Better Late than Never

After completing the lecture notes for my spring 2014 courses, I wanted to do some reading in my field before diving back into my current research project.

I recently finished Molly Worthen's Apostles of Reason, and have now started Elesha Coffman's The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline. So far, so good. In the first one hundred pages, I learned a lot about the Disciples of Christ/Church of Christ as well as the organizational and marketing capabilities of Charles Clayton Morrison, the man most responsible for the success of The Christian Century. I hope to finish the rest of the book over the weekend.

I have recently designated a bookshelf in my home for the "fun reading" titles that I hope to tackle in my spare time, mostly in the evenings. Among the books on this bookshelf that I plan on reading in the near future include John D'Elia's A Place at the Table: George Eldon Ladd and the Rehabilitation of of Evangelical Scholarship in America (on my shelf for over three years now), Sarah Rivett's The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (winner of the Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History), Kate Bowler's Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel, Peter Gottschalk's American Heretics: Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and the History of Religious Intolerance, and Erskine Clarke's By the Rivers of Water: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Odyssey.

         
I also recently ordered Hans Boersma's Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of Sacramental Tapestry, Tanya Luhrman's When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, and John Turner's Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ: The Renewal of Evangelicalism in Postwar America. I realize that I am somewhat behind the times in reading these titles, but I figure better late than never.