempted to reform Eastern Orthodoxy. Political power got involved. They flourished as long as the Byzantine ruler sympathized, but eventually the church went back to its own established ways.

One recurring theme through many of the stories of evangelism, reformation, and/or rediscovery of the Bible is persecution. It is remarkable that some of these groups survived at all. Some did not.

We read about various groups. Some of the better known ones are the Moravians and various Mennonite, Brethren, and Baptist groups. We read how the Baptists like John Bunyan managed to survive in England in spite of persecution and some social intolerance.

I was struck by the description of nineteenth-century Englishman J. N. Darby. He became involved in one of the “nonconformist” Brethren groups. He was extremely pessimistic about the survival of the Christian Church in general. He saw things getting worse and worse, Christianity becoming more marginalized and unbiblical, until finally God would “rapture” the remnant to Heaven.

While Darby did not invent the pre-tribulation rapture dogma, he popularized it. His pessimism seems to run counter to the Lord’s own declaration that

And this gospel of the kingdom will be throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:14)

That sounds like a vigorous Christianity, able to present the gospel to the whole world! It is certainly not weak! And that is a sign of the end of time. Believers are not to be conformed to the world (Romans 12:2), but they are not to escape the world either (see Mark 16:15).

Perhaps there is a streak of pessimism in the presentation of this book. But the author also notes and repeats numerous times that true believers, true children of God are found in all Trinitarian churches that respect the Bible, not just “type six.” He understandably is appalled that in many cases Christians could not recognize their brethren to the harm of the body as a whole. And we are reminded that the real power of the Holy Spirit is not institutions but in people who have Him and operate in His power according to His Word.

Brian Kilmeade. The President and the Freedom Fighter. Sentinel, 2021.

We have reviewed two other books by Brian Kilmeade. His history books are short and lively. The President and the Freedom Fighter is the same. While the other two books by him we reviewed were specifically concerned with the conduct of battles, this book sets the war as a backdrop.

Kilmeade presents what we could call parallel lives. He shows in broad strokes how Abraham Lincoln, poor farm boy, became President. Similarly, he shows how Frederick Douglass, born a slave, became a spokesman for the African American of his day.

Kilmeade does a great job of noting the significance of little things. I am familiar with both men because I frequently teach a class in Civil War Literature in which we study Douglass’s autobiography and a number of Lincoln’s speeches. Still, I learned a few things, perhaps things I could have picked up myself if I saw the significance.

For example, at age five, Douglass was taken from the fields where most of the slaves worked to become the personal servant of one of the sons of his owner. The son was about twelve and Douglass remained with him until the son was seventeen. That meant, among other things, that Douglass learned what we would call standard English. He would later learn to read and write, and he always kept a grammar book with him.

That explains a few things about Douglass. Even the first time he spoke publicly at a meeting in Massachusetts, he could communicate in a way his audience could understand. Some people did not think he had been a slave because he was so articulate, but he had learned English from the upper class.

Lincoln had little formal education. He also referred to grammar books for help. Both he and Douglass carried with them the same rhetoric text. They were both students who put into practice what they learned.

As best we can tell, Douglass and Lincoln only met two or three times, however Lincoln was aware of Douglass because of his magazine and wanted to meet him. One time he met with him, he kept him for hours. A leading senator who wanted to speak with the President had to cool his heels for some time, but it made no difference to Lincoln.

After their meeting, Douglass came to a different understanding of Lincoln. Douglass was mainly concerned with one thing—freeing the slaves. Lincoln ultimately wanted that, too, but “Lincoln’s political dance was delicate” (156). He had to consider the military, radical Republicans, copperhead Democrats, and fears of white laborers that freed slaves would take their jobs. Douglass did not always agree with Lincoln, but afterward he would admit that Lincoln was doing what he could.

From the perspective of the 1860s, Lincoln did accomplish a lot. The country stayed together, and the nation passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution making slavery illegal. Sadly, Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson was more prejudiced and would not even consider an idea from Douglass or any other black man. Under Grant, many of Lincoln’s ideas went forward.

A last connection between Lincoln and Douglass was Douglass’s speech at the dedication of the Freedman’s Memorial in Washington D.C. in 1876. Although Douglass himself was not crazy about its design, the memorial does acknowledge Lincoln’s role in overcoming chattel slavery. We are reminded that the memorial was paid for and installed by black Americans.

Kilmeade emphasizes the significance of the Gettysburg Address.

Without saying so directly, the president acknowledged the passing not only of the Gettysburg dead but of the old republic, wounded and divided by war. In its place, he proclaimed a reborn nation, one in which freedom would be redefined, not solely as freedom from tyranny but by adopting the even higher standard of equality. Lincoln had already extended the pledge of freedom to the enslaved; here, in Gettysburg, Lincoln was asking his countrymen to join him in carrying out a transformation of the nation’s society, extending freedom to all, Black and White. (190)

Both that speech and the Emancipation Proclamation appealed to Douglass. He was glad to see, for example, that the final draft of the Proclamation included an invitation for black Americans to join the military. He also understood that without a change in the law and even the Constitution, some things might take longer.

Of course, the book does remind us of the war that was going on. Douglass was an early advocate of using black men in the military. Lincoln agreed, but he also wanted to make sure that it would not backfire politically or hinder the war effort. One of the biggest supporters of the idea was General Grant.

When it became obvious that he was one of the more successful Federal generals, his support would go a long way. There were draft riots in New York in 1863 which ended in attacks on some black citizens and institutions, but a year later black army volunteers were cheered in some of the same streets.

Early in his career, Douglass was supported by William Lloyd Garrison. One could even say, in Hollywood language, that Garrison discovered Douglass. Garrison would burn copies of the Constitution to make a point that the Constitution’s passivity concerning slavery was an abomination.

Later, both Douglass and Lincoln would focus on the Declaration of Independence in their rhetoric. Because the Constitution provided for the “blessings of liberty” which included the ideas that “all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” there was hope for our constitutional republic.

Douglass could see changes happening even if they were slower than he would have liked. The President and the Freedom Fighter reminds us of both “the better angels of our nature” and the idea that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”