Faithful eight

Hope College historian Marc Baer follows a theme of faithfulness to assemble a top-notch collection of biographies in Mere Believers: How Eight Faithful Lives Changed the Course of History (Cascade Books, 2013).

As William Wilberforce was faithful in the pre-Victorian political realm, so G.K. Chesterton was faithful as an influential public intellectual in London in the early 20th century—and Baer shows a similar faithfulness in his short biographies of British heroes. He challenges the cynical modern lie that no one really makes a difference in history. These people made a difference.

Many American evangelicals now know of Wilberforce’s campaign to end British slavery in the early 19th century, but few know of Olaudah Equiano, a slave who became a leading voice in the abolition movement and challenged the whole British establishment.

Hannah More is not well-known, but she was a skilled playwright in secular London circles: Getting serious about Christian faith, she used her pen for Christ’s kingdom and helped Wilberforce lead a cultural reformation in England. She told her readers how to help the needy and defended the faith to secular friends and foes: Baer notes that More’s “writings and philanthropic activities deeply influenced the public mind and social character of her day, evident in the letters and memoirs of her contemporaries.”

Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, put wealth and social influence to use for the building of evangelical churches, boosting the Great Awakening in England. She dedicated her aristocratic stature to Christ’s kingdom in an age when English law and custom restricted common people from preaching or gathering for worship.

Baer promotes biblical principles but also brings impartiality. We see strengths and weaknesses: The great journalist, G.K. Chesterton ate and drank too much and didn’t get enough exercise, likely shortening his life and potential usefulness. But Baer points beyond the believer’s own limited capacities to the grace of Christ in their lives. In the case of Chesterton in the early 20th century, the result was a heroic and lonely plea for Christ in a public marketplace in London dominated by modernist thinking.

Baer’s previous books were aimed at an academic audience. Here he writes for a broader audience. He does so with the faithfulness of his characters and a ray of hope in the lives of these “mere believers.”

A better love

No one wants a friend to have cancer, especially a friend who is 36 with four young children and a pastor-husband starting a church. Kara Tippetts has chronicled the battle daily in her well-read blog, Mundane Faithfulness, and now in her book, The Hardest Peace (David C. Cook, 2014).

Other cancer memoirs proliferate, but hers is rare in its raw take. She describes her hard childhood and wandering before coming to Christ. She writes of honest talks about death with her children, and the moment she realizes her husband should marry again. But through “the hard” she recounts so honestly, deep new ways to savor the gospel appear. Out of the severest mercy arrives a better love.

Early after her diagnosis Kara told me she planned to suffer in public, a calling she sensed was hers because she is a transparent person rooted in Scripture. She didn’t know that her calling to grace in suffering would become a story of grace to the rest of us, too. —Mindy Belz