Books Read 2025

 Fiction

1.      William F. Buckley, Jr., A Very Private Plot. Buckley was not a great novelist, and his weaknesses showed as he wound down the Blackford Oakes seies. The earlier thrillers were better. 

2.      R.C. Sproul, Johnny Come Home. Sproul also was not a novelist. This was written fairly early in his adult life and is largely autobiographical, and he didn't repeat the effort at writing fiction. Stick to his theological works.

3.      William F. Buckley, Jr., Last Call for Bradford Oakes. One way to end a series of novels is to kill of the protagonist.

4.      Anthony Trollope, Can you Forgive Her. A former church member introduced me to Trollope. I have enjoyed the 3 novels I have read.

5.      Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. Re-read this for the first time since high school. I enjoyed the read and the experience of thinking about how I react differently now than then.

Nonfiction 

6.      30 Years Closer: Essays for a Modern Reformation. Most of the essays are good reads.

7.      Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos. Gets quoted regularly by others in my corner of the universe. Enjoyed reading it.

8.      Leland Ryken, Philip Ryken, and Todd Wilson, Pastors in the Classics. A good reference resource. I will read many of the works they discuss. Some of them aren't really "classics."

9.      A.S. Ibrahim, Reaching Your Muslim Neighbor with the Gospel. A helpful read I have recommended to others.

10.  Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation. In spite of the off putting title, the author makes some good points.

11.  Holly Pivec and R. Douglas Geivett, Counterfeit Kingdom. More Christians need to be aware of the subject matter of this book, which is known as the New Apostolic Reformation. The authors have now contributed 3 brief volumes on the subject, which they show to be extreme but increasinly influential.

12.  Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation Grows Up. See above comment on book by the same author.

13.  G. K. Beale, We Become What we Worship. This is an excellent work that has shown up in my preaching. 

14.  Candice Millard, River of the Gods. Millard is excellent. I wish she could produce works as fast as I rad them. If you have not read her works on the assassination of Garfield and TR's trip up the River of Doubt, do yourself a favor and get them.

15.  Nathaniel Philbrick, Travels with George: in Search of Washington and his Legacy. I like Philbrick, but this approach was not really my cup of tea. He does a sort of travelogue to historic places.

16.  Michael Seidel, Tod Williams: a Baseball Life. An interesting summary of Williams' disciplined and erratic life.

17.  Chad Van Dixhorn, Confessing the Faith. This was ok, but I admit disappointing. Van Dixhorn doesn't deliver the historically nuanced commentary that he seems to promise.

18.  Edmund Morris, Edison. This is the most frustrating biography I have ever read. There is a lot of good information here. For reasons that to my knowledge the author never explained, the book starts at the end of Edison's life and works backward. The approach is baffling.

19.  B.M. Palmer, Sermons by Rev. B.M. Palmer, Vol. 1. Southern Presbyterian preacher bridging the Civil War era. Recommended to me, but the topical preaching doesn't really resonate in my world, and the racial views of the era are not helpful.

20.  Keith A. Mathison, Toward a Reformed Apologetics. Controversial in a Van Tillian world. I thought it was excellent and highly recommend.

21.  Robert J. Morgan, Then Sings my Soul. Some of this was helpful in pointing out macro developments in the history of hymnody, but not really my cup of tea in the individual stories.

22.  Ronald L. Kohl, ed., The Triune God. Good work on an important subject.

23.  Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants (One Volume Abridgment). The abridged version is still long and detailed, but worth the effort.

24.  Wilhelmus Á Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Volume 1: God, Man, and Christ. This is the first of 4 volumes by the author that I read this year. Historically, he is important in Dutch confessionalism. Too pietistic for my taste.

25.  Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: the Eastern Front. I read all 4 volumes by Churchill on the Great War. Agree with him or not on the various issues, Churchill is always worth reading.

26.  Wilhelmus Á Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Volume 2: The Church and Salvation. See on the same author above.

27.  Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: 1916-1918. See above.

28.  Dale Losch, A Better Way. I read this and the following book in preparation for my new ministry.

29.  Jim Pitman and Bobby Harrington, Discipleshift. See above.

30.  S. Donald Fortson III, the Presbyterian Story. I read this and the following 2 books to prepare for transfer exams to a new presbytery and denomination. Fortson is very good.

31.  S. Donald Fortson, Liberty in Non Essentials. See above.

32.  Nathan P. Feldmeth, et al, Reformed & Evangelical. See above, though this is an edited work with various authors. As with all such works, quality varies.

33.  Wilhelmus A Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Volume 3: The Law, Christian Graces, and the Lord’s Prayer. See above.

