A taste of the Christian academic vocation and the greenhouse community as described in “Restoring the Soul of the University.”Read more…
Pray for Tom’s Sabbatical
As of yesterday, Tom Grosh is officially on a well-earned sabbatical to finish his own dissertation; he’s excited to return to the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) in June.Read more…
Help Tom Finish His Dissertation and You Could Win a Free Book
Take a short survey on how/what you’ve learned about “calling” by December 22, and be entered to win a free book.Read more…
Book Response: GloboChrist, by Carl Raschke
Although I appreciate the “glocal” vision of an indigenizing and incarnational “GloboChrist,” I see the global incarnated in the local and local informing the global in local communities which richly embody the Body of Christ.Read more…
Book Response: The Courage to Be Protestant, by David F. Wells
Overall I appreciate that instead of attempting to summarize and update fifteen years of intense writing (including five Eerdmans publications); Wells delivered the essence of his work. But I wished from the beginning that he included a limited number of footnotes and/or recommendations for further reading beyond references to his previous titles.Read more…
Book Response: Popcultured
Steve Turner begins “Popcultured: Thinking Christianly About Style, Media and Entertainment” by asserting that we have all become “popcultured.” Read more…
Book Response: Hollywood Worldviews, by Brian Godawa
“I am a screenwriter. . . . If you don’t have a good story, you won’t have a good movie, no matter who is acting in it or lighting it or directing it or producing it. If the story doesn’t work, the movie doesn’t work” (9). Yes, the writer creates and “the story is king” (10).Read more…
Book Response: Eyes Wide Open, by William Romanowski
Going beyond Christian consumption of and ghettoization of 20th century popular, mass art requires: “An engaged, critical, and productive involvement with the popular arts—grounded in a faith vision that encompasses all of life and culture” (14).Read more…
Book Response: Desiring the Kingdom, by James K. A. Smith
Smith’s “core claim . . . is that liturgies—whether ‘sacred’ or ‘secular’—shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. . . . [i.e.,] liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love” (25)Read more…
Book Response: Everyday Theology
Everyday Theology embodies the “theological lay of the cultural land” (7) and “Christian primer for cultural literacy” (11) I desire to inspire among members of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Emerging Scholars NetworkRead more…
Book Response: To Change the World, by James Davison Hunter
To Change the World has been hailed as “a seminal book on cultural formation and change, particularly insightful on how Christians (primarily evangelical) have understood and misunderstood culture change over the past 40 years or so” (Micheal Hickerson. Changing the World with James Davison Hunter. Emerging Scholars Network Blog, 8/2/2010). Read more…
Book Response: He Shines in All That’s Fair, by Richard Mouw
In “He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace,” Richard Mouw offers a healthy form of “commonness,” “Seeking the Common Good,” and “preserv[ing] an area of mystery regarding God’s dealings with humankind” (90).Read more…
Book Response: Foolishness to the Greeks, by Lesslie Newbigin
The book’s theme remains one of my primary life concerns, “What would be involved in a missionary encounter between the gospel and this whole way of perceiving, thinking, and living that we call ‘modern Western culture’”? (1) Read more…
Book Response: The Presence of the Kingdom, 2nd Ed
What a surprise to find in The Presence of the Kingdom, 2nd Edition (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmes & Howard Publishers, Inc., 1989), the foundation for Jacques Ellul’s perspective.Read more…
Book Response: Christless Christianity, by Michael Horton
In Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008), Michael Horton stands against Satan’s active opposition to the true and clear proclamation of the Gospel in the United States of America.Read more…
Book Response: Christ and Culture Revisited, by D. A. Carson
D.A. Carson summarizes and critiques H. Richard Niebuhr’s typology in an excellent manner. By doing such he sets up the importance of biblical theology as the lens for the Evangelical culture engagement.Read more…
Book Response: Christ and Culture, by H. Richard Niebuhr
Christ and Culture’s ideal-typical method offers a platform to begin a conversation about “The Enduring Problem” regarding “the relations of Christianity and civilization” (1).Read more…
Book Response: Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, by James K. A. Smith
Truly the church is an apologetic in which one is renewed and transformed by God as part of a people living in a disciplined, liturgical community (28-30, 25, 99) across particular times and places to interact with “the lens of an interpretive framework governed by ultimate beliefs” through the Scriptures by the sanctification of the Spirit (54-56).Read more…
How should Christians approach catechism?
Getting back to basics. A consideration of The Heidelberg Catechism.Read more…
Book Response: Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful
“Why? is the proper question with which to begin our exploration of the church’s teaching ministry” (20).Read more…
Book Response: Almost Christian, by Kenda Creasy Dean
In her reflective and research-filled work, Dean disturbingly explores how the religiosity of American teenagers reflects “their parents’ religious devotion (or lack thereof) and, by extension, that of their congregations” (3-4).Read more…
Win a free ebook: Strong and Weak, by Andy Crouch
The Emerging Scholars Network is delighted to give away 5 free e-books of Andy Crouch’s Strong and Weak . . . Enter for a drawing of an e-book.Read more…
Book Response: Soul Searching
Since Soul Searching’s publication, I have recommended that parents, church leadership teams and youth/campus ministers prayerfully read, consider, and develop structural adjustments taking into consideration “Summary Interpretation: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” (161-71) and the “Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Observations and Implications of NSYR (National Study of Youth and Religion) Findings for Religious Communities and Youth Workers” (259-271).Read more…
Teaser: Strong and Weak, by Andy Crouch
Andy Crouch begins “Strong and Weak” (2016) by offering the two questions that “haunt every human life, and every human community. . . .”Read more…