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Reviews

Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution

So many books on creationism!—Books promoting various creationist positions, books critiquing those positions, books by historians on creationists, and books by scholars and pundits explaining what is going on with creationists and how to deal with them. The wisdom writer was correct, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the…
February 28, 2022
Reviews

Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism

The thesis of this monograph is captured nicely by its subtitle: Christian convictions and motivations both energized and obstructed the crusade to end slavery in the United States. Although in its essence the author’s thesis is not novel—the realization that opponents and defenders of bondage both wielded religious arguments is commonplace—Wright offers a provocative analysis…
February 28, 2022
Reviews

Fiftieth Anniversary Book Reviews

Thomas Molnar’s review of Albert Camus and Christianity by Jean Onimus (University of Alabama Press, 1970) was CSR’s first book review. The final review of its first 50 years was T. M. Moore’s look at The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). In the intervening decades, CSR has…
October 27, 2021
BlogReviews

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

Joseph Henrich’s big, impressive, and fun book should appeal to scholars across a broad spectrum. Historians, sociologists, economists, church historians, psychologists, cultural historians, and educators will find much to ponder and process in The WEIRDest People in the World. Henrich tells the story not of how the West was won, but how it was born.…
October 5, 2021
BlogReviews

The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality

Play is pervasive. It is a quintessential creaturely activity that is observed and experienced in virtually all human cultures. Play pokes through and manifests itself in so many different forms of life that, if Christians fail to think about play, it means eliminating or subtracting a significant swath of human behavior from theological reflection. Brian…
September 21, 2021
Reviews

Heaven on Earth: The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of Socialism

Reviewed by James R. Vanderwoerd, Applied Social Sciences, Redeemer University “If you build it, they will leave” (xvi). What could be more ominous, obvious, and even humorous than this pithy observation at the end of Joshua Muravchik’s preface? Muravchik grew up as a card-carrying socialist who was thoroughly imbued with the doctrines of socialism from…
Reviews

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents

Reviewed by John A. Bernbaum, former President of the Russian-American Christian University (RACU) in Moscow, Russia; currently CEO of BEAM (Business and Education as Mission), Inc. Rod Dreher is a courageous Christian author. He is willing to address controversial issues, which most Christians carefully avoid, and his criticism of the “moralistic therapeutic deism” that characterizes…
May 11, 2021
Reviews

Mathematics for Human Flourishing

Reviewed by Dave Klanderman, Mathematics and Statistics, Calvin University “For such as time as this.” This phrase serves as part of a final justification offered by Mordecai in his plea to Esther to use her role as Queen to help to save the Hebrews from Haman’s plot to destroy them (Esther 4:12-14ff). In a similar…
May 11, 2021
Reviews

The Error of Truth: How History Came Together to Form Our Character and Shape Our Worldview

Reviewed by Jeremy Scott Case, Mathematics, Taylor University The study of worldviews has been a mainstay of Christian educational institutions, and a worldview cast as quantification deserves attention in today’s age of data-driven decision making, quantitative science, technology, and statistical rhetoric. Steven J. Osterlind’s book The Error of Truth argues our epistemology has moved toward quantitative thinking.…
November 12, 2020
Reviews

How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church

Reviewed by Tim Muehlhoff, Professor of Communication, Biola University C. Christopher Smith, senior pastor of Englewood Christian Church (Indianapolis, IN), describes early attempts to bring diverse people in his church together to talk as a “hot mess.” Yelling and sarcasm were default modes as members gathered Sunday nights to discuss potentially volatile issues. Out of…
November 12, 2020
Reviews

Burying White Privilege: Resurrecting a Badass Christianity

Reviewed by Nicole Saint-Victor, Director of Multicultural Engagement, Trinity Christian College To the brown body, fear is gifted like a birthright, poured generationally onward, originating from the stench of the transatlantic. The non-white body composes reformulated versions of “I’ll Fly Away,” joining Albert E. Brumley’s (1929) stuttered tribal emblems we long to reach the by…
July 15, 2020
Reviews

Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community

Reviewed by Adam Perez, Liturgical Studies, Duke Divinity SchoolAdam Perez is currently writing his Th.D. dissertation in Liturgical Studies at Duke University, and Monique Ingalls recently joined his dissertation committee. However, the current review was commissioned and drafted before that professional relationship was established. To the outsider, North American evangelical Christianity can seem rather opaque.…
July 15, 2020
Reviews

A Literate South: Reading before Emancipation

Reviewed by David Brodnax Sr., History, Trinity Christian College Alex Gorman of Raleigh, North Carolina, owned both the Spirit of the Age newspaper and the enslaved persons who produced it, and any of them caught reading the text that they helped create were beaten. Among his subscribers may have been Amanda and Betsy Cooley, two sisters in…
July 15, 2020
Reviews

Spirituality and English Language Teaching: Religious Explorations of Teacher Identity, Pedagogy and Context

Reviewed by Michael Lessard-Clouston, Applied Linguistics & TESOL, Biola University Mary Shepard Wong (Azusa Pacific University) has co-edited two volumes on Christians in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), one on pedagogy and ethical dilemmas and the other presenting empirical studies on Christian faith and English language teaching (ELT).Mary Shepard Wong and Suresh…
January 15, 2020