Reviews

Reviewed by Sean F. Evans, Political Science, Union University In The Good of Politics, James Skillen argues that politics is not a necessary evil in our fallen world but an essential component of our Christian calling and a means to create a more just social order. By promoting a more positive view of politics, Skillen…

Reviewed by Douglas V. Henry, Great Texts Program, Baylor University Imagine that most of the major achievements of the modern age grew out of a fundamentally flawed assumption about human understanding. Suppose that the assumption in question, for all the evident successes built upon it, gave rise to circumstances in which alienation from nature, isolation…

Reviewed by Paul R. House, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University Editing a good festschrift is analogous to integrating faith and learning in a university context. Both must balance research and application. They must show deference to the past while holding out hope for the future. Milestones must be duly noted without leaving the impression that…

Reviewed by Todd C. Ream, Higher Education and Student Development, Taylor University and Aaron Morrison, Student Development, Nebraska Wesleyan University Power is not what it used to be. At a point in time we now vaguely remember, a handful of newspapers provided an authoritative look at the affairs of the day. Such details were then…

Reviewed by Robert C. Bishop, Philosophy and History of Science, Wheaton College Shaun Henson’s God and Natural Order: Physics, Philosophy and Theology should be praised for pursuing science-theology relations from a thoroughly Trinitarian perspective rather than the usual bland, generic monotheism. As Colin Gunton has diagnosed, many problems in Christian engagement with creation and the…

Reviewed by Matthew Hill, History, Liberty University Much ink has been spilled in recent years rediscovering many “forgotten founders” and arguing for a more diversified range of ideas of the founders on church and state issues. Excessive devotion to the likes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison as well…

Reviewed by Michael Buratovich, Biochemistry, Spring Arbor University Stephen C. Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, is one of the most prolific and articulate proponents of the theory of Intelligent Design (ID), which holds that certain features of the universe and living things are best explained by an intelligent cause…

Reviewed by Barry Hankins, History, Baylor University Molly Worthen has given us the first intellectual history of twentieth-century American evangelicalism. Apostles of Reason should be a standard for the foreseeable future and take its place alongside other fine books such as Joel Carpenter’s Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism and Darren Dochuk’s From…

Reviewed by Pamela Jordan-Long, The Center for the Study of C. S. Lewis & Friends, Taylor University Of making many books about C. S. Lewis there is no end. Even Lewisian scholars say that everything there is to say about Lewis has already been said. Yet, remarkably, Alister McGrath’s The Intellectual World of C. S.…

Reviewed by Philip Smith, Christian Studies, George Fox University Virtues and Their Vices is a collection of twenty two essays, freshly written for this volume, addressing that region of ethical theory called “virtue theory.” Most of the authors are philosophers, with two essays contributed by psychologists and one by a theologian. Some of the essays…

Reviewed by Nathan Alleman, Educational Administration, Baylor University Winston Churchill famously said, “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”393 House of Commons Debate, 5, s. 403 (October 28, 1943). The late Prime Minister’s words came to mind as I read Margaret Grubiak’s intriguing book, White Elephants on Campus: The Decline of the…

Reviewed by Steven McMullen, Economics, Management and Accounting, Hope College There are a cluster of interesting questions at the intersection of Christianity and economics, some of which go to the core of the disciplines of economics and theology. What is economic justice? How should Christians approach poverty? What is the role of the Church in…

Reviewed by Donald L. Cassell, Jr., Senior Fellow, Africa Portfolio, Sagamore Institute Susan VanZanten is a literary scholar and professor at Seattle Pacific University. She has written an autobiography that reads like a bildungsroman, a story of formation and growth. Here the growth is not necessarily psychological and moral, but intellectual and unexpectedly emotional. There…

Reviewed by Sarita D. Gallagher, Missiology, George Fox University In many ways Scott W. Sunquist’s text, Understanding Christian Mission: Participation in Suffering and Glory, is the text for which missiologists and mission practitioners have been waiting. In Sunquist’s three-part exploration of mission history, theology, and practice, the author presents a well researched, ecumenical, and theologically…

Reviewed by Arlin C. Migliazzo, History, Whitworth University For more than four decades Professor George M. Marsden has modeled for many of us in the academy the winsome synergy possible between disciplinary rigor and Christian faith assumptions. From his studies of fundamentalism through his critiques of American higher education, to his Bancroft Prize-winning biography of…

Reviewed by Fred Van Geest, Political Science, Bethel University The essays in Christian Political Witness were presented at the 2013 Wheaton Theology Conference at Wheaton College in Illinois. Of the twelve contributors, eleven have a background in theology and one is an historian (Mark Noll). Not surprisingly, the essays are largely theological in nature and…

Reviewed by Todd E. Johnson, Theological Director, Brehm Center for Worship Theology and the Arts, Fuller Theological Seminary Michael Bauer identifies the target at which this volume is aimed in the Introduction. Bauer writes, “This book is an attempt to lay a foundation for that vital work (arts ministry) by grounding it in the insights…

Reviewed by David Lyle Jeffrey, Literature and the Humanities, Baylor University Anyone who has read so much as one of her many books knows that Michelle P. Brown, Curator Emerita of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library and Professor of Medieval Manuscript Studies and History of the Book at the University of London, is no…

Reviewed by Steven W. Wood, Theatre and Communication, Indiana Wesleyan University Jill Stevenson has made a considerable contribution to evangelical theatre scholars and practitioners – and the larger academia interested in performance studies, theatre criticism, and American theatre historiography – by coining the term “evangelical dramaturgy” (4). American evangelical dramaturgy, Stevenson argues, is a broad-reaching…

Reviewed by Mary M. Brown, English, Indiana Wesleyan University All of the five contributors to Making Nothing Happen: Five Poets Explore Faith and Spirituality consider themselves both theologians and poets. Their formal educations and professions favor their positions in theology, but their practice confirms their place in the world of poetry. Gavin D’Costa, Eleanor Nesbitt,…