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1 week ago | 
christianitytoday.com | Michael Horton |Matt Reynolds
How Christian Smith's concept of a "Millennial Zeitgeist" helps explain their recent retreat from faith. I doubt I'm the only parent of Gen Zers who occasionally hears the protest "I'm not feelin' it" on a Sunday morning. availableatamazon As Christian Smith argues in Why Religion Went Obsolete, it is widely recognized that traditional religion in America is in "a spiral of decline." What is less understood is why.
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1 week ago | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds |Ryan P. Burge
One is relatively simple to map out. The other is much harder to capture. In social science, it's relatively easy to explain what is happening. Ask a question with a straightforward answer-How has the cost of lettuce changed over time? Are people getting married later in life?-and the answer should be forthcoming. Just download the right data set, write a bit of computer code, and present the findings in an informative, visually appealing manner.
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1 month ago | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
Instructions for authors and publishers. Pixabay, Pexels / Edits by CTDear publishers and authors,Here are this year's award categories: Each year, Christianity Today honors a set of outstanding books encompassing a variety of subjects and genres. The CT Book Awards will be announced in December at christianitytoday.com. They also will be featured in the January/February 2026 issue of CT and promoted in several CT newsletters.
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2 months ago | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
A classic novel captures the tension between the church's devotion to particular places and its mission to the ends of the earth. Churches are governed by a paradoxical brand of Newtonian physics: One law of ecclesial motion commits them to stay at rest. Another commands perpetual movement. Ministry leaders often speak of churches being planted. That metaphor suggests an ideal of rootedness and stability, of devotion to particular people in particular places.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
Some should tiptoe onto gender-role battlegrounds. But most should stay on safer scriptural turf. In some ways, all eras of evangelical journalism are remarkably alike. It's too cynical to conclude, with Ecclesiastes, that there's nothing new under the sun, but similar issues and challenges continually bob up to the surface. This lesson hit home a few months ago as I combed through bound archives of Christianity Today spanning decades.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
Analyzing the appeal of John Mark Comer and Jordan Peterson-and much more from the year in books. Preston Sprinkle's Exiles is a bracing call to return to Scripture, but some of his specific political applications are dubious. Brad Wilcox's Get Married debunks misguided conventional wisdom and offers both challenge and hope to Christian singles. Rod Dreher's new book is a sprawling, vulnerable call to enchantment in a disenchanted world.
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Dec 19, 2024 | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
Sociology can help us see neglected drivers of religious beliefs. But it shouldn't lose focus on the beliefs themselves. You should read Religion for Realists: Why We All Need the Scientific Study of Religion. The author, sociologist Samuel Perry, will help you understand how social scientists think about religion. Most importantly, his work will improve how you think about religion too. availableatamazon I come by this evaluation honestly.
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Dec 13, 2024 | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
We're eager to ask whether it could have happened. We shouldn't forget to ask what it means. For the last 100 years, conversation around the Virgin Birth has centered on whether it actually happened. Could Mary really have had a child without a previous sexual union? Maybe, the thinking went, ancient people were simply more gullible in the face of stories like these. availableatamazon While the historicity of the Virgin Birth is an important question, there are others worth asking.
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Dec 3, 2024 | 
christianitytoday.com | Matt Reynolds
Our picks for the books most likely to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.
