Daniel J. Mount

Posted By admin on June 23, 2009

Daniel J. Mount is a Christian author and speaker. His current book, The Faith of America’s Presidents, can be ordered here, or from Amazon or christianbook.com. (But get it here if you want it autographed!) He also recently released a DVD on the faith of America’s Presidents; it is available (and excerpts can be viewed) here.

Click here to subscribe to Daniel’s email newsletter for friends and fans. (Email updates are occasional, and can range from once every few weeks to once every few months.)

Thank you for visiting!

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Posted By admin on June 23, 2009

Higher Hope is book two in Robert Whitlow’s Tides of Truth series. Tami Taylor, homeschool graduate and law student clerking in Savannah, is assigned to a case where an outspoken local preacher with a gift for prophecy has publicly reprimanded one of the law firm’s clients. The client wants to use the opportunity to sue her for everything she is worth, in hopes of being able to claim and develop her church property for commercial purposes.

When this book came out, I requested it from Thomas Nelson’s Book Review Bloggers Program—but not without some trepidation.

On the one hand, Robert Whitlow is one of the greatest contemporary novelists in Christianity. The List, a story of multi-generational curses and redemption, and Jimmy, the story of a mentally handicapped boy who can see the angelic realm, are absolute gems. (For those of you who have only experienced The List movie, that adaption doesn’t even halfway do the book justice.)

But on the other hand, book one in this series, Deeper Water, is the only Robert Whitlow novel I’ve ever quit reading.

At points, Higher Hope reminded me why I quit book one. At others, it reminded me why I place Robert Whitlow in the top 5 novelists today. And the odd thing is that it was the same section of the book that did both.

The book starts with Tami and her suitor, Zach, driving to her childhood home to introduce him to her family. The first 132 pages of the book take place there; then they drive back to Savannah, where the rest of the novel takes place.

Part of the reason I quit reading book one was that the plot didn’t exactly hook me within the first few chapters. But the larger, underlying reason was that Whitlow’s portrait of Tami’s homeschooling roots seems too much like a stereotype. In the better than fifteen years I’ve spent in the homeschooling movement, I have come to know dozens of homeschooling families well. Even though a number of those families have been from holiness and fundamentalist backgrounds, so few even came close to the portrayal of the Taylor family (in either book 1 or 2) that it just didn’t come off as an authentic portrayal of a conservative holiness or fundamentalist homeschooling family.

Despite my qualms about authenticity, Whitlow is such a master storyteller that this warm, engaging section is also my favorite part of the book. In particular, Tami’s younger twin siblings Ellie and Emma are delightful characters, so real that it’s a letdown when their only appearance for the rest of the book is a brief cameo on a phone call. The modern Christian publishing industry likes to tie novelists down to genres (Whitlow’s being Christian legal fiction), but Whitlow should really try his hand at a family comedy.

The book ends abruptly. The case that provides the central plot is resolved, but all the character arcs are left unresolved. The most effective books in a series are complete stories, satisfying in and of themselves, but this book takes the alternate approach. It isn’t really a complete story in and of itself, and that can be frustrating unless you approach the book expecting it. Higher Hope needs to be read in the context of the series.

Despite my mild frustration over authenticity and incomplete character arcs, my reaction can best be measured by two little facts. I’m going to go back and give book one another try. And I’ll probably read book three.

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Posted By admin on April 16, 2009

It’s 12:01 AM on April 16. The quote of the day comes from President Gerald Ford.

“My Fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”

- President Gerald Ford, swearing in speech, Aug. 9. 1974

(that is, until next year…)

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Posted By admin on April 13, 2009

ChristianFilmmakers.org sponsored a contest last weekend challenging Christian filmmakers to make a short 3-minute film in 36 hours. Some of the entries were so good that I had to write a post about them!

1. The Boy with $100. Great story, and excellent acting for a lead so young.
2. What is Your Favorite. Great acting.
3. Pet-ty Cash.
4. The Artist.  I struggled with where to rank this one. Somehow, entering it, I found myself not wanting to like it, and eliminated it from my top 10, but I kept returning to it as much as or more than any other.
5. Neighbors.  There were several retellings of the Good Samaritan in this year’s contest. This one was the best.

