11/26/07 -- Late Nights in the Library

The week of November 26 is another one of our once-a-quarter, late-night weeks complete with coffee, sodas, and study snacks:

Mon - Thurs (11/26 - 11/29) -- 8:30am - 12am
Fri (11/30) -- 8:30am - 10pm
Sat (12/1) -- 9am - 10pm
Sun (12/2) -- CLOSED

Beverages and snacks will be served every evening starting at 6pm. Come in to study or just stop by and pick up something during a class break. Everyone is welcome!

11/16/07 -- Thanksgiving Break Hours

The week of November 19 is a break week at Northern Seminary and the library will have reduced hours:

    Mon - Tues (11/19 - 11/20)      9am - 8pm
    Weds (11/21)                                 9am - 5pm
    Thurs - Sun (11/22 - 11/25)     CLOSED

After the Thanksgiving weekend, the library will reopen at 8:30am Monday morning, 11/26. You can view the full library calendar here.

11/6/07 -- New Book Lists Updated

You can view the list of new book titles at Brimson Grow Library here.

If you would like to receive the list of new book titles by email, you can subscribe to the library email news.

10/31/07 -- Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online

The Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the most recent addition to our Virtual Reference Library. This brings our collection up to a total of 12 available online reference sets:

     Contemporary American Religion (1999)
     Dictionary of American History (2003)
     Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007)
     Encyclopedia of American Religions (2003)
     Encyclopedia of Education (2003)
     Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (2004)
     Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2006)
     Encyclopedia of Religion (2005)
     Encyclopedia of Science and Religion (2003)
     Encyclopedia of World Cultures (1996)
     Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America (2000)
     New Catholic Encyclopedia (2003)

If you are connecting from off campus, a password is necessary to connect. If you are a Northern Seminary student, staff member, or faculty member, you may call the library at (630)620-2104 to request the password.

10/4/07 -- New Email Addresses

All Northern Seminary students should have received notice by now of their new @seminary.edu email addresses. Northern Seminary is now using these new email addresses for all official communication with students. This means that Brimson Grow Library will also be sending all overdue notices, renewal reminders, and other library information to each student's @seminary.edu email address. If you do not know how to access your new Northern Seminary email address please contact the I.T. department for more information.

10/4/07 -- New Book Lists Updated

You can view the list of new book titles at Brimson Grow Library here.

If you would like to receive the list of new book titles by email, you can subscribe to the library email news.

9/24/07 -- Password Access to New Databases

Over the summer, we added two new databases to the library's online resources:

SAGE Journals Online and
Thomson/Gale's Virtual Reference Library.

Access to both of these databases from off campus requires a password. If you do not have the password for these databases, please contact the library at (630)620-2104 or library@seminary.edu to request your password.

More information about these databases is available at http://www.seminary.edu/BGL/detailed.htm -- scroll down to the bottom section of the page.

9/18/07 -- Fall library hours

During the week of September 17, the library will be open until 8pm for anyone wanting to get a head start on fall reading:

Mon, 9/17 - Thurs, 9/20    9am - 8pm
Fri, 9/21 - Sat, 9/22         9am - 5pm
Sun, 9/23                            CLOSED

With the start of classes on Monday, 9/24, the library will resume regular school session hours:

Mon - Thurs     8:30am - 11pm
Fridays              8:30am - 10pm
Saturdays         9am - 5pm
Sundays            CLOSED

7/13/07 -- 2 New Online Resources

The Library is pleased to announce the availability of two new online resources:

The Virtual Reference Library -- Gale's Virtual Reference Library provides online access to 11 reference sets:

    Contemporary American Religion (1999)
    Dictionary of American History (2003)
    Encyclopaedia Judaica (2007)
    Encyclopedia of American Religions (2003)
    Encyclopedia of Education (2003)
    Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (2004)
    Encyclopedia of Religion (2005)
    Encyclopedia of Science and Religion (2003)
    Encyclopedia of World Cultures (1996)
    Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America (2000)
    New Catholic Encyclopedia (2003)

You can search across all 11 reference sets at once, or you can narrow your search to individual titles. To connect from off campus, contact the library (630-620-2104 or library@seminary.edu) for the password.

