Welcome, BookNotes readers. I’m going to actually put it in writing as a way to help remind me: this column is going to be (relatively) brief. [Addendum: it didn’t work. Sorry.] What I mean is that I’m not going to indulge my keen interest in telling you lots and lots about the following books. In order to trumpet a larger batch of new books, I’m going to have to keep it moving. I’m sorry, as I do have opinions about these, and hope in a quick sentence or two I can give off clues as to whether any of these are for you; most are very, very good. Read widely, we say, so here ya go.
It has been fun this past season sending out books that we announced way in advance – books that folks pre-ordered. Helping create a bit of an advanced buzz on a forthcoming book is fun, and we thank those who allowed us to send to the books like Jamie Smith’s On the Road With Saint Augustine, Diana Butler Bass’s Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship, Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson’s artsy prayer book, May It Be So: 40 Days with the Lord’s Prayer, Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon by David Kinnaman & Mark Matlock and, of course, Os Guinness’s Carpe Diem Redeemed. These were our biggest selling books in the early fall, and we hope you know about them.
There are plenty of other good books we’ve received in the last month or so, and plenty good ones to come. Here are just a few highlights of our in-store selection.
History and Eschatology: Jesus and the Promise of Natural Theology: The 2018 Gifford Lectures N.T. Wright (Baylor University Press) $34.95 ** no discount on this item The scholarly community respects the legendary Gifford Lectures (which often bring together the world’s finest minds on faith, science, natural theology and such.) They are always published and are often immediately esteemed. It is not surprising, but it is still remarkable, to see N.T. Wright now standing among this illustrious list of philosophers and scholars who have done a Gifford.
But I don’t know of many who start explaining the notion of these famous lectures to his elderly mother who says “I’m glad I don’t have to listen to those lectures.” We love Tom Wright.
Scholars from throughout the West are raving about this deep dive. John Cottingham of the UK says it is Wright’s “crowning achievement.” Frances Young says it is an “extraordinary reappraisal.” A theologian from St. Vladimir’s Russian Orthodox Seminary calls it a “tour de force.” Miroslav Volf says it is “Wright at his best – an exegete, theologian, churchman, and public intellectual.”
Friends of Hearts & Minds might appreciate this review by Brian Walsh (most recently co-author of Romans Disarmed) who has been a long time pal and colleague of Wright’s:
With a stunning breadth of research Wright takes his Gifford lectures as an occasion to deepen the paradigmatic shift in biblical studies that he has shaped over the last thirty years. Wright offers a model of historical exegesis that just might release us from our Platonic bondage. This book combines breathtakingly creative brilliance with a lovely eloquence. Since an ‘epistemology of love’ is at the heart of Wright’s natural theology, we wouldn’t have expected anything less. Read this book, then read it again. It takes its place in the esteemed tradition of Gifford lectures becoming classics.
DVD + study guide The New Testament You Never Knew: Exploring the Context, Purpose, and Meaning of the Story of God N.T. Wright & Michael F. Bird (Zondervan) $51.99 for book + study guide together. Our 20% off sale price = $41.59. This eight-session video curriculum is filmed on location in the Middle East, Rome, Greece, Turkey, and captures not only the geography and places where the New Testament developed, but a brilliantly succinct overview of the bigger Story of God of which the New Testament is a part. There is solid teaching on the canon of the NT, great preaching about Jesus, about the early church and the apostles and Paul. Spectacular.
The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians N. T. Wright & Michael Bird (Zondervan Academic) $59.99. Our 20% off PRE-ORDER sale price = $47.99. This major text will be coming out mid-November. There will be a workbook one can buy to go with this selling regularly for $22.99; our pre-order sale price = $18.39. DVDs of the seminary level classroom lectures that go with the content of the book will also soon be available (regularly $47.99; our sale price = $38.39.) Wow; imagine: you can sit in on serious lectures of N.T. Wright and Michael Bird! Pre-order the book, the workbook, or the DVDs and we’ll send them out promptly. (The more popular level, filmed on location DVDs called The New Testament You Never Knew listed above are available now.)
A Big Gospel in Small Places (Why Ministry in Forgotten Communities Matters) Stephen Witmer (IVP/Praxis) $18.00 Our sale price = $14.40 This is one of those books that we need so badly – I can count on one hand a few good books on rural and small town church ministry – that I’m truly thrilled to be able to tell you about it here. In fact, I had heard so much about it from mutual friends who trust this author and his good work (Small Town Summits) that I was willing to announce it at a recent conference, trying to garner pre-orders, before I even laid eyes on it. I had heard enough to know that this author is evangelical and very thoughtful (he’s an adjunct professor of New Testament at Gordon Conwell) and that he was a beloved small church pastor in Massachusetts. He has a heart for what God is doing in small towns and rural places. I was struck by the audacious claim by Echard J. Schnabel (of Gordon Conwell) who said about A Big Gospel in Small Places:
This is one of the more important books written about the gospel and missions in recent decades.
He continues:
Stephen Witmer takes the gospel seriously: he is more interested in the good news than in church-planting strategies. He takes people seriously: he is more concerned for people than for programs. He understands success in terms of faithfulness to God’s calling rather than in terms of fame, in terms of the transformation of people’s lives rather than in terms of the numerical size of a congregation. Here writes an academic who wears his scholarship lightly, a pastor who challenges his audience to think deeply, a follower of Jesus who follows Jesus to all the places where people live. Witmer explains that strategic thinking about ministry must acknowledge one of the great truths about God who lavishes his grace on city people, on small-town people, and on village people alike. This book is a pleasure to read, indeed a must-read for professors, students, and pastors who think about gospel ministry in the twenty-first century.
Reading Buechner: Exploring the Work of a Master Memoirist, Novelist, Theologian, and Preacher Jeffrey Munro (IVP) $18.00 Our sale price = $14.40 We have long been waiting for an authoritative, charming, wise and thoughtful guide to the many sorts of writing done by the imitable Frederick Buechner. I ran across some letters of correspondence with Buechner that a woman in my church had given to me before she died and was again struck – existentially, so – how important of a voice Buechner was, bridging the worlds of literary fiction and mainline Protestant thinking and the best of modern evangelicalism, whose institutions (such as Wheaton College or King University in Tennessee, say, or the famous Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing) honored him more than anyone. There is a lovely, powerful forward by visual artist and writer Makoto Fujimura and blurbs on the back of this book are from the well-known Marilyn McEntyre, Michael Card, John Wilson and Calvin University English prof and co-director of the Calvin Festival of Faith & Writing Jennifer Holberg who commends it to both newcomers and longtime readers of Mr. Buechner. What a gift this brand new book is; I’ve paged through a bit and it nearly got choked up. I, like many of you, I’m sure, can’t wait to read it.
We hope we sell a bunch which, in turn, gets people reading Buechner again. It’s as easy as ABC. (And if you are mystified by that allusion, you really need this book!)
The Reading Life: The Joy of Seeing New Worlds Through Other’s Eyes C.S. Lewis (HarperOne) $19.99 Our sale price = $15.99 What a fabulous idea this is, a brilliant idea, really, taking so much that Lewis has written about reading and writing and putting it together in one small, very handsome hardback volume. Kudos to David Downing (co-director of the Wade Center) and Michael Maudlin (of HarperOne) for bringing this little treasure chest together. Anyone who loves Lewis, and anyone who loves reading, will be beyond thrilled.
The Reading Life follows on the heels of a few others where they’ve gleaned from Lewis’s large body of work (from essays and sermons to letters and speeches) and compiled his insights together topically. For instance, there is one called How to Pray and another compilation, How to Be a Christian. So these gathered collections showcasing a theme are great. And this gem just appeared last week!
C.S. Lewis was, famously, a reader. A lover of books, of good writing, of the reading life. He was a literary critic and writer of nearly every genre. But he loved to read and advise othres on reading well. These pieces honor that aspect of his life, and invite us to the joys of literature, learning to follow in his footsteps in being a better student, a more vibrant lover of the printed page. This little hardback will inspire many, and would make a truly lovely gift for any book lover or Lewis fan you know. Cheers!
Tending Soul, Mind, and Body: The Art and Science of Spiritual Formation edited by Todd Wilson & Gerald Hiestand (IVP Academic) $25.00 Our sale price = $20.00 Here is another tremendous volume from the Center for Pastoral Theologians; their previous conferences yielded tremendous collections – such as the amazing Creation and Doxology: The Beginning and End of God’s Good World. This brand new one should be of interest to anyone who does spiritual direction, who is interested in the interface of psychology and spirituality, and who longs for a deeper, human, and integrated faith experience.
And, there’s a special Hearts & Minds connection: there is a chapter by a Presbyterian pastor friend, Rachel Stahle, who we knew as a neighbor girl who visited our shop decades ago. So nice to see her appropriating the old insights about the soul from Jonathan Edwards (about whom she has written her own book) and offering them in this thoughtful collection! Congrats, Rachel! Dallastown is proud of you!
The Lord’s Prayer: A Guide to Praying the Our Father Wesley Hill (Lexham Press) $15.99 Our sale price = $12.79 For starters, realize that this is the second in a series of handsome compact hardcovers, the first being the nuanced, compelling, and surprisingly popular volume The Apostles Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism by Ben Myers. The Lord’s Prayer is brand new in the “Christian Essentials” series. We so respect Wes Hill, who teaches Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, and is exceptionally astute, eloquent, and very well-read. He is increasingly known in his field and is a gracious, good guy. With blurbs on the back of this small book from the likes of Marianne Meye Thompson and Matthew Levering, you can be assured that he is thoughtful and solid and that this book will bring some new passion for this old chestnut of a topic. No lesser preacher and scholar than Fleming Rutledge commends it.
Indeed, listen to what Rev. Fleming Rutledge says:
Most Christians say the Lord’s Prayer with great frequency and familiarity, so that we scarcely know what we are saying. In this treasure of a book, Hill opens up the prayer with great freshness for the ordinary reader, so that we seem to hear Jesus himself speaking to us, showing us how to pray to his Father in the same spirit that he himself does. This little volume will enrich a reader’s life immeasurably. — Fleming Rutledge, author of The Crucifixion and Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ
Miracles and Other Reasonable Things: A Story of Unlearning and Relearning God Sarah Bessey (Howard Books) $26.00 Our sale price = $20.80 This should be one of the most talked about books (at least in some circles) this season. It may help to know that Sarah launched this book at the “Evolving Faith” event put together each year (this year in Denver, just a week or so ago) by Nadia Bolz-Weber and the late Rachel Held Evans. Bessey’s earlier books were very well written and I liked them a lot, including Jesus Feminist and the reassuring Out of Sorts: Making Peace with an Evolving Faith.
I assumed this eagerly anticipated one is a bit of a follow up, but one of the important things to know is that Sarah was in a serious car wreck the damaged her body, and shook her faith; chronic pain can do that, you know. Realizing this back-story makes me want to read it all the more…
The blurbs on the back are truly notable and, we think, inspiring:
“Sarah Bessey is a writer of remarkable gifts. Beyond her ability to make a breath-taking sentence, and to tell the truth about the dying and rising of faith, she can tell a story as if she is whispering it straight into your heart. She is, by her own definition, a dangerous woman, with wisdom to spare about learning to love the broken miracles God offers us once we’re honest about where it hurts.”–Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Learning to Walk in the Dark and Holy Envy
“Sarah Bessey’s Miracles and Other Reasonable Things is immediately one of my favorite books. I can’t think of a single other work that brings together such raw, vulnerable pain with such a real sense of enchantment. Sarah is not too pious to tell us the truth about suffering, but not too cool to tell us the truth about the magic, either. In this trail-blazing, bush-burning book, anything can happen: the Pope shows up, and God does too . . . except of course, when God doesn’t.”–Jonathan Martin, author of How to Survive a Shipwreck and Prototype
“Miracles and Other Reasonable Things will surprise and delight you. Sarah’s writing is so breathtaking, sometimes you think you are reading poetry. The story is so thrilling, sometimes you think you are devouring a novel. And the Spirit she describes is so compelling, you’ll swear you experienced a revival. You won’t put it down once until you close the last page. We are so lucky to be readers in the era of Sarah Bessey.”–Jen Hatmaker, author of For the Love and Of Mess of Moxie and 7 Days of Christmas
“Sarah Bessey, the self-described introvert, has given us all a witty and intimate personal reflection on faith and life that borders on liturgy. She walks the walk of an evolving faith, with power and vulnerability, guiding us through the common experience of listening to God’s nudge (and painful jolt) so we can relearn God again and again, and in so doing witness our own process of unbecoming and re-becoming people of faith. Thank you, Sarah, for putting yourself out there!”–Pete Enns, author of How the Bible Actually Works
Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery Mark Charles & Soong-Chan Rah (IVP) $17.00 Our sale price = $13.60 This is a big, serious, and very (very) important work that, despite its heavy, hard-hitting content, is readable, informative, and well written. It has been very highly anticipated and long awaited, offering, as it does, a distinctively Christian critique of the old European “Doctrine of Discovery” with the blunt assertion that “you cannot discover lands already inhabited.” Healing from the trauma of colonization, slavery, genocide, and dehumanization, they suggest, may take something akin to a “Truth and Reconciliation” commission as we so famously heard about in South Africa and, more recently in Canada. I hope to tell you more about this eventually, but for now know that we think it fills a real void and will be a gift for readers willing to take it up. Endorsers include a wide array of Christian leaders, including John Witvliet of the Calvin Institute on Christian Worship and Gene Green, a NT scholar at Wheaton, and activist Kathy Khang. The back includes Native theologian Randy Woodley (who says it is a “righteous and integral narrative” and from Andrea Smith (who serves on the board of the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies.”
Historian Mark Noll writes, wisely, I think (as one who doesn’t agree with all of the book), the following important recommendation:
Why should I endorse a book when I do not agree with some of its historical judgments? Answer: for the same reason you should read it. Charles and Rah attack a pernicious principle (the Doctrine of Discovery), review an evil history (the United States’ treatment of Native peoples), challenge a persistent stereotype (American exceptionalism), and psychoanalyze white America (in denial about the nation’s history). The entire book, even when you think things could be evaluated differently, will make you think, and think hard, about crucially important questions of Christian doctrine, American history, and God’s standards of justice.
