A Season for Justice: Defending the Rights of the Christian Home, Church and School

Reviewer's Bookwatch, August, 2004 by Proctor S. Burress

A Season for Justice: Defending the Rights of the Christian Home, Church and School.

David French, Broadman & Holman

Nashville, TN

0805424911, $12.95, 215 pp.

I selected this book after learning that David and Nancy French were neighbors here in Lexington, KY. They moved (last 3 weeks) to Philadephia where Mr. French is now CEO of a Christian civil rights organization. David's father, Dr. Austin French, a professor of math at nearby Georgetown College still lives in the home immediately next door to where David and Nancy lived. I actually found the book title on Mr. French's web page "theculturecurve." He did not elaborate on the book's content from the blogosphere.

Dr. Austin French and I had the opportunity to get acquainted a few weeks ago as I greeted him while he was tending the dandelions in his front yard. He immediately gave me "his testimony" and I walked away convinced "I had talked with an authentic fundamentalist." Dr. French, David and Nancy and other members of the family have been long associated with David Lipscomb College in Nashville. Many years ago I read the church newsletter of a church in Louisville, Kentucky pastored by by a rather extreme religious figure, Harold Hazlip, who became president of David Lipscomb. He has since retired.

I was fascinated, as a young man, by Rev. Hazlip's newsletters as they were a full frontal assault on the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Apparently Hazlip was a firebrand within his circles, if not known very well nationally. He seemed to be attempting to recruit Catholic priests in the streets of Louisville to debate him in church on Catholic doctrine.

Incidental to all of this is that David French grew up in Georgetown, Kentucky which is featured in this book and my wife graduated from the Baptist college there.

Thus, I feel a number of "connections" to both the issues raised in the book and the circumstances in which it was developed. I also feel that the author is honestly struggling with some issues that he may not treat so even- handedly as he gets more locked into an occupational focus of very narrow advocacy.

I have two degrees from the University of Kentucky and am now retired. I was General Manager Human Resources of Starkist Seafood in Long Beach, CA before returning to Kentucky. I was an Army Security Agency cryptoanalyst in norhtern Japan. I have worked in and consulted with both Japanese and American companies. I wrote some "Affirmative Action" Plans and was tutored on Affirmative Action laws by Ellen Shong Bergman, the first director of the OFCCP under President Reagan and by Dr. Robert Holmes, a law professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. We have lived in London, England, Japan and traveled in Europe, Africa and the Carribean. I have had a long term fascination with the practice and dynamics of human psycholgy and public religion.

The book appears to be written for the non-specialist and church members. The author writes well and articulates some issues that will not be fully grasped by many of his readers. For example, his plea to evangelicals not to seek government endorsement may not be internalized at all! The book will alarm most of his audience especially those who have limited insight into American pluralism with all of its faults. The book does not clarify how secular ideas and institutions have provided a historical "buffer" between hostile contending religious viewpoints in America. Mr. French is perfectly capable of understanding and even articulating this "buffer" perspective. The question is: will Mr. French ultimately ignore and even willing to sacrifice this "buffer" which afterall, may be more precious than the Constitution itself? As thoughtful as the author is, many will take a singular message from this book: the sky is falling! Maybe this is not the author's intent, just the effect!

The tile of this review is taken from the author's text.

"From Mars to A Petri Dish"

The author provides few hints that he has studied the basis for his beliefs. Certainly, he has thought about how to defend public religious expression. Understandably, he talks about his faith. At the same time, he claims those disagreeing with his belief are advancing their "faith" in so doing. (In this context he borrows the phrase ..."the church of the left"... from the rather superficial essays of Dr. Stan Kurtz).

He consistently toys with straw man constructions in this polemic without admitting his faith is that of one hoping for substance unseen. It is not likely this hope will ever be commonly shared by all of humanity.

It is rather interesting to see him start asserting matters of "proof" when engaging a fellow law school student who is gay. Surely, proof is hard come by and an unlikely companion when making such traditional assertions of faith. Many passages in this book begin with the author being "stunned" or being "shocked" at what he observes. This rightly characterizes the emotional basis for both his convictions and the religious ideas he endorses.