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Highlights and reviews of new releases and publications

Music

Dizmas

Dizmas | 4 stars out of 5

It's always a good sign when you're listening to an album if your fingers drift over to the volume button to turn it up. Something's caught your attention, and you want more. Dizmas has several such moments on its new self-titled album, affirming that Forefront Records made a smart move bringing the act into its fold.

The 10-song disc is essentially a best-of Dizmas' two releases for Credential Recordings, 2005's On a Search in America and last year's Tension, plus four new tracks. The quintet of tunes from Tension are the album's primary strength. The songs from the previous records are billed as ”remastered,“ and while sometimes you have to be a sound engineer to appreciate redone works like that, tunes such as Shake It Off do seem to have a bit more clarity and pop. Different is the best of the new bunch, with angular guitar parts showing some adventure in the band. The other three, Save the Day, Worth Fighting For and Yours, are also solid efforts that show a bit of mellowing and thoughtfulness in the band. Overall, the Forefront debut is a good Dizmas primer for folks who haven't tuned in already. It'll be interesting to watch for the Lancaster, Calif., act's first full effort with the label to see where this move takes Dizmas and whether the music will still make us want to crank it up.

Rich Copley, rcopley@herald-leader.com

BOOKS

"Thank God for Evolution!'

By Michael Dowd.Council Oak Books. 394 pp. $24.95.

The Rev. Michael Dowd, once a United Church of Christ pastor, now travels full-time with his wife, making impassioned presentations about how to bring science and religion together in our time for the sake of the world's future.

In his acknowledgements, he credits respected science writer Connie Barlow effusively as both spouse and partner in this new ”missionary“ work and as co-creator of several of the book's technical sections.

But his dedication is ”to the glory of God,“ with this explanatory footnote: ”Not any "God' we may think about, speak about, believe in, or deny, but the one true God we all know and experience.“ If that doesn't intrigue readers, the cover will, its Darwinian-looking, fossilized fish overlaid with that simple, ancient Christian symbol.

What impresses here is the author's fact-melding perspective: that the world's religions grew from revelations; that science, driven by humankind, continues to reveal, providing insights that in each successive generation enrich rather than conflict with the bedrock of faith. In the chapter ”Words Create Worlds,“ Dowd says: ”To imagine God as distant from the here-and-now is, in effect, to posit two gods. How do I relate to a universe that is so demonstrably, profoundly, thoroughly and divinely creative if my God is not truly immanent, omnipresent and revealed in the unfolding creativity of matter itself?“

The advice of the Hebrew sage Hillel is apropos here: ”All else is commentary. Go forth and study.“ (This book, of course.)

Harriet P. Gross, The Dallas Morning News

WEB

www.sheepcomics.com

This site questions the ”programmed, systematized, and professionally managed church systems“ through a series of comic strips and accompanying editorial comments. Lionel the Average Lamb attends a megachurch led by CEO Dr. Flockshorn, who discourages individual thought, plays down the sacrament of baptism, stresses the importance of donations to the church and uses flow charts to explain concepts such as a strategic ministry plan, corporate worship and restoration of the first-century church.

The comics illustrate main ideas that the seemingly anonymous artist and writer further explore — sometimes with quotes from Scripture and almost always with an idea that will challenge many of the leaders and laity of today's non-denominational evangelical megachurches.

Tyra Damm, The Dallas Morning News