I hope you saw the last BookNotes post (we heard that some who subscribe didn’t see it in their inbox the day before Christmas.) We invited you to download a book cover and give a last minute gift of a PRE-ORDERED book.  While we can easily take pre-orders for almost any legitimate book, we picked three that are going to be just wonderful, and, we think, important.  I predicted already that they will be in the running for Best Books of next year!

I know this was appealing to some, and our 20% discount was appreciated, too.

We suggested for you the January release of the new Andy Crouch book, his fantastic follow-up to Playing God called Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk & True Flourishing (IVP; $20.00.)

Also, we suggested the mid-February release of It’s Not Too Late: The Essential Part You Play in Shaping Your Teen’s Faith (Baker; $15.99) by our good friend Dan Dupee, President of the CCO, about parenting older teens and college-age young adults. It is really a fine book, fresh and helpful.  Skip back to that previous BookNotes post if you didn’t see our description of it.

Lastly, we were pleased to recommend the eagerly-awaited early-March 2016 book by James K.A. Smith We Are What We Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Brazos Press; $19.99) which in many ways is going to be a lucid and action-able summary of his much-discussed “Cultural Liturgies” project. (That is, he will, we’ve heard, summarize in readable style his major works Desiring the Kingdom and Imaging the Kingdom and what will be, someday, Embodying the Kingdom.) 

No sooner did I hit post, and put that BookNotes newsletter up on Facebook, that I wished I had named a few more equally interesting, important, forthcoming works.  The first few months of 2016 are going to be exciting for book lovers, at least the sort of readers that follow BookNotes, so I felt badly not naming a few other equally anticipated titles.

Perhaps you might want to PRE-ORDER them here, now,

at our BookNotes 20% off promo. Just use the links to our secure order form, below.

We think you will enjoy reading about 12 more soon-to-be released titles.  We are happy to announce these that are sure to please many of our customers and Hearts & Minds friends.  We will have them as soon as anyone, and suspect that you might be delighted to be among the first to receive some of these. We’ll be shipping them as soon as they arrive. We’ll deduct the discount from the regular retail price shown but won’t bill you or use your credit card until we actually send them on their way to you.  Okay?

Know anybody else you could forward this to?  Happy New Year, ya know… Thanks for helping us spread the word.

We suspect most will actually be here a bit sooner then the announced date; in some cases, considerably earlier.  Hooray.  Ain’t it good to be a book lover?

To the Table: A Spirituality of Food, Farming, and Community Lisa Graham McMinn (Brazos Press) $19.99  due early January 2016  The minute I heard of this it catapulted to the top of my most-eagerly awaited list; McMinn is an expert writer, a woman I’ve read for years, whose books are good and true and lovely. When I saw the final copy of this, recently, I was just dazzled — nice illustrations bring to mind a Mollie Katzen cookbook, too, or some of our own old books like Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet. This is an interesting, graceful call and practical guide to a slower (if sometimes demanding) local lifestyle, almost as if it is a follow-up to her very practical Walking Lightly on the Earth.   To the Table includes stories from McMinn’s community near George Fox University, near Newberg, Oregon, including inspiring advice from the work she and her husband do with their CSA (including mouth-watering recipes!) Author/Mad Farmer Joel Salatin says it is about “dining devotionally” and Rachel Marie Stone (who wrote Eat with Joy) says it is a “warm and wise invitation to practice eating as a spiritual discipline.”  Do you want more intention, compassion, gratitude? Are you interested in gardening, health, neighborly conviviality?  To the Table is a gem, a gift, a sweet yet astute volume. Order it today!

Out of the House of Bread: Satisfying Your Hunger for God with the Spiritual Disciplines Preston Yancey (Zondervan) $18.99 due January 2016 This will be a lovely hardback and should become a treasured volume, but it remains to be seen if P. Yancey — Preston, not Philip — becomes well-known among us.  We’re offering this as a pre-order for just this reason — it deserves to get some buzz right away. His wonderful spiritual memoir about being a Southern Baptist Texan who fell in love with “reading saints, crossing himself, and high church spirituality” called Tables in the Wilderness: A Memoir of God Found, Lost, and Found Again, was an unsung treasure of 2014. Yancey is an alumnus of Baylor University, is in the process of being ordained a priest in the Anglian Church of North America, after having complete an Master in Theology from St. Andrews in Scotland. He is currently serving as a Canon Theologian, so he’s a smart cookie, but he is also — as you will discover in this wonderful new book — a baker.  This is, in many ways, a spirituality of baking, even if it is mostly structured around meditations upon and guidance in the classic spiritual disciplines.  I’ve already marked up by advanced review copy!  Brother Yancey may be a modern day Brother Lawrence, himself a baker who “practiced the presence of God” in his kitchen. An appendix includes information about gluten free breads, as well as suggested readings and artwork for contemplation — from suggested icons to paintings from artists as diverse as Rembrandt, He Qi, Marc Chagall and Mako Fujimura. This is a great book.

My Name Is Lucy Barton: A Novel  Elizabeth Strout (Random House) $26.00 due early January 2016  I haven’t laid eyes on this yet, but it is a 208-page, wonderful-looking hardback with deckled edge paper due out soon by the esteemed author of Olive Kitteridge.  Olive Kitteridge, a connecting set of stories that came out in 2007, and subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize, was one of the most popular novels around a few years back. Wonderful!  This new one, My Name is Lucy Barton, will surely be one of the most discussed novels of 2016.  It is said to be a profound exploration of the mother-daughter bond which begins when a woman in the hospital is visited by her estranged mother. SIgnificant things from the past come up, tender things are poignantly drawn, and her great gift of portraying redemption within the ordinary will surely make this an acclaimed novel, one of the most eagerly awaited of the year.  Pre-order it today and, as with the others, get 20% off.

The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance Bethany Hanke Hoang & Kristen Deede Johnson (Brazos Press) $19.99 due January 2016  Just when I thought we didn’t need any more books on the topic of social justice, I learned of this forthcoming work by two seasoned activists and educators, and — wow! — am I ever excited.  Bethany Hoang, by the way, is a person we’ve crossed paths with often; she has an MDiv from Princeton and is the director of the Institute for Biblical Justice at IJM (International Justice Mission) giving her the right to be heard, as much as anyone I can think of.  This is going to be an amazing book by a really important writer! Kristen Johnson (with a PhD from St. Andrews) is a professor of theology and Christian formation at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. She is known as a wise guide, passionate about the interface of theological formation, spiritual growth, cultural engagement and social action, and vocational discernment.  Putting theses two scholars/leaders together is a stroke of genius!

Here is what Nicholas Wolterstorff says of The Justice Calling:

Many books on justice have appeared in recent years. Three things make this one stand out from the crowd. First, instead of quoting only a few golden nuggets from Scripture, the authors trace the theme of justice throughout Scripture. Second, they give concreteness to their discussion with harrowing true-life stories of present day sex trafficking and slavery. And third, they explicitly address the need of those who struggle for justice, patience, lament and hope. An important contribution.

I like that Bethany’s mentor, Gary Haugen, has an endorsement as well, saying,

There is much joy to be found as we follow God into his work of justice, so much strength to be gained in the Scripture’s that he’s given to us. The Justice Calling takes us deep into all these gifts. As we face down the giants of injustice in the season ahead, this is a book I’d urge every follower of Jesus to dig into and carry close at hand.

American’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America  Jim Wallis (Brazos Press) $21.99 due mid January 2016  One may not agree with everything Sojourners magazine and ministry does, but I am more than eager to promote this particular resource and encourage you to pre-order it right away.  We’ve known and watched Wallis since before they moved to DC (hands up if you recall The Post American, published out of their radical community in Deerfield in the early 70s) and we hosted him here at our bookstore ages ago. “America’s original sin” of racism is surely one of Jim’s strong passions and a topic about which he has been consistently outspoken for decades and decades, starting when, as a high school student, he wandered from his own local evangelical congregation into Detroit’s blazing inner city.

Wallis has over the years come to know many black leaders and has submitted himself to some of the best former leaders and students of the old civil rights movement, as well as many of the rising young activists in the post-Ferguson years.  American’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America will be a major work, and we hope you and your circle of friends consider it carefully. There will be a forward by Bryan Stevenson, author (as if I have to tell you, of Just Mercy.) Kudos.  Coming soon!

Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism Drew G.I. Hart (Herald Press) due mid January 2016 $16.99  Well, one might say that it is unfortunate for a first-time author on an indie press (Herald Press is a long-standing, but smallish Mennonite publishing house) to release a book about racism the same day as one by progressive rock star and best selling author Jim Wallis. I’d guess this is not lost on Drew himself.  But there are many reasons why you should pre-order this right away, and get ready to read it when it comes out.

Yes, I will admit, we have a personal connection to this author and some of his story, so we sincerely want to get a buzz going on this; a few good book clubs and adult classes using it would generate word-of-mouth interest. Please don’t hesitate to order extras from us — we’d appreciate it because we really do want to support this book. You see, Drew Hart is an old friend, a young African American leader formerly of Harrisburg, PA.  He worked at near-by Messiah College, in fact, and was on staff with the CCO. (I might have even sold him some of the books cited in this new book.) He is currently a respected speaker, leader, blogger (his blog Taking Jesus Seriously is hosted by the Christian Century) and  is a PhD theology candidate working on social ethics at the Lutheran  Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.  His experience of being a young black man within a largely white and rural evangelical denominational culture (the Brethren in Christ) and as a student in a largely white, mainline Protestant seminary, has given him an array of insights and a unique angle of vision. HIs Anabaptist influences are evident as well, making this a strong, interesting, important paperback.  Drew Hart is a rising voice you need to know. Trouble I’ve Seen is a book you should get.

Hart asks, “What if racial reconciliation doesn’t look like what you expect?” Given the high-profile killings of young black men and the recent uprisings and culture-wide conversations on race and white privilege, the time is ripe for fresh and young voices alongside older ones like Wallis.  D.G.I. Hart challenges white and black Christians about their assumptions and practices, in ways that are compelling and interesting. He tells much of his own story, here, and it is a book I highly, highly recommend. There’s a very good foreword by Christena Cleveland.  Kudos to Herald Press, props to Drew.

As Shane Claiborne writes, of Trouble I’ve Seen,

This book is a gift from the heart of one of the sharpest young theologians in the United States. Hold it carefully, and allow it to transform you — and our blood-stained streets.

Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious  David Dark (IVP Books)  $20.00 due February 2016 I do hope you know the brilliant and provocative writing of David Dark (such as his insightful and fun study of pop culture, Everyday Apocalypse; his pained love letter to these United States, The Gospel According to America; or the one I have a little endorsing blurb in, right next to a rave by Eugene Peterson, The Sacredness of Questions Everything.) Dark writes like a manic prophet at times, creative in thought and word, living righteously in word and deed. Charles Marsh in a rave review mentions his “luminous reckonings with the real” —  how’s that for a book endorsement!  This passionate book is, I gather, a hip and thoughtful guide to faith for smart seekers and skeptics. 

These “strange negotiations” are sure to help us all craft a more sustainable sense of meaning, but will be particularly good for the “spiritual but not religious” fans of the likes of the high brow New Yorker or the edgy Pitchfork.  He wrote it for just such thoughtful seekers. As Sara Zarr — herself nominated for the National Book Award — writes of it, “A bracing manifesto for modern people and an optimism-infused love song to humanity.” Charles Marsh calls it a “irresistible triumph.”  David’s an amazing guy, and this book is going to be life-giving and intellectually important for some.  Maybe you know somebody you can give it to?  You really ought to pre-order it, so you have is promptly!

Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians: Finding Authentic Faith in a Forgotten Age with C.S. Lewis Chris R. Armstrong (Brazos Press) $19.99 due February 2016 My, my, what can I say about this? I’ve not seen it yet, but it is very high on my own personal waiting list, and I’m confident it will be one of the more fascinating and useful books of the season. (I think the last major work I read on the Middle Ages was a lovely one by Thomas Cahill.) This one is going to be fantastic!

Firstly, I might note that Chris Armstrong wrote an earlier book that I just loved which in some ways is similar in approach and effect, with the great title Patron Saints for Postmoderns: Ten from the Past Who Speak to Our Future which showed off his knack for taking older writings and making their worth apparent and even urgent. (Dr. Armstrong is, by the way, editor of Christian History magazine, so knows what he’s writing about!) Here, he will be offering a similar project, helping us see the important  middle ages stuff that C.S. Lewis himself read, realizing the significance of the previous centuries which in which Lewis famously immersed himself.  This is a curious, cool idea of a  book that will certainly be enjoyed by not only those interested in church history, but by Lewis fans as well.  

“Too many evangelical views of church history,” the publicity about the book tells us,  “leave out the medieval period.”  Tapping into current interest in ancient studies, though, Armstrong explores in Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians the Middle Ages —  in conversation with Lewis. How cool is that? If all you know about the medieval world is what you’ve seen in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail, you know you need this book.  If all you know about Lewis is that he was super smart and a bit dusty, well, this will help you get the fuller picture of his own loves and influences. If you are a church leader wondering how the contemporary issues of the modern world might ever be explored with depth and deep wisdom, this will help too.  Armstrong himself is a leader in the faith/work conversations, currently directing a special collegiate program called Opus: The Art of Work. He also serves as a senior editor of the on-line Patheos faith and work channel. He holds a PhD from Duke University and is a friend of Hearts & Minds. Kudos!

The Future of Our Faith: An Intergenerational Conversation on Critical Issues Facing the Church Ronald J. Sider and Ben Lowe (Brazos Press) $18.99  due February 2016 Ron Sider is a friend and mentor and hero. I’ve read all of his many books, and encourage you to dig into his old ones and recent ones. You will find a passionate believe who is courteous and careful, impeccable in his evangelical faith and eager to be Christ-like and Biblical in his social ethics and political advocacy. Ben Lowe is a younger friend, a young adult leader in the faith-based effort to be better at creation care and environmental stewardship, especially around issues related to  climate change. Ben even ran for office a few years ago, and wrote a fine, fine book about enduring in faith and patience even while attempting to make a difference in the world. I love him!

In this forthcoming book, the two leaders — one now in retirement, one truly rising in prominence — chat about what changes await their beloved evangelical tradition, and how gospel-centered ministry is changing in the new era we find ourselves in.  From marriage, homosexuality, creation-care, politics and more, these gentlemen not only highlight difference between them, but develop insight that is useful for any church or para-church ministry, eager to be the church always reforming, but equally committed to fidelity to the ancient truths handed down.  What a edifying and worthwhile time you will have listening in on this wide-ranging conversation!  More, what an important model we see here as they cultivate an intentional, charitable, and much-needed intergenerational dialogue.  Pre-order this today, but please: consider ordering more than one. The Future of Our Faith is a book that is really going to be useful!

Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant and Extreme David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons (Baker Books) $19.99 due early March 2016 This is truly one of the most anticipated titles of 2016.  I’m very excited as both authors — guys I count as friends and supporters — will be at the CCOs 2016 Pittsburgh Jubilee Conference.  This forthcoming book will officially be launched nation-wide at the 2016 Q Commons events in March.  You can pre-order it now, and I hope you do.  The last book they did together is still commonly cited as it explored the research done by the Barna Group on how young outsiders to the church think about the faith. (That was, of course, called Unchristian and remains a best seller.) After that amazing and provocative study, they each wrote their own books, both of which we’ve sold well over the years: Lyons did the excellent The Next Christians and Kinnaman did You Lost Me.  Both are really, really good.

It is fabulous that they are teaming up again, writing new stuff out of their years of experience helping others imagine and take next steps to live out faith in relevant and winsome and effective ways. If you’ve seen any of the extraordinary Q events curated and led by Gabe Lyons, or heard David Kinnaman in his many good presentations around the research his organization does, you know that these are talented communicators and thoughtful, energetic teachers. Agree or not with every detail, you simply must be aware of their work, and you will delight in reading any of their impressive books. I whole-heartedly endorse their efforts, and I’m sure Good Faith will be a great blessing. (I expect an early manuscript of it to arrive shortly, and I’ll be hard pressed not to take the day off work the minute it arrives to dive in, with pen in hand.)  I’ll be writing more about it, I’m sure.

Their forthcoming volume Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant and Extreme will ask us how Christians can be culturally engaged and faithful to the gospel, proposing fresh insights based on extensive new research equipping us to be firm about our deepest convictions without being defensive or judgmental. Can we both challenge the direction of culture and still be clear we are committed to serving the common good?  Can we learn to understand the heart behind opposing view and learn how to stay friends with others, despite differences? Can we hold with confidence our religious convictions without being toxic or alienating to others?  This is going to help us love others, care for the culture, deepen our desires to help renew and restore the brokenness around us and honor God in gracious and effective ways.  May it be widely read, and widely discussed. Pre-order it today!

Create vs. Copy: Embracing Change, Ignite Creativity, Break Through with Imagination Ken Wytsma  (Moody Press) $14.99  due March 2016 This small hardback is one I am sure to read as soon as I can. Books about creativity are everywhere these days — tapping into a mostly wholesome cultural ethos of wanting to be entrepreneurial, inventive, generative, or at least a bit clever in finding one’s own signature style as we pass through our days. There’s a reason that these kinds of guides to increasing our own capacities to be creative are enjoyed by so many.

But, yet, good as many are, I suspect something less then substantive about some of them. Not so with this: Wytsma is President of the Kiln’s College, and his last book, 2015’s The Grand Paradox: The Messiness of Life, the Mystery of God, and the necessity of Faith  was said to be, by the brilliant Nicholas Wolterstorff, one of the best treatments of faith that he ever read!  (Okay, here is exactly what Nick said:  The Grand Paradox is “Thoroughly honest, never evasive, free of clichés, deeply Christian, encouraging rather than scolding in its tone, it is the most perceptive and helpful discussion of faith that I know of.”  Wytsma’s Pursuing Justice: The Call to Live and Die for Bigger Things emerged from his own innovative efforts starting the groundbreaking Justice Conference, and is fantastic. What I mean to say is that he is a extraordinary thinker, an important leader, a fine writer, and he has earned the right to be listened to, to be heard; you should consider reading anything he does!

If this forthcoming one offers some background insight about how he does his thing — wow!  if he shares with us how to be a big more creative, not merely copying what is in vogue, then bring it on!  I trust him, and we should be rejoicing for any assistance he can give us, especially about how to enhance our imagination.

Here’s what the Moody Press catalog says about Create vs. Copy:

This short, punchy book blends theology, history, and cultural observation to lead you toward a healthy, confident, more innovative life mindset. It celebrates the good news of your God-given capacity to create and help you harness it to take charge of your life, navigating changing times, and, ultimately, flourish and succeed. 

This will be a book of beauty, grace, and energy,and sounds like it will be very useful to many, from ordinary readers to professional artists and designers, and especially to leaders of organizations, ministries, and nonprofits. 

Thumbprint in the Clay: Divine Marks of Beauty, Order and Grace Luci Shaw (IVP Books) $17.00  due April 2016  I hope you know the wonderful writer, Luci Shaw, who has spent a lifetime working publishing, offering many volumes of poems and good books of thoughtful prose. Her most recent nonfiction works have included books about aging and the spirituality of her own “ascent.” She is an author and person we esteem and enjoy, and we hope you do to. She is one of the best.

This new one is a rumination on God’s own thumbprint found in all things.  It is, she says, “for me a singular clue to human identity.” God is, of course, the creative and ever-creating One.  The publicity about the book reminds us that “We reflect God’s imprint most clearly, perhaps, in our own creating and appreciation for beauty. A longing for beauty is inherent to being human.” Is there some sense in which beauty is redemptive?

Novelist Brett Lott writes,

Luci Shaw is a treasure, and Thumbprints in the Clay shows us again precisely why: this book is wise beyond measure, the writing beautiful beyond compare, and its heart a reflection of the one true God… This is a beautiful, ruminative and necessary book.

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333

I know we’ve sent a lot to you lately — from some reviews of heavy theology books to a few Advent devotional lists to a BookNotes feature of interesting kids books, to two long posts offering book ideas for certain sorts of hard-to-buy-for readers.  We love telling you the kinds of things we stock, and of course these reviews are all archived for you to order later, if you’d like.  20% off any thing ever mentioned.

And, we’re eager now to quickly tell you that you can PRE-ORDER nearly any forthcoming book you want from us. Really, we can get almost anything!

Here’s a quick gift idea: you could download the cover of a forthcoming book (use a google image search or go to a publisher’s website) and wrap that up as a little card, or as a promissory note.

We’ll then send that book to the address you give us, once it comes out.  Easy, huh?

That would be a great last minute gift; easy for you and very impressive!

Almost any book that is coming out in the next few months would work; we can promise to send it to your recipient (or directly to you, if you prefer) whenever it does release.  We can enclose a note saying it is from you, and even gift wrap for free, too, if you want.

And we won’t even use the credit card number you give us until we ship the book, once it really comes out.  Nice, eh?

May we suggest that you pre-order now at least one of these three forthcoming titles? They are excellent choices for any serious reader of non-fiction.

These three are among the most anticipated books of the next season, and although we could name a dozen other good ones, we’re happy to promote at least these three that we think will be just the sort many of our readers would want.  We’re here to help you out, now.  Download these covers, send us an order, and we’re good to go. Merry Christmas and ho, ho, ho.

You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit James K.A. Smith (Baker) $19.99  not yet released:  DUE MARCH 2016 You may know that Jamie Smith has been one of the most talked about Christian authors of the last several years.  His remarkably interesting and very important books Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation and Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works have been considered to be truly ground-breaking, and widely read across the denominational spectrum. These books talk about how we are not merely thinkers — “brains on a stick” as they say — but God created us to be lovers. Minds and Hearts!  We desire and love and care and serve. So Christian formation that only teaches data — Bible truths or worldviewish principles or theological doctrine, no matter how right or profound or astute —  but doesn’t really shape our deepest desires, loves, priorities and such isn’t going to be truly transformative. And in fact, our Christian worship practices may be “thin” and less influential, while our secular cultural liturgies may be “thicker” and truly impact how we see and feel about the world.  Those books explore deep and wise visions of spiritual imagination and how worship, among other things, effects our human flourishing and the tone of our discipleship.

These two fabulously rich books will be, a year or so from now, supplemented with a crowning third volume, tentatively called Embodying the Kingdom.

Here’s the thing: both of these first two were a bit academic and although they were really exciting in many ways, there were ponderous and demanded a bit from serious readers. I suspect the third will be a little scholarly, too, once it is done.

However, this spring (maybe mid-March) Smith has a volume coming that will be, simply put, a more accessible summary of volume one (Desiring…) and a summary of volume two (Imagining…) and a summary of what will become volume three (Embodying the Kingdom.) You are What You Love will be an overview of Smith’s whole, big “Cultural Liturgies” project and will be a perfect way to help those who haven’t yet waded through the first two to get up to speed. 

Or, for those who have read the first two, and are eager for the third, this forthcoming one will tide them over early this Spring, offering a fresh re-articulation of Smith’s thesis, explained anew, and offered as a basic tool for those of us wanting to keep this conversation alive, embodying it in church and culture.

This is going to be a “Book of the Year” for 2016, no doubt, so you could give it away, now. I’m sure your friend will thank you.  Yes!

Here is what the publisher says about it:

In this book, award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that who and
what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. And while we desire to
shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. We might
not realize the ways our hearts are being taught to love rival gods
instead of the One for whom we were made. Smith helps readers recognize
the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of
Christian practices. He explains that worship is the “imagination
station” that incubates our loves and longings so that our cultural
endeavors are indexed toward God and his kingdom. This is why the church
and worshiping in a local community of believers should be the hub and
heart of Christian formation and discipleship.

Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk, and True Flourishing Andy Crouch (IVP) $20.00  not yet released, DUE JANUARY 2016 Like James K.A. Smith’s named above, this is one of the most anticipated books among thoughtful and widely aware Christian readers.  Mr. Crouch — who has been here to Hearts & Minds, and supports us in very nice ways — has been percolating the ideas in this book for quite a while and we trust him a lot.  (We sold a book to him that pushed him further along in writing this new one) and we heard an early version of what would become this book more than a year ago at a conference in Boston.  It is, Beth and I both agree, one of the books we are most eager to see, and one of the books that we are most eager to sell.  I’m not kidding: Beth still has notes she took about his lecture a year ago in her purse, now, and can tell you about his chart with four options spelled out about power, opportunity, vulnerability and oppression.

It certainly will (I’m just telling you now) be one of the Best Books of 2016. 

Not unlike the James Smith book above, although perhaps not so obviously,  Strong and Weak is the third in what seems to be, if not a set, a series of books that nicely flow from one to the next.  First, was Crouch’s remarkable — and a personal favorite  — very generative book Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling. Since it’s publication in 2013 it has been a Hearts & Minds standard; we take it everywhere and recommend it often.

Then came Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, an excellent book, and a rare one, it seems, studying thoughtfully a Christian view of power, even power expressed within institutions. and how we can have a better view and engagement with authority and power.  It made sense when that one came out: if we are to be culture makers, reflecting God’s image by making something of the world, using our gifts and talents to serve the common good, stewarding well all that God has put into the creation for us to explore and manage and develop, as his first one said, then — sooner or later — we are going to have to deal with institutions, organizations, leaders, and cope with the question of power. How do we get things done, and reform the world in ways that are healthy?

Playing God was not really a book on leadership, although some seemed to think that. It was about the goodness of power (and the horror of it when it is abused.) Yes, to really make a difference in the world, we are going to have to be salt and light and influential leaven within systems and structures and bureaucracies; exploring the sociology of power becomes important to nearly any Christian wanting to be serious about making a God-glorifying, neighbor-loving dent in the fallen world around us. We must, as the sub-title puts it, “redeem power” and Andy tells stories from all over the world of people doing just that.  I think Playing God is, to this day, one of the best books I’ve ever read and one of the ones that is woefully under-appreciated among us.