SAGE Journals Online -- A full-text backfile for 298 journals

SAGE Journals Online allows you to search the contents of over 460 journals published by SAGE. For 298 of those journals, the full text articles are available online through 1998 (the "backfile"). At the present, you have to be using a computer on campus to be able to access the full text articles. Northern students, employees, or faculty members can contact the library (630-620-2104 or library@seminary.edu) to request a copy of an article from the backfile. See http://www.seminary.edu/BGL/sage.htm for more information about SAGE Journals Online.

7/10/06 -- Welcome to 6 New I-Share Libraries

The CARLI consortium has added six new libraries to the I-Share system, bringing the total number of I-Share libraries to 71. The six new libraries are:

Carl Sandburg College, Galesburg

Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, with four locations: Frontier Community College, Fairfield; Wabash Valley College, Mt. Carmel; Olney Central College, Olney; and Lincoln Trail College, Robinson

Knox College, Galesburg

Monmouth College, Monmouth

Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing, Peoria

Trinity International University, Deerfield

Note that now that Trinity International University is part of the I-Share system, Northern Seminary students, faculty, and staff will no longer need to make use of an ACTS card to borrow materials from Trinity's library. Just like any of the other 70 I-Share libraries, your Northern Seminary library card is all you need to borrow books from one of these libraries.

For more information, you can view the CARLI news posting at http://www.carli.illinois.edu/news/52/65.html.

6/15/07 -- Free Trial of Religion Resource

We have a free trial of Routledge's Religion Resource available to us until July 11, 2007.

To connect, go to http://www.reference.routledge.com and enter the username and password in the upper left corner of the page.

Contact the library at (630)620-2104 or email us at library@seminary.edu to request the username and password.

Once you have tried it, let us know what you think -- do you think that this would be a useful online resource?

For more information about this free trial, go to http://www.seminary.edu/BGL/routledge.htm.

6/11/07 -- Library Open to 10pm for D.Min. Courses

For the week of June 11 while D.Min. classes are meeting the library hours will be as follows:

Mon, 6/11 - Thurs, 6/14          8:30am - 10pm
Friday, 6/15                               8:30am - 5pm
Sat, 6/16 - Sun, 6/17               CLOSED

5/27/07 -- Library Closed Memorial Day & Commencement

For the week of May 28, the library hours will be as follows:

Monday, 5/28                     CLOSED for Memorial Day
Tues, 5/29 - Thurs, 5/31          8:30am - 11pm
Friday, 6/1                          8:30am - 10pm
Saturday, 6/2                     CLOSED for Commencement
Sunday, 6/3                          CLOSED

5/21/07 -- Late Night Study Breaks

For the week of May 21, 2007 the library will once again offer extended hours:

Monday, 5/21 - Thursday, 5/24     8:30am - 12am
Friday, 5/25     8:30am - 10pm
Saturday, 5/26     9am - 10pm
Sunday, 5/27     CLOSED

Coffee, soda, and study snacks will be served each night from 6:00pm until closing.

NOTE: The library will be CLOSED for Memorial Day on Monday, May 28.

5/17/07 -- Tools for Finding D.Min. Theses

There is a new link on the library's home page to assist researchers in locating Doctor of Ministry theses. (Look for the "NEW" icon.)

While none of these resources is new, the Quick Limit for theses in the library's online catalog is a new feature.

You can either click on the D.Min. link on the library's home page, or you can go view the new instructions directly here.

5/11/07 -- Book of the week: Turabian, 7th ed.

LB 2369 .T8 2007
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th ed., Kate L. Turabian, revised by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)

The 7th edition of Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers features significant new material, a more user-friendly arrangement, much-needed rules for online resources, and an eye-friendly, two-tone typeset format.

