Resources on Book Reviews
When I finish a book, I add it to my annual “books read” list. My 2019 list is at the end of this post. I don’t have a detailed reading plan – I select books based on interest and recommendations, as well as a desire to improve my cultural awareness. I also use commentaries, Bible dictionaries, and systematic theologies as I prepare two weekly sermons and lectures. Since I seldom read these cover-to-cover, few are found in my lists. 2019 Reading Highlights What follows are some of my 2019 reading highlights. Several of my comments come from booknotes I wrote earlier in the year. Every year, I read a few substantial volumes in theology. This year I chose Wilhelmus…
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Albert N. Martin, The Man of God: His Calling and Godly Life. Trinity Pulpit Press, 2018. More than a century ago James Stalker warned: I believe the question, what is to be the type and the tone of the ministry in any generation, is decided in the theological seminaries. What the students are there, the ministers of the country will be by-and-by. . . The state of feeling in a theological seminary ought to be such, that any man living a life inconsistent with his future profession should feel thoroughly uncomfortable, and have the conviction driven in upon his conscience every day, that the ministry is no place for him. (Yale Preaching Lectures, 1891) If theological students are to live…
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(Earlier in the year, I posted a book review of The Faithful Preacher by Thabiti M. Anyabwile. It has now been published in the September issue of Reformed Theological Seminary’s online journal, Reformed Faith & Practice.) __________ One of my goals at RTS Jackson is to introduce students to the “neglected voices” of the evangelical church. I am not the best qualified to remedy this neglect, but have made it my habit to assign readings that will help. One such book is Thabiti Anyabwile’s The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007). The book presents biographical sketches of Lemuel Haynes, Daniel Payne, and Francis Grimké, along with selected writings. First, Lemuel Haynes. Born in 1753, he…
Read MoreBiographer and journalist Robert A. Caro shares glimpses of his life and writing subjects in Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing. Since the 1960s, his professional career has been devoted to biographies of two twentieth century giants: New York City infrastructure planner Robert Moses (though never elected to public office, he became one of the most powerful men in his state for forty years), and Lyndon Baines Johnson, who as president, reshaped American society. Johnson’s accomplishments were breathtaking. Working with Congress, he secured the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the 1965 Immigration Act, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start, education bills, and War on Poverty legislation. He dramatically increased the scope of the conflict in Vietnam. Four of the projected…
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God’s Ambassadors: The Westminster Assembly and the Reformation of the English Pulpit, 1643–1653, by Chad Van Dixhoorn. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2017, xxi + 215 pages, $40.00. The mere convening of the Westminster Assembly in 1643 is a wonder. Since the days of Edward VI, reform efforts in the church of England had stalled or been reversed under his Protestant successors, Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. The eruption of the English Civil War, with its political and military tumult, made the convening even more unlikely. But convene it did, and over the next decade, the fruits of its labors were prodigious. General histories and expositions of the assembly’s Confession of Faith and Catechisms are many. What distinguishes God’s Ambassadors: The Westminster…
Read MoreOne of my goals at RTS Jackson is to introduce students to the “neglected voices” of the evangelical church. I am not the best qualified to remedy this neglect, but have made it my habit to assign readings that will help. One such book is Thabiti Anyabwile’s The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors. The book presents biographical sketches of Lemuel Haynes, Daniel Payne, and Francis Grimké, along with selected writings. First, Lemuel Haynes. Born in 1753, he was abandoned by his parents when only a few months old. He became an indentured servant to a Connecticut family who treated him as their own child, and where he was to receive the blessings of family…
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