Balmer (Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory), a professor of American religion at Barnard College, Columbia University, poignantly comes to terms with the fundamentalist Christianity of his childhood by explaining the "lover's quarrel" that he and his father sustained until shortly before Clarence Balmer's death in 1997. Clarence Balmer, a conservative Midwestern minister of some renown, placed his hopes for a successor squarely on the author's shoulders, even providing him with a three-foot-tall wooden pulpit on his fifth Christmas. But in college, Randall Balmer began questioning the faith of his parents (a "ritualized rebellion," he calls it), and decided to pursue an academic career instead of ordination. Balmer beautifully describes the tensions this choice created in his relationship with his father, in his first marriage and in his own self-understanding. Several of the essays are simply piercing; in particular, "Sins of the Fathers," which describes how Balmer's own experiences of fathering two sons helped him to better understand his father, is a pain-filled and deeply moving expression of spiritual growth. But while Balmer is an outstanding writer, the collection lacks cohesiveness. The undated essays, written at different times and for varying audiences, often repeat information and even use the same phrasing. Their chronology can also be confusing; in one chapter, for example, Balmer explains that his grandmother is in a nursing home, but two chapters later she has passed away. This said, however, Balmer's superb writing and mature theological ruminations deserve a wide audience. (Nov.)
