Robert Benne has been a strong and clear voice for Christian orthodoxy, and
Thanks Be To God!: Memoirs of a Practical Theologian is a delightful read. Much like another widely published Lutheran of his generation (and founder of this journal), Benne's early work as a theologian and church leader participated in the activist spirit of the 1960s (which, as Benne points out, lasted until 1975). And like Richard John Neuhaus, Benne came to see the excesses of that activism, not the least of which involved squandering the apostolic inheritance for social “relevance.” Not only does the reader gain a fresh perspective on the religious impetus behind First Things, which might be dubbed “theological neo-conservatism,” Benne also provides a charming account of growing up in a small town in Nebraska in the middle of the twentieth century. It was a time and a place where grandparents told their grandchildren about the sod houses they built on newly plotted homesteads.