Editors Booth, Colomb, and Williams have adapted material from their The Craft of Research and inserted it as Part I of the 7th edition. Researchers now get both a style guide and a research guide in one book.

The three-part format for the 7th edition also makes it easier to navigate. Part I is the new research guide; Part II is the rules for source citation; Part III is the style guide. In the 6th edition, the first chapter was a guide to the parts of a research paper which then had to be compared to the formats and sample layouts in the last chapter. The new edition combines all this material together in Appendix A along with instructions that are updated to reflect common word processor settings. And the index at the back of the volume now references items by page number rather than chapter and section, a great improvement in my opinion.

The 7th edition brings Turabian up-to-date by including rules and examples for citing online sources. Part II also separates the instructions for notes/bibliography style from the instructions for parenthetical/reference list style. What had been a completely separate chapter for citing public documents is now helpfully included with the rest of the citation rules. Part II of edition 7 now includes over 100 pages of citation examples compared to the 26 pages in chapter 11 of the 6th edition.

One weakness that is not corrected in the new edition is that Turabian's official stance for encyclopedias and other reference works is still that they should only be cited in notes. (17.5.3, p.191) Nothing acknowledges the difficulties of citing scholarly encyclopedia or dictionary references where signed articles are the norm. One can, however, adapt the instructions for edited collections on p.179 to sufficiently cite academic reference works.

Finally, the blue-and-black typesetting makes it much easier to distinguish in-text examples and to move one's eye from section to section.

It is fitting that the 7th edition has been published on the 20th anniversary of Kate Turabian's death. The many improvements in this edition will ensure its place on student bookshelves for years to come.

5/4/07 -- Book of the Week: New Faith in Ancient Lands

BV 3160 .N49 2006
New Faith in Ancient Lands: Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, edited by Heleen Murre-van den Berg (Boston: Brill, 2006)

It is a common conceit that our problems are unique in human history. One of the reasons for studying history, of course, is to deflate that conceit by finding the overarching stories that have been part of human history for millennia. New Faith in Ancient Lands accomplishes this by giving historical insight into West/East religious encounters in the past two hundred years that evoke parallels with what we see in the news today.

Consider the story of Pope Gregory XIII who in 1582 sent two papal legates to the Coptic patriarch John XIV. In the middle of negotiations with the Coptic Church synod, John XIV mysteriously died. The legates were immediately arrested as spies and were not released until a ransom of 5,000 gold pieces was paid. As Anthony O'Mahony summarizes the end result of this attempt at reunion, "The results of the attempt at reunion remained ambiguous and contested through mutual lack of understanding between the two parties." (p.94)

Or consider the fate of Miss Matilda Creasy, one of the first female English missionaries to Jerusalem. Creasy became the treasurer for the Sarah Society, and partnered proselytization with the charitable work of the society. Most of the Sarah Society's money went to feed and clothe the poor women of the Jewish Quarter. On September 9, 1858, Matilda Creasy's beaten body was found outside the city of Jerusalem. Efforts to investigate the murder led to conflict between the Ta'amri Bedouin and the Ottoman government, resulting in the death of four of the Ottomon soldiers. No one was ever convicted for Miss Matilda Creasy's murder, but unflattering portraits of the Holy Land as a murderous land lived long after her.

Nor are all the stories negative: Consider the works of the Kaiserswerth Deaconess Institution. Founded in 1836 in Kaiserswerth Germany and funded by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, the Kaiserswerth deaconesses worked to establish the Orientarbeit, an educational and nursing program in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. Part of the Deaconness Institution mission was to raise up sisters from the local population. This partnership with local peoples contributed to the longevity of the Orientarbeit, and the last Kaiserswerth deaconess retired in 1974.

As Murre-van den Berg writes in her introduction, "There can be little doubt that the nineteenth century, like the early stages of the Crusader period, constituted a time in which influences and developments from many different parts of society contributed to an ever-increasing Christian interest in the Middle East." (p.17) The stories collected in this volume capture well the ambiguity, the struggles, and the seemingly few successes of Western missionary efforts in the Middle East. They are apt tales for our time.

