A movie like this one is easy to lampoon. It’s filled with some cliches of the righteous outsider, the marginalized hero, the crusading moralists. But perhaps underneath all of that is a muffled cry for some conversation, from one guilty conscience to another, seeking for some way to break an old, old curse.

The show is as much fun as 5th Grader, and perhaps more so for Christian viewers who suddenly get to use that daily Bible study time not only to grow spiritually, but also to lord fact-retention capabilities over your significant other (or maybe that's just me.)

When you think of all the trouble the reformers went through to bring God’s Word back to the laity, it really does make you wonder why we would complain about actually learning what it says.

Loconte quotes a wonderful passage from C. S. Lewis, often quoted but worth hearing yet again: "Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off … is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation."

“Borders” in other words are psychological and spiritual as much as physical, and the Jordan (like many rivers) carries multiple symbolic meanings. To say that “we” live on this side of the river also means that they, those foreigners, those unclean people, live on the other shore, and are nothing to do with us.

Americans are failing to accomplish the important task of maintaining their freedom, Os Guinness argues in his new book, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future.

Did God Really Say? is a compilation of seminar lectures given at the Virginia Beach 2011 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of America. The messages have been converted into essay form, making up the different chapters of the book. So the PCA does not take this doctrine for granted either. It was incumbent for them to pull together some of their finest scholars from Covenant Seminary, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Westminster Theological Seminary (Phil.) to give these messages to the leaders of the church. One thousand points for the PCA on that one!

Hans Madueme is assistant professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and Themelios book review editor for systematic theology and bioethics. He recently completed his thesis, “The Evolution of Sin: Sin, Theistic Evolution, and the Biological Question—A Theological Account” (PhD diss., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2012).

A full-scale, newly published critique of Barton is coming from Professors Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter of Grove City College, a largely conservative Christian school in Pennsylvania. Their book Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President (Salem Grove Press), argues that Barton “is guilty of taking statements and actions out of context and simplifying historical circumstances.”

McGrath's strong emphasis is on sensitive, artful, and personalized discourse, built on careful listening for the deeper layers of concern in the hearts of those whose spirits are grieved by the brokenness of humanity. It's a strategy we might describe as "pastoral apologetics."