Author: Jennifer Sheen (Page 1 of 11)

Here is a selection of titles recently added to our collection.

  A new history of redemption : the work of Jesus the Messiah through the millennia /Gerald R. McDermott.  Taking inspiration from Jonathan Edwards, a widely-respected evangelical theologian traces the redeeming work of the Messiah in the Bible and in church history up through the new heavens and earth.

 Climate change science : an essential reader /Richard C.J. Somerville.  Written by an established climate change scientist, this book introduces readers to cutting-edge climate change science. Unlike many books on the topic that devote themselves to recent events, this volume provides a historical context and describes early research results as well as key modern scientific findings. It explains how the climate change issue has developed over many decades, how the science has progressed, how diplomacy has (so far) proven unable to find a means of limiting global emissions of heat-trapping substances, and how the forecast for future climate change has become more worrisome. A scientific or mathematical background is not necessary to read this book, which includes no equations, jargon, complex charts or graphs, or quantitative science at all. Anyone who can read a newspaper will understand this book. It is ideal for introductory courses on climate change, especially for non-science major students.

  Front porch wisdom : navigating leadership pressures and barriers as a woman of color /Froswa’ Booker-Drew ; foreword by Natasha Sistrunk Robinson.  Celebrating the achievements and struggles of women of color in Leadership.  Front Porch Wisdom fills a crucial gap in leadership books by focusing on faith and workplace journeys unique to women of color.  Each chapter is an invitation to explore tools and insights tailored for nonprofit management, corporate environments, and beyond. With wisdom accumulated from a lifetime of leadership and community engagement,  Front Porch Wisdom offers women the opportunity to: – Emphasize the importance of faith and personal values in leadership roles. – Learn practical tools and strategies for navigating corporate and nonprofit sectors. – Read real-life stories and experiences from women of color in leadership. – Experience reflective exercises designed to encourage personal and professional growth.

 How ableism fuels racism : dismantling the hierarchy of bodies in the church /Lamar Hardwick. A Black autistic pastor and disability scholar helps the contemporary church understand the connections between ableism and racism and how to dismantle both in attitudes and practices.

Land of my sojourn : the landscape of a faith lost and found /Mike Cosper. Land of My Sojourn is a deeply personal, hope-filled story of faith, disillusionment, and coming back home. Through meditations on the spiritual significance of the mountains of the Bible and encounters with Peter, Elijah, and Jesus, Mike Cosper shares his own crisis of faith sparked by a painful church experience and the broader challenges facing evangelicalism today. Cosper, host of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and Cultivated podcasts, examines the church’s often troubled witness, its ongoing crisis of leadership, and the epidemic of narcissism, abuse, and cover-up that has continued to emerge year after year. This book is about Cosper’s journey both before and undergirding that work—the shattering of dreams and the grace that restored a broken faith in the aftermath. It’s a story about grace leading him home when he thought all was lost. If you’ve found yourself lost in the wilderness of doubt or disillusionment with church, Land of My Sojourn will remind you that you’re not alone—and that God is working even in your hardest times. Cosper writes,’My hope is that as I tell this story you might find echoes of your own. I pray if you’re in the wilderness, you might find that though the territory is a mystery, you are far from alone. Most of all, I pray that you rediscover that Jesus is chasing you like a lover… right through heaven’s gates.’

  Mine is the kingdom:  The rise and fall of Brian Houston and the Hillsong Church /David Hardaker. The inside story of the global megachurch and its charismatic leader, Brian Houston. In 2023 the curtain finally came down on Brian Houston. The rock star of Pentecostalism, former Global Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church, was acquitted of concealing his father’s sexual abuse of a minor, but it was too late. His glittering megachurch had disowned him. How had it come to this? And how did Hillsong, the brightest star of international evangelical Christianity, fall to earth so spectacularly? Following in his father Frank’s footsteps, Brian had supercharged Hillsong to become the nation’s biggest and loudest Pentecostal church, built on the millions donated by its followers. He would hold audiences of 20,000 in the palm of his hand with a powerful message from God: You need more money. Houston took his church worldwide, and even made it into the White House. Justin Bieber and several Kardashians were Hillsong regulars. Politicians courted Hillsong, with its magnetic appeal to aspirational Australians, and its story became entwined with that of Australia’s first Pentecostal prime minister, Scott Morrison, who looked to Brian Houston as a key spiritual influence. But just as Brian Houston’s kingdom was at the very height of its powers it dramatically fell apart when the church’s dirty secrets came tumbling out. Behind the scenes a secret insurrection, led by young Christian women, had mobilized. Journalist David Hardaker had been investigating the Hillsong phenomenon for several years, gaining unparalleled access to former insiders, when he received a tip-off. Something big was going down . . .

