I hope you saw yesterday’s BookNotes review inviting you to pre-order the wonderful, forthcoming biography of Walter Brueggemann, Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography by Conrad L. Kanagy.  I did a good review of that exciting, soon-to-be-released book (please check it out HERE and share it if your so inclined.)

I promised a soon-to-follow “Reader’s Guide” to some of the many important books of Dr. Brueggemann. It took a lot of work, but here you go, my quick summary of the most important books by Walter Brueggemann. You might want to get a drink, maybe even a strong one, and settle in.

ALL OF THESE LISTED BELOW ARE 20% OFF — and some are discounted off already lower prices. Scroll down to the very end of the column to see our order form links where you can safely enter credit card info. We’ll send ’em out right away  — or hold them until the forthcoming biography releases in mid-October, if you pre-order that. Just let us know how we can best serve you.

A (PARTIAL) READER’S GUIDE TO (SOME OF) THE BOOKS OF WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

Brueggemann is allusive, evocative, charmingly good with words, one of the most interesting writers in the field of Biblical studies. He is, I think, theologically quirky. He is a poet, a man whose very rhetoric is deeply grounded in the cadences of the Biblical text, even though he has studied radical thinkers from Karl Marx to Paul Ricour. He notices things about the Bible — from the rhetoric to the political setting to the wit or sarcasm or exuberance in the original Hebrew. He preaches endlessly and so has, alongside producing oodles of serious scholarship, hefty theology, and academic commentaries, released tons of collections of essays, articles, speeches and sermons, some of them short and somewhat accessible. He even has several books of prayers, which are edgy, raw, provocative and yet often lovely. He has been writing since the mid 1970s and done nearly 100 books.  I will group a handful of them under a few general categories or types.

For what it is worth, Walter has himself named what he sees as his most important or seminal works in a few pages in the above mentioned forthcoming biography Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography by Conrad L. Kanagy. I’m not going to argue. Or maybe I will…

START HERE: TEN GOOD INTRODUCTIONS

I’m just going to say it; Brueggey is an acquired taste. Some of passionate professor’s academic works, groundbreaking as they were, struck me as pretty technical and just too deep for nonprofessionals like me. There was a spark that one sometimes doesn’t see in such high-level technical scholarship, but still. I’ll name some of those shortly. But for beginners — or those who just don’t need the heavy stuff — here are six great collections that will introduce you to this master of the Biblical text, applied to contemporary society.

Real World Faith (Fortress Press) $24.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

This is the newest such release, drawn from a series of blog posts Walter had done not long ago. It shows the urgency of Biblical texts to inspire contemporary prophetic imagination and “real faith for the realities of the world.” A bit personal and playful at times, expressing gratitude and tender care, it captures this wise, even eccentric, scholar weighing in on the world at large and his own thoughts as he enters his 90s. 31 entries in 250 pages. I’m really enjoying it and find so much already that I’ve shared with others. Excellent.

The Peculiar Dialect of Faith (Cascade) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

This is a shorter collection of perhaps more serious blog posts, relating to themes of “Biblical utterance” and his routine influences of “imaginative probes into the mystery of God’s creation and into the hidden complexities of human hurt and human hurt.” The rhetoric of the Bible is always relational, which itself critiques the modern styles of discourse. Old Testament prof Rolf Jacobson calls it “quintessential Brueggemann!” Kathleen O’Connor says that these luminous essays illustrated why he is esteemed as a singular wordsmith.

Deliver Us: Salvation and the Liberating God of the Bible (WJK) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This is one of three currently available anthologies grouped by topic, published as “The Walter Brueggemann Library.” Black preacher and activist Jacqui Lewis says, “You will need this on your shelf.” She is right. In these dark times, this starts with the narratives of liberation in Exodus which illustrates much, so much. Some of these chapters are themselves worth the price of the book. And there are good reflection questions to help you process it, or, better, to use it as a small-group read.

Our Hearts Wait: Worshiping Through Praise and Lament in the Psalms (WJK) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Again, this is a wonderful new collection as part of the themed studies brought together as “The Walter Brueggemann Library.” I suppose you know that Brueggemann has done exceptional work on the Psalms and this brings together some of his seminal essays, journal articles, chapters from various books. Good discussion questions make it useful for a small group read.  If you’re interested, I think this is a must.

Hope Restored: Biblical Imagination Against Empire (WJK) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Oh my, what can I say? This is perhaps one of the very best ways into the oeuvre of Dr. Brueggemann and, yet, an inspiring refresher course for those who have read much of his work.  There are good chapters from an early book on the Old Testament and a rare journal article for preachers. There are some pieces from his small book on the prophets and a bit from Hope Within History, a personal favorite, if older. Very interesting; urgent, even. Good discussion questions. Highly recommended.

Spirituality of the Psalms (Fortress) $11.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $9.59

Below you will see our listing of two other classic works on the Psalms. This mass-market sized, small book in the “Facets” series offers brief and brilliant treatments, in this case, a concise summary of much of Walter’s passion for reading, praying, and living the Psalter.

In the first chapter, he writes:

“The life of faith expressed in the Psalms is focused on the two decisive moves of faith that are always underway by which we are regularly surprised and which we regularly resist: out of a settled orientation into a season of disorientation, and from a context of disorientation to a new orientation, surprised by a new gift from God, a new coherence made present to us just when we thought all was lost.”

Materiality as Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (WJK) $18.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This is one of the shorter books Walter has done and there are questions for discussion and reflection following each of these five chapters. What is materiality? You know, stuff. There is no hard dichotomy in the Scriptures between the seemingly sacred and secular, and ordinary stuff and how we use it is critical. The subtitle is clear: this is about nurturing moral active and public ethics for living in the real world. He is evocative and has scholarly footnotes, but this is ideal for those wanting to see the social implications for Biblical faith. He looks at food, money, the body, time, and place and asks how our faith influences our stewardship of these opportunities. One reviewer said this is a succinct manifesto of Brueggemann’s most important work. Jim Wallis has a lengthy forward called “A Compelling Worldly Faith.”

Gift and Task: A Year of Daily Readings and Reflections (WJK) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

When this came out a few years ago — following the liturgical assignments for Year B — many were thrilled. Of course, it can be used any year, and in Gift and Task Brueggemann gives us a full year’s worth of daily readings, reflections on the texts of the day. I cannot believe this book isn’t better known among us and used rigorously. What a gift.

There is probably no single Scripture scholar whom I would sooner endorse or want to thank than Walter Brueggemann. He has not only introduced us to the courage and importance of the biblical prophets but has also turned out to be one himself. Western culture needs his prophecy now.  — Richard Rohr, OFM – The Center for Action and Contemplation

A Wilderness Zone (Cascade) $23.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.40

There are so many collections and anthologies of Walter’s many, many essays and articles, but this recent one seems really helpful, locating, as he does, his faith and Biblical work in the middle of current socio-political issues and cultural trends. Here is how he puts it:

In these several pieces I have worked to trace out possible interfaces between specific scripture references and matters at the forefront of our common social life. It is my hunch that, almost without fail, such an interface creates a very different angle of vision for any element of our common social life, because it situates such a topic in the context of the biblical narrative that is occupied by the holy agency of God. Such an alternative angle of vision helps to defamiliarize us from our usual discernment according to the master narrative of democratic capitalism that is most widely shared across the spectrum of conservatives and progressives. Because our common angle of vision shared by progressives and conservatives has a very low ceiling of human ultimacy, we (all of us!) easily come to think that our particular reading of social reality is absolute and beyond question, even if dominated by a tacit ideology. It is my bet that an interface with biblical testimony can and will de-absolutize our excessive certitude and permit us to look again at the social “facts” that are in front of us. I do not think and do not suggest that such interfaces with scripture are inevitable; they are rather suggestive, impressionistic, and fleeting, the kind of linkage that is available in the matrix of faith that is not fixed on certitude.

Simply put, we have no one like Walter Brueggemann. . . . Here, he outpaces all others once again, amazes us once more, as he ranges easily across the full span of Christian Scripture with not-infrequent, equally dexterous engagements with economic and political theory, race relations, philosophy, liberation, migration, and much, much more. And so, again, I repeat: we have none like Walter. Take and read!” — Brent A. Strawn, Duke University, author, The Incomparable God: Readings in Biblical Theology

Tenacious Solidarity: Biblical Provocations on Race, Religion, Climate, and the Economy (Fortress Press) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

I wasn’t sure where to list this one — it’s hefty — but it is an excellent, thick example of how Walter allows the Bible to speak into, in often surprising ways, the most contemporary themes and topics of contemporary culture. As the lengthy and excellent introduction by editor David Hankins puts it, Brueggemann excels at undermining those who want to somehow separate dispassionate Biblical scholarship and contemporary ethical pronouncements. Brueggemann always reads with this kind of trajectory and so these essays are compiled from fairly recent talks, sermons, essays, and presentations among groups of Bible scholars, laypeople, activists, and others.

It is a big book and some of the pieces are somewhat demanding. Yet, it is Brueggemann at his best, exploring the Biblical text, evoking connections that resonate, drawing implications by listening well to the voice of the text, sacred Scripture that it is, and putting it into context with the daily news, contemporary (or older) secular scholars, the latest headlines.

Here’s how others explain how important it is:

With his characteristic skill and wisdom, Walter Brueggemann demonstrates again in this collection of recent essays the generative and transformative potentials of biblical texts to name and confront urgent challenges of our time. His interpretations model a compelling dialogue between biblical texts, interdisciplinary scholarship, and incisive, contemporary social, political, and economic analyses. The result utterly captures the imagination and urges and inspires the building of a far more welcoming, forgiving, generous, and sustainable future together.  — Christine Roy Yoder, Columbia Theological Seminary

I was taught to preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. It was faithful advice. Of course, there are times (like now) when a steady tide of distressing newspaper headlines can overwhelm even the most biblically savvy of preachers. Do not fear, says Walter Brueggemann, pointing calmly to the book in our other hand. Tenacious Solidarity is unmatched in rifling through Scripture’s pages and finding there wisdom and courage for the living of these days. –Scott Black Johnston, pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

BASIC TOOLS TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE

The Bible Makes Sense (Franciscan Media) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

This was a small, early book that has been released by several different publishing houses; it is magnificent, even if provocative at times. It insists that the Bible cannot be co-opted or read properly through the lease of the classic cultural left or right; it is beyond social liberalism or cultural conservatism and wants to have us enter its world and listen to it’s strange cadences of a unfolding story that brings hope and new ways to imagine the world. (Actually he critiques what he describes as the “The Modern-Industrial-Scientific Model,” “The Existentialist Model,” and “The Transcendentalist Model,”offering instead am “Historical-Covenantal” approach. Eight or nine chapters and a summarizing piece at the end.

Reverberations of Faith: A Theological Handbook of Old Testament Themes (WJK) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00  (This is a limited time, special sale price; new copies will come in at $49.00. Get them at this cheaper price, only while supplies last.)

This is literally a handbook, a set of over 100 A to Z entries explaining words, people, places, ideas, and themes. This is what one reviewed called “a theological jewel” and often shows the deep interconnection of these various words and places and notions. I refer to it often and sometimes it is a tad puzzling. Other times it is nothing short of brilliant. It is always useful. This is fantastic.

Money and Possessions (Interpretations) (WJK) $50.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $40.00

You may know the Interpretation Bible commentaries (Brueggemann did two of them, actually, on Genesis and on both books of Chronicles.) They are critical, serious, but readable, designed for preachers and teachers. Some are better than others.

In any case, in the spirit of that series, they expanded the brand to include major mainline denominational scholars weighing in on key themes and topics. Those are all very useful and none more than this one on economics. This big whopper of a volume is, in Brueggemann’s own estimation (or so he told Conrad Kanagy when he asked) one of the most important volumes he ever wrote, a classic example of what he hopes to do as he unleashes the complicated teachings in the Bible about a topic for today. There is a whole lot in Holy Scriptures about money and possessions and while others have tried, nobody has documented all this content in one provocative volume.  Almost 345 awesome pages.

From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets (WJK) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

This is almost a little handbook, a brief introduction to each of the prophets, major and minor. He explains the complicated socio-political contexts — the setting of North or South in the divided Kingdom, the threat from Assyria, the post-exilic preachers in Babylon, etc. — and is as succinct as any little such book I know. Nicely done. 120 pages.

The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (Fortress) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

I’ve mentioned in my comments on Kanagy’s book, above, that this was the first Brueggemann book I ever read – thanks to Peter J. Steen! — and I’ll admit it was above me at the time. Still, it is not one of his most rigorous, but a moderately academic, a serious but readable study of land and place, throughout the Bible, Known, of course, as an Old Testament scholar, he does here push into New Testament content a bit as well. It is magnificent and nearly majestical, a theme within the Biblical literature that if you don’t understand it, you will fail to be fully grasped by the Kingdom vision of the Scriptures. He was one of the first Biblical scholars to draw on Wendell Berry, too, so there’s that. I wish he had attended to Revelation 21 and 22…

The Book That Breathes New Life: Spiritual Authority and Biblical Theology (Fortress) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00 (This is a limited time, special sale price of the hardbacks prices [regularly $35.00] at the cheaper paperback price. Get them at this cheaper price, only while supplies last.)

This is a part of a trio of handsome hardbacks that Fortress did years ago and while it my not be my favorite book about the authority of Scriptures, it is one of the helpful resources to show what Brueggemann thinks. I recall years ago when a strict evangelical (whose views of the Bible I mostly agreed with) express disapproval about Brueggemann’s liberal views. I thought of the parable Jesus told of the one boy who said he would do the bidding of the father, but did not. The other boy said he refused, but did obey. There are bunches of authors who have written about inerrancy and the battles for the Bible and calling us to know and live the Scriptures, but they don’t really do it faithfully themselves and frankly just bore me. And there are those like Brueggemann who will quip, about a Psalm or prophetic utterance, “But, ya know, it’s just a poem.” And then he invites you to stake your very life on it. This book collects some of his academic pieces about how God speaks through these contested texts of sacred Scripture and where he places himself along with other giants of 20th century Biblical scholarship.

By the way, a fun piece making this interesting for some of our readers: years ago our friend J. Richard Middleton (who has gone on to publisher stellar, groundbreaking books) politely disagreed with Brueggemann about something he wrote, and ended up doing an article in the Harvard Theological Review. Brueggemann ended up mostly agreeing with young Richard and his response to the piece is offered here, entitled “Israel’s Creation Faith: Response to J. Richard Middleton.” He has some others pieces about Von Rad and about Brevard Childs, (of course he does) but for some of us, the Middleton response will be the first chapter we read.

A FEW ESSENTIAL SHORTER WORKS ON BOOKS OF THE BIBLE OR THEMES

Listen carefully. A few of these are rigorous, demanding, paradigm shifting. A few are less academic and good for groups. I’ll try to explain which are which. This short list only names few of his many important books, including full commentaries on Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Psalms, and more. (I’m not even going to list those, but we’ve got ‘em.) Here are a few of my favs.

The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Fortress) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

This introduces the notion that there are essentially three kinds of Psalms, poems of what he calls “Orientation” (where God is in heaven, Jerusalem is upheld, and all is right with the world), psalms of “Disorientation” (where exile is threatened or sin has overwhelmed and things are dark. These are mostly laments, a genre he helped recover in our lifetime) and “Re-orientation” where, after exile or sin, things are re-covered, but perhaps with greater sobriety. God reigns, grace abounds, but they know, now, what has happened. This threefold schema has been the most generative insight about any part of the Old Testament that I think has been uncovered in the last 50 years at least. That is parallels the grand story of creation – fall – redemption is not lost on him or others. This, in a nutshell, is the way to sing and pray and reflect on the realty, grief, and hope of our lives.

The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Fortress) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.30

This is a collection edited by Patrick Miller of some of Brueggemann’s best scholarly work on the Psalms and I know important Christian thinkers and leaders who say this is one of the best things they’ve ever read of his. As Brueggemann points out, when these Psalms are proclaimed, they make claims about reality (and, as Miller writes, “they shape reality in ways more potent and shocking that we usually realize.”) This study of the use of the Psalms by the church and what we might recover in using them more wisely is simply one of the best resources on this stuff written in our times.

From Whom No Secrets Are Hid: Introducing the Psalms (WJK) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Edited by Brent Strawn, an OT professor from Candler and increasingly known as a Brueggemann protege and spokesperson in his own right, this volume in a sense represents the later insights and teachings about the Psalms, a culmination of years of research and preaching. He looks at some lesser known Psalms and makes available fresh visions of praise and re-orientation for ordinary church leaders. (One reviewer from Baylor University notes that “the articulation of the world envisions by the Psalms and its challenge to our world in chapter 2 of the book are alone worth the price of book!) You could say that about a number of this brilliant, readable, pieces.

Abiding Astonishment: Psalms, Modernity, and the Making of History  (WJK) $14.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.69  This is a limited time, special sale price; new copies will come in at $22.00. Get them at this cheaper price, only while supplies last.

I’m not even sure if this is still in print but we have a bunch, delighted to name it now as a volume in the old “Literary Currents in Biblical Interpretation” series. It is thin, academic, and an amazing survey (if you stick with it) about this trend in understanding the role of rhetoric and utterance and praise in the Scriptures. The title itself is so quintessentially Brueggemann and indicates what you’ll get in on if you join him in this little study.

For what it is worth, this is a short but rigorous study of what is called the “Psalms of Historical Recital” (which is to say Psalm 78, 105, 106, and 136) where Brueggemann considers what these pslams are saying on their own terms and how their truths stand in contrast to the making of modernity and the values of our own age. Wow.

Using God’s Resources Wisely: Isaiah and Urban Possibility (WJK) $14.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.69  This is a limited time, special sale price; new copies will come in at $17.00. Get them at this cheaper price, only while supplies last.

This is a slim book that packs a wallop, that is full of promise and hope even as it looks at injustice and exploitation (as described so vividly in the book of Isaiah.) Yet, there is a restoration afoot and God’s call is to live into a wise stewardship of our resources. This book was exceedingly good when it came out — they were first given as talks to Presbyterian Women in the very early 1990s — and in his preaching about the urban crisis and the ecological crisis he was breathtakingly prescient. This book could be read more profitably today than then, and it was very good, then. He uses the provocative phrase of some of Isaiah being an artistic-theological history of the city of Jerusalem” and thereby a case study in an urban environmental crisis. Highly recommneded.

Delivered Out of Empire: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Exodus – Part One (WJK) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

I hope you recall our review of this in a previous BookNotes a year or so ago. It is a reader-friendly study of the Book of Exodus with a eye to the pivot points on which the text shifts and the story deepens or changes. What a great way to study these rhetorical points in the story and the great moments that come alive in his vivid storytelling and astute scholarly look. Great study questions, too, make this ideal for small groups.

Delivered into Covenant: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Exodus – Part Two (WJK) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Yep, Part Two, picking up at Exodus 16:10. Brueggemann has spent his life studying these texts and it is so good to reflect with him on how the story unfolds and what it might mean for us today.

Returning from the Abyss: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Jeremiah (WJK) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Using the same insightful and user-friendly sort of approach as in the two-part Exodus study (above) he here parlays his life-long study of and preaching on Jeremiah into this adult study  (27 chapters) of key texts in the book where things pivot or become vital or clearer. These shifts make a world of difference, sometimes 9and sometimes only are obvious to the reader who is paying close attention.) Simply amazing. There is nothing like this and I hope the editor (Brueggemann protege Brent Strawn) finds others to do more in this “Pivotal Moments in the Old Testament” series.

MID-LEVEL THEMATIC WORKS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE

The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress) $21.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

Oh my, so, again, this is the one to read. I think it was my third time through that I began to “get it” and that was after I heard him so I had learned to slow drawn, draw out the words the way he does, and take it in slowly. I came to understand a bit of this powerful insight about the pathos of sorrow — breaking through the denial — that the great prophets had (from Moses to Jeremiah to Jesus) and how tears, therefore, are subversive. (I”ll admit, my friends Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton helped me immensely in the second half of their vital Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be as they countered the postmodern incredulity towards meta narratives with a Brueggemann-esque reply that in this meta narrative, the leading character suffers and dies. It is not an oppressive totalizing narrative, but an upside down one and therein lies its power to stand against a “royal consciousness.” Tears are subversive! I bet ya didn’t see that coming?

As I know you know, this kind of “prophetic imagination” is not about predicting the future nor is it mostly about advocating for lefty social justice issues, but is a deeper matter. One of the top few books I’ve ever read, even though it took me a bit, and I’m still processing it all. Kanagy’s biography is right, it is, in many ways, his signature book and an apt description of Walter’s gift to the church.

Reality, Grief, Hope: Three Urgent Prophetic Tasks (Eerdmans) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I think this is one of the most under-appreciated books in Brueggemann’s huge library. It is, or so he says, the long-awaited sequel to The Prophetic Imagination.  Naturally, much revolves — like all the prophetic literature — around the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC. The prophets either were fighting the denial (the Hebrews assuming they were GOd’s people and nothing truly bad would happen to them) or they were in despair in exile, wondering if they could ever be loved by God again. Breaking through despair and denial takes a sturdy grasp of the really real, an honest and compelling practice of lament, and the prophetic gift of the hopeful imagination. After the 9/11 attacks, Brueggemann’s handy schema of the importance of 587 BC became palpable for many of us. This book is, literally, about having a prophetic imagination.

As Shane Claiborne, author and activist puts it:

Walter Brueggemann is a legend. . . . With typical Brueggemann brilliance, here he brings the prophets of old into the contemporary world and dares us to look through their eyes. If you love Walter, you’ll love this. If you’ve never heard of him, get ready to get hooked.

Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile (Fortress) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

I always counted this as the sequel to Hopeful Imagination and to this day it has the same cover design as did the original version of Prophetic Imagination. So it is a companion to that groundbreaking book (even if Reality Grief and Hope was later designated as the official follow up.) It is a great, serious read.

I tell customers that if they appreciated Prophetic Imagination then this is a natural next read, asking the same question: how did these prophets of hope and new energy have the audacity to conjure up such claims? Go back to Israel during the most sour years of captivity, when Israel had been decimated and the temple destroyed? Build a highway through the desert for God’s sake? Where did these kind of dreamers come from? I loved this taut, serious, study of the post-exilic prophets, among others.

This description I found somewhere is a bit clunky as formal prose but it explains the book well:

Professor Brueggemann here examines the literature and experience of an era in which Israel’s prophets faced the pastoral responsibility of helping people to enter into exile, to be in exile, and to depart out of exile. He addresses three major prophetic traditions: Jeremiah (the pathos of God), Ezekiel (the holiness of God), and 2 Isaiah (the newness of God). This literature is seen to contain the theological resources for handling both brokenness and surprise with freedom, courage, and imagination. Throughout, Brueggemann demonstrates how these resources offer vitality for ministry today.

Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology (Fortress) $26.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

It took me years to squeeze in various Brueggemann books; as much as I liked him, and as valuable as the books were (and as many tapes as I listened to) as I was still a novice. Somewhere, years ago, long after this 1988 book was released, I tackled it in earnest and I will never forget how the “lights came on” as I realized, through Brueggemann’s expert analysis, that some praises in the Bible were illegitimate; some were idolatrous, and sometimes what we casually cite as beautiful, sweet passages, are, in fact, in context, wicked. They gave voice to a priveledged royal consciousness that was aligned with the ruling empire — think of our own beloved patriotic songs (and Jimi Hendrix’s subversive deconstruction, as a black man, playing the “Star Spangled Banner” in an electric, fuzzy blues version at Woodstock, understood, by some, as protest and resistance.) Yes, praise is our duty and delight but what if praise is misguided? Or used against the idols? Can true doxology unmask and resist false ideologies?  What are the differences in the point and theology of the royal enthronement Psalms, say, the the liberative messages “from below” that come from, say, Exodus or the second part of Isaiah?

This is beautiful, heavy stuff on praise, yes, but also an astute critical assessment of how the Bible has more than one voice, and some parts, even praises, may be counter to the true God of redemption. Wow. Let this sink in.

Ichabod Toward Home: The Journey of God’s Glory (Eerdmans / Wipf & Stock) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

First done by Eerdmans, I am grateful that this publisher reissued it. It is a fascinating study of 1 Samuel 4 – 6. (He has deeper more systematic commentaries on some of the historical books.) In this dramatic section, we have the famous story of the ark of the covenant being captures by the Philistines (but finally returned to Israel.) God’s glory with them, gone, and returned. (Creation-fall-redemption? The three-day story of Christ alive, dead, and resurrected?) This ancient story has, Brueggemann shows, profound relevance for nurturing images of faith and for our social lives today.

In a fascinating gesture not uncommon in Brueggemann’s studies, he compares all this to the modern consumer three day weekend and shifts to how this rendering of God’s glory and the Ark narratives contrast (“contradicts”) the dominant narrative of our own culture “with our strident emphasis on self-indulgence, narcissism, and self-sufficiency.”

As the back cover puts it, “In looking anew at what this story reveals about God’s glory — or kabob, from which the name Ichabod derives — Brueggemann builds a powerful new theology of God’s sovereignty.”

Journey to the Common Good (WJK) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I had nearly worn out my cassettes of these brilliant lectures offered Regent College in British Columbia when the first edition of the book came out in 2010. Then, after the killing of George Floyd, Brueggemann wrote a new chapter, re-introducing the themes of these lectures that were offered there at the thoughtful evangelical graduate school in Vancouver. I would say this is one of the truly great Brueggemann books, bringing his years of serious study to fruition in lively lectures, provocative and deeply Biblical, pushing his listeners to greater faithful engagement.

In the lectures, as is the won’t of Regent, they had their own staff reply and respond, and Brueggemann, in the cassette tapes, replied to their good feedback. I wish that were in the book. Still, this is a masterpiece of a little book, three major lectures. Here are the titles of each chapter:

• The Journey to the Common Good: Faith, Anxiety, and the Practice of Neighborliness
• The Continuing Subversion of Alternative Possibility: From Sinai to Current Covenanting
• From Vision to Imperative: The Work of Reconstructing

Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (WJK) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I suppose this is not his deepest scholarship but it truly brings together themes he has written bout often and spoken of in workshops I’ve heard for decades. It is Walter that first pointed out to me (I’m dense, okay?) that in the two tellings of the 10 commandments and the mandate to keep sabbath, one is given with the reasoning because of the creation mandate: God rested on the seventh day, so we should, too, image bearers that we are. The other recording of the Ten Words comes, however, with a different prelude, offering a different rational, It is because “you” were once slaves in Egypt, at the whims of the Pharaohs brick quotas, the ever increasing workload. “You don’t have to live like that!” I have heard Walter insist, with such passion that I will never, ever forget it. Sabbath as Resistance draws on this subversive logic of God to resist the oppression of the overlords, the consumer culture, the capitalist systems, inciting that we can resist all of that with this simple Biblical command.

The new edition has a good study guide and it makes a great book club title, useful for adult Sunday school classes or Bible study groups. There are six good chapters, each with a different Biblical text. Nice.

Publishers Weekly called this “concise but significant.” Indeed.

A Glad Obedience: Why and What We Sing (WJK) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I can hardly say how great this is and I could go on and on naming groups that might read it together. The choir in a mainline church? The praise team at your mailing church? Your worship band at your evangelical mega-church? The book club at the senior center where surely folks still remember the old hymns? With a foreword by John Witvliet, you know it’s solid, good stuff.

The first part of this — four solid chapters — are under the rubric of “Why We Sing” and it his unique take on four different Pslams (104, 107, 105, and 106.)

Part Two is “What We Sing” and there are about 15 reflections — with his prophetic imagination attuned and his deep Biblical worldview functioning well — on various sorts of songs, hymns, and old gospel tunes. He loves this stuff and if you read his biography you’ll be reminded of how much a conventional church guy he really is. I love this book, and I think of the elders in my own family and my wife’s family who lived as much by the hymnbook as anything. There is nothing quite like this on the market and I do highly recommend it for those who want his deeper, evocative language in conversation with Psalms and hymns to recover what Luke Powery calls “our primary doxological vocation.”

A Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church (WJK) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00  This is a limited time, special sale price; new copies will come in at $30.00. Get them at this cheaper price, only while supplies last.

This is one of those often-missed Brueggemann books which is a collection of heady papers, challenging sermons, provocative messages, and inspiring lectures given — mostly circa 2005 — that in one way or another related to the life of the local church. These are serious lectures and papers (or typical Brueggemann-esque sermons) on ministry, urban mission, sabbath, congregational identity, conflict, worship, ministry. They hang together, more or less, and are all deep in the Biblical literature, explicating the extraordinary insights Brueggemann gets from pondering our primary texts.

