Rod Dreher’s 2001 review of The Close is a must-read. He captures as well as anybody the deadness and irrelevancy of theological liberalism. The author of The Close is Chloe Breyer (daughter of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer), and in the book she chronicles her life as a liberal seminary student slouching towards parish ministry. Dreher’s critique is sharp and well-earned. Breyer seems genuinely unquestioning of her own assumptions about life and the things she believes (or disbelieves). In a telling moment in the book, Breyer is stunned that a group of prison inmates were not buying the Protestant liberalism she was selling. Dreher is particularly good here:

N. D. Wilson is a great writer, and he has a new novel out titled The Dragon’s Tooth. He was interviewed recently on the NPR program “All Things Considered,” and you can listen to the audio below or download it here. [audio:http://pd.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/atc/2011/11/20111110_atc_08.mp3] The book is fantasy-fiction on the order of C. S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia.” According to the report, here is what the book is about:

Matt Hall had many positive things to say about Mark Noll’s book Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind. He also has some critiques, and this one stood out to me. He writes, Noll’s book at times rings of the most strident and elitist forms of evangelical condescension. I’ll admit that as a Southern Baptist I easily grow weary of constant screeds against my denomination’s supposed pervasive intellectual backwardness and disinterest in developing anything even close to a respectable life of the mind. With all the respect to Noll I can muster, these caricatures are not only unhelpful but also tired and inaccurate. The last 20 years have seen…

Tim Challies is sharing excerpts from John Eldredge’s strange new book Beautiful Outlaw. What’s strange about it? It’s the stories Eldredge tells about the various ways God communicates with him through signs and visions. But these aren’t your run-of-the-mill charismatic expressions; they’re pretty weird. In one vision, Eldredge claims that Jesus was wearing a pirate hat. In one sign, Eldredge claims that God gave him a heart-shaped piece of manure to show how much He loved him. I’m not making this up. You can go follow all of this at Tim Challies’ blog. I’ll print the first to excerpts below.

Ravi Zacharias has said this about Leonard Ravenhill: The truth is, even though I am known now as an apologist for the Christian faith, dealing with the intellectual issues of Christianity, I really owe an passion for God, for prayer and for true revival that initially began in me, to Leonard Ravenhill. He, by God’s grace, was the catalyst that has caused the passion to know God to continue to this day.