34.  Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: the Aftermath. This is perhaps the best of the 4 volume set. Churchill was prescient in many ways.

35.  Wilhelmus A. Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, Volume 4: Ethics and Eschatology. See above

36.  Janeen Burnham, Miracles of Restoration. Written by a member of my new congregation about a boys ranch in south Missouri that our church helps support.

37.  Perry Miller, The New England Mind. Miller was an atheist who taught history at Harvard and admired the New England Puritans. Though flawed in some respects, the detailed intellectual history was engaging.

38.  Jon Meacham, And There Was Light. I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed reading this.

Books Read 2024

 Here is my completed reading list for last year. My favorite 10 are marked by asterisks:

1.      Christopher Buckley, Make Russia Great Again

2.      William F. Buckley, Jr., Mongoose R.I.P.

3.      Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds ***

4.      Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

5.      Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

6.      C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

7.      C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

8.      William F. Buckley, Jr., Tucker’s Last Stand

9.      Thomas Watson, All Things for Good

10.  E. Michael Jones, Libido Dominandi

11.  Ward Farnsworth, The Socratic Method: a Practitioner’s Handbook ***

12.  Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance

13.  Thomas Watson, The Godly Man’s Picture

14.  Stuart Robinson, The Church of God ***

15.  Thomas Sibbes, The Broken Reed

16.  William Perkins, The Art of Prophesying

17.  JJ Virgin, The Virgin Diet

18.  W. Robert Godfrey, Learning to Love the Psalms

19.  Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth, Nero

20.  John Flavel, The Mystery of Providence

21.  Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel ***

22.  John Flavel, Facing Grief

23.  Samuel Rutherford, Letters

24.  James Osterhaus, Avoiding Pastoral Pitfalls

25.  Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ

26.  Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewell of Christian Contentment

27.  John Bunyan, Prayer

28.  Joseph Alleine, A Sure Guide to Heaven

29.  Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices

30.  William Bridge, A Lifting up for the Downcast

31.  Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching

32.  Bill Browder, Freezing Order ***

33.  Kathleen Peddicord, How to Retire Overseas

34.  Elizabeth R. Varon, Longstreet ***

35.  G.K. Beale, Union with the Resurrected Christ ***

36.  Bruce K. Waltke and Fred G. Zaspel, How to Read and Understand the Psalms ***

37.  C.S. Lewis, Miracles

38.  Sam Quinones, The Least of Us ***

39.  G.K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology

40.  Lee Gatiss, Fulfill your Ministry

41.  C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

42.  Guillaume Bignon, Excusing Sinners and Blaming God: A Calvinist Assessment of Determinism, Moral Responsibility, and Divine Involvement in Evil 

43.  C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed and The Abolition of Man

44.  Guy Prentiss Waters, Well Ordered, Living Well

45.  Guillaume Bignon, Confessions of a French Atheist

46.  Bryan D. Estelle, The Primary Mission of the Church

47.  Jason M. Baxter, The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis ***

48.  Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God

49.  Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals

50.  Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis:1911-1914

The Least of Us, by Sam Qionones, a Brief Review

 The Least of Us is Sam Quinones' second venture into the crisis of drugs and death that began with the prescription opioid epidemic that grew under the national radar for so many years. I read Dreamland after hearing Quinones speak at a medical conference. While I felt like I knew a lot of the background of Dreamland due to my employment in the workers' compensation industry (as a non-clinician), I nonetheless found it helpful in filling in my knowledge gaps. As more recent developments related to fentanyl and meth have greater involvement of street drugs, my knowledge is not as extensive. This book proved extremely helpful in bringing me up to speed.

Quinones weaves individual stories of abuse, addiction, and enablement with analysis and additional tales that offer hope. While the book does offer stories of individuals and communities that are learning to respond helpfully to the crisis, many of the accounts are sad and tragic -- don't read this while depressed. Quinones does not flinch at the enormous toll of cheap, highly addictive, and harmful drugs on individuals, families and communities. He also does not flinch in placing much blame on the start of the pandemic (the prescription drug part) on pharmaceutical companies. He is rightly scathing with regard to the role of Oxycontin maker Purdue Pharmacy and the Sackler family in laying the groundwork for all that has followed.

That said, there are heroes in this book. Interestingly, this is not a political work. Other than a brief mention of added resources made available via Obamacare, Quinones seems uninterested in what is happening in state or federal capitols. Instead, the heroes tend to be in communities where diverse groups of people realize what is happening around them and creatively begin to address them. Quinones never reveals his own political biases (he mentions the benefits of a capitalism reined in by a moral sense), but I would guess him to be center-left. This is interesting in that he goes out of his way to praise the work of political conservatives who get things right and make progress in this fight in their communities.