As he reminds us so often, “our faith is not about pinning down moral certitude’s. It is, rather, about openness to wonder and aw in glad praise.” Can this habit and practice — doxology — allow us to “courageously defy political polarization, consumerism, even militarism” in our churches? Can our church’s push us into the world not with fearful anxiety but as peacemakers in the culture? This book seems to me to have been maybe 20 years ahead of its time. Get it today!

BOOKS OF PRAYERS

There are some new prayers and prayer-poems in the forthcoming Kanagy book and he says that maybe, years from now, the prayers will be that which will most last. I don’t know about that but they are stunning, provocative, useful. He famously prayed before each class that he taught, and I’ve experienced those prayers on rare occasions at events. These books are remarkable.

Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Water Brueggemann (Fortress) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Prayers for a Privileged People (Abingdon Press) $25.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

Acting in the Wake: Prayers for Justice (WJK) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

Following into Risky Obedience: Prayers Along the Journey (WJK) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

BOOKS ABOUT PREACHING

Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation (Fortress) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.30

Written in the late 1980s, this remains a classic text in contemporary homiletics and is one of the top books Brueggemann recommends to understand his body of work. At least once he suggested it was his own favorite! He has always studied the rhetoric of the Bible utterances and it was natural for him to translate that into Biblically inspired poetic theories of “daring speech.”

Fascinating, eh? Did I mention it’s a classic?

The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering Word (Fortress) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

He reminds us that preaching has always been “an audacious task” and invites preachers to takes seriously all that is at stake. Veteran thinker and preacher (and author of a handful of preaching texts) William Willimon says that “Brueggemann proves an emergency and shame an d accommodated culture-bound, tamed, therapeutic church with his fecund prophetic re-descriptions and creative transpositions that speak the biblical word into our time and place.” Yup. He even sounds like Brueggemann when he says that God is “ceaselessly interesting.”

Yes, the word has made preachers militant. Yet, yet, y et certainly not in the manner of the violent January 6th rioters. You understand that he doesn’t mean that. Read this to understand a better way.

Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles (WJK) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I love this book and have read it more than once. The notion that we are exiles here in post-Christian, post-Christendom America is compelling and generative. Can he fuel our own imaginations to preach through honest speech in a way that leads us to radical ways of faithfulness in but not of the world? His reflections on how the church is in a situation somewhat comparable to the ancient Israelites captivity in Babylon is instructive, and his provocative call to preach like that is so is extraordinary.

The Practice of Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Word (Fortress) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

This handsome hardback gets serious about how we actually can preach an “emancipating word” and what the “practice” of preaching towards a Christian imagination looks like.

Listen to Sam Wells, a great storyteller, theologian, and liturgical preacher:

Walter Brueggemann’s early work on prophecy and imagination has become foundational for a whole generation of preachers and scholars. Here he returns to perhaps the most characteristic of all his myriad ventures, with unaltered vigor and razor-sharp edge. Prophets are not just provocateurs: they are those who profoundly love their people, deeply — Sam Wells, author of Humbler Faith, Bigger God: Finding a Story to Live By

The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education (Fortress) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Admittedly, this is not about homiletics, but it fits to list it here. Now in a revised and updated second edition (with an excellent new forward by Amy Erickson) The Creative Word seems to have comesout of that period when Brueggemann (after earning his ThD at Union in New York) felt called to get a PhD in educational theory. (He was, after all, a Dean and active teacher at a seminary and felt the need to learn more about pedagogy and Christian education.) This book is not about preaching, per say, but about nurture and formation, about pedagogy and education — think of the remarkably innovative new approaches developed decades ago from John Dewy to Paulo Freire. Yet, it really is yet another heavy study of the notion of the canon, the notions of the Word of the Lord, the structures within the Old Testament, and the way a high regard for the formation of these many texts together can shape a congregations worldview. In a way, it is asking how congregations equip their youth and how they assimilate new members.

As the back cover promises,

“Brueggemann here offers a framework for education in the structure of the Hebrew Bible canon, with its assertion of center and limit (in the Torah), of challenge (in the Prophets), and of inquiry (in the Writings).”

Alrightee, then. Whew.

THREE MAJOR SCHOLARLY WORKS

Old Testament Theology: An Introduction (Abingdon Press) $32.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60 (This is a limited time, special sale price; new copies will come in at $42.00. Get them at this cheaper price, only while supplies last.)

This is not as scholarly as it may seem and is readable to most educated adults. It’s a nice overview of the entire Old Testament and the theology that emerges from the various streams, threats, writers, genres, and literary voices in the unfolding history of ancient Israel.  It does intend to offer a model for doing theologizing with full engagement with the Biblical text.  The publisher describes it as Brueggemann portrays the key components in Israel’s encounter with God as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. Creation, election, Torah, and the divine hand in history–these and other theological high points appear both in their original historical context, and their ongoing relevance for contemporary Jewish and Christian understanding.

Terrence Fretheim, a prominent Old Testament scholar, now retired from Luther Seminary, says that it’s effect “is to present the reader with a remarkable tapestry that lingers long in both mind and heart.”

Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy  (Fortress) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

Some might say that this is the most important of the many works of Dr. Walter Brueggemann, his lifetime achievement, but I wouldn’t be so sure. It is, doubtlessly, his most academic magnum opus and in our forty years of bookselling cannot think of a comparable theological title that garnered so much anticipation, attention, discussion and debate. Releasing in 1997 (and weighing in at 2 1/2 pounds and 778 pages) it is monumental and complex. The ideas are complex, the writing is technical, and while it still carries some of Brueggemann’s clever zeal and charm, it is dense and at times obtuse.

No lesser light in the field than Phyllis Trible (herself at Union in New York where Walter once studied) says “This monumental endeavor offers an abundance of ideas that will carry Old Testament theology well into the twenty-first century.” She observes that he “understands that the standard formulations of the past but yield to new speech for new situations.”

His friend and critic Terence Fretheim notes that Walter is one of the few biblical scholars who “commands the range of scholarship, the insights into texts, and the theological imagination to take up this task.”

We have an edition that has a searchable CD-Rom with it. It’s no longer available, but we’e got a few. Order now while we have that edition. Pretty cool.

An Unsettling God: The Heart of the Hebrew Bible (Fortress) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

This came out a decade after Theology of the Old Testament and offers a distillation, a summarizing and somewhat less technical reflection on his majestical major text.  It is less than 200 pages and promises to “distill a career’s worth of insights into the core message of the Hebrew Bible. The work presents the theologian at his most engaging, offering profound insights tailored especially for the beginning student.”

Well, I’ll admit, I still didn’t get into it. It is important, and a major overview of his deepest considerations about the “unsettled” God of the Bible. I’m intrigued by his claim that the Old Testament shows God with four “conversion partners” — Israel, the nations, creation itself, and the individual human being — who help God enact the divine purpose.

TWO FESTSCHRIFTS IN HONOR OF BRUEGGEMANN

God In the Fray: A Tribute To Walter Brueggemann (Fortress) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

This is an extraordinary festschrifts, some scholarly articles offered up in honor of Walter and a few about him, including the (exceedingly friendly) critical pice by Terence Fretheim that Kanagy discusses in his forthcoming biography. It is a very illuminating piece, deep and complex but a must-read for those deeply interested in Brueggemann’s Theology in the Old Testament. You’ll find here some of the major mainline Biblical scholars who were peers (and some who were students) of Dr. B, from Norman Gottwald to Kathleen O’Connor to Phyllis Triple to Claus Westermann to Timothy Beal, among many others. There is a splendid response by Brueggemann himself, characteristically gracious and lucid.

Shaking Heaven and Earth Essays in Honor of Walter Brueggemann and Charles B. Cousar  (WJK) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20  This is a limited time, special sale price; new copies will come in at $34.00. Get them at this cheaper price, only while supplies last.

This is a double festschrift, offered when these two professors (now Emeritus) at Columbia Theological Seminary were retiring, Brueggemann, of course, a professor in Old Testament and Courser who was a legendary New Testament guy. They have worked together often and these essays are examples of the high-level scholarship their educational ministries nurtured. They both were closer readers of the Biblical text, both believed God truly shared the world, and that we respond in doxology and justice-seeking. The book is offered also for their “gifts of collegiality and friendship” “with deep love and gratitude.” I enjoy this kind of stuff and it is a fabulous collection of various sorts of scholars and preachers showing their work.

Of the two volumes, this one is a bit more readable, it seems, less technical, with pieces from the likes of Beverly Gavanta and Leander Keck and Carol Newsome. Solid, thoughtful, applicable stuff, all about transformative study and the role of these two wild and prophetic gentleman. Naturally, there is a god pice by Cousar and a lovely and touch reply by Brueggemann at the end.

And don’t forget yesterday’s posting where I reviewed the forthcoming authorized biography of Brueggemann by Elizabethtown (PA) sociologist Conrad Kanagy, entitled Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography. We are taking pre-orders and will send it out when it arrives in early-to-mid October. (Click back to yesterday’s BookNotes for my review and all the details.) It is priced at $24.99 but we have it at our BookNotes 20% OFF — $19.99.) We sure would appreciate it if you helped us spread the word. Thanks.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders.And if you are doing a pre-order, tell us if you want us to hold other books until the pre-order comes, or send some now, and others later… we’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know.

In this BookNotes I’m going to tell you about a book that we think you should pre-order, a book that is coming mid-October, and is one of the most interesting, unique, and I’d say important books of the year. Some of us have been wanting something like this for years now, and it is finally (almost) here. And it is truly extraordinary, very illuminating, a great read.

I’m inviting you to order the forthcoming biography of Walter Brueggemann penned by central Pennsylvanian, Conrad Kanagy. I’ve read the early version and I’m a huge fan. I’ll tell you a bit about it so you can determine if it is something you want (or something you want a bunch of to give away or to use for a book club.) It’s a good one.

After my review of the forthcoming bio, I’ll post tomorrow a big “reader’s guide” to some of the essential Brueggemann books and suggest a few of my own favs. He’s written up towards 100 books — some tour de force groundbreaking volumes, others nice collections of essays or sermons or prayers — so I can’t list them all. We have almost everything that is currently in print.

But first, the forthcoming biography. Then, tomorrow, the big list. You can find your way to the bottom of this column and click on that order link to enter credit card info. Thanks.

Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography  Conrad L. Kanagy (Fortress Press) $24.95  OUR 20% OFF SALE PRICE = $19.96  not yet released – due mid-October 2024

Conrad L. Kanagy is a well-respected Mennonite pastor, leader, and author who is also a sociologist, and professor of sociology at Elizabethtown College here in central PA. That he discovered Brueggemann long after Brueggemann had been publishing gives him the enthusiasm of a recent convert to this giant in the field of Biblical studies. Kanagy did a deep dive into some of Brueggemann’s books (including on Jeremiah, which were seminal) and, of course, the classic — arguably one of the most important books in Biblical scholarship in the last 100 years — The Prophetic Imagination. He used Brueggemann’s book in his own work evaluating various concerns in his own denomination and realized some resonance; Brueggemann, undisputedly a leader in the guild of Biblical scholarship, is, at heart, what we used to call a churchman. He loves the local church and spent a career training pastors. He did this, though, as Kanagy’s forthcoming biography shows, by reading widely across the disciplines, but especially in the social sciences. He was a sociology major in college, before going to Eden Seminary in the 1950s. Kanagy, in his discovery, was coming to know a soul mate.

As Kanagy tells it in this fabulously readable, even artfully crafted, narrative, he understood that Brueggemann was influential in the guild; his remarkable gift and passion was for drawing critical scholars away from dry speculations and tediously detailed literary studies to energetic and generously interpretive exegesis for the sake of hearing the voice of the God behind the Biblical text. He has brought this nearly evangelical passion to his field, offering what I might cheaply call a third way between near dismissal of the text in liberal camps and fundamentalist literalism on the other hand. Besides exceedingly academic work offering this fresh articulation for Biblical studies in the guild, Brueggemann has also been powerfully influential in the mainline church (and, in greater or lesser degrees) within the evangelical movement as well. Both camps have had their beefs with him, and yet he is the closest thing to a Old Testament Biblical studies rock star we’ve got, only somewhat analogous, I’d say, to N.T. Wright in the New Testament world.

Kanagy wanted to know this important, if controversial, figure and determined to do a series of interviews (mostly over Zoom) to let Walter tell his story. This “theological biography” is the thrilling result.

Again, there were a few things that seemed to draw Kanagy to this project, besides his own genuine appreciation for the books and articles by Brueggemann and Walter obviously being  influenced by sociologists, from Emile Durkheim to Karl Marx to Peter Berger.

As the story develops we see that Brueggemann made some hard (if, in retrospect, understandable) choices of not being a pure academician, not working solely in the high-octane world of the theological academy, but by teaching in seminaries designed to serve those heading into the ministry. (We learn that at one point, mid-career, Walter turned down a prestigious job offer to teach at a fancy-pants divinity school.) Walter’s famously tireless commitment to the church, shown in his doing workshops for congregations, preaching around, for serving many denominations, was apparently appealing to the Mennonite Kanagy. Had Walter just been another esteemed but arcane Biblical scholar with a few heady books under his belt my sense is that he would not be as well known or as well loved as he is. Kanagy’s book portrays Brueggemann as a church guy, who — despite some famous leadership in scholarly circles, seminal lectures known the world over, and controversies caused at the Society for Biblical Literature, say — mostly taught preachers to wrestle with the Bible with and for their congregations.

(I have been to events with Brueggemann and I could tell some lovely stories of his passion and zeal and humor and special attention given to me, the lowly guest bookseller at congregational gigs or denominational retreats. I’ve been with him at a Bread for the World banquet and at more than one central PA church. I’ve been with him as he lectured with UCC clergy, with Epsiopalian congregants, with Presbyterian folk. The first time I heard him in the early 1980s I had snuck into the State Pastor’s Conference with a pastor friend’s name tag; Moltmann was there, too, but Brueggemann blew me away. I almost had those cassette tapes memorized. Always he is passionate about the Word of God but aware of the world of mainline church life as he would speak to small groups of working pastors or interested lay folk. I always came away struck by how someone of such scholarly influence and prestige would show up in Harrisburg or Lancaster or a bland Philly suburb. His service to God’s people is as striking as it is extraordinary.)

Yet, he served as President of the SBL (Society of Biblical Literature) and has friends (and a few critics) within the scholarly guild. By knowing the critical theories so well (and assuming what some evangelicals might think is too much from that liberal tradition) and being grounded in the best of mainline/ecumenical studies of the last century — he studied at Union with the famous James Muilenburg and was profoundly influenced by Von Rad and Brevard Childs and Norman Gottwald and knows everybody doing critical scholarship — he had a certain gravitas among those doing that sort of work, thereby (as I might put it) earning the right to be heard. With a near photographic memory and massive capacity for reading the critical literature, he could call those in that tradition to repent of Enlightenment-based sorts of rationality, epistemologies of hubris and certainty, and to implore them to move towards the realities of a faith-based submission to the deepest questions offered by the Biblical texts. Again, that he would draw on the likes of Paul Ricoeur, was deft and impressive.

Kanagy comes back to this often, this both/and capacity of Brueggemann to speak the language of the most modernist scholar (and, eventually, the postmodernist ones, too) even as he pushed through their dead-ends and cul-de-sacs and invited them to a more robust, wholistic, lived, encounter with the God behind the texts. Kanagy makes much of this and it brought, at least to this reader, more sympathy and gratitude for the price Brueggemann has paid within the scholarly community of mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish scholars. Kanagy reports a few examples of this tension, and the tension it brought; for instance, he describes in detail a Christian Century review of three needlessly critical/arcane commentaries on Jeremiah that Brueggemann lambasted, indicating the uselessness of such hermeneutical dead-ends.

He also cites — fair enough — a very critical speech given (which was included in a chapter in God in the Fray, a festschrift in Brueggemann’s honor) by Walter’s friend Terry Fretheim, who took Walter to task for failing in any number of scholarly details and holding too many theological ambiguities. Later, Brueggemann spoke highly of Fretheim as their theological disagreements (and Fretheim’s public critique) were less important than their friendship and mutual respect. Kanagy’s Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination is loaded with this kind of fascinating stuff about his life and the balancing of aspects of his thinking and his ministry, his ever-evolving scholarly work and his public offerings.

Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination not only shows in passionate detail some of the battles of Brueggemann’s career as Bible scholar to the churches, but how he routinely pushed towards a generative and socially disruptive vision, the “prophetic imagination” of that seminal 1978 book. (And, who knew that somehow the editors who helped name that stunning work drew on a line from Flannery O’Connor?) This radical vision of how the prophets came to imagine that things could be otherwise — filled with pathos and daring to confront the cultural accommodation of God’s people (whether Moses or Jeremiah or Jesus) — was, in so many ways, imparted, nearly imputed, by Brueggemann to his students and listeners. It is no surprise that his poetic passion for imagining new social policy that emerges from the texts of Scripture — and, man, Brueggemann shows that nearly any passage has public implications! — ends up influencing Christian peace and justice activists in the streets; there is a section in Kanagy’s book about Walter’s many articles published in Sojourners and about his friendship with Jim Wallis.

Back when I was much younger and a bit more impudent, I once gently chided Walter for not getting arrested in gestures of civil disobedience; it seems that his Biblical and prophetic directives sure would have compelled that kind of public resistance. But, still, his courage and assistance to those on the picket line, in the soup kitchens and free medical clinics and advocating for immigrants and others marginalized by church and state has been consistent and healing ballast for those in the struggle. I wish Kanagy might have explored some of the public stuff Brueggemann did do, speaking at protests or preaching on the streets or joining those doing mission projects. There is no reference to friendship with Dan or Phil Berrigan, say, although Walter appreciated their mutual mentor, Abraham Heschel.

The book does explore, and Kanagy does speak, however, about another aspect of Brueggemann’s life which, as a biographer, he had to investigate; let’s give it that generic name of his background; his family of origin. There are no awful stories there, other than the impact of Walter having grown up rural and poor, with a relatively uneducated father who became an innovative and respected small town pastor. (Respected by some, that is; there is a terrible story of a snooty Missouri Synod Herr Doktor pastor who would not even shake Brueggemann’s father’s hand, humiliating him deeply.) Walter’s mother was demanding and those who have heard Brueggemann speak candidly, as he does in workshops and retreats, may have heard him speak of having been in therapy some of his adult life. He has studied Freud and others, trying to figure out the vexed relationship with his loving, good, German family. Kanagy is  never inappropriate and there are no hidden secrets revealed, but a few key moments in his upbringing come up, over and over, actually. It’s revealing, instructive, and, again, garners more sympathy for Walter as he admits to ongoing puzzlement about his family of origin and the pietism of his immigrant denomination and the faith in which he was brought up.

Speaking of which, he was, as most know, part of a stream of gentle, German Reformed Calvinists that merged with another such tributary, who then merged with New England congregationalists to form the United Church of Christ (UCC.) I wish Kanagy might have mentioned a bit more about this historic merger and if Brueggemann was involved; his first books were on the UCC press, I believe, including his famous Living Into a Vision which was reissued years later as Peace.) Walter’s first seminary job — he was a farm hand as a kid — was at his father’s old seminary, Eden, founded in 1850 near Saint Louis, which, years before Walter arrived, had one of the Niehbur brothers as dean (and the other on the Board.) Brueggemann’s own interest in weaving together insights from sociology with Biblical theology was affirmed there, even as he became a young dean, himself, appreciated greatly by nearly everyone there.

And so, Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography is just that — a personal biography, yes, but with a special view to Brueggemann’s ongoing theological development, in light of his speciality, the exegesis of the texts of the Bible which he knows so well. (To be clear, he is not trained officially in theology proper, but is a Bible scholar, not a theologian as such.) By speaking in such lively terms about the possibility of knowing the God of the Bible and actually caring about communities of faith that pray and sing hymns and baptize babies and serve the poor and do what ordinary churches do, he lives his life at the intersection of Biblical studies and congregational life.

As an older gentleman, now, (he was born in 1933 so you do the math) his conversations with Kanagy were winsome and wistful, energetic at times, honest, even painful. But, mostly, the interviews reflect on Brueggemann’s own sense of the call to study and grapple with and proclaim the good news of God’s promised regime change, the reign of God breaking into human history, most clearly in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. His lifetime spent upsetting the arcane, critical worlds of (nearly) unbelieving Biblical scholarship as well as the co-opted, captive churches (left, right, or center), made for a hard but dramatic life. Kanagy raises so much, reports back from the interviews with elan and appreciation, and sometimes digresses to show how Brueggemann connects the dots between the Bible and our emerging postmodern times.

Kanagy’s voice is the present one in the book, but the topic comes alive. Those who have met Brueggemann will appreciate this so much, hearing him in these stories and reflections and those who have not will come to a better appreciation of the man and his work.

One other little part of the book that makes it especially enjoyable: Kanagy brings in four or five “conversation partners” as he tells how they were profoundly influenced by Walter’s teaching, friendship, and guidance. New hope was found, new directions discerned, and younger scholars and pastors tell of their own encounters with Brueggemann as teacher and mentor. One was literally suicidal and reading Brueggemann’s The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith (the first book I ever read of his in maybe 1980) and then hearing him preach saved his life!

A few of these names will be known by those who follow Brueggemann’s publishing career as they have gone on to write books with him, such as Clover Reuter Beal, who published a book called An On-Going Imagination: Conversations About Scripture, Faith, and the Thickness of Relationships (WJK; $18.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40) and Carolyn Sharp, who teaches a course at Yale Divinity School on Brueggemann, who has given us Living Countertestimony: Conversations with Walter Brueggemann (WJK; $20.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $1`6.00) as well as her excellent guide to Brueggemann’s work, Disruptive Grace: Reflections on God, Scripture, and the Church which, although mostly an anthology of Brueggemann’s best work up to that time, was curated and introduced helpfully by Sharp. (Fortress; $35.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00.) These fine folks who discovered Walter’s influence as young scholars, pastors, or activists, and their testimony about his generative role in their lives, is fascinating.

I think Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination is a book that will be enjoyed by anyone who has appreciated his work and, I think, will be important for those who are seriously engaging with his core theories and visions. If you hunger to know more about how the Bible relates to modern life, this isn’t a programmatic guide, but it is a glimpse to the most important Biblical scholar doing that kind work yet today.

We very highly recommend this fascinating biography to those serious about studying Biblical texts, their rhetoric, and their subsequent evocative power to shape our imaginations or to those who just want to learn about the life, background, passions, and career of this exceptionally popular Christian scholar.

Here we see biblical scholarship embedded in a contemporary life of struggle, conviction, commitment, and prayer. For preachers, teachers, scholars, readers who cannot leave the Bible alone because God won’t leave them alone, this book helps us make sense of our experience and our sense of what is still possible with God. — Ellen F. Davis,  Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, Duke Divinity School, author of Biblical Prophecy: Perspectives for Christian Theology, Discipleship, and Ministry

Walter Brueggemann is the clearest biblical prophet of our time. He is not just a magnificent scholar of the prophets or their best theological interpreter, but Brueggemann himself is a prophet to and for our troublesome days. Walter would be the first to deny such accolades. And this is why Conrad Kanagy’s theological biography is so needed. Kanagy, in rich and critical detail, documents what Brueggemann has seen and heard, studied and learned, reflected upon and then preached and written. This book reveals what it looks like to speak the Word of God’s truth to power in the face of all our ideological manifestations of falsehood. As with the prophets, justice is his measure and the marginalized are his focus. Yet, as Kanagy shows, Walter is a kind man who walks humbly with his God. –Jim Wallis,  founding editor, Sojourners, Director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, author of Christ in Crisis? Reclaiming Jesus in a Time of Fear, Hate, and Violence

I can think of no biblical scholar more worthy of a biography than Walter Brueggemann, the most gifted, insightful, and prolific scholar the field of Old Testament studies has ever seen. Conrad Kanagy has provided us with just that in a volume that is equal parts biography of Brueggemann, an account of his career, and reflection on his breakthrough book, The Prophetic Imagination — all written in an engaging, lively style. Kanagy’s treatment consistently delivers profound insights into all three of these things (and their remarkable interrelations) and is especially noteworthy in its attention to Brueggemann’s early years: how formative his family of origin, his upbringing, and his pre-professorial days were to all that followed. Even if you know Walter and his work well — or just think you do — be prepared to learn an immense amount in this book, which left me yet again awed and inspired by one whom I deem no less than a modern-day prophet. — Brent A. Strawn, Professor of Old Testament; Professor of Law, Duke University, author Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at the Old Testament

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders.And if you are doing a pre-order, tell us if you want us to hold other books until the pre-order comes, or send some now, and others later… we’re eager to serve you in a way that you prefer.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know.

PRE-ORDER TODAY

SHIPPING BEFORE OCTOBER 24, 2023

20% OFF

Welcome to another weekly BookNotes, the newsletter of Hearts & Minds, a small-town bookstore (where we are still struggling with Covid-safety questions and doing backyard customer service) here in south-central PA. We’re in our 40th year and for a long while we’ve been sending out these book reviews, announcing just some of the many books we carry. All the old BookNotes are all archived at our website.

Sometimes we curate themed reviews, listing recent books that more or less fit a topic. For instance last week we did a set of mostly short books, mostly for pastors who might need some refreshment; here we did one on recent books about racial justice; here is a longer review of More Than Things and some other books that fit with the heavy book on the theological /philosophical social ethic of personalism. Here’s one we did on books about nature writing, creation-care and eco-theology.  I hope you saw this one on books on masculinity and what some call “toxic masculinity.” And those are just from the last few months.

Often, though, we just tell about a batch of new books that have arrived here that we are hoping to mail out to our faithful online customers. Here’s one of those sorts of catch-all BookNotes, naming a dozen books that are, mostly, quite new, the sorts of thoughtful stuff we thought many of our readers might care about. ALL ARE 20% OFF.

FIRST though, there’s an invite for a very special pre-order that we’re eager to tell you about. You can pre-order anything, anytime, but this one — The Just Kitchen: Invitations to Sustainability, Cooking, Connection, and Celebration by Derrick Weston & Anna Woofenden is fantastic and it’s coming soon. Read on!

Read down to the very end of the column so you see all twelve, and then simply click on that link at the bottom to place an order. Or click the one that says “inquire” if you have questions about any of these — or anything else. As a full-service bookstore, we’re happy to help.

LET’S START WITH THIS VERY SPECIAL PRE-ORDER OPTION

The Just Kitchen: Invitations to Sustainability, Cooking, Connection, and Celebration Derrick Weston & Anna Woofenden (Broadleaf Books) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE 20% off = $23.99 / PREORDER NOW

NOT YET RELEASED –due October 10, 2023

Derrick is an old Pittsburgh Presbyterian, urban ministry guy, and now a food and faith podcaster and gardening activist in Baltimore. His official bio says that he manages the Rockrose City Farm on Baltimore’s east side, growing food for ministries that distribute to those who are food insecure. A documentary filmmaker, producer, and former Presbyterian minister, Derrick is a firm believer in using one’s voice and the media to inspire and enact social change. Indeed!

You may know of Anna, who wrote a book we adored and that I wrote about briefly a time or two here at BookNotes, This Is God’s Table: Finding Church Beyond the Walls. That great memoir was about her essentially creating a fresh expression of the inclusive church by inviting folks to urban gardening. Her bio notes that she remains the pastor of both The Garden Church and Feed and Be Fed Farm in San Pedro, California. She is said to be “passionate about spirituality, justice, food, the earth, beauty, compassion, and community.” She is now based in Northampton, Massachusetts.

This forthcoming book is a delight. Slightly oversized like a good cookbook (it does have recipes!) it is, as one Colorado reviewer put it, “a heart-warming, soul-satisfying, and salivating meditation on the spiritual dimension of foodways.”

As you might guess if you follow any of this sort of writing at all, there’s a lovely endorsement by the important leader in the field, Nate Stucky, who directs Princeton Seminary’s “Farminary.” Stucky says:

Like a carefully and lovingly prepared meal, Derrick Weston and Anna Woofendon have given a rich and generous gift in Just Kitchen. With honesty, humility, and great generosity of spirit, Derrick and Anna echo a truth I learned from the keepers of the kitchen in my own family–there’s more going on in the kitchen than we usually realize. Yes, it can be a complicated and difficult space, but it can also be a space of interaction, preparation, transformation, reflection, healing, community, mutuality, celebration, and hope. For anyone who has longed for a guide to a more meaningful relationship with the kitchen, Derrick and Anna graciously show the way–recipes included.

Just Kitchen is one of our most anticipated books of the fall. There are short, smart pieces scattered throughout it with rich sidebars, interviews, and inserts. There are stories galore, reflections, meditations, poems and recipes. It is both serious and inviting, profound and friendly. Hooray. We expect it a bit early and hope to send ‘em out in early October.

