ON A HILL TOO FAR AWAY: Putting the Cross Back into the Center of Our Lives

"The God of present-day evangelicalism is a big buddy in the sky," chides Fischer, a musician and columnist for Contemporary Christian Music magazine. What has happened to the cross? For someone firmly entrenched in evangelical culture, Fischer has some pretty harsh things to say about evangelicalism—things that he believes many Christians need to hear. Fischer often caustically reminds readers that sin is more than "dysfunction," that the promises of Easter are empty without the horrifying reality of Christ's bloody, bloody death. (Fischer, like a 19th-century Methodist hymn, likes to speak of "nothing but the blood.") This is an eye-opening if craggy read, challenging evangelical Christians to place the cross at the center of spiritual life. (Feb.)