This forthcoming one — due, we’ve heard by the end of January — seems to be a follow up to Playing God, although one does not need to read Playing God to appreciate Strong and Weak.  We’ve got an advanced copy of it, and it stands alone quite nicely. It will be a somewhat hand-sized, chunky hard-back a perfect little gift.  It is not too intimidating or heavy, although the question of how we use power — and what happens to folks who are vulnerable and unable to exercise self-determination — is endlessly fascinating.  A point of this book is that some of us choose not to take any rises, play it safe, don’t rise to the fullness of our potential, and that is a form of powerlessness, too.  We are not made for utter safely, or utter powerlessness.  How can we flourish and enjoy real life by expressing our deepest talents and values.  “Regardless of your stage or role in life,” he says, “here is a way of love and risk so that we all, even the most vulnerable, can flourish.”

You may want to give this book to someone, or get it for yourself, asap. Especially after you read John Ortberg’s nice endorsement, who writes,

This book is going to have a profound impact on our world. It’s built on a clear, deep, life-changing insight that opens up vast possibilities for human flourishing. Classic, elegant, and utterly illuminating.

It’s Not Too Late: The Essential Part You Play in Shaping Your Teen’s Faith Dan Dupee (Baker) $15.99 not yet release DUE FEBRUARY 2016 I will be writing more about this later, but for now, you should know that this is, again, what we believe to be a groundbreaking, exceptional book.  There is nothing quite like it in print, and we can’t wait to sell it once it becomes widely available this winter. I have read an advanced version of the manuscript — have an endorsing blurb on it, in fact — and am really excited to tell you about it.

Here’s the short version (and why you should pre-order it now.) This is an exceptional book that is bucking the trends and assumptions we tend to have, expressed in the media, in popular culture, and even in some Christian books (I heard a person say it in the bookstore just this afternoon!) that parents of college age students don’t really have much influence anymore, that once kids reach that stage in their lives, their parents work is mostly done, and they have to hope for the best.  Even in matters of faith, young adults will tend to drift from their spiritual roots, it is assumed; after high school kids will leave the church, and, at best, will come back to their faith communities, at least at Christmas and Easter. We hope that once they sow their oats, settle down, they might come back to faith in mid-life.

No, no, no.  Dupee knows better, and can tell you why the data suggests something very different: his research shows that parents and the local church of college age students do still have a huge role to play, and that wise parenting of teenagers, even older teens, can pay off in vibrant faith and healthy transitioning after high school into Christian discipleship in the young adult years. It’s Not Too Late explains all this in fun and sparkling prose, drawing specific principles and practices that he has learned along the way. Dupee is a down to earth guy, a dad himself (of two sets of twins, I might add) and knows well the struggles of parenting adolescents who are growing into young adulthood. He tells some great stories, too, making this a top-notch and really fascinating parenting books, more interesting and more important than most.

Dupee is a good friend and a person I admire greatly. I’ll happily admit that I’m biased: Beth and I know Dan and his wife, Carol, and some of his kids, too, themselves now college graduates. You see, Dan has been the President of our beloved campus ministry organization, the CCO (Coalition for CHristian Outreach.) If anybody knows young adults, college students, and those who love and serve them well, it is Dan Dupee. If anybody should hav
e written a book like this, it is Dan.

In his prep for this book, Dan convened numerous focus groups. (As the CEO and director of a para-church ministry that partners with local congregations near colleges, he knows churches that have good outreach to students, and knows many, many collegiates. He had ready access to lots of folks who were very willing to participant in his gathering of data.) Some of what parents and young adults said in these many face-to-face research groups is reported in It’s Not Too Late and you will be excited to learn what works (and what doesn’t) in wise and effective parenting of teens and young adults transitioning out of the house and into college or adult life. You can be confident that this is a book that is at once fun to read, upbeat and practical, and yet actually based on research, gathering of data, and lots and lots of first hand stories with students Dan has met through the CCO and their parents.  It’s a treasure of a book, and we couldn’t be more happy to commend it to you. 

Why not order a few now. Give one as a gift, and donate one to your church library?  We’ll be among the first to get them (mid-February, we’re told.)  Order now at our 20% off.  Spread the word: it is not to late to do what God invites us — expects us — to do: care for our young adults as they move away from home, take up their own vocations in the world, and deeper their discipleship, for the rest of their lives.  This book will help.

BookNotes

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After yesterday’s epic list suggesting nice recommendations for various sorts of people, I just had to do some more.  Maybe these will be of interest to you or yours, or it might jog your thoughts about other people you could give books to, or other books you wanted to share.  Call this biblio-ministry, perhaps, but now’s a nice time of year to share the benefits of helpful resources.

Faithfully Yours: The Amazing Bond Between Us and the Animals We Love Peggy Frezon (Paraclete) $17.99  This nice hardback is a fine book, and makes a nearly perfect gift.  It is inspirational, full of fun and often amazing stories about our animal companions, and offers a bit of a Christian perspective without being heavy handed or overly theological.  Maybe you’ve seen Dr. Marty Becker (“America’s Veterinarian” on “Good Morning America”) who, of course, could endorse any number of the many books about critters these days. He called this one “Blissfully engaging and full of love… a heart-warming must-read for anyone who has experienced the power of the bone between animals and people.”  This is a book about animals and about kinship.  Very nicely done.

Two Dogs and a Parrot: What Our Animal Friends Can Teach Us About Life Joan Chittister (BlueBridge) $18.95  Do you know this very popular, very thoughtful woman religious? Sister Joan is an Erie-based Benedictine nun who has dozens of books —  a major biography was just released about her, too — mostly about the inner journey of contemplative spirituality, but also about peace, justice, service to the poor and such. She is, along with Richard Rohr, one of the most popular voices among more progressive Christians and beloved among many who hunger for ancient Benedictine wisdom applied among the daily stress of modern life. Anyway, she just released a month ago a new hardback offering three long pieces on three different pets she’s befriended over the years.  If you know Sister Joan, you know this will be well written and engaging, touching and reflective, and firmly in the tradition of contemporary spirituality. What joy to know this behind the scenes aspect of her life and her loving animal friends!

Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table, with Recipes Shauna Niequist (Zondervan) $19.99  I was drawn to this lovely 2013 hardback for a particular reason today, and re-reading a very, very moving few pages is what inspired me to do this “part two” of my already massive book list.  How did I not mention this beautifully written book yesterday? There are many people — youngish or not  — who would love this tender, memoirist rumination on eating, cooking, sharing food, doing hospitality and being a person who delights in the goodness of God’s creation.  There’s recipes too.  What a great gift this would make… maybe with a hand written note promising to join them in preparing one of the recipes and exploring the joys of good food together.

Eat with Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food Rachel Stone (IVP) $16.00  This is my go-to book for one wanting a nicely written, very thoughtful, but balanced study of faith, food, and the joys of eating well. I really, really like this book and while it isn’t as lush and richly eccentric as, say, the classic Supper of the Lamb by Capon or as radical as the remarkable reader Food and Faith: Justice, Joy and Daily Bread edited by Michael Schut, Ms Stone’s nice paperback is a joyful gem.  A nice forward by Norman Wirzba, too.  

Why the Bible Matters: Rediscovering Its Significance in an Age of Suspicion  Mike Erre (Harvest House) $14.99  You know, we’ve got dozens of books like this, and I want to suggest this because it does two things: it makes a reasonable case why the Bible matters, and gives some tools to those who may wonder how to defend the classic, historic view that the Bible is an inspired book, reliable and authoritative.   Secondly, it does give the big picture narrative a nice pitch, showing that the Scriptures are a coherent narrative moving readers into a big story, a story of redemption and hope and goodness.  He does all this without sounding too strict and yet without pushing too many envelopes. And he’s funny. This is a nice, balanced, thoughtful intro good for anyone wondering how to start, or deepen, their journey into the Bible as God’s Word for us.By the way I enjoyed his older Jesus of Suburbia and loved his Astonished: REcapturing the Wonder, Awe, and Mystery of Life with God.

The Whole Story of the Bible in 16 Verses  Chris Bruno (Crossway) $10.99  Yep. This is solid, good stuff, with a bit of an evangelistic intent, making it clear that the overarching story is one that is Christ centered, affirming his death and resurrection as the fulfillment of the whole great messy plot.  I love the way God’s grace and Christ’s glory are drawn out in key turning points, explained in 16 short chapters.

The Paul Debate: Critical Questions for Understanding the Apostle  N.T. Wright (Baylor University Press) $34.95  I have told you before about how useful this astute work is — it is, in a sense, Wright’s view of five key areas where there currently is academic debate regarding Paul.  Much of this was distilled from a year’s worth of study of the critics of his magisterial, two volume Paul and the Faithfulness of God that came out in November 2013. (That highly anticipated two book fourth volume in his “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series would be an awesome gift if they can take it. It’s $89.00, before our discount.)

A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology J. RIchard Middleton (Baker Academic) $26.99  Okay, I know I’ve pushed this on you before, even naming it as one of the very top books of 2014. I wish I could just name it again as it is getting traction and good reviews all over.  It really is a defining book, important, serious, but not tedious. Richard is a good thinker, an evangelical with both a broad and deep Biblical understanding, having written in major scholarly journals, in conversation with responsible scholars all over the map. Blurbs on the back here range from Walt Brueggemann to James Smith to Cornelius Plantinga, from Al Wolters to Sylvia Keesmaat. If your Bible loving friend doesn’t have it yet, why not gift it today!

Counterfeit Christianity: The Persistence of Errors in the Church Roger E. Olson (Abingdon) $19.99  Don’t let the funny cover fool you; this is a serious book by a very, very reputable scholar who teaches at George Truett Theological Seminary and has published major works from various good presses.  This really does give an overview of distorted Christian teachings and a lively evaluation of how these discredited views are cropping up again in our age.  This isn’t trying to pick a fight or, to use Jesus’ own warning, straining gnats. This is important theological discourse about the nature of fidelity to a standard sort of Christian worldview.  Throughout church history we’ve seen stupid stuff hurt the church and some of that stupidity has been immoral actions, ugly crusades, heartrendingly evil inquisitions and such. But some has been dumb thinking and fool hearty promotion of unbiblical notions.  We really should guard against nastiness and fighting, but still, this kind of resource can be immeasurably useful.

J.I. Packer: An Evangelical Life Leland Ryken (Crossway) $30.00  We have a number of very good, seriously done biographies or autobiographies of famous contemporary theologians in our store; we’ve got a thick hardback about Jorgen Moltmann, a two-volume biography of John Stott, the reflections of Dorothy Soelle,  a small paperback memoir of Douglas John Hall that I really enjoyed, and we’ve been pleasantly surprised that we’ve actually sold a few of the very interesting memoir that came out last year by Thomas Oden, A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir. This new book about the man his friends call Jim, and many of us call J.I. stands in this grand tradition of telling the life story of a serious modern Christian leader. Packer is doubtlessly one of the primary shapers of modern day evangelicalism (not to mention a student of the Puritans, applied Reformed theology, and theological spirituality. I trust you know of his book Knowing God.)  One reviewer called it a “good book about a great man” and another said it is “fascinating, insightful, and, to my mind, precisely accurate…” Alister McGrath wrote a very good bio of Packer in the late 70s, and Sam Storms did a recent paperback that is said to be very nice, but this one is now definitive.

True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World David Skeel (IVP) $15.00  This brilliant work wasn’t released as a major scholarly tome from a university press, but it might have been; it is serious, thoughtful, rigorous. I’m glad it is also quite readable and truly fascinating. Skeel is a well regarded attorney and public intellectual (Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School) who has been on NPR and The News Hour, Nightline, Hardball and written for the New York Times, The Weekly Standard and the like.  He’s very, very smart and this book makes a simple case: no simple worldview can give an adequate account for the complexity of the world and the weirdness of our human experience.  The tragic/redemptive story of the gospel may be the very stalwart explanation that can sustain investigation into the complexity of reality as we know it. One Times reviewer complimented Skeel for his knowledge and for writing with such gracefulness. He “makes sense of essential questions and you can feel the power of his intellect and faith on every page.”

Letters to an Atheist: Wrestling with Faith Peter Kreeft (Rowman & Littlefield) $19.95  This is a nice sized hardback, not too thick not too intimidating or demanding, and that illustrates much about this book: it is really designed to enter into good conversations with the reader, not just marshal fact after fact after fact, stacking up weighty arguments, cases, evidences. It is, rather, a lovely set of letters, “profound yet chatty, brilliant yet warm and humorous” says Ronda Chervin, herself a former atheist, now at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. I hope you know Kreeft as the writer of many imaginative works, pretend dialogues and conversations created to help sort through important matters. The significant Jesuit thinker James V. Schall, emeritus at Georgetown University writes, “For anyone honestly looking to see what arguments for atheism are and how they might be resolved, no better book can be found.” 

FOR ONE WHO WANTS TO BE A LEADER  – OR WHO IS A LEADER

Storied Leadership: Foundations of Leadership from a Christian Perspective Brian Jensen & Keith Martel (Falls City Press) $18.00  I have written about this before and we were the first bookstore to promote it; I was the first reviewer to weigh in, I think, in our affirming BookNotes post description. I give it two big thumbs up, and a hat tip to the guys who did it, allowing their writing to reflect their good experience as leaders, and as those who develop leaders at Geneva College in Western Pennsylvania.  Storied Leadership is deeply Biblical, offering a reminder of the narrative of the Scripture and the redemptive story it tells; it is intentional about allowing that worldviewish plot-line to inform what we think about life, discipleship, the work and reign of God and
, consequently, the nature and task of leadership.  The second half, after the thrilling Christian perspective developed in the first, is really practical, offering wise practices for sturdy leadership. Published by a classy micro-press started by a dear friend, this is a book that isn’t well known, but ought to be.  Buy a couple, quick!

Servants and Fools: A Biblical Theology of Leadership Arthur Boers (Abingdon Press) $19.99  My description of this at BookNotes earlier this fall was one of the most popular blog posts I did this year. It seems that many leaders — some who work in the world, or who are pastors or church leaders — wanted to take in this hard-hitting critique of the unhelpful ways church folk have adopted worldly leadership assumptions and have perhaps unthinkingly understood leadership guided by values rooted in unbiblical philosophies. In a feisty forward, Eugene Peterson explains what is at stake — our faithfulness to the Bible and the Jesus Way not to mention the health of parishes and Christian organizations and leaders who do not serve them in spiritually healthy ways.  In this book, Boers does a close reading of many Bible texts, seeing in them a counter-cultural ethos and radical vision which undercuts modern American corporate structures and institutional practices. To say the Bible subverts our modern understandings isn’t that uncommon, but to show how and why and what to do about it makes this book a very, very necessary resource.  I dare you to give it to a leader you know.

100 Things Orioles Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die Dan Connolly (Triumph) $14.95  I know this isn’t of interest to everyone, but if you care about the Birds, Dan is a friend and one of the most knowledgeable guys on the planet about our team. We helped launch this book when it first came out last spring with a very fun book signing one day before he had to report to his place in the journalistic seats at Camden Yards. It really is the ultimate resource for O’s fans.

Jesus Without Borders: What Planes, Trains, & Rickshaws Taught Me About Jesus Chad Gibbs (Zondervan) $15.99  This is a heck of a fun book, interesting, well written, open-minded but still eager to be about God’s work in the world, growing in Christ. The author lived his whole life in what he claims is “the buckle of the Bible belt” (you may think you live there, but he’s from Alabama!) Christianity seemed to be the default setting for everyone he knew.

Global Gospel: An Introduction to Christianity on Five Continents Douglas Jacobsen (Baker Academic) $21.99 Anybody that has met “Jake” Jacobson – a professor of church history and theology at Messiah College near us here in central Pennsylvania – respects and enjoys him.  He is a curious guy who writes about faith and scholarship (published on Oxford University Press) and got a PhD under Martin Marty at University of Chicago. He’s a member of the UCC and, now, he’s going to have to be considered an expert in emerging global faith, too.  This book, just out, is getting rave reviews and surely going to be considered one of the most important books of the year. Rave reviews on the back are from Mark Noll, Amos Young, Michael Kinnemon, and Todd Johnson, all important players in the work of acknowledging and building bridges with the majority world Body of Christ in the global South and far East.  I suppose this is designed as a textbook but it is still a rare volume, energetic, astute, full of important stuff from both Pentecostal sources and mainline denominational settings.  Global Gospel makes the case for a global gospel indeed!

Introduction to World Religions edited by Christopher Partridge (Fortress) $45.00  We have dozens of books about world faiths, about global spirituality, about interfaith dialogue and what used to be called comparative religions. Some are feisty and evangelical, some attempting to be more disinterested and fair-minded. Some are too complex, others simplistic.  This big one is a highly regarded major textbook type volume, almost 500
pages on lovely glossy paper to enable bright full color photographs and good graphics. It will be a cherished volume for anyone interested in such a resource There’s even a CD that comes with it! This is a very balanced, exceptionally fair-minded overview of major religions.  This was original researched and produced in cooperation with Lion Press in the UK.  Top notch, for sure!

FOR ONE INTERESTED IN GOOD READING ABOUT SERVING GOD IN THE MARKETPLACE

Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good Amy L. Sherman (IVP) $17.00  Of the many, many good books out these days recovering the doctrine of vocation, and thinking about our callings into workaday careers and jobs and what it means to “think Christianly” and be distinctive in our service as salt and light in those professions or job sites, few can rival Ms Sherman’s for original insight, creative approaches, and strategic, thoughtful guidance.  I know some told me they thought her little chapter was one of the highlights in the book I edited, Serious Dreams, and I could agree. Her extrapolation of Proverbs 11:10 — about prospering for the sake of the common good — in my book was splendid.  But here, she spells it out with great detail, and offers various “levels” (so to speak) or models of faith/work integration. What does it mean to steward our vocational gifts and callings? What are ways to actually make a difference within our own workplaces and spheres of influence? Can we help our employers shift focus in ways that will be innovative and helpful?  If you want to see transformation in your own town or city, and wonder what is missing from our missional efforts, I think this book could provide huge benefits and fresh insights.  Give it to somebody who cares about these things!  Steve Garber, of Visions of Vocation fame, wrote a great afterward; the forward is by the always energetic Reggie McNeal.  What a book!

By the way, although it isn’t a large part, Amy lights up the screen more than once in the splendid For the Life of the World DVD.  What’s the gospel for, she asks.  This book is a good part of the answer!  You can share it with great confidence to anyone eager to learn, to grow, and to take more steps about this whole “faith in the work-world” project.

At the Altar of Wall Street: The Rituals, Myths, Theologies, Sacraments, and Mission of the Religion Known as the Modern Global Economy Scott W. Gustafson (Eerdmans) $22.00  Okay, this may not be the warmest or coziest little gift you’re going to give this year, but if you need something for an economist, or a serious business person contemplating his or her role in the global economy, if you know a Christian social ethics scholar or somebody just interested in reading about how religion works out in the public square, and the role of myths and rituals, this close reading of the habits and ideologies of the financial world will be eye-popping and surely appreciated. Agree or not with this seemingly outlandish thesis, it will be hard to put down for those atuned to thinking about the symbolic power of stuff going on Wall Street.  Gustafson is a stock-market investor himself (and, previously, a Lutheran seminary prof) so he knows what he’s talking about.  It is provocative, of course, but he argues that economics functions in our current global cultural just as religions have functions in other cultures.  If you know a person who would like a book that is described as a “trenchant analysis” this could be your surprise gift of the year! 

FOR ONE INTERESTED IN GROWING IN SPIRITUAL PRACTICES

Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us: Revised and Expanded Adele Ahlberg Calhoun (IVP) $22.00  So-created by the wonderful spirituality ministry at The Transforming Center, this big handbook has recently been revised, expanded, and re-issued with a lovely new cover.  My, my, this may be the single best one-volume resource of which we know to guide folks into the classic spiritual habits that help yield a deeper, more Christ-like life. Calhoun is ecumenical, catholic, draws on all kinds of good sources, and remains evangelically-minded and intentionally Biblical.  This is a treasure-trove, and so very lovely that you can give it to anyone that is interested in growing in their faith life. If they are a spiritual director or have keen interest in reading contemplative writings, this will be truly appreciated.  Highly recommended.

Pray Like a Gourmet: Creative Ways to Feed Your Soul David Brazzeal (Paraclete Press) $18.99  What a fun and curious book, pleasantly written and attractively designed to show how this French chef learned to pray more deeply by taking practices learned in his gourmet cafe and applying them to his spiritual life.  This is fun, unique, and not too odd, come to think of it: the interface of prayer and food prep.  Phyllis TIckle said it was “the gentlest, most readable, kindest guide to prayer one could ever hope to explore.” Maybe you could give it to someone who wouldn’t accept a more conventional book about how to pray.  It sure is a fun book, on very nice paper, with lots of color throughout.

Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems Scott Cairns (Paraclete Press) $39.00 This big paperback is created very well, the cover done on textured stock with French folds and paper that has deckled edges. The layout is easy to use, and the work, well, the work is legendary.  Cairns is a religiously aware poet, his imagination shaped by his journey to Eastern Orthodoxy and time spent at a legendary monastery near the Mediterranean. The preface is by Richard Howard and there is a good word from Image Journal editor Gregory Wolfe.  Slow Pilgrim includes the complete works from seven volumes of Cairns mature work.  “An enormous gift,” Howard writes, “not only to the literary community but also to all who feel themselves embarked on a pilgrimage through life.”  

Hungry Spring & Ordinary Song: Collected Poems (an autobiography of sorts) Phyllis Tickle (Paraclete) $18.00  I was writing about this at BookNotes a week or so ago, so glad that it came out, admiring its handsome design, commending the fabulous forward, noting that the poems are from nearly the whole of her long publishing life.  Those of us who knew Phyllis as a leader in the church, within interdenominational discussions, and within the publishing world, all are glad to see anything by her and I might have neglected to underscore just how very good and accessible these poems really are. I think it would make a great, handsome gift to anyone who likes poetry of a modern sort… lovely, thoughtful, evocative. I know your supposed to like Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry, and we do, but add the late Phyllis Tickle to the list of those who celebrate the spirituality of the ordinary through her allusive, suggestion-rich words, phrases, and literary pictures.  

Staying Is the New Going: Choosing to Love Where God Places You Alan Briggs (NavPress) $14.99  I love this book, this call to stay local to care for our places, to develop a geography of spirituality, if you will.  I have written about it before, and I am sure I will again as I write up my Best Books of 2015 list before too long. Yes, we are called to neighborliness and concern about our neighborhoods and towns, but this goes further explaining why and how and the results of such a down-home, small-scale, missional discipleship.  There is a rather literary forward by the great Michael Frost and I have read some of out loud in several workshops and sermons.  

Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People Michael Frost (Navpress) $4.99  Just when I thought the inestimable Aussie couldn’t say anything more about missional evaluations of faith and culture, about the Jesus way and communities of the King, about postmodernism and love for people, about being in exile and taking risks and God and sex and community and…. well, is there anything he hasn’t written about? I so respect and enjoy this lively, important thinker, teacher, prophetic leader and church activist, but he sure is prolific. Now, he’s just done it again, released a book that I think is going to be a “must-read.”  It came yesterday and I was delighted — it is cool to hold, small, and really inexpensive. And, yep, it covers just five missional practices. This little book will help you journey down the “road to missional” and will not only help you see opportunities to learn and serve but will help you embrace habits that keep you going, attentive, eager to be an avenue of God’s redemptive work in the world.  At our discounted price, this is a tremendous bargain and it is so new I doubt anybody you know has it yet. Buy a bunch so you can — wait for it…. “Surprise the World!” Uh-huh.

Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More — Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist Karen Swallow Prior (Thomas Nelson) $24.99  Have I listed this lately? I surely must have as I think it is one of the best books of the year, and it is the first major work on this amazing Victorian era woman.  You may know her from Eric Metaxas’s great book on Wilberforce, Amazing Grace (or the film by that name) or, if you are older, you may even recall hearing of her once-popular novels, plays, poems.  She was, quite simply, a major literary figure and Christian abolitionist leader who feel out of favor and was, until Metaxas, and now, thankfully, the extraordinary Karen Swallow Prior, not well known at all.  This book will change all that — it’s a great biography and great read.  Give it to somebody who likes biographies, or who might appreciate the story of this literate woman from an earlier era. Blurbs on the back couldn’t be more vibrant — raves from Richard Mouw, Thomas Kidd, Ann Voskamp, Leonard Sweet, Mark Noll, Russell Moore, Natasha Aleksiuk Duquette, Kevin Belmont.

Yet One More Spring: A Critical Study of Joy DavidmanYet One More Spring: A Critical Study of Joy Davidman Don W. King (Eerdmans) $32.00  There is no doubt, this is a must-read book for anyone seriously interested in the life and work of C.S. Lewis. If you have a friend who is cuckoo for the Oxford Don, this book will thrill him or her no end; Joy Davidman was, of course, Lewis’s wife, whom he married as she was dying of cancer. An American, of Jewish descent, perhaps once a socialist! How unlikely a pair they were. Her son Douglas Gresham has offered a great endorsement (“an amazing portrait” he says) which is, of course, essential for such a book. Dr. King, editor of the Christian Scholars Review and lit prof at Montreat College is the Davidman scholar (having edited also this year a big volume of her poetry, A Naked Tree, and previously having edited her collected letters, gathered in Out of My Bone.)  Over 250 serious pages.

Rising Strong: The Reckoning, The Rumble, The Revolution Brene Brown (Spiegel & Grau) $27.00  Perhaps you know this popular hardback, an upbeat call to be more vulnerable, to take risks, to be willing to fail. We’ve written about it before and am glad that this hip bestseller is written by a woman who herself is a follower of Jesus. (She is also a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate School and the CEO of The Daring Way.) It is, you may know, the sequel to the bestseller
Daring Greatly (you probably know somebody who has told you about her much-discussed 2010 TED talk.)  Well, if you think your friend already has Daring Greatly and Rising Strong how about her earlier ones: The Gift of Imperfections or I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t.) We’ve got ’em all.