A DOZEN NEW BOOKS ON A VARIETY OF TOPICS — ALL 20% OFF

Pastor, Jesus Is Enough: Hope for the Weary, the Burned Out, and the Broken Jeremy Writebol (Lexham Press) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I almost listed this in the previous BookNotes which highlighted some quick reads for pastors that may feel a bit demoralized. I wanted to call it Pastor, Jesus Is Enough, Already, but that was a bit too whimsical for the content.I suppose one reason I didn’t cite this one in that bunch for pastors is that it is intense. Honest. Complex. Biblically engaged. Really real, even raw, but deeply, profoundly gospel-based and Christ-centered. It’s strong, but not simple or cheery.

Writebol is a pastor of a big church and executive director of a publishing venture called Gospel-Centered Discipleship. They are impeccably about Christ and his grace, missional, evangelical. Writebol fits the perfect pastor mold, modeling solid doctrine and Biblically-oriented faith, caring and Christ-like. But yet. But yet. He knows something can go wrong — deeply wrong. And these days, even in his own ministry, things can take a bad turn.

Not only are pastors (perhaps now more than ever) discouraged and hurting, but some (get this) are more in love with their ministry than they are with their Lord. Some may serve the Kingdom, but they ignore the King.  Maybe that is part of what sets this book apart, as it explores those who are so dedicated and who try to be so “more than enough” that they don’t feel like they even need God. Mainline pastors like Eugene Peterson wrote about this decades ago, this love for the organized religious delivery system (church, in that view) that is disconnected to a real, live, daily walk of faith.

Another thing that really sets apart Pastor, Jesus Is Enough is the format, his way into this heavy topic. He explores the famous seven letters that Jesus (through John) wrote to the cities in Revelation 2 – 3. You know some of them, at least… it’s a good approach, an uncommon book on these seven words. Jeremy discovers, alas, that these are not just to the churches (each with a unique foible or sin) but to pastors of those churches. In each, the leaders (whether tired or hurting, drifting or sinfully straying) are reminded of Christ’s sufficiency. These are warnings but also promises. They are, Writebol tells us, “words of life.” It’s a very good book.

Hopeful Lament: Tending Our Grief Through Spiritual Practices Terra McDaniel (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

Well, I love to say often how much I trust InterVarsity Press and how much I appreciate their eye for good writing, thoughtful, evangelical-ish authors, solid authors of mature faith, addressing the reading world with verve. This book sure seems to be quintessential — for thoughtful readers, but not academic, for those wanting serious reading, but work that is down to earth, practical, useful.

And this topic — oh my, Terra McDaniel is surely not the first to advise those in grief towards classic contemplative disciplines, but this may be the first major book about this tool. She insists that we need to rediscover the lost practice of lament, which can help us to process personal and communal mourning. She calls it “tending” our grief. I’ve just begun this and love it already.

As it says on the back, “Hopeful Lament makes space for the powerful act of crying out before a loving God and offers provoking reflection questions, embodied practices, and includes applications for families with children.” This is designed to help us all better learn to journey gently through suffering, discerning how it can be transformative.

Lament and sadness go together, but they are not the same thing. Terra McDaniel poignantly shows how Christian lament is about disciplined sadness, holy prayer, formative practices, and believing in the possibility of hope without rushing to joy prematurely, all because of Christ. We will all grieve, there is a way to learn to grieve well, and this is a faithful guide and companion. — Nijay K. Gupta, professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and author of Tell Her Story

In Thought, Word, and Seed: Reckonings from a Midwest Farm Tiffany Eberle Kriner (Eerdmans) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It’s a standard question in author interviews: have there been books that you’ve purchased just because of the cover. Ha! Book lovers everywhere know the answer to that. Of course. And we do it here, taking on a stack of inventory, convinced that a classy cover will necessarily mean classy writing. Of course, that’s dicey and sometimes not at all the case. But it often rings true as sparkling prose inspires a designer to do her best, finding cover art that captures the tone of the book itself. That certainly is the case with the cleverly titled In Thought, Word and Seed.

The woodcut art on the cover, by the way, is from 1918, by Dutch artists Julie de Graag.

Cover aside, this is a brilliantly crafted collection of lyrical essays, what Phil Christman (of the seriously acclaimed Midwest Futures) called a “beautifully written book.” He continues, saying that it “turns the cliches of an evangelical childhood into a robust adult faith, the fragments of American history into a story of repentance and renewal, and a beat-up bit of land into a life-giving farm.” Okay, then.

In the excellently done, thoughtful introductory foreword by Thomas Gardner, Gardner calls these pieces, so much about literature and land, “spiritual improvisations.” Another writer said In Thought, Word, and Seed offered “smorgasbord of genres.” It is tasty, but somewhat demanding. These are rich, serious essays, full of ruminations on writing and literature, simply and compellingly entitled Field, Grass, Forest, Clearing and Wattle. An epilogue ends with “Christ Have Mercy.”

My friend Brian Walsh, co-author of Romans Disarmed and Beyond Homelessness has a lovely blurb. Claude Atcho (of Reading Black Books) says it is “genuinely remarkable and gloriously undefinable.” Beth Felker Jones notes the shades of Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, and Julian of Norwich. She assures us it has a voice all its own and she says that voice is “luminous. Audacious. Holy.”

Ever buy a book for the cover and the amazingly wise and superlative blurbs by people you trust?

Trust me, this is a lovely, thoughtful, book, complicated and not easy to describe, even though the random essays weave together and developing into a memoir of a bookish couple (she is a English prof at Wheaton who has written a scholarly classic offering a “eschatology of reading”) who also care about home and place and land. Their northern Illinois “Root and Sky Farm” farm is quite a rugged place. Her ruminations are intelligent and beautiful.  Very highly recommended.

The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education edits by Jeffrey Bilbro, Jessica Hooten Wilson & David Henreckson (Plough Publishing) $19.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

In the past generation there was (thanks be to God) somewhat of a renaissance of the notion of distinctively Christian learning. There has been much worldviewish scholarship and Biblically-grounded social initiatives, thoughtful engagement with the world in fresh, dynamic, and uniquely Christian ways. We have tried to underscore and amplify this kind of deeply Christian orientation that yields fruitful Kingdom insight for learning and life (across the college curriculum and in all zones of professional and public life.) Three cheers for the many good books on faith and life, worship and work, prayer and politics, spirituality and science, even for what philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd called “the inner reformation of all the sciences.”

Many of the best such books, (some written years ago, now) that called for a new energy for integrating faith and scholarship were inspired by a more-or-less Reformed world and life view; some drew on the beloved quotes of public theologian Abraham Kuyper (you know, the “every square inch” guy.) If Christ is indeed claiming “every square inch” of creation, then we need those who consider each and every square inch, who can help us along the journey, in if not of the world.

Enter this new book by a mostly younger generation of scholars and practitioners, lovers of books and of life-long learning, many who are not rooted in the Dutch reformational vision of Kuyper et al. Some of the many good writers here may be in that circle of influence but most are not, or so it seems. This is, in the best sense, a delightfully ecumenical book.  From Peter Mommsen (of the Bruderhof) to Rachel Griffins (from Spring Arbor University), from David Hsu (who has worked in industry and is now in the engineering department at Wheaton) to L. Gregory Jones (formerly of Duke, now President of Belmont), these are all leaders from mostly other Christian faith traditions, each saying why the liberal arts still matter.

It is just thrilling to read pieces by the likes of Emily Auerback who founded the Odyssey Project and co-hosts University of the Air on Wisconsin Public Radio, and Zena Hitz, of St John’s College in Annapolis (and author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures ofd An Intellectual Life) and the brilliant critic and scholar Jonathan Tran of Baylor. There are a few classical education advocates, Steve Prince, a black visual artists, now at William and Mary, and Columbia University medical ethics doctor Lydia Dugdale who wrote the widely-acclaimed Lost Art of Dying. It didn’t surprise me to see here the eloquent Anne Snyder, the editor of Comment and host of the Whole Person Revolution podcast.

This new cohort of educators and public thinkers are here “reimagining and re-articulating what a liberal arts education is for and what it might look like in today’s world.”  I like how many of them are showing how all of this plays out in spaces outside of the typical college classroom. Whether you are connected to institutions of higher learning or not, The Liberating Arts is a treasure trove.

As the back cover puts it:

“In each chapter, dispatches from innovators desire concerned ways this is being put into practice, often outside the academy, showing that the liberals arts are not only viable today, but vital to our future.”

Not every book on a mostly Anabaptist, indie-press publishing house gets a rave review in Harper’s Magazine. As Jon Baskin notes, this book is “lucid and inspiring” and that it shows how the liberals arts “remind us that nothing is more fundamental to preparing citizens to live in a pluralistic society.”

Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies David P. Gushee (Eerdmans) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This was another one of these books that we have long been awaiting — I had the privilege of getting an advanced copy and was taken in by its study of jurisprudence and political history — and while I thought of grouping it with a forthcoming BookNotes column on books about the rise of white Christian nationalism and the “red state Christian” phenomenon of those who have fallen for the MAGA idolatry, I just couldn’t wait. We’ll list this with others, later — there are a lot, these days — but, for now, it’s good to announce any new David Gushee book that arrives, especially one that is so judicious. Yes, he is sure that the American republic, and her democratic ways, is in danger. There are authoritarians who are, too often, weirdly promoted by a reactionary sort of Christianity. And this book cautiously, carefully, teaches about what ideologies are behind some of the global trends towards anti-democratic and authoritarian regimes.

Gushee was once a young evangelical being tutored by the best in public theology — from Ron Sider to James Skillen to Glen Stassen and informed by important scholarship such as that by Michael Walzer — and in those years he was often in conversation with politically conservative faith leaders (think of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, say) so you could reasonably say he has been at this a long time. The struggle against bad Christian sorts of nationalisms has been in the wind for as long as Gushee has been a Christian and this, now, is his clear-headed manifesto for what Hak Joon Lee of Fuller Theological Seminary calls “a timely, eloquent, and compelling apologetic for democracy.”

Two things you might want to know: first, Gushee shows that our political chaos and the rise of religiously-motivated authoritarians is not merely a US phenomenon; he has a chapter each on the recent drift towards anti-democratic impulses in Poland, in Orban’s Hungary, and in Bolsanaro’s Brazil. You will learn much, I bet, and it will be alarming, even if the prose is sober. Wisely, too, David frames these three chapters with two historic explorations (“Reactionary Politics in France, 1870 – 1944” and “The Politics of Cultural Despair in Germany, 1853 – 1933.”) He admits that every chapter here is short and the material succinct. But it is strong and illuminating and offers details that are good to know, case studies to help us see more clearly the dangers of “authoritarian reactionary Christianity” in our current Trump-era United States.

David helpfully looks that three Christian traditions whose robust public theologies offer pro-democracy undergirding, traditions from which we can learn as we deepen our political mindfulness and civic habits of firming up our Republic. He has a chapter each (and a big ‘ol chart) on The Baptist Democratic Tradition, the Black Christian Democratic Tradition, and Covenantal Christian Political Ethics.

(Please remember here that he is not necessarily advocating for the Democratic Party, as such, but is writing about the broader traditions that affirm democracy.)

This carefully researched book is accesible but should be interesting for scholars and specialists. There are discussion questions for groups serious enough to want to read it together, something I’d highly recommend. We indeed live, as John Adams put it, in “serious times.” This thoughtful, judicious work is a major contribution towards revitalized and faithful Christianly-shaped, pro-democracy renewal.

Just listen to these wise promotional endorsements by important public scholars:

David Gushee has written that rare book that combines reader-friendliness, moral clarity, and political detail. A stellar accomplishment much needed today. Gushee sets America’s sociopolitical rifts in context and guides the reader to big-picture thinking about what’s at stake in the world today, and he does it in a way that is both elegant and heartfelt. Read it and give it to everyone you know.  — Marcia Pally, author of White Evangelicals and Right-Wing Populism: How Did We Get Here?

Unflinching in his analysis, David Gushee traces the sobering history of Christianity’s all too frequent complicity in authoritarian rule. Yet Gushee also shows how Christians have within their faith the tools to restore democracy at this critical juncture. Reminding readers that democracy must be fought for, Gushee equips the American church for this battle. Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies is an immensely important book for our present moment. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Calvin University, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

This is an important book. It asks about the ways in which Christians may favor autocratic politics over democracy and does not shy away from difficulties. It analyses how authoritarian regimes can legitimate their power by playing into religious sentiments. Thus, it gives a theological foundation to the need for political awareness within Christian circles. — Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics –  And Where Do We Go From Here Kaitlyn Schiess (Brazos Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Well, if the vibrant and semi-scholarly Gushee book, above, inviting us to resist an alt-right Christian takeover of our public institutions doesn’t quite grab you, this one, also about faith and politics and the Bible, might suit better for you. (Or, ideally, get ‘em both!)

Kaitlyn Schiess, with a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary, is now working on a PhD at Duke, and wrote one of the very best introductory books on why people of faith should be careful about forming political attitudes and civic habits. In her groundbreaking The Liturgy of Politics, she invited us to ponder how we are formed, how our virtues and instincts and public views develop (and from what sources.) Not wanting to be beholden to any worldly ideology right or left, she calls for us to be truly Biblical as we evaluate the many competing political ideologies influential in today’s public debates. If that book showed her to be wise beyond her years (as James Skillen put it in his review), this book steps back a bit and reflects on how use (and, often, misuse) of the Bible has always been a part of the American civic discourse.

The Ballot and the Bible is good history, a book that has been recommended by folks as diverse as history-writers Jemar Tisby (The Color of Compromise) and Karen Swallow Prior (The Evangelical Imagination) and politico Michael Wear. Michael (the president and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life) and author of the forthcoming The Spirit of Our Politics, says it offers “keen, level-headed, and perceptive insights” into the use of Scriptures in our political life.

She starts the book with the puritan Biblical interpretations during the colonial years, has a good chapter on Romans 15 and American identity, a bit on the Bible “through slave-holding spectacles” during the Civil War era, and moves from the social gospel (and the unique hermeneutics of that movement) into the various views of Scripture on both sides of the civil rights struggle. She has a good chapter on the conservative movement of Bush and Reagan who believed in “the magic of the market” and had a “small government” hermeneutic even as another chapter explored the notions of Biblical eschatology during the cold war. (That chapters offered a clever nod to Hal Lindsey by calling it “The Late Great United States.”)

On she goes, comparing and contrasting the use of the Bible by George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and one chapter on Donal Trump’s appeal to evangelicals.  The closing chapter is called “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city” which offers a wise reflection on “Jeremiah 20 and Political Theology.”  Throughout the book she offers this dual concern, both the peril and the promise (as she calls it) of Biblical references in political life.

The Bible Explained: A College Student’s Guide to Understanding Their Faith Cyril Chavis Jr. (Hides Publishing)  $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I bet you don’t know this book. And you should, really. If you care for college students at all, or if you work in campus ministry, this great new title could be a real resource for your work.

Time or space does not allow me to describe all the wit and clever writing in The Bible Explained nor can I say much about what makes it useful, other than the obvious. And that includes three main features.

Firstly this is designed for black college students. The author is himself in campus ministry at Howard University, and that means it is, itself, an extraordinary resource, emerging as it does from his thoughtful work among the intellectually curious (and sometimes skeptical) African American students there. The author is one of the handful of black campus works for the PCA-related Reformed University Fellowship. He knows his way around black youth culture. (His own seminary degree is from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.) Dig that.

Secondly, this is a book that wisely invites seekers into the broad narrative of Scripture. Sure, there is plenty of stuff about interpreting given texts, rules of the road for reading the Bible, explanations of genre and context. But helping people come to a deeper, appropriate understanding of God’s Word is offered with a combo of common-sense reading strategies and classic, basic hermeneutical insights, with this big picture vision of the scope of the story, the whole unfolding drama of God’s mighty acts and redemption promised and fulfilled.

Thirdly, although it is a complex and healthy conversation to have, I’ll say that it is clear that the author is himself not only good Bible teacher who wants to help young adults discover the Scriptures for themselves, but he is an evangelist, wanting people to meet the God behind the story, the Christ who is the star of the story, and Spirit who directed the writing and keeps the sacred story alive even now.

God is “more glorious and enjoyable than you ever knew,” Chavis promises, with a hint of the famous answer from the Westminster Catechism, which he surely knows. Yet, he invites young adults into this hope of glory, by way of teaching them about the Bible.  Even though it is written by a black pastor to black students at historically black colleges and universities, I think it is useful for nearly anyone wanting a sensible way to introduce the Scripture afresh to seekers.

One young black woman from Howard University wrote to thank Cyril for this rather rare book. She wrote, “Thank you for thinking of us the whole way; I felt seen and thought about as a black reader.”  Nice, huh?

Spiritual Practices for Soul Care: 40 Ways to Deepen Your Faith Barbara L. Peacock (Baker Books) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

My goodness, gracious, what a jam-packed set of wise suggestions for anyone who wants to try something new, fresh, classic, deepening their own sense of connection to the divine, actually growing in their spiritual lives! This book is for anyone who has felt stalled by heavy talk of mystical disciplines or who hasn’t had time to ponder a whole, transformative Rule of Life or settled into life-changing rhythms. In other words, this is about simple, restorative practices that you can do today.

In fact, each chapter has “today” in the titles. Stuff you can do today.

Barbara Peacock is an award-winning author as well as a passionate spiritual director. (Her master’s is from Princeton Theological Seminary and her DMin from Gordon Conwell.) She is in Charlotte NC and is known for her groundbreaking book about spirituality within the historic black church tradition. You may know it, Soul Care in African American Practice, published by IVP.

Here, she invites us, yes, to “embrace rhythms that lead to true flourishing.” But she knows that many need help in learning about and trying spiritual practices that can be put into practice right away. If you yearn to go deeper and learn some new options for your quiet time, this book is tremendous.

In each entry she has a “soul care leader” in which she gives a little biography of somebody known for that teaching, and it’s a wide array of leaders, from Henry Blackaby to Howard Thurman, John Newton, Marva Dawn, Dallas Willard, and so many more. And, she has a “Scripture Focus” for each practice.

It is arranged around seven sections (with several practical “today” chapters under each.) She writes well around “Soul Care Living”, “Soul Care Directing”, “Soul Care Discipling”, “Soul Care Restoring”, “Soul Care and Self-Care”, “Should Care Reflecting”, and “Soul Care Liberation.” She has short, suggestive and instruction chapters like “Reading Today” and “Chastening Today” and “Storytelling Today” and “Entering Today.” From very obvious (one on exercising — Serena Williams is her guide for that one — and one on praying) to the more allusive— “Readying Today” or “Dwelling Today” — she covers a lot of ground and offers wise counsel. This is a great handbook, a treasure trove. You should get it!

What Would Jesus See: Ways of Looking at a Disorienting World Aaron Rosen (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Sometimes a book is just so very interesting, so unique and compelling, I have to tell you about it. And when the author makes themselves known as someone immediately likable, generous, charitable, curious, interesting, well, the book is a winner. In this case, the thesis of the book is striking and the author (a serious Jewish scholar of the arts) seems to be a heck of a guy. I’m impressed. I think some of our readers are going to love this one of a kind book.

Here’s the short version, although it deserves a more detailed survey and critique. It is trying to invite readers into an ethical space where they imagine what Jesus would see — based, mostly, on accounts in the gospel of what he did see — and, in a way, replace the nearly vapid WWJD slogan. Actually, drawing on the likes of The Imitation of Christ, Rosen knows that asking how to do the things that Jesus did is pretty revolutionary, even if rendered nearly copied by today’s consumerist culture. Still, it’s not a bad question, WWJD, and Rosen only wants to expand and deepen it.

He is a visual guy, a Jew who teaches Christian seminarians (at Wesley Theological Seminary in DC.) He is engaged often with Christian comrades in the movement of artists and writers who publish in Image (he thanks Jamie Smith and Lauren Winner.) His wife is an Episcopal priest, so he knows the Christian tradition well. And he is drawn to the Jesus described in the New Testament.

Here’s the thing: as Professor Rosen helps us learn to “see” in fresh ways, through the Jesus lens, let’s say, he is inviting us to a renewed vision of “radical empathy.” And as an arts curator, he does that not only through a close reading of episodes from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but from the great history of art devoted to the scenes of Jesus. He defends this, as a Jew, in the first chapter with a moving story from the great Jewish novel, My Name is Asher Lev, the memorable part where Lev is chastised by his Jewish art mentor when he wants to turn away from all of the pictures of Jesus in the art museum. Just a few pages in and you know this is going to be a great, fun, and challenging book.

Bill McKibben says it is “a clever — and timely  — way to phrase this question.” Eboo Patel (the Muslim founder of Interfaith America) says it is “an interesting, creative, and compulsively readable book.” It is all of that, interesting, clever, timely, and readable. I think, mostly, it will help us all understand Jesus just a bit more, live into the chasm between what we claim and what we do, by discerning a bit about how we see. What an intriguing, captivating book!

The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers are Considering Christianity Again Justin Brierley (Tyndale Momentum) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Okay, just for starters, this isn’t written by our Dordt College friend Justin Bailey, who wrote Reimagining Apologetics, which might be simpatico with Justin Brierley’s new one. Brierley’s new Surprising Rebirth… has nicely emerged from his long years of working in a UK broadcast interviewing atheists, mostly. He documented that in a nice little book a few years ago called Unbelievable?: Why After Ten Years Of Talking With Atheists, I’m Still A Christian. Unbelievable, almost, that his show, Unbelievable, brought many with such harsh critiques of Christian faith to the fore, and he struggled with them all, discerning answers to the most common objections non or anti-Christians have with historical Christian conviction.

This new one is a more wide-ranging survey, and is remarkable, suggesting that — against what the popular press might be saying — there may be a return to belief in recent times.

The book has nice blurbs from the likes of Philip Yancey — if Yancey likes something, you know it is well written and thoughtful. Phil calls it “stimulating” and notes that it “sounds a hopeful note.” This hopeful note, curiously, was inspired by an interview Brierley did with  an agnostic journalist who sensed that the rigid atheist of a decade or so ago was in decline. This book was the fruit of his deeper analysis and vast numbers of interviews, conversations, and debates (both public on his radio show and in personal dialogue.

The forward to The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God is by N. T. Wright, who the author works with often in England. A good number of famous thinkers show up, here, from Jordan Peterson to Tom Holland and he narrates the debates he hosted, such as the one between Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins. So, clearly, he’s no slouch and this is not a simplistic screed or overblown hope. Just the stories of the people he’s met are fascinating, but his project, weaving them into a note of hope, is fascinating and rather compelling. I think some of our readers need this book.

Curve-ball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (Or, How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God) Peter Enns (HarperOne) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This is a book I couldn’t put down and, agree or not, it is interesting, honest, appealing, and sensible. I have been wanting to write about it, but have been waiting for a long-in-coming, epic BookNotes I want to do about the passel of books about doubt, deconstruction, and the trend of evangelicals leaving the tradition, if not the faith. But I just couldn’t wait for that big post, and wanted to name this one, here, now.

It is indeed about what some call deconstruction. Dr. Enns was a conservative Bible scholar who taught at the exceptionally strict Westminster Theological Seminary and was booted out there when he opened himself to minor differences within their hyper Reformed faith system. He wrote a brilliant book about that called The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our Correct Beliefs and then wrote a handful of books about how his view of the Bible developed and how to wisely read the Bible more faithfully.

Curveball, in a way, is a personal memoir and a guide to how to navigate faith when questions arise and one realizes one must be honest before the big questions. As Thomas Jay Oord puts it, “Pete Enns’s spiritual memoir combines wit and wisdom, along with biblical and theological insights! The vision God Pete humbly proposes is different from the one many of us were given. And far more winsome.” I guess this is a theme of the book — shown in the subtitle, especially — that as we grow and leave some unfruitful for untrue notions behind, we can find a bigger, truer, better, God, not the simplistic constructs of whatever theological system in which you were taught.

With blurbs on the back from Sarah Bessey and Brian McLaren and Jonathan Merritt, my fear is that some customers, allergic to these sorts of writers, may think ill of the author and not give the book a chance. Yet, as Merritt nicely says on the back, the book “reminds readers that with crises are not something to be feared but are opportunities for spiritual growth that can hep you re-embrace God as more beautiful, loving, and mysteries.”

Isn’t that what you who are understandably concerned about the ease of talk of deconstruction these days want, for those drifting from faith to return, sobered, but in love with God all the more? Pete is funny and he is smart and he is a bit cynical, but he loves God, and this book shows it. Who knows what life will throw our way next? Curveball will help. And even if you’re not in a scary or disconcerting space of deconstruction, you’ll learn some stuff. Enjoy and ponder.

A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ John Andrew Bryant (Lexham Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

There are bunches of books — some very serious, some less so — on mental health issues these days and, to be really frank, when publishers known for solid, no-nonsense historically conservative theology weigh in, I sometimes worry. Are they so dogmatic for doctrine that they miss the human messiness of our fallen world? Can such theological worldviews accommodate the loose ends of hurting people without shunting off the pain to some gospel-centered cover-up? Or, worse, subtly blame the victim?  It happens.

Yet, I respect Lexham Press. And I couldn’t shake that cover, with the first and last words nearly off page, sliced, on the edge?  Further, greatly appreciate the woman who wrote the forward to this, Kathryn Green-McCreight, herself the author of the extraordinary memoir about her bi-polar disorder, Darkness Is My Only Companion. And then I realized that I was at a conference with this guy, once. His formate housemates are among our best customers, dear friends in Western PA who we deeply respect. No wonder I liked the smell of this.

Once I started it I realize it was a very special book. There is a glossary in the front – a bit odd, maybe — naming phrases he uses in the book. When one is as mentally ill as Mr. Bryant, things can get dark. As a poet and artist, he does an excellent job being especially creative in the writing even as his theology and prose are clear as a bell. It blends honest and human-scale creative writing with straight-arrow, Biblical insight, true truth of the best sort.

Some of the trauma John experienced, he only alludes to, but I know it has to do with church abuse and abandonment. There have been other serious pains, and this chronic illness. As a seminary trained thinker, though, he knows a thing or two that we all can learn from. A Quiet Mind is both for anyone wanting insight about a Christ-centered view of mental health issues, and for anyone struggling with mental illness. This is a handsomely designed paperback, creatively written, and with exceptionally solid, Biblical orientation. I am sure some will come to value it. Spread the word.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options and, of course, UPS.  If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know.

If you missed last week’s BookNotes due to the long holiday weekend that some Americans enjoyed, we invite you to check it out here. Although I highlighted a few fairly recent books that are useful for living well as leaders and church workers, I reviewed two significant new books. One was called Metanoia: How God Radically Transforms People, Churches, and Organizations From the Inside Out (by the prolific missional author and Aussie gadfly Alan Hirsch.) The other one called The Scandal of Leadership (by JR Woodward) studies the question of nurturing wise and Christ-like leadership by taking on the principalities and powers (and domineering leadership styles) a theme not explored in any other leadership book I know.

The other day I talked to a pastor about these very books. He wondered if they were for him, heady and well-footnoted as they are. He seemed by his own account a bit lackluster, not burned out, but demoralized by all the things you can imagine might demoralize an otherwise Godly Christian worker.

Which got me thinking.

I figured in this BookNotes I’d just share a bunch of books that might bring refreshment and stimulation for pastors young or old, nothing too heavy. None of these are a silver bullet and none should be the only book a pastor reads for his or her professional development but I sincerely think these could be helpful to any tired leader. The list isn’t comprehensive and tilts towards mostly recent titles. (Although don’t miss the three classics at the end, one dating to 1974.) If you are a minister looking for a nice read, or wondering what book to use in a collegial book group, or if you want to gift your pastor with a book, maybe some of these might help.

All are, as always, available at the Hearts & Minds bookstore here in south central Pennsylvania, or you can easily order them at our website. The links below lead to where you can safely enter credit card digits (or just ask us for an invoice so you can pay later if you’d rather.) Scroll all the way down so you don’t miss anything and see the order link at the end. Thanks.

Again, for the record, some of these are written to and for pastors or other congregational leaders. I’m pitching this BookNotes to the pastors among us, even though I know most readers and customers are not clergy.

 

I do hope everybody realizes that most of these are, in fact, good for anyone wanting some nice reading and while I say these are “for a pastor” you can stretch that a bit with almost all of these. Also, maybe you know a pastor or two. Feel free to share. Thanks.

