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If you’ve followed me long you know one of my favorite genres is memoir. That is, not heady detail biographies and not utterly fictional, but those creatively told stories of a piece of somebody’s life — lived well or poorly as the case may be. I often say that if the plot twists and relationship issues in some memoirs were in a novel readers might protest as it being too unexpected or twisty. But life is stranger than fiction sometimes, and I’ve always got a memoir or two going. L

Some I read for the sheer joy of the writing, for others maybe it is to get a glimpse into another sort of person I don’t know well. Often it is to say, as C.S. Lewis reminded us, that we read to discover that we are not alone. What? You too! 

Currently I’m in the middle of two that are somewhat slower reads but the rave reviews drew me in and the prose is elegant (if sometimes eccentric.) One is A Truce That Is Not Peace by the award-winning fiction writer Miriam Toews (Women Talking, Fight Night, and others) published by the prestigious W.W. Norton. The impressive intellect Laura van den Berg described it as “haunting, tragicomic, and incredibly moving inquiry into the landscapes and the people that define us.” It has great allusiveness and sometimes great rage and is, as another novelist put it, “a stunner.” The other I keep dipping back into is Small Town Girls: A Writer’s Memoir by Jayne Anne Phillips who won the Pulitzer for the fantastic novel Night Watch (set in an asylum in West Virginia after the Civil War.) I’m often draws to small town stories and memoirs and when I learned that Phillips grew up in West Virginia, I knew I had to check it out. You may recall my review from early in the summer where I raved about a edge-of-your-set story of an NYC investigative activist writing about a far right extremist outpost in WV called Strange People on the Hill and the struggles of this changing Appalachian tourist town so I’m still thinking about small-town WV. Anyway, Small Town Girls ends up being what some call “a memoir in essays.”

I’ve dipped in and out of a bunch more and there’s some I’m eager to tell you about. As entertaining as any novel, as informative (sometimes, at least) as straight nonfiction, this genre is a joy and a reminder that we are not the only ones with “one wild and precious life.” Read on.

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Roosevelt Park Rising: A Memoir of the Renewal of a Past, a Church, and a Neighborhood Reginald Smith (Reformed Journal Books) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE =  $19.99

This is a really good read, riveting in many ways, as you find yourself pulling for this black pastor serving in a conflicted (mostly white) Dutch Reformed church in a rougher part of Grand Rapids, MI. Authors you may know — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, just for instance — are involved in these congregations, two old, flagship, traditional CRC churches that merged after both congregations lost steam and members (most from classic white flight as the neighborhoods transitioned to Black and Latino.) On a good day, the tension between these two former congregations now merged was high (they fielded two different church league softball teams — and which one would their new pastor play for?) Any pastor who has navigated congregational mergers will sympathize with this dude. That he wasn’t Dutch didn’t help.

And yet, they called this remarkable person — raised on the rough streets of Chicago, eventually the first Black student to graduate from their prestigious denominational seminary (Calvin Theological), experienced in urban ministry in Paterson NJ. Some of their elders and search committee had enough of a missional vision to somehow reach the changing population in their neighborhood so he was invited to bring change to these two nearly merged congregations. Or so he thought.

Any pastor or church leader who has coped with self-doubt in the midst of congregational conflict (or who has to navigate exceptional frustration) will relate to this. Anybody who has been in a church where issues of “then” (the glory days) and “now” (harder times and less robust ministry) will appreciate reading this pastor’s honest story. As the congregation moved to fresh expressions of their vision for ministry — and added a Spanish-language component to worship — you can imagine the anxiety, the new hope and the naysayers. Curiously, one of the two previous congregations was the last church in Grand Rapids to offer a service in their original Dutch. One might think that a congregation which prided itself on its immigrant heritage would be sensitive to the experiences of the Hispanic neighbors as they assimilated into the mid-Western city. Pastor Smith tried; oh how he tried. Did I mention that he wasn’t Dutch and neither were the newcomers to their neighborhoods?

But yet, the Reverend Reginald Smith brought his Reformed worldview to his missional sense of God’s love for God’s world and for Christ’s Lordship over all things. Including the daily grind of ghetto life. He has to muster God’s grace for street hustlers of all races and of all kind; there were drug deals gone bad, shoot-outs and the fairly typical urban plethora of drunks and those affected with mental health stuff. Street people would come to church and then make scenes. New believers would be attracted to Roosevelt CRC only to be put off by the quiet racial animus pervading the congregation. Church leaders would either affirm or criticize (or both) Pastor Smith’s efforts to open itself more widely to the needs of their neighbors. It was one step forward and two steps backwards. And even with his white wife (they met when she was a student at Calvin College across the street from his seminary) it became evident he wasn’t “one of us.”

I kept thinking that his interest in cultural engagement and institutional reform and social action would resonate with these folks raised on the language of their forefather Abraham Kuyper and their unique evangelical passion to be agents of reform within the structures of socidety. Smith started doing that, talking about housing co-ops and public playgrounds and various sorts of sensitive ways to help redirect the cultural development in that part of town, hoping for better flourishing for all. There is something about the DNA of his denominations tradition (or at least there once was) that insisted that all of creation is God’s and the local church should be a conduit for missional outreach and Godly social reform.

I suppose you can see where this might be going. Reginald Smith is dedicated and serious. He’s a fun, ordinary guy, but troubled by traditional church experience that doesn’t seem to care adequately about the needs of the neighborhood. He gets involved in all sort of community development projects — everything from raising money to advocating for policy changes in local government to starting nonprofits and pursing evangelical outreach to local families. Soon he realizes more about his own sense of calling, and his own spirituality and piety nurtured not only behind the stained glass and denominational theology but in the streets, from the people, longing for a cross-cultural movement of improving lives and building community. He was ahead of his congregation and the memoir isn’t fully clear how much he understood this.

If you are interested in changing congregations, about debates about missional vision, about the relationship of prayer and public action, if you want a glimpse into the life of a working urban pastor and his wife and kids, if you care about race relations or Kingdom living among the marginalized, Roosevelt Park Rising is for you. It is an easy read, compelling, lively, honest, and helpful. Like other RJ books, I highly recomend it.

American Christians have long touted the goal of “racial reconciliation,” but Reggie Smith’s story makes clear that healing the racial divide doesn’t happen through quick fixes. Transforming a church requires changed hearts and transformed lives. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of  Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation and Live, Laugh, Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made

A wonderful book! I am so grateful for this book. I found reading it profoundly moving. Often, I was moved to tears by how Reggie was treated by a church community that I love, but, in the end, I was also moved to hope and gratitude. We owe so much to Reggie and others who have hung in there with their courageous commitment to the grand vision of a racial justice grounded in the power of the Gospel. — Richard Mouw, President Emeritus of Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World

Thy Tender Care: What Caregiving and Disability Can Teach Us About God’s Kingdom John Van Sloten (Herald Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

We have highlighted each of John Van Sloten’s various books here over the years and this one is not dissimilar in style, although it is much more personal than the others. Let me explain.

In Every Job a Parable he highlighted in each chapter a different sort of job or career and showed us something we can learn about God and His ways in the diligence of those who work in that occupation. John interviewed tons of ordinary workers and came up with a lovely list of various ways ordinary jobs can not only be an avenue of service and even build God’s Kingdom but point to attributes of the God we know in Christ. Similarly, he focused on things scientists can teach us about God in God Speaks Science and, again, there are interviews with various sorts or researchers and science experts, sidebars with a varity of guests.  Those studying the scientific details of creation surely have windows into the nature of God and that book is at once a introduction to thinking well about the sciences and about opening our vistas of who God is by way of learning what scientists know.

In this brand new one, Thy Tender Care, Van Sloten doesn’t have to interview dozens of others; he doesn’t have to tell the stories of other caregivers or family members of the disabled because he and his wife have a son, Edward, a young man, now, with Down Syndrome. Edward is also nonverbal and in this memoir of parenting John gives us glimpses — like Jesus’s parables one reviewer noted — into the deeper reality “where weakness becomes strength, difference brings life, and love speaks clearly even when there are no words.”

Yes, we can “discover God’s Kingdom in the sacred space of caregiving.” I would say that it seems that the primary audience of this book is those who are parents of or caregivers for those who have disabilities. Church leaders, school teachers, social service workers all need this insight, too, as do (well) all of us, eh? We have a large section of disabilities studies but few of the books are so clear and poignant and honest and good. If you are a caregiver or pastoral leader or educator I very highly recommend Thy Tender Care. It will help you understand the nature of such caregiving, a bit about disability-sensitive theology, and will help form your own broader vision of God’s reign.

But, yes, I’m listing it here as an enjoyable memoir because, at the heart of John’s pastoral heart and teaching gifts, sits the vivid story of his life with his son. This is John and his wife, Fran’s, book, and Edward’s. John shows — just like he did in the previous books — that ordinary life can reveal much about God and, just as Psalm 19 starts with the truth that God speaks to us in creation, so God can reveal much in the ordinary lives of orindary folks. In this case, he, a father, and Edward, a son.

The opening line is jarring. “I didn’t feel that I could love my son when he was born.”

John continues:

It pains me to think about it now — a helpless little boy with Down syndrome, his life just beginning, deprived of the fullness of a father’s love, all because his dad couldn’t handle the reality of having a child with a disability.

If that isn’t the start of a memoir-like story, I don’t know what is. True, there is Godly instruction here about the way of Jesus, about Edward’s life pointing us toward life-giving virtues, but, again, the heart of the lessons are in the story. Thank you to the Van Sloten’s for opening their lives to us and for Herald Press for publishing such honest, tender, amazing books. Love it!

Arsenio: A Memoir Arsenio Hall (Black Privilege Publishing) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I know, celebrity tell-alls are a dime a dozen and there are plenty of intriguing characters we’d enjoy hearing all about. Michael Douglas has a long-awaited one coming next month as does the great LeVar Burton; Malala Yousafzai’s moving international story from last year, Finding My Way, was just released in paperback; and Sylvester Stallone has one coming called The Steps, mostly about “Rocky” I gather; the brand new Taylor Tomlinson (Actually, Nevermind) is a collection of comedic essays but might as well be a memoir. But of all the many cool stories by so many celebrities we know and maybe love, Arsenio is more important than the rest.

I liked Arsenio back in the day, I did. I didn’t watch that much TV but late night talk shows were often on, and I admired that there was a young black guy competing with the bigger, established names. He always did a good job and was more serious than folks maybe knew. He was mentored from a distance by the likes of the great Johnny Carson and he had solid aspirations about doing this job with joy and seriousness.

In this new memoir it is clear just how funny and just how serious he indeed was. And is.

(I did not know much about the underground comedy scene of the 80s and 90s, but this explains a lot. Cleveland-born Hall ends up in Chicago, home of the legendary Second City Comedy movement. Hall later had an important mentoring sort of relationship with the vital Richard Pryor on the West Coast and his telling of these last decades of the 20th century entertainment world is really significant social history for our times today.)

I was hooked on this story and ordered the book for the shop when I heard him on the NPR show Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I recommend that interview as it shows just how innovative he was; the first to do so much good on national TV. And just how esteemed he was in the black community. He’d interview major social activists and political figures in a way that has yet to be matched. Muhammad Allie? Denzel? Luther Vandross? Nancy Wilson, the great jazz singer? Magic Johnson? Eddie Murphy? Will Smith? Tupac? Maya Angelou? Nelson Mandela? Yes, he had them all as guests. He helped move the needle on our public awareness of many Black leaders and the issues for which they advocated. He was valuied within the Black community in ways I didn’t realize. With humor and glamour and tons of grit (who knew?) Arsenio Hall was truly a groundbreaker. The 1990s were wild times and he had on his couch stars like Elton John, Tom Cruise, George Burns, Tom Hanks, Jerry Seinfeld (and Moses — Charles Heston!)  He tells how nervous Dolly Parton was and how she sat on the wrong chair — Arsinio loved how she played it. The story, like much of the book, is charming. The book is described as “no-holds-barred” but it is also full of grace.

Read his new memoir to realize how it all played out and why it is a window into a part of America culture we all know — the talk show host — and how it felt as a black comedian doing important conversations then and now. Like when George Bush bad-mouthed him so he booked candidate Bill Clinton instead, who was surprisingly very alert to issues of violence in the black community.  And the story of rocking the boat with the anti-semite Louis Farrakhan. Fascinating. Arsino is an easy read, but substantive, and I’m sure you’ll learn something new. Enjoy.

Summer of Gone: A Memoir Phil Madeira (W. Brand Publishing) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Anybody interested in alt-country or Americana music or even the indie music biz most likely knows (even if they don’t recall his name) the amazing musicianship and side-man role of performing artist, song-writer, record producer, Phil Madeira. Phil came to fame for some of us by being the other Philly in the 1970s-era Phil Keaggy Band whose story of a lifetime in the music world (most of Nashville) and leaving his overly strict sort of fundamentalism behind was powerfully chronicled in 2013’s God on the Rocks: Distilling Religion, Savoring Faith. Local friends might recall that we hosted Phil here at the shop for a book reading of that now out of print title and how he brought his guitar and played a few tunes, which was breathtakingly cool. As a member of the backing band for the legendary Emmylou Harris (the Red Dirt Boys) this was as good as it gets for a small-town shop like ours.

(Okay, we’ve hosted NT Wright who played a Dylan song on a borrowed guitar and Michael Card who was splendid on guitar and keyboards, but I digress. Phil really was very, very cool.)

If you like stuff about singer-songwriters, about tour life and producing albums and playing benefits and name dropping everybody from Keb Mo to Amy Grant to Steve Hindalong and Derri Dougherty to Buddy Miller to Cindy Morgan, you’ll dig this; he dishes a bit about some unpleasantness touring with John Cougar Mellencamp but mostly it’s all really noble. He likes almost everybody and even gives jerks a second change. I loved this glimpse into the life of a working creative but I loves his memoiristic reflections on his desire to be gracious, honest and usually kind.

But therein lies the heart of this Summer of Gone. It is about betrayal and forgiveness, about relationships gone sour — his long-standing romantic partner was by everyone’s account a very mean person and Phil took the brunt of it as she was dying of cancer. Why do some people allow nearly toxic or abusive relationships to continue? Why is the music business filled with creatives who can be so very giving, and also egotistical and self-centered, narcisistic, event? The memoir unfolds as a few years in Phil’s creative life, always in the context of a faith that is undeniable, if a bit loose at time. As we bear the weight of loss, can we live into a hope that God is still good? As we grow into self-awareness, can we live with trust and good humor? He doesn’t intend this book, I am sure, as any instruction manual to guidebook to any thing. It’s his life and as a writer and singer and painter, what else can he to but testify? It is about a hard few years, focued mostly on a painful season, a summer of loss and of being gone. This is what it was like for him.

I wished it didn’t end. From travels to produce albums in Norway to smoking Christmas Eve cigars with his Episopal priest, from the confessions of his role in broken friendships to his enduring faithfulness to his family, Summer of Gone may be about a hard season coping with a bizarre and sad relationship, but it still glows with the joy of making music, honoring old friends and family, rediscovering new sounds — he did an almost jazz instrumental album, and shifted from acoustic guitar to piano for Providence which was all about his growing up in Rhode Island. As a good writer can, he captures the skylines and horizons (literally and metaphorical) wherever he travels, making this a standout memoir. Thanks, Phil. I hope we cross paths again one day.

The Spirit in the Sky: The Power of Music in Our Search for Graceland Jeff Crosby (Bloomsbury) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

I know we raved about this previously and since it is a study of religious themes in the lives and recordings of various popular singers and musicians — from Van Morrison to Mavis Staples to Tracy Chapman and so many more — one might not expect to see it here under recent memoirs. I get it; each biography of the artist tells of their life and times, their work, their influence in the field. But yet, all of this is seen through the lens of Jeff’s youthful obsession with music and his life-long quest not only for religious spirituality but for resonance with the music he loves. Why was he attracted to Pink Floyd? How did Bruce Cockburn expand his faith towards global justice issues? How did Van’s journey “into the mystic” mirror Jeff’s own? Or guide Jeff’s own?

No, this isn’t a standard, straight-line memoir but each and every chapter includes often quite tender (and always self-aware) reflections of Jeff’’s own interests and spiritual yearnings and how the experience of listening to each artist added another window into the big search for goodness and truth for beauty and God. In a way, it really is his story.

No matter your age, if you care about music at all you’ll love hearing him talk about how he missed the Beatles on their famous Ed Sullivan TV premiere. (His parents watched it, but he had not yet caught the music bug.) If you are old enough (or a vinyl collector now) you’ll thrill just having him describe pulling an album out of its sleeve and carefully placing the needle on the turntable, and then spending hours reading the liner notes. You’ll appreciate his description of seeing Dylan live (and the journey to visit Hibbings, Minnesota, where the young Bob Zimmerman once lived.) This is as much a coming of age story and a conversion story (of sorts) and a musical awakening journey as Crosby reviews these seventeen artists as it is a study of the individual artists and albums discussed.  Sure he digs (not too deeply so it is never arcane) into the life and beliefs of Bill Withers and Paul Simon and Mickey Newberry and Laura Nyro. From Cat Stevens to George Harrison he finds much to learn about non-Christian religions and is always curious and generous. As fellow book-man and music-lover David Zimmerman puts it, “Crosby offers a lifetime’s journey into the thin space between the human and the divine.”

And, for many of us, he brings back a lot of memories, too. When was the last time you listened afresh to Seals and Croft or Marvin Gaye or the esteemed Judee Sill? Or the Beatles, for that matter? The Spirit in the Sky is, like Jeff’s great, gentle book The Language of the Soul and, like his splendid World of Wonders on the need for a Christian appreciation for books and the reading life, loaded with personal reflections, honesty, and his own brand of clear, gentle storytelling. I guess it isn’t written as a memoir, but I’m delighted to suggest it here. It’ll scratch that itch, believe me.

By the way — we are hosting a webinar with Jeff so I can interview him more about the artists and his experiences of their work. I think it will be a fun conversation (and, believe me, Jeff knows his stuff, even if much of the book is his own story encountering these artists, he gives plenty of informative detail.) It’s going to be a blast. Stay tuned for how to register (coming before long) but do put Tuesday night October 27th on your calendar now.

All the Way Home: The Incredible True Story of an American Aid Worker’s Harrowing Seven Years as an Al-Qaida Hostage Jeff Wood (Zondervan) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Do you remember the TV shows after 9-11 — intense stuff like Homeland and The Looming Towers and the docuseries Captive, which examined complex hostage negotiations including “high-profile kidnapping cases carried out by extremist organizations in regions destabilized by the post-9/11 global conflicts.” Well, this author was just such a victim and brings his amazing true story into a must-read book. It is gripping, a story of survival, geo-politics, personal faith and “new life that can emerge when all seems lost.”

Certainly all seemed lost when Wood was captured, in a blinding flash of flame “mutating into a surreal mix of terror and blood.” He was a former missionary and hostage of al Qaida. The physical brutality, I’m told, is described sparingly but the soul-crushing fear is palpable.

His capture in Northern Niger on the night of October 14th 2016 — ten years ago — led to six and a half years of unspeakable horrors. Once released (in March of 2023) he suffered PTSD which, as the story will show, nearly destroyed his Christian faith.

They say this is an incredible story of “loss and redemption, brutality and forgiveness, should-wrenching questions and soul-deep peace.” Jeff Wood learned what it means to be carried through suffering and his faith helped him realize the ultimate power and victory of the love of God. He had won (through his work with YWAM in Niger) acclaim from the United Nations for disaster risk reduction as he prepared farmers in Africa for sustainability and climate change prep. He now writes poetry and fiction and advocates for not only lang regeneration but helping trauma survivors.

Shattered: Picking Up the Pieces of My Father’s Rage Arthur Boers (Here Below) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I wrote about this at length when it first came out, and then again when I name it one of the Best Books of 2023. No lesser literary lights than Andre Dubus III raved about it (Dubus wanted to do a forward and it was an amazing blessing upon this subtle, nuanced memoir.) Now that Shattered is out in a paperback — on Here Below, that new imprint from Eerdmans featuring more literary works — I wanted to acknowledge it again. It really is an amazing memoir by a very good writer.

Shattered has much that many want in a memoir, a coming of age story, a survival narrative, a struggle against all odds to keep faith in a hurtful, constructed religious institution, a writerly sense of elegant prose and aesthetic taste. It is harsh and lovely and wise and beautiful, even as it is heartbreaking and hopeful. And it ends (thanks be to God) better than many such stories do. I love this book and I love this author.

Arthur’s story is complicated and the book covers a lot of captivating ground. You’ll be eager to  keep turning the pages. But the very short version is that he was raised in a very strictly Calvinist subculture among Dutch immigrants in Ontario. These are first or second generation immigrants who remember fighting Hitler in their occupied homeland and who most likely don’t trust their significantly Dutch CRC denomination’s flagship Calvin College. Too liberal, too accommodationist. And so Arthur comes of age being chastised severely by his hyper Calvinist parents for wanting to attend a nondenominational fellowship group for high school kids.

The restrictive church life and violent home life lead to Arthur becoming Anabaptist for a season (think nonviolent activism for peace and justice rooted in solid New Testament scholarship) and, along with being nurtured by a friendship withPresbyterian pastor and spiritual writer Eugene Peterson, he found a ministerial home in the Anglican Church of Canada. Even while publishing on (the Mennonite) Herald Press he was interested in the liturgical calendar and fixed hour prayers and the monastic movement of contemplative spirituality. His journey makes sense, but it wasn’t at all easy. You see, his father had nearly uncontrollable rage attached to his fundamentalist Calvinism and, as many youths of such homes, Arthur paid a price. I’m gathering that writing this epic, eloquent book was somehow more than cathartic. It was healing.

The title is a good one, but means more when you realize the Boer family had connections to the world-renowned glass industry back in Holland. His dad worked making glass for greenhouses in Canada and as a kid Arthur handle the dangerous panes. There is an unforgettable scene of family violence and shattered glass. Your heart will stop for a moment but it is so worth reading.

Arthur concludes — and the writing here is tender and insightful — that his father was carrying PTSD wounds from the horror of his war years in the resistance to Nazism. Maybe it is mostly me, but I think of PTSD as a plight of Viet Nam vets or the vets of the 21st century endless wars on terror. Fighting Hitler in Europe was horrible and the Boer’s family carries stress in their family DNA. Shattered is a book of honest reflection on being raised in the setting of that defining Christian worldview tinged with the wounds of wars decades previous.

Rift: A Memoir Cait West (Here Below) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.39

Speaking of the acclaimed new publishing imprint Here Below developed by Eerdmans, Rift is one of the first of their brand new releases. I might have mentioned it before but it is now out as a paperback edition of the previously released hardback and it is good to have it in a less expensive paperback but also in this growing line of literary projects. Here Below is a line of books to watch. And to buy!

Rift is not totally unlike any number of popular books these days — I don’t mean to be insensitive to suggest it is nearly a cottage industry — of stories of deconstructing one’s previously overly strict faith, of recovering from harsh religion, of escaping the often ludicrous confines of fundamentalisms. Not all of these are contemporary accounts of leaving MAGA-extremist cults, although there have been a rash of those. Some are not stories of escaping typical Protestant fundamentalism, either — just think of the hugely popular Educated, the memoir of Tara Westover or the lesser known but high octane writing of The Motorhome Prophecies: A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness by Carrie Sheffield. In any case there are a lot of such books and Rift is one I very highly recommend.

Yes, the pathos is real, the odd customs of the super-patriarchal parents at times unimaginable; this extreme courtship stuff that kept a young adult woman at home under the strict watch of her father is reprehensible. That they operated in plain sight in denominations most of us have heard of is mind-blowing. How could any denomination approve of cruelty and family weirdness like this?

Here’s the thing, or at least one of the things: the family was, on the face of it, not so bad. Yes, they fussed about the modesty of a five year old’s swimsuit; yes they homeschooled with an ideology that suggested all others were lost and corrupt, yes they insisted that girls and boys had different needs and their parenting reflected much of that. College was forbidden and a career unthinkable. But they weren’t like the off-the-grid family of Ruby Ridge or involved in extremist cults that everyone knew as unsavory. There were ordinary church people with seemingly normal lifestyles. Except…

In memoir fashion West tells her unfolding story and it is moving, elegantly written, thoughtful. The story moves and crescendos, falls back, rises again. A good novel couldn’t do it much better. As it says on the back cover it is “heartbreaking, hopeful, and blazingly honest.”

Why do some church folks dig so deep into this particular sin, this inappropriate idolatry of the masculine? How do we approach churches that hints at this kind of toxic repression of girls and young women? How bad does it have to get?

Cait’s journey to find courage to say no to this family system and her gender obsessed family developed slowly. Her love life is shattered and then rebuilt. Her faith is nearly ruined and she moves into spaces where being kept under male authority isn’t necessary. She learns most people don’t live like that. She realizes something was very, very wrong in her family of origin and the churches that in one way or another funded such ugliness.

We need good nonfiction books to help us understand this mess. I would start with Dorothy Greco’s must read For the Love of Women: Uprooting and Healing Misogyny in America (Zondervan; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.) Other memoirs will help you realize the crisis in this area — we recommend A Well-trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings or Shannon Harris’s The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife. But start with Cait West and the excellent Rift: A Memoir.

“Written with unusual sensitivity and unflinching honest, there is a sort of aching loss and gritty resilience, of brokennes, beauty, and hope.”  — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne and Live, Laugh, Love.

A Merciful Journey: The Memoir of Bill Pannell William Pannell (Cascade) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

His handful of phone calls to me meant the world. We had met at a conference out selling books somewhere and even though he worked in Southern California (at Fuller Theological Seminary) he crossed the country often and  regularly checked in with folks he knew. I learned this was not uncommon, that he was one of these rare leaders who consistently showed extraordinary kindness and strategic care. I’m sure he didn’t even realize how important this was.

As I had told him, he was the first black public speaker I ever personally encountered. I heard him at a CCO conference in Pittsburgh in maybe 1973. CCO later followed up with other legendary evangelical African American leaders for what became the Jubilee Conference, from Tom and Barbara Skinner to Elward Ellis, John Perkins, Lisa Sharon Harper, Carl Ellis, Anthony Bradly, Ekemini Uwan, Vincent Bacote, Eric Mason, Karen Ellis, Esau McCauley, and many more. But, for me, it started with Bill and his first book My Friend the Enemy released in 1968. I think I got it in 1973 or so and it was riveting and, I suppose, life-changing.

A Merciful Journey tells his story, a memoir he had been working on for years, including up to his death in 2024. It chronicles his life and education, his deep involvement with white evangelicalism (he worked for Youth for Christ for a while) and how he was always in the middle of this outsider / insider tension. After the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles he wrote The Coming Race Wars? Which was prescient; he remained always a gospel-centered evangelical wanting to share the good news of Christ’s Kingdom, but always alert to explain the ways this Biblical understanding of Christ’s work should lead to protest against injustice, wholistic missionary endeavors, bringing together word and deed, evangelism and social action. He was influenced by — and significantly influenced — popular evangelicals with this justice vision like Ron Sider and Tony Campolo, say.  His influence over the next generation of black evangelical leaders is notable — think of Brenda Salter McNeil, who called him a “trailblazer and role model of racial reconciliation.”

Two of his former students offer a forward and an afterword, Anthea Butler and Jemar Tisby, both who have distinguished academic careers with an activist style. Thank God that Bill models this approach to being “salt and light” in gracious, engaged, brave and yet well grounded ways. This lovely book explains this motivating theme of his whole life.

I sometimes think of how many good writers and culture shapers and sophisticated Christian influences there are these days. On the themes of Biblical peace, justice, and racial reconciliation there are so many good resources. But I sometimes worry that there aren’t rising leaders of the character and statue of Bill Pannell. Losing him, and then John Perkins this Spring, makes me wonder who will take his place. We should be passing out copies of this simple life story anywhere we can so that we might all learn about the life and times of a quiet, gentle giant of a man.

The resources listed in the back of A Merciful Journey include two films; one is called Black + Evangelical made by Christianity Today in which Bill features prominently. The other is produced by Jemar Tisby and Fuller, called The Gospel According to Bill Pannell. Check ‘em out.

Joyful Anyway Kate Bowler (The Dial Press) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I have already highlighted this at BookNotes and I suppose many who might want it already have it. It released this past Spring and while this is cheating a bit, I really wanted to mention it, at least in passing.

I suppose you know her first two memoirs, that are among my all time favorites. They explain her life-threatening brain tumor and how she, as a witty and brash religion PhD (studying the “name it and claim it” sort of prosperity gospel preachers) with a teaching job at Duke, and a couple young ones in the house, realized she might soon die. She takes the journey with pathos and lots of cheeky humor; she is bold and funny and honest and a great, great storyteller. I’ve read both Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved) and No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) twice!

We could say that Joyful Anyway is ore of the same — serious advice brought to you in the form of laugh-out-loud (or, as the case may be, tissue-needed ) stories. Or, we could say, it is autobiographical theology, Christian testimony of an off-beat source, offering what one reviewer called “luminous clarity and unsentimental grace.” I sometimes call her this generations Anne Lamott. I love the observation of Jerry Seinfeld (!) Who notes that she “suffers no fools, especially the toxic optimists.”

But yet, if she rejects the cheeriness of the “everything happens for a reason” optimism and rejects the certainty that God will heal you no matter what, how does she invite us to joy? Well, with a hella lot of realism and a lovely bit of grace. She brings light and goodness to our aches.

Joyful Anyway is not a call to be happy or to deny the sorrows of life. But it is charming. and full of resilience. And, goofy as the cover looks, it is profound. What a collection of down-to-earth episodes from her fascinating life!

And the Sea Was No More: Reading the Bible in the Deep Dave Nienhuis (Eerdmans) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Okay, I have only started this and I can’t say too much. But, man, is it engaging, even stunning. The thesis is something that captured my attention immediately before I knew a thing about the book or the author, who I know realize is friends with friends of mine and is widely respected in several important circles. (The blurbs on the back are from Michael Curry, the presiding bishop of the Episopal Church and Chuck DeGroat from Western Theological Seminary whose new book I touted last week, and Brenda Salter McNeil, who was named above as she was a student of the late, great William Pannell.) So he gets around, which is reassuring, but I’d have bought this book even if I didn’t know anything about the calibre of the author.

You see, this is a memoir about reading the Bible. I know most BookNotes fans are bookworms but I also assume your most often read volume, the Book of all books, is your Bible. But reading it isn’t always easy and how to apply it isn’t always obvious. I don’t know a thoughtful soul who doesn’t feel weird reading some of these stories. Even the lovely one can cause us to stop short. How many times have you scribbled in the margins or underlined something (or blamed the book shut in exasperation)? Reading the Bible is a human activity and even with the help of the promised Holy Spirit (and situated in a supportive community of fellow-readers) it is something, is it not?

I am not sure I can say much more but this book is not mostly about intellectual challenges with perplexing texts. It is, rather, about being overwhelmed. It is about Dave Nienhuis’s story of his emotional trauma (experienced as a child) and how that interior brokenness led to panic attacks and more. Can this book bring healing and hope when one brings such baggage to the text? This is not theoretical. This is not a test.

And the Sea Was No More strikes me as a brilliant title for a book — the sea was a dangerous place in land-locked Judea and the ancients viewed the dark and forbidding ocean as the creation at it’s most out-of-control. Or so I’ve heard. And somehow it is tamed — isn’t our title phrase a line from the eschatological promise of new creation? I can’t believe God doesn’t like ocean waves and sandy beaches or deep sea mysteries. No, it is the foreboding, the danger, the scary deep that the ancients feared that is “no more.”

Here is what is really going on in this brand new memoir: “When a panic attack shattered his world, leaving him growing in a chaos he couldn’t name, biblical scholar Dave Nienhuis discovered something unexpected: Scripture itself offered language for his anguish. The Bible’s recurring image of the menacing Deep — the watery chaos that threatens to overwhelm — spoke of him when he had no words of his own.”  Part memoir, part confession, part Bible study, And the Sea Was No More looks like a fabulous study and a great story.

I saw an interview at the Eerdmans blog and he quoted T.S. Eliot’s line about what T.S. Eliot once called a raid on the inarticulate. So he’s a smart dude. Nienhuis continues:

I’d been through a horrible event that tossed me into a world of suffering, and though I made it through to the other side, I found I lacked words to describe what I’d experienced. And because I couldn’t articulate it, I couldn’t incorporate it into my life — I couldn’t speak honestly with God or truthfully with others about it. I couldn’t embrace it, fully, as a part of my life’s story.

 

Then, one day, I was surprised by Scripture. As a Bible professor I’ve sometimes told my students that we come to the Bible to learn God’s story, only to discover it has the capacity to tell our own story better than we could have told it ourselves. This was proven true for me when I rediscovered the biblical theme of the watery Deep.

No matter how hurt you are, no matter the nature of your woundedness,  no matter how confused, no matter how acutely you feel our broken world these days, as Nienhuis puts it, this new book “reveals that the only way through the Deep is to follow the slaughtered Lamb who went down into the waters and came out the other side, scarred and singing, follow me.”

And the Sea Was No More is a rare work of depth and honesty. Dave Nienhuis refuses trite answers to challenging biblical and existential questions, creating space for mystery, lament, and truth-telling. In doing so, he offers what we most need and what we know today to be the antidote to ongoing trauma and woundedness–a compassionate witness to our pain, and faithful companionship when we find ourselves in the deep. — Chuck DeGroat, professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality, Western Theological Seminary; author of Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself–And to God–When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering and the brand new Who You’re Becoming: The Slow and Courageous Work of Cultivating Character in a Narcissistic Age

Dave Nienhuis has written a remarkable book: honest, unsettling, and full of theological wisdom. And the Sea Was No More speaks with rare depth to the realities of trauma, anxiety, shame, and embodied suffering, while resisting the false comfort of simplistic religious answers. What emerges instead is a vision of faith shaped by lament, truth-telling, and the discovery of God’s presence in the very places where people often feel most abandoned. This is a deeply humane and profoundly Christian work. It will be of great importance to those going through suffering and to those who seek to accompany them with greater care, wisdom, and compassion. — John Swinton, professor in practical theology and pastoral care, University of Aberdeen; author of Seeking Sanctuary, Finding Shalom: Toward a Deeper Practical Theology of Mental Health

Conversion Therapy Dropout: A Queer Story of Faith and Belonging Timothy Schrader Rodriguez (Broadleaf) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

When I read a memoir I want it to entertain me, capture my imagination, make me feel something close to reading fiction, and, hopefully make me a better person my understanding something afresh. I may not be fashionable to say it in some circles these days but I want a good story to give me greater empathy. To walk a mile, as they say, in another’s shoes.

Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez’s stunningly honest story did all of that for me. Like him or his choices or not, Conversion Therapy Dropout is a fabulous read, and I recommend it.

Look: most of us know that the much touted “pray the gay away” strategy that was all the rage for decades in most evangelical circles (not to mention many Catholic and mainline Protestant churches) was fraudulent. Besides the critics that said it was just cruel to insist that people change their own sexual orientations, or to say God expected such a seemingly impossible change, increasingly a decade or so ago voices began to emerge saying that the stories of success were fabricated, that the leaders were themselves closed gays, and that much of the apparantly well-intended ministries like Exodus International were a sham. It was more than a decade ago that Exodus International fully shuttered its doors and Alan Chambers, the President of Exodus wrote My Exodus: From Fear to Grace which was bravely published by Zondervan.

Memoirs of those chewed up by the evangelical world’s hostility to persons of the LGBTQ community are many. I’ve reviewed the heart-breaking memoir Out of Focus: My Story of Sexuality, Shame, and Toxic Evangelicalism by Amber Cantorna who was rejected by her father (who ironically worked for the pro-family Focus on the Family.) I’ve suggested Affirming: A Memoir of Faith, Sexuality, and Staying the Church by Sally Gary, another heartbreaking but honest memoir of a thoughtful evangelical gay woman.

But Conversion Therapy Dropout has a different tone than these stories that focus mostly on the family relationships of the authors. Rodriguez tells of his becoming an early internet guru and learning to do marketing and online campaigns for evangelical ministries. From megachurches to Christian worship-music record labels, from well known celebrity pastors to various missionary projects, Timothy knew the leaders, was trusted by them to crank out good digital content, and he was a behind the scenes regular at some of the nation’s leading evangelical gatherings. Once he became known for that niche skill, he did workshops and trainings for leaders of all kinds of cool churches that were embracing the digital age. This lead him to get job offers from places like Hillsong, Australia.

On one hand, this alone is a worthy story, or almost, anyway. A young student is mentored in the faith, gets a couple of jobs at a couple of medium sized churches, and sooner or later is guided towards service in bigger, more influential platforms. Its’s fascinating and anyone that has mentored young adults (or have hired young adults in their own congregations or parachurch ministries) will smile over some of this.

The memoir move alongs in a few phases: his own godliness and early awakening of his same sex attraction, his shame and struggle (and joining pretty secretive support groups) and the valiant effort to trust God for some inner transformation that would lead him out of being gay.

Eventually he attends some groups that are less hateful about it all, still insisting that same sex partnerships are not God’s will but that gay Christians need not be saddled with shame over it. He never heard such liberating news that one’s identity might be as a gay Christian with the need for sexual purity like with any other unmarried hetero Christian. Those moderately accepting spaces held his interest for a while until he realized the later homophobia and hostility still lingering within those circles. All the while he is trying to find an evangelical church home, he loves the charismatic experiences of Pentecostal churches, and he adores, mostly, the rock power worship teams of places like Hillsong. They are gay friendly, they say, as song as it is “don’t ask don’t tell.” You will read about the personal questions of integrity and honor that he struggles with, wanting to be honest about his struggles and wanting to be candid about his distaste not only for the painfully crude conversion therapy models, but for the disdain and ugliness behind much of it. There are a lot of jokes in this book, but it is tear-inducing as well. What harm some church movements put people through!

It is anguishing to read about a person who so badly wanted to be a part of churches that continually kept shutting him out. I’m struck by how vulnerable Tim is here, and how gracious he is, given what he has experienced.

You can imagine where all this leads and he finally finds a place of full acceptance and belonging. It entails fresh relationships, new understanding of theological process, and a different sort of spirituality and a new church home. It asks big questions about the nature of being made in the image of God, what we know about human sexual desire, and what it means to be accepting of others.  It is on one hand “raw, radiant field notes on survival” and it is also a moving story of letting go.

The forward is very lovely, a brave and celebratory affirmation by Shauna Niequist. As she writes,

All of our stories are worth telling, of course. But some stories have been going untold for too long, and this is one of them. This is a story whose time has come and I’ll be pressing this book into the hands of so many people.

This is a story that has the power to reshape our churches, to mend the hearts of those we’ve wronged, and to build a more beautiful, just, inclusive, Jesus-centered future for us all, and for generations to come.

Our Knives Will Save Us: Dispatches from a White Mountain Apache Chef Nephi Craig (Penguin Press) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

For those who are foodies or listen to the NPR podcast “The Splendid Table” or like international cultural stuff, this riveting memoir is sure to please. It isn’t just about cooking, though, as this indigenous Apache chef has led a dramatic life. He has struggled with substance abuse and at eighteen years old was facing felony charges when a merciful and wise judge sentenced him to either going back to school or find a job. Nephi Craig turned over a new lease on live and enrolled in a culinary arts program where he was surprised to find his passion for cooking.

He also experienced while there, despite being not far from the Navajo Rez, a “profound dissonance as the only Indigenous person in the kitchen, preparing European recipes that — disguised by their French and Italian names — relied on ingredients native to the Americas.”

Wow.

This story untangles some of the buried histories of Indigenous cultivars (tomato, cacao, acorns, and amaranth) “each one a portal into possibility as well as a marker of the violent legacy of colonization.”  Yet, some reviewers have comments on the joy and gentleness in the prose. Chef Nephi Craig is not only a historian a Indigenous footways and a very fine chef, but a good educator and kind mentor who has “walked through an often treacherous path which evolved from a culinary pursuit to a life of incredible purpose.” Daphne Miller (author of Farmacology) says it shows how food can nourish not only our bodies but our souls.

Even as he wrestled with addiction Chef Craig travelled around the world, serving high-end restaurants and fine dining places from Brazil to Germany to Japan. But, of course, he realized food could help with his recovery and the recovery of his people.

A visionary blend of Indigenous food, culture, and decolonization, Our Knives Will Save Us traces Craig’s deeply personal journey while offering a grounded history of the White Mountain Apache and Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island. Guided by mentors, parents, elders, and chefs, Craig confronts settler culinary colonialism and the erasure of Native food knowledge. His return to Indigenous traditions is inspirational and profound. This is one of the most important and powerful books about recovery, decolonization, and resurgence that I have read. — Dr. Michael Yellow Bird, professor and former dean of social work at the University of Manitoba, Arikara, co-author of Sahnish (Arikara) Ethnobotany and Decolonizing Pathways Towards Integrative Healing in Social Work

Things In Nature Merely Grow Yiyun Li (Picador) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I have only dipped into this, just out in paperback, a bracing book that the New York Times Book Review said was “Strange and profound and fiercely determine not to look away.”

You see, Ms Li tells us, frankly, “There is no good way to say this. My husband and I had two children and we lost them both: Vincent in 2017 at sixteen, James in 2024 at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.”

Can you imagine?  Of course the prose, as one reviewer noted, “cuts deeply.” She is a meditative writer, but also deep philosophically, so part of her memoir is a reflection on the limits of language in describing loss. What words can hold a place for her sons? Apparantly some, as she has given us the great gift of a whole book’s worth. She is a deep thinker and it is a gift — as an NPR reviewer put it, “to be in Li’s head.” It is a rare privilege watching her figure out how to write about such things. In this, Thins In Nature Merely Grow is a powerful memoir, yes, but also a bit of a guide, a tentative lifeline into the abyss.

Yiyun Li is a prolific novelist and has won the Pulitzer Prize in 2026 for Things in Nature… as well as the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction; it was a finalist for a number of prestigious awards (including the PEN “Best Book of the Year.” And the National Book Award.) We congratulate her on this, but can’t say much more than that what I’ve dipped into is hard and beautiful and touching and anguished, exceptional.

Raiding the Heartland: An American Story of Deportation and Resistance William D. Lopez (Johns Hopkins University Press) $28.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.16

I suppose this isn’t a typical memoir in terms of the rules of the genre. Let’s call it “narrative nonfiction” where an author writing a report or expose so enters the scene that the journalism that unfolds is very much first-person, real-time, action-oriented storytelling. It is less about the author’s own life, so in that sense it isn’t memoir, but it is first-hand storytelling about a given time and place.

And, my friends, the time and place is now, in these United States, and the book tells about how ICE is doing terrible things to people and to their towns, businesses, churches, teams,and locales, especially in the mid-West. Again today I was adding a comment to a social media post that has asserted simply that if people were fully legal, ICE wouldn’t bother them. If they were citizens, they wouldn’t be detained. Of course I replied that this simply is not true. Mark it up to unjust intent or bad training or Trump’s quotas or sloppiness or racism, but the ICE programs have been brutal and often illegal, detaining perfectly legal fellow citizens and those (legally) awaiting green cards or (legally) awaiting asylum claims. Raiding the Heartland is less about these injustices of ICE against people who ought not be captured, but more broadly about the impact of this era of mass deportation on the lives and schools and churches and business in American neighborhoods.

It is colorfullly and passionately written as the author (a public health scholar from the University of Michigan) tells of his experiences on the trail following this story, writing it as a sequel to his acclaimed Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid. I’ll let the back cover reviewers tell you why we recommend it.

A work of narrative nonfiction that grabs readers from the opening pages and doesn’t let go. Raiding the Heartland is a well-told, sometimes personal, often infuriating tale enriched with stories from across the U.S. that effectively shows deportations aren’t just an immigrant story but an essentially American one. — Gary Rivlin, author of AI Valley and Katrina: After the Flood

Raiding the Heartland is an absolute must-read in this terrifying political moment. Lopez deftly chronicles what it means to render entire communities fearful as they attend church, take children to school, and make their livings. But his rescuing of how these same communities navigate and resist this fear will inspire in ways beautiful and necessary. — Heather Anne Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy

The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness Cal Flyn (Viking Press) $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

Travel writing is an armchair traveler’s delight, artfully crafted memoirs and tales of going here and there. We have a section of books in our shop about pilgrimage, too, that unique kind of spiritual travel writing about one’s physical journey. I’ll admit The Savage Landscape is not a memoir in the traditional sense nor is it a reflection on the spirituality of pilgrimage. But what is it — first person nature writing, narrative nonfiction, personal essay, travel guide, stories of anthropology? Yes, and more.

The Savage Landscape starts with a very memoir-like recollection of an encounter with a bureaucratic sign (and sign in) as she horse-backed days journey away from any other signs of civilization in the Colorado Rockies. It annoyed her, and as she ruminated on that first page I was hooked. I’ve not gotten far in this far-flung story of Cal Flyn journeys to find answers about the very definition of wilderness. But as one Pulitzer Prize winning author put it in review, it is about “searching in the best sense — full of ideas, beauty, doubts, and adventures.”

Flyn is (as the world-class Pico Iyer notes) “one of the most exciting writers around. She is obviously learned and a clear-headed writer, but yet full of exuberance and a poetic sensibility, even lyrical. She is no Annie Dillard as she is driven not be mere observation of creation, but engaging the wildness of it all, the places that are hardest to find, the truly untamed places, and the people who, for better or worse, are usefully nearby. And, as Iyer puts it, her stories “open one door after another — to wonder, to terror, to rich and mixed feelings, so that we can see the world anew.” Call it a “bracing meditation” or a collection of global adventures into the wild, or a beautiful memoir of her quest, but The Savage Landscape is amazing.

She visits (and has stunning full color photos of) places not only in the US like Yellowstone but tracks gorillas in Uganda, spends time in zodiac boats off the coast of Antarctica, travels with wild game hunters in Mozambique, visits with the Yanomami tribe in Brazil, hikes the slopes above Lake Phoksundo in Nepal, and has mysterious pictures of the “Cloud of Unknowing” in the Grampian Mountains of Scotland. To name a few of the places her travels take her.

She is like Barry Lopez on steroids, a respected writer, having filed reports for outlets as diverse as National Geographic to Granta to The Wall Street Journal. Her previous book was Islands of Abandonment.

Remembering: A Biography of Books Stanley Hauerwas (Cascade) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

I wanted to end with a round number of books but I thought of this one which I had to mention. I had not reviewed this before, and while this isn’t a conventional autobiography, it is somewhat like a memoir, and it is one I intended to celebrate months ago. How did I miss not telling you about it? (Or maybe I did, in passing.) It is an amazing book to own and it is an important set of essays by one of our important living theologians and scholarly ethicists. I am sure most BookNotes readers have heard of the cranky, Christ-centered Texan who did his doctoral work at Yale and taught for decades at the University of Notre Dame and then at Duke. He is a figure you should know.

Most popularly he is known for penning some important, accessible books with is friend William Willimon and, philosophically, for any number of heavy titles about narrative theology, Biblical studies, medical ethics, the nature of community, and radical Christian faithfulness. His work on virtue ethics is nearly seminal and his call to mainline Protestants to take seriously the call of Christ to nonviolence has been very, very important for our contemporary social ethics. We love his recently published small collection of excerpts and sermons published by Plough called Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible with its lovely introduction by Tish Harrison Warren. In 2010 he did a bone fide memoir simply called Hannah’s Child. I hope you know it.

Earlier this year, though, this curious title came out to little fanfare and while I was very, very excited about it, it is the sort of book one can dip in to somewhat haphazardly, and so I’ve had it laying around my bedroom for months. And what a treat it is for those who are interested in such things. Somewhat like Karen Swallow Prior’s first fabulous collection Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me or like Jon Sweeney’s My Life in Seventeen Books: A Literary Memoir, Hauerwas here tells about his intellectual journey by way of a series of reflections on his various books.

Is there such a thing as a philosopher’s memoir focusing on his or her intellectual development? I suppose there is, and this little volume is a good example.

In the lengthy introduction Hauerwas has a section sub-titled “A Brief History of Where I (We) Have Been and Where I (We) May Be.” Okay, then. He has six chapters looking at six eras of his publishing work, starting with the first chapter discussing books pubished in 1974 through 1981; the most recent era goes from 2011 (Working with Words) to his recent little Plough title.

For those who know Stanley Hauerwas is a legend, this book identifies which parts of the legend are true. For those who’ve scratched at the elephant of his work, knowing only a tusk, a tail, or a trunk and not grasping how it all fits in one body, this volume embraces the whole. For those who wonder if he’s changed his mind, here are the answers. To read it is like tidying an office after fifty years–and pausing to cherish, ponder, and rediscover. — Sam Wells, Vicar, St Martin-in-the-Fields, author of Constructing an Incarnational Theology and Walk Humbly: Encouragements for Living, Working, and Being

It is difficult to overstate the impact of Stanley Hauerwas on the last fifty years of Christian ethics. As he here narrates (with characteristic candor) the story of the forty-six (now forty-seven) books he has written over that half century, what emerges is a strikingly unified body of work, a corpus that places on compelling display the practical character of Christian convictions amidst the steady decline of mainstream American Protestant delusions of control over history. Readers are thereby invited to witness, and thereby potentially also carry on, Hauerwas’s remarkable journey of faithfulness. — Jennifer A. Herdt Professor of Christian Ethics, Yale University, author of Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices

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I was especially exuberant in the last BookNotes naming some incredibly good books, rich reads and fun titles. I can hardly believe it, but I’m equally enthused about this week’s newsletter, naming other titles that are practically must-reads, great titles for discerning nonfiction readers.

We can order for you almost anything for you so whatever your book needs are, I hope you allow us to help you.  But, man, these books are ones you should know about.

This started out as a list of authors to support who have books coming in late September or early October — it was going to be an invitation to pre-order them. All but two have come early, though, so what was once a plan to invite pre-orders is now a mix of brand new releases and those two that is just around the corner, the John Mark Comer one on silence and the Barbara Kingsolver novel. Both are eagerly anticpated.

As always, you are invited to use the secure order form page by click on the order tab at the end of this column.

 

Tell us what you want and how you want to pay and we’ll take it from there.

Fierce & Faithful: 25 Women of the Bible Who Dared to Trust God Carmen Joy Imes & Nijay Gupta, illustrated by Jade Van Der Zalm (IVP) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

We just got these in — almost a month early! — and we’ve already sold some (thanks to the Hearts & Minds shout-out from our friend, Carmen Imes and from Nijay, Gupta.) We couldn’t be happier with this great hardback with great writing, fabulous insight, and fantastic art by the accomplished Van Der Zalm. What a fantastic book for kids maybe ages maybe 8 – 12.

There are plenty of other such books lifting up for boys and girls the unique role of women in the Biblical drama. Some are quite good. But there is something about this that makes it stand above the rest. For starters, no other kids books on this topic is written by top-notch, world-class, published Biblical scholars. Dr. Imes is an Old Testament prof at Biola University and author of several books (and she obviously does the first half of this collection of stories) and Dr. Gupta teaches New Testament at Northern Theological Seminary and is author of many more books, including Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church  on this exact topic and, even more recently, Paul: or the World: A Grounded Vision for Finding Meaning in This Life–Not Just the Next which I raved about earlier at BookNotes.) He obviously does the New Testament portion of these stories. To say they both know their stuff is putting it mildly and it is very cool to have such good thinkers and teachers doing a book for older kids.

And, nicely, they both are upbeat, pleasant speakers, and their writing is loaded with curiosity and adventure. (Not every academic scholar has the capacity to write children’s lit, you know.)  It may be a “plot twist” as the back cover puts it, but women star in some of the most powerful stories in all of Sacred Scripture and they know these stories well. Granted, most Bible stories feature men, but women play a signifcant and sometimes essential role in the unfolding drama of redemption. In Fierce and Faithful, we get very well -told introductions to 25 key women. Carmen writes about the women found in the Old Testament and Nijay writes about the women of the gospels and epistles of the New Testament. These are remarkable stories and in their telling, the importance shines through. Some of the stories are fierce, some tender, all about faithfulness — God’s true goodness and the way women rose to the occasion to play their part. There are maps and  interesting sidebars and a few questions to consider (“is violence ever okay?” “what is sin?”) and a regular “Your Turn” section inviting readers to do their part.

Kudos to Jade Van Der Zalm for the great illustrations. We love her work in the larger-sized kid’s picture book The Story of Home: God At Work int he Bible’s Tales of Home and The Story of Water: God at Work in the Bible’s Watery Tales. Glad for her colorful role in Fierce and Faithful. It really is a must-have resource if you care about children, and I hope it ends up in church libraries everywhere. And if you are fans of the energetic social media presence of Carmen and/or Nijay, you know you want to have this. Order it today, please.

he Spirit in the Sky: The Power of Music in Our Search for Graceland Jeff Crosby (Bloomsbury Academic) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

Let me say this right off the bat — even though this is on a prestigious scholarly press, it is not a dry or dense academic treatise. It is a gentle and inviting report from Jeff’s own soul, or, at least, from his turntable and headphones. It is a truly fascinating set of 17 essays on a variety of recording artists that have shaped the spiritual longings and search for meaning for Jeff. (And, frankly, for generations and countless thousands like him, including yours truly.)  Since most of these great artists have their roots in the 60s and 70s pop and softer rock — from Paul Simon to Cat Stevens to the Staple Singers to Van Morrison to Seals and Crofts — Spirit in the Sky will appeal especially to we aging baby boomers. (And if you remember that Norman Greenbaum hit from 1969, good on you!) But as he notes, younger fans have been routinely drawn to older sounds and kids today are fierce in their appreciation not just of early Dylan, but of many of the artists in this fun collection.

It isn’t all soft folkie rock like his wonderful chapter on Laura Nyro and his great piece on Dylan — he has a chapter on Pink Floyd and the final one is “What’s Going On” about, obviously, Marvin Gaye. His chapter on the Beatles that ends up being mostly about All Things Must Pass the 1970 triple album by George Harrison, again, is not just about acoustic folk.

While I loved his Bruce Cockburn chapter (I would have liked it more if he had cited the essential Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination by Brian Walsh) and I am surprisingly cited in his very good Paul Simon chapter, I really like his Van Morrison piece the best. (Although his “Lean on Me” chapter about Bill Withers was really lovely and deep fans who know the lesser known Judee Sill will love that chapter.) Perhaps the least known artist he reviews is, actually, an old pal of ours who has performed for Hearts & Minds, in fact, the incredibly talented Brooks Williams (and oh how I loved the songs Jeff mentions — “Railwalker” and “Jubilee” and others inspired by great writers like Walker Percy and Frederick Buechner.) The artists who is the youngest, I think, is Tracy Chapman, and it is a very good look at her work. None of the chapters were duds and none overstated the matter.  But they all played their part and he invites us to listen — in the words of Peter Mayer of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, “to the songs that awaken courage and set free the sacred spark within.”

In each chapter Jeff weaves together a brief biography, a bit of a discography, and stories about how each artist and their music nurtured his own life — some from before he made a profession of Christian faith, others that enhanced and deepened his newer faith, and others that God used in common grace to inspire, comfort, or encourage him even as a more mature follower of Christ. Although he doesn’t belabor it, this is a beautiful case study of what we call “natural theology” or “common grace” and without breathy theology, shows how Christian people can appreciate the popular arts. Right on!

I know I am not alone in naming musical artists who have been near companions for my own spiritual journey. For me, I’d have to also name Jackson Browne and Bill Mallonee (formerly of Vigilantes of Love, but now better known for his vast solo, America work.) I suppose I’d mention the many albums of the Indigo Girls and much of U2, not to mention the Boss and Joni and Ricki Lee Jones. I really, really value the work of Mark Heard and Pierce Pettis. The aforementioned Cockburn, obviously. And this is what might happen if you read The Spirit In the Sky and listen in over Jeff’s shoulder as he tells about luminous moments, hit songs and deep cuts, songs and live shows and artists who touched him; you will be inspired to think of your past, the moments of music that touched your life. The book is worth every penny, if only for that.

Fan that I am, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the many stories he tells — about his own journey, the power of so-called secular music, and the background vignettes about the artists and their times. I am hoping to host a webinar conversing with Jeff about all this. He’s got a playlist (and bibliography) for each artist although I don’t know if we’d legally allowed to play those tracks. But we sure can talk about the book and it will be a truly happy and fantastic conversation. Stay tuned for more info on that.

Jeff Crosby, as you may know, wrote the wonderful book called The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Language of Our Hearts (in which readers learn of his love of music and the way in which popular music can shape our values and mindset.) He also wrote the spectacular World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading which also tells a good part of his story as a bookstore worker and publishing industry exec. Books and music, taken in as part of a journey of Christian discipleship. What’s not to love? Have you searched for Graceland? Do you know anybody who has?  Order The Spirit In the Sky today.

The Stories We Live By: Seven Cultural Myths That Fail Us and the Story That Never Will Timothy Keller & Michael Keller (Zondervan) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I gather this is the late, great Tim Keller’s final book, finished up by his son, Michael Keller, a long-standing pastor in the Redeemer urban New York network of PCA churches. Both Keller’s are serious thinkers, culturally learned and savvy, and have a gospel-centered heart for sharing truly good news — a true, better, more beautiful story — to those lost in the anguish of contemporary modernity.

It is more than a cheap truism that we are the stories we live by. We are shaped by narrative and below the surface myths and worldviews, and the fast-paced secularizing culture continues to offer us alternative stories to live by. Slogans and cliches and deeply formative values have gripped most of us, at least in some respects, and this book tries to help ordinary folks analyze the assumptions of these less than adequate stories and offer “the story that will not fail us.” Perhaps if you loved (as I did) Keller’s Counterfeit Gods on the idols of money, sex, and power, the brand new The Stories We Live By will resonate.

Although this offers fairly sophisticated and illuminating cultural analysis, it is written not for armchair philosophers but for all of us trying to live well in our anxious world. What do we make of stories that tell us to “do what makes you happy” or “be true to yourself”? What does it mean to “life free” or other such slogans that offer (even promise?) The good life? Are these hidden (or not so hidden as the case may be) narratives really that important? And really that deforming? Is there some vision that might “point the way to the life we’ve been looking for”?

This book is obviously one we all need. I think it is especially germane to those in their young adult years, those seeking a vision for life, those open to asking the deepest questions about truth and goodness, beauty and justice, meaning and purpose. In a sense, this is a book of cultural apologetics and uses commonly heard myths of our time as a springboard for asking bigger, deeper questions. What if the real story, the truest true story, is “a story that offers a hope able to sustain us through suffering — grounded in a story bigger than death itself”? The Stories We Live By gives us just such a hope. I hope you buy at least one to have around to share when you most need it…

In God We Trust: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? John Fea (WJK) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

You may recall my excited review of a big book this summer by the insistent whistleblower and fact-checker John Throckmorton, The Christian Past That Wasn’t. Not exactly trained as a historian, Throckmorton nonetheless does impeccable research to counter the often wildly wrong-headed claims of those on the Christian nationalist right, line by line, lie by lie, showing how Barton and other “Christian America” pseudo-scholars get the historical data wrong. And sometimes won’t retract their errors even when it is pointed out. It is fun and fiesty and a bit hefty with lots of primary source documentation. For a non-historian, it is one of the best such books I’ve read.

However, the best book on this big question is the award-winning book by Dr. John Fea, a balanced and impeccable American historian, called Was American Founded as a Christians Nation? A Historical Introduction. It first came out in 2011 and was revised  and expanded in 2016. It is nuanced and careful and a great read for anyone interested in a wise exploration of the religious landscapes of the Founding Fathers. I’d say it (along with Throckmorton) are nearly essential for good Americans who want to fight for our ever-changing Republic.

So what’s with In God We Trust, Fea’s brand new one? Simple: it is a significantly abridged (and yet, then expanded) version of his magnum opus. It is short and edited and abridged (and cheaper) so it is an easy go-to choice for someone wanting a brief, balanced, solid study of the question. And great for a small group, an adult class, a book club.

Yoni Applebaum (Deputy Executive Editor of The Atlantic) says you will want to “grab this book and devour his fascinating answers.” Lindsay Chervinsky, the Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, calls it “a wonderful resource on the most pressing questions between Christianity and the founding of the United States.” She says “Fea is the ultimate authority and is better than ever…”  New Testament scholar Scot McKnight says “Fea’s prose is so clear that political and Christian leaders can distribute this book by the dozen to discussion groups.”  He is right that it should be in the local library and the local church.

If his major Was American Founded as a Christian Nation seemed a bit daunting, this slim-downed version will be ideal. If you loved that one, though, you just may want to pick up this one, too, in part for the considerable newmaterial and his fiesty comments that are sure to spark interest.   

Leading Transforming Community: Foundations Practices and Strategies for Opening to God Together Ruth Haley Barton (IVP) $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.79

Oh my, this unexpectedly came early, also, and I wish I had time to have read some of it before highlighting it here. But I only just now have it in my hands and I can only tell you the electric feel I’ve got, excited and sobered and joyful and expectant. I have read  all of Ruth’s books — sometimes racing through them, flipping pages urgently like a starving man feasting, and then only later going back and working through them ever so slowly (as one should.) She is one of my favorite authors and I hope you’ve got a couple of her books under your belt. Although not her first, perhaps her breakout book remains Invitation to Solitude and Silence, followed by the very helpful Sacred Rhythms: Spiritual Practices That Nourish Your Soul and Transform Your Life. This new one seems almost like a update of all she has learned in the years since, centering the question of what it all means; what is spiritual transformation and how do we form communities that can facilitate our growth together as members of God’s Kingdom?

(She has, in fact, lead cohorts through questions of spiritual formation for over 25 years and it seems this really is the report from the front, the key stuff she has learned in her in-depth experience doing this work.; a capstone.)

Her leadership in the Transforming Center and her writing has appealed to many different folks, from the monastic mystics to the hectic church leaders. Her friend Gary Haugen (founder and CEO of the world famous anti-slavery and trafficking ministry the International Justice Mission) has a blurb on the back notes that she invites us to “discover the miracles of God’s transformation that unfold through practices pursued in community rhythms.” He notes that in this new Leading.. volume she has “distilled her considerable, hard-won wisdom into this guide.”

This book really does seem to be designed as a catalyst for spiritual formation groups — whether you are conventional church leaders or serving parachurch or nonprofit organizations, it is said to be more than a trustworthy companion, which it surely will be, but a manifesto, a guide, a transforming vision for “opening God together.”

Leading A Transforming Community Study Guide Ruth Haley Barton (IVP) $13.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

Don’t miss the very valuable accompanying resource, Leading A Transforming Community Study Guide also by Ruth Haley Barton, which is a thorough six session study guide for “personal reflection, group conversations and next steps.” I’m not always sure of study guides and extra supplemental books but this looks really good so we highly recommend it.

Besides helpful stuff for personal use and the thought-provoking questions there are liturgical prayers and suggested group experiences and practical guidance for establishing or developoing your own group “turning vision into reality” as she puts it.

Nothing Can Separate Us: Healing for Souls and Nations Howard Thurman; edited by Myles Werntz  (Plough Publishing House) $12.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.36

These fairly thin, compact sized paperbacks with uniform covers are among my favorites for introducing people to the riches of great Christian writers from the not-too-distant past. The good folks at Plough offer these expertly curated collections of the writings of Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, Clarence Jordon, Amy Carmichael, Simone Weil, Abraham Heschel, Stanley Hauerwas, and Edith Stein. Thurman is a perfect edition to this pantheon of those who have written about public theology and a philosophically rich, reflective sort of spirituality. Each volume has a very inspiring and informative introductory essay, and the one in the Thurman volume by Vincent W. Lloyd. Kudos to Plough for selecting this stellar voice.

Thurman, you may know, was a much-published contemplative, a Black Quaker whose Jesus and the Marginalized was a personal favorite of Martin Luther King, Jr. His passion for public justice and his deep, gentle, Christ-like spirituality are legendary; indeed this book highlights his call to embody action and integrity. It seems to me to be masterfully edited — Werntz picks pieces and excerpts of sermons and essays and book chapters, arranging them by theme. Some of the chapters compile stuff that is not surprising — loving others, loving enemies, choosing nonviolence. And there are sections about surrender to God, about prayer. Interestingly, there is a chapter on “Attending to Nature” and another on “Living in Community,” It is so nice to have this small and handsome reader to supplement the other paperbacks we have by the great Howard Thurman.  Nothing Can Separate Us will introduce many

Who You’re Becoming: The Slow and Courageous Work of Cultivating Character in a Narcissistic Age Chuck DeGroat (Tyndale) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Chuck DeGroat has been a hero of ours for years; his first book was published by Faith Alive, the CRC publishing house, and then he did a pair of wonderful works on Eerdmans. His IVP title When Narcissists Come to Church sadly was necessary and became a bestseller.  His last one, Healing What’s Within, I have suggested is one of the best books on the inner psychologic life I have ever read. The title alone speaks volumes, assuring us that there is stuff deep down, below the surface, and whether one has experience actual trauma or not, we all need inner healing. He brings to gather the pastoral care of a spiritual director and the incisive expertise of a seasoned counselor. And he’s a good, good writer.  If you like Curt Thompson, say, or Aundi Kolber or Alison Cook (her brand new one is called The Secure Soul: Finding Inner Strength and Connection When Trust Doesn’t Come Easy) you should read DeGroat. That the eloquent Winn Collier calls it a “compellingly beautifully-written book” is worth paying attention to.

I suppose this book is trying to explore how people change.  It’s about personal growth, Christian growth. How you and I can change. It is about nurturing “true depth of character” and while this isn’t exactly on the classical virtues, it is about — as he puts it —  how we’ve “traded character for charisma and discipleship for display.” Another way of saying that is that we too often have substituted personality and platform for the more important integrity and character. Whoa.

Can Christlike character affect how we do life? That is, our personal stuff, our parenting, our work, play, and church life? Can we learn how neurobiology can help us see “how character breaks down and how it can be rebuilt.” And how does that happen when in this particular cultural moment we have an attention economy rewarding instant gratification and where notions of profound resilience have been reduced to grit or pushing through. Everybody wants a quick fix.

We long to be more, don’t we? If you are a follower of Jesus you are wishing, I’m sure, for greater grace in daily life, to be the kind of person who (as Winn puts it) “who, at our best, we long to be.” And we know our social habits and cultural context makes this hard.

There is hope. There are ancient practices and spiritual stuff about friendship and community and that can help us be grounded and learn to mature. Every chapter is a “r” word — regulated, rooted, reflective, and ripened, reintegrated, and reoriented. His “transformation” united invites us to be renewed, resilient, and relational. I started the book at the very end, reading “A Letter to You, the Reader.” Wow. DeGroat is a great author and Who You’re Becoming is a very good read.

Can Religion Save Democracy: How More Faith — Not Less — Can Heal Our Public Life Matthew Kaemingk & Shadi Hamid (Brazos) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

This is a  brand new major work that I really wish I had time to more carefully explain and review. I suspect that as it becomes known it will be reviewed in important venues; they will have podcasts and interviews I am sure, and I am grateful. For now, I must be content to announce this and say with all the earnestness I can muster, that I think this is a very important work of public theology and of American cultural studies. It is not simple or cheap or easy, but it isn’t academic and dense, either. It is lively and life-giving, important, even vital. Get one and give it to a thoughtful influencer, your local political candidates, a public square activist. We have to get the word out about this.

Here’s the simple gist. This book, written by an evangelical (and Reformed) Christian and a moderate Islamic believer both have deep awareness (I’m sure they feel it in their bones) of the ways in which their respective faiths have harmed the world, have damaged trust and goodness, and have both wrongly tried to coerce fellow citizens into an unjust sort of posture in the public square. That is, some Muslim extremists and some dominionist Christian fanatics, have tried to impose their convictions on everybody else in sometimes egregious, event violent forms of crusade and jihads. It makes sense to want to keep religion out of public life, to thwart these anti-democratize religious takeovers. Nobody should want that, so we get the impulse to understand religion as toxic. Maybe secularism disenchants the world into a modernity machine, but at least it doesn’t dominate with religious zeal.