Small Victories: Spotting the Improbable Moments of Grace Anne Lamott (Riverhead) $22.95 Well, this may work, as long as the person you are giving it to loves great, honest sentences, clever word play, and a bit of a sarcastic, snarky tone. Okay, a lot of snark.  Ms Lamott, you should know, is a recovering addict with a killer wit, a bohemian Presbyterian with dreadlocks, a novelist and writer and loud mouth gal who will tell you just what she thinks about almost anything, from religion to politics.  What a storyteller! And what a carrier of grace: if anything, she teaches us to not sweat the small stuff and to love everybody.  Many of these pieces were previously published in part of other anthologies and collections and she selected them to hang together in a very classy hardback.  This is very, very moving stuff, fun, touching, edgy, and will make a good gift to those who don’t mind a little spice and a piety that is colorful and disarming. 

The Pastor as Public Theologian: Reclaiming A Lost Vision Kevin Vanderhoozen and Owen Strachean (Baker Academic) $19.99  This nice hardback would be a great affirmation of one of the most important, but often under-appreciated tasks of the local pastor — being a resident theologian. I think your pastor would appreciate this (even if he or she may not agree with all of the proposals these authors make) and to have such a calling underscored would be a lovely gift.  In fact, maybe your gift to him or her should be that you’re going to read it first, and be an advocate for the vocation of being a public theological voice, honoring your pastor by deepening your awareness of what this central part of the pastor’s job really is. This is a very good and very needed book.

The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry Mandy Smith (IVP) $16.00  The latest in the respected “IVP Praxis” line which are exceptionally thoughtful books which intend to equip those in contemporary ministry. It is quit new, so would make a surprising gift, I suspect.  Pastors are Human Too, it says on the back — and yet, and yet. So many pastors are not invited to be real, to be human, to be vulnerable.  This new work will be discussed much, I trust, and is presented as a serious book, with a great preface by David Hansen, and blurbs on the back from Marshall Shelley, who has been an editor at Leadership Journal  for many years, and Carolyn Custis James.  Paul Sparks, one of the three amigos who wrote The New Parish says of it, “Beautifully written. Irresistibly truthful. The Vulnerable Pastor is a profound reversal of nearly everything you know about being a ministry leader.”

Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism  Alvin Plantinga (Oxford University Press) $27.95  Okay, this isn’t for everyone, not even for ordinary practicing scientists, as it is actually about the philosophy of science, written by one of the premier academic philosophers in the world today. This is a weighty work making the case that the conflict that the media (and all kinds of people, from atheists to fundamentalists) talk about — faith vs science — isn’t really what the battle is about. What is contested, or ought to be, is the underlying philosophy of science that shapes our understanding of data, facts, truth, the role of science and the role of faith.  That is, science, as science doesn’t even exist: it is always science informed by some underlying perspective, some deeper a priori assumptions, held in faith-like ways, and that’s where the issues get interesting.  This is a lucid, reasonable, important book to clarify what is going on in recent debates about faith and science, and a way that at once gets us out of the false dilemmas, and yet clarifies where deep differences do exist.  What a book!

The Cosmic Common Good: The Religious Grounds for Ecological Ethics Daniel P. Scheid (Oxford University Press) $29.95  Wow, talk about a bit of a controversy — global warming/climate change and progressive Catholic social ethics! This important volume is just out, brand spanking new, by one of the leading theological voices in this debate about science, creation care, the role of religion in the modern world, and the nature of contemporary stewardship for the sake of the common good. This author got his PhD from Boston College and now teaches at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Just listen to these rave endorsements:

This volume could not be more timely. Just when Pope Francis issues
the momentous encyclical, Laudato Si: On the Care of our Common Home,
Scheid gives us the most complete account of its norm, the common good,
that exists. His is also one of the most creative, expanding a
traditionally human-centered norm so as to make the case for Earth
rights and a ‘cosmic’ common good. For religion, ethics, and ecology,
Scheid’s is a major contribution. –Larry Rasmussen, author of
Earth-honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key 

The
Cosmic Common Good is one of the finest books to emerge in ecological
ethics in recent years. Well-written and carefully argued, it opens up
important new grounds for Catholic social teaching and comparative
religious ethics. By highlighting a cosmocentric perspective it expands
the fields of religion and ecology and ecological ethics for years to
come. –Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim, Directors, Forum on Religion
and Ecology at Yale University 

This visionary and
carefully crafted work takes the theological grounds of ecological
responsibility to a new level. Though most scholars recognize that inter-religious cooperation is essential if humans are to resolve urgent
global challenges, few are equipped to offer specific and
tradition-spanning theoretical grounds to anchor activism and hope. It
is no exaggeration to say that this book is essential reading at the
cutting edge of Christian ecological ethics. –Lisa Sowle Cahill,
author of Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics 

Okay, we’ve paired a number of good books — mostly new, although a few chestnuts, too — with a particular sort of reader, someone maybe on your gift list to whom you might want  to give a book.  Of course we simply couldn’t be exhaustive, but if you have a certain person and are stymied as to what sort of book to give, send us a quick inquiry or call.  We’ll see if we can help find for you a good book to give to that hard to buy for person.

It’s a perfect time of year to give almost anyone a little gift and sharing a book now may be done without awkwardness, so why not take this opportunity? Been wanting to help inspire or inform someone dear?  Maybe this will help, or at least get you thinking.

HERE’S OUR “JUST THE RIGHT BOOK IDEAS FOR … ” list. Ideas for those interested in science, art, history, spirituality, work, family, seekers, cynics, and more.  Books for parents, books for college students, books for video gamers, books for memoir-lovers, theologians, politicos, and more.

Sorry we didn’t show all the covers… call us if we can help explain anything at all.

ALL ON SALE, while supplies last.  We’ll deduct 20% off the regular retail prices that are shown.  Order below.

For what it is worth, we can send small packages (a book or two or three) to most places in the country via US Priority Mail cheaper than UPS and often quicker. We cannot guarantee it, of course (unless you pay extra for expedited service, which we can easily do), but it is our sense that orders that go out on Monday would be received most places by Thursday.  How’s that? 

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN HISTORY

Why Study History: Reflecting on the Importance of the Past John Fea (Baker Academic) $19.99  We have raved about Professor Fea’s award winning, detailed and impeccably balanced Was American Founded as a Christian County; this little volume backs up and makes the case for why Christians (and anyone, for that matter) should care about the enterprise of reflecting on our past. This is a lovely little book, highly recommended.

Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions Jay Green (Baylor University Press) $34.95 For those who are interested in the Christian pursuit of serious academic scholarship, this will be an edifying and important example of the integration of faith and learning. It will be thrilling for those interested in the philosophy of history, and how people of faith should think about the foundational questions in this field.  Fair, wide-ranging, theologically rigorous, this is a magisterial contribution to thinking about how we write, research, interpret and read history.

In the Beginning Was the Word: The BIble in American Public Life, 1492 – 1783 Mark A. Noll (Oxford University Press) $29.95  What a handsome big book this is, studying in impeccable detail the rise of the use of the Bible in the earliest days preceding and during the founding of these United States. Noll is an esteemed historian and this simply a must-read for anyone interested in the colonial era.

Religion in the Oval Office: The Religious Lives of American Presidents Gary Scott Smith (Oxford University Press) $34.95 A few weeks ago I put this 665 page magnum opus on a list I did for the Center for Public Justice, for those interested in  the history of US political life. Smith had won remarkable awards for a previous book a decade ago on the faith of some of our Presidents and in this brand new one, he bests himself, wonderfully exploring the unique religious convictions of eleven others. This has garnered fabulous reviews from those who study the history of Presidents, those curious about the inner working of the White House, and how faith has or hasn’t impacted US policy, in the distant past and in recent decades. A fascinating, great read!

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN CHURCH HISTORY

Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past Robert Rea (IVP Academic) $20.00  For many contemporary Christians, questions about the role and value of church history can be difficult to appreciate. Professor Ray is a clear teacher, passionate and helpful, showing over and over why knowing how the church unfolded, for better or worse, is vital to know today. This is nearly a one-volume overview of church history, but it’s main concern is to explain why it matters. especially for those who are clear that their life and ministry are to be Bible-based. Yes!

Theologians on the Christian Life  (Crossway) $18.99 or $19.99 each We have dozens and dozens of books on church history, from the earliest first century founders of the Way to the church fathers and on into the modern era, and American and global faith expressions.  And some people really geek out on this stuff, so give us a call if you think we can help.

This series of handsome paperbacks is not exactly church history, at such, but draws on the spiritual wisdom of important figures, asking how their own theological insights in their day might be useful for our own faith development today.  Call it applied theology from the past, these are almost all really, really interesting and very, very helpful.  Read the Bonhoeffer one by Steve Nichols if you don’t believe me, to see how they not only teach about the person, his writings, but also how it can aid us in our own spiritual journey.  The Luther one is important, John Newton’s fascinating, Wesley inspiring. If you know about Francis Schaeffer (the only really modern person studied) the one by Bill Edgard is very good.  A nice set with uniform covers, why not buy a few and wrap them up together?

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THE ARTS

Rainbows for the Fallen World Calvin Seerveld (Toronto Tuppence Press) $30.00  I list this old classic as it is one of the most esteemed books in the contemporary conversation about faith and the arts, aesthetics, and the role of these matters in our daily life as the people of God.  Seerveld has written much, often quite dense, about aesthetic theory, and there is some of that in here, but many think this is his most useful book, energetically written, truly profound, and somewhat hard to find.  We’ve stocked it since the day we’ve opened and folks are still delighted to discover it. Whew.

It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99  I routinely say this is my favorite collection of good essays about faith and the arts, about aesthetics, about beauty and about how serious people of faith can create important, mature, contemporary art.  There are some that are more basic, some that are more complex, but this is simply a must-read for anyone interested in the arts. Some lovely design touches and full color illustration make it a particularly nice volume.

 It Was Good: Making Music to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books( $24.99  Did you see what I wrote above? It goes double for this one, 33 fabulous chapters that are not simplistic or too obvious, but not heady or overly deep, either.  There’s fascinating, faith-fueled pieces here on various genres (jazz, blues, hip-hop) to various practices for and by musicians (rehearsal, song-writing, collaboration, performance) and some for all of us, on using music in worship, singing the Psalms, music as solace during grief, how to host and listen well to live music.)  A must for musicians, classical or contemporary, and a delight for anyone passionate about songs.

Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination Brian J. Walsh (Brazos Press) $22.00 All right, this isn’t for everyone, but I love to show it off — I even helped offer some input along the way, so it means a lot to me!  Cockburn is an esteemed, progressive Christian who has won just about every award one can get in the contemporary folk rock and global music stuff.  Last year his big auto-biography appeared called Rumours of Glory: A Memoir (HarperOne; $28.99) and I reviewed it at great length.  But this one is a serious, challenging, and finally inspiring interplay between Cockburn lyrics and Biblical texts.  Walsh is deeply (deeply) immersed in Cockburn’s social imaginary and knows all his albums well, and he is one of the best Bible guys I know. Fabulously entertaining and seriously exploring a Christian view of art, music, and how rock artists like Cockburn can help us along the way.

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN PHOTOGRAPHY, ETHNOGRAPHY OR URBAN MINISTRY 

Witness: Cleveland’s Storefront Churches Mark B. Greenlee (Greenlee )$39.95  This is a truly fascinating, beautiful coffee-table book of wonderfully reproduced photographs taken by a good friend of ours, a thoughtful Christian lawyer who in his free time got involved in photographing buildings around his beloved city of Cleveland, Ohio.  Eventually, as he matured in his skills of seeing and getting good shots, he focused on store-front churches, mostly ethnic, many Pentecostal or other spiritual flavors very unlike his own mainline denominational loyalties. As Greenlee got to know the pastors or lay-leaders of these quirky, small ministries, he grew increasingly eager to tell their stories, to show their houses of worship and their often eccentric-looking worship spaces. There are over 500 buildings in that one city alone that have been re-purposed for urban worship!  I wish I had a picture of it to show you — we have a nice stack of them here and I promise you won’t be disappointed!

This special book offers at once an inclusive vision of the church — there are so many kinds of folks following Christ — and a study of urban ministry, often giving great and colorful dignity to the poor and oppressed and marginalized. This would be a great gift for anyone interested in urban affairs, in the story of under-the-radar street missions, and of racial and ethnic diversity.  Also, I must say, it would be a cherished gift for anyone interested in architecture or urban buildings, as these photographs capture such wonderfully curious spaces. It is very well produced, originally prepared in cooperation with Kent State University Press, on glossy paper, and very nicely reproduced photos. Witness is a rare find, which I promise will be an intriguing a blessing to that special person — even if you’ve never been to Ohio!

FOR ANYONE WHO LOVES WELL-WRITTEN, INTRIGUING MEMOIR

Swim, Ride, Run, Breathe: How I Lost a Triathlon And Caught My Breath Jennifer Garrison Brownell (Pilgrim Press) $18.00  From the first paragraph I was hooked — what a powerhouse of a punchy, good writer!  Brownell is an almost mid-life UCC pastor but this book is rather surprising: it is a moving, enjoyable, captivating memoir, telling of her interior life and thoughts — snarky at times, fearful, raw, a bit inspiring — as she concludes she wants to do a triathlon.  She is not — I repeat, she is not — an athletic type at all.  This ends up being somewhat of a reflection on the role of our bodies, especially since her husband is himself pretty seriously disabled and wheel-chair bound.   (Some of this is, then, about her marriage.) As the feisty, excellent writer and preacher Debbie Blue writes, “This is not an inspirational tale about cheerfully conquering adversity. It is a funny, heartbreaking and wise story about telling the truth in all its messy beauty and learning to love it. It’s about finding grace and gratitude in the ordinary and extraordinary details of life and memory. It is wonderful and hopeful. I loved it.”  So there.

The Year WIthout A Purchase: One Family’s Quest to Stop Shopping and Start Connecting Scott Dannemiller (WJK) $16.00  This unassuming little volume is certainly one of my favorite books of the year — it made me laugh right out loud, made me cry and made me wonder what in the world they’d do next.  And what in the world I might do next. It’s fun and funny, as Dannemiller offers an insiders look into this family’s zany plan not to buy anything for a year (except food and essentials. And the stuff they might cheat on.) Margot Starbuck says it is “playful, thoughtful, substantial” and she is right;!  This family really did try to connect with others, living well on less, and it is told with a wink and a sly grin, even as it is nicely inviting and even compelling. Of course you don’t have to do what the Dannemiller’s — Scott, Gabby and two loud, smart kids — did. But you can give this book to anybody who likes a family drama, with a view to being more just, sustainable, joy-filled, and faithful.  Yeah.

Ordinary Light: A Memoir Tracy Smith (Knopf) $25.95  This has been on my list to read myself, and if you know somebody who is interested in complex, literate, important memoir, this is getting named on a e Pagels, Abraham Verghese, Julia Alvarez? It is lyrical, evocative, poignant without sentiment.  Jamaica Kincaid says it is “at once common and ordinary, while also being singular and unique.”  There is much love in this harsh story written by the “dazzlingly original Pulitzer Prize winning poet hailed for her ‘extraordinary range and ambition.'” 

Tracy Smith was the youngest of five children born into an affectionate, God-fearing African American home. Her parents were part of the struggles for human rights in the contentious Civil Rights era in Alabama;  Tracy ends up at Harvard in a new century, but her mother gets cancer right before she goes off to college.

It is said that “Ordinary Light is the story of a young woman struggling to fashion the own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America.” .  It is “shot through with exquisite lyricism, wry humor, and an acute awareness of the beauty of everyday life.  I like what it say on the cover: “Here is a universal story of being and becoming, a classic portrait of the ways we find and lose ourselves amid the places we call home.” Smith teaches creative writing at Princeton University.

Wild in the Hollow: On Chasing Desire and Finding the Broken Way Home Amber C. Haines (Revell) $16.99  I wonder if anyone recalls the review I did from this late last summer?  I explained how very creatively written this is, a certain sort of moving voice, emerging from a poetic, young Christian woman, being honest about her life and faith journey.  God makes himself known in broken places, she learns, and from her conservative, Southern ethos she moves to a wider understanding of God’s grace.  This reflects on her deepest desires, about her wanting a certain sort of husband and certain sort of family and how it wasn’t quit meant to be.  I think any young woman who lies creative non-fiction would appreciate this, and if the woman is a wife and mother and doing ministry and having a hard time fitting it, it would be even better.  The remarkable writer Sarah Bessy says “this book made me feel homesick and at home all at he same time.”  Nish Weiseth, who wrote the very helpful Speak: How Your Story Can Change the World calls Amber Haines a “once-in-a-generation voice.”  And I love how Emily Freeman (author of the recent Simply Tuesday and last year’s A Million Little Ways) puts it: “How can a woman with a story so different from my own be telling my story too? Amber Haines has found a way, and I am deeply grateful for her artistry, her honesty, and her courage. This captivation book has stunned me speechless.”

God in the SInk: Essays from Toad Hall Margie Haack (Kalos Press) $11.95  Okay, this isn’t a full-on autobiographical memoir, it is a collection of essays and ruminations, stories about her own life, her faith, her struggles, her family and the remarkable ordinariness she finds, day by day.  I say that the ordinariness is remarkable because Margie and Denis are remarkable folks, with an incredible ministry — hospitality, mentoring, cultural criticism and appreciation, writing, teaching, embodying the gospel in their own place, among those whom God brings to their door — so you’d think as evangelical rock stars they’d have some spiffy, notable life. And you would be wrong. You may know their stellar magazine, Critique and may appreciate their engaging honesty and spiritual depth. These are essays that have appeared in Margie’s own newsletter, formerly called Notes from Toad Hall, and are about finding God in the mundane moments of life, about feeling deep things, worry and annoyance and sadness and joy, even as she realizes God’s grace blesses us smack in the middle of our stumbling ways.

I love this book, it’s honesty about ordinary things, and commend it to men or women, young or old, who are up for an honest look at real life through the lens of woman who is sincere, devout, but a bit snarky, complaining, just shy of cynical.  And joyful, did I say joyful? Glad for knowledge of God, merciful because she knows mercy. This is a grand and great book, lively, wise, funny, and a perfect resource for those who want to read more than a predictable devotional, but not a major theological tome.  Get two, one for you and one for your friend or relative.  You won’t regret it. Soon, you, too, will find God in the kitchen sink.

The Art of Memoir Mary Karr (Harper)$24.99  Mary’s stunning memoir The Liar’s Club was followed by the equally breathtaking Cherry and helped set off the last 20th century fascinating with memoir. Her excellent third volume — again, it is so interestingly written and such a story! —  Lit, includes her story, such as it is, of her conversion to Christ.  These are exceptionally well regarded works by the literary world, and her recent book on how to write memoir will be interesting to anyone who follows the genre, or who cares about Ms Karr.  It is one my own bed stand and I cannot wait to read it for my own pleasure, soon.  Cheryl Strayed (Wild) says, 

Mary Karr has written another astonishingly perceptive, wildly
entertaining, and profoundly honest book-funny, fascinating, necessary. The Art of Memoir will be the definitive book on reading and writing memoir for years to come. 

FOR ONE WANTING TO KNOW WHAT — OR WHO — TO READ NEXT

Writers to Read: Nine Names That Belong on Your Bookshelf Douglas Wilson (Crossway) $16.99  The spectacular writer Doug Wilson — who drives me crazy sometimes, I might point out — self published a great, great little book on writing on his odd little publishing house, Canon Press, called Wordsmithy.  I’ve read it twice, and if you are a young writer you should, too.  Out of that, perhaps, came this, too: good writers, good thinkers, good Christians in the contemporary Western world, should be readers, and thoughtful ones at that.  This book explains why, and gives you nine names whose works you should read.  As it says on the back, “If books are among our friends, we ought to choose them wisely.”   

Why are some authors truly important, considered great? Why should we go out of our way to read these, at least?  Can we become better readers as we take up the books of the finest writers?  Wilson curates a list here, guiding us through some books that he thinks we should read, and tells us why.  From Chesterton, Eliot, Mencken, and others, to P.G. Wodehouse, Robert Capon, Marilynn Robinson, many will love his discussion of these authors and their work.  You may be annoyed when you realize he included his colorful son, N.D. WIlson, with such august company, but I think it’s a fine choice for what he is doing here and I’d not expect anything other from D.W.  This is a fine, fine list and great advice for any eager reader. You should heed him, or at least mostly heed him.  This book is a fun, good start.

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN POLITICS

The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life Vincent Bacote (Zondervan) $11.99  Call this a little stocking stuffer with a big bang. You may know we hosted Dr. Bacote to lecture out in PIttsburgh last summer and we were thrilled to hear him make this basic, important, nuanced claim that Christians must be involved in public life, without ideological loyalties to the right or left, but to offer uniquely Christian witness as citizens committed firstly to God’s reign.  Neither agitated or cynical, this is the most clear-headed, basic, and nicely short book on Christian engagement in civic life of which we know.  Part of four-book series of “Ordinary Theology” which includes fantastic small books on urban planning (CIties and the City to Come), on surgery (The Scalpel and the Cross), and one on sexuality (Faithful: A Theology of Sex.)  Get all four!

The Good of Politics: A Biblical, Historical and Contemporary Introduction James Skillen (Baker Academic) $24.00  Skillen is one of the premier thinkers about the reasonable relationship between faith and politics and a exceedingly needed voice these days. He has written careful, important books for four decades or more. (In fact, he founded the Center for Public Justice decades ago, written widely on Kuyper, social justice, and political pluralism and, by the way, has been one of the inspirations and intellectual mentors to the above-mentioned Vincent Bacote.  And me, too.) I have raved about this, naming it last year as one of the most important books of the year as it offers a solid, detailed exploration of how government has been understood throughout church history and how various denominations and traditions have often failed to grapple with all that the Scriptures teach about the nature of God’s creation, the common good, and the task of the state. A must-read for anyone wanting to develop a faithful understanding of civil society, the role of law, and the nature of public justice,statecraft and citizenship.

Five Views on the Church and Politics: Five Views edited by Amy Black (Zondervan) $19.99  This is brand, brand new —  we got it a bit early into the store just this week!  It is one of these useful, if almost tedious, studies that offers six views, and then, after each chapter, the other authors offer their own response and critique. By the end of the book  you not only hear great examples of these varying viewpoints, but the responses back and forth of the other positions. What a great way to learn!  The perspectives and orientations of this amazing collection include a “seperationist” view written by a Mennonite/ Anabaptist, a “two kingdoms” approach written by Robert Benne, a Lutheran, a classic Roman Catholic view, a prophetic black church perspective and an integrationist/Reformed view by Kuyperian James K.A. Smith.  I must admit I read Jamie’s chapter first and it is brilliant, concise, insightful. I’m eager to join this conversation, and trust you know somebody who will be grateful to get this as a gift.

FOR THOSE WHO ARE TEACHERS

Teaching and the Christian Imagination edited by David Smith & Susan Felch (Eerdmans) $22.00  This literally just arrived today and I’ve been eager to see it for weeks and weeks now, having heard about it from the publisher and one of the authors. Talk about brand new! This is a wonderfully conceived and wonderfully written anthology of great pieces about three central metaphors for teaching — pilgrimage, gardening, and building.   A rave review on the back by Dorothy Bass of Valparaiso University notes that readers will “encounter BIblical texts, poems and works of art that will help you see what you do every day with new eyes.”  Perry Glanzer of Baylor says “I have never read anything quite like this delightful book.”  This will be soul-nourishing and encourage educators — from elementary to high school to college instructors — to greater faithfulness and excellence in their craft.  It includes some important folks who have written about faithful views of education such as Barbara Carvill, Kurt Schaefer, Timothy Steele and John Witvliet.  Smart, thoughtful, and I am confident it will be fabulous for those serious about teaching. Smith, by the way, is the director of the Kuyers institute for Christian Teaching and Learning and director graduate studies in education at Calvin College while Susan Felch is director of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and a professor of English there. 

Making a Difference: Christian Educators in Public Schools Donovan Graham (Purposeful Design) $16.95  This is a book I regularly suggest, perhaps the best in this small genre of thoughtful, faith-informed view of serving as a public school teacher.  We have books that are more detailed, studying theories of education from a Christian worldview, and we have some that are lighter, encouragement and prayers and devotionals, but this is just right, a helpful survey of how to be “salt and light” and make a difference in the lives of the children one teaches in public schools.  Nice.

FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN SCIENCE

The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions Karl Giberson & Francis Collins (InterVarsity Press) $22.00  We often recommend this nice hardback as a very solid overview — in a useful question and answer sort of format — helping people in the science community realize faith is not a detriment and helping people in the church world realize that science can be approached rigorously without compromising appropriate, BIblical theology.  This is not only about the questions of evolution and origins, and it is not from the view of “creation science” so it should have very wide appeal.  Highly recommended as one way into this vital conversation. 

Delight in Creation: Scientists Share Their Work with the Church Edited by Deborah Haarsma & Scott Hoezee (Center for Excellence in Preaching) $16.99  You most likely won’t find this book anywhere else, but we couldn’t be more thrilled to promote it.  Created by a scientist and a preacher, this is a collection of stories of various scientists, people of deep faith, describing what they do.  The goal of this fine book was to alert preachers what many of their parishioners actually do, and how these Christians in the science professions relate their sense of vocation and calling to their research. There are testimonials here from earth scientists, environmentalists, an astronomer, a psychological researcher, a chemist, an engineers, a mathematician, a scholar of bio-ethics and more. What’s also great as it was nicely designed with breath-taking pictures, some handsome color graphics, and a very nice, classy touch here at there. (Kudos to our friends Rob and Kirsten Vander Giessen-Reitsma for their good work.) What a great paperback book to enhance anyone’s vision of the delight we can have in God’s wondrous world and the good work done by those with the vocation of service through science.