FOR A PASTOR WANTING TO BRUSH UP ON CREATIVE WAYS TO SPEAK ABOUT GOD

Speaking of God: An Essential Guide to Christian Thought Anthony G. Siegrist (Herald Press) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

The back cover asks “Do you ever think you’re forgetting how to talk about God?” Theology is, this author asserts, nothing more or less than speaking together about God. Still, “a lot of us don’t know where to start.”

Siegrist is a Canadian Mennonite who has written for Missio Alliance and reminds us of “common threads of thought and practice across traditions.” His missional vision is savvy, but at heart, he is thinking that the unfolding drama of Scripture — the “sweeping epic” as he calls it — is the “scaffold” for this accessible book. He’s upbeat and clever, and plumbs the depths of all manner of writers, thinkers, mystics, pastors. I like that the back cover blurbs are from a Lutheran (Dorothy Bass), a Wesleyan from West Virginia, and a Kierkegaard guy, the dean of theology at Westminster Theological Centre, an innovative British ministry that tilts a bit charismatic. Something for everyone!

God Turned Toward Us: The ABCs of Christian Faith Will Willimon (Abingdon Press) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Okay, it ain’t Frederick Buechner who was known for several theological alphabet books. It is nearly an homage to him, a good, maybe better, theological handbook written in the form of a deceptively simple ABC book. Grant, Willimon is not an award winning novelist and memoirs, but he is a darn good storyteller (and has, for the record, written both a novel and a memoir.) He’s not Presbyterian, like Buechner was, nor was he quite as urbane, although he was the chaplain at Duke for a while. Down home Southern, Methodist, a Barth scholar and lover of God’s church, this really is an amazing book. A Central Texas Conference bishop said “Reading God Turned Toward Us is like walking through a diamond mine.” Nearly every page is worth the price of the book. As the back cover puts it, “The challenge of the Christian life is learning to talk Christian. Somebody has got to tell us, give us the words that open the door to the faith called Christian. Each of us is due the delight of discovery in submitting to God’s talk to us.”

The book is organized by “the words the church teaches us to use to talk about ordinary life apprehended by a God who is Jesus Christ.” These are short, meditative reflections upon key concepts that guide Christians, new or longstanding.

Kenneth Carder, himself a retired bishop in the United Methodist Church, notes:

This is no ordinary book about Christian belief and practices. Rather, it is a sometimes jarring, always interesting, consistently insightful and persistently provocative invitation to talk the talk and walk the walk of Christian discipleship.

The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of the Christian Faith Trevin Wax (IVP) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

This medium sized hardback is itself a handsome book, and it is well worth having. No matter what theological persuasion you, dear reader, find yourself in, it’s an exceptionally erudite and energetic reminder of the core stuff, paradoxes and all. It invites us to a beautiful orthodoxy, to truth seen and experienced as a grand adventure — think Chesterton, or Lewis, maybe — and what Katie McCoy called “the consuming wonder.” It is, doubtlessly, a clarion call to the historic Christian faith, without being overly narrow.

Trevin Wax shows that traditional orthodox Christianity might not be as glossy and glamorous as Christianity gone worldly, but it is ancient, majestic, global, and glorious. It is a tried and tested alternative to the faddish and fragmentary fakes that masquerade as Christianity in some places. Trevin is not pushing dry doctrine but passing on fresh fire that is thousands of years old.  –Michael F. Bird, academic dean and lecturer in New Testament at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia

The Love That Is God: An Invitation to the Christian Faith Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt (Eerdmans) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

When we reviewed this a year or so ago a number of thoughtful customers just raved. They really liked it and one person ordered more. I figured that it was ideal for those interested in Christian theology but not wanting a tome or a text. This small book is poetic and glorious, even if rooted in profoundly serious, ecumenical Christian theology. The author is a renowned Catholic professor at Loyola University in Maryland and a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, assigned to the Cathedral. I have never met him.

Stanley Hauerwas, no slouch himself, says “I cannot help but believe that this book is destined to become a classic.” Wesley Hill says “This book made we want to become a Christian all over again.” For the right kind of reader, this reflection breathing new life into the ancient claim that God is Love can bring new ideas and deep renewal, I’m sure of it.

Sarah Coakley wrote the foreword and she insists that:

This is a book that takes us back to the raw basics of our faith and restores hope in the cruciform God of Love of whom it speaks so eloquently.

FOR A PASTOR WANTING TO BE RE-INSPIRED BY THE BIBLE

Re-Enchanting the Text:  Discovering the Bible as Sacred, Dangerous, and Mysterious Cheryl Bridges Johns (Brazos Press) $22.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Okay, this, too, maybe isn’t as simple as I’d wish for this list, but it’s a marvelous, new study and I’m convinced it is going to provoke fresh thinking about the Scriptures. Here’s the straightforward thesis of this serious book: “In an age when the Bible has been stripped of its sacredness and mystery and functional biblical illiteracy reigns, this book makes the case that we must work to re-enchant the text in order to return the Bible to its rightful place in the lives of Christians.”

Dr. Johns got her PhD from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary even though she, herself, is Pentecostal. The scholarly Pentecostal icon Amos Yong raves. A professor from Duke eagerly says it provides “a way forward.” Holy smokes, even Walter Brueggemann exclaims, “One can only voice a vigorous ‘yes’ to this wise and welcome book.” Lisa Bowens (of Princeton Theological Seminary says it is “powerful and compelling.” Okay, then. I think it may be just what you need.

This book amounts to a bold Pentecostal intervention in current discussions about the theological interpretation of Scripture. Johns’s vision for a Pentecostal ontology of Scripture is not just for Pentecostals–it is a gift to the church catholic, born at Pentecost.– James K. A. Smith, Calvin University; author of How (Not) to Be Secular, Thinking in Tongues, and You Are What You Love

Sacred Belonging: A 40-Day Devotional on the Liberating Heart of Scripture Kat Armas (Brazos Press) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Oh my, this brand new book deserves a bigger review, but just know that it is arranged as a set of short readings, but they are unlike nearly any you’ve read before. They are a tad quirky, passionately engaged, deeply transformative, loyal to Christ and His Kingdom, which is to say, written with an out to the outcast and outsider.

You may know her great book Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach Us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength. This new one, Sacred Belonging, is, in the words of Arielle Astoria (a poet, author, and spoken word artist) “an invitation into a deep, expansive, and healing way of encountering Scripture.”  Looks amazing!

Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters Carmen Joy Imes (IVP Academic) $22.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

One of my favorite books this year, and one of the great new friends of Beth and me this year, Being God’s Image by Biblical scholar Carmen Joy Imes is a delight, a provocation, a reminder, a stimulation, a great study of what the founding creation narratives have to say to us today. What does it mean to be human? How does our gender matter? What is our relationship to the Earth itself? Importantly, how does the Bible shape our understanding of our life and times?

The cofounder of the well-loved and widely respected Bible Project, Tim Mackie, calls it “an accessible and profound exploration of this most important Biblical theme.” There is a remarkable forward by J. Richard Middleton, and if he thinks it’s important, you should read it. Hooray.

Harvest of Hope: A Contemplative Approach to Holy Scriptures Mark McIntosh & Frank Griswold (Eerdmans) $22.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I have discussed this in previous BookNotes suggesting it is a great addition to the growing number of books which invite us to a contemplative, prayerful engagement with the Scriptures, a lovely and holy experience by two elder statements (McIntosh died in 2021) within the Episcopalian church. It’s a very special book.  See, also, by the way, the lovely companion volume that they did together, Seeds of Faith: Theology and Spirituality at the Heart of Christian Belief (Eerdmans; $24.99.)

FOR ANYONE NEEDING TO GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUNGER VOICES OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

Hear Us Out: Six Questions on Belonging and Belief Sue Pizor Yoder and Co.Lab.Inq (Fortress Press) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

I’ve mentioned this before and it is so very interesting, I just have to tell you again. Anyone interested in unchurched young adults will want to hear these narratives describing the bunches of conversations this team had, mostly with folks in the Lehigh Valley in Eastern Pennsylvania. The team found both the nones and the dones (that is, those that have no religious affiliation — as in “none of the above” on the religious survey and those that once did but are “done with that.”)

The book includes a lovely bit of description of the desires and hope and methodologies of the team (made up mostly of pastors) did the research and it tells, often with great eloquence, their own surprise in the things the interviewees told them. The ideas that emerge from the research are generous, and, in a way, points mostly to the need for us all to share our stories, to listen well to “co-create a more just world, and take seriously the call to Love.” Brian McLaren wrote a fabulous foreword and we learn much important stuff for congregations that want to (as he puts it) “learn to welcome emerging generations into their midst.”

FOR A PASTOR WHO IS TIRED AND NEEDING TO DEVELOP SPIRITUAL RHYTHMS

The Weary Leader’s Guide to Burnout: A Journey from Exhaustion to Wholeness Sean Nemecek (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

There is a virtual cottage industry these days releasing often very good books on clergy burnout. There are books about the physical ill-health of many pastors, books about stress and tension and unbearable expectations. From time management to dealing with faith-based conflict, being a Christian leader is hard work. Many of the books are wise and thoughtful.

I highlight this one because it is readable, fairly concise, and really wise. To respond to this epidemic of burnout, Nemecek gives us not only a helpful diagnosis but a guide to recovery (or, better, prevention.) His wife is the acclaimed published poet Amy Nemecek (The Language of Birds) so that’s nice, too. He is a regional director in Western Michigan for “Pastor-in-Residence Ministries, which coaches pastors into recovery from ministerial stress.

Sacred Strides: The Journey to Belovedness in Work and Rest Justin McRoberts (Thomas Nelson) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Okay, first this: I’ve raved about this before, encouraging Hearts & Minds friends of all sorts to buy it. I admitted, though, that it is casual and upbeat with lots of stories, including some very funny ones. Justin is a dear friend, a mentor to many, nearly a spiritual director to artists and leaders and others who are culture-makers maybe a bit off the beaten path. He’s a singer-songwriter, pretty hip, and refreshingly honest about his own journey, his own soul, the stuff he’s learned the hard way. Serious as all this may be, he’s not just an upbeat writer, he is hilarious.

Sacred Strides nicely uses the image of walking, one foot, the next foot, the stride. That is, it is not about an arbitrary “balance” between work and rest. It truly is about rhythms and practices, about the joy of work and the necessity of rest, over together, as we learn to lean on God. All of it moves us to a space where we can know we are beloved, truly so. Unless you like your religious books to be necessarily stodgy or arcane, this book is a must. Love it.

The Spacious Path: Practicing the Restful Way of Jesus in a Fragmented World Tamara Hill Murphy (Herald Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is another book that will surely be on our “best of 2023” list later this year, and is both a simple invitation (“into a life ordered by restful rhythms of listening and love” and a call to develop some sort of a Rule of Life. This is not arcane or weird or overly monastic; she makes a fine case, beautifully, for the ancient Benedictine wisdom becoming a lively and fruitful part of our modern lifestyle.

It could be an uphill climb since some of that language of “rules” is foreign to us, or maybe has been hurtful, if you’ve been a part of an overly zealous rules-based religious background. Trust me, A Spacious Path is just that, spacious, inviting us to the journey, a way, a path. It is a restful and healing journal, a helpful guidebook, a beckoning.

Clergy will hopefully know a bit of this language but the book is beautifully written, mixing personal narrative and solid teaching and ancient sources. There are guided prayers and meaningful reflections. It’s a great tool, a lovely resource to lean into. Highly recommended.

Tamara is a person we respect, a writer whose works have shown up in fabulous places like Plough and Englewood Review of Books (she quotes Joan Chittister and Dorothy Day and Annie Dillard and other top flight writers) and is a trainer of spiritual directors. She is a lay leader in the Anglican Church of North America and a mature, lovely writer.

FOR A PASTOR WANTING TO REFRESH HIS OR HER SPIRITUALITY

The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts Jeff Crosby (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I have raved about this before so consider this your reminder that, yes, you really did intend to get this but never got around to it yet. Pastors will love the storytelling stuff that will inspire sermons and the deepest truths that so eloquently open up reflection and spiritual pondering. Of course the book isn’t just for ministers, not at all, but I highlight it here as an easy read that could be truly refreshing for those needing some organization to their teaching, longing, hoping. It’s a great, great book.

There is some stuff, too, about discerning one’s call, about the theme of finding “home” and about learning the language that most deeply resonates with the deepest longings. He famously cites lots of music (of all sorts) since sometimes, ya just need the lyrics of a good ballad, rock songs, or the tones of a jazz piece to capture these sublime things. Again, The Language of the Soul is a treasure, highly recommended for leaders who need to learn, well, this peculiar insight about our heart’s deepest longings. You will find it an invaluable help, I am sure.

Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality David Bender (IVP /formatio) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

There are so many good, rich, thoughtful, transformative books on spiritual disciplines and practices one hardly knows where to begin. I often, for meaty readers, suggest Ruth Haley Barton and Richard Foster. This, those, is short and powerful, reminding us beautifully that “Only God deserves absolute surrender because only God can offer absolutely dependable love.” There is a tender forward by M. Basil Pennington, and a nice set of reflection questions.

Unteachable Lessons: Why Wisdom Can’t Be Taught (and Why That’s Okay) Carl McColman (Eerdmans) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I nearly devoured this book, realizing I needed to slow down and ponder its delightful truths, its powerfully honest stories, its Biblical hints and its call to silence, to trust. McColman is the author of many books on classic church spirituality, contemplative practices, and discovering encounters with God through the mystical tradition. (See, for instance, his Big Book of Christian Mysticism,) Here, as a Lay Cistercian, he tells of discovering a way of knowing God that is beyond dogma, not constrained by perfect doctrine or certainty about stuff, just embracing a God who meets us at every step. (Hey, preacher and teacher — let the provocative title of this book sink in just a bit. Ha!)  Unteachable Lessons is lovely, a bit edgy, but what the extraordinary mystical writer Martin Laird calls “sure-footed.” It is also what Marilyn McIntyre calls “deft and funny.” Did I mention I really, really liked it? Surprisingly so.

James Martin, the funny and prolific Jesuit (who has a brand new big one, by the way, called Come Forth: The Promise of Jesus’s Greatest Miracle) says of Unteachable…

Riveting, inspiring, and beautifully written, a moving account of finding God admits both the laughter and tears in life.

Bearing God: Living a Christ-Formed Life in Uncharted Water Marlena Graves (NavPress) $10.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $8.79

A brand new one, written by the author of the award-winning The Way Up Is Down, this little book is slim, and creatively written, offering “stories and teaching about discerning God’s will and discerning a sense of call in the midst of life’s storms.” It’s an extended and playful riff on Mark 4. I’ve just started it and it’s so good.

Graves makes the point that as believers “we are all little vessels carrying Jesus.” Our lives, the boats in which we carry Christ and his gospel, will venture out to sea… How do we respond when the storms come? How imaginative is that?

This book is, one reviewer said, “brimming with keen theological insight and personal stories speaking with a voice for the marginalized.” Drawing on diverse quotes from St. Ireneus and the Desert Fathers and Mothers right up to the likes of Fight Club and Tattoos of the Heart, it is a neat little book. Short and sweet and an ideal little read to refresh you in your task.

FOR A PASTOR NEEDING SOME REASSURANCE AND SELF-CARE

Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self Ken Shigematsu (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, I’d refer you back to my previous rave review of this potent and beautiful self-help book that invites us to grapple with our “true self” and to let go of shame and dysfunction. It does this, though, in the most faithful and spiritually mature way — by inviting us to understand the God who loves us, breath in the gospel itself, and develop intentional practices of contemplative spirituality that can create space for God to do God’s work.

Super-busy pastor John Mark Comer — who wrote the hip and fabulously interesting The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry —  says:

Utterly wonderful. Emotionally attuned, self-aware, thoroughly researched, well written, seamlessly blending theology, spirituality, psychology, rooted in ancient practices and yet culturally engaged: there’s so many good things I could say about this book, but the main thing is: read it.

I could say this for most of the books on this list, but I feel like I should underscore it here: shame-based fears and hurts seem nearly ubiquitous and, pastors, you may want to have a few of these around to share with folks you talk with. Right?

FOR A PASTOR WANTING TO BE REMINDED TO KEEP ON THEIR TOES

Keep Christianity Weird: Embracing the Discipline of Being Different Michael Frost (NavPress) $7.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $6.39

I said I wanted to keep my suggestions on this list fairly quick reads, mostly easy stuff. This one is quite short, pocket-sized, and backs an oversized wallop. And it’s a hoot. You know that phrase “Keep Austin Weird”? It seems some other cities have adopted that kooky vision, not making their place just a tourist trap like every other place, but affirming their eccentricities, their edge, not being afraid to let their freak flag fly. So it may be with the best local churches.n Can we, too, “keep Christianity weird?” The back cover puts it allusively, but you’ll get it:

“Jesus Is Different. Go and do likewise.” I know, right?

We are to be off-center, unique, not “of” this world. So let’s resist the allure of acceptability, and “get back to the unsafe roots of our faith.” You’ll be challenged and chagrined. Smile away and get serious.

Why the Gospel? Living the Good News of King Jesus with Purpose Matthew W. Bates (Eerdmans) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

In an adult Sunday School class in our church last week I was going on about the truest understanding of the gospel. We showed the spectacular, brief, Bible Project video called “What is the Gospel?” and underscored the Biblical teaching that the regime change that has happened in the resurrected Jesus, the creation-redeeming vision inaugurated by Jesus known as the Kingdom of God, is what the very good gospel really is all about. In contrast to more sentimental liberal views or more dogmatic fundamentalist views, this Kingdom vision really helps us frame the “God with Us” new-creation promises of the Scriptures.

Anyway, this small book is as keen on this stuff as any I’ve read, and a quick, but provocative read. It is a book not just asking what the gospel is but why it is so needed. It is a bold reminder that Jesus is King. I wish every pastor and church teacher would wrestle with it.

FOR A PASTOR NEEDING TO PRAY

Morning and Evening Prayers Cornelius Plantinga (Eerdmans) $20.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

This hand-sized hardback remains a treasure for those wanting a sets of small prayers, each “expressing some essential Christian longing on behalf of self and others — for faith, hope, love, wisdom, gratitude, peace — and which yet also makes space for any state of heart of mind by rejoicing with all who rejoice and weeping with all who weep.”

Plantinga is a gracious and thoughtful writer, the president emeritus of Calvin Theological Seminary. Very, very nice.

Kneeling with Giants: Learning to Pray with History’s Best Teachers Gary Neal Hansen (IVP) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

I wanted to recommend books on this list that were short and accessible, really useful for busy pastors. This one is meaty and lengthy, so, sorry. Yet, I happily mention it here because it is simply the best book I know of for clergy wanting to deepen their prayer lives. (Or to teach others the same.) The chapters are really interesting, there is some great information about various Christian leaders — from early church folks to medieval saints to Calvin and Luther, up to a few contemporary voices. From each one learns a certain sort of practice — that anonymous Russian monk prayed The Jesus Prayer;  Puritans wrote their prayers, Andrew Murray has much to teach about intercession.

I like that more than once the author invites us not just to study this stuff, but to do it. He’s an excellent, gracious teacher — he was a much-loved seminary prof for years — and knows the hearts and lives of pastors well. Highly recommended.

FOR A PASTOR WANTING TO THINK ABOUT HIS OR HER LITURGICAL WORK

A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship W. David O. Taylor (Baker Academic) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

This is a bit scholarly but is invigorating. There is nothing like it in print — nothing! So this, dear brothers and sisters, is a must.  It is exactly about what the subtitle says. And everybody who does anything in worship — from planners, leaders, liturgists, preachers, or in-the-pew worshippers — needs to ponder all of this.

I like this for a bunch of reasons, in part because it explores the body in such a sound and interesting way, offering a foundation not just for understanding worship, but so much of our life in the world. In a sense it is one of those handful of essential studies on what it means to be human and how Christ’s own bodily resurrection might impute righteousness (and, sometimes, healing) to our own. Taylor shows well that all of this is not (as Joel Scandrett of Trinity School for Ministry) puts it, “merely about having a body, but being embodied.”

The endorsements are by remarkable thinkers and practitioners, from Rowan Williams to Constance Cherry, from Singapore lecturer and scholar Simon Chan to Northern Seminary’s Beth Felker Jones.

As I’ve indicated, I think this is important for anyone, anytime, but for pastors “wrestling with the long-term impact of the pandemic on our worship practices” it is, as Rowan Williams insists, “an indispensable resource.”

Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding Life in Liturgy, Sacraments, and other Ancient Practices of the Church Aaron Damiani (Mood Press) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is a lovely little book, easy to read, handsome to hold, fabulous in style, quick and clarifying. Here’s the thing: Damiani serves as the lead pastor of Immanuel Anglican Church in Chaco. Which is to say, he didn’t used to be an Anglican, so is a recent convert to all things liturgical. (I’m thinking, like, what Anglican or Episcopalian church has a “lead pastor” and not a rector, huh?) So he’s speaking as a newbie, sort of, which makes it ideal for those of us not deeply familiar with or rooted in the sacramental tradition. He raises up the centrality with a lovely zeal and clarity that some books on liturgics seem to miss. He is, after all, a nearly charismatic evangelical.

Soooo, with pastoral warmth, Father Damiani offers “an engaging glimpse into the ancient practices of the historic church — into rhythms that quietly nourish us with the life of Jesus.”

There is stuff in here on the eucharist and baptism, liturgical prayer, and the church calendar, There’s lots of insight about living the Christian life once shaped by profound worship — for instance, how to see the “fallen broken world crammed with the beauty and glory of God.”

I suppose Earth Filled with Heaven isn’t mostly about worship skills, so to speak, but for worship leaders, this “sacramental” worldview may help you take seriously the formative work you do as a liturgist, no matter how informal or contemporary your worship style may be. Nice.

Living Under Water: Baptism as a Way of Life Kevin Adams (Eerdmans) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I did a lengthy review of this months ago and it strikes me that it would be nice to list it here, again. It is one of the great books from the “Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies “ series (edited by the great John D. Witvliet.) There’s a foreword by Cornelius Plantinga, and, if that doesn’t inspire you, you might know that Adams has written other lively and clever books (The Gospel in a Handshake: Framing Worship for Mission, for instance) and this, now, is as interesting as any book I’ve read on the subject. Hooray.

It is at once a theology of baptism, and a story about his own liturgical and worship and congregational practices, a delight to read for anyone who cares about church life and mission outreach. Also, it is a wise and generative rumination on the implications of “living under water” once the baptized comes to know what the heck it is all about. It is pastorally wise, exciting, and ecumenical in the best sense. Covering all sorts of stuff, it is, as counselor Chuck DeGroat says of it, “a happily grounded book.”

I adored Living Under Water, learning of his casual church planting efforts, his sensible gospel appeal to seekers, his discussion of baptism in the setting of the messy, local church, and its great implications for us all. No matter what sort of baptismal practices you and your church promote, this book is really interesting.

What Language Shall I Borrow? The Bible and Christian Worship Ronald Byers (Eerdmans) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This book now sells for considerably more, but we have some at the earlier price and since it was one of the first in the aforementioned “Calvin Institute of Christian Worship’s Liturgical Studies” series, I wanted to name it here. Byars is, shall we say, a fairly conventional, Presbyterian Church guy (professor emeritus of preaching and worship at Union in Richmond) who worked on the wording of the beautiful, PCUSA Book of Common Worship and, decades ago, wrote wisely, if a bit firmly, about the likelihood of an erosion of reverent worship practice with the rise of contemporary and seeker-driven services. With many of our biggest evangelical church worship programs arranged with a bunch of songs from a stage of performers and a cool talk, he is, doubtlessly right.

Many need this book that came out 15 years ago more than ever, I’d say.  It is an important conversation to have. He is asking how worship “soaked in the deep wells of Scripture” can be nourishing to believers and he asks what sorts of communal speech most honors God and communicates wisely to the gathered community.

As it asks on the back, “What language is most appropriate for worship? Should it lean toward the colloquial, perhaps targeting those attending a worship service for the first time? Or should it be a language with deeper roots, the language of a community that, for the most part, already loves the God to whom worship is offered?”

And, I might add, what do we do when many long-time members, who indeed love God passionately, don’t know the Bible, the Biblical language, the lingo and theological meanings of words, stories, phrases?

This is a remarkable study asking important questions but, on its own, is nearly a (scholarly) devotional, with pages of word studies and Bible reflections. It is instructive, eloquent, and a guide to building bridges between ancient words that communicate today.   Leanne Van Dyk of Western Theological Seminary says it is “an indispensable encouragement for pastors and worship leaders.”

By the way, if you don’t know the rich, famously exquiste, very old hymn from which this book takes it’s title, maybe you really should consider it. Ya dig where I’m comin’ from?

FOR A PASTOR INTERESTED IN SHARPENING HIS OR HER PREACHING

Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us Mark Yaconelli (Broadleaf Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Okay, this amazingly moving book isn’t about preaching. It’s not a homiletics text. This really is about the amazing gift of storytelling, and reports how Yaconelli has gotten people into rooms to listen to, to receive one another’s deepest stories. He uses this openness to other’s hearts in hard places, actually, even in war-torn militarized zones, and the writing here is exceedingly powerful.

I think I suggest it here because it affirms the power of words, the influence of language, the significance of our human communication. For Yaconelli, himself theologically trained (he was a Presbyterian pastor for a long while) this is holy ground. He gives some advice and tells some stories. It might remind some preachers that, yes, this stuff can really make a difference. What a book.

Preachers Dare: Speaking for God Will Willimon (Abingdon Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I know, I know, not every preacher is going to want to read a homiletics text. As much as I’m geeky enough to enjoy any number of them — some are fantastic! — I realize that, oddly, as important as preaching is for most preachers, they generally don’t read up much on the art of preaching. Some want to just trust God, some feel they are too busy writing the darn thing each week and have no time to read about it. And some just trust their own human charm and communication skills to carry them through. I get it.

Preachers Dare is a fascinating book and highly recommended (taking its title, we are told, from a hint by Karl Barth who said “Christian preachers dare to talk about God.” Yup. And with God’s help!

This book is a dissent against homiletics as an exclusively human endeavor (call it, rhetoric) or homiletics as a taxonomy of effective sermon forms and sales (poetics.) Willimon says “The only good reason to bother people with a sermon, the sole rationale for investing a life in this vocation, is theological.

Blurbs on the back of Preachers Dare are really strong. Joni Sancken says it is “a splash of cold water, waking preachers up to the generative power of God’s own triune speech.” The great Paul Scott Wilson says it is written with “sparking wit and deep spiritual insight.” The clever Jason Mitchell makes you want to read it, unless, maybe you’re scared to. You might be “haunted by the truth that the only good reason for someone to show up for your sermon is, that, in it, there will be a word from the Living God.” Wow.

If you are bold enough to have this conversation with your people, you may want to order from us a copy or two of the companion volume by Willimon called  Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon. It’s $16.00; OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59.)

FOR ONE CONCERNED ABOUT THE LOCAL CHURCH

The Church: God’s Word for Today John Stott (IVP) $14.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $11.20

You want short and sweet and solid and stimulating? This is, as award-winning historian Mark Noll says, “a book to a new generation of readers.” This is vintage Stott, drawn from his large book The Contemporary Christian, which has now been broken down into sensible small volumes. This is the center of that big book, less than 100 pages on the value of the church. I think it is more spot on than it was decades ago.

There are four succinct chapters and no pastor will be unmoved by this clear-headed thinking. They are, firstly, the secular challenges to the church, then a section on evangelism through the local church, and then an excellent chapter on dimensions of church renewal, and finally a good piece about the church’s pastors. Kudos to Tim Chester for editing this, bringing it just a bit more up to date. The original preface to the big remains, a wise rumination on time, and living in the middle of the “now but not yet.” A great little resource.

Delighted: What Teenagers Are Teaching the Church About Joy Kenda Creasy Dean, Wesley W. Ellis, Justin Forbes, Abigail Visco Rusert (Eerdmans) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

In the eyes of many, certainly in the eyes of many young people, the word “joy” is not one that is associated with the local church. But, of course, it should be.

What if youth ministry (and discipleship for all ages) is somehow connected to God’s joyful delight in us, which — curiously — as this book shows, is something young people seem to know.  Kara Powell, popular young ministry writer from Fuller Youth Institute, says “After reading Delighted, you’ll love young people differently and you’ll certainly view yourself differently, too.

I suppose this book, written by veteran youth works and theologians of and for youth ministry, is not designed to give hope to struggling congregations, but it sure can’t hurt. It is energetic and smart, exploring the difference between happiness and joy. If we can teach our kids that, it just might rub off on the rest of us.

