Willis Jenkins wanted to inspire Christians to exercise faith in God as well as in contemporary science—science which suggests humans are damaging the earth God created. So he did like any good academic does; he wrote a book called Ecologies of Grace, which explores how being saved [...]

There’s an old saying that goes “the essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity.” Sometimes scholars bring clarity by making things less clear. This is true in most academic pursuits, but it matters especially in biblical scholarship which deals with sacred texts. Peter Martens explores the task of Bible interpreters, religious, scholarly, and scholarly-religious, […]

For centuries Christians have gathered to worship God and study the Bible. But this same text that has unified the faithful has also been the source of much discord. One of the most exciting—though by no means uncontroversial—academic developments during the past century has been the renaissance of interest in early Christian biblical scholarship. Earlier this year […]

On October 27, the third book in the Maxwell Institute's Living Faith series was released—Steven L. Peck's Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist. We celebrated by hosting a panel discussion at Writ & Vision in Provo, Utah. Three panelists shared their thoughts about[...]

The Study Quran from HarperOne is a historic and ground-breaking work produced by a distinguished team of Islamic Studies scholars. Maria Dakake and Joseph Lumbard are two of the book’s general editors. They helped produce the brand new translation and contributed to footnotes and essays exploring various aspects of Islam’s holy scripture. In this episode, we are privileged to hear […]

Everyone knows the classic story of how America was founded by pilgrims and puritans fleeing oppressive lands in search of religious freedom. The problem is that this classic story doesn't adequately relate the much messier and more interesting history of religious tolerance in the United States or elsewhere. From Roger Williams's Bloudy Tenent to today's Internet debates, the idea of [...]

Terryl and Fiona Givens joined me back in July of 2013 for the first episode of the Maxwell Institute Podcast, and it seems fitting that they're back on the nice round number of episode 30.

Here we talk about their latest book The Crucible of Doubt: Reflections on the Quest for Faith. One of the fundamental [...]

gracePaul’s New Testament letter to the Romans is one of the most important Christian writings ever recorded. The passage of time has obscured the letter’s original context, not to mention the language it’s been rendered in—from its original Greek to archaic King James English. It can be difficult for readers today to appreciate the logic […]

Amy-Jill Levine is a Jewish scholar with a deep love for the New Testament. Her latest book is a detailed, scholarly, and witty investigation of some of Jesus's parables. It's called Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi. Levine exposes ways the parables have been misinterpreted from the past to the present and shows that they are as relevant today as they were when they were recorded centuries ago.