What do I say to open up this latest BookNotes? Happy Thanksgiving? Certainly so. Some years I list all those we are grateful for in the book industry, writers and editors and marketers (at least those who don’t shill for Amazon), those in our supply chain and our own team here, staff and volunteers and cheerleaders. And (obviously, although we can’t say it enough) you, our faithful readers and book-buyers. We are grateful.

I could also wish you a meaningful Advent. If you want to hear me yap on about the meaning of it all and the sort of reading we might do this season (and nearly an hour of book recommendations) check out the UpWords podcast (from the Upper House campus ministry and study center at University of Wisconsin) where they hosted me as a guest, again. You can watch the conversation unfold on YouTube, or listen at Apple or Spotify podcasts.

We just posted the latest Advent book episode of our own every-other-week “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast, too. Again, you can watch it on YouTube, or listen at Apple or Spotify podcasts. Thanks much to the very bright Phil Shiavoni and Sam Levy (both who are area directors for the CCO and very dear pals) who lob soft-ball questions like, “Okay, Byron, what three books do you want to tell us about this time?” And we’re off…

I could also ask how you are doing (emotionally, spiritually, relationally) given the bizarre and taxing ongoing circus of public life these past weeks. Several have reached out to talk about the nutso Cabinet picks hitting the news each day; it is hard not to be glib to our neighbors who are scratching their heads and scowl “we told you so — you voted for this madness.” It’s going to be a complicated season, eh? I am sure to speak out about the President-elect’s bad character and bad policies (and affirm him when he gets it right as he surely sometimes will) but we want to deepen our ability to listen to others and extend grace even as we disagree. More on that later.

For now, how about a few books to help you through this awkward, demoralizing season?  I have wept bitter tears. Maybe you have too. Maybe not. In any case, you are not unaware that these are confusing times, at best, for many of us. Here are some titles I’m eager to share with you that just might help. Each is very highly recommended and any book mentioned is 20% off. Send us an order and we’ll reply personally. Thanks.

As always, you can order easily by clicking on the “order” link at the end of the column.

 

Defiant Hope: Essays on Life, Faith, and Freedom Michael Gerson (Simon & Schuster) $28.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

We have a big stack of these here and I hope many of our friends (regardless of their orienting philosophy or voting record) will pick it up. It is, I assure you, a book worth owning. I know a few of these essays well, and many I’ve never seen. I suspect even if you were a Gerson fan, you’ve not seen this incredible array of his astute columns and pieces.

For those who may not know, Gerson was an acquaintance and we admired him greatly. Even though I did not always agree with him — he was a speechwriter and confidant of George W. Bush — he was a political figure and public thinker and solid, gracious Christian scholar who was extraordinary. A top thinker, great writer, serious Christian, from his Wheaton days on, he was respected and loved. He famously guided Bush through the awful days following the horrific 9-11 attacks and he came to be known as one of the visionaries, if not the architect of what came to be known as “compassionate conservatism.” (He had become an assistant to the President on policy concerns by the middle of the aughts and was known globally for advancing Bush’s stunningly life-saving work in Africa, with a little help from his pal named Bono.)

Mike’s big 2007 book Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America’s Ideals (and Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don’t) was throwing down a gauntlet, it seems, and he eventually took his own advice and broke with the GOP over their embrace of Donald Trump, a political move he morally could not abide. In the first Trump years he was a gadfly and prophet, speaking with increasingly heart-broken tones that good people would drift so far from the sort of wholesome conservative values they once seemed to embrace.

In 2010 Gerson released a slim but serious book on Moody Press, co-authored with conservative thinker Peter Wehner, called City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era that carried a foreword by Timothy Keller. (Moody Press; $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.) Years later he graciously contributed a helpful section to the co-authored, concise book by Stephanie Summers and Katie Thompson of the Center for Public Justice called Unleashing Opportunity: Why Escaping Poverty Requires a Shared Vision of Justice which remains a very interesting little study on domestic poverty. (Falls City Press; $12.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39.)

Like others in his conservative, intellectual, caring camp, Gerson took hits when he renounced the MAGA ideologues and he paid a price for that. And he made enemies with his touching, remarkable piece in the WaPo, “Why Anthony Fauci Is the Greatest Public Servant I Have Ever Known” from October 2022, published just weeks before his death in November of that sad year. It makes for very good reading now as we ponder new directions in what little public health infrastructure we have in the U.S.

