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“My God is a Rock in a Weary Land”: A Comparison of the Cries and Hopes of the Psalms and African American Slave Spirituals

Despite the nearly three millennia that separate them, the psalms of the ancient Israelites and the spirituals of the African American slaves are remarkably similar, reflecting their communities’ similar milieus, emotions, and convictions. In this article, Elizabeth Backfish compares these musical manifestations of the heart, arguing that Israel’s subjugation in exile produced similar musical effects…
October 15, 2012
Article

John Foster and the Integration of Faith and Learning

The “integration of faith and learning” has become a touchstone of many Evangelical Protestant higher education institutions in recent decades. Martin Spence argues that modern Evangelical scholars and teachers have intellectual forbears who long ago raised similar questions about the relationship between faith and learning. The author introduces one such individual, the nineteenth-century British Baptist…
October 15, 2012
Article

Comenius: Dead White Guy for Twenty-first Century Education

Gretchen Schwarz and Jill Martin argue that contemporary Christian evangelicals often perceive American public schools as evil, and many have retrenched into their own private schools. These schools generally offer a highly traditional, narrow, even classical curriculum. In contrast, Comenius, one of the Reformation era’s outstanding scholars and educators, developed a wealth of ideas that…
Book Review

Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts

Reviewed by Louis Markos, English, Houston Baptist University C. S. Lewis knew his Aquinas well. Not only was he familiar with Aquinas’s proofs for the existence of God; he was well aware that the Angelic Doctor could only conceive of two possible reasons to doubt God’s existence. In Part I, Question 2, Article 3 of…
October 15, 2012
Book Review

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

Reviewed by Edward C. Polson, Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, Messiah College In Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat examines some of the most significant changes that have occurred in U.S. religious life since the 1950s. He explores the impact that the declining significance of both…
October 15, 2012
Book Review

The Image in Mind: Theism, Naturalism, and the Imagination

Reviewed by David A. Hoekema, Philosophy, Calvin College “In spite of the indispensable use of images in our yearning to make sense of reality, there has not been sufficient attention to the aesthetic in the debate between theism and naturalism” (3). This opening comment conveys the motivation for a wide-ranging and provocative book by a…
October 15, 2012
Book Review

Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy

Reviewed by Tom Lehman, Economics, Indiana Wesleyan University Imagine a situation in which someone you know to be innocent is wrongly accused of crimes she did not commit, and the prosecution in the case is the actual perpetrator of those crimes. However, the accused innocent is not particularly appealing, is not always cooperative, is easily…
October 15, 2012
Book Review

Introducing World Christianity

Reviewed by George F. Pickens, Theology and Mission, Messiah College Even though I have been a student of World Christianity since before that term was widely used, I confess that the idea of reviewing yet another volume which claimed to examine Christianity around the world was not initially appealing. For a myriad of reasons, interest…
October 15, 2012