Spunkie's Book Club

Spunkie & family were delighted to find this brilliantly clever and insightful, yet humorous work in the Christian Inspiration section of our local Barnes & Noble. It is a must read for all Christians--A Field Guide to Evangelicals & Their Habitat by Joel Kilpatrick. For those of you Christians who appreciated Spunkie's sense of humor, this read should be quite a treat for you. For those of you Christians who felt perfect and sinless enough to judge the Spunkie clan and deem their humor inappropriate and "un-Christian", perhaps this book will help you reconsider your position and understand that Spunkie was only trying to point out, in a light-hearted and somewhat mocking way, some idiosyncrasies that evangelical Christians can sometimes have. And for any non-Christians who may be reading this, we are most enthused to have you join us. We acknowledge that sometimes we Christians veer away from the thesis of our faith (which is Christ, who was perfect and without sin, died in order to be a substitute for all humans, none of whom are perfect and are full of sin, in order that we might not perish, but live eternally with our Maker), and focus more on petty issues (the "correctness" of homeschooling and the "wrongness" of public schools being just one of many thousands of them). In other words, we would like to acknowledge that sometimes the Christian community can "major" in minor things (again, methods of schooling would be an example of one of the minor things). We are sure we owe some apologies for the obnoxious and abrasive way that Christians can come across. Sometimes the best way to reveal our flaws is through a little humor and satire; that is often the best way for our little human minds to see the absurdness in certain things that we are doing.

Spunkie & family say "kudos" to Joel Kilpatrick for putting together this book, in which the absurdness of what we evangelicals can sometimes do is compiled in a manner in which we can laugh out loud. And, because Spunkie focuses predominatly on the issue of education, we want to make sure you read Chapter 10 "Evangelical Education". To read the mostly positive reviews given of A Field Guide..., click here (scroll down to Spotlight Reviews and Customer Reviews).

We quote some of the best reviews right here:

"...If you're an evangelical, reading this book is like seeing yourself on video for the first time -- you'll realize you're not as attractive as you thought. Even so, you'll find yourself laughing way too much and you might even shed a tear and determine to change the way you go about living out your faith. I highly recommend this book, as it is challenging and funny." --A reviewer on amazon.com

"Having grown up in the church and attended a Christian college, it's scary how right on Kilpatrick is in his field guide. I laughed out loud several times in recognition, and shook my head in embarassment as I noted truths about myself and friends of mine. This is a must-read if you are an evangelical with a sense of humor."--A reviewer on amazon.com

Spunkie believes that humor is important for Christians. That's just the way it is.

Happy reading! Please comment and let us know what you think of the book once you've read it.
And we'd like to close with this quote from the classic Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis...
"Only the devil cannot abide to be mocked."