Evangelicals on Public Policy Issues
Harold Heie (Abilene Christian University Press)
This very helpful book grew out of a nine-month conversation among six politically diverse Christians at Respectful Conversation.net. The convener, Heie, summarizes it here, taking up in turn a series of contentious issues ranging from immigration, gun control, and abortion to a variety of foreign policy questions, noting where there is common ground and where there are sharp differences. The six participants—Amy E. Black, Paul Brink, David P. Gushee, Lisa Sharon Harper, Stephen V. Monsma, and Eric Teetsel—model the overarching commitment to "respectful conversation" even as they disagree.
Margaret Maund (Y Lolfa)
Much writing about missionaries either demonizes them or bathes them in the rosy glow of hagiography. This delightfully unpretentious little book—subtitled "The memoir of a Welsh nurse in 1960s Africa"— does neither. Maund—later ordained as an Anglican priest—was in the Belgian Congo from 1968 to 1971 under the auspices of the Baptist Missionary Society. Before going to Africa at age 25 as a midwife and nurse, she went through a three-year training course; she had also studied French. Her episodic account is touching, funny, inspiring, and blessedly down-to-earth.
Edited and translated by Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström (Milkweed Editions)
Eight Swedish poets are represented in this bilingual selection. Much-translated figures such as Gunnar Ekelöf and Tomas Tranströmer are here, but also less familiar voices.The poems are bracketed by Mörling's introduction and Ellerström's "Brief History of Modern Swedish Poetry." "A poem," Mörling quotes Tranströmer, "is a manifestation of an invisible poem that exists beyond language. Therefore, a translation of a poem into a new language is an opportunity to realize the original (invisible) poem."
