Eareckson Tada, Joni and Nigel Cameron, How To Be a Christian In a Brave New World. Zondervan, 2006.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I am looking for such. I believe I heard once that the most daily adult reading level material was the newspaper and they chose to use a 6th to 8th grade vocabulary to be understood by the most readers. This topic necessitates a willingness to learn the meaning of new words. Smile.

Speaking of which I’m curious about a book. Joni Erickson Tada of theodicy fame due to her diving accident and youth culture (some years back) and more recently on embryonic stem cell research, has apparently co-authored a book with the more scholarly writer Nigel Cameron. Have you read it? I think it has the phrase ‘for a brave new world’ in the title.

I was wondering if this might be what I’m looking for for this 7 week adult ed class in a church that normally does the ‘how to raise kids’ and ‘how to manage money’ and a Biblical book elective classes and rarely does any let alone a prophetic pool of social implication issues like the oxymoronic “biotech/ethics”. Do you know? We’ve ordered the material “Playing God” but I’ve never used it or seen it used before and it clearly was not a huge seller again in a world that studiously would rather not know.

Thanks again for your list.

Joe Whitchurch, Indiana, USA

Yes and no. On some issues it is not at all necessary to give all points of view. I do not think we need to hear paedophiles and rapists justify their positions, for example. Most people do not believe in the “equal time” approach to many issues. Most governments for example are happy to bombard their citizens with anti-smoking information. They do not for a moment feel it is necessary for the tobacco industry to come along and present their viewpoint in the interests of fairness. Most people would have no problem with such a ‘lack of balance’..

And it also depends on what your purposes are. My website is coming from a certain point of view, and there is no concealing that. As I said in the intro to this article, there are plenty of books around on bioethics. However, those books that take a pro-life and more cautious approach are few and far between. Thus it was my intention to highlight those volumes. Walk into any decent bookshop and there will be plenty of books on bioethics taking the contrary view.

Given that the position I hold is admittedly a minority position, at least amongst the elites, it seems fair to be able to point those titles out to those who are interested.

If you are unhappy with this selection, there are of course hundreds of websites and other sources that will list the titles you may be interested in.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Don Osborn