Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Robert Tracy McKenzie

Book Review: The First Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History by Robert Tracy McKenzie. IVP Academic, 2013.
The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History by Robert Tracy McKenzie. IVP Academic, 2013.

McKenzie, Robert Tracy. The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013.

Review by Joshua Shiver

“Ours is a present-tense society,” historian Robert Tracy McKenzie notes, “We live in a time and place in which thinking deeply about the past is a countercultural and even a radical act.” Twenty-four hour news channels, instant status updates, and communication with the click of a mouse or tap of a finger have made ours a world of the here-and-now. This myopic focus on the present has blinded us to the importance of our past—even as modern Americans grope for answers to societal woes in a post 9/11 world. As a graduate student, the question I am most often asked now is what I intend to do with a degree in history. I’ve realized that behind this less-than-subtle jab at my life choices, friends and acquaintances are really asking me “What’s the point?” [Read more…] about Book Review: The First Thanksgiving

What Books are on Your Christmas Lists?

The Campus Resources from InterVaristy Press: 2013-2014 Academic Year Edition. Do not miss the IVP discount for Emerging Scholars 🙂 If you may be interested in helping with book reviews, please contact me.

What books are on your Christmas lists, not only your own wish list, but also ones you desire to give to others and/or suggest for a book discussion in the coming year? I am very interested in learning what Emerging Scholars desire to read, review, discuss, gift, possibly even teach (e.g., campus ministry, local congregation, even classroom). Please share . . . Note: No need for the book(s) to be “Christian”.

But yes, if you are looking for a suggestion (or two, three, four . . .), the Emerging Scholars Network does have a lot to offer . . .

The First Thanksgiving: What Makes Good History?

The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History by Robert Tracy McKenzie. IVP Academic, 2013.
The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History by Robert Tracy McKenzie. IVP Academic, 2013.

The dead are not dead insofar as we are bound together in the communion of saints, living and dead, and therefore our conversation cannot be limited to those who now live.

Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon[1]

Robert Tracy McKenzie[2] begins Chapter 1 of The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story Tells Us About Loving God and Learning from History (InterVarsity Press, 2013) with a sampling of the classroom answers he receives to the question, “What makes a good history book?” As I continue to read Chapter 1, I have come to understand the larger question as “What makes good history?” That is, “How do we research, embrace, and live in proper relationship to the ‘real story’ of those who have gone before us?” AND how much more important the answer becomes when approaching those people and events which shape our self-understanding (individual and corporate — a theme touched on in Andy’s “Ants and Thanksgiving” post) as we together live our short lives in the present “context”, shaping and entering the future. . . .

To encourage the exploration of the history of Thanksgiving with family, friends, and colleagues, I offer to you The First Thanksgiving – An Animated Short, Robert Tracy McKenzie on The First Thanksgiving, and Robert Tracy’s blog Faith and American History. Enjoy 🙂

[Read more…] about The First Thanksgiving: What Makes Good History?