Or does it? Isn’t that the argument many of us make, that, in fact, secularism is it’s own kind of religion (of no-religion) it’s own bias and zeal with its own drive to dominion. The very best discussion of civility and pluralism are aware that everybody is working out of some deeper agenda; nobody is neutral. Secularity is no less a commitment ideology that Islam or Christianity and it, too, has its very dark sides.

So — is the argument for secularity and against religious values in the marketplace of ideas and the public civic spaces really solid? Kaemingk and Hamid say no. Less religious faith is not the answer and secularism it itself its own kind of social imagination, it’s won worldview. We have to learn to adjudicate differences of all sorts and people of faith can help with that. In fact, they are ideally suited if they are self aware about the best of their respective traditions.

Kaemingk is a student of Dutch neo-Calvinism and knows much about the structural pluralism set up by then Prime Minster Abraham Kuyper in the early 20th century and (as he showed in his first book) how such pluralism can have huge implications for hot button contemporary issues like immigration.  Similarly, his Muslim friend, Dr. Hamid, also knows his faith tradition at its most useful and knows how Islamic insights can lead to generous hospitality and genuine social pluralism.

We do not need more brazen ideologues or anyone trying to take over. We need good citizens, caring neighbors, fine folks willing to allow their own best values guide their best arguments in the public square. The common good for all can be enhanced not by less faith in public life but more. If it is the right kind, so to speak. Not dominionism or jihadists, obviously. But good-hearted, faith-based believers, informed by their deepest faith but oriented around the common good. Can it happen?

In chapter over chapter, in great, even invigorating prose, these two tell their stories. They make their arguments and share their best hopes. They listen to but disagree with secularists on one hand and extremists of their own faiths on the others. They want to be good citizens, healthy players guided by good care for others. Can the right sort of faith influence and motivate others to this sort of healthy, diverse, framework for living with our deepest differences? Yes. In this sense, religion can “save” democracy. Can Religion Save Democracy? might be one of the more important public affairs books of many a year.

Listen to these quotes, please:

One of the most insightful diagnoses of our cultural moment that I’ve read in years. What makes this book particularly compelling is that it is not written from abstraction. You can feel the lived experience behind every chapter.  — Dalia Mogahed, coauthor of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think

In this brilliant book, two men of faith from different traditions illuminate a truth that some Europeans painfully discovered nearly a century ago: A post-religious society is not necessarily more rational, reasonable, or tolerant than a religious one. They ask how traditional religion might help heal the clash of tribalisms in which we now find ourselves. In a deeply troubling moment, they offer a profoundly religious remedy: hope. — Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow on Islam and modernity, Cato Institute; author of Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance

I have admired Kaemingk since his first  Eerdmans book on Christian-Muslim friendships and pluralism in the immigration debate. He later edited a volume of neo-Calvinist essays from around the world showing how their “creation regained” / reformational worldview could shape public theology. Next he co-wrote two books on the relationship of work and worship. Shadi Hamid, like Matthew, is a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He is the author of The Problem of Democracy and Islamic Exceptionalism. Together they do the lively and wise Zealots at the Gate podcast. I love that they model civility and grace in their disagreements on the podcast and that this book itself illustrates the sort of congeniality and convicted pluralism they espouse. It’s not academic, but maybe a bit more details than some citizens are used to. Believe me, it is worth it.

Defying Tyrants: Following Jesus in a World of Christian Antichrists Matthew D. Taylor (Broadleaf) $32.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I am almost always reading books about public theology and contemporary affairs and social issues. I learned from Ron Sider early on about the need to hold a robust vision of evangelical faith and to always be applying that to our call to be peacemakers in the world, working for justice, serving the common good. With rare exceptions (the grieving, say, or seriously ill) no one in the United States is off the hook. We are called to be salt and light in this world of woe and if we don’t offer uniquely Christian insights to the contemporary crisis of our body politic, we will not be found faithful. We simply must not give up speaking truth, especially about the current regime that is built on lies and bullying and disgusting moves  — not to mention terrible policy proposals  — that increasingly point towards a scary authoritarianism. No one can deny this, so the question is what are we to do and how are we to right the ship of state.

One of the essential tasks at hand is understanding how the Christian faith (and especially the white evangelical movement) has been hoodwinked into support for the ungodly MAGA extremist ideology. I will list other important resources soon but, for now, I want to commend to all citizens this exceptional book about how people use the name of Jesus to cause harm to others. I sort of wish this fine scholar and public figure would not have used the word “anitchrists” to describe this phenomenon, but he makes a good case. Too many use power and God’s name to erode the very values of Jesus that we all know and love. And, man, this book is important (even if you don’t love the subtitle.)

Matthew Taylor was raised in evangelical and Pentecostal circles which gave him a large window into understanding charismatic renewal and the Pentecostal personalities and worldview behind much of the dreaded Seven Mountain Mandate of the so-called dominionists. His book The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy has been on the top of our list of the top couple of books for anyone wanting to understand and resist the movement that help create the January 6th attack on the Congress and Capitol. If you don’t know about this particular network of vibrant prayer warriors calling down angles to fight demonic strongholds (you know any body that thinks Trump’s election lies are scandalous and that the rule of law ought to hold over this pluralistic Republic) and the worship teams and the TV preachers (and the deeper thinkers behind it, like the gang in Moscow, Idaho) then you need that book. It is fair and interesting and compelling.

In Defying Tyrants he has moved from analysis to action, offering yet another compelling study of who the dangerous religious voices are who are aligning themselves with power and money and authoritarian figures. It digs deep and it is frightening and yet maintains a certain “pastoral passion and clarity” (as a Wheaton College prof put it on the back cover.) Rev. Caleb Campbell (author of the fabulous Disarming leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbors) says it is “anchored in a desire for Christians to resist the temptation of worldly power and to cling to the power of the risen Jesus.”

Read these blurbs carefully — they are compelling. Order the book at 20% off today!

Quite simply, Defying Tyrants is a book every Christian should read. Undermining every case for Christian supremacy, it offers a bracing challenge to those seeking to seize power in the name of Christ. Courageous, clear-eyed, and utterly compelling, this book is a gift to the church and to the world beyond the church —to the neighbors all Christians are called to love and serve. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne and Live Laugh Love

In this bold and timely book, Matthew D. Taylor confronts the theological emergency of our time — a five-alarm fire fueled by Christian supremacy and its antichrists. With an incisive grasp of the early Jesus movement, Taylor offers readers the theological and biblical grammar needed to challenge angry tyrants and their allied pastors and priests. This is the most important book I’ve read in the past decade for this fraught moment. — Drew Strait, author of Strange Worship

I pray that this book would be a means the Lord uses to feed his people well and to inoculate them against the poisons of domination and exploitation, however tasty those poisons may present themselves to be. May we be a people committed to the actual Christ rather than the many antichrists! — Rev. Malcom Foley author of The Anti-Greed Gospel

Unleashing the Image of God: Discovering Your Identity, Purpose, Vocation, and Character Perry L. Glanzer (Baker Academic) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Baylor University’s Perry Glanzer has long been an admired and greatly appreciated voice in Christian higher education, writing and editing volumes such as Restoring the Soul of the University, the recent Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide, several projects on “servant teaching” and the fabulous collection by student affairs professionals called Stewarding Our Bodies. He did the excellent one less focused on higher ed, Identity in Action: Christian Excellence in All of Life and it seems that maybe set the stage for this brand new one about what it means to live well in the world knowing we are made in the image of God. He has long been interested (and written scholarly treatises) on how modern secularism has eroded a sense of meaning and purpose, even human dignity and the basis for morality. He’s an energetic and robust thinker. And, yes, this is ideal for college students.

Unleashing the Image of God is not an academic monograph or a study of higher education, although I would think anyone who works with younger adults in their “critical years” would surely find this very helpful. College profs and campus ministry folks and young adult pastors and those mentoring new grads in their post-college transitions? This is a must.

Dr. Glanzer’s colleague Tom Ream has written that Perry has long thought about “the implications of the creation narrative for the identities that college students are called to navigate, discern, and embrace. These pages now bring to bear those years of reflection, inviting students to chart pathways of faithful discipleship. Anyone invested in the future of students would also be well served by considering these reflections and acting as inspired.” Wow.

But I think it is clear that this is also for all of us and brings a fresh level of insight and usefulness to the conversations about vocation and calling. Hearts & Minds customers and BookNotes fans are going to love this!

Here is the table of contents, just so you can see if this book is for you:

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Part 1: Navigating the Buffet of Identities: Trying to Find Yourself in College
• 1. The First Problem with Losing Yourself: Losing Your Worth
• 2. The Second Problem with Losing Yourself: Missing or Disordered Purposes
• Part 2: Our Original Identity and Purpose: Being and Bearing God’s Image
• 3. Who Are You, Really?
• 4. Being and Bearing God’s Image: What Christ Taught Us
• Part 3: The Historical Consequences of Recognizing That All Humans Are Made in God’s Image
• 5. The Image of God and Humanizing the Marginalized
• 6. The Image of God and the Transformation of Education
• 7. The Image of God, Political Liberty, and the Abolition of Slavery
• Part 4: The Image of God and Contemporary Application
• 8. Recognizing Our Own and Others’ Human Worth and Dignity
• 9. Our Motivation for Bearing God’s Image: Responding to God’s Excellence
• 10. The Image of God and Our Purpose: Identity Excellence
• 11. The Process of Acquiring God’s Virtues
• 12. Bearing God’s Image Through Excellence in Specific Sub-Identities
• Conclusions
• Postscript for Professors, Administrators, and Student Life Staff

In what way does being made in the very image of God shape our self-understanding, our values and character? And how does that propel us into the world with a sense of one called, or sent, if you will? If we are image bearers of the Triune God that will help us imitate God’s ways in our own vocations.

This engaging book invites you to the realization that by embracing your identity as God’s image bearer, you are not just recognizing your profound worth and that of those around you. You are joining a story deep and wide enough to bring empowering meaning to your work, your play, your values, your very self. — David I. Smith, Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, Calvin University, author of Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom

A beautiful gift that college students and their parents and educators so desperately need right now. Glanzer’s argument is simple, yet the implications are anything but that: To succeed in college and in life, students need something greater than academic efforts and professional aspirations. They need to know that they are beloved persons made in God’s image–and this knowledge will change everything. — Nadya Williams, books editor, Mere Orthodoxy;  director, MFA in Creative Writing, Ashland University, author of Christians Reading Classics: An Introduction to Greco-Roman Classics from Homer to Boethius

PRE-ORDER: Into the Quiet: Following Jesus in a World of Noise John Mark Comer (Waterbrook) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00  DUE OCTOBER 6, 2026

I was fortunate enough to get from the publisher an early version of this wonderful forthcoming book and I am once again struck by how very sharp and helpful John Mark Comer is. He is youngish and fresh, with a vibe that is edgy hip and yet utterly sane. If Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster, Dallas Willard, Richard Rohr and maybe even Ruth Haley Barton appeal to somewhat older readers (although anyone should read them!) Comer became popular among young adults with his cool book about sexuality (Loveology) and his brilliant one on what it means to work and rest, Garden City. I know a group of college students gathering this very weekend around his earlier book God Has a Name.

With the excellently-created (free, six-session) Practicing the Way video curriculum (based on the fabulous book by that name) and then the slew of very handsome paperback study guides on the other handful of free four week videos, his franchise has grown and Comer is now one of the most listened to voices in the whole arena of spiritual formation ministry. If you don’t know his work you owe it to yourself to read up. He’s a joy to behold, and his free videos are fantastic.

Into the Quiet is not merely a companion to his million-seller, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World although it seems a bit similar. If we are going to find space for God and arrange our lives (in community with others) to become transformed into Christ-likeness, then we have to eliminate our rush and speed, our hectic anxiety and our senseless hurry. But, deeper, still, harder, still, is a quiet life. Yes, slowing down and paying attention is key, but beyond that is Comer’s newest experiment: what does it mean to follow Jesus into a space of quietude?

Comer esteems the above mentioned Ruth Haley Barton, and, yes, he knows (and surely commends) her wonderful (previously mentioned) Invitation to Solitude and Silence. But his Into the Quiet is at once more accesible and engaging and in a sense more easy to read — it’s that youthful vibe and the white space on the page, again — and more sociologically attuned for our world of devices. He tips his hat to social science research on the health effects of noise pollution and tells stories about the din of urban life. He knows about our fears of solitude and how we use our phones for comfort. What are we afraid of?

Into the Quiet was a joy to read. Admittedly, I’m not as worried as he is about it all and, as a pretty face-paced person in a pretty high-strung career, I don’t have time to waste. So maybe I’d have found it more poignant (maybe even painful) if I labored over every sentence, worried about applying every principle. It is a joy to be liberated from the guilt of reading prophetic books — they may be right, but I don’t have to do what they recommends — and that feed me to actually absorb a lot of it. Did I mention how fun it is to read? Did I mention how you can be encouraged (not discouraged) by hearing his own gentle struggles with this world of noise and speed? This book will invite you to hear Jesus’ invitation to “come away to a quiet place” and to find stillness as an anecdote of our chronic overactivity.

What does it mean to listen to (as Irish singer Van Morrison put it) “hymns to the silence.” What does it mean to adopt habits of listening prayer? What do the saints mean by “detachment”? Why is sabbath important? Can we do this in community? Does a regular quiet time lead to a quiet heart? And, geesh, are we still allowed to yell with zany passion at our sporting events and blast rock music really loud?

I love the books of John Mark Comer. He knows the deepest spiritual writers, he knows theologians, he cites social science studies and he tells very modern stories of contemporary life. And he is rooted in the Scriptures— Old and New Testaments. He is honest about pain and joy, about struggle and faith. And knows this stuff could change your life and, in fact, it could give us a depth of character that might allow us to reform our weary and unjust society. Into the Quiet is going to be a much-loved and much-discussed book.  Pre-order it (quietly) today.

PRE-ORDER: Partita: A Novel Barbara Kingsolver (Harper) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60 DUE OCTOBER 6, 2026

What can I say? I haven’t read anything much about it and haven’t laid eyes on it at all, but it is a new Barbara Kingsolver novel, her first since winning the Pulitzer Price for her Appalachian retelling of David Copperfiled in the unforgetable Demon Copperhead. 

The publisher tells us this much:

Partita is a story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty.

Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime.

Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the experiences of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life.

It would be our honor to get a few orders for this.

Here are some blurbs about it:

Brilliant, affecting work from one of contemporary literature’s masters. . . . A fierce belief that great art is for everyone joins Kingsolver’s familiar preoccupations with class distinctions, social injustice, and the complex bonds of family and community in a tender denouement. — Kirkus (starred review)

Kingsolver presents an enrapturing, brilliantly plotted, deeply personal, and profoundly insightful celebration of the life of the land, the skills and struggles of farmers, and the transcendent power of art to bring us together, make us feel ‘more alive, ‘ and make us whole. — Booklist

An engrossing story. . . . Kingsolver shines in her character work. . . . This tragic story of long-held secrets will keep readers turning pages. — Publishers Weekly 

Wrestles with the questions that have fueled Kingsolver’s whole career — namely, who is art for, what makes it good, and what can it actually accomplish? —The New Yorker

We started with a highly anticipated children’s book and ended with a new novel by one of our best American writers and in between some life-change reads about faith and life. What a joy to know there are such good books around and what a rewarding thing getting to tell you about them. Thanks for your friendship and book-loving care.

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BookNotes

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I hope you’ve followed our last several BookNotes. As fellow-bookworms we bet you’ve enjoyed reading about so many different kinds of books. Spending a couple of minutes (okay, maybe more) with our suggestions can solve many of your questions about what to read next. There’s been scads of great stuff this summer, eh? We are glad that you read BookNotes and trust our almost 45 years of recommending good books.

(All our past BookNotes are available to read at our website so you can easily visit our past posts. You can see our recent lists of books about work, our hefty review of the forthcoming Live Love Laugh by Kristen Du Mez, paired with Bonnie Kristian’s critique of (some) critics of evangelicalism, In Defense of Evangelicalism.) You can skim back and see a BookNotes post that included a link to a podcast with some other booksellers and the classy indie press Slant Books and my survey of a few of their titles. Before that, you’ll find a dozen new books about church life and pastoring. Mid-summer I tipped my hand about two books that are surely among the best of 2026, including The Way of the Spirit by Jeremy Sims (who I will interview in a free webinar Tuesday evening, September 22 — stay tuned for details about registering for that great night.) The BookNotes post before that was rewarding to write and even more rewarding for the orders we got from our telling about Fire Weather (John Vaillant) and Before It’s Gone (by Jonathan Vigliotti) and an older favorite, At Home on an Unruly Planet by Madeline Ostrander. Before then, in early July, I did a bunch of books on play and hobbies and outdoor recreation — fishing and birding, for instance and ten very special novels suggested then for your summer reading. There were other catch-all lists of new books, one on indie press and self-published authors, and a powerful review of the powerful The Place Between Our Pain by KJ Ramsey (along with more than 20 others that fit that theme.) In late Spring we reviewed some about our dangerous political times and the shift towards extremism and we talked about an event we did with Mako & Haejin Fujimura, helping launch their book Beauty x Justice  Anyway, it’s been a good season and we are glad for those who catch up on missed BookNotes, anytime. The 20% off discount still holds for all of these. You’re very welcome.)

I now sense an urgency to tell you about some brand new titles. Here are 15 new, really excellent titles — culled from so many other new releases.

These are (most of) our favorites this month.

As always, don’t hesitate to use the convenient order form at the end of this column. Tell us what you want, put in the shipping info, and credit card digits if you want. We’ll confirm and send your order as promptly as we can. We appreciate your support. Happy ordering!

15 NEW BOOKS WE VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND

This Is the Main Event: Discovering The Life You Long For in the Life You Have Joshua Luke Smith $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

We discovered this theologically sound and very creative writer in his first little-known book a few years ago called Something You Once Knew: Waking Up to the Extraordinary in Your Ordinary Life (on the very cool, UK indie publisher Form) which was absolutely a cut above your average book about sensing God’s call and creatively living into a Kingdom vision for all of life redeemed. It was said to be rather” innovative and thought-provoking” that offers “reflections on finding your own unique voice and how to use it amid the chaos and confusion of modern-day life.” And it was a great little book.

This new hardback finds our man — who maybe looks at little like Jelly Roll without the tats — as the writer in residence this year at the creative, evangelical community in Nashville called The Rabbit Room; the Andrew Peterson likes him says a lot. That Jan Richardson (known for writing poetic blessings and prayers and a powerhouse memoir about the death her husband) likes him, too, is fascinating. She says he writes “like no one else I know; he tells the whole of this brutal and beautiful life.” Brainy writers like Elizabeth Oldfield (I raved bout her book Fully Alive) and Mako Fujimura appreciate him. ShaunaNiequist says This Is the Main Event is “a thoughtful, artful, soulful meditation life and faith and time and what really matters.”

Loaded with a blend of personal story and Biblical narration, with poems and prayers, Smith brings a potent sense of the holy to ordinary, even broken, daily life. It is arranged around three spiritual practices — lamentation (he says we are allowed to name our paint; consecration (we can let grace change us); and adoration where “you are invited to live in the wonder of God’s daily presence.”

For those who follow such things, as a songwriter, Joshua Luke Smith has been called “a poet for the people.” He is the founder of the record label Orphan No More and The Psalmist, a nonprofit that teaches creative expression and self-reflection among the incarcerated. He’s the real deal.

(I suspect I am not the only one that things the typography on this cover is a bit goofy. The book has plenty of gravitas and plenty of energetic joy along with the theme of lament. It’s a bad cover for this book, I’d say, but don’t worry. You’ll be in the book turn pages and won’t even care. Trust me; don’t judge this book by its light-hearted cover.)

Looks Like a Lady: Five Visual Tropes of Womanhood and How to See Ourselves Differently Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (Brazos Press) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

What an absolutely original and helpful and scholarly and fascinating bit of good, good writing this is. I’m thrilled to tell you just a bit about it. For anyone who loves good nonfiction, who loves to learn, who appreciates (even a little bit) what we might call art history or cultural studies. The book is so amazing it is almost hard to categorize.

Weichbrodt is a fabulous speaker and young leader particular in thinking Christianly about the arts. She has done presentations at places like the CCO’s Jubilee Conference, Rabbit Room gatherings and Square Halo events. She teaches at Covenant College in Chattanooga and her first book won (among other more prestigious accolades) one of our picks for Best Book of the Year a few years back. That was Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art. That is one great book.

Looks Like a Lady, I presumed, was going to be mostly another exciting and educational tour of art history, with reflections on how women are seen in older and modern art. Which, I suppose you could say, this almost is. But her reflections are broader than just art, but include the messages and myths and meanings in popular culture, in music old and new, in images galore (like advertising, obviously.) So, really, it includes delightful semiotics, cultural criticism, worldview studies, aesthetic evaluations, social concern, and faith-based prophecy (yes, it really is.) So hear what the Lord might be saying through this good voice, his servant with a multi-ethnic name, Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt. Namely, that women the world over [not unlike men] are made in God’s image and created for a purpose and, alienated from that as they may be, can be redeemed by God’s own love and restored to a proper direction. Which is to say — get this — other stories of our origin or purpose or characteristics or temptations or strengths must be discerned as to their truth, their insight, their fruitfulness.

“Images tell powerful stories about how women should look and act,” she tells us. “And whether we notice them or not, those stories shape what women believe they’re allowed to be.”

Did you get that?  “Whether we notice them or not.” This is how cultural formation works; worldviews are caught more than taught. So this is a very good way to spend some (very enjoyable) time learning how to probe beneath the surface, unveil what might not be noticed, evaluate the primary myths stories about women that come at us all (women and men alike) and shape our assumptions about gender.

Jessica Hooten Wilson says that Weichbrodt “highlights counterstories that transform our imagination of women.”

Look Like a Lady is a title with layers of meaning — what is a woman supposed to look like? And what does it mean to look (and see) as a woman? As Karen Swallow Prior exclaims, this is “an astonishingly rich book — visual, imaginatively, and intellectually.”  There are some full color art plates but Elissa does a lot of her own pen and ink drawing of famous pictures (she explains why she did this and why it is hopefully enhancing in the introduction.)

She names five “visual scripts” that have “quietly malformed us.” She names them as Venus, Vessel, Maiden, Mother, and Monster. You’ll have to read Look… to see how she offers better stories (also from art history)  to deconstruct these common notions.  Better stories of women, for women, and for all of us.

Although the back cover presumes a female readership in saying there are “five stories you inherited as a woman — and five that can set you free” I think it is equally important for men. Jesus said you might have to pluck your eyes out for seeing badly. Give this book a try before it comes to that. Order Look Like a Lady today.

The Pace of Peace: Distraction: Attention, and the Gifts of an Examined Life Jay Y. Kim (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I ordered a stack of these sight unseen because I love the writing of pastor-theologian Jay Y. Kim. He is a pastor in Silicon Valley so hangs with some incredibly smart and cutting edge thinkers. He works with driven people who are very, very busy. I gather than his church is contextualized in meaningful ways as a faith community that is a safe and welcomed place for people following the way of Jesus, yes, even near Palo Alto.

His first two books came out before and during the worst of the Covid pandemic. Curiously, the first was about how we need real, embodied faith communities and in-person worship, written before the quarentine. (He is from the software world, remember, so this does not come from an idealistic reaction to digital culture. He’s no Luddite.) That first one was entitled Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age. Kim soon followed up that wise one with Analog Christian: Cultivating Contentment, Resilience, and Wisdom in the Digital Age which looked at everything from the commodification of our attention to the need for discernment about our use of phones and such. AJ Swaboda raves, saying these will “set Jay Kim up as an enduring voice for the church for this generation.” Listen to this:

What a marvelous invitation to the primal Christian movement that is solely and singularly focused on Jesus as Lord of all in our fragmented and distracted moment. Analog Christian gives voice to a part of all of us that longs for a day when Christians are known for their fruit over their fame. This work will set Jay Kim up as an enduring voice for the church for this generation. Highly recommended. A must-read.

Kim next did a book that I highlighted, curiously enough, in the latest “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast last week, a profound, hardback volume called Listen, Listen Speak: Hearing God and Being Heard in a Noisy World. Watch that podcast (or listen at Spotify or Apple) to hear more of my description.

And so, he’s written about embodied communities, about attentive discipleship in a digital age, and about the ways to focus on hearing God (and others) by listening well. And now comes The Pace of Peace. This new set of short but meaty reflections on the “gift of the examen” seems a natural follow up. If you’ve read his others, I’m sure you’ll want this. If you’ve never read him before, this is a great entryway. It starts with his potent little study of the myth of multitasking (and ends with an allusive conclusion, “Panic Attacks and Nothing Is Everything.” Did I mention he’s a good writer?

I have not read these chapters yet but can’t wait to see what he has to say about the “Toil of Absence” and what he calls the “Wreckage of Reactivity” and the “Futility of Self-Will.” Whether it is his lovely-looking invitation to presence, gratitude, or “the Gift of God’s Will” or his critique of “striving for more” and “the Shackles of Pride and Shame”, I think The Pace of Peace is going to be thoughtful, reflective, and helpful. It seems like a journey from chaos towards something like simplicity of heart and mind.  He is thoughtful, even contemplative, but offers practice tools to help. He calmly channels Saint Ignatius as a “framework of all of life” (less a technique or even a practice.) The Pace of Peace looks fantastic. There is a foreword by John Mark Comer.

The Internet Will Die And So Will You: On Learning to Live in Our Digital Age John West (Here Below) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Speaking of digital culture and those who work in the tech world (as I noted the setting of Jay Kim’s books, above) this may be one of the most unique books of the zillion coming out about AI and the digital zeitgeist and our lack of attention in this high-tech culture. We bought a bunch of this one for a couple of reasons and I’ll tell you about two.

First, it is the among the very first of a new imprint lovingly put together by a friend of ours who works at the serious (and delightfully diverse) theological publisher, Eerdmans, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For years she has acquired and edited and championed writers writing out of some sort of theological imagination, if not a self-proclaimed Biblical worldview, and who, creative as they are, needed a publishing home that was, well, generous and literary. From heart-wrenching memoirs like Rift by Cait West and the exquiste Spiritual Direction for Writers by the fabulous Charlotte Donlon, to the forthcoming memoir of a linguist in the US military (Between the Light and Me: A Memoir of Beauty and Violence by Kathleen Kilcup) the new publishing line in the imprint Here Below is offering to the book buying world a certain sort of book — beautifully crafted writing, mature thinking about things that matter, honest and (it seems) captivating. If Eerdmans is doing this new imprint, we are here for it.

Secondly, besides the fact that The Internet Will Die is one of the first two books on this new imprint that is so full of literary potential, let’s face it: the title is nothing if not intriguing. All I knew about West is that he writes code for the Wall Street Journal and is, if I recall correctly, a recovering alcoholic who brings a group of mostly non-religious friends to his New York apartment to enact a “Lessons and Carols” service of sorts over the Christmas holidays [as told in his 2023 Eerdmans book Lessons and Carols: A Meditation on Recovery.] And now he’s writing about broken code and so much more.

A rare endorsement by the exquisite Sven Birkerts  — his The Gutenberg Elegies:The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age kept me in this business 20 years ago —won me over before I cracked the cover. That Phil Christman (an often dense columnist from the rust-belt mid-West and author of the lovely Why Christians Should Be Leftists) recommended it further deepened my interest.  So, could a book about the impermanence of the stuff on the internet be that interesting? If it is debuting on Here Below, I was guessing it would be spectacular.

Can a reflection on code and broken links and bottlenecks — from train wrecks to data jams — be an avenue into deeper questions of life and death? Could it be written with intellectual depth and yet be a nice read? PJ Vogt (host of a podcast called Search Engine) says it is “clear-eyed, alive, even quite funny.” It’s a book, he says, “about loss that’s somehow a pleasure.” I am about two thirds through it and I’m here to testify, even if some of it is beyond me.

Another respected author and tech analyst /critic (NYU professors Meredith Broussard, author of Artificial Unintelligence) says it is “a lovely meditation on what it means to reckon with one’s own mortality, the impermanence of the digital, and the mysteries of faith.”

When Children Imagine God: Conversations with Church Kids J. Bradley Winger (Eerdmans) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Brad Winger had been legendary in at least PC(USA) circles and beloved among educators and parents for years. As a professor of Christian Education at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary (where he taught, among other things, childhood studies) he has also published lovely children’s books about prayer (like the Eerdmans picture book Thank You God.) We still sell his fabulous little Together We Pray and the thoughtful The Power of God at Home.

And now, this may be his most important book yet, an engaging read about how children relate to God. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore says it is in the tradition of Robert Coles. Yes!  It explores children’s insights about how they feel God, how they talk about God, how the talk to God, stuff about their own spirituality and their own view of faith and church life. Based on tons of actual interviews and loads of attentive listening, Emeritus Professor Wiggers “centers space for children to lead us into fresh imaginings about age-old questions of who God is and who we are in relation to the Divine.”

It is a bit more academic and a bit more detailed than my personal gold-standard choice for this sort of project, Spiritual Conversations with Children: Listening to God Together by Lacy Finn Borgo (IVP; $22.99.) If you read that one, this would be a serious follow up.

When Children Imagine God ushers readers into a beautiful and creative space–a realm awash in spiritual wisdom. Refusing to treat children’s spirituality as simply a source for cute stories and giggles, Brad Wigger invites us to listen to children with patience and care. When we make time to attend to these observant souls, Wigger observes, we inevitably discover that they have a lot more going on spiritually than we may imagine. In fact, through these conversations, we discover reliable and winsome guides for our own spiritual journeys. — Scott Black Johnston, senior pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York

To Set the World Aflame: How Artists Bear Witness to the Fullness of God’s Creation W. David O. Taylor (Brazos Press) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I sure wish I had had an advanced copy of this so I could tell you so much more about it. Maybe I can do a fuller review later as it is, I’m guessing, going to be known as one of the great books of the year. Taylor is a theologian and a pastor and an advocate for the arts (and a scholar of aesthetics.) He has written widely and vibrantly, so I knew this would be top-tier. However, the subtitle caught my attention and I am confident that this really does do something that no other book has quite done, although many point towards this truth that God’s very good world was made for cultural development. Perhaps the potentialities of culture — that would be all things scientific and societal (see Andy Crouch’s seminal and still essential Culture Making)  — are there from God’s good hand in the beginning, waiting to be discovered, developed, cultivated. In this sense all of us humans called to steward the garden — now with toil and much that is broken — bear God’s creative image, working together to make something of the stuff we are given.

I’m not sure if Taylor is exactly saying that, but he is insisting that artists and makers (which is to say most humans) are “more than creatives; they are stewards of truth, goodness, and beauty.” In the redemption brought by Jesus Christ through his death, resurrection, ascension and sending of His Spirit, is, in a way, re-making the fallen world. We all get to participant in “God’s re-creative purposes” extending the cultural mandate to find ourselves amidst not only the glory of a wondrous creation but a glorious great commission, helping make all things new.

What we are all called to is, in a way, what artists embody best. They offer us “models of making” and (as Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt says on the back cover) explore how to “pursue virtues and disciplines that allow for flourishing, and to consider the communal, missional vitality of what we do.”

James K.A. Smith — a deeply spiritual philosopher with an artists heart and sensibility — says “This is unlike any other book. It is at once a manifesto and a tender work of pastoral care.” He says it is written with “beguiling prose” and that Taylor has, “the voice of a teacher who cares.”

That may be enough for many of our readers to take it up — do you want great prose? To you want to know how to teach? Are you wishing you articulated whatever you are articulating with a more graceful, pastoral, artful style? This book that is solid and visionary, serious but accesible, is a model.

Yes, it is about the complexity of being an artist. Mako Fujimura says “in this fine book we witness David Taylor’s ability to make the mystery of art accessible.” Indeed. But even my quick glance through makes it evident that Jamie Smith is right — this isn’t yet another theology of the arts or Christian perspective on creativity or a study of the role of beauty, or any of that, although it seems to be all that. This is about all of us, about the vision of the arts in a renewed Kingdom come.

There are three chapters each in six major sections — Vocational Perspectives, Aesthetic Perspectives, Biblical Perspectives, Theological Perspectives, Formational Perspectives, Missional Perspectives.  The concluding piece is “In the End: Art for Love’s Sake.” He includes an appendix of “Six Prayers for Artists.”

In the lovely foreword by singer-songwriter and recording artist Sandra McCracken writes with this book help we will cultivate our capacity to “discover what’s true and beautiful all around us.” She promises, “in the pages David has curated for us a feast of the finest offerings to share and enjoy together, not just artists but as the entire family of God.”

Listening Hands: Eavesdropping on the Sound of Life Martin Schleske (Eerdmans) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE= $21.59

Speaking of books about beauty and art and wonder (and creation) that would be so appreciated by artists and creative-types but really is aimed at a very broad audience, I am thrilled to announced the long-awaited arrival of the sequel to the astonishing Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty. That handsome hardback was the story of this German luthier and woodworker, telling of his craft (from choosing the trees to be felled to the making of instruments.) It was lovingly translated by Janet Gesme, a US cellist who met the unassuming artisan in Germany, and who dedicated herself to translated this one as well. The title and subtitle, especially — “eavesdropping on the sound of life” — indicate how this, too, is about embodied work and the ways in which beauty and wonder appear.

It has been called “a master class on discerning the sacred in everyday work” and it is what one critic called “a profound exploration of lived art and lived life.”  Tony Payne (of the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music) says that “I have never seen someone so passionated and comprehensively express the relationship between calling and faith. Page by page, Schleske offers lessons along his violinmaking journey that are sure to inspire his readers.”

I am sure this new one will evoke similar sensations as you read. From his reflections on the craft of instrument design to the science of acoustical research, he is not only inspired, but inspiring. He draws on German journals and classic Christian mystics and a few world religion texts and spiritual writers.

Schleske (of course) makes woodblocks to do his own woodcuts that enhance each chapter. There are not precisely carved linocuts as we see in such fine detail in the work of some contemporary printers. These are old-school, woodblock, a tad bold and blurry. I love ‘em.

