BOOK REVIEW

KNOWING TRUTH, DOING GOOD

Engaging New Testament Ethics

By Russell Pregeant

Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN 2008

Dr. Russell Pregeant is the Professor of Religion and Chaplain at Curry College in Boston, MA and Visiting Professor in New Testament at Andover Newton Theological School. He is the author of innumerable articles and several books, including ENGAGING THE NEW TESTAMENT and CHRISTOLOGY BEYOND DOGMA.

I will read anything Russell Pregeant writes, not only because he is a friend and colleague for over thirty-five years, but also because of the poetic quality of his prose, the careful scholarship of his research, and his open, yet devoted progressive, post-modern perceptiveness. Even after saying all that, I must admit, with KNOWING TRUTH, DOING GOOD, he hooked me with the Dedication. We are both enamored of the city of New Orleans; both having lived there, indeed, I still do, and both soulfully shaped by its diversity, unpredictability, insanity, as well as its sounds and rhythms and its inability to take itself too seriously. It is a great place to eat, too.

More important, we both were deeply wounded by the damage done to it by Hurricane Katrina and the inadequate response to its cries for “Help” in the immediate and, now, long-term aftermath. Russell’s dedication is “To the people of New Orleans, in sorrow, in solidarity, in hope.” The poetic words that follow are what hooked me:

“While the disciples were asleep,

The people’s bread was stolen to buy instruments of war

And line the pockets of the ones who dress in purple and adorn

themselves with gold;

The trees were cut, the wetlands filled;

So carbon caked upon the firmament and made the planet boil,

While levees lay untended, weak, decaying;

And in high places care was nowhere to be found.

Thus, when Katrina came, with fury fueled by simmering seas,

The wind and water washed the poor away,

And the sacred place where jazz was born and soulful music always

filled the air

Became a bloody sacrifice to the god of human greed.

But when the sleepers are at last awake,

What thoughts will occupy their minds?

Will they waste their time hunting witches?

Or will they stand beside the one they claim to follow,

Who even now in agonizing prayer must contemplate his death,

Because he made the Empire tremble as he cast his lot

With those neglected by false shepherds of the sheep?

Surely that is enough to invite your interest in a book that deals with the nuances, the abstractions, the many strands, and yet the divine imperative of New Testament ethics. In the words of Leander Keck, “The moral life…refers to what one values deeply enough to live by and, if necessary, die for because one is convinced that it is both right and true.”

I am going to take a break now. Order the book, start reading it, and little by little we can share its treasures and be nurtured by its insights. More to come. Stay tuned.

John Winn