Youthfront leader Mike King notes that we are in the midst of an “emotionally stressful culture of contempt.”Can “Joy” make a difference? Can we find some faithful way to allow our exuberance to sustain us, even through dull or hard times? This is a book about youth ministry, but I think any congregational leader (or parent) would appreciate it immensely.

When Church Stops Working: A Future for Your Congregation Beyond More Money, Programs, and Innovation Andrew Root and Blaire D. Bertrand (Brazos Press) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

I’ve highlighted this before but it’s so good, I wanted to bring it to your attention again. Short, accessible, practical, it draws deeply on the previous, profound (and fairly academic) works of Andrew Root, such as Churches and the Crisis of Decline: A Hopeful, Practical Ecclesiology for a Secular Age and The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time Against the Speed of Modern Life and The Church After Innovation: Questioning Our Obsession with Work, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship.

(The brand new one in this big and important series is due out in the next few weeks from Brazos and you can PRE-ORDER it from us now: The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticisms: Why Spiritualities Without God Fail to Transform Us; $28.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19.)

Anyway, When the Church Stops Working is not merely a watered-down summary of those bigger volumes, although that would be one easy way to describe it. It has new content, lots of ideas for faithful, adaptable, ministry. If the bigger volumes analyze the problems of church and culture, this offers guidance for what to do about it, in reasonable, if radically Christian ways. As you might expect he says to put away our gimmicks and strategies and programs and learn what it means to wait on the Lord. Beautiful, human, real. You should get this one, for sure!

The Great Dechurching: Whose Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take To Bring Them Back Jim David & Michael Graham, with Ryan Burge (Zondervan) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This is already a much talked about resource which offers lots of great and useful data, research you need to know about, exploring what some might say is one of the largest and fastest religious shifts in US history.

One person notes that this shift is bigger than the impact of the First and Second Great Awakenings combined, but “in the opposite direction.” Tens of millions of regular Christian worshippers have decided to stop attending church, leaving, too often, little explanation as to why.

Unlike more academic treatises that are strong on data but not so passionate about real answers for local congregations, or somewhat simplistic evaluations, The Great Dechurching offers sober thinking and practical advice.

The book is based on what is said to be the largest and most comprehensive study of dechurching in America, conducted by trusted sociologists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe.

Becoming the Church: God’s People in Purpose and Power Claude R. Alexander, Jr. (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I hoe you know Bishop Claude Alexander, a senior pastor of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina He severs on any number of boards of important, internationally known para-church groups but is most beloved in his large, multi-ethic church. He’s a great black preacher and his writing is clear-headed, moving, and solid. You may recall his lovely little book Necessary Christianity which we highlighted last year.

He starts this book –which is informed considerably by the book of Acts — admitting that people today have given up on the church. Those within and those who are outsiders disregard the local institution. Yet, God has not given up on it, he insists, and he shows here how we have sometimes forgotten what we are to be about. By looking at how Jesus’s first followers served him and how the Holy Spirit shaped their life together, he hold out the possibility of a renewed 21st century church. This is an imaginative study of the early church with a view of how it help us “become the church.”

There are 15 chapters, upbeat and inspirational, some creative side-bars and a power epilogue. You should check it out. There’s a great study guide in the back, too. Yes!

FOR A LEADER WANTING TO UNDERSTAND THE ALT-RIGHT AND CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church Andrew Whitehead (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ve highlighted this before but want to simply say that it seems to me to be a must-read for all of us, and certainly for church leaders who have any right-wing members of their church who are involved in this stuff. Which is to say, most congregations.

Granted, it isn’t an uplifting quick read like many on this list. One reviewer did note that it is “crisply written and utterly compelling.” So there’s that.

We need this book, though. As I showed in the last review, it’s really solid, well known, expertly researched but deeply rooted in the faith community.

And many recommend it.

We need this book. Now. With skill and grace, Whitehead explains the dangerous ideologies undergirding Christian nationalism, traces how it has infected the church, and provides practical guidance for those of us fighting it in our own communities. This is a book you should give to your friends, your family, and your pastor.  — Beth Allison Barr, professor, Baylor University; author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

Saving Faith: How American Christianity Can Reclaim Its Prophetic Voice Randall Balmer (Fortress Press) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I said I wanted to keep most of these short and sweet. Balmer’s new Saving Faith is small sized, thin hardback; at under 100 pages it shows how we can reckon with the heritage of complicity in racism and, through stories and analysis and Biblical teaching, invite us to get real and get going. As Rob Wilson-Black puts it, it may seem like “a stinging indictment” but for some of us it will read like a blessing, a “long-awaited healing treatment.”

More can and must be said, but any church leader wondering how to weave this stuff of concern into his or her parish ministry will want to have this on hand.

There is, by the way, an appendix of the tremendous and justly famous 1973 “Chicago Declaration of Social Concern” written by the likes of Hearts & Minds friends and mentors, Ron Sider, John Perkins, Richard Mouw, and Jim Wallis. It was nice to see that reproduced. Right on!

FOR A PASTOR WANTING TO THINK THROUGH HOW TO DISCIPLE OTHERS

Go: Returning Discipleship to the Front Lines of Faith Preston Sprinkle (NavPress) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I don’t know about you but I’ve often been squeamish about recommending books on disciple-making. We don’t need an overly organized strategic plan and we don’t need formulas since mentoring and life-on-life care-giving should emerge organically from relationships and context. Still this is one I highly recommend as it gives some basic data (compiled by Barna) on what ordinary church folks think the word discipleship means, and how, then to begin to mentor others into a more robust, lived-out faith.

There is some indictment here, but also really great stories and tons of ideas to show how we can do what Jesus did with his earliest followers. We need this fun little book.

Discipleship with Monday in Mind: How Churches Across the Country Are Helping Helping THeir People Connect Faith and Work Skye Jethanie & Luke Bobo (Made to Flourish) $8.50  OUR SALE PRICE = $6.80

Maybe you should do something to help adults think through the implications of their faith for their jobs and careers? Maybe you aren’t ready for a full-blown dive into the faith and work movement, but, geesh, there really are a lot of neat things people are doing. This small book is short but potent, loaded with ideas, showing how real pastors have helped their churches connect faith and work.

This little gem is concise and practical and rare. We are really proud to recommend it.

Spiritual Direction: A Guide to Giving and Receiving Direction Gordon T. Smith (IVP) $15.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.00

Again, this little book is potent, if succinct. As always, Smith has a way of writing profoundly — with not a bit of fluff — and always to the point, with grace. This short book reminds leaders that they are to be companions on the spiritual journey with others. Perhaps you need a spiritual director (this book will help you discern if that is the case and what one might do for you) and how to be one yourself, in a general, pastoral manner which doesn’t entail going to a monastery and being a full time mystic.

This is about the spiritual journey, about how we need not be alone in our questions, and how pastors can help make sense of the spiritual growth of others, with them, offering encouragement and discernment, insight about prayer and the process of hearing the Spirit speak into our lives. This really is an excellent, concise guide to being a spiritual guide or friend, especially for pastors, but truly for anyone.

Color-Courageous Discipleship: Follow Jesus, Dismantle Racism, and Build Beloved Community Michelle T. Sanchez (Waterbrook) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This is a great resource that asks what race has to do with discipleship, and then proceeds to offer a program in mentoring others in faith formation with an eye to forming Christians who see anti-racism work (and multi-cultural sensitivities) as integral to their discipleship in Christ.

I like the solid, evangelically-minded work on being Biblically and proactively involved in racial inequity but I really like how they link it to the gospel, to faith formation in the local church, and the process of forming disciples to become the beloved community. It isn’t super short, but it is accessible and an easy read. Kudos!

FOR A PASTOR WHO HAS YET TO READ THESE SMALL CLASSICS

In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership Henri Nouwen (Crossroad) $14.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96

Short but remarkably lasting, this is Nouwen’s deeply personal exploration of the three temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness. You will come back to this time and again, despite the awfully bland cover. It’s a gem and a classic. Extraordinary.

Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life Henri Nouwen (Image) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

Written in the mid 1970s and one of the enduring Christian books of the last 50 years, this small but potent read invites us to hospitality and more. There are three sections, about the journey inward to the needy self, outward towards others, and upward to God, under the rubric “from illusion to prayer.” A must-read, lovely and moving.

Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity Eugene Peterson (Eerdmans) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This was the first of the four great books in Peterson’s “Vocational Holiness” series, and looks at just three essential aspects of ministry: praying, reading the Bible, and offering spiritual guidance. (Well, one preceded it but was added into the quartet later.) This isn’t super-short, but it’s so refreshing and sensible that it just might transform your paradigm for ministry.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options (who just raised their rates again) and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Not all workers have a new, upbeat (or worrisome) season of fresh opportunity come the fall, but for those in education or church work, at least, it sure seems like the turn of the calendar into the fall is something like a new year. Fresh starts, new programming, hopeful feelings about good efforts in the works. Some of us leave the dog days of summer with new commitments about commitments, our prayer lives, our reading habits, our dedication to service projects, our church involvement, or whatever. Welcome to the club. Here we are.

(I often dedicate the Labor Day weekend BookNotes to reflections on books about work but, to be honest, hardly anybody buys them, so I’m going to skip that this weekend, but hope that in church you participate in liturgies and sermons on work. If not, you and your church leaders need this, right here.)

I am of two — or several — minds when it comes to leadership theories and leadership books. I read them and I like them. I don’t know in what ways I’m a leader — I think I am not, really — but I get inspired reading about offering a witness of integrity and influence among others. Whether at work — where most of us spend most of our time — or in para-church ministry or congregational service, almost everybody can benefit from some time spent reading about leadership. Let us know if you want some basic ones for ordinary folks.

For some, leadership is serious business. Really serious.  And some of the books that they’ve produced are important.

I’ll tell you about one recent one that is one of the most serious and provocative and detailed studies on leadership theory I’ve read in recent years. And then I’ll follow up that review with another amazing book from the same indie publishing house. If you read leadership books, especially for congregational and para-church ministry, JR Woodward’s new Scandal of Leadership is a must. In fact, I’d say that even if you are not a formal leader in your church, but you care about leadership in the congregation, you should explore this one. It’s hefty, but exceptional. I enjoyed working through it a lot.

I also enjoyed the new one by Alan Hirsch, JR’s associate in visionary missional work, called Metanoia but we’ll get to that. They are, I think, connected. They are quite a duo to pair this month.  Happy September!

The Scandal of Leadership: Unmasking the Powers of Domination in the Church JR Woodward (100 Movements Publishing) $26.99     OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I’ve hinted already that this is an important book on leadership, if a bit limited to congregational leadership. For the record, God’s Kingdom is coming in all areas of life and as you well know, we don’t specialize here in books only on the church or professional clergy types. We need an all-of-life-redeemed wholistic vision which honors and equips Christians to be salt and light and leaven in the loaf of their various spheres of influence, at work, in school, in the neighborhood or nursing home, in the lobby, library, or late-night lounge. But leadership in the arts and sciences — although JR wouldn’t disagree — isn’t the focus of this book, but the insights surely can frame thinking about leadership (and dangerously bad dysfunctional leadership) in all zones of life. It is a book about church life, but is so wise and profound, it’s good for anyone, leading (or following) in any sphere or institution or organization. Okay?

There are a few vital things to know about Scandal of Leadership that I’ll list, making this review a bit less charming, perhaps, but hopefully clear. I want you to know what it is about so you can determine if you need it (or if you need to buy it for a friend, pastor, missionary, or person you may know.)

FIRST. It seems to me that this book is mostly a PhD dissertation, perhaps gussied up a bit for popular readership, but it is, for better or worse, a scholarly tome with lots of fabulous and provocative rabbit holes and tangents and excursions. These are helpful, carefully arranged to make important points and he circles back to the primary narrative, over and over. So it’s just a good, serious, fairly dense study, covering this, that, and the other. It’s a Hobbit journey, there and back again. You’ll want to spend some time with it, and you’ll want to take notes. And you’ll be richer for it, believe me, even if it might have been popularized just a bit. That said…

SECONDLY. Ahh, how to say this without pigeonholing the book? I’ll just blurt it out, as the sub-title hints and as the back cover states boldly: it is about abusive leaders, dysfunctional leaders, about domineering and domination systems, about sin and scandal.

Please don’t think, well, that’s a problem in some unfortunate churches, but not in my church. Maybe not. But this book, still, is remarkably profound and good for anyone.

The title of the book is a doubly-whammy play-on-words, I think: there is the scandal of Christian leadership these days — you’ve heard of the macho wack job out at Mars Hill and you’ve heard of the shady millionaire televangelists, disgraced, the cover ups and the weirdness; even seemingly good pastors swept up in disconcerting patterns of abuse and pride — but there is also the scandal (to use a Biblical phrase) of the gospel itself. There is a righteous way to be a scandal as we imitate the “scandalous way of Christ.” That is really what this book is about, countering the tragic scandals that have hurt so many (and turned many folks away from the gospel and away from church) with the scandal of the upside down Kingdom where following Jesus flips the script and redeems even the most awful human realities.

This is the heart of the book, developing common sense, Biblical approaches to leadership as expressed by the likes of Eugene Peterson, say, or spelled out systematically in Arthur Boer’s powerful Servants and Fools: A Biblical Theology of Leadership. One of his big themes (and this is rich and serious) is showing how missional leadership must be rooted in a practice of imitation.

THIRDLY.  If you’re aware of some of the philosophical literature about all this you’ll guess where this is going (if not, I don’t blame you; I am unschooled in this myself.) For Woodward, at least in this book, he finds the language from Rene Girard (“mimetic theory”) as a way to open up the Biblical mandate to imitate Christ. He has two strong chapters in Section Three — one of those big rabbit trails I mentioned — that are worth the price of the book for those who need a clear and useful appropriation of Girardian theory. It offers (as he puts it in another chapter) a “theology remedy” pushing us towards the scandalous practice of our imitation of the crucified Lord.

But why dig so deep for such admittedly heady tools to understand our call to serve others by following Christ? Haven’t pastors always had this pretty simple — if difficult — vocation and task? On one hand, sure. Obviously. Lucky you if your pastor is good at it and is helping her flock in the ways of Jesus.

However, this secular age, and the facts of the eroded sense of authority and the nature of twenty-first century institutions and the challenges of modern leadership make pastoring well — let alone leading multi-staffed congregations, multi-site churches, Kingdom groups, para-church ministries, mission teams, and Christian organizations  — that much more difficult. We live in dizzying times and while I tip my hat to my favorite pastors who try to imagine their work in simple Peterson-esque ways, the forces and expectations of robust (and often conflicted) organizations make it harder than ever. JR gets this. His own leadership capacities have been shaped in the trenches of missional church organizations, edgy church planting, fresh expressions of Kingdom communities, and consulting with bunches of creative church types. He has seen some things. And he’s done his homework.

(That he doesn’t deal with the important set of books on ministry, church leadership, pastoring all in “the secular age” by Andrew Root — there is yet a new one coming soon! — is unfortunate.)

FOURTH. This third feature (the nature of the times and how they impinge on even the best leaders) leads me to the fourth big point that makes The Scandal of Leadership utterly essential for anyone serious about reading well in the leadership genre. This book not only says — as the best do, these days — that times are more complicated and we must nurture a deeper spirituality (that is, the interior lives of the sustainable leader and his or her character, below the surface) and the capacities for adaptive change and such (the skills of “canoeing the mountains” as Tod Bolsinger puts it.) It also says that there are what the Bible calls “principalities and powers” that have deformed (demonically, perhaps) the very structures in which we lead and serve. Whoa! This is new in leadership studies.

You see, we can be people of great depth and have great, congenial skills for adaptive change the the like, and we may be fully aware that times are tough and we can be a non-anxious presence in our organizations, but — damn! — things are not just hard and they are not just broken, they are captured, tyrannized, occupied; demonic.

To explore this serious state of affairs, Woodward studies the best theologians who have grappled with the provocative texts about what the Bible calls the principalities and powers. Hendrikus Berkof, of course. Yoder.  Marva Dawn. Obviously, he interacts with Walter Wink; it has been a while since anyone (let alone a vibrant evangelical) has worked with Wink’s remarkable teaching —  Naming, Engaging, Unmasking the evil powers. As I mentioned, Woodward draws on Rene Girard. And, surprisingly (and a delight for me, since I’m a fan of this under-appreciated scholar and activist) he uses William Stringfellow as a conversation partner. (Ya gotta love scholarly dissertations, eh? Who woulda thunk a modern, missional evangelical would introduce us to this radical Episcopal lawyer of Block Island?) Hooray for this important trio of important thinkers (Wink, Girard, Stringfellow) who engaged the powers in their own heroic lives and who become vital teachers for JR.

The Scandal of Leadership brilliantly puts all of this — the deeper diagnosis on why we have an epidemic of failed leaders and failing church structures — in conversation with the near classic literature on the missional church and on contemporary missional leaders. From Darrell Gruder to Craig Van Gelder to David Fitch, from Roxburgh and Romanuk to Goheen and Newbigin, he knows the best books and authors and shows much fluency in bringing each into the evolving discussion. He is laying out his argument in organized fashion, building from why we need missional leaders to where it all went wrong to what we can do about it.

Chapter Three is called “Domineering Leadership in the First-Century Church” which illustrates that this problem of failing leaders is not new. He cites everybody from Bonhoeffer to N.T Wright to James K.A. Smith to Alan Kreider and helps us understand so much. It may be different in our post/hyper-modern culture, and the church is not what it once was, but as that excellent chapter shows, questions of misshaped desire (and the “subversive work of the powers”) are perennial. And one thing the ancients had that we do not is a cosmic or mythical sense of the Powers. He shows that all of this is a “hermeneutical challenge.” We have some work to do.

Whenever a book is published by an indie-press you can expect some eccentric touches. There are a few more graphs and charts than a typical publisher might have allowed. He uses phrases like “leadership matrix” and brings up some obscure articles (the Ford/Frei Scale). At moments, it seems a bit much; the print is a nice size and there are beautiful graphic design touches, but, well, it’s a big book, filled with a whole lot.

And most of it is very good. Is there a new way of “being and belonging”? Can we embrace being scandalized not by foolish abuse of power but by imitating the One who was himself a scandal? Is that how we subvert and resist the Powers? There is no other book that asks these kinds of questions about the ubiquitous task of leadership. I have a few small complaints, but, man, this is a leadership book unlike any I’ve ever seen. Theologically rich, culturally profound, spiritually alive, systematic and visionary, both, JR Woodward has given us an amazing, near masterpiece. It shouldn’t surprise, us, really. I raved about his excellent IVP volume produced with Forge, Creating a Missional Culture: Equipping the Church for the Sake of the World. (IVP; $25.00; OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00.)

Check out his stuff near the end of Scandal on “selfless leadership in the praxis of mission” and (in light of 2 Timothy) his riffs on “kenotic living.” He wisely invites us all, and certainly leaders, to the “formation of desire through local exemplary models.” (He explores “distant models”, too, which I liked a lot and is necessary for many of us.) We can learn the way of “humble obedience” which, as JR shows, is actually revolutionary. To make the point he writes a bit about Oscar Romero! He offers vivid, practical teaching, even as he opens up the Scriptures with the help of a rising batch of Biblical scholars, from Nijay Gupta to Timothy Gombis, and older scholars like Sarah Coakley. What a book!

If you aren’t sure of my recommendation, consider these, just three of the many who have raved:

This book is a sensation! Every Christian leader should read this. — Michael Frost, Keep Christianity Weird: Embracing the Discipline of Being Different

This deep spiritual investigation will disrupt the forces of domineering leadership and help us name our temptations, transforming us from the inside out and restoring integrity to individuals and systems and to our missions.  — Mandy Smith, The Vulnerable Pastor and Unfettered

The Scandal of Leadership is not a screed but rather an engaging exploration of leadership for Christian communities. Churches and other Christian organizations would do well to read and engage with  Woodward’s analysis  — Dennis Edwards,  Might from the Margins: The Gospel’s Power to Turn the Tables on Injustice

Metanoia: How God Radically Transforms People, Churches, and Organizations from the Inside Out  Alan Hirsch with Rob Kelly (100 Movements Publishing) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.88

I’m a big fan of Alan Hirsch and hopefully many of our readers will think of his many books on vibrant wholistic discipleship, cultural analysis, the missional church, and upbeat books about leadership and change. While he isn’t the same (he’s Australian, for starters) as the every-witty and often brilliant semiotic evangelist, Len Sweet, there are some similarities — beside the penchant for clever wordsmithing, there’s the deep stuff made accessible, his connecting the dots of culture and social trends, his beautiful loyalty to the church of Christ even if serving as a contemporary prophet calling God’s people to more relevant faithfulness. I guess he’s an organizational consultant or praxis leader or something with some cool letters and one-man, live missional incubator, and, like Sweet, Hirsch calls us over and over — in the context of the cool cultural studies — to love God by following Jesus in the power of the Holy Ghost. In this, Hirsch is unflinching and steadfast. He combines philosophy and theology, Biblical studies and spirituality, social and political evaluations, in a way to help us rethink “unfruitful patterns and systems” so we can “experience the person, church, and organizational transformation we so desperately desire.” When he talks about transformation, he’s not kidding around.

His buddy JR Woodward’s book — which, similarly is a wild ride covering lots of ground and released by their hybrid publishing ministry — is easier to place in our store, though. It goes under congregational leadership. Got it.

Hirsch, though, is bursting at the seams a bit more, making his book about any number of things. It is about spirituality and formation, about discipleship and service, about church life, and about how serious transformation will lead to significant change in our lives and lifestyles, in our work and goals, in our organizations and institutions; it’s about social reformation. Hooray for books that are hard to pigeon-hole and hooray for interdisciplinary authors who don’t “stay in their lane.”

Yet, despite the breathy passion for understanding big things and despite the many fruitful pages exploring the nature of real change — inside out, personal spiritual transformation that bears fruit in galvanizing and mobilizing missional networks and movements for reformation and renewal — the thesis of the book is fairly focused. In a foreword by the important Dennae Pierre (she of Redeemer City to City) and in Alan’s own preface, they suggest that this book is ground-breaking, radical, vital, new, needed. This might seem a bit presumptuous, but I get it; in most of the churches I know about there is to be found one of two general vibes — a certain sort of lifelessness, as if they are good folks trusting God, but still nearly in the ho-hum doldrums or a certain sort of peppy enthusiasm that seems almost a caricature of Biblical zeal, as if they have to keep on the happy face and keep the juggled plates from fallen because, well, ye gads, if we stop, if we ever stop, who knows what will happen.

Into these kinds of institutional cultures and churchy attitudes, we need a word from God, a true truth that can be grace-giving, healing, and yet transformative, empowering. The Biblical word for all of this, as Hirsch and his co-author Rob Kelly (who serves as a catalyst for city networks that “unite the church for the flourishing of cities” and who works for the Charlotte Network and the City Leaders Collective) point out over and over, is the greek word metanoia. It means something like to change one’s mind, but also to turn around, to change one’s direction. It was a word used in Greek and Roman culture and was often on the lips of our Master. If we are serious about following Jesus, we have to come to terms with all that is implied (indeed all that is expected and promised) with this notion of metanoia. What’s a first century paradigm shift mean for us today?

As the authors plumb the depths of this realignment, we learn a lot. Even if you have studied the kind of words related to this born-again phrase — words like repentance, say — I am sure that you will find much of this jam-packed volume quite compelling. I sure did. For what it is worth, I’m confident that many of us across the theological and congregational spectrum, have some confusion about the radical nature of the paradigm shift and reorientation that “invites us to perceive the world through God’s eyes” which can bring about “transformation in our own lives, the organizations we lead, and the world around us.” We need this book on repentence and change and, well, metanoia.

You know this is going to be a wild ride when the first chapter (under the section “Why Metanoia” starts with the title, “The Apocalypse of the (Ecclesial) Soul: Glimpses into the Problems and Potentials of the Church.”  You may not fully resonate with his evaluation of churches (and what kind of churches he is referring to) but mostly, you’ll know in your gut that he’s speaking truth. We indeed need — as the next chapter puts it — “the spiritual art of re/turning and re/tuning.” One might think Len Sweet came up with that bit of clever wordplay. It’s an important chapter that lays out a lot of important terms and you won’t want to miss it.

I love the later chapter that calls us to a “Christo-logic” which “sees the world from inside the mind that created it.” Oh my. His later reflection on what some might call epistemology (how we know) points us towards what he calls wholeheartedness — activating the mind, soul, and will (and, he’d say, too, I’m sure the body.) This is rich.

Hirsch has written before about this re-orienting paradigm shift that affects all that we are and all that we do and the way in which inward conversion leads to our influencing transformed churches and organizations. In a sense, Metanoia is a sequel to the very lively book co-written with our friend Mark Nelson (that I raved about at BookNotes) called Reframation: Seeing God, People, Mission Through Reenchanted Frames. In fact, in the opening “briefing for the (metanoic journey” that opens the new Metanoia book, Hirsch mentions this previous book. With the “ideological swirl” of the Trump years and the implications of the global pandemic, now, he thinks, the notion of a conversion to see through a Jesus-lens, is as urgent as ever.

I love the practical tone of the second portion, but it’s still some fun, wild stuff. The last half is about “learning to unlearn to relearn” (yes, let that sink in) and the last three chapters are entitled:

• Paradigm: Blowing the Collective Mind
• Plat/formed: Shaping the Collective Soul
• Practice/s” Engaging the Collective Will

Our brave authors suggest that we have to work this out in our own place and context, but creating opportunities to nurture real encounters with God — not just talking about God — is foundational. Out of our raw encounter with the Holy One, we will be transformed and called into metanoia and the ongoing work of “reframation.” They note that it is sort of like those “choose your own adventure” books. God is with us. God will transform us. We can then transform the world. Carry on.

The endorsements recommending this are mighty. Here are a couple:

Compelling, hopeful, and unflinching, Metanoia is a masterful book that every Christian leader should read. — Lisa Rodriguez-Watson, national director Misso Alliance

This book is a master class, a philosophical tour de force — a profound, transformative, and luminous work. — Brian Sanders, The 6 Seasons of Calling: Discovering Your Purpose in Each Stage of Life

This book is inviting people to open their minds and soften their hearts to receive the precious, life-altering, beautiful, good news of Jesus. — Danielle Strickland, The Other Side of Hope: Flipping the Script on Cynicism and Despair and Rediscovering Our Humanity

The church is living in the midst of a tectonic shift in American religion. Needed more than ever is a theology for navigating this cultural paradigm shift. This book provides a theology for embracing change through a biblical analysis of metanoia. This is an essential read for aspiring church-based change makers. It is both inspirational and practical, while maintaining missional faithfulness This is a book about hope, not despair. — Dr. David John Seel, The New Copernicans: Millennials and the Survival of the Church

+++

While we’re thinking about big books about serious Kingdom transformation, organizational change, leadership and the like, I’ll quickly remind you of just four other great reads (one brand new this week) that I think would help equip anyone — and certainly church leaders — to be about God’s work in God’s ways. Each of these are very good reads. Here ya go:

Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers That Can Transform Your Church into a Tov Culture Scot McKnight & Laura Barringer (Tyndale Elevate) $22.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

One of the truly lovely and happily much-discussed books of the last few years around cultivating healthy, Christ-like church cultures was 2020’s A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing by Scott McKnight & Laura Barringer. (“Tov” is, we learned, a Hebrew word suggesting goodness and beauty and health.) What would a church shaped by “tov” look like? How might this “goodness” concept help us resist toxic cultures and abusive leaders?  It was, in many ways, groundbreaking and a great read.

Now, here, we have a practical guide to help you build a culture in your church or organization that resists abuse and cultivates goodness. This is, as Danielle Strickland puts it, a “prophetic invitation to move.” It is a guide, a manual, an imaginative conversation starter and practical stimulant. There is wisdom and clarity and tons of helpful checklists and insightful ideas to help actually process the Church Called Tov book and initiate change in our congregation or workplace. There are lots of case studies and examples of church leaders who pivoted. There are good discussion questions at the end of each section. Pivot shows leaders how to unleash a culture of goodness in their ministry. And, yes, it offers insights for readers who sense something wrong in the culture of the congregation of which they are a part. This is a fabulous resource, for all of us. It’s highly recommended.

A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders Mark Sayers (Moody Press) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Our younger readers, at least, who pay attention to podcasts like the one Sayers used to do with John Mark Comer (This Cultural Moment) and the one he now co-hosts called Rebuilders, most likely know the hyper-cool Sayers has this recent book out. Others may need to be reminded — he is a prolific and somewhat edgy cultural critic, non-nonsense, full of stories and hope, offering insight about the nature of our times, our worldviews, our social trends, and offering faithful pointers for navigating these times, such as they are. I love his thinking (and how accessibly he writes, making often complicated stuff pretty fun.)

