"Exploring Intercultural Communication"

Butte College Communication Studies instructor Tom Grothe (pronounced "gro-tay") spent pandemic lockdown time writing a textbook about the pleasures and pitfalls of communicating across cultures. What's more, he's made it free to the public.

"Exploring Intercultural Communication" (published by LibreTexts, free at bit.ly/3mc3DnZ) is accessible as web pages or a PDF. In ten chapters Grothe moves from the "what is it" to the "how to do it," offering fascinating insights along the way.

For example, Grothe reminds us two words with same dictionary definition may be used differently in different cultures and even within a culture. "The word 'amigo' in Spanish is equivalent of the word 'friend' in English, but the relationships described by that word can be quite different. During my travels in Guatemala, I experienced 'hola amigo' as a common greeting, even among strangers. Just as in English, a Facebook 'friend' is quite different from a childhood 'friend.'"

Or take the offer of coffee. In some cultures, that means the host is suggesting guests stay a bit longer. In other cultures, "an offer of coffee after a meal is generally recognized as a polite way to indicate to the guests that they ought to leave soon." It's easy to think one's own cultural tradition is the way everyone does it. (Not true, of course, as the section on what counts as an obscene gesture demonstrates.)

Defining culture itself is notoriously difficult, in part because scholars no longer see it as something fixed. Culture "is influenced by historical, social, political, and economic conditions." Older books about the cultural norms of South Korea, for instance, are likely significantly out of date.

Grothe writes from an inclusive perspective, bringing non-Western and indigenous research to bear on examining the "power structures" inherent in cultural assumptions. From the experience of migration and identity to racism, privilege and stereotyping, the book does not shy away from considering, in a calm and reflective manner, some of the most divisive issues of our time.

Sections on intercultural conflict management, romantic relationships, communicating with people with disabilities and nonverbal communication all provide a comprehensive but friendly guide to the diversity--and ambiguity--of human interaction.

Tom, would you like some coffee?

"After Trump: Achieving A New Social Gospel"

Donald Heinz, Lutheran minister and Chico State University emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, offers in his new book "an invitation and a manifesto." He calls for a revitalized Progressive Christianity "that mimics the liberating God of the Bible." 

He wants the voice of the church to be heard once again in the public square (rather than a watered-down political liberalism too embarrassed to talk about Jesus). He wants to draw on "Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, evangelical, and neo-Anabaptist" teachings to restore the prophetic mission of the church in proclaiming God's "preferential option for the poor."

In "After Trump: Achieving A New Social Gospel" ($28 in paperback from Cascade Books; also for Amazon Kindle), Heinz says "what society most needs from the church" is "the prophetic imagination of alternative realities"--a vision of justice and the common good--brought into the public square. 

We must, he says, take sin (personal and corporate) seriously, but reject what he calls "freeze-dried biblical literalism." "In the kingdom of God that Jesus proclaims, love stretches law and custom towards new forms of social justice. Arms full of antipathy to gays cannot carry the Gospel too." The church is a "parade" as it marches into the public square with this new prophetic vision; and it is "pilgrimage."

"Pilgrimaging towards a new social gospel is the task the times require if we are not to continue our descent into Trumpism--white racism, resentment, selfishness, a rapacious free market, and government in the interest of the 1 percent." The church is (or should be) on the move, collaborating with other institutions but never dissolving into them. 

Heinz situates this liberation within a historical and cultural context. He writes that "the crisis of secular modernity (begun with the Enlightenment) is that it created a thought world in which the Bible simply was no longer allowed to speak." But it must: The "canon within the canon"--"God as liberator, played out in the exodus, the prophets, Jesus, and Paul"--provides the key to what the Bible can say in the public square.

The two Donalds (Heinz and Trump) present starkly different worldviews. The book calls readers to "think on these things."

"The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism In An Age Of Crisis"

How do we rebuild a community after horrific devastation? How do we pursue the common good to mitigate future disasters? Do religious traditions have a part to play in teaching us how to bear our griefs and to express thanksgiving in the midst of suffering?

Such questions arise in a new book by Alan Jacobs. Jacobs is an academic (Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University) writing with clarity and verve for a wider audience. Former Paradise resident John Wilson, who edited the now-defunct Books and Culture literary journal, published numerous articles by his friend Jacobs.

In 1943 it was apparent that the Allies would triumph in World War II. A number of writers, working separately but united by a Christian worldview, agonized about rebuilding. What kind of education would be needed to avoid the temptation toward authoritarianism or, alternatively, acquiescence in the idea that all values are merely socially constructed with the highest good "getting along"?

Jacobs considers the responses of five important literary and philosophical figures in "The Year Of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism In An Age Of Crisis" ($29.95 in hardcover from Oxford University Press; also for Amazon Kindle). In weaving together the central themes of these Christian intellectuals--Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil--Jacobs raises questions for our own times, and our own rebuilding.

For him, these writers "share the conviction that this restoration will not be accomplished only, or even primarily, through theology as such, but also and more effectively through philosophy, literature, and the arts. It is through these practices,which I believe are best called 'humanistic,' that the renewal--or if necessary the revolutionary upheaval--of Western civilization will be achieved. That was the project that these figures, in the various ways and with their sometimes fierce disagreements, shared."

The final chapter is devoted to French Reformed writer Jacques Ellul, whose seminal studies on the rise of technology and propaganda show there are no simplistic answers on the road ahead to rebuilding an enduring community. But we didn't expect there to be.