{Melinda Doolittle with Ken Abraham. Beyond Me: Finding Your Way to Life’s Next Level. Zondervan 2010. 192 pages. $18.99} Reviewed by Ralph Marston In any competition, the person who finishes in first place receives pretty much all the glory and attention. Whoever comes in second gets a little bit of acknowledgement as a key participant in the final drama, and then is all too quickly forgotten. But what about third place? Does third place even matter at all? Is there anything... Read more
{Kenda Creasy Dean. Almost Christian: What the Faith of our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church. Oxford University Press 2010. 264 pages. $24.95} By Deborah Arca Mooney From 2003-2005, researchers conducted the most ambitious study of adolescent spirituality to date in the U.S. Among the results of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), it was found that while three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, only half consider it very important, and fewer than half... Read more
{Sanjay Patel. Ramayana: Divine Loophole. Chronicle Books 2010. $29.95} Reviewed by J. Ryan Parker Lost in the never-ending debates about biblical inerrancy and infallibility is the recognition of the Bible’s worth as a great work of literature. Lost is the focus on how it has inspired countless translations and interpretations, both written and visual. If anything, we should at least be able to agree that it and other sacred texts of the world’s major religions are works of immeasurable literary value that... Read more
{Melvin Konner. The Jewish Body. Schocken 2009. 304 pp. $22.00} Reviewed By Sherwin B. Nuland Melvin Konner of Emory University is one of America’s most distinguished anthropologists, whose talents include the ability to make himself easily and enjoyably understood by readers with no background in his area of expertise. He also teaches in the university’s human biology and Jewish studies programs. When a scholar with such qualifications focuses his attention on a theme as potentially amorphous as The Jewish Body, we... Read more
{Marcus J. Borg. Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith. HarperOne 2010. 352 pp. $25.99} Reviewed by Martha K. Baker Putting Away Childish Things: A Tale of Modern Faith is didactic. Usually labeling any book “didactic” is the kiss of retail death, butMarcus Borg’s most recent book also courts a second smacker: it’s a novel, a teaching novel. Borg, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University, has written best-sellers — Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Jesus, andThe Last... Read more
Gina Welch grew up in an atheistic, anti-religious household in Berkeley, California. After she moved to Virginia for graduate school, she found herself surrounded by evangelicals, at the very time that evangelicals were credited (and often blamed) for the re-election of George Bush. To investigate what makes evangelicals tick, and to confront her own personal prejudices, Gina resolved to go "undercover" and fake a conversion at the fundamentalist Thomas Road Baptist Church, where the pastor was a certain Jerry Falwell. Patheos' Tim Dalrymple recently interviewed Gina Welch, author of In the Land of Believers: An Outsider's Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church. Read more
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