Quinones also describes himself as a non-Christian, but again he goes out of his way to praise Christians and churches that are making positive efforts to help individuals and families. Much of the narrative takes place in Appalachia, where there are plenty of Christians and conservatives to talk about. That he finds helpful stories, perhaps from people that he disagrees with on other things, shows Quinones to be more interested in promoting solutions than tribes. I consider this to be a strength of the book.

The author is on shakier ground when he extends the findings of neuroscience to reveal a widespread addiction problem across broad sectors of American life. Regardless of what one thinks about his conclusions in this area, the development of this narrative is not as well researched or compelling as the rest of the book.

That weakness aside, this is a work that I will highly recommend to friends and colleagues. I have previously recommended Dreamland to anyone interested in this crisis, and The Least of Us stands as a worthy successor.

Christian Nationalism Without Christ

 For decades Christians with whom I share many sympathies have warned about the emergence of a Christless Christianity among American evangelicals. In the last decade the reality of an advocacy of Christianity without Christ has seemed to increase as Christians have seemed willing to desire the restoration of Christendom even if it involves the abandonment of the Son of God. Consider the following:

• In the last year or so Christians have invested significant time and treasure in a campaign to sell to the American public a version of Jesus that resembles the heresy of Socianism more than it looks like Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament. Stripped of any message of his divinity or his saving mission, Americans are supposed to be impressed that "he gets us," though it remains unclear why it should matter.to anyone.
• A nationally known Christian talking head was recently heard by this correspondent to say that the Bible actually has "little to say" about salvation, though it provides a lot of information relevant to the development of a "Christian worldview." Evidently, the core affirmation of the Christian religion that God saves sinners, a notion that suffuses the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, is in fact remarkably absent after all and not important to whatever worldview that requires developing.
• In a lecture on Christian nationalism before an academic evangelical audience, listeners were assured that Abraham Lincoln was certainly a "Christian nationalist" even though it was admitted that it is unclear whether the 16th president would affirm a single phrase from the Apostle's Creed. Seemingly, Christian nationalism doesn't require any clear doctrinal confession -- not even the opening phrase of belief in "God the Father almighty."
• Recently, a woman who had been victimized as a girl by radical versions of Islam before embracing atheism has now announced her conversion to Christianity. I need to state that I hope she truly has come to faith in Christ, as her story is a striking one of great courage. What is unclear from her written statements, however, is whether her conversion involves faith in the saving work of Christ. She seems more concerned about the capacity of Christian ethics and perhaps theism to provide a foundation for a humanitarian societal ethic. Many evangelicals seem enthused.

These types of examples seem to point toward the embrace of Christendom and Christianity without Christ, of evangelicalism without the evangel. Advocates seem to want to point to legal structures embracing moralistic commitments as a foundation for "taking America back," though it is unclear what they are taking it back for. Somehow, no one talking about a Christian nation is advocating replacing the Star Spangled Banner with the Nicene Creed or the vague "In God We Trust" with a pronouncement that justification is by faith alone.

None of this is to deny that there are negative trends taking place in culture, but the culture cannot be reclaimed by a church that has lost track of the Gospel. The real need of the day is not the reclamation of the culture as much as the reformation of the church. The former is unlikely apart from the realization of the latter.

Books Read 2023

Fiction 

1.      William F. Buckley, Jr., See you Later, Alligator

2.      Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo *

3.      Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and the Margarita *

4.      William F. Buckley, Jr., High Jinx

5.      Scott Turow, Suspect

6.      Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn *

Nonfiction

7.      Michael P. Winship, Hot Protestants: a History of Puritanism in England and America

8.      David D. Hall, The Puritans: a Transatlantic History *

9.      Thomas S. Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical?

10.  Charles Malcolm Wingard, Help for the New Pastor

11.  Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age

12.  Millard J. Erickson, ed., Readings in Christian Theology, Vol. 1: The Living God

13.  Shelby Foote, The Civil War (Volume 2) *

14.  Keith A. Mathison, The Lord’s Supper

15.  Richard Ganz, Psychobabble

16.  David VanDrunen, God’s Glory Alone *

17.  Kim Riddlebarger, The Man of Sin *

18.  Scott David Allen, Why Social Justice Is not Biblical Justice

19.  Grant Macaskill, Autism and the Church

20.  Gene Edwards Veith, Jr., God at Work

21.  D.G. Hart, Sean Michael Lucas, and Stephen J. Nichols, eds. The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards *

22.  Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future *

23.  Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., Before Jerusalem Fell

24.  W. Andrew Hoffecker, Charles Hodge: the Pride of Princeton

25.  Stephen J. Nichols, R.C. Sproul: a Life *

26.  John Stott, The Cross of Christ *

27.  William R. Edwards, John C.A. Ferguson, and Chad Van Dixhorn, eds., Theology for Ministry

28.  Geoffrey Robertson, The Tyrannicide Brief *

29.  Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre

30.  J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism *

31.  Shelby Foote, The Civil War (Volume 3) *

32.  R.J. Rushdoony, The Sermon on the Mount

33.  Roosevelt Montas, Rescuing Socrates

34.  Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope

35.  J.V. Fesko, Adam and the Covenant of Works *

36.  Michael Horton, Recovering our Sanity *

37.  Edward Taylor, Upon the Types of the Old Testament (Vol. 1)

38.  Edward Taylor, Upon the Types of the Old Testament (Vol. 1I)

* -- highly recommended

Movie Review: "Jesus Revolution"

 Back during my student days, I attempted to invite a co-worker to church. In response, he told me about a time in the past when he and some friends, then teenagers, occasionally visited a church. They seemed always to hear the preacher opine against young men wearing long hair. Looking around and seeing no other males with long hair, they figured that the sermon must be directed at them. Whether correct or incorrect, they soon quit going and did not seem to hear any message other than the criticisms of the length of their locks.

That story came to mind while watching the recent movie sensation, "Jesus Revolution." My own reactions to the movie were rather complex, finding more of value in the diagnosis than in the cure presented over the course of the film. The strength in the film lay in its exposure of knee jerk reactions against those in need of the Gospel. Yet, the film also, sometimes unintentionally, exposes weaknesses in the Jesus Freak movement that require correction, rather than emulation.

Though the movie takes the sort of cinematic short cuts that must be taken to reduce real life events to a 2-hour film, it attempts to recount the story of the Jesus movement of the late 1960's, as it occurred at Calvary Chapel. Pastor Chuck Smith (Kelsey Grammar) had no interest in or sympathy for the hippies until he actually met one, Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie). When Frisbee convinced Smith that hippies were looking for truth about life's meaning, and some were learning to prefer the message of Jesus over Timothy Leary, Smith's attitude changed, and hippies began showing up at Smith's church, much to the chagrin of some of the church's leadership. 

In the face of opposition to outreach to the unkempt, unshod hippies, Smith showed admirable courage and earnestness. At what I found to be the movie's most poignant scene, church leaders complained that the dirty bare feet of the new visitors would destroy the church's carpet. Those leaders arrived at the church on Sunday to see a long line at the entrance, as Pastor Smith, on hands and knees with basin and towel beside him, washed the feet of each young person before they entered.

How could one not be moved at that?

The movie has been called a fluff piece on the Jesus movement. While that is partially true, it does expose weaknesses that were largely responsible for the implosion of the movement after about 5 years. As mentioned above, Smith had earnest concern for the spiritual condition of these hippies, but once they arrived in mass he actually seemed at a loss as to what to tell them, and in the movie, at least, he basically turned everything over to others who themselves were novices in the faith. Frisbee focused on evangelical concerns at the start of the movie, but soon gave in to extravagant and sensational claims of Spirit prompted healings. In the movie's version of events, immature leadership eventually led to a fracturing of relationships among leaders, as well as a tendency toward abusive leadership models based on charismatic qualities. The movement as such ran its course in about 5 years, though it has had numerous long term impacts on the larger church. The various imitative "calvary chapels," as well as Vineyard churches spread over the country are the most obvious examples, and many of the changes in church music and focus on charismatic leadership in the last 50 years have their origin in the movement. Such changes have tended to attempt to retain attendance and evangelism at the expense of reducing biblical content. These changes have also tended to produce unhealthy authoritarian leadership structures in churches.

Those thoughts regarding impacts notwithstanding, I have attempted to focus this review on the contents of the movie itself. I am aware that there are others giving more attention to whether events portrayed in the movie cohere with reality. Not having the time or inclination to perform that research, I will leave that task for others.

Nonetheless, I will say that efforts to develop all sorts of extracurricular materials designed to use this movie to foster a revival movement would seem to reflect the unhealthy tendency within evangelicalism to use history as prologue by reducing spontaneous movements into techniques. The Spirit blows where He wills, and we would do better to engage in faithful practices related to the proclamation of Word and sacrament while asking the Spirit to use the means that He has commanded.