Acts of the Almighty: Meditations on the Story of God for Every Day of the Year: A 365-Day Devotional Walter Wangerin, Jr. (Zondervan) $18.99 Our sale price = $15.19 I hardly have to say anything, I trust, about this famous writer, a Lutheran pastor, fantasy writer, poet, Bible teacher, and recipient of the National Book Award (and a New York Times Best Children’s Book of the Year Award.) I’m sure he’s gotten a few Hearts & Minds Best Books of the Year Awards over the years, too… and this one looks as good as any of his many marvelous books. It is, as it says on the back, “God’s grand story. Told in Single Moments.”
Oh my, this looks just splendid, creative, insightful, reading “the Bible’s expansive and arresting story in a brand-new way.” Beautiful cover, too.
Rings of Fire: Walking in Faith through a Volcanic Future Leonard Sweet (NavPress) $17.99 Our sale price = $14.39 It is almost impossible to adequately review a Len Sweet book – they have to be experienced first-hand! – and it is even harder to do so briefly. He uses images and metaphors in ways that are unlike any writer I know and he is entertaining, thought-provoking, (and sometimes, maddening.) He plays with words, interprets data in fresh ways, and cites more scholarly (and poetic) literature than anybody you’ll read, always with a preacherly bit of exhortation. It is a robust reading experience, to say the least. The footnotes are a major part of the book, too, and not to be missed; Sweet is a polymath and it is a delight to just soak in his vast knowledge. In this creative wake up call to the nature of our times and the coming future, Sweet invites us to a sweeping study of what’s a-coming in the 21st century. (And he makes a good joke about brooms in admitting how sweeping his observations may be.) Many who are born these days, he reminds us, will live to see the 21st century, (think about that) and the church simply has to be better prepared to not just cope but to offer fiery leadership in this era of volcanic eruptions in economics, communications, technology, bioethics and such. And he describes here in special chapters in Rings of Fire, a lot of cultural hotspots.
I will have to do a longer review after I’ve read more of this. I’ve read the first two chapters twice and studied the footnotes — which is another reason this latest BookNotes has been delayed.
For those that follow Sweet, I might say that with this book, he’s back in full. Big time. For the last several years he has offered a valuable stream of fine, smaller books, each lovely and exceptional and marked with that sweet wit and big picture insight. All of these books in the last decade have been potent and unique in the marketplace of religious titles, such as the short biography of his mom, Mother Tongue, and the compact book about community, From Tablet to Table, and his clever Bible study about the “bad” stuff Jesus did or the one about relationships or The Well Played Life, a theme he has often memorably taught about. (One doesn’t “work” at the violin, after all, but “plays” it, so he recoils about “working” at one’s marriage or life…) But they have all been fairly brief and somewhat conventional, super-smart and above average with his trademark connecting-the-dots style, but accessible and limited in focus. But none would be called magisterial. (Except maybe Giving Blood, which was about preaching, with that limited, specific audience in mind.)
With Rings of Fire, though, Len has given us a major work, akin to his previous, award-winning, meta-mega-monumental manuscripts, Faithquakes (1994), the unforgettable and still relevant Soul Tsunami (1999), and 2001’s Carpe Manana (we still promote this – he suggests that if we “seize the day” we’re already too late; we must seize tomorrow, which will be, by the way, multi-ethnic in a way many of us still haven’t realized. You should order one while supplies last! And then follow up that one with his very clever Soul Salsa, using the metaphor of the dance, not the condiment, although he writes about that, too.) Rings of Fire is hot, on fire offering what he is most known for, semiotics and future-studies, quantum faith engaging with the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Pink, for instance. We might need to get Earth-shaking verses like Nahum 1:5 in view as we join this master futurologist into this volcanic, seismic age. He wryly notes:
Rumbling, erupting, and exploding volcanoes signal the time for volcanic drive and cyclonic energy among us, to carve anew some breath-giving vistas of the future. Bob Dylan’s “The Time’s They Are A-Changin” may have worked for the twentieth century, but the soundtrack for the twenty-first century may be Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” Or, if classical music in not your thing, try Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”
Rhythms of Renewal: Trading Stress and Anxiety for a Life of Peace and Purpose Rebekah Lyons (Zondervan) $24.99 Our sale price = $19.99 We have long enjoyed the speaking and writing of Rebekah (who is also part of the team that runs the gloriously interesting and important Q gatherings, with her husband Gabe Lyons.) We’ve promoted her other books that are so honest about her own panic attacks, anxieties, and the complexities of raising four children, two with Down syndrome. Her first book was Freefall to Fly and her next was You Are Free.
It seems that this new Rhythms of Renewal is very practical, offering colorful, fun, essays of advice arranged in four sections, describing four kinds of rhythms, what she calls “Rest Rhythms”, “Restore Rhythms”, “Connect Rhythms”, and “Create Rhythms.”
New York pastor and author Jon Tyson writes,
Rebekah Lyons has given us a great gift. Rarely does a book combine a compelling vision, theological insights, and a vision of practical faith so well. This books touches a deep longing we all have for a more beautiful and sustainable life one lived to the depth and height of what God actually offers. You will find rest for your soul and strength for your heart in here.
For what it is worth, we have a DVD curriculum with Rebekah sharing this same content that would make a great small group learning experience or could be used in an adult Sunday school class.
Reframation: Seeing God, People, and Mission Through Reenchanted Frames Alan Hirsch & Mark Nelson (100Movements Publishing) $18.99 Our sale price = $15.19 Oh, man, I’m telling you, this is one of the most significant, rousing, interesting, re-framing books that have appeared in recent years within the genre of books about the missional/incarnational church. Alan Hirsch, as you may know, is a seminal voice in the missional church movement and is a vibrant and award-winning author of books on movements, organizations, congregations, leadership; his co-author Mark Nelson is lead pastor of a faith community called Crossings, in Knoxville. (He is involved with the Forge movement as well, serving their Knoxville Hub and on their American board.) Their playful messing with the word “reformation” and calling us for a new sort of reformation, that creates a full-orbed re-framing and an imaginative enchantment of our worldview is remarkable, if maybe a bit blustery at times and full of lingo like “paradigmatic” and “catalytic” and “movement practitioners.” It is fascinating with lots of intellectually stimulating excursions and lots of stories from the authors. It is, if anything, a full gospel manifesto. Much, much more needs to be said, but we encourage you to order this a start a conversation about it in your church circles.
Anybody who is anybody in this movement has offered wildly supportive blurbs for this new work. For instance, there are raves by hip activist writers such as Christiana Rice, Hugh Halter, JR Woodward, David Fitch, Danielle Strickland, Linda Bergquist, John Mark Comer, Mark Sayers, and, of course, Hirsch’s occasional co-author, Michael Frost (who wrote a glowing afterword to Reframation.) Others have weighed in, from Walter Brueggemann to Bill Hull to Christine Sine to Bishop Graham Cray.
There is so much going on in this book calling on us to re-frame and re-enchant our understanding of God’s work in the world (and, consequently, but not only, our understanding of the structure and mission of the church.) To “re-frame” is a hugely audacious response to the work of the Spirit, and this book offers a visionary, complicated, big-picture, ride through our post-modern/secular/mystical culture to find ways to re-frame how we think of God and God’s role in our lives and world.
I happened to an endorsement of these authors in the book, and here’s is what is printed next to a lot of much more significant figures:
Every once in a while a book comes along that is so audacious, so sprawling, so visionary, so learned, so fascinating, that one almost wonders what wild prophets could come up with such a work? Hirsch and Nelson have been at this ministry, playing in these fields of the Lord, for a long time, and they offer us a deep and wise manifesto of how we might reframe our view of God, God’s work, our human vocation, our hope, and yes, the church’s mission — so we might be faithful and full and fruitful in these times. Uber-contemporary reports such as Hirsch’s taking in The Burning Man festival and Nelson’s moving account of hiking the El Camino trail, to scholarly engagement with extraordinary thinkers like Von Balthasar, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Taylor, will add to the urgent conversations of our day about the quest for meaning, the proper understanding of gospel-centered faith, the nature and scope of redemption, the joy of beauty, and the goodness of longing for a better world. Serious scholarship is illuminated by the transcendental vibe of Blake’s poetry and awesome exegesis of Biblical praise songs, by tender stories and great quips and quotes. In a hurting, searching, God-haunted world, Reframation is itself a signal of transcendence.
Semper reframation!
What Does Your Soul Love? Eight Questions That Reveal God’s Work in You Gem and Alan Fadling (IVP/formatio) $22.00 Our sale price = $17.60 I hope you know that we carry all the books in the remarkable “formatio” line. They without fail offer solid insights about spiritual formation, our interior lives, the way in which God can transform us from the inside out to be of great service in our broken world. Many are about prayer and solitude and the contemplative life, but some are more general, as this one seems to be. You may know Alan Fading from his wonderful (and wonderfully convicting, I suspect) Unhurried Life and The Unhurried Leader.
This book deserves greater explanation, but a quick look at the Table of Contents shows us it offers nuanced and evocative reflections on desire, resistance, vulnerability, pain, fear, control, joy, and other key emotions. The invitation to “change from the center” seems clear and the last piece (before some great appendices) offers us guidance about “staying on the path of change.” This has good “process stuff and invites us to be honest about what is getting in the way, what we are hiding, what we cling to, and how we might find something more real and healthy.
Retreat leader Will Hernandez writes of What Does Your Soul Love?:
Books on the subject of transformation abound. What makes this book stand out is that Gem and Alan crystallize for us what real change looks like through their very down-to-earth, living examples–concrete and relatable. One comes away after reading their accounts–peppered with story after story–convinced that authentic growth in God is indeed possible when our souls are focused in the right direction. Not only inspiring but downright practical!
No Avatars Allowed: Theological Reflections on Video Games Joshua Wise (Church Publishing) $18.95 Our sale price = $15.16 We have a big section in our store about faith-based reflections on popular culture, books offering Christian (and other) thoughtful perspectives on advertising, film, Super-heroes, hip hop, and more. We have books like Brent Laytham’s Ipod, Youtube, Wii Play: Theological Engagements with Entertainment next to Watching TV Religiously: Television and Theology in Dialogue edited by Kutter Callaway and Dean Batali. All framed by the best of the bunch, Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture by William Romanowski.
It’s a fun section in the shop with lots to browse through, but, to be honest, there are not many serious and thoughtful (and fun) Christian books about video games that are worthwhile. Of Games and God: A Christian Exploration of Video Games is our go-to, and the author, Kevin Schut Professor Media and Communications at Trinity Western University, happily, has a good blurb on the back of the brand new No Avatars Allowed.
Schut writes:
No Avatars Allowed is a valuable contribution to discussions Christians are having about video games. Joshua Wise writes in clear and accessible language about important topics surround theology, philosophy, and gaming. He raises insightful points that will hopefully spur discussions around a part of culture that the Christian Church still struggles to come to terms with.
Another fun connection with Wise’s book is that it is dedicated to (among others) our young friend and customer, Father Benjamin Gildas, who has graced the book with a very nice and informative foreword. Fr. Ben helped Wise start a lively podcast about gaming and God (also called No Avatars Allowed) and has been at the center of conversations about theology and technology and pop culture for years. Both serve Holy Sacrament Church in Drexel Hill, Philadelphia, and Wise also is an adjunct professor of systematic theology at Villanova. He is, curiously, drawing on some of the Patristic Fathers here, and early on cites Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria. He offers a measure of George MacDonald, it seems, too, all in a study about very contemporary gaming. What a book!
Exactly As You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers Shea Tuttle (Eerdmans) $23.99 Our sale price = $19.19 Oh my, just having this book face out in the store brings a certain calm and joy and pleasure. It looks so very good; we respect Ms Tuttle for her important work as co-editor in the “Lived Theology” project called Can I Get a Witness: Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice that came out from Eerdmans earlier this year. I raved about it at BookNotes earlier this summer, and I’m glad that she has taken up this project. I’m sure she brings a kindness but also a certain suitable gravitas to the study, although with a light touch.
As it says in the publisher promo:
In Exactly as You Are, Tuttle looks at Fred Roger’s life, the people and places that made him who he was, and his work through Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. She pays particular attention to his faith – because Fred Rogers was a deeply spiritual person, ordained by his church with a one-of-a-kind charge: to minister to children and families through television.
I trust you know the fabulous, hefty Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King (now out in paperback) and I really hope you know the remarkable Peaceful Neighbor: Discovering the Countercultural Mister Rogers by Central Pennsylvania religion professor Michael Long. Both are indispensable. But this brand new one, lovingly researched and wonderfully written, may now be considered one of the very best books on this amazing, amazing, Presbyterian Christian and media icon.
My Heart Cries Out: Gospel Meditations for Everyday Life Paul David Tripp (Crossway) $24.99 Our sale price = $19.99 Paul Tripp is a conservative, Reformed Christian/Biblical counselor who draws on the gospel truths of the Scriptures in everything he does and writes. He is very widely respected and appreciated for being raw and real and always rooted in the great news of the transforming power of the cross of Christ. The over-used phrase “gospel centered” can properly be applied to his approach and his many books illustrate these no-nonsense commitments to keeping first things first, even as he loves living in the real world and helps others cope with their hurts and foibles, sins and struggles.
So it is no surprise that contemporary, theologically rich, hymnodists Keith & Kristyn Getty have an endorsement on the back of this book of devotions, saying:
Tripp has the great ability to grasp the vast riches of biblical truth and distill it for us in creative, compelling, and wonderfully-practical ways.
It may be a bit more surprising to see hip hop recording artist and writer Lecrae write:
As an artist who uses words as expressions, I found joy in reading My Heart Cries Out. This work connects with the human condition in a unique and awesome way.
You see, these artists appreciate this book because, unlike Tripp’s other books, this is poetry. (And there are other endorsements from women and men who are artists, singers, hip hop guys.) Yes, it is offered as “gospel meditations” and it is somewhat of a daily devotional. But the form is sheer poetry. Written, as one observer notes, by a “sage with scars.”