 On the resurrection. Volume 1, Evidences /Gary R. Habermas.   Published in four volumes, On the Resurrection serves as Gary R. Habermas’s magnum opus – a comprehensive defense of the authenticity of Jesus Christ’s resurrection, built from Habermas’s lifetime of scholarly study. In the first volume, Evidences, Habermas presents a comprehensive offering of all the historical evidence for the resurrection, including extra-biblical sources and a full exploration of the minimal historical facts argument. This volume includes: A detailed overview of the nature of historical research and how historical truth is evaluated. Evidence for the existence of Jesus. A complete evaluation of the minimal historical facts surrounding Jesus’s resurrection, plus six other known historical facts. The biblical data for the resurrection account. Through his comprehensive analyses built from a lifetime of research, Habermas demonstrates why we ought to trust the biblical and historical testimony of Scripture regarding the resurrection. This book is a must-read for pastors, students, and scholars interested in the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Reckoning with power : why the church fails when it’s on the wrong side of power /David E. Fitch.This book provides a theology of power through the lens of the triumphs and failures of the church, showing that whenever the church has aligned itself with worldly power, it has been on the wrong side of crucial justice issues. But when the church submits to and cooperates with God’s power, the world is disrupted and changed.

 Secularism and the pursuit of transcendence, Volume I /edited by Stanley E. Porter and Wendy J. Porter.  We live in a secular age, or so we have been told. Nevertheless, the Christian church strongly believes that we still experience–and in fact are surrounded by–acts of transcendence, encounters with God that often defy imagination and explanation. And yet we do try to explain such phenomena, whether theologically, experientially, biblically, historically, philosophically, literarily, or even (or especially) artistically. These two volumes are more than just papers from a major conference on secularism and the pursuit of transcendence held at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. They contain genuine attempts by people deeply engaged with their secular surroundings to explain what we mean by transcendence. Transcendence has been a longstanding topic among the best thinkers of this and previous ages, and the same is true for these volumes, which include contributions by Charles Taylor, Robert Wuthnow, Merold Westphal, and Christina Gschwandtner–but also by a wide range of others who address the question from divergent vantage points. The responses vary as much as the orientations of those involved, in the pursuit of defining not only what it means to live in our secular age but to be involved in the pursuit of transcendence–or even to perceive the Transcendent’s pursuit of us.

  The artist’s life : the heartbeat of the creative person /Beth Leibson, James C. Kaufman.  This book delves into the lives, growth, and inner workings of creative artists, sharing stories about the lives of those who have built their career in the arts.   These detailed, intimate, and often surprising anecdotes shed light on creativity from both personal and professional perspectives. Chapters focus on the influences of family and school on creativity, through early discoveries and passions that led to growth and development. In their own words, interviewees describe the joys of “making it” in the creative world alongside the realities of the business, from finances to relationships and possible legacies. Taking a narrative approach thatreveals the hidden truths about being a creative artist, this book offers a rare window on creativity for researchers and artists alike.

 The cost of ambition : how striving to be better than others makes us worse /Miroslav Volf. An internationally renowned theologian argues that rather than improving us as individuals and as a society, our ambition to be better than others actually diminishes us.

The theological imagination : perception and interpretation in life, art, and faith /Judith Wolfe, University of St Andrews.  How can we live truthfully in a world riddled with ambiguity, contradiction, and clashing viewpoints? We make sense of the world imaginatively, resolving ambiguous and incomplete impressions into distinct forms and wholes. But the images, objects, words, and even lives of which we make sense in this way always have more or other possible meanings.  Wolfe argues that faith gives us courage both to shape our world creatively, and reverently to let things be more than we can imagine. Drawing on complementary materials from literature, psychology, art, and philosophy, her remarkable book demonstrates that Christian theology offers a potent way of imagining the world even as it brings us to the limits of our capacity to imagine. In revealing the significance of unseen depths – of what does not yet make sense to us, and the incomplete – Wolfe characterizes faith as trust in God that surpasses all imagination.

Untangling critical race theory : what Christians need to know and why it matters /Ed Uszynski; forewords by Preston Sprinkle and Crawford Loritts.  What is critical race theory? It may be one of the most widely referenced issues of the day, but it’s also one of the least understood. In its translation from the academic world to the general public, critical race theory has inaccurately become a catch-all term for anything related to race. But what does it actually mean, and how should Christians engage it? Ed Uszynski is uniquely positioned to address the dynamics of critical race theory. He earned his PhD in American culture studies in the university world and navigated the realities of Marxist critical theory and critical race theory-while still a white male conservative Christian ministering in traditional contexts. In this enlightening guidebook, he unpacks what critical race theory really is and how Christians can make sense of it. Uszynski carefully explores CRT’s roots and tenets, revealing what it aims to do and also how some portrayals of CRT misrepresent its purposes. With responsible answers to legitimate concerns, Uszynski goes beyond the surface to provide a reliable path of just discernment and cultural engagement.

