Articles

Francis Beckwith’s volume of the Christian Worldview Integration Series has much to offer the undergraduate student or novice newly considering the relation of faith and politics. The text’s subtitle indicates Beckwith’s Aristotelian assumption that “man is by nature a political animal.”Aristotle, “The Politics,” in Classics in Political Philosophy, J. Porter, ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall),…

The publication of To Change the World marks a new phase in the career of a distinguished sociologist. The author of a half-dozen books on religion and American culture, James Hunter goes where few social scientists dare to tread: the frontier between sociological analysis and theological reflection. The result is essential reading for those called…

“A MAN with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails (New York: Harper and Row,1956), 3. This…

Born the son of a Baptist minister in western Pennsylvania, one of many parts of the country that takes very seriously its athletic competitions, Shirl Hoffman has grown up in and around sport. With his upbringing and later his work as a Professor of Exercise and Sport Science as well as the Director of the…

Is it possible to speak properly of God without falling prey to fideism, projectionism, onto theology and the neoscholastic notion of analogiaentis? In Speaking of God, D. Stephen Long argues that a constructive antidote to these modern theological ills (chapter 1) requires a more explicit Christological basis. More specifically, “if we are able to move…

What are rhetoricians good for? That query plays on George Scialabba’s 2009 book title about the utility of public intellectuals. Directed toward rhetoricians in particular, the question also helps interpret Michael J. Hyde’s recent book, Perfection: Coming to Terms with Being Human. Christian scholars will quickly appreciate Hyde’s attention to the relationship between rhetoric and…

In this book, which is the latest in a series on the mature Christian life that also includes Simply Christian and Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright returns to the theme of the new heaven and new Earth. This time, he challenges everyone to think through what it means to live a fulfilled life as…

Just a few decades ago, it was illegal in much of the United States for a white person and a black person to marry. Today, intermarriage is not illegal, and the very term formerly used to prohibit it—miscegenation—seems a distasteful relic of an ugly, bygone era. Frankly, most Americans rarely think about the subject anymore.…

Historians by nature seek new methodologies in understanding old stories, and this work deftly reexamines a familiar narrative in novel fashion. The story of American religionis generally told chronologically, moving from century to century, or topically, such as examining Puritan communities in New England or Quaker communities in Pennsylvania. Amanda Porterfield and John Corrigan, two…

The University of California, Irvine’s Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, John C. Avise, is a very productive and highly respected scientist. His popular book, Inside the Human Genome, examines the content and structure of the human genome, but he moves beyond the bald facts about our genomes and tries to discern what they…