The Story of Science: From the Writings of Aristotle to the Big Bang Theory Susan Wise Bauer (Norton) $26.95  I hope you know — and stand in awe of — the vast learning and good writing of Ms Bauer.  She is known for a several remarkable, big volumes such as The Story of the World andThe Well-Educated Mind (called a “landmark” achievement, reviewed well in the New York Times and America, for instance) and is esteemed in both classical and home schooling circles,. She has been published in exceptional journals and many news outlets. This recent one is, as you might guess, her  well-organized and nicely-written overview of the history of science.  Or, more precisely, it is a guided tour through the best science writing.  Called “a riveting road map to the development of modern scientific thought” it will surely appeal to those who appreciate a bigger picture, or for those who want to read groundbreaking science writing for themselves, rather then having it be interpreted in public debates by journalists and politicos. There are twenty-eight succinct chapters illuminating the entire history of science by examining the writings that have been offered by the scientists and scholars. 

Mathematics Through the Eyes of Faith James Bradley & Russell Howell (HarperOne) $19.99 This is a remarkable book, interesting to anyone in the STEM fields, asking about the relationship of chance and divine providence, what concepts like infinity might offer to theological reflection, and wondering whether math is, in fact, discovered or invented, and why it is so effective and important in the sciences. Most of the earliest Western mathematicians believed in God and some were lively Christians. The rich intersection of faith and math has never been more exciting and vital to explore.

FOR SOMEONE INTERESTED IN TRANSFORMATIVE DISCIPLESHIP, SPIRITUALITY FOR DAILY LIVING

The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love with the God Jesus Knows

The Good and Beautiful Life: Putting on the Character of Christ

The Good and Beautiful Community: Following the Spirit, Extending Grace, Demonstrating Love 

James Bryan Smith (formatio/IVP) $24.00 each

Any one of these three from the “Apprentice Series” could be life-changing, and each have garnered some of the strongest reviews we’ve seen in decades of selling books about the interior life, spiritual renewal, and contemplative discipleship. The late, great Dallas Willard has said that these offer “the best practices I have seen in Christian spiritual formation.”

They are handsome together as a set, but they do stand alone, and we are sure that they would be helpful to someone you know and love.  For what it is worth, these are our favorite sorts of books: thoughtful and wise and profound, without being overly mystical or deeply eccentric. Just what most folks really need, plainspoken guidance on transformation from the inside out, based on our understanding of God, our commitments to Christ, and how the Spirit works in community!

Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good Steven Garber (IVP) $16.00  I suppose you know we’d suggest that you give this to a special someone; VoV is one of my all time favorite books, and it speaks so very eloquently and deeply about the things that matter most — how we construe our lives, the meaning of history, the nature of God’s promises in Christ — that is should be read by all thoughtful people, religious or not. It’s largest themes, though, keep circling back to questions of how to care about the world without giving up, how to love well, finding passion particularly in one’s own discernment about calling and career. Can we take on God’s messy world, serving well, offering our best selves to make a difference right where we are? We will sustain faithful Kingdom living for the common good if we are clear about our own visions of vocation and trust God to work through us, in but not of this crazy world. I love this book, and you should give it to someone who hungers for integrity, who will not abide cheap answers, who wants a good writer and serious thinker.  Such a nice cover, too.  Highly recommended.

Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times Os Guinness (IVP) $16.00  This is a truly handsome paperback and, truly, one of the most important spiritual books I’ve read in years. I cannot easily summarize Dr. Guinness’s profound insights, but it does at least say this: we must trust God for social renewal, public justice, and cultural transformation, and we cannot expect to manipulate it with power, media buys, church growth or other man-made strategies to change the world. We should, indeed, use our gifts and callings to serve God robustly in all of life, but we should also realize that a spiritual renaissance comes from the gospel itself, not our own efforts.  It is at once a stinging rebuke to the idols of our culture and a critique of churches (liberal or conservative) that fail to live distinctively. If  you know someone who needs a reminder of robust, orthodox seriousness and a pleasant and inspiring call to hope, this might be the perfect small gift. It’s not a large book, but it carries a large, large message: trust and obey, live in hope.  What a fine, eloquent book.

The Cultivated Life: From Ceaseless Striving To Receiving Joy Susan Phillips (formatio/IVP) $17.00  We have highlighted this book throughout the fall at various events, and folks have appreciated this lovely tone, the gracious, ecumenical perspective, and how this woman, who is a professor of sociology and a spiritual director, weaves together fresh visions for living well.  A great forward by Eugene Peterson reminds us that this book helps us wisely walk through the disconnected “circus” of our fast-paced modern culture.  As Phillips puts it, “Cultivation requires a kind of attentiveness that is counter-cultural to our age of distraction.”  Know anybody ready to leave the circus?

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God Timothy Keller (Dutton) $26.95  This is surely one of the great Christian books of the year, a major work with solid theology and wise counsel and helpful application. Keller is famous for being both astute and serious-minded, popular among his parish of mostly young, sophisticates in Manhattan.  This is rich, grounded in the best thinking of the ages, applied smartly to modern believers. Very good.  This is a sturdy hardback that just came out in early November.  See, also, his brand new devotional, The Songs of Jesus, described below.

FOR SOMEONE WANTING A UNIQUE DAILY DEVOTIONAL

The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms  Timothy and Kathy Keller (VIking) $19.95  Yep, this is a daily devotional, a short reading from the pens of Tim and Kathy, inspired by their own practice of reading the Psalms day by day throughout the year.  There is solid exegesis, some helpful spiritual insights, and a bit of their own life shared together in a very handsome compact sized hardback with a ribbon marker.  This is a wonderfully reliable, thoughtful, handsome. Highly recommended.

One Year Home and Garden Devotions Sandra Byrd (Tyndale) $15.99  This attractive paperback devotional covers one whole year and offers an encouraging, applicable, sometimes humorous, and always personal message each day for contemporary women of all ages who delight in being busy at home.  This is earnest and often quite personal.  The publisher offers this sentence as one example of the insights which emerge from caring for one’s home life.

There is something poignant and meaningful about up-cycling an abandoned planter with its well-earned patina while considering how the lines of life has etched on us actually makes us more appealing.

Disciplines: A Book of Daily Devotions 2016 The Upper Room (Abingdon) $15.00  This perennial best seller is a favorite among many.  It is a handsome, somewhat trim sized, handy paperback written mostly by working United Methodist pastors, seminary profs and preachers. Each d;ay has a selected Bible reading, of course, a meditation on the scripture passage and a prayer or suggestion for reflection.  The authors are from a variety of backgrounds and each one does a week’s worth, offering 53 different voices. Very nicely done.

FOR SOMEONE INTERESTED IN PROGRESSIVE FAITH, A DOWN-TO-EARTH SPIRITUALLY, AND DISCIPLESHIP ORIENTED TO OUR COMMON SPACES

Grounded: Finding God in the World — A Spiritual Revolution  Diana Butler Bass (HarperOne) $26.99  I have reviewed this just a bit on line, and hope to write more about it someday, but keep coming back to it’s basic structure and main points.  It is arranged in a fascinating, generative way, the first third being luminous, important, and excellent descriptions of how Christian faith must be informed by our “natural habitats” of dry, water, and sky.  For those that recall Diana’s beautiful memoir Strength for the Journey: A Pilgrimage in Community you know that she can write wonderfully, weaving seamlessly social and cultural analysis (she is trained as a church historian) and vulnerable testimony of her own personal story, doubts and warts and all.  Here, she writes more beautifully than ever, drawing on science writers and naturalists (Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard) to help us understand our place on Earth. And where God is being discovered even among those who are most attentive to concerns about the state of the environment.

The second, perhaps even more interesting portion of the book, explores “Human Geography” by writing of how spirituality evolves and is embodied within structures of roots, home, neighborhood and the commons.  Any one of these chapters is well worth pondering, and I am grateful for her passionate storytelling and her broad theological reading as she points us to a faith that is grounded, for the life of the world, in service to the common good of the whole cosmos. A few of these chapters moved me deeply (despite asides and sentences that I found troubling, even off putting, at times.)  This manifesto for real world faith, grounded in places — yes, she cites Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, too — will resonant with many who are seeking belonging and fidelity amidst a culture of displacement.

I think this very handsome hardback will make a nice gift for many, but I am a little reluctant to promote it widely. Conservative evangelicals will find some of her theological sources suspect — she draws on Paul Tillich and Sally McFague and Marcus Borg and mystics such as John O’Donohue and John Philip Newell. It might be fair to say she stands in the tradition of deep immanence, favoring panentheism — citing authors like Brian Greene and Matthew Fox. In a way it is the next logical step after her much-discussed 2012 watershed release, Christianity After Religion.  It is, however, more beautifully written and more personal, as she shares of her own deeply anguished journey about “Christianity for the rest of us” and how to sustain church involvement and spiritual practices while moving increasingly towards involvement in the post-Christian but deeply spiritual ethos of our ecological age, to what really is.   

I would recommend Bass’s Grounded to be read with discernment and with healthy conversation partners — there’s so much to ponder and discuss! — by nearly anyone, but it will be an especially cherished gift for those who have these intuitions about faith that is expressed in less dogmatic and more experiential ways, attuned to what God is doing in this new era of awareness of both the threats to and the blessings of God’s good creation. Shauna Niequist says “Grounded made me love this beautiful world more deeply, and made God’s presence more visible everywhere I looked.”

If one needs a Biblically-oriented, historically orthodox, theology book that places the search for awe and wonder and faithful practices of environmental sustainability within a more conventionally evangelical worldview, this may not be the one… 

FOR NORMAN WIRZBA LOVERS, CREATION-CARE ADVOCATES, OR THOSE FOLLOWING THIS SERIES, EDITED BY JAMES K.A. SMITH

From Nature to Creation: A Christian Vision for Understanding and Loving Our World Norman Wirzba (Baker Academic) $19.99  I can tell you of at least three sorts of folks who would love having this book gifted to them, during this time of year or anytime. It is going to be a beloved gift, I’m sure…

Firstly, and most obviously, it will be appreciated by those who love Wirzba’s writings. He’s pals with Wendell Berry and has served to edit some of Berry’s populist, agrarian work. He has written a major book on the spiritual roots of the modern environmentalist movement, and a major book on the theology of food (Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating.)  We adore his very accessible co-authored paperback Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation — written with farmer Fred Bahnson.  Professor Wirzba’s Living the Sabbath is a delightful read, challenging and wide-ranging as we learn the rhythms of rest and delight in God’s good world. Many friends and customers of Hearts & Minds are fans of Wirzba.

Secondly, of course, there are those who simply care about these issues, that really are interested in the outdoors, environmental protection, creation-care, living lightly in their own place, but maybe don’t know his serious body of work. This would be a great choice, deep and foundational, important and clear.

Thirdly, one of the most talked about and often-cited contemporary Christian thinkers and writers these days is James K.A. Smith.  We have hosted lectures with him and count him as a friend — even though his serious output (even as editor of Comment magazine) is hard to keep up with.  This volume, From Nature to Creation, is the most recent in a big series Jamie Smith has edited, a series of weighty paperbacks called “The Church and Postmodern Culture.”  In each, European (and often French, deconstructive) post-modern philosophy is brought into conversation with historic Christian theology and church life.  Although this one seems perhaps a bit less obviously postmodern — others in the Smith series include books with titles like Whose Afraid of Postmodernism?, Whose Afraid of Relativism? What Would Jesus Deconstruct and Globo-christ, just for instance — this Wirzba one will take its place on the shelf next to others in the series, especially The Economy of Desire (Daniel Bell) and The Politics of Discipleship (Graham Ward.) Anyway, there are those who have been collecting this whole set.  Earlier in the year we reviewed the previous one in the Smith-edited series, the excellent Fieldwork in Theology: Exploring the Social Context of God’s Work in the World by Christian Scharen.  Norman Wirzba’s, I’ve heard, is the final one in this 10 book series.  We’ve got em all.

FOR THE SPIRITUAL OUTDOORS ADVENTURER

Backpacking with the Saints: WIlderness Hiking as a Spiritual Practice Belden Lane (Oxford University Press) $24.95  We only have a very few of these left, but it is remarkable. You may know our love for his deep and stunning similar book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes (also Oxford University Press; $) As I’ve described before, this serious book studies great religious mystics, each read and explored in a particular outdoor mountain climb, river expedition or wilderness sojourn  This offers mature reflections on classic spiritual writings — from Therese of Lisieux to St. John of the Cross toLuther to Merton and more — and some nifty outdoor hiking tales in some pretty fabulous locations.

Rewilding the Way: Break Free to Follow an Untamed God Todd Wynward (Herald Press) $15.99  Be warned!  This outdoorsy book — set in the stark, striking American Southwest — will rock your world.  Wynward is a wilderness guide who has spent more than one thousand nights in the great outdoors. He founded a wilderness-based public charter school.  He is passionate about how we need to be in touch with the power and rhythms and wonder of God’s creation, but this is not just a book about outdoor adventure. It is a serious and uncompromising call to reject the ease of modern life, to faithfully follow Christ, to be “wild” in our understanding of faith and whole-life discipleship. I quipped to one friend that he reminds me of Shane Claiborne, but in the desert wilds rather then the urban slums.

Wynward is a fine writer, an exceptional visionary, a creative educator, forming communities able to help us reject soul-deadening affluenenza and culturally-accommodated church; importantly, he’s alive to the ways of Jesus.

Best Day on Earth: The World’s Most Extraordinary Experiences From Dawn till After Dark  Rough Guides (Penguin) $19.95  Okay, this is a large sized, full color, brightly arranged paperback that is so much fun to behold, I can hardly contain myself. Imagine — okay, it takes quite a leap — to plan the ultimate 24 hours on Earth. Witness nature’s greatest spectacles, be inspired by off-road adventures, try a new adrenaline sport in a far-flung destination, and see famous sights in a different light.  Search the internet all you want, you will be hard pressed to find such lush photographs, so coherently arranged, taking you on this mission impossible.  Rough Guides are legendary for their accuracy and back-roads insight, and have done similar fun books, such as their popular Make the Most of Your Time on Earth and First Time Around the World.  (Yeah, the rough-riding guide to the first time you travel around the globe.)

This Best Day starts at daybreak as you “marvel at otherworldly Cappadocia” in Turkey and watch the famous stilt fisherman at work in Sri Lanka, and then on to see dawn break over Bagan in Myanmar.  And on it goes, short entry by entry, with amazing full color pictures.  You can “haggle at Cai Rang Floating Market” in Viet Nam  or wake up in the Mojave Desert in the USA.  There’s a great map, and lots of options — maybe you’d want to experience rush hour in Mumbai, India, or try the life aquatic in the Red Sea.  You’ve got to see the picture of the active volcano Irazu in Costa Rica.

You’ll be back in Myanmar to see the Golden Rock at dusk. and will enjoy the brightly colored lanterns at Hoi An’s Full Moon Festival — if it’s the fourteenth day of the lunar calendar, at least. Later, you can see an all-night parade in Rio and after trying your late night luck in Vegas, admire the Northern Lights in Swedish Lapland.   What a fun picture journey all over the world.

FOR SOMEONE WHO IS SERIOUS ABOUT STUDYING MISSIOLOGY

The Gospel and Pluralism Today: Reassessing Lesslie Newbigin in the 21st Century edited by Scott W. Sunquist and Amos Yong (IVP Academic) $28.00 This is an amazing work, compiled by two leading evangelical thought leaders, with several major contributors (including our friend Dr. Esther Meek.) It just came out so I have not studied it, but I am confident it will be considered one of the most significant books of the year.

Here’s what it says on the back cover: toward the end of the twentieth century, Lesslie Newbigin offered a penetrating analysis of the challenges of pluralism that confronted a Western culture and society reeling from the dissolution of Christendom. His enormous influence has been felt ever since. Newbigin (1909-1998) was a longtime Church of Scotland missionary to India and later General Secretary of the International Missionary Council and Associate General Secretary of the World Council of Churches.

They continue, the essays in this volume explore three aspects of Newbigin’s legacy. First, they assess the impact of his 1989 book, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, on Christian mission and evangelism in the West. Second, they critically analyze the nature of Western pluralism in its many dimensions to discern how Christianity can proclaim good news for today. Finally, the contributors discuss the influence of Newbigin’s work on the field of missiology. By looking backward, this volume recommends and advances a vision for Christian witness in the pluralistic world of the twenty-first century.

FOR INKLING FANS WHO THOUGHT THEY HAD IT ALL

Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings Diana Pavlac Glyer (Kent State University Press) $18.95  There may be no other book like this, a serious and mature study of the creative process used by this legendary group of Christian writers.   It has been eagerly anticipated; Glyer’s older book The Company They Keep  broke new ground in understanding the friendship of Lewis and Tolkien.  This one is a joy to read and is a fabulous invitation to think about collaboration in work and in cultural creativity. 

Michael Ward of Planet Narnia fame writes,

 No one knows more than Diana Pavlac Glyner about the internal workings of the Inklings. In Bandersnatch, she shows us how they inspired, encouraged, refined, and opposed one another in the course of producing some of the greatest literature of the last on hundred years.

Charles Williams: The Third Inkling Grevel Lindop (Oxford University Press) $34.95  I joked that this could have been called “the weird Inkling” as William’s fascination with the occult and spiritually mystical traditions was an important contribution to his work with Lewis, Tolkien and the others. Eerdmans still has some of his mysterious fantasy novels in print; one is said to have influenced some of Dancin’ in the Dragon’s Jaws by Bruce Cockburn. His church history, The Descent of the Dove, remains a true classic.  Colin Duriez says, “A ground-breaking and compelling biography establishing, after years of neglect, Charles Williams as a poet, writer, and critic of unusual importance.” Almost 500 pages, it was just released a few weeks ago.

FOR SOMEONE INTERESTED IN SERIOUS THEOLOGY

The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ Fleming Rutledge (Eerdmans) $45.00  I hope you saw our major announcement about this at BookNotes a few weeks ago as we had the opportunity to be one of the very first bookstores to promote this and to be with this renowned Episcopalian preacher and scholar as she lectured during a recent book launch event. This very new 668 page book is a stunning, serious, tour de force, acclaimed by folks all over the theological spectrum for being a classic, historic study of the meaning of the cross, the nature of Christ’s death and how our justification is received through God’s grace. What a major work, surely to be much discussed in years to come. 

Joy and Human Flourishing: Essays on Theology, Culture, and the Good Life edited by Miroslav Volf and Justine E. Crisp (Fortress Press) $39.00  Fortress almost always overprices their books, but this, this, is worth every dollar, an excellent collection of important essays by some of the finest working theologians writing today.  It is a book about joy, about life lived in God, about human and cultural flourishing; you can read chapters by  Jurgen Moltmann, N.T. Wright, Marianne Meye Thompson, Mary Clark Moschella, Charles Mathewes, Miroslav Volf.  The very introduction will bless you and stimulate your thinking: it is called “Bright Sorrow” which is a phrase from Russian Orthodox scholar Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World. Endorsements are from Willie James Jennings, the African American scholar now at Yale, and John Ortberg, the popular pastor at Menlo Park EPC Church in California.  

Listen to what Nicholas Wolterstorff says of Joy and Human Flourishing:

If ever a book filled a gap, this is it. Joy is a central component in the New Testament description of life as it is meant to be lived. Yet theologians have given little attention. Philosophers have done no better. This volume is an excellent beginning at filling that gap. It’s ground-breaking.

Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto (Collected Works in Public Theology) Abraham Kuyper (Lexham Press) $49.99  This is the first of an comprehensive, years-in-the-making publishing program translating (sometimes for the first time) into English the legendary theology of common grace created by the prolific Dutch scholar and civic leader.  Kuyper lived in the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century, and the recent interest in his work is nothing short of phenomenal. As I cited in my review a few weeks ago, Greg Forster writes, “It is a scandal and a disgrace that we have all read Burke’s response to the French Revolution, but few in the English-speaking world have read the equally profound and equally consequential response of Abraham Kuyper — a response that has at least as much to say to twenty-first century readers as Burkes.”

Gordon Graham (Henry Luce Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton Theological Seminary) says “Kuyper’s ‘anti-revolutionary’ vision, worked out here at length, provides an illuminating historical lens through which to see contemporary debates between Christianity and secularism.”  Fascinating.  This is a large sized hardback with lots of annotations and helpful aids to work through this seminal work of public theology.

FOR A SAINT FRANCIS FAN, OR ANYONE WHO LOVES ART FROM THE MIDDLE AGES

The Story of St. Francis of Assisi In Twenty Eight Scenes Timothy Verdon (Mount Tabor Books) $24.99  Do you recall last years absolutely lush, classy and quite hefty book by Verdon called The Art of Prayer? What a great gift that makes for anyone interested in older Christian art, full color reproductions designed to show how beholding ancient beauty can enhance one’s spiritual life.  Here, the esteemed Christian art historian (trained at Yale and now the Academic Director of the Mount Tabor Centre in Barga, Italy) offers a lovely short biography of the life and mission of Francis, by reflecting on twenty eight art pieces.

These aren’t just any art pieces, but are the legendary thirteenth-century frescos by Giotta that cover the walls of the famous Basilica in Assisi named for the saint.  Here is what it says on the back of this handsome book:  They are reproduced in full color, together with a schematic drawing showing their placement in the church.  Through detailed descriptions and illuminating commentary on each of the famous frescoes, Verdon tells the story of Francis’s extraordinary life, allowing today’s reader the opportunity to “read” the art on those walls in the same way that a medieval Christian might have done.

Wow.  Frankly, even if one isn’t all that interested in the poor monk himself, this idea of exploring the experience of viewing these intentionally placed frescoes — as perhaps millions of people have over the centuries! — is itself a remarkable experience of the Body of Christ, seeing what others have seen, and learning what others have done, from the 13th century onward.  Produced well on heavy stock paper, this is a fine, fine book and will be a treasured gift for someone special.  Be sure to take a peek yourself before you wrap it and share its glory.

A MODERN DAY MEMOIR ABOUT READING AN ANCIENT BOOK  (FOR SOMEBODY WHO NEEDS A SELF HELP BOOK BUT WON’T READ A TYPICAL ONE.)

How Dante Can Save Your Life: The Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem Rod Dreher (Regan Arts) $29.95  I have written about this at length, and shared my appreciation for this often in these last months.  It is technically a sequel to The Littel Way of Ruthie Leming his tear-jerking and altogether lovely memoir of leaving the fast-paced, high-powered life of a culture reporter, political pundit, and film critic to move to rural Louisiana to be with his extended family after the death of his beloved sister. Alas, he gets settled in to this family-oriented, slower paced Southern town only to realize not all is well in the family system. He gets depressed, develops an auto-immune illness from the stress, gets into counseling, helps plant an Orthodox church, and — low and behold — finds the thing that helps him out of his serious funk and the serious dysfunctions of his not so warm and friendly way of life is reading The Divine Comedy.  This is a southern, nearly Gothic tale, a study of Dante, and the thinking person’s self help book.  I loved it.

Eric Metaxas gets it right when he says,

Sometimes a book comes along that you want to press into the hands of everyone you know. A brilliant, searingly honest account of one man’s path to real healing, and an invitation to the rest of us to join him.

Ronald Herzman, the SUNY professor who teaches the audio Great Courses lectures on The DIvine Comedy says “Dreher has assimilated what is most urgent in Dante and makes The Divine Comedy passionately real.

A KILLER MEMOIR FOR THE HIP AND RELIGIOUSLY CYNICAL, WHO LIKES A RAW, HONEST TELLING OF A MESSED UP EMERGENT CHURCH

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People Nadia Bolz-Weber Convergent Books) $23.00  Okay, this is not for everyone. Trust me on this. Give this to your up-tight, Victorian fundamentalist aunt and her grey hair will turn purple!  Give it to your young, truly reformed crusader and he’ll put up his dukes to smack  you down for pushing heresy, GLTB dignity, and women preachers, tattooed up, no less.  She is edgy and a little odd and a little jaded and ornery and part of a community that is assured of the righteousness of being progressive.  This isn’t the soft edge of evangelicalism and it isn’t mere dressed up liberalism.  This is far out Bible-reading, serious stuff about law and grace.

So, if you know somebody who is comfortable within the youth-ish culture that uses the F-word casually, who writes with irony and postmodern edge, and who still loves Christ and His holy church, well, this author of Pastrix might keep them in the church, and might make them thank you profusely for years to come.  This book is as weird and funny and sacrilegious and inconsistent and sinful and creative as anything I’ve read all year.  And you know what: it sings grace, it lives out evangelical hospitality, offers good news of acceptance and dignity to all listening in to her story about her peculiarly named church with right-on theological meaning: The House of All Sinners and Saints. It isn’t my subculture and it isn’t my style of speaking and it isn’t my theological tendency, but it was won of the most amazing reading experiences I’ve had in years!  It moved both Beth and I deeply, and we are grateful to have experienced it.

One reviewer said it is “a triumph of faithful storytelling,” Another write of it that “this book made me so happy to be a Christian. Honest and funny, deep and insightful Accidental Saints disarmed me and then, right when I was vulnerable, Nadia’s words snuck right in to mess with me.”  Another says “Nadia understands more than most that we are messed up people living in a messed up world with other messed up people. She gets the human condition. She refuses to sugar coat the depths of her own desperation and need.  And that’s why she get’s grace — our dire need for grace… I couldn’t put this book down.”

I couldn’t either, and I appreciate much about her counter-cultural vibe, her emergent Lutheran faith community that invites all manner of oddballs to show up.  I like A.J. Jacobs famous quip that Nadia is what you get if you’d mix the DNA of Louis C.K., Joey Ramone, and Saint Paul.”  She is a recovering addict, a former late night stand up comic, and an ex-fundamentalist now serving as a liberal Lutheran in punkish attire — and often wearing that liturgical dog collar.  She’s a darned good writer, stunningly so. 

Sara Miles, herself quite an amazing wordsmith, says, “Nadia Bolz-Weber’s new book is even tougher, sharper, and sweeter than Pastrix.” She continues, beautifully,

In painfully honest stories, she pulls back the curtains of religious life to show how church — the actual, living, body of God — is created among us. This is a book for everyone who years to be made new.