 Who really wrote the Bible : the story of the scribes /William M. Schniedewind.     Tradition long identified Moses as the author of the Pentateuch, with Ezra as editor. Ancient readers also suggested that David wrote the psalms and Solomon wrote Proverbs and Qohelet. Although the Hebrew Bible rarely speaks of its authors, people have been fascinated by the question of its authorship since ancient times. Schniedewind offers a bold new answer: the Bible was not written by a single author, or by a series of single authors, but by communities of scribes. The Bible does not name its authors because authorship itself was an idea enshrined in a later era by the ancient Greeks. In the pre-Hellenistic world of ancient Near Eastern literature, books were produced, preserved, and passed on by scribal communities. Schniedewind draws on ancient inscriptions, archaeology, and anthropology, as well as a close reading of the biblical text itself, to trace the communal origin of biblical literature. Scribes were educated through apprenticeship rather than in schools. The prophet Isaiah, for example, has his “disciples”; Elisha has his “apprentice.” This mode of learning emphasized the need to pass along the traditions of a community of practice rather than to individuate and invent. Schniedewind shows that it is anachronistic to impose our ideas about individual authorship and authors on the writing of the Bible. Ancient Israelites didn’t live in books, he writes, but along dusty highways and byways. Who Really Wrote the Bible describes how scribes and their apprentices actually worked in ancient Jerusalem and Judah.

 Women and the reformations : a global history /Merry Wiesner-Hanks.  A compelling, authoritative history of how women shaped the Reformations and transformed religious life across the globe The Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, have long been told as stories of men. But women were central to the transformations that took place in Europe and beyond. What was life like for them in this turbulent period? How did their actions and ideas shape Christianity and influence societies around the world? In this rich and definitive study, renowned scholar  Wiesner-Hanks explores the history of women and the Reformations in full for the first time. Wiesner-Hanks travels the globe, examining well-known figures like Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth I, and Anne Hutchinson, as well as women whose stories are only now emerging. Along the way, we meet converts in Japan, Spanish nuns in the Philippines, and saints in Ethiopia and America. Wiesner-Hanks explores women’s experiences as monarchs, mothers, migrants, martyrs, mystics, and missionaries, revealing that the story of the Reformations is no longer simply European–and that women played a vital role.

  You will be my witnesses : theology for God’s church serving in God’s mission /Brian A. DeVries.Defines the church’s witness within a biblical theology of God’s mission, including evangelism, apologetics, global partnerships, church planting, and gospel suffering.

Check out these Giller and Booker award winning books recently added to our collection:

The Giller Prize (formerly the Scotiabank Giller Prize) is  one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards, celebrating the best in Canadian Fiction – novels, short stories, and graphic novels.  Founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch to honor his late wife, Doris Giller, it awards $100,000 to the winner and $10,000 to each finalist, promoting literary excellence.

2024 Giller Prize Winner

Held / Anne Michaels.  1917, On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls–a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds.

2023 Giller Prize Winner

Study for obedience /Sarah Bernstein.  A young woman moves from the place of her birth to the remote northern country of her forebears to be housekeeper to her brother, whose wife has recently left him. Soon after her arrival, a series of inexplicable events occurs – collective bovine hysteria; the demise of a ewe and her nearly born lamb; a local dog’s phantom pregnancy; a potato blight. She notices that the local suspicion about incomers in general seems to be directed with some intensity at her and she senses a mounting threat that lies ‘just beyond the garden gate.’ And as she feels the hostility growing, pressing at the edges of her brother’s property, she fears that, should the rumblings in the town gather themselves into a more defined shape, who knows what might happen, what one might be capable of doing. With a sharp, lyrical voice, Sarah Bernstein powerfully explores questions of complicity and power, displacement and inheritance. ‘Study for Obedience’ is a finely tuned, unsettling novel that confirms Bernstein as one of the most exciting voices of her generation.

2021 Giller Prize Winner

What strange paradise / Omar El Akkad. More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though she and the boy are complete strangers, though they don’t speak a common language, she determines to do whatever it takes to save him. In alternating chapters, we learn the story of the boy’s life and of how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the girl and boy as they make their way toward a vision of safety. But as the novel unfurls we begin to understand that this is not merely the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world, it is the story of our collective moment in this time: of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair–and of the way each of those things can blind us to reality, or guide us to a better one.

2020 Giller Prize Winner

Mercy among the children / David Adams Richards.  As a boy, Sydney Henderson thinks he has killed Connie Devlin when he pushes him from a roof for stealing his sandwich. He vows to God he will never again harm another if Connie survives. Connie walks away, laughing, and Sydney embarks upon a life of self-immolating goodness. In spite of having educated himself with such classics as Tolstoy and Marcus Aurelius, he is not taken seriously enough to enter university because of his background of dire poverty and abuse, which leads everyone to expect the worst of him. His saintly generosity of spirit is treated with suspicion and contempt, especially when he manages to win the love of beautiful Elly. Unwilling to harm another in thought or deed, or to defend himself against false accusations, he is exploited and tormented by others in this rural community, and finally implicated in the death of a 19-year-old boy.
Lyle Henderson knows his father is innocent, but is angry that the family has been ridiculed for years, and that his mother and sister suffer for it. He feels betrayed by his father’s passivity in the face of one blow after another, and unable to accept his belief in long-term salvation. Unlike his father, he cannot believe that evil will be punished in the end. While his father turns the other cheek, Lyle decides the right way is in fighting, and embarks on a morally empty life of stealing, drinking and violence.   A compassionate, powerful story of humanity confronting inhumanity, it is a culmination of Richards’ last seven books, beginning with Road to the Stilt House—all taking place in New Brunswick’s Miramichi Valley.

