Often in this space we report bad news. Fundamentally, though, Christians are bearers of good news, to a degree that earned Nietzsche's contempt, so foolish did it seem to him, as it does to many today: shamelessly impotent in the face of the Real Truth, which is, we are assured, bleak indeed. Undaunted, we continue to hope for that grand restoration of all things promised again and again in the Bible.

Two splendid reminders of that hope came last week. The first was the launch of Brazos Press, marked by the arrival of review copies of the first three books to be published by this new house, a division of Baker Book House in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Brazos is a bold new venture, with ambitions suggested by its slogan, "The Tradition Alive." Here "tradition" means nothing less than the Church itself, engaged in a conversation that cuts "across the old lines of Protestant and Catholic, 'liberal' and 'conservative,' and mainline and evangelical." By "alive," we are to understand that Brazos is not interested in Christian antiquarianism that prides itself on its isolation from whatever is happening now, as "tradition" sometimes translates.

Baker is an evangelical publisher, and both Don Stephenson, Brazos's director of publications, and editorial director Rodney Clapp are alums of InterVarsity Press, but Brazos is pushing the evangelical envelope (as IVP itself has been doing with its Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture).

The venture is not an exercise in flabby ecumenism such as was fashionable in the 1960s but rather an expression of the common hope that all confessing Christians share.

And then there was the wedding, on Saturday, October 28, of Ted Olsen, CT's online editor, and Alexis Beggs, whose work with Opportunity ...