By the way, kudos to Crossway for the nice design. the book is a bit larger than usual, with French fold covers, and some full color photography in side. It’s a beautiful paperback.
The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times George Weigel (Ignatius Press) $24.95 Our sale price = $19.96 Agree or not with the conservative Roman doctrine or the culturally traditionalist commitments of this remarkable thinker, his work is significant. (A blurb on the back by Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon calls him “a steady voice of reason.”) He writes mostly around the intersection of faith and culture, societal concerns, public justice, social ethics. In this heady collection he draws us to the questions of how to keep order when the very notions that sustain order are eroded. (For a recent, evangelical, Protestant book that follows similar grooves, at least in political matters, think of Os Guinness’s A Free People’s Suicide or Last Call for Liberty.)
Agree or not with his particular take on history and evaluation of the times and his conservative religious loyalties, you surely will be intrigued with a book by an author who garners a blurb like this:
Mary Eberstadt, Senior Research Fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute), says:
Every page in this book shines with moral clarity, literary pyrotechnics, and the illumination of history. The Fragility of Order proves once more that George Weigel is our Virgil through the dark woods of modernity.
Consumed By Hate, Redeemed By Love: How a Violent Klansman Became a Champion of Racial Reconciliation Thomas A. Tarrants (Nelson Books) $24.99 Our sale price = $19.99 Our lives have been too busy, and I have felt badly that I have not reviewed for you this major release, truly one of the most amazing, God-glorifying stories I’ve ever heard. We are friends with the author, the President Emeritus of the C.S. Lewis Institute in Washington, DC. Tom is a good, good man, redeemed and made new by Jesus Christ, and when we first heard that he had been in jail for attempted murder in a violent KKK incident, I was stunned, breathless, sick to my stomach. Beth and I so admired Tom’s quiet and peaceful demeanor and his sharp, well-read mind. We had no idea of his background and found it hard to belief. We didn’t know much, then, but realized he was the guy who had once written a book about his racial hatreds with African American faith leader, John Perkins. It wasn’t terribly well known, but maybe you’ve seen it. It was called He’s My Brother and it only told part of this dramatic, wild, redemptive story. Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love tells the whole backstory in all it’s scary ugliness and amazing, amazing grace.
I surely will have to review this more carefully and thoroughly later, but, for now, know that this autobiography tells of Tom’s past, his anti-Semitism and racism, how he had engaged in what we now might call alt-right militia type activities. He was involved in shoot-outs with law enforcement and went to prison for an attempted bombing of a Jewish synagogue.
This bombing, an awful chapter in the US civil rights struggle, was something novelist John Grisham heard about as a kid growing up in Mississippi, and he later used it as a backdrop for his novel The Chamber. As the Southern Baptist Grisham writes, “Now, one of the bombers, Thomas Tarrants, tells the real story in this remarkable memoir.”
Grisham continues,
It is riveting, inspiring, at times hard to believe but utterly true, and it gives some measure of home in these rancorous times.
You will have to read his own well told story to learn how he got keep into this mess, and how, in prison, he found a personal relationship with Christ which transformed his identity and his racial prejudices. The governor of the state granted him clemency and he ended up working in a multi-racial church in urban Washington DC. There is a lot more to this story, but we wanted to introduce it here, now. Listen to Russell Moore, who says Consumed by Hate, Redeemed… is a “riveting narrative… the path from burning crosses to the cross of Christ himself, from raging hate to amazing grace.”
This astonishing portrait of captivity to a corrupt ideology and eventual authentic conversion is well worth reading. As journalist (and convert from a rigorous atheism, himself) Lee Strobel says:
Put on your seat belt and prepare to enter into one of the most extraordinary true stories you’ll ever encounter.
Not Home Yet: How the Renewal of the Earth Fits Into God’s Plan for the World Ian K. Smith (Crossway) $15.99 Our sale price = $12.79 Increasingly there are books which – praise the Lord! – show that the ultimate plan for the created order is re-creation and renewal. We are not going to be raptured to some ethereal heavenly plane but the Bible teaches that God returns to fulfill his promises, to heal the creation; the good news is one of restoration, not destruction. A few books and movements with this vision of “all of life redeemed” and “every square inch” reclaimed by Christ link it to what ought to be obvious: environmental concerns; but some do not. This little volume of Biblical studies is not primarily about stewardship of the environment, as such, but it frames our ecological concerns in light of this wonderfully robust, solidly Biblical vision of God’s faithfulness in the past and future to the work of His hands.
This has something to do with, and will be of great interest to those who have come to understand the descriptor “creation-fall-redemption-restoration” as the best over-view of the Bible’s story and the history of the plan of redemption. (Not Home Yet also looks at themes in the Old Testament about exile and homecoming and the temple being destroyed and restored.) Those four “chapters” of the Biblical story influence much, but few accessible Bible scholars have done good work on the hope of a restored planet. (The very, very best study of this, although a bit academic and lengthy for some, is the classic A New Heaven and A New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology by J. Richard Middleton.)
What is the nature of our “future home?” How might a high regard for God’s covenant and promises for the Earth influence our living, now? (Think of the good insights about these very matters in N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope.) Not Home Yet explores this all quite nicely. He insists that what we do now has value, because God values the Earth. This beautiful place is not “second best” as if we’re going “somewhere better.” This is, as Smith shows, exactly what the Bible teaches.
I love it that pious Scottish Presbyterians like Sinclair Ferguson endorse this little book. A highly regarded and fabulous Old Testament scholar, Tremper Longman endorses Not Home Yet, by saying:
I have never seen such a clear articulation of the theme of creation and re-creation anywhere.
Choosing Community: Action, Faith, and Joy in the Works of Dorothy Sayers Christine A. Colon (IVP Academic) $16.00 Our sale price = $12.80 I said I want to keep these announcements short. But oh my, there’s so much to say about Dorothy Sayers, her friendship with C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, her work as a Dante scholar, as a mystery writer (do you know the detective fiction featuring Lord Peter Whimsey?), her contributions as a playwright, her legendary letter writing, and her rise as a extraordinary and somewhat surprising example of a respected Christian scholar. One of her famous books was called, of course, The Mind of the Maker and many in the contemporary faith and work movement draw on her seminal essay about the essential dignity of human labor, called “Work Matters.” She is a figure we should know more about.
And so, I’ve wished for years for a book like this. And here it is. (If only I had time to dive in, which I surely will, soon.) Choosing Community… as you might be able to tell, isn’t just a dry overview of the famous Dorothy Sayers and her many books. It presses us to grapple with Sayers’ life and work and learn from it how to thrive in our particular day and age, troubled as it may be.
Listen to these endorsements.
Christine Colón has written an original and thoroughly fascinating book on Dorothy L. Sayers and community. Sayers enthusiasts will appreciate her meticulous research, but even the general reader who doesn’t know Sayers will learn something about how people can live together in harmony despite the traumas of this world.” (Suzanne Bray, professor of English, Lille Catholic University)
“Colón wends her way through Sayers’s detective novels and religious plays in the context of her life and times to help us see what Sayers wanted us to learn about community and the work that God has given each of us to do with joy for the health of our communities ― especially the church. Sayers comes through as one who passionately grounded these insights in essential Christian doctrines, such as God’s triune existence and the atonement, during times of war and societal decay. At a time when we seem to be sinking into tribalism in a contentious world, there are lessons to be gleaned from Sayers thanks to Colón’s guidance. And this study might just prompt one to hurry to the bookshelf and read or reread a Sayers piece, seeing in it what otherwise would have been missed.” (Dennis Okholm, professor of theology, Azusa Pacific University, author of Learning Theology Through the Church’s Worship)
Near the Exit: Travels with the No-So-Grim Reaper Lori Erickson (WJK) $17.00 Our sale price = $13.60 Before I ran out of time, I had a plan: I was going to do a longer review of this in time for the Mexican Day of the Dead ceremonies (now oddly celebrated all over the world) which mostly coincide with Halloween and, yes, All Saints Day. Near the Exit is a very vividly written, entertaining travelogue book where the author (known for bringing religious sensibilities to expert travel memoirs, like in her popular Holy Rover) explores how people all over the world dispatch their dead. It isn’t gloomy, but some readers might find it a bit creepy. On the very first page she is embedded in a Day of the Dead event in Chicago. Whoah.
When a world-renowned doctor who has specialized for a lifetime writing about care for the dying such as Ira Byock (Dying Well) writes that a book is “informative, insightful and thoroughly entertaining” it’s worth checking out. When an author is as witty and irreverent and yet deeply tender as Erickson is, she is, for my tastes, worth reading. This is one fascinating book.
She is honest about some of her immediate motives: her brother dies rather suddenly and her mother is in a dementia-care unit. (Some of the writing around that was very, very moving for me, having lost my mother recently.) Erickson moves from curious strolls through church graveyards to Egypt’s Valley of the Kings to Mayan Temples to a Colorado cremation pyre to writing about her own care for her own dying mother. Erickson is an Episcopal deacon so stands firmly within the broad Christian tradition, although some with traditional orthodox theology will find her cavalier writing about what happens after death a bit wanting. Still, if one can get past that this isn’t a theological treatise or Bible-based sermon, but a colorful travelogue (did I mention she has won writing awards in the Travel Books category) by a person who respects global faiths and diverse cultural customs – more an anthropologist than a theologian – it could be a real enjoyable read for you. And, who knows, in exploring how others including Erickson herself) process the mysteries of death and dying, maybe you will glean a bit more empathy for others and a bit more willingness to explore what you believe and why. After all, as she notes in the preface, to be human is to be mortal. We all, whether we enjoy it or not, have reason to be interested. Near the Exit is one entertaining way into that big question…
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As you may have seen at our Facebook group, we have author Shawn Smucker coming to the store on Saturday night, October 19th. Shawn has written two YA fantasy novels (which, like the best YA novels, are good for adults, too), a mysterious adult novel called The Light from Distant Stars and a moving memoir about meeting a Syrian refugee and what that taught him about “loving my neighbor.” It starts at 7:00 pm and will be a great time to hear an accomplished writer read from his books and talk about his stories and his craft. All are welcome.
Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus Jim Wallis (HarperOne) $25.99 OUR BOOKNOTES SALE PRICE = $20.79
The subtitle “Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus” is a directly jab, of course, at the Christian right. Those who want to be faithful in the ways of Jesus need to counter the way the media and the fundamentalist right has co-opted the lingo of evangelicalism without much obvious commitment to Christ’s teachings. Good people can disagree about the application of the Sermon on the Mount mandates and we should admit that a Christ-like social ethic (let alone public policy) can be complicated. Wallis is a preacher, not a politician, but he knows a bit about the policy debates, so his direction in political Christ-likeness isn’t cheap rhetoric. Granted it’s not Jamie Smith’s Awaiting the King on political theology or James Skillen on the task of the state (as in his The Good of Politics) but it is really, really good Bible stuff that somehow we too often miss in thinking about the relevance of our faith for our civic lives.
Love Anyway: An Invitation Beyond a World That’s Scary as Hell Jeremy Courtney (Zondervan) $17.99 OUR BOOKNOTES SALE PRICE = $14.39
And they do it. They started a local soap-making project and helped form a candle-making business; they teach job skills as ways to bring income to a region, they work well with woman and help with child protection services, even as they arrange for emergency medical work. In the midst of severe crisis, they get semi-trucks loaded with healthy food into places no aid organizations dare go. (Backing out the huge trucks is another story!) This becomes a bit of a theme in some of the chapters – why aren’t the established, major relief organizations where they are so badly needed? The Preemptive Love Coalition is small and the need is great. Where are the big, well-known charitable groups? The answer may be one of organizational culture with the larger agencies mired in bureaucracy and politics and a clunky top-down organizational flow in contrast to Jeremy and Jess’s nimble, audacious style, guided by a Gen X metric of relationship and Christ-like idealism. So there they go, fearless it seems, right into the heart of violent, ISIS occupied Mosul, the only Western charitable organization on the ground.
theme of the story.) Love Anyway offers a bit of a quick overview of some of what is told so dramatically in the earlier volume about arranging (cross-cultural and interfaith) pediatric heart surgeries, Preemptive Love: Pursuing Peace One Heart at a Time. In those early days in Iraq they adopted the motto “love first, ask questions later” in contrast to what they heard US military men and women say, famously, “shoot first, ask questions later” or “kill them all, let God sort ‘em out.” He is quick to admit that this isn’t US policy, of course, and his soldiering friends may or may not have actually endorsed these slogans of dark humor, but – as we know – this is part of the culture of military training and there have been gross abuses and civilian deaths in our waging war. Without sounding off in protest against the warriors (with whom he sometimes partners) The Preemptive Love Coalition tried to wage peace.
anxieties, despite truly great accomplishments. Most of us who have tried to innovate or start something or serve in hard places understand something of these quandaries, but this is like nearly anything I’ve ever read. I think you won’t be able to put it down. Your heart make ache a bit and you may want to pray harder for Jeremy and Jess and their children, Micah and Emma, and their friends and team-members. I hope so.
From Judgment to Hope: A Study on the Prophets Walter Brueggemann (WJK) $14.00 Walt may be aging a bit and he has largely retired from travel and speaking, I’m told, but he is as generative and productive as ever, doing new books, writing introductions, collating previous stuff into serviceable, inspiring, resources for God’s people. I know he isn’t the only one, but in many ways, Brueggemann has almost single-handedly inspired many (especially in mainline churches, at first, and now more widely) to recover the profundity of the counter-narrative of the Bible, the prophetic imagination, the subversive and transforming vision that offers an energetic faith-filled alternative to the dominant ideologies of the age. As he has said over and over (perhaps most clearly in his little The Bible Makes Sense) those on the cultural right and left have both tried to read the Bible within their own chosen proclivities and ideologies, and the texts simply won’t allow it. Any honest reading of the raw and wild poetry of the Scriptures simply must renew our assumptions and set us on a trajectory unlike the worldly options of left or right, religious or secular, the poles of freedom or control.