2017 Giller Prize Winner

 Bellevue square / Michael Redhill.   Jean Mason has a doppelganger. She’s never seen her, but others swear they have. Apparently, her identical twin hangs out in Kensington Market, where she sometimes buys churros and drags an empty shopping cart down the streets, like she’s looking for something to put in it. Jean’s a grown woman with a husband and two kids, as well as a thriving bookstore in downtown Toronto, and she doesn’t rattle easily—not like she used to. But after two customers insist they’ve seen her double, Jean decides to investigate.  She begins at the crossroads of Kensington Market: a city park called Bellevue Square. Although she sees no one who looks like her, it only takes a few visits to the park for her to become obsessed with the possibility of encountering her twin in the flesh. With the aid of a small army of locals who hang around in the park, she expands her surveillance, making it known she’ll pay for information or sightings. A peculiar collection of drug addicts, scam artists, philanthropists, philosophers and vagrants—the regulars of Bellevue Square—are eager to contribute to Jean’s investigation. But when some of them start disappearing, she fears her alleged double has a sinister agenda. Unless Jean stops her, she and everyone she cares about will face a fate much stranger than death.

The Booker Prize is the world’s leading literarcy award for a single work fo fiction, awarded anually to the best sustained novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.  Renowned for transforming careers, the winner receives £50,000 and significant international recognition, with £2,500 awarded to each of the six shortlisted authors.

2025 Booker Prize Winner

Flesh /David Szalay.  A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unraveled by a series of events beyond his grasp. Fifteen-year-old Istvan lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor–a married woman close to his mother’s age–as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that Istvan himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control. As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely. Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.

2024 Booker Prize Winner

Orbital: A novel /Samantha Harvey.   Orbital deftly snapshots a day in the lives of six women and men hurtling through space– not toward the moon or the vast unknown, but around our planet. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts– from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan– have left their lives behind to travel at warp speed as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate. So are the marks of civilization far below, encrusted on the planet on which we live.

2023 Booker Prize Winner

Prophet song /Paul Lynch.  On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what–or who–is she willing to leave behind? Prophet Song presents a shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

2022 Booker Prize Winner

Seven moons of Maali Almeida /Shehan Karunatilaka. A searing satire set amid the mayhem of the Sri Lankan civil war. Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida–war photographer, gambler, and closet queen–has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira Lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers, and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka.

2021 Booker Prize Winner

The Promise: A novel / Damon Galgut .  On her deathbed, Rachel Swart makes a promise to Salome, the family’s Black maid. This promise will divide the family–especially her children: Anton, the golden boy; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by feelings of guilt. Reunited by four funerals over thirty years, the dwindling Swart family remains haunted by the unmet promise, just as their country is haunted by its own failures. The Promise is an epic South African drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of history, sure to leave its readers transformed. Simply: you must read it. –Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine This tour-de-force unleashes a searing portrait of a damaged family and a troubled country in need of healing.

2020 Booker Prize Winner

Shuggie Bain: A novel /Douglas Stuart. Bain spends his 1980s childhood in public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s war on heavy industry has put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. His mother Agnes is Shuggie’s guiding light but a burden for his siblings. Dreaming of a house with its own front door and ordering happiness on credit as her husband philanders, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good but finds solace in drink. As she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety, Agnes’s addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her– especially her beloved Shuggie.

2018 Booker Prize Winner

Milkman: A novel /Anna Burns.  In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes “interesting,” the last thing she ever wanted to be. Despite middle sister’s attempts to avoid him―and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend―rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor.

2017 Booker Prize Winner

Lincoln in the bardo / George Saunders.  February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy’s body. From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins a story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state — called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo — a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul. Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end.

2016 Booker Prize Winner

The sellout: A Novel / Paul Beatty.  Born in the “agrarian ghetto” of Dickens, the narrator of The Sellout spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. Raised by a single father, a sociologist, he is told that his father’s work will lead to a memoir that will solve their financial woes. But when his father is killed, he realizes there never was a memoir. Fueled by this deceit, the narrator initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery, which lands him in front of the Supreme Court.

2015 Booker Prize Winner

Brief history of seven killings / Marlon James.  On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert, gunmen stormed his house, machine guns blazing. The attack nearly killed the Reggae superstar, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Marley would go on to perform at the free concert on December 5, but he left the country the next day, not to return for two years. Spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters — assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts — A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s.

