Top Books for the Globally Enlightened Student
Just in case your summer reading list has wilted in the heat, my good friend John Nunes, president of Lutheran World Relief, recently posted a booklist of top books for the globally enlightened student.
The list was in response to a college professor who asked him what books she should encourage her students to read to gain greater global awareness. He passed along the question to a group of friends and colleagues. I was honored to be included.
My contribution was as follows:
The Gospels in Our Image: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Poetry Based on Biblical Texts, edited by David Curzon. A kind of midrashic collection of poems ranging from the deeply reverent to the keenly skeptical. Also a great primer in world poetry from the last century.
Jesus and the Disinherited, by Howard Thurman. A classic in Black theology. A seminal read for the young Martin Luther King, Jr.
Exclusion and Embrace, by Miroslav Volf. One of my own teachers in divinity school, his theological thinking is deeply influenced by his native experience of the brutal religious war in former Yugoslavia. Especially post-9/11, I can’t think about culture, society, or conflict without reflecting on the insights of this book.
John and I recently talked about keeping up a running tally for this list. I’d add my current read—Say You’re One of Them, stories by Nigerian Jesuit priest Uwem Akpan—even as we speak. And interestingly enough as we mark his passing, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn didn’t make the list. Makes me wonder what other books should be there.
Thoughts?
Travis Scholl, 35, is managing editor of theological publications at Concordia Seminary. A graduate of Yale Divinity School (MDiv), he is an ordained Lutheran minister. Despite some time away, he and his wife are native St. Louisans, as is the child they are now raising. 
If the objective is to be “Globally Enlightened”, I recommend the weekly magaziine “The Economist”.
An interesting publication to be sure. Fascinating articles, both in topics I agree with (globilization, free trade) and ones I don’t (legalizing narcotic drugs, “gun control”). The quality of the editors and writers there is evident. Everyone should read it once…
I’d add Dakota by Kathleen Norris and New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. I think Solzhenitsyn is hugely impactful, and will be appreciated for years as we think about oppression and freedom around the world. When I read the Gulad Archipeligo, I had to stop frequently and reflect; it is just that heavy. I also think Ma Bo’s Blood Red Sunset and Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum are powerful books that deal with Communism in China and it’s 20th C. abuses.
If it has been indeed written:
In the beginning was the Word; and “God” (being that word)is “Spirit”, then what else are we, as his imaghe and likeness, but a smaller of the “spirit” that created us, in the beginning?
And yet, we have become, and imagined becoming everything but “spirit”, even as our religions seek to blindly control thus, quenching the “spirit” that still draws us to study, learn, know, and become what we truly have been created to become…to actualize.
What are you trying to know and become?
That’s a book worth reading and perhaps…there are only a chosen few who can write it.
Kolt4JC