By Jack Haberer
Geneva. 2001. 192 pp. Pb. $19.95.
ISBN 0-664-50190-7
Reviewed by Brent Eelman of Houston, Texas
This book should be mandatory reading for all commissioners to this year's General Assembly. Jack Haberer, who is well-known as an evangelical leader in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), has written a thoughtful book that challenges the reader to rethink the easy categories that we often use to describe theological differences.
By Dean E. Foose
Geneva. 2001. 114 pp. Pb. $9.95.
ISBN 0-664-50041-2
Reviewed by Freda Gardner, Princeton, N.J.
The subtitle of this book is "A Roadmap for Pastor Nominating Committees." It is well chosen and Dean Foose, director of alumni/ae relations and placement at Princeton Seminary, is well qualified to describe a way for congregations and pastors to discover their respective callings.
By Robert Thornton Henderson
Providence House. 2000. 160 pp. Pb. $16.95.
ISBN 1 57736 203 9
Reviewed by Richard Ray, Pittsburgh
Utopian, iconoclastic, broad-brushed and frequently irreverent about venerable PC(USA) ways, Robert Henderson's Blueprint 21 is a provocative book. If you like your theology cool, your sense of churchmanship poised, your rhetorical style silky and smooth, and your exegesis in harmony with the claims of the Enlightenment, you had better head for your aspirin bottle before you begin to turn these pages.
By Barbara Brown Taylor
Cowley. 2000. 104 pp. Pb. $10.95.
ISBN 1-56101-189-4
Reviewed by Scott Dalgarno, pastor, First church, Ashland, Ore.
"In the age just past, nationalism has brought us Hitler, science has brought us the atom bomb and religion has brought us some really awful television programming." So quips the inimitable Barbara Brown Taylor in a new book on a topic most of us think we've heard quite enough about already: sin.
By Ronald P. Byars
Geneva. 2000. 96 pp. Pb. $11.95.
ISBN 0-664-50136-2
Reviewed by James G. Kirk, Glen Burnie, Md.
Much to the satisfaction of those of us who serve in parishes, Geneva Press, in conjunction with the Office of Theology and Worship, has initiated a new series of books called the Foundations of Christian Faith.
By Robert W. Herron
Thomas More. 2000. 188 pp. Pb. $15.95.
ISBN 0-88347-460-3
Reviewed by Margret Barnes Perry, a pastoral counselorin Asheville, N.C.
Yet another book on marriage? Yes, and this one is a worthwhile read in large part because it has a particular focus: making it through midlife with your spouse. In writing this book, Robert W. Herron claims his hope: that he will help couples "navigate this transitional period in life and marriage and feel better about themselves as they do."
Bill Williams has written a very good book for those who wonder why, if God is all-powerful, there is imperfection and suffering in this world. He had good reason to ask such questions. He was one of three children in one family who were born with cystic fibrosis. Noting that the odds of such an occurrence were one-in-four, no wonder Williams asks, "Why?"
ISBN 1-57075-279-6M. T. Winter, widely known as a "singing nun," is also widely appreciated as a friend of God and of all God's children. This book, as the subtitle indicates, is the story of her own faith journey from the blind belief of childhood to the mature faith of a medical missionary as Sister Miriam Therese.
ISBN 0-664-50129I expect devotional books to be sentimental and superficial, at best, and insipid at worst -- this book of meditations on the psalms by Thomas Currie is neither. Instead the reader will find here real theological depth and an authentic wrestling with issues of the spiritual life.
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