Groen Van Prinsterer
Ben House has a great article on the life and significance of the dutch thinker Groen Van Prinsterer, here: http://benhouseblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/christian-thinking-applied.html

"God’s use of Groen van Prinsterer fits that recurring pattern of God doing the unexpected to advance His Kingdom. He used an aristocrat to help the poor, a childless couple to promote Christian education for children, a historian to chart the future for the Netherlands, and a servant to the royal family to start a political party for the common people. "

Michael Behe: The Edge of Evolution

The much maligned Michael Behe has written a follow-up to Darwin's Black Box where he explored the idea of irreducible complexity. This is the idea that at the biochemical level, the molecular level of life, there are mechanisms which are complex and could not be less complex in order to function. In The Edge of Evolution Behe answers some of his critics and tries to draw the line where evolution leads to and where design can be the only explanation for the complexity of the creation. Behe believes in the common ancestry of all living things, but renounces Darwinism as an explanation. So he is not a creationist as such. He believes in God, and that is what has made him unacceptable in the academy.

Behe is very engaging and makes fairly complex material very accessible. He is one of the Intelligent Design crowd and an able spokeman.

Sarcasm, Irony and Wit

A Christian book on sarcasm, irony, wit and verbal jousting - that is Douglas Wilson's The Serrated Edge (Canon Press). Pastor Wilson carefully takes us through the scriptures, and it becomes obvious that the prophets, Jesus and Paul all use various forms of invective, leg-pulling and mockery to serve a godly purpose. When Elijah tells the prophets of Baal to "try harder" as they go to work with the razor, when Isaiah mocks the dumb idols of the idolaters, when Jesus calls his opponants a nest of snakes, and Paul exhorts the judaizers to castrate themselves, we start to see that the Scriptures are full of such language.

Pastor Wilson carefully explains these and many other passages, together the time and place appropriate to such behaviour. This is nice repost to the "be nice and sweet to everyone" sacherinism that is embedded in modern evangelicalism.

Expelled The Movie

Advocates of Intelligent Design have bene expelled from the academy in America for their anti-evolutionist views. Ben Stein sets out to expose the fact in a new film: Expelled: The Intelligence Allowed. See the trailer here: http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

Fiction
"Stories frame a child's interior life for living in this world. Fiction is far more realistic than we realize. Fiction and poetry mysteriously transfer truth in a far more powerful way than anything else. God Himself chose to write in passionate poetry and narrative and parables rather than in the bureaucratic style of systematic theology. But again, parents have to lead the way. Many parents, however, have little taste for fiction though they allow it for the "little kids". Some parents disdain fiction because they are bony pragmatists, not having the time, but others even claim that it is unspiritual ("I just want Scripture"). Though I couldn't prove it in an ecclesiastical court, I'm beginning to suspect that parents who don't enjoy fiction must have some serious spiritual problem lurking about, either in a very distorted view of spirituality or in a rejection of beauty. They are like the person who ungratefully refuses to delight in God's handiwork in nature. Time will tell in the lives of their children." (Douglas Jones, Angels in the Architecture. p. 124)

Mona McNee & Alice Coleman
The Great Reading Disaster: Reclaiming our Educational Birthright
Imprint Academic. 2007

Illiteracy rates have fallen to such a level that even the government has noticed, even though many are still in denial, and is trying to act or react. But the roots of the problem run deep: family breakdown, lack of discipline at home and in school, ideological teacher training, and the failure of, what these authors call, the Progressive method. The culprits are "look-say", "whole language" amongst an array of other broken cisterns.

This tour de force against the demise of Synthetic Phonics as the only method of teaching children how to read, that works, is written by two veterans of education. Mona McNee was a school teacher for may years, a private tutor for those with reading difficulties, as well as successfully teaching her own son (who has Downes Sydrome) how to read after he was written-off by the schools. Mrs McNee has also written a very successful, but too little noticed, phonics teaching book, Step by Step Reading. At a fraction of the cost of the acceptable programmes from the big publishing houses. it more than does the job.

This is an important book for homeschooing parents because we do need to be very clear on the issues at stake in the "literacy wars". Two different worldviews stand in opposition, one that wants to re-make children with new methods and denigrate the older, tried and tested methods for teaching children to read. The Progressives have set themselves against the very structure of our language (as a phonetic language) and have created a generation or two of illiterates, people who shall be lead.

Readers can think and think clearly, at least they have the opportunity to. People who can read well have a whole world open to them as well as a degree of independence from the elite who wants to shape us as citizens in their new egalitarian utopia. For the people of God the Word of God stands as the ultimate authority of God in all matters, and straightaway this means that the ability to read and understand is central to the Faith passed down. In fact there is no "passing down" without it.

Christianity is a literate culture, it has spread literacy and knowledge wherever it has gone, in spite of the counter claims of the new atheists who cannot lay anything good at our door. The Church needs to cultivate a high, literate Christian culture - a whole life that is given to godliness, beauty and covenant faithfulness. This is not possible whilst we are sat with a book and the lights out.

