Mark Noll

Apocalyptic Fever

History & Biography

“Apocalyptic enthusiasm rarely receives calm and thoughtful consideration. Kyle is a most welcome exception. His book is careful, nuanced, insightful, and charitable toward a subject that is usually treated as incredible, unbelievable, mad, or deadly certain. Apocalyptic Fever takes the temperature of a serious disease and provides just the right calming prescription for bringing the fever under control.”

Atlas of the European Reformations

History & Biography

“The beautifully produced maps of this Atlas—along with informative time lines, well-chosen illustrations, and clear, accessible prose—make this book an excellent contribution to 500th anniversary commemorations of the Reformation. All who are concerned about the fate of Christianity today will benefit from this illuminating window into the crises, the renewal, and the world-wide effects of the Reformation era.”

Bad Girls and Boys Go to Hell (or not)

“Not every reader will agree with every one of Gloria Neufeld Redekop's conclusions . . . But all readers should appreciate the honesty, care, seriousness, and sensitivity of this book. It is a significant memoir, as well as a challenging theological treatise and important sociological study of those who have left fundamentalism behind.”

Believe Me

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“John Fea’s timely and sobering book shows convincingly how legitimate concerns from white evangelical Protestants about a rapidly secularizing American culture metastasized into a fear-driven brew of half-truths, fanciful nostalgia, misplaced Christian nationalism, ethical hypocrisy, and political naiveté—precisely, that is, the mix that led so many white evangelicals not only to cast their votes for Donald Trump but also to regard him as a literal godsend.”

Between Interpretation and Imagination

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“As a well-informed biblical scholar and a close (also appreciative) reader of C. S. Lewis, Leslie Baynes has provided a masterful study of Lewis on the Bible. The arguments of the book are compelling, both in showing where Lewis stumbled in addressing questions involving technical knowledge of the New Testament and in explaining why so much of Lewis’s writing, especially the Narnia tales, puts Scripture to use with consummate effect. Biblical scholars as well as Lewis’s many readers will find this a captivating read.”

Black Fire

History & Biography

“This particular book is especially welcome. African American Pentecostals have become a major force in American (and world) Christianity, but there is a serious lack of well-documented studies. Estrelda Alexander does an excellent job filling that lamentable gap.”

British Evangelical Identities Past and Present, Volume 1

History & Biography

“This volume addresses a good question: how have evangelicals thought about their own identity and how have such thoughts affected their broader efforts for the Kingdom of God. All who care for diligent scholarship, careful reasoning, and Christian edification will greatly value this book.”

California Dreaming

“This superb collection demonstrates how much fresh historical insight can be gained by careful examination of a single state in the USA. The book’s particular virtue is to show how a theological interpretive framework illuminates questions of race, urbanization, the environment, immigration, and more. The individual essays are penetrating, the entire effect superb.”

Called to the Life of the Mind

Discipleship & Christian Education

“Much to be welcomed are these wise words from a wise man about the Christian stake in wisdom. Shakespeare had it just slightly wrong — for this book, brevity is the soul of wisdom.”

Canadian Baptist Fundamentalism, 1878–1978

History & Biography

“This book offers a carefully researched, well-argued, and accessible account of Canadian Baptists during a tumultuous century. For this American reader, it succeeds especially in showing the many ways in which Canadian Baptists resembled American fundamentalists, but also significant areas where being a Canadian made a difference. For pushing back against stereotypes and making good use of first-order research, editors Murray and Wilson have made a significant contribution to historical knowledge and theological understanding.”

Changing Churches

Theology

“This book exemplifies the best in charitable yet tradition-specific ecumenical discussion. A. G. Roeber (a Lutheran become Orthodox), Mickey Mattox (a Lutheran become Catholic), and Paul Hinlicky (a Lutheran who remains Lutheran) explain what they find helpful (or indispensable) in Lutheran theology and then why they have transcended (or retained) those Lutheran insights. The result is both a primer in the classical Trinitarianism that the authors share and a set of powerful statements about the Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran distinctives that have remained to this point irreconcilable. Evangelical Protestants will especially appreciate the book's instruction in classical orthodoxies as well as its goad to probe the strengths and weaknesses of their own traditions with the care that these authors have shown toward theirs.”

Changing Signs of Truth

Philosophy

“If you think that Roman Jakobson, Charles Sanders Peirce, Antonio Gramsci, Mikhail Bakhtin and a host of other esoteric theorists are irrelevant to Christian living in the modern world, Crystal Downing wants you to think again. Her persuasively engaging book explains why semiotics (the science of 'signs') can in fact illuminate Christian faith, Christian approaches to culture and believers' relationships with other believers. Although the material in this book is complex, Downing does a beautiful job conveying her message about the importance of 'signs' and the hopeful possibilities of 're-signing' with winsome simplicity, telling anecdotes and solid Christian wisdom.”

Chasing Paper

Foreword

(wrote a foreword)

Choosing Community

Arts & Literature

“Christine Colón has provided an engaging argument for the importance of community in the astonishingly varied literary corpus of Dorothy L. Sayers. Colón's insightful tracking of this theme through Sayers's detective fiction, religious drama, theatrical associations, and epistolary friendships illuminates both the mind of this significant author and the importance of the community life that Sayers's life so remarkably exemplified. The book is an especially winsome account of an important author and a crucial theme in lives well lived.”

Christ Across the Disciplines

Theology

“This pace-setting volume offers a most helpful account of the effort to ‘integrate faith and learning’ as that effort has been understood by Christian scholars and Christian colleges since mid-century. Even more, it shows many and varied ways for moving beyond ‘integration’ to other fruitful practices for promoting scholarship as faithful believers. It is a compelling book of unusual insight.”

Christian History in Seven Sentences

History & Biography

“Jennifer Woodruff Tait thinks that study of the Christian past provides 'navigation charts' to help believers sail safely through the turbulent waters of the present. Her sharply focused attention to seven key sentences from strategic moments in the history of Christianity demonstrates the wisdom of her metaphor. This book is an ideal resource (with another metaphor) to begin mining the riches of the past for the best kind of wisdom in the present.”

Colonial Presbyterianism

History & Biography

“Since Leonard Trinterud published his fine book on colonial Presebyterianism more than fifty years ago, there has been no other comprehensive study of this formative period in American Presbyterian history. This new book edited by Donald Fortson offers an excellent collection of essays that goes a long way toward updating the subject and showing its ongoing contemporary importance for church structure and Christian life. The book's authors are learned, yet chapters are clear and accessible. The book deserves a wide readership.”

Concise Theology

Theology

“Although this book was published decades ago, its introduction to Christian theology remains focused, clear, and especially valuable for its deep immersion in the biblical record. J. I. Packer's ‘concise theology’ is, as he states forthrightly, reformational and evangelical, which means that some readers will be Bereans checking the Scriptures to see ‘if these things are so.’ All, however, should find the book valuable for illumination and understanding but even more for doxology and devotion.”

Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition

Theology

“This book provides a welcome introduction to a memorable Christian statesman who also happened to be a formidable theologian, a pious devotional writer, an ever-active journalist, and an important theoretician concerning Christian life in the world. Those who do not yet know Abraham Kuyper will find Craig Bartholomew a reliable guide, while those who have already encountered this 'flying Dutchman' will be pleased with the range and depth of Bartholomew's insights.”

Creation Groans On

Arts & Literature

“I like poems that connect to some kind of real world and where the diction matches the subject, so I do appreciate Bazyn’s poems—here lighter in tone, but no less accessibly sharp. Several made me chuckle. The well-chosen images slow down reading in just the right way.”