Books

We posed this question to eight theologians: Suppose someone told you they haven’t been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years. Now they want to read the most important books in theology that were written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?

We posed this question to eight theologians: Suppose someone told you they haven’t been keeping up with theology for the past 25 years. Now they want to read the most important books in theology that were written during that time. What five titles would you suggest?

Wouldn't it be great if one of the world's best travel writers, after 60 years and fortysome books, went back through her work and notes and plucked out hundreds of haunting, revelatory, shimmering moments— brief encounters that "have been sparks of my work," she might say, "if often only in glimpses—a sighting through a window, a gentle snatch of sound, the touch of a hand . . . fleeting contacts [that] have fuelled my travels down the years, generated my motors, excited my laughter and summoned my sympathies."

Eighty years ago marital counseling was a brand new profession. Today millions of married couples and 40 percent of all engaged couples receive counseling.

Computers are changing the way we think. "Calm, focused, un­distracted, the linear mind is being pushed aside by a new kind of mind that wants and needs to take in and dole out information in short, disjointed, often overlapping bursts—the faster, the better." This is probably not a good thing, says Nicholas Carr.

"No whining!" the plaque on my study wall all but shouts. Steven D. Smith does not whine as he invades a territory frequented by whiners.

Three new books give fresh insights into the complicated history of evangelical Zionism. Together they present a compelling argument that the founding fathers of the modern state of Israel were not just Theodor Herzl and his Zionist Congress, but American and British evangelicals who exercised tremendous political and economic power in the 19th century—power that modern-day evangelicals like Hagee and his allies can only dream of.

Hobgood-Oster, who teaches religion and environmental studies at South­western University, describes her book as "both a religious-environmental history and a contemporary theology."

United Methodist pastor Elise Erik­son Barrett writes for women who have experienced miscarriage, pastors who help couples grapple with it and anyone who has helped a friend, spouse or relative grieve.

A critic once called Clyde Edgerton the "love child of Dave Barry and Flannery O'Connor"—a reflection of the fact that his novels are both dark and funny.

Too much writing about the arts and Christianity is apologetic, explaining why the church should be concerned about artistic expression. Within that category is a lot of writing that voices high-minded generalities about "good art" and "bad art" and about who should and should not be making art.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Leonard Bern­stein was there to celebrate with Beet­hoven's Ninth Symphony. The great chorus did not voice the familiar "Freude, Freude" ("joy, joy") but instead sang "Freiheit, Freiheit" ("freedom, freedom"). That simple, direct, unambiguous mo­ment, however, is not the norm for thinking about freedom.

Anyone who has watched children play knows the spectacularly creative and subversive ways in which they can use playthings, even "safe" religious ones.

When we complain about how busy we are, are we actually boasting of our importance?