|
Summer Reading List
Book Reviews
Home - by Marilynne Robinson
God and Race in American Politics - by Mark A. Noll
Study Guide
2009-2010 course offerings - Information coming soon
Archives
|
Book Reviews
Two of the featured speakers at past convocations of the Reformed Institute—historian Mark Noll and novelist Marilynne Robinson—have just published new books that should be of interest to the Institute’s clientele. We are posting here reviews of both books, one by James Reichley, who is a member of the Institute’s Company of Teachers, and the other by Catherine Saunders, who is an elder at the Lewinsville Presbyterian Church and a member of the faculty of George Mason University. Dr. Saunders has also prepared a study/discussion guide for the Robinson book that is intended for use in church groups; that guide is available on our web site as well.
Home
by Marilynne Robinson
Readers of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead will find themselves viewing familiar events from an unfamiliar perspective in Home.Robinson’s third novel, like her second, is set in Gilead, Iowa, in 1956, but the home around which the story is centered is not that of John Ames, narrator of Gilead, but of Ames’ longtime friend and colleague, Presbyterian pastor Robert Boughton.
[click for more] |
God and Race in American Politics
by Mark A. Noll
Mark Noll, who was the speaker at the Reformed Institute’s first convocation in 2004, argues in his newest book that race has always been central to American politics, in many periods absolutely the most influential, and that religion has crucially shaped public attitudes on race.
The second of these claims is certainly valid, but the first, at least as so broadly stated, is more questionable.
[click for more]
|
Study Guide to Marilynne Robinson’s novels, Home and Gilead
Did the Reformation unleash a dangerous idea? Two reviews of Alister McGrath’s latest book
Alister McGrath is one of the most respected interpreters of the history of Protestant Christianity in the world today. Professor of historical theology at Oxford University in the U.K., he is the author of several books on the Reformed Institute’s list of recommended readings on the Reformation. Now he has produced yet another book that will be added to that list: Christianity’s Dangerous Idea—the Protestant Revolution: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First (HarperOne 2007). We commend it to you and offer the following reviews by two members of the Institute’s Company of Teachers to introduce the book.
Melissa Kirkpatrick
Certified Christian Educator
Presbyterian Church USA
Mainline Protestantism, at least here in the U.S., perceives itself in decline. Numbers are down (they are); too many seminarians are second-career (old! Where’s the new blood?); and traditions are often considered to be tired and less than useful for revivifying the old system. Yet, as Alister McGrath points out, Protestantism is alive, well, and living ... [click for more] |
David Van Houten
Program Director of the Transition into Ministry Residency Program
Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church
Alistar McGrath’s Christianity’s Dangerous Idea is an ambitious book. In it he attempts to provide an interpretative history of Protestantism in a single volume. It is an examination of general trends and influences punctuated with individual cases and examples. McGrath moves from Luther’s Wittenberg to Pentecostalism in the Global South ... [click for more] |
How Do I Continue to get more Information?
Sign up for our free mailing list. Just put your email in the form
below and hit "Submit".
|
|
