Mama Bear Apologetics: A Book Reflection

A few years ago, at a friend's recommendation, I obtained a copy of Hillary Moran Ferrer's Mama Bear Apologetics to supplement my more academic forays into the subject. After re-reading it last year, I found that it made the cut of what to write a book reflection on, this year. Now, here it is! As a reminder, here's the general outline of this post: I will . . .

1. Contextualize the author's writings as a whole (bibliography)
2. Bring the author's major ideas to the present day
3. Comment on major sections of the book, or important chapters, depending on organization

Bibliography

Technically, this encompasses three women's bibliographies, since Ferrer edited the book while Teasi Cannon and Alisa Childers took turns writing chapters.

Ferrer's

The book that started things came out in 2019. Besides books, Hillary has written blog posts over at Mama Bear Apologetics' website. From her Amazon page, books she has written center around the popular-level apologetics book:

• Mama Bear Apologetics in spiral-bound and paperback forms
• Study guide thereto
• M. B. A. Guide to Sexuality with workbook
• Honest Prayers for Mama Bears
• Pocket Prayers for Mama Bears

As we'll see, the target audience of "Mama Bears" is synonymous with discerning Christian mothers.

Cannon's

Teasi Cannon started writing in 2012, but mostly contributed after 2018. From her Amazon page, she has written

• Lord, Where's My Calling? When the Big Question Becomes a Big Distraction
• My Big Bottom Blessing: How Hating My Body led to Loving My Life

Childers'

I've mentioned Alisa Childers several times before in the context of her YouTube channel and work at apologetics websites such as Cross Examined. She has a Reformed theological background and focuses her attention on progressive Christianity. Her other books are (Amazon):

• Live Your Truth and Other Lies (translated into Spanish and German)
• The Deconstruction of Christianity
• Another Gospel?

Ferrer's Major Ideas

These line up with major sections of Mama Bear Apologetics. The central idea is that discernment is essential in developing an apologetics mindset in one's children. The phrase used is "chew and spit," referring to getting the nutritive value out of a tough, gristly piece of meat without swallowing the non-nutritive parts.

Because this book is so recent, and written at a popular level, its ideas have likely percolated through its target audience but not too many other places in the Great Conversation. However, one more argument of why the book is needed is that a Christianity-secularity culture war is still going on, consistent with a Christ-transforming-culture view. (Rod Dreher, taking the view of Christ-against-culture, is of the opinion that the war is over.)

A third major idea is that one's children need apologetics as much as the non-Christian coworker does. She attributes this to hypocrisy of laity and clergy, while I think it is also (contra Ken Ham--read the 1-star reviews) due to denominations tying themselves to untenable interpretations of Genesis 1-11. Ferrer looks in the eye the issue of Christian parents (and pastors) in some segments of the faith being reluctant or feeling ill-equipped to answer tough questions that children in every generation ask and that have been answered--though one may need to read the right books to find those answers.

Book Walk-Through

Part 1 introduces the topic and rationale. It answers the questions of why one needs to think about apologetics when one has young children, what "doing" apologetics as a mother looks like, and a transition chapter on word redefinition ("linguistic theft"). My caution: Only one side of the political spectrum tends to claim that the other side uses linguistic theft. However, this reveals a blind spot of one's own position. A contemporary example is conflating personality with moral character because one's preferred candidate has plenty of the former but none of the latter--but still wishes to court Christian voters. Here's a better way. Here are some helpful extracts:

• Mothers who do apologetics best are honest, humble, humorous, and heroic as needed.
• Family-based apologetics activities include developing Biblical literacy, maintaining resources, studying regularly, being in community, and practicing with one's children's questions.
• The ROAR method of apologetics entails recognizing the message(s) being presented, offering discernment to affirm the good while rejecting the bad parts of said message, arguing for a healthier approach, and reinforcing through discussing/discipling and praying for one's children.

Part 2 is much longer, with individual chapters (authored or co-authored most commonly by Childers and Cannon) on these topics:

• Self-help movement (zeroing in on Norman Vincent Peale), magnifying the efficacy and sufficiency of free will
• Naturalism. While correctly indicating that the church takes a harmfully simplistic view of Evolution, this chapter could have been more helpful had she specified that methodological naturalism (addressed in this post) is the real target.
• Skepticism. This chapter takes an evidentialist approach, which has strengths and limitations.
• Postmodernism. The most helpful part here was the dig at a common question in small-group Bible studies, "What does this verse mean to you?"
• Moral relativism. The most helpful part in this chapter was the reminder that sorting every moral question into a "wrong" or "right" category, which tends to happen in religious fundamentalism, does not reflect the reality of gray areas of created life.
• Emotionalism (emotivism). Let emotion have its proper place, as the servant of reason. (Side note: decreasing the role of emotion in one's thinking is a common strength of autistics.)
• Pluralism. The Gospel is divisive!
• New-Age mysticism. The most helpful part for me was highlighting that NAM is a rather fragmented worldview, mixing components of "Eastern religious ideas, psychology, modern philosophy, pseudiscience, and Christianity" (p. 201). 
• Marxism. The most helpful part of the (very abbreviated) history of Marxist philosophy is the identification of the teleological utilitarianism it uses. (It's not the only movement that does so, quoth this moderate.)
• Feminism. Most of the chapter deals with egalitarian feminism, which resembles third-wave feminism today, correctly identifying that maternal feminism was a better way to go.
• Progressive Christianity. Since Childers has already written a book about this, I would point you to that instead. This chapter felt like it was trying to summarize too much.

Part 3 consists of one chapter as an encouragement to mothers, the main parents interacting with their children and answering their questions. (Child is not quite at that stage, but we are both mentally preparing for the iterative skepticism!) Overall, I found the book a valuable start for someone who has not done any reading on apologetics. The next step I'd recommend would be someone like Doug Groothuis, or any on the shelf below. 

What are your favorite apologetics resources?