The TLS & the scandal of the Evangelical mind

This week's TLS makes great reading for anyone interested in Christianity and History. Tom Wright has a two page spread on new studies of Jesus by Joseph Ratzinger (aka the Pope), Maurice Casey and Bruce Fisk. Anthony Kenny has a characteristically fair-minded review of a history of philosophical thought on the soul written by two Christian philosophers. The classicist Kate Cooper considers Peter Leithart's provocative study, Defending Constantine. David Martin reviews a book on secularisation.

Back in 1995, the historian Mark Noll lamented the scandal of the Evangelical mind. This week's TLS suggests that the health of the Evangelical mind might be improving (as Noll himself admits in Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind). Exhibit A is Tom Wright, the world's most renowned New Testament scholar; he reviews Bruce Fisk, who teaches at Westmont College, and presents a clever popularisation of recent work on the historical Jesus; the philosophers Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (whom Kenny reviews) have both been involved with the Evangelical Philosophical Society; Peter Leithart is a Reformed theologian with a voracious intellectual appetite; the opening review engages with The Geographies of Nineteenth-Century Science, co-edited by David Livingstone FBA, who has worked closely with Noll on the Evangelical response to Darwinism; and the book on secularisation is co-edited by Timothy Shah, a scholar of foreign relations who has been leading a two-year project on 'the opening of the Evangelical mind':
http://www.cardus.ca/comment/article/38/

This is not bad for a single issue of the TLS, and it shows how British and American Evangelicals (of various stripes) are producing first-rate scholarship in biblical studies, philosophy of religion, the history of science, sociology and foreign affairs.

Wright's review of the Pope's Life of Jesus can be read online:
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article842102.ece

New Book: Bebbington on Baptists

CHF members will be delighted to learn that Prof David Bebbington has a new book out. Baptists through the Centuries: A History of a Global People (Baylor UP, 2010) provides a panoramic overview of Baptist history from its Reformation roots to its global spread. As one would expect, it combines the big picture with rich detail, starting with a wonderful vignette about the Castle Donington General Baptists who in 1864 bought their pastor a pair of waterproof boots to be worn during baptisms. It's a reminder, for Bebbington, that Baptists were always 'accommodating themselves to their time and circumstances', in this case by becoming more decorous to reflect their rising social status. Like Bebbington's now classic work, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (1989), this is a study of cultural adaptation. Alongside its chronological overview, there are fascinating thematic chapters on race, women, ecclesiology, religious liberty and foreign mission.

Bebbington has been at the forefront of Baptist history for several decades, and this is the first general history of the Baptists to harvest the wealth of recent research on Baptist communities through the centuries, including those of Eastern Europe. It's a great gift to Baptist themselves, for nowhere else will they find an account of their past as rich, rounded, critical and fair-minded as this one. But it ought to be read by anyone interested in the history of Christianity since the Reformation.

John Coffey
University of Leicester

Readers can get a sneak preview here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bebbington+baptists