Table of Contents:

Introduction / Heleen Murre-van den Berg

Spirituality and scholarship: the Holy Land in Jesuit eyes (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) / Bernard Heyberger and Chantal Verdeil

William McClure Thomson’s The Land and the Book (1859): pilgrimage and mission in Palestine / Heleen Murre-van den Berg

Fransciscains en terre sainte: de l’espace au territoire, entre opposition et adaptation / Giuseppe Buffon

Coptic Catholic church, the Apostolic Vicar Maximus Giuaid (1821-1831), the Propaganda Fide and the Franciscans in early nineteenth-century Egypt / Anthony O’Mahony

Danger and the missionary enterprise: the murder of Miss Matilda Creasy / Nancy L. Stockdale

Public space and private spheres: the foundation of St Luke’s Hospital of Nablus by the CMS (1891-1901) / Philippe Bormaud

Metamorphosis of a pietistic missionary and educational institution into a social services enterprise: the case of the Syrian Orphanage (1860-1945) / Roland Löffler

Deutschen Kurdenmissionen in Mahabad in ihrem Kontakt zu den orientalischen Christen / Martin Tamcke

German "Home Mission" abroad: the Orientarbeit of the Deaconess Institution Kaiserswerth in the Ottoman Empire / Uwe Kaminsky

American Protestant missionary beginnings in Beirut and Istanbul: policy, politics, practice and response / Habid Badr

"Missions in Eden": shaping an educational and social program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855-1895) / Barbara J. Merguerian

Evangelization or education: American Protestant missionaries, the American Board, and the Girls and Women of Syria (1830-1910) / Ellen Fleischmann

Muslim response to missionary activities in Eqypt: with a special reference to the Al-Azhar High Corps of ʻUlamâ (1925-1935) / Umar Ryad.

4/23/07 -- Book of the Week: Render Unto God

BV 639 .P6 P57 2002
Render Unto God: Economic Vulnerability, Family Violence, and Pastoral Theology, by James Newton Poling (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2002)

In his introduction, James Poling writes, "In this book I extend my research to discover how economic vulnerability among working-class and poor women and children in European American, African American, and Latina/o cultures exacerbates experiences of family violence, and what role religion plays in empowering them and their families."

Render Unto God provides extensive research on and case studies of the ways in which economic injustice affects members of these three communities, especially women and children. The concluding two chapters, Pastoral Care With Persons Who Are Vulnerable and The Spirituality of Practicing Goodness, are Poling's plea for a transformation of pastoral care practices, especially when there are marked differences in cultural or economic class backgrounds between a pastoral caregiver and someone receiving the care. Particularly in the Western Church, there is a need for pastoral caregivers to accept their brothers and sisters who have been economically oppressed with open receptivity and a courage to act on their behalf. Poling argues this kind of transformation in pastoral care will in turn lead to a transformation of the worship and community life of the Church, more closely conforming the Church to the image of Christ.

Table of contents:

Principles of Pastoral care -- Economics, violence, and care -- Pastoral Counseling of Domestic Violence Victims in Nicaragua -- A story of healing and liberation -- Pastoral care and vulnerability -- Economic analysis -- The connection between the unjust distribution of wealth and vulnerability -- Theories of capitalism and the distribution of wealth -- A Christian critique of market capitalism -- Resistance to capitalism -- Resistance to capitalism in Nicaragua -- African American resistance to capitalism in the United States -- Women’s resistance to capitalism in the United States -- Theological reflection -- Mark’s critique of oppressive political economies -- Mark’s alternative economic vision -- A church empowered by the holy spirit-- Transforming pastoral care -- Pastoral care with personals who are vulnerable -- The spirituality of practicing goodness.

4/15/07 -- New Book Lists Updated

You can view the list of new book titles at Brimson Grow Library here.

If you would like to receive the list of new book titles by email, you can subscribe to the library email news.

4/13/07 -- Free CHE Accounts Available

Everyone can now have a personalized subscription to Academe Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education's daily email news report.