So, if you think somebody would like this — even down to the silk-screened cover with odd embossed typefaces and that late 1800s poster-like figure. which is just so campy — this might be worth giving.  Warn them it has R-rated lingo and edgy theological assumption, and that, through it all, they might realize more of what it means to need God’s grace and to show love to everyone, no matter what.  What a story.

FOR A HURTING YOUNG ADULT, A REBEL, AN OUTSIDER, A LONER, OR ANYONE EAGER TO EMBRACE HOW CARING FOR OTHERS CAN CHANGE THE WORLD

If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For Jamie Tworkowski (Tarcher) $16.95  This is a pretty hip book and the cool author himself has come out of a scene working in the rock and roll, backstage at shows, in conversation with bands and their fans.  Along the way he’s met some hurting kids, messed up folks, anguished souls, even the suicidal, who are, actually, great people who he truly admires.  Outside the box? That’s putting in mildly.  You may know the story (I explained it a bit when I reviewed this the week it came out early last spring) of how Tworkowski “wrote love on her arm” and how that slogan became a lifeline for kids that were cutters, addicted, unsure that anybody really, truly loved them.  Jamie offers words of empathy, words of solidarity, words of pathos and support and of love.  Things lost, things hoped for? And things found, too.  This is a very cool project, inspiring for all of us who care about those who walk on the wild side, and a beacon of hope for those who are in pain. If you know anybody who is desperate, or seems cynical and disillusioned, this would make a fantastic, honest gift.

FOR A SEEKER UNSURE OF FAITH, MAYBE DRIFTING FROM EVANGELICAL CERTAINTIES

Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith Sarah Bessey (Howard) $15.99  Let me be clear: Bessey is a great writer, and her first book was called Jesus Feminist. I really appreciate her, but you should realize that about her.  Yes, Jesus was a feminist, and his followers should be to.  And, yes, she is a bit out of sorts with her conservative, conventional dogmas and toxic church experiences.  Being out of sorts with a long-held religion can be painful — some might even call it a crisis of worldview — and yet, she writes with (as Micha Boyett puts it) “the fire of a preacher and the soul of a mother” and she offers “critical thought without cynicism.”

There’s the thing: this is a faith journey (I couldn’t help but think of Rachel Held Evan’s own memoir called Searching for Sunday) that is honest and realistic but doesn’t devolve into ugliness or jadedness.  Shauna Niequist says “This is the truth: Sarah is one of my very favorite writers. He complicated dance with church and all its tentacles is on that is familiar to so many of us. I love this book!”  Pete Enns, himself a very thoughtful Reformed thinker who has moved away from some of his associations in recent years says it is “thoughtful, compelling, moving and real. Bessey models a faith many are seeking but afraid to voice, a faith released of the obligation to be certain.”

Here’s what the lovely Jen Hatmaker writes

Sarah Bessey manages to be poetic but accessible, prophetic but gentle crazy  smart but approachable, strong but gracious. I have no idea how she does it, but as I read Out of Sorts I wanted to curl up into every single paragraph and stay there forever.

I don’t know if the person you want to give a gift to will be comfortable with very conventional spiritual books, new or old. Some just don’t want to read the same old affirmation of the very stuff they are struggling with.  But we don’t want to lead them away from real faith, we want a lifeline, an author they can relate to and say “Yes, if she can handle complexities of faith and the messiness of the church, I can too.”    Maybe this book will be a help.

FOR A CHRISTIAN SAINT WHO IS AGING

Finishing Our Course With Joy J.I. Packer (Crossway) $9.99  There are many, many books about aging, both for caregivers, congregations, and for those who are elderly. Some are quite nice, some are upbeat, some simple. This short piece is by one of the grate evangelical leaders of the last 60 years or so, the soft-spoken, deep thinking scholar and pastor, J.I. Packer.  I love Marva Dawn’s blurb when she says “I.I. Packer is his usual wise self as he gives his counsel herein for older people to pursue their aging with ‘zeal.” This is devout and inspiring motivation. Sam Storms notes that “I can’t think of anyone who can provide more helpful and encouraging insight that Packer.  Don’t wait until you’re sixty or seventy to read this book.  Start now and finish well!”  The print is not toooo small, either. NIce.

FOR A PERSON IN LOVE WITH VIDEO GAMES

We have a number of good books on video games, including some that investigate the religious significance and a Christian perspective on gaming.  Of Games and God: A Christian Exploration of Video Games by Kevin Schut (Brazos; $22.00) is the one to start with, without a doubt.  Not overtly Christian, but still quite thoughtful is The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture  edited by Daniel Goldberg & Linus Larsson (Seven Stories Press; $20.00.) This one will be esteemed by gamers as some fabulous authors are included and the Swedish editors are known for a book they did on Minecraft. It comes highly recommended, especially for those who want to be attentive to the bigger issues.

 I have never touched a video game in my life, but I started the brand new How to Talk About Video Games by Ian Bogost (University of Minnesota Press; $19.95) and the first few pages won me over and made me cheer.  It’s very thoughtful and looks to be quite fun. 

FOR PARENTS WHO DON’T WANT JUST ANOTHER TYPICAL RELIGIOUS PARENTING BOOK 

Home Grown: Handbook for Christian Parenting Karen DeBoer (Faith Alive) $12.00  I like this because it is short, a lovely collection of ideas and thoughtful suggestions, a practical handbook that would make a nice stocking stuffer or small gift. It actually offers 11 real-life questions and answers.  Karen DeBoer is a mother of four, an early childhood educator, and a curriculum editor who has been involved in children’s ministry for more than 25 years.   A cute cover, with very solid insights.

Ordinary Miracles: Awakening to the Holy Work of Parenting Rachel Gerber (Herald Press) $12.99  We adore this book, written by a funny and very thoughtful Mennonite educator that beautifully reminds us here that “God walks beside us. We are not alone on this journey.”  There are few parenting books that are as lively, fun, realistic and yet profoundly theological, serious and good.  A gem of a small book, very nicely done.

Never Say No: Raising Big Picture Kids Mark & Jan Foreman (Cook) $15.99  We have long heard about Mark and Jan, pastors of a thriving, serious church in San Diego, and perhaps more famous for raising the brothers who formed the rock band Switchfoot.  And since Switchfoot is truly one of my all time favs — I’ve got every single album and have been deeply moved by some of them, so much I wanted to write an essay about some of their songs! — I was curious about how their parents raised them. This really is a study of what happens when you mostly say “yes” to your child. There is an expected blurb by the band’s pal Donald Miller (he interviews Mark and Jan in his own recent memoir Scary Close) but listen to what Andi Ashworth of Art House (and author of Real Love for Real Life) says: “A wise, holistic, and wonderfully inspiring book about the great work of opening up the world to children and cheering them on to the life God has for them.”  For those who follow this stuff, you might find it interesting that they are speaking at the upcoming Jubilee 2016 conference this February in Pittsburgh.  We can’t wait to meet them.  Help us get to tell them that we sold a few of their book!!  

FOR A YOUNG ADULT WHO HAS RECENTLY GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE — OR IS ABOUT TO 

Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life edited by Byron Borger (Square Halo Books) $16.99  Yep, this is my book; I’ve edited a handful of excellent commencement addresses for Christian college students, helping to launch them out into the world, assisting them in their transition into their careers and callings, encouraging them in their hopes and dreams. My opening chapter, however, is about taking small steps, living local, being content in less then dazzling settings, and has been really well received. It has been a real joy this year (after selling books for almost 35 years) to actually have one with my name on the front.)

The other essays in Serious Dreams are just so great, and are written by some of the finest and most esteemed Christian leaders today — Richard Mouw, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Amy Sherman, Claudia Beversluis, John Perkins, Steve Garber and, well, yeah, me too.  It’s a great little book, we think, with some nice touches, and would make a great gift for anyone wanting to live out their faith in the real world, making a difference for God’s sake right where they are.

I’ll even autograph it, too, if you’d like! 

Forgive me if it appears unseemly for me to promote this myself, but if you’d like to know more about it, you can see my initial announcement and review, here.  Or read my first chapter for free, here.

FOR A COLLEGE STUDENT

Make College Count: A Faithful Guide to Life + Learning Derek Melleby (Baker Books) $12.99  This handsome little hardback is worth it’s weight in gold, a fine, fine help to any young college student.  Derek is a good friend and I can’t say enough about how wise and interesting and useful this little guide is.  In fact, it could nicely be given as a gift for a high school senior, exploring key questions they should consider as they make their way into the modern university.

Learning for the Love of God: A Student’s Guide to Academic Faithfulness Donald Optiz & Derek Melleby (Brazos Press) $14.99  If there is any one book that I think every college student should read, that guide Christian students towards thinking well, nurturing a wide-as-life sort of Christian worldview, reflect on their discipleship even in their choice of a major and their work in the classroom, it is doubtlessly this. There is nothing like it in print and it is exceptional, simply exceptional!  Give this way to any student you know As James K.A. Smith says it is “a marvelous book” and assures us “it is one of a kind…”  

FOR SOMEONE INTERESTED IN LIVING FAITH IN THE MARKETPLACE AND WORK-WORLD

If they have the classics — Os Guinness on The Call or Timothy Keller’s Every Good Endeavor or Tom Nelson’s lovely Work Matters  — they might enjoy these lesser known and really great options.

The Gospel Goes To Work: God’s Big Canvas of Calling and Renewal Dr Stephen Graves (KJK Publishing) $10.00  This little book is a gem, packed with insight, solid real-world faithfulness, and arranged in a very, very handsome small paperback. Work is core to our lives; for years, Graves has been an tireless advocate for a Christian viewpoint to frame our thinking and practices in the world-world. I love this little, hard-to-find, very handsome book.

The Gospel Goes to Work: How Working for King Jesus Gives Purpose and Meaning to Our Jobs Sebastian Traeger & Greg Gilbert (Zondervan) $16.99  This topic has garnered much attention lately, with conferences and blogs and video curriculum and all sorts of good efforts to resource folks to think faithfully about their sense of calling into their work and careers.  This one offers a good reminder and an immense help: the gospel of God’s grace seen in the Lordship of Jesus must be at the center of our lives. We seek and serve Him, and that must effect everything.  This is a fine gospel-centered contribution, useful especially for those who want to ponder their interior lives, motivations and how God’s grace can properly order our involvements in our jobs.

FOR A SUPER KUYPERIAN 

Yes,
there are some that are true fans of the early 20th century theologian,
and who give away their copies of RIchard Mouw’s little and wonderful Abraham Kuyper: A Personal and Short Introduction (Eerdmans; $16.00), who regularly read his daily devotional Near Unto God () and who have already ordered the above listed Our Program recently published by the Acton Institute and Lexham Press.

Want
a lesser known book for serious aficionados of the great Dutch Reformed
theologian, activist and Prime Minister?  Here are four that are, shall
we say, not for just everyone. 

Abraham Kuyper, Conservatism, and Church and State Mark Larson (Wipf & Stock) $15.00  A brand new study of what modern conservatism has in common with Kuyper.

Abraham Kuyper: A Pictorial  Biography Jan de Bruijn (Eerdmans) $40.00  Wow.

Kuyper in America (Dordt
College Press) edited by George Harinck  $11.99 I loved this collection
taken from Kuyper’s diary kept while visiting the US, from small towns
to Princeton Seminary to the White House. Lovely letters back to his
wife, explaining why he missed a very important event with the Queen.

Our Worship Abraham
Kuyper edited by Harry Boomstra (Calvin Institute on Christian Worship
Liturgical Studies/Eerdmans) $14.99 This is a new English translation of
Onze Eredienst, offering Kuyper’s clearest thinking on worship and liturgy.

FOR SOMEONE WHO IS A SERIOUS CHRISTIAN READER AND WANTS ONE (OR MORE) OF THE VERY BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Okay, I’m offering here four great books that are new this year, nice hardbacks, that should appeal to a wide variety of readers.  Allow us to suggest these tremendous books from the cream of the crop of 2015.

Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice Brenda Salter McNeil (IVP) $16.00  We would read any new book by McNeil and we’re glad for this brand, brand new release that surely will be considered a major contribution to questions of racial reconciliation and Christian unity. We love her upbeat style, even as she looks at some hard stuff. This would be a great book for anyone seriously interested in racial justice and mutli-ethnic ministry, whether they are a seasoned pro or just beginning. It’s very accessible and very wise, I’m sure.  There are tons of rave reviews, from Christena Cleveland, Efrem Smith, Patricia Raybon, Shane Claiborne, Soong-Chan Rah, Mark Labberton, Eugene Cho (who wrote the foreword.)

The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves Curt Thompson (IVP) $22.00  Oh my, I do hope you recall the long review I did on this when it first came out. It was one of the more popular BookNotes columns I’ve done and I am glad to know that it resonates with many folks. Curt is a deeply Christian psychiatrist who has a great knowledge of neurology.  This study of the toxic shame that plagues so many is exceedingly well written, profoundly Biblical, and full of interesting scientific insights about the brain and the body, informed by an acute awareness of how important it is to learn to be real, to be vulnerable, to be in healthy, generative relationships.  God will use this fabulous work to influence many, inviting us all to be healed of this disease with which we are all infected: shame. Dan Allender agrees, calling it “transformative.” If you want to be particular generous, give ’em also his first one (a more general overview of faith formation in light of what we know about brain studies, and how our relationships and faith can be better if we are aware of how God wired us to work.) It is called Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising
Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can
Transform Your Life and Relationships (SaltRiver; $15.99)

Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God Lauren Winner (HarperOne) $24.99  I am enamored with Winner’s great writing style, her exquisite prose, her lovely gift of being able to weave together memoir and instruction, confession and a call to take seriously important concerns.  Here, she revisits the age old question: how do we know God, and what names, images, and metaphors does God choose when God reveals to us how we should think about the DIvine One?  The BIble is loaded with what some might think to be unusual and eccentric images of God and Winner deftly explores the meaning and use of these odd images.  James Martin says it is a “gorgeously written and compelling investigation into what it means to strike up a friendship with the Living God.” Barbara Brown Taylor offers a truly lovely review and Wake Forest prof (and farmer) Fred Bahnson says Winner “convenes a salon of saints and biblical writers to join her” in this project to bring great depth and orthodox creativity to our spiritual formation.  This is a fascinating, stimulating, entertaining book.

Fools Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion Os Guinness (IVP) $22.00  I have raved about this before, and many who I trust the most have agreed that this is one of the most important books they’ve read in years, certainly one of Guinness’s most important, among a big stack of important ones he has done over the last several decades. This is, in a sense, his magnum opus, drawing on three large influences in his thinking, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Peter Berger.  It invites us to think seriously about the nature of the modern mind, why people do or don’t reject Christian faith, and offers ways for us to learn the art of fruitful conversation, deep dialogue, and respectful efforts to effectively persuade skeptic and seekers that Christ is indeed the only sustainable answer to the world’s deepest questions.  This is a thoughtful, serious, extraordinary work and I invite you to give it to someone who is a thinker, who wants to understand deep things, and be fruitful in persuading others about the truth claims of the gospel. 

AND FOR SOMEONE WHO DOES’T WANT TO READ, BUT IS EAGER TO LEARN ABOUT A RELEVANT CHRISTIAN FAITH IF IT IS PRESENTED AS LIVELY, CREATIVE, ENTERTAINING, EXCELLENT

DVD For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles Gorilla Productions (Acton Institute) $25.00 This six part video is spectacular, and I’ve touted it often here, wishing I could just get folks to see it and its creative excellence, its fascinating vision, its delightful cleverness and true, Biblical profundity. In our 34 years of doing this we’ve never seen anything close to it in its hip dramatic effect, its good humor, and the attractive, lived-out way it presents a broad Christian worldview.  For the Life of the World looks at the very point of faith, and how the economy of God includes all of life, and we are invited into this grace-filled world of wonder to serve, to serve the common good, even as we learn about work, family life, politics, creativity, education, church and more.  This is a fabulous gift, especially for culturally savvy young adults.  For an extra $9.99 you can get the also fabulous, colorful Field Guide, which is a very useful study or discussion guide. You can find my larger reviews of by searching our website, or shoot us a note if you want more info.

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333

Kids books.  Oh my, where do we begin? I don’t write enough about them, but we have a sizable room here in the shop with all manner of children’s resources.  We have non-book items, too, like CDs, including the new Roots for Rain Waiting Songs, and our latest cool thing, an interactive book/game with 20 blocks like dice that invite storytelling, nicely put together by our friend Daniel Nayeri, called How to Tell a Story (Workman; $19.99.)

I’m going to describe some fun and very creatively produced picture books, but first want to give a shout out to a few more serious books for middle-school readers or teens. 

We have these in stock and at least until we sell out, we can ship promptly. The US Postal Service’s Priority Mail is cheaper than UPS and just as quick and sometimes quicker.  Contact us today and you’d still have these before Christmas.  ALL ARE 20% OFF THE REGULAR PRICE SHOWN.  We’ll deduct the discount when you order at our secure on line page or call.

FOR OLDER KIDS, MIDDLE-SCHOOL READERS OR TEENS

Orbiting Jupiter Gary Schmidt (Clarion) $17.99  

I hope you know the important Newberry Award winner Gary Schmidt, who not only is famous and respected in the youth, YA, and teen book world, but teaches writing at Calvin College in Grand Rapids and is a significant Christian leader in the writing arts. (Oh how I loved his children’s novel, The Wednesday Wars which is out in paperback, now.) We are fans of his work, and this very new one, Orbiting Jupiter, is about a 12-year old boy who gains a new 15 year-old foster brother who just got out of juvenile detention and himself has fathered a child, a child he hasn’t met, named Jupiter. It’s not a long story, and is sure to hold the attention of youth, but it is heavy. One critic said this is Schmidt at his very best. 183 pages, hardback.

Get Your Story Straight: A Teen’s Guide to Learning and Living the Gospel Kristen Hatton (New Growth Press) $17.99

We stock most everything of this publisher, best known, perhaps, for their substantive “Gospel Centered Life” small group curriculum (that had been created by World Harvest Mission, now known as Serge.) This is a remarkable, Bible-based devotional with workbooky sorts of questions to ponder and some places for journaling. Its solid, rather Reformed, vision centers on grace and how Christ is King of all of life. We are called into His Kingdom story of renewal and restoration and teens, too, are invited to take faith seriously, to understand heavy stuff, and to take up their own resistance to the idols of the selfie culture. This is nice, but serious, joyful, but demanding, storied and full of stories, Scripture stories of truth and goodness.  It’s 325 pages in 52 chapters — one a week for a year!

A Wolf at the Gate Mark Van Steenwyk, art by Joel Jedstrom (Mennonite Worker Press) $12.99 

When I’ve described this before I’ve talked about the cool art — done in full color, conjuring an old silkscreen press — and how handsomely this small book has been designed and crafted. I have explained that this is actually a retelling of an old tale which is part of the legends that have grown up around the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.  I’ve even explained that some of the proceeds have gone to the urban care ministry of the author and their radical mission among the poor in Minneapolis.  But enough of the background; here is what is says on the back:

At night, the Blood Wolf prowls near the village of Stonebriar. She devours chickens and goats and cows and cats. Some say children are missing. But this murderous wolf isn’t the villain of our story; she’s the hero!  Settle in and read a tale of tooth and sword, of beggars and lords, of outlaws and wild beasts. It is a story of second chances and the power of love. This is the story of the Wolf at the Gate.

Concerned about the xenophobia and violent response to fear in our culture? This is a beautiful story, made in a very street-level, hipster styling, that any cool kid would love to have, I think, and will will over a counter-narrative to all that.    It’s well told, just 75 pages, on nice creamy paper,  a little oversized, making it a very nice paperback edition that makes a great gift.

A Chameleon, A Boy, and a Quest J.A. Myhre, illustrated by Acacia Masso (New Growth Press/Serge) $15.99

It seems that the well-traveled religious tradition of giving kids missionary stories has somewhat declined, and I was simply delighted to see this fairly recent publisher releasing an entertaining, spiritually-alive, adventuresome tale of life on the foreign mission front.  At first I thought it was a standard missionary bio, but realized quickly that it is fiction, fiction tinged with what more highbrow scholars might call “magical realism.” One scholar and mystery writer says, “It is like a Narnia tale set in the African bush.”

The main character in this novella is 10-year old Mu, and readers of all ages can journey through Africa with Mu, discovering how one simple encounter can change everything. 

The gospel themes are fairly subtle, the adventure vivid, the storytelling and writing quite fascinating.  The author, J.A. Myhre, serves as a doctor with Serge in East Africa where she has worked for over two decades.  (She is passionate about health care for the poor, training local doctors and nurses, promoting childhood nutrition and such, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.) This fantastical tale allows East Africa to come alive in the mind’s eye of the reader, and the story of the chameleon (and a dog, too) is sure to appeal to older children and young teens. One reviewer says A Chameleon, A Boy, and a Quest “is rich in African texture.” Mindy Belz writes that “It’s a journey rich in the beauty and wonder of Africa, but it’s also – importantly – a lesson on redemption and sacrifice.”  Nice. 160 pages

Secrets of the Ancient Manual Revealed! Every Dragon Slayer’s Guide to the Bible Sir Wyvern Pugilist (Paraclete Press) $15.99 

Perhaps you recall a few years our rave review of Sir Wyvern Pugilist’s debut story, a matte black book designed to look like a mysterious, ancient manual, called Dragon Slayers: The Essential Training Guide for Young Dragon Fighters, Based Wholly on the Practices of the Great Dragon Slayers of Old and the Wisdom of the Ancient Manuel.  Yep, that’s the title, and the secrets of said Ancient Manuel are offered as kids learn the serious art of spiritual warfare.  I’m not kidding, this is a hoot and a half and serious, maybe deadly serious.  Yes, it names all kinds of species of dragons and writes about their “absolutely putrid, exceedingly loathsome and revolting breath” but it also gives good guidance on prayer and putting off the temptations of evil.

This one has look that is almost as cool and the page design is filled with graphics and fonts and pictures that will capture the imagination of anybody reading fantasy, Harry Potter type tales, or medieval battle stuff. Secrets of the Ancient Manual Revealed! Is an overview of the Bible, mostly, and while the first was truly about spiritual warfare and the armor of God, this is about the Word, fun, but informative.  

One reviewer, a coordinator of children’s ministry at an Episcopalian parish, says it “draws from a rich and fabulous literary tradition… and in so doing invites us to become more familiar with the Christian story of creation, fall and redemption.”

This is just a slightly oversized paperback, 205 pages. 

STRIKING, CLEVER, PICTURE BOOKS FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN – OR KIDS OF ALL AGES

Edgar Wants to Be Alone Written and illustrated by Jean-Francois Dumont (Eerdmans) $16.00 

Edgar the rat was furious. He had been out walking, when suddenly he noticed that an earthworm was following him.  Edgar didn’t want company, he wanted to be alone. He is determined to get rid of this menacing shadow, and recruits other animals to help him get this worm away from him. In a hilarious set of episodes Edgar eventually realizes that he might have been part of the problem all along. It’s a zany story, wonderfully illustrated, with some kind of moral, maybe about humility or keeping an open mind or trusting others for help, or maybe it’s just a crazy, fun parable about the unexpected obvious that can make us laugh.  I love this French author’s hilariously anti-xenophobic parable, The Chicken Built a Wall, too.  Yay.

Never Ever Written and illustrated by Jo Empson (Child’s Play) $7.99

This is one of the more wild and eccentric picture books this year, both subtle and at times nearly crazed… you may recall her weirdly wonderful book about grief called Rabbityness that we promoted a few years back. This one is about a child that complains that “nothing ever, ever, ever happens to me.”  Of course all kinds of stuff is happening (you can imagine the response of little ones who see the purple pig flying by) and the stuff that happens gets wilder and more interesting as the pages unfold. It is said that Never Ever displays Empson’s “inimitable sense of fun, her love of storytelling and surprise, and her delight in the magical world of the imagination.”  Short, sweet, with a real lesson about realizing the amazing nature of the ordinary. It’s not Brother Lawrence, I’ll admit, but it might be a start.  Yes, kiddos, stuff happens. Wake up.

Just for Today Written by Saint John XXIII,  illustrated by Bimba Landmann(Eerdmans) $16.00

This classy hardback with somewhat of a medieval look is not about the current Pope, who even children have heard of, but an older one from the mid-20^th century.  This is John’s little intention, his declaration of how he was going to live for God, moment by moment, day by day.  He actually said some of this when he was 7 years-old, it is said, and developed it into a written rule years later. John served as pope from 1958 until his death in 1963. During his lifetime he helped save the lives of thousands of Jews fleeing the Holocaust, made a significant effort to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis, and founded the Second Vatican Council. He was canonized in April of 2014.   This nice reproduction of his “Decalogue” shows how we can live each day in a helpful spirit.  Nice, with just a little edge to the bright art.

Little Big Written and illustrated by Jonathan Bentley (Eerdmans) $16.00

Who doesn’t like a book with a giraffe on the cover? This story starts with a child saying, “Being little is no good. That’s because being big is better.”

Well, of course these fantastic watercolors portray all kinds of funny stuff and get the child into situations where being big may be a hindrance. Soon — at least after some adventures — he comes to see that “being little is best of all.”

I offered this as a bit of a parable at a gathering of leaders from small congregations this past fall, helping us see that small things sometimes can do things that larger institutions cannot.  But, let’s be honest: I was stretching; it’s not E.F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful book about localist economics:  it’s just a goofy kid’s book about being a small child.  What fun, and what a nice lesson to remind them that they are okay, “just the way they are.”

Beautiful Hands Bret Baumgarten, illustrated by Kathryn Otoshi (Blue Dot Press) $17.99

This may be the most delightful, eye-catching, tenderly exciting children’s picture book in years!  It is made entirely (or so it seems) with kid’s handprints, fingers and thumb-prints, palms and multiple hands, making remarkable gestures in bright, bright paint. This is so simple yet so incredibly creative, you will be delighted and the more you study it the more amazed you’ll be.  Some customers literally gasp as we turn the pages.

The text is, again, simple, but surprising;  both sweet and profound.  

“What will do you with your hands today?” it is asked.  

