As a pastor's wife for 25 years, Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be. In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on that experience and her expertise as a historian to trace the history of the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities that existed throughout most of church history and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers.

In the midst of poverty and oppression, liberation theology emerged in 20th-century Latin America as a beacon of hope. By thinking about their faith in innovative ways, believers wrestled with these profound social problems. Dramatic in its context and sweeping in its scope, liberation theology continues to offer fascinating ways to engage with issues such as inequality, violence, and ecological concerns. Now, Liberation Theology gives you the opportunity to understand its context and implications today.

The ancient Near East is known as the "cradle of civilization" - and for good reason. Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia were home to an extraordinarily rich and successful culture. Indeed, it was a time and place of earth-shaking changes for humankind: the beginnings of writing and law, kingship and bureaucracy, diplomacy and state-sponsored warfare, mathematics and literature. This Very Short Introduction audiobook offers a fascinating account of this momentous time in human history.

Historic statements of faith—such as the Heidelberg Catechism, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Westminster Confession of Faith—have helped the Christian church articulate and adhere to God’s truth for centuries. However, many modern evangelicals reject these historic documents and the practices of catechesis, proclaiming their commitment to “no creed but the Bible.” And yet, in today’s rapidly changing culture, ancient liturgical tradition is not only biblical—it’s essential.

Did the New Testament canon arise naturally from within the early Christian faith? Were the books written as Scripture, or did they become Scripture? Why did early Christians have a canon at all? These are the types of questions that led Michael J. Kruger to pick apart modern scholarship's dominant view that the New Testament is a late creation of the church imposed on books originally written for another purpose.