Reviews

The November, 2009 Christianity Today webinar featuring Christian Smith discussing his most recent book provided a rich example of his argument. In this session Smith discussed the content and implications of his findings thoughtfully and articulately while online participants watched, listened and had the opportunity to post real-time questions that showed up in a sidebar…

In spite of the apparent benefits of recent and predicted advances in medical science which promise to enhance human well-being and extend life, many people experience a vague uneasiness about a brave new world where disease, suffering, and finitude in general might be vanquished. If we can replace limbs, repair organs, cure cancers, and even…

Although Christian ethics masquerades sometimes as a discrete discipline, it is understood better as an ambitious multidisciplinary enterprise, requiring knowledge of (at the very least) biblical studies, theology, philosophy, and the social sciences. Dennis P. Hollinger ’s The Meaning of Sex draws on material from across all these fields as he articulates and defends the…

In 1954 Aldous Huxley published Doors of Perception, an account of his mescaline-induced mystical experience. R. C. Zaehner responded to the wave of experimentation Huxley provoked with Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience, a book that drew fine distinctions between categories that Huxley had neglected to address. In the…

Billed as the first full-scale exploration of theatre and theology, Performing the Sacred: Theology and Theatre in Dialogue by Todd E. Johnson and Dale Savidge endeavors to find anexus between the previously distinct worlds in which both of the authors participate. Johnson, the theologian, and Savidge, the theatre practitioner, desire to create a new form…

The title of David Jasper ’s new book, The Sacred Body: Asceticism in Religion, Literature, Art and Culture, promises a survey of the topic of asceticism in art and literature. More enticingly, it promises the reader that she will embark on a historical pattern-finding mission with the author. (What is this “sacred body”? What is…

What is the relationship, if any, between Christian theology and the visual arts? Does this relationship need to be “contentious”? Should Christian theologians think that the Apostle Paul’s critique of images “made by man’s design and skill” (Acts 17:29) applies to all objects considered “visual art”? In Visual Theology: Forming and Transforming the Community Through…

David Smith, professor of German and director of the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning at Calvin College, has a knack for inducing discomfort in his audience. At the professional conference during which we interact each year, I consistently look forward to Smith’s talks, knowing that they will be engaging, witty, and insightful; yet…

That we Americans live in a radically pluralist society is no secret. For some time now, there has been concern among thoughtful Christians that America may be heading down the same road that Europe trod in recent decades – the road to a radically secular, post-Christian society. However, this trend is called into question, increasingly,…

Richard Horsley attempts to employ a more nuanced, historically and socially contingent approach to the interpretation of Scripture in order to lead us to embrace a call for economic justice. The end result is an interpretation of Scripture that portrays modern market capitalism as a violation of the original covenantal principles of economic justice. For…

At bottom, this is a wonderfully simple book. It gathers essays from scholars of high academic standing to tell us what we learned in kindergarten: we need to listen in order to understand; we need to put ourselves in another person’s shoes; we need to see things through another’s eyes. This collection of authorities gives…

Rodney Stark sums up the argument of God’s Battalions tersely: The thrust of the preceding chapters can be summarized very briefly. The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. They…

Initially, the title of this book made me think it could provide a much-needed critique of the ubiquitous notion of “human development” that, for centuries, has influenced a variety of fields from psychology to education to political science to philosophy to history. “Development” is indeed a commonplace term that deserves significant analysis, but this book,…

Peter J. Leithart is the organizing pastor at Trinity Reformed Church, a Christ Reformed Evangelical congregation, and the Dean of Graduate Studies and Senior Fellow of Theology for New Saint Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho. Deep Exegesis is a clear, optimistic, and well-written book, with wide-spanning and interdisciplinary implications. Impressively, Leithart returns frequently to his exegesis…

Stratford Caldecott’s finely-written book, Beauty for Truth’s Sake, advocates a return to (Christian) Pythagoreanism as the founding spirit of liberal arts education. Caldecott understands true education as centered on the liberal arts, which he interprets in the spirit of their classical roots as trivium and quadrivium. He argues that education has been disenchanted, because it…

Scholarship by and about the non-Western Christian world is proliferating in recent years, and the picture that is emerging bears remarkable similarities to Christianity in the West. While the immediate focus of this work by Mark A. Noll, distinguished author and professor of history at Notre Dame, is on Christianity in the United States, ultimately…

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” W. B. Yeats’ oft-quoted line is useful in capturing any number of problems. When applied to the Christian life, it can suggest that we did not try hard enough to understand how — with Christ at the center — everything can hold together (Colossians 1:17). When applied to…

Philosophers Keith Yandell and Harold Netland offer an excellent historical and apologetic study of the Buddhist tradition. Chapter 1 describes its origins in India under the title “Early Buddhism.” Chapters 2 and 3 chart changes and innovations as “The Dharma Goes East” to China, Tibet and Japan and as “The Dharma Goes West.” Chapters 4…

Once a moderately well-known poet and public intellectual in Britain in the middle of the twentieth century, Ruth Pitter has been almost forgotten save as a footnote in biographies of C. S. Lewis. Yet her work won the Hawthornden Prize for Poetry and the William E. Heinneman Award. She was the first woman to receive…

On May 28, 2007, the recent creationist organization Answers in Genesis opened its 27-million-dollar Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. Although the organization projected 250,000 visitors to the museum in its first year, 404,000 people paid to see the museum during its first year of operation. Despite the economic slow down in 2008-2009, almost one million…