An On-Going Imagination: A Conversation about Scripture, Faith, and the Thickness of Relationship Walter Brueggemann and Clover Reuter Beal (WJK) $18.00 Okay, this is a different sort of book than the little study of the prophets listed above. This is as good as it gets, though, as an introduction to Brueggemann, as it literally is a collection of often brief, rather informal, but always rich conversations.
You are going to be enriched by reading this, whether you are a long-time Brueggy fan or new to his work. You’ll like hearing about his early experiences at church camps and his “personal-theological” work. There are brief chapters (again, in dialogue/conversational format) about a theology of sin, about “Eucharistic empowerment” and a chapter called “Liturgy Versus Empire” which is on the elements of worship. They talk about public prayer and about private prayer, they explore neighborliness and talk about money and possessions and so much more. Clover asks him “what keeps you going” and what he believes in. This truly is an on-going conversation and we highly recommend joining an on-going conversation by nurturing an on-going imagination.”
The End of Hunger: Renewed Hope for Feeding the World edited by Jenny Eaton Dyer & Cathleen Falsani (IVP) $17.00 You may recall that a few weeks ago I suggested two recent books on hunger – one by Bread for the World founder Art Simon called Silence Can Kill: Speaking Up to End Hunger and Make Our Economy Work for Everyone (Eerdmans; $29.99) and another by Texas Anti-Hunger Initiative leader, Jeremy Everett entitled I Was Hungry: Cultivating Common Ground to End an American Crisis (Brazos Press $16.99.) As I said there, both are splendid. They are still on sale for 20% off the shown prices.
Live in Grace, Walk in Love: A 365-Day Journey Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson) $16.99 We gave a quick shout out about this a while ago and have some pre-orders that will go out Monday. The book “drops” – as they sometimes say – on Tuesday and we are thrilled. Bob is a friend and supporter (is there anybody he meets he doesn’t befriend and encourage?) As you know from Love Does and Everybody Always he is a consummate storyteller, a funny guy who lives in whimsy, and whose adventures – holy capers – are designed to create a better world of love and grace. From offering balloons to the sick to starting a girl’s school in the face of the Taliban in Afghanistan, how does he do it? Bob truly is one of the most unforgettable people we’ve ever met and his energy and cheer befuddles me.
He joked with me the last time we were together that he had thought he might get out of this (with a bit of tongue in cheek and faux bluster, I’m sure) book contract by writing just 30 days of devotions for a nice month-long reader. Oh no, no way! The publisher was not having it – they wanted a full-on 365-day reader of all new content. Stories, Bible studies, inspirational faith-building lessons? Yep, all of the above. An entire year’s worth. Bob Goff has a storehouse of adventures to draw upon and as an old Young Life guy, knows how to re-tell a Bible episode like the best of ‘em. Live in Grace, Walk in Love is going to be a great, great devotional. It releases this week and we have it at 20% off.
Secondly, as I’ve said, Goff does have a blast doing the unexpected, living well in gracious, good ways. That is, this new, yearlong reader could inspire those who are bored, those who are dreamless, those who can’t see that faith or spirituality might be real or exciting. Live in Grace, Walk in Love will be for many un-churched folks, I suspect, the best invitation to the Christ-promised “abundant life” that they’ve ever encountered. Buy it for the young and the old, the faithful and the faithless, the light-hearted and the too serious.
Faithful Witness in a Fractured World: Models for an Authentic Christian Life – How Not to Be Crappy Christian by Nicole L. Johnson & Michael T. Snarr (Cascade) $18.00 As I explain below, a collection of great stories of ordinary folks doing good work in taking up their vocations as social activists with principles and insights gleaned from traits they each exhibited. A great study, important for all of us.
I hope you saw the last BookNotes column which featured two serious books about world and domestic hunger. Silence Can Kill: Speaking Up to End Hunger and Make Our Economy Work for Everyone by our friend Art Simon (founder of the citizen’s anti-hunger lobby, Bread for the World) is a very important new book, up-to-date and informative. Although fewer children are starving to death than 50 years ago, this dare not lull us towards an optimistic apathy; needless starvation and chronic, painful poverty are evils that must be battled. Bread for the World may be the most important and effective anti-poverty organization because of the legislative work they do and the sheer scope of the impact of public policy (from foreign aid to funding for TANF and SNAP and the like.) You should read that book and learn how (and why) it all works.
Another book I highlighted in that review was I Was Hungry: Cultivating Common Ground to End an American Crisis by Jeremy Everett (Brazos; $16.99) which documents the exciting work done by the Texas Hunger Initiative. I loved this book and the energetic stories of faith communities partnering with civic and even governmental agencies. No matter what state your in – the play of words and smile – you need this book! 
There are plenty of more theoretical books, too. Think of the book released just this past summer, the magnum opus of Duke University scholar Luke Bretherton entitled Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy (Eerdmans; $49.00.) It has been called “a tour de force”, a “monumental achievement”, “a transformative contributions” and “impressively expansive.” He moves from secularity to pluralism to democratic ideals to what notions of neighborliness mean for our public thinking and, everyone agrees, breaks new and important ground.
The brand new book called Faithful Witness in a Fractured World: Models for an Authentic Christian Life – How Not to Be Crappy Christian by Nicole L. Johnson & Michael T. Snarr (Cascade) $18.00 [our sale price = $14.40] makes an important claim – that many young adults are drifting from faith (and sometimes loudly denouncing traditional religion) because it does not do this. Big name televangelists and Christian right loud-mouths condemn gays and mock science and want to push their views on everybody, but it seems they do little to care about the hurting, the disillusioned, the poor or oppressed. Unlike Francis Schaeffer – who some on the Christian right seem to claim to like, even if they haven’t read his more serious works – they don’t show that they want to weep with those who weep over our culture’s lack of compassion and the injustices that are so prevalent these days, from gross injustices in immigration policy to police violence to species extinction to sexual abuse cover-ups, even in exceedingly pious evangelical churches. They don’t offer young seekers “honest answers to honest questions.” They just want to fight culture wars and defeat anybody they don’t like.
Enter, as your guides, Niki Johnson and Michael Snarr, friendly and popular profs at a small liberal arts college in Ohio. As a religious studies teacher (and former campus minister) and poly sci teacher (who has served with Christian Peacemaker teams and other lively activist groups), these two listen well to their young students, work eagerly with the emerging adults these college students are, and help them navigate the big questions of their search for direction, their making of meaning, their grappling with the faith of their childhood and their new experiences in college. Like most caring professors, they do more than relay information in the classroom but are accompanying students on a journey of discovery and walking alongside them in these critical years.
Which is what makes “How Not to Be a Crappy Christian”, that is, Faithful Witness in a Fracture World, so very, very good. It follows the lives of a handful of people the authors admire, some who are former students that they’ve come to know well, that are living out faith in concrete ways, in authentic ways, sometimes in rather dramatic ways. But they are fairly normal people, doing good work but nothing that will catapult them to international fame. Our authors call them “unsung.” These folks are living what John Perkins once called “a quiet revolution.”
own image and members of his subversive, counter-cultural community. This has huge, huge, socio-political implications and although none of the characters described in Faithful Witness in a Fractured World are professional Biblical scholars, they would, I think, resonate with the anti-Empire, pro-justice themes in the detailed exploration in Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire/Demanding Justice by Sylvia Keesmaat & Brian Walsh (Brazos Press; $26.99.) If you missed my review of that stunning book, 
Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus Jim Wallis (HarperOne) $25.99 This brand new book just arrived a few hours ago so I’ve hardly got a chance to look at it. I wish I had an earlier version, or took time to study it before telling you about it, but it so fits this week’s theme that I simply have to announce it. I’m very excited.
And so, has the church become captive to the modern American Babylon? This was an early theme in Sojourners when they were more obviously influenced by William Stringfellow and Daniel Berrigan and the like. Things were dire, and this radical “politics of Jesus” was counter-imperial, helping us say “no” to Empire and power and such. It may be the crass compromise of the evangelical right in these Trump years may have shaken Jim back to his roots – a call to conversion to the ways of Jesus.
Love Anyway: An Invitation Beyond a World That’s Scary as Hell Jeremy Courtney (Zondervan) $17.99 I can’t tell you how glad we are to get to announce this book by a friend we respect immensely. We’ve only been together two or three times, I thinks – once for a great evening when he allowed us to host him at our church as he shared about his first book, Preemptive Love and the amazing organization he created mostly arranging heart surgeries for children in the radiation enhanced war zones of Iraq.
Some of these chapters are fairly short and they seem to have the feel of a memoir. There are memories and stories galore, Biblical insight, missionary bravado, honest testimony of his fear and brokenness. He and his family have seen so much and I hope you, like me, can’t wait to read about it.
did on this topic and I’m sure if you click through on those you will learn about books you haven’t heard of, religious ones and more general ones. There are so many resources to help us think about our careers and callings, the good and bad of our working lives. And new ones keep coming – for instance, any day now we’ll have the long-awaited Working in the Presence of God: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Work by Denise Daniels & Shannon Vanderwarker (Hendrickson; $24.95.) If you missed that column, skim back to our past BookNotes and check out those links. You won’t want to miss that James Taylor video!
One of the books that Tom Nelson wrote that I didn’t mention the other day is a helpful guide to thinking about the economic development and consequences of the work world. In The Economics of Neighborly Love: Investing in Your Community’s Compassion and Capacity (IVP; $18.00.) he makes clear that people of faith should always be thinking about how we can help our regions flourish; supporting good businesses and even being entrepreneurial can be ways to serve our neighbors. Voting in the marketplace (that is, the decisions we make as to we chose to spend our dollars) has consequences, often significant ones. (Tom doesn’t address it, precisely, but this is one of the big criticisms of mega-size and placeless entities like Amazon, who drain money from local economies and get out of paying taxes, even as they hurt local businesses and services. Data shows that wherever Amazon moves in, the wealth flows away from the local community, especially when municipalities and states give them huge tax incentives; I support them with my tax dollars and then they announce they want to put me out of business. Yep.) More can be said about community development and what “neighbor love” means for our stewardly, home-making economics, but this book by Tom Nelson is a nice start, recommended for anyone who hasn’t read this sort of thing.
Another great, great book (that was reviewed in greater detail in one of those older links I shared to past BookNotes) that addresses this and, no doubt, influenced Nelson in his own Economics… book is the magisterial Kingdom Callings: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good (IVP; $22.00.) by Amy Sherman. In that book she makes a powerful case (based on Proverbs 11:10) that even the poor and marginalized will rejoice in the success of a just business; truly righteous, just businesses make things better, even for the poor. So she invites us to think faithfully about stewarding our vocational aspirations in ways that not only please us or help us find our own professional sweet spot but in ways that serve the common good. She offers several different styles or “levels” of involvement showing numerous ways (from the simplest to the most sophisticated) that our work lives impact and serve the world.
Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (Thomas Nelson; $15.99) remains a must-read to explore and motivate us to care about the poor; it is surely one of the most important books of the last 50 years. The best-selling The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World by Richard Stearns came out ten years ago this month, and we have a brand new, 10th Anniversary Edition (Thomas Nelson; $17.99) His story of finding meaning by shifting away from his successful big business career to take up more directly the cries of the poor important and inspiring reading for all of us.
Silence Can Kill: Speaking Up to End Hunger and Make Our Economy Work for Everyone Arthur Simon (Eerdmans) $29.00 Does our apathy or even our silence really indict us? Can silence really kill? It is a strong accusation and Art Simon is careful to explain why. This book is the most important and comprehensive faith-based study of poverty and hunger (in the US and abroad) in ages; Art has written some wonderful books in the past but this may be his magnum opus. In it, he deftly explores the complications and controversies around poverty and public policies that might fruitfully address the crisis of hunger. Although trained as a Lutheran pastor, he has spent most of his adult life organizing citizens to lobby –through the organization he founded, Bread for the World – for legislation that helps the poor, so much of our political legislation has direct consequence (sometimes for good, sometimes for ill) on the impoverished. Maybe you’ve heard the story – Art and other Bread for the World leaders tell it often – of how one year, in one quick vote in the Reagan years, US Congress cut more from life-saving foreign aid than all the charities of all the US churches combined had given that year. I forget the exact figures, but imagine if all the churches, together, raise and generously share 10 million dollars for relief. And imagine that the government cuts $100 million from our aid budget. For those that truly want to save lives and bring relief to starving brothers and sisters in Africa, say, might it have been better to spend more time letting our congressional representatives know that we favor such aid? If we love our neighbors by sincerely donating to charities, why are we silent when so much more is cut?
When I think of heroes like Schindler, I think of Art Simon. It may be that he has saved more people from unjust death than anyone living today. This is not hyperbole — give the guy a Nobel Peace Prize already! Read Silence Can Kill: Speaking Up to End Hunger and you’ll learn much and you will be impressed by Simon’s extraordinary life, about which he writes humbly.
After Art retired from Bread for the World, another extraordinary Lutheran leader, David Beckman, took the helm (after a time working at the World Bank where he lead Bible studies with global leaders.) Beckman wrote a short and really useful little book called Exodus From Hunger: We Are Called to Change the Politics of Hunger (WJK; $18.00) that tells the BFW story in the 21st century; it, too, is very highly recommended.
Years ago a Dutch economist and Reformed Christian leader in the old Kuyper party in Holland, Bob Goudzwaard, wrote a book about the idols of our age. (It was later updated and expanded with two other authors as Hope in Troubled Times: A New Vision for Confronting Global Crisis (Baker Academic; $24.00) and, upon reading it, Brian McLaren was inspired to write Everything Must Change: When the World’s Biggest Problems and Jesus’ Good News Collide (Thomas Nelson; $14.99) that explored the ideologies and philosophies and assumptions about society and culture and government and meaning and values that propel our idolatrous cultures. Goudzwaard’s rather dense book and McLaren’s lively interpretation of it are both excellent and I recommend them for those wanting to see the way big issues (from poverty to environmental degradation to militarism) combine and are driven by certain spirits or ideologies.
and it is as potent now as it was then. It is called How Much Is Enough?: Hungering for 
God in an Affluent Culture (Baker; $16.00.) For a comprehensive study of all the key passages about money/Mammon in the Bible see the hefty Money and Possessions (in the Interpretation series) by Walter Brueggemann (WJL; $40.00.) For a more practical and delightfully well-balanced study of how all this might inform our daily financial habits, see Practicing the King’s Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give by Michael Rhodes, Robby Holt and Brian Fikkert (Baker Books; $19.99.) It is very, very useful, balanced, thoughtful, wise.
