Book launch - Carey Baptist College Sep 24th at 7.30 pm.

Brian Smith's new book "Who made God? : and other tricky questions" is being launched in Auckland at Carey Baptist College on September 24th at 7.30 pm.

Function is free and open to anyone who would like to attend.

Library Week 16 August - 22 August 2010

Come and celebrate Library Week with us.

Free coffee on Monday 16 August.

Venue: Dining Hall.

Staff publishing

Myk Habets published book "The Spirit of truth" is now available in the library!

Staff publishing

Laurie Guy has written an article titled "Spirit possession and Deliverance Ministry in the Auckland Assembly of God, 1970-1983" in the new published book "Spirit possession, theology, and identity : a Pacific exploration" Elaine M. Wainwright, general editor ; with Philip Culbertson and Susan Smith.

Hot from the press

Laurie Guy's new book "Making sense of the Book of Revelation", published by Regent's Park College with Smyth & Helwys Publishing is now available in the Library.

Carey staff publishing

George Wieland in cooperation with Andrew Butcher has published an article titled

"Go from your country : missiological reflections on Asian Christians in New Zealand"
Stimulus, Feb 2010, Vol. 18. Issue 1.

Welcome

Kia ora and welcome back. Remember we are here to help you in your studies. If you need any assistance or help, please ring or email us.

Hot from the press

The Anointed son : a Trinitairan Spirit Christology

by Myk Habets is now available in the library.

Important

The library will be closed on

Wednesday 10 February 2010.

Re-open on Thursday 11 February 2010.

New & old books in the library

Old, unwanted books displayed for sale in our library.

Library circle of life. Fresh new books are still in the boxes, unpacked, waiting to be catalogued and displayed on library shelves.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from the library staff!

As you can see we are already in a Summer mood. Hope you are too. So take it easy, grab some good books and hit the beach!

A bone to chew

Being a dog fan, The dog allusion: gods, pets and how to be human, by Martin Rowson, bounded straight off the cataloguing shelf at me.

You will find it in the library under the Dewey number for the humorous treatment of religion. Although the author is also a political cartoonist, don’t search here for the perfect, dog-themed sermon illustration. However, if you are looking for something provocative, thought-provoking, topical and irreverently funny, then maybe this book is for you.

The dog/god, religion/pet-owning comparisons are here, but it’s the nature of human beings that is really under the caricaturist’s spotlight (or should that be ‘floodlight’). Be warned, this self-professed atheist’s ‘rant’ is punctuated by rambling footnotes and helpful appendices such as a list of international animal noises, grouped by language. In his arguments - for example, that religion is really just a subset of politics - Rowson the satirist does not hesitate to take swipes at many, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Richard Dawkins.

To give you a taste, here is a snapshot of human inconsistency, which is by coincidence taken from what may be the longest sentence in the book: “[I]f your political bent is not totalitarian, or you’re not blinded by Manicheanism or substitute racism…you should have no problem whatsoever in sympathising, or maybe even empathising, with poor and beleaguered Muslims and their families while still deploring the narrowness and short-sightedness of their self-selected spokesmen, while simultaneously supporting the efforts of Muslims in Muslim countries using whatever methods they can to free themselves of the corrupt and incompetent despots who rule them, even if you deplore the wider implications of the political Islamism they resort to, while at exactly the same time utterly deploring the crass interventions of Western powers to bolster those despots, but also actively supporting, advocating and defending the Western way of life to the death”. Yes, there are some big mouthfuls in this bite-sized book!

Liz Tisdall