Honorable Mention:

• Return. Excellent use of the film’s security elements, especially at the end. (The security elements were things announced the day of the contest that had to be included – three of seven choices – to prove the story was filmed during the contest time.)
• Falling Out of Control.
• Mice or Men. Good acting, especially by the very believable big-sister drill-sergeant. “Elsie Dinsmore?”
• The Masquerade. Great acting. I love the punch line. Just a little too weird to make my top 5.
• Leave Me. Definitely the best cinematography of any of the films, and a good idea, but I haven’t exactly figured out the ending.

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Posted By admin on March 28, 2009

When Protestant Christians in the United States think about Bible versions and study Bibles, we tend to think within a fairly set spectrum. Translations are more or less literal, and use texts supported by more or less of the evidence. But nearly all Bible translations we encounter have the same 66 books in the same order. Most of us know the Roman Catholic church recognizes ten or so additional books as a canonical Apocrypha.

Most of us, however, are far less familiar with the Scriptures recognized by the third major branch of Christianity, the Orthodox Church. In that light, Thomas Nelson and the scholars at St. Athanasius Academy have done the church a great service by preparing The Orthodox Study Bible. The Orthodox New Testament canon is identical to the Roman Catholic and Protestant New Testament canon; however, the Orthodox Old Testament has the books found in the Roman Catholic Apocrypha and several additional works (151st Psalm, 3 Maccabees, Epistle of Jeremiah, and a 1 and 2 Esdras with a separate Nehemiah). In The Orthodox Study Bible, these books are intermingled with the books Protestants accept as part of the canonical Old Testament.

Given my background, the textual basis of the work was of particular interest. Though several Protestant denominations still use the Traditional Text of the New Testament, unfortunately most Protestants and the Roman Catholic church use the Modern (Critical) Text.The Orthodox church is the only branch of Christianity that still advocates the Traditional Text. Since the scholars of the St. Athanasius Academy were working with Thomas Nelson, they had access to the New King James Version, the only major modern-day translation based on the Traditional Text, and they used its text in the New Testament, noting alternate Majority (Hodges-Farstad) and Nestle-Aland alternate readings in footnotes.

The Old Testament was based on the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek Old Testament, which is the standard Orthodox text. The New King James Version’s Old Testament was based on the Masoretic Hebrew Text. Where the LXX’s Greek reading was the same, the NKJV wording was used. A new translation was made where the LXX version was different. In the 200-year history of the Orthodox Church in North America, this is the first time it has issued an Old Testament based on the Septuagint.

The Bible’s primary audience is for the English-speaking Orthodox church. Its primary appeal outside of that audience is probably in its commentary. The notes draw from a rich heritage of church fathers; to an extent rarely found in Protestant circles, Orthodox view their church history as an unbroken series of links from the time of the early church fathers (who largely wrote in Greek) through today, and the views of the early church fathers are brought into the commentary where applicable. Even when no specific church father is cited, the notes draw from well over a thousand years of Orthodox tradition. These are frequently fascinating and sometimes provide insights missed by Protestants. (Reinventing the wheel can make us feel quite intelligent. But it is typically a monumental waste of time.)

Due to the different canon used in the Old Testament, most Protestant readers will not adopt this as their primary Bible. But the commentary is sufficient reason for pastors and serious Bible students to add this to their library—its sparkles with the freshness of a new viewpoint on the Scripture. Or at least as new as an 1800-year-old forgotten insight can be when upon rediscovery.

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Posted By admin on November 10, 2008

The Chronological Study Bible is a new edition of the New King James Version, with the passages arranged in chronological order.

The dust jacket states that it is the “first study Bible” to have the passages arranged in chronological order; though this is technically true, “study” is the operative word, as there have been other chronological Bibles before. My family has had Harvest House’s Narrated Bible for years; its author, F. LaGard Smith, arranged the New International Version text in chronological order and added some extensive (often over one page long) historical background.

That said, the Chronological Study Bible is a step above any other chronological Bible I’ve seen. Between every transition, there is a note explaining the historical context. Virtually every page either has an extensive commentary box (which, in a rather unusual move for study Bibles, is placed at the top of the page instead of the bottom), or smaller in-column boxes with notes on one of fifteen different categories. Categories covered range from Culture and Customs to Medicine, Science, and Technology.

One of the sticky issues that comes up in the arranging of a chronological Bible is whether or not to accept Genesis’ account of the Creation of the world at face value. This Bible largely sidesteps the question, referring to Creation as “undatable” and putting the first eleven chapters of Genesis in a section of their own headlined “Creation—2000 B.C.” However, the commentary works from Evolutionary dating assumptions, making references to an Old Stone Age before 10,000 B.C. and stating in a highlighted box, “Scholars have placed the first human settlements as early as 7,000 to 8,000 years before Christ. Time Capsules, which do provide reliably historical context elsewhere, provide dates as early as 23,000 B.C. at points in the first eleven chapters.