2014 Booker Prize Winner

The narrow road to the deep north / Richard Flanagan.  Moving deftly from a Japanese POW camp to present-day Australia, from the experiences of Dorrigo Evans and his fellow prisoners to that of the Japanese guards, this savagely beautiful novel tells a story of the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.

1986 Booker Prize Winner

 The old devils / Kingsley Amis; introduction by John Banville.   Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon. Long-dormant rivalries and romances are rudely awakened, as life at the Bible and Crown, the local pub, is changed irrevocably. Considered by Martin Amis to be Kingsley Amis’s greatest achievement—a book that “stands comparison with any English novel of the [twentieth] century”—The Old Devils confronts the attrition of ageing with rare candor, sympathy, and moral intelligence.

Here is a selection of titles recently added to our collection.

 A pledge of the truth : Theophilus of Antioch’s doctrine of scripture and its role in his Ad Autolycum /Taylor Evan Walls ; foreword by Michael A.G. Haykin. Persecution, false accusations, and philosophical criticisms were all a common part of the life of the church in the second century.  Many Christian writers took up the mighty pen to defend the Christian faith. Though often overlooked, Theophilus of Antioch was one of these apologetic writers who boldly identified himself as a Christian and a believer in God’s word. In his only remaining work, Ad Autolycum, Theophilus shows the irrationality of the pagan worldview and defends the Christian faith with a firm commitment to the authority of Scripture. The Scriptures are foundational to his defense of the Christian faith. He presents the Scriptures, both from the Old and New Testaments, as a faithful guide and guarantee of truth on the nature of God, the world, and ethics. The Scriptures were efficacious in his own conversion to Christianity, and so he uses those same divine words in order to call his pagan friend from idolatry to the truth of the one God.  In this book, Walls offers a systematic presentation of Theophilus’ understanding of the nature of Scripture, and shows how this doctrine provided the foundation and structure for his defense of Christianity.

 Barbarian queens and the conversion of Europe  /Burnam W. Reynolds.  The role of Christian queens in the conversion to Christianity of their pagan husbands has often been ignored when studying the origins of European culture. This study evaluates the contributions of these queens to the establishment of a trans-national connective that formed the basis for an identifiable European culture.

 Encountering Jesus in Revelation : the apocalyptic perspective that calls us to follow the Lamb /Ben Boeckel.  Is Revelation really worth the effort? Does its message resonate with followers of Jesus in the here and now?  Encountering Jesus in Revelation offers pastors and laypeople an accessible tool for studying Revelation within the local church.  It situates Revelation in its ancient context while stressing how its apocalyptic nature addresses God’s people at every point in history, including our own. It does this by introducing apocalyptic writing as a form of literature and then surveys the alternative perspective Revelation offers on the world of its readers. That perspective is one in which we encounter Jesus and his call to leave behind the often-unrecognized beasts and monsters that inhabit our world. Readers who find themselves reluctant to study Revelation because of the confusing nature of its contents–and of academic books written about it–will find that Encountering Jesus in Revelation offers accessible and applicable insights as it explores how Revelation addresses its readers today.

How to build a thriving marriage as you care for children with disabilities /Kristin Faith Evans, MA, MS, LMSW and Todd Evans, PhD, MA.  Raising a child with disabilities can take a toll on your marriage as you pour yourself into your child’s needs. Drawing from their training and personal experience, these authors teach you how to build a thriving marriage by using practical, research-based tools.

 National images and United States-Canada relations /Stephen Brooks.This book explores the psychological-cultural dimension of the United States-Canada relationship by analyzing how each country has viewed the other. Drawing on a wide range of data, including primary sources, secondary literature, and survey research, the methodology is historical/analytical, seeking to explicate and understand how Americans and Canadians, and their elites, have viewed one another from the moment they were launched on separate trajectories, why they developed and held such ideas, and what consequences these images had for the bilateral relationship between the countries. American and Canadian images of the other have deep roots and are, in many respects, recognizably the same today as they were many decades ago.  Moreover, even when anchored to important realities of the other, such images influence the perception and interpretation of events, and actions taken by the other. How Americans and Canadians have viewed each other, the sources of these ideas, the way they have been influenced by each country’s domestic politics and place within the international system, and the consequences for their bilateral relationship are among the questions examined. Interdisciplinary in approach, the book will appeal to scholars and students of political science, international relations, and history.

 Pacific well-being : (is)lands, theologies, worldviews /edited by Jione Havea.This book makes space (1) for Pasifika contributions to academic conversations on critical topics and (2) for influencing the conversations to account for, and thus reflect, Pasifika ways and modes. The critical topic that runs through the chapters is well-being, and the contributors were located at the time of writing in Pasifika–Aotearoa, Fiji, Kioa, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu–but there are many more Pasifika voices and concerns than are represented in this work.  Nonetheless, the ways in which this work seeks to influence the conversations on well-being reflect the intersectional modes of thinking that native Pasifika Islanders share. The essays are placed into three intersecting clusters: well-being of bodies and (is)lands, well-being of traditions and theologies, and well-being of imaginations and worldviews. The rationale for this arrangement is that the well-being of Pasifika requires attention to the present (bodies and islands), to the past (traditions and theologies), and to the future (imaginations and worldviews). The chapters address Pasifika questions and concerns, and they are placed so that the conversations they spark can take place–free of the traps of Western theories and disciplines–with Pasifika accents and rhythms.

