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bt Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn
The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
Thinking Nature and the Nature of Thinking by Willemien Otten
Wading through tough political topics like abortion, racism, and poverty,
The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship (Eerdmans Press) brims with generosity and wisdom. A Reformed evangelical who has learned much from Catholic social teaching, Daniel K. Williams charts a path between many a partisan divide. Everything in this book comes off as imminently reasonable, well-informed, and well-argued.
A highly regarded historian, Williams maps out where our partisan convictions came from and where they are headed. He counsels those Christians “convinced that we have a moral duty to vote Republican” for religious reasons to remember that “the Republican Party’s policies on economics and race are not in the best interests of most blacks and Hispanics.” He also has some painfully obvious yet somehow overlooked thing
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The Social Order
Public spaces are cluttered with sloganeering from political causes; ads for luxurious products attempt to seduce us; self-help and soft spiritualties like neo-astrology and therapeutic versions of Christianity supply superficial comfort. This cacophony pulsates across the Internet, a flood of content that can overwhelm the capacity for coherent thought. Meantime, higher education provides little guidance to escape what many see as a growing crisis of meaning.
At the same time, public conversation bursts with advice. We’re inundated with suggestions about how to enhance life with the latest tech products; how to curate an online image; how to pin down the perfect exercise routine and clean diet; how to be politically literate; and so on. Still, amid the competing guides on how to live, there’s little reflection on