In this, Sayer’s suggests that history shows that renewal is often preceded by crisis. And we are in a current epoch-changing crisis — a shift away from technocratic solutions and pragmatic policies and trust in vision-casting and planning and execution. There are great weaknesses to these “supposedly solid strategies” which bring to light myths and idols we maybe didn’t even know we had.

This is a book of hope, showing how individuals and corporate renewal can happen, especially if we change our posture, our relationship to the world, our own capacity to move from our comfort zones into adaptive change. It’s a sweet and solid little book.

Listen to what our friend Tish Harrison Warren — author of the brand new little volume Advent — says; she’s read it carefully and commends it to you:

Mark Sayers has a unique and profound ability to understand culture and, in particular, our cultural moment — how we got here, where we are going, and how Christians might seek to live faithfully amid the tectonic shifts of our age. In A Non-Anxious Presence, Sayers casts a vision for pastors and other Christian leaders that allows us to offer hope in a quickly changing and ever-anxious world. Sayers vividly describes the disorienting ‘gray zone’ we now find ourselves in, as well as helpfully interpreting this cultural shift as a ‘wilderness’ of testing in which leaders are called to be refined and purified as we seek the presence of God in our world, our churches, and our lives. Sayers is a faithful, studied, and remarkably insightful guide in this time of upheaval and transition, a time where we find ourselves often befuddled and fearful, a time when God is yet at work redeeming all things.  –Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk & True Flourishing Andy Crouch (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I could write about this at length — and I have — but the short version is that, like all of Mr. Crouch’s eloquent books, it is a must read. He did a major work — one of our most regularly recommended titles in the last 15 years — called Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (look for a new updated edition very soon; we’re taking pre-orders!) which was followed up a few years laster by one of the very best books ever done on the notion of power. (It is a must-read for culture-makers, entitled Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power.)

I don’t recall if I’ve heard Andy say this, but it is my sense that this nicely-done compact paperback came out of his reflections on the book about power. In a way, it is a case study, a short and provocative look at ways to make a difference by embracing our weaknesses, aligning ourselves with the Christ who suffers, and moving from too much power (or power poorly stewarded) to give ourselves away in trust and vulnerability. It is good for anyone, of course, who wants to live a free life, a life of abandon, following the Lord Jesus in culturally helpful ways. But it is exceptionally poignant for leaders. The title and subtitle don’t directly allude to leadership but if Woodward and Hirsch are right that we need a converted vision, a paradigm shift about leadership, this graciously thoughtful book is going to be very, very helpful. Beth and I commend it often.

The publishers summarize it nicely:

Two common temptations lure us away from abundant living — withdrawing into safety or grasping for power. True flourishing, says Andy Crouch, travels down an unexpected path — being both strong and weak. Regardless of your stage or role in life, here is a way of love and risk so that we all, even the most vulnerable, can flourish.

The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry Austin Carty (Eerdmans) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Again, this is a book I’ve highlighted time and again, and have done live announcements about whenever I’ve been with (live or over zoom) clergy this past year. I do not tire of promoting it, enjoy gushing about it, and will continue to express how grateful I am for Carty’s lively prose, visionary reading plan, and incredibly wise (and fun) stories about growing into a love for reading.

I know. For busy pastors, as it says on the back, “time spent reading feels hard to justify, especially when it’s not for sermon prep.” Right?

But what if reading felt less like a luxury and more like a vocational responsibility — a spiritual practice that bears fruit in every aspect of ministry?

I am so sure this will benefit you and that you will enjoy it that, besides offering our 20% off discounted price, I will offer an unconditional guarantee. If you don’t love this book, we’ll give you your money back. (I was going to say “no questions asked” but that may not be true. I’d love to hear it if you don’t appreciate this book.) How’s that? It’s on sale but if it isn’t as great as I’ve often said, we’ll refund your dough. I want to get this book out there, cultivating and spreading a love of books and the value of book buying, even. I think Karen Swallow Prior is right when she says that “pastors who read and live by the wisdom of this book will be changed, as will their ministries and the people to whom they minister.”

As the exquisite neurologist and scholar of reading, Maryanne Wolf (of the great Reader, Come Home), wrote:

I am gobsmacked by this book’s three-fold beauty, its writing, its erudition, and the author’s deep commitment to what true reading can give not only pastors, but us all.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is helpful if you tell us how you want us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options (who just raised their rates again) and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

I’m going to make this BookNotes column short, and, hopefully, sweet. I’m going to solve your problem about how to commemorate the 60th anniversary of one of the great events in American history — the 1963 March on Washington.  Yep, we have you covered.

Actually I had hoped to include this one item in the previous BookNotes (our store newsletter) which featured a number of mostly recent books about race, racism, and the grand and glorious (if troubled) civil rights movement. You may recall I highlighted what I said was one of the best books I ever read, a remarkable, informative, page-turner walking you through the tumultuous year of 1966. Saying It Loud: 1966–The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement by Mark Whitaker, is simply a must-read. I’m picking it up a second time and enjoying it so much; it is at once oddly sobering and quite inspiring. It usually sells for $29.99 but at our BookNotes 20% off sale price we have it at $23.99. I hope you saw the others I reviewed and the three that I invited you to consider pre-ordering. You can do that by clicking on our order tab, below.

Like any store, we can pre-order nearly anything and we have a number of little waiting lists for any number of anticipated forthcoming books. But for our purposes in the last BookNotes I very highly recommended that you pre-order The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy by Robert P. Jones, the memoir How Far to the Promised Land by Esau McCaulley and The Gospel According to James Baldwin by Greg Garrett.

The item that I wanted to add to that list, but it just wasn’t out yet — it arrived today! — is a video curriculum that we’ve been waiting for for, well, for decades. This is an excellent, informative, inspiring, and very well made introduction to and Christian exploration of the vision and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was so very excited to learn of it, thrilled to watch the first episode a while back, and delighted to share it with you here, now. (See the link to the first episode, below.)

Share the Dream: Shining a Light in a Divided World through Six Principles of Martin Luther King, Jr.  DVD and Participant’s Guide  hosted by Matthew Daniels and Chris Broussard

(K.I.N.G. / Harper Christian Resources) $50.99     OUR SALE PRICE = $40.79

This pack includes a DVD and an excellent participant’s/leader’s workbook. It also includes an access code that allows you to stream the video content if you’d rather play it that way. There are discussion questions, reflection points, chapter summaries and a leader’s planning guide. There are nice graphics in the interior design and there are 18 small Bible studies to do between the sessions, or to draw from in your sessions. It’s fantastic and easy to use.

Here is how they describe it:

EMBRACE A LIFE OF LOVE FOR ALL HUMANITY

Share the Dream is a six-session video Bible study based on the life and teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. You will look at six biblical principles that shaped Dr. King’s life and motivated him to speak on behalf of African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement: love, conscience, freedom, justice, perseverance, and hope.

The best way to Share the Dream is to follow in Dr. King’s footsteps and embrace his vision. You can help a new generation better understand, live, experience, and ultimately form a community around the unifying principles at the heart of the dream to which Dr. King dedicated his life.

Sessions and video run times:

1. Love (24:00)
2. Conscience (16:00)
3. Justice (17:30)
4. Freedom (14:30)
5. Perseverance (15:00)
6. Hope (17:00)

While there are several good folks interviewed in each episode the hosts are two well-known and very fun black Christian leaders in both historic black churches and in the American sports scene. Dr. Matthew Daniels has been a sports chaplain and  Chris Broussard (who I met years ago when we were both speaking at Taylor University)  is an American sports analyst and commentator for Fox Sports 1 and Fox Sports Radio. Best known for his coverage of the NBA, he is now a co-host on FS1’s afternoon show First Things First, as well as co-host of The Odd Couple with Rob Parker on Fox Sports Radio. Previously, he worked for The New York Times, ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, and made appearances on ESPN’s SportsCenter, NBA Countdown, First Take, and NBA Fastbreak as an analyst.

Matthew Daniels, J.D., Ph.D. teaches human rights and law on four continents and is the creator and Executive Producer of the Human Rights Network, an educational video network promoting universal rights through digital media. He is Chair of Law & Human Rights at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., and founder of the Center for Law and Digital Culture at Brunel School of Law in London. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at Handong International Law School in Pohang, South Korea — small world, I know his Dean, there — and at the University of Costa Rica. Professor Daniels is the creator of the nonprofit organization Good of All, which is committed to educating people around the world about human rights and freedoms.

In 2019, Good of All launched a Universal Rights Scholarship Program at four historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., as a joint project with the Martin Luther King, Jr. Advisory Council of Georgia. Dr. Daniels also served as the Executive Producer and Educational Advisor for the human rights documentary A Higher Law on Georgia Public Broadcasting.

So, these lively leaders know their stuff and are joined by Lecrae, Ambassador Andrew Young, Linsey Davis, and U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry Black, some who have studied Dr. King’s legacy their whole lives. This six-part series is fantastic and we would be honored if you ordered a “study pack” (a DVD and Participant’s Guide) at our sale price.

If you are unsure, watch this first episode so you can get a feel for the quality of the program. It’s interesting, upbeat, Biblical, but not too heavy. Good for all sorts of church fellowships, community classes, small groups, adult ed options as well as college and youth ministry settings.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FIRST SESSION — then come back to order from Hearts & Minds.

Thanks.

https://watch.studygateway.com/share-the-dream-matthew-daniels-and-chris-broussard/videos/share-the-dream-daniels-s1

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options (who just raised their rates again) and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Thank you so much. Truly, Beth and I are very grateful for those who helped us spread the word and for those who tuned in to the on-line conversation last week that we hosted with Dr. Paul Metzger of the New Wine/New Wineskins Institute out at Multnomah College in the grand Pacific Northwest. IVP Academic, who published his excellent, hefty study of personalism called More Than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture put the tech piece together and Paul and I had an invigorating and fun — at the very least for us, but we’ve heard that others liked it, too — discussion on personhood, a Trinitarian theological basis for caring about the dignity of humans made in God’s image, and a whole host of pressing ethical questions in various social spheres. From abortion and end of life issues to creation-care and climate change, from personal and institutional racism to gender and human sexuality, from medical ethics to drone warfare (and even on to “The Last Frontier”, space exploration) Paul carefully offers perspective and insight and Biblically-informed reading on a personalist emphasis.

The live video conversation was recorded. You can watch it HERE. We hope we were personal and welcoming to all, somehow redeeming a bit of this too often polarizing and inhumane technological space. Check it out, please.

One of Paul’s early mentors was the great evangelical hero who has taught many about race and grace, about injustice and public righteousness, John Perkins. Paul’s chapter on race in More Than Things is a major contribution to serious thinking about such matters and I very highly recommend it. As with the other topics Metzger addresses, our society (not to mention most churches) really needs a re-think and a re-do. We’ve got to learn from the past, denounce idols and reductionisms, forge a Biblically-shaped ethic, and offer a “new song” from the Lord, paving the way to reconciliation and restoration and hope. Metzger has been at this work on racism a long time and we honor him for it.

In this big BookNotes I want to offer a reminder to PRE-ORDER a couple of important soon-to-be-released books (scroll down) about race that should be on your list of must-reads this fall. First, I  highlight a few current books that are very, very good, in this field. I’ll try to be succinct. We really hope you enjoy this BookNotes. Share it with others if you can.

One of the ones I’m listing this week, with which I will start this list, is one of the best books I’ve read all year. Read on!

Saying It Loud: 1966 – The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement Mark Whitaker (Simon & Schuster) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Yes, indeed, this is not only one of the very best books about the history of the civil rights movement, it was so captivating, so gripping, so informative, that I’d say it was one of the best page-turners I have ever read. And I’ve read a lot about the civil rights era and a lot of investigative reporting and popular history. I’ve been wanting to tell BookNote friends about it for months now, and it seems now the time is right. We are approaching the grand 60th anniversary of the legendary March on Washington (1963) that even school kids know about. What happened before that and after, is legendary. Saying It Loud jumps back and forth sharing the whole big picture of the movement from the early 60s to the early 70s, but its structure is simple. It unfolds month by month in one pivotal year. I would bet that all but the most rare scholar of the movement will know all this stuff and it has now become my go-to book for anyone to read who wants to understand the virtues and faith and struggles and tragedies — and, yes, the huge ideological differences that came to the fore — during this most remarkable era of American history.

If you, like me, came of age in the late 60s or so, you will want to read this book. Come on, despite all the names that you heard on the news — Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seal, just for instance, not to mention the larger backdrop of music and art and war and protest that was simmering in that era — I bet you don’t know the backstory of each of them. And what stories they are! You have got to read this book!

And if this new to some of you, great. It’s a part of American history you have to know. This book is a great starter. No matter your age or era, this will teach you well.

As you probably know, there was among most civil rights leaders (and the rank and file folks who were involved) a profound commitment, guided by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and others) to faith-based, even Biblical, nonviolence.  From King’s Christian personalism and Gandhian training in direct action and profound loyalties to American civic principles, the movement, radical as it was, was rooted in this vision of law and order and goodness and truth. King and John Lewis and others from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, or “snick” as it was often called) were Christians, after all, and the black church served as the hub of most campaigns of protesting segregation and, then, eventually voter registration drives. That changed in 1966.

And what a lot of trouble it was, inside the movement. Young activists were increasingly influenced by the vibrant Malcom X and they increasingly insisted that there needed to be more teaching about black self-regard (and self-protection.) Black Is Beautiful became a slogan and the Black Panthers rose up with guns, famously in Oakland, California. There were meetings and debates and councils amidst murders and jailings, visits from government officials and heoric entertainers and donors. There was prayer and politics and personality squabbles and more.

Of course the Panthers — one of the most ubiquitous names from the news of my youth — did more than the paramilitary training that white media showed. They had excellent feeding projects and after-school programs and taught discipline and self-respect and civic action. The Black Arts movement was starting up in Harlem, too, led by LeRoi Jones, who would soon change his name to Amiri Baraka, which Whitaker explores. This even gave rise to the new holiday known as Kwanzaa. The times they were a-changin’.

By the way, I did not know (I’m a little embarrassed to admit) that the name and mascot of the militant urban, mostly West Coast Black Panther group came first from a rural Alabama voting rights group which actually became a black political movement running as an independent third party later that year. They really were, first, a political party.

(The Lowndes County Freedom Organization emerged after some organizers that were on the famous 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery stopped and stayed with local residences there. The NAACP had been banned in the state at that point and some of Fred Shuttlesworth’s Christian Movement for Human Rights were involved as well, creating a poltical alternative to the segregationist party headed by George Wallace (a Democrat, who literally used the phrase “White Supremacy” in the local Democrat party’s logo.)

These were earth-shaking times and no book that I know of tells the story so boldly, with so many amazing digressions and fascinating rabbit trails with helpful explanations of the past and glimpses, occasionally, to where it all would lead. John Adams had said it in colonial times, and it was true in 1966: these are serious times.

Mark Whitaker is a great storyteller, an excellent journalist, and a very fine writer. Some of you reading this know his marvelous book on the under-reported story of the extraordinary early 20th century experience in black quarters in Pittsburgh, paralleling the famous Harlem renaissance, called Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance.The verve and brilliance and detail of that book is shown even more in the fast-paced Saying It Loud. And the issues explored —is nonviolence necessary and effective? how do we make room for activists of various or no faiths? what is the relationship between the arts and social change? how can women and men lead together? does civil rights work look different in the south and north (and rural and urban settings)? and on and on — are with us today. If you care even a little about the voices of BLM, or you want, perhaps, a more traditional approach to faith-based organizing, you need to read this book.

Allow me to note three more quick things about the value of Saying It Loud.

First, as I implied, it covers the history and tone of the civil rights movement so very well. Although it is rooted in the long year of 1966, as Whitaker introduces a character — say, Stokely Carmichael, or Huey Newton, just for instance — it explores their back story, their own biographies, their dedicated (if sometimes contentious) work in the rural towns of Mississippi or Alabama, moving from events in Memphis or Little Rock to Selma or Atlanta, among movers and shakers and among those who could not read or write. The way these men (and many women, too) were beaten and threatened (and some, in the narrative, were murdered) was appalling; reading it again was shocking, even as we all know this is how it was. The reporting is so vivid and the history unfolding so fast and furious that one cannot but gasp, and cry out to God in remorse and repentance. That white folks were so cruel, so vicious, so funded and evil and that young men and women working for change were so brave, so dedicated, so willing to suffer and to serve — what stories! These mini-biographies woven naturally into the narrative of the dedication (often) or personal difficulties (often, as well) of the main players in the drama are excellent. Saying It Loud is the best one-stop read to learn so very, very much and be taken into the heart of the struggles for so many. I very highly recommend it.

Previously, by the way, I have often recommended the excellent, concise abridgment of the world-class, huge, three volume history of the era, America in the King Years by Taylor Branch called The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement (Simon & Schuster; $17.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39.) That is still excellent, and offers a historians overview of key moments, or episodes, in the struggle, but Saying It Loud tells of the people and their bravery, failures, angers, prayers, and accomplishments. Wow.

Secondly, this recent one by Mark Whitaker really does offer a brilliant look into what was, surely, one of the most consequently shifts of thinking in perhaps all of American public life, and while it cannot be (and ought not be) reduced to a debate between Martin King and Malcom X, the occasions of the two men meeting is told wondrously by Mr Whitaker. If only either had lived longer to see how the debate about Christianity, nonviolence, black separatism, and political reform might have played out. The story is tragic but Whitaker tells it with energy and passion. The consequent move away from King’s nonviolent mass movement is a historical reality that needs to be deeply explored and Whitaker gets us towards an understanding of the beginning of a pivotal end of an era.

Thirdly, again, with the thrust of the book being as it must be — the shift away from nonviolence and the leadership of King to Black Power the rise of the Panthers — it nonetheless shows how these differing approaches to civil rights and better lives for black citizens, are still related. Yes, there arises a different strategy, and yes, it is more than a change in tactics (about violence or how to do voter registration, say, or a shift from the rural south to the teeming ghettos of the north) but a new generation’s whole worldview. The times saw an ideological shift and a cultural shift and a political shift. As reviewer Michael Eric Dyson notes, “Whitaker brilliantly tracks the rise and fall of Black Power and how its lessons echo across the decades and thunder in today’s headlines.” Indeed. The book is for today!

Saying it Loud: 1966 is a tour de force, a major contribution, a fascinating page-turner, a great read. Please stick with me, here, and read the following blurbs from the back, which are rich and will perhaps inspire you to order the book.

I was in high school in 1966, and it felt like the edge of history. In his brilliant new book, Saying It Loud, Mark Whitaker has taken me back there, and the journey is both enthralling and a riveting reminder of the tumult, inspiration, and potent possibilities of the Black Power movement. It’s also novelistic in its fully realized human portraits of the movement’s backstory. I can’t say it any louder: this is not only a compelling read; it’s essential for understanding where we started and where we might find lessons in determining where we go from here. — Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University

The years that Mark Whitaker chronicles in Saying It Loud were years I well knew as a young reporter and also as a Black Southerner who came out of the Civil Rights Movement when much of the complicated (and yes sometimes disturbing) history he delves into was being made. . . . What Saying It Loud provides, especially for the Black Lives Matter generation, is history that will help them avoid the pitfalls of their predecessors as well as a road map to the more perfect union this country has long promised but has not yet achieved. — Charlayne Hunter-Gault, journalist and author of My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives

At once eloquently intimate and bracingly expansive, Saying It Loud is a tour de force. Mark Whitaker has produced a provocatively eloquent and original work of narrative history that inspires us to look upon the past with new eyes. The heroically flawed lives of the generation that shaped the year 1966 and the rise of Black Power will never look the same after reading this insightful, challenging, and thought-provoking book. — Peniel E. Joseph, author of The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy J Russell Hawkins (Oxford University Press) $29.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.96

This is an important history volume, peer reviewed by the famous and prestigious scholarly press and laden with vital accolades. Dr. Hawkins is the Professor of Humanities and History in the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion, Indiana.

The book offers, as one historian put it, “more complex stories about the interplay of race and politics” within the ranks of evangelicalism. Derek Hick, author of Reclaiming Spirit in the Black Faith Tradition says it is “stylistically unflinching while managing to remain approachable delicate” and that Hawkins “has produced a tour de force that tells an unsettling tale of certain white evangelical’s efforts to maintain a dominant social order.”

Do you recall the classic in the field of civil rights history, the extraordinary and sadly riveting volume God’s Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights by Charles Marsh (Princeton University Press; $37.00) that we often tout? That, too, shows how various folks on different sides of the civil rights battles, used (or misused) the Bible for their own side. The Bible Told Them So shows still more, and it is both perplexing and sad, but important for us to understand. (It is my sense that this is going to become even more important as some on the alt-right are themselves, now, using the Bible to justify their ideological weirdness.)

And listen to this, importantly:

Hawkins convincingly demonstrates how religion framed, informed, and bolstered South Carolina whites’ resistance to racial equality. He further shows how, once the raw biblical justification of segregation acquired a bad reputation, the rhetoric of color-blindness and anti-identity politics carried this resistance forward under a more respectable but deceptive guise. — Carolyn Renée Dupont, author of Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975

A Fever in the Heartland: The Klu Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them Timothy Egan (Viking) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I have highlighted this already at BookNotes so won’t say much more other than to remind you that, before the 1950s and ‘60s civil rights movement there was this grand struggle. The KKK arose after emancipation, of course, in the south. It had, most thought, pretty much died out. But the second iteration of the Klan — with its most significant stronghold in the 1920s state of Indiana— was even more viciously racist; devoutly evil, and on the rise. This book, written with what the great writer Erik Larson says is “narrative elan”, exposes their plots of this most sinister period of American history. It shows their not very long march through the institutions of culture, their infiltrations of the courts, and into corridors of power, and it is breathtakingly ominous. Why a book!

That the KKK remains a force to be reckoned with. Similar racist, antisemitic, and neo-Nazi type groups are on the rise and even intertwined with the campaigns of Donal Trump and other Republican leaders. This book could not be more fascinating as a gripping historical study and could not be more timely.

Timothy Egan is a meticulous scholar and fine writer. You may know his award-winning book on the dust bowl years (The Worst Hard Times) that was made into a fine documentary by the great Ken Burns. Burns notes that “the influence the KKK wielded over states and policy should put a chill in every American.” Here is what Burns says about A Fever in the Heartland:

Egan has done it again, mastering another complicated American story with authority and surprising detail. The Klan here are not the nightriders of the late 19th century, but a retooled special interest group and unusually potent political power. The influence they wielded over states and policy should put a chill in every American. Bravo. –Ken Burns

Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation Robert Chao Romero & Jeff M. Liou (Baker Academic) $23.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

I have written about this before and I have given pleas for folks to buy it at every event this spring and summer wherever I’ve been asked to make up-front book talks. I’ve plugged it as essential reading for pastors, for campus ministers, for thoughtful evangelicals and for mainline church people. Everybody has heard of the controversies around critical race theory (CRT) and most readers of BookNotes will, I suspect, know that the far right fear and their loathsome caricatures are reactionary and almost silly. While there may be a grain of truth is some sophisticated critiques — some CRT scholars may be Marxian in their worldview and may draw without discernment upon worldly ideologies — most religious criticisms of CRT have been woefully ignorant.

That is, until now. This is the first major book to read about CRT, bar none, at this point. As Duke Kwon put it, “This book should be required reading for anyone seeking to explore the intersection of critical race theory and Christian Scriptures.”

This really is the firsts comprehensive exploration from a theologically-informed, Biblically-shaped, discerningly thoughtful Christian perspective and it is a masterpiece of good thinking and good writing. Romero and Liou’s Christianity and Critical Race Theory delivers just what the subtitle promises: “A Faithful and Constructive Conversation.”

Just look at the flow of the book, which offers a good structure for their detailed analysis:

1.  Introduction: Critical Race Theory in Christianity
2.  Creation: Community Cultural Wealth and the Glory and Honor of the Nations
3.  Fall: Sin and Racism–the Ordinary Businesses of Society
4.  Redemption: Critical Race Theory in Institutions
5.  Consummation: The Beloved Community
6.  Conclusion: Made to Be Image Bearers

We need this book, and I hope it is widely read! Although there is angry rhetoric on both sides of this controversy, these authors carefully–and wisely–go after the truth.    — Richard Mouw, Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, Calvin University, author, How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor

When tricky questions come up about critical race theory, Romero and Liou are the first people that I turn to. They help readers understand the larger dynamics, orient them in Christian ways, provide helpful insights, and bring clarity to complicated topics. — Nikki Toyama-Szeto, executive director, Christians for Social Action

I Won’t Shut Up: Finding Your Voice When the World Tries to SIlence You Ally Henry (Baker Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This book is a fabulous, if haunting and at times (for this white guy reader) a bit off-putting (or at least it made me a little uncomfortable) collection of essays that serve almost as stand alone pieces and yet congeal as a memoir of sorts. Ally Henry is a fiesty and loud writer — her word — and I want to recommend it here again, even though it came out in June. Yes! Edgy and firm as it is, it is one to read.

Ally Henry is a writer, speaker, advocate-minister, and vice president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective (which I hope you know about; it is an organization committed to encouraging, engaging and empowering black Christinas toward liberation from racism.) She has an MDiv from Fuller and has had a long-standing blog called The Armchair Community.

She is serious and funny, frank and witty, and speaks with candor about harm and micro-aggressions and the stress and joys of being a black woman. She is, perhaps surprisingly, an introvert and she says she is shy, but has learned to navigate without compromise the often overwhelmingly white spaces she inhabits. It is a good look at the story and personality and attitude of a young black woman that many white folks need to read, especially if you find yourself wanting to police the appropriateness of some loud black behavior. She is convinced that most white people have this dismissal of certain kinds of black folks who are claiming their place, finding their voices, maybe just doing their thing. (Think of the black bird watcher in Central Park or that family just cooking out in that park out West, both stories that got in the news. Or the poor souls harassed and demeaned every single day in the United States.  Check it out with an open heart, please.

There are stories here, from her girlhood and school days. It got Beth and I talking about our own memoirs of race and class and difference in our own respective schools. We appreciate her call to black women to use their voices, to tell their stories, to be loud and proud and assertive. She is firm, blunt, and in most stories — due to her fine ability as storyteller, even when it is hard — entertaining.

As Danielle Coke (herself an artist, illustrator and entrepreneur) writes in the good, brassy forward, “Your voice has unimaginable power and you have every right to use it. This book will show you how.”

Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World And How to Repair It All Lisa Sharon Harper (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This is a book that I have highlighted several times — since before it even came out, actually. We highlight it again, here because we want our BookNotes friends and fans to know how we appreciate Lisa and this extraordinary book.  It carries endorsements from some of the most important writers in this whole genre — Ruby Sales, for instance, who calls Harper “a masterful storyteller” and the heroic Rev. Dr. William Barber (the president of Repairers of the Breach) who says the book is simply “Brilliant.” We agree.

Kirsten Powers, CNN senior political analyst and columnist and author, notes that Lisa is one of our nations most critical voices on the issues of race, gender, faith and justice and I agree.

“Harper is one of our nation’s most critical voices on the issues of race, gender, faith, and justice.”

And so we are not alone in our affirmation of this epic story of Lisa exploring her genealogy and telling the story of her grueling and glorious research into finding her family history. From DNA research, oral history, fascinating interviews, and more, she takes us along on her journey — some of it full of pathos as we learn about who enslaved whom, who sold whom. This is hard to read, on one hand, but Lisa is brave and hopes to satisfy her longing to know of her colorful background (she is part Native, as well — you may recall her writing about that in her excellent and popular book The Very Good Gospel) even as she tells the story of “how race broke my family.

Indeed, the brokenness that race has wrought in America is part of this tender, personal story, and her big vision of collective repair is urgent. She calls for us to tell the truth, a prophetic call needed now more than ever! I beg you to read it. It is by a woman we count as a friend who is also a respected, nationally-known Christian leader who has earned the right to be heard.

Here is a great, short, and moving video of Sharon talking about the book. Check out this  trailer: 

AND, there is this fun news. With the soon to be celebrated 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, there is a new song that celebrates her book, putting it within the framework of the important history of the civil rights movement. With the theme of this BookNotes — centered by the must-read Saying It Loud by Mark Whitaker —it seems perfect to share this innovative bit of artful promo of Lisa’s classic book Fortune. Here is how she describes it:

“Fly” (aka “Fortune’s Song”) will be released the week of the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington. Inspired by Fortune and co-written in partnership with Common Hymnal and Andre Henry at the Alex Haley Farm last summer, “Fly” shines light on the lies of racial hierarchy that broke the world and issues an epic call for truth and reparation.