I Was Hungry: Cultivating Common Ground to End An American Crisis Jeremy K. Everett (Brazos Press) $16.99 What a blessing to have a second major book released this season within the religious publishing world – kudos to Brazos Press for taking up this terrific, exciting read by a young-ish activist, founder of the Texas Hunger Initiative. Informed by the framework and inspiration of Bread for the World and other faith-based public policy initiatives, Jeremy Everett (a graduate of Baylor University and Truett Theological Seminary) has spent years as an advocate for the poor. From an inspiring story of being moved to give away his stuff to the homeless after watching the Saint Francis film Brother Son, Sister Moon to the riveting opening pages about running a special needs medical shelter for hundreds of evacuated folk in the immediately aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we learn that Everett has a big heart and has learned, often the hard way, what it means to not only be proximate with the poor and hurting, but how to organize social services in ways that help stem the tide of human anguish. He’s colorful and dedicated and, I gather, not only winsome but seemingly unstoppable. I suppose one has to be if one is doing serious research to learn the facts and doing on-the-ground, directly care giving and energetic advocacy for the poor. His community organizing skills become evident early on in this page-turner of a book. I Was Hungry – notice the way the words are crossed out in the art design of the book – is a wild, hopeful read!
In fact, Bread for the World President David Beckman (who has read and written tons on this topic) writes in a moving foreword, “Once I started the first chapter of this book, I had a hard time putting it down. Jeremy Everett is a great storyteller. And the overarching story of this book is God’s call to Jeremy – to all of us actually – to end hunger.”
Everett’s Texas Hunger Initiative is an organization that partners with the United States Department of Agriculture, Texas state agencies, the corporate sector, and thousands of churches and community-based organizations. When he says in the subtitle that this book is for “cultivating common ground to end an American crisis” he knows what he’s talking about. I’d say you might read it just to learn about his adept navigation of various social sectors, non-profits and governmental agencies, to advance social entrepreneurship, uniting different kinds of folks to accomplish this good, lasting work.
And Social Justice for All: Empowering Families, Churches, and Schools to Make a Difference in God’s World Lisa Van Engen (Kregal) $13.99 This is an excellent resource, more than 300 pages, with information and insight about a dozen different topics — from creation care to human trafficking, from fair-trade wisdom to disabilities rights, from racial justice concerns to family care. There’s stuff about bearing the “fierce light” of being a change-maker and guides on creating a community gathering. There’s even a plan to raise awareness, topic by topic, month by month, which looks intriguing to try. This evangelical educator and mom from Holland, Michigan, has given us a rare combination of gospel-centered faith and down-to-Earth education for social change. She and her family are members of Covenant CRC in St. Catharines, Ontario. Highly recommended.
Loving God and Neighbor with Samuel Pierce Michael A.G. Haykin & Jerry Slate (Lexham Press) $12.99 This is the second in a little series called “Lived Theology.” (I will be writing more about the other, an introduction to the public engagement theology of Abraham Kuyper, also in this little series.) Those that know much about evangelical missionary work may know the name of Samuel Pierce, a nearly forgotten saint who embodied a late eighteenth-century Baptist piety and advanced a wholistic vision of the gospel. This handsome little book invites us to explore Pearce’s “holy love” and tells of his years of ministry in England (and his trip to India and preaching trip through Ireland.) Loving God and Neighbor models how older-school evangelical faith can propel one to care deeply about serving one’s neighbors and about caring about God’s world as an expression of a deep appreciation for the saving grace of Christ.
Missional Economics: Biblical Justice and Christian Formation Michael Barram (Eerdmans) $26.00 We have a pretty hefty economics section (besides our section of global development, world hunger, and international affairs.) Some are heady, some less so. Some are tough in their critique of mainstream capitalism, but some, like, say, Redeeming Capitalism by Kenneth Barnes, with a foreword by Miroslav Volf (Eerdmans; $25.99) are thoughtful, with a serious, moral center, but more balanced. We have extraordinary, serious works like Just Capitalism: A Christian Ethic of Economic Globalization by Brent Waters (WJK; $40.00) that seem very much like something neither right nor left, but seeking a deep, alternative vision. That is also why we’ve often recommended Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World by Bruno Roche and Jay Jakub (Berrett-Koehler; $19.95) about their surprisingly good work with the Mars Corporation.
Bread for the Resistance: 40 Devotions for Justice People Donna Barber (IVP/The Voices Publishing) $15.00 We’ve written favorably about books by Leroy Barber and it is a delight to know of Donna, his wife and ministry partner, co-founder of The Voices Project which is trying to “influence culture through training and promoting leaders of color.” She is the director of Champions Academy, an initiative of the Portland Leadership Foundation and is the first African American to serve on her local district’s school board. This is just what you’d think, a feisty, visionary, inspiring set of devotional readings for justice activists. Are you tired or over-worked, struggling, wondering how to keep on keeping on? This will refresh your soul and keep you going. Brand new – we have it on our counter at the shop!
Rest for the Justice Seeking Soul: 90 Meditations Susan K. Williams Smith (Whitaker House) $14.99 FORTHCOMING – PRE-ORDER: due to be released November 12, 2019 Wow, this is another small collection of daily meditations by an experienced leader who is a woman of color, the communications director and secretary to the Board of Directors for the Samuel D. Proctor Ministers Conferences. Those who know the African American church know that the Samuel Proctor name is deeply esteemed and Ms. Smith’s connection there is indication of her stature. Perhaps more importantly, she’s known on the streets as a voice for faith-based social change; she has been involved in organizing in her home-town of Columbus, Ohio, and on the national level. She is involved with numerous social justice organizations, including Dr. William Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign. These short readings were designed for those who are feeling beleaguered and battered down in their activism during these hard days. Kudos to Whitaker House (not known for these sorts of social action books) for taking up the writings of this important sister in the struggle. PRE-ORDER IT NOW.
Created to Flourish: How Employment-Based Solutions Help Eradicate Poverty Peter Greer & Phil Smith (Hope International) $19.99 What a handsome, joyous, wonderful book this it. It is not new, but wanted to mention it here because we are so glad to stock it, and you may not know of it. I hope you do know about the remarkable ministry directed by Lancaster-based Peter Greer called 
Jesus’ Economy: A Biblical View of Poverty, The Currency of Love and a Pattern for Lasting Change John D. Barry (Whitaker House) $15.99 I was amazed that folks I respected from a variety of theological views and who tend to tilt left or right, so to speak (favoring more governmental adjustments to reform the economy or those who trust the free market as the best way to bring people out of poverty) all agreeing that this author is a gem, that this book is a great little guide. John Barry is one well-respected, behind the scenes leader.
Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream Brian Fikkert & Kelly Kapic (Moody Press) $15.99 Wow, what a book! I have alluded to this before, mentioned it at book groups, and shown it here in the shop. It deserves an even more detailed review that I am able to do at this time, but, trust me – it deserves your attention. An important project of The Chalmers Center (at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis) it is, in a way, a prequel to the bestselling and much discussed When Helping Hurts. Many have read that important volume (alongside the equally valuable Toxic Charity and Charity Detox by Robert Lupton) and somehow concluded that all foreign aid (or even local charitable mission) is suspect. This has become so common that Calvin College Press published a helpful little study called When Helping Heals by Tracy Kuperus & Roland Hoksbergen (Calvin College Press; $10.99.)
Of course few would argue with the central thesis of When Helping Hurts. Too often big bureaucracies and government programs, or smaller, well-intentioned local charities, are patronizing, even toxic, and build dependency. Nobody wants poor folks to be dependent on somebody else’s charity. And, really, nobody wants to serve our needy neighbors in ways that are hurtful. But yet, we do.
A Field Guide to Becoming Whole: Principles for Poverty Alleviation Ministries Brian Fikkert & Kelly M. Kapic (Moody Press) $14.99 Okay, as I suggested above: a few years ago this team from the Chalmer’s Center put out what became a best seller, When Helping Hurts. They did a side-project called When Helping Hurts in Church Benevolence and a video curriculum on short-term mission trips. It’s a big deal, and good stuff.
difference for reform of this fallen world (usually in small ways) by allowing the Christian mind to shape our thinking and practices about our work-world. That book is called Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Lives (Square Halo Book; $13.99) and even though it is designed for young adults just out of college or trade school, it captures much of what I think about when Labor Day rolls around. There’s even pretty good reflection questions too, making it a fine book for a book group, especially, but not only, for young adults.
Do you know the great album of worship music that was commissioned to create songs somehow about or alluding to our work and callings in the world? We are proud to know some of the song-writers and recording artists behind this marvelous Porter’s Gate worship project called Work Songs. Here’s a little background about 
written (or co-written) by real-world workers, not academics or pastors, but business executives or public school special ed teachers or advertisers or scientists or shop floor stewards. Often considered the very best, Every Good Endeavor Connecting Your Work to God’s Work (Penguin; $17.00) is by the always-thoughtful Timothy Keller (whose Manhattan ministry has long been known by his seriousness about orthodox faith related in gracious ways to the contemporary culture, especially to matters of calling and vocation) but in this he got a major assist from co-author Katherine Leary Aldsorf, who has spent years working in the business world, living out her faith in a high-powered corporate culture. Katherine was the first director of Redeemer’s extraordinary 
But I often say that one of the best starter books was, in fact, written by a pastor, my friend Tom Nelson (now of 
Another that I’ve raved about came out a year ago, also by a pastor, who creatively did a long series of sermons about what we can learn about God from various jobs. I’ve shared the stage with the thoughtful John Van Sloten and think he is exceptionally gifted in offering a profound theological framework for this project of nurturing a spirituality of the workplace, Every Job a Parable: What Walmart Greeters, Nurses, and Astronauts Tell Us about God (NavPress; $14.99.) To his credit, John interviewed tons of folks about their jobs, thought well about all manner of careers and callings, including some unique ones, and preached on the redemptive aspects of car repair and what forensic psychologists or a residential landlord can teach us about the Kingdom. It’s really, really good.
Discovering Joy in Work: Transforming Your Occupation into Your Vocation Shundrawn A. Thomas (IVP) $22.00 I am eager to read this soon (it just came a day or so ago) as I need it, believe me. My own job is harder and more painful than I would wish and our situated context within the current less-than-bookish culture, the broken supply chains, the shuttering of faith-based bookstores, the larger global economy, and more, make my days regularly feel “cursed.” My own sins and foibles loom large, too, so I need this. Do you? Coming from IVP as it does, I am sure it’s going to be very well done. And a quick skim leads me to think this is some fresh and practical stuff.
active in his local Chicagoland church. He is one of these young men who has already worked in very high-level corporate environments, so Discover Joy in Work might be especially appealing to those who work in the financial sector or in the corporate world. It is interesting, to me, too, that he is an African-American leader; many of the best books so far on the faith/work conversation have been by white guys. It’s nice to have this significant contribution by a person of color.
Thank God It’s Monday: Flourishing in Your Workplace Mark Greene (Muddy Pearl) $15.99 This book came out of Scripture Union in the UK a decade or more ago and was very widely respected. It was just re-issued in an updated edition by this cool Scottish publisher. Greene (who once was a Mad Man in New York, working in advertising for the famed Ogilvey agency) now is the Director of the brilliant London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. This book is packed full of stories, inspiration, transformative opportunities, great ideas about how to be a whole-life follower of Jesus in the ever-changing workplaces of the global economy. As one British Anglican put it, it is “intelligent, invigorating, inspirational, and, ultimately, indispensable.”
Work: It’s Purpose, Dignity, and Transformation Daneil M. Doriani (Presbyterian & Reformed) $15.99 You may know enough about us to know that our earliest visions for relating faith to work, to seeing our jobs as connected to the great “cultural mandate” of Genesis 1, of developing a Christian perspective on work and labor, came from our years ago working for the campus ministry called the Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO) on the committee coming up with the ideas for the very first collegiate Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh. (
I mention this because the author of this fine, no-nonsense, theologically solid (and yet very interesting) book was also once on staff with the CCO. Doriani has had other jobs too — the book tells us he’s been a security guard, construction laborer, freight handler, tennis coach and tour guide. He knows a bit about the hardships of work, the ugly stuff. He has pastored churches and has served as a faculty member of colleges, most notably, at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where he is now the vice president of strategic academic projects (and professor of theology.) My good friend Steve Garber, author of the must-read Visions of Vocation, has done some teaching at Covenant about how to prepare future pastors to equip their future congregants for work-place calls and vocations in the work-world. Not many seminaries have stepped up to make this a clear part of their ministerial formation, and Garber and Doriani have been part of that. Thanks be to God!
Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon David Kinnaman & Mark Matlock (Baker Books) $21.99 I hope you recall that we invited you to pre-order this a month ago, and it is now out! Thanks to those who pre-ordered it; we enjoyed sending a bunch out. (Say a prayer this Labor Day for the package handlers and truck drivers and mail carriers and others who make our work possible!)
Here is why I mention this now in the special Labor day issue of BookNotes: one of the five key practices that churches that maintain their relationship with their young adults and attract that age group is “To ground and motivate an ambitious generation, train for vocational discipleship.”
PRE-ORDER forthcoming due September 2019 Church for Monday: Equipping Believers for Mission at Work Dr. Svetlana Papazov (Brookstone Publishing Group) $14.99 This is another book that is mostly aimed at church leaders to help them develop a passion and the skill sets necessary in order to equip congregants to see their workplace as a missional context. Svetlana is a dynamic pastor and connected with our friends at Made to Flourish, and she and her church are highly regarded. She is energetic and entrepreneurial. She is Spirit-led, evangelical, and innovative about the church’s impact in the public sphere; her small business startup background has made her particularly sensitive to and insightful about issues of marketplace ministry.
