Grant Wacker

A Charge to Keep

History & Biography

“Rosell’s work offers a model for how the story of a theological seminary ought to be written. . . . He shows how the seminary has provided a consistently strong evangelical witness since its founding in 1969, but he also acknowledges painful moments of personal and theological tension. In short, in Rosell’s hands, a distinguished seminary receives the distinguished history it deserves.”

A Life of Listening

History & Biography

“Ford draws readers deep into his own life, a long journey of listening to the one true Voice that quietly yet relentlessly called him to his vocations of poet, artist, writer, evangelist, and mentor. A master stylist, he nudges readers into a rushing stream of arresting verbs, memorable phrases, and gripping stories of loss and redemption. With this book, Ford gives the genre memoir new and unforgettable meaning.”

A Light to the Nations

Evangelism & Missions

“These deeply researched essays cast new light on old questions and raise new questions that the literature in these fields has overlooked. The volume offers a signal contribution to our understanding of the threads that have connected these fields in the past, today, and, without doubt, many years to come.”

An Odd Cross to Bear

History & Biography

“Wills offers the first scholarly biography of Ruth Bell Graham, who may well have been the most visible ‘invisible’ woman among twentieth-century evangelicals. Wills tracks down the elusive details of Bell Graham’s upbringing in a missionary family in China, illumines the theological subtlety of her poetry, and analyzes the paradoxes of her taut yet loving relationship with Billy Graham, her husband of sixty years. The result is a book that is deeply researched, deftly executed, gracefully written, and brilliantly conceived.”

Christian History in Seven Sentences

History & Biography

“Four features of this superb book stand out: First, the writing. It is consistently lucid yet thought-filled, witty yet serious. Second, the erudition. The notes and bibliographic essay alone are worth the price of admission. Third, the conciseness. Jennifer Woodruff Tait brings the entire sweep of (mostly) Western Christian history into view through the deft device of isolating, exegeting, and contextualizing key sentences in the tradition's story. Finally, the import. Foregrounding not only her own Christian faith but also the implications of such faith for the church today, Tait answers the 'So what?' question clearly, decisively, and with a pastor's heart.”

Health and Medicine in the Methodist Tradition

“Holifield’s erudition and graceful writing are on full display in this concise history of the quest for spiritual and physical health in the Wesleyan tradition. With deft strokes, Holifield draws readers into a story that is at once far away and close at hand.”

Ministers of a New Medium

History & Biography

“This gracefully written, deeply researched, and subtly argued volume illumines a strangely under-studied topic: the conjunction of the rise of electronic mass communications, the emergence of two radio celebrities from dramatically different traditions, and their role in the reception of historic Christian faith in mid-twentieth-century America. Of evangelicals such as Charles Fuller, Billy Graham, and Aimee McPherson, we already know a fair amount. But by focusing on ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier, this truly pathbreaking volume opens new avenues in our understanding of American religious history.”

Mother of Modern Evangelicalism

History & Biography

“This deeply researched and lucidly written volume illumines the life of one of the most important but least examined figures in the early history of American (and world) evangelicalism. The continuities between Mears’s multiple contributions and the far more heralded career of Billy Graham, for example, are simply astonishing. Migliazzo writes with empathetic yet not uncritical engagement. He provides a wonderful addition to our understanding of American religious history in general, and to the history of women in the formation of evangelicalism in particular.”

One Lost Soul

History & Biography

“Silliman writes with the flair of a journalist, the eye of an investigative reporter, and the instincts of a highly trained historian. (Off-stage, he actually is all of those things: journalist, reporter, and historian.) Whatever one’s view of Nixon’s policies, Silliman makes a powerful case that he was a man obsessed with his work, tortured by self-doubt, and perennially searching for the God he never could quite find. Silliman’s portrait of Nixon’s religion is a moving and sterling addition to the LRB’s distinguished shelf list.”

People of the Book

Arts & Literature

“David Lyle Jeffrey writes with clarity and power, and his erudition is simply awesome. His text moves deftly from Augustine to Goethe to Flannery O'Connor to Harold Bloom. Jeffrey seems to have read everything ever written about the role of the Bible in the formation of Western culture. Fortunately for us, he wears his learning lightly, as truly first-rate scholars always do. Jeffrey himself surely ranks as one of the premier Christian thinkers of the late twentieth century.”

