Regent Faculty Members Receive Awards for Books

Recent books by Hans Boersma (James I. Packer Professor of Theology) and Don Lewis (Professor of Church History and Academic Dean) have been chosen as being among the year's best in the 2005 Christianity Today Book Awards. Professor Boersma's work, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition, was given the top honour in the category of Theology and Ethics, while Professor Lewis received an Award of Merit under Missions and Global Affairs for his book Christianity Reborn: The Global Expansion of Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century. We congratulate both for their fine work.

Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross
The cross is central to any understanding of Christian theology. But what is the primary significance of the cross: God's victory over death and hell? The moral example of a righteous sufferer? God's Son taking the punishment for the world's sin? Or is it possible that in our postmodern setting these traditional views of the atonement are irrelevant and outmoded? In this important study, Hans Boersma proposes an understanding of the atonement that is sensitive both to the Christian tradition and to postmodern critiques of that tradition.
Throughout his work, Boersma takes seriously the critics of traditional atonement theology. He also acknowledges a certain paradoxical tension between violence and hospitality that will remain a mystery. Nevertheless, he offers a substantial response in the form of an alternative account of violence that also reenvisions the atonement as divine hospitality.
Click here to order Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross from Regent Bookstore.

Christianity Reborn
This book provides the first transnational in-depth analysis of the global expansion of evangelical Protestantism during the past century. While the growth of evangelical Christianity in the non-Western world has already been documented, the significance of this book lies in its scholarly treatment of that phenomenon. Written by prominent historians of religion, these chapters explore the expansion of evangelical (including charismatic) Christianity in non-English-speaking lands, with special reference to dynamic indigenous responses. The range of locations covered includes western and southern Africa, eastern and southern Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. The concluding essay provides a sociological account of evangelicalism’s success, highlighting its ability to create a multiplicity of faith communities suited to very different ethnic, racial, and geographical regions.
Click here to order Christianity Reborn from Regent Bookstore.