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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
Reviews

Bytes and Belief

SHAPING A DIGITAL WORLD: FAITH, CULTURE AND COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY DEREK C. SCHUURMAN IVP ACADEMIC, 2013. $18.00. 138 PAGES. Derek Schuurman asks a question very similar to one asked by many of my computer science students: “What does my faith have to do with my work as an electrical engineer?” Of course, this question is relevant not only for Christians involved in working directly with computer technology but for people in all stations of life. Along with me, many students wrestle with the…
Mark Vellinga
October 30, 2014
Reviews

Revaluing the Funeral

THE GOOD FUNERAL: DEATH, GRIEF, AND THE COMMUNITY OF CARE THOMAS G. LONG AND THOMAS LYNCH WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2013 252 pp. $25.00 In the discipline of pastoral care and counseling, I believe there are three courses that students training for pastoral ministry should take. Of those three, one would be Death and Dying and the text, The Good Funeral: Death, Grief, and the Community of Care, coauthored by Thomas Long a pastoral theologian/ Presbyterian minister, and Thomas Lynch,…
Raynard Smith
October 30, 2014