Book Reviews

“David Hein’s Teaching the Virtues…. is intended as a primer for parents and teachers at these private schools and approaches its topic not as a treatise on either virtue or teaching but as one on teaching virtue, an impulse not without ambition, for philosophers have long wondered whether virtue can be taught.” - Acton

Mark Ward on the book 40 Questions About Bible Translation

“The core of Barr’s complaint has merit. She notes that the ‘pastor’s job often includes the unpaid labor of his wife.’ Barr didn’t mind helping her husband; however, she says, “What I minded was feeling like my help was an expectation for his job” - TGC

“Linneman… inspires readers to move beyond intellectual acknowledgment of the need to pray and into a vibrant, God-dependent practice of prayer. He begins by establishing our identity as children of the Father and then moves into practical instructions.” - TGC

“Religious liberty did not emerge from abstract speculation, but rather the concrete experience of Protestant republics in the Atlantic World.” - L&L

“Asserting the primacy of ‘identities and social norms’ leads to the dissatisfying explanation: ‘Because that is who they are and what they do.’ This invites the exasperated follow-up: ‘OK, but why is that who they are and what they do?’” - Current

“Every time we let someone say, ‘Oh, I’m just a mom,’ and don’t honor her work, we let stand the idea that serving the vulnerable is somehow a lesser existence—when in reality it is the foundation of any society that hopes to survive.” - Acton

“Though a fascinating historical study undoubtedly unfamiliar to many readers, American Heretics fails to interpret properly the framers’ conception of religion and… ham-fistedly collapses into a single whole a diverse group of religious conservatives who often share little more than superficial commonalities.” - Acton

“Bavinck delivered the lectures that would become The Foremost Problems of Contemporary Dogmatics: On Faith, Knowledge, and the Christian Tradition at the beginning of his time at the Free University of Amsterdam, likely writing much of it in 1903–4.” - TGC

“In his new book, ‘Believe,’ Douthat makes a case for name-brand religion, saying the world’s largest faith traditions are like maps for helping us navigate life and the universe around us. They also might just be true.” - RNS

Related: Gavin Ortlund interview