Our country, which was born in revolution, has been opposed to all recent revolutions and in most cases has tried to undermine them. Humility before the immensity of the problems faced by many other nations should be the beginning of wisdom in American statesmanship, but this quality has been the one most lacking.
(ENTIRE BOOK) This book summarizes the history of the Christian religion, directing attention to the challenges it has met, the failures of many of its most loyal adherents to live up to "the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," and some of the achievements in seeking to make that calling a reality.
A review of a book that surveys Christologies from Biblical times to the present.
A review of a book by Roger Haight that surveys Christologies from Biblical times to the present.
With the benefit of hindsight, we are forced to conclude that almost any alternative to the Civil War would have been preferable. The cancerous nature of its social causes would not brook any other "solution," it is true. But the wastage of the actual and the potential was enormous.
Timothy Renick reviews two books about holy wars. The Crusades were a Christian holy war against Islam, not unlike the present call against the terrors of that faith.
(ENTIRE BOOK) An introduction to the exciting and fascinating story of the movement of the Christian Gospel in Asian lands. The evidence is slight and fragmentary, but there is enough to indicate that while Paul and other missionaries were converting Greeks, Romans and the barbarian tribes in the west, there was a movement of Christianity to the East – Edessa, Persia, Arbia, Central Asia, China and India before the arrival of western missionaries.
This book, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. by Allen C. Guellzo, gives great insight on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, showing that both were great Americans, together embodying the complicated identity of America.
Henry Ward Beecher, charismatic leader, a brilliant but troubled man who reached the pinnacle of fame only to land in a sexual embarrassment
According to Wells-Barnett, whites resented Afro-Americans who could successfully compete with them economically and advance socially.
A review of In Search of the Early Christians: Selected Essays, by Wayne A. Meeks. Meeks contributes to New Testament studies in his careful and exacting mass of data telling the story of early Jesus movement groups.
Satan may be no doctor of theology, but he is very well trained in philosophy, and has had 6,000 years to practice his craft.
(ENTIRE BOOK) The author intends to present the portrait of a man of extraordinary accomplishment in the fields of religion, politics, linguistics and ecclesiology, but also as an ordinary man whose letters and reported conversations reveal his struggle with the ordinary issues of a person of his time.
(ENTIRE BOOK) A biographical account of many Christian martyrs through the centuries, some not well known in the West. Each article is written by a student of Dr. Balasundaram as a project from his class based on the subject at The United Theological College in Bangalore, India. Despite the shortcomings of the text, the bravery of the great Christian martyrs comes through prominently.
A critique of Elaine Pagels’s Adam, Eve and the Serpent: Pagels’s success will encourage greater recognition of the religious foundations of our civilization, and lead even secularists to face the religious dimensions of their own post-Christian commitments.
(ENTIRE BOOK) An interesting and readable history of Protestantism in America, starting with the Jamestown settlement in Virginia in 1607, and ending in 1965.
(ENTIRE BOOK) An examination of the two primary traditions -- denominational biblical tradition and enlightenment utilitarianism -- that worked together to contribute to the American Revolution and to create the civil religion which marks American culture to this day. The three chapters are by Brauer, Sidney Mead and Robert Bellah.
The reviewer of two lenghthy volumes on the debates preceding the ratification of the U S Constitution reports on religious matters as these surfaced in the debates.
The author provides an extended review of a book that describes how patristic and medieval thinkers dealt with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The reviewer calls it "a jewel among current intellectual endeavors."
Marty comments on several studies of "primitivism" and its place in the life of the church, especially in America.
Niebuhr asks us--in light of what has happened in this century--to re-consider Edward's understanding of the holiness of God.
As respect for the organized church has declined, reverence for Jesus has grown. Within the church, but also far beyond its walls, his person and message are, in the phrase of Augustine, a "beauty ever ancient, ever new," and now he belongs to the world.
(ENTIRE BOOK) A brief historical overview of the development and spread of Christianity, examining the several periods of advance and decline and detailing its various branches.
St. Francis of Assisi stands as an example of the cultured European mind during the Enlightenment period, who caused a tremendous outpouring of cultural activities after his death.
Zachman suggests that the Calvin of recent scholarship emerges as a more intriguing figure than the conventional view that he was a cold, rigidly systematic thinker whose most important book, Institutes of the Christian Religion of 1559, emphasized God's judgment and the doctrine of predestination. Zachman puts Calvin's life and work in context, emphasizing the pastoral concern expressed in his biblical commentaries.
However you choose to explain Luther’s life, it makes sense chiefly as one rooted in and focused by an obsession with God. This God-centered Luther might be a hard sell these days, when people are more comfortable speaking of "spirituality" than of God.