Will you lift? What will you lift?  Spirits? 
Will you touch? What will you touch?  Hearts? 

Will you plant?  What will you plant?  Ideas?

There’s a backstory, too, for this book; Otoshi is a very renowned and creative picture book designer, and Baumgarten  is a dad fighting cancer, and the two came together to collaborate with this life-giving project, something for Bret to leave his own children, really.  In an interview in the School Library Journal, Otoshi said,

I work with symbolism in my stories. For Beautiful Hands, I saw
there could be wordplay between the tangible and the intangible–TOUCH
hearts; LIFT spirits; REACH for love. Since this was a legacy book for
his family, I thought it would be nice to have Noah, Sofie, and his
wife, Deborah, to be physically engaged in the book’s process as it all
came together. So all their handprints, including Bret’s and my own, are
in the story.

And 100s more, actually. I wish we could show you how much fun and how inspiring and how beautiful this colorful book is. It’s very nice. I’m not sure why I say this, exactly, but it might appeal to those who loved 2013’s break-out. The Day the Crayons Quit and this year’s The Day the Crayons Came Home.   Sweet stuff, about connections and home and making a difference.

Fur, Fins, and Feathers: Abraham Dee Bartlett and the Invention of the Modern Zoo Written and illustrated by Cassandre Maxwell (Eerdmans) $17.00

The cut paper collage and mixed-media art in this great book is tremendous – not overdone or artfully designed for adults or to merely wow the viewer (as some seem to be.) Iit is perfect —  an aesthetically pleasing, creative, useful style, making this a delight to behold, but with the focus on the story. Importantly, the story is really, really good and something I think kids will be interested in. Fur, Fins, and Feathers is about the person who essentially created the first modern zoo (in the mid-1800s in London.) A person of deep faith, Abraham Dee Bartlett loved animals from the time of his childhood, and this picture book explains his passion and his principles about caring well for God’s creatures. His vision was to keep animals in their habitats, treating them well, educating others about their glory and needs, helping moderns respect and co-exist with wilderness and the creatures of the wild.  He worked tirelessly at the London Zoo to ensure that the animals were happy and healthy.  This is a great book, inspiring and informative with lots of facts and lots of fun.

The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch Chris Barton, illustrated by Don Tate (Eerdmans) $17.00

Eerdmans continues to be respected among the best scholars and practitioners of children’s literature, and their picture books win awards world wide. This is a great example of a book that tells a story that even adults should know. It is wonderfully illustrated – whimsically, I’ll admit – and told with passion and grit. It is a fun story, but a serious one, too, about heroism success, and, yes, about the scourge of racism.

John Roy Lynch had an Irish father and an enslaved mother. By the law of the South before the Civil War, that made John Roy and his brother half Irish and all slave.  John Roy thrived after Emancipation and was appointed to serve as a justice of the peace and was eventually elected into the U.S. Congress where he worked to ensure that freedman like himself were truly free.  This is a lively look at Reconstruction through the life of one of the first African American congressmen and is truly interesting.  

There is a long and interesting historical note in the back that says, among other things:

Between 1870 and 1877 there were sixteen African Americans who served in the U.S. Congress from former Confederate states.

But there were only six more who served between 1878 and 1901.

And between 1902 and 1972 there were zero.  What happened?

Roger Is Reading a Book Written and illustrated by Koen Van Biesen (Eerdmans) $16.00

This is an example of a European children’s picture book picked up and redone for US readers. It is slick and cool in its jazzy drawings, funnier the second time through as more and more things seem to appear.  The story is simple: Roger is reading and is disturbed by a rambunctious little girl named Emily through the apartment wall – she is shown on the left hand page of the spread and Roger and his chair and his book on the right.  He goes over to her place, knocks on the door, and says, “Shhh.  Roger is reading.” Emily tries a different game, but this time it’s even louder, and so it goes, Roger traipsing over to get her to pipe down, insisting that he needs to read his book, and the little girl doing more and more and more outrageous things to cause noise.  The battle of wits continues and then ends – spoiler alert, here – when she is given a book, and she now wants to be quiet and read!  Ahh, the power of the book, the goodness of solitude.  There’s a surprise funny ending, then, too.  

Brother Giovanni’s Little Reward: How the Pretzel Was Born Anna Egan Smucker, illustrated by Amanda Hall (Eerdmans) $17.00

What a jovial and sweet little book this is, full of colorful medieval monastic images and good-hearted monks at the monastery bakery.  But the baker has to teach the children their prayers, and that is not going so well. With an important visit from the Bishop rapidly approaching, Brother Giovanni must figure out how to use his gift to motivate the children to learn. There are some colorful shades of Tomie DePaolo here, some think, and some good insight about using one’s gifts and talents — and even a recipe for home-made pretzels. Nice!

Just Like I Wanted Elinoar Keller & Naama Peleg Segal, illustrated by Aya Gordon-Noy (Eerdmans) $17.00

Originally published in Israel, this is one of my favorite kids books of the year! What great art – again, paper-cut collage and mixed medium, giving it a lively, interesting, curious look — it tells a story about a child making an art project.

The story is mostly simple: what happens when one simply can’t color inside the lines?  “No matter how determined you are to draw the perfect picture, it’s not always easy to stay inside the lines! Sometimes, though, mistakes can make a perfect picture even better.” Creative types (or those who like to make excuses, perhaps) or those who like to experiment, listen up: the little star of this book is your new patron saint.

The Red Bicycle: The Extraordinary Story of One Ordinary Bicycle Jude Isabella, illustrated by Simone Shin (Kids Can Press) $18.95

Every year there is a new book in the informative non-fiction series called Citizen Kid. (Learn more about them here. ) We’ve featured many over the years, such as Mimi’s Village (about basic health care in a poor village), Planet Ark (about preserving the Earth’s biodiversity), One Well (about the story of water on Earth) and more. Many loved One Hen which is sort of a Heifer Project type story, and last year we promoted Razia’s Ray of Hope an inspiring book about a young girl and her dream of education.

This new one, The Red Bicycle is tremendous, really, really interesting, and I am sure it will be fascinating to some kids who tend to not want to read other sorts of storybooks. These informative books do come to us as a story, though, and in this one, a girl named Alisetta sees a bike without ever knowing that it had traveled across the ocean from North American where it once belonged to Leo. The author used to be the editor of YES magazine and is a science writer who has turned her considerable talents to this fabulous, complex, educational and very inspiring story.

We have a stack of these sitting here and have been eager to have somebody buy them – I’m sure you’ll enjoy learning about the many places “Big Red” goes, from the bike repair shop and donation project center in Leo’s town to the container ship leaving from the US docks, across the ocean to Koudougou in Burkina Faso. And there the story really takes off. Oh the difference that bike makes!

Kudos to Kids Can Press and CitizenKid that inform children around the world and inspire them to better global citizens.    Watch a one minute trailer for the book here.

B Is for Bethlehem: A Christmas Alphabet Isabel Wilner, illustrated by Elisa Kleven (Worthy Publishing Group) $16.99

When I was listing some children’s Advent and Christmas books a week or so ago I really wanted to show you this one, but the list was growing long. Now, I really want to list it, and exclaim about its colorful, curious, busy-ness and the wonderful, celebratory art it offers in this rhyming telling of various parts of the Christmas story.  Here’s what I like about this: the artwork reminds me of Eastern European culture, maybe even some sort of refugee or gypsy culture, bringing to mind the work of, say, Patricia Pollocca (I hope you know The Keeping Quilt, or her others with this look.) Indeed, B Is for Bethlehem won a number of mainstream book awards 25 years ago when it was first published, including being a coveted “Pick of the List” from the American Bookseller in 1990. It has been re-issued this year and we are glad to celebrate its eye-catching and fabulously evocative mixed-media art.  I mentioned Eastern European culture; does this seem Jewish, somehow? Does it even evoke the religious art of famous painter Marc Chagall?  Or do I misunderstand, and is it somehow Americana folk art? Or Hispanic?  I am intrigued by this nice book, its heart-felt design with oh-so-much going on in each big spread.  The rhyming lines are fine, the teachings about the Christmas adequate; I enjoy alphabet books and it’s not always easy to do them right, but I think they have a lot of appeal, to many ages, actually. But the best part of this one is the endlessly curious paintings.  I’m glad to see it back in print after being unavailable for so long. We stocked this book in our children’s section decades ago, and it is good to recall it.

Ms Wilner, by the way, is the daughter of missionaries, lived her early years in China and the Philippines.   The artist is renowned for a number of books, perhaps most significantly Abuela, which we have also stocked here at the shop.  Kudos!

The Biggest Story: How the Snake Crusher Brings Us Back to the Garden
Kevin DeYoung, illustrated by Don Clark (Crossway) $17.99 Last but not least — so “not least”, I am sure it will be on our “Best of 2015” lists — is this spectacularly colorful and exceptionally profound children’s Bible. We announced this when it came out this fall and the response has been great among those who have seen it. The art work is hip and very modern, the flow of the story coherent and faithful to the Biblical narrative.

The allusion in the subtitle is to the promise in Genesis 3 of God’s victory over evil — the snake will be crushed by a future king from the linage of Eve.  This is the biggest story that frames our Christmas celebrations, isn’t it? The Biggest Story and DeYoung’s telling, in this sense, is similar to the Sally Lloyd-Jones’ Jesus Storybook Bible I mentioned in the last post, a storybook Bible that isn’t comprised of random, disconnect moralistic episodes, but a gritty unfolding drama of God’s faithful rescue of the cosmos. Back to the garden, and more!

Of course, as with any such Bible storybook, there will be lines you wished were written differently, or this or that small feature you may not love. But we should be glad for such a passionate, creative, visually unusual telling of the biggest, most important story of all.

Why not donate one to your church library or nursery, and get young parents excited about reading the Bible to their little ones.

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333

Yep, two new books, one certainly for grown-ups (but with pictures) and one for kids (without pictures.) This is gonna make your head spin —  telling about books that are sooo good, Revealed and The Story of God’s Love for You.  Available now, on sale.

We love selling books about the Bible, and, of course, real Bibles.  There are so many good resources to help us understand that complex book, and the story of God’s redemptive work.  We have introductory books for beginners, clear-eyed books struggling with the some of the harder portions, Old Testament overviews, New Testament introductions.  There are Bibles with notes, Bibles with good graphics and charts, “reader’s editions” without verses, conservative elegant translations and easier-to-read renditions. We have large print and compact ones, inexpensive and pretty high end.  If you have questions about these sorts of things, do give us a call as we delight in helping folks find more and better Scripture study aids.

Today, I will tell you about two very, very different resources, both of which thrill us to no end.  They are so different in audience and style but, interestingly, the authors are in agreement about much that matters most: the God-breathed inspiration of the Bible, the narrative nature of its storied structure, how the hero of the drama is God (not the morals of this or that person in the plot, many of whom are flawed and stupid.) Both authors believe in what some call a Christo-centric reading, which simply means that Jesus is the heart of the plot-line of the Bible and is the incarnation of the God whose redemptive work is the driving force of the sweep of the story, a story of promise and deliverance. As one of the two authors has famously said “every chapter whispers His name.”

If we can’t say that during Advent we will miss much of the promissory nature of the season and Christmas will devolve into the sentiments of a baby bathed in lovely Christmas tree light, but not the grit of a covenant God rescuing the cosmos.

So the two books I’m about to describe – wildly different as they are – are in agreement about the importance and nature of the Holy Scriptures and how to best tell and teach it in order to find ourselves within that story as redeemed actors in the unfolding drama. They would both agree with the Hindu leader that Leslie Newbigin tells about in his fabulous, short, Bible overview, Walk Through the Bible, who said that the Bible must be “the true story of the whole world.”

The first of the two books is easy to describe and although I will be brief, I hope you understand our great enthusiasm for it.  If you are a reader of BookNotes – occasional or faithful – and you care at all about the Bible being proclaimed well in our time, I think you should get this and pass it on to a kid you know.  The second, well, that’s going to take some explaining…

The Story of God’s Love For You Sally Lloyd-Jones (Zonderkidz) $14.99, sale price = $11.99  I have raved about Ms. Lloyd-Jones’ popular The Jesus Storybook Bible before, celebrating the colorful, artful illustrations, the moving cadence, the whimsy and humor and yet deadly-serious conviction that Christ is the heart of the unfolding drama of Scripture, the coherent plot that makes up the 66 Bible books.  Indeed, the subtitle on the cover says, “Every Chapter Whispers His Name” and the inter-textual reading offered for preschoolers is at times nothing short of remarkable.  We do hope you know it.

Yep, the Jesus Storybook Bible is one of our favorite children’s Bibles, not because it covers as much as some do, or is “the” best children’s Bible, but because of the way it tells the story, the themes it whispers, the lovely language it uses to convey a Christ-exalting, creation-healing, all-of-life-redeemed vision of where the plot of the Bible is going. Its compact shape and bright colors make it ideal for little ones. The most popular edition is a smallish hardback, although there is a fantastic larger sized gift edition that we recommend.

Because so many people have grown to appreciate the lively storytelling and delightful blend of sweet and serious language used to tell this singular story of the unfolding drama of God’s redemptive plan, and value the class and charm and robust theological vision of the text, they’ve sometimes given this Bible designed for young children to older kids.  I know youth pastors who have used it in high school ministry and – okay, I’ll admit it, happily – I’ve read it out loud on occasion in my own adult Sunday school classes.

And so, the publishers acted on the wishes of so many and created a Jesus Storybook Bible for older kids and middle schoolers.  The text is unchanged but the title has changed to The Story of God’s Love For You and the children’s art has been removed.  It is now a very handsome hardback, with blue ink, and cool info-graphic type symbols in front of each book of the Bible.

It looks great for all ages, just a touch of cool graphic appeal, and a small, handy size with heavy-stock paper.  It is a fabulous looking little book.  There is a regular hardback (the price shown above is $14.99 before the discount) and there is also a very nice leather-like gift edition that comes in a paper slipcase ($19.99 before discount.)

We’ve already sold it to pastors using it with elementary aged children who have outgrown the picture-book style and for a middle school Sunday school class; a teacher of a small confirmation class thought it would work with young teens who would appreciate its tender, personal cadence and its big picture vision.  Kudos to Ms. Lloyd-Jones and Zondervan for working to put this project together. Order a few today!

Revealed: A Bible Storybook for Grown Ups edited and compiled by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $36.99  sale price = $33.29 This, gentle readers, is a treasure of a book that came from a brilliant idea — an adult Bible overview using mature, suggestion-rich, high-quality visual art.  Much of the art is original, commissioned or created for this volume, which was years in the making. It may be a bit controversial — some of the art is (shall we say) vivid — and it may not be immediately evident why such a creative resource is so useful, but I think this is nearly a historic publication, and you should seriously consider owning it.

There are some notable distinctives of this picture Bible for grown-ups, which I will explain anon.  After the holidays I hope to do a more thorough, detailed review of this as I am smitten with it, and have spent a lot of time lost in its artwork, even having seen close up some of the remarkable originals. There are back stories to tell (Ned has been working on this for years!) and there are interpretation of texts to debate, art choices to evaluate, and so much to discuss that I simply cannot do it now. Perhaps other publications will review it seriously — Christianity Today? Books & Culture? The Christian Century? Image Journal? Comment? — as I assume Christian arts organizations like CIVA, IAM, and Fuller’s Brehm Center surely will.

For now, join us in celebrating its limited release; we are the only place to currently stock it!

As you can imagine, it would make a very surprising gift under somebody’s tree.  Bible lover? Art fan? Book person? I can assure you they will be intrigued and delighted and won’t have expected it.  Revealed is rare and brand, brand new. 

Here are three things you should know as we launch this extraordinary volume into the publishing world. 

STUNNING BLACK AND WHITE PRINTMAKER’S DESIGN

Firstly, the art is all black and white, using styles that seem to hang together well. The editor – manager of the arts-oriented publisher, Square Halo Books – told me that the early vision and initial work for the book compiled too much, and the diversity of art styles ended up appearing as a distraction.  That Mr. Bustard limited this big project to woodcuts and lithographs, etchings, and contemporary modern photography and graphic art allowed for the book to be visually coherent. From classic lithographs by Durer to sketches by Rembrandt to old school woodcuts (including two by the historically significant Eric Gill) to quite powerful (and, occasionally nearly whimsical) modern ones to a few very contemporary photographs and mixed-medium art pieces, this book holds together visually.  It is designed well — one of Bustard’s great gifts for which he has won awards is creating sharp page layouts.

A COHERENT, HONEST, OVERVIEW OF THE WHOLE BIBLE

Secondly, besides the coherent look and feel, and perhaps more importantly, the hermeneutic itself is coherent: Revealed believes the Bible is God’s Word, revelatory, speaking still.  Bustard has read some of the best books (like The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Michael Goheen & Craig Bartholomew) and wonderful little essays like Calvin Seerveld’s “How To Read the Bible Like a Grown-Up Child” so understands that Scripture is to be entered into as a story, trusted, lived out.

Therefore, these are not random pictures based on random episodes or eccentric texts, compiled with some quirky agenda, but a knowing, faithful unfolding of the canonical plot-line, with an unflinching look.  More than anything, this is a Bible story book, enhancing our understanding of the whole of Scripture.  Bustard’s own annotations to the texts and his exceptionally astute comments about the art help us “get the point” (even if I might argue he occasionally over-reaches just a bit in his homilies on the Scriptural passages, perhaps oddly worried that the graphic art wasn’t enough to carry the story along.)  Still, mostly, his text is good, the art insights very helpful, making this a solid and stimulating introduction to or enhancement of the Bible for those who believe the Bible is somehow deeply, truly, true.

The short reflections he offers, next to the Scriptural text itself (each on one page, facing the full-page art piece on the right hand part of the spread), includes short quotes and citations, too, from the likes of N.T. Wright, Luci Shaw, C.S. Lewis, Bono, Timothy Keller, Denis Haack, and more. 

I suppose you realize that this classy work could serve well as an introduction to the real-world, complex plot of the Book for those who may not yet believe.  Come to think of it, this would make an ideal gift for skeptics, or those a bit cynical about how evangelicals portray the Bible these days, or those who have drifted from church or faith. Bustard himself, like many of us, frets that some in the watching world, when invited to consider the authority of Scripture, think firstly of images of Westboro Baptists or the kitschy angles mass produce by Precious Moments. He hopes to offer, in Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grown-ups “the Bible as it really is – in all its raw, violent, and sexy glory.”  It will nearly force us to take a fresh look.

After all, as Bustard writes in an excellent introductory essay, “Christ came to save the lost…not the misplaced. A book that does not address the deep depravities and gut-wrenching sorrows of the human condition is no good to any of us, believer of unbeliever alike.”

YES: FOR GROWN-UPS

Thirdly, by design, this handsome work attempts to tell the story of God’s holy faithfulness amidst human sin and stupidity, care and cruelty, faith and frustration, by highlighting what some Bible curricula leaves out, namely, some of the sex and a lot of the violence.  I suspect Ned, who is by nature culturally conservative, must have been inspired by some pressing muse, getting this subversive idea of doing an R-rated adult Bible project; he wanted to offer a gift book that might be arresting, really noticed, showing it slant, helping people engage the reality of the messy truth of God working in mucky history. (The Bible is not so sacred as to somehow avoid the human, the offensive, the tragic, indeed it at times seems to make a point that God shows up among the broken and bad and badly broken.)

The piece shown here above is a linocut of Rahab; Bustard quotes Denis Haack of Critique magazine who writes of it,

“Rahab is usually depicted as the scandalously promiscuous woman who was saved by grace, always with the impression given that since someone much more low class and tasteless than I can be saved, there is hope for the likes of me, who is a sinner, but not really all that bad compared to her…”

But the composition of this print forces the viewer to look up to Rahab, begging the question: are you going to humble yourself and take salvation offered by this holy hooker?  Bustard cites Hebrews 11:31, and then notes that she “ended up marrying one of the spies and her son was Boaz, the husband of Ruth — placing her in the genealogical line of Jesus Christ.”

Bustard studied solid books that explored the “texts of terror” and the good and bad of sexuality in the Scriptures. He debated the meaning of difficult passages with wise Bible scholars.  He considered the ways in which these contested texts were handled in earlier eras (in commentaries, sermons, and, of course, by older artists, who, we’ve come to discover, didn’t share the Victorian queasiness that has shaped many in the modern Western church.) He had no intent of being salacious, nor does he want to trivialize the important questions of how to help form readers in true godliness. Clearly, Revealed is not a silly book or a novelty item (there are some of those out there, scintillating for effect or even mocking in tone about the rough stuff in the Bible.)

You will have to read for yourself the careful analysis of the wholesome eroticism in Slow Dance by Steve Prince, shown here (illuminating 1 Corinthians 6:15 – 7:6) but it is gritty and good.

Graphic as it may be at times (I wanted to turn away from the awful power of the portrayal of one individual death shown as a rendering of the genocide of Joshua 10, and the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel is portrayed very strongly by Erin Cross) it is on the whole aesthetically nuanced and not always blunt, sometimes merely suggestive, a fine example of the balancing act between artful integrity and clarity of illustration. These prints are, after all, curated, mixed and matched, collated and combined with their aesthetic power harnessed for the sake of breaking open The Book. Vivid, disturbing, striking, moving, at times breath-taking, these are mostly stellar works and together they create what must be called a tour de force. I know of nothing even close to it on the market.

I will most likely review this in greater detail here at BookNotes, but you may want to know that it is soft-back 9 x 10 inches, solid, over 260 sturdy pages. Of the 130-plus images about a third were newly commission for this project.  Besides great ancient art, the woodcuts and etchings and lithographs of contemporary artists are shown, work by renowned artists such as Tanja Butler, Wayne Forte,  the exceptional Edward Knippers, Chris Stoffel Overvoorde, and the spectacular African American craftsman Steve Prince. Some of the finest pieces are from a Lancaster collaborator with Bustard, Matthew L. Clark, and one exceptional piece was done by Margaret Bustard. 

I wish there was a way I could show more of this, as the pieces are very compelling, and arranged so well.  Even the opening inside cover and the closing inside cover pieces are offered with an intentional touch: Durer on creation, and Durer on new creation.  The insight and care put into this is simply phenomenal. 

Consider these delightfully written, compelling endorsements:

Revealed sets out to crush any notion that the Bible is a safe, inspirational read. Instead the artwork here, historic and contemporary, takes a warts-and-all approach to even the most troubling passages, trading well-meaning elision for unvarnished truth. If you gaze deeper, Revealed springs another surprise, too: it debunks the equally prevalent misconception that a sacred anthology ages in the making can offer no single, unifying message. To see that message, however, might just require a second look at verses that make the pious avert their eyes.”

J. Mark Bertrand–novelist, speaker, and founder of the Bible Design Blog

“Of all the stories the biblical authors could have written down for posterity, Revealed homes in on this deleterious collection. These provocative, often-shocking, and relentlessly pervasive stories were not only included in Scripture, but are integral to understanding its message. Revealed not only forces us to look again at those stories, but artfully asks us to meditate on them, engaging both our moral and literary imagination.”

Andrew Johnson–author of Biblical Knowing: A Scriptural Epistemology of Error

“Revealed reminds us that verbal metaphor does not always translate smoothly into visual form. Awkward or not however, visual form does grab our attention and generates a more graphic sense of what words may be saying. So an illustrated text may come alive for us in fresh ways. What comes to life in Revealed is that the Bible is a collection of stories about human foibles and

failure rather than triumph. The surprising images in this illustrated Bible remind us once again that we are saved by Grace.”

Joel Sheesley–professor of art at Wheaton College

“If your Bible reading threatens to become a matter of simply “going through the motions,” this is the book for you! Eye-opening woodcuts, lithographs and etchings accompany short Scripture readings, along with evocative blurbs which, for all their brevity, bear much theological and aesthetic wisdom. This one really is for grown-ups.”

Joseph W. Smith III–author of Sex and Violence in the Bible

“Revealed collects a smart range of beautiful printmaking approaches both old and new to illustrate some of the Bible’s more unique and uncomfortable moments–opening up a fascinating new way to read a familiar text.”

Brenton Good–professor of art at Messiah College

“Revealed is a poignant reminder that worldly pessimism isn’t dark enough, nor is worldly optimism bright enough. The works of art herein are worthy of thorough, meditative study. You will emerge with a deeper sense of God’s willingness to engage the malignancy of the fall.”

William Edgar–professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary

“In Revealed: A Storybook Bible for Grownups difficult passages from scripture–especially the stories “nice” people find offensive–are paired with the art of printmakers and an explanation of what is conveyed by each image. Our imaginations are enlivened as we are led from the shocking murder in the First Family to the terrifying holiness of God. Revealed reminds us that God does not blink or evade the true story of human violence and injustice, but neither does he turn from our intimate acts of love.”

Margie Haack–author of The Exact Place and God in the Sink

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333

We have most of the books by Fleming Rutledge & Michael Gorman (see list below) on sale at a big savings. These deep discounts will only be offered through Wednesday, December 16, 2015.

After that they will revert to our customary BookNotes 20% OFF. 

To receive the 35% off please type in the order form page the CODE 35% OFF. 

The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ  Fleming Rutledge (Eerdmans) $45.00

     Sin is the colossal X-factor in human life. It is not something we do so much as it is our mortal foe. The Cross rears up over all human life because it is the scene of the God’s climactic battle against the Power of a malignant and implacable Enemy. 

A few days ago Beth, our daughter Stephanie and I had the great privilege of hearing the respected and eloquent Episcopalian scholar, pastor and preacher, Fleming Rutledge, hosted by the Ecumenical Institute at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore MD.  One of the first women ordained into the Episcopal Church, she has served churches in New England and, for more than a decade, in New York City.  She is known as an excellent preacher and as a particularly thoughtful, theologically moderate voice, calling us to live out sturdy faith, based on a serious awareness of the great tradition of historic Christian faith and generous orthodoxy.  Which is to say, among other things, she is no fundamentalist, but resists the ways in which modernity has eroded conventional doctrines and core Christian convictions. 

