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RICHARD BAUCKHAM, The Blurred Cross: A Writer’s Difficult Journey with God. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2024. Pp. 194. $21.99 (US) I had nearly finished reading The Blurred Cross when I was reminded that I had promised to review it for this journal! That may clue you in to this...read more
JUDITH PAULSEN. A New and Ancient Evangelism: Discovering the Ways God Calls and Sends. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2024. Pp. 207. $21.99 (US) Paulsen pulls no bait and switch in her book A New and Ancient Evangelism. Sadly, we cannot say the same thing for the habits of North...read more
NELSON KRAYBILL. Stuck Together: The Hope of Christian Witness in a Polarized World. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2023. Pp. 240. $18.99 (US) As I write this review, the United States is in the final stretch of yet another divisive presidential election. By the time of its publication, the results of...read more
NANCY HEISEY. From Word to Book: Ten Questions about How We Got the Bible. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2024. Pp. 148. $24.00 (US) I know Dr. Nancy Heisey from my student years at Eastern Mennonite University. She started every class with prayer (no matter whether the course was...read more
ELIZA GRISWOLD. Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024. Pp. 332. $30.00 (U.S.) When a book is published by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, excerpted in The New Yorker, blurbed by Christian luminaries such as Kristin Kobes...read more
PAUL SANTMIRE. EcoActivist Testament: Explorations of Faith and Nature for Fellow Travelers. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022. Pp. 133. $22 (U.S.) EcoActivist Testament is a quick read that discusses, in conversational fashion, a few of the theological and practical lessons from Lutheran theologian H. Paul Santmire’s life-long vocation of connecting...read more
NANCY FRENCH. Ghosted: An American Story. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Books, 2024. Pp. 269. $29.99 (U.S.) Nancy French served as a ghostwriter for conservative political leaders, including five books that made the New York Times best seller list. In Ghosted: An American Story, she candidly tells her own story of evolving...read more
DARRIN W. SNYDER BELOUSEK. Marriage, Scripture, and the Church: Theological Discernment on the Question of Same-Sex Union. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021. 330 pages. ($US 29.99) The questions Belousek wrestle with lie in deep waters. Attitudes on all sides of the issue of same-sex unions have hardened such that...read more
JONATHAN KUTTAB. The Truth Shall Set You Free: The Story of a Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer Working for Peace and Justice in Palestine/Israel. London, UK: Hawakati Publishing, 2023. $US 29.95. Early in The Truth Shall Set You Free, the autobiography of the Palestinian lawyer and human rights activist, Jonathan Kuttab,...read more
MATT AYARS, CHRISTOPHER T. BOUNDS, and CALEB T. FRIEDEMAN. Holiness: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Theology. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2023. Pp. 382. $45.00 (U.S.). In this book, Ayars, Bounds, and Friedeman present an impressive study of holiness. While they are to be commended for their contribution to our...read more
CHENG-TOZUN, DORCAS. Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways. Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2023. Pp. 227. $26.99 (US). In her book, Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul: How to Change the World in Quiet Ways, author Dorcas Cheng-Tozun sets out to shine a...read more
ELESHA J. COFFMAN. Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2024. Pp. 290. $24.99 (U.S.) Elesha Coffman’s Turning Points in American Church History: How Pivotal Events Shaped a Nation and a Faith is a valuable and readable...read more
DENNIS R. EDWARDS. Humility Illuminated: The Biblical Path Back to Christian Character. InterVarsity Press, 2023. pp. 192. $22.00 (U.S.) “The Church in the United States—and perhaps in other places throughout the world—needs to recover, respect, and reenact biblical humility” (1). With this first sentence of the introduction, Edwards sets the...read more
MARK NOLL, C.S. Lewis in America: Readings and Reception, 1935-1947. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2023. Pp 176. $20 (US) I first read C. S. Lewis’s books in the early 1960s. I found the beginning of his space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, on a bookshelf in our home,...read more
JASON PORTERFIELD. Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2022. Pg. 205. $17.99 (U.S) Jason Porterfield’s Fight Like Jesus: How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week takes a day-by-day dive into the most contentious week of Jesus’s life and the ways that peace...read more