Spiritual Direction for Writers: Everyday Rituals for Your Writing Life Charlotte Donlon (Here Below) $24.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

Well, congrats to the team at Eerdmans for launching the first two books in their new imprint, the rather literary and allusive Here Below. The other title debuting in this new line of books is the above-mentioned The Internet Will Die and So Will You: On Learning to Live in Our Digital Age which is characteristically heady as you might expect from most Eerdmans titles, even their ones that are not overly theological as such. This other new Here Below release, though, is not dense or arcane but delightfully direct about attentive practices for writers that might be akin to spiritual direction. Or, at least to, well, as one critic puts it, “guide writers back to the deeper “why” beneath the work.” (That line comes from the fascinating Emely Rumble, author of Bibliotherapy in the Bronx.)

Ms. Donlan is herself a spiritual director and has been a customer here at Hearts & Minds. She’s written for Image (impressive, no?) and wrote a fantastic book on loneliness and connection and openness to God, published by Broadleaf, called The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other. Congrats to her for the release of this new one Spiritual Direction for Writers.

Modern poet, former pastor and Christian justice advocate Drew Jackson (he wrote the Biblically-based poetry volumes God Speaks Through Wombs and Touch the Earth) says this book “manages to be both deeply practical and a portal into mystery. It should be a constant presence on the desk of eery writer.” Wow.

Contemporary novelists of no lesser calibre as Jamie Quatro has called this “an essential guidebook for anyone working at the intersection of the ordinary and the sacred.”

I have only dipped into this (it is brand new, of course) and I can say it is not a daily devotional, even though the chapters are short, perhaps designed for regular use. These aren’t Biblical meditations and while her guidance is generally Christian, her beautiful writing — even about praying and attending to the liturgical calendar or grace — is of the sort nearly any open-minded writer would appreciate. Some of the reflections are filled with common graces and good advice — learning to write anywhere and being part of a literary community and becoming friends of time and bestowing goodness upon others. There is a chapter about intercessory prayer for others and she invites readers to ponder the questions of the Ignatian Examen, but much of this sweet wisdom invites us to encounter art!  To become even more curious! Become familiar with openings and closings! It is, again, not the sort of guidance from a simply evangelical devotional.

And yet, one of the chapters admonishes readers to deeper faith and is called Belong to God. In it she tells of meeting one of my literary heros, Imani Perry, at a book signing for her exquisite Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People. I was nearly breathless.

A Rule for the Rest of Us: An Ancient Practice for Making the Daily Decisions That Shape Faithful Lives Jen Pollock Michel (Waterbrook) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Just out this week, Jen Pollock Michel may be the best she has done yet. I adored her first book, Teach Us To Want: Longing, Ambition, and the Life of Faith (did that really release in 2014? We haven’t been out of it since!) In maybe 2017 she released the one-of-a-kind Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home, which, again, was very, very good. I think her 2019 book should have been a bigger seller — I bet even now some of you need it — as it was about paradox; it is called Surprised by Paradox: The Promise of “And” in an Either-Or World. She has gone on to do a 40-day devotional on being close to Jesus and a recent book on time use and more — In Good Time: 8 Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace; it was good to see such a productivity book written by a woman. She’s been busy.

A Rule of for the Rest of Us is a tremendous read and I think really, really important for most of us. It is about the Rule of Saint Benedict and how to adapt such principles for creating a sort of manifesto for personal lifestyle choices. It is in the spirit of (but without any colored graphs and charts) Justin Earley’s popular The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction. It seems to me that if you are using that, you will love this deeper dive into the spirituality behind creating some of these sorts of practical guide-rails. It’s a very different writing style and somewhat of a different mood or theology, even, but it’s in that popular wheelhouse.

Another book that is more workbooky than many of us prefer is, nonetheless, a very helpful tool in this journey towards creating a rule of life. Crafting a Rule of Life: An Invitation to the Well-Ordered Way by the very wise and interesting Steven Macchia. That one carries recommendations from the likes of Reuben Job, Adele Calhoun, Christopher Webb.

A Rule for the Rest of Us captivated me from page one, drew me into its narrative and vision more deeply than I had expected. I have loved Robert Benson’s lovely little books like A Good Life: Benedict’s Guide to Everyday Joy and A Good Neighbor: Benedict’s Guide to Community and we are proud of the dozen other books about Benedict’s famous “rule of life” that we have. Michel herself starts with a good citation from Sister Joan Chittister’s beloved Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today — nearly a classic in some circles.

But, hear this: A Rule for the Rest of Us by Jen Pollock Michel (and with a great foreword by Tish Harrison Warren) is, now, in my estimation, the best introduction to Benedict’s notion a rule and how it can be applied to ordinary modern follower’s of Jesus. It is written with charm and depth, and with an existential awareness of (and solidarity with) very busy modern people who feel overwhelmed by much of contemporary culture. I suppose it is less about Benedict and more about appropriating the notion of a “rule.”  I think it will be informative enough and very helpful for many. Even those of us who aren’t drawn to such pragamtic steps…

Drawing from years of leading spiritual formation workshops, Jen Pollock Michel will help you:

• Keep company with God — Establish practices that cultivate ongoing conversation with the One who sustains your life.
• Name your givens — Honestly assess your current season, roles, and limitations instead of fighting against them.
• Attend to your desires — Examine what your heart truly longs for as an important step toward faithful response.
• Articulate faithful habits — Develop specific, sustainable practices for your relationships, work, and daily rhythms.
• Review and revise — Create systems for ongoing reflection and adaptation as life changes.

This really is a “rule for the rest of us.” If you looking for a companion in your fall season’s wishes for spiritual growth and personal stability within your home and church, this will help. Try Pollock’s  A Rule for the Rest of Us: An Ancient Practice for Making the Daily Decisions That Shape Faithful Lives. Let us know how it goes.

Backslide: Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation After the Christian Turn Against Democracy Robert P. Jones (St. Martin’s Essential) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

We have carried each the books of this important public intellectual and scholar of American racism, Robert Jones, from his early academic text Spirit and Capital in an Age of Inequality (published by the scholarly Routledge) and his early popular ones that catapulted him to respected status as a historian such as The End of White America (which won in 2019 the prestigious Grawemeyer Award in Religion.) Soon enough he released White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (which won the American Book Award) and the most recently, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. All are important, but I think this brand new one, Backslide, may be the most urgent, yet.

Although Jones is a scholar, he is a popularizer in the best sense, and wants the best sociological data to shape his articulation of his public theology. Some know that he holds a Ph.D. in religion from Emory University, and an M.Div. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary,  but his undergraduate work was in computing science and mathematics from Mississippi College. Hence his love for data. He is the founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and works with a team of scholars of the history, philosophy, and habits of democracy including authors whose work we esteem: Kristin Du Mez, Obery Hendricks, The Rev.Jacqui Lewis,  Andrew Whitehead, Jemar Tisby, Fr. Bryan Massingale, and others.

In recent years Jones has written a popular newsletter called “Redeeming Democracy” and although the questions of institutional racism and white supremacy inform his work, his concern about the extremist and authoritarian nature of most evangelical Christian nationalists is most pressing in this new book. In a way it is his most personal — he was raised within the sub-culture of conservative Southern evangelicals — and hence the power of the title —Backslide. The Christian right is (as the data shows) hardly Christian at all anymore and the religious and church-going habits of those who claim to be modern evangelicals show that the movement has backslidden. This is a key insight of our best-selling book of this topic, Disarming Leviathan: Loving Christian Nationalist Neighbors; Jones brings the story up to date with sociological insight, data and story, and his own uniquely Christian take on the backsliding nature of much of his former tribe.

I didn’t know this but he shows that there is a lot of political science discourse these days about the backsliding of fundamental values that uphold a Republic and a democracy. That is, as authoritarian leaders are supported by populist movements around the globe, we ‘re finding that backsliding isn’t just a term referring to those who have drifted from their “first love” of Jesus and His ways but is also a term being used as those who are regressing towards authoritarianism. I have no doubt that there is a connection between the loss of Biblical principles among the so-called evangelical MAGA movement and the increasingly anti-democratic ways in a drift towards authoritarian regimes. Even if you’ve read a bit about the heresy and danger of extreme white nationalism, and even if you are aware that there is some sort of apostasy going on among ideologically-captive religious people, Backslide by Robert Jones is a must-have resource.

He opens the book with a meditation on what Nazi resister Martin Niemöller wrote about his regret in his silent years, before he spoke up against the Hitler regime. Jones asks, fairly, about what might be our “future regret.”

“We can no longer pretend we do not know where this path will lead,” Jones writes.

“We can and should know that any political ideology that demands the circumscription life and the extinguishing empathy has moved beyond the bounds of both pluralistic democracy and Christian faith. If we do not defend that truth with our lives, we will find ourselves unable to recover a democratic society I which we can all live together. And we will surely feel devasting regret.”

One Nation Over God Wes Crawford (Eerdmans) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

The books examining the ways in which religion is part of the landscape of American political  culture keep coming and many are, to be honest, riveting. And, I think, very, very important. In these serious times (as John Adams put it) we have to come to a deep awareness. Robert Jones is right: we must name and understand what is going on.  I am not necessary glad about it, but I have committed myself to reading regularly about this ongoing battle in the public square.

In the last week or so our store received several new book on this topic, one of the best being the lively and frightening: American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom by Keri Ladner (Bloomsbury; $35.00.) There’s the historical study Devils of Democracy: America’s Love Affair with Political Demons from the Revolution to Today by Michael Heyes (Broadleaf; $32.99), and another history, Stealing Elections, American Style by David Albert (Bloomsbury; $27.00.) I’m eager for the sophisticated Unity in Diversity: How Critically Recovering Our Sense of the Nation as a Body Can Offer Us New Paths Forward in an Age of Division by Donald Roth (Cascade; $26.00.) Roth is a prof at Dordt University in Iowa where he co-directs the Kuyper Honors College and knows a thing or two about the structures of society and the nature pluralism.) We just got the new Bradley Onishi release, the alarming American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords are Turning America into a Monarchy (St.Martin’s Press; $29.00) and a brand new one by an author I greatly respect, Matthew D. Taylor called Defying Tyrants (Broadleaf; $32.99.) You may recall he had written the powerful must-read The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy (Broadleaf; $32.99) on the history and increasing militancy of the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. And, oh my, don’t forget Rick Pidcock’s eagerly awaited Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism Broadleaf; $28.99) which at least some of our customers are going to have to read. Wow. We’ll deduct our 20% off any order for any of these.

Most of these, and so many more, are seriously aware that there has been in recent years a major surge of Christian people adopting a harsh sort of nationalistic ideology. (Bonnie Kirstian argues in her new In Defense of Evangelicalism that this is all overstated, but I am not so sure.) The polling data shows that a majority of conservative Protestants like evangelicals have supported a politics of vulgarity and violence. I’ve described dozens of books before about how that happened and why it is not only bad for the body politic, but bad theology as well. Some are pretty hard hitting and many of our customers should read them. But I get it that some are not that helpful in sharing with a friend who is deep in the mess of conspiracy theories and far right extremism.

One Nation Over God by a former pastor who is now a history prof and vice provost at Abilene Christian University, is not particularly hard-hitting.

Well, it actually is, but it is so charmingly written, so graciously understanding, and so moderately sensible that it is the sort of book that might make Christian sense to some who have gone overboard on the MAGA thing. Civil religion has been a constant in American history and some of us have denounced it as an inappropriate blending of faith and the flag, church and state, Christ and this culture, for a very long time. But with the high-octane version of extreme Christian nationalism now on the rise, gently saying we have to be careful about keeping the gospel first and thereby relativizing our civic patriotism, may be too little too late. But I hope not. I believe good people who have been formed too much by the likes of fundamentalist dominionists and too much of Fox News, really don’t want to betray their Lord and Savior. I think they don’t really want America as a theocracy. They may not like that the liberal media goes after Pete Hegseth and Doug Wilson but deep down they worry that this militancy seems a little off, if not outright wackadoodle. They know that when Jesus comes back he will not be riding an elephant or a donkey.

And so, I can’t say enough about this very, very good, easy to read, generous and gracious work that speaks about a wiser relationship between our spiritual identity and our national identity. One Nation Over God is a compelling and inspiring study of how civil religion developed in our unique country and why, as one reviewer put it, “the church’s witness depends on clear allegiance to the crucified and risen Jesus above every flag, party, or platform.” Wes Crawford is a good writer but has a light touch and the book is witty at times. It’s like a nice intro class on religion and public identity, with some nice stories thrown in.

Heretofore the best book to give to somebody with confusion about God and country was the altogether lovely and solid Your Jesus Is Too American: Calling the Church to Reclaim Kingdom Values Over the American Dream by Southern Baptist Steve Bezner (complete with a foreword by Beth Moore.) It wasn’t too radical and is nicely Biblical. Now, add in God Over Country which is a gentle, wise, historically-informed overview of civil religion by a long-serving, well-informed pastor.  We all need this, and it is one your diverse book club could study together. You could give it to a friend or relative. As Lee Camp put it, there are thousands of people looking for a book like this. Praise the Lord, One Nation Over God will be a real gift to our deepening understanding of our current faith crisis and might draw many back from the edge of some deeply troubling views and preoccupations. Kudos to Wes Crawford.

A Tale of Two Swords: In the Beginning was the Song Leonard Sweet (Salish Sea Press) $24.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

I don’t even know how to start this review, how to express my appreciation, surprise, and delight in this incredibly well written — fiesty, even — overview of the whole Bible by way of a particular set of ideas that are largely overlooked. How to tell you how I admire Len Sweet, a man who has given of himself for hundreds if not thousands of leaders who he has taught and mentored? How to tell you how smart he is, even though he isn’t particularly known in the deep end of the academy’s pool? How to tell you how darn witty he is — almost, sometimes, annoyingly so (there is hardly an alliteration on Earth he doesn’t like; he has cultivate a capacity to create them like none other.) And, if you’ve read almost any of his dozens of books, you know the footnotes (and bibliography) is half the fun. I rarely skip anybody’s footnotes, but with Sweet’s he carries on the energy of his teaching in his discussions with the authors who are genuine conversation partners. I’ve said these sort of things before but for those who love words, he will give you lot of them. Some maybe even unnecessary, but, you’ll enjoy the reading experience if you just buckle up and enjoy the ride.

So I’d read almost anything Sweet does. You might want to make that pledge too — life is too short to read boring books and it is too urgent to read the same old, same old. Sweet is expansive and fun, a thinker who will rock your world and drive you towards the things that matter most. His last pari of books were about the person of Jesus, fully human and fully God.

A Tale of Two Swords, though, he has said, may be his most important book ever. He maybe has said that before (or maybe I said it about one of his) but this is written with such urgency and detail and provocative power that I think he means it. For a guy who has written up towards 70-some books, this is one that you should not miss.

What’s it about? A million things, but circling around a vivid image of two swords mentioned in the Bible: the sword that guarded Eden after our human parents were exiled and the sword of the Spirit mentioned more than once in the New Testament. In a sense, a sword of judgement and a sword of grace, an enforcing blade and a healing one.

But here is the thing: he does some stuff, making linguistic moves worthy of Derrida (and easier to follow) about the sound of the swords. Your eyes will pop when you read his lines about the Hebrew words about the spinning nature of the sword keeping us East of Eden. It spins so much it makes a sound! It is so evident and sensible that I am amazed nobody that know of has ever said such a thing. How many millions of sermons have there been on Genesis 3? How many commentaries, erudite and technical? I don’t know if Sweet is the first person ever to say this stuff, but he just may be. The subtitle about the “sound” is no mere phrase to gussy up the cover. A Tale of Two Swords really is, in many ways, a theology of sound.

Is this a mixed metaphor, or what? Is the book about dangerous blades or gorgeous, saving music? Yes.

And you may intuit where this is heading. As he unfolds the drama of Scripture and keeps the big picture in our view, the moment is coming: only a deadly blade can stop the whirring of that first blade. The living Word sounds out a cry that is deathly and, finally, victorious.

What’s that Tolkien line, everything sad becomes untrue? Can the sound of the swishing leaves of that final tree (Revelation 21- 22, which is for the healing of the nations) be the sweet music to undo the millennia of human songs of lament? Blades and songs, gardens parched and renewed in a new Jerusalem with a healing tree and a new song. What manner of music is this that can sing this song?

I’m sort of trying to wax a bit poetic here, but not doing a good job. Len does it better and A Tale of Two Swords is going to go down as one of his best books ever. Certainly rich theological reflection and Bible-teaching, but with a fresh, faithful, postmodern edge. The brief surveys of music in theera of the kings (“Jericho and the Resonant Wall”,  “Jehoshaphat’s Choice and the Battle that Sung Itself”, and “David’s Harp and the Curdler” (on “therapeutic frequency and psycnological war”) are fascinating.Not to mention the connections with Psalm 149.  Maybe you won’t dig it fully, but it’s worth a read. With sections like “The Still Small Voice in the Age of Maximum Volume” and his ruminations on The Demon Hunters, K-Pop, the Mudang Tradition, this is a book you’ve got to read!

“Jesus is not merely truth to be believed but music to be heard.”

He says “Jesus is not merely truth to be believed but music to be heard.”  Amen to that, right?

Two other quick remarks: this is a book written, in part, it seems, to cut through the noise of our fast-paced distracted age. It is for those who are anxious in these digital days, full of overwhelm. I believe this is somewhat of an antidote.

And, for edification and a whole lot of fun, there is a playlist with each chapter, a couple of key songs — classical, rock, techno, folk, hymns and hollers — and listening in will be an intregal part of your reading experience. He names the “theological fit” of each song.  And there’s those footnotes! Buy A Tale of Two Swords today. Maybe God will use it to “tune your heart to sing his praise.”

Vulnerable God: How Jesus Upends our Assumptions About God — and Shows Us How to Be Human Kenneth Tanner (Brazos Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Oh my, how to tell you quickly how incredible wonderful this profound book is. I did an episode (that just dropped, as we say in the podcast biz) in our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast that featured me waxing if not eloquent, at least insistent, that this book is a gem, a treasure that will point you to Jesus and thereby allow you to live well, to be fully human. It is a book of fairly deep but wonderfully written meditations on the life of Jesus and how this essentially (!) Divine One is also fully human. And how that mystery of the incarnation is not merely a doctrine to ponder during the Christmas season, but is a utterly bedrock teaching about who God is, what God is like, and therefore, also, who we are as men and women. Tanner is a rare breed — a down-to-Earth pastor in a small town (think Eugene Peterson, maybe) and yet a theologia. (Perhaps you have seen him online and if so, you know I’m not exaggerating to note his theological chops, his breadth knowledge of the church fathers, and yet knows how to show how that ancient wisdom is relevant today. As his friend the poet Malcolm Guite notes, it is “Accessible, mercifully free of jargon, and profoundly moving.” Yep, ends up the pastor/theologian is a bit of a poet. As well.

There is a spectacular foreword to Vulnerable God by the excellent writer and thinker and pastor Brian Zahn and you will not want to miss that. He notes why this question of the nature of Jesus as God is so important and why this meditation on the incarnation will, in fact, change not only how we see God (in Christ) but how we become like Christ — by beholding him.

Zahn writes:

In Vulnerable God we find a valuable and beautiful sustained meditation on Jesus Christ. This book does not read like a dry, academic, theological tome — it is far more like a poetic portrait.

He continues:

Thankfully, this book does not join the ranks of the ubiquitous catalogs of Christian pragmatism in which we are told “how to” do this or that. This book simply invites us to gaze upon the face of Christ until the miracle of inner transformation begins to occur. Christ does the saving; all we have todo is look upon him. “Turn to me and be saved” (Isaiah 45:22.) This book is not angry — we have far too many of those. This book is gracious. It doesn’t strike as lightening; it falls as gentle rain.”

Doesn’t that sound like a book you long to read?

Zahn shows that Tanner uses great ancient minds like Origen, Athanasius and others and makes them feel “bracingly contemporary.” Bracingly. Yes!

And, yes, every chapter (almost every page) is about Jesus, a God enfleshed who had to be held. And who gave himself to be killed, so that we, in our own bodies, can be someday fully restored.  The great book is arranged with creative reflections about the person and work and meaning of Jesus, explored in four main sections: A Human God, A Human Life, A Human Death, and A Human Future.

Again, it is about our humanness by way of the love of God.  And as Malcolm Guite puts it, Tanner “will take you there in the only way possible: in and through the vulnerable heart and healing wounds of Jesus Christ.”

Kenneth is pastor of Church of the Holy Redeemer in Rochester Hills, Michigan. He has written for outlets as diverse as Sojourners, Mockingbird and The National Review. He is part of the liturgically sophisticated Charismatic Episcopal denomination and is, simply, a delightful person, learned and kind. Vulnerable God is one of the best books of the year.

The Wisdom of Jesus: Meditations on the Gospels in Words and Paintings N.T. Wright (Zondervan) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Although NT Wright has a short but important commentary on Isaiah coming in a month or so, his brand new one has caught many by surprise. The Wisdom of Jesus just came out and it is wonderful — only 100 before the footnotes and credits. Mostly it is wonderful because it has brief comment and rumination on key texts from the gospels illuminated by dozens of vibrant, often bright, contemporary paints from all over the world. The art pieces by mostly modern artists from Africa and Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America, Europe and North America. They are aesthetically pleasing, which is to say artful and striking. With glossy paper and nicely printed, these are worth the price of the book. Wright wouldn’t mind us saying this, either, as these paintings are not mere decoration but invite us to visio divina.

Beside the succinct but always helpful words of NT Wright, there are, in his New Testament for Everyone translation, the words of Jesus. As Tom puts it, “Take time, then, over the words of Jesus in this book. Roll the phrases around in your mouth. Taste their subtle flavor; refresh yourself with the freedom and love they contain.

Wright continues,

You might take a few pages each day and think and pray about how the wisdom they contain might work in your life. As you do, you might find yourself coming to recognize the person who stands behind the words…

There are nice devotional reflections here, five under each of five headings: True wisdom, True happiness, True love, True prayer, True God.

By the way, the two pages of artist credits and, for most of them, their websites, is also worth the price the book. You’ll be glad to have this unique collection of web addresses for (among other things) Biblical art at your fingertips…

ESV Four Holy Gospels Makoto Fujimura (Crossway) $49.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $39.99

I can hardly believe this amazing new (somewhat smaller and more affordable) gift edition of the four gospels masterfully illuminated with the art of modern Japanese-American artist Mako Fujimura first came out fifteen years ago. The very large size of that original edition has been made more manageable — although it is still  9” x 14” — and the cost is no longer $150. With our BookNotes discount making it just $39.99, it is not that much more than some major hardback bestsellers these day. Thanks be to God.

The elegantly produced Four Holy Gospels were highly acclaimed when they first came out. In a way they were honoring the celebration of the 500 years of publication of the seminal KJV but yet with the clean (if traditional) ESV translation and Mako’s classic modern abstract work in ancient Nihonga style paintings done originally for this Bible. That oversized original has been gifted to everyone from the Pope to Wendell Berry and we sent some even to other continents. And then it was out of print.

Thankfully, this new slipcased edition retains the beautiful art, the excellent typography, the handsome printing. It makes a very special gift (without being, well, as much as that first gloriously large edition was.) This, in my view, is a better edition for reading or displaying. We are delighted that it just came out and assume you will be too. Kudos to Crossway for doing such good work and thanks to Mako for his Biblically-guided modern artistic imagination. This is a pretty great literary event, it seems to me, and we should rejoice.

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BookNotes

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SHORT-LIVED LABOR DAY SALE. I know you’re busy and it is a holiday weekend. But I bet you have at least a nagging interest in this; maybe a haunting. We can help. And on sale, too. Hooray!

Our bookstore, as you probably know, has long stocked a whole lot of titles that help people of faith ponder the implications of thinking faithfully about various careers and jobs. Our employment (if you are still working) matters to God and there are ways to consider our beliefs about this and live out faithful practices about the dignity and meaning of our labor. Some would say reading these sorts of books brings a whole lot of light to their lives.

Whether you hear this in church or not, we believe it is essential to a learn a bit more about a Christian perspective on work. Connecting the dots between Sunday and Monday, between liturgy and labor, so to speak. I know a number of people missed my enthusiastic column last week with its robust description of almost 40 books about faith and work. (Not to mention the links to some other good columns, lists, and websites.)

Although the boundaries are a bit fuzzy, I grouped them into four categories:

1. The first list of 10 are inexpensive and mostly brief. Delightful and inspiring to read, these are some of my favorites. Very highly recommended.
2. The second batch of 10 are only a bit more complex but still not too academic or costly. These really are the crème de la crème in many ways.
3. The third list includes titles which are somewhat more rigorous, specialized, or pricey. All good; very good.
4. The fourth smaller list is comprised of fantastic books but they tend to be specilized for pastors or church leaders. If you are in ministry of any kind, these are for you.

HERE’S OUR LABOR DAY SPECIAL OFFER — GOOD UNTIL MIDNIGHT SEPTEMBER 8th while supplies last. On Wednesday they go back to our 20% off on-going disocunt.

• Buy any one of last week’s nearly 40 titles and get 30% OFF
• Buy any two from lasts week’s list and get 40% OFF
• Buy any three from last week’s list and get 50% OFF.

It doesn’t matter which category they are in — I listed them that way to help you easily determine which title might be best for you, your friend, maybe a recent graduate now in the work force, your small group or book club, or your church library. Or your boss or Board.  GET THE EXTRA DISCOUNTS NOW WHILE YOU CAN.

READ LAST WEEK’S BOOKNOTES POST HERE.

Again, the sale is up to 50% off for orders from last week’s BookNotes column. HERE.

Click below to either ask a question at our inquiry page or to order at our secure website. Just tell us what you want and we’ll take it from there.  We are sure your life will be better if you read some of these books. All are 20% off, too.

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We know life is overwhelming these days and good books can help. We’re here so you don’t have to waste too much time figuring out what to read next (and why.) As always, we invite you to use the easy order form button at the end of this BookNotes column. We are grateful for your interest in keeping the reading life alive and well. 

A RAMBLING INTRODUCTION TO OUR 4 CATEGORIES OF LABOR DAY BOOKS

It just so happens that as we approach Labor Day I am in the middle of a captivating novel —  Work to Do by Jules Wernersbach (University of Iowa Press; $19.95 // our sale price = $15.96)  — which is sort of a romp and sort of serious and somewhat odd story about a handful of folks on one side or another of an attempt to unionize the workers at a fictional food co-op and natural food store, set in Austin, Texas. The old, wealthy patrons, the college students, the heat (and the flood) and the competition from Whole Foods in their old hippy neighborhood is the setting, but struggles about profit and loss, worker solidarity and relational and sexual tensions, and dreams and visions and hopes and goals all possibly down the drain — all told from different angles. The author nails the chit-chat about organic this or that, gluten-free and vegan products, exotic brands and upbeat trends in contemporary alternative health stuff. You’ve been in places like that. You’ve seen the flyers on the bulletin board and the worker’s tee shirts; their store logo is a raised fist clenching broccoli. Ha!

Work to Do and its tale of the investors vs the postmodern workers at Guadalupe Street Co-op (which, they note, isn’t really a co-operative) deserves to be mentioned now because it describes the ordinary joys and struggles of working in retail. It’s hard work keeping shelves stocked, rotating through the daily details, waiting on customers, cash registers humming (in a good way) and the back room fluorescents humming (in a bad way.) The many paragraphs about work made me smile.

The electricity goes out. A staff member gets sick. A customer is disgruntled. A delivery truck doesn’t show up on time. Products sell out. We’ve been there.

My dad worked for a while in the 1950s managing a chain grocery story and, as our family legend has it, he abruptly quit when an outside suit from headquarters told him how to stack up a display of peas when he knew better; they were his customers, after all, neighbors that he knew, and he knew what worked in the matter of merchandising. He was not a union man and he wouldn’t have appreciated the foul language and the cool references to indie music in Work to Do would have baffled him, not to mention the gender fluid characters, but, still, I wished he was around to talk about the hard work of running a grocery story and how low-wage workers could be more graciously valued.

I wrote a few pages about glorifying God in our mundane moments of retail work in the fabulous collection called Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books; $24.99// our sale price = $19.99.) In a book replete with hobbies and hardships — chapters about watching movies, gardening, doing art, and smoking a pipe (Malcolm Guite wrote that one, of course) alongside pieces on grief and loss and pain — it is nice to also see a few in that book about the workaday world. If the Bible calls us to live all of life for the glory of God and we are told to do all that we do in the name of Jesus, then it is a fair question to ask what that looks like.

I’ve raved before about the wonderful read called Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool and Priest by the fabulous writer James Martin (HarperOne; $29.99 // our sale price = $23.99.) I pitched it to you before for those who love memoirs or are fans of Father Martin. Sure it is a light-hearted coming-of-age story (and is, as you might expect from a guy who wrote a book about humor, really funny) but there is something important about this guys journey, looking for meaningful employment, good work, purpose, a calling. Sure, he ended up a Jesuit, but he honors the world of work by walking us through his working life, from his jobs as a small town kid to his time in the high-end financial district in New York City.

So, sure, read it for fun, for what Mary Karr has called his “graceful storytelling voice and keen eye for detail.” She says it is “his most layered and lyrical effort” yet. But also, in this season of the Labor Day weekend, I commend it as a nitty-gritty, down and dirty (and very humane) treatment of a handful of ordinary jobs. Like the subtitle lists, he’s worked in an ice cream shop, been a caddy, worked in factories, and been in the corporate world. The title itself Work in Progress speaks of his calling to vocational ministry by way of his other careers. Hooray.

And, to add to the mix here in my introductory comments, I had reason recently to tell a customer here in Dallastown about one of my favorite books, Tish Harrison Warren’s beautiful and honest Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep (IVP; $24.99 // our sale price = $19.99.) It is in fact a book about praying the compline prayer in the Episopal and Anglican tradition but, more generally, about praying in the nighttime of weeping. But, also, in the midst of this prayer designed for those keeping watch, even in sorrow, there is this marvelous prayer about work. Tish’s chapter about work and its possible role in bringing restoration and hope, is brilliant. I was glad to recall and re-read that chapter here before Labor Day.

This upcoming holiday is not just for the end-of-the-summer cookouts but is designed for us all to ponder the role of work, and to honor, especially, those who work hard doing the kind of work that has often been demeaned, so much so that unions have had to organize workers into collectives that could demand more fair treatment. (One of my early passions was trying to help the United Farm Workers who stood with migrant workers against big agribusiness.) One does not need to be a Marxist (or even a Wobbly) to know that too often those with lots of money and power pay little heed to the needs of those who work in their factories and slaughterhouses and fields and data centers. I think the case is out whether unions these days do all that they should to help workplaces become more human and labor to be more meaningful, but there is no doubt that something has to give. Whether or not one recalls the country hit from the 1960s (“Take This Job and Shove It”) or Dolly’s fabulous “Nine to Five” or the title of the rocker “Working for the Weekend” many of us live our work-lives in less than healthy settings. Or our imaginations have been captured by our consumer culture so we do not even care about finding meaning in the hours spent at work; we are just putting in the time until we can get to our real lives.

Whether it is the socio-cultural-economic degrading of working conditions or the negative assumptions we carry in our bones about why we work, anyway, with a sneaking hunch that it is just a “necessary evil” rather than a venue in which we find purpose in serving our neighbor and the common good, for whatever reason, many folks just don’t like their jobs much.

BOOKS CAN HELP

In this BookNotes column from Hearts & Minds, offered around Labor Day (as I do many years) we offer books that folks can read to help heal the wounds of work. Whether we need to step up like a Joseph or a Daniel and speak God’s truth into our work world or whether we have to deepen our desire to think Christianly about our particular career or calling, whether we might fight for social change in complicated institutions or whether we need to just nurture our own vision for a Christian view of work in more quiet ways, these books can help.

I can’t name all the titles we have in this genre but I seem to think that Hearts & Minds may have the most extensive selection of books about a theology of work and a faith-based views of careers and callings than any bookstore in the land.  Not many ask about them, but we stock them, endlessly. I hope others promote this sort of stuff but most Christian bookstores I’ve visited don’t even have a section on work (let alone career areas like business or architecture or farming or law or medicine or teaching or engineering.) So if you are looking for anything in this genre, we are the place to call.

In a way, this was one of our earliest distinctives when we opened our bookstore: in 1982 we wanted ordinary “butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers” to find something to help them relate Sunday and Monday, God’s care for their personal sin-sick souls as well as their public lives in the world of work and business and careers and economics. We worship, yes, but we also work, and some have said the Hebrew word in the Bible for work and worship are, in fact, the same word. How about that?

If you are interested, please read my other columns and see our other book lists HERE (where I shared links to some songs and websites and even a passioante talk I gave once at a conference about business.) Or, HERE or HERE. (where I list about a dozen links to important organizastions and resources.) I know I’ve shared these in years past but they are columns and reviews that I think are enduring and a topic we often need reminded of. I hope somebody prays for your job at church this week, but I know many of us will go unnoticed. Which is why you need these books — because chances are you aren’t hearing this in your local congregation. Am I right?

We hope these are helpful for your deep-down (maybe sublimated) interest in this topic. I’m sure you care. We are here to help. Read on.

ELEVEN BRIEF or INTRODUCTORY BOOKS TO START LEARNING ABOUT THIS TOPIC

Reweaving Shalom: Your Work and the Restoration of All Things Hugh C. Whelchel (Institute for Faith, Works & Economics) $9.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

This is one of the best short books we can suggest; it’s not even 60 pages and yet is profound. It is Biblically and theologically rich with discussion of what shalom is, why work matters, and the hope that our small role in God’s redemptive plan is significant. Can we “work for the shalom of the city” where God has planted us? The late Hugh Whelchel had over twenty-five years of experience in corporate business work and a Master’s degree from Reformed Theological Seminary. This short booklet is a fabulous little resource and we are honored to stock it.

Why not buy a couple to share with somebody who needs it.

