A Review of the Book "The World is About To Turn" by Rick Rouse and Paul O Ingram

Title: The World is About To Turn

Author: Rick Rouse and Paul O Ingram

Publisher: Chalice Press

Year: 2020

141 pages, including appendices

    Our relationship with each other is severely damaged. Throughout the world, there is so much violence and hatred towards one another, and social media is doing horrific damage to any form of conversation, healing, and reconciliation.

    Over the last few weeks, I took an online webinar called "Holy Rage to Holy Hope". From the syllabus, "Pastors and judicatory leaders will explore what it means to live out their calling as a prophet, public leader, and change agent in their congregations and community. Participants will discover how to help their faith communities deal with difficult topics such as racism, sexism, Christian Nationalism, etc. Through peer learning, online lectures, and skill building exercises they will be equipped to teach their members how to carry out civil conversations with others who have opposing opinions. The goal is to help congregations become centers of healing that can help bridge the divisions that currently exist in this country."

    My goal with this course was to find ways that I can use my platform of the pulpit to help engage the church in being part of the bridge, rather than part of the problem. And while this particular course concentration on American politics, there was certainly a lot of comparable topics to Canadian politics, and damage done to our Indigenous population especially, by both church and government.

    The book I am reviewing today was the accompanying text to the course. Co-written by the facilitator of the course, "The World is About to Turn" is a practical guide to discussing people of faith can live well together and work together to build a better future in America. It would make a good book for group study as each chapter ends with a list of discussion questions.

    It was quite an engaging book and, as I said before about the course, even though the book is based on American religion and politics, there are plenty of parallels to events in Canada. As well, the conclusions drawn for how we can move forward from here are easily translatable to every day dealings with our neighbours (any type of neighbour).

    The final chapter, called "Building Bridges of Hopes", suggests ten ways we can move forward from "Holy Rage to Holy Hope":

    1. Recognize and Repent of One's Offences

    2. Stand in Solidarity with the Oppressed

    3. Educate and Work for Peace

    4. Assess Your Degree of Prejudice or Openness to Others

    5. Engage of Storytelling with Those Different from Yourself

    6. Participate in Interfaith Conversation

    7. Get to Know Your Community

    8. Embrace Diversity and Reject Nationalism

    9. Understand the Path of Hate that Leads to Genocide

    10. Never Stop Loving

    If you are someone who wants to start seeing relationships being repaired, I recommend this book as the beginning of your reading list.