The Professor of Theology at the University of Oslo, Norway, describes faith as a gracious landscape where we can breathe freely. He makes use of compelling and yet familiar Bible stories – including the Song of Songs and the story of the woman taken in adultery – to offer us glimpses of God’s full presence as what he calls “re-enchantment”. Here is a spiritual and theological antidote to the pessimism and alienation of our time.

Making God Laugh by Anne Primavesi (Polebridge, 978094434469, $27.95) has a different take on how we may approach God. Taking as her starting point the Yiddish phrase “If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans”, she reflects on the claims of many to know what God knows and to speak with divine authority about God’s plans for us and our world. While this attitude surely makes God laugh, she claims, it can have far from laughing consequences on our relationships with other Christians and other religions. She suggests that perhaps the time has come to replace human arrogance with ecological humility.

A Touch of the Sacred by Eugene Borowitz (Jewish Lights, 978158023378, $31.95) has a chapter of his book that says ‘We can’t talk about God but we must’. While the book is primarily written for his fellow Jews, its insights into Jewish understandings of God and Jewish belief offer a refreshing – and quite different – approach to the topic.

Bread and Water, Wine and Oil (Conciliar Press, 9781888212914, $24.95) offers an Orthodox Christian experience of God. The author reflects on the idea of life as mystery – not in the sense of a conundrum that can be solved if we think about it long enough; rather as a place where the human mind cannot go but must depend on the heart for understanding. This leads the reader to reflect on the mystery of God and the Church, with its seven great mysteries also called Sacraments.

Finally from Paraclete Press, an entirely different book called How (Not) to Speak of God by Peter Rollins (Paraclete, 9781557255051, $29.95) that has at its heart a mystical approach to God as “a secret which one is compelled to share yet which retains its secrecy”. The book is part of the ‘Emerging Church’ movement and explores the theory and praxis of this contemporary expression of faith.

Issues surrounding religion and science are perennial. A new book The Big Questions in Science and Religion by Keith Ward (Templeton, 9781599471358, $24.95) explores ten big questions such as: How did the universe begin? How will it end? Is evolution compatible with creation?. The author is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the British Academy and has a special interest in the interplay between science and faith. His book includes the understandings of thinkers from other faith traditions as well as the views of cosmologists, physicians, mathematicians and philosophers.

Tony Kelly from the Australian Catholic University has another impressive book published recently by Orbis. Called Resurrection Effect: Transforming Christian Life and Thought (9781570757709, $39.95), it asks what difference should the resurrection of the crucified Jesus make to Christian thought, to our sense of the cosmos, and our understanding of humanity itself. He sets out to affirm the resurrection as the living centre of Christian life and the basis for its theological methods and themes.

Australian Jesuit theologian Gerald O’Collins also has new book recently published: Jesus – A Portrait (DLT, 9780232527199, $29.95). There are many books about Jesus, but few attempt to tell us what he was actually like. This new book Jesus. It combines devotion and experience with a lifetime of scholarly investigation.

Over the years, Fortress Press has been publishing a sixteen volume series called The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Just arrived on my desk is Volume 10, subtitled Barcelona, Berlin, New York 1928–1931 (9780800683306, $99.95). It’s a beautiful book, tracing Bonhoeffer’s development during the crucial years 1928–1931, making available for the first time in English his letters and other writings that reveal to us his personal and intellectual life. This was a time when Bonhoeffer was – perhaps unconsciously – laying the foundations of his future opposition to National Socialism in Germany. Bonhoeffer has wide appeal in all the churches and this series will be welcomed by all who recognise the significance of this 20th Century theologian for our understanding of Christianity. Ten of the set are now available.

Chance or Dance by Jimmy Davis and Harry Poe (Templeton Foundation Press, 9781599471334, $37.95) provides an overview of design and a clarification of the controversial Intelligent Design movement. They reach an interesting conclusion that while there is no scientific evidence behind Intelligent Design, it remains valid to correlate faith and sensory experience, suggesting that while science has been successful at describing processes, it has failed to explain origins.

It asks if religion has
contributed to the environment
crises of our planet

Two books from Continuum, God’s Troublemakers – How Women of Faith are Changing the World by Katharine Rhodes Henderson (9780826429254, $29.95) is now in paperback. Based on interviews with twenty women, the book claims space for progressive forms of religion, honouring women who integrate a progressive social agenda with their faith.

Creation’s Diversity (Voices from theology and science) by Willem Drees, Hubert Meisinger and Taede Smedes (9780567033291, $80.95) is a collection of substantial essays that explore the question of environmental engagement in the context of religious convictions. Basically, it asks if religion has contributed to the environment crises of our planet and presents a series of theological options that will not only respond to this allegation but seek somehow to establish foundations on which to build an authentic approach to sustainable diversity in our world.

The Lambeth conference this year attracted its own share of controversy with arguments about who should attend overshadowing the theological and pastoral issues that would normally be the core business of the gathering. Not by coincidence, some recent books on the topics have arrived here.

A Fallible Church – Lambeth Essays, edited by Kenneth Stevenson (DLT, 978023252730, $32.95) ask two basic questions: can Anglicanism hold together? Is there something Anglican that is worth sustaining? The book has essays from leading Anglicans from different backgrounds and traditions who essentially share a conviction that the Anglican Church will continue to be used by God in the furtherance of the kingdom.

Still on the question of ecclesiology, there is a fascinating new book edited by David Clark called The Diaconal Church – Beyond the Mould of Christendom (Epworth, 97807162063 54, $65.00). In a previous publication, the author had argued for a diaconal church as the only one that could set us free from the continuing dominance of the Christendom model of church. This follow-up volume has contributions from thirteen scholars from a variety of denominations reflecting on the author’s original model of ‘diaconal church’ and is evidence of a wideranging discussion about the servant nature of church and the primacy of the laity.

Transfiguring Capitalism is an expensive title by John Atherton, retired canon theologian of Manchester cathedral in the UK (SCM, 9780334028314, $99.00). The book is a thorough analysis of economic globalisation and the transformation of capitalism. The author’s purpose is to demonstrate the need for religious and Christian understandings of humanity to be brought to bear on dealing with the moral issues surroundings the global economy. The book is clearly for people who are concerned about contemporary social ethics on a global scale.

Finally, at a more popular level, comes Marry a Pregnant Virgin by Frank Honeycutt (Augsburg, 9780806680361, $27.95). With the subtitle ‘Unusual Bible stories for new and curious Christians’, the book doesn’t run away from the difficult and weird bits of the Bible. Rather, the author begins with the observation (from Burton Votisky) that “for rabbis and the church fathers, reading the Bible was an adventure, a journey to a grand palace with many and awesome rooms”. Such a beginning allows him to bring lively and fresh interpretations to old stories. This is a book for people interested in new ways of reading familiar (and sometimes uncomfortable) Bible stories.
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