Reintegrate Your Vocation with God’s Mission Bob Robinson (Good Place Publishing) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I list this one early here because it is easy to read and essentially a small group study book. There is in each chapter some good (brief) reading to do so it really can be done solo but the insightful and important questions for reflection deserve conversation partners. These exercises Bob offers are great!  Use it as a small group resource— there is nothing like it in print — or use it alone; either way I am sure you will be challenged, struck with new ideas, introduced to new authors (he has lots of great pull-quotes and boxed citations that show up nicely from all the right sources) and you’ll end up realizing it has, as Dr. Tom Nelson says on the back, “the potential to truly change your life.” A small-town bookstore owner in Dallastown has a blurb on the back, too, so there’s that. Don’t miss Reintegrate!

I hate to seem pushy, but if you are in a small group (or could imagine yourself starting one) this really is ideal to be read together and discussed. Sure it is fine to work through it yourself, but you’ll appreciate the conversations done with others.

Faithful Work: In the Daily Grind with God and for Others Ross Chapman & Ryan Tafilowski (IVP) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Again, really short and sweet, this handbook is an excellent introduction to the topic; one of the very best. One third of our waking lives are spent at work — there is no reason to leave God out of it. Work is, they say, “central to God’s mission to redeem souls, systems, and structures.” God uses our work to “bring hope to the brokenness and fallenness of our surrounding culture.” I love how they give a big picture of the framework for a missional vision of meaningful work — to love God and neighbor in the daily grind. You should buy a couple.

Chapman is now the CEO of the excellent Denver Institute for Faith & Work. Tafifloski is both a professor at Denver Seminary and a pastor and has worked with the Denver Institute. Faithful Work is a hand-sized compact book and less than 100 pages.

Women, Work, & Calling: Step Into Your Place in God’s World Joanna Meyer (IVP) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

The wonderful Joanna Meyer is also a key leader at Denver’s Institute for Faith & Work and is one of the most beloved and esteemed figures in the movement of the last decade that is helping church folks think about their vocations and callings with a Kingdom-of-God vision for faith and work. I would say that this book is simply a must-read for any woman in the work world; it is concise and clear and powerful. In fact, I think it is so good in highlighting the key stuff about our vocational imaginations that it is good for anyone who wants a biblical framework for work and calling — men and women alike. Yes, it has some guidance for the particular sorts of challenges faced by women in the work world but it also wisely invites readers to pursue purposeful relationships, “collaborating and building strong relationships with others.” Women, Work, and Calling is both visionary and practical, faithful with a big picture and really helpful with day to day faithfulness. And it is short. You can do this! I very highly recommend it.

Work That Makes a Difference Daniel M. Doriani (Presbyterian & Reformed) $14.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I will mention below a bigger book Dan did that this small one sort of spun off from, but for now, I want to celebrate this little one as one of my favorites in this field. During the COVID year of quarantine, Dan started to interview hundreds of people — maybe as research for the other, larger book. He has been teaching about the relationship of faith and life, faith and work, calling and career, and making a difference as God’s agent in the work world for decades, so it is great to see his books on this. (He is a pastor and Bible scholar and has contributed this book for a cohort at the St. Louis Center for Faith and Work.) But besides his pastoral theology and his respected Bible commentaries, this little volume is a gem. In just over 110 pages he invites us to think about ways to concretely live out faith in the marketplaces of the world. What does it look like to serve God and neighbor by doing good and transformative work; what are the Biblical and theological foundations? How do we step into our employment, knowing we are ordained by the God who blesses our human work? The discussion questions and exercises are very, very good.

You’ll smile when you learn that Doriani’s one grandfather was a farmer, the other an opera singer.  And as he put himself through college and seminary, he’s had his own share of colorful jobs.  I like his bigger volume (below) very much, but this is a short and concise introduction and particularly good for small group conversation. Yay.

Every Waking Hour: An Introduction to Work and Vocations for Christians Benjamin T. Quinn & Walter Strickland (Lexham) $12.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.36

This small hardback is now out of print but we have a few left. It’s very neat a compact sized hardback. It was a companion to another small hardback, Every Square Inch about a Christian worldview and cultural engagement (that one written by Bruce Ashford.) The two lively authors here are captivated by their Biblical but broad worldview influenced by authors such as Herman Bavinck and Abraham Kuyper, as well as John Stott and the fun gang that created the popular For the Life of the World video curriculum. When they cite that you know it’s worth reading. Biblically-informed, thoughtful, foundational.

The Gospel Goes to Work: God’s Big Canvas of Calling and Renewal Stephen Graves (KJK, Inc.) $10.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $8.00

I’m not going to lie — I first ordered a big batch of these because the design was just so great; colored ink, not splashy but creatively arranged, a good (if small) font. It’s a really great looking little book, especially for younger readers who want a cool visual appeal. And, the price was awesome. And now we have it on sale! This is solid but also way cool.

Graves did a series of these little studies but this is the one that seems to me to stand out. He has worked as an executive coach and has helped many relate their deepest values to their careers, has given leaders a fresh framework for thinking well about how the gospel should shape our work — and how it really could. He uses this bit he calls “The Baseline and the Blue Sky” and it can apply to any worker doing any kind of work in any setting. This is a very cool little book. Get a few, while supplies last.

Working from the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work that Transforms Our Outer World Jeff Haanen (IVP) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I really love this book and although he is not the only person offering a sort of contemplative spiritual formation perspective for our workaday lives, he does it as nicely and as compelling as anyone. Who among us doesn’t need some fresh energy for our work, for a balanced lifestyle, for caring about the Monday world? Haanen has been there, so much so that he founded the excellent Denver Institute for Faith & Work (see the two above related with the Denver Institute.) He later wrote a lovely little book on retirement from a fine Christian perspective. But this one? Wow.

This really is an invitation to a journey, to “pull the veil on the deep emotional and vocational challenges faced by the majority of workers” and it shows not only how our work lives can be a manifestation of our faith, an integrated part of our discipleship, but also what sort of inner resources we need to be of use to God in the work world.  The title says it all!

I like how Jeff touches so seamlessly with everything from vocation to civic health, from emotional life to spiritual formation. Using our minds, our bodies, our hearts — it is a multi-dimensional and deeply spiritual approach to finding the deepest purpose of work and labor. A truly wise book, in only 150 pages.

Mere Christians: Binge-Worthy Biographies That Show You How to Glorify God in Your Work Jordan Raynor and Kaleigh Cox (Harvest House) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Okay, this is a regular-sized, large hardback but I list it here because the print is big and there is artwork in the design, so it isn’t dense, and it is like five short biographies, giving it a structure that is really easy to read. One reviewer says it is “unlike any set of biographies ever written, filled with exciting twists and page-turning cliffhangers.” Okay, so, it’s vivid.

And it really does offer insights about Christian truths, Biblically-informed values that made a person’s work significant in culture-changing ways. We can all be history-makers. He looks at Fred Rogers, the Presbyterian TV host, Fannie Lou Hamer (courageous, black civil rights leader and advocate for women workers) Ole Kirk Christiansen (the founder of LEGO), Hannah More (the poet and writer who worked with Wilberforce against the British slave trade) and C.S. Lewis, literature professor and children’s author. Each little biography designed to help you integrate faith and work and sense of calling and purpose.

I almost rolled by eyes when I read the hype on the back cover — “Each profile is mercifully short, extremely entertaining, and profoundly-helpful with clear takeaways on how to glorify God in your own work.” But you know what? Jordan knows his stuff — I name his Sacredness of Secular Work in another list, below — and this fun set of bios is a friendly way into this conversation. Hooray.

The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love & Learning, Worship & Work Seven Garber (IVP) $21.99 //  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Speaking of short and sweet, this really is one of my all time favorite little books, a compact sized book (on nice paper to reproduce full color photos.) It seems to be a travelogue report of Steve’s journeys, speaking engagements, visits, and memories, telling about this place or that, this workplace, that career area, a story of this kind of experience or that kind of sorrow. The beautiful and the profound come under his gaze and he writes eloquently about these seemingly one-off experiences.  It’s really good.

I’ve read some of the several page entries out loud in classes and speaking engagements  — they are that eloquent and compelling! The heart of this call to seamless living is to close the gap between Sunday and Monday, between worship and work. He loves to talk about passionate, life-long learning so that we can be shaped into people of character people who care, and do something important with what we know.  To live seamlessly, with coherence, really is an unspoken desire, often frustrated by the modern world. Here, he invites us to relate our love for God and our worship and our work. Many of us are in deep gratitude to Steve’s particular, elegant style, but his Fabric of Faithfulness, Visions of Vocations, and Hints of Hope are admittedly not simple. This, one, though, so conversational, with short chapters. Yay.

The Seamless Life gently weaves coherence and grace from he far corners of vocations, friendship, and spirituality. — Sandra McCracken, singer-songwriter and recording artist

Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life edited by Byron Borger (Square Halo Books) $13.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

Dare I say it? Push by own book? I suppose it’s my job (speaking about noble work) and, to be honest, no other bookseller or algorithm is going to bring it to your attention. I tend to mention it boldly in the Spring as a gift idea for college graduates. That is its reason for being in the world, why I called the authors and transcribed their college commencement addresses; we need a nice little graduation book for collegiates. The talks were all so good, giving wise and inviting advice to young adults setting out to find purpose in careers and callings, vocations and employment.

Not all the talks in Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas.. are exclusively about work, but nearly all emphasize a faithful, coherent vision of making sense of our loves and longings in ways that helps be knowingly salt and light and leaven in the cultural institutions we find ourselves in.  Naturally, in sending off college grads, there really was a missional vibrancy in these commencement addresses and I was glad to get to pull them together. You’ll find short chapters (with discussion questions) by Claudia Beversluis, Steven Garber, Richard Mouw, John Perkins, Amy Sherman, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Oh, and that Byron Borger guy has a rousing one. I feel a little awkward suggesting it, but I think you may appreciate — or you may know somebody else who would appreciate — these inspiring, relatively short chapters of good talks about serious dreams and thinking about being sent into the work-worlds. Even if you never went to college or have long ago graduated. Do me a solid, friends, and send us an order. I think you’ll enjoy them. And it’s a nice way edging into this big conversation about labor and our working lives.

TEN MID-LEVEL, EASY-TO-READ TITLES TO DEEPEN YOUR WALK INTO THIS TOPIC

Why Your Work Matters: How God Uses Our Everyday Vocations to Transform Us, Our Neighbors, and the World Tom Nelson (Brazos Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

For years, Tom Nelson’s amazing Crossway book Work Matters was one of the top go-to books, basic but fascinating, thorough but not daunting. It was just a perfect book for those starting their journey into this topic (or for those who had, indeed, already considered it a bit.) Rev. Nelson wrote the book from the point of view of a pastor who had neglected equipping his congregants to think well about their life in the work world and it was his own story of repentance that fueled the book. “Professional malpractice,” he called it, and his earnest awakening made for a compelling read. Alas, over time he has matured and thought more about this topic, so this 2026 re-release is a considerably re-written new book. That is, it is not just a rehash or a mere title change, but an almost fully new edition. There is some overlap but it is well worth having, even if you read the first edition. It’s not complex but it is just over 200 pages in 11 good chapters.

Rev. Nelson is the senior pastor of Christ Community Church, and founder and executive chairman of Made to Flourish.

An expanded and revised edition of a classic? What’s not to love!

Transforming Work: Encouragement from God’s Word for Your Day-to-Day Work Simon Flinders & Paul Grimmond (Matthias Media) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Author Simon Flinders is an Anglican Archdeacon to the Archbishop in Sydney Australia where he has done a lot on this topic; Paul Grimmond is a Vice Principle at Moore Theological College there. That they are a part of the broader Anglican communion is appealing to me, and that they are clearly gospel-centered, deeply Biblical, unmistakably evangelical, makes this appealing to many. I love how they use the Scriptures well (with explanations of the cultural mandate) and delve (as one put it) “with warmth and insight into questions around relationships and responsibilities.”  They insist that cliches are inadequate — like, for instance, cheap talk about achieving some “work/life balance.” Conservative evangelicals in Europe and down under are light years ahead of most American evangelicals, it seems, and we’re grateful for this delightful read.  8 Chapters, under 190 pages.

Faith at Work: Christian Vocation in the Professions edited by David W. Loy (Concordia) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This isn’t the first time Lutheran folks have led the way and these individual essays are all written by Lutheran experts in their respect fields. They all offer (to greater or lesser degree) a Biblical and theological foundation for their particular sense of calling into their careers and employment. They each wonder how they are serving their neighbor by doing their part — Luther taught that, you know, that God cares for us through our neighbor’s work. Just imagine if there was nobody making your car parts or inventing your software or growing the what for your daily bread; some worker planted cables that got this internet info right to your inbox. Praise the Lord!  Anyway, the first part of this very readable book offers a foundation with five essays on Christian vocation. The essays for the rest of the book explore this as it relates to very specific professions. It seems to me that readers from any career area will be inspired to see how these sisters and brothers integrate their faith with their jobs. Granted, these are all professionals, but no matter your work place, this is lovely to see.

The first part of Faith at Work, by the way, has a chapter on work in the Old Testament, another on work in the New Testament, a good piece on vocation and human flourishing, another on economic systems, and a chapter called “Preaching to Professionals in a Secular Age.” I’m no preacher, but this was good stuff. If you are a preacher, you need to read this chapter!

The next part has a chapter on counseling, one on nursing, a bit on teaching, a piece on serving in healthcare administration, and another on serving God in public health work. There’s a fine contribution on coaching, one on law and justice, a chapter on business and one on the vocation of being a pharmacist. The print is large and it is only 180 pages. It isn’t a hard read at all, but I’ll bet there’s some stuff here you’ve never seen before. Enjoy!

The Sacredness of Secular Work: 4 Ways Your Job Matters for Eternity (Even When You’re Not Sharing the Gospel) Jordan Raynor (Waterbrook) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

I’ve highlighted this often before so I don’t need to say much more other than to remind you that this is a treasure of a book, so interesting and compelling. Granted, it seems to be for those who think that personal evangelism is the only way we bear witness to God’s grace and that doing such gospel-sharing is the way we redeem our moments in the seemingly secular places we live. But, frankly, there really are not that many fire-breathing folks who only give out gospel tracts. Most of us know that how we live day by day is complex and that caring well means all kinds of levels of compassion and competency and embracing what some call a common kind of grace. So this book, despite the subtitle, will convince you of the depth of meaning of your seemingly secular job and that even if you don’t think a Christian view means you have to be talking about church all the time, it will guide you to a higher regard for your daily jobs.

(And it is a great adult follow-up to his lovely picture book for children called The Creator in You published by Waterbrook; $14.99 // our sale price = $11.99.)

There are some inspiring ways your work can reveal God’s Kingdom and there are some surprising strategies Raynor shows that “ensures vocation has an eternal legacy.” This really is a very good book. Deeply researched, it is still an easy read.  With the footnotes it’s only 180 pages. You’ll enjoy it.

Make Work Matter: Your Guide to Meaningful Work in a Changing World Michaela O’Donnell (Baker) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

You’ve seen her name here at BookNotes before (she co-write a fabulous personal growth title with our friend Lisa Slayton called Life in Flux: Navigational Skills to Guide and Ground You in an Ever Changing World.) She has worked as executive director of Fuller Seminar’s legendary Max De Pree Center for Leadership and consults regularly about leadership ethics, vocation and calling, and this very important topic of how to actually move from theory to practice, so to speak, from the theology of work to actually doing work that is meaningful and good. Her guidance here is very impressive and I have found it helpful even in our little business.

O’Donnell writes in Make Work Matter for those who maybe feel stuck, helping us name our frustrations and how to “lean in and let go” as we embrace a sense of being called. Of course, much of this is about “who you will become,” and she offers insights about being rooted in relationships and trusting your own creativity to do good work. She shows how to build resilience amidst challenges in your workplace. You may not be an entrepreneur, but there is something motivational about her showing how to find more meaningful ways to work. There’s stuff about empathy and imagination and reflection on the interior processes that help us “take the next doable risk.” This is rich, solid, brave, and very helpful.

Working in the Presence of God: Spiritual Practices for Everyday Work Denise Daniels & Shannon Vandewarker (Hendrickson) $25.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.76

Although it isn’t a simple, short, beginners-level book to read (see the above category), Working in the Presence of God is inspiring and could be as transformative as any you’ve read in this field. The subtitle seems to say it all — this is about spirituality in the marketplace, praying and being attentive to the Spirit in our working lives. However, thinking about conventional prayers and meditations and liturgies of the ordinary doesn’t quite capture what this is about as there is much more to it than that. Yes, it invites us to spiritual disciplines and to “practice the presence of God” in the work-world. But it doesn’t spiritualize spirituality, it doesn’t offer a merely interior mysticism, but invites us to a real-world, creation-based, embodied sort of spiritual formation that allows us to see all of life (including out day-to-day jobs) as holy. Could our work-place be sacred space?

There are reflections on typical spiritual disciplines — sabbath, confession, solitude, prayer, lamentation — showing how they can be practiced at work. Wow, can we go beyond just remembering that Jesus is Lord of all areas of life and actually be attentive to the Risen Lord even in our busy and sometimes painful workplaces? Can our work become a venue for Christian maturity and can our witness there point gently to the light of Christ? This hardback book is remarkable. Highly recommended.

Practices for Working in the Presence of God: A Guided Journal Sharron Vandewarker & Denise Daniels (Hendrickson) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This solid and well made paperback journal has lots of solid content, more insight and reflection on the ideas of the companion hardback, Working in the Presence of God. For those who want to carry not just the ideas about their faith but the spirituality of their lives into the marketplaces and hospitals and schoolyards and computer desks and medical labs and factory floors of their lives, this guided journal will help you do this. More than a few prompts and ideas, more than a collection of prayers and Psalms and other litanies, Practices for Working in the Presence of God has all that and more. Much more.

After some wise counsel about using the book to its full potential, the first big part is “Orienting to Work” and the first piece is “The Liturgy of Commute” and has ideas and thoughts and Bible texts and suggestions for imaginative prayer and more. The second part is under the rubric of Engaging in Work” (where there are four fabulous chapters, including ideas I am confident that you’ve never read before on confession and lament at work.) The final third unit is “Reflecting on Work” and these chapters offering marketplace / work-world ideas about solitude, prayer, and sabbath. Yep. Throughout there are black and white drawings that are just allusive enough on invite you in and make you ponder. You’ll be surprised how much is packed into this guide book, with adaptations suggested for various work-world locations. There is nothing like this and while it is a practical manual for apply the companion hardback, I think you could benefit just from this, even without the bigger book.

Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work Elaine Howard Ecklund & Denise Daniels (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This has been touted — as I’ve said before at BookNotes — as one of the major new releases this year, groundbreaking in some ways. It is written by two veteran women scholars of this field (Ecklund is a socialist at Rice University and Daniels is a professor of entrepreneurship at Wheaton.) Together they offer a theologically well-grounded, research-based approach to the study of Christian influence in the work world. They’ve identified five key tensions arising from changing demographics in American culture and suggest “practical applications for all levels of workplace contribution.” Fascinating.

There has been a robust and growing movement in recent years about all of this faith in the work world —  and there Bible studies, books, podcasts, conferences, organizations, church-based ministry but also within industries and career fields. But some of the stuff being said has not changed much in decades. (Bethlehem Steel executive William Diehl spoke at our Pittsburgh Jubilee conference in the late 1970s on his groundbreaking book Thank God It’s Monday.) Ecklund and Daniels have studied the demographics of the workplace, the ways in which cultural shifts have changed how Americans think about work (and practice their careers or jobs.) This book really does push, as Curtis Chang put it on the Good Faith podcast, “beyond the tired categories of evangelism, ethics, and excellence. Working for Better is a way forward with a thoughtful combination of theology, data, and narrative.”  Yay.

Michaela O’Donnell says it is a “seminal study” and John Inazu (who has written professionally about civility and pluralism) say it is “a timely and important intervention.” If you collect resources on this topic you should know this one, for sure.

Work: Its Purpose, Dignity, and Transformation Daniel M. Doriani (Presbyterian & Reformed) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Oh my, I mentioned in my list above that Dan’s small book was a great brief guide for a small group to study. This is his major work on the subject and although it is almost 225 pages, it is a lovely read, full of story and theology, Biblical reflection and rooting our own experience of work in the broader redemptive narrative of Scripture. It’s one of the best and a must for anybody seriously leading in this topic.

Does all work really matter? Are some jobs more meaningful or better than others? Is “being true to your craft” enough? What does fidelity in the work space mean and look like? Can our work somehow contribute to making the world a better place, serving God and our neighbors? Doriani says yes.

Biblical scholar D.A. Carson says of the many books that treat a Christian view of work, this one is the best.

For everyone everywhere, our work is an expression of how we answer the most complex questions of life, of who we are and why we are. A historian, a theologian, an ethicist, a pastor, and (perhaps most profoundly) a grandfather, Dan Doriani takes up this complexity with seasoned wisdom born of years of paying attention to the life he has lived and the labor he has done. This volume is a unique contribution to the growing literature on the meaning of work for human beings. At one and the same time it is rooted in remarkably rich biblical and theological reflection and also pastorally responsive to the people Dan has known whose vocational questions have informed his writing. I know of no other book like Work. May it have a wide reading among those who wrestle with why we work, and why our work matters to God and the world. — Steven Garber, former professor of Marketplace Theology, Regent College; author, Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good

A concise yet comprehensive must-read for the thoughtful and committed Christian embedded in the ‘secular’ workplace. Dan Doriani has masterfully captured the nuances of the twenty-first-century workaday world, covering a wide range of topics from discerning God’s calling to dealing with difficult corporate situations and contemporary dilemmas, such as overwork and underemployment. Doriani skillfully explains pertinent theological principles in everyday language, lacing his narrative with compelling true-life illustrations and applications. Whether answering God’s calling on the shop floor, in the corporate office, or in the home, the reader will find practical and theologically sound answers here. — Franz J. Wippold II, Emeritus Professor of Radiology, Washington University, St. Louis

Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work Timothy Keller & Katherine Leary Alsdorf (Penguin) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I suppose this is still the gold standard in our library of books about a Christian approach to work. Co-written by a wonderful woman who has been a corporate executive and leader in the Redeemer Church’s Center for Faith and Work, she and Keller offer exquisite insights about all things related to this topic.

It is hard to explain just how very important this book has been, with the famous Tim Keller validating many of us who have been saying this sort of thing for years, affirming a broad Kingdom vision of a “creation-being-regained” sort of worldview, grounded in the Bible’s gospel-centered view but laden with culturally-savvy insights about the society and our views of labor. From the goodness of it all to the hard toil, from signs of hope personally and structurally, this really offers a philosophy of the topic that is wise and charming and serious. It is a masterpiece in so many ways…

Some might say it focuses a bit too much on professional life, on careers and workspace common to Keller’s Manhattan landscape. Yes, he has investment bankers and museum administrators and top surgeons and world-famous ballerinas in his congregation. But there are public school teachers and retail workers, software designers and bus drivers, too. Biblical wisdom is applicable to all folks in all sorts of job sites and Every Good Endeavor is aptly named. It is one of the best, weighing in at about 265 pages before the footnotes and other pages… Co-written by the amazing Katherine Leary Alsdorf, one of the most important voices in this topic in the last 25 years.

Their Center for Faith and Work (CFW) groups order books from us and we have contributed to some of their older industry specific bibliographies on their website. Katherine has mostly retired and Tim of course has passed away, but CFW remains vibrant under the leadership of Paul Sohn (who wrote Quarter-Life Calling: Pursing Your God-Given Purpose in Your Twenties) and former Pennsylvanian, Robbie Brown. Just the other day I saw a whole page at the CFW website of prayers for architects. Thanks be to God.

TEN SOMEWHAT MORE DEMANDING, LENGTHY or EXPENSIVE VOLUMES

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work Matthew B. Crawford (Penguin) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Not too expensive or hefty, I almost put this in the above category, but although it is often breezy and a fun story, it is at times a tad philosophical. Crawford was a University of Virginia scholar who ended up pushing white papers at some think-tank and he realized this seemed neither meaningful nor virtuous; he longed for something more tangible. He opened a motorcycle repair shop and here reflects long and hard on how we devalue blue collar work and why embodied reality calls forth — if only we’d listen —an interest in shop class. In the trades. In working with one’s hands. The New York Times Book Review called Shop Class as Soulcraft “a beautiful little book about human excellence and the way it is undervalued in contemporary America.” It’s a fun, profitable read, but, again, he is a mechanic who likes to philosophize a bit. As he ruminates on the craft of practical, manual trades, he notes that such work “can be more intellectually demanding than the sort that deals with abstractions.” And, importantly, “maintenance and repair work also cultivate certain ethical virtues” which in turn foster habits of responsibility. Wow, this is good stuff.

We also love his important work The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction and his fascinating reflection Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road. But for our purposes here, now, read Shop Class as Soulcraft. You won’t regret it, I promise.

Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good Amy L. Sherman (IVP)$27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

Oh my, this is such a good book, with so very much content and lots to ponder. I love that it has an energetic foreword by Reggie McNeal and a spectacularly-written and deeply moving Afterword by Steven Garber. Amy is a hero in these circles and she really gets how we are called into God’s Kingdom, living out faith to help the culture flourish. The book she wrote after this one is magisterial and, while covering so much, a truly fabulous read. That one is called Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society (IVP $29.99 // our price $22.39.) But for the topic work in this Labor Day season, you’ve got to read Kingdom Calling to reflect on how we steward our vocational options.

I trust her instincts and admire her gifts as a speaker and writer. (Her chapter in my Serious Dreams is maybe my favorite entry as she holds up example of graduates from the college where she spoke and the ways in which they are doing good work in the world, in jobs and innovative businesses and social initiatives for the common good.)

Kingdom Calling is a serious handbook on relating faith to work and her pattern in the book is to start basic, offering a few  simple and obvious sorts of ways to bring faith into one’s job site; the next proposal is a bit more sophisticated, a deeper intentionality about faithful presence at work. There’s a third model, and a fourth, each a different angle or style of strategy for stewarding our vocational options. Not everyone can start their own (Christian) business, say, and not everyone can even deeply integrate a Christian way of thinking about the practices of her career. But can we do something? Of course. Her stories are contagious and her various “levels” of innovative commitment to a Christian sense of vocation in one’s career are all so, so helpful. This is a fabulous book articulating the ways in which we think Christianly about work and then exceptionally clear about (various ways) of how to make it happen, with different styles, instincts, or models. There is a rare blurb from the wise Katherine Leary Alsdorf which speaks volumes. This is an important, wonderful book.

One of the great bits in the book is an extended rumination from Proverbs 11:10. She was the first I ever heard ask about this, why it would be that the (secular) city would rejoice when the God’s people prosper. Do people get happy when slumlords and union busters and corporate fat cats prosper? No, they do not. People are glad when the righteous (the tsaddiqim) prosper because they see those leaders, those neighbors, those good folk, as a blessing to them and their setting. They are glad when God’s people succeed because they know that they are blessed when the tsaddiqim succeed. This is the reputation we should have as workers doing stuff that is a help to the community and to the workplace.  Her piece about this is something I’ve been thinking of for years, now.

We are, supposedly, challenged by our preachers, we learn to more deeply trust God as we bless the world, our neighbors and especially the needy flourish and so the world celebrates. Yes!  Believe me: Kingdom Calling will help those of you who are struggling to understand how this works. It is a great book and you will have greater insight once you read it.

Lived Vocation: Stories of Faith at Work Timothy K. Snyder (Fortress Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Again, this one isn’t that academic or pricey but it’s just a bit more sophisticated in tone than some. I think it makes sense that David Jensen (Academic Dean at Austin Presbyterian Seminary) called Snyder a “theological Studs Terkel.”  Terkel, of course, wrote the groundbreaking collection of interviews in 1974 called Working which captured some of the joy and a lot of the pain of 20th century working class lives. In Lived Vocation, Snyder ( a professor at New York’s General Seminary) interviewed and then reported on the experiences of ordinary folks, offering “the multifaceted lived experiences of real people at work, challenging our default understanding of the vocations of others.” He admits his own sense of vocation is complex and (as Jensen puts it) the result is “a beautiful interweaving of our story and theology, testimony and tradition.”

In a way this is how the doing of theology (broadly and practically understood) is an on-the-ground project, done in community, in real places. There is much to absorb and consider, especially for those who have read some of the above books, as this one breaks it down, gets really real, and helps us empathize with those trying to live into their sense of call in the real world.

A black pastor (of Bethany Baptist in NYC)  notes that most of the folks in the book don’t have any theological training as such, and says it is “a thoughtful and necessary reflection.” Indeed.

Eighth-Day Discipleship: A New Vision for Faith, Work, and Economics Richard H. Bliese (Fortress) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

It is important that mainline denominational publishers, more than most other faith-based presses, it seems, take up the important task of reflecting on economic systems, a theology of markets, relating Biblical ethics to the structures of capital and capitalism. (See, just for instance, Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage by Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, released by Fortress; $35.00 // $28.00.) Eighth-Day Discipleship places our work-lives in the context of our global economic setting, so there is a bit of a Christian critique of late-modern capitalism even though it isn’t mostly that. It has been called by Phyllis Anderson, former President of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary “astoundingly original, accessible, and important.”

Here are two things about it: Richard Bliese has extensive ministry experience on three continents and cares deeply about evangelism and wholistic mission. He knows the gospel and cares about what some might see as core truths about personal salvation and the grace that shows the love of God. Bliese cares about disciple-making and wants the church to be active in reaching and shaping the lives (the whole lives) of folks everywhere. He is situated as a mainline Christian and draws on Luther’s Catechism for an “evangelical design” for living well. In a way, we could as easily put this book in our discipleship section or our disciple-making section as it has that missional focus.

The second thing is that Bliese reminds us that the gospel story always links belief and behavior, faith and work, the personal and public sides of life, so, to be faithful in our day and age, we have to grapple with the forces of the economy, reforming it, so to speak, being agents of resistance and transformative ways being engaged in work and service. To see a Lutheran guy citing Abraham Kuyper and to see a mainline denominational leader not fall in to standard left-wing critiques is refreshing. Maybe the Spirit really is helping us foster a new vision for faith, work, and economics. This book blends some varying perspectives and covers a lot of territory.

Worth Doing: Fallenness, Finitude, and Work in the Real World W. David Buschart & Ryan Tafilowski (IVP Academic) $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

I appreciate the visionary clarity and evangelical zeal in that first category of basic books above — easy, exciting, inviting us to honor the Kingship of Christ over all areas of life, basic explorations of a Christian view of work. Rejecting dualisms and working towards integration, we can think Christianly about all zones of culture and, obviously, then, work. While most admit that the workplace is often stressful and that our labor may even seem in vain at times — let alone any whistleblowing efforts to change anything all that much — those books are all mostly upbeat and hopeful. They offer greater joy and purpose as we head more knowingly into our occupations and holy callings, allowing God to meet us on the shop floor, business center, art studio, school, clinic, break-room, or lab or house (since unpaid work like homemaking is still work, as well.)

This book, though, Worth Doing — wow.  This one brings a deep truth about things that simply must be said. We live in a fallen world and we have limits. We have our personal sins and weaknesses and a lack of wisdom, sure, but the systems and institutions and cultural air we breathe is sullied. We all live East of Eden and yet we forget that a theology of work must take into account the implications of “finitude and the fall.”

These authors are seminary professors (at Denver Theological) and both have PhDs from important places (Drew and Edinburgh) and both invite us to take serious the goodness of our limits (a la the books of Kelly Kapic, who wrote a great introduction) and the challenges of this fallen world.

“A vital contribution to the faith-work conversation, especially for those who don’t always feel seen in traditional narratives of calling and purpose.” — Denise Daniels co-author of Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work

The Church and Labor Joseph Husslein & John Ryan (Cluny Publishers) $24.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

Cluny does classic reprints of mostly Roman Catholic scholarly works (and old fiction) and we stock some of their wonderful resources. This little remembered volume was published in 1920, presenting “the teaching of the Catholic Church on a social issues intimately connected with the other problems and assets of industrial society: human toil.”

The back cover tells us:

Compiled by Fathers Husslein and Ryan, The Church and Labor includes texts by Popes Leo XXIII, Pius X, and Benedict XV, as well as other important voices from Catholic thinkers (and the bishops from Ireland, France, and Germany, not to mention the American Bishops — all decades ago!) There are church based insight on a living wage, on “the reconciliation of capital and labor” and essays on the development of a Catholic social platform that stands for justice and social reform.

While all of the pieces are situated in older time and places, the topics are current, including a firm piece against socialism (from the German Bishops in 1920) one on industrial relations, and another on what was called “the labor question.” The prose writing, from an earlier era, is a bit complex and the book weighs in at nearly 325 pages.

Saving the Protestant Ethic: Creative Class Evangelicalism and the Crisis of Work Andrew Lynn (Oxford University Press) $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

Twenty years ago a scholar named David Miller (now the Director of the Princeton University Faith & Work Initiative) wrote a much-discussed book (on Oxford University Press) called God at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement. It was, and remains, a major scholarly research report into this movement. We here at Hearts & Minds in Dallastown were one of the few Christian bookstores who carried it, or so we were told.  Now, Andrew Lynn comes along and picks up the tale, doing academic study into the convictions and cultures of those involved in at least the conservative Protestant wing of the larger-than-ever faith and work movement. It’s an interesting survey, important for anyone offering leadership in our movement.

From marketplace ministry to the sort of alternative businesses explored by Amy Sherman, from talk of a Christian labor union (like the one in Canada, the CLAC) to Christian centers offering fellowship and industry-specific prayers and proposals, there is so much to report. Saving the Protestant Ethic — an allusion to the famous Max Weber book, I guess — shows how this public conversation and movement is not a passing fad, but increasingly sophisticated and self-aware.

No greater a social scientist than Robert Wuthnow recommends this book:

In these days when almost everything about American evangelicalism is controversial, this well-researched, fair-minded book about the evangelical ‘faith and work’ movement is a welcome contribution. Andrew Lynn has provided a great deal for supporters of the movement, its critics, and all who worry about the moral malaise present in the marketplace to ponder. — Robert Wuthnow, author of Why Religion Is Good for American Democracy

Working Blessedly Forever Volume 1: The Shape of Marketplace Theology R. Paul Stevens (Cascade) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Working Blessedly Forever Volume 2: The Practice of Marketplace Theology edited by R. Paul Stevens & Lucas Lee (Cascade) $29.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Working Blessedly Forever Volume 3: The Spirituality of Marketplace Theology edited by R. Paul Stevens $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Oh my, if there were one person I might call the grandfather of this faith at work movement, who, at least in the somewhat worldviewish branch the evangelical and Reformed stream of this movement, could be considered a fountainhead, it might be Paul Stevens of Regent University in Vancouver, WA. He has faithfully proclaimed a wide-as-life faith, inviting his students all over the world to embody a creation-based, redemptive lifestyle that, of course, has vast implications for work, for the market, the marketplace, and our visions of vocation.

