A Grand Slam for God:
A Journey from Baseball Star to Catholic Priest
by Burke Master
Word on Fire, 192 pages, $29.95
If I had a daughter on the cusp of adolescence, I would talk to her about romance. Living with a man is a surefire way to be disgusted and frustrated by the little aspects of humanity you’ve never noticed before, and the heat of erotic desire won’t harmonize life’s discordant notes—only the cool beauty of romance will.
And I’d tell her that if she wanted romance in her life, she should find a guy who follows baseball. There’s so much failure in baseball that the only way to survive is to appreciate the beauty of the game—the dimensions of the park, the strategy and honed skill, the lucky and unlucky bounces, the smell of grass and leather—and not just victory and raw athleticism. God gave me boys; I’m trying to show them this romance.
But even a baseball lover can mistakenly chase the dramatic heat of victory as the goal and fail to pursue the romance. Burke Masters’s life was marked by earthly glory when he cranked a legendary home run in the 1990 College World Series. The moment, iconic to baseball fans and Mississippi State alumni, was immortalized with the call “A grand slam for Masters!”
When the heat of the moment faded, Masters felt surprisingly empty. Rather than chase another high point, he followed God’s call to a greater romance, the chaste vocation of a Roman Catholic priest. His memoir, A Grand Slam for God, whose title borrows from his iconic moment, tells of the journey from dugout and diamond to altar and confessional. Those expecting Fr. Burke to name-drop his baseball pals or tell clubhouse stories will be disappointed. His narrative turns from athletic stardom to the far more relatable—trying to find a job, the death of his mother, and the ordinary struggles of the extraordinary calling to the priesthood. Fr. Burke’s honest storytelling is an accessible, while undramatic, presentation of this increasingly misrepresented vocation.
—Jesse Cone
The Nature of the Religious Right:
The Struggle between Conservative Evangelicals and the Environmental Movement
by neall w. pogue
cornell university, 264 pages, $45.95
Evangelicals were for tree-hugging before they were against it, but deep green eco-spirituality, conspiracy theories, and an emphasis on free markets within Reagan-era conservative politics moved them from their initial light-green leanings. The early environmental movement, epitomized by Earth Day in 1970, was met with praise from Francis Schaeffer, the intellectual godfather of the religious right. Schaeffer’s ethics of Christian environmental stewardship would influence future leaders like Richard Land. On the heels of the major Earth Day events of 1990—and in one of his first acts as head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm—Land spearheaded a 1991 denominational conference on environmental stewardship. The effort’s lukewarm reception was an early indicator of an evangelical shift that would eventually lead to public ridicule of environmentalists.
Pogue’s historical survey is not comprehensive, but in addition to Schaeffer and Land, his archival mining of religious broadcaster and presidential candidate Pat Robertson, National Association of Evangelicals vice president of government affairs Robert Dugan, and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell produces valuable nuggets. Robertson, once the greenest of the bunch, highlighted “care for the soil, the forests, and God’s other creatures who share with us the earth” in his 1988 GOP convention speech. Before waffling, Dugan was supportive of the Evangelical Environment Network. Even Falwell, who by 2007 would preach on “The Myth of Global Warming,” was once more sympathetic on matters green.
Pogue also chronicles the changes in Christian educational materials. Until 1986, fundamentalist fifth-grade reading classes included the story of John Muir, complete with an illustration of young Muir hugging an ancient oak. Eventually, nuanced calls for stewardship succumbed to capitalist cheerleading.
In balanced fashion, the author, drawing support from noted historian William Cronon, suggests that Schaeffer’s vision could have offered a viable middle way. He places blame for the way things turned out on both the backs of ultimately spineless Christian leaders and an environmental movement that cold-shouldered religious conservatives. Looking back in 2017, Land said, “It could have taken a very different path.” Today, Pogue’s concise and fair work provides a useful field guide for orienting evangelicals within the forest of environmentalism and thinking through next steps.
—John Murdock
Art and Politics in Roger Scruton’s Conservative Philosophy
by ferenc hörcher
palgrave macmillan, 393 pages, $139.99
In Art and Politics in Roger Scruton’s Conservative Philosophy, Ferenc Hörcher seeks to solve an apparent dilemma: why two subjects which are only tangentially related were the two subjects to which Roger Scruton devoted most of his life. Could it be that Scruton simply possessed two distinct interests, no more cause for investigation than if they happened to be chemistry and coin collecting? Hörcher does students of modern political thought a service by showing, through philosophical analysis and intellectual biography, that the connection between aesthetics and the philosophy of politics is the distinguishing mark of Scruton’s brand of conservatism.
The chief merit of the book is its careful attention to Scruton’s vita activa and vita contemplativa, his public actions and his thought. Many have observed the role Scruton’s forays behind the Iron Curtain played in his contemplative thought, but Hörcher finds many more. For example, when Scruton fled the ugliness of the overwrought response to his infamous tobacco scandal in England, he moved to Virginia, where he wrote an update for his first book on his conservative philosophy. While revisiting the beauty of localism so central to this philosophy, Scruton recognized that his exposition of oikophilia—the love of home—compelled him to move back to his small corner of Wiltshire. He did. These insights are so many that the book could reasonably be described as the second intellectual biography of Scruton, following Mark Dooley’s Roger Scruton: The Philosopher on Dover Beach.
In teasing out the tension between art and politics in Scruton’s thought and life, Hörcher concludes with a synthesis, one that will intrigue close readers of Scruton especially: the importance of religion. Hörcher sees in Scruton’s later thought a recognition of the fact that culture’s rootedness in religion is crucial, even in a secular age. The appetite of those hungry for a glimpse into Scruton’s personal religious convictions will be whetted, though not satiated. Those eager for a better understanding of Scruton’s conservatism will come away fulfilled.
—Paul Shakeshaft
Saved as through Fire:
A Thomistic Account of Purgatory, Temporal Punishment, and Satisfaction
by luke wilgenbusch
emmaus academic, 176 pages, $29.95
For many years theologians have been silent on the topic of purgatory and indulgences. Saved as through Fire breaks that silence. If anyone wants to deepen his understanding of the theology of purgatory and indulgences, this book is a great place to start. The book is merely an introduction and leaves much room for debate, but it is an excellent introduction.
Set within a Thomistic framework and relying heavily on Aquinas’s account of purgatory, Saved as through Fire explains both the various theological speculations about purgatory and the historical debates surrounding them. Fr. Wilgenbusch defends the classical thesis that, in addition to the medicinal benefits of purgatory (healing our disordered inclinations), there is also the need to make satisfaction for one’s sins through temporal punishment. Using Thomistic theology, Fr. Wilgenbusch argues that God’s wisdom arranges that the medicinal benefits, the removal of disordered inclinations, accrue precisely through the temporal punishments.
In the final chapter, the book turns to indulgences and explains that the reason Christians are able to make satisfaction for each other’s sins is due to the bond of charity—their union in the Body of Christ. The saints (those now in heaven) made more satisfaction for their sins than was necessary during their lifetimes; the Church has the power to apply this extra satisfaction as she sees fit. Thus, the Church makes certain good acts super-beneficial by applying the extra satisfaction of her saints to those who need it.
—Matthew McKenna