I do not know if it was related at all to his changing political awareness but he wrote vulnerably and movingly about his depression. (His National Cathedral talk about it from 2010 is included here) And, of course, he got cancer. (His famous Washington Post column, “After Cancer Diagnosis, Seeing Mortality in the Near Distance” from December of 2013 is here.) And Parkinson’s. His lovely piece about his dog dying is here as well, not to mention wonderful essays about his kids, about Harry Potter, and about “Crying at the Movies.” There are some really poignant and lovely stories.

This grand collection of some of his best work includes a handful of pieces under the headings America, Faith, Family, Heroes, The Arena (including the wise “Abortion Deserves a Sober Debate, Instead, It Gets a War of Unreason” from June of 2022), Life and Death, and four very interesting pieces under the heading, Presidents.

David Brooks wrote a stellar, profoundly moving, introduction. The first line reads, properly, “It is not an exaggeration to say that Michael Gerson possessed one of the most important consciences of his generation.”

They first met, we are told, when Mike was working as a Senate staffer, “devising a package of proposals to help the poor and the marginalized.” Later, Brooks notes, “In short, he led a life of astonishingly moral coherence and grace in a political world that bends towards cynicism and egomania.” At one point he says a person such as Mike ends up with a “hyperactive conscience.”

I have read Brooks’ substantive introduction twice already and it is nearly worth the price of the book. It is moving and wise. But, of course, we read on, one article at a time, or skipping around (they are grouped by theme, not chronologically) and savor the work and vision of the late, great, Michael Gerson.

Passing in 2022, one of his last pieces was “Gaffes Aside, I Once Assumed GOP Goodwill on Race. I Was Wrong.”  It simply must be read. And yet, dour as he could be in his assessments, he was often joyful and lived with “defiant hope.” What a great title for this collection. Defiant Hope is certainly a great book for our times. Highly recommended.

Brooks writes:

This tradition did not provide Mike with a preset political platform. He got something far deeper, an underlying worldview, a set of priorities, an order of loves. This worldview, and way of being, starts with the great inversions that Jesus embodies. “The whole Christmas story is pregnant with enigma and violated expectations,” Mike wrote.

Brooks continues, quoting Gerson, from a striking piece that is included in the book:

“The Creator pulls on a garment of blood and bone. Almighty God is somehow present in a fragile newborn. The deliverer of humankind is delivered, slimy with vernix, in a place smelling of dung.”

One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation Daniel Silliman (Eerdmans) $36.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $29.59

Impious and amoral, petty and vindictive, it should be obvious that Richard Nixon — brilliant in many ways (and more politically significant than many realize) — is not (as it says on the back cover of this thrilling recent book) “the typical protagonist of a religious biography.” But — get this — historian and scholar and writer Dan Silliman insists that “spiritual drama is at the heart of this former president’s tragic story.”

Some of us have heard how the night before his resignation, Richard Nixon grabbed the arm of Henry Kissinger and prayed. And wept. This was one of the most vulnerable (rare) and spiritual (even more rare) moments in his troubled life. He later summoned Kissinger back to his office and begged him not to tell anyone. But it was too late, Kissinger was so struck by the whole odd affair that he had already told several aides and colleagues.

So begins this extraordinary book. If you’ve read any of the many books about Nixon or about the Watergate crisis (and you should as a way to understand the deep corruption and power-mongering mixed with religious-like zeal even in our time since the parallels between Nixon and Trump are, in some manner, notable) this is surely one to add to your library. And if you have not, it is a great one to start with to understand this enigmatic President who escalated bombing even on Christmas Day, all the while carrying a strict moral baggage from his Quaker mother.

One of Silliman’s great insights — documented diligently through having done obvious years worth of serious archival research (and, yes, he listened to all the infamous tapes) — is that Nixon yearned for approval, for love. From his often cold parents to the figures of the main religious movements of the mid-century, to his friendship with Billy Graham and more, the line from Kissinger stands out. He wondered out loud, “Can you imagine what this man would have been had somebody loved him?”

Silliman is an accomplished scholar, teacher, author (we loved his fabulously interesting Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith; Eerdmans; $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39), and now is the news editor for Christianity Today. This new work is another in the respected multi-volume, serious series called the Eerdmans Library of Religious Biography.