Finally, if you have doubts about the Phonics v. Look-Say question, then read this book. Whilst we carving out new lives with the same blunt tools as the pagan standing next to us, we can only produce less than we might. The bane of Christian Home Education is the "we are at least as good as the state schooled pagans". This sets the bench mark too low. This book will help us raise our eyes to the hills, and to see from whence comes our help.

Douglas Jones & Douglas Wilson: Angels In the Archietcture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth (Canon Press)

If you want to watch a steak being driven slowly through the heart of Modernity, then read this book. In the compass of a few essays the two Douglases hack away at the menace of Modernity, with passing shorts at it's offspring, Post-modernity en route.

This is done by pre-dating the Modern Period (starting a the Renaissance), and digging back further into the Middle Ages. Jones and Wilson delve into our more distant past and reveal how the concerns of the pre-Modern (because everything gets to be measured according to the Modern by us moderns!) are much closer to the concerns of Scripture. This is the age that pre-dates all our favourite "isms": feminism, egalitarianism, to mention a notorious pair.

Written in a witty, combative, but gracious style, this is great writing, as well as greta subject matter. And this is really one of the thrusts of the book: the modern church, albiet faithful in parts, has not risen to the still higher challenge of aesthetic glory, a glory that flows out of the beauty of holiness. Christian parents are starting to wake up to the need to keep our children pure and safe form the world, but that is just not enough. We need to nurture children who are full of life, not just those who frown upon the wicked. The overflow of life, wisdom and joy is where we need to aim.

Chapters cover everything from marriage, parenting to poetry; politics, beauty and literature. It is challenging, it is "different", it one of the most sprightly challenges to modernity avialable.

A History Primer

Looking for a book to enthuse your children (yourself?) about History? - then there is More Than Dates and Dead People by Stephen Mansfield. Written in a snappy, almost informal style, Mansfield lays out the Christian view of history as God's providential government of all things for His own glory. The first half of the book expands on the christian view of history, knocks out the Evolutionary perspective, and thrusts before the reader why we ought to be exited about history, how it ought to challenge and change us, and why we ought to want to learn it, so as to pass it on.

The second half of the book builds on this with a half dozen examples of historical events that Mansfield re-tells in according to the Christian perspective, emphasizing the providence of God, the lessons we ought to look for, and the abiding principles. The stories of The Titanic, Pocahontas, Churchill's nanny, to name a few, are the examples he takes and re-tells so as to wet our interest and leave us thirsting for more.

This is an ideal book for any homeschooling parent, 11+ years child. A great book to kick off the new school year in History.

Joel Beeke & R J Pederson: " Meet the Puritans".

Here is a big, fat introduction to the puritans by men who have read deeply and widely in the theology of the 17th century. Over 700 pages of short cameos of all of the puritan authors that have been re-published since the revival of reformed re-printing started with the Banner of Truth in the 1950s. They are all here: John Owen, Richard Sibbes, Thomas Goodwin, John Flavel; all the old favourites. But they are also accompanied by the legion of others, lesser known puritan preachers and teachers.

Two appendices includes further biographical sketches of the scottish puritans, Rutherford and the rest, and then another covering the Dutch "puritans" - Witsius and many others.

This is great reference resource.

C. S. Lewis on "Myth".

"Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth that is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be the myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying no one knows when or where, to a a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle....

Those that do not know that this great myth became Fact when the virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied. But christians also need to be reminded.. that what became Fact was a Myth, that it carries with it into the world of Fact all of the properties of the myth. God is more than a god, not less; Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology."

THE Book for Fathers on their Sons

If you are a father of sons, and you have not read this book, then you need to get this book and read and re-read it fast. Future Men, by Douglas Wilson, is not another cry for help over our lost masculinity. It s not another de-scripturised plea fo the recovery of our "manhood", either by beating our chests in our own front room or by wrestling with bears out West some where.

Rather Future Men is the carefully thought out biblical implications of raising sons in the modern world. It is pro-active, painfully challenging and stunningly perceptive. You have to have this one on your shelves, and on the bedside table, often.

It counters our inertia, challenges our passivity, and calls us to godly action. Sons are warriors in the making, and we must not effeminise them. Boys are naturally lazy, and therfore they need a spur to physical and mental exersion. Boys need to hear about the absolute sovereignty of God, not the pathetic "Jesus" who has a "wonderful plan for your life". In short, our boys need to hear that the risen Christ is KING of the kings, and there is something for them to do about it, something more than a new emotional fulfillment plan.

Finally, our boys need to be shown the victorious kingdom of Christ and the application of the faith to all of life and thought. They need to hear a big gospel, one that is bigger than their own spiritual backyard.

Read it, be challenged and stretched, pray over it, discuss it with your wife and above all apply with with your sons.