Review Essays

Andrew J. Spencer’s and Steven Bouma-­Prediger’s recent releases applying Christian theology to contemporary environmental problems share similar goals and face common constraints. As trade paperbacks, both books are intended to motivate an indifferent or skeptical Christian readership and theologically equip students to address hot-­button political topics. The authors self-­identify as Evangelical, utilize the language of…

If we’re going to do this,” DeAmon Harges told me, “we’re going to have to become friends.” The condition set me back on my heels. Of course, I wasn’t opposed to getting to know this Indianapolis-based nonprofit leader, rapidly becoming a national figure in community development conversations. But though I was far from reluctant to…

Russell Moore and Karen Swallow Prior may not fit the stereotype of an “exvangelical.” Unlike the angry twenty-something who takes to social media to announce that they’re resigning from church, Moore and Prior both devoted several decades of their adult lives to serving the church through teaching, writing, and (in Moore’s case) denominational administration. Both…

Debates rage over the best direction for American conservatism, particularly in the wake of Donald Trump’s disruptive presidency. The three books reviewed here provide distinct diagnoses and prescriptions for American politics. Only one book, Yoram Hazony’s Conservatism: A Rediscovery, is primarily intended as a blueprint for American conservatism. Francis Fukuyama’s Liberalism and Its Discontents assesses…

As I sat down to begin writing this review essay of these recently published books, the sun was rising on the first day of the forty-eighth year of my life. I did not plan to be writing a review essay on my birthday, but it seems fitting given the topics addressed in these books. Like…

Toward the end of the previous century, Dana Gioia broached the question whether poetry, which had fallen on hard times with the reading public, could ever again matter.Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter? (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1992). Although there were plenty of poets, numerous poetry journals, respectable poetry publishers cranking out new collections every…

Each of the three authors of the books reviewed in this essay seems to have had a moment when he realized that imparting knowledge and skills, however important, is an insufficient goal of education. For Quentin Schultze, it was when one student dumped his notes and textbook (written by Schultze himself!) into a trash can…

Reappraisal of the operative vocational theologies that dominate popular Christian scholarship and teaching are actively under way. As with many sub-disciplines and fields of theology, vocational theologies are being vigorously re-examined with greater attentiveness to context and the underpinnings of their guiding theological assumptions. Vocational theologies, maybe more but certainly not less than other fields,…

In the short space of about 30 years, we have gone from heralding liberal democracy (or liberalism) as the final political regime (see Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesisFrancis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1992).) to wondering whether it can or should survive. The big idea…

In his recent book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, journalist Jonathan Rauch makes a compelling case that our shared sense of reality is a product of a worldwide network of those committed to a set of principles and practices he sets out to articulate.Jonathan Rauch, The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of…

Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn is assistant professor of New Testament studies at Regent College. Three very different books on Romans emerged around the same time in 2019, authored by Scot McKnight, by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, and by Jackson W. Not one claims or seeks to be a commentary; rather, they each provide a sort of…

Mark A. Peters is professor of music and director of the Center for Teaching and the Good Life at Trinity Christian College. He is president of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music and book review co-editor for Christian Scholar’s Review. Whatever you learn, remember: the learning must make you more, not less, human.—Elie Wiesel…

Not long before the last U.S. presidential election, on my pre-dawn bicycle ride to work, a companion Southern Californian road user in a car took umbrage at my having the audacity to signal to change lanes to turn left. Lit up like a Christmas tree, I was clearly visible, but my not staying to the…

By and large, the discipline of political science does not take religion seriously. The typical member of this particular scholarly guild sees religious belief and affiliation not as causes of political action, but rather as consequences of political or economic interests. Religion, at most, is a device that savvy elites use to hoodwink gullible masses…

Charles Taylor identifies a shift in Western culture in the 18th century around the idea of “authenticity,” a shift toward valuing individual people for their original perspectives, their unique ways of being human. As Western thinking was making this shift, a brother and sister in northern England began packing picnic lunches and wandering around some…

“Be gracious to me, O Lord,” the Psalmist writes, “for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also.” He does not hold back. The agony of grief that drives him to poetry and song provides us with a rich fund of words that still serve us in our sorrow:…

Rebecca C. Burwell is a faculty member at Chicago Semester, where she teaches courses in race, social justice, and vocation. In 1942, during the Second World War, British academic William Beveridge developed a report entitled “Social Insurance and Allied Services” that identified five social issues that the British government would need to address once the…