Theonomy: A Reformed Critique edited by William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey Zondervan, 413 pages, $15.95 Certainly one of the more interesting religious stories of recent years has been the attraction of growing numbers of evangelical Christians to a variation of Reformed . . . . Continue Reading »
The Scattered Voice: Christians at Odds in the Public Square by James W. Skillen Zondervan, 225 pages In the minds of many people, American evangelicalism is closely identified with right-wing politics. In reality, the political beliefs of American evangelicals are far more varied than is evident . . . . Continue Reading »
Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truthby Mortimer J. AdlerMacMillan, 162 pages, $18.95 For many moderns, “truth in religion” means little more than what is deemed important for the psychological and communal needs of individuals or religious communities. Religion is . . . . Continue Reading »
The First Universal Nation: Leading Indicators and Ideas About the Surge of America in the 1990sBy Ben J. WattenbergThe Free Press, 418 pages, $22.95 Ben Wattenberg is America’s most prominent optimist. He is notoriously reassuring about the condition of what has in his mind become “the first . . . . Continue Reading »
Under God: Religion and American Politicsby Garry WillsSimon and Schuster, 445 pages, $24.95 Garry Wills is an indefatigable iconoclast, and the icons that have felt the sting of his wit are as diverse in time as in form. They include ideas like the facile notion of Lockean hegemony in the . . . . Continue Reading »
Memoirs in Exile: Confessional Hope and Institutional Conflict by John H. Tietjen Fortress Press, 368 pages, $19.95 In the spring of 1969, near the completion of my first year as a student at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, John Tietjen was named the seminary’s president. Most of the . . . . Continue Reading »
In the theological world, Liberation theologies express the yearning for human wholeness . . . . They reread the Bible and reinterpret Christian tradition and theology from their experience of oppression and liberation. This must be the time we have to reread the Bible from the perspective of birds, . . . . Continue Reading »
It is now more than thirty years since C. P. Snow’s Cambridge Rede Lecture, “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” popularized the notion of a dangerous rift between the literary and scientific world views. Snow put the blame on the pessimistic, anti-social, and politically silly . . . . Continue Reading »
Iwould like to have an answer. . . . If someone will be good enough to provide the answer I will gladly take his change of garments to the bathhouse for him.” The bit about the change of garments and the bathhouse is talmudic phraseology from tractate Eruvin (27b), indicating a matter . . . . Continue Reading »