He wrote the first book in this recent trilogy, The Shape of Marketplace Theology, and it carries a tremendously wise and eloquent introduction by Steve Garber (who also taught at Regent for a bit.) In volume 1 Stevens makes the case that doing marketplace theology involves thinking well while also being rooted in spirituality and being led to actual action in the world. It deftly explores how we ponder and pray and work. It is a magnificent first volume of many of his shorter pieces and we highly recommend this first volume.

The second volume, The Practice of Marketplace Theology, focuses specifically on the work we do, the habits of our hands and bodies and how we might embrace fresh and helpful practices as workers. He edited this one, so the essays are from dozens of people from around the world with numerous jobs and occupations in various arenas. I do not recognize most of them but they offer deep and thoughtful reflections. There are a few chapters, too, by the way, about the work of pastors and how churches can nurture marketplace theology and vision.

“Paul Stevens has made seminal, if not singular, contributions to the faith and work movement over a long and distinguished career. Working Blessedly Forever is the fruit of that blessed life in conversation with many influenced by his example. Volume 2 gathers thoughtful marketplace practitioners and practical marketplace theologians to explore how faith and work can find expression in everyday life. Highly recommended and a gift to the church and the world. “– Uli Chi, author, The Wise Leader

The Spirituality of Marketplace Theology is the third book in the Working Blessedly Forever trilogy and is, as the subtitle shows, about prayer and spiritual practices. Again, although he has several contributions, much of the book was edited by Stevens, so the chapters are from faithful voices from around the world.  My friend Steve Garber has a chapter in this one but many of the writers are not authors of books. They have various jobs, and they offer their wholistic spirituality here, helping us all “work blessedly forever.” Amen!

 

 

FIVE MUST-HAVE BOOKS FOR PASTORS AND CHURCH LEADERS

Leading Worship for Workers: How to Design Liturgies for All of Life Matthew Kaemingk and Kathryn Roelofs (Baker Academic) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

When I announced this earlier this year I was thrilled to have the opportunity to tell you about it. I loved it for several reasons — firstly, of course, because of our passion about the Biblically commanded principle that we are to do our work unto God. Which is to say, worship should have something to do with our vocations in the world. This volume is a much-needed (rare, even) resource for helping congregants do what they are called to do.

Secondly, perhaps as a consequence of thinking about vocations and callings and employment (and unemployment) and so forth, we, again, grapple with the Biblical vision of God’s care about all of creation, about the awe of life on planet Earth, soiled by sin as it may be. That is, by helping us think about worshipping for work, we are led to the broader question of worshipping the God who is there, the God revealed in the Bible as worker and creator. Thinking even occasionally about leading worship for workers will remind us of the broader principle of worshipping a God who loves creation, made us as image-bearers to nurture that creation. We worship the Lamb who was slain for the sins of the world and the creation itself. In other words, besides the obvious resource about worshipping in ways that help workers in thinking of their jobs as Christian work, it also, more generally, pushes us to think generously about the gospel for life.

Anyway, just having a book like this speaks volumes about faith and life and the Kingdom’s relevance to culture and God’s great redemptive promise to restore us fully to our image-bearing calling to work and rest. Leading Worship for Workers is surely one of the most important books published in 2026.

Worship leader and author Constance Cherry (emeritus professor at Indiana Wesleyan University) says:“

This is a handbook filled with biblically grounded, practical examples and exercises that help address the persisting bifurcation between the sacred and the secular.”

Exactly. Order it today.

Work and Worship: Reconnection Labor and Liturgy Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Wilson (Baker Academic) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

Well, if the Leading Worship for Workers manual is the practical handbook to accompany Work and Worship, I’d say this original text, Work and Worship, is the brilliant foundation for thinking well about both work and workship and about the combo of work and worship, together. With a forward by Nicholas Wolterstorff, you know it is serious and mature and profound — there is simply nothing like it on the market. We’ve highlighted this before and can’t say enough. Give it to your pastor if she or he doesn’t have it yet. Which they probably don’t.

Luke Bobo, who worked for Made to Flourish for a time, says it is “beautiful and timely” and notes that even though ti is methodical and persuasive, it is winsome. He says that Kaemingk and Wilson trace how this vision drew in diverse people and people groups and cultures, ancient and modern.

And listen to this, by Jamie Smith:

Here, finally, is the book that will take the ‘faith and work’ conversation to new depths of intentionality. With theological clarity and real-world accountability, Kaemingk and Willson mend what we have rent asunder. Advancing scholarship in theology of culture, it is also a must-read for those who lead worship for workers — which includes, of course, everyone. This should become a standard textbook, for the sake of the church and for the sake of the world. — James K. A. Smith, Calvin University; author of Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation and Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works

Pastoring for Monday: Help Your Congregation Integrate Faith and Work Matt Austen (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.59

I hope you recall that we celebrated the release of this recent book just a few weeks ago. We noted that Matt Austen has been himself a pastor who has studied this exact topic of relating faith, work, economics, and vocation at Fuller. He is now President of Made to Flourish (and editor of their great magazine, Common Good.) I don’t know if he was mentored by Tom Nelson (see Why Your Work Matters to God, above) but he is now at the helm of this amazing organization that Tom founded to help clergy and church leaders made a difference in their neighborhoods and the workplaces of their congregants. If ordinary, daily work matters to God, as we’ve said, it is a fair question to ask if it matters to God’s church? I have noted before that in my own church we have never heard a careful sermon on this topic and I cannot recall ever having been prayed for as a businessperson. Perhaps you are there too, feeling a bit neglected. It would be a great gift to share this with you pastor.

If you are a pastor, you may know you most likely need a book like this.  We have and pastors need all kinds of professional resources, about doing funerals, about pre-marital counseling, about leadership, stewardship campaigns, promoting public justice, and the various aspects of preaching and leading worship. So you know you read widely to understand how to do your job, better and better. It is an honor to serve you in this journey of professional development.

If you have struggles with thinking well about this theme of work, wondering how to engage your people with this topic, I’m sure this book will help. Buy this, and you will be able to move forward in this area with greater confidence.

Put plainly, the wonderful Amy Sherman says:

Matt Rusten knows that genuine discipleship necessarily includes an intentional, consistent, practical focus on helping parishioners understand their work through the lens of faith. A veteran at this sort of equipping, he shows how to do it with excellence and specificity, providing numerous illustrations from Scripture and ordinary people’s lives. Armed with Rusten’s tool-belt of strategies and practices, clergy will learn how to effectively support and relevantly communicate with their members as they navigate many common work-related struggles. — Amy L. Sherman, author of Kingdom Calling and Agents of Flourishing

And pastor Tom Nelson, senior pastor of Christ Community Church, and founder and now chairman of Made to Flourish, of course, weighs in:

Out of a deep and refreshing well of theological reflection, hands-on experience, and timeless wisdom, Matt Rusten ignites leadership imagination, offering helpful tools to pastor congregants with their Monday in mind. This truly outstanding book is a remarkable gift to the church and a must-read for every pastor. — Tom Nelson, author of Why Your Work Matters.

Read those two endorsements again, and use the order button at the end of this column. You’ll be glad you did.

Faith Work: Galvanizing Your Church for Everyday Impact Missy Wallace & Lauren Gill (Redeemer City to City) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

These two fantastically gifted women have been at this for a long while and they know, as well as anyone, how a whole church can be inspired to live out this robust faith that focuses on a sophisticated, multi-dimensional missional vision. What does a congregation where almost every members sees their work as an opportunity to deepen their faith and truly serve God (right where they work) will do to cast that vision, to deepen those who appreciate it, to offer both theological footing and strategies to overcome the obstacles to a coherent plan of integration faith and work. This book, created out of the network of Redeemer “City to City” churches around the world, gives nuts and bolts plans and steps, like a roadmap, for implementing this sort of stuff in a big way in your church. Michaela O’Donnell (of the Max De Pree Leadership Center) says it should be “required reading for eery church leader who believes the people of God are called to live out their faith in every sphere of life — including their work.”

Every sentence, every framework, every tool and case study are the hard-won fruit of decades of ministry-tested, cross-cultural, cross-sector work, reflection and distillation.        — Rev. Abe Cho, vice president of Thought Leadership at City to City.

Discipleship with Monday in Mind Skye Jethani & Luke Bobo (Made to Flourish) $8.50 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

Here we are, back where we started with a very basic, succinct, and charming little book that is inexpensive but worth its weight in gold. The subtitle says “How Churches Across the Country Are Helping Their People Connect Faith and Work.”

Happy Labor Day, dear readers. We only have a few of these left but this is a compact sized, thin (and handsomely designed) resource showing how real pastors have helped their churches connect faith and work.  In a way it introduces the whole topic for congregational leaders in short pieces, testimonials and stories of churches that did something to enhance the vocational sensibility of their congregants. It shows “what you can do to hep your congregation make the connection between Sunday worship and Monday work.”

From pastoral practice to worship planning, for how we talk about spiritual formation to how we talk about mission, it all can nature or discourage a sense that God and God’s people in the church care about the daily work of ordinary members.  This small book is under 100 pages and is a nice, quick read, perhaps to share with somebody who is’t ready for the other books on this list. Churches can introduce this view of labor and the Biblically-informed meaning of work into its life discipleship, formation, and mission. This little book shows you how others have done it.

Click below to either ask a question at our inquiry page or to order at our secure website. Just tell us what you want and we’ll take it from there.  We are sure your life will be better if you read some of these books. All are 20% off, too.

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Live Laugh Love: The Secret History White Christian Women and the World They Made Kristin Kobes Du Mez (Liveright) $31.99 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE at 20% OFF = $25.59  releasing September 15, 2026

Sometimes, when I like a book very, very much, and I also think others will be helped by it — that they either will enjoy it as I did or that they ought to read it — when I sense that confidence that this is it, one of the books of the year, one I really want to get behind, press into the hands of nearly every reader I know, well, I sometimes then get a bit verbose trying to make the case.

I have sometimes been told that I say too much about my favorite books — that I should just recommend them briefly and trust that folks don’t need any breathy arm-twisting. But yet, when I love a book I want to say why. I want to honor the author by showing that I’ve read the book and appreciate both its spirit and its content, its literary verve and the information it shares.

Which is a long way to ask: should this be a long review or a short one? Because, ladies and gentleman, older and young readers, folks near and far, this right here is one of those books.

We really want you to pre-order Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s  Live Laugh Love: The Secret History White Christian Women and the World They Made. We will send it out to you the day we’re allowed (the official street date is September 15th) and we will have them autographed.

We already have a nice number of names on the waiting list and we are sure there will be more wanting to pre-order it so they can get it as soon as it becomes available. We’re selling it at 20% off (which is a lot cheaper than that faceless mega-chain that could hardly care less) and there hopefully will be autographed plates with Kristin’s nifty signature.

I suppose you know that Du Mez is somewhat of an acquaintance of ours — we’ve long been fans of Calvin University (where one of our kids went and knew her a bit on campus) and we knew some of Kristin’s own college teachers when she was a student at Calvin’s poorer cousin college, Dordt, now University. (That she quotes the late Calvin Seerveld, from a talk he gave at Dordt in Live Laugh Love just made me smile to heaven.)

We reviewed her first academic book, A New Gospel for Women: Katharine Bushnell and the Challenge of Christian Feminism (Oxford University Press; $60.00 // our sale price = $48.00) when it came out over ten years ago. We raved (early on, if I may say so myself) about Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Liveright; $18.99 // our sale price = $15.16.) That is a thrilling ride through US evangelical history from the last 60 years or so and baby boomers will especially resonate with so much of it, even if you weren’t reading early evangelical feminism books in the 1970s as we were.

Beth and I are celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary this year — yep, we married in 1976, the year of the US Bicentennial, and we still are dazzled by the Bicentennial Bible we were earnestly given as a patriotic wedding present. You know, right there is a symbol of the beginnings of an ungodly blend of Americanism and faith that, as Du Mez shows so righteously, developed into the religious right and eventually the idols of MAGA ideology. She shows how rugged masculinity shaped much of that faith and the militarism that seemed to go with it, hand in glove. Anyway, agree fully or not, Jesus and John Wayne was a huge cultural marker, a book that so many talked about and named something that wasn’t clearly stated before. As a historian she received accolades. Popularly, she was both lionized and lambasted (often cruelly — those macho theo-dudes seemed determined to prove her point with their vile threats.)

But what about the women in the story? How did this John Wayne macho-culture of patriotic hyper-evangelical faith affect them? What role did they play, pro or con? What was their experience in the white evangelical subculture of the last lifetime?

Kobes Du Mez starts off Live Laugh Love with two personal comments that I found fascinating. First, she realized the John Wayne book was heavy stuff — masculinity gone pagan, the KKK,  gross militarism, patriarchy and misogyny and abuse all in the name of a judgmental Jesus — and although Jesus and John Wayne was still a pretty entertaining read of 20th century history, she hoped to do a lighter book next time. And she thought it would be shorter, too. Ha.

Like J&JW, Live Laugh Love is fabulously-written social history and at times a delightfully informative page-turner. But as the chapters unfold it picks up steam and by the end she is talking about some pretty darn ugly stuff. The book was meant to be lighter and it ended up being heavier, even searing, at times, and a bit longer than its companion predecessor.

One of the reasons the LLL book had to be longer is that Du Mez, historian that she is, realized that the thought patterns that so influenced many mid-to-late 20th century evangelicals (shaped, at first, by an upbeat sort of holiness theology and a revivalism formed at camp meetings and Keswick) were even more basically influenced by a positive thinking sort of ideology that swept the country in the tail end of the 19th century and into the early 20th.

How fascinating to see the dots she connects — vividly, insightfully, and, finally, compellingly — between the likes of new thought positivity and charismatic preacher women like Aimee Semple McPherson (who disappeared in 1926) and Kathryn Kuhlman (known at first in Pittsburgh, she died in 1976.) As a writer, Du Mez shines in weaving stories of the influences that shaped people like Norman Vincent Peale (Donald Trump’s childhood preacher) and multi-level marketing movements (Tupperware was invented by a Mr. Tupper) like Mary Kay; Oprah Winfrey was captured by that philosophy, going back to thinkers like French physician Franz Anton Mesmer (from whom we get the word “mesmerize”) and other mind-cure philosophers, as were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Mary Baker Eddy (of Christian Science fame), not to mention early “name it and claim it” positive confession / prosperity guy E.W. Kenyon (and, adjacently, what is known as the Latter Rain movement.) I love this kind of social history which draws out the trends, ideas, and the genealogies of attitudes and practices in a smart combo of intellectual history by way of stories and biography. And there were so many colorful characters leading up to the 21st century that she had to start earlier. Hence, the book is a bit longer and your enjoyment under her tutelage that much more thorough. Hooray.

Dr. Du Mez’s exploration of Hannah Whitehall Smith is spectacular and her wide influence will be important information for many of us.  Her chapter on Elizabeth Elliott is excellent, marking shifts in Elliott’s own sense of the rightness of evangelical truisms and her later deep journey into submission to God by way of submission to males in general and a possibly abusive husband particularly. (A footnote documents letters to Virginia Ramey Mollenkott which is a breathtaking bit of information. If you know who she is, you’ll be astonished.) It’s an amazing part of the book.

And there you have it, or at least one thread of this fabric — submission as an ideology, humility developed by covering up desire and placing oneself as a woman strictly under a God-ordained male. This is, for many women, the religious teaching about the very order of the universe.

Curiously, then, a certain sort of (worldly?) beauty was necessary to please men, and a movement development (first among Mormon women) called “fascinating womanhood.” Who knew how many millions of their booklets sold and how many drew from this notion? It may be where Marabel Morgan got her Total Womanhood stuff, submissive sexiness as a key to female happiness. That Marabel Morgan’s erotic suggestions about how to greet a husband coming home from work with little to nothing on were being published and bought (by the millions!) In the early-to-mid-1970s by evangelicals, the whip-smart Roman Catholic Phylis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum was heating up as conservative women were taught to fight the Equal Rights Amendment. Anybody paying attention to the mid-’70s social debates knows this stuff and Du Mez’s chapters had my heart racing. I remember well those efforts to get states to ratify the ERA and how Southern Baptists Jimmy and sweet Rosalyn Carter were demonized for their support of the ERA.

Chapter after chapter Du Mez opens new avenues of exploring women’s lived experience of faith and their social settings. There’s so many amazing threads such as the odd influence of Keswick preacher Jessie Penn-Lewis over Frank Bachman (who went from Penn State ultimately to Oxford to create what became known as Moral-Rearmament that nearly fell in with Nazis), some great stuff on Little House on the Prairie (can anybody say “tradwives”?), multi-level marketing schemes (then and now), women’s ministry (see Beth Barr’s Becoming the Pastor’s Wife) and more. There is a fabulous chapter on the rise of contemporary Christian music, and her bit on Amy Grant is fantastic. The chapter called “Like a Virgin”, for some readers, will be worth the price of the book. And, oh, those of us who have worked in Christian bookstores? Hang on. She’s not wrong, you know.

And her bit about the ever popular Amish romance novels and the art of the troubled Thomas Kinkade is fascinating and generative. (Thank goodness she quoted The Thrill of the Chaste:The Allure of Amish Romance Novels by Valerie Weaver-Zecher!)

As the book moves towards the 21st century there are chapters on well-known women, from Joyce Meyers to Nadia Bolz-Weber, from Paula White to Sarah Bessy, to the influencers Joanne Gaines and Jen Hatmaker. I found each of these short bios to be very well done, moving, even. Her stuff about the tragedies of how Beth Moore was treated is excellent (even if you’ve read her fabulous memoir.) Her bit about Rachel Held Evans is illuminating. From Kathy Keller to Sadie Robertson to Aimee Byrd to Ann Voskamp, they are all here.

I’m glad she discussed the important role of black evangelical leader Latasha Morrison (author of Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation.) As in Jesus and John Wayne our historian is focusing on a broad social movement largely comprised of white women but she is not unaware of the ways in which this white evangelicalism has fueled racial tension and pushed us deeper into institutional structures and reflexes that can only be called racist. It is all captivating and it is all important.

I loved the line from the back cover where Beth Allison Barr (author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth) notes in her rave review that this movement of Biblical womanhood “married capitalism with spirituality, harnessed the language of submission to broker their own networks of power, and refashioned right-wing authoritarianism into a romantic mythology of family values.” 

“…married capitalism with spirituality, harnessed the language of submission to broker their own networks of power, and refashioned right-wing authoritarianism into a romantic mythology of family values.”

If you sense that this is about right, you’ll love this book.

If you don’t quite follow how this happened (or why it is troubling) you really need to read this, no matter your gender or faith. This gives the background to a good bit of our contemporary socio-religious landscape. We all need this book.

Dr. Du Mez’s in-depth research really pays off as the focus moves from various pearls to the string that holds them. The colorful details matter but soon the big picture becomes evident. Her diligent efforts — massive amounts of archival work, tons of interviews, painstaking reading of records, pondering how this fits with that, and writing about it all so well, is a sheer gift. And how it all relates to power? Wow. Jeff Scarlett, himself an excellent researcher and writer about the often secretive movements within far-right evangelicalism, calls this book “startling, heartbreaking, and terrifying” and insists that Live Laugh Love is both groundbreaking and vital:

You simply cannot grasp the scale of Christian nationalism without this vivid and essential exploration of a distinctly American religion of white womanhood.

Again, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made by Kristen Kobes Du Mez (which is almost 400 pages) is on sale at 20% off and releases September 15th.  We hope you use our order form page at the link at the end of this column and safely enter your pre-order. We’ll take it from there. Thanks.

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Although we take pre-orders for anything, anytime, here is a title coming September 1st that we wanted you to know about. It is somewhat related to Kristin Kobes Du Mez, offering some firm push-back to her and others like her and their take on things.

In Defense of Evangelicalism: A Response to Its Cultured Despisers Bonnie Kristian (Forum Books) $27.00 // OUR PRE-ORDER SALE PRICE = $21.60

releasing September 1, 2026

I will say it right out. Bonnie, who I have met and whose previous books I have liked a lot, has a chapter in this forthcoming book offering criticism of Dr. Kristin Du Mez, both her Jesus and John Wayne book and her tireless blogging on Substack about overly masculine and militaristic faith and her speaking and organizing to resist the inappropriate blending of faith and nationalism. In an on-line tussle a week ago about changes at CT (where Bonnie Kristian works) Du Mez both apologized and pushed back a bit.

Which says something about the nature of In Defense of Evangelicalism. Chapter by chapter she tries to show — sometimes convincingly, sometimes, not so well, in my opinion — how critics of evangelicalism overstate the problem, caricature conservative Protestants as fire-breathing tyrants or goof-ball yokels or creepy power-mongers who routinely cover up child abuse, thereby ignoring the evidence that most evangelicals are just trying to be good Christians, living in grace and showing care to their neighbors the best they can. Whether the critics are exposing crass nationalism within MAGA fundamentalism or egregious sex-abuse cover-ups in the SBC or racism all over, Bonnie Kristian (trained in professional investigative journalism) attempts to show that passion gets the better of the critics and they make it sound worse than it is.

This disdain and exaggeration, she reminds us, is nothing that new. For the last century cultural elites have mocked evangelicals, “a favorite scapegoat of American public life.”

To be clear: each of the troubling exposés she investigates are (she says clearly) about real problems. She goes out of her way to assure readers that the critics should be heeded: racism and violence and sexism and anti-immigrant hostility and homophobia are all wrong and not uncommon in faith communities of all sorts. (It isn’t just evangelicals who support warmongering and anti-immigration policies, policies Bonnie herself has spoken against.) So even though the publishing imprint she is on is aligned with agenda driven socio-political conservatism and even though the subtitle (a historic line from Friedrich Schleiermacher) is an unhelpful dig, we should take her assessment at face value on the merits of her case.

She is right when she says things like:

“Evangelicals have work ahead on matters of sex and gender, theology and discipleship, and more. And, of course, we should be polite and considerate wherever we find ourselves. Yet our failures do not justify treating public religion as a sinister imposition.”

Have some of those who are angry about toxic stuff they’ve encountered in traditionalist evangelicalism thrown the baby out with the bathwater, dismissing evangelical piety and doctrine and service, because some have been hypocrites and behaved badly? Surely. Are some who are called to prophetic denunciation missing some nuance and caution? Probably so. So, her new book is a good corrective, calling for caution in analysis and wiser discernment. She is somewhat right, I am sure.

For starters, I recommend this forthcoming title for anyone who is wondering if, given the zeitgeist, they still want to use the word evangelical to describe their faith tradition. She says we should and that some of our bad press isn’t accurate or fair. Frankly, this would be good for anyone wanting a realistic look at typical evangelical types today. Mainline, liturgical, progressive or secular readers — come on!

I’ve raved before about great books on this question about the viability of the phrase “evangelical” for those of us within that camp. For instance, Still Evangelical? Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning edited by Mark Labberton (IVP; $24.00 // our sale price = $19.29) shows several views and the authors are good folks. Struggling with Evangelicalism: Why I Want to Leave and What It Takes to Stay is by Dan Stringer (IVP; $18.99 // our sale price = $15.19) and is wise and honest. And don’t miss Restless Faith: Holding Evangelical Beliefs in a World of Contested Labels by Richard Mouw (Brazos Press; $22.00 // our sale price = $16.00.) These three are exceedingly balanced — thoughtful and honest, critical and gracious.

Bonnie Kristian, who works in editorial roles at Christianity Today is herself an Anglican who is in favor of women’s ordination and admits she is a Biblical pacifist. So she’s not a MAGA ideologue or a Jerry Falwell acolyte. Yet, she worries that too many critics of evangelicalism seem to almost despise their former evangelical roots; in offering legitimate critique, they end up smearing the good reputation of many of their ordinary brothers and sisters by being sloppy with their accusations. She does a close reading of texts and looks specifically at Calvin University historian and gender studies scholar Kristin Du Mez, Baylor church history prof and author Beth Allison Barr, sociologist of religion Samuel Perry, journalist and bestselling author Tim Alberta (of a book I very heartily recommend, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, among others.

She tells lots of good stories and names the names of her alledged culprits. She dissects the writings of former right-wing operative turned anti-Trump evangelical Peter Wehner and his sociological efforts to describe the ways which many evangelicals are attracted to Trump. Yet, she says, “They don’t talk about Donald Trump if you ask them for the meaning of their evangelicalism. They talk about Jesus.” She continues, “Wehner has come to see evangelicalism as a partisan tribe, but they haven’t.”

Is she right? I hope so.

In Defense of Evangelicalism is not exactly a defense, doctrinally or theologically, of evangelical faith. That is, she doesn’t defend their loyalty to the Bible, their insistence that one must have a conversion experience, the personal sense of vibrant piety, and their conviction about a mandate to share the gospel through evangelism and world missions. Rather, she is pushing back against the assessment of many writers that evangelicalism, as such, is in bed with idols of the far right. In this sense, the book is defending the reputation or honor of those in the tradition, the run-of-the-mill people in the pews (or megachurch theatre seats, as the case may be.) Still, a majority of those who identify as evangelicals did vote for Trump, after all, and many still support the rampage of the Capitol that fearsome January 6th. So Bonnie’s defense against those criticizing the political agenda of the religious right is, in my view, an up-hill battle. Saying that most evangelicals don’t know about nationalist Doug Wilson, for instance, which may be true, doesn’t make the problem go away. His brand is growing and what he stands for is not uncommon. Still, she makes her case powerfully and clearly, in part by dissecting many of the books these authors have written. You should read it yourself.

In 2022 she published Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community which looked at celebrities who pass disinformation, right wing mania about election frauds, Q-Anon stuff and exceptionally biased media and the like. It was a thoughtful and important study of how we know what we know, inviting us to integrity and honesty in our media consumption. Is she trustworthy, herself, now, in this latest jeremiad? Is she guilty of “corrupting Christian community” in attempting to blow the whistle on what she sees as terribly unfair “guilt by association” tactics, smearing ordinary church-going believers with the foolishness of the few? I think there is a connection between her research on truth in communications and our “mass minds” and this call to think through what popular (lefty) critics are saying. Even if they are touted in BookNotes, I might add. Ha! As Jake Meador notes, she has an “intolerance for pablum.” Fair enough.

The always interesting and always eloquent and always impressive Alan Jacobs wrote a short foreword to In Defense of Evangelicalism and I have enjoyed reading it several times. Evangelicals are his people (even though he publishes on Oxford and clearly is of a different social location than many conservative evangelicals.) They are Bonnie’s people, too, apparantly.

About a decade ago she wrote a fabulously fascinating book on the many different ways to be Christian, showing wildly different faith traditions from Pentecostals to the Bruderhof or the Amish, from those who worship in sacred spaces with highly liturgical ceremony to those who gather in informal house churches, from edgy postmoderns to conservative straight arrows, from monastic isolation to exciting “new monastic” communities that serve the poor. That book is A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (Faithwords; $19.99 // our sale price = $15.99) and I wonder if her generous explorations there somehow deepened her virtue of respecting differences. And she’s now annoyed at those who castigate others.

Alas, she is a bit firm in her rebuke throughout the book, I think, overstating her accusations of those who maybe overstate the scope of their critiques. Despite that, she may often be right, and I recommend In Defense of Evangelicalism to be pre-ordered asap and read with discernment. It would be great to read it alongside Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne if you haven’t read that yet, or her forthcoming Live Laugh Love.

Read this quote from near the end of the book, where Kristian once again explains her process:

The [evangelical] movement is rife with flaws and failures, as any movement spanning centuries and continents and communities will be. Pick a vice and some evangelical or other will be guilty of it. Evangelicals have done and condoned and ignored terrible things, sometimes in characteristically evangelical ways. We haven’t always loved God with our whole hearts or our neighbors as ourselves. We don’t always look like Jesus.

All that is granted— evangelicals are sinners. The point of defending evangelicalism from its despisers, then, is not to exempt it from fair scrutiny. It’s to clear out specious and spurious attacks so we can conserve what is valuable and make room for real repair.

I think I’d feel better about this if she hadn’t called those with whom she disagrees about the scope of their criticisms “despisers.” And to suggest that scholars like Du Mez are making “specious and spurious attacks” goes too far; she is falling prey to the very lack of caution and prudence that she is warning against.

Bonnie continues, “Effective critique will be made from evangelicalism’s own commitments and by its own people.” Geesh, I am not sure if that will happen or not or on what basis she thinks that is plausible. We can hope.

But she is very right about this:

“We need less revulsion and ridicule from without, more reformation from within. Disdain does not bring renewal.”

If you are ordering both of these, please let us know if we should send In Defense of Evangelicalism first and then, two weeks later, Life Laugh Love OR if we should consolidate, sending them both together mid-September. We’re at your service, so do tell us how you’d like us to handle shiping these two titles. Use our simple order form page at the link below. Thanks very much for your care for good books and these tough topics.

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All books mentioned can of course easily be ordered by using the secure order form page button at the end of this column. Or call. We love hearing from customers and friends.

This edition of BookNotes is one I’m really enthused about. It is inspired by a podcast on which I was a guest.

Let me explain.

Slant Books is a small but important independent publisher of serious literature, poetry, and some theology and philosophy. Slant was founded by Gregory Wolfe — himself an esteemed author and founder of the Image Journal that since 1989 has championed faith-inspired conversations about the arts, aesthetics, and literature; he is also the founding director of the Seattle Pacific University MFA in Creative Writing program. The significance of Image (now under other leadership after a season of being captained by James K.A. Smith) is for another day, but Greg has a long history of caring deeply about books and culture. That he would fund and curate a boutique publishing house in the Pacific Northwest, releasing books that make there way even into the cluttered shelves of Hearts & Minds here in Dallastown, PA, is pretty darn cool.

And what a publishing venture it is. Slant, for instance, acquired a book of plays by Rowan Williams (Shakeshaft & Other Plays), released a collection of short stories by the University of Notre Dame English professor Valerie Sayers, offers books by the fascinating Bethel College philosopher (and novelist) Daniel Taylor and a memoir of sorts by the novelist Ron Hansen. And lots of lesser known and debut writers who need to be known.

The official podcast of Slant Books is called Slantcast and, like our own “Three Books from Hearts & Minds”, can be watched on YouTube on their “Slant” channel or listened to, podcast style, wherever you get your podcasts.

I was asked to join a conversation discussing the role of the indie bookstore in the ecosystem of the publishing and book business with two other very smart and passionate bookstore managers. Joining host Gregory Wolfe was Joshua Alan Sturgill representing the legendary Eighth Day Books in Wichita (founded by the late Warren Farha, to whom this podcast conversation was dedicated) and David Kern of Goldberry Books in Concord NC. Both of those cool gents were influenced, even mentored, by Warren and he inspired them both to the vocation of bookselling. It was such a privilege to join this conversation that I wanted to share it with you. You can watch it here, or listen here.

Gregory’s opening few minutes will warm the heart of any bookstore lover. Don’t miss it.

(And don’t miss the announcement at the end from Slant’s brilliant Managing Editor, Emily Kwilinski; what a sharp and pleasant advocate she is to the Slant projects.)

Listening to these guys and their love for books as they discuss the art of principled, indie bookselling is so rich that I wanted you to have a chance to take it in. I tell a bit about our own small business origin story as do the other two colleagues in the indie bookstore world. You might even enjoy sharing it with folks you know who might want a glimpse into what we do.

For what it is worth, each of us are pretty unique (as the most interesting bookstores usually are) each embodying and curating a store with some kind of individual taste and values and priorities. The other two guys have stores that are a bit more sophisticated than our own, it seems, (and, curiously, both of them have a small publishing venture as well.) The conversation really encouraged Beth and me to continue to be ourselves, to continue to offer the sort of bookish vision that (as David put it) indicates something of who we are; our tastes and convictions.

We are so grateful for our customers and appreciate your loyalty to us (we really do) but you should join us in celebrating these other fine, speciality booksellers. I admire them immensely.

Unique, niche bookstores are increasingly a thing, it seems, and we are delighted knowing of new shops opening around the country with focuses on specialities as diverse as kids books, mystery and true crime titles, black studies, travel books, LGBTQ resources, cookbook stores, metaphysical shops. Lots of new stores seem to be opening (even in small towns) but they are often speciality places. Curiously, within the Christian book industry — which is still huge, if less than it used to be — there seems to be fewer theologically sophisticated and literary bookstores; like Eighth Day, say. Too many family owned shops remain in the rather less bookish style of Christian retailers (and are not primarily booksellers.) We give thanks to God for the stores described in this podcast (Eighth Day Books and Goldberry Books.) There are other great Christian bookstores around but we are not at groundswell…

A CAVEAT

I’ll say a quick two-part thing that I wish I could have said in the podcast conversation.

The first thing I should have said is something like this: I do not want to romanticize or overstate the goodness or beauty of all indie publishers, nor demean the big presses and the big authors.There are bad indie publishers and there are great authors on big publishing houses. Most of our very favorite authors are on the medium-sized or bigger houses, actually. And there are bunches of small presses that are just awful.

Further, there are big, corporate types who are very good to work with and are able to offer us discounts and free shipping options and there are smaller presses that are so tight with their own budgets that they make ordering from them nearly impossible. Some establishment, corporate guys are generous and some small businesses are as greedy as the proverbial big business titans.

I loved that Gregory said that he hopes to publish “exquisitely crafted literature that is operating at the highest capacity of the imagination” (and that we can persuade ordinary readers that such fine writing is “not as scary and weird and difficult as they may think.”) Well-done books are a joy to behold and can provide lots of good entertainment so we want to make available really good stuff that is well made, surprising, captivating, aesthetically-rich, and we like championing lesser known authors from smaller presses. But that is not to say that the independent voices are in fact always the best and that the corporate publishers are just churning out cheap stuff. Not at all.

