Book Reviews
Book Review: “The Toxic War on Masculinity”
The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. By Nancy R. Pearcey. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2023. 352 pp. $26.99 (hardcover). In Nancy Pearcey’s latest offering, The Toxic War on Masculinity, she takes on a subject ripe for cultural commentary: the attack on men in contemporary society. With her characteristic wit and rhetorical…
Book Review: “The Common Service”
The Common Service: The English Liturgy of the Church of the Augsburg Confession. By James D. Heiser. Malone, TX: Repristination Press, 2022. 323 pp. $39.99 (hardcover). Acknowledging that liturgical study is not the favorite subject of everyone, why would an Anglican read this book? Why should an Anglican care about the Lutheran liturgy? The answer…
Almost Atonement & The Wood Between the Worlds
Some years ago, self-deprecating comedian Martin Short joked with talk show host Conan O’Brien that his family would write the word “Almost” on his tombstone.[1] “Almost” because he had, in his mind, never quite fully made it in Hollywood with a smash hit. While it’s hardly true of Short, that’s the line that kept ringing…
Book Review: “American Heretics”
American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order. By Jerome E. Copulsky. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024. 384 pp. $40 (hardcover). “The concept of heresy,” Jerome Copulsky observes, “is…relational—it is a term deployed by a group to mark out its boundaries, define its foes, and police deviance within its ranks” (3). That is to…
Book Review: “Island Cross-Talk”
Island Cross-Talk: Pages from a Blasket Island Diary. By Tomás O’Crohan. Translated by Tim Enright. Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. 208 pp. $19.99 (paper). “The sun was high when I wandered out. The way the day had cleared would make you reflect that it was not the end of the world yet,…
Book Review: Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and for Christ
Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and for Christ. By Jason S. DeRouchie. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024. 368 pp. $32.99 (hardcover). Several years ago, Baptist pastor and author Dr. John Piper responded to a question about whether he found the Federal Vision theology of Douglas Wilson to be a different gospel by saying, in…
Book Review: Re-Formed Catholic Anglicanism
Re-Formed Catholic Anglicanism. Edited by Charles F. Camlin, Charles D. Erlandson, and Joshua L. Harper. Anglican Way Institute, 2024. 478 pp. $29.99 (paper). In a recent review of the Nashotah House Press edition of Bishop A. P. Forbes’s Explanation of the Thirty-Nine Articles, Gerald McDermott describes Forbes as “reformed catholic.” A critical response to this…
Book Review: “Images of Pilgrimage”
Images of Pilgrimage: Paradise and Wilderness in Christian Spirituality. By R. D. Crouse. London, UK: Darton, Longman, and Todd Ltd. 96 pp. $24.99 CAD (paper). Christian thinkers past and present have often considered our relationship with place—the lands and cities that we dwell or sojourn in. Often, these considerations reflect larger theological questions: Are our…
Book Review: “An Explanation of the Thirty-Nine Articles”
An Explanation of the Thirty-Nine Articles. By Alexander Penrose Forbes, with a new Foreword by C. P. Collister. Nashotah, WI: Nashotah House Press, 2024. 874 pp. $32.11 (paper). When Anglican seminarians ask me how to study theology, I tell them to pick one of the great theologians and burrow into his corpus. But make sure…
Book Review: “Mad about Belief”
Mad about Belief: Religion in the Life and Thought of Bertrand Russell. By Larry D. Harwood. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2024. 362 pp. $66 (hardback), $46 (paper). Bertrand Russell is often analyzed in terms of his philosophical ideas, logic, and critiques of religion. In fact, he is often taken to be a despiser of religion…