The Contemporary Television Series

Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon (eds.) (2005) The Contemporary Television Series. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

• If you are a great fan of those USAmerican TV series (such as ER, The West Wing, The Sopranos, X-File, Ally McBeal, etc. etc...), and want to consider them as more than sheer entertainment, but want to avoid the annoying show-off of 'academic' jargons, this book is probably for you.
  
• Personally I have never been really a great fan of such series, but have somehow been 'trapped' into chasing after the final two seasons of The West Wing since last year. Thus the chapter on that series is interesting and informative for me.
  
• Indeed an enjoyable break-time reading for me - learn something while not having to take notes and / or crack the pretentious language that has stuffed so many of the academic books.

Happy acquisitions from Christian Aid Book Sale 2006 - archaeological discoveries

This year there are quite a number of interesting items from China of the earlier part of the 20th century, possibly from the donations of some old missionaries or their families.

《新約全書》 － 官話和合譯本，附標注音字母。上海大英聖書公會 / 美華聖經會印發。
The New Testament in Character and Phonetic Script, Mandarin U.V.
Published jointly by the American Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society,
Shanghai, 1929. (Ed. 2590)

• £1.
  

《譜天頌讚》(線譜本，民國二十五年三月初版)。上海廣學會出版，民國二十五年。
Hyms of Universal Praise (1st edition, music edition) (Edited by the Union Hymnal Committee). Shanghai: The Christian Literature Society of China, 1936.

• £1. (original price: $2.)
  
• Hardcover, clothbound.
  
• According to the copyright page, a total of 114,000 copies were printed in the first edition, of which 13,000 were music edition.
  
• The first cross-denominational ecumenical effort in church music by the Chinese Church. The Union Hymnal Committee was appointed by the Chung Hwa Sheng Kung Hwei 中華聖公會，The Church of Christ in China 中華基督教會，The East China Baptist Convention 華東浸禮會，The Methodist Episcopal Church North 監理會，The Methodist Episcopal Church South 美以美會，The North China Kung Li Hui 華北公理會.
• Inside the backcover cloth wrap there is an old piece of oil-printed paper (油印紙)，which is 『五育校歌，張遜詞，一九三七；鄭少懷調，一九三七』. The original owner was probably a member of that school.
  

《譜天頌讚》(數字譜本，民國二十九年十二月十版)。上海廣學會出版，民國二十九年。
Hyms of Universal Praise (1oth edition, numerical edition) (Edited by the Union Hymnal Committee). Shanghai: The Christian Literature Society of China, 1940.

• 50p (original price: $1.90.)
• manila paper cover 線裝紙面
• According to the information on p.1, a total of 326,000 copies of this hymnal has been distributed from 1936 to 1940. Prices have gone up tremendously at the same time.
  
• This copy is distributed by the Kunming Depot of the Christian Literature Society (廣學會昆明發行所).
  
• Additional interests:
  
• Signed by: 穆美理 三年級，probably the original owner, and possibly lives in Yunnan Province.
  
• Found slipped inside: 2 stamps of the Republic of China - 中華民國郵政，一分 (with a portrait I cannot recognise)； 中華民國郵政，貳角伍分 (with portrait of Sun Yat Sen).
• Found slipped inside: a tiny picture story card (公仔紙) which identifies itself as picture number 15 in the story of Snow White (雪姑七友圖說 [十五])，and is provided by a tobacco company 中國南洋兄弟煙草股份有限公司。 Intriguing, huh?
  

Warren Horton Stuart (1932) The Use of Material from China's Spiritual Inheritance in the Christian Education of Chinese Youth: A Guide and Source-book for Christian Teachers in China. Shanghai: Kwang Hsueh Publishing House / Oxford University Press China Agency.

• £1.
  
• PhD dissertation written for Yale University
• I showed this to my Singaporean colleague T as I found it in the book sale. He said, How much is our PhD worth? See? Just one pound! .....mmm.....
  

Happy acquisitions from Christian Aid Book Sale 2006 - special interest

Albert Schweitzer (1954) My Life and Thought: an autobiography (2nd ed). London: British Publishers Guild.

• 50p
  
• As a teenager I only heard of Albert Schweitzer as a medical missionary to Africa. It was only in seminary that I realised that he was also a prominent biblical scholar in the earlier part of the 20th century who started the first wave of 'the Quest for the Historical Jesus'.
  

Eberhard Bethge, Renate Bethge, Christian Gemmels (1986) Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures. London: SCM.

• £1.50.
  
• Published 20 years ago to commemorate the 80th birthday of the late German theologian who has inspired so many over the decades. It is good to get it at the year which marks his 100th birthday.
  
• 'Dedicated to Sabine Liebholz, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's twin sister, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, 4 February 1986.' (from copyright page) -- How about that! I never knew he had a twin sister!

Adrian Hastings (ed.) (1999) A World History of Christianity. London: Cassell.

• £5
• I am attracted by the breadth of geograpical coverage - as the book's own backcover says: 'This is the first major study to escape the bounds of Eurocentricity and ecclesiocentricity. It shows Christianity as related organically to the diversity of the world's cultures and regions ... '
  
• Also attracted by the chapter on 'China and its Neighbours' by R.G. Tiedemann of SOAS.
  

