Books

Scholars who devote themselves to interpreting Baptist tradition must contend with a community that is not sure it has one.

The phrase "separation between church and state" does not appear in the Constitution. Nor does the concept originate with Thomas Jefferson.

When people who don’t know a lot about American Christianity hear that I am Mennonite, they sometimes ask if it’s the same as being Mormon. No, I say, and add a stock reply: other than starting with the same letter of the alphabet and being inscrutable to outsiders, the groups are quite different. After reading Joanna Brooks’s memoir The Book of Mormon Girl, I will no longer answer with such alacrity.

The Color of Christ confronts the complicated history of the Christ image and racial politics in the United States. Edward Blum and Paul Harvey's ambitious—some might say audacious—aim is to track “the creating and exercise of racial and religious power through the images of Jesus and how that power has been experienced by everyday people.”

By now, we are all familiar with what liberation theology and Catholic social teaching have called the Bible’s “preferential option for the poor.” But what about a biblical preferential option for the rebel?  In a new book by biblical scholar Yoram Hazony called The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture—which I learned about from Jonathan Yudelman’s review—the story of Cain and Abel receives a reading different from any I have heard.

Fleming Rutledge is the most interesting preacher today working the fault line between the mainline churches and evangelicalism. Throughout this remarkable collection of Old Testament sermons she calls for mainliners and evangelicals to realize their common identity in Christ for the sake of our mutual mission in the world.

Our fall books issue's reviews include Sam Wells on Jürgen Moltmann, William H. Willimon on Lamin Sanneh, Shirley Showalter on Rhoda Janzen and others.

Our fall books issue includes the following annotated lists of top new titles: New Testament, practical theology and world Christianity/American religion.