John Newton
From Disgrace to Amazing Grace
By Jonathan Aitken
(Crossway, 2007)
A new biography based on previously unpublished papers.
400 pages, hardcover.
Category: Featured Books by Staff
Figures in the Carpet
Finding the Human Person in the American Past
By Wilfred M. McClay
(Eerdmans, 2007)
Essays.
Paperback: 506 pages. McClay is the editor of this collection.
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God’s Undertaker
Has Science Buried God?
A world-renowned scholar of profound intellect refutes the strident accusations from polemic scientists who assert the indisputable proof of God's final demise.By John Lennox
(Lion Hudson, 2007)
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Culture Counts
Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged
In this book renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends Western culture against its internal critics and external enemies, and argues that rumors of its death are seriously exaggerated, describing it as a continuing source of moral knowledge.By Roger Scuton
(Encounter Books, 2007)
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Upon the Altar of the Nation
A Moral History of the Civil War
Harry S. Stout examines the conflict of ideas wrapped up in the Civil War, exploring the lethal mix of propaganda and ideology that came to justify slaughter on and off the battlefield.By Harry S. Stout
(Penguin, 2007)
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The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
By Roger Scruton
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
A profound and incisive guide to political ideas. Third Revised Edition.
This new edition takes stock of the revolutionary political changes that have taken place since the dictionary was first published in 1982, bringing the dictionary right up to date. Some 1790 entries cover every aspect of political thought, defining concepts and ideologies, surveying the arguments on issues, giving capsule histories of political institutions, and summarizing (with newly expanded treatment) the thought of major political theorists. The dictionary provides a readable and impartial survey of political thought, of immense value to students of political science, government, philosophy and jurisprudence as well as to the general reader with an interest in ideas.
paper: 760 pages, Third Edition
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Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce
Many are aware of Wilberforce's role in bringing an end to slavery in Great Britain, but few have taken the time to examine the beliefs and motivations that spurred him on for decades. In this concise volume, John Piper tells the story of how Wilberforce was transformed from an unbelieving, young politician into a radically God-centered Christian, and how his deep spirituality helped to change the moral outlook of a nation. As world leaders debate over how to deal with a host of social justice and humanitarian crises, a closer look at Wilberforce's life and faith serves as an encouragement and example to all believers.By John Piper
Foreword by Jonathan Aitken
(Crossway Books, 2007)
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Children of Prometheus
Technology and the Good Life
By Edited by Dan Russ with Peter Edman
(2006)
Technology has become too important to be left to technologists. As its changes keep increasing in both rate and scope, leaders of all spheres and levels of society need a critical and constructive view of technology. Such a view is best developed by grounding our understanding in the origins of the technological ideal and considering the ways technology has developed or diverged from its ideals over the course of history, as well as the way technological ideals relate to wider human concepts of the good life.
Children of Prometheus offers a series of readings, ancient and contemporary, that raise the seminal and enduring questions about the extraordinary advancements that many technologies have given the world; the origins of technology; the triumph of technique over substance in the modern world; the benefits we are now enjoying and the prices we are now paying; and our hopes, dreams, and plans for a rehumanized technology. In short, we join a dialogue among some of the great thinkers about what it means for humans to have technological dominion over creation, what we are making of that creation, and what we are making of ourselves.
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The White Mare
By Michael McLaverty
Foreword by Miguel Mesquita da Cunha
(2006)Discussion Guide Included
This Reading features a short story by the northern Irish writer Michael McLaverty. McLaverty takes us to a seemingly remote island in a seemingly remote time. But his careful attention to the small details of this account of a few days in the life of an elderly farmer plowing his field reveals something profound about the human condition and the beauty and struggles of the world we inhabit.
We are introduced anew to some universal themes—including work and our relation to it, beauty and suffering, and the transitions of life—and permitted to live deeper within the question of what it all means. The selection is also a good introduction to the transparent yet evocative prose of an under-appreciated twentieth-century master of the short story.