Two quick things that drew me in besides my firm memory of protesting Nixon’s warring madness and watching his solemn resignation speech that August afternoon, and my evangelical prayer that somehow Billy Graham’s evangelism touched his soul somehow. First, Dan’s opening chapter is riveting. You will be drawn in and have some sort of empathy for this “one lost soul.” And, secondly, the fabulous afterword which tells in vivid prose what it was like doing the research for this, is nearly worth the price of admission if one wonders what the task of writing a serious biography is like. From letters and papers, numerous biographies (he tells you which were most helpful and which were not), hours at the Presidential Library (in Yorba Linda, California.) That some of Silliman’s study was delayed by the Covid pandemic furthers the poignancy of this scholar’s “note on sources.” Read that first and you’ll want to follow him anywhere.

Silliman writes with the flair of a journalist, the eye of an investigative reporter, and the instincts of a highly trained historian. (Off-stage, he actually is all of those things: journalist, reporter, and historian.) Whatever one’s view of Nixon’s policies, Silliman makes a powerful case that he was a man obsessed with his work, tortured by self-doubt, and perennially searching for the God he never could quite find. Silliman’s portrait of Nixon’s religion is a moving and sterling addition to the Eerdmans LRB’s distinguished shelf list. — Grant Wacker, author of One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham

This beautifully written book not only brims with historical insights; it is deeply moving. Silliman helpfully chronicles Nixon’s exploits with various religious movements and leaders throughout his life and career. But more importantly, Silliman’s unique contribution is his breathtaking and affecting depth of analysis of the spiritual struggles of a man who labored for grace and longed for acceptance. — Aaron L. Griffith, author of God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America

The Church in Dark Times: Understanding and Resisting the Evil That Seduced the Evangelical Movement Mike Cosper (Brazos Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Many of us have been pondering for years how the once vibrant and theologically engaged evangelical church could be reduced to a mere voting bloc, one that supported a man who bragged about not needing forgiveness (not to mention his sexual molestations) and was, in fact, convicted of felony. Can (as the back cover of this new book puts it) “evil hide in the church behind good intentions?

Let me be clear, though: the evangelical voting bloc for the MAGA agenda and the vexing adoration of Trump, is not the main theme of this book. It is context and it is background (at least for this reader) but the more obvious sins — he names them as evil! — of the evangelical movement are, among other things, a dynamic of abuse (sexual, sadly, and of power more generally, hubris and the like.) The seductions of what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” come into play as Mr. Cosper struggles to document and understand what went wrong.

The Church in Dark Times is a cry from the heart of the movement by one who has written widely (on worship and wonder and the Bible and on a distinctively Christian posture of cultural engagement.) Alas, he saw things in his church planting circles and the evangelical conference circuits that were troubling and soon enough he found himself both profoundly alarmed, deeply depressed, and, eventually, somewhat of an outcast among some old friends as he wrote about the troubles in evangelical circles. He famously investigated and produced the much-discussed podcast series about the fall of Mark Driscoll and the virtual collapse of his big, notorious, Mars Hill Church in Seattle. Shortly thereafter Cosper did a very moving memoir (that I recommended here at BookNotes) called Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found (IVP; $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20.)

As the publisher puts it, in The Church in Dark Times, Cosper “uncovers the underlying causes of the breakdowns of the church and offers practices that foster healing and renewal.”

(In makes for an easy to follow structure — the first half is the careful diagnosis and the second on proposals for what to do.)

Complex and, yes, dark as this may be, it is fascinating and helpful and — hear me on this! — a vital resource for folks from any religious tradition. Whether one is Roman Catholic or mainline Protestant, Mennonite or charismatic or Orthodox, believe me, there is stuff here not only about (as one chapter puts it) “Authority, Violence, and the Erosion of Meaning” but how to resist dark times in any of our faith communities. It realy does offer practices for healing and renewal.

There is a chapter on resistance to evil that includes exceptional insights from Eugene Peterson and Charlie Brown. (See, it isn’t all gloom and doom.) To help steady and equip us Cosper writes about solitude and thinking, about storytelling and culture-making, and a chapter that I have not yet gotten to, on worship. This is great, rich, stuff.

With Hannah Arendt as a guide he knows that evil isn’t alway obvious, showing itself in blatant malice and overt cruelty. More often, the malevolence is more subtle. His repertoire of final chapters are brilliant, showing profound (yet practical) things we can do to help work for reform and renewal.  This is a very, very important book for us all. Even if you think your faith tradition is sane and healthy and your local congregation is safe and good. Don’t miss this.

