Books

Preaching to huge crowds in the 18th century the highly popular theologian Jonathan Edwards did not soften his rhetoric when it came time to describe the fate of humanity and its need for divine grace Natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell They have deserved the fiery pit a

Maybe you don rsquo t have to believe This collection of 24 tales comes with an alternate subtitle Short Fiction on the Varieties and Vagaries of Faith and a fair number of its protagonists in works by Marjorie Kemper Joyce Carol Oates William Saroyan Isaac Bashevis Singer et al could hard

A professor I knew used to say Hamlet seems befuddled at times because he is a Renaissance man in a medieval world Over the years I saw that the reverse was equally true Hamlet knows the new philosophy but is troubled by new customs and friends who betray old loyalties he fails at playing the Ma

Fenton Johnson grew up in the shadow of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky the youngest of nine children born in a Catholic county surrounded by a Protestant sea For years his family home had been like a second home to monks from the abbey who walked over for conversation a beer or for some spare part

A question that looms large for many Americans these days after the second Persian Gulf war is ldquo How does a religion that claims universal and exclusive truth fit into a pluralistic environment rdquo Such is the question at the heart of George M Marsden rsquo s new work Jonathan Edwards

Hans K uuml ng b 1928 may well have been the 20th century rsquo s most important Catholic theologian mdash not the most original or profound to be sure but the most influential because of his astonishing breadth energy productivity and pedagogical skills in explaining liberal orthodoxy to an

The United States Supreme Court seems to have settled on the view that our Constitution limits regulates but in the end still permits the death penalty So what Franklin Zimring calls the contradictions of American capital punishment will likely be resolved if ever through dialogue and debate in

What makes a life story worth retelling beyond the sympathetic confines of family and friends Is it who we are who we know what we stand for or where we have been Or perhaps all of the above John Cort rsquo s recently published memoir encompasses all of the above but he chooses to organize his