Books & Music & Fiction

There's lots happening in our sister blogs and if you don't peruse the Friday updates, you're cheating yourself.

Over at Notes, our Music blog, one writer wonders why there's an unnecessary rift between so many pastors and their music ministers. Got an opinion?

Over at Word, there's some unlikely Apostolic fiction, but read the intro first!

Finally, a title to look out for in November (yes, November) that Publisher's Weekly gives a starred review by the esteemed Phillip Jenkins, a continual fresh voice on the religion front:

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia
Philip Jenkins. HarperOne, $26.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-06-147280-0

Revisionist history is always great fun, and never more so than when it is persuasively and cogently argued. Jenkins, the Penn State history professor whose book The Next Christendom made waves several years ago, argues that it's not exactly a new thing that Christianity is making terrific inroads in Asia and Africa. A thousand years ago, those continents were more Christian than Europe, and Asian Christianity in particular was the locus of tremendous innovations in mysticism, monasticism, theology and secular knowledge.

An interview on the book is here. 90&9 has been reporting on Jenkins as far back as 2002, sharing his thoughts on a worldwide Pentecostal revival in both.