For Des and Gill Ford, what is “the Baby?” It is the package of distinctive messages to the world for which, they believe, God raised up the Seventh-day Adventist church. The package includes:

• A premillennial reading of history that shakes humans out of self-satisfied self-righteousness and makes it clear humankind is not progressing but only getting worse.

If the book of Job were written by a contemporary middle aged guy from Oregon, chapter 5 verse 90 might read:

No longer concerned or caring about what to call God and energized by his ire, he walked up to the door and decided to bang loudly and see what happened, but just as he raised his fist to do so, the door flew open, and he was looking directly into the face of a large beaming African-American woman. [1]

Editor’s Note: After 32 years, Prophetess of Health has been republished. To mark this event, Spectrum interviewed Ron Numbers about the book, his experience of Adventism, and the church’s response to this historic book. Additionally, I chose a classic review from a cluster of reviews originally published in 1977 to help us revisit the topic. 

In reviewing this book, I’ll resist the temptation to tell you the story of how the author, Nathan Brown, made me buy it, and the story of his deep discontent with the book’s title and the sunflower on the cover, and even the completely irrelevant story of how he ran a red light, got a ticket, and had to take a breathalyzer test while driving me around Perth. I’ll cut straight to the heart of the matter: it’s an engaging, well-written, thought-provoking book, and you should read it.

Some people know a lot about church and some know a lot about lying face-up in a field, alone, feeling the divine presence. And once in a while you find someone who knows a lot about both, and speaks fluently the languages of both.

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of those people.  

It was great to hear what you all have been watching this summer, so let's bring on the books! Summer is often known as a time for lighter reading, but I have a feeling with this crowd we've got quite a mix of books on the bedside stand or in the beach bag. What book keeps your attention right now? What books are challenging your assumptions? Inspiring you? Making you laugh?

Australian Peter Singer is the the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is also arguably the most controversial philosopher alive today. His critics label him “the most dangerous man in the world”. Using an adjective like “dangerous” to describe a philosopher might seem vastly overblown or at least oxymoronic.

Just a reminder of this month's Book & Film Club selections are Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor and Babette's Feast.  

Mid-June 2008, a newly published 379-page book arrived in my mailbox on the east coast of Australia. Who was willing, I wondered, to pay $15 to airmail this volume from the United States to the Antipodes? Immediately, the title arrested my attention:

If you pick up Chris Hedges’ recent book I Don’t Believe In Atheists, don’t be misled by the title. This book is no recapitulation of the well-worn phrase: “There are no atheists in foxholes” which is often used by those wishing to combat atheism by dismissing it.