by Bryan Knedgen | Feb 17, 2016 | Book Reviews
Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture A Book Review by Bryan Knedgen Mark Yarhouse graduated from Wheaton with a M.A. in Theology and a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology. He is currently the Hughes Endowed Chair and professors of psychology at Regent University where he heads the Institute for the Study of Sexual Identity. He has written several other books on the topic of sexual identity and has recently penned Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture. I decided to read this book because campuses are strongholds of Sexual Identity Politics and if we truly wish to engage them with the truth of the Gospel we must understand the views they hold and build bridges to them. The book is divided into seven chapters, and I will break them down into 3 major chunks as we discuss them. Chapters one and two deal with the definition of Gender Dysphoria (GD) and Christian perspectives on it. Chapter three to five discuss scientific study, causes, ranges, and treatment of GD. Finally, chapters six and seven handle application of the topics of the preceding chapters with a Christian response towards GD on an individual level and an institutional level. Throughout the book Yarhouse peppers in case studies, personal experience and a wide range of opinions to display what is out there while responding with acceptance and push back to the content. The author begins his discussion with a list of terms that he will consistently reference throughout the book (Gender, Sex, Primary Sex Characteristic, etc.). He defines GD as “the experience of having a psychological...
by Bryan Knedgen | Oct 14, 2015 | Book Reviews
Aliens in a Promised Land by Anthony Bradley A Book Review By Bryan Knedgen Anthony Bradley has assembled a great host of theologians, pastors and teachers to help enlighten the majority culture in ways to listen and implement avenues in which minority cultures can better participate in evangelical churches and institutions. This book has been on my radar since it was published back in 2013, however it wasn’t until our Cru Summer Staff Conference announced an emphasis on diversity that I knew it was time to read this book. The poem from Propaganda called “Pernicious Puritans,” sets off the tone of book. 10 essays follow this sobering beginning and an appendix of a Report on Racism in the Church by Lutheran Missouri Synod draw it to a close. I cannot cover all the essays but will highlight the ones that were particularly helpful. Anthony Bradley gained his Ph.D at Westminster Seminary and is now is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College in New York City, an ordained Presbyterian Church in America Teaching elder and is also a Research Fellow at the Acton Institute. He taught at Covenant Theological Seminary but left my first year so I was not able to take one of his classes. I currently am “friends” with him on facebook, but our relationship does not extend past that of following his posts and responding with an occasional comment. As editor of Aliens in a Promised Land, Anthony Bradley shaped and molded the contents of this book and starts us off with his own. In these pages he explains the struggle of...
by Bryan Knedgen | Jun 14, 2015 | Book Reviews
Justo L. Gonzalez graduated from United Seminary in Cuba and went on to Yale for his M.A. and Ph.D, where he was the youngest person to be awarded a theology doctorate at Yale. He has served at multiple seminaries and schools of theology, including Emory. He is now retired but continues to serve as an adjunct professor of history at Columbia Theological Seminary. Gonzalez penned The Story Of Christianity, Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation in the mid 80s as an accessible history of the church. I choose this book desiring to gain a greater understanding of my history as being part of the church. As an evangelical, I am tempted to often believe that there was the early church 33 AD to 500, throw away the next 1000 years as dark corruption of the church and skip to the mid-1500s and beyond. Gonzalez sheds light on the glories and marred history of the church during these 1,000 years in this volume. Writing about 1500 years of history over multiple geographical locations in just above 400 pages is a massive undertaking. Gonzalez cuts this into four major sections: The Early Church, The Imperial Church, Medieval Christianity, and The Beginnings of Colonial Christianity. Each one of these sections is divided into smaller parts focusing on events and people that shaped particular movements and thought within Christianity. At the beginning of each section, he lays out a nice timeline displaying important events and people with corresponding dates. I will highlight particular interesting parts within each section. At the end of each, he encourages the reader toward further reading with...
by Bryan Knedgen | Feb 14, 2015 | Book Reviews
Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Book Review By Bryan Knedgen Many people have read Letter from a Birmingham Jail, it is a classic in American literature and one of the most convicting letters to the Church in the United States. I remember the first time I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail; it was given to me by my professor, Dr. Perry, during our covenant group (think of it as a prayer/study group) in the cold, wet month of February in 2010. At the time I process the depth and beauty of Dr. King’s words under the weight of classes, a part-time job and Army Reserves service. However, if we truly want to remember and learn from our past we must reread what has been written and respond. That is what I did this past January in light of Dr. King’s birthday and black history month this February. I found the wise and convicting words of Dr. King are like the law of God, displaying our sin but also calling us to live in a truly human way. The book I am reviewing, Letters to a Birmingham Jail, is a collection of reflections by professors, pastors and community leaders on Dr. King’s Letter. Since there were so many contributors, I wanted to highlight the ones that I thought did well and those that could be improved upon. First up is John Perkins, who helped found the Christian Community Development Association and is the father of its ministry philosophy. His essay is titled “Why We Can’t Wait for Economic Justice.” In it he...
by Bryan Knedgen | Dec 14, 2014 | Book Reviews
The Healing Path by Dan B. Allender, PhD Book Review By Bryan Knedgen Dan B. Allender received his M. Div from Westminster Theological Seminary and a PH.D in counseling from Michigan State University. He is the former president of Seattle School of Theology and Counseling, is currently a professor there, in addition to heading up the Allender Center, which provides counseling courses online. Allender originally worked with sexual abuse victims for years which allowed him to mine the depths of his soul and see both ravages of sin and beauty of redemption. The Healing Path is the fruition of many years of listening, learning, counseling and caring for people. Since walking through the tragedy of losing the hope to have additional children biologically, I thought it was time to reread this book and process it outside of the crazy winds of seminary. The book is broken into four parts; Suffering as a Sacred Journey, Exposing the Intentions of Evil, Allure of Redemption and Embracing Redemptive Relationships. In each part, Allender uses stories from his own life or a patient he has treated to help create a narrative that displays the themes and glues each part together. He weaves insight, exposition and story together throughout the book. His overall frame work is found in the triad of faith, hope, and love. In the first part, Suffering as a Sacred Journey, Allender begins with how we often approach sorrow and pain. He calls us escape artist. We lean into our escape in four different ways: paranoia, fatalism, heroism or optimism. These categories provide us with how we deal with the pain and...
by Bryan Knedgen | Oct 2, 2014 | Book Reviews
Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology) Book Review By Bryan Knedgen One of my professors once said that inerrancy, defined as “Scripture being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit,” is the watershed issue on which evangelicalism stands or falls. In light of that and recent articles popping up in social media, we felt this would be an important book to review. The book opens with the editors, Merrick and Garrett, giving a history of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), its purpose, its definition of inerrancy and its challenges in modern-day scholarship. Some well-known founding members of the ICBI were R.C. Sproul, Francis Schaeffer, and J.I. Packer. The editors set up each contributor’s discussion on inerrancy into two parts. The first part deals with four categories: God and his relationship to his creatures, the doctrine of inspiration, the nature of Scripture, and the nature of truth. In the second part, each contributor was asked to do a case study on three topics in Scripture. The first is Josh. 6 (the fall of Jericho) and the factuality of Scripture. The second is on canonical (the collection of books in Scripture) coherence in relation to Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9. The third is on theological coherence with Deut. 20 in relation to Matt. 5. Each author’s section is followed by a critique from the other four contributors. First up to bat is Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who penned the essay “When God Speaks: The Classic Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy.” Molher takes a firm, traditional stance on inerrancy. He views the ICBI as a wholly sufficient summary of the correct view of Scripture....
