What an odd spring we have all had! Amid all the clamor about viruses and social distancing, one of the unintended benefits of quarantine has been increased free time (at least for some of us). Let’s not waste such a moment with insipid social media scrolling, binge-watching old (or new) television series, or shallow reading (what Charlotte Mason referred to as twaddle). Instead, we should steward this moment well with good books and fulfilling activities. Below we have provided some of our favorite reads from recent months that address a wide range of topics. If you have a good suggestion for reading, please leave us a short review in the comment section.
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Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz, The American Puritans (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2020), 208 pages.
While teaching a history of American Christianity course at Welch College recently, I was reminded of the American Puritans’ vibrant spirituality. In The American Puritans, Dustin Benge and Nate Pickowicz examine the life and spirituality of nine American Puritans. The chapters on John Eliot, missionary to the Algonquin Indians, and Anne Bradstreet (the first published female American poet) were the most interesting chapters to me. Both Eliot and Bradstreet embody the best qualities of the Puritans with their ardent love for God and deep desire to bring Him glory. These brief biographies give readers a small taste of the best parts of American Puritanism and whets their appetite for more.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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John A. D’Elia, A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of Evangelical Scholarship in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 304 pages.
I was introduced to George Eldon Ladd’s work through his A Theology of the New Testament, but I knew little about the life of this renowned scholar. John A. D’Elia, in this incredibly insightful book, lays bare Ladd’s life in all of its candidness. I think this book is especially provocative and helpful for Christians that may be interested in a career in higher education. D’Elia seeks to contextualize Ladd’s life, his upbringing, and theological convictions, especially highlighting the tension between Ladd’s hubris and his important contribution to New Testament studies. This book serves as a warning of the pitfalls and temptations in the intellectual life. Regardless of one’s profession, I highly recommend this biography.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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J. Ryan Davidson, Green Pastures: A Primer on the Ordinary Means of Grace (Palmdale, CA: RBAP, 2019), 107 pages.
What if the primary means that God uses to bring about conversion and sanctification are the ministry of the Word, the ordinances, and prayer? In Green Pastures: A Primer on the Ordinary Means of Grace,J. Ryan Davidson builds a biblical case for ordinary means of grace as the God-ordained means for conversion and sanctification. Davidson defines the means of grace as “the instruments Christ ordinarily uses to birth and strengthen the faith of the elect as He is present among them” (20). Or, to quote Charles Hodge, which Davidson does, these are the “ordinary channels of grace, i.e., of the supernatural influences of the Holy Spirit to the souls of men” (27).
While I don’t share Davidson’s Calvinist Baptist soteriology, I agree wholeheartedly with him on the role of the ordinary means of grace in the life of the believer and the ministry of the Church. The Lord has given us everything necessary for life and godliness in the ordinary means of grace, which are enlivened by the work of the Spirit, yet we’re so tempted to pursue other methods and other means. How desperately American evangelicals need to return to the ordinary means of grace.
—Recommended by Jesse Owens
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William C. Davis, The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy Modern War Studies (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 224 pages.
William Davis’s 1996 monograph, The Cause Lost, is an intriguing blend of military and political history with biography woven throughout. Davis’s goal is to peel back the layers of interlocking myth surrounding the Civil War and more specifically the Confederacy, arguing that the Confederates were “Americans in the act of nation-building” (ix). Thus, according to him, Jefferson Davis and the other Confederates are understandable, and sometimes even honorable, even with their shortfalls. While Davis advocates getting to the truth beneath the myths of the Confederacy, he also cautions that myth is inevitable and can even be appreciated as an attempt by Southerners to exonerate the “South from any responsibility in bringing on the conflict” so that they could “cope with defeat” (x, 177).
Davis is an enjoyable author to read. His research focuses on collected papers of individuals and military records. However, he also has a strong command of the secondary literature and film representations of the war, which he highlights at the end of the book. He may come across as apologetic for the Confederacy, but he tries to strike a balance that honors both sides while pointing out their failures. This work will appeal to more than just Civil War buffs. In our current culture of monument destruction, Davis provides an important and historically based reflection on the leaders and motives of the Confederacy.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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Charles J. Finger, Tales from Silver Lands (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1924), 207 pages.