The other booksellers in this conversation are wonderfully interesting and Gregory himself offers fantastic insights; it’s a good conversation which I think you’ll enjoy. I hope you watch or listen and remember that you are part of this story, too. Your support of our family business and your willingness to sometimes buy titles you haven’t heard of shows that you are a real part of the action. You’re keeping books alive in the too-often mindless, digital age. Thank you.

In the spirit of this Slantcast podcast, then, I’d like to tell you about some of the titles in Slant’s catalogue. A month or so ago you may recall I did a list of books by authors who had mostly self-published their books and who each had some connection to us. That self-publishing thing is a whole other topic but they were friends of the store and deserved that shout-out.

But independently owned small or medium sizes presses are often glorious. I think of classic literary outfits like Milkweed Editions or Tin House or Graywolf or (in the faith-oriented space) publishers like Square Halo Books or Plough or UMI (Urban Ministries Inc) or Rabbit Room or Falls City Press or Leonard Sweet’s new Salish Sea Press or Reformed Journal Books, not to mention Eighth Day Press and Goldenberry Books. They are often artful, always fascinating, and worthy of your consideration.

So, a few from Slant that we happily carry. ALL ARE 20% OFF.

Gather the Olives: On Food and Hope and the Holy Land Bret Lott (Slant Books) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $ 16.00

Bret Lott is not well known enough in our view — he has written mainstream fiction (like Jewel, which was an Oprah Book Club selection) and has had books on the major evangelical publishers. He has written about faith and fiction and he has a book about writing. It isn’t every day that a literary figure from an evangelical background offers a book about peacemaking in the Middle East by way of offering a hopeful look at “the solidarity of sharing a meal.” Lott has lived and taught in Jerusalem and here he offers intimate portraits of “the people, the food, and the hope for peace to be found in a region ravaged by war and conflict.” Faith and food writing and peace? You bet!

These are meditation-like reflections on his journalistic reports of places like a non-kosher butcher shop in a very kosher part of Israel or an olive oil cooperative run by Palestinian and Israeli women. Did you know there is a nighttime harvesting of olives by Bedouins? Have you ever read eloquent prose on a traditional Shabbat dinner? Gather the Olives offers wonderful writing that is what one critic called “a very capricious table.”

Brooding Upon the Waters: A Memoir of Farming, Fishing, and Failure in America’s Lost Landscape Howard Schaap (Slant Books) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I gave a quick shout out to this in our conversation at the podcast, telling Greg that we loved this book (Beth stole it from me after I had told her I was in the middle of it, and she finished it before I did.)  The author is a professor at Dordt College and he tells here about his depressed father who lost a farm years ago. The sturdy Dutch Calvinist worldview is often helpful give us a visionary (almost sacramental) orientation to God’s good world but sometimes it ends up stern and insular. Schaap’s upbringing was as violent as Arthur Boer’s (as described in his hard, exquiste Eerdmans book Shattered) but it seemed a touch similar. Schaap becomes a fisherman and finds solace on those waters in the driftless region of mid-America.

What a story this is, bringing to mind that chestnut slogan about the universal in the particular. It is his unique story but, man, it sheds light on so much of what has become of our troubled times. There is “stark beauty and haunting isolation” in growing up in this part of the Upper Midwest, the”lost landscape” of the subtitle. Highly recommended.

God’s Liar: A Novel Thom Satterlee (Slant Books) $15.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.00

None of us have started this yet, but Beth loved Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (and just watched the film version of the novel Hamnet, which she also read) so this may been her list next. It is set in 1665 (during theme of what is called the Restoration) and a blind, politically and religious marginalized write (somewhat associated with Olver Cromwell) appears. His name is John Milton (and he has not yet written paradise Lost) Of course there is the plague and Milton and his wife have fled to the countryside where they are befriend by a local curate.

But it is not just about Milton, but could be said to be about a writer writing about another writer. It is about the power of language and, as Linda Mannheim says, “about being human.”

I greatly appreciate a Christian college literature prof and writer, Paul Willis. Among the many other rave reviews, Willis says:

This deeply satisfying historical novel will keep you reading — and keep you examine your own conscience for the lies, big and small, that we tell. Thom Satterlee’s subtle exploration the memories of a seventeenth-century Anglican minister who came under the influence ofJohn Milton brings to mid the reflective rhythms of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead. This is a tale full of surprises, told by an insightful craftsman

Sing Me a Song, She Said: Poems Paul Mariani (Slant Books) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Mariani is a retired, esteemed English prof (he taught at Boston College) and has published literary biographies (on Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams.) We very much appreciate his hefty The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernity published by Paraclete Press. He has thought a lifetime about literature and poetry and poets and his own poetry volumes have been in our poetry section for decades.

This brand new one, we are told, has as its central section a verse drama about growing up in a fractured family back in the 1950s. “Finally the poet tries to sing a song for his family and especially his mother, long gone, now, who asked him to sing for her all those years ago.” Although he drew up in the tenements of New York’s East Side, these poems about “the erosion of his family on Long Island” and about his many years along the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts, sing with a sense of place. The great Ron Hansen says”Paul Mariani’s poetry has always been alert to the sacredness of life and the quiet, abiding presence of Mystery even in the quotidian.”

I do not know if this book, filled with poems of wonder and regret and memory and loss will resonate with young readers; maybe. I am sure it will resonate with me. You, too, perhaps?

Against Certainty: Poems Scott Cairns (Slant Books) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

This brand new collection arrived a few days ago and it seemed like a holy moment. I have only met Cairns a few times and he is a delightful fellow — funny, the assumptions we make about intense poets or those who write about the mysticism of their Orthodox tradition (Scott does both.) I am not sure why I’d assume otherwise, but he is a good, good guy, and a remarkable writer. Slant says that “Against Certainty is the culmination of forty years of literary pilgrimage, resounding evidence that Scott Cairns has produce not only a richly layered body of work but also a poetics that restores the craft to its ancient, enduring purpose.” I suspect he didn’t write that, as he knows the virtues humility. But I can add a hearty Amen to this assessment. You should read anything he does.

The publisher offers this serious exploration of his new work:

What makes words arranged on a page serve as a poem? Over the centuries, poets and critics have spoken of poetry as prospective (as opposed to retrospective), as generating openness, suggestiveness, connotative implication, ambiguity, and-as poet Scott Cairns has said-recognizing the poem as a scene of meaning-making, rather than merely a document of meaning made.

In each of these attempts to name the poetic operation of language, one common disposition obtains: a genuine poem is never finished in its effort to lead a reader into further meaning-making. One might say that the poem is a place-a semantic field-where a recombination of old things can give rise to a new thing.

The poems offered in Against Certainty have been crafted to open up possibilities not only for the reader, but also for the poet himself. As Cairns notes, both the form and the substance of these poems are “the results of my writing to see what I didn’t know to see, to say what I didn’t know to say.” A poem invites the reader to come to terms in order to appreciate them as the approachable terminus of new departure.

Thirst: A Novel A. G. Mojtabai (Slant Books) $16.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

I picked this short book up a few years ago for a few reasons — I mostly like Gregory’s taste and appreciate his brave project publishing literary fiction. And I was curious: years before I read a truly remarkable nonfiction book by this author called Blessed Assurance about the people who work in a plant making nuclear weapons in Amarillo, Texas. The Catholic Bishop there (in the very late 1970s, as I recall) declared that it was a sin to work there. Anyway, I knew the authors name and that part of her writing.

I was also intrigued that the very form of this short novel seemed like a prayer book. And that cover!

Here is how they describe it at the fascinating Slant website:

As A.G. Mojtabai’s Thirst opens, Lena has been summoned to the bedside of her ailing “brother” Theo, an aging country priest who has started to refuse food and drink. What Lena faces is complicated by the fact that she left the faith long ago.

First cousins and closest childhood friends, Theo and Lena were raised in a small Catholic farming community in Texas, named for the village their parents left behind in Germany, a place where all questions—asked and unasked—were answered for all time. The known world was bounded by the iron fence of the parish cemetery containing nearly all their dead. Beyond it, lurked disorder, the dragons of unbelief.

Now faced with the mysteries of mortality and loss, both are struggling to come to terms with the choices that have defined them.

Thirst is a book hard to classify—a novella, certainly, but it is also in part a tone poem, a contemporary book of hours, and a meditation engaging issues of faith and doubt, death and healing.

Roger Rosenblatt has said of A.G. Mojtabai: “It is rare to find a gorgeous stylist and a writer of substance yoked in the same artist. Her work shows heart and unsentimental kindness that leaves the reader enlightened and wiser.”

Miller Cane: A True and Exact History Samuel Ligon (Slant Books) $21.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80 releasing soon

Okay, just when you might be thinking that the literary style of most Slant books is a tad highbrow, aesthete, exceedingly literary (whatever that means) and heavy, I will tell you about this forthcoming novel, a very contemporary read that I finished a few nights ago. It is a wild ride, an unusual book that I may never forget.

The plot is energetic and fun, the wild writing is engaging (except maybe when one of the characters goes on yet another long written rant, which are increasingly unhinged) and the upshot of the story is something that is utterly contemporary and compelling. Among other things it is about school shootings and other civilian massacres.

It isn’t a morose book nor is it disrespectful. But it does have a crazy plot: Miller Cane, a former history teacher, has developed something like a scam offering odd comfort to those who are the victims of massacres; bereaved parents, mostly. He sadly knows something about this first hand, as you will learn. He shows up when there is mass shooting and makes money by offering certain services which may or may not be fully honest or truly helpful. A guy who thinks he and his bereaved wife were not helped by Miller is off the rails and out to expose his scammer worse. So Miller is on the run in his motor home trying to stay one step ahead of this angry stalker with a gun.

Meanwhile, the heart of the story tells of a young girl, Carleen — the precocious daughter of Miller Cane’s former lover, now jailed — who he has taken into his custody at the request of said former lover because her ex — an angry man even worse than that other guy out to get them — is planning to kidnap Carleen who he thinks is his daughter. A will is involved and money is at stake. Miller takes the girl on a exhilarating roadtrip teaching her American history (often about massacres of indigenous peoples, or the various places in Little House on the Prairie) trying to keep her in the dark about both of the men out to find them.

On top of this, Miller is under contract to write side-bars of American villains/heros (or hero/villains) to spice up a high school history textbook that is in the works. His editor is not pleased with his weird essays that make Hunter Thompson’s rants look calm and reasonable. He looks with zeal at the good, the bad, and the ugly of the American psyche (and I was left googling stuff to see if that was even really true or not.) This is weirdo satire at its finest.

Listen to these two reviewers who get it:

Buckle up, gentle reader, Sam Ligon is about to take you on an outrageous road trip across American history and hysteria. It will be tempting to see your fictional guide on this journey, the massacre-counselor and unhinged textbook author Miller Cane, as an unreliable narrator, but it’s the American myth that’s unreliable in Sam Ligon’s razor-sharp satire. Oh, and there’s a chase. And a cat. And it’s hilarious. —Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

Miller Cane is a jolt of straight-up, adrenalized American greed and violence. Sam Ligon’s prose is an elemental force —fierce and funny, profane and sacred — and his vision of the country’s past and present is as engrossing as it is unsparing. —Shawn Vestal, author of Godforsaken Idaho

The Substance of Things Hoped For: A Novel  Tom Noyes (Slant Books) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

A year ago Beth and I watched a very moving Netflix show about Charles Guiteau who had been in the mid-nineteenth century Oneida, New York, free-love “Christian” utopian commune. The Oneidians were not the only odd cult in this spiritually ablaze era of American history but it is true that Guiteau — who was the assignee who killed President James Garfield — spent time there. As the plot of Death by Lightning miniseries unfolded, I thought that it surely was based on The Substance of Things Hoped For which is a novel exactly on this utopian community and Guiteau’s odd role there.

Alas, the film-makers did not reference this novel but said it was based on a nonfiction work by Candice Millar called Destiny of the Republic. Well, I knew a bit about this truth-is-stranger-than-fiction plot line because I couldn’t put down the fictional work by Tom Noyes. It has won some acclaim in some circles, but, again, quality works like this ought be better known.

I might have highlighted this novel several years back when I first read it and I suspect that I mentioned that, oddly, author Tom Noyes is, in fact, a distant relative of John Humphrey Noyes who founded the Oneida community.

The good folks at Slant described the novel like this:

Joining Noyes and Guiteau in their parallel narratives are a chorus of other characters—family members, lovers, rivals, notable historical figures — whose haunting voices complement, undermine, complicate, and enhance Noyes’s and Guiteau’s versions of events, while also homing in on the novel’s most pressing questions, including those related to revelation, delusion, loyalty, and love.

A Land Without Sin Paula Huston (Slant Books) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

This may be the first Slant release that we championed and I reviewed A Land Without Sin in BookNotes maybe in 2013 or so. We still have some hardbacks and it is a revelation of a book. It is set in Southern Mexico in the 1990s; in those years people knew from the news something about the Zapatista revolution there. It is literary and entertaining, laden with drama and struggle and politics and faith. And the famous Mayan pyramids. Huston has only grown in her reputation as a fine writer over the years (her most recent is The Hermits of Big Sur on Liturgical Press, about a contemplative monastery started in the 1960s at the urging of Thomas Merton.)

I so enjoy the excellent descriptions of the books on the Slant website which captures Slant’s passion for books and their articulate care for their authors. Here’s what they say about A Land Without Sin.

As revolutionary forces gather in the Lacandon jungle of southern Mexico in the fall of 1993, an idealistic American priest vanishes from his post in San Cristobal de Las Casas. The church, immersed in trying to negotiate a peaceful solution to the escalating conflict between wealthy landowners and poverty-stricken indigenas, remains strangely silent in the face of his disappearance.

When his sister, only thirty-four but already a hardened battlefield photojournalist, finds out what is going on, she flies to Central America to find him, applying for a job assisting a taciturn Dutch Mayanist in order to provide herself with a cover story. But as it turns out, he, too, is on a secret quest.

From the great pyramids of Tikal to the graceful palaces of Palenque to the shadowy guerrilla camps of the vast Lacandon, A Land Without Sin is a modern-day journey into the heart of darkness.

Huston has said (on a video at the Slant website) that she hopes that readers will come away with “an increased sense of hope” even though this mystery read is mostly about facing the reality of evil even though God is good. Can love win out over evil? That’s one of the biggest question of all, eh?

Leaping from the Burning Train: A Poet’s Journey of Faith Jeanne Murray Walker (Slant Books) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I don’t know if you know the wonderful poetry of Jeanne Murray Walker or have come across her articles or talks at various literary festivals or faith and the arts events over the years. She is a retired literature prof with an earnest dedicated following; she is so respected and loved by others in her obit, and almost in the circles of Luci Shaw and Madeline L’Engle. Her books works as a memoir but it is also a salute to reading. Anyway, her story is a moving one, a tale about overcoming a strict sort of fundamentalism and embracing the reality that good reading and writing is an open window to the world. Perhaps not as heavy (but as beautiful as) the breakaway in, say, Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? or Tara Westerover’s Educated, but if you appreciated those, this is a memoir that will break you open and give you hope. I adored it.

An ode to reading and writing, lurking inside an account of questing faith — or perhaps the other way around. Why read spiritually-minded prose by a poet? Because the poet tells us that Alice Munro’s short stories have been, for her, a means of grace. Because she tells us that reading is a sacrament. That we might “quarry our own lives for images instead of buying. . .ready-made ones.” I feel lucky to be Jeanne Murray Walker’s friend. I feel even luckier to be her reader. — Lauren Winner, author Girl Meets God

Light in the Canyon Darran Cools (Slant Books) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Showing their stylistic diversity and love of great writing, again, they just released a YA novel. Yep, a youth book!  I’ve listened to some of it being read by the author at their podcasted book release event. What an intelligent launch with Gregory and Emily and  Darran chatting and him reading. I’ll admit, the discussion was a bit more brainy than I’d expect at a book launch for a kids book, but there it is: these are seroius book lovers and joyfully serious people. And the book, I gather, lives up to their high standards.

I have not read it, yet, but I can say Cools is, well, cool. And even if I distrust publishers who liken their young authors to Madeline L’Engle, but there are some home-made science experiements (“something about black holes”) and Gregory knew her, so if he says it, I’m trusting the suggestion.

They say it is is “by turns chilling, tender, and profound. A story of loss and courage, Light in the Canyon explores how change can help us discover who we’re truly meant to be.”

Booklist is usally a very reliable and respected reviewer of YA books. They write,

Time and the Temple: God and Man Luigi Giussani (Slant Books) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Greg was first known as the legendary literary leader of Image Journal and now, as distance has grown from his role in that past work, on the strength of his growing reputation as a bone fide indie publisher (and, I hope, from the ripple effect of their fascinating Slantcast podcast as one who continues to the public conversation about books, humanism, and the moral imagination.) Slant is becoming know as a very fine small press, or House as we used to say. They do more than poetry and fiction; they have a number of memoirs and a number of nonfiction pieces.

Time and Temple is one of a handful of books by Giussani published by Slant (alongside one called Living the Liturgy, another on hospitality, one on classical music, and more.) Those who renewal movements within the global Catholic community may know Monsignor Giussani (who died in 2005) as the founder of the Italian lay movement Communion and Liberation which grew into a worldwide movement and Fraternity. This book is a collection of meditations given by Father Giussani in the mid-1990s, two given to Catholic lay communities and the third (“Recognizing Christ”) given to a university group.  Various sermons and talks and chapters have been translated into over twenty different languages so it is a special grace to see Slant in Seattle doing Giussani’s work.

Slant tells us that this book really is a “concise and illumination synthesis of what Fr. Giussani wanted to communicate” — especially to young adults. At the heart of these reflections is the theme of vocation.

There is a bit about discernment in Time and Temple, about paying attention to place and time. Can every moment of life be “an offering”? Can every instant of life be lived for the glory of Christ? Memoir Domini

Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations of Art, Faith, and Mystery Gregory Wolfe (Square Halo Books) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

In my little paragraph above naming some reputable, boutique publishers that are so good these days, I mentioned Square Halo Books. Square Halo published a collection of Gregory Wolfe’s short essays in maybe 2003 or so, a collection of his excellent columns in Image Journal which he then edited and for whom he wrote. They were, if I’m being honest, often my favorite part of the literary journal. Later, Ned Bustard (polishing up his own square halo) edited a bigger, expanded collection and redisgned and reissued it. It is a wonder. If you listened to any of Gregory’s good comments on the podcast, you know how articulate and often charming he is. He is full of insight about things that matter much, and I wanted to highly recommend this good glimpse of his fruitful mind and pen. Support another independent press and buy this fabulous reader from us today. 20% off.

 

 

I don’t know if you care for podcasts much, but my dear friend Phil Schiavoni, who works for the CCO (the campus ministry organization Beth and I serve) is my conversation partner every other week in our “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast. For a while a year ago we did three random books that I wanted to tell about but these days we usually do a themed approach. We’ve done podcast conversations on books about play and hobbies, about racial justice, about reading the Bible well, about living in our bodies; we’ve done a few episdoes listing three books by or about an important author (for instance not long ago we did an episode on the books of Malcolm Guite and another on Dallas Willard.) It’s been fun and and few folks have said they love listening in.

We have two primary audiences — one group is those CCO staff who find keeping up with books I’m recommending to be a simple bit of professional development for their work with young adults. The other is more general — those who find us via Hearts & Minds, which is a broader reading community. Like many podcasters, we do it over Zoom so you can watch us chit-chat on YouTube (and see me hold up the books) or you can just listen by finding the “Three Books…” pod at Apple or Spotify.

On the most recent “Three Books…” we focused on three titles about the church. CCO is unique among campus ministry organizations in part because they partner with local congregations whenever they can, finding theologically conventional churches near campuses who hire CCO-trained folks to do evangelism and disciple-making at that near-by college. Even though they study ecclesiology and really value faith communities that can enfold seeking young adults (not every church has that capacity) I thought it would be fun to give  shout-out to three sort of specialized books about certain parts of church life. This BookNotes expands on that.

THREE BOOKS FROM HEARTS & MINDS PODCAST

You can find this “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” episode and my enthusiastic promotion of Strip Mine Jesus by Charles Cotherman, the delightful novel about a small church,  Love Big Be Well by Winn Collier, and the heavy Baal and the Gods of More by Andrew Root HERE (watching on YouTube), HERE (listening on Apple), or HERE (listening on Spotify.)

I want to circle back to those three in this BookNotes for those who didn’t listen and might appreciate the more conventional, written book review format here. I’ll add some others about the church to make this a pretty useful post for almost all of our readers. So here ya go, a Baker’s dozen of mostly recent books about the church, the spaces where congregations exist, the liturgical year, worship, and a few recent ones on pastoring. Don’t miss the last two — one on children’s ministry and on the aging population in our churches.

Please order these from us by clicking on the secure order link at the end of the post. We appreciate your support.

Strip Mine Jesus: Hope for the Rural Church, Small Towns, and Overlooked Places Charles E. Cotherman (Baker) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I yapped about this at the podcast, but it is one of my favorite books of 2026 so I have to write about it here, now, too. Brand new, it is the result of years of work that the author did as director of the Center for Rural Ministry (located on the campus of Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania.) Charlie has helped do both sociological research about and spiritual formation for pastors of small congregations and has deepened his awareness of the nature of various sort of small churches in various sorts of places. This book is both about rural and small town life and about doing church well in this “overlooked places.”

Which is to say, whether you are in a rustbelt town or a rural location, whether you find yourself in a deteriorating suburb or a struggling church in a typical small town or village, God cares. Jesus sees you and is glad for your work. Christ reigns over his whole creation and my, my, a whole lot of spaces in America (not to mention around the globe) that may be hurting, are God’s territory. And His own body — the church — is often struggling in those places. Again, Christ has not given up on His people. The zippy megachurches may or may not be doing well, but they serve a minority of God’s people: most churches are, in fact, not large. Ordinary churches often serving in less than exciting locations, are the norm.

There are a great handful of books about small churches and we have most of them. And there are (thank goodness) more books lately about the rural church as well. Of course we have books (even secular ones) about rural and small town life, about the heartland and the fringe places, and Cotherman’s great new book covers it all. He does indeed look at the smaller church and he is exceptionally aware of the context, the setting, whether that is rural spaces or small towns, country or rustbelt or whatever.

Charlie has been an important figure, oddly enough, in another aspect of our interests, because his first book was a study of the rise of Christian study center ministries at elite and research-oriented universities. In To Think Christianly he documents the expansion of a vision influenced by the likes of early Francis Schaefer and James Houston of British Columbia’s innovative Regent College into what is now the Consortium of Christian Study Centers. Charlie cares about the mind, about bearing witness with a sharp Christian presence in major universities and, interestingly, he cares about the roughshod places like his own Western Pennsylvania town (of Oil City, PA, where he pastors a small Vineyard congregation.) He also edited a book about church planting (Sent to Flourish) which is yet another area of expertise this renaissance man exhibits.

Strip Mine Jesus does, as I’ve hinted, two really important things. First, it explores the geographical terrain of “forgotten places” that may be overlooked (or romanticized) in the popular imagination. Whether it is the rural places explored in a book like Brad Roth’s excellent Flyover Church or the locations explored in The God of Small Places — a Rural Church Institute Resource edited by Glenn Daman & Jeffrey Clark or even the lovely little book (also set in Western Pennsylvania, I think) by Ronnie Martin & Donnie Griggs, Pastoring Small Towns: Help and Hope for Those Ministering in Smaller Places, Cotherman has read widely and studied diligently and writes fabulously. His book is simply not one to miss, almost no matter where are. Unless maybe your life and ministry is in Hollywood, Manhattan, or Palm Beach, almost all our BookNotes friends would benefit from this. You will appreciate his incisive teaching about cultural idols and how it is that our social imaginations are deformed by assumption in our modern Western society.

Secondly, I want to be careful how I say this as Charlie does not use this language himself, exactly, but I almost want to call this a liberation theology of the forgotten places. At least insofar as he insists that God has some special heart for the discouraged and neglected. At least insofar as he insists that Christ’s Kingdom comes in surprising ways — “not by power, not by might” says Zechariah, right? God is bringing God’s own healing and transformative influences to restore the broken, bring liberty to the captives, hope to the dispossessed, with gospel-rooted churches embodying real care, justice, and a passion for the common good. It is no accident that the back cover of Strip Mine Jesus uses the word “exploited” as that sort of extractive influence is exactly what has happened in many places. Just read the latest Wendell Berry novel, Marce Catlett to see one way that played out in Appalachia. (Or, for that matter, pre-order his late October forthcoming release, Dispatches from Rural America: Sixteen Essays.)

Cotherman does, this, though, this embodying a liberative vision for the ignored and even exploited geographies, by showing how a flourishing community can bring a new verve to isolated places. Most books on small church renewal celebrate the unique way many smaller churches are more personable (“where everybody knows your name”) than bigger institutions, but he wisely takes that a bit further. He uses as a case study the L’Abri community of Edith and Francis Schaffer in a small village in Switzerland, which was very nicely done. Charley knows a bit about what we sometimes call “intentional community”and has a really fun section telling of his first visit to inner city Camden NJ and the Simple Way community (led by Shane Claiborne, long before most knew who he was.)

There are three core chapters here, in a way the heart of the book: The Beauty of Community, The Goodness of Stability, and The Truth of our Identity. Linking community, stability, and identity to beauty goodness and truth is simply brilliant. Applying them to the “suffering and hope in small-town America” is spectacular.  Not bad for a kid who (he tells us) grew up wanting big things — bigger dreams, bigger places, bigger impact. I suppose it is hard, even now, for young adults to escape the metaphor of saying “he will really go far” as if to make something of oneself necessarily means to go away. Anyway, Charlie gets that, has lived that. And now he knows that God words in extraordinary ways even among the mundane and ordinary. Hooray!

His concluding chapter? It’s called “Living Toward Hope That Lasts.” He invites us to “attentive expectation.” Drawing on country Mennonite writer Brad Roth and urban Reformed thinker Tim Keller and a lovely line from the singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson, he pushes us to a hope of creation renewed and what it looks like to pay attention. I was cheering by the end, believe me.

In this now-burning world, we all live in “strip mined” places. And there is hope for us all, as creation groans, as our churches forge real fellowship and we embody a new way of seeing and a new way of being, right where we are. Start by applying some of the ideas of this great book.  You will discover a “simple goodness” in what Cotherman calls “the Great Horizon.”

HAVE YOU HEARD OF WEE KIRK?

{By the way, for those interested in a gathering for those in small congregations please know that we are involved in the Northeast Wee Kirk Conference, this year held in October 12-14 at a great camp and retreat center in the moutains a bit east of Pittsburgh. Here’s a little facebook video I did inviting folks to come. It’s low-key and a lovely time. And we take a lot of books!}

Love Big Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church Winn Collier (Eerdmans) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I mentioned this short novel in the Three Books podcast even though it isn’t brand new. Most of what we highlight here tends to be newer books, and when this was new (in 2017) I raved about it. I keep taking it to conferences and events and mention it when I can. There are a few literary memoirs about small town pastors (everybody should know A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry Garrett Keizer) and a few novels (Incorporation by Will Willimon is a fictional account of a big church in a small town, and is quite the take-town of the underside of megachurches.) I think the best story of church life I’ve ever read is this lovely little epistolary novel by a great writer, the authorized biographer of Eugene Peterson, Winn Collier. (Collier wrote the book about Peterson called A Burning in My Bones, some of which nicely unfolds in a small congregation in the suburbs of growing Baltimore.)

Love Big is about a less than stellar small town church looking for a pastor who calls a less than upbeat retired guy who wants to pare down the church and become more focused on just loving each other by worshiping God. In the drama that unfolds — and there is plenty that we learn through this pastor’s monthly church letters — we fine an honest story of a real church “trying to figure out how to live faithfully in the particular, everyday places of our lives.”

The great writer Robert Benson says “Collier writes strong and true, happy and sad, funny and wise, heavy and light.  I never fail to read anything that he writes. If you are a lover of words and wisdom on the printed page, you should read him too.” Seth Collier (author of the recovery memory Coming Clean) says “There are some stories that are so well-written, so layered with meaning, so humble and true, that they should be read, reread, and reread again. Winn Collier has written that kind of story.”

Pastor Pete himself, by the way, called it a “tour de force” which is a powerful phrase for a quiet little book. Eugene continues, saying Love Big Be Well is “an angle on understanding the life of both congregation and pastor that exceeds anything I have ever read.”

“Love Big Be Well is an angle on understanding the life of both congregation and pastor that exceeds anything I have ever read.” — Eugene Peterson

Traumatized Church: What Paul’s Relationship with the Corinthian Church Teaches Us About Helping Those Who Are Hurting Scot McKnight and Adrienne Gibson (Zondervan Reflective) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Our staff chuckle and sometimes debate where a book should be shelved and a few years ago we had this quandary when Brazos Press released Scot McKnight’s Pastor Paul: Nurturing a Culture of Christoformity in the Church. McKnight is a Biblical scholar who also writes good books about ordinary discipleship and about church life. For instance, his two lovely books on building safe, trusting, healthy congregational cultures — A Church Called Tov and Pivot — we put under church life, obviously.) But Pastor Paul? It’s a fairly scholarly study of pastoral passions to help others become Christlike as found in a close reading of Paul’s epistles. Does it go under New Testament studies or under being a pastor? Well, this brand new one is similar. It is a careful reading of Paul’s letters to the deeply troubled folk in Corinth. But yet, co-written with a therapist, it seems a very exceptional blend of NT explication and practical counsel. As one reviewer put it, it is “compelling and complex portrait of the agony and angst Paul went through when he was dealing with the Corinthian church.” Lynn Cohick, a distinguished New Testament prof and scholar says “We meet St. Paul as we’ve never seen him: as a traumatized apostle.”

Adam Hamilton writes,

If you’ve known pain in your church or in your ministry, or if you’ve struggled with Paul, you will find this book a remarkable gift.

I love the work of Chuck DeGroat and he says, “Traumatized Church reminds us that holiness has never required superhuman strength — only honesty, humility, and hope.”

If you want to understand trauma, especially as it has manifested in the church, and if you want to promote safer conversations among congregants, and if your hoping to heal harm and embrace restoration (not add to further trauma) this book ought to be in your hands. It asks “is your church a place of healing or hurt?”

It is deeply engaged with the story of Paul and the pain in Corinth. Some of it reminds me a bit of Pastor Paul and that serious work on Christoformity. But this really is less a first century cultural survey or Biblical study as suc but is an up-to-day and poignant exploration of what it means to (as they put it) realize, recognize, respond, and resist the ugly stuff of fractured relationships and navigate the wounds within the local church.

When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis Shaunti Feldhahn & James Sells (Tyndale Refresh) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Speaking of which— although we have good, serious help from the above mentioned Biblical scholar McKnight and the trauma counselor Gibson, this recent release might be ore practical for some readers. Feldhahn is a popular evangelical writer and James Sells is a psychologist, counseling prof and scholar of mental health from Regent University in Virginia.

The easiest way to explain this upbeat and clear-headed book is to quote this from the publisher’s marketing explanation, noting that people “are hurting on a scale we’ve never seen. They’re dealing with an onslaught of issues like anxiety, grief, mental health illness, family troubles and hopelessness.” I think we all know this is true. Can this book help?

Some say that congregations that work to become known for understanding and caring about the anxiety of members and guests will be stepping up to a great opportunity. Maybe we need to help our members become more savvy about what people are going through and a faith-based, gracious response.

Here is what they say they offer:

When Hurting People Come to Church will share how this works, and equip you as a busy leader to:

• understand the mental health crisis in your community
• raise up motivated lay people within the church to help address the spiritual and emotional needs of the hurting
• partner with counselors and other mental health professionals most effectively
• organize the church’s time and resources to reach the most people, while freeing you to step in where you are most needed
• grow your outreach to your community

Whether this is a “church growth” strategy or not remains to be seen and it should be obvious that we care about people because we care about people. And we care because of God’s love. Helping others with their deepest hurts and fears isn’t a strategy for something else, or a means to our own ends. Having said that, they aren’t wrong that people want to belong to places that truly care and have some clue about their concerns. This book can help get that conversation started.

Baal and the Gods of More: Rescuing Church Growth from Idolatry Andrew Root (Baker Academic) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Well, speaking of church growth — as the ad copy on the otherwise fine book above suggests — this new Andrew Root project is one of the most dense I’ve read in a while (and I am not finished) but, man, is it provocative and rewarding. As we’ve come to expect from Andrew Root he brings incredible insight into a truly Biblically-shaped form of ministry and church life — radically rejecting the ethos of our time and the attitudes and techniques that have emerged from the church drawing too unquestioningly from the culture’s ways — and offering us a exhilarating journey into the social sciences and cultural critics who give us eyes to see what we’ve too uncritically absorbed. The new one does that brilliantly.

Since it is a critique of church growth (helping us reform our understandings of the nature of growth and ethos of progress / growth motif) he has to look at the long-lasting, but mostly 20 and 21st century understanding of economics. Capitalism reduces things to the metrics of numbers, of quanity over quanity. He has to draw on thinkers like, oh, say, Hernando de Soto and Robert J. Gordon and Max Weber (of course.) When he shows how this faith in growth combines with techno-optimists he draws on the work of Manuel Castells. Did I say that Root is brilliant? I hear his podcasts are a blast, which is fun, having such a friendly guy who is so learned.

(Speaking of podcasts which I don’t listen to much, I had to hear [after I wrote this] the Holy Post interview with Andrew Root. In the introduction Skye Jethani says that in this book Root shows how “capitalism over the past 150 years has deeply shaped the church to mimic the efficiency of a machine rather than the relationality of a family.” Well put. That Holy Post interview can be found here, about 30 minutes in. Be sure to come back and read the rest of BookNotes, friends!)