One advantage of having your own subscription: You can personalize your login and password so if you want to connect to the Chronicle's web site from home, you will be able to do so with your own login and password instead of having to remember the school's login.

Signing up for Academe Today is simple. Just go to http://chronicle.com/help/emails/academetoday/?sle and click on the “sign up now” link. You’ll have to create a free Chronicle account if you don’t have one before you can subscribe. Once you confirm your e-mail address, you’ll receive your very own copy of Academe Today the very next weekday morning.

4/9/07 -- Book of the Week: Saint John's Bible

BS 191.5 .A1 2005 .C65
The Saint John's Bible is the first hand-lettered and illuminated Bible produced in over 500 years.

The monks of St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota wanted to commission a hand-illuminated Bible at the start of the 21st century. Jewish and Islamic communities have kept alive the art of hand-lettered scriptures, but this practice in Christianity died out with the advent of the printing press.

To create this special Bible, Donald Jackson was commissioned as the artistic director of this massive project. Donald Jackson and his team of over a dozen other artists and calligraphers are writing and illustrating the Bible one page at a time.

The Saint John's Bible uses the text of the New Revised Standard Version chosen both because its predecessor, the Revised Standard Version, was accepted by most Christian churches and because of its use of gender-inclusive language. Four of the seven volumes are now complete, and the entire Bible should be finished in 2008.

The full-color facsimile volumes in our library are available to be checked out to allow everyone to enjoy this beautiful and enduring edition of God's Word.



You can read more about the creation of the Saint John's Bible at http://www.saintjohnsbible.org.

4/2/07 -- Book of the Week: Off-Road Disciplines

BV 652.1 .C735 2006
Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders, by Earl Creps (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006)

This book is Earl Creps's take on the role of spiritual disciplines in forming the life and practice of believers. He steps outside of the traditional definitions of spiritual disciplines and encourages believers to go "off-road" by practicing disciplines that engage them with the world in ways that will fundamentally transform their souls. His chapter headings divide his list of disciplines into six personal disciplines and six organizational disciplines (arguing that organizations, like individuals, need to be spiritually formed):

Part one: personal disciplines
Death : the discipline of personal transformation -- Truth : the discipline of sacred realism -- Perspective : the discipline of POV -- Learning : the discipline of reverse mentoring -- Witness : the discipline of spiritual friendship -- Humility : the discipline of decreasing

Part two: organizational disciplines
Assessment : the discipline of missional efficiency -- Harmony : the discipline of blending differences -- Reflection : the discipline of discernment -- Opportunity : the discipline of making room -- Sacrifice : the discipline of surrendering preferences -- Legacy : the discipline of passing the baton

Epilogue: three coffee houses

4/2/07 -- Library Closed Easter Weekend

The library will be closed Good Friday through Easter Sunday:

Mon, 4/2 - Thurs, 4/5    8:30am - 11:00pm
Fri, 4/6 - Sun, 4/8     CLOSED

The library will reopen at 8:30am on Monday, April 9.

3/19/07 -- Book of the Week: Recycling the Past or Researching History?

BX 6232 .R43 2005
Recycling the Past or Researching History? : Studies in Baptist Historiography and Myths, edited by Philip E Thompson and Anthony R. Cross

This title is volume 11 in the Studies in Baptist History and Thought series published by Paternoster. Click here to see all the available volumes in our collection. We have recently added this volume along with others from this series to our collection.

From the back cover:

Recycling the Past or Researching History? brings together an international group of Baptist scholars who explore various issues in Baptist historiography and myths. To this end, contributors examine and re-examine areas of Baptist life and thought about which little is known or the received wisdom is in need of revision. Historiographical studies include the date Oxford Baptists joined the Abingdon Association, the death of the Fifth Monarchist John Pendarves, eighteenth-century Calvinistic Baptists and the political realm, confessional identity and denominational institutions, Baptist community, ecclesiology, the priesthood of all believers, soteriology, Baptist spirituality, Strict and Reformed Baptists, the role of women among British Baptists, while various 'myths' challenged include the nature of high-Calvinism in eighteenth-century England, baptismal anti-sacramentalism, episcopacy, and Baptists and change. The theme which ties these studies together is that research into Baptist history should deal with the primary sources and not, as has too often been the case, rely uncritically on the scholarship of previous generations.

