Reviews

Reviewed by Timothy Larsen, Biblical and Theological Studies, Wheaton College To quote Tammy Wynette, “Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman.” It is especially difficult if the man to whom you are giving all your loving is a megachurch pastor, and even more so if you are pursuing a high-profile evangelical ministry without the help…

Reviewed by Rick Ostrander, Ostrander Academic Consulting It is no secret that Christian liberal arts colleges in the United States face significant challenges. Shrinking pools of high school graduates in some regions have led to stagnant or declining enrollments at many private institutions, creating significant financial pressures. Moreover, career-oriented parents often question the value of…

Reviewed by Peter J. Snyder, Business, Calvin University The Prosperity Paradox is an important new book that takes a somewhat different look at the issue of poverty. Using the lens of innovation, Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ojomo, and Karen Dillon range across, to greater and lesser extents, economics, public policy, history, sociology, and development to reframe…

Reviewed by Louis Markos, Humanities, Houston Baptist University I spent the latter half of the 1980s as a graduate student at the University of Michigan and as a member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. We discussed and debated many books in our IVCF meetings, but the one I remember that inspired some of our most fruitful…

Reviewed by Clark Bates, Fellow at the Text and Canon Institute, Phoenix Seminary Can We Trust the Gospels? is a concise, compelling and erudite compilation of multiple lines of evidence intended to demonstrate the reliability of the four New Testament Gospels, and ultimately the rationality of the Christian faith. At a brief 140 pages, the…

Exploring Christian Song, a collection of essays marking the fifteenth anniversary of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music (SCSM), is an admirable testament to the breadth and quality of contributions made by SCSM members to the growing conversation between music and theology. For these scholars, Christian song is more than liturgical decoration. It is,…

In Religion: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters, Christian Smith proposes an insightful theory of religion, differentiating between the nature of religion itself and the various effects of religion. Seeking such differentiation, the complex and overlapping relationship between an ontological understanding of religion and religion’s practical effects and impacts in and…

Tracing capitalism’s evolution, particularly its lending and borrowing elements, from its Smithian beginnings to its neoliberal present, North Park University philosopher and ethicist Ilsup Ahn warns that something radically new and deeply troubling is now afoot: “The neoliberal idea of debt is problematic because it is no longer conceived as a morally relevant issue but…

Reviewed by Emily S. Bosscher, First Year Experience, Trinity Christian College Over the past five years, the student population on college campuses has changed. Current students are equal parts less ready for college and adulthood but highly empathetic toward others around them, indecisive and yet yearning for mentoring relationships, filled with anxiety and the fear…

Reviewed by Joyce del Rosario, Ph.D. Candidate, Fuller Theological Seminary In full disclosure, since taking on this assignment as book reviewer, I have joined the national board of directors for the Christian Community Development Association, along with the author Dominique Gilliard. Recognizing this potential conflict, I still attempted to review this book as objectively as…

Black lives matter. This phrase, since its debut in 2015, has sparked much debate and has often been the source for conversation regarding racism and police brutality in the last few years. With the resurgence of public protests following the deaths of many African Americans at the hands of police, young activists took to the…

How is the presence of ubiquitous personal technological devices shaping human development and interpersonal relations? How might persons navigate this technological revolution in a way that deepens and enlivens personal development, relationships, and experience rather than truncates or diverts them? What does it mean to reflect Christianly about how people relate to technology? What spiritual…

Religion has been a matter of inheritance for most of Western history since at least the end of antiquity. From infancy, individuals were claimed by the religion of their parents or community through baptism, circumcision, or some other rite. One might be more or less closely affiliated with the religion’s institutions, practices, and beliefs, but…

Institutions of higher education have changed many of the world’s economies and societies. Entire societies have been influenced by changes in the availability of higher education to people who once did not have access to it, and many social movements have had their beginnings on college or university campuses. Globalization of economies and cultures continues…

Reviewed by Lenore M. Knight Johnson, Sociology, Trinity Christian College Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, best known for her explorations into the intersections of work, family, and personal life, departs from her previous work and dives into the world of American political divisions in her most recent book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning…

Reviewed by James S. Spiegel, Philosophy and Religion, Taylor University A long-standing criticism of open theism—at least since the emergence of the movement in the 1990s—is its failure to adequately account for God’s permission of evil. Why would God refrain from stopping rapes, murders, and child abuse when he could easily do so? The standard…

Reviewed by Michael J. Kallenberg, Denver, Colorado “But we can also see the illustration now as one thing, now as another. – So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.” – Ludwig WittgensteinLudwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, eds. P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S.…

Reviewed by Michael Buratovich, Biochemistry, Spring Arbor University On July 7, 2016, Answers in Genesis’s Ark Encounter opened to the public. This attraction features an enormous wooden replica of Noah’s Ark, 510 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 51 feet high. The Ark Encounter and the exhibits housed within it argue that the Earth is…

Reviewed by David Brodnax, Sr., History, Trinity Christian College “The American founders read the Bible” (1). This first line in Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers aptly summarizes Daniel L. Dreisbach’s exploration of the Christian scriptures’ theological, literary, and rhetorical impact on the people who created American democracy. With this historical work, Dreisbach, a…