Earlier this week, I had the chance to go hear George Murphy speak at Calvin College about a topic I can never resist: science fiction. His lecture was titled “Real Faith and Fictional Worlds,” and in it, Murphy talked about the increasing respectability of science fiction, the way that religion is (and often isn’t) portrayed [...]

Christianity Today has announced its 2008 Book Awards. Here’s the list:
APOLOGETICS/EVANGELISM
There Is A God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese (HarperOne)
Biblical Studies
The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition
Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd (Baker Academic)
Christianity and Culture
Faith in [...]

Somehow this managed to completely slip past me unnoticed, but the second book in Anne Rice’s series of novels about Jesus was published earlier this month. It’s called Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, and it apparently tells the story of Jesus’ life and ministry between his baptism to the miracle at Cana.
I’m afraid [...]

IV Press’ Addenda & Errata blog has a post up calling writers and readers alike to stop and think before applying the labels “liberal” or “conservative” to theological positions and observations. It’s not that those labels are always inappropriate—rather that they make it too easy for us to lazily categorize views as one or the [...]

Hey, it’s a blog about CS Lewis! It “offers original work on and about C. S. Lewis from scholars who have written far and wide about his stories, his theology, and his world.” Posting thus far is light, but the posts are excellent.
Now if only somebody would do a similar blog about Tolkien scholarship, I’d [...]

Bill McKibben is the writer of The End of Nature and Deep Economy.
After hearing him talk I can say that McKibben has an infectious affability to his speaking. He manages to infuse just the right touch of self-depreciation in his speech in order to sugar-coat his interesting ideologies. Ideas like communities establishing local [...]

Chances are that you didn’t make it through high school and/or college without reading at least part of Dante’s Inferno. The different circles of Hell filled with sinners suffering horribly ironic punishments, the description of Satan eternally devouring Judas, Brutus, and Cassius—they’re strange but compelling images that have worked their way into popular culture. But [...]

Is it possible to celebrate the work or art of somebody who has committed a terrible sin?
I think most of us would agree that being a sinner doesn’t disqualify you from being a good artist—if it did, there would be no art to appreciate at all. But when somebody goes seriously astray, does it retroactively [...]

Remember the buzz last year about the third-century Gnostic “Gospel of Judas,” which allegedly cast Judas as a hero (rather than villain) of the Gospel story? We noted it here at TC, and it generated a fair amount of controversy and discussion, hitting the public eye just as the hype around the Da Vinci Code [...]

Dick Staub (who, among other things, hosts the excellent Kindlings Muse podcast) has listed his picks for the top five books on pop culture.
How many of them have you read, and what additions would you make to the list? If somebody asked you to recommend five books that really explain how our culture works, what [...]