Each year around this time, I offer ten new (or relatively new) titles - in no particular order - for your summer reading consideration.  Enjoy.

Arminian Theology by Roger Olson.  Whether you are a Calvinist, Arminian, or a desperate “Calminian,” Olson brings a much-needed treatment of Arminian thought that breaks through the caricatures and stereotypes that abound on both sides.  It fills a much-needed gap in contemporary theological literature, and is fast becoming required reading in seminary classrooms around the world.  It has certainly become required in mine.

The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South by Philip Jenkins.  In 2002, Jenkins altered the thinking of many with his book The Next Christendom, which brought to attention the changing center of gravity for the Christian world – specifically, that it is moving to the global South (to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world’s largest Christian populations).  In his most recent book, Jenkins takes us a step further by examining the Christianity of the global South – and his findings, at places encouraging and at others alarming, are critical to grasp on multiple fronts. 

Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the French Revolution to the Great War by Michael Burleigh.  While a 2005 book, it was this year’s release of Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics from the Great War to the War on Terror, the sequel to Earthly Powers, that cemented this recommendation to go back and begin his two-part history.   Together they are masterful.   

Choose one:  Letters to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens, or The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  The publication of these three books, in the same year, created a minor sensation – not so much for the return of atheism from its twilight, as much as the passionate case against religion in all forms, and particularly Christianity.  All three strike the same notes, but Hitchens is the best writer.

Dissolution (a novel of Tudor England) by C.J. Sansom.  Though first published in 2003, it was this year’s release of the third “Matthew Shardlake mystery”, Sovereign (which followed the second installment, Dark Fire) that has put Sansom in my must-read novelist category, along with such luminaries as P.D. James.  Indeed, James wrote the following of Sansom’s inaugural effort:  “The historical detective story must be one of the most difficult novels in the genre to write, requiring as it does a detailed and scholarly knowledge of the period, the ability to bring it alive for the modern reader and the talent to provide a credible and exciting plot and a solution which is intellectually satisfying.  With Dissolution, C.J. Sansom fulfils all these criteria.  The sights, the voices, the very smell of this turbulent age seem to rise from the page.  With his remarkable debut, C.J. Sansom can lay claim to a place among the most distinguished of modern historical novelists.”