Reading Evangelicals

History & Biography

“Though evangelicals have never produced a Graham Greene or a Flannery O’Connor, their fiction writers have sold millions of copies and influenced millions of readers. Silliman explores this sprawling yet curiously understudied subculture with a golden pen, genuine empathy, and keen insight. He not only carefully summarizes the narrative of a dozen or so key texts but also draws on social scientists such as Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas to show how they addressed the spiritual needs of their time. In Silliman’s hands the topic receives the sophisticated yet accessible treatment it richly deserves.”

Revising Pentecostal History

History & Biography

“This volume forms one of the most important contributions to the study of (mostly) American Pentecostalism produced in the past decade. Based on deep research in multiple languages, the text is consistently lucid, clearly argued, and responsibly positioned between the heartfelt affection of the insider on one hand and the critical training of the academic outsider on the other. The book’s many virtues include how it shows the ethnic complexity, theological richness, and missional energy of the Scandinavian stream within the Pentecostal tradition. The editors have given us a first-rate anthology entirely worthy of its compelling topic.”

Sightings

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“This collection of one hundred Sightings, crafted by a wide variety scholars, journalists, and pastors, is rather like the proverbial bag of potato chips. Once started, you can’t quit until you have consumed them all. One needs a host of adjectives in order to capture the richness of the offering: lively, lucid, funny, quotable, perceptive, provocative, memorable, and, very often, poignant. Many of the individual essays are worth the price of the book. One third come from Marty’s own hand. They yield a ‘sighting’ of how one of the great minds of Christian history has performed the hard work of spotting and making sense of the extraordinary complexity of contemporary religious trends.”

Songs I Love to Sing

History & Biography

“The genius—and that is the right word—of Edith Blumhofer’s volume is that it weaves three narrative threads into a seamless tapestry. The first is the story of Graham’s beloved soloist, George Beverly Shea. The second follows the ministry of Graham’s choir director and crusade organizer, Cliff Barrows. And the third features not Graham (as Shea quipped, Billy suffered from the ‘malady of no melody’) but rather the songs that the audiences did in fact love to sing, decade after decade. Larry Eskridge, a prize-winning historian of contemporary Christian music, has brought his own considerable skills to the completion of an already superior study. In these pages, students of Graham, Shea, Barrows, and gospel music will find their academic and spiritual interests greatly enriched.”

The Life of Isabel Crawford

History & Biography

“In this fast-paced account of the career of Isabel Crawford, Whiteley brings to life a largely forgotten but remarkably compelling Canadian-American Baptist missionary to the Kiowa Indians in the Oklahoma Territory at the turn of the twentieth century. Crawford emerges as a courageous . . . woman whose determination to proclaim the gospel marched with determination to fight for the preservation of Kiowa culture. Her story is at once inspiring, sobering, and altogether beautiful.”

The Puritan as Yankee

History & Biography

“Mullin's intellectual biography of Horace Bushnell ranks as one of the finest in the entire field of American religious studies. Drawing on an encyclopedic reading of the sources, Mullin shows that Bushnell was both a great imaginer of new things and a great conserver of old things. This volume represents a superior achievement in the clarity of its prose, the breadth of its scholarship, and the force of its argument.”

The Shape of Christian History

History & Biography

“In this elegantly crafted book, Sunquist distills decades of research in the historical materials of global Christianity in order to convey the theological meaning they hold. In them, he finds the concepts of time (creation and incarnation), cross (suffering and mission), and glory (humility and hope). They inform how we tell and, more important, live the story. Rich with quotable lines and pastoral insights, Sunquist gives us a superior book that will serve as a resource for people of faith everywhere.”

The Spiritual Practice of Remembering

Prayer & Spiritual Formation

“Margaret Bendroth shows once again that she is an artist who happens to work with words rather than paint or clay; she is also a Christian and a historian. Bendroth makes a powerful case that the past is never totally past but remains a rich resource for the practice of our faith. The point is less the mastery of this or that 'dry' detail than to see that our spiritual parents often faced questions similar to ours yet gave answers different from ours -- answers more practical, more creative, and more faithful. It pays to pay attention. The book is at once learned, thought-filled, and wonderfully engaging.”

Turning Points in American Church History

World Religions

“More than a dozen academic surveys of American church history grace the field, and each displays distinctive strengths. Yet Coffman’s volume offers the strongest overall combination of focus, clarity, research, conciseness, and wit (yes, wit). I would assign this work before any of the others to virtually any seminary, university, or Christian formation class. It is a truly brilliant contribution.”