Cosper brings to bear his extensive work uncovering some of the most troubling moments in the American church, his deep and wide knowledge of art and culture, and, most important, his love of stories, Scripture, and the church. — Karen Swallow Prior, author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

Makers By Nature: Letters from a Master Painter on Faith, Hope, and Art Bruce Herman (IVP Academic) $28.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

There are hard tears and there are what are commonly called tears of joy. There is an anguish in both and I am feeling a lot just holding this extraordinary volume, yes, literally, with tears in my eyes. I really hope you consider this one.

Packed with some of my favorite contemporary art by a favorite artist, made with fold-over French folded covers on a paperback full of soft color and fabulous interior design, the book artifact, Makers By Nature, is a sight to behold, a beautiful reminder of what a book can be. And, it is a reminder of how the Christian faith can be different from what the popular media (and, often, the secular mindset) too often construes in to be. This is expansive, not stuffy,  thoughtful and caring, gracious and full of big questions and glimmers of wonder, examples of what it means to be a truly good person, a good citizen, a good friend, probing, always probing, as these letters do, the meaning of faith and creativity and art and hope. Unless one is tone-deaf to the world of the arts or care-less about the biggest questions of truth and meaning and vocation and faith, this book is a quiet classic of Christian life.

The letters are sometimes chatty and in reply to questions from previous conversations with the recipient — they met at a Duke, they worked on an installation somewhere, they were students long ago, they were at a Board meeting together wrestling with philosophical questions, they were asking for his advice about the rhythms and practice of being a working artist or for explanations about some of his provocative pieces. And (I was surprised to realize) they are fictional. Although — curiously — they are (at least some of them) to real people whose identity readers may figure out (painter and writer Mako Fujimura, philosopher and critic Jamie Smith, spiritual writer Bobby Gross) and a handful of women and men I can only speculate about. It doesn’t matter, really; these are letters for you, for me.

Makers By Nature uses this epistolary form, Bruce tells us, for a few reasons; mostly, it suits his own relational style, and his disposition to think on his feet, not crafting a lengthy, coherent, argument about faithful aesthetics or the integration of faith and art. This collection of letters, then, is a tremendously rich and very helpful compliment to the major works in this movement of Christian thinkers pondering the nature of faith and art. Herman writes on vocation and tradition, prayer, paradox, desire, failure, craft and style, on loss and discouragement, on “The Anxiety of Influence”, being “A Servant of the Work” and “Hallowing the Everyday.” And more, unfolding in lovely, entertaining, even, old-fashioned letters.

These letters forming the chapters of Makers by Nature will be exceptionally helpful to working artists but, frankly, will offer Godly counsel, devout insight, and creative encouragement for any and all of us. I mean that. This book is a treasure that will keep you company for the long haul. As Malcolm Guite notes in his wonderfully precious foreword, not unlike reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, this book might be that transformative.

Guite notes that Bruce could have done an academic treatise, but, instead…

He has chosen something far better, something personal, engaging, and practical, something whose most luminous moments shine thorough amid the most down-to-earth and homely advice, something which is aimed not at the theoretician but at the artist herself.

Cam Anderson writes,

…each epistle enables Herman’s readers to benefit from the artist’s lifetime of learning, his strong connections to so many, and his life-giving practice of paying attention. Bruce is always paying attention to God, the world, art, and those he loves. — Cameron J. Anderson, Distinguished Fellow for Art and Literature at The Lumen Center in Madison, Wisconsin, author of The Faithful Artist: A Vision for Evangelicalism and the Arts

Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt Charlie Peacock and Andi Ashworth (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

We championed this book before it came out, knowing that a collection of letters from Charlie and Andi would be spectacular — fun and interesting, artful and wise. Then, after getting some pre-orders, we describe it again, glad for our customers to know we were recommending it. Many of our customers have followed his music career (and now of Andi’s role in ArtHouse and her own very good volume, Real Love for Real Life.) They have both published chapters in classy, good collections by our friends at Square Halo Books as well. For those that may not recognize their names, Charlie has been an innovative and at times edgy recording artist in the contemporary Christian music scene and, more generally, an award-winning producer and coach for exceptional artists (from The Civil Wars to Switchfoot to Ruby Amanfu to Merle Haggard, Jacob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Bela Fleck, Rich Mullins, The Lone Bellow, Ashley Cleveland, and on and on.) He may be my only friend who has to attend the Grammys.