Papazov (along with her husband, and small, multi-ethnic team) planted their Assembly of God congregation several years ago. Real Life Church, as it is known, is “an entrepreneurial church with a heart for de-churched people and for bridging the sacred and secular divide. The entrepreneurial church is not a “how” church, but a “why” church. It’s not about the methodology, but about the Christology.”
Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father’s Heart Karl Forehand (Quoir) $19.99 Karl is a new friend, a friend of some other friends, and a former pastor who now attends Brian Zahnd’s church in Missouri. Forehand’s story is gently told and it is, I think, a fairly common one, especially these days. He has shifted from a more legalistic and strict conservative faith to a more open and generous one. Memoirs of how folks have shifted in their faith journey are not uncommon and are often moving – think of Rachel Held Evans or Pete Enns, just for instance – and in a way, this is one of those sorts of stories of a traditionalist evangelical has refreshed his understanding of God.
Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care edited by David Paul Warners & Matthew Kuperus Heun (Calvin College Press) $17.99 We stock everything of this small college press (including their marvelous, brief paperbacks in their “Calvin Shorts” series.) This is a major new work and might have been well-served by being shopped around to be released on a major, prestigious publisher because Beyond Stewardship is brilliant in its overall vision and wonderful in how it has offered so many interesting, astute, and vitally important contributions to the conversations about faith and what some call creation-care. This fascinating and generative book deserves a more careful review and I hope to do that, soon.
Prophetic Whirlwind: Uncovering the Black Biblical Destiny Onleilove Chika Alston (Voices Publishing) $24.99 Again, every now and then we are just delighted to find a vibrant writer and spokesperson who is doing extraordinary work but whose book is not widely known outside of their own niche circles.
A Restless Age: How Saint Augustine Helps You Make Sense of Your Twenties Austin Gohn (with a foreword by Wesley Hill) (GCD Books) $12.99 As many are waiting on the forthcoming work by Jamie Smith (On the Road with Saint Augustine) might I suggest this as an excellent companion volume. In fact, whether you are attracted to Smith’s heady study or not, A Restless Age is the best introduction to Augustine’s Confessions I have yet seen. Everybody knows that Confessions (for any number of reasons) is an important classic in the Western canon and a must-read for anyone wanting to be fluent in the standards of ancient Christian books.
The Just and Loving Gaze of God With Us: Paul’s Apocalyptic Political Theology Henry Walter Spaulding III (Wipf & Stock) $36.00 Hank has become a good friend and a great customer of ours, even stopping by the store (on his way to and fro from, oh, say, stuff like a Princeton Barth conference where he was presenting.) Young, casual, widely read, a passionate teacher and principled supporter of indie booksellers like us – what’s not to like? Well, I have to admit, I’m inclined to promote books by authors who support us (it’s a bit annoying when folks expect us to sell their book, even if they’ve never darkened our door or sent us as much as a an email and push people to Amazon regularly on their own social media. Really?) But Hank showed up here seeking books perhaps not even knowing we had his book in our cluttered and jam-packed New Testament section. With blurbs on the back from the likes of William Cavanaugh and citing many other “ethical” readings of Pauline politics I realized quickly that The Just and Loving Gaze is a serious and important contribution to New Testament studies and contemporary discipleship. Now that we’ve met him, we’re even more thrilled to tell you about it and to commend it to you.
The Dream: A Novel Deborah Arlene (Christian Faith Publishing) $16.95 If you visit our Hearts & Minds Facebook group you might find a handful of folks offering suggestions and reviews. I invited Deborah to tell us there just a bit about her new novel in part because – whether it’s high quality, literary literature or just an inspiring, earnest story nicely told – some books deserve to be known. And there’s a bit of backstory about The Dream, and it is so frustrating. Let me explain. First, you should know that it is a story that has an anti-abortion message, or, I should say, a truly pro-life one, as the tender story embraces the controversial and painful topic of abortion by imagining the tale of a woman who is helped by good folks at a Christian crisis pregnancy center. As one who has been involved with a couple such centers, I am happy to know there is a novel that captures the life-changing stories that the care-givers in those places hear and help facilitate day in and day out. Carrying a pregnancy to term when the situation is complicated is emotionally hard, and the support these sorts of places give is often extraordinary. The hardships of an unexpected (and, at first, perhaps unwanted) pregnancy can be made less so with a little bit of lovin’ care. This shouldn’t be controversial, and all sides of the policy and legal debates should affirm that helping women with her choice to carry a crisis pregnancy is a good thing.
A More Christlike Way: A More Beautiful Faith Bradley Jersak (CWR Press) $19.99 I’m really excited to tell you about this small press release even though I don’t even know what CWR Press is; its related to CWR Magazine, which is some Jesusy Canuck ‘zine that I also don’t know much about. But I love this author! We’ve stocked other books by this ambitious thinker and Dean of the Masters of Ministry program at St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, Canada. We stock his serious academic tomes like Her Gates Will Never Be Shut about “Hell, Hope, and the New Jerusalem” to the lovely, thoughtfully done children’s picture book with sophisticated text, Jesus Showed Us! This new one, A More Christlike Way is a sequel to his A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel. In each case, Jersak is doing what other thinkers are also helping us with (I think of Brian Zahnd and his Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God) in raising up a very high Christology and insisting that however we know God, think about the Old Testament, o define the gospel itself, it has to be done through the lens of Jesus the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, God-in-the-flesh. It is hard to argue with that, it seems to me, and his pressing Christ-like and Christ-commanded compassion to its logical implications (a non-violent understanding of the atonement, a Christ-like mercy in thinking about eternity, a Kingdom-centered gospel where Christ is lifted up and actually followed, and the like) is urgent, vital, important. Theologians will debate all of this, I’m sure, but Jersak here sets forth, as Zahnd puts it, “a vision for following Jesus that is in keeping with the kind of faith that first turned the world upside down two thousand years ago.”
Calling Mother: Out of Darkness into Light Cathleen Cody Lauer (self published) $19.95 This wondrous book is a small, quiet gem, wonderfully crafted and creatively written. It is nearly a small art book – more than a poet’s chapbook – but glorious in that same, artful way; the paper quality is good and there are touches of color throughout. To have it in your hand is to realize you are experiencing something very special, owning a book that but for serendipity you may not otherwise even know about, and you will be glad. Perhaps offering an outright “thanks be to God” or a Nunc Dimittis. How did we even learn of this?
The Theopolitan Vision Peter J. Leithart (Theopolis Books/Athanasius Press) $12.95 Do you know Peter Leithart and his fascinating, Birmingham-based “Theopolis Institute”? He invites men and women into an intense, residential Fellows program relating, as they put it, “Bible, liturgy and culture.” Doc Leithart is colorful, undeniably brilliant, liturgically-minded, Reformed. You many know of his serious Bible commentaries, his little studies of Jane Austen, or his little book Shining Glory on the Terrence Malick film The Tree of Life which he relates to the book of Job. He’s done Between Babel and the Beast (on “America and Empires in Biblical Perspective”) and a curious study called Defending Constantine: The Twilight of Empire and the Dawn of Christendom that I suspect I don’t adequately understand. Leithart has written on Mercersburg theology and did a fabulous book called Solomon Among the Postmoderns. I liked this Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience. He did a big, scholarly book on the history and experience of gratitude published in hardback by Baylor University Press. And that’s not even all of it. Despite this prodigious, thoughtful output, he’s started this recent educational/formational ministry and this new little book is a bit of a manifesto.
Godly Character(s): Insights for Spiritual Passion from the Lives of 8 Women in the Bible Lisa Smith (Square Halo Books) $16.99 How can I offer a list of rare books by indie publishers and not mention our friends at the classy boutique publisher out of Lancaster, PA, called, curiously, Square Halo Books? We love this little outfit and appreciate their eager collaboration with us. (They are the ones who surprised us with a book on our bookstore’s 35th anniversary, created with chapters by friends and respected scholars, called A Book for Hearts & Minds: What to Read and Why.) You may know they do widely respected books on faith and the arts, on popular culture (like BIgger on the Inside, their book on Doctor Who) and books that teach us how to best “lean in” to and faithfully engage our contemporary world. (See, for instance, the fabulous, entertaining and deeply wise Good Posture: Engaging Current Culture with Ancient Faith by Square Halo booster and pal, Tom Becker of the Lancaster Row House Forums. And, okay, I’ll say it — my own little book, the quite handsome and meaty Serious Dreams: Big Ideas for the Rest of Your Life.) We stock all the books that Square Halo publishes and have reviewed all of their two dozen or so books here at BookNotes. They are top-shelf!
With Us: Everyday Evidence of God’s Presence Kelly Willie (XulonElite) $15.99 When this inspiring, delightful book first came out, I was eager to read it and happy to promote it. It is about a topic we think folks find helpful — the spirituality of the ordinary, so to speak — and also because it was nicely written, sensible, interesting, with some great stories and illustrations of her spiritual discoveries. One reviewer on the back cover said “With Us is a wakeup call for the soul that has been lulled to sleep by the inattentiveness to God’s presence every day.”
A Theology of the Ordinary Julie Canlis (Godspeed Press) $12.99 I mentioned above our fascination with books about ordinary life, about the spirituality of the mundane, about practicing God’s presence in the quotidian of daily life. There are remarkable books about this, and many are anecdotal or experiential or in the genre of spirituality, I suppose. But this, this is a bit different and nothing short of brilliant. Quiet, but brilliant. A Theology of the Ordinary is less a spiritually or reflection and more a theology; not academic, but still. It is written by a woman with a PhD in theology who has written a stunning, academic book on John Calvin (Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension) but the impetus for the writing of this is part of the story. And it’s a great story.
Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon David Kinnaman & Mark Matlock (Baker) $21.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59. For some in our audience, this will be a very important book as they have already read what might be seen as the first two in a trilogy co-authored by David Kinnaman. Whether you’ve read them or not, you most likely have heard of the Barna research and the books that came out about young adults who are not Christians and their views of the church (unChristian) or who have left the church of their youth (You Lost Me.) Both of those important books showed that churches of all sorts have a major problem in that many older teens and 20-something think the church is unhelpful and the gospel is irrelevant (or worse.) Those two books explain, in some detail, what the data suggests about how we in the churches have failed our young adults. In a nutshell, one might say those books diagnose the problem and feature (as they should) what we’re doing wrong.
This long-awaited third one in this series, Faith for Exiles, however, offers some practical (if at times visionary) notions based on the latest Barna studies about churches and ministries that have retained their young adults or ministries; Faith for Exiles examines programs and practices that have been successful and fruitful in effective ministry with that age group. For those that want guidance, ideas, suggestions, best practices, and solid stuff that works in doing ministry with young adults, Faith for Exiles is a must-read.
What Is a Girl Worth? My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth About Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics Rachael Denhollander (Tyndale) $26.99 OUR SALE PRCE = $21.59. We are proud to be able to promote this and trust that many other bookstores will champion this riveting, troubling and inspiring memoir of a Christian leader who has become an international hero. That she and her husband have gotten disgusting letters and social media harassment makes us want to try even harder to show off this fine Christian book. I has gotten some national attention already, received a starred review at Publishers Weekly and is going to be widely discussed. Beth Moore (herself a sexual abuse survivor) has recently said, “This is one of the most important books you’ll ever read.”
Rachael Denhollander’s voice was heard around the world when she spoke out to end the most shocking scandal in US gymnastics history. The first victim to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics team doctor who abused hundreds of young athletes, Rachael now reveals her full story for the first time. How did Nassar get away with it for so long? How did Rachael and the other survivors finally stop him and bring him to justice? And how can we protect the vulnerable in our own families, churches, and communities?
By the way, we also have the soon to be released How Much Is a Little Girl Worth? a children’s book also written by Rachel Denhollander (and illustrated by Morgan Huff) released by Tyndale Kids! ($14.99; OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99.) It’s very nicely done. More on that later…
Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times Os Guinness (IVP) $20.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00. Those that know me know that one of my favorite books — and one we promote tirelessly — is The Call: Finding and Fulfilling God’s Purpose for Your Life, which was released last year in an anniversary edition, a bit more trim in size but with some editing, expansion, and a few new chapters. This book almost single-handedly help create a hunger within certain parts of North American evangelicalism to explore the long-neglected doctrine of calling, especially as it applies to ordinary folks. For too long only priests and nuns, ministers and missionaries, got to use the language of discerning and receiving a call to a particular vocation and Guinness explores how that de-formation happened, how a revitalization of Western culture depends upon a renewed focus on faith and calling, and how a “purpose driven life” is more, much more, than many have realized. Erudite and gracious, literary and beautifully informed by great stories from history (from the Greeks and Romans through to Winston Church and many modern folks, from Picasso to the great filmmaker who created Lawrence of Arabia and the curious jazzman Coltrane.) Guinness is well read and Biblically wise and The Call is simply a contemporary masterpiece, a book nearly everyone should read at least once in their lives.
Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice edited by Mae Elise Cannon & Andrea Smith (IVP Academic) $36.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $28.80. I know there are just dozens of wonderful, beautiful, powerful books on a Christian view of justice; Biblically-informed, deeply spiritual books to inspire us to care more about what God most cares about. God moved me to tears not long ago as I read out loud a few passages which link deep knowledge of the God of the Bible with the doing of justice and I was strangely warmed again, gladly. There was a time when one had to insist these verses were really in the Bible, so meager were most church people’s familiarity with the themes of justice in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. (I still return to Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger for a good overview.) Happily, we have moved deeper into the Biblical story these days and many of our best customers are looking for more detailed or more profound studies to equip them as agents of God’s peace and justice in this distorted, unfair world.
