Summer reading in religion?

When June arrives, some folks work their way through a summer reading list.

The list may be comprised of books, whether ones with physical spines or accessed via the Internet, that folks choose to peruse on vacation.

The thought of a summer reading list got me thinking about books that have been important to me over the years.

The other night, my wife Lois and I were talking to a real estate client of ours who mentioned he had quite a theological library.

As it happens, so do I.

With two exceptions, all those books of mine are in our attic and have been largely untouched since taking full ministry retirement eight years ago.

There are two I keep close at hand.

Geneva Bible was gifted to me not long ago by a dear friend who lives in a retirement community. If you've never heard of it, that's understandable. The Geneva Bible was first published in 1560, a little more than a half century before the prestigious King James Version (KJV) of 1611. I don't care for the KJV personally, but I've had parishioners who love it. In fact, one of my New Testament students at Southeast Missouri State this past semester told me he reads nothing else but the King James.

I show a copy of the Geneva Bible to my SEMO pupils, nearly all of whom are traditional students, which is to say between the ages of 18 and 22.

There are many reasons I prefer the Geneva, all of them historical.

• It was William Shakespeare's Bible. Nearly all the Bard's important work was already penned before the KJV came along. Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, et al, were all written post-1560 and well before the KJV ever saw the light of day.
• It was one of the Bibles the pilgrims brought to North America aboard the Mayflower.
• It is believed to be the preferred Bible of John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress.
• It is the first Bible in the English language to use verse numbers.
• It is believed to be the first English Bible in which the entire Old Testament is translated directly from Hebrew.

When I pass the Bible around the classroom, students frown as they read. Works from the Elizabethan era (1558-1603), referring to the written form of English used during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, can be difficult to decipher at times.

The most popular version of the Bible in the United States today is believed to be the venerable New International Version, which was my late father's preferred translation.

The other book I keep close at hand is not specifically a theological work but one I found immensely helpful in my former parish work.

Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue was written by the late rabbi Edwin Friedman, who spent much of his ministry in Washington, D.C.

Friedman wrote about the emotional life of congregations.

As someone who spent some period of years leading churches, I found myself returning again and again to Friedman's thoughts.

One section of the book refers to the "elasticity," as Friedman put it, found in family systems.

Families, he wrote, can hurt one another, can be estranged from one another, can be indifferent to one another, but one thing never changes.

For Friedman, the family bond never snaps. It is elastic and will endure, even if family members no longer speak to one another.

Few things I've encountered in my non-theological reading has been as helpful as Friedman's insight into the human family.

Trusting the "elasticity" found in families helped me see that relationship repair is possible.

Things may not go back to where they'd previously been, but every situation can be improved.

Thanks, Dr. Friedman.

Summer has begun, readers, so what are you reading in this unusual pandemic-lingering season of 2020?

If you are reading this online, please feel free to respond in the comments section.