This recent book is a collection of hard-earned and profound wisdom about, well, almost everything that matters. From family life to vocation and work, from artfulness to politics, from offering hospitality to advice about being a public speaker, these letters are so interesting and, again, the word that comes to mind is wise. They call it “the way of love” (and who doesn’t need a shot of love these days?)

Do you want to mend part of the hurting world in which we live? Do you long for a better public face of gospel Christianity? Do you wonder how to discern when it is time to change something in your life? Might you want to arrange more time in your schedule to write? Are you worried about passing on a meaningful, non-toxic kind of faith to children and grandchildren? Are you reluctant to admit you are a dreamer? Or that you are weary?

In love, can you lean in?

Believe me: the gracious, smart style woven throughout this great collection is the sort of demeanor and perspective we need right now. We can join God’s redemptive work in the world, using our God-given imaginations to live out a good faith “in but not of” the world around us. We can help shape the world in specific ways, whether that is, as it says on the back, “from the kitchen to Carnegie Hall.”

The kitchen? Yep, the first chapter is about learning to cook and what might be lightly called a theology of the kitchen.

These fine letters (some from Andi, some from Charlie, and some from them both) are a “model for expressing love in marriage, friendship, citizenship, and very kind of work — even in the midst of cynicism, fear, exhaustion and oppression.” Don’t we all need a gentle nudge toward beauty and goodness? With chapters like “Why No Part Is Too Small to Matter” and on addressed to “the sick and suffering”, this is so rich and up-lifting. Charlie and Andi have been friends and heroes of ours for decades and it is a delight to recommend Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter… in fact, it is more than a delight, it is a passion, a zeal, an obligation. This book is that good and that important. Pick a few up today.

By the way, I’ve got an advanced copy of Charlie’s fantastic forthcoming autobiography, Roots & Rhythm: A Life in Music coming out in a cool hardcover from Eerdmans perhaps as early as late January. (Eerdmans; $32.99 / OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE = $26.39.) It is well written and a blast!  PRE-ORDER it today and get on the waiting list.

The Art of Being a Creature: Meditations on Humus and Humility Regan Sutterfield (Cascade) $25.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

Okay, I’ll admit the last few suggested titles — curated for those who maybe need some extra encouragement and hope in these complicated times — are a bit on the artful side, wonderful reads (for anyone) by culture-makers, creators, artists. (And the first two listed, admittedly, were about political figures, from Michael Gerson to Richard Nixon.)

How about a hope-filled, encouraging book by a farmer? A theologian of the land, an Episcopalian who knows something about (as the subtitle suggests), the very human condition of being linked to the soil and to Christian virtue of humility? Ragan Sutterfield is your man and the quite new The Art of Being a Creature is one of the great lessons we all must embrace. This is a rare, good, book.

I’ve adored and raved about books that highlight the fragility of our human condition. Many folks of faith have done expert work on reminding us of the theology of limitations and the practical wisdom of embracing our fundamental reality of being creatures. From Kelly Kapic’s excellent You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News (Brazos Press; $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59) to Liuan Huska’s memoir of chronic pain, Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness (IVP; $20.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79) to the gorgeously written The Gift of Limitations: Finding Beauty in Your Boundaries by the great Sara Hagerty (Zondervan; $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59) there are plenty of titles with inspiring prose reminding us of our limits, boundaries, constraints.

Sutterfield’s new book links all this — with exceptionally good writing, by the way — to our very dignified role as creatures in God’s good world. But yet, he is wiser than most about how (“from AI to the Anthropocene”) our technological age has created somewhat of a crisis about the meaning of being human. Such power has “pushed human life to the limits.” Naturally, we are alienated.

As it asks on the back cover:

“What if a study of the soil, the humus from which humanity came, could shed light on our condition? What if attending to the soil could teach us something about how we should live?”

This will come as no surprise to those who have followed Ragan’s work. He is a writer whose first book — a brilliant, concise volume written a bit more than a decade ago — was called Cultivating Reality (a provocative title for sure, eh?) The subtitle of that was “How the Soil Might Save Us” which he explores here in greater depth. In the following years he has been ordained and, not unrelatedly, has become an expert in permaculture (he farms in his native Arkansas.) He has written my favorite, lovely introduction to the writing and life of Wendell Berry (Wendell Berry and The Given Life (Franciscan Media; $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19.) As a pastor, priest, and writer he invites us to ponder what abundant (dare I say sacramental) life looks like, what it really means to be a human, to be fully alive, and to attend to the soil beneath our very feet.

