Christianity Today Book Awards

I am happy to report that two of Christianity Today’s 2009 book awards went to IVP books that I edited: Andy Crouch’s Culture Making in the Christianity and Culture category, and Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice’s Reconciling All Things in the Christian Living category. Here’s what their judges said:

On Reconciling All Things: “I love this book for its range, the weave of the two writers’ voices, its deep appreciation of process, and its combination of spiritual groundedness, accessibility, and ecclesial, psychological, and political awareness. It retrieves the term reconciliation from the buzzword bin, and offers hope and direction at the same time.”

On Culture Making: “An astonishing work that moves from sociological analysis to biblical theology (in story form) to their practical implications. Crouch’s main contribution is to show how Christians can and should do cultural analysis but not stop there: They should proceed boldly and deliberately to creating culture itself. This is a book for the whole church.”

(Just for the record - when I brought Andy's proposal to our publishing committee some years ago, I said, "This is the quintessential IVP book, and I predict that it will get a starred review from Publishers Weekly and win a CT book award." I'm not always correct in my predictions, but with this particular book, I was right on both counts. And it was named one of PW's best religion books of 2008, as well.)

In addition, IVP's Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry and Writings edited by Tremper Longman and Peter Enns received an award of merit in the Biblical Studies category.