The works of Albert Schweitzer, once dubbed by Time magazine as "the greatest man alive," are being revived, courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Press. Two of his best works have been brought out in trade paperback editions.
"The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede" ($18.95) sets forth the thoughts of this noted humanitarian that led to his motto, "Reverence for Life." The book was first published in 1906, when Schweitzer was just 31. The text covers the period from the Enlightenment to the dawn of the 20th century.
Schweitzer covers the big questions about Jesus, outlining the debate that raged over such questions as the paucity of information about the Son of God in the New Testament, as well as the extent of His Jewishness. He also addresses the matter of differences among the Gospels.
The second volume in the Johns Hopkins series is "The Primeval Forest" ($15.95), in which Schweitzer writes bout giving up his post as a professor at the University of Strasbourg in 1931 to travel to French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon) as a physician. The book details how Schweitzer and his wife set up an outdoor hospital in the jungles of Lambarene, handling up to 40 cases a day. Eventually they established a permanent hospital to help the suffering people of the Congo.
This Fall will see publication of two additional titles, "The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle" and "Out of My Life and Thought."
Schweitzer, who died in 1965, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, using money from that prize to expand his hospital and to build a leper colony. He remains one of the most admired individuals to have been on Earth. These initial two volumes demonstrate his thought processes and his amazingly clear writing style. His talent as a writer matches his other exploits.
NEW AGE MOVEMENT ASSESSED
In this century's search for the meaning of our existence, a hunt that continues for many seeking the truth, the established church stumbled its collective toes over the rocks placed in their paths by the New Age movement. The traditional fire-and-brimstone attitude of conservative church leaders seemed in total confrontation with a movement that presented different ways of looking at life and defining how one should approach faith.
While many critics of the New Age have been content to assail its beliefs without paying much attention to exactly what they are, author John P. Newport has taken the time to do a thorough study of New Age practices before turning on his firepower. His new book, "The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview" (Eerdsman, $35), offers a calm counterview to the philosophies put on display by followers of spiritism and channeling, magic and witchcraft, neopaganism and Satanism.
Newport, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., takes a comprehensive look at ecology, health, business, education, science, and the arts as they relate to the New Age worldview, deftly contrasting them with traditional Biblical thought. Newport has done his homework, writing about everything from Matthew Fox,s brand of mysticism to little-known theories that managed to wrest converts from Christianity.
Newport's book, certain to be added to many church libraries, deserves reading not just as a resource for research. He writes with thoroughness and in a style that is both lively and straightforward. This book should interest both Christians and New Agers alike, although the latter won't endorse Newport's conclusions. But they may compliment him for being as fair-minded as a devout Christian could be.
GAY HISTORY: PAST AND PRESENT
Leading a sheltered life growing up in the small town of Gauley Bridge surrounded by the beauty of the mountains of West Virginia, I think I must have been in high school before I became aware that homosexuals existed. I was so innocent that even after hearing boorish classmates brand fellow students "queers," I still had little idea what that obviously derogatory word implied.
Several years later I came to the conclusion that one of my best friends probably was gay, a world that didn't enter my personal vocabulary until many years afterwards.
Homosexuals have been around since the advent of the human race. In the permissive atmosphere of the late 1990s, a majority of Americans object to their condemnation, believing in research of recent years that demonstrates that gayness is not a choice, but rather a biological event. Although such a conclusion causes outrage among religious fundamentalists, most intelligent people have come to accept homosexuals as a fact of life. While discrimination lives on, the blatant attitudes of the past have softened during the current fad of political correctness. Hatred has been hidden, not eliminated.
Author John Loughery, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize with his biography of painter John Sloan, has just published an intriguing review of American gayness. "The Other Side of Silence: Men's Lives and Gay Identities: A Twentieth-Century History" (Henry Holt, $35) is perhaps the best book ever to seek to define the history of male homosexuality in the United States.
His topics range wide. Loughery writes about the Navy's mission in 1919 to ensnare gay enlisted men, which came to be called the Newport scandal. He describes the relationship between infamous Sen. Joe McCarthy and his gay lawyer assistant Roy Cohn during McCarthy's outrageous witchhunt against Communists during the 1950s. The book also looks at significant contributions of gay men in the twentieth century, from the unknowns to such artistic geniuses as Tennessee Williams and Terrence McNally.
The author interviewed hundreds of gay men in his efforts to create a fair and exhaustive portrait of this nation's gay life. As Loughery notes in his introduction, "How one reacts to loving or sexually desiring members of one's own sex does matter in twentieth-century America because society has made it matter by means of repressive laws, by condoning violence and discrimination, by its own incessant style of classifying and naming. . . Some men and women, we know, took their secret to their graves. Others acted on it (and still do) in self-destructive ways. A large number found their way to happiness and fulfillment. But still others chose to move beyond silence, to see what could be done, what humane capital could be made, out of that childhood or adolescent sense of otherness. We have yet to reap the full benefit of their daring, doubts, instructive failures, and hard-fought triumphs."
If you like Bob Powers, and everyone should, and you want to read more of his incisive columns, check out Innerart/artbits; The Columbus Free Press; or go to Suite 101 and click on "Today's Fiction."
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QUEER PLANET: PHIL MARTIN decides to visit summer camp and gets the surprise of a lifetime. "CAMP HOMO NO MO."
ON DRUGS: ADAM J. SMITH on kids in Florida who have a new game: "Drug Dealer." "The Pompano Beach Twelve."
POWERSBOOKS: BOB POWERS on the reissue of two titles by ALBERT SCHWEITZER, JOHN P. NEWPORT's tome on the New Age movement, and JOHN LOUGHERY on Gay History.
RADIO ACTIVE: RADIO RAHEEM says "WHERE ARE THE SISTAHS?"
G21 DAY ONE: TODAY: THOMAS HART explains this "Slow Week for Dish." [Excuses, excuses. --- Ed.]
K.O.'s CALLS: K.O. on the Mo Vaughn Saga.
POWERSSOUND: BOB POWERS "sings" the praises of Sonny Rollins' new CD "Global Warming; looks at the Arbor Records Sampler; GOSSIPS about:
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