Books

Turkle writes that she was once optimistic and hopeful about the positive potentials of technology. But after interviewing hundreds of people, she is becoming more and more concerned about how we are being shaped, changed, and formed by technology.

Merritt leaves us with the deep and reassuring hope that we need not abandon the rich traditions of the church in order to speak the gospel to a new generation of people who long for some good news.

Sara Miles shares the liberal critique of a Christianity stultified by its preoccupation with doctrine and institutional maintenance. But she comes to this critique through her conversion at the communion table, and the experience of God as “a force blowing uncontrollably through the world.”

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the importance of paying attention to the ordinary if we are to live an engaged and authentic life.

The novelist Elizabeth McCracken is not a religious person, per se. But her memoir about her pregnancy and the stillbirth of her first son bears witness to the transcendent in its exploration of love, grief, and hope.

This is a spiritual memoir, and the theological reflection Srubas brings to bear on her own story does not fit into a clean arc or a clear-cut story of before and after. The narrative decisions Srubas makes in telling this story are both lovely and smart, and pastors and religious leaders would benefit from study of her voice.

This collection of essays, marked by adventurous scholarship and imaginative playfulness, teases out and extends the thought of Rene Girard. James Alison covers topics as diverse as Pentecost, grand opera, the McCarthy witch-hunts, the state of Israel, and life as an openly gay priest loyal to Rome and a cautious admirer of the current Pope.