As it becomes increasingly clear that the Christian right has no theology at all anymore, and moderate evangelicals remain pietistic with a personalized faith with little public square commitments, what theological work needs to happen to serve a Bible-centered, Christ-honoring, historically orthodox foundation for liberation, reconciliation, peace, creation-care, freedom and justice? This is the big project that Mae Cannon and Andrea Smith has taken up, bringing together some older and newer voices and it is a major project. There are amazing pieces in this handbook/anthology called Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice — serious chapters on body shame, on animal liberation, chapters by thinkers of various ethnicities and social locations on how their own status shapes their understand of the Biblical hope. Wow, this is a wild and generative compilation! Kudos to the women editors, of course, and to their evangelical publisher for doing this kind of serious work for the overturning of death-dealing idols and the flourishing of the common good. We hope to get this in very soon, but the 
May It Be So: Forty Days with the Lord’s Prayer Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson (Waterbrook) $16.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59. I mentioned above that Dave Kinnaman describes the big Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh in his forthcoming Faith for Exiles. (He will be speaking there this February, so make plans now to attend! No matter where you live — come to Pittsburgh!) Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson are two friends who have spent their share of time hanging out in the big book room at Jubilee and, in between speaking and painting and praying and playing music there (they are a talented duo) they cooked up a plan to collaborate on a book which would serve as a prompt to pray. Not exactly a book about praying nor exactly a book of prayers. The readings are nearly like Zen koans, I’ve said, Justin’s allusive and mystical and generous ruminations inspired by Scott the Painter’s very hip graphic designs. I suppose I’m not sure what came first, the pictures or the text, but somehow, they created our of that Jubilee vision an imaginative, remarkably useful, and very popular Prayer: Forty Days of Practice (Waterbrook; $16.99.) This book is one of those rare ones that they self-published — what they called their “Jubilee baby” (conceived as it was, right there in their conversations at the conference) — and it was so hugely well respected that a mainstream publisher picked it up, issuing it in an affordable hardback. This doesn’t happen often, folks, so it is an indication that it was a a very special book.
On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real World Spirituality for Restless Hearts James K.A. Smith (Brazos Press) $24.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99. With no disrespect for any of the other great authors and marvelous books coming out this fall, I think many in our circles will agree that this truly is one of the most highly anticipated and certainly will be one of the most significant spirituality books of the year. Those who followed Smith’s tour de force “Cultural Liturgies Project” comprising of three volumes (Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and Awaiting the Kingdom) or the one-volume, more accesible, You Are What You Love, you know of his affection for the great Saint Augustine from Northern Africa. Discipled by Ambrose on the mid-300s, Augustine became a Bishop, helping navigate the church’s role in a deteriorating Roman culture. How can those graciously swept up into the reign of God relate to the corrupt powers of this world? What does it look like in a world falling apart to be “in but not of?” Despite huge foibles and flaws, Augustine’s City of God shaped much Christian public theology and cultural engagement for centuries.
And so, Jamie Smith takes seriously the adage that is said to be Augustinian: if you want to know what somebody is really like, don’t ask so much what they believe, but what they love. That is the power of his best-selling You Are What You Love as it reminded both modern day evangelicals and classic mainline denominational folks that dogma and doctrine and even talk of the allusive worldview doesn’t change people’s lives. The center of gravity of the human person is the heart, not the brain, and we must re-oriented our loves, our passions, our affections, note merely try to change minds. And that, as he explains brilliantly in the “Cultural Liturgy” trio and in You Are What You Love, happens through stories. We are conscripted into stories of the good life (or what is said to be the good live), and that often happens through habits and rituals. I won’t re-iterate it now, but that’s why Smith thinks that our hopes to deepen our discipleship in ways that shape us into the sorts of Christians who can faithfully engage the issues of the day and reform the society must start in deep and thoughtful worship of the Triune God. We are what we love, after all.
Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship (Second Edition)
religious right, either: everywhere we went we heard the drums of war. I admired that Diana — a historian and sociologist with theological training and a congregational, parish educator — was willing to risk her job, perhaps her reputation within her own denomination, to speak out against this warring madness (as the old hymn puts it.) “Broken We Kneel” seems a more faithful and honest and profound and Christ-like slogan, doesn’t it? Broken We Kneel explored her own experience within a church that didn’t quite agree and what it means to adopt this posture of peacemaking and Christian identity. It is a memoir of her season coming to grips with this civil religion stuff but it is also a guide for all of us. The new edition will have some updated chapters showing how this question is as lively and contemporary as ever.
rehearse all that, but we have a whole section in the Dallastown shop which we call “books about books.” Serious literature criticism, memoirs about reading, and Christian arguments for reading widely abound. (I suppose you know we have often mentioned and featured Karen Swallow Prior’s lovely memoir of her own early years by way of the books she read, a great read called Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me and had her in the store last fall to do a presentation on her must-read book on character formation called On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books.
York theatre district (which Beth liked, even though it was fairly graphic in its description of sexuality, a racy feature some will not appreciate.) We feature important ones, especially, such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered (which we both loved!) or the latest by award winning Moroccan-born, American novelist, Laila Lalami, The Other Americans, a crime novel revealing much about immigration, and, of course, the brand new (very, very heavy) The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, who wrote last year’s amazingly well done, Pulitzer Prize Winner, The Underground Railroad (which is now out in paperback.) None of us have read it yet, and it may be too gruesome for some tastes, but 
Do you know the work of Miriam Toews, a Canadian with a Mennonite past who writes socially engaged, serious fiction such as her recent Women Talking? It is about sexual abuse within strict Amish-like communities and gained some fame when none other than Margaret Atwood tweeted, “This amazing sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of Handmaid’s Tale.” Another writer called it “an astonishment, a volcano of a novel…” and Laura Van Den Berg says it is a “flawless, ferocious work of art.”
Fallen Mountain Kimi Cunningham Grant (Amberjack Publishing) $14.99 We were alerted to this indie press book by a good friend of ours, a discerning reader and good writer herself who is a friend of the author. (Hey, Erica Young Reitz, we even saw how you are thanked in the acknowledgments for helping the author think through the ending.) Ms Grant is a central Pennsylvania native and attended Messiah College. She has won numerous poetry awards and received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship grant, so is obviously a young writer to pay attention to. And she is, indeed, a good storyteller, has a way with words, and can craft good, good pages that draw out her characters. This slow, building plot set in the mountains of North Central PA.
Light from Distant Stars Shawn Smucker (Baker) $14.99 I so badly want to explain what we like about this great new book, and have so much to say. Since the death of my mother, this book that opens in a funeral home and is largely about the relationship of a son and his deceased father, is more poignant for me than I knew when I started this review almost a month ago. I have carefully read this fascinating, entertaining, curious novel, written about it, erased it all, tried to re-write a better review, participated in a book release event party (sponsored by the author’s Lancaster friends The Row House Forum and Square Halo Gallery) and have pondered it over and over again. It means a lot to me this summer and we would be very happy if you ordered it from us so you can join in the buzz.
For starters, as we have said before, Shawn Smucker is a fine writer, a friend of Hearts & Minds, and a truly decent guy; he received great acclaim for two very well-written YA fantasy novels (The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There that we have highly recommended) and an inspiring (dare I say necessary) memoir Once We Were Strangers about his friendship with a Syrian refugee in his hometown of Lancaster, PA. He’s co-written a few biographies too, so has been honing his artful writing chops since his days as a lit major in the good program at Messiah College.
The Overstory Richard Powers (Norton) $18.95 Good friends who read a lot of contemporary fiction kept telling about this and we watched as some smart customers bought it and it was increasingly mentioned on literary blogs and appeared on “best of” lists in newspapers and journals all over the country. This was before it won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Beth eagerly picked it up this Spring and found it to be one of the most beautifully crafted works she has read in ages. She has a good eye for good writing and was so taken by some passages she put little Post-it notes on certain pages to read them out loud, later. What writing! What an artful, respected piece of modern fiction.
Evangelical MD turned environmentalist Matthew Sleeth recently wrote Reforesting Faith: What Trees Can Teach Us About God and if you’re not up for Mr. Power’s strikingly imaginative story about trees, read Sleeth, first, and then read Overstory. Or, if you find the beauty and power of a fictional story about trees and greed and conflict and life and death to be deeply compelling, then read Power’s novel first, then the non-fiction Reforesting Faith next.) In any event Richard Powers is a gifted writer, an astonishing storyteller, and his drama is thick and engaging. It’s a beauty of a book.
Shades of Light Sharon Garlough Brown IVP) $18.00 I have written about this before and a few interested customers were eager to pre-order it. We just got it into the store last week, a bit ahead of the scheduled mid-August release, and we’ve sent it out to those who have already ordered it. You may recall that I touted it as a realistic spiritual story that moved me, surprisingly so.
These four “Sensible Shoes” novels (each published by IVP) are a delight because there isn’t much popular storytelling about those sorts of topics or characters who take up intentional spiritual practices.
My Dearest Dietrich: A Novel of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Lost Love Amanda Barratt (Kregel) $21.99 This is a brand new novel that I just had to mention even though we have not yet read it. There have been a few other authors brave enough to create a novel set in World War II era Germany, using that backdrop to explore, in fictional storytelling, what it might have been like to be romantically involved with Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the years of his underground seminary and resistance to National Socialism and Hitler. We have letters from him during those years of his imprisonment starting on February 7, 1945, the day after he turned 39 when he was transferred from his prison in Berlin to Buchenwald to Regensburg to Flossenburg.
Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens (Putnam) $26.00 I mentioned this in passing, above, as it has been riding at the top (or near the top) of all the standard best-seller lists and is hugely popular this summer. It has sold more than 2 million copies (in part due to its choice as a “Reese’s Book Club” selection. (That Reese Witherspoon has very good Southern taste, I must say!)
Southernmost Silas House (Algonquin Books) $15.95 This publisher is renowned for good, classy, meaty (Southern) stories, and this one just released in paperback – called “bracing, honest, and luminous” — is no exception. The fictional Asher Sharp is an evangelical preacher who is, as it says on the back cover, “willing to give up everything for what he believes in. Except his son.”
All Manner of Things Susie Finkbeiner (Revell) $15.99 I think the simple cover and the curious title (hasn’t that ever been used as a book title before?) first struck me, as did the imagination-capturing blurb from Jocelyn Green, a Christy Award-winning author of Between Two Shores, who wrote, “Some books are meant to be read. All Manner of Things is meant to be lived in.” If the characters are real and the story important, this quote is a huge invitation, eh?
The Most Fun We Ever Had Claire Lombardo (Doubleday) $28.95 Okay, I’ll admit it. I got this into our store mostly because I loved the cover. And I read a fabulous review. (But mostly the cover.) Some people just love holding this kind of a big, thick, novel — I recently ordered for myself another hardcover copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s splendid The Signature of All Things just because such a sprawling, epic, wondrous novel deserves a material heft in the hand to match the story. The Most Fun We Ever Had, a debut novel with amazing endorsements from the likes of Richard Russo and Affinity Konar, despite the cheery title, just seems to deserve this good, fat, 500 page volume. It’s apparently an ambitious, sprawling, multi-generational novel about the life-long friendship of four sisters and their respective families. The Guardian said it could be the “literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler.” Ha.
The Tubman Command Elizabeth Cobbs (Arcade) $25.99 If you follow serious historical fiction you may know of Cobbs for her best-selling novel, The Hamilton Affair. Here she offers a fictionalized account of a lesser known event in American history, the time in May 1863 when the demoralized Union Army (having suffered fresh losses at the Battle of Chancellorsville and Fort Sumter stood to taunt the American Navy) recruited a woman with the code-name Moses. You know this is the heroic (and by that time, hunted by the Confederates) Harriet Tubman.
The Last Year of the War Susan Meissner (Berkley) $26.00 I wanted to list this since it is one Beth found very engaging and very entertaining. It is a beautifully poignant novel, with what one reviewer said “explores the complexities of love, friendship, and the fleeting truths of identity.” The prose is truly lovely, even if it highlights a dark aspect of our culture and a sad time in American history.
Piano Tide Kathleen Dean Moore (Counterpoint) $16.95 This is not a brand new novel, but we somehow had missed it, even though it was written by a memoirist and nature writer that I adore. I’ve read several of Moore’s beautiful non-fiction works (such as Pine Island Paradox and Holdfast and Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature.) Her recent polemic is important and passionate, called Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change. We stock them all, of course. I had completely missed that this philosophy professor and mom and ecologist and climate change activist had tried her hand at a novel. She’s such a good writer that I figured we should carry it.
Everything Happens for a Reason And Other Lies I’ve Loved Kate Bowler (Random House) $16.00 paperback/$26.00 hardcover I know this isn’t brand new and I have to admit neither Beth nor I had read it when it was at the height of its buzz a year ago. We knew Bowler’s impressive and charitable ethnographic study of Pentecostal and prosperity preachers (Blessed, published by Oxford University Press) and knew that, in the midst of becoming a scholar of religion and teacher at Duke Divinity School, she was diagnosed with an awful, quickly developing, terminal brain tumor. We put the book under death and dying in our store, recommended it to those experiencing illness and, more, loss. I suppose that works, but now I also want to shelve it in our ordinary memoir section; this really isn’t a systematic critique of cheesy things people say or simplistic theology or even a theodicy, as such. It is her story. It is a memoir. And I Couldn’t. Put. It. Down. I’m not kidding – I laughed and cried and read some of the good parts out loud and told everybody I knew that week that they had to read this right away. My goodness, what a read, what a storyteller, what an experience she has had.
Accidental Preacher: A Memoir Will Willimon (Eerdmans) $24.99 We want to be among the first to announce this – and note that there is a lovely Afterword by Kate Bowler. I suppose Willimon is one of those writers who most everyone who reads BookNotes would have heard of. He’s written dozens of books (which have sold over a million copies) and is often cited as one of the best preachers in America. He has been a rural pastor, an urbane preacher, a scholar, writer (including a novel), a seminary professor, a chaplain (at Duke) and a United Methodist Bishop. He has co-written books with his friend Stanley Hauerwas and is considered, by some, too theologically conservative and, by others, too theologically liberal. Some say he’s cranky, others say he’s a softy. We first heard him here in Dallastown (yes, at a small UCC church, decades ago) and he spoke at our Pittsburgh Jubilee conference. He has been outspoken on the need for the church to be theologically astute, for pastors to be caring but deep, and for the church to bear witness to the ways of Christ in society, standing against injustice, racism and apathy about poverty. He’s our kind of guy.
