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OCTOBER 2012: INSIDE OUT by Carol Westphal "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses..." Hebrews 13:1 I've been married to the same man for almost fifty years, and it's been a good run. But recently, a new man has come into my life. My husband doesn't need to worry too much about him, though, as this "new" man is really a very old man. In fact, he's been dead for over sixteen hundred years, and…

OCTOBER 2012: REVIEW by Johnathan Kana Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church Darrin W. Snyder Belousek Eerdmans, 2012. $55.00. 684 pages. Penal substitution apologists, beware: this weighty tome is not for the doctrinally faint of heart. Darrin Belousek critiques the common evangelical understanding of Jesus' death with keen philosophical insight and exegetical rigor sufficient to unsettle even the most studied proponent of evangelicalism's standard soteriology. He forces readers to scrutinize their…

OCTOBER 2012: REVIEW by Jay D. Green Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics Ross Douthat Free Press, 2012 $26.00. 352 pages. Among the many keen observations found in his new book, Ross Douthat notes the virtual absence of Christians in the leading class of American public intellectuals. After reading Bad Religion, I would suggest that Douthat himself is an exception that proves this rule. The thirty-two-year-old wunderkind conservative New York Times columnist here treats readers to a…

OCTOBER 2012: POETRY by Daniel Bowman Jr. The thought that she can't stay beautiful much longer on cigarettes and coffee nags at her a little more now that it's fall. But not today. Early Sunday morning, the city forgives her in its light and silence. This is how it worships— a holy refraining, nothing banging together. Even the small man at the counter barely chews. Daniel Bowman Jr. is the author of A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country. His first…

OCTOBER 2012: ESSAY by Janel Curry Moments of great stress such as natural disasters illuminate underlying theological constructs and worldviews. Extreme natural events bring to the fore the basic structures of these belief systems, beliefs about the most basic human problems and their solutions, concepts of good and evil, and the trajectory of history. Historical work has been done on the impacts of major natural events on various societies, including religious interpretations of the tragedies, such as the association in…

OCTOBER 2012: ESSAY by J. Todd Billings In 2010, my wife Rachel and I traveled to Ethiopia to adopt a lovely little girl. We know the country of Ethiopia relatively well—as we both taught in Ethiopia for five months in 2009, and I had spent nine months in Ethiopia earlier in my teaching career. We know that Ethiopia is a wonderful place—a place with beautiful landscapes, welcoming people, and very strong coffee. But we also know that it is a…

OCTOBER 2012: RESPONSE by Scott Hoezee In his attempt to bolster the contention that all of creation is a "text" on which pastors should preach in a way similar to traditional preaching from scripture ("Engaging the Whole Counsel of God,"August/September 2012), John Van Sloten marshals John Calvin to his cause. There is much more I could say in reply to Van Sloten's rejoinder to me, but I will limit my comments here to his suggestion that John Calvin's theology authorizes…