Mark Noll

6 Modern Myths About Christianity & Western Civilization

Apologetics

“Philip Sampson's altogether helpful book gently deflates many of the important myths of modern Western culture. Sampson first patiently unfolds these myths--like the heroism of Galileo versus the benighted tyranny of the Catholic Church or the mindless colonialism of Christian missionaries versus the noble savagery of indigenous peoples. Then he shows that the myths rest not on facts or reasoning but on persistently repeated stories. For the sharpening of thinking, especially among those who suspect that Christianity has never been as repressive as often claimed, this is illuminating reading at its best.”

A Brief History of Sunday

History & Biography

“As he has in many other books, Justo González here puts to excellent use his singular combination of biblical, historical, theological, ecumenical, and cultural wisdom to explore a subject at the heart of individual Christian life, corporate Christian community, and public Christian witness. As it tracks variations, shifts, and controversies in 'Sabbath' observance from pre-Christian days to the present, this learned but wonderfully accessible book explains why corporate worship on 'the Lord's day' should still be as encouraging as it has been so consistently for so many in the past.”

A Companion to the Mercersburg Theology

Theology

“In their own day, the theologians at Mercersburg received scant attention. Over the last fifty years, with the assistance of insightful works like this Companion, that situation has been reversed—which has meant both better history and deeper theology. This particular volume is an ideal introduction to Nevin, Schaff, and company, even as it should also stimulate wider appropriation of these important voices from the past.”

A Future for American Evangelicalism

“This stimulating and hopeful book features the best kind of respectful conversations among American evangelical believers. Harold Heie is convinced that actually communicating with others who hold slightly different--or very different--convictions about what evangelical Christianity should be creates the best path into the future. This book puts that conviction into practice. As it takes up issues that often divide evangelicals into angry sub-camps, the result is a welcome promotion of civility, balance, and humility--all of which reflect the Christian gospel in its most attractive form.”

A Global History of Seventh-day Adventists

History & Biography

“This well-proportioned book offers an unusually reliable guide to the history and present circumstances of Seventh-day Adventism that should be appreciated equally by Adventists and outsiders. Among its many strengths are a careful account of origins in the 1840s, discriminating treatment of the role of prophet Ellen G. White, full attention to the Adventists’ remarkable range of medical and educational institutions, perceptive details about parallels to fundamentalist and evangelical movements, many details for the Adventist communities found in almost every part of the world, and up-to-date coverage on topics like ongoing debate over women in ordained ministry and the effect on Adventist churches in Russia and Ukraine of the war begun in 2022. A judicious denominational history.”

A Little Book for New Historians

“This book makes an outstanding contribution—for students of history, readers of history, history classes in college or high school, and discussions of history in church groups. It explains clearly what historians do, how historical study can promote the right kind of intellectual discipline, and why history means so much for Christian faith. The book is as powerfully effective as it is accessibly succinct.”

A Passion for Souls

History & Biography

“Biographers of D. L. Moody have tended to praise him as a spiritual hero or reduce his efforts to a function of historical circumstance. The great merit of Lyle Dorsett's new biography is to combine spiritual insight with unusually wide research. The result is a book that positions Moody in his times, but which also provides Christian reasons for why he was so important in those times, and since.”

A Pastoral Rule for Today

Church Leadership & Ministry

“This book will be especially welcomed by busy pastors who can take time to look back toward the past as well as ahead to the future. What they will find is encouragement of the very best sort from historical exemplars who, though facing great challenges, embodied biblical insight, found Christian stability, and carried out unusually effective ministries. The book is a treasure that gives much-needed dignity and hope to the pastoral calling today.”

A Patterned Life

History & Biography

“If the personal history of a bookish historian might sound like a very dull subject, Eileen Bebbington's 'life' of her husband, David, upsets expectations. This warmly human and intellectually insightful account is full of unusual insight about an unusually gifted historian--the result is an unusually successful book.”

A People So Favored of God, Second Edition

History & Biography

Foreword

(wrote a foreword)

A Prairie Faith

History & Biography

Foreword

“[A]n outstanding example of how detailed research can supplement, modify, or, in some cases, overthrow what everyone thought they knew about an author whose books are still much read and, by many, much loved.”

Above All Earthly Pow'rs

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“This last of David Wells's penetrating four-volume investigation of the Zeitgeist envisions a duel between the plague of postmodernism (by which he means hyper-consumerism, functional nihilism, and meandering egotism) and the power of the Christian gospel understood in the classic formulations of the Reformation. Readers will be challenged as they grasp why Wells wonders if evangelical churches can survive the test. They should be heartened to discover why he believes that the risen Christ will prevail.”

Abraham Kuyper

History & Biography

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Albrecht Dürer

History & Biography

“Stacey Bieler’s beautifully (and intelligently) illustrated study of Albrecht Dürer shows convincingly why she is such an important guide to the reformation era. Her text and well-chosen Dürer prints and paintings explain with particular clarity why Luther became such an important figure in the artist’s life. It is a book to broaden historical understanding but also to delight the eye.”

America Discovers C. S. Lewis

History & Biography

“Snyder has made this a very good season for deeper understanding of the impact of C. S. Lewis. America Discovers C. S. Lewis joins George Marsden's recently published 'biography' of the Mere Christianity writer to explore and explain why Lewis has meant so much to so many American readers. Snyder's use of Lewis' correspondence with Americans is a special highlight in this helpful study.”

American Churches and the First World War

History & Biography

“Gordon Heath's intelligently edited volume joins important recent books by Philip Jenkins and Jonathan Ebel in showing how thoroughly the First World War represented a religious event as well as a military conflict. This book excels in its treatment of a wide array of American denominations, no two of which reacted to the war in exactly the same way, but also in the care with which authors of the individual chapters have done their work. It makes an unusually fine contribution, for both religious history and social-political history, to 2017 and the centennial commemoration of the United States' entrance into the war.”

American Slavery and the Immediate Duty of Southern Slaveholders

History & Biography

“Jack Davidson’s examination of a long-unpublished treatise from 1860 is anything but a historical curiosity . . . The minister, Eli Caruthers, deserves to be much better known for the way he used an Old Testament passage (Exodus 10, ‘let my people go’) to attack slavery systematically, which was unusual at the time in general and all but unknown in the South. This unusually informative book makes a powerful contribution as both history and theology.”

Among the Vesper Spires

Fiction

“Among the Vesper Spires has echoes of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, but also C. S. Lewis’s Pilgrim’s Regress—with the added bonus of catechism questions. It is ambitious to combine allegory with catechism, but the book integrates the two in an interesting way.”

An African Dream

History & Biography

“This book provides the kind of detailed, informed, organized, and chronologically clear history that is lacking for too many evangelical institutions in the non-Western world. Its account is especially good for the key African leaders who got the Bangui Evangelical School of Theology (Central African Republic) off the ground and have made it a thriving success to this day. It is equally informative concerning the Western missionaries, including the book’s author, who assisted the Africans in their sometimes complicated, often discouraging, but always faithful efforts. The book is a landmark for charting the course of evangelical theological education in an emerging center of rapid Christian development.”

An Asian American Ancient Historian and Biblical Scholar

History & Biography

“Edwin Yamauchi’s life has touched several continents, climbed heights of academic achievement, reached widely through faithful Christian service, and encountered an extraordinary range of other memorable people. From Okinawa and Hawaii to a secure academic post at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, but with connections circling the globe, this ‘examined life’ is filled to the brim with insight, reflection, edification, and instruction of the very best kind.”