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Reviews

Spirituality, Social Justice, and Language Learning

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…
April 15, 2009
Reviews

John Calvin and the Natural World

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…
April 15, 2009
Reviews

The Evolution Controversy: A Survey of Competing Theories

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…
January 15, 2009
Reviews

A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church

“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…
January 15, 2009
Reviews

Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue

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…
January 15, 2009
Reviews

Being Feminist, Being Christian: Essays from Academia

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),…
January 15, 2009
Reviews

The American University in a Postsecular Age

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…
January 15, 2009
Reviews

Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music

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…
January 15, 2009
Reviews

God and the Reach of Reason: C.S. Lewis, David Hume, and Bertrand Russell

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,”…
October 15, 2008
Reviews

Magnificence at Work: Living Faith in Business

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…
October 15, 2008
Reviews

Liberty: Rethinking an Imperiled Ideal

Two key assumptions of political liberalism, individual rights and limited government, proceed logically from Christian premises. No political philosopher demonstrated this better than Glenn Tinder in The Political Meaning of Christianity. Each person is an “exalted individual,” one whose destiny is at the heart of the drama of creation and redemption. Respect for that status…
October 15, 2008
Reviews

God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution

If, as Richard Dawkins says, Darwin’s theory of evolution allows one to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist, Haught’s theology allows one to be a scientifically-fulfilled theist. In this second edition of God After Darwin, Haught argues that not only can evolutionary biology (EB) be reconciled with Christian theology, but that EB is a great gift to…
October 15, 2008
Reviews

Liberating Tradition: Women’s Identity and Vocation in Christian Perspective

Written with conviction and care, Liberating Tradition: Women’s Identity and Vocation in Christian Perspective by Kristina LaCelle-Peterson, associate professor of religion at Houghton College, is a primer of feminist and Christian intersections, paths often viewed as either diametrically opposed or at least mildly in conflict. Working from the perspective that the Bible has a liberating…
October 15, 2008