Mark Noll

Respectful LGBT Conversations

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Through several different channels, Harold Heie has worked very hard at getting Christian believers to talk to each other directly, even on sensitive issues like the subject of this book. As someone who leans strongly toward traditional views on sexuality and marriage, I find myself leaning even more strongly toward efforts at encouraging charity, mutual comprehension, and respect for the extraordinary diversity within the body of Christ. This book should be appreciated by all who share a commitment to those ideals.”

Salt and Light, Volume 2

History & Biography

“The editors have assembled a strong team of authors, both Chinese and American, to write these compelling portraits. The subjects are lay Chinese Christians who were active between 1850 and 1950, all of whom had some contact with the United States and all of whom were leaders in building up Chinese society. For our day, which marvels at the rapid spread of Christianity in contemporary China, this book is especially important for showing how long-standing and how effective--but also how Chinese--have been the serious Christian contributions to Chinese society. This is a very important book.”

Saving the Bible from Ourselves

Biblical Studies & Commentaries

“Because the Bible remains foundational to all Christian life, it is a very good thing to be reminded regularly how it should be put to use. Glenn Paauw's clear, thoughtful and historically well-informed book explains ways of reading, marking and inwardly digesting Scripture that draw their wisdom from Scripture itself. The same wisdom provides welcome encouragement not only to learn from but to love the written Word of God.”

Saving the Church of England

History & Biography

Foreword

(wrote the foreword)

Science and Christianity

Science & Faith

“The polarized positions, from within the church and from skeptics outside, are so loud and so effectively disseminated that it is often difficult for sensible, mediating positions to be heard. But I am encouraged that there are more and more such positions, including this straightforward defense of critical realism.”

Singing Church History

History & Biography

“Paul Rorem's delightful book explains how well hymns illustrate the entire history of Christianity, but also how often hymns have played an active part in shaping that history. With full attention to the importance of Scripture for hymnody through the ages, illuminating portraits of key hymn writers, carefully crafted discussion questions, helpful appendices with hymns identified for liturgical and doctrinal use, and (not least) many hymns printed for singing, the book is well suited for both church and classroom. It is keyed to Lutheran hymnals, but thoroughly ecumenical in its coverage and usefulness.”

Skipping School

Discipleship & Christian Education

“With engaging prose, balanced judgments, and keen historical insight, Skipping School offers a model exploration of an unusually tangled subject. Debates over homeschooling involve complex legal, cultural, political, religious, and (of course) educational questions, questions that are addressed in this book with discerning intelligence. Well-researched general history, focused attention on Los Angeles as a central venue of influential legal decisions, and occasional references to the experiences of the author’s own family shed welcome light where heat too often prevails.”

Still Letting My People Go

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.”

Still Voices—Still Heard

History & Biography

“This creatively edited book offers unusually effective insights for the Presbyterian College in Montreal's 150-year history. Each chapter features something written by a significant figure connected to the college, but also interpreted in context by a contemporary author. The result is an excellent account of the college, while illuminating much wider domains in Canada and beyond.”

Subversive

History & Biography

“Dorothy L. Sayers was much more than a talented author of detective stories. She challenged Christian timidity with a bold faith, and she challenged quid-pro-quo views of religion with an emphasis on God's grace. Crystal Downing has succeeded very well in showing why the Sayers who wrote so effectively in her own time deserves to be heard in our day as well.”

Surviving the State, Remaking the Church

History & Biography

“Li Ma and Jin Li have written an unusually valuable book on the recent history of Christianity in China. Unlike too many others (often speculative or ill-informed), they support their general narrative with extensive ethnographic research. The individuals they have interviewed provide fascinating insights into conversions in prison, the Christian ‘harvest’ from the Tiannamen Square massacres, effective evangelism at McDonald’s and Starbucks, the emergence of Christian NGOs, ongoing tensions between believers and the Chinese Communist Party, the surprising emergence of self-conscious Chinese Calvinist theology, and much more. The result is extraordinary insight concerning perhaps the most important scene of Christian development in the world today.”