The 1925 Newberry Medal winner, Tales from Silver Lands, contains nineteen folktales. It is similar to what you might expect from Hans Christian Anderson, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, or Andrew Lang, except that these stories originate in the Americas rather than in Europe. Most stories are approximately ten pages or less, making them easily digestible. At times, some elements within these stories may strike Western readers as unfamiliar but others will resonate with our own cultural tradition. As an example, one folktale reminded me specifically of one of Scottish author George MacDonald’s short stories. In any case, Tales from Silver Lands, which is a fun and interesting read, may interest children, as well as the childlike.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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John F. Kilner, Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 414 pages.
The terms identity and imago Dei rank high among evangelical buzzwords right now. Yet, too often, we haven’t taken a critical look at how we’ve understood these concepts. In a thoroughly researched volume, John Kilner explores some of the misconceptions concerning the image of God in man. Chief among these is whether this image itself can be broken or diminished. As Kilner notes, people often define the imago Dei by its functions, e.g., relationship, ruling, reason. Yet, as Kilner asks, what happens if someone cannot participate in these functions due to limitations not owing to their personal sin? Are they then made less in the image of God? While one may not agree with all of Kilner’s observations, his historical survey of theological positions and his own perspective are a breath of fresh air to this conversation.
—Recommended by Christopher Talbot
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Jonathan Leeman, One Assembly: Rethinking the Multisite and Multiservice Church Models (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 150 pages.
Jonathan Leeman makes a compelling argument that a church, based on the Greek word ekklēsia in the New Testament, is one gathering of believers under one administration. Therefore, multisite and multiservice church models are essentially as many churches as they have congregations. Since local churches are “earthly, in-time outposts of a glorious heavenly and eschatological reality,” Leeman contends that each individual church must come together as one assembly to signify properly the future heavenly assembly (97). The most helpful part of One Assembly was not Leeman’s lexicographical study on ekklēsia but rather the alternatives that he suggests for churches that have reached maximum capacity. Instead of opening another site across town or adding a service, Leeman paints a beautiful picture of churches helping one another. I highly recommend this book for any church leader. It will challenge you to think biblically, even if you disagree, about the purpose of the church.
—Recommended by Zach Vickery
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Anne Marrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea (New York: Random House, 1955), 77 pages.
I was delighted that Anne Marrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea dropped into my life in an especially busy season when I needed a bit of rest. In poignant prose, wife to Charles Lindbergh, mother of five children, and an accomplished aviator herself, Anne Lindbergh reflects on the peculiar difficulties and gifts of family life for the modern (well—1950s) woman. Her insights into solitude, simplicity, and the inevitable growth and change of our closest relationships continue to be deeply relevant, even sixty-five years later. Any woman will find something thought provoking and soul nourishing upon which to reflect in Lindbergh’s short work.
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuniga
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Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 372 pages.
Dartmouth historian Bethany Moreton’s, To Serve God and Wal-Mart,is a fascinating study of the interrelated late-twentieth-century history of the South, evangelicalism, and the birth of the service industry. She argues that Sam Walton built Wal-Mart into an international business from its home in the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas because he and other executives were attentive to the sensibilities of Populist southern evangelicals.
Importantly, the middle-aged mothers who staffed Wal-Mart played a key role in shaping the developing service industry, emphasizing servant leadership and personable service in a clean, well lit, but stripped-down environment. The connections that Moreton draws between Wal-Mart executives and the burgeoning mega-church movement are also revealing, showing that business and advertising models were married with parachurch evangelical methods like those developed by the Jesus Movement and Campus Crusade for Christ. While her analysis is intriguing, her grasp of broader evangelical and Christian history affects her success, leaving me to draw different conclusions than she does. Still, this book is a great read for anyone interested in twentieth-century religious and economic history with a strong emphasis on women.
—Recommended by Phillip T. Morgan
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J. C. Ryle, Warnings to the Churches (Carlisle: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), 173.
This book is a collection of addresses and articles by J. C. Ryle concerning various matters of the church. Though Ryle has been dead for over a century now, the warnings found in this book remain just as relevant as when he originally gave them. Many of the warnings concern sound doctrine, while others focus on the integrity and fallibility of ministers. He discusses how easily false doctrine can find its way into the church if we do not protect against it and emphasizes that misplaced and misguided motives easily lead ministers to fall. Warnings to the Churches is a great read for Christian leaders who want to be challenged to lead the church the way that God intended.