Here is an interview conducted by PBS from a few years back, even hinting that she is working on this finally released book (although you will notice she had, apparently, a different working title.)

As I’ve said, Dr. Rutledge is known around the world as a scholar and pastor, and she has several collections of sermons that have been published — including one on Romans that is excellent. She has twice been a resident Fellow at the Center of Theological
Inquiry in Princeton.  In 2010 she was a Visiting Scholar at the
American Academy in Rome.

Her new book The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, is getting considerable acclaim, and it was fabulous that the EI invited her. We are grateful to them for the opportunity to serve the gathering by displaying her books.  Weighing in at 607 pages (including the footnotes and indexes) it is certainly a work to take seriously.

Here’s what Dr. Craig Higgins (a PCA pastor and board member of the World Reformed Fellowship) wrote in his recent review of the new book:

My friends who get their exercise by running often speak of experiencing
a “runner’s high”; I wouldn’t know. But I do know that, having just
finished Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion, I am experiencing a
“reader’s high.” This book is simultaneously challenging &
captivating, demanding & exhilarating. Having finished it, I can’t
imagine not having read it.

“Reader’s high.” Nice, huh?

With exceptional Southern charm and self-confidence — I couldn’t help but think of Barbara Brown Taylor and her gracious forthrightness in sermons that are at once delightful and arresting — Fleming did not back peddle in her frustration with liberal theological trends that fail to grapple with the full teaching of Scripture or the horrors of our age of terror and genocide.  The holiness of God? Wrath? Judgement? The “Assize” of God?   The relationship of Christ’s death and Older Testament themes of Passover and Exodus?  These are some of the themes we must work with when trying to understand Christ’s atoning death and vindicating resurrection, even if we dare not talk about them simplistically. “God has a case against us and the good news is that Christ is the advocate for the defense” she preached, and it was a thrilling moment! In a way, she sounded like a modern day Karl Barth, standing in that broadly described Reformed tradition.

This kind of theological work is complex, particularly since theological discussions are so polarized, these days; some in the church have overstated (and some understate or rule out altogether) such topics.  One short book that generously brings many varied models and voices to the table is one in the “Living Theology” series edited by Tony Jones,  A Community Called Atonement by Scott McKnight (Abingdon; $18.99.) I highly recommend that for an entry-level introduction. Much more complex, but an excellent overview of 10 different theories and approaches, is Saving Power: Theories of the Atonement and Forms of the Church by Dr. Peter Schmiechen (Eerdmans; $39.50) who is the former President of Lancaster Theological Seminary here in Central PA.

Further, provocatively, she suggests, few make a point of accounting for the gruesome, degrading, public manner of Christ’s death by crucifixion, “a mode of execution so loathsome that the ancient Romans never spoke of it in polite society.”  How does this realization impact our faith, our discipleship, our ethics?  As many have observed, this is academic, but not too much so; it is aimed at clergy and educated congregants, not mostly the academic or scholarly world.

Rev. Dr. Rutledge attempted, and largely succeeded, her daunting task, presenting a brief overview of the new 670 page tour de force, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ  It is a book that she has been working on, on and off, well, she said, “for really, a lifetime.” It is a comprehensive study, analyzing both what the Bible teaches about the public execution of Jesus and the various schools of thought which attempt to explain it, and the rectification — what a word! –that it brings. There has been a flurry of books in the last decade about this topic and numerous texts examining and proposing a new emphasis or framework.  I’ve read a number, but often come back to the very helpful, broad-ranging and readable book by John Stott, my favorite major book on the subject, The Cross of Christ (InterVarsity Press; $27.00.) Dr. Rutledge names that one in her book, as well.

Her’s is truly one of the most magisterial works on the subject in our lifetime.

There were two respondents to Dr. Rutledge’s lecture; first, Dr. Amy Richter, who wrote an exceptional book on the role of bodies in Christian theology, an Advent study, really, about the implications of the incarnation called Love in Flesh and Bone: Exploring the Christmas Mystery (Wipf & Stock; $17.00.)  Rev. Richter not only teaches New Testament at the Ecumenical Institute but is also a parish priest, so her very gracious evaluation of Rutledge’s lecture and book include appreciation for how pastoral helpful it was. I appreciated this.

The heady and thick discussion about various schools of thought regarding the atonement yield fruitful insights that pay off in lived practices, and pastors and church leaders can more profoundly respond to the ethical demands of our faith in the modern world if we are well schooled in classic theology.  Richter observed – and Fleming was passionate about this in her response – that her insistence on a robust view of justification reverberates into habits and practices of just living in a fallen world. (It is a shorter book by a more conservative author, but I suspect Rutledge and Richter would appreciate Tim Keller’s Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just on how the doctrine of justification should compel us to be people of justice.)

Rutledge reminded us that we must be outraged, dealing with the register of radical evil.  “The story of Jesus,” she says, “has cosmic implications” and surely one of these is that it gives us ways to understand the gravity of sin and the victory Christ wins over the ways of Death. (My favorite book of hers is a collection of Holy Week messages, responding to great Christian art, called The Undoing of Death, and she well understands the cosmic reverberations of that.  It makes me think of the line by Sam in Lord of the Rings who wonders if “everything sad will become untrue.”  Indeed, in light of holocausts and terrorism and gross racism and mass starvation and modern slavery and on and on, we need the undoing of Death!)  Richter is right — Rutledge is not just a stern Bible scholar, but a caring pastor who hopes this sturdy stuff will help us navigate these hard times, not falling for “cheap” reconciliation or shallow hopes.   She gave a nod to Miroslov Volf, in fact, as one scholar who has worked on this matter. (Just think of his important Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation.)

Ecumenical Institute Professor and Bible scholar Michael Gorman gave a splendid response to Rutledge, too, and shared several areas in which her views works well alongside his own, the highly acclaimed and very important Pauline books such as Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross and the recent Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission.  (In fact, one of the last chapters in her book is called “Recapitulation, Incorporation, Participation” which I believe helps the conversation about substitution move towards a broader, Kingdom framework, as Gorman and his friend Tom Wright, for instance, have done in their scholarly treatises.  Gorman liked that her book starts with the credo from 1 Corinthians 2:2 “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”  Rutledge seemed to suggest that if she were to do a follow up – her editors advised her to cut a third of the book out, moving the content to another, subsequent work – that it would be something along the lines of Cruciformity with an emphasis of how all this works out in daily discipleship for the life of the world.

Rutledge disagrees with Wright in his criticisms of what some call the “Apocalyptic School” of Pauline interpretation — in part formed by the scholar Ernest Kasaemann. (Rutledge studied at Union in New York under St. Mary’s most famous former professor, the late Raymond Brown who was influential as well.) This “apocalyptic” interpretive grid influences her New Testament work, bringing her into conversation with, although somewhat different from, N.T. Wright’s now famous views of justification informed by his interpretation of “righteousness” in Paul seen as “covenant faithfulness.”  Yet, she is fair and mostly quite thorough in her evaluations and debates with others. (Her footnotes are exceptional, and she discusses everyone from Ridderbos to Girard, from William Placher to Douglas John Hall; she said, jokingly, “doing the names and subject indexes almost killed me.”) The book demanded a tremendous balancing act, holding up the big themes of Christus Victor and themes of justification, sacrifice, substitution (although not “penal”) and recapitulation. 

Beyond a detailed overview, more than only a balancing act, this book — or so it seems to me – is offering a new sort of “blending” and reformulation of classic, important stuff, in important, contemporary ways.  She works with the classic writings of the church Fathers, the medieval scholastics, and the Reformers as well as much 20^th century scholarship, from Bonhoeffer and Barth to Desond Tutu. The Christus Victor motif and the concept of substitution merges with Ieanaeus’ recapitulation model.  And through it all, she draws in insights from literature such as Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy and her beloved Shakespeare. This is, quite simple, one of the most amazing books on this topic I’ve ever seen.

And I am not alone in raving. 

Here is a very thoughtful, thorough review. I am announcing it, inviting you to buy it, but I realize I haven’t really evaluated it.  Here is a very fine review for your consideration.

The many, many endorsements in the front pages are stellar, commending the book – on and on they go, from many quarters, affirming its value and importance.

Here are a few that I invite you to read carefully.  This is truly one of the most acclaimed works of its kind in years.

Stanley Hauerwas
— Duke Divinity School
“This is a work of a lifetime that could only be written by someone who has lived a life determined by the cross.” 

Scot McKnight
— author of The Jesus Creed
“In this amazingly complex but clear book Fleming Rutledge goes deftly where few seem willing to go — to the variety of imaginations shaping early Christian explorations of the significance of Jesus’ death. She is one of the few theologians who not only preach inclusivism but practice it by inviting all points of view into the discussion.”

Marilyn McCord Adams
— Rutgers University
“To those who think they want a maximally mellow God who overlooks our faults and accepts us just as we are, Rutledge’s challenge is to ‘get real.’ Twentieth-century atrocities bear witness: there is something drastically wrong with the human condition, which only God can fix. Setting things right calls for crucifixion, not only Christ’s but also ours. Rutledge has given us a very Pauline book, full of information and observations to provoke clergy to preach the cross to their congregations.”

Leanne Van Dyk
— Columbia Theological Seminary
“Before we can get to the glorious resurrection, we must take full account of the tragic necessity of the cross. . . . Penetrating and unflinching in its insistence on Jesus Christ, condemned, crucified, dead, and buried, this book powerfully demonstrates that the crucifixion of the Son of God is good news of cosmic and comprehensive scope.”

Richard J. Mouw
— Fuller Theological Seminary
“Though I have been thinking much about the cross of Christ for a half-century now, Fleming Rutledge has taught me many new things in this wonderful book. And where she addresses matters that I have long cherished, she has inspired me anew. This book is a gift to all of us who pray for a genuine revival of crucicentric preaching and cruciform discipleship!”

George Hunsinger
— Princeton Theological Seminary
“After publishing numerous books of powerful sermons, remarkable for their biblical depth and their contemporary relevance, Fleming Rutledge has now produced this profound volume on the saving significance of Christ’s death. She makes the welcome argument that Christus Victor themes need to be counterbalanced by priestly elements like substitution and expiation. . . . Here is the kind of strong theology that will undergird strong preaching. Preachers who take this book to heart could well revitalize the church.”

Katherine Sonderegger
— Virginia Theological Seminary
“Fleming Rutledge here lays out the horror of the cross with unflinching honesty and with a patient, full exposition of the rich themes of Christ’s redeeming death. She does not shy away from the demands of her theological vision, taking up motifs of satisfaction, substitution, rectification, and divine wrath in turn. Throughout, Rutledge draws on the rich storehouse of a preacher. The whole world stands under her gaze — literary examples, political folly and cruelty, horrendous evils of war and torment and torture, religious timidity and self-deception, human faithlessness and sin. But always the gospel rings out. Christ’s cross has won the victory, and it is all from God. This book is a moving testimony to the courage, intelligence, and faithfulness of one of the church’s premier preachers. Every student of the Scriptures needs this book.”

John D. Witvliet
— Calvin Institute of Christian Worship
“A deeply probing and richly evocative exploration of the central mystery of the Christian faith. This is a book to contemplate, to savor, to reread. It promises to nourish renewed Christian preaching, a new generation of Christian poets and hymnwriters, and ministries of witness, evangelism, pastoral care, worship, and Christian education that brim with doxological testimonies about the counter-intuitive, counter-cultural reality of Jesus’ life-giving death. It is easy to glibly repeat Paul’s claim that Jesus’ death is a scandal and stumbling block. It is quite something else to let that claim transform how you perceive the world and the triune God who created it. This book confronts all that is glib and evokes that life-giving transformation.”

Mark Galli
— editor of Christianity Today
“I can hardly think of a book more necessary for our time. Many well-meaning attempts to summarize the good news today barely allude to the cross, and we’re left with an anemic if not a false gospel. Read, mark, and inwardly digest this book if you want to learn about the cross that truly rectifies the ungodly, even the likes of you and me.”

Paul Scott Wilson
— University of Toronto
“In beautiful flowing words, Fleming Rutledge encourages the church to get over its often embarrassed silence on the crucifixion. Her immediate accomplishment is brilliant. She recovers a rich array of biblical images relating to Christ’s death and places them within the final stages of a drama in which God is the principal actor and humanity has a vital role. Persistent readers will find their hearts transformed. Preachers will be emboldened to speak more frequently of the cross, contributing to the gospel renewal of the church.”

Nicholas Wolterstorff
— Yale University
“The word that came to my mind as I read Fleming Rutledge’s book The Crucifixion was ‘bracing’: the book is bracing in its vigorous affirmation of the centrality of Christ’s crucifixion in the Christian proclamation, bracing in its description of the unspeakable horror and shame of the crucifixion, bracing in its affirmation that we are one and all sinners, bracing in its identification and rejection of the many forms of theological silliness now inhabiting the church. Though meant for pastors and laypeople, this book will also benefit scholars. It carries its deep learning with eloquence and grace. I will be returning to it.”

J. Louis Martyn ^†
— Union Theological Seminary
“In the crucifixion we sense anew the intersection at which Christian drama and Christian dogma meet one another with announcements that are emphatically universal and nothing less than cosmic. At that intersection we are truly fortunate to have the voice of Fleming Rutledge, one of the most gifted theological preachers of our time. In her writing we encounter the confluence of high drama and arresting dogma, as they work together to strengthen the preacher and provide a high-protein diet that will nourish the congregation to vigorous health.”

Stephen Westerholm
— McMaster University
“If churches of the twenty-first century are to bear any relation to those of the first, then the cross of Christ must return to the center of their proclamation and life: that, in essence, is the message of Fleming Rutledge’s Crucifixion, a book that should serve to mediate much contemporary biblical scholarship on the subject to ministers and other interested readers. Unlike a good deal of that scholarship, however, Rutledge treats a variety of New Testament motifs that speak to the salvific effects of Christ’s death, refusing to allow any one motif to so dominate the discussion as to exclude the others. Richly illustrated with examples from literature and current events, this book should prove a gold mine for preachers at the same time as it invites the careful reflection of every reader on the mystery of salvation.”

Douglas Harink
— The King’s University, Edmonton, Canada
“In this bold, uncompromising, nuanced, and expansive work Rutledge takes us through — and beyond — theories of atonement, avoiding all merely individualistic, spiritualized, religious, moralistic, and therapeutic reductions of the meaning of the crucifixion. Rutledge resolutely proclaims the truth of Christ crucified. To all priests, preachers, and professors: if you care about the church and its mission in history, read this book!”

Joseph Mangina
— University of Toronto
” ‘Who put the roses on the cross?’ asked Goethe, who in fact preferred that the brutal cross be covered in roses. Fleming Rutledge brushes the roses aside and asks us to look at the cross and, even more so, at Him who hung upon it for our sake. This is a book marked by outstanding exegesis, theology, and pastoral sensitivity — a book for thinking Christians and even thinking unbelievers.”

Martinus C. de Boer
— VU University Amsterdam
“In this thoroughly readable book, preacher-theologian Fleming Rutledge demonstrates that she is also a fine exegete. She brings recent scholarship on Paul’s apocalyptic theology (in particular the work of J. Louis Martyn) fruitfully to bear in her profound and far-ranging theological reflections on the crucifixion. Through careful exegetical study of the Bible in dialogue with a range of interpreters, she has produced a book that merits a wide readership among theologians, biblical scholars, and preachers.”

Dirk Smit
— University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
“Fleming Rutledge’s reputation as a preacher is widely known, her rhetorical skills — of logos, ethos, and pathos; of content, engagement, and passion — widely respected. This treatment of the crucifixion — the fruit of almost two decades, and indeed of a lifelong journey — could in fact also be read as one long sermon. . . . What does it mean to say that Jesus Christ died for us? Honestly facing her own resistance to many traditional and contemporary framings of this question, she consults widely and delves deeply into biblical, historical, and interpretive material in search of her own answers. . . . Informing, reminding, critiquing, illustrating, unmasking, challenging, reassuring, encouraging, and inspiring, she writes for both preachers and listeners. The question Will it preach? is in fact her major concern. The answer can only be a resounding and grateful Yes!”

HERE ARE THE BOOKS WE HAVE ON SALE AT THE LIMITED TIME OFFER – 35% OFF (After Wednesday 12/16/15 they remain at 20% off for BookNotes readers.)

BY FLEMING RUTLEDGE

The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans) $45.00 — $29.25

Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Sermons from Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Eerdmans) $22.00 – $14.30

The Undoing of Death (Eerdmans) $22.00 – $14.30

And God Spoke to Abraham: Preaching from the Old Testament (Eerdmans) $30.00 – $19.50

BY MICHAEL GORMAN

Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (Eerdmans) $28.00 – $18.20

Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Eerdmans) $38.00 –  $24.70

Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology  (Eerdmans) $25.00 – $16.25

Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters  (Eerdmans) $44.00 – $28.60     

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333

Lots of new books keep coming out, and I know that some of our friends are still in need for good Christmas gift ideas.  How do I know this?  Hmm.  I could say a certain holiday elf told me or I could quote Ecclesiastes about how there is no end of new titles. (Who knew they had an issue with discerning what to read, even then.)  It’s my joy to get to tell you about wonderful new or recent titles.  These are all great and remind us why we value books so.  Enjoy.

And, for those that stick to it, we even offer a free book at the end. A serious one, too!

Just for fun, I group these in handy little pairs.  They are all on sale, any way you choose ’em.  We’ll take 20% off when you click at the order link below. Or, if you’d rather, give us a call, old-school at 717-246-3333.  We’re open 10 am – 8 pm (but always closed Sunday) EST.

ART and POETRY

Hungry Spring & Ordinary Song: Collected Poems (an autobiography of sorts)  Phyllis Tickle (Paraclete Press) $18.00  This just arrived, and as I read the beautiful introduction (written in the very last season of her life) I was brought back to the last time I was with Phyllis; as anyone who knew her can testify, she made me feel like an intimate friend.  We talked about other places we’ve crossed paths – she was passionately ecumenical and easy-going (and candid!) around varying denominations.  What a delight to be in the setting of a liberal mainline denomination (which she loved), talking about the conservative Acts 29 church plant she attended, showing off books I wanted her to buy.  And we talked about words, about her long life, about books and publishing and reviewing; on several occasions she honored us with great encouragement and kind blessings.  We didn’t talk about poetry, though, and now I wish we would have! I had no idea!

Jon Sweeney, who edited the excellent anthology of her life-long writing work (Phyllis Tickle: Essential Spiritual Writings) says “I think Phyllis was a poet first and foremost, before anything else.”  This is evident in the first glorious paragraph of her introduction (any aspiring poet should read it, as should anyone who wants to know what Tickle was pondering as she prepared her “autobiography of sorts” as she moved from this world to the next.)  Yes, these are stunning poems, by an important woman in our literary landscape.  That she gives occasional comments in this edition explaining the context or point of certain poems makes it that much useful, drawing us into her life as she shares it with us in such artful ways.

Several of these beautiful  poems – some so very tender, some worshipful, some fierce — were written in the last years of her life, although many were written before she was famous, as a young mother, one who lost babies and who worked hard and noticed much on their Western Tennessee farm.  These are stunning, so good that I would confidently recommend them to serious poets and readers of poems, but also to those of us for whom poetry sometimes seem to be nearly a foreign language. She has an exceptional gift of using words and phrases so very colorfully, but without being cryptic or obscure. 

As Margaret Britton Vaughn, Poet Laureate of Tennessee, “Phyllis Tickle uses words as Vermeer used paint; both bring a unique light to their word. The page became a canvas, and master writer Phyllis Tickle’s pen brushed her life, family, friends, then framed them in a sense of place.”

The Operation of Grace: Further Essays on Art, Faith, and Mystery Gregory Wolfe (Image/Wipf & Stock) $25.00  I hope you know the sophisticated (dare I call it high-brow) arts journal, Image, edited so faithfully for years by the always brilliant, quite sharp Gregory Wolfe. We continue to stock Bearing the Mystery, their sturdy hardback anthology which served as a celebration of their 20^th anniversary a few years back; which includes some of the best faith-based writers working today (Annie Dillard, Scott Cairnes, Clyde Edgerton, Densie Levertov, Ann Patchett,  Wim Winders,  etc.)  Greg always has a fabulously written, often provocative, generative opening essay in Image and the first collection of these wonderful short pieces appeared in the very cool paperback (with black and white illustrations by Barry Moser!) published by Square Halo Books, Intruding Upon the Timeless.  Who can resist a book with a title like that? Wolfe is learned and insightful and witty and in these pieces he offers a perfect representative of the best of the faith/art/literature conversation these days.  Either one – the big  Bearing anthology he edited, or the Square Halo Timeless book of short essays – would make great gifts.

Or this. The brand new The Operation of Grace brings together a second collection of his lovely, inspired, important essays from Image. These may be “occasional pieces” but as Lauren Winner says in an endorsing blurb, “they add up to a marvelous whole… at times winsome, at times bracing.”  Yes, there are themes of grace, of mystery and there are reviews and studies and ruminations, references to art history and contemporary poets and pieces with titles such as “Why The Inklings Aren’t Enough” and “Scenes from an Editorial Life” and “The Culture Wars Revisited.”  

I love the endorsement from Mako Fujimura who writes

Gregory Wolfe is to the burgeoning art and faith movement what Camille Pissarro was to the Impressionist movement – a central pillar, a wise teacher, an irreplaceable presence. One simply cannot imagine today’s art and faith conversation without his voice

DYING and GRIEF

A Faithful Farewell: Living Your Last Chapter with Love Marilyn Chandler McEntyre (Eerdmans) $15.00  I have often raved about Marilyn McEntyre, back when she was publishing handsome books of poetry, and, more recently, a lovely book reflecting on short phrases from the Bible (What’s in a Phrase? Pausing Where Scriptures Give You Pause, the lovely forward of which I’ve often read out loud in workshops) or her spectacularly inspiring and valuable Stone Lectures at Princeton on the stewardship of language, wonderfully entitled Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.  So when I saw she was doing a set of short reflections on the approach of death I was curious – why this? – and yet was confident it would be unlike anything in print.  What a lovely little book!

Clearly and profoundly Christian without being sentimental or clichéd, it is just what we’d expect from a woman who cares for words: “refreshingly frank and deeply faithful” as Michael Lindvall puts it.  Others who work with the dying or in health care professions have said it is “sensitive and helpful encouragement” and “quietly graceful and grace-filled” and “startlingly real and profound in hope.”  If you know anyone who is interested in reading a practical set of Bible reflections on their own “long journey” (or not so long, as the case may be) A Faithful Farewell will be a beautiful companion.  It seems obvious to me that those who care for the dying, or those preparing for the eventual loss of a loved one, or want to see in simple, clear, riveting prose a Biblically-informed vision for processing this final journey will also benefit from this extraordinary, beautiful, wise book.  Thank you, Ms McEntyre, for stewarding words well, and for helping us all with these short pieces.

A Long Letting God: Meditations on Losing Someone You Love Marilyn Chandler McEntyre (Eerdmans) $15.00  Did I tell you that I often rave about Marilyn McEntyre?  Ha – see above!  Yes, this new book is a very handsome companion volume, a short collection of meditations in the spirit of A Faithful Farewell.  This is a set of “wise, nurturing reflections for caregivers letting go of loved ones.” It is less about bereavement after the death of a loved one, but a book for caregivers as they are in that season of accompanying a loved one to their final days on Earth.  It invites caregivers to slow down for reflection and prayer as they prepare to say good-bye to a beloved friend or family member, even as they are grieving that coming loss. I know that some of you need this book, and many know someone who does.  It is a nice little gift, I assure you.

Based on McEntyre’s personal and profession experience with the dying, these gentle meditations – each consisting of a short opening quote, a reflection and a prayer – offer comfort, guidance, hope, respite.  It is beautifully written (I’ve only dipped in briefly, but will cherish it over time, I’m sure.)

Michael Card (who himself has two must-read books on lament and expressing grief) says, simply but importantly, that “Marilyn McEntyre embodied simple, patient kindness in the pages of this book.”  Samuel Wells (formerly of Duke, now vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London) says “Going gently with her into the prison of death will set you free.”  Wow.

JUSTICE and MISSION

Faith on the Road: A Short Theology of Travel & Justice Joerg Rieger (IVP Academic) $18.00 Just when I thought nearly everything that needs saying about a Biblically-rooted, spiritually rigorous view of social justice has mostly been said, here is a fresh and remarkably interesting new book, offering a vision of being “on the road” and how this might serve as a metaphor for justice ministries.  It a shows so how such a view of being a ‘sojourner’ or ‘exile’ might gives us important angles of vision for activism and advocacy. Rieger is an internationally known theologian and activist and while he is not the first to develop these themes, his direct study of travel, here, is clever and helpful (and brief.) It looks like a fantastic resource.

You may know that I’ve written a lot about a sense of place, about being literally grounded, about a vision of discipleship that is creation-based, for the life of the world, tending towards the local and therefore resisting the glamour of moving up and away; the spectacular (dense) book Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Steven Bouma-Prediger & Brian Walsh remains a central, vital book for our time,  I think, and it sides with the marginalized even as it eschews a worldview that is place-less, inviting us to a sort of homecoming. My own book, the anthology of speeches that I edited called Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life, in fact, starts with an intro reminding young adults that they might not need to embrace glitzy visions of changing the world in far-away, big-city ways but might take up a small-town, staying-put sort of spirituality of home-making.  These days we maybe need a Jayber Crow, or at least a Gene Peterson,  to tell us it is good to stay put.

And then comes along Joerg Rieger – his other heady books that we stock include Occupy Religion and Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times – and he gives us here a succinct reminder that “God looks different from the dusty roads of Galilee than from the safety of the temple in Jerusalem. Today, God looks different from the street level of our cities than from the corner offices of economic, political, and religious privilege.”

