Soul Salsa: 17 Surprising Steps for Godly Living in the 21st Century

This provocative exhortation to a more vibrant Christian life fairly sings with relevance. Sweet, a dean and professor at Drew University's school of theology, writes in his customarily accessible style, incorporating references to literature, art, poetry and the theater alongside suggested Web sites that Christians should explore, including Martha Stewart's carefully crafted page and www.siteforrent.com, the official site of the hit musical Rent. Throughout, Sweet posits that Christians should be living joyfully, creatively and counterculturally, participating in a wild dance called the SoulSalsa. The book continues the postmodernist themes Sweet explored in SoulTsunami and Aquachurch, offering suggestions for what postmodern Christian disciples should do. Among the 17 recommendations, Sweet notes that Christians should ""practice inconspicuous consumption,"" multitask, sacralize the everyday, avoid gossip, become lifelong learners, enjoy regular sabbaticals and--in a particularly terrific chapter--die broke, having given everything away. Sweet has a knack for making concepts like ""postmodern""--a word that has spooked many an evangelical--sound like wonderful opportunities for New Paradigm Christianity. (Postmodernism, for example, means that ""no two people will have the same devotional life."") Sweet uses trendy, computer-based language to convey some spiritual points (prayer is our ""uplink"" to God; the entire book is a ""lifeware design package""), but his enthusiasm is so contagious that even Luddite readers may have to give technology another chance. (May)