Philip E. Thompson is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Heritage, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA

Anthony R. Cross is a Fellow of the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Regent's Park College, Oxford, UK

3/19/07 Spring Break Hours

The library will have reduced hours over spring break, Monday, 3/19 - Sunday, 3/25:

Monday - Thursday    9:00am - 8:00pm
Friday                            9:00am - 5:00pm
Saturday - Sunday    CLOSED

Regular hours will resume on Monday, 3/26.

3/16/07 Campus wireless services extended

The wireless connection in the library has changed because the classrooms and Kern Commons are now also wireless hot spots. If you have been using the wireless connection in the library, you will have to reconfigure your settings to take advantage of the new, extended wireless on campus.

3/12/07 Book of the Week: Africa Bible Commentary

Ref BS 491.3 .A47 2006
The Africa Bible Commentary, edited by Tokunboh Adeyemo (Zondervan, 2006) is new to our reference collection. It provides access to African biblical interpretations, intentionally from a conservative theological perspective. As the following review makes clear, this can be viewed as a strength or a limitation, depending on your perspective.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reviewed by Chad Pollock, reference librarian at the JKM Library, serving the schools of McCormick Theological Seminary and The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

The Africa Bible Commentary (ABC) is a one-volume commentary of the Christian Bible written by African scholars primarily for an African audience. As such, the ABC is unique in the corpus of one-volume Bible commentaries. The ABC is the brain-child of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa (AEA), and members of the AEA chose the authors and served as the editorial board.

In the general introduction to the commentary, Tokunboh Adeyemo, the General Editor of the ABC, describes the contents in the following way:

"The ABC is not a critical, academic, verse-by-verse commentary. Rather, it contains section-by-section exegesis and explanation of the whole Bible as seen through the eyes of African scholars who respect the integrity of the text and use African proverbs, metaphors and stories to make it speak to African believers in villages and cities across the entire continent."

This quote highlights both the uniqueness of the ABC as well as one of its major limitations. The ABC's uniqueness lies in its embrace of what Justin Ukpong calls the "ordinary reader," the common African reader as opposed to a religious or academic elite. The goal of the commentary is to provide a devotional, rather than critical, reading of the text, one that resonates with the African situation, utilizes African language and cultural markers, and one that has practical consequence. This goal is commendable.

However, in choosing those scholars who "respect the integrity of the text," the editorial board excluded many African scholars who perhaps could have added more depth to the commentary. Most notably, there are no scholars from the Catholic tradition, nor are there any from the Ubuntu school of Desmond Tutu or from a tradition of liberation. The contributors to the ABC were required by the editorial board to accept the AEA Statement of Faith with its corresponding emphasis on the "infallible and entirely trustworthy" nature of the Christian bible. Nowhere is this commitment more palpable than in the various introductions to the biblical books.

The authors, for example, embrace the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Davidic authorship of the Psalms, and, in general take an unquestionably traditionalist approach to the matters of critical introduction that Western scholars have haggled over for the last two centuries. This is not necessarily bad. A reading of scripture that skews the historical-critical method can provide a refreshing look at the text, and one could easily forgive the lack of critical introduction if the section-by-section exegesis provided such a refreshing reading. This type of reading seems to be what the authors intended. Throughout the forward and in the ABC's promotional literature, the editorial board-and others-praise the commentary for its uniquely African reading. "In interpreting the biblical text, the authors have also been able to bring together Christian spirituality and the depth of their understanding of African culture and religion," says Dr. Robert K. Aboagye. "Its foundation is Biblical, its perspective African," says John Stott. The vision statement for the ABC similarly says, "the general aim of the commentary is to make the word of God speak relevantly to African realities today."