Happy acquisitions from Christian Aid Book Sale 2006 - some modern classics

Peter L. Berger (1969) The Social Reality of Religion.. London: Faber and Faber.
[USA title: The Sacred Canopy]

• £1
  
• a classic that I have long heard of but never really read, a significant work in the sociological study of religion in the mid to late 20th century
  
• ' ... treats religion as a social product, as part of the world of meaning that every human society constructs in the course of history.' (from front flap)
  
• 'After discussing the paradoxical roots of secularization in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, it analyzes the contemporary secularization in its institutional aspects and in its character as a phenomenon of consciousness.' (from front flap)
  
• plus: for some of us who got into the gate of 'religion and society' through the Boston school, there is perhaps a special feeling toward this contemporary godfather of the field at Boston University.
  

H. Richard Niebuhr (1951) Christ and Culture. New York: Harper and Row.

• 50p
  
• I have now gone far far away from Neibuhr's static and universalistic notion of culture, yet beyond any argument this book is the most important work in the area that has come out over the last century. Its paradigm is still applied and used in many circumstances (including by myself just a few years ago), and supplemented or refuted by many (including myself of today).
  

Gerd Theissen (1986, ET 1987) The Shadow of the Galilean. London: SCM.

• £1.50.
  
• The story of Jesus told in a first person narrative form by a top notch biblical scholar - this in itself is already a tremendous selling point of the book.
  
• Years ago when I was still quite into New Testament study, I was fascinated by Theissen's works on the social scientific study of the NT. But actually they were tough reading and were beyond my capacity of full understanding.
  
• Then later when I learnt that brother Kun Chun was Theissen's student, WOW! was the only possible reaction in secret ... WOW!
  

The Enchantment of Sociology: A Study of Theology and Culture

Kieran Flanagan (1996) The Enchantment of Sociology: A Study of Theology and Culture. London: Macmillan / New York: St. Martin's.

• the author: British sociologist of religion, currently Reader in Sociology at Bristol University, practising Roman Catholic.
• the book: 'This study is a reflection on an amibition to write the imperative for enchantment in sociology into the interface between culture and theology ..... It examines the self understandings of culture between theology and sociology to show their mutual and precarious relationship to secularisation.' (ix)
  
• very critical of the liberal theological project (esp post-Vatican II) to make itself relevant to culture but at the same time becomes buried by the latter
• cf. Michael Northcott's criticism of the classical liberal project of correlation as a dead end which goes no where.
  

• poses a challenge (or at least a serious reminder) to my recent thinking on the overall direction / orientation of my thesis --- which, although not conceived along the line of 'classical' liberal theology and refutes its Tillichian 'method of correlation', is nonetheless an effort to interrogate Christian (public) theological expression with contemporary (popular) culture. (In a more 'fashionable' term, I am in some sense 'reversing the hermeutical flow'.)
  

'Since [Vatican II], theology has become dominated by cultural issues it cannot seem to transcend or to control. The humanisation of theology has not been matched by a sanctification of culture. If anything the reverse, for modernity has made theology irrelevant in the cultural marketplace. Secularisation, a disengagement from the sacred, governs everyday reality. In its relationship to modern culture, theology seems to have lost its grip. ... The 1980s was a uniquely grey period of theology. Despite dalliancies with ideologies, little of substance has emerged.' (9)

'If theologians are to cope with contemporary culture, they have to find not only a point of connection but also a grammar with which to read its contours.' (9-10)

'By endorsing the doubts of contemporary culture, liberal theologians pre-empted their capacity to confront what Lindbeck has termed the 'acids of modernity' and to seek definite forms of belief in communal enclaves that would be supportive for others rather than purely individual concerns with rights. The whole strategy conceived in Vatican II, to open to the world, was fatally misconceived, as it misunderstood the basis upon which belief was secured within modern culture. It has no sociological means of asking, let alone answering this question.' (11, my emphasis)

• intruging indeed: contra conventional notion of Vatican II being a revoultionary moment for the Roman Catholic Church to 'update' itself.
  

'Theological reflection seeks an experience of the Divine, an intimation of presence which that makes it something more than academic study ... Academic theology seems to have obscured the spiritual roots of its focus of study.' (55)

'In ['A Sociological View of the Secularization of Theology', in Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 5 (1966)10], (Peter) Berger indicated that it does not occur to liberal theologians that those concepts to which they make appeal, embodied in secularisation, are themselves subject to processes of relativism. If the culture that forms the ground of belief for sociologists has become unsettled, a similar instability applies to liberal theologians who seek to open belief uncritically to what they perceive to be cultural imperatives.' (61)

'The cognitive validity which theologians granted to contemporary culture, that effected a pastoral process of modernisation, hence secularisation and dismantlement of sacerdotal bonds, that has had such fracturing effects three decades later, is untenable and has become more so in the context of postmodernity.' (61, my emphasis)

'What is a solution to theology is the beginning of a sociological problematic one all the more apparent in the culture of postmodernity. Openness disguises agnosticism, pluralism veils indifference, and the pursuit of individual rights conceals fragmentation.' (61)

'Because sociology is reflexive on matters of detail if often confronts theology blind to the implications of what it enacts. Liberal theologians confuse rhetoric with analysis of consequences. Often these relate to trivial matters with significant consequences, which to the sociologist seem to uncouple boundaries and to undermine forms of representation and identity.' (62)

'The need to modernise, to accord with contemporary social sentiment, but at the same time, to protect belief and doctrine from corrosive effects of the Enlightenment, left theology divided against itself. If it did not modernise, its messsage would pass ungrasped and unnoticed; but if it did modernise, there was the risk of abandoning or corrupting the tradition upon which belief was formulated and founded.' (69)