Stay tuned for that! I’ll share it at Facebook, for sure. Hooray for “Fly” (aka “Fortune’s Song”).

THREE BOOKS TO PRE-ORDER NOW.

If you happen to be ordering more than one title along with a forthcoming one, please let us know if you want us to send the available ones now and the not-yet-released ones later, when they arrive OR should we hold up and consolidate, sending things together, later. It would be helpful to let us know how you want us to serve you in this instance. THANKS.

The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future Robert P. Jones (Simon & Schuster) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99 // ON SALE DATE – September 5, 2023

Oh my, when an esteemed public theologian and respected historian does a deep dive into the roots of American history to suss out ways in which racism and white supremacy has been “cooked into the cake” of our country’s past, we should all pay attention. This has been done a lot lately, from the controversial The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story to Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi, to the IVP Academic title We the Fallen People: The Founders and the Future of American Democracy by Robert Tracy McKenzie.  A few mail order customers have ordered African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideal by David Hackett Fisher.

Jones stands among these important scholars, a good thinker and passionate teacher himself. He is also a person of deep faith and is concerned about how these things are talked about.

Jones is the president and founder of Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and a leading scholar and commentator on religion and politics. Jones writes regularly on politics, culture, and religion for The Atlantic, TIME, and Religion News Service. He holds a PhD in religion from Emory University and a MDiv from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

This forthcoming one, releasing early in September, isn’t his first book on all of this. He is the author of White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award, and The End of White Christian America, which won the 2019 Grawemeyer Award in Religion.

We have long carried these previous two books, and in this forthcoming one, he told a group in central PA this past Spring, he is “going back to the beginning” and exploring the roots of it all. The coveted “starred review” from Kirkus Review noted that it is ”Revelatory. . . . A searing, stirring outline of the historical and contemporary significance of white Christian nationalism.”

Jones makes this narrative historical study particularly engaging (even if it isn’t exactly the very beginning of America’s original sin) because he explores the story of three locations in the United States — in Mississippi, Minnesota, and Oklahoma — where the indigenous people were driven out by European colonists, where vicious racial killings took place in the last century, and “how these places are coming to terms with the past, creating new organizations dedicated to racial repair and reconciliation as they aspire to a more inclusive, more promising future.”

Read these important endorsements to see if this is a book you should have on your bookshelves:

An essential journey into the origins of America’s current identity crisis, told through the voices of people working across lines of race to create a truer vision of our shared history, and our future. — Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

Robert P. Jones has deepened our understanding of how Americans think about religion, justice and oppression. . . . This eloquent volume, by turns personal and analytical, calls us to face up to the past in order to build a more just and democratic future. — E. J. Dionne Jr., senior fellow, the Brookings Institution; author of Our Divided Political Heart 

How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South Esau McCaulley (Convergent) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60 // ON SALE DATE – September 12, 2023

This is one of the most anticipated books of the season for some of our BookNotes readers, I’m sure. McCaulley is the extraordinary speaker and writer and scholar, the author of the best-selling and must-read Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (IVP; $22.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60.)

He is also the editor and curator behind the small “Fullness of Time” book series on the church calendar, such as his own Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal. (Heads up: we now have the brand new ones on Advent by Tish Harrison Warren and Christmas by Emily Hunter McGowan and hope to have soon Epiphany by Fleming Rutledge.)

How Far to the Promised Land is a memoir created within a series of essays that more or less follow his boyhood in the deep south, his coming of age amidst a father who sometimes had a needle in his arm, the rough and tumble of a hard neighborhood, serious poverty, a single mom who did well by him, the complexities of race and racism in Alabama — and elsewhere.

Dr. McCaulley, as you may know, has a fairly classic Black church background, somewhat Pentecostal, and who made his way to Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and, eventually, to St. Andrews where he studied with world-renowned New Testament scholar, N.T. Wright. He is an ordained clergyman, a priest in the Anglican tradition, a New York Times columnist, and a professor at Wheaton College. His hard family background (and the forgiveness that was hard coming, even after his father’s untimely death) is told honestly, with great vulnerability, and always respectfully.  It is quite an accomplishment.

The book starts with a very engaging narrative of going to speak at a largely white college setting where he is asked to share, during the Q & A, the worst example of racism he himself has encountered. Something sort of snaps as it is a question black speakers who address questions of racism are often asked; in this case, he declines from answering. He explains why and it is astute, thoughtful, helpful to hear for white readers, I’m sure, and resonant to hear for people of color reading the book. Yet, he wonders. It seems this whole book is an extended answer to this fair question.

It is pitched as “a riveting intergenerational account of one family’s search for meaning and a place to call home in the American South.”

As the senior editor for the publisher wrote in an advanced copy made available to selected reviewers

At first glance, Esau’s story follows an arc that might seem family: a young black man beats the odds of growing up fatherless and being educated in under resourced schools to escape poverty and achieve a life in the middle class…”  He explains more, noting that we think we know what to do with such narratives. He continues,

But Esau realized that the spotlight in these discussions is too narrow. We are persons, not storylines. And a good narrative — a Black one, at least — is not owned by any single individual; it is, instead, a story of a people, of how the struggle in each life to find meaning and purpose, regardless of its outcome, teaches us something essential about what it means to be human.

Executive Editor Derek Reed concludes his summary of some of the interesting and compelling stories in How Far to the Promised Land that “all of this comes together in an evocative, tender account that complicates the classic American success story while leaving us a hope that a better one can yet be written.” It is a testament, he says, “to what makes Esau one of the most important writers at work today.”

It is a testament to what makes Esau one of the most important writers at work today.

Some of these stories made me laugh, some made me cry, I was shocked to learn some of the hardships he has faced and glad for the way the church has so rooted and inspired him and his wife and four children. It’s a great read and I hope you pre-order it from us today.

The Gospel According to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach us About Life, Love, and Identity Greg Garrett (Orbis Books) $24.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20  // ON SALE DATE – September 15, 2023

I like Greg Garrett a lot. He’s a lit prof at Baylor University and we first discovered him decades ago when he wrote a memoir about leaving fundamentalism to embrace Episcopalianism (cleverly called Crossing Myself.) He has gone on to write other books, studies of film and literature, a good one on “holy superheroes” and a fine study of the gospel seen in the work of U2. And he has done a few good novels (most recently, the widely acclaimed Bastille Day, published by Paraclete, that we’ve recommended.)

The Gospel According to James Baldwin does what you might expect, looking at Christian themes within Baldwin and, more generally, how Baldwin’s life and writing can inform our own views about love and identity. It is, to be sure, quite readable, but it offers a close reading of both Baldwin’s words and his legacy.

I like how the manuscript which I got the publisher to send to me send puts it:

During the reading for and writing of this book, Garrett followed in Baldwin’s physical footsteps — walking with him from his early years in Harlem to his painful journeys to the America South, from the cafes of St.-Germain in Paris to the mountains of Switzerland, where he did some of his more important thinking and writing.

Indeed, he writes of doing some of his own writing while seeing the view that Baldwin had from the Happersberger chalet in the Alps; he knows the “soul-food joints in Harlem.” I don’t mean to draw too many comparisons but I did think of one of my favorite books, the one where Jamie Smith retraces some of the not-yet-Saint Augustin’s journey in Italy. Sort of a travelogue and sort of an embodied study, Smith’s On the Road with Saint Augustine has that very real touch, and it seems some of Greg’s book does as well. You’ll like it, I’m sure. The very first sentence tells of his how-in-the-world-did-I-get-here sense of being high in the Swiss Alps; that first chapter is called “On Pilgrimage, Seeking St James.”

Greg admits to many differences between himself and the great twentieth century writer: Greg is white, was raised middle-class and mostly rural (he’s driven tractors and stacked hay bales, he notes) and while Baldwin was born and raised in black Harlem, still, there are connections. Even this oddly, sort of fascinates:

He officially left the church after early piety; I was a young religious malcontent who became deeply and even traditionally Christian in middle age.

And so the book meanders towards its study, offering writerly biographical glimpses of both men and Garrett’s remarkable experiences of teaching The Fire Next Time or “Sonny’s Blues” or Go Tell It on the Mountain, how it lingers, even among students who contact him later.

He notes a great quote — a quote I might have used in my own review of Nicholas Buccola’s book The Fire Is Upon Us, an amazingly learned and, I think, important book on the monumental University of Cambridge debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley. Garrett quotes Buccola, saying:

For me, and for many others, Baldwin is the sort of writer who alters your perception of the world and forces you to consider and reconsider your place within it.

Dr. Garrett is conversational in his prose but has done a scholar’s bit of heavy lifting in the archival research, too. (The Baldwin Collection at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem has been just recently inaugurated.) He even visited the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library — you’ll see why.

The book is very nicely written and thoughtful as it covers Baldwin on culture, faith, race, justice, identity, and so much more. He notes that to address so much of such importance we need “an artist, a saint and a prophet.” The Gospel According to James Baldwin should release September 15th and we are eager to send a few out at our discounted price.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options (who just raised their rates again) and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

REGISTER HERE.

I mentioned this upcoming on-line event with me interviewing Paul Metzger, author of More Than Things, in the big BookNotes column I did a couple weeks ago reviewing Metzger’s new book, and then alluded to it again in the most recent Booknotes (the one about spiritual formation, personal growth, and learning resilience and joy) a day or so ago. All you have to do is pre-register here.

More Than Things: A Personalist Ethic for a Throwaway Culture is a book that — if you don’t mind working through the exceptionally serious-minded scholarship and the fabulously copious footnotes citing tons of ancient and contemporary theologians, cultural critics, philosophers and ethicists for almost 450 pages — could almost fit in that upbeat post a day ago listing books like Karen Marsh’s recent Wake Up to Wonder and Justin Whitmel Earley’s new Made for People and that great anthology edited by Perry Glanzer called Stewarding Our Bodies. What threads through yesterday’s BookNotes of more than ten recent books about personal growth and spiritual formation is that they all emphasize, in one way or another, the fact that we are all persons and we deserve to be treated well, with dignity and honor, illustrating the inherent worth of people made in the very image of the Triune creator-God. Even the books about resilience or suffering (or Amanda Held Opelt’s brilliant Holy Unhappiness) are, I think, related to and best understood under the umbrella of Metzger’s good theology and subsequent social ethic which he calls personalism.

Paul Louis Metzger does a deep dive in More Than Things into this philosophy of personalism and the fabulous book cover aptly illustrates that we are not just plastic, not just cut-outs. I’m not sure if the plot and message of the Barbie movies fits in here — I’m going to ask him, that’s for sure — but Metzger is a culturally-aware public theologian who wants to show how a distinctively Christian worldview is, at heart, a matter of personalism; alive as we are in God’s world of good but fallen institutions and systems, but always as persons to be treated with dignity. His personal energy for this social ethic is matched by his exceptional kindness and grace. The book is brilliant and our time is going to be interesting.

So, re-read that review if you’d like and, in any event, sign up to be a part of our on-line conversation.

Once you sign up (here) you will then be sent a Zoom invitation, a simple code that gets you into the party. It is free (and there may even be some ongoing perks from IVP Academic, the publisher.)

I’ll interview Paul about the book starting at 1:00 PM in the Eastern time zone (he is out in Oregon, so it’s earlier out there.) We’ll have some friendly discussion about the book and its themes and we’ll take (written) questions from the on-line participants. Naturally, it will be a closed gig — that is, your face won’t be shown to the world and you’ll just see Paul and me — but we have a behind the scenes tech guy who will field questions and comments, creating the possibility of a real on-line conversation of sorts. We are really pleased that InterVarsity Press is hosting this event for us, and Paul and I both tip our hats to them. And to you, interested participants. We can’t do this without you.

It may be recorded and we might be able to share bits and pieces later, but, please, if you are at all able to join in this coming Thursday, please do. (We know it is in the middle of the work day for many but it was the only time our tech helpers could do it.) It would mean a lot to me, and I’m sure Dr. Metzger would be deeply appreciative, as well, if you could join us. He has done a number of books over the years, but this is one that is particularly important to him, the fruit of his years pondering Scripture and social ethics and public justice and coping with some troubles in the life of his own extended family that bring to the fore the very philosophy of life which this book so eloquently speaks. We are both really looking forward to chatting together, having others listen in, and taking feedback and comments from our gathered on-line community.

Won’t you be a part of it?

See you on-line on Thursday, August 17th at 1:00 EST (a bit earlier in other time zones.) Please don’t forget to pre-register so you can get the free code to join in the fun. Just click here and fill out the form from which we can send you the Zoom link. Thanks.

As I was finishing up writing about some of the heavy books I wrote about last time — and thinking about the ones I did before that — I grabbed some brand new books from our new book table that are less directly about the brokenness of our culture, the theological demands of public life, that might be helpful or even fun reading for the dog days of August. I hate to call them self-help books or spiritual formation, exactly, although some are sort of that.  Some are, shall we say, a bit less demanding, maybe more personally engaging and encouraging. They are each really, really good.

Big thanks to those who ordered books from the last few BookNotes. Don’t forget that we will continue to promote the extraordinary (if fairly scholarly and complex) new work by Paul Louis Metzger, the fabulous More Than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture (IVP Academic) in an on-line event on August 17th. If anybody can make a national Zoom event personal, I’d like to think Paul and I can. We’ll laugh some, chat some, maybe argue some, tell some tender stories, and take questions through the miracle of modern on-line technology. Paul is a great on-the-fly conversationalist and the hour will zoom by. I’ll send out a pre-registration link soon. See my previous review here if you missed it. Even if you haven’t bought the book please plan to join us at 1:00 PM (EST) on the 17th.

For now, though, here’s a fresh BookNotes column that offers something a bit other than analyzing culture and doing socially-engaged theology. We offer 10 new books for your summer reading that offer insights about personal growth. These are really great, and we’d be glad to send some out now.  Plus — hooray! — one to pre-order that is not out yet.

If you order the forthcoming The Deepest Place by Curt Thompson [see below] along with any other items, be sure to tell us if you want us to hold those we have while we wait for the not-yet-released one, or if you want us to send some now, and that one later, when it arrives, later in the month.

TEN NEW BOOKS FOR PERSONAL GROWTH AND WHOLENESS + ONE TO PRE-ORDER

Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday Karen Wright Marsh (Brazos Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

If this doesn’t end up on many year’s end best books lists, something is wrong out there. It is utterly delightful, challenging, interesting, informative, glorious, useful. It offers “a life of spiritual depth, amazement, and connection” which, they say, is “within reach — today and everyday.” Okay, that may be a bit of a big promise, but they are on to something here: in our quest to live a vibrant spiritual life, we need, as Karen puts it, “not to follow the perfect plan but people that we could follow.” This approach is grounded in the sensibly Biblical embodied sort of spirituality. This book offers twenty-two playful, simple practices that bring deeper meaning and purpose to everyday life.

You may recall Karen Marsh’s remarkable book Vintage Saints and Sinners: 25 Christians Who Transformed My Faith (that nicely sits next to books like Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church by Philip Yancey.) It’s a fabulously designed and wonderfully written hardback that I can’t say enough about.

This new one is similar insofar as it offers mentors and guides, faithful followers who have something to model or teach. The big difference, it seems, is that Wake Up To Wonder has a bit of a lighter touch, inviting us to gap and glory in amazement. It invites us to abundance, truly. (It covers topics as diverse as physical health and prayer, activism and Scripture study, creativity and enjoying nature.) Each brief look at a saint — from Dorothy Day’s delight in a day at the beach to Howard Thurman’s learning to “take a pause” to Martin Luther’s habit of “singing out loud” to Henri Nouwen’s advice of “putting pen to paper”  — not only offers a specific practice, but she has ingenious and creative application prompts to help you ponder and pursue it, engaging, as they say. There are personal experiments anyone can do, and you can start this summer. Highly recommended, for reading pleasure, for deepening faith, for waking to wonder.

There are delightful and compelling blurbs on the back that are convincing. Not every book has a rave from The Most Rev. Michael Curry (presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church) and rock and roller of Switchfoot fame, Jon Foreman, next o James Martin, the popular (and funny) Jesuit, who calls the new book “beautiful.”

I was surprised by how much I needed the spiritual sustenance that Wake Up to Wonder offers. Marsh invites us to nurture our own wellsprings of wonder. — Barbara Homes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church

Stewarding Our Bodies: A Vision for Christian Student Affairs edited by Penny Glazer & Austin Smith (Abilene Christian University Press)  $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This is a book that, while designed for student affairs professionals, campus ministers, and others who work with young adults, is so admirably wise and interesting, that I want to promote it here for all Hearts & Minds friends. Yes, numerous issues related to the body seem to nearly plague those in higher education, so this is going to be helpful for any college educator or college kid you know. (Just think — or ask them if you think I’m overstating it — how students struggle with sleep, mental health, eating disorders, sexual identity questions, clothing choices, concerns about body image, alcohol problems and on and on…)

However, this book, written by students and faculty and staff at faith-based institutions, offers more than simple bromide or self help advice they can get from a quick google search. No, it is a one-of-a-kind blessed bit of serious research on a theological framework for such concerns related to embodiment in the real world (these days.)

Each chapter is on a different topic related to bodily life and, while drawing on the expertise and experiences of researchers and practitioners (mostly within the setting of Christian colleges, but not exclusively so), each offers a great bit of tender, wise insight.

There are chapters that themselves are nearly worth the price of the book, offering desperately needed guidance for a uniquely Christian perspective on navigating these topics. Agree or not with the details, this framework is one-of-a- kind and we are pleased to recommend it widely. 

These include (among others) great, thoughtful, chapters such as:

• Savoring and Stewarding Food by Lisa Graham McMinn
• Stewarding Our Limitations: Receiving GOd’s Gift of Sleep by Lisa Igam
• Sabbath Taking by Justin Whitmel Earley
• Attuning and Attending: Exercise and the Body by Andrew Borror

There are fabulous pieces on fashion (by the amazing Robert Covolo who is the pioneering thinker on this topic) and social media by the brilliantly astute Felcia Wu Son. There are several pieces on sexuality, sexuality identity, and one on pornography use (intriguingly called “Sex with a Person’s Mediated Body.”) As you’d expect there are several helpful chapters about anxiety, about depression, about mental health.

Stewarding Our Bodies is a must-have resource for anyone who works in higher education, and, I think, good for any youth pastor. Naturally, with a bit of understanding of its context, it would be great for nearly any seriously Christian young adult.

Holy Unhappiness: God’s Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life Amanda Held Opelt (Worthy Publishing) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Okay, friends, this is an amazing new book and I am only part way through, but can’t wait to tell you just a bit about it. It deserves a more thorough review, but for now I can alert you to what is going to be, I trust, an enduring work, maybe someday considered a classic. It is so nicely written, accessible, interesting, fun, even as it is about a somewhat dour topic: why aren’t we happy and, more importantly, why do we expect to be. Ha. What a thesis!

You may know Amanda Held Opelt, who wrote the marvelous (I’m not kidding you — a marvelously interesting and edifying) book on grief practices from around the country, around the world, even. That one was called A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing (we just got the paperback edition) and I was blown away by how good it was.

This one illustrates that Ms Opelt is a very good writer and a thoughtful, balanced, insightful thinker. It is a gift that she shares her concerns with such vulnerability — it isn’t a highbrow research tome or a heady theological discourse. It reads like an engaging memoir as she tells her story of being, shall we say, restless. And why and how she came to be at peace with that.

Two wonderful pieces early in the book captivated me. First, she is so very candid about how she has had a pretty good life, easy by global standards, and, despite the horrible sudden loss of her beloved sister, Rachel, she mostly feels pretty blessed, privileged, even. This recounting of her station in life was so refreshing and won me over that she has a perspective that is rather different than so many self-help books. This is not, she says, a heartbreaking epiphany, being sent “on a journey of self-discovery and rebirth. My unhappiness did not descend on me like some grand revelation. It has been more like a slow drip of disappointment.”

She notes:

It feels like a lack, almost as if I am expecting something out of life that has not yet been delivered. Sometimes the sadness looms large, feels like a boulder I’m carrying. Sometimes it’s as small as a pebble in my shoe. But it is always there, pressing painfully at every step.

She says this is not depression, really, or clinical anxiety. It’s like an “ever-present anticlimax.”

Can you relate, this sense that somehow life has let you down?

Here’s the second big thing: she relates our expectations about what we think we should get out of life from what she calls a “emotional property gospel.” Most of us have heard, and most have rejected, the prosperity gospel promising health and wealth. She, too, has been a part of churches that firmly oppose such heretical nonsense. Yet — and it is a big yet — much of the air many Christians believe in solid and robust churches, is a sense that, emotionally, our callings and vocations and faith and service should bring us some sort of extraordinary feeling of well-being.

Opelt links this to the New Thought movement that swept America in the late 1800s and which resurfaced within Pentecostalism, and then, again, in the Eastern-ish New Age movement. (Yes she nicely draws on Blessed, the academic study of this by Kate Bowler.) Her cultural analysis is not tediously detailed but she has clearly done some very important research that has shaped how she understands our times, her quandary, and how she tells her story. It’s really interesting!

Amanda has worked in the third world and knows well what real deprivation looks like. She worries that even telling this story might be off-putting. She says she “feels the cringe-worthiness of all this even as I type it.” I am grateful that she says this, and how she observes that it is confusing, even to her.

But it is a story that must be told — why do our very blessed lives not often feel like a blessing? It is a matter, I think, that a simple gratitude journal will not fully solve. Her insights about the concept of blessedness (which “has a long and storied history, particularly within religious circles”) make this an informative study, even as it reads like an honest memoir.

There are three main parts to the book and after the three chapters in each of these sections she offers an interlude which she calls, not ironically, a blessing. These “blessing” readings include good, good words on delight, on humility, and on hope. My, my, this is beautiful, rich, honest, good stuff. Just what I needed. You, too, maybe?

Traveling Light: Galatians and the Free Life in Christ Eugene Peterson (IVP) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This newly expanded edition of an early book of Peterson is a joy to this old bookseller’s heart and, as a friend and fan of Eugene, it nearly brings tears to my eyes to tell you about it. As I hold this book in my hand — expanded, a handsome, demure cover, a great new forward by Karen Swallow Prior, a new subtitle — I think of the early 1980s first one. It had cool hot air balloons on the cover, and when it too soon began to look dated, I wished and prayed that IVP would reissue it. I’m glad they finally did.

A late dear friend named Mark, who died too early, often told me this was a life-changing, favorite book for him. I argued that A Long Obedience in the Same Direction and its sequel, then called Earth and Altar, (now known as Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms That Summon You from Self to Community) were stronger, but Mark insisted that Traveling Light was genius, the one that clicked for him. As a graphic designer, he didn’t love the happy hot air balloon cover, and eventually got the rare second edition with the Marc Chagall painting on the cover. I wish he was around to see this new one.

It is, as the new subtitle conveys, a study of Galatians. That was one of the early studies that Peterson did in his church basement as he mimeographed his paraphrases, now famously released as The Message Bible. This, my friends, in a way, started it all. Peterson wrote a few other books before this, and, indeed, Long Obedience remains a most beloved classic. But his study of the freedom we have in Christ, the down-to-Earth, gritty sort of fidelity found in knowing grace and loving well, this freedom from fear — it is foundational. Ground zero for Pastor Pete, I’d say.

Karen offers in her tremendous preface a page on one of Peterson’s favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins. She says that “Peterson’s approach to freedom in Christ reflects what Hopkins expresses in “The Windhover.” She invites us to read it and re-read it. To read it aloud and read it yet again. Eugene would have liked that, believe me.

Listen to what my friend Winn Collier wrote about it:

Eugene Peterson wrote Traveling Light amid a time of cultural upheaval. This was his Scripture-saturated response to his profound concern for how Christians were growing distrustful of their neighbors, taking on tribal identities, withdrawing from the world’s pain, and holding more loyalty to some vision of America than to the kingdom of God. Eugene believed we were consumed by a constricting, heart-gripping fear–and that we were desperate for a fresh encounter with God’s liberating freedom. Apparently, Eugene was also writing for us, right now.  — Winn Collier, author of A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson and director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination

Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self Ken Shigematsu (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Ken Shigematsu is an author I’ve reviewed before here, highlighting just how wise and right he is about so much, and what a good writer he is. He is not deeply mystical or arcane in his contemplative lifestyle, even though he stands pretty squarely in that tradition. He was a fast-paced, high-profile international business exec who found, nearing burnout, a deeper, classic way to be a Christian, weaving ancient practices into his lifestyle and seeing his soul transformed. That story is told in several earlier books. You might not be surprised to know that Eugene Peterson figured into this guy’s transformation in Christ. Ken is now a pastor of a large and diverse inner city church, Tenth Church in Vancouver, BC.

This new book is a delight to read even as it gently approaches some very hard stuff. It is one of the many (many) books out in recent years on shame. The experience of shame, the back cover states, truly, is more common than we think. “It isn’t confined to those who have failed or gone through trauma or who have been told as children that they would never amount to anything.” Nope. He asserts that “People who are immensely successful also struggle with a sense that they are deficient.”

In this marvelous recent book he draws on a wide range of sources (including Scripture and spiritual-formation classics) as well as psychology and relational-neuroscience. He tells stories of his own life and of those he knows.

The point of the book, as you may suppose, is that a “deep experiential encounter with the love of God” can heal us of our shame, make us whole, and “inspire us to fulfill our purpose by making a unique contribution to the world.” (Did I mention he used to be a major multi-national business exec? His view of vocation and calling is robust and does not assume that spirituality or deep, healing discipleship is disengaged from the rough and tumble or real world jobs and global economics.)

So, this will help readers break free of envy, and “reveal how beauty and the experience of joy can help us overcome shame.” There are ten good, practical chapters. It isn’t too dense, not too self-helpy, but not too mystical either. This is just a great, solid, book inviting us all to sensible, profound, balanced Christian living. I’m sure you’ll like it.

I am not alone in thinking this is so good. Listen to these remarkable blurbs, by authors we trust:

Utterly wonderful. Emotionally attuned, self-aware, thoroughly researched, well written, seamlessly blending theology, spirituality and psychology, rooted in ancient practices and yet culturally engaged; there’s so many good things I could say about this book, but the main thing is: read it. — John Mark Comer, author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

If you’ve ever wondered what really matters or questioned whether you are enough; if you have doubted, failed, feared, questioned, floundered, messed up and thought yourself incapable of real change; if you have succeeded and found acclaim and yet still feel the ache of ‘not enough’ in the pit of your stomach, then please, please, please, read this book. With clarity, humility and courage Ken Shigematsu skillfully breaks open the goodness of Love and the possibilities of discovering our own belovedness. This is the only thing that really matters. As you read this book, what is on offer is Life in all its fullness and an encounter with the only power that can truly set you free to be yourself. — Danielle Strickland, author of The Other Side of Hope: Flipping the Script on Cynicism and Despair and Rediscovering Our Humanity

The universal struggle with shame is so multilayered that we need an integrated, robust approach to be free from it. Ken Shigematsu has offered us just the gift. Ken weaves theology, psychology, sociology and more to help us become our true self. I found myself repeatedly nodding as I felt truly seen in his words. I highly recommend this book! — Rich Villodas, author of Good and Beautiful and Kind

Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women without Children Elizabeth Felicetti (Eerdmans) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I do not have to say too much about this as the title explains so much. I’ll share that it is very well written, by a woman who is an Episcopal priest (at St. David’s Episcopalian in Richmond, VA.) She has written in venues such as The Christian Century and The Atlantic and, believe me, has some fine writing chops. Her love of the barren landscapes of the deserts of the Southwest — which give a fresh and new meaning to the word, “barren” — gives rise to writing that is delightfully lovely. But she’s shrewd, here, too, seriously deconstructing and reworking the phrase barren. It is a freighted Biblical word and she’s out to reclaim it. Wow.

Obviously (or so it should be) many women live extraordinary and splendid lives without bearing offspring. Some are happy with their reproductive choices while others are heartbroken with the struggles of infertility.  Rev. Felicetti ponders why many in our culture — churched and otherwise, fundamentalist and progressive — seem uncomfortable about all this. She replays a conversion with a (liberally progressive, presumably) female bishop whose hurtful words shocked me. There is no doubt that women without children are seen in an odd light by many.

While reflecting on her own experiences, Pastor Felicetti explores “how childless women make vital contributions in their communities” It is as simple and as needful as that. Here you will meet twenty-five women who “generated life without giving birth.”