 Preaching from the cross : Paul’s theology of proclamation /Frank J. Matera. A senior New Testament scholar explores Paul’s understanding of his own preaching and relates Paul’s theology of proclamation to preaching today.

 Secularism and the pursuit of transcendence, Volume II /edited by Stanley E. Porter and Wendy J. Porter.  We live in a secular age, or so we have been told. Nevertheless, the Christian church strongly believes that we still experience–and in fact are surrounded by–acts of transcendence, encounters with God that often defy imagination and explanation. And yet we do try to explain such phenomena, whether theologically, experientially, biblically, historically, philosophically, literarily, or even (or especially) artistically. These two volumes are more than just papers from a major conference on secularism and the pursuit of transcendence held at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. They contain genuine attempts by people deeply engaged with their secular surroundings to explain what we mean by transcendence. Transcendence has been a longstanding topic among the best thinkers of this and previous ages, and the same is true for these volumes, which include contributions by Charles Taylor, Robert Wuthnow, Merold Westphal, and Christina Gschwandtner–but also by a wide range of others who address the question from divergent vantage points. The responses vary as much as the orientations of those involved, in the pursuit of defining not only what it means to live in our secular age but to be involved in the pursuit of transcendence–or even to perceive the Transcendent’s pursuit of us.

 The Holy people of God : identity, contexts, challenges /edited by Svetlana Khobnya, Arseny Ermakov, Deirdre Brower Latz, Peter Rae and MiJa Wi. This collection of essays addresses aspects of Christian identity formation as God’s holy people in a global context in the midst of various challenges. The contributors offer interdisciplinary explorations on what it means to live as God’s holy people in different settings and consider challenging questions from biblical, historical, theological, missiological, and pastoral perspectives.

 The new Anabaptists : practices for emerging communities /Stuart Murray ; with contributions by Alexandra Ellish, Karen Sethuraman, Juliet Kilpin.  What does it look like to be an Anabaptist community in the modern world? And why does it matter? A new incarnation of Anabaptism is blossoming-but not where we might expect. In the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, and other post-Christendom contexts with little historical Anabaptist presence, Christian communities are embodying novel expressions of Anabaptist faith and practice.  In this companion to The Naked Anabaptist, author Stuart Murray identifies twelve common practices of such churches and communities that are shaped by an Anabaptist vision. Murray explores how these practices-which include encouraging economic radicalism in the face of rampant consumerism, truth-telling in a “post-truth” society, accountability in an individualistic culture, peaceful activism in a world in conflict, and faithful witness in communities that no longer know much about the Christian story-might shape and grow emerging Christian communities and inspire those that seek fresh expressions as cultural changes accelerate. The New Anabaptists provides foundational resources for followers of Jesus in many different contexts as they rise to the challenge of embodying faithful and radical discipleship in local communities.

 Waiting isn’t a waste : the surprising comfort of trusting God in the uncertainties of life /Mark Vroegop ; foreword by Jen Wilkin.  Exploring 6 Characteristics of Waiting to Prompt Wisdom from God and Gain Invaluable Peace Throughout our lives, we experience countless periods of waiting.  Some moments are mere nuisances–others are daunting seasons filled with intense worry and doubt. We grow impatient by immovable traffic or crave an impending answer to a medical condition.  Whatever our current circumstances, our innate response is to take action rather than stay still. In Waiting Isn’t a Waste,  Vroegop calls believers to resist the human urge for control and lean on Christ for comfort while we wait for the uncertainties of life to unfold. Vroegop explores what it means to wait on God through 6 important characteristics–waiting is hard, common, biblical, slow, commanded, and relational. This book not only teaches readers how to wait on God but inspires them to embrace waiting–for it prompts wisdom from God and brings invaluable peace to the present.

 Working blessedly forever. Volume 1, The shape of marketplace theology /R. Paul Stevens ; foreward by Steven Garber. Work, whether from home, in cyberspace, or in a factory or office, occupies a major chunk of our time, energy, and soul. This book seeks to make sense of our work in the world through adapting the pithy statement of the Puritan William Perkins to define marketplace theology as the’science of working blessedly forever.’  It is a science involving investigation, but not just with the head (thought), but also with heart (prayer) and hand (practice). But it is a science of working. So the book investigates a theology of work undertaken in the light of God’s blessing and purpose.  Our work is not just for this life but’forever,’ since some of it could last into the new heaven and new earth where, guess what, Scripture says we will work as fully human and resurrected beings. Stevens gathers his lifetime of research and teaching into this book showing through biblical research and contemporary analysis the meaning of work and human enterprise. It could change your lifestyle, your work style, and your soul.

 Working blessedly forever. Volume 2, The practice of marketplace theology /edited by R. Paul Stevens and Lucas Lee. In volume 1 of Working Blessedly Forever, Stevens argues that doing marketplace theology requires head (thought), heart (prayer), and hand (action). Volume 2 takes up “the doing” part through the experience of multiple practitioners thus providing a practical marketplace theology.  Under the headings of “Doing Theology from Above and Below,” “Dimensions of Marketplace Practice,” “Issues in the Marketplace,” and “Marketplace Practice and the Church,” these sixteen authors, ranging from a machinist to a lawyer, elaborate on what they have learned about the integration of faith and work from their actual work life. Edited by R. Paul Stevens, who writes the introduction, a short introduction to each session, three of the short chapters, and the epilogue, this book does not cover everything but gives a window into the actual life of a marketplace Christian in their work for God and neighbor. Along with volume 1 this puts “flesh on” the invigorating and empowering truth of biblical marketplace theology.

Here is a selection of titles recently added to our collection.

Entangled being : original sin and wicked problems /Rebecca L. Copeland.  Contemporary societies face many complex injustices, from environmental devastation that threatens our long-term prospects, to human trafficking that fuels our global economy, to health disparities that harm already marginalized communities.   Although theologies of liberation have long identified these injustices as manifestations of systemic sin, many Christians recoil from using the language of sin to discuss our everyday involvement in such systems.  In Entangled Being, Rebecca L. Copeland asserts that sin is the most appropriate theological language for naming what has gone wrong in the world and for beginning to repair those wrongs, despite modern resistance to the use of sin-talk. She argues that Christians need a reconstructed understanding of what naming something as sin should accomplish. Copeland offers the scripturally based idea of unoriginal sin to explore moral agency and responsibility in our complex, pluralistic, and interdependent world.  Expanding the doctrinal boundaries of sin-talk to encompass repentance, she argues that Christians need not only to name systemic injustices as sin but also to repent of them by taking responsibility for the harms they cause and working to repair such harms. Entangled Being addresses common concerns about sin-talk, deconstructs individualistic understandings of moral agency, and draws from the work of marginalized communities to reconstruct understandings of agency and responsibility competent to address the wicked problems we face today.

 Hear ye the word of the Lord : what we miss if we only read the Bible /D. Brent Sandy ; foreword by John H. Walton.  Long before the words of the Bible were written, God’s communication through the spoken word rang out loud and clear. Jesus in particular commissioned representatives to speak on his behalf even during the time of his earthly ministry. And yet today we are a reading culture. It is easy for modern Christians to take for granted that the Bible was handed down in written form, but the way we receive God’s message is far different from how the original hearers would have heard it. These differences not only shape the way that we hear God’s message to his people, but they put us at risk of misunderstanding his revelation.  In Hear Ye the Word of the Lord, biblical scholar D. Brent Sandy explores how oral communication shaped the ways that biblical writers received God’s message—and even more importantly, how the ancient and modern faithful receive it through hearing. Filled with helpful biblical insights related to oral communication and constructive ways for modern readers to become better hearers and performers of Scripture, Hear Ye the Word of the Lord provides a constructive way forward for readers interested in exploring how we can better hear God’s Word.

 Liberating Scripture : an invitation to missional hermeneutics /by Michael Barram and John R. Franke ; foreword by Drew G. I. Hart ; afterword by Lisa M. Bowens.  Rooted in and advocating for a postmodern and postcolonial understanding of mission, Liberating Scripture is the first book-length study designed specifically to introduce readers to the emerging subfield of biblical interpretation known as missional hermeneutics. The authors provide a thorough overview of the background, development, rationale, terminology, and methodology of missional hermeneutics, doing for biblical interpretation what Missional Church (edited by Darrell Guder et al., 1998) did for reimagining the church in light of the missio Dei.  As the initial volume in the new Studies in Missional Hermeneutics, Theology, and Praxis series, Liberating Scripture is a critical resource for study and practical application, and its accessibility will make it a go-to text for classrooms and congregations.

Nearing a far God : praying the Psalms with our whole selves /Leslie Leyland Fields. In Nearing a Far God: Praying the Psalms with Our Whole Selves, you’ll experience the Psalms in fresh, personal, and life-changing ways: Discover how the Psalms can draw you into dialogue with God no matter your pain, struggle, or doubt. Practice transformative writing and prayer exercises that engage and impact the whole brain and the whole self. Reclaim ancient practices of movement and bodily postures to heighten your worship and deepen attachment to God.

 Practice-led theology : a model for faith-based research /Neil K. Ferguson.  Following a series of economic and political changes in the late 1980s, art/design schools and performing arts academies were incorporated into the university system. To justify their teachings as academic research, they developed the idea of practice-led research. Practice-led research recognizes two or more languages–that is, the validity of both explicit/propositional knowledge and embodied/tacit knowledge–allowing for the researcher’s corresponding output, expressed through both the written word and relevant practice. Christians often find themselves living a life of two languages: a set of intellectual beliefs and the practice of being a Christian. This book develops this methodology and translates it for use in theological research. Most importantly, it clearly develops key elements of this methodology using a comprehensive model and detailed definitions. This is a book which not only presents a fully articulated and flexible model of practice-led research, but also presents Christian researchers with an approach they could incorporate into their theological work.

 Preaching the pastoral epistles /Robert W. Wall. Since the second century, 1-2 Timothy and Titus, often referred to as the ‘Pastoral Epistles,’ have been read and practiced together to help order a Christian congregation’s life and mission. These three letters were likely recognized early on as divinely inspired scripture and were added to the Pauline collection to help train the spiritual leaders of earliest Christianity. However, they are rarely taught in most congregations and seminaries today. Admittedly, the genre of these letters (paraenesis) is hard to preach. The primary reason for their neglect, however, is modern criticism’s silencing of them because most scholars think they were not written by Paul and are not aligned with either his gospel or mission. Moreover, they include instructions that are widely received today as out of sync with our modern social worlds. This Proclamation Commentary on these Pauline letters presumes both their apostolic authority as divinely inspired and human-inspiring scripture and their contemporary relevance in encouraging clergy and teachers to reimagine their roles as ministers of the gospel and spiritual leaders for today’s global church.

 Revelation /edited by Rodney L. Petersen and Gerald Bray.  Discover the world of sixteenth-century interpretation of Revelation Known as one of the most enigmatic books of the Bible, Revelation has sparked centuries of diverse theological debate, capturing the imaginations of Reformers navigating a time of immense upheaval. This volume, part of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture series, invites readers to engage with the perspectives of key Reformation-era theologians, offering a window into their reflections on prophecy, eschatology, and profound hopes for moral renewal. Guided by Rodney Petersen and Gerald Bray, this masterfully curated commentary guides readers through a wealth of early modern commentary on the book of Revelation, including voices across theological traditions–Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Radical, and Catholic. Much of the material–including commentaries, sermons, treatises, and confessions–appears for the first time in English, providing pastors, scholars, and students with fresh perspectives on the text. Through their expert curation, Petersen and Bray expand our understanding of how Revelation has been interpreted historically, enlightening contemporary reflection and practice. This volume offers more than theological insights–it’s a resource for spiritual growth and deeper engagement, ideal for pastors seeking to invigorate their sermons or scholars aiming to broaden their knowledge of Reformation biblical interpretation.

 The Sermon on the Mount : reflections for the church /edited by Victor Lee Austin. Although a central Christian text, the Sermon on the Mount remains full of mystery. In this book, an ecumenical group of scholars guides us from exegesis to theology to application to proclamation. Marianne Meye Thompson grounds the Sermon in the narrative of Matthew’s Gospel. Piotr Małysz provides theological amazement at the Sermon being at once law and gospel. David Cloutier works with the Sermon to understand and critique our culture of victimhood. Brent Waters explores its economic “realism.” Sarah Hinlicky Wilson concludes with a poetic paraphrase and reflections on how to preach on the Sermon as a whole. As a special supplement, and continuing the concern of Pro Ecclesia for doing theology ecumenically, Michael Root examines the changes in the ecumenical movement over the past generation. This volume as a whole is offered pro ecclesia, for the building up of the church.

 Transloyalties, connected histories and world Christianity during the period of decolonization and the Cold War : 1945-1970 /edited by Frieder Ludwig, Ellen Vea Rosnes, Joar Haga, Marina Xiaojing Wang, Jairzinho Lopes Pereira.  Focusing on the history of World Christianity, this book relates the concept of “transloyalties” to developments during the “Period of Decolonization and the Cold War.” This was a time when the terms “loyal” and “loyalty” became more frequently used, not only in the United States, where a “loyalty program” was introduced but also in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Churches and ecumenical organizations had to navigate in this context of new loyalty demands. They had to clarify whether changes in church/ state relations and corresponding changes in their organizational structures were necessary, or whether they affected core identities. Was the restriction or exclusion of Western missionaries a threat to the universal character of the church or a transition to self-governing churches? How did African and Asian churches relate to Western mission societies in the new context? Was the strive for justice a basis for cooperation with socialist governments, or were the concepts fundamentally different? How were denominations organized at a national level? Which forms of church government were chosen? Which denominations could become members of Christian Councils that represented joint interests toward the states? These are some of the questions that underlie the importance of this volume to the study of the history of World Christianity.

 Why we pray : understanding prayer in the context of cosmic conflict /John C. Peckham.This accessible and carefully argued book wrestles with the perennial problem of petitionary prayer by placing it within the larger context of the Bible’s cosmic conflict motif.