At times the ABC achieves this goal admirably. In the commentary on Mathew 5:9, for example, the author highlights the need for peacemakers:

"Sudan, and especially the Darfur region, is just the latest part of Africa desperately needing peacemakers...[peacemaking] involves actively working for reconciliation between hostile factions (1119)."

At other times, the authors descend into a simplistic and almost patronizing interpretation of the text, such as in the exegesis of Genesis 24, the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah:

Rebekah had an important role to play in the whole affair. Here is a reminder for parents and guardians that when it comes to the matter of marriage, the wishes of the future wife or husband are of first importance...Parents should listen very carefully to their children when arranging marriages...forced marriage is a sin before God (46).

In approaching this review, I should state plainly that I am a white American male, trained in the historical-critical method at predominantly white protestant universities. Although I attempt to embrace what Daniel Patte calls a multi-dimensional andro-critical perspective, I struggle with a bias against what I would deem a non-critical reading. Nevertheless, when I signed on for this review, I was excited about reading a commentary from a distinctly African perspective. My disappointment in the ABC is rooted mostly in the fact that the polyvalence of African voices is not represented. Instead, the commentary offers a one-sided African reading, even as it asserts a more universal tone.

The various topical articles sprinkled throughout the ABC are the most succinct attempt to bring together topics of interest to African Christians and the biblical text. There are a total of eighty of these articles, and the topics range from "Angels, Demons, and Powers" to "Yahweh and Other Gods." These articles come close to fulfilling the ABC's self-described goal. The articles on "HIV/AIDS in Africa" and "Christians and the Environment" are particularly noteworthy. However, the over-simplification that plagues much of the rest of the commentary is not absent from the articles. The article "War," for example, concludes with the admonishment that sometimes war is necessary because, "Jesus Christ himself...had to wage the ultimate war against sin on Calvary in order that we might live (968)."

The only work comparable to the ABC is the African Bible published by the Catholic Paulines Press. Although the African Bible is a study Bible and the ABC is a commentary, the two works are similar in scope. Both provide introductions to the books of the Bible and both give a running commentary on the text. The difference between the two is one of perspective. Whereas the ABC is written from the vantage of African Evangelicals with a strong sense of Biblical inerrancy, the African Bible is written from the standpoint of African Catholic Bishops with an emphasis on applying church teaching to the African situation. The two books complement one another and would function nicely as bookends to a broader African reading.

The ABC certainly deserves a place in any theological library. Does it, however, belong on the reference shelf? Ultimately, this decision rests with each individual library. Its focus on a narrow devotional reading of the bible inclines this reviewer toward the stacks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This review will be published in the forthcoming American Theological Library Association Newsletter.

3/12/07 -- Library hours for finals week

For the week of March 12, finals week, the library hours will be:

   Monday - Thursday     8:30am - 11:00pm
   Friday                              8:30am - 10:00pm
   Saturday*                       9:00am - 5:00pm
   Sunday                            CLOSED

Library hours will be reduced the following week for spring break.

*On Saturday, 3/17, new student orientation for the spring quarter will be taking place on campus and there will be library tours.

3/7/07 -- New book lists updated

You can view the list of new book titles at Brimson Grow Library here.

If you would like to receive the list of new book titles by email, you can subscribe to the library email news.

3/5/07 -- Extended Library Hours

For the week of March 5, library hours will be extended, and study snacks will be served from 6:00pm through closing. The library hours for this week will be:

   Monday - Thursday 8:30am - Midnight
   Friday                   8:30am - 10:00pm
   Saturday              9:00am - 10:00pm
   Sunday                 CLOSED

Stay late to study or just stop by to pick up a cup of coffee or a cold drink to take back to class with you.

3/1/07 -- Preview Google Book Search

You can now preview some of the books available from Google Book Search on the library's home page. The rotating display of covers will give you some idea of the kinds of books available from Google's site. See the link to Google Book Search on the library's list of other full text resources for more information.