Anxious About Empire is a collection of 13 essays written by various Christian academics and theologians ranging from Robert Bellah to Wendel Berry. I honestly picked it up because I saw Wendell Berry’s name and knew Amos was a fan. In the book, the primary topic is The Bush Doctrine, specifically centered around the document, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.”
Empire is a term that I fear may be losing its potency from overuse. It is a popular term with those who currently critique America’s actions abroad and especially among those who critique American Evangelical Christianity. However, it is an appropriate term when considering America’s worldwide troop placement. Empire will aways be sought after even if it is called by another name and if America is truly a ‘Christian’ nation, should this be the course pursued by such a nation?
I tend to hold off on some current event books because not all of the details have usually been uncovered and therefore can be made obsolete quite rapidly. If anything, their purpose is to have a hand in policy and public opinion shaping. Not that trying to sway opinion is a bad thing, we all do it. But some books have an alarmist tendancy that, when coupled with the immediacy of the event being covered, causes the reader to lose sight of the bigger picture.
I plan on spending the next 13 posts looking back on each essay retrospectively to see if and why their predictions and comments were accurate or not.
-mike
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