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Hannah and Nathan
By Wendell Berry
Foreword by Gregory Wolfe
(2006)Discussion Guide Included
This Reading is an excerpt from Wendell Berry’s 2004 novel, Hannah Coulter with a Foreword by Gregory Wolfe, editor of the journal Image and director of the MFA program at Seattle Pacific University.
Hannah Coulter, the latest novel set in Berry’s fictional Port William, Kentucky, is something of a sequel to Berry’s first novel, Nathan Coulter (1960, revised 1985). In our selection, which reads more like a memoir than a traditional novel, Hannah narrates the events surrounding her courtship and marriage with Nathan after the death of her first husband in World War II. In the process, she welcomes the reader into a way of life different from our own, and into a vision for what a human life can be.
As Wolfe notes in his Foreword, the story reminds us that “Love is not a passing emotion but a fundamental commitment, a rootedness in being; its shape and meaning can only be known on the scale of a lifetime.” There is a public dimension to marriage, and Hannah’s story raises quiet but insistent questions for us who may have forgotten our own history. Wolfe asks with Berry and Hannah: What have we lost as we have made marriage into an abstract, private pact, forgetting its appropriate setting in the web of obligations that holds together a community?
Touching on life and love, loss and grief—and recovery, commitment and consequence, place and continuity, “Hannah & Nathan” will introduce you to characters you will want to spend time with—and a place you will want to revisit.
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Politics, Morality, and Civility
By Václav Havel
Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald
(2006)Discussion Guide Included
An essay by Czech playwright and former President Václav Havel.
“Politics, Morality & Civility” is from his 1992 book Summer Meditations, written soon after the former dissident took office after the dramatic fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia. It is a clear look at the world situation and a call for our cultures and our leaders to rediscover or cultivate what Havel terms “higher responsibility,” a morally grounded vision for the common good.
In his Foreword, Alonzo McDonald says that the essay “summarizes Havel’s thinking on how a modern politician should think and act. In this commentary, he acknowledges that the transition to democracy has also brought a ‘dazzling explosion of every imaginable human vice’ and that ‘society has freed itself, true, but in some ways it behaves worse than when it was in chains.’ Naturally these tendencies enormously complicate the challenge, which he still accepts, to administer the state morally, justly, and with truth.” Yet Havel still believes that high moral standards, respect for the transcendent, and truth in action can yet be applied in our complex, modern, democratic societies.
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The Language of God
A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
By Francis S. Collins
(The Free Press, 2006)
A personal account of Collins’s faith and experiences as a genetics researcher, plus discussions of more general topics of science and faith.
paper, 294 pages, includes discussion guide.
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Jesus in Beijing
How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power
By David Aikman
(Regnery, 2006)
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God at Work
The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement
By David W. Miller
(Oxford University Press, 2006)
Done well, the integration of faith and work has positive implications at the personal level, as well as for corporate ethics and the broader economic sphere.
At the same time, increasing expressions of religion and spiritual practices at work also present the threat of divisiveness and discrimination.
Drawing on the insights of theological ethics as well as the sociology of religion, Miller analyzes the history of the modern day Faith at Work movement from its roots in the late 19th century to its modern formulation and trajectory. He examines the diversity of its members and modes of expression, and constructs a new framework for understanding, interpreting, and critiquing the movement and its future. Miller concludes that workers and professionals have a deep and lasting desire to live a holistic life, to integrate the claims of their faith with the demands of their work. He documents the surprising abdication of this field by church and theological academy and its embrace, ironically, by the management academy.
Offering compelling new evidence of the depth and breadth of spirituality at work, Miller concludes that faith at work is a bona fide social movement and here to stay. He establishes the importance of this movement, identifies the possibilities and problems, and points toward future research questions. God at Work is essential reading for business scholars and leaders, theologians and clergy, and anyone interested in the integration of faith and work.
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Evangelicals in the Public Square
Four Formative Voices on Political Thought and Action
An examination of evangelical political thought over the past fifty years through four key figures which argues that, in addition to Scripture, the evangelical political movement should be informed by the tradition of natural law.By J. Budziszewski
Foreword by Introduction by Michael Cromartie, Afterword by Jean Bethke Elshtain
(Baker Academic, 2006)
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