Reformed Books: “Our goal is to honor Christ by equipping Christians in the truth by pointing you to the finest classic and contemporary resources of historical Reformed orthodoxy.”
Puritan Library: More Bible teaching than most of us could read in a lifetime.
David Nilsen reviews Michael Horton’s book, Christless Christianity:
One famous Evangelical pastor has recently made popular the phrase, “deeds, not creeds.” Evangelicals have their doctrine right, this pastor tells us, they just aren’t living it. Against such sentiments, Dr. Horton argues that many Evangelicals actually do not have their doctrine right, or at least they aren’t preaching it correctly. Evangelicals have confused the important categories of Law and Gospel, turning the Gospel message (which is supposed to be the good news of something that Christ has already done for us), into the Gospel program. If you’ll only live out the Gospel (by reading your Bible every day, joining a certain group at church, and learning how to be a Christ-like example to others), you’ll be healthy, wealthy and wise. The question to be answered is, “What would Jesus do?” rather than, “What has Jesus done?”
There’s a book in the works from Gov. Sarah Palin to describe her life in Alaska and her experiences in presidential politics. She will be writing the book herself, working with a more experienced co-author. As far as I know, the co-author will not be Franklin Graham, pictured with Mrs. Palin below.
This could happen to you.
Hunter Baker reviews a biography on Francis Schaeffer. He writes about Schaeffer:
The man who cared enough to tutor a little boy with Down Syndrome is also the man who told his church in St. Louis that he would resign if a black person ever came to his church and felt unwelcome. The budding intellectual who answered the existential questions of college students in Europe is also the agitator who took up the cause of the unborn and became arguably the finest shaper of and advocate for a potent evangelical critique of modern culture.
Or enjoy them for the first time through the Moody Classics series.
On Discerning Reader, Trevin Wax recommends a new book by Scot McKnight called, Fasting.
The greatest strength of the book is McKnight’s picture of fasting as a response, never an instrumental practice in which we try to receive something. We go without food because of what has taken place in our hearts.
The book lays out the different ways that fasting serves a response. It can be an expression of repentance, a response to a moment in which we feel we must earnestly seek God, a response to grief (McKnight sees grief as the thread that connects all the various fasting practices). Fasting can sometimes be a response to our need for spiritual discipline, a response to our corporate life together, even a response to poverty and injustice.
Glenn Lucke recommends a new book by Tullian Tchividjian, the new pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian, called Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the world by being different. He says it’s a very useful tool for standing out for Christ in appropriate ways.
From the forward, Tim Keller, a great pastor and author, states, “Here you will learn how we must contextualize, how we Christians should be as active in Hollywood, Wall Street, Greenwich Village, and Harvard Square (if not more) than the halls of Washington, DC. And yet, there are ringing calls to form a distinct, ‘thick’ Christian counter-culture as perhaps the ultimate witness to the presence of the future, the coming of the Kingdom.”
Our friend Rev. Paul T. McCain, Publisher at Concordia Publishing House, directs our attention to this article about novelist, biographer and former atheist A. N. Wilson, who has now embraced faith (of some sort; it seems a little vague) again.
I first became aware of Wilson some years back, when he published a critically acclaimed biography of C. S. Lewis. Fans of Lewis, and people who actually knew the man, were less enthusiastic. It was reported in the Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society that Lewis’ stepson Douglas Gresham was considering suing Wilson on behalf of the estate.
As it turned out, Wilson was losing his Christian faith precisely during the period when he was writing that book. And now he’s got it back. Continue reading A. N. Wilson’s re-conversion, plus some uncharitable moralizing from me
The School Library Journal is talking up sixteen of last year’s best juvenile books in a type of book-on-book row, judged by fifteen authors of such books. I assume all conflicts of interest have been mitigated. Two of the matches have been judged so far. The Journal copied their idea from The Morning News, which has done a book battle for a few years.
Author and book battle judge Roger Sutton notes, “Much as we might wish it, books ain’t basketball. The thing about March Madness, which I only dimly comprehend after watching the last ten minutes of Michigan State over Connecticut, is that everybody is playing the same game. So not so with books, but given that proviso, let’s begin.”
Fair enough.