Christianity Today is proud to announce the results of the 1997 CT Book Awards. More than 200 books published in 1996 were nominated. Ballots were sent to a large panel of scholars, pastors, writers, and other church leaders, who chose the titles for our “Top 25” list. (Because of ties, the list includes a total of 26 titles.) These outstanding books, it is important to add, are but a few among a much larger number that merit recognition. The diversity of publishers represented here—18 in all—is also worthy of note. InterVarsity Press, for the third year in a row, led all publishers, with six titles.
Twenty-five years ago, in the issue for February 2, 1962, CT honored the “Choice Evangelical Books” of 1961. Among the 25 books so honored (chosen, at that time, by CT’s editorial staff, and listed alphabetically by author rather than in ranked order) are several that many of our readers will still have on their shelves, including Elisabeth Elliot’s classic The Savage, My Kinsman (which has just been reissued, with a new epilogue, by Servant Books, 152 pp.; $10.99, paper) and the first edition of F. F. Bruce’s superb survey, The English Bible. Also on that lightly annotated list is The Genesis Flood, by Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb, Jr., described as a “new system for unifying and correlating scientific data bearing on the earth’s early history.”
Evolution is still a live issue for evangelicals, as attested by the selection of Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box as CT’s Book of the Year and the strong showing of Del Ratzsch’s The Battle of Beginnings. (Nancey Murphy’s Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism also touches on this debate.) But in the quarter-century since The Genesis Flood was hailed by evangelical gatekeepers, the action has shifted. Indeed, Behe (who is profiled in this issue, p. 14), Phillip Johnson, and other proponents of “intelligent design” distance themselves from young-earth creationists like Morris.
Many of the award-winning books have been reviewed—or will be—in CT and its sister publication BOOKS & CULTURE. In this issue, in addition to the profile of Behe, you’ll find reviews of Miroslav Volf’s Exclusion and Embrace (p. 29) and William Martin’s With God on Our Side (p. 22), also featuring an interview with Martin. Look for reviews of Richard Hays’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament and Rodney Clapp’s A Peculiar People coming soon in CT and, down the road, Tom Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God and Gerald Bray’s Biblical Interpretation.
In the May/June issue of BOOKS & CULTURE, you will find reviews of Jaroslav Pelikan’s Mary Through the Centuries and Jean Bethke Elshtain’s Augustine and the Limits of Politics. Future issues of B&C will feature reviews of the books by Volf and Clapp, as well as Clark Pinnock’s Flame of Love and J?Moltmann’s The Coming of God. (If you missed Mark Noll’s magisterial review of Andrew Walls’s The Missionary Movement in Modern History in the Nov./Dec. 1996 issue of B&C [print only], let me know and I will send you a copy.) So please stay tuned to these channels.
Thanks to the honored authors, editors, and publishers and all who participated for their good work. We are already looking forward to the 1998 Book Awards.
By John Wilson, Book Review Editor.
1997 Book of the yearDarwin’s Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution,by Michael J. BeheAn excerpt This book is about an idea—Darwinian evolution—that is being pushed to its limits by discoveries in biochemistry. … The astonishing progress made by biochemistry since the mid-1950s is a monumental tribute to science’s power to understand the world. … We may have to pay a price, though, for our knowledge. When foundations are unearthed, the structures that rest on them are shaken; sometimes they collapse. When sciences such as physics finally uncovered their foundations, old ways of understanding the world had to be tossed out, extensively revised, or restricted to a limited part of nature. Will this happen to the theory of evolution by natural selection?
WINNERS 1. Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, by Michael Behe, Free Press
2. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, by Richard Hays, HarperSanFrancisco
3. Jesus and the Victory of God, by N. Thomas Wright, Fortress Press
3. A Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism, by Alister McGrath, InterVarsity Press
4. Augustine and the Limits of Politics, by Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Notre Dame Press
5. The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel, by Walter Wangerin, Jr., Zondervan
6. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, by Miroslav Volf, Abingdon
6. Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit, by Clark H. Pinnock, InterVarsity Press
6. Integrity, by Stephen Carter, Basic
6. The Missionary Movement in Modern History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, by Andrew F. Walls, Orbis
6. A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society, by Rodney Clapp, InterVarsity Press
6. Who Speaks for God? The New Spiritual Politics Beyond the Religious Right, by Jim Wallis, Delacorte
7. The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side Is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate, by Del Ratzsch, InterVarsity Press
7. Biblical Interpretation: Past & Present, by Gerald Bray, InterVarsity Press
7. The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris, Riverhead
7. People of the Book: Christian Identity and Literary Culture, by David Lyle Jeffrey, Eerdmans
8. Beyond Liberalism & Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda, by Nancey Murphy, Trinity Press International
8. Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture, by Jaroslav Pelikan, Yale University Press
9. The Epistle to the Romans: The New International Commentary on the New Testament, by Douglas Moo, Eerdmans
9. The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation, edited by Timothy R. Phillips & Dennis L. Okholm, InterVarsity Press
10. The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, by Jürgen Moltmann, Fortress Press
10. Genesis: A Living Conversation, by Bill Moyers, Doubleday
10. Luke, Vol. 2: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, by Darrell L. Bock, Baker
10. Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, by Gordon D. Fee, Hendrickson
10. Why Believe? Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God, by C. Stephen Evans, Eerdmans
10. With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America, by William Martin, Broadway
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