Review Essays

There is a tension between psychology and Christianity. This is not because they are radically different or irreconcilable, but in some ways the opposite: they are too similar, and are so clearly related to each other that those who are not Christians feel perhaps they have to disentangle the psychological from the mystical, spiritual, or…

It is no secret that the western world’s relationship with time, work, and community is complicated, generally unhealthy, and does not lead to restful, delighted lives. We tend to continually desire more and perfection, and so tend not to stop, cease, rest, or enjoy community. Three recent books seek to reconstruct our theology and habits…

When I first became a provost at a small Christian college about ten years ago, I encountered the reality that forty percent of our faculty were within five years of retirement or already well beyond retirement age. Most of these faculty were long tenured members with a significant amount of institutional knowledge, strong academic leadership…

David Anonby also begins Shakespeare on Salvation: Crossing the Reformation Divide with a reasoned defense for his engagement with religion in Shakespeare, invoking some of the same scholars that Oser does in his introduction. Anonby describes those in the turn to religion who have challenged the “secularizing narrative of the theater” (4), before turning to…

It has been approximately twenty-five years since the “turn to religion” in Shakespeare studies. When I informally polled a few colleagues in history, psychology, and social work about a turn to religion in their fields of study, each identified a pivotal publication in the late 1990s or early 2000s in the scholarly literature. One is…

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…