Inside CT: Our Renaissance Writer
Mark Galli | posted 4/02/2001 12:00AM
Pick a subject, any subject, put him on the trail, and what you'll end up with is a fine piece of journalism on—well, whatever. And though a man of his diverse talents should be getting a lot more publicity, he doesn't seem to mind staying in the background, puttering about his Santa Rosa, California, home with his wife and two teenagers (a third child is in college), churning out an article here, a book there. I'm speaking, of course, of senior writer Tim Stafford.
Looking for insightful biblical exposition? Check out the notes in The Student Bible, which Tim coauthored (with CT Editor at Large Philip Yancey) and which has sold over a million copies in the last two decades.
How about an advice book on teen relationships? Look at his Love, Sex, and the Whole Person.
Maybe you're interested in something on spirituality. In that case, you'll want to get a copy of Tim's Knowing the Face of God.
If you're not ready for book-length treatments, then try out some of his Christianity Today articles: "The Business of the Kingdom" (Nov. 8, 1999), if you're interested in management guru Peter Drucker; or "The Criminologist Who Discovered Churches" (June 14, 1999), if you want to know more about the faith-based-organization champion and recent Bush appointee John DiIulio Jr.
In this issue, Tim looks at the rise of evangelical historians and some of the challenges they face as believers who have earned the respect of the secular academy (see "Whatever Happened to Christian History?" p. 42).
He has recently turned his attention to writing history faithfully, which he says is "the result of a calling from God and a lot of research." His Stamp of Glory: A Novel of the Abolitionist Movement and Sisters: A Novel of the Woman Suffrage Movement (both 2000) are the first two installments of a four-part historical fiction series published by Thomas Nelson. "Put together, these books are meant to chronicle the ways in which faith interacts with social justice," says Tim.
Tim says about the first book, "The abolitionist movement sprang out of Christian revival, so it has many insights to lend Christians who want their faith to make a difference today." Much the same could be said regarding the women suffrage movement, as well as the subjects of his two future installments on Prohibition and the civil-rights movement.
History, of course, is not a neat story that moves easily from conflict to resolution, from confusion to clarity, from lies to truth. It often seems to work backward, in fact. But as he put it in another ct article ("How God Won When Politics Failed," Jan. 10, 2000):
"We cannot know whether we will ultimately succeed, and our trust ought not to rest in our plans and hopes. Rather we trust and hope in Almighty God, who rules our plans and makes of them results more fundamental and astounding than anything we can dream."
To be sure, God has made astounding use of Tim's diverse talents, more than he ever imagined when he first put pen to paper decades ago. And though I'm no prophet, nor a son of a prophet, I'm predicting we'll see more surprising successes from Tim in the years to come.
…
Next issue: Our annual books issue, including articles on C. S. Lewis's surprisingly modern (and postmodern) apologetics, a profile of rising novelist Vinita Hampton Wright (Grace at Bender Springs, Velma Still Cooks in Leeway), and an interview with author Jeannette Bakke (Holy Invitations: Exploring Spiritual Direction)—not to mention our annual book awards.
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April 2 2001, Vol. 45, No. 5
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