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Reviews

Arts Ministry: Nurturing the Creative Life of God’s People

Reviewed by Todd E. Johnson, Theological Director, Brehm Center for Worship Theology and the Arts, Fuller Theological Seminary Michael Bauer identifies the target at which this volume is aimed in the Introduction. Bauer writes, “This book is an attempt to lay a foundation for that vital work (arts ministry) by grounding it in the insights…
January 15, 2015
Article

Wingless Chickens and Desiderium Naturale: The Theological Imaginations of Flannery O’Connor and Henri de Lubac

Many writers have commented on the theological elements within the strange world of Flannery O’Connor’s stories. In this essay, Derek C. Hatch asserts that O’Connor’s work has deep theological resonances with twentieth-century Catholic ressourcement thought, especially that of French Jesuit Henri de Lubac. While there is no genealogical link between them, O’Connor’s fiction evidences an…
January 15, 2015
Reviews

Sensational Devotion: Evangelical Performance in Twenty-First-Century America

Reviewed by Steven W. Wood, Theatre and Communication, Indiana Wesleyan University Jill Stevenson has made a considerable contribution to evangelical theatre scholars and practitioners – and the larger academia interested in performance studies, theatre criticism, and American theatre historiography – by coining the term “evangelical dramaturgy” (4). American evangelical dramaturgy, Stevenson argues, is a broad-reaching…
January 15, 2015
Reviews

Making Nothing Happen: Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality

Reviewed by Mary M. Brown, English, Indiana Wesleyan University All of the five contributors to Making Nothing Happen: Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality consider themselves both theologians and poets. Their formal educations and professions favor their positions in theology, but their practice confirms their place in the world of poetry. Gavin D’Costa, Eleanor Nesbitt,…
January 15, 2015
Reflection

Reflection: Standing on the Shoulders of Others

For sixteen years Don W. King has served as the Editor of the Christian Scholar’s Review. In the first of three short reflections as he completes his service to CSR effective May 1, 2015, he muses on an obvious but nonetheless important truth—all of us owe much to those who have gone before us. Mr.…
January 15, 2015
Reviews

My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer

Reviewed by R. Michael Medley, English, Eastern Mennonite University When one risks sharing a story of intense personal suffering, one invites others to a sacred moment of communion. Though the assertions of the sufferer may make us uncomfortable, we cannot be judgmental nor shut our ears to his or her story. To read Christian Wiman’s…
October 15, 2014
Reviews

Turning Points in Natural Theology from Bacon to Darwin: The Way of the Argument from Design

Reviewed by Edward B. Davis, History of Science, Messiah College This book by Stuart S. Peterfreund, professor of English at Northeastern University, episodically traces the history and rhetoric of British natural theology from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The unifying scheme is the identification of a few key “turning points,” when the…
October 15, 2014
Reviews

Faith on the Avenue: Religion on a City Street

Reviewed by Noah J. Toly, Urban Studies and Politics & International Relations, Wheaton College Place matters to the practice of faith in urban congregations; congregations’ practices of faith matter to the dynamics of urban neighborhoods. So goes the two-pronged central argument of Katie Day’s book, Faith on the Avenue: Religion on a City Street, a…
October 15, 2014
Review Essays

Human Dignity and the Image of God—A Review Essay

John W. Wright is Professor of Theology and Christian Scripture at Point Loma Nazarene University. Introduction We live in a world assembled to overcome the instabilities arising out of World War II. The dominant post-War narrative has understood the “Good War” as an ideological battle between democracy and totalitarianism.“The Allies cause has been dressed up…
October 15, 2014