Books on Various Topics

I’ve enjoyed these books. Some are aimed at a popular audience. Others are dense and academic. Still others fall somewhere in between. As with all books, digest the fruit, spit out the seeds.

Early Christian History

  • The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God, Robert Wilken.
  • The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, Robert Wilken.
  • The Orthodox Church, Timothy Ware.
  • The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died, Philip Jenkins.
  • Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom, Peter Leithart.
  • Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years, Philip Jenkins.
  • The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity, Robert Wilken.

American Christianity

  • America’s Religious History, Thomas Kidd.
  • The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, Daryl Hart.
  • The Democratization of American Christianity, Nathan Hatch.
  • American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists, John Wigger.
  • The Color of Compromise, The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, Jemar Tisby. 

God and Country

  • Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not, Scot McKnight, Joseph Modica, Andy Crouch, et. al.
  • Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can’t Ignore the Bible’s Violent Verses, Philip Jenkins.
  • The Destruction of the Canaanites, Charlie Trimm.
  • Christians and the Military: The Early Experience, John Helgeland.
  • Augustine on War and Military Service, Phillip Wynn.
  • While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers, Steven E. Woodworth.
  • The Great and Holy War: How World War I Became a Religious Crusade, Philip Jenkins.
  • A Religious History of the American GI in World War II, G. Kurt Piehler.
  • God and Uncle Sam: Religion and America’s Armed Forces in World War II, Michael Snape.
  • Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America, Ronit Y. Stahl.

Basic Chaplain Primers

  • Outside the Gates, Robert Crick (Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee)
  • Foundations of Chaplaincy, Alan Baker (Reformed Church in America)

The Moral Cost of War

  • God’s Hiddenness in Combat: Toward Christian Reflection on Battle, Preston Jones.
  • Death Letter: God, Sex and War, David Peters.
  • On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, David Grossman.
  • On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace, David Grossman.
  • Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, Jonathan Shay.
  • Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, Jonathan Shay.
  • Killing from the Inside Out, Robert Emmet Meagher.
  • War and Moral Injury: A Reader, Robert Emmet Meagher (ed).

Methodists

  • Classic Christianity: A Systematic Theology, Thomas Oden.
  • A Compendium of Christian Theology, William Burt Pope.
  • The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace, Kenneth J. Collins.
  • Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology, Randy Maddox.
  • John Wesley’s Teachings: Volumes 1-4, Thomas Oden.
  • Practicing Christian Doctrine, Beth Felker Jones.
  • Sacramental Life: Spiritual Life through the Book of Common Prayer, David DeSilva.
  • Participating in Christ : Explorations in Paul’s Theology and Spirituality, Michael J. Gorman.

Assorted Anglicans

  • Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction, Michael F. Bird.
  • The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, Scot McKnight.
  • The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, Fleming Rutledge.
  • The Anglican Way, Thomas McKenzie.
  • Reading While Black, Esau Mcaulley.

The Church and The Christian Life

  • Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
  • God of the Mundane, Matthew Redmond.
  • Visible Church-Visible Unity: Ecumenical Ecclesiology and “The Great Tradition of the Church”,  Ola Tjorhom.
  • For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann.
  • Of Water and the Spirit, Alexander Schmemann.

Christ and the Old Testament

  • The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry into the Old Testament, Sandra L. Richter.
  • Echoes of Exodus: Tracing Themes of Redemption Through Scripture, Alastair J. Roberts and Andrew P. Wilson.
  • Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, Carmen Joy Imes.
  • Do We Need the New Testament: Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself, John Goldingay.

New Testament Foundations

  • The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus, Michael F. Bird.
  • Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, Richard Bauckham.
  • How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus, Larry Hurtado.
  • The Birth of the Trinity, Jesus, God, and Spirit in the New Testament & Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament, Matthew W. Bates.
  • The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era, James Jeffers.
  • Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture, David DeSilva.
  • Jesus and the Jewish Teachers of Jesus, James, and Jude, David DeSilva
  • Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Brant Pitre.
  • In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity, Oskar Skarsaune.
  • A Jewish Paul, Matthew Thiessen.
  • Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King, Matthew W. Bates.