Swing Low, volume 1

History & Biography

“Walter Strickland's narrative of Black American Christianity provides a well-researched, carefully organized, and immensely informative history of an immensely important subject. The accompanying volume of well-chosen and well-introduced documents makes a valuable project even more useful. With its focus on Black Protestants, these books are landmarks for the exploration of the nation's past and its perennial struggles over race. Most of all they record a story that has been regularly neglected in accounts of American Christianity. It is the often unexpected, sometimes contentious, but enduring impact of the Christian gospel throughout African American history.”

Swing Low, volume 2

History & Biography

“Walter Strickland's narrative of Black American Christianity provides a well-researched, carefully organized, and immensely informative history of an immensely important subject. The accompanying volume of well-chosen and well-introduced documents makes a valuable project even more useful. With its focus on Black Protestants, these books are landmarks for the exploration of the nation's past and its perennial struggles over race. Most of all they record a story that has been regularly neglected in accounts of American Christianity. It is the often unexpected, sometimes contentious, but enduring impact of the Christian gospel throughout African American history.”

The Activist Impulse

History & Biography

“From George Marsden's wise foreword, the editors' informative introduction, and Steve Nolt's superb survey of Anabaptist-evangelical relationships in American and Canadian history, right through to the last chapter and Sara Wenger Shenk's discerning afterword, this volume sparkles. Its examination of Anabaptists among North American evangelicals brims with discerning historical insight. For Anabaptists, evangelicals, and evangelical Anabaptists with eyes to see, it also provides a bracing challenge to live up to the best in these respective traditions. There have been good books before on the complexity of evangelical-Anabaptist relationships, but this one is the best.”

The American Evangelical Story

History & Biography

“Evangelical history can seem complicated, but in this book, clarity, precision, and solid spiritual lessons are the order of the day. For care in defining who evangelicals are and have been, for reliability from using the best available scholarship, for awareness of world trends and political influence, and most of all for concentration on the Christian meaning of evangelical history, this is a very fine book.”

The Antirevolutionary

History & Biography

“Roel Kuiper’s biography of Groen van Prinsterer shows clearly why the life of this extraordinary Hollander meant so much to those who knew him personally and why it came to mean perhaps even more through his legacy as founder of the Anti-Revolutionary Party. Insights that Groen van Prinsterer gained through his work as a historian, service as a politician, and faithfulness as a lay Christian shaped his writings about the character of Christian faith and the hope of Christian civilization. That life and those writings would, in turn, inspire Abraham Kuyper and a host of others who shared his vision that the Christian gospel pointed the way to social health now as well as to everlasting life.”

The Best of The Reformed Journal

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“The Reformed Journal, which was once a tonic for serious readers, makes a much welcomed reprise in this splendid anthology. Jim Bratt and Ron Wells are the luckiest ones for getting to read all forty years of the magazine, but all who take up their selection of oldies but goodies will be amply rewarded as well. Sober (and not so sober) cultural analysis, solid theology worn lightly, whimsy and occasional touches of angst, literary insight, and a few moments of insider Dutch baseball -- once again, it’s all here.”

The Case for Christian Humanism

Theology

“Franklin and Shaw provide a convincing case for the essential compatibility of humanism and the Christian faith. Careful definitions and learned historical inquiry clear the ground for substantial commentary on the ‘humanism' (properly understood) of the Bible, worship, and theology. The arguments give pause, and then illuminate a set of fruitful conjunctions too often abandoned by partisans of a non-Christian humanism or an anti-humanistic Christianity,”

The Christian Past That Wasn't

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“Warren Throckmorton's book is not for folks who say, 'My mind's made up--don't bother me with any facts.' For those who do not think that way, it provides careful documentation to test claims that the United States was founded as a special or uniquely Christian nation. Extensive use of primary sources shows where these claims are false or only partially true. In so doing, the book promotes the best kind of evidence-based discussion of Christian faith, the national founding, and the morally checkered course of American history.”

The Contemporary Christian

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“InterVarsity Press is doing a very good thing by bringing John Stott's The Contemporary Christian back into print—slightly modernized, helpfully rearranged, and broken into short, reader-friendly books. The result is a boon to a new generation of readers who will greatly benefit, as many have before, from Stott's thorough grounding in Scripture, unusual help for living the Christian life, and perceptive interaction with the contemporary world.”