BOOK NOTES

 

Pat Boone’s New Song

The controversial book, A New Song, by Pat Boone is at last available. My family and I read this to each other over several sittings, and we were most impressed with its contents. It is a magnificent testimony from a brother and his family concerning their obviously sincere search for a dynamic faith. It is surprisingly candid, more so than it need be. But Pat lays bare his soul, confesses his sins, states his case, and leaves the consequences with God. He describes his moral dilemmas in show business, his financial difficulties, the near shipwreck of his marriage, and his prayerful search for an answer. While always legalistically right in his church life, his “hypocrisy” is spelled out in terms of partying, drinking, gambling, and sleeping through church with liquor on his breath, even while being praised by preachers for being at the assembly.

Pat’s problem, along with that of Shirley, his wife, was one common to so many religious people today, and in many churches beside the Church of Christ, and that is a religion that fails to meet the demands of our complex world. Pat could see that something was wrong. His faith lacked meaning and relevance. He professed Christ but did not really know him, he tells us, and this new confrontation with Christ came through the mediation of the Holy Spirit.

Pat’s scripture-quoting Church of Christ background follows him all through the book, and yet his use of the Bible is so subtle and natural that one does not get any impression of being preached to or of any effort to persuade him to Pat’s position. Pat is simply sharing his experiences, but he wants you to know that he has Bible for it.

The turning point comes when the Boones meet “Spirit-filled people,” people baptized with the Holy Spirit, whose fruit seemed evident enough to the Boones. This eventually leads to what is now the most controversial aspect of what may be called “the Boone episode,” the speaking in tongues. The Boones choose to call this “a prayer language,” and it is Shirley who first has the experience, then Pat sometime later, and finally all three of the daughters.

It will be unfortunate if this tongues business is all that our people see when they read the book. It will be like the pussycat who visited the queen and spent her time chasing a mouse. The book has a real spiritual thrust, and it certainly has something to say. “A prayer language” or not, the real point is that a typical religionist of our time, who happens to be a public figure, found deliverance from his insipid faith by a real confrontation with Jesus. One theme of the book is certainly that Jesus lives for Pat and Shirley Boone. They searched and they found. They knocked and it was opened unto them. Jesus stood at their door, and they invited him in.

Along with being a star performer, Pat is an excellent writer. He has a way of laying open his heart and inviting the reader to step in. Once inside there is no escape. Pat captures anyone who loves Jesus by his own struggle for truth and freedom.

I was reading to Ouida and the children when Pat was describing how his world was crumbling around him, even his marriage. It reached the point where he decided to leave home. He reached the door, telling Shirley that there was no need trying anymore, and our kids supposed that another Hollywood divorce was in the offing. Is this Pat and Shirley Boone? When he tells how Shirley fell at his feet and begged him not to leave, that she loved him, and that somehow God would help them find an answer, I was all choked up and had to pass the reading chores along to Ouida.

You’ll laugh and weep, I’ll assure you. And if you are of the Church of Christ, you’ll recognize Pat’s many descriptions. And like ourselves, you’ll appreciate his positive attitude toward the church of his youth, referring as he does to “our beloved Church of Christ.” Pat is not mad at anyone. It is the simple and exciting story of a man who has a new song, which he sings elegantly, in true Pat Boone style.

I have one criticism of the publisher. 4.95 is too high a price. I wish it were cheaper. But we have them at that price, and you just must have one.

Other New Books

For 1.65 we can send you a thoughtful little volume dealing with evolution and man’s future entitled Where Are We Headed?, by a Christian zoologist named Jan Lever. Rejecting the literal interpretation of Genesis, he sees man, not as created spontaneously by the Divine potter out of dust, but as being formed from the highest living organisms. Yet it is definitely Christian in that it looks to God as creator and to man as being His chief end in the universe. His chapters on “The Origin of Life” and “Consciousness” you will find informative and perhaps intriguing. For our youth who are disenchanted with the way our leaders have responded to the claims of evolution, this book will serve as an honest and responsible effort toward a Christian compromise.

My favorite writer on freedom is that old libertarian Leonard Reed, of the Foundation for Economic Freedom. His newest book, like all his books, are not religious per se, and yet they deal with issues that are most relevant to the Christian’s life. His idea, for instance that excellence is caught, not taught, is provocative. We invite you to try Talking to Myself for only 2.50. If you do not get your money’s worth from such topics as “Education versus Propaganda,” “Why Freedom is Not Trusted,” and “When Freedom Becomes Second Nature,” we’ll return your money and no questions asked. Too, in reading Reed one learns a lot about how to make one’s ideas clear. He is a brilliant writer and thinker, lucid and concise.

Evangelism in the Early Church by Michael Green is a substantial study of a neglected subject. Evangelists have a way of ignoring theology, while theologians are indifferent to evangelism. Prof. Green, of London Divinity School, is committed to both, and he gives us a work dealing with the nature of evangelism in the early church, its missions and its methods. He deals at length with the nature of the gospel. It is a book for the more serious student. A 350 page book, a price of 6.95 seems to be in line.

Another substantial work is A Theology of the Holy Spirit by Frederick Dale Bruner, which is a treatment of the pentecostal experience and the New Testament witness. There are extensive discussions of Holy Spirit baptism, tongues, gifts, and a treatment of every reference to the pentecostal idea in the scriptures. 8.95.

Secular Christianity and God Who Acts by Robert J. Blaikie will interest all those who are aware of the problem of secular religion. Asking the question What is action?, the author sees God as a God of action in science, medicine, education, history. The God who has died cannot be a God of action. T. F. Torrance writes the introduction, describing it as a book that comes to grips with some of the big problems facing the Christian in a secular world. 2.95.