The Art of Being a Creature is more than a tract against gnosticism and it is more than a call to agrarianism (although he does cite Wendell Berry, Gene Logsden, Bill McKibben, etc.) It is ultimately about a spirituality of matter, a call to Biblical and spiritual faithfulness, an enjoyable set of stories and illustrations (from composting to discovering awe, from “pushing a wheelbarrow” to nurturing solidarity) where we can in our very lifestyles overcome some of the barriers between heaven and Earth.

This, too, seems to be a book for our times. Learning to realize our connection to the Earth and thereby living a bit more locally, being attentive to the trees and birds around us and developing the skills of stewarding well that which is given to us, all seem so urgent, now. The Art of Being a Creature is a gift.

Weaving together reflections on the soil, the biblical story, farming, compost, and our hope for the healing of creation, Ragan Sutterfield has created an allusive and poetic symphony of gratitude, awe, and solidarity with and for the soil and ourselves as creatures. This book evocatively and compellingly invites us to join the dance of all of creation, so that we, who are intimately bound with the soil, might become more deeply rooted in the life of the Creator. — Sylvia Keesmaat, founder, Bible Remixed, co-author of Romans Remixed: Resisting Empire / Demanding Justice

How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor Richard J. Mouw (IVP) $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

This is another book that just cries out to be recognized at a time like this. I have highlighted it before and have admitted that, even if I might have worded things a slightly bit different here or there, I am in great awe of Richard’s calm ability to guide us through very thorny matters — thorny academically and thorny morally and thorny theologically — and leave the reader wanting even more. It is a clear-headed, down-to-Earth book that is informed by his lifetime of good thinking, developing his own ecumenical but generally Reformed world-and-life view and philosophy of political theory. Mouw — who taught philosophy (particularly political philosophy) at Calvin College early in his career — moved to become an esteemed President of Fuller Theological Seminary. Now back at the Paul Henry Institute in Grand Rapids, holding forth on public theology and social ethics and Christian perspectives on all manner of things, How to Be A Patriotic Christian is very well researched and very well informed.

For those who worry that a book like this seems too close to Christian nationalism or that using the word patriotic to defend the Christian’s commitments to patriotism, fear not. As the subtitle says, Mouw is drawing on matters of land and culture and state and justice to enhance our love for others. This is nothing approximating a chauvinistic or pompous elevation of one’s own land and he bears no brief for idolatrous American exceptionalism (although he is quick to honor distinctive American traditions and guiding principles.) I think that those who tilt left and those who tilt right in their cultural assumptions and political ethics will find something here to appreciate. It is, in that sense, a bridge-building book, something we can talk together about, perhaps even in agreement over much.

Good folks that we trust — Luke Bobo, founder of Pursuing the Great Good and John Inazu (author, recently, of Learning to Disagree Well) just for instance — have nice endorsements on the back. (Inazu is right when he says Mouw’s is “one of the wisest and kindest voices around.”) This good book would be worth reading even if you didn’t care a whit about patriotism. And if you do, it is a must, helping you see your patriotism in a faithful manner.

In a fresh and upbeat way, Mouw is asking questions akin to one of the most important books in all of Western history, The City of God by Saint Augustine, written during the collapse of the Roman Empire. That is, what is the relationship between Christianity and culture, between Jerusalem and Athens, between this world and the next? Can, somehow, some sort of temporal honor to our own land and a wise stewardship of our citizenship bear witness to our standing as members of a different Kingdom? Mouw says yes. Agree or not, in and for these days, How to Be a Patriotic Christian by Rich Mouw is a very helpful guidebook.

Let me be blunt: if you are saying “not my President” right now and are in disdain of the President elect, you may need this book (not to dissuade you from your needed critique, but to put it in appropriate frame.) And if you are even a partial MAGA disciple or are excited about what Mr. Trump may do come January, again, you, too need this book. It is not flamboyant or needlessly provocative, but reasonable and gracious and a good, good read. We are going to be having this conversation in weeks to come and you’d be smart to have this under your belt. Buy a couple, at our BookNotes 20% off.  You’ll be glad you did.

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