Books

The U.S. would seem to be prime ground for deep and chronic social conflict. Yet the evidence indicates that Americans get along fairly well in spite of having many different religions, including the growing number who subscribe to "no religion."

If you share my concern about the theological thinness of much of the current craze of construing Christianity as a practice, get Roger Owens's book. Even more, if you care about the theological identity of the church, you will find The Shape of Participation to be this decade's finest work of ecclesiology.

Creation has long been a neglected child in biblical-theological studies; it is ground often left to creationists and naysayers. Only in recent years has the Bible's creation theology been addressed in a major way, not least because of the impact of the environmental movement.

Franzen has turned his considerable novelistic talents to a kind of inquisito­rial examination of the American ideal of freedom. He shows how freedom is negatively construed—focused on what we are free from and not on what freedom might be for, what worthy ends it might be used to pursue.

Our fall books issue includes reviews by Robert Westbrook, Susan R. Garrett, Stanley Hauerwas, Randall Balmer, Anne Blue Wills, Valerie Weaver-Zercher, Shirley Showalter, Amy Frykholm and Brian Doyle.

Before his untimely death in Novem­ber of 2008, William Placher was a celebrated teacher who exercised his gifts of exceptional insight and clarity of expression not only in the classroom but also in his many books, book chapters and edited works. One project in progress at the time of his passing was a biblical commentary series authored by well-respected theologians and published by Westminster John Knox.