The chapters are intriguing, starting somewhat as expected with barren Old Testament matriarchs and New Testament Christians. She describes “barren medieval mystics and writers” and “two English reformers.” There is a chapter on “childless Christian composers’ and one on “childless Christian activists.” There’s a moving section on medical professionals and, naturally, one on childless clergy.  In each she tells moving stories — it brought to mind old missionary anthologies I used to read — and in some she asks, bluntly, if they would have done such great things, or done them differently, if they had had children. It’s a fair question, curious, and, I’m guessing, finally, liberating for many who by choice (or through no choice of their own) have not borne children.

As a woman without children myself, I treasure the cloud of witnesses Felicetti has gathered together in this bold new book to attest to the abundant possibilities of a life aside from motherhood. What wonderful company we find ourselves in! Mary Magdalene, Clare of Assisi, Elizabeth I, Pauli Murray, Dolly Parton, and more. Unexpected Abundance will be a faithful and fierce companion for women who have chosen or are discerning this path. — Heidi Haverkamp, Episcopal priest and author of Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year B

Full of surprising blueprints both personal and historical, this book deftly flips the cultural script that conflates childlessness with something sad, bad, or less than and reminds us that flourishing has never followed a single plot. Even what we call barren bears life.     — Erin S. Lane, author of Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment  Phone and Someone Other Than a Mother

Everything Is (Not) Fine: Finding Strength When Life Gets Annoyingly Difficult Katie Schnack (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

You know, for a book about hard times — “when the world knocks us flat on our butt” as it says on the back cover — this book is pretty darn enjoyable. Okay, it’s honest about some anguishing things, but there is an upbeat, even inspirational, feel to some of this. There is no sugarcoating (or “toxic positivity”) when searching for sustenance as she faced a child’s medical challenge and her own difficult season. As a starred review at Publishers Weekly put it, without much charm, her “honest rendering of faith challenges will help readers feel less alone, and her sense of humor added welcome moments of levity.” Oh yeah, there are moments of levity, many moments of levity. She is a character (and fine writer.) If you are young and in your twenties you may have read her The Gap Decade: When You’re Technically an Adult but Really Don’t Feel Like It.

I love the unit headings with titles like — “Don’t make it a thing until it’s a thing”  and “Ghosts, messy T-Shirts, and chickens, because all these things totally make sense together.”

There are some great stories in here, offering advice like “make friendships with a firefighter who buys matching muumuus at Walmart with you” and “listen to your kid’s singing, even if it is obnoxious.”  I like the chapter title that goes: “It might not get easier. Sorry. But! You can get used to it.” I wish I had maybe 30 years ago the chapter simply called “Chill Out About Parenting.”

So, this is fun, serious, wildly imaginative, funny, and at time grave about faithfulness in a broken, hurting world. I’m sure some of you are going to love this, especially if you’re the kind of person who calls their Starbucks drinks “Starbies.”

Made for People: Why We Drift Into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship Justin Whitmel Earley (Zondervan) $19.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I hope you know Justin Earley’s amazing previous IVP book called Common Rule: Habits of Purpose in an Age of Distraction. (It was just re-issued in a slightly expanded edition with a new study guide.) It offers nice graphics and charts and nicely colored ink on creatively designed pages to show how there are things in our lives we need to do less of, and things we need to do more of, daily, weekly, monthly. It is one of the very few self-management books that makes sense to those of us with allergies to such stuff, and its design is a gift for those who like grids and charts to make things do-able. He roots his advice in theories of habits and desires and inner transformation, even as he offers right-on, whole-life advice about Christian maturity. The book is very wise blast.

The second one applied much of this same approach and writerly energy (and nice design) to family life, parenting and whatnot. It was called Habits of the Household and, again, is simply stellar, useful, fun. Give it to any young parents you know!

This brand new one seems to carry a similar edge and elan, written with energy and honesty (and some multi-colored ink on the cleverly designed pages, complete with line drawings and cartoons.) What fun.

The Made for People book, however, is not cheesy nor simplistic, and the topic is deadly serious. It is, as Kyle Idleman put it, “a clarion call to covenant friendship — a deep abiding love that comes from vulnerability.”

Loneliness has become a cultural epidemic and it literally affects the health and happiness of millions. As it says on the back cover, “busyness, fear of vulnerability, and past pain often stop us from developing the deep friendships we long for. But it’s not supposed to be this way. You were made for people.”

God has made us in God’s own Triune image as people to be in relationship. We, these days, for various reasons, need to relearn key habits that “foster a lifestyle of friendship.” Isolation is not helpful and it need not be the story of our lives. Earley — a busy dad and business lawyer — has a lot to tell and a lot to teach. Just the table of contents is inspiring. I’m going to check it out. Maybe you should start a group to read it together, folks who might deepen in Biblical wisdom for deeper relationships.

Finding Freedom in Constraint: Reimagining Spiritual Disciplines as a Communal Way of Life Jared Patrick Boyd (formatio / IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

From the publishing partnership with the Order of the Common Life to the exciting forward by Bishop Todd Hunter (and the stellar endorsements by Episcopalian Bible prof Wesley Hill and Anglican priest and writer Tish Harrison Warren) I knew this was going to be a very special book. I spent hours with it on Sunday and will take it up contemplatively next Lord’s Day, I am sure. It is stunning.

Speaking of relationships (see Made for People, above) Boyd insists that this book must be read with others. He encourages us to find fellow readers, begs us to comply; I get it. He is right. We have privatized and personalized the spiritual practices that make for a rich interior life way too much, and we need the local church (or at least a small group of like-minded pilgrims) to walk the way of spiritual formation with us. He’s right, but whether you have reading companions and conversation partners or not, this book is a rewarding, rich, compelling read.

Finding Freedom in Constraint is, in many ways, a “next level” book if one is familiar with the writings of the likes of Richard Foster or Ruth Haley Barton or Dallas Willard or David Benner; he loves citing Thomas Merton, Roberta Bondi, Thomas Greene, and the like. He draws on ancient church writers (especially the early church mothers and fathers of the desert) and helps us reimagine how all that works in our own lives. He offers intriguing history of the rise of monasticism and the way of life that ensued… He tells contemporary stories and shares much about his own journey. It’s a great read.

Jared is sensitive to those who have been hurt by the church and invites even those who are skeptical into this freedom-seeking life of constraint. He’s been down the road of deconstruction a bit, I gather, not unaware of issues looming large for some. I appreciate his tone and his general direction.

Here’s the big thing, as you can tell from the title. He believes that spiritual disciplines, when practiced together, are enriching even if they teach us to live within limits. To submit, to surrender, to be constrained. I wish he explained exactly what that means early on, but that is part of the fun, reading eagerly, hoping it is fleshed out and made more clear, as it seems to be, chapter by chapter. Will we limit ourselves and thereby be opened up to “make greater room to experience the love of God”? As Wes Hill puts it, it will be for many “a welcome challenge and summons to a holistic encounter with God in Christ.”

Jared Patrick Boyd is a pastor in the Vineyard USA movement and the founder of a missional monastic order, helping think through the nature of religious vocation and calling in our era. He also wrote the tremendous, tremendous book about praying with children and mentoring them into a deeper life called Imaginative Prayer: A Yearlong Guide for Your Child’s Spiritual Formation.

(By the way, while Boyd writes, it seems, to a somewhat younger crowd and those experimenting with new forms of liturgical church and spiritual formation groups, the type font in this book is a nicely readable size, a tad bigger than some. For those needing a bit of help in this area, Finding Freedom in Constraint is a readable choice.)

Ordinary Saints: Living Every Day to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

May I suggest this yet again. It came out a few months back and while I did a major BookNotes review, I’m still so fond of it and find myself dipping in over and over. There are bunch of chapters by bunches of people — some who are extraordinary writers, some rather famous, most not, though — and each just shares a short, creatively written piece about how they honor God in their ordinary lives. Each one picks a certain thing, a side of life or thing they do, and explains how, in God’s gracious economy, this thing matters.

As I’ve said before here at BookNotes there are fun chapters. There are inspiring essays on roller skating, raising chickens, drinking wine, doing home repairs. Most readers will enjoy the chapter about going to museums and some will get a kick of the piece on knitting (written by poet Luci Shaw.) Can you dance to the glory of God? Does God care about your choice of briefcase? Hooray for a theologically-informed celebration of comic books. Who knew reading about napping would be so fun. The small talk chapter is a great one. Malcolm Guite even has a piece on smoking pipes.

There are harder things here, too — there is a candid chapter about mental illness, one on grief, one on the sadnesses (among the joys) of grand parenting. There is a God-honoring chapter on resisting porn. The piece on “graying” is good.

Some are not quite funny, but not about hardships. Calvin Seerveld has one on a Biblically-informed way to talk about knowing. Curt Thompson has a really good piece on being present to others. I have one about working in retail. I will forever be touched by Ned Bustard’s piece on making love, knowing that his wife, Leslie, is now awaiting the full resurrection and restoration all things, in love.

From a nice piece on mentoring others to a good introduction to the joy of movies, from Bruce Herman on painting to a nice entry on writing, Ordinary Saints is a treasure chest full of enjoyment and, importantly, examples of, well, ordinary saints. Soli de Gloria, even if you don’t strap on those roller skates.

The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope  Curt Thompson (Zondervan) $27.00  NOT YET RELEASED – DUE AUGUST 29, 2023 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE = $22.39

This may soon become one of the most talked about books of the fall, in the religious book marketplace, at least, and should be one of the most anticipated. It comes out in a few weeks or so, but, alas, my fear is that it may not be widely known that it is coming soon. Dr. Curt is a hero for many of us, an articulate, polished, honest, teacherly psychotherapist who has the knack of being able to write profound, serious works that are upbeat, clear-headed, and accessible. He is Biblically-wise and exceptionally thoughtful, theologically informed as he is. We so appreciated his debut release The Anatomy of a Soul, raved about his exceptional sophomore volume,The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe about Ourselves (the best Biblically-informed psychological study of the topic I’ve ever read) and was very deeply moved by his seriously lovely third one, The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community. (Mako Fujimura wrote a splendid forward for that one.) The last two were expertly done in hardcover by IVP and they remain essential volumes.

This new one is on a topic that has been mined deeply and covered well — the problem of suffering and the hope for resilience. I almost wondered what even Curt might bring to this well-worn conversation. Could he add something new? I am half way through this extraordinary book and I am sure there is little done that does what this book accomplishes. Who knew that such a standard topic could be so very interesting and how this uniquely Christian approach to neuro-psychology and “interpersonal neurobiology” (IPNB) would be so enlightening. Wow.

There is good Bible study in here, there is provocative, solid theologizing, there is awareness of deep and personal suffering, all woven around themes of how to find hope, rather than despair, how to move through grief, and how God uses it, forming it some sort of redemptive peace. I hesitate to even say that, as it can be exploitive and debilitating, but in Curt’s empathic and experienced hands, hope is within reach — formed in community! — and, through certain sorts of perseverance, can change our brains and reshape our imagination. The Deepest Place builds a slow case, carefully, clearly, delightfully, even.

We can live into a better future, through a faithful understanding of the nature of suffering, some profound Biblical insight (especially from the first few verses of Romans 5 that he unpacks nicely) and help from tools gleaned from attachment theory, neural social engagement systems, EMDR, and the work of scholars such as Daniel Siegel and Bessel van der Kolk. This work is as fascinating as it is helpful.

Seeing Siegel, van der Kolk, and Brene Brown in conversation with the likes of John Goldingay, N.T. Wright and Lesslie Newbigin, is a sheer delight. This book is a stand-out, an instant classic in how it models a fruitful integration of faith and scholarship, and how it offers durable hope for real folks. Curt Thompson’s work is always very highly recommended and this is one of his most urgent. Due out sometime the end of August (but one never knows with this publisher, I must say.) Pre-order it now at our discounted price and we’ll send it the day it comes.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options, and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.85; 2 lbs would be $4.55.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50,  if it fits in a flat rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

And so I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed

Just to get it all out, what’s in my head

And I, I’m feeling a little peculiar

And so I wake in the morning and I step outside

And I take a deep breath and I get real high

And I scream from the top of my lungs

“What’s going on?”

Do you remember that one-hit wonder by 4 Non Blondes from the mid-90s? Not every rock ballad in those years was singing about pathos and longing, about praying, about revolution. I wondered if they read Walter Brueggemann.

The first prayer in his new small collection Acting in the Wake: Prayers for Justice (WJK; $17.00 – our sale price = $13.60) starts with an admission: “We are a strange mix of amber waves of grain and rockets’ red glare.”

The prayer offered at his seminary for the National Day of Prayer continues, “We are a people blessed with flourishing land that is marked by beauty and prosperity. We are, at the same time, a people bent on war and domination, violence and torture. We mumble about our ambiguity. And then we notice we are in a free fall.” That was in 2014.

In a much earlier prayer, also written in Acting in the Wake, Brueggemann prays,

“We do not know how a church

     could be shaped after the body of Jesus,

       but you have promised it to us,

         and so we ask for new beginnings.”

+++

A few years ago I reviewed a few books that asked if the word evangelical was still viable, still a useful indicator of core theological doctrines and a certain “Bible believing” faith. Some felt like this is their theological home and they want to remain steadfast in claiming the name, despite its being sullied. Others thought — out of loyalty to Jesus and faithfulness to the streams of the Spirit that makes up the church — that it was time to distance themselves from the alt-right, Christian-nationalist, MAGA-evangelicals. I knew that some of our BookNotes readers are not all a part of that tradition, and I still recommended the books to them; the honest self-reflection was a good model for self-aware, self-reflection for those in other theological camps or church traditions as well. For those who are (or were) evangelicals, the books were essential. Like that cry of that song title, they ask, “What’s Up?”

Of the several good ones exploring this territory, I recommended Still Evangelical? Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning edited by Mark Labberton (IVP; $24.00 – our sale price = $19.20) with pieces by Soong-Chan Rah, Lisa Sharon Harper, Jim Daly, Shane Claiborne and more. It’s a great collection and offers several different answers to the question. I’ve read most chapters more than once. 

By a single author (a thoughtful and especially articulate one), I can hardly say enough about Struggling with Evangelicalism: Why I Want to Leave and What It Takes to Stay by Dan Stringer (IVP; $17.00 – our sale price = $13.60.) Richard Mouw wrote the forward to that one and his own mature ruminations are well worth reading, too — we’d love to send out some copies of his 2019 Restless Faith: Holding Evangelical Beliefs in a World of Contested Labels (Brazos Press; $22.00 – our sale price = $17.60.)

Less personal, more scholarly, (and thicker, at 335 pages) but, again, nearly a must to understand the religious landscape of our lifetime, we recommend Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be edited by respected historians Mark Noll, David Bebbington and George Marsden (Eerdmans; $28.00 – our sale price = $22.40.) It’s a very carefully edited anthology with authors from Timothy Keller to Kristin Du Mez, Molly Worthen to Amanda Porterfield, Jemar Tisby to D.G. Hart, and many more.

If you’ve got any of these titles, it might be good to get ‘em out for a re-read. Or order those you don’t have. The crisis which precipitated such volumes is nowhere near over.

FOUR NEW ONES – ESSENTIAL READS

There are many new books exploring what has happened within the evangelical sub-culture.  There are four recent ones that are stand-outs, must-reads. I want to briefly highlight them here. You can order, as always, by scrolling to the bottom of this column, using the link to our secure order page. All of us at Hearts & Minds thank you for your interest and your support of our south-central Pennsylvania bookstore. We’re broadly ecumenical and have very wide reading habits, but this stuff is close to home. We hope you order some at our 20% off BookNotes discount. Don’t forget to tell us how you’d like them shipped — USPS “media mail” (as we explain, below) is cheaper but a bit slower. We can ship any way you’d like or, if your in the area, swing by.

Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical Christianity Russell Moore (Sentinel) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

This is a hugely important book, honest, clear, thoughtful, wise, nearly definitive for this genre of explorations of the religious coherency, complexities, idolatries, blessings and curses of the evangelical movement and Moore’s own Southern Baptist tradition, specially. I’ve met Moore a time or two and we’ve had lovely conversations about faith and books. He’s smart, gracious, kind, and astute. His earlier books were good, but this is significantly more important than anything he has yet done.

As the artful writer and singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson (of Rabbit Room fame) notes, Moore’s voice is “gentle, courageous” and “has a way of cutting through the blame of the age, right down to the marrow of what matters.”

The great civil rights voice John Perkins puts it bluntly: “Russell Moore tells it straight about how the church has lost its way.”  As both reviewers not, for Moore, what really matters is Jesus.

Moore, as you may know, was for nearly a decade the voice of public policy concerns of the SBC, having replaced a retiring guy who was part of the first iteration of the Christian right; Moore said he was going to expand the social vision and public theology of the evangelical SBC to include — as the Bible teaches and as Jesus would want — creation care and racism, poverty and social justice concerns, even as he continued to advocate for classic Baptist policies around the right to life and religious freedom. It did not take long for the controversies to brew. When he spoke out against the logic of conservative Christians supporting a serial sexual abuser and chronic liar with little or no Biblical awareness, he became a target of pretty serious criticism in his denomination.

He hints at only some of this in the powerful introduction to Losing Our Religion but, whew, when he insisted that his denomination behave with compassion and transparency about the bubbling sexual abuse scandals, he became nearly a pariah among their old boy networks; to this day some call him foul names. I am summarizing in my own words, here, but he is candid about it all, and pushes us towards a more consistently Christian vision and a way out of our religiosity. I like how the theme of authentic, evangelical faith, trusting in Jesus — what his mentors and elders taught him, after all — comes across with thoughtful zeal. He doesn’t call us to rancor or power but to a Christ-like posture that lives into a consistent life of discipleship, in private and in public, in church and at work, in our families and in the public squares.

Moore sets out to convince us that the crisis in American evangelicalism is worse than we may think. It is counter-intuitive for some, but he suggests that this just might be good news.

Losing Our Religion has five major chapter titles entitled Losing our Credibility, Losing our Authority, Losing Our Identity,  Losing our Integrity, and Losing our Stability.

The subtitle of each chapter is fascinating (again, whether you see yourself as an evangelical or not.)

• • How Disillusion Can Save Us from Deconstruction
  • How the Truth Can Save us from Tribalism
  • How Conversion Can Save Us from the Culture Wars,
  • How Morality Can Save Us from Hypocrisy
  • How Revival Can Save Us from Nostalgia

Listen to Beth Moore — no relation, except she, too, was a conventional Southern Baptist who was treated viciously when she expressed opposition to the SBC Trumpism, church power-plays, and sexual abuse cover-ups.  Beth writes:

Russell Moore’s Losing Our Religion is head-shakingly good. By the time I’d underlined at least one sentence in every paragraph of the first two chapters, I knew I was reading a book I’d keep within easy reach for years to come. Russ writers with a remarkable blend of clarity, color, and candor. More important, the ink on these pages is drawn from a deep well of biblical conviction that drives the author’s decisions. Here you go: a gift of gospel-centered sanity in a culture gone utterly mad.

A Burning House: Redeeming American Evangelicalism by Examining Its History, Mission and Message Brandon Washington (Zondervan) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

If Russell Moore is a sage and thoughtful evangelical leader, balanced and gracious, intellectually engaged but still a preacher at heart, Brandon Washington is nearly similar — but with a local church profit; he is a black pastor of a more contemporary sort of church in Denver, Colorado. A graduate of the Conservative Baptist Seminary there, the flyleaf bears a solid quote from a personal hero, the late, former President of what is now called Denver Seminary, Dr. Vernon Grounds. I think I first met Grounds when he was speaking in a tag-team event with the somewhat younger Ron Sider. The two were socially-active, deeply-evangelical, full-gospel gentlemen with commitments to evangelism and social justice. If Pastor Washington was shaped by Dr. Grounds, I am immediately his fan.

“American Evangelicalism is ablaze” cries Washington,, as he tells the story of how this large swath of American Protestants got to this point. There has been some sort of unity around doctrinal identity, he says, but for too long “divisions along ethnic and cultural lines have tarnished the movement’s witness.”

This remarkable book not only tells the story of how evangelicalism was captured by worldly ideologies and increasingly lost a clear sense of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It is not that other authors are unaware of this aspect of the large critique that is needed (more is not unaware of racial issues) but this book highlights this important part of the tale better than any book I’ve read recently about evangelicalism.

You should know this: the book title and its working metaphor comes from Dr. King. With desegregation on the horizon, MLK said, “I’ve come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house.”

As it says on the back cover, “As with the country, if we hope to fully integrate the American evangelical church, we must do so as firefighters.”

As one reviewer put it, this book is “equal measures hard and hopeful.” It invites us to both lament and repent.

Pastor Washington is a keen observer of history and offers a good overview of much that is important for us all. While he offers his historical and theological appraisal of American evangelicalism, it carries a weighty and appreciative foreword by East Coast black urban leader, Eric Mason. He notes that it is a “labor of love” and “enormously important in our time.” Pastor Mason says,

Brandon has given us a seminal tome for reflecting on the racial-justice issues of our day in a balanced, honest, healthy way and engaging them with godliness, grace, and scholarship.

Moore has quite an inside story to tell and he has been on media venues as diverse as The Trinity Forum and Morning Joe this week.  Pastor Brandon Washington may not be as well known but his book is substantive and, while not scholarly, well researched and vivid. I highly recommend it.

American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church Andrew Whitehead (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This brand new book is not exactly a study of evangelicalism but insofar as much of the mainstream, white evangelical movement has identified in one way or another with the advocates of this sort of ideology — that Whitehead identifies as idolatry — then this book is a urgent, key aspect of any wise and faithful assessment of evangelicalism itself. Evangelical historians like Calvin University professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, herself a specialist in 20th century evangelicalism, says it is “an essential primer for anyone seeking to understand our current moment so we can chart a path toward a more just and compassionate future.”

Yes, as Whitehead shows, there have been theological and spiritual costs to the church/state problem that undergirds a uniquely Christian nationalism. It is clear that this ideology has infected all sorts of churches, but statistically, mores in evangelical congregations. It is a conversation that we must have and this book, as one advocate says, it is “a book whose time has come.” We need this book.

Here’s two good things you should know. Professor White head is an accomplished scholar in this field. He co-wrote a very important volume (Taking America Back for God) on Oxford University Press, which won the 2021 Distinguished Book Award from the Society of the Scientific Study of Religion. He runs a think-tank and research center of religion in American culture at Indianapolis University – Purdue. His PhD is from Baylor and is himself a devout Christian. As they say down south, he’s got a dog in this fight. So he is quite a well informed and nuanced scholar and a person of deep faith.

Secondly, you may want to know that this is written seemingly for an evangelical or at least a church-related, religious audience (while his previous one for a more general market of interested citizens and civic scholars.) He speaks less academically and is clear about the theological questions of idolatry that undergird any discussion of our views of the state, civil religion patriotism and whatnot. Perhaps not as accessibly simple as the excellent How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor by Rich Mouw (VP; $17.00 – our sale price = $13.60) it is nonetheless a book that could be used in a church study group, an adult Sunday School class, or campus ministry program. It’s important, solid, helpful, every-so-timely, and inspiring. As one reviewer said, it is “crisply written and utterly compelling.” The Library Journal review called it “heartfelt.” It offers a faithful path forward.

With the precision of a scholar and the passion of a faithful Christian, Whitehead clarifies the difference between Christianity and Christian nationalism. By the end of this book, one discovers that it’s not only Christian nationalists who betray the gospel but also those Christians who remain quiet in the face of it. Required reading for anyone who claims to be Christian in this time of Christian nationalist fervor.  — Kelly Brown Douglas, former dean of Episcopal Divinity School, professor, Union Theological Seminary, author of Resurrection Hope: A Future Where Black Lives Matter

We need this book. Now. With skill and grace, Whitehead explains the dangerous ideologies undergirding Christian nationalism, traces how it has infected the church, and provides practical guidance for those of us fighting it in our own communities. This is a book you should give to your friends, your family, and your pastor — Beth Allison Barr, professor, Baylor University; author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis Karen Swallow Prior (Brazos Press) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

While this extraordinary book is less overtly about the ugliness of evangelical nationalisms and political postures that are un-Christlike and the temptations of power that has seduced many evangelicals and charismatics who ought to know better, it does explore the deepest DNA, as we say these days, of the movement. I hope you saw my earlier review, back when we were still taking pre-orders.

As Karen puts it early on in the book,

If evangelicalism is a house, then these unexamined assumptions are its floor joists, wall studs, beams, and rafters — holding everything together but unseen, covered over by tile, paint, paper, and ceilings. What we don’t see, we don’t think about. Until something goes wrong and something needs replacement. Or restoration Or reform.

She thinks that the evangelical house is indeed badly in need of repair. She uses the language of crisis and notes that some parts of the house may be rotten.

Can we shed parts of our make-up that are more cultural and unfaithfully political than fully Biblical? Can we make discerning moves to sort out where we’ve been? This is a delightfully captivating read, full of stuff I bet you didn’t know, with fascinating detours to locations and explorations of people and ideas that are helpful to understand evangelical history and current practice (but which you, like me, maybe didn’t really know.) From brief looks at The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress to the Left Behind franchise — she even gets into Chick Tracts — evangelicals have been linked to publishing, for good and for ill. She has an excellent section on sentimentality — the Evangelical Imagination book cover captures some of the bad art she is concerned about — and explores in a chapter sub-titled “Uncle Tom, Sweet Jesus, and Public Urination.” Yep. You’ve got to read that chapter, believe me!

As I said in my previous BookNotes review, Karen is adept at explaining British evangelical history; she has a thrilling book on Hannah More (who was a poet and novelist in the Clapham movement with William Wilberforce) called Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More: Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist (Thomas Nelson; $24.99 – our sale price = $19.99.) She knows her stuff and this new one is a coherent, teacherly, study of the historical forces and contexts that shaped modern American evangelicalism.

(I recently heard a great presentation by two women who were part of the Asbury Outpouring that started in Wilmore, Kentucky, last winter, by the way, and their overview of the history of revivals and renewal was informed by British evangelicalism and the likes of George Whitefield and John Wesley and on to American revivalists like Charles Finney and his abolitionist pals. I wondered if they knew Dr. Prior’s new book which would fill out some of the cultural background.)

Karen Swallow Prior knows this history well and moves from those distinctively evangelical movements in British and American history to insights about former President Trump, connecting the election of 2016 with a rumination on Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails song “Hurt.” Wow – this is really, really interesting.

The book is a broader reflection on the deepest values, rooted in stories and metaphors, that have shaped American religion and, as such, is a book for our postmodern times. It goes a bit deeper and asks bigger questions, so it may not seem as directly urgent to the crisis at hand, but the writing connects the dots, helpfully so.

We just got into the shop The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge (Zondervan; $29.99 – our sale price = $23.99) which takes its place with a handful of other recent studies of “the nones” and the process of secularization within 21st century modernity. As important as knowing the facts about “dechurching” and what many people are thinking regarding religious affiliation these days, to steward the good news well and share the gospel effectively we need more than the data of what is going wrong. We need to do more than wring our hands about the polarizing in our churches by those who, in Russell Moore’s apt phrase, have led us to a church “so identified with Machiavelli-like cruelty and Caligula-like vulgarity.” The subtitle to Prior’s The Evangelical Imagination should be noticed and pondered: “How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis.”

In a way, all four of these major new books could be read in conversation with each other, each having their own unique take on the problems of white Christian nationalism and the corrupted evangelical pseudo-theology that bolsters it. Dr. Prior is right, though: better doctrine and even better public/political theology isn’t enough. We need new stories, better images, rich and faithful metaphors to healer church cultures and to bring hope to our confused era. I hope you will be interested enough to spend some time yet this summer digging a bit deeper into this quandary of a “burning house.” Maybe, as Russell Moore put it, you will respond to a new call to conversion, an invitation, as his tradition calls it.  Perhaps we can lose some of this bad religion and return to the best evangelicalism has taught us.  Of course we need God. We need the resurrected Christ. We need the Holy Spirit. But we must do our part. These books can help.

May I say it again: even if you are not an evangelical or don’t have current affinities to the name or tradition — some readers have been hurt and excluded by this movement, and just want to say “good riddance” — I hear you. I get it. But whether you are disillusioned, or a happy non-evangelically-minded member of a mainline denominational church, I bet you know people who are vexed by the nature of their community churches and para-church ministries and TV preachers and such. We are, as members of Christ’s church (and, honestly, as Americans) in this together. I want to say that everybody will benefit from and may really enjoy these reads. Come on!

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

PLEASE READ, THEN SCROLL DOWN AND CLICK ON THE “ORDER HERE” LINK BELOW.

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

The weight and destination of your package varies but you can use this as a quick, general guide:

There are generally two kinds of US Mail options (who just raised their rates again) and, of course, UPS. If necessary, we can do overnight and other expedited methods, too. Just ask.

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF