Reviews

Rob Warner, sociologist and head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at University of Wales, Lampeter, produces an intriguing analysis of the evolution of English pan-Evangelicalism during the latter half of the 20th century in his recent work Reinventing English Evangelicalism. Following Callum Brown’s advocacy of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of…

What does it mean to be an evangelical Christian? This is the question explored by a collection of prominent Christian scholars in The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities. The book was released first as a British imprint under the title: The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Apollos, 2008). The impetus for this collection…

The relationship between anthropologists and missionaries is a particularly intriguing one. It is full of the stuff that is fertile ground for academic engagement, not least because of a certain overlap of interests coupled with long-standing tension. The collection of articles found in Anthropology’s Debt to Missionaries, written predominantly by anthropologists, provides a valuable, though…

My prolific bookseller friend has insisted that Beyond Homelessness is one of the most important books of 2008.Byron Borger, review of Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement, by Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh, http://www.heartsandmindsbooks.com/review/beyond_homelessness_christian/ (accessed November 2008). I find it hard to disagree. Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh assert that…

A few decades back, Walker Percy told the parable of a Martian who, upon visiting our planet, is overwhelmed by how much humans talk. After asking about all the gabbing, the alien receives a cross-disciplinary bibliography on linguistics and speech physiology and information theory. “’But wait,’ says the Martian, ‘What about the actual event of…

This collection of essays explores the intersection of language learning, social justice and spirituality. Discussions of the relation of spirituality to language teaching have opened up only recently, sometimes with alarm and acrimony by secular critics of Christians in the field of teaching English as a second language. David Smith has authored or coauthored four…

A recent article in The Economist, “Evolution: Unfinished Business”, reflecting on the development and dissemination of Darwin’s theory on the 200th anniversary of his birth, considered the results of a poll on the public’s acceptance of the theory of evolution within several Western countries. In the US, the bar graph showed that roughly 40% of…

Some critics have claimed that James Baldwin was the last African American writer for whom the church was a necessary subject and context. Such a claim attempts, I think, to point to the changes that had been ongoing within African American culture since the turn of the century. At least as early as W.E.B. Du…

In the spring of 2008, the movie Expelled hit the theaters. Ben Stein, famous for his dead-pan act in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, interviewed scientists who claimed that their disagreement with the Neo-Darwinian party line jeopardized their careers and made them the targets of discrimination. While some of the claims of this movie are almost…

“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” (Tertullian, the 3rd century B.C.E.) is really the basic question addressed by this new book, which is part of the Liturgical Studies Series of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Calvin Stapert’s small book undertakes an enormous task, sketching a brief history of documents that refer to…

Robert B. Stewart is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, where he holds the Greer-Heard Chair of Faith and Culture. It is there that he also directs the annual Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum, which is a five-year pilot program that provides evangelical and non-evangelical scholars opportunities to come together to…

In the last quarter-century, a number of books and essay collections have been published which address the role of women in higher education, as well as the difficulties many females face as faculty members in male-dominated institutions. Books such as Lifting a Ton of Feathers: A Woman’s Guide to Surviving in the Academic World (1993),…

Two Messiah College faculty members, Douglas Jacobsen (Distinguished Professor of Church History and Theology) and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen (Professor of Psychology and Director of Faculty Development, and yes, they are married), have provided us with another provocative book addressing the relationship of religion and American higher education. Their previous book on Christian higher education, Scholarship…

Jeremy Begbie believes that music is far too important to be ignored by theologians and that musicians need to understand the theological concepts that shape their assumptions about musical meaning and value. He wants us to learn to think theologically through music, and also to be theologically musical. His project is understood best not as…

If you’ve ever wondered where God stands on “business” and the role of business in Kingdom work, Paul Stevens’ Doing God’s Business: Meaning and Motivation for the Marketplace is a must-read. In a previous publication, The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Minis-try in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), he presents a personal…

Returning after an extended absence to a once-familiar place, be it a college campus, a church, or an organization, a person may be surprised by the contrast between what is recalled through the mind’s eye of what was, and what is apparent through physical eyes of what is. The natural and reactionary question “how did…

Having crossed paths with many well-known philosophers, such as Gilbert Ryle,John Mabbott, Oxford Memories (Oxford: Thornton’s, 1986), 77-8. Antony Flew,Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: HarperOne,2007), 22-3. C. E. M. Joad,Christopher W. Mitchell, “University Battles: C. S. Lewis and the Oxford University Socratic Club,”…

Magnificence at Work: Living Faith in Business begins with the profound suggestion that work is a paramount consideration and an integral facet of faith—especially from a Christian perspective: “work has always been the locus of God’s calling. It would be surprising if it were not, for work matters profoundly as a creative act, as a…

Alan Roxburgh begins the “Forward” to this text with an interesting and concise message regarding why and for whom the book was written and the intended story of the book. While Roxburgh suggests that the book is intended to be a guide for leaders, it appears as though the book may be aimed at pastors…

As academics, we all want listeners or readers who are interested in what interests us. They make our days. Like Luke who wrote both the gospel that bears his name and the Book of Acts for Theophilus, we have an interested audience in mind. Claar and Klay want to reach Christians who have no knowledge…