I imagine one of the questions some have asked on encountering this blog is “why does Bob review so many Christian books?” That’s actually pretty atypical of most book blogs. I suspect some of you just pass these up and read other reviews on books, or my Youngstown posts. That’s just fine, although I hope you will dip in if you see an intriguing title. Don’t worry, this blog is not about proselytizing. Like all reviews, I want to help people get a sense of what the book is about and what I thought about it so they can decide if they want to buy or borrow it.

OK, so why do I review so many Christian books? Besides the fact that I am a follower of Christ, it stems, I think, from a conviction formed early in my Christian journey. A Christian leader I deeply respected once said, “While not all Christians who read are growing Christians, all growing Christians are reading Christians.” That resonated. Deciding to follow Christ was quite simply the best thing to happen in my life and I wanted to grow into all that this meant for my relationship with God and neighbor, my calling in life, my character, and how my faith informed how I saw and lived into every aspect of life. More than fifty years later that is still true.

I believe we grow through our interactions both with God and other Christ-followers. Some are those in my own Christian community with whom I share life. The first book, of course, that we should read and re-read is the Bible. But the wonderful thing about other Christian books is the chance to learn from other Christians I may never meet, especially if they are from before my time. How thankful I am for what I’ve learned from Augustine, Calvin, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, John R. W. Stott, Theresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others. Likewise, I’ve been enriched by so many contemporary writers from N.T. Wright to Tish Harrison Warren.

I began writing reviews to remember what I read, to record what I wanted to remember. I started posting them on an old Facebook app and then on Goodreads (where they still appear). A few years later, I started Bob on Books with the idea of making my reviews, and other thoughts about reading and life available to those who didn’t want to be tied to Goodreads.

I work with a collegiate ministry serving graduate students and faculty. I also hold a Masters degree from a seminary. That leads to reading works written with a kind of academic rigor and careful thought that characterizes what the students and faculty I work with read. While those kinds of books are not generally so popular today, they offer the heft to meet the spiritual and intellectual challenges the scholars we work with face. And this is not so unusual in a Christian history in which the great universities of both Europe and the United States grew out of the church. Any study of intellectual history will number devout Christians like Aquinas and Pascal among the greatest thinkers.

One of my reasons for my reading and reviewing is to share these resources with colleagues, faculty and students who will find these helpful. In earlier years I carried a trunkful of books to share with students I met on campuses. Books would continue conversations we began, with conversation partners who offered far more than I could. I discovered that in writing about books, I could do something similar with a wider group of people. I get to connect people with everything from devotional resources to the latest in Pauline scholarship to books discussing the relationship of faith and science as well as books discussing pressing societal issues from a Christian perspective.

While some of the books I review are academic in character, I try not to write “academic” reviews such as one would find in an academic journal. Most of my reviews are under a thousand words–a challenge when trying to distill several hundred pages! I work to identify the writer’s main idea and how they unpack it, highlighting what seem original, or sometimes, controversial insights. I try to write for ministry colleagues and for non-specialists in theology or biblical studies, though they are often highly specialized in their own field of study.

I’m a non-specialist myself. While I read widely and have some academic training, I am not a specialist in many of the fields in which authors work I review. I don’t attend the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature (AAR/SBL) conferences they attend or follow the journals where they hash out ideas with other scholars. That’s a handicap, and I will be the first to admit I miss things, even though I try to fairly and accurately present a writer’s ideas. Mostly, authors are glad for the publicity for their books and often pass along resources to fill in the lacunae in my own knowledge.

But this is the same handicap most of my readers have. They are bright folk but not trained in the fields of the writers I review. Sometimes, I’m saddened because writers actually have important ideas for “people in the pews” but they write only for the AAR/SBL crowd. But many of the writers I review write plainly enough that any fluent reader of English will profit from reading them if they are willing to give them undivided and unhurried attention, something increasingly rare in our age of distraction. I consider it a privilege to help them reach a wider audience than they might otherwise–and I learn along the way.

A book that greatly influenced both my sense of call and my passion for reading and reviewing thoughtful Christian writing was Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Noll’s point about the evangelical mind at the time he wrote was that there wasn’t one. He noted the penchant of evangelicals for action rather than thought and the critical need for both. In seminary, I researched the work of William Wilberforce, who with a circle of reformers called the “Clapham Sect” achieved a number of social reforms including the abolition of the slave trade and then slavery itself in the British colonies forty years before our Civil War. Again, the one critique that might be offered was a tendency to action over thought. In consequence, many of the reformers children carried on the reforms but departed from the faith.

I’m concerned that I sometimes hear a longing for spiritual renewal set against the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). I want it all and think being asked to dispense with one is like being asked which wing of an airplane I would dispense with. I long for living a life of loving God with heart, soul, mind, and strength and my neighbor as myself. I do think what we read, what we nourish ourselves on, matters. We rail against junk food but settle for mind candy when there is so much rich fare out there. I hope my reviews point the way to a better diet that enables us to link thought to passionate devotion and action. Instead of banning ideas in the world of higher education, I long for Christian scholars who meet deficient ideas with better ones. This is the renewal I long for. I hope the reviews you find here will help in some small way toward that.