—Recommended by Zach Vickery
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Harold Senkbeil, The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor’s Heart (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2019), 312 pages.
Several months ago, this 2019 book award winner was featured in a post on the Commission for Theological Integrity website and has since been included on the Missouri Free Will Baptist book club list for 2020, prompting me to check it out. I was not disappointed. Though Senkbeil is a Lutheran, which comes across strongly in his discussion on the role of the sacraments in pastoral care, the rest of what he says is profoundly biblical and helpful in our modern ministry context. Senkbeil is trying to reconnect pastors with the themes of Scripture—especially the pastor as shepherd. Simultaneously, Senkbeil is drawing us into a long tradition in the Christian church of seeing pastoral work as soul-care and soul-cure. By the former, he means providing ongoing spiritual treatment for a chronic condition. By the latter, he means dealing with an acute need. Pastors certainly find themselves doing both. The implication of the book is that we have not spent enough time as shepherds performing soul care (which perhaps explains the increased need for soul cure later).
Senkbeil fundamentally rejects any vision of pastoral ministry that reinforces the Messiah-complex that can plague the heart of proud pastors. In fact, he rigorously emphasizes that shepherds can give others only what they have first been given (and continue to be given) by God through Christ. This is a beautiful publication with many illustrations (written and drawn) from agricultural life, which Senkbeil knew as a young man. I heartily commend this work.
—Recommended by W. Jackson Watts
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James K. A. Smith, On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2019), 256 pages.
In the introduction to James K. A. Smith’s most recent publication, he asserts that his book is not a biography but a journey Home alongside the Church Father he knows so well. “Here’s a Christianity to consider before you stop believing,” he explains (11). Smith uses this journey metaphor throughout the book as he examines the basic hungers of the human heart, noting that Augustine seemingly meets us at every sorry detour. Smith is a philosopher by trade and, although he can’t quite hide the fact, the book remains accessible to those who haven’t swum in the deep end of philosophy lately. It is a probing book for believer, doubter, and skeptic alike.
—Recommended by Rebekah Zuniga
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Bruce Waltke, Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 247 pages.
Some years ago, I was in a seminary library and happened to notice this title by eminent Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke. I was intrigued by the title but didn’t have the opportunity to read it. Still, I wondered what an academic theologian had to say on a subject as popular and practical as finding God’s will. Our Free Will Baptist book club here in Missouri included Waltke’s book on this year’s list, and I’m so glad. Of all the many topics that need demystifying, discerning and doing God’s will is one of them.
In this accessible book, Waltke explains that too often Christians have been guilty of trying to divine God’s purpose as if they were pagan peoples of the past. He points to modern, blasphemous practices such as astrology, all the way to more common evangelical practices such as using Old Testament narrative to justify “putting out a fleece.” Waltke pushes back on these practices exegetically and theologically, and he offers his own six-step program for finding God’s will. Aside from a few pages on God’s sovereignty, as Waltke understands it, I can happily endorse everything I read here. Indeed, many of our students and adults alike would benefit by discarding pietistic and mystical notions of God’s will and learning from the text of Scripture itself. Waltke’s book can aid one in doing just that.
—Recommended by W. Jackson Watts
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Albert Wolters, Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 155 pages.
The Reformed tradition, whether Calvinist or Arminian, speaks often of salvation history in terms of creation, fall, and redemption. Creation Regained, originally published in 1985, gives classic and effective articulation of these doctrines. The book begins with an introduction on worldview, after which it gives a chapter to each of the key doctrines mentioned above.
Its fifth and final chapter provides a helpful distinction between structure and direction, a key component undergirding a Reformed theology: Although sin has corrupted the direction of the world, it has not corrupted its underlying (ontological) structure. In consideration of this distinction, a Reformed theology of culture eschews both cultural retreat and accommodation, speaking instead of cultural renewal.
Although some readers may find concepts such as worldview, creation, fall, and redemption to be familiar territory, it is familiar due partly to the influence of Wolters’s book. Even so, his exposition of structure and direction is less familiar but no less worthy and deserving of our reflection.
—Recommended by Matthew Steven Bracey
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