Book Review Article: "Who Is an Evangelical: a Movement in Crisis," by Thomas S. Kidd

 In 1963, Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter published "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," a work for which he won a Pulitzer Prize the following year. The book received high praise on the left from academics who agreed with the author's jeremiad of a spreading anti-intellectualism in the United States. Perhaps unexpectedly, the work has also been applauded by reformed evangelicals who appreciate Hofstadter's praise of Puritan New England as the intellectual high point of American history. Noting that the agrarian colonists prioritized the building of colleges and built a culture featuring high literacy rates, Hofstadter complained that American religionists had since contributed to the downward spiral of intellectual life in this country.

While Hofstadter's book is a well written and argued survey, it can be read as a work of his times. In some important ways, the highly regarded book was simply an extended rant against a culture so lacking in sophistication that it had elected the philistine Dwight David Eisenhower instead of the poster boy of socially elite enlightenment, Adlai Stevenson. Subsequent investigation demonstrates that neither Eisenhower nor Stevenson deserved their reputation, but, nevertheless, Hofstadter was hardly the only academic elitist who held to this view of the two men.

All of this brings us to the more recent work by Thomas Kidd, Who Is an Evangelical, surveying the evangelical landscape. Kidd, a highly regarded evangelical historian who teaches at Baylor University, would seem well positioned to write such a survey. While the stated purpose of the book is to "introduce readers to evangelicals' experiences, practices, and beliefs, and to examine the reasons for our crisis today," he acknowledges that the work is not primarily intended to address the interests of scholars. Rather, he is writing for "journalists, pastors, people who work in politics...." to explain to them "what has happened to evangelicals." Nonetheless, he seems particularly exercised about reports that 81% of evangelicals supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election (the book was written prior to 2020, which spared Kidd the necessity of adding more anxiety inducing details). Nonetheless, Kidd wants to clear evangelicals from the calumny that they are an extension of the Republican Party. He also doesn't want evangelicals to be thought of as white, though he finds it necessary to admit that blacks have sometimes not been included in the movement.

Every writer on evangelicalism struggles to find a definition for the movement, and Kidd is no exception. As is common with contemporary writers and pollsters, Kidd uses the characteristics suggested by David Bebbington (conversionism, emphasis on biblical authority, centrality of the cross, and evangelistic activism) to develop his parameters. Nonetheless, Kidd runs into trouble by lumping Pentecostals (but not prosperity gospel advocates) into the movement. Ignoring the fact that mainstream evangelicals either in the pre or post WWII era did not consider Pentecostals to be part of their movement helps Kidd improve his demographics, but it forces him to ignore many of the aspects of contemporary evangelicalism contributing to the movement being in crisis. He is able to include everyone from Aimee Semple McPherson to John Gerstner as an evangelical, a feat requiring an extraordinary bungee cord. In short, including Pentecostals undermines any ability to focus on a unified and defined movement (Bebbington's criteria notwithstanding) while masking the doctrinal decline that this blogger would find at the center of the crisis. Having defined those issues to the periphery, Kidd is left to focus on political and social concerns.

Kidd contends that political interest has always played a role in evangelical activism, arguing that evangelicals have done best when advocating in behalf of the marginalized. Notions of the church having a spiritual mission are readily dismissed as opportunistic when groups don't want the church to weigh in against their interests. Kidd is no political leftist -- no one should think that his criticisms of the religious right mirror those of evangelical leftists such as Ron Sider or Jim Wallis. Nonetheless, Kidd takes an increasingly dim view of evangelical politics since the rise of the Moral Majority. Leaders of the movements leading up to the present have damaged the reputation of the church, bringing it to the point of crisis.

While one should take care not to criticize a survey unfairly for what it has left out, a couple of obvious matters deserved attention in a work of this sort. First, many of us believe that the crisis of American evangelicalism may have a political component, but the more fundamental issues relate to a decline in doctrine and piety. Second, if Kidd is going to insist on evangelical politics, the work of Carl F.H. Henry deserved greater attention as providing an example of a road not travelled. Kidd discusses Henry's critique beginning with his publication of The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in the post-war years. However, he gives no attention to Henry's post 1980's critique of Christian political engagement as lacking in an overall political philosophy including the goals and limits of political engagement.

Finally, Kidd fails to address the potential benefits of the church not seeking a seat at the political table. The late conservative journalist Robert Novak, when asked whether the rise of the religious right had been beneficial, responded that it had been great for the Republican Party, to which it provided foot soldiers, and a disaster for the church.

Had Novak lived longer, he might have even argued that the disaster contributed to a movement in crisis.