Take & read: Spring books

Books in the April 29, 2015 issue

Image by Flickr user ginnerobot, licensed under Creative Commons.

Our spring books issue includes scholars' recommendations of the best recently published books in their fields:

Patricia K. Tull on Old Testament

Amy Plantinga Pauw on theology

D. Brent Laytham on ethics

This article appears in the April 29, 2015 issue.

When religion joins the UFO conversation

“The nexus of religion, technology, and culture is more interrelated than most people assume,” says professor and filmmaker Brett Robinson.

Interview by Jessica Mesman

Features

The new Bonhoeffer movie isn’t just bad. It’s dangerous.

By egregiously misreading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s moral crisis, it primes viewers for violence.

by Mac Loftin

Features

In the Bible, gender is not binary

The Bible employs many merisms, in which two contrasting words stand in for a whole spectrum. “Male and female” is one of them.

by Julie Faith Parker

Feature

Body counts: The dark side of Christian history

With its long coastline, rugged mountains and haunting sand dunes, Oman is a paradise for desert lovers, hikers and boaters. Muscat, the capital city, is a gem—its arched white buildings and flat roofs squeezed between the blue ocean and black mountains. Yet call me an egghead, but what I remember most from a trip to Oman is a booklet I read there with an ominous title: Body Count: A Quantitative Review of Political Violence Across World Civilizations (2009). In it, author Naveed Sheikh claims that “the Christian civilization emerges as the most violent and genocidal in the world history.” Compared to Islam, Christianity is a clear winner: 31.94 million deaths by Muslims to 177.94 million deaths by Christians.

by Miroslav Volf

Take & read: Spring books

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When religion joins the UFO conversation

The new Bonhoeffer movie isn’t just bad. It’s dangerous.

In the Bible, gender is not binary

Body counts: The dark side of Christian history