Elsewhere this week: two reviews of important new books on Christianity and culture
Marriage and Family
No, your eyes and your calendar do not deceive you. It’s not Saturday, and this is not another installment of the Slow Read—that’s coming your way tomorrow morning, as usual. But this week two book reviews that I’ve had the privilege to write have appeared, and instead of throwing them into tomorrow’s newsletter, which is getting crowded, I decided to separate them out.
Review 1: Brad Wilcox, Get Married
Not everyone is called to get married, and the church most definitely needs to do more for the unmarried singles, whether those who are single for a season or for life. That said, the vast majority of Christians have traditionally expected to get married, and Brad Wilcox’s fascinating new book shows clearly ways in which marriage is “The Most Essential Christian Institution,” as I wrote in my review, out today in Providence Magazine. A taste:
Wilcox pushes against the modern secular ideal of individualism in thinking about happiness, resources, and one’s goals in life. He shows instead (with concrete numbers, based on extensive surveying work) how people who put “we over me” flourish in marriage—meaning, have marriages that are more secure and happier. At the same time, regularly having to think not only of one’s own needs but also those of at least one other person also shapes us in important ways. Living a life of daily service, dying to self in ways minor and major, cultivates the virtues Christianity has historically called believers to: humility, self-sacrificial spirit, love and care for the weak, and general compassion for others. In other words, Christian realism acknowledges that people are sinful, but when you put sinners together in marriage, they can grow in sanctification in unexpected yet beautiful ways.
Review 2: Timothy P. Carney, Family Unfriendly
Wilcox’s book pairs very well with Tim Carney’s new book, published just this week: Family Unfriendly. If you read Current (or even if you don’t normally), check out the fantastic two-day review forum we ran there:
’s review of the book’s overall argument (“Why Aren’t Americans Having Children?”) and ’s deep dive into issues related to homemaking (“The Value of Homemakers”).In addition, my review in Christianity Today, “Honey, We Shrunk the Family,” focused on (yet again) the aspects of Christianity and culture that this book encourages us to think about. From my conclusion:
No policy can make that kind of emergency support possible. In early parenting, maybe more than any other season of life, you need real people—flesh and blood, friends and family, people who come because they love you, not because someone is paying them—to be right there, eager to help. (I’ve semi-joked that I’d have another baby just to get another meal of the lasagna one elder’s wife at our previous church dutifully took to all new moms. It was that good.)
More than any possible government program, this kind of network will encourage people to have more babies. And Carney would most certainly agree—indeed, the introduction to his book involves just such an emergency for his own family. They came through it relatively smoothly because of the beautiful support of their relatives, colleagues, and, most of all, the church.
The bride of Christ is not flawless in the here and now. Yet it is churches that have the capacity to create, at least in microcosm, a culture that is family friendly in a world that is not.