Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. Brazos Press, 2021. In 2016, Beth Allison Barr’s husband lost his job as a youth pastor, a position he had held for more than fourteen years. The reason? He dared challenge the church’s complementarian stance on women in ministry. The church […]
review
According to Alisa Childers, People Like Me Are Going to Hell: A Review of Another Gospel?
I just finished reading Alisa Childers’ book Another Gospel?. It is a hugely popular book that came out a year ago and has almost two thousand Amazon.com reviews. As I will note briefly below, it does have some diamonds embedded in the coal. But there is a lot of coal. Indeed, this is one of […]
The Early Reviews of Jesus Loves Canaanites
Jesus Loves Canaanites has now been out for 5 weeks and while a few brief reviews have been posted at Goodreads and Amazon, the first blog review was posted today by J.W. Wartick at his Reconstructing Faith blog. You can read it here: Genocide and the Challenge of Apologetics: Randal Rauser’s “Jesus Loves the Canaanites”
Canadian Primal: A Review
Mark Dickinson. Canadian Primal: Poets, Places, and the Music of Meaning. McGill-Queens University Press, 2021. It was a rainy afternoon in February in the late 1990s and I was jogging by Fort Langley (east of Vancouver). The clouds had been socked in heavy and dark for days blocking out the spectacular, jagged peaks of the North Shore […]
Christianity Vindicated?: A Review of The Rational Faith Part 2
Jason A. Crook. The Rational Faith: A Review of the Evidence for Christianity. 2020, 267 pp. If you have read the first installment of my review of Jason Crook’s new book The Rational Faith (for Part 1 see here) then you know that I got sidetracked by outlining my disagreement with the way Crook sets up […]
The Decline into Secularism Reconsidered: A Review of The Rational Faith Part 1
Jason A. Crook. The Rational Faith: A Review of the Evidence for Christianity. 2020, 267 pp. In his new book The Rational Faith, Jason Crook, an international business lawyer by trade, turns his attention to developing an apologetic of the Christian faith. The book consists of nine chapters and seeks to build a systematic apologetic that Christianity […]
Atheist Polemic for Pastor Dan: A Review of God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction
Dan Barker. God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction. New York: Sterling, 2016. At the beginning of chapter 2 of his bestselling book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins infamously describes God as “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, […]
How Do You Hear God’s Voice? A Review of God Calling: Spiritual Direction for People in the Real World
Jeffrey J. Kilmartin. God Calling: Spiritual Direction for People in the Real World. Wipf and Stock, 2020. God Calling by Jeffrey Kilmartin is a spirited and somewhat iconoclastic survey of a range of topics pertaining to spiritual direction such as discerning God’s will, identifying one’s calling, praying effectively, pursuing spiritual disciplines, and engaging in spiritual […]
An Atheist Review of Conversations with My Inner Atheist
The first review for Conversations with My Inner Atheist is out. Counter Apologist got a copy yesterday and reviewed it this morning. Wowsers, that’s fast. It’s also a very positive review. This is important because the purpose of the book is to steelman objections to my beliefs, so the fact that my exercise passed muster with […]
Everyday Apologetics: A Review
Paul Chamberlain and Chris Price, eds. Everyday Apologetics: Answering common objections to the Christian faith. Lexham Press, 2020. In his foreword to Everyday Apologetics, Sean McDowell flags three virtues: accessibility, practicality, and a gentle, kind tone (xi). That’s a fair assessment. While there are many introductory books in apologetics, Everyday Apologetics strikes a fine balance in these […]
Church Doctrine & the Bible: A Review
David Instone-Brewer. Church Doctrine & the Bible. Scripture in Context. Lexham Press, 2020. The latest entry in the Lexham Press “Scripture in Context” series focuses on the relationship between Christian doctrines and the Bible. Throughout the book, David Instone-Brewer, a research fellow at Tyndale House and specialist in Judaism in the first century, takes his knowledge […]
Is Jesus Human and Not Divine? A Review
Dale Tuggy and Christopher M. Date, Is Jesus Human and Not Divine? A Debate. Essential Christian Debates. Apollo, PA: Areopagus, 2020. As the old joke goes, after the Sunday school teacher asks, “Okay children, who left the cap off the glue?” the answer comes back in unison: “Jesus!” You get it, right? Jesus is always the […]
The Questionable Comfort of Impotent Love: A Review of God Can’t
Thomas Jay Oord. God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils. SacraSage Press, 2020. “Why God?” It is a question that has been asked by countless people. “Why did you allow me to get cancer?” “Why do you allow children to starve?” “Why do you allow a pandemic like […]
Inspired Imperfection: A Review
Gregory A. Boyd. Inspired Imperfection: How the Bible’s Problems Enhance Its Authority (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2020). The postscript to Gregory Boyd’s new book Inspired Imperfection tells the story of a woman whose beloved vase was broken into several pieces. Devastated, she initially sought a restorer who might bring the ceramic back to its original, pristine condition. However, even the […]