Outside of that, the notes and commentary look fascinating. This will be a useful addition to virtually any pastor’s or layman’s library.

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Posted By admin on November 10, 2008

This may not be the #1 question I get, but it would have to be near the top. So I thought I’d address it in a post.

I always have a few projects in mind, and I do put in some writing time on each. But I don’t want to publish a second book just to crank out a book a year. I want to wait to finish a book and find a publisher for it until I have a message I’m passionate about and a  draft worthy of the message.

There are enough books out there that I don’t see a need to publish just to have a longer discography. I’d rather wait until I’m sure it’s the right message and the right time.

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Posted By admin on October 31, 2008

Robin Lee Hatcher over at Write Thinking posted a review of The Faith of America’s Presidents earlier this week. I was particularly delighted to see that the book is proving helpful to her in one of her own book projects—that’s one of the specific things I hoped would come of the project.

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Posted By admin on August 17, 2008

Thomas Nelson recently released The Faith of Barack Obama by Stephen Mansfield. Mansfield is perhaps best known for his 2004 book The Faith of George W. Bush; his other books have also tended to be biographies of conservative political figures, or focusing on themes amenable to conservative Christians.

With that background, it is somewhat surprising that he would choose the faith of the Democratic presidential nominee—who is no conservative—as his current book topic. But even that is not the most surprising aspect of the project.

In a heated election year, one would expect most biographies of presidential candidates to be at least slightly slanted, either to encourage the reader to vote for the individual or the opposite. Rarely is this blatant; unlike campaign biographers of the mid-1800s, campaign biographers today realize that subtlety is often more effective. A selective presentation of the evidence, favoring points that are either likely to resonate with or repel the intended audience, can often be done so subtly that the average reader does not even realize how the presentation of evidence or choice of wording impacts their reaction to the book.

The Faith of Barack Obama comes across as a genuine attempt to find the truth about his religious experience and beliefs and portray it fairly and accurately, largely in terms that Obama himself would likely find unobjectionable. (I do not mean to say that the purpose of the book was either strictly academic or entirely altruistic; Mansfield undoubtedly realized earlier this year that Obama will be the defining force in this election, and that more people—Republicans and Democrats alike—would purchase a book on Obama’s faith than on John McCain’s.)

For roughly twenty years, Obama attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. The church was led until this year by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. This man, who shaped Obama’s religious and political views so profoundly, has been caricatured in the public mind more than any other supporting actor in this year’s political drama. The book paints a picture of a man with a surprising juxtaposition of orthodox and unorthodox doctrines; though he might say incendiary things about only believing the portions of the Bible that relate to his black liberation theology, Wright also presents an orthodox view of salvation.

His portrayal of Obama’s personal faith sticks closely enough to Obama’s own words that it has the ring of authenticity. Obama is a man who will say he believes “in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ” and “that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life,” but he will also that “I believe there are many paths to the same place and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”

The book seems to drift somewhat in Chapter 5, “Four Faces of Faith.” The chapter contains treatments of the faith of John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and George W. Bush. The section on Bush was adapted from The Faith of George W. Bush, while the sections on McCain and Clinton read like the synopses of the books Mansfield could have written had the election gone differently. There is an effort to tie the threads together at the end of the chapter with a comparison to Obama; this is a decent recovery from a chapter that seemed to be a surprising departure.

The conclusion, on the direction in which Obama’s faith may be changing the attitude of the Democratic party toward Christians, is well-written.

Someone who picked up the book expecting most of its pages to discuss Obama’s personal faith would probably be disappointed. But that is less a failing on Mansfield’s part and more that Obama has not given us much source material to work with.

The book does not succeed in demonstrating that Obama’s religion is a major force in shaping his politics—but in its defense, it doesn’t particularly try. It does succeed in showing how Obama’s faith and politics intersect, with his political views often the predominant force.

Category: Book Reviews, Faith of our Presidents | 2 Comments »
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Posted By admin on June 17, 2008

This week, I released a DVD on the Faith of America’s Presidents. It’s available here. Here are two video clips:

If your browser blocks YouTube, you can watch these directly on my website.

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