Books reviewed …

At First Things, Franklin Freeman reflects on George Orwell’s strange agnostic righteousness, as described in David Lebedoff’s The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War:

“As I read David Lebedoff’s latest book … I began to think of George Orwell as a real-life Dr. Rieux, the hero of Camus’ The Plague, whose heroism suggests that it is possible to be a saint without believing in God.”

Michael Dewalt looks at a scholarly tome: James Dennison’s Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation: 1523-1552:

“This book is the first of a 3-volume set that James T. Dennison will be working on for the next two years, which sets forth a translation of a number of the Reformed Confessions that have never been in English until today. Some may wonder how this project differs from that of what Phillip Schaff has done in his 3-volume Creeds of Christendom. The answer to that is …”

Trevin Wax reviews The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ:

“The blogosphere is changing the world. Am I exaggerating? Maybe. After all, there are plenty of people who have never seen a blog. Many people give you a blank stare if you ask them what a “blogger” is. But there is no doubt that the way we obtain information in this Internet age is changing, and the blogosphere is a big part of that information revolution.”

Two friends of Scot McKnight, Brittany Bennett and Nick Johnson, share their thoughts on Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals, by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove:

“Here’s the question: Does prayer imply action to work with God for the answer to that prayer? (As long as it is something we can do.) Put directly, does prayer for justice imply a commitment to work for justice?”

And the Irish Calvinist discusses Mark Driscoll’s Death by Love:

“My ears perk up when I hear that a fellow pastor is writing a book that is going to deal with various counseling scenarios that he has encountered over the years and how he dealt with them from the foot of the cross.”