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Taming of a Firebrand

FIERCE CONVICTIONS: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF HANNAH  MORE, POET, REFORMER, ABOLITIONIST KAREN SWALLOW PRIOR THOMAS NELSON, 2014 $14.99 306 PAGES How is it that a prolific writer, a beloved teacher and an influential reformer could be lost in the annals of history? And how are we to reclaim her? Enter Hannah More, an 18th-century playwright, novelist and pamphleteer, and Karen Swallow Prior, her latest biographer. In Fierce Convictions, Prior draws on a rich archive of literature, life writing and local…
September 1, 2015
Reviews

A Cure for Flinging Scripture Around

GOD AND THE GAY CHRISTIAN GOD AND THE GAY CHRISTIAN: THE BIBLICAL CASE IN SUPPORT OF SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS MATTHEW VINES CONVERGENT BOOKS, 2014 $17.97 224 PAGES THE BIBLE’S YES TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: AN EVANGELICAL’S CHANGE OF HEART MARK ACHTEMEIER WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2014 $13.83 144 PAGES THE BIBLE'S YES TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE In 2010 I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Stanley Hauerwas at Duke University. During the meeting, Hauerwas spoke of the need for the church to…
July 1, 2015
Reviews

Fighting Gendercide from within the Church

THE CROSS AND GENDERCIDE THE CROSS AND GENDERCIDE: A THEOLOGICAL RESPONSE TO GLOBAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS ELIZABETH GERHARDT IVP ACADEMIC, 2014 $16.28 185 PAGES At the conclusion of my recent class The Global Politics of Human Rights, a student made the observation that when we discuss the basis for human rights or discuss the nature of human-rights problems, we try to understand them through the lens of faith. But when we talk about solutions to human-rights problems, we…
July 1, 2015
Reviews

A Kindly Ballet of Serious Questions

Lila, by Marilynne Robinson LILA MARILYNNE ROBINSON FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, 2014 $15.60 (HARDCOVER) 261 PAGES Marriage counselors would certainly have discouraged talk of a marriage between an aging Presbyterian pastor in Gilead, a small Iowa town, and an orphan 40 years younger who had only years of wandering with an itinerant group to show for her life. This novel, the third in a trilogy that includes Gilead and Home, builds on the lives of ministers Ames and Boughton –…
April 23, 2015
Reviews

Finding Roots for Change in Our Faith

Inhabiting Eden: Christians, the Bible, and the Ecological Crisis INHABITING EDEN: CHRISTIANS, THE BIBLE, AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS PATRICIA K. TULL WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2013 $14.24 200 PAGES In a mountainous region of India, far from the congestion of populous city life, a nun from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity sits eating her lunch on a train. As she finishes a takeout box of chicken, she leans toward the pane of glass separating her from the exquisite mountains rolling…
April 6, 2015
Reviews

North-South Relationships in the Global Church

Sister Churches, By Janel Kragt Bakker SISTER CHURCHES: AMERICAN CONGREGATIONS AND THEIR PARTNERS ABROAD JANEL KRAGT BAKKER OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013 320 PP. $26.96 Christianity is rooted in the Middle East and flourished in North Africa for centuries. Yet since the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity under Constantine in the fourth century it has been perceived as a Western religion, and for 17 centuries Christianity has been closely tied to the cultures and peoples of the North Atlantic.…
February 28, 2015
Reviews

N.T. Wright’s Copernican Revolution

Paul and the Faithfulness of God BOOK REVIEW PAUL AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD N.T. WRIGHT FORTRESS PRESS, 2013 1519 PP. IN TWO VOLUMES $89.00 Bishop N.T. Wright has written a prodigious number of books. This book is his Summa, the most prodigious of them all. He’s been working on this book for decades, all while he was publishing his many other popular books, commentaries, articles and monographs. My own reading of the New Testament has been much altered by…
Daniel Meeter
January 10, 2015
Reviews

Reckoning with the Formation of the Bible

The Lost World of Scripture BOOK REVIEW THE LOST WORLD OF SCRIPTURE: ANCIENT LITERARY CULTURE AND BIBLICAL AUTHORITY JOHN H. WALTON AND D. BRENT SANDY IVP ACADEMIC, 2013 320 PP. $15.98 John H. Walton and D. Brent Sandy, Bible professors at Wheaton College, describe a scene that is undoubtedly common in biblical-studies classrooms on Christian campuses across the country: A student lingers after class to ask “the question” in hushed tones, fi rst looking around to make sure everyone else…
January 10, 2015
Reviews

Seeking Foundations of a New Consensus

THE TWILIGHT OF THE AMERICAN ENLIGHTEN-MENT: THE 1950S AND THE CRISIS OF LIBERAL BELIEF GEORGE MARSDEN BASIC BOOKS, 2014 $26.99. 264 PAGES. A specter haunts George Marsden: the specter of modern liberalism. What did it promise? How did it fail? What comes next? To explore these questions, Marsden’s essay on American public intellectual culture since the 1950s follows some famous middlebrow and scholarly writers—creators of America’s modern “liberal consensus”—into the 1960s. This era, Marsden argues, was the eve of the…
Michael Kugler
October 30, 2014