Called to Forgive: The Charleston Church Shooting, A Victim’s Husband, and the Path to Healing and Grace Anthony B. Thompson, with Denise George (Bethany House) $17.99 This past June was the fourth year anniversary of the awful day when Dylann Roof attended the Wednesday evening Bible study at the predominantly black Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof killed nine African-Americans as they prayed and one was Myra Thompson, the wife of Reverend Anthony Thompson.
Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor’s Struggle for Home in Rural America Ayaz Virji (Convergent) $26.00 This is pretty much just what you’d expect, but I was very, very moved, nicely entertained, a bit troubled, and very glad I picked this up. It had me hooked by the fist dramatic page. It had gotten a coveted starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and is (I think) the first book by an Islamic author published by this progressive, Christian publishing house. Love Thy Neighbor: A Muslim Doctor’s Struggle for Home is a great read — lovely, hard, important.
Embracing the Journey: A Christian Parent’s Blueprint to Loving Your LGBTQ Child Greg and Lynn McDonald (Howard Books) $26.00 Not everyone will agree with this journey – reluctant at times – towards acceptance and inclusion that these evangelical parents promote, but I do not list it firstly as a self-help guide for religious parents and their LGBTQ+ adult kids. I list it here as a memoir, a story, a captivating, engaging narrative of a family coping with their own unique situation and the conflict and renewed deepening of discipleship and faith in evoked.
Congratulations, Who Are You Again? A Memoir Harrison Scott Key (Harper Perennial) $15.99 For some of us, taking books on a vacation or sitting under a canopy in the back deck, is a special pleasure this time of year and I wanted to suggest at least one book that was wise and truly funny, engrossing and sure to make you chuckle out loud. A buddy of mine and mail order customer of ours mentioned to me that he is in a little band in his church – a bunch of older guys who get together to rock out about old guy stuff, which itself is kinda of funny – and that memoirist Harrison Scott Key was in this little side hustle of his. Holy smokes, I couldn’t believe it. Key wrote the best-selling and evidently hilarious memoir-ish collection of essays called The World’s Largest Man and thereby won the prestigious Thurber Prize. As in James Thurber. As in fine, literary comedic prose.
Whence and Whither: On Live and Living Thomas Lynch (WJK) $18.00 With a nice textured cover with French folds and deckled edges, this handsome paperback book bears a certain sort of weight, insinuating that it is serious, mature, heavy, even. And it is. The writer is the nearly legendary author of the late 1990’s book about the funeral business called The Undertaking: Life Notes from the Dismal Trade and it’s wonderful, must-read sequel, Bodies at Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Morality. These are among my all-time favorite books, by the way, and we have subsequently carried and promoted Lynch’s poetry, his memoir about going back to Ireland, Booking Passage, and, of course, his co-authored books with theologian and preacher Thomas Long on a theology of and righteous practice of funerals (The Good Funeral.) Lynch is a literate figure, intellectual and writerly, and his prose is stunning; it moves from humorous storytelling to philosophical observations, from artful lines and illuminating insight. And he wrote me a letter, once, so there’s that. I love this guy.
Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace Christie Purifoy (Zondervan) $18.99 It is one of the great joys of recent months to have gotten the chance to finally meet Pennsylvania author Christie Purifoy, a memoirist and essayist of the finest quality, who can turn a phrase like nobody’s business. A few years ago she wrote a lovely book about her spacious, old farmhouse “in four seasons” (Roots & Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons) and it was quite good. But his Placemaker book is extraordinary, delightful, compelling, enjoyable on many levels. The other evening at a book event she read movingly from a section about fermentation (you know, sauerkraut, kombucha, making pickles, even.) The Earth’s processes of death and decay, entropy, chaos and the like became a window for reflecting on our desires for control, for reigning in the chaos. She frets about these things as we do, but she also tends orchards and writes glowingly about trees. Creation and Fall and Redemption swirl together in her gorgeous reflective prose and a book about place becomes a vision for living into God’s healing ways, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Leaving the Witness: Exiting Religion and Finding a Life Amber Scorah (Viking) $26.00 I don’t usually feel a need to warn folks about a book, although this (and the next I’ll describe) carry a bit of a concern. Bear with me while I describe this too quickly. I couldn’t put it down, staying up to the wee hours, and yet was so very deeply saddened by how this story ends, as the subtitle implies, in atheism. This calm willingness to face an essentially meaningless life devoid of faith or the transcendent is unsettling, and I trust that it will not unduly influence readers in that (tragic) direction. I worry about such things.
Heavy: An American Memoir Kiese Laymon (Scribner) $26.00 hardback; $16.00 paperback Oh my, this is another that I couldn’t put down, that moved me considerably, that I want to commend, but feel like I have to offer some honest notes so you can determine if this book is for you or not. I picked it up for a variety of reasons; like many Hearts & Minds friends and customers, I am a white guy wanting to be more deeply aware of the stories of people of color; as the subtitle suggests, it is a deeply American story and I do not want to look away. I am also interested in questions of the body, how weight is seen and experienced – I mentioned feminist hero and great, great writer Roxanne Gay, above, and it was her lively endorsement of Heavy that really caught my attention. If she says the topic and the prose is that breathtaking, I knew I wanted to read it.
We used to complain about gridlock and the lack of civility. Now we have a left wing guy shooting Republican congress-people while they are playing baseball. And lefty feminista politicians get vile rape threats almost daily. Helping fuel this ugliness we have a President who cannot be civil because he can’t follow the plain Bible command to tame his tongue. Or his twitching, tweeting, fingers. We elected a man who said he was proud about his greed and who exhibits traits of narcissism, a self-professed sexual abuser and then some fundamentalist Christians circled the wagons around him, saying he gets a “mulligan.” In response many others grow more and more angry. Both sides accuse the others of holding to double standards. (Thanks to PennLive for the cartoon.) It seems to me that nobody should be happy with how things are these days.
’ve written much, before, here at BookNotes, about developing a uniquely Christian worldview that funds a distinctively Christian approach to politics. Before we get to the topic of civility and the fraying of our culture and perhaps our Republic, I want to remind us about this. See 
Heady stuff like Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies (now out in an important second edition) by David Koyzis (IVP Academic; $33.00) critiques the ideologies of the left and the right and the roots of their pagan, Enlightenment-era political philosophies. What a powerful, important read — vital for the serious-minded Christian citizen. Similarly, James K.A. Smith’s third volume in his must-read, if demanding, “Cultural Liturgies” trilogy, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology (Baker Academic; $22.99) is, again, intellectually robust but very, very important. 
We have recommended the fascinating five-views across the spectrum dialogue expertly edited by P.C. Kemeny called Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views (IVP Academic; $22.00) and the more recent five-fold back and forth in the Counterpoints series dialogue in Five Views on the Church and Politics edited by the wonderful Amy Black (Zondervan; $19.99.) Whenever I mention this I rave about Jamie Smith’s helpful contribution not only offering a Kuyperian type neo-Calvinist pluralistic approach, but in his ecumenically astute feedback after the other chapters a Lutheran, an Anabaptist, a Roman Catholic, and a historic, black church approach.
More simple but helpful is Vincent Bacote’s little The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life (Zondervan; $11.99) which can persuade the apathetic to care and those accommodated to either party to think a bit more about social holiness and Biblical distinctiveness so that our public witness might be more aligned with Christ’s rule and intent and less partisan. It’s part of a series of nearly pocket-sized called “Ordinary Theology” and is very useful.
I’m a fan of Bruce Ashford’s small and often delightful Letter to an American Christian (B&H Books; $16.99.) He is a Senior Fellow in Public Theology at the Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics (Cambridge, U.K.) and a Research Fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He is the co-author of One Nation Under God: A Christian Hope for American Politics, author of Every Square Inch: An Introduction to Cultural Engagement for Christians so he has been bringing his wholistic, if a bit conservative, Christian worldview to bear on public issues for a while, now. This one is especially fun as it is written as a kindly, pastoral letter to a young person who has recently become a Christian but is perplexed about the relationship of faith and public life here in the USA.
One of the books I think is the very best on all this is Ronald Sider’s meticulous Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement (Brazos Press; $24.00.) It offers a complex template for developing a Biblical worldview, a Christian social theory, a faithful view of political foundations, a batch of policy goals, and then a guide for thinking about detailed issues, policies and advocacy, with due Biblical diligence, theological sophistication, social savvy about realities on the ground. And, always, a good bit of humility since good citizens, even good Christian citizens who have done “all of the above” in getting their ducks in row, can still disagree. Many will disagree with Ron’s conclusions about the Biblical material or the social science data, but no one should criticize his intention to be coherently Christian and informed by good faith, good thinking, and good care for the betterment of society.
Richard Mouw’s Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (IVP; $18.00) remains the gold standard for me, and I very, very highly recommend his fabulous, small, inspiring book. I know I am not alone in declaring how much I like this book. I’ve written about it in greater detail HERE and would be delighted if you read my review and ordered a bunch. Maybe you could suggest it now as an adult Sunday school class or small group book study for this fall. It’s the best to choose, I think, for a Christian study class or faith formation group or adult ed forum and I explain why in that older BookNotes column.
I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations Sarah Stewart Holland & Beth Silvers (Nelson) $24.99 This is a delightful book, a lovely study that came out of the friendship of these two politically engaged moms with tons of grass-roots civic experience. They know their stuff, have significant disagreements, and have fun talking about them. They famously co-host the 
Unified: How Our Unlikely Friendship Gives Us Hope for a Divided Country Senator Tim Scott & Congressman Trey Gowdy (Tyndale) $16.99 What a great little book this is! It is easy to read, co-written by two elected officials – one black, one white, both Republicans — and they are, almost surprisingly in the current climate on Capitol Hill, good friends. This describes how their relationship has allowed them, compelled them, to take each other’s life experiences and views more seriously and with greater good will. For those that long for a story that gives us a glimpse of how to find harmony within diversity, this is a great read.
There is a nice companion booklet to Unified called The Friendship Challenge: A Six Week Guide to True Reconciliation – One Friendship at a Time (Tyndale; $12.99) which enables you to work for greater unity in your own community. Grab some friends and work through this together. 
Them: Why We Hate Each Other – And How to Heal Ben Sasse (St. Martin’s Press) $28.99 I hope you know the fabulous books by Senator Ben Sasse. Agree or not with his principled, mid-Western conservatism (and his rather incongruous voting history) his books are fantastic to read. He is a thoughtful, well-spoken, multi-faceted civic leader, less concerned, it seems, about politics as such and more about cultural renewal and civil society. His book The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-Of-Age Crisis–And How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance (St. Martin’s Press; now out in paperback for $17.99) was about problems with the rising generation, or, I might say, with how older Americans have raised and perhaps coddled Gen Z. He invites self-sufficiency, wide reading, consideration of things that matter, local loyalties, family ties, and the like. It’s smart and not condescending.
Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt Arthur Brooks (Broadside Books) $27.99 Wow, this subtitle alone should capture your attention and inspire you to want to start a book group, right? I have heard Mr. Brooks (no relation to David, by the way) and know him to be kind and eloquent and thoughtful. The New York Times recently reviewed this in their Book Review section which indicates its seriousness and its importance. With great endorsements by Simon Sinek and Ben Sasse, cofounder of AOL Steve Case, and important and eloquent Roman Catholic author, Bishop Robert Barron, you might realize that this will appeal to readers from across the political and religious and cultural spectrum. When he warns us not to “weaponize” the values of others that we disagree with, but to treat them with understanding and respect, he’s speaking boldly and wisely. When he says we have more in common than we realize, he’s surely correct and, as you might guess, I love hearing that good news about common ground and such. (Alas, he seems to almost under-play our most serious differences, though. In fact, some of really don’t have much in common. I appreciate the line from Os Guinness who years ago spoke of learning to live “with our deepest differences.”) Kindness and grace are hugely and urgently needed, but I wished for a bit about the structures and principles of pluralism and how we can actually honor serious diversity and what may seem like impassable conflict.
The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump Peter Wehner (HarperCollins) $25.99 This book is powerful, unrelenting, nuanced, very well-written, even elegant, and mostly right, I think. Peter Wehner worked in the Reagan White House, served President Bush, and is one of those who, we might say, helped craft the ‘80s itineration of the religious right, at least the more intellectually sound corners of that movement. Almost a decade ago he co-wrote a book with the “compassionate conservative” Michael Gerson, Wheaton grad, Bush speechwriter, now an anti-Trump, Republican Washington Post columnist. That short book which of course we continue to stock was called City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (Moody Press; $19.99) and was wise, balanced, reasonable. Mr. Wehner works at the brainy, principled, conservative, think-tank The Ethics and Public Policy Center, has written for The Atlantic and is a contributing editor to the The New York Times. I say all this to add weight to this incisive study of our current context and our dysfunctional discourse and bad views of government, politics and the use of power, so that you will take seriously his lament and diagnosis, his urgent call for reform and, at least, dignified civility.
Reforming American Politics: A Christian Perspective on Moving Past Conflict to Conversation Harold Heie (Read the Spirit) $24.99
A House United: How the Church Can Save the World Allen Hilton (Fortress) $16.99 I reviewed this at greater length in a BookNotes last fall. I highlighted it in a column I did for the Center for Public Justice, in fact. Even though it isn’t brand new, I have to list it here. I’ll admit that at first I wasn’t so sure about the title and premise — can the church save the world? But what Hilton means is powerful and poignant, and, frankly, exceedingly practical. In a nutshell, his common sense (but explored with helpful theological substance) argument is this: we cannot help heal the culture wars in our civic spaces until we within the Body of Christ (at least!) learn to respect one another. There are huge theological and ethical differences within various denominations (and even within our own congregations.) Sometimes, we allow our worldly dispositions and partisan political loyalties to trump our affection for our brothers and sisters within the one body of Christ. There may be no more practical and urgent starting point for our efforts to heal the fallout from the cultural wars than for people of faith to love one another. (Sounds a bit like John 13, doesn’t it?)