What can we learn from those on the move, from various forms of contemporary travel? Might Christian and Jewish traditions that developed from communities in exile and on the road guide us in this new century? Rieger makes the case – maybe not the whole picture, I’d caution – that “from the exile from Eden to the wandering of Jesus and his disciples, the story of Scripture is a dynamic narrative of ceaseless movement.”  Okay, so here is a brief “theology of the road” and “from the road” written by a liberation-oriented motorcyclist. (Yep, it’s true.) Can his proposals transform our hearts to be more than tourists in our sojourn on Earth, even as we embrace travel, at least as a metaphor of movement? This is punchy, stimulating stuff.

Christian Mission in the Modern World: Updated and Expanded John Stott & Christopher J.H. Wright (IVP) $17.00  Now is not the time or place to tell this story fully, but I think it can be argued that this is one of the most important books of the last 50 years; it was first published in 1975 – just after Stott’s contribution as principle framer of the 1974 Lausanne Covenant, an international gathering of evangelical leaders from around the globe (in part convened by Billy Graham!) which struggled to answer tough questions about the relationship of faith and justice, evangelism and social action, spirituality and cultural engagement. This little book popularized the wholistic vision that emerged from that conference and pressed the global church (or, might I say, the Western church, largely inspired by those in the developing nations who understood more than most in the West) to be agents of reconciliation and restoration, working out the implications of the Kingdom in all areas of life amidst the currents of the modernizing and secularizing world.  The legendary work of  Rev. Stott (carried on today by his Langham Partnerships) pushed this vision forward, combining creative but stubbornly orthodox theology with socially progressive calls to resist racism, overcome poverty, care for creation, and the like. Stott was theologically impeccable, charming, Biblically-helpful, and politically balanced/wise.

One of the helpful features of Christian Mission in the Modern World is how it reminds us, even amidst this huge matter of defining a wholistic Kingdom vision for mission in the third world, it also offers a delightfully clear-eyed and passionate call for ordinary folks to serve God in their daily callings into the work-world.  In this, it anticipated not only the missional church movement, but the faith/work conversations which are growing so popularly nowadays with our realization that “work matters” as we live into “visions of vocation.”

(Indeed, a paragraph from the first edition of this book about serving God in industry and the arts and various professions and farming and public life graced a brochure announcing the CCO’s famous Jubilee conference, which remained in my Bible for decades.)  The original edition of this book is a treasure, a classic, and I’ve often felt it ought to be more often read and used among us.

And now, there is this full revision, a brand new expansion done by Christopher Wright (the international ministries direct of the Langham Partnership.) You may know his many books on Old Testament ethics and his serious texts such as The Mission of God, or may have heard of his significant work drafting the 2010 Capetown Town Commitment from the Third Lausanne Congress. (That document, by the way, is available, as a nice, short booklet on multi-faceted, socially-engaged, evangelical mission. Let us know if you’re interested!)  As an ordained clergyperson in the Church of England, Wright also serves on staff of the church Stott once pastored, All Souls in London.  

Wright both slightly revised Stott’s chapters and added his own reflections as new chapters following Stott’s good stuff, chapter by chapter.  So, you see, the new version of Christian Mission in the Modern World has five new chapters, each one by Wright moving Stott’s case further along, applying his writing to the hypermodern 21^st century world.  Thank God for this great, updated version of a classic, made all the more useful, interesting, reliable, and urgent.

 DRAMATIC NARRATIVE and QUIET MEMOIR

Dangerous Love: A True Story of Tragedy, Faith, and Forgiveness in the Muslim World Ray Norman (Nelson) $22.99  This publishing house has done some excellent memoirs in the last decade – starting with Blue Like Jazz and other Donald Miller books, perhaps, they realized the usefulness of releasing well done, even edgy creative nonfiction.  This, though, is less an artsy memoir and more a gripping narrative, a high-drama page-turner that, as Richard Stearns of World Vision puts it, “captures not only the violent clash of civilizations that has torn apart our twenty-first century world but also illuminates one thing that might just save us all – the power of faith and forgiveness to head and redeem.”  Dangerous Love is a real life testimony that is a powerful read, urgent in these days of political pundits and even some religious leaders talking like worldly thugs, promoting retribution and violence. It is a book for our times, a story worth knowing and telling.

Ray Norman is the director for Faith Leadership, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at World Vision International and former national director for World Vision’s program in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania. (He is also a former academic dean at Messiah College, near us here in central Pennsylvania.) Norman was raised in rural West Africa, a missionary kid, and soon became an experienced expat, having lived all over the world, when he arrived in Mauritania around the turn of the millennium.  I suppose I don’t have to tell you that in the aftermath of 9/11things were tense in many parts of the world.  I will not spoil the story, but you will soon learn that both Norman and his daughter, Hannah, were shot by Islamic extremists, rushed to an emergency care facility in Senegal, fighting for their lives.  In a story that could be pulled from this week’s news, the FBI and other international law enforcement professionals were investigating the shooters and their religio-political contacts.  How did the Norman family get so deeply involved in this tragedy? What was his agency’s role in the country?  What will they do next?  In a moving and thoughtfully told part of the story, the family, years later, returned to Africa, only to meet those who attempted to kill them.

Dr. Norman (a respected world-class scientist – with a PhD from Cornell – and a recognized leader in global development issues) tells this story very, very nicely, drawing on fine writers and spiritual leaders, with a believable, but wise, seasoned voice. His good friend, Dennis Hollinger (now President of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) writes, of Dangerous Love: A True Story…

A remarkable story of living and forgiving an ‘enemy’ in the aftermath of 9/11… Told with generosity, graced, and humility, Ray’s narrative goes against the grain of the politics of hate and revenge so prevalent in our world… This story needs to be heard everywhere!

Sky Lantern: The Story of a Father’s Love for His Children and the Healing Power of the Smallest Act of Kindness Matt Mikalatos (Howard/Simon & Schuster) $24.99  Okay, I’m just going to say it.  I ordered this book firstly because I love the author, who has a very creative imagination, and who I’ve met, and who has written some hilarious books about what it would be like if Bible stories were played out in contemporary times. (The newest such lark is an updated retelling of the story of the book of Acts called Intro the Fray. You should order it!)  So, I thought this was one of those.  And, I loved the cover, I really loved the cover.  Whatever; I blew the first assessment as this is, in fact, a true memoir, not a Bible study, spoofy or otherwise. (Although the cover is still awesome and inviting.)  I cannot wait to read this book, as Matt is a heck of a writer, it carries a coveted Homer “Rocket Boys” Hickam blurb on the front, and, well, the story is just remarkable.  You will hardly believe it.  Here is what it says on the back cover:

“Love you, Dad. Miss you so much. Steph.”

A brokenhearted daughter scribbled those words on a sky lantern before setting it aloft. She had no way of knowing the lantern would fly halfway across the country.

Matt Mikalatos found the lantern, broken and crushed, the words still legible. As a father of three daughters, Matt could not let Steph’s heart-wrenching note go unanswered, but he wasn’t sure where he could find her. So he posted an open letter to her on his blog, which went viral overnight. Little did he know how that small act of kindness would lead him to the real Steph and change his family’s life in remarkable ways.

A poignant and lyrical account of the beauty and wonder of domestic life, Sky Lantern tells the miraculous events that followed Matt finding the sky lantern in his yard–of meeting Steph and forming a friendship that impacted him and his family–proving that the bond between a parent and their child is lasting and far-reaching.

Sky Lantern will bring a tear to your eyes and a smile to your face as you fall in love with Matt and his family in this heartwarming, beautifully written memoir.

This book is for people with questions about what it means to love, to be loved, and to love well. It’s for anyone who has had a parent relationship: absent, complicated, or amazing. It’s about embracing the truth about ourselves: that we are worthy of love, and that love makes our lives worth living. 

NEW KUYPER and a FREE KUYPER

Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto Abraham Kuyper (Lexham Press) $49.99  This is a handsome, large, and wonderfully made big book that is a flagship title in the “Collected Works in Public Theology” series that is being done in part by the good folks at the Acton Institute.  You may know Acton as the producers of the wildly popular and enthusiastically appreciated DVD curriculum For the Life of the World: Letters from the Exiles. Perhaps, if you bought the Field Guide study booklet to go with the DVD you’ll know (or if you are a really, really astute viewer, or have read me at BookNotes describing it with gusto) that  FLOW star Evan sports a tee shirt with the scribbled visage of the old Dutch statesman, Father Abraham himself  (Reverend Kuyper lived in Holland from 1837 – 1920 and is a theological hero of a growing movement emphasizing uniquely Christian cultural and intellectual engagement for the common good.)

Our Program is Dr. Kuyper’s large, urgent work explaining his understanding of the task of the state, a Christian vision of government, various spheres of life working cooperatively, religious pluralism – freedom for all faith communities! – and why Reformed evangelicals, especially, needed to band together for principled social action for the common good. (His vision was set, largely, against the rising secularity which derived its humanistic principles from the violent French Revolution.)

Kuyper started the first Christian political party in modern democracy (as well as the first religious university not run by church or state, the Free University of Amsterdam, a Christian labor movement, a daily newspaper, and more) and was elected Prime Minister in the early 1900s.  I cut  some of my own teeth learning about worldviews and faithful vocations in the world with intellectual rigor hearing of this stuff in the mid-1970s, and our bookstore would not have quite the orientation it does had we not been taught this vibrant alternative, a third way between the so called left and right.  We are pleased to announce the release of this big volume, and glad to offer it at a discounted price.

Here are some significant endorsements that might convince you this is worth having or giving to anyone interested in the conversations about mature faith and distinctive politics.

In describing how Kuyper was the intellectual force for a new way of doing politics, George Harinck of the VU University writes,

Our Program illustrates how Kuyper turned politics from an elite business into a public affair, how he changed the public involvement in politics from a single issue activity into permanent action, and how he challenged liberal politics based on reason and consensus by introducing a debating culture in Parliament based on conflicting worldviews. It is amazing how relevant this monument in political history still is.  Read it, and you will be encouraged to make your voice heard!

James Bratt, professor of history at Calvin College, and author of the definitive big bio of Kuyper, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat writes:

Abraham Kuyper was trained as a theologian and self-trained as a political thinker and organizer. This comprehensive Program, which Kuyper crafted in the process of forming the Netherlands’ first mass political party, brought the theology, the political theory, and the organizational vision together brilliantly in a coherent set of policies that spoke directly to the needs of his day. Our Program served for decades as an inspiration to Kuyper’s followers and set a high standard for his opponents to match. For us, it sets out the challenge of envisioning what might e an equivalent witness in our own day.

Greg Foster, Program director of Faith, Work and Economics at the Kern Foundation, and author of the vibrant call to cultural renewal, Joy To The World says,

It is a scandal and a disgrace that we have all read Burke’s response to the French Revolution, but few in the English-speaking world have read the equally profound and equally consequential response of Abraham Kuyper – a response that has a least as much to say to twenty-first-century readers as Burke’s. It has been truly said that American never produced a really great political philosopher and has had to borrow them from Europe; Kuyper deserves a place besides Locke and Tocqueville as a titanic European intellect whose thought can help us understand the American experiment in religious liberty and constitutional democracy.

Kudos to the Kuyper Translation Project and the Acton Institute. And to the general editors Jordan J. Ballor and Melvin Flikkema for their labor of love, a historic undertaking of such a large, on-going publishing project. Hat tip to Harry Van Dyke for his own work as head of the team that did this particular volume.  The prefaces and introductory materials are exceptionally helpful for those of us mostly unfamiliar with the details of this big work.  I suspect they have no illusion that this volume will spur on a Christian political party, but it might offer some historically seasoned, Biblically-thoughtful, serious-minded principles to get us beyond the increasingly shrill and often stupid rhetoric from the right and left in North American civic life.  If this can help, I can only say, read on!  Spread the word!  

FREE BOOK OFFER: 

WITH ANY PURCHASE OF OUR PROJECT: A CHRISTIAN POLITICAL MANIFESTO  BY ABRAHAM KUYPER WE WILL SEND TO YOU A COMPLIMENTARY PAPERBACK EDITION OF THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY, KUYPER’S DRAMATIC SPEECH GIVEN AT THE INAUGURATION OF THE FIRST CHRISTIAN SOCIAL CONGRESS IN 1891.

IT INCLUDES A FINE FOREWORD BY JAMES SKILLEN ILLUSTRATING ITS RELEVANCE YET TODAY.

FREE, WITH OUR COMPLIMENTS.  ORDER TODAY.

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333

Thanks to those who expressed appreciation for the Advent
list we put together a week or so ago; Hearts & Minds friends sharing these
suggested resources with others helps us get the word out about great books, and,
yes, it helps us garner some orders, orders that are much-needed on this end.

Here are some other resources that we think will help you
strengthen your faith, discover a sense of sanity, a deeper understanding of
and commitment to the Story of God of which we are a part this great, if
complicated, time of year.  That is
what we all want, right? It is what you
want for yourself and those you love, I’m sure.  You know, I hope, that books can help nudge us in the right
direction, provide insight and encouragement, inform us and bring pleasure as reading them strengthens our resolve.  These
are tools of the trade, blessings in small packages. We’d be foolish not to
pass ’em out this time of year.  I
mean it sincerely when I say we are here to help. 

You can easily order by clicking on the link found below.

The Meaning is in the Waiting: The Spirit of Advent Paula
Gooder (Paraclete Press) $15.99 This came out years ago in the UK from
Canterbury Press and was wisely picked up a while back by the good folks at
Paraclete Press. This edition has
a spectacular foreword by Lauren Winner – reminiscent of her beautifully astute
introduction to Bobby Gross’s Living the
Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God. (I get out that book and
read Lauren’s intro every year this time of year.)  In this one, she expresses her desire to have the church
year – which orients us towards God’s time, focused on God’s redemptive work in
Christ – shape her sense of time more than, say, the academic year (which
starts in September) or the government year (tax day!)  Oh, to have our very sense of time and
the calendars we inhabit be formed by the person of Christ.

In The Meaning is in
the Waiting Gooder helps us learn the spiritual practice of waiting, even making
the case that it is vital to our wellbeing. She helps us (as she has in other
lovely, poetic books) see God in the ordinary.  She deftly explores the real-world people who are the
described in the Biblical stories for this time of year, Abraham and Sarah, the
Hebrew prophets, John the Baptist, and Mary.  And then there is this:  Winner writes, “In this winsome yet provocative Advent
devotional I began to sense something I had not understood before, in any of my
other Advent observances – it is not just we who wait. God is waiting, too. “The
Lord waits, that He may be gracious unto you,’ says Isaiah, one of the prophets
who interests Paula Gooder most. 
God waits on us, for our attention, for our visits home; God waits for
our vision and our ear.” This is a rich, thoughtful little book and I commend
it to you.

Walking Backwards to Christmas Stephen Cottrell
(Westminster/John Knox) $14.00 this is a fun and interesting little book, with
two very distinctive features. 
Firstly, as the title suggests, it walks us through the Christmas season
stories backwards.  That is, it starts with the end of
the story, so to speak, with Jesus being presented at the temple to Anna and
Simeon, and moves backward through Herod’s slaughter of the innocents, the wise
men’s visits, Jesus’ birth in the stable, Mary’s pregnancy, and finally to the
much-earlier hopes and dreams of Isaiah and even Moses!  Yes, the first chapter is Moses!

A second feature will make this most helpful for some that
need creative resources this time of year. Each chapter is written as a
first-person monologue, so it tells the story through the eyes of these
well-known figures.  Other imagined
characters show up, too – the innkeepers wife, for instance. Cottrell is a fine
writer (his creative retelling of the characters of the Easter narrative is
called The Nail.) A few of these
pieces could even be read out loud as they are lively and dramatic.  A few are more subtle; Isaiah is moody
and mostly about his interior life and visions, understandably. Paul Strobe
(who wrote Walking with Jesus through the
Old Testament) says that “Cottrell truly ‘gets inside’ the characters,
including their sorrow and anger and uncertainty as well as their hope and
faith.”

Five Questions of Christmas: Unlocking the Mystery Rob Burkhart
(Abingdon) $16.99 At first I thought this was a fine but perhaps unremarkable
set of meditations on the Bible stories and their application to today.  I suspect these could have been a good
sermon series — inviting us to ask how we can find truth and meaning, wonder why
there is such suffering, pointing us to trust the unseen, design and embody a
future hope in the here and now. 
And then I realized that between each of the five meditations is a set
piece, a very well-written narrative about Burkhart’s own holiday experiences.  These vignettes, each dated, reveal some truly
extraordinary stuff — Christmases full of great tragedy and unforgettable
experiences from his own life; they frame the Biblical messages, and add
real-world grit, insisting that we embody the evangelical promises in the real
world of beauty and sorrow.  Burkhart has an MDiv from Fuller and has been a leader within the Assemblies of God for more than 30
years. This is nicely written, but carries a not-so-subtle subtext: in this
world as we know it, sometimes asking the questions is as important as
declaring answers. This really is an interesting, good book.

The God of All Flesh And Other Essays Walter Brueggemann
(Cascade) $22.00  This is brand
new, another profound collection of essays by the premier Old Testament scholar
and passionate preacher.  It
includes 9 serious chapters, all previously published in mostly obscure
sources, so this brings them to a wider readership. The theme is described on
the back quite nicely:

Biblical faith is passionately and relentlessly material in
its accent. This claim is rooted in the conviction that the creator God loves
and cares for the creation and summons creation to be in sync with the will of
the creator God. This collection of essays is focused on the bodily life of the
world as it ordered in all of its problematic political and economic forms. The
phrase of the title, “all flesh,” in the flood narrative of Genesis 9, refers
to all living creatures who are in covenant with God — human beings, animals,
birds, and fish – as recipients of God’s grace, as dependent upon God’s
generosity, and as destined for praise and obedience to God.

As you may guess, this accent about the materiality of the
Christian faith and true Biblical religion is an alternative to any sort of
piety that wishes to transcend or escape the world and the matters of politics
and economics. Brueggy writes, “Such a temptation is a serious misreading of
the Bible and a serious misjudgment about the nature of human existence.”

While this isn’t an Advent book as such, it certainly seems
apropos as we move into this season of incarnation.  We stock all of his provocative, dense books, and are proud
to celebrate the release of this brand new one.

The First Days of Jesus: The Story of the Incarnation Andreas
J. Kostenberger & Alexander E. Stewart (Crossway) $17.99  This is a rare and important kind of
book – exceptionally erudite, written by two of the best conservative Biblical
scholars working today, offered in a way that is readable and truly
interesting. It is not an Advent devotional, but it is perfect for serious
reading this time of year. For Sunday school teachers, campus ministers or
preachers needing to come up (once again!) with meaningful seasonal sermons or
classes, getting this essential doctrine right is of exceptional urgency. The First Days… is a remarkable book,
meaty but fascinating, with lots of close Biblical study and scholarly insight
about historical and contextual matters – from the birth narratives and on to
the earliest days of Jesus as recorded in Matthew, Luke, and John.  Paul Maier notes that it “is a welcome
antidote to the cheap sensationalism in recent books on Jesus that try to
demolish every reason for regarding Christmas as “the most wonderful time of
the year.”  Kudos.

Belief Matters: Incarnation: The Surprising Overlap of Heaven &
Earth William H. Willimon (Abingdon) $13.99  We’ve announced this one before (as well as the others in
the ongoing series, such as the smart and useful one by our friend and local
pastor, Kenneth Loyer, called Holy Communion,
and the latest, by the always upbeat and interesting Jason Byasee, The Trinity.)  In each case, these short books are designed to be quick
reads for ordinary folks who want a helpful guide to key theological topics
(and why they matter.)  Willimon is
the senior editor of the project, and he inaugurated the series with this one
on the notion of the incarnation. 
I loved it, and found it helpful, provocative, and inspiring. A perfect
time of year for this quick, important read, although the point will last you a lifetime.  Chapter four is called “Life in Light of the Incarnation” which is a good reminder of the catch-phrase of the series: Belief Matters.  It really does.

CD  Waiting Songs Rain for Roots  $15.99

I hope you recall that we’ve
exclaimed our appreciation for this quartet of folk-singing moms and their
commitment to doing very cool acoustic singer-song-writer styled songs for
children. The first two releases (Big Stories for Little Ones and The Kingdom of Heaven is Like This) I’ve
sometimes described as “Indelible Grace” for children; indeed, several of these women
have been involved in those theologically mature, rootsy hymn projects. (As an aside: one of the women, Katy Bowser, also has two CDs
which we proudly stock under the name Coal Train Railroad which introduce kids to
jazz.) These are amazing young women, good artists, seriously thoughtful Christian parents and educators.

This new Advent project is
exactly what it says: it is not a Christmas carol release, but an album about longing, waiting, the promises
of God, the hope of the covenant, expectation. Indeed, they’ve got the logo that proclaims “Almost, Not Yet / Already, Soon.” Drawing on themes familiar to
those who love Sally Lloyd-Jones’ Jesus
Storybook Bible, this approach to the significance of this season allows
them to create a truly rare record: serious kids’ stuff that isn’t dumbed down,
and a holiday album of Advent songs, not Christmas ones. Already soon? Christian Waiting Songs, indeed.
Here is a link to see a bit more about the album, and a free listen to
their version of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.”  The other songs are originals, and only one feels like a silly child’s song — most are great songs for anyone who likes the softer folk-rock style. A few of the songs are simply stunning.

Order
today – even if you don’t have young children!

Kristoph and the First Christmas Tree Claudia Cangilla McAdam
(Paraclete Press) $16.99 Oh my, what a vivid story!  This is a bright, dramatic, conventionally illustrated
children’s picture book with text that is both glorious and shocking.  Why isn’t this story told among
us?  Is it even true?  The book begins saying it happened on
December 24, 722 in Germany.

Bonifice and his young orphan friend Kristoph are travelling through the
German countryside and come across a pagan tribe who are about to sacrifice a
child in the snowy forest in an awful ritual to appease the spirits of their
sacred oaks.  Bonifice begs them to
set the child free, and to experience the mercies of a loving God.  There is some debate that nearly brings
to mind Elijah’s famous conflict with those who worshiped Baal, with the
chieftain and his tribe eventually allowing Bonifice to chop down a foreboding
tree, saving the child.  A miracle
(or is it?) involving an evergreen transpires, and, well, the life-saving truth
of the gospel and the legend of explaining how the tree points to the living
God is started.

The ending of Kristoph and the First Christmas Tree is
too profound to say merely that “they lived happily ever after” although it
does have a very nice ending.  What
a story, told, as one reviewer put it, “with lyrical language and old world
charm.”  The author, Claudia McAdam
has degrees in both English literature and theology.  She has included a blessing that can be recited by a family
around their own Christmas tree. How nice is that?

The Christmas Promise Alidon Mitchell & Catalina Echeverri
(The Good Books Company) $14.99 
This may be my favorite new Christmas book for kids – a solid,
whimsical, informative ride through what it means that Jesus is a King, one who reigns over all the Earth.  Even the endpapers have energetically scribbled pictures
of all manner of kings – from ancient Romans to medieval monarchs, Asian
tyrants to little old Napoleon, right through to replicas of modern-day
dictators and presidents.

But what
kind of King is promised to the Jews? How can a baby be a King?  This is an historically accurate
portrayal of the first nativity, but frames the story by the Biblical promise
that God promised a rescuing King. Oh my, this is sooo good. On the back cover it says, “Join Mary
and Joseph, a bunch of shepherds, some wise men, and lots and lots of angels as
they discover how God kept his Christmas promise.”  Fantastic!

The Nativity Julie Vivas (Houghton Mifflin) $7.00  I mention this some years and some
people adore it.  Others (oddly — perversely,
even, I think) complain that showing the little penis of the baby Jesus is
inappropriate. (“A ploy,” one critic opined.) The artwork is a bit bizarre; the
winged angels are, while not scary, a bit odd, but the whimsy doesn’t devolve
into sentimental cute. Mary is sooo pregnant,
and it shows!  The visiting angel
wears army boots.  The characters
are not exactly white. You’ve got to see this to believe it.  We’ve been fans, even though some warn
against it.

Song of the Stars: A Christmas Story board book Sally
Lloyd-Jones (Zonderkiz) $7.99  We
raved about the original full-sized version of this two years ago, and again and agin: the vivid,
full-size picture book is one of our true favorites, illustrating as it does
how the whole creation is anticipating the cosmic scope of the birth of
Jesus. The artwork is splendid, the lyrics just right.  “It’s time” the animals
proclaim!  This new board book
edition is a perfect little stocking stuffer, an inexpensive but potent gift.
We suggest that you buy more than one; you will be glad you did.

The Christmas Star board
book Paloma Wensell (Liturgical Press) $7.95  This is another absolutely favorite board book this year,
with charming illustrations, wonderfully done by German children’s artist Ulises
Wensell.  It, too, tells the
conventional story of Mary, Joseph, the stable, baby Jesus, etc.  What I so like about this one is the
classy sparkle integrated into many of the thick pages, first as the star, then
as the angels are portrayed, later, seeming to engulf the whole sky- glory shone all around, after all – and
then by the end, it seems to inhabit the whole page, glory indeed!  Does
this prefigure the swirling flames of Pentecost, somehow?  I think this little touch makes this
not only a visually exciting presentation, but might open the door for deeper
conversations.  Nice!

Brother Egbert’s Christmas Steve Eggleton (Lion Pres)
$17.99  This is an exceptionally
classy book, with each page illuminated as if a medieval manuscript. Every page
is beautifully colorful, telling about the work of a village man and his son
who are helping monks fix a ceiling at the monastery, making wooden carved
bosses.  Brother Egbert spends most
of his time copying pages of scrolls and manuscripts, and young Jake, the
woodcarver’s son, suggests they use Brother Egbert’s prized Christmas story
manuscript as the model for the wood carving he and his dad will make. This
book for older children has lots of color and interesting calligraphied text,
with the traditional telling of the nativity story at the center.  There’s an appendix about making your
own paint, too, just like they do at the monastery, and a guide to making a
nice capitol letter at the start of a page.

BookNotes

                                      Hearts & Minds 234 East Main Street  Dallastown, PA  17313     717-246-3333