Customer Reviews

The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior

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Garber makes three key points for those looking to live a meaningful Christian life in the modern world: cultivate a coherent worldview, find a teacher to learn from, and develop and community with whom to live out that worldview. The rest of the book focuses on explaining the why and how of his findings.

_Fabric_ is helpful for a few reaons: (1) it engages with a broad literature and diverse fields of study, (2) it is well thought out and coherently argued, (3) it is very accessible. While the "study" he does and the interviews he draws on are far from methodologically rigorous, the book is a good first step. It is not the last word on these issues but is rather a book that can be see as generally readable and leads into possibly deeper study of the issues Garber address. One should look at this as a springboard into works by James Davison Hunter, Christian Smith, Peter Berger, and other more academic Christian thinkers who get at the nuts a bolts and more in depth philosophical aspects of what Garber hints at.

I would recommend this specifically for late high school students, college students, and those involved with student ministries. If you are wanting to develop comprehensive theories about the role of beliefs in society, this won't be particularly useful. But, again, as a ministry tool, Garber's work gets at some fundamental questions and makes a strong case for living coherently by weaving together belief and behavior.