Mark French Buchanan, Embraced: Many Stories, One Destiny: You, Me, and Moltmann (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2015), viii + 100 Pps., $15.00.
Mark French Buchanan is a Presbyterian pastor specializing in multicultural ministry in the Los Angeles area. He has been an enthusiastic student of Jürgen Moltmann’s theology since first encountering him as a seminarian at Princeton Seminary. In Embraced: Many Stories, One Destiny, Buchanan uses the art of storytelling to illustrate the theology of Moltmann. Within Moltmann’s thick tomes of theology, Buchanan found hope in the suffering, or groaning, of the world. His theology caused hope to well up into Buchanan and on a grand scale pointed to the hope that encompasses all things. Through an “interpenetration of hope,” God’s hope rose up and descended into Buchanan, and this book is a display of the appreciation that he has for Moltmann’s theology. His theology taught Buchanan that the very existence of hope is evidence of God’s life dwelling within and around the people of God’s creation. Indeed, the theology of Moltmann and the stories within this book help Buchanan make sense out of life as it is linked to the life of God.
Buchanan’s stories illustrate the central insights of Moltmann’s theology and narrate what is fundamental to his work; that God dwells in every person as an inward guide, and that God encompasses everyone and everything. The stories also illustrate how by dwelling in and encompassing all things, God is drawing all things into his own future. Buchanan is convinced that every time a hopeful story is told, God is the unseen storyteller, whispering, as it were, his empathy, encouragement, and guidance for life. As he shares these stories, Buchanan invites us to hear God whispering words of hope into our own lives, and to find our places within God’s larger story. He encourages us to identify parts of our lives with portions of the stories and thereafter perceive how we are being beckoned and what such beckoning evokes in us. Moltmann’s theology has proven true in Buchanan’s life, and he believes it will also in his reader’s.
In sum, Buchanan engagingly writes using real life stories to bring to life the central tenets of Moltmann’s theology. He illustrates common human experiences and takes us on the journey from hopelessness to hopefulness. As a practical application of Jürgen Moltmann’s theology, Embraced: Many Stories, One Destiny introduces us to a communal life with God that is both hopeful and creative. The central message of the title is that God can indeed bring us hope and life out of suffering and death in this world. Heartily recommended.
Bradford McCall
Holy Apostles College and Seminary