Just wondering

Retro Yancey

JUST WONDERING
By Philip Yancey
Monarch Books. 232 pages. £7.99

In 1983 Philip Yancey was asked to write regularly one-page essays for the fortnightly Christianity Today, the organ of the new evangelicalism.

In 1989 this first collection of his articles was published in the USA and it has now been reprinted under this title in the UK on the strength of the popularity of Yancey's muddled book What's So Amazing about Grace? which is advertised on the front cover. This is not a review of that book but of this book of 44 sweet essays by a good writer and observer of all manner of things in American society up to 20 years ago.

Not much illustrative help for the preacher is found here, but there are no pleas for the unconditional love and acceptance of the prostitute and drug-addict without requiring from them repentance. This was to come from Yancey's laptop later, so I couldn't but read these pages wondering what hints of forthcoming peril I would detect. Little enough, just crafted essays on this and that. The man can write this type of essay, and still each month in Christianity Today one appears, so I hear.

Geoff Thomas,
Aberystwyth

© Evangelicals Now - August 2003
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Main Articles

• EZ36 - Rebuild the ruined cities
  What's happening on St Mellons estate, Cardiff
• Teamwork: reaching barren Britain
  An interview with Andrew Setchell of TEAMwork
• How to have a good gap year
• Carers with a conscience
  Controversy among social workers
• Taking a tough job
  An interview with Jonathan Stephen
• Questions to an open theist
  Will anyone answer David Field's concerns?
• Five fatal mistakes
  Do we need to consider before it's too late?
• Monthly column on hymns and songs
  The numbers game
• Monthly column for youth leaders
  Seven diseases your church may have
• Monthly column on student work
  Feast your eyes - Emma meets art students
• God's wrath on America?
• Letter from America
  An Englishman in New Haven
• Speed dating
• Creation questions
  Four American academics give some answers

Other articles

• Run the earth, watch the sky
• Wesley and men who followed
• Lives turned upside down
• Streets paved with gold - The story of the London City Mission
• I capture the castle
• Monthly column on the arts - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• The Message of Ezekiel
• I don't know how she does it
• Just wondering
• Authentic Christianity - Sermons on the Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 3, Acts 5 and 6
• Things we couldn't say
• Whose side is God on? - Nationalism and Christianity
• Lights shining in the darkness
• Characters around the church - Witnesses to the birth of the Jerusalem church
• Jesus asked - what he wanted to know
• Postmission
• New Covenant Theology
• On Giants' Shoulders - Bringing new life to Japan
• The unseen face of Islam
• Small groups, growing churches
• Chosen people - The big idea that shapes England and America