Volume 55, Number 1 · January 17, 2008
Taking the Gospels Seriously
By Bill McKibben
The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?
by Peter J. Gomes
HarperOne, 264 pp., $24.95
unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters
by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
Baker, 255 pp., $17.99
In the 1960s, at Harvard Divinity School, the future seemed orderly and ordained. Mainline Protestantism was at the height of its power; the theologian Paul Tillich had made the cover of Time less than a decade before, and Reinhold Niebuhr was widely known for his writings and political views. Evangelicalism was represented by the moderate and polite Billy Graham. For the young men studying at the Divinity School, even most of the gathering political protest a quarter-mile away in Harvard Yard seemed remote. 'Columbia had burst into flames the year before,' recalled Peter Gomes when I interviewed him a few years ago. Now a teacher at the school, Gomes said, 'The general reaction was 'thank God that's down there.' There was Mario Savio in Berkeley, but that was what they did in California.'
Review, 3808 words
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