The obvious answer seems, “Not very.”
Surely the terms moral and Hitler have to be mutually antagonistic.
And yet…
Author Richard Weikart offers the proposition that Hitler was a moral man.
See what you make of this: Read it all
books
Bonnet Rippers
Branches that hang low and ruin passing coverings on female Amish heads? I wish...
I learned a new expression day before yesterday: Bonnet Books. So I Googled it and learned another new one: Bonnet Rippers.
Great. Just great.
There’s a new kind of romance novel out there and its plot includes forbidden love, a mysterious outsider and a heroine who has to decide between new love and her old life.
But these are not sexy Harlequin-like romances nicknamed bodice-rippers.
These are bonnet rippers.
Amish love stories are occupying many of the top spots in religious fiction.
[…]
The books’ plots usually include a young Amish woman who falls in love with an outsider. The woman is young enough, however, that she has not yet officially entered the Amish church, so she still can make a decision to leave the community.
[…]
In most cases, the woman does leave with the community and the reader perceives a happy ending.
If she doesn’t turn her back on her faith, does the book qualify as a bonnet ripper? (Get it? In case you don’t…she keeps her faith and her bonnet, ripping neither.)
One more quote from the article:
The books are marketed at conservative Christian readers, often showing up in devotional sections of bookstores.
Those things qualify as devotional?! 🙄
“Nothing Less Than Prophetic”
For those who have taken our religious freedom for granted or have gradually slipped into lukewarmness or even hypocrisy, this book may jolt us back to reality.
“Have you read The Whirlwind Cometh?” asked my Arizona friend shortly after noon today.
He just came across the book and is probably done with it by now. He said reading it in the context of what’s going on in the United States these days made chills go up and down his spine.
“It’s nothing less than prophetic,” he said (and I think that’s an exact quote).
He thinks every young man and young woman in our Mennonite churches should read it. “Required reading for” is the way I recall him putting it.
Maybe some day I will get around to posting some excerpts from this novel, set in Canada.
Apparently written by an Amish author who chose to remain anonymous, this inexpensive little book is published by Pathway Publishers. (Maybe this qualifies as one of the few truly profitable amish novels!)
This is an unusual book, a story you will not soon forget. A new Canadian government under Prime Minister John Smith sweeps into power, and at once begins a program to bring reform to Canada. One result is that the historic peace churches are put to a test to see if they are truly nonresistant and if their faith is genuine. The young people must appear before tribunals before they are granted conscientious objector status.
For those who have taken our religious freedom too much for granted, or have gradually slipped into lukewarmness or even hypocrisy, this book may jolt us back to reality. This gripping story is not a history, but a challenge to examine the present and be ready for the future.
Hey — an idea! You could buy your own copy and post your comments here!
Book Review: Plain Secrets
A unique story of culture crossing in rural America explores the role of religion in modern society by looking closely at the life of the Swartzentruber Amish.
From the Boston Globe, The shock of the old:
Joe Mackall’s new book, “Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish,” explores the role of religion in modern society by looking closely at the life of a small devout religious community in Ohio: the Swartzentruber Amish. The struggle of the Amish people to live with “the English” (the non-Amish), and of the English “outsider” (Mackall) to understand the Amish, is a unique story of culture crossing in rural white America.
The complexity of the bridge that Mackall attempts to build between the Amish and English cultures is mirrored in the Latin root of the word “religion” — religare, to bind together again. This is the problem/promise that Mackall confronts: Religion can both liberate and indoctrinate, both create a community through the bonds of tradition and doctrine, and enslave a community through the binding of minds and control of behavior. The book points to a difficult truth: A religious community is bound to be freed.
If you need more than the first two paragraphs of the review, click the link above.
If you want the book, click the book graphic. 😉
