When Carolyn Weber arrived at Oxford University to begin her post-graduate studies, she felt no need for God and had no interest in him. An intelligent young woman who had grown up in a nominal Roman Catholic family, she was glad to rely on her intellect for the answers to life's greatest questions. As a blooming academic, she had few mentors or models who could show that faith is not only compatible with intellectual pursuits, but that it actually enhances them.

But the Lord had plans for Weber. Soon after arriving on campus she met a young man who shared the gospel message with her and, as she came to learn, once you have heard that message you cannot unhear it. The message resounded in her heart and mind. She spent 2 terms pondering that message, learning more about it, fighting against it, reading the Bible and engaging in conversation with anyone who would speak to her. She knew that the Lord was pursuing her and she eventually began to pursue him in return.

This tale is described in Surprised by Oxford, Weber's newly-published memoir. The quirky setting for this pursuit, this love story, is the ancient campus of Oxford University. The structure follows Oxford's academic year and its 3 terms, Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity. There are 3 dimensions to this love story--love for Oxford, love for a young man, and love for a Savior. The three are interwoven and inseparable; each one is fascinating.

The Marriage Bed is a helpful little book from Ray Rhodes who has also written several titles dealing with family worship. This book[let], weighing in at just 32 pages, is a biblical guide to sexual intimacy. Responding to the inevitable critique that this topic has been covered enough times, Rhodes offers four defenses for writing about it once more: 1) Misinformation about the topic abounds and there is room for a book that falls in the space between legalism and licentiousness; 2) His experience in pastoral ministry has shown that problems with marital intimacy continue despite all of those other books; 3) He has specifically focused on applying the gospel to marital intimacy; 4) The ministry he serves, Nourished in the Word Ministries, exists in part to strengthen marriages and families through biblical teaching and he has written with that kind of ministry in view.

The summer is drawing to a close. Though I love summer and will be sad to see the days grow shorter and the skies grow colder, fall does bring with it some great benefits, not the least of which is a long list of new books. For that reason I anticipate squeezing in a few more book reviews than usual over the next few weeks. I hope you don’t mind!

Though it has been thousands of years since it was written, and though countless people have made valiant attempts to decipher it, it seems as though we are no closer than ever to reaching a consensus regarding the Song of Solomon. Should it be read literally, as a poem that deals with love and sex? Or is this only a superficial meaning beneath which we will find a whole world of allegorical meaning pointing us to Christ? Or might it be some combination of the two, where it speaks both literally and allegorically? Christians continue to disagree.

Candice Watters' professor just about blew her mind. "I was sitting in class learning about all the ways our country was slipping from its constitutional foundations. And in a moment of exasperation, I raised my hand and called out, 'So what's the solution?'" It wasn't what she expected. Her professor told her to get married, to have babies, and to do government (and in that order, too). Here she was, in grad school pursuing a master's so she could head to Washington and fight for the traditional family. Yet here she was told that she was going about it all wrong. It all comes down to math. "The people who form families, who raise children and send them into the next generation, are the ones who will influence where our government and culture go in the future." The conversation soon turned in a different direction, but she was changed; she was transfixed. She began to believe that she, too, could and should be married.

In 2000, when she was only twenty-three, Wendy Shalit published A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue, a book in which she argued that the sexual revolution may not have been entirely beneficial for women. She decried the lack of modesty this revolution has brought about and, according to TIME defended “compellingly, shame, privacy, gallantry, and sexual reticence.” Of course many people, and feminists in particular, were disgusted with the book and ruthlessly mocked her.

A person does not have to be married for long to realize that marriage is a lot more difficult than it may seem. Certainly it is a lot more difficult than God intended for it to be. With the fall into sin came the rise of the self, with the loss of perfection came the dominance of sin. Even the best marriages are now tainted by sin, by selfishness, by a distinct lack of love. Every marriage represents the joining of two sinners. Though they love each other, they fight constantly to love each other as much as they know they should.

We live at a time when relationships are increasingly marked by the awful dictum of meet up, hook up, shack up, and break up. This describes too many relationships, too many hardened hearts and too many ruined lives. But as John Ensor says and as observation bears out, this pattern “bankrupts the rich treasure trove of love itself.” It does not work and it is time for young people to revolt against the times.

I recently began reading Laura Sessions Stepp’s Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, a book I am really only reading because of the final three words of the title. That young women are pursuing sex and delaying love is common knowledge, but it’s rare to find someone who is willing to declare that this causes women to lose at both. While I am not yet at that stage of the book, I am looking forward to her conclusions.

In the first section she discusses what young people mean by the oft-used phrase “hooking up” and seeks to figure out why girls are so quick to hook up and so slow to commit to significant relationships. She shares a conversation that took place between a college-aged girl named Shaida and her friend.

It is easy to be skeptical about the faith claims of politicians. It is rare for a politician to claim to be anything other than a Christian and yet so few of them show any real evidence of the faith they profess. Of course there are undoubtedly some who rise to power that truly are genuine Christians. In The Faith of Condoleeza Rice, Leslie Montgomery shows Condoleeza Rice to be one of these.