Although he has always been theologically deep and often surprising — think of his captivating 2014 book Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker — his super-sophisticated approach began in earnest in 2017 with the “Ministry in a Secular Age” series which put deep theological considerations about church life in conversations with the complex theories of philosopher Charles Taylor (first in Faith Formation in a Secular Age: Responding the the Church’s Obsession with Youthfulness and then in 2019’s The Pastor in a Secular Age: Ministry to People Who No Longer Need a God, and then in The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time Against the Speed of Modern Life.) In subsequent, perhaps even more dense works, Root draws heavily on thinkers Hartmut Rosa and Byung-Chul Han. Whew!

(I have joked that I wonder if he is on the board of the major academic publisher, Polity Press as he cites all of their authors, over and over. Maybe he gets free ones or something, but, man, he does know his stuff, with long footnotes delving deep into questions and conversations about nuances of critique. The word enchantment comes up, as it does.)

And so, as I tried to say on the “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast this new one, while intellectually demanding, is brilliant. And his study of 1 Kings and the Elijah narratives is spectacular — a bit Brueggemann-esque, I might say — as he draws on the prophets denunciation with the gross syncretism between Baal (a god of fertility — the sexual bits of the clay statues he shows in the chapter “Memes and Museums” are not meant as erotic, but practical. Baal produced the goods, more fruit) versus Yahweh, the true God who meets the people in the desert with just enough Manna. We think we need growth, more tricks and techniques and miracles to bring more people to our church— crassly measured with butts in the pews and funds in the offering plates — when, in fact, we need a humility and sober trust. He has a picture of a clay idol of another such fetility idol, like Baal, but of Artimas (one of those famous ones seen in some Bible dictionaries) with dozens of breasts and he contrasts that with a famous icon of Mary and Jesus. Does the church have a Baal problem?

Do economics and stabilization and anxiety about survival and escalation/growth — deep in our worldviewish imagination — show up between the lines, the real idolatry in our congregational lives? Is there a relationship between the bull (a Baal-like symbol of ancient fertility cults) and our modern Wall Street symbol of bullish markets. You will be amazed by his original and brilliant insights about the Jezebel spirit, which is deeply economic.

In a way, this brilliant study of the ways we tend to prefer the gods of Baal rather than the suffering son held by the grieving mother Mary, picks up themes in his previous book called Evangelism in an Age of  Despair: Hope Beyond the Failed Promise of Happiness which offers a “theology of consolation” can shape how we think about evangelism and hope and the community of Jesus into which we are inviting folks.

Like Evangelism… and a few others, Baal and the Gods of More not only has rigorous social analysis and deep Biblical study, it has delightful fictional bits. (They are in italics and although he swears they are capturing more or less real conversations he’s had with real people they are a fictional device.) This playful bit of imagined characters and case studies makes the book lively just when it is getting too dense.

I am not sure that all of the congregations I know of, especially not some of the mainline ones, are, in fact, frantic in their fixation on growth; although the back cover shouts “the endless pursuit of ‘more’ won’t save the church” I am not sure that most of us directly have relentless commitment to bigger and better. Small churches are often happy for their size. Mainline folks often reject the mega-church “bigger is better” tone. But yet, why are we exhausted all the time, grumbling and fearful. Maybe late modern capitalism has seeped into our souls as the assumptions of growth like air we breathe and we aren’t even aware of our ”transactional” imaginations. Maybe we are more seduced by Baal than we even know.

If Root is even only half right about the Baal fertility gods and the modern equlivents, this book is urgent. God offers us a better way. Andrew’s invitation to the life of Mary is instructive and inspiring. We will never find a more vibrant and authentic faith until we disentangle ourselves from our fascination with modern idols of growth and data. Baal and the gods of More will help, if we take the time to study it. The preface and first chapter are priceless.

Ordinary Time: The Season of Growth Amy Peeler (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

In Root’s pivotal engagement with philosopher and social critic Charles Taylor, one of the ideas he ponders in The Congregation in a Secular Age is that “in the wilderness of high modernity” we need to reform our social imaginations, our ways, particularly in our view of time. He invites us to “keep sacred time against the speed of modernity.” I don’t recall if he cites the marvelously rich book by Taylor-esque philosopher James K.A. Smith called How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now but I sure recommend it.

Which is my plug not only for the deep Root volume, and the serious but wonderful Smith volume, but any books that help us capture a sense of time in a new and different way. What could Root mean by “sacred” time?

Certainly one of the ways we can think about and embody and imagine time differently is at least by paying some attention to what is called the church calendar. This is not all to the story — which is why I so value Jamie Smiths How to Inhabit Time — but it is a great compliment, an aid along the way. Arranging our lives through Advent into Christmastime and Lent and then Easter into Pentecost, will help us focus on the life of Jesus, writ big. As Diana Butler Bass explores in a one year batch of 52 meaty devotionals around the church calendar (A Joyful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perserverane) keeping the seasons intentionally and learning a bit about feasts and fasts and living well into the seasons can help counter the increasing secularization of our sense of time. It’s countercultural and a meaningful prop to family life and our experience of church and worship.

Enter this new volume on what is called Ordinary Time, which is typically understood as about half the year, the slow slog through the time after Pentecost (in the late Spring) into Advent in December. Ordinary Time? What’s the big deal about ordinariness? As some pundits put it, compared with the drama of Advent or the glory of Christmas or the intensity of Lent and Easter and Pentecost, not much happens. Exactly.

Black scholar, professor, writer and Anglican priest Esau McCaulley has edited and curated a small series of books on each of the major seasons of the church year. He was not raised in a liturgical church so it was sort of new to him, and as he became increasingly shaped by this rather unique view of time itself, he wanted to spread the news. He developed this “Fullness of Time” series with a short hardback on each of the main seasons. I have told you about all of them and have raved about them all. Now, a few months ago, the latest small volume released and it is Ordinary Time: The Season of Growth by Wheaton College (and Anglican priest) Amy Peeler.

If you know this series you surely will want to have this one to finish the collection. I adored the Advent one (by Tish Warren) and really loved the Christmas one (by Emily McGowin). Wes Hill did a fantastic job on the Easter one; the famously eloquent and hard-hitting Fleming Rutledge did the great Epiphany one, one of the best. Now we have this understated season. I hope you don’t miss it.

Ordinary time is a time of growth. I’ll say this, in case anybody wonders — the sort of growth Peeler means is not at all the same as the fascination with the idols of “more” that Andrew Root writes about (above.) The sort of “growth” he means, is not at all what Peeler tells us about in this little volume. This call to experience God in the ordinary times of Ordinary Time is to grow spiritually, to mature, deepen, grow in quality to speak, not quantity. She doesn’t at all talk about “church growth” or the metrics of measurement of the life of faith (as if one even could.) No, her invitation it so a spirituality of the commonplace, pulling us gently towards a quiet sort of season that is about maturity in Christ. Depth in the doldrums, as I’ve sometimes put it.

Diana Butler Bass, in the aforementioned A Joyful Year, notes something I never quite pieced together, that the first half of the church calendar is based on the life of Jesus (yes, obviously) but the second half is our response. That is, it is somewhat about us, our response, our call to discipleship, our, as Peeler puts it, “true colors” and “true freedom.” As Peeler tells us a bit of interesting stuff about the history and significance of Ordinary Time she reminds us that it is a season of spiritual formation.

She explains about some of the most common readings in the lectionary (“Propers”) and the season’s prayers and collects. The book is loaded with Biblical exploration, too. I had no idea this time when not much happens could be so rich. Even for those who sort of know this, it is important for me to be reminded. Ordinary Time is about the “fullness of time” as well, especially as we lean into daily faithfulness. She notes that deep trust, even in the face of death, “becomes our new ordinary.”

Why We Worship: Experiencing Heaven on Earth at Church Adriel Sanchez (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This isn’t the place to air my grievances about Sunday worship but I’m sure you, too, have sins to confess about Sunday morning grumpiness or lackluster attitude in the sanctuary. I think this book will help (and might be a good resource for an adult ed class or small group or, if you are that kind of church, for your worship team to study together.) Let’s at least hope your worship team leaders or liturgists or officiants or whatever you call them, know this kind of stuff. Why We Worship is brand new and looks warm and wonderful.

I actually like heady books about serious worship. I was recently re-skimming Brazo Press’s Grand Entrance: Worship on Earth as in Heaven by the great Presbyterian turned Orthodox scholar, Edith Humphrey. (I told a friend that I smiled when I see that the back cover has blurbs from a Catholic scholar, an Orthodox participant, a non-Reformed evangelical, a CRC Reformed leader, and another Catholic.)  I’ve been dipping into Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology by David W. Fagerberg (published by Hillenbrand Books, a scholarly imprint of the upbeat Catholic LTP.) I’ve written before about the thoughtful “Dynamics of Christian Worship” series done by IVP Academic, especially Worship in An Age of Anxiety: How Churches Can Create Space for Healing by J. Michael Jordan, an ordained Wesleyan pastor who is now the Dean of the Chapel at Houghton University. There are a lot of good books on worship — we have hundreds!

Do you remember when I told you about the very interesting and useful How to Worship for All Its Worth: A Guide for Pastors, Worship Leaders, and Students by Steven Felix-Jäger (Zondervan Academic; $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39)? I explained how it offers a handful of principles about good worship; for instance, he explains why even contemporary worship services should be biblically faithful; aesthetically rich yet appropriate; theologically sound and robust; and pastorally sensitive but challenging. Then the second half of the book takes you on a lively visit to several different worship services which serve as case studies to evaluate the strength and weaknesses of these various worshipping communities. He looks at what we can learn from “Evangelical Worship”( Park Avenue Baptist Church, Titusville, FL),  creative Reformed Worship (Pillar Church, in Holland, MI), Pentecostal Worship by way of a visit to Life Church in Lancaster, CA,  Black Gospel Worship at an AME Church and, uniquely, a parish which offers a charismatic Catholic mass.

Well, anyway, all of that is too bring me to the brand new Why We Worship and my hearty recommendation for it. It presents a strong theological summons but seems very warm and inspiring; it helps us remember, as Justin Holcomb puts it, “that worship is an ascent into the presence of the Holy Trinity, entering another world, to worship the living God rattan than chasing religious inspiration. This is timely, gracious, and bracing invitation to be re-formed by the gospel as we gather.”

The book is arranged in three parts (Going to Church: Ascending the Mountain At Church: The Summit, and Descending the Mountain: Back Into the World.) These three sections frame the topic excellently (and the appendix about taking your kids to worship is very good.)

As you might guess, the heart is the middle portion what explores the meaning of things like the Call to Worship, the Confession, the role of musical worship, the sermon and benediction. There’s a good chapter on communion and a great chapter on the benediction. Who know that you needed this?

Listen to the thoughtful, Reformed thinker and writer Joni Eareckson Tada who offers this encouragement to read this book:

“As you wit with each chapter and meditate on its principles, you will understand worship for what it is — a God-centered response to God’s revelation of himself, all of it superintended by his Word and listen high through Jesus Christ.”

There is no doubt that in most of our congregations, our experience of church and our experience of worship is primarily mediated by the pastor. Granted, worship involves much more than what the pastor does and leading worship and preaching is only a small part of what most pastors do. But, let’s face it: the pastor is important in worship and in church. I’m going to name three new books about pastoring, and although I have named them before, they are each exceptional. Get them for your pastor, your pastor/parish relations committee, your search committee if you are looking for new congregational staff. This is the kind of stuff that can energize all of us as we learn to love our pastors well.  I won’t say much, but these are each fantastic and Highly recommend them.

Pastoring for Monday: Help Your Congregation Integrate Faith and Work Matt Austen (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I wish I didn’t have to say this, but if your congregation is going to be faithful to its call to send out ordinary folks to “love and serve the Lord” into all areas of life, this book is essential. That ordinary work is not mentioned much in most churches is an indictment of our puny vision and dualisms and dichotomies and such; it is a blindspot we simply have to allow God to correct. Why do so many folks feel a gap between Sunday and Monday, between worship and their work? What can be done? How should a typical clergy person not fall into what one pastoral called “professional malpractice” by missing this core concern? The library of fabulous books on ordinary church people stepping faithfully into their callings in the work-world continues to grow, but most of them are books pastors just aren’t reading.  Maybe they feel ill-trained (since a robust theology of work isn’t taught in most seminaries) or maybe it’s just too huge for them to consider. In any case, for ordinary pastors of any denomination, Pastoring for Monday is a god-send, an answer to your questions about how to lead and preach and pastor as if God cared about your church members work-lives. This book helps pastors see that faith integrated into all of life, including vocations in careers and other callings, as a necessary focus of contemporary ministry, “not an optional add-on.”

Anyway, most readers of BookNotes won’t be surprised when I promote this good one. Spread the word — we have it here at our 20% off.

Armed with Austen’s tool-belt of strategies and practices, clergy will learn how to effectively support and relevantly communicate with their members as they navigate many common work-related struggles.  — Amy Sherman, author or Kingdom Callings and Agents of Flourishing

This truly outstanding book is a remarkable gift to the church and a must-read for every pastor. — Tom Nelson, founder of Made to Flourish and author of Why Your Work Matters

The Pastor as Midwife: Life Giving Leadership for the Healing of the Church Shawn Singer Gaines (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I raved about this about a month ago and I wanted now to circle back and underscore it again. I have long used the midwife metaphor (haven’t you?) when talking about ministry, in or out of the institutional church. We strive to participate with God in union with Christ, empowered by God’s Holy Spirit to get stuff done. To bring life, new life!  Right? I am surprised that there isn’t more written like this, richly plumbing the nuances of the work of a midwife to show how the life of a pastor can be enhanced by keeping in mind these women who catch babies for a living. What a parallel!

I appreciate Shawna Gaines and her vision “life-giving leadership.” I like that she names the pain that many of us and our institutions are in, which, frankly, is part of the whole childbirth thing, right? As it says on the back cover “the church is in pain, but God tells us that pain is pregnant with possibility.”

It is sort of interesting, she suggests, by the way, that the shepherding metaphor worked well when congregations were full and pastors saw clearly where they were headed (and what hazards to steer people away from.” In our different moment, the church needs more than a gentle guide, a pastoral shephard. We need a labor coach.

This book is very wise about the state of pastoring these days. Gaines has her DMin from Lipscomb University and is lead pastor of Trevecca Community Church in Nashville, TN. Like some artists of midwifery I know, she seems calm and grounded, wise for her age. Can we help navigate labor pains of the new world God is bringing in being? She is a lovely writer and this has been called by Scott Daniels, the General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene,  “fresh and biblical.. a creative way for pastors to frame within ministry as they participate in the birth a community that reflects new creation.”

Author Shawn Singer Gaines has a nice line in her acknowledgments that reminds us of the good marriage and co-parenting approach she has with her husband (who has labored together with her not only in congregational ministry but in higher education and neighborhood work.) She says to him, “While I was writing this book, you displayed the intuition of a midwife, knowing when to coax me to take a break and breather, and when to press me to push harder.” Exactly.

Pastor as Gardener: A Renewed Vision for Ministry Matthew Erickson (Eerdmans) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I have highlighted this more than once so will not go on and on here, raving more than I already have. But I will remind you quickly about several thins I love about this fabulous book.

First, it is just so well written, truly lovely, inspiring as the gracious words form into gracious paragraphs, inviting us to ponder and muse. It is one of the nicest professional books for pastors I have read in a very long time. There is no accident that he shares much with Eugene Peterson’s books about pastoral ministry, but he is a better writer.

Secondly, although it is obviously about pastoring, it really will be of interest to anybody who cares about church life.  I’m not kidding.  As my friend Vincent Bacote (a black theologian from Wheaton and a wise scholar of  Abraham Kuyper and other socially-engaged public theologies)  has said, “this insightful, catalytic, and personal book will bring great benefit to all who love Christ and his church.”

Thirdly, the restorative vision underneath the gardening talk really will be of interest to many and, rather like the midwifery metaphor, above, it is a fresh way to frame and approach the work of ministry. Whether you think the slow work of patient tending of the garden or the ways in which it involves us in “partnering with miraculous things” or understanding older ways of doing good work that isn’t primarily shaped by techniques and technology, The Pastor as Gardener is sure to be helpful. And stimulating. Whether you have read deeply in the agrarian worldview of Wendell Berry or not, this urban pastor’s introduction to this sort of metaphor will be generative. I promise.

It’s time for pastors to return to this old agrarian metaphor. It’s time for us to take up our rudimentary tools — our Scriptures and our prayers and our faith — and get back to our fields. This is serious work. This is joyful work. This is loving work.  — Winn Collier, author of Love Big, Be Well

Wet Cement: Inclusive Children’s Ministry That Leaves an Impression Julia Dennis (Friendship Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, this is a fun and fiesty little book that is a pleasure to read and easy to take in. I know some of our readers will be a bit out of their comfort zone with this one, but hear me out. Julia Dennis and her husband are creative types raised in homes where the parents were fiercely supportive of them and who entered church with a fairly mainstream Protestant sort of care for everybody. She was raised United Methodist and we learn early on that her mom did all sorts of good stuff — saving the freezing unhoused in urban Baltimore, standing up against racism and injustice, preaching against war. (And some who didn’t appreciate her not only threatened her physically, but slit her tires. There’s some fine-looking “Christian” response to a liberal pastor, eh?) So as a youth this energetic gal saw it all. When Ms Dennis went away to college she was shocked to meet gay and queer friends whose parents had kicked them out of the house, even renounced them. How can a parent ever be so cruel to their own children? How can churches be so ugly?

Long story short — as she colorfully tells in this upbeat handbook that reads like a memoir — she adopts a progressive and inclusive sort of faith and ends up becoming a UMC children’s ministry, joyfully and boldly teaching children about the Bible’s overarching story about God’s goodness and grace and our radical response in working for social righteousness and public  justice. There are some things I would have wished for, but, mostly, this is a useful resource.

And then there is this: she herself is a bit ADHD, maybe on the spectrum, as some say. One of their own children has autism which inclusive folks now call neurodiversity. Julia Dennis is so compelling about this in Wet Cement because it is very much her own story. In Wet Cement she wants to help congregations be welcoming places for all children and youth and part of this is adjusting our normals to fully include those with what some call disabilities. She wants us to learn from her story so congregations can incarnate the big mercy of God. She wants us to be advocates and allies. Her book is to help us be more intentional about our compassion and our inclusion and our working hard to challenge exclusive systems.

I do like how the publisher explains this, exploring the “wet cement” image:

In Wet Cement, Julia Dennis challenges church leaders, Sunday school teachers, and spiritually curious parents to approach children’s ministry with a view of the lifelong impressions we are leaving on our children’s faith. With honesty, passion, and practical guidance, Dennis reimagines a faith formation that is child-led, radically inclusive, and rooted in the boundless love of Jesus.

Can unusual children be known not problems to manage but gifts to cherish? Can we help them enter into the Biblical narrative in a healthy way, not driven by fear of punishment or a wrathful God? Wet Cement: Inclusive Children’s Ministry That Leaves an Impression was recently released by Friendship Press (the publishing arm of the National Councilor Churches.)

A Vision for the Aging Church: Renewing Our Ministry for and by Seniors James M. Houston & Michael Parker (IVP Academic) $30.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.79

I suppose if I dig into older books that I love about the local church community I’d list a dozens. But for our purposes here, offering a short list of mostly new books for those who love their congregations and pastors, and want thoughtful resources about refreshing our ministries, I just had to put something in about what some call “seniors” or the “aging population.” The elderly.

Not sure what phrase to use that suggests the challenges and opportunities of those in this late season of life but I love this book for several reasons. It came out several years back and isn’t new, but wanted to end this list with it because it is rather rare and pretty unique.

First, A Vision for the Aging Church balances between serious sociological and theological reflection and practical stuff to do, to deepen integral ministry for the older folks in our churches. There are plenty that are more simple — devotionals for those in care facilities or Bible readings about growing older, sure. And there are a few academic studies about the “graying of the church.” This blends mature thinking and som practical insights making it ideal for many Hearts & Minds customers. Yay.

Another thing I like about this is the subtitle: the ministry it explores is both for and by seniors.  A very good point.

Thirdly my hat is always off to one of the great geniuses and behind-the-scenes evangelical leaders of our time, the wide (and quite elderly) founder of Regent College in British Columbia, the mystic and leader James Houston. (I mentioned in our lead book review above that Charlie Cotherman, author of Strip Mine Jesus had an early book on the rise of the Christian Study Center movement, and Jim Houston plays a major role in that well-told book.) Anyway, anything James Houston writes is something we are interested in stocking. His 2019 auto-biography — with some world historical stunning moments — is called Memoirs of a Joyous Exile and a Worldly Christian.

Fourth, there are several appendices that are questions to use in a church survey, some more general for the aging person but a vital one about church life and services. It’s worth the price of the book, almost, for that good list for a useful church survey.

Houston and his colleague Michael Parker did a sequel to this for the individual aging Christian which looks good. (We have a whole bibliography of books on agin faithfully. Send me an email if you want us to share it.) I celebration this one, A Vision for the Aging Church here, though, since it is one of the rare ones about the local congregation and ministry. Highly recommended.

Order any of these books (or anything else) by using the links below. 

 

Thanks to those who read through my last BookNotes, telling about three fast-paced, very well-written books about, among other things, the “fire weather” we are experiencing in our hotter planet. We are still surprised that some are surprised we can get so enthusiastic about books that are not written out of an obviously Christian perspective. Intentionally Biblically-based or not, those three titles are tremendous reads and important. Read about them here if you missed it.  And then send us an order, please. Maybe consider donating them to your public library or some roadside Little Free Library or start up a book club.

In this week’s BookNotes I’m sending out love primarily to two books, one which I’ve highlighted already, the other technically not released yet (but we have them here, now.) I am sure many of our readers will appreciate them as much as I have, and will be glad for this week’s focus on the nature of God and our interior lives. One book reminds us of the Triune God and nicely ponders how knowledge of the Trinity is good for understanding our own belovedness. It’s called Fully Beloved and is wonderfully written by author and pastor Timothy Jones. it is truly a sweet book, thoughtful, wise, captivating. I liked it so much I’m doing my second BookNotes review.

The one I will focus more on, however, is by a friend named Jeremy Sims and I am truly honored that he orders books from us, titles which, I think it is fair to say, show up in the beautiful footnotes in his brand new The Way of the Spirit: Recognizing and Responding to God’s Subtle Movements. I’ll tell you much more about that below.

CS LEWIS

Before I dive into it, though, I wanted to squeeze in an announcement about another brand new title, The Everyday Mysticism of C.S. Lewis: Spirituality for Daily Life by Gary Selby (IVP Academic) $24.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99.) Selby is the masterful writer of another Lewis book that I loved called Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality: C.S. Lewis and Incarnational Faith, also published a few years back by the great IVP Academic. This new one starts off on the back cover issuing a concern that I often have: some of the Christian mystics and great saints and teachers who have had deep encounters with the Divine are sometimes seen to be eccentric (fair enough) and not very down-to-Earth. One can get lost in the interior castles of the medieval mystics and sometimes folks come away from this sort of intense spirituality more interiorly focused than they ought. Selby — who used to direct the Center for Faith & Learning at Pepperdine — is quick to show that, in Lewis’s take, we get from the great older writers an “everyday” sort of mystical encounter. (Remember Lewis’s lovely bit about “patches of Godlight” in his book about prayer, Letters to Malcolm? That’s it!) Lewis read the classic Christian mystics and deeply respected their intense writing about their spiritual experiences and, informed by his Lewis studies, Selby invites us to live out of that kind of faith in more practical and day-to-day ways. Everyday Mysticism sort of seems like a follow up to Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality but you really don’t have to read that one first. Lewis enjoyed the mundane and in this new volume, Selby is pointing us to deeper formation and, more urgently, to union with Christ. As Bonnie Thurston (formerly of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) puts it, the book is “erudite without being snobbish and faithful without being narrow.”

MakeYour Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path to Unknowing James K. A. Smith (Yale University Press) $28.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40. I’ve raved about this one already (as I do all of Jamie Smith’s books) but I’ll say again that some of you should be reading his hefty and serious new one. I want to mention it here, again, as it really is a great piece of work, remarkable in its learnedness and wonderful in its compelling invitation to grapple with “the path to unknowing.”  It is at times searing, so honest and real about his own struggles (abandoned by his father as a boy leading to some serious adult depression at the height of his writing fame) and how an unlikely encounter with the mystics like Saint John of the Cross allowed him to give us the idolatrous search for certainty. Granted, some of it is at times a bit scholarly and academic, dense, even. But well worth the careful reading experience. If you know about his must-read You Are What You Love you can see even in that book his move towards “what’s under the hood”, the need for us to have the Spirit touch the imaginations of our hearts. Nope, we can’t “think our way” out of these messes of the modern world, nor our own inner pains. By allowing the sublime to touch him deeply (whether it is from disruptive modern art and edgy contemporary literature or the deep writings of medieval mystics) Smith finds a way to let go of intellectualism and live out of God’s utter goodness and love in the midst of his calling as a philosopher and public thinker. I suppose it is not for everyone. but Make Your Home… is truly one of the most provocative and vital books of the year.

So whether it is late 20th century touchstone spirituality books like Merton’s deep New Seeds of Contemplation or the fabulous The Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster or Ruth Haley Barton’s Sacred Rhythms or the modern masters like, say, Ronald Rolheiser or Martin Laird, or the one’s I’ve mentioned above — Gary Selby’s The Everyday Mysticism of C.S. Lewis or Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark by Jamie Smith — there are so many places to start this encounter with the contemplative ways knowing and being.

We live in an age of so many good books written to appeal to so many different sorts of readers. The following two I’m recommending to almost anyone. They are both among my favorite books of the last several years.

FULLY BELOVED

Fully Beloved: Meeting God in OurHeartaches and Our Hopes Timothy Jones (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I wrote with a lot of enthusiasm for this recent book a few weeks ago. I was maybe two-thirds of the way through and had to get the post done, so I gave it my big thumbs up and packed it in my bag as we headed out of state to sell books for a week. In the weeks following I have savored each and every page, re-reading many sections for the sheer joy of them. Jones has won me over as a fan; he is an exceptional, splendid writer, with a lovely blend of story and theology, earnest faith and superb prose. He can be poignant but it never devolves into being sappy. He is tender, but, again, not mawkish. His restrained prose, crafted with such striking texture and pace, reminds me of the great Robert Benson. His focus on the goodness of God and the grace shown in the death of Christ reminds me of Brennan Manning. Jones is now an Anglican priest and while he has somewhat of a sacramental worldview, it isn’t about that. It’s about the Trinity which ends up being a window into the joy and beauty of the gospel, the very good news that God rescues us out of an abundance of love.

Fully Beloved verges on the edges of a contemplative sort of tone but it not about esoteric encounters, not at all. It is about real stuff like his mother and father abandoning him in his young adult years, about him wondering what it would feel like to be accepted. It is — again, without smarmy prose with TMI (“too much information” as the saying goes) or corny applications like too many Hallmark-lite writers — about the wavering of the human heart and the great need to be known and loved. Sure Henri Nouwen and Parker Palmer and so many others have written about this, but there is something about Jone’s appropriation of the Trinity and the “three personed God” (as John Donne puts) that gives this a gentle bit of heft. I wouldn’t say it is written with gravitas as it is way too charming for that descriptor, but almost. For some, it is going to be life-saving.

As I said in my first write-up, I can hardly say enough about Fully Beloved but I can say this: it keeps getting better and better as the book unfolds.  The first line is “Am I loved? Maybe no question nags at us more. Perhaps no questions matters as much.”  In the last half of the book he offers a pair of chapters on God the Father’s answer to this eternal question, and how Jesus (and his death and resurrection) contribute to the answer, and the last two chapters on the role of the Holy Spirit brings it all home. (You see what he did there, this three-fold structure?) There are some very honest stories and some really good prose and some great citations (footnotes from poets and scholars.) There is some in-depth Bible stuff and some clear-headed guidance about church and family and forgiveness and prayer and…. Well, in a way it is a very good overview of the entire Christian life. It’s an all around great book.

Want a good book about God and you, the hurts of your heart and God’s assistance? Do you yearn for rescue without the insight offered being shallow or formulaic? Do you want a bit of theological meat with your lovely lines about goodness and grace? Can you take some hard stuff, knowing how much brokenness there is in this good but fouled world?

After a lovely and helpful concluding story about Jones finding an old picture of himself playfully tossing his two-year-old son in the air, he wondered about trust and presence and joy.  After that beautiful paragraph he writes:

We’ve caught glimpses of the Trinity as a society of intimate relating and congenial collaborating. Glimmers, too, of a God who is not only personal but who overflows in love for us — for our world. I hope you have seen ways forward for ourself in all this. An invitation to greater intimacy.

After telling about his use of the famous icon by Andrei Rublev (his portrait of the Trinity with a open place at the table, it seems) he notes more of what he sees:

Mystery, yes, but also clarity. Our imaginations get stretched and our awe swells again and again. And most of all, our love for the God of great love kindles and grows more radiant day by day.

THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT

The Way of the Spirit: Recognizing and Responding to God’s Subtle Movements Jeremy Sims (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I’m just going to say it: this is one of the very best books on the inner life and deeper spirituality that I have ever read.

“This is one of the very best books on the inner life and deeper spirituality that I have ever read.”

There, I said it. Should I just let it go at that, hoping you will trust me enough and order The Way of the Spirit right away? Or should I tell you what I so loved about this extraordinary book? It deserves a fantastic review (I’m sure others will do it better justice) and there is so much to tell, but I do not want to overdo it. I want you to order it!  As a believer and champion of this new author, I have to say just a bit. Here are three things you should know about the author — mostly what he explains in the book — and some  things about this glorious book itself.

Although we’ve never meet in the flesh, I count Jeremy as a true pal and appreciate the emails he sends (and the orders he’s placed.) We’ve chatted on the phone (and I watched his wedding a number of years back when it was streamed live.) I love this guy. And we hope to do a free webinar so you can enjoy a conversation about the book — stay tuned as plans develop.

So three things about the author:

First, Jeremy has a complex story, and has experienced a more painful portion of life than most of us. You will read how it effected his move into a quieter sort of contemplative experience of faith, but the hard death his first beloved wife (from Huntington’s Disease) rocked his world, as it would anyone. He was an upbeat and beloved youth pastor at the time and had young kids, too, and during those years his longing for a deeper experience and mode of faith was clearly (but not exclusively) driven by the tragic losses during this pivotal season. Had he even read The Dark Night of the Soul? Like most of us, probably not. But he went through a personal devastation and he writes about it with just enough pathos to help you appreciate his journey (but not too much as The Way the Spirit is not a book primarily about grief.) He eventually remarried and entering into that great gift is also part of his story.

And, truth be told, his longing for something (animated by what he calls a restlessness) began before the year their lives began to change. He tells of a pivotal retreat and discovering what became one of his favorite books, Mansions of the Heart by Thomas Ashbrook about the stages of spiritual growth, with a famous forward by Eugene Peterson. It’s amazing what a book can do, sometimes, eh?

Secondly, importantly, Jeremy was raised and remains a Southern Pentecostal. He is so cool that he had a crazy/fun video which he used to audition for the TV show The Amazing Race and he is smart and a great leader and has huge amounts of integrity. So don’t conjure any smarmy Jimmy Swaggert images. But this was and remains his faith tradition. He does teaching, spiritual direction and mentoring of future Assembly of God pastors (and others, okf course) at Southeastern University in Florida. But has a Doctorate of Ministry from Portland Seminary. And hangs out in Catholic retreat centers and knows the great medieval mystics as well as anyone I’ve ever read. More on that in a moment.

I think (and this seems both interesting and important) that Jeremy so longed for a mystical (if quiet) encounter with the Spirit of the risen Christ because he knew both passionate, real, encounters with God and, yet, because he wanted something more (not less) even if he wanted it in a gentle, sublime manner. Throughout the book he cautions about putting on airs or manufacturing sentiment or overdoing emotional expression, and while all of that is wise and helpful (some of it stemming from the early desert fathers and mothers or the monastics of the 15th century) it does seem to emerge from his concerns about the loud and visceral sort of stuff that happens in his own church tradition. For those with eyes to see, some of The Way the Spirit is a gentle plea to his own tradition to go deeper, not seeking the sensational.

Here’s how he starts the book; don’t miss a word:

I am a cradle Pentecostal, the kind who grew up under wooden-beamed ceilings with fans that spun slow above a sweaty sanctuary, where perfume and prayer mingled in the air and no one doubted that God still moved. The music was loud, the faith louder. We sang until the floorboards rattled, prayed until someone shouted, and waited until heaven seemed to lean close enough to touch. I remember the tambourine keeping time with a hallelujah, the worn pews groaning beneath the weight of saints who had learned to hope through hardship. In those moments, I learned to expect the Spirit’s power, but I didn’t yet know how to recognize the Spirit’s quiet. For a long time, I thought intimacy with God had to sound like thunder. It took years to learn that most often the Spirit moves like breath.

Beautiful, no? And then he explains:

Over the last fifteen years, the Spirit has led me on a journey I never expected. I have not walked away from my Pentecostal roots; if anything they have sunk deeper. I still believe in the God who heals bodies and breaks chains and fill sanctuaries with holy fire. But I have also learned to cherish the quiet fire that has burned for centuries in the historic church — the prayers that have been prayed long before my voice entered the chorus, the wisdom of saints who teach us how to wait when the miracle does not come quickly.

I shed tears reading that, and I was hooked.

Which leads me almost too obviously to the third thing you should know about Jeremy Sims. He is an incredible writer. If this is the only book he does (and I hope it is not) we should thank God in awe that there are such wordsmiths who craft such good paragraphs working among us. Jeremy is not only a contemplative Pentecostal, but he is also an artist, a writer of the finest order. Maybe he’s got the spirit of Bezalel from Exodus 31. I know he’s worked hard on this book and it shows.

Don’t you love where this is going, where a sobered and bereaved Pentecostal pastor takes up with a spiritual director and learned to be both fully Pentecostal in his AG tradition and at the same time “grounded in the ancient practices that have sustained the faithful through both drought and abundance.”

“I have found,” he observes, “that encounter and tradition are not rivals.”

One does not have to be a restless and then grieving Pentecostal to want a “deepening into something wider, older, and surprisingly familiar.” Don’t you, too?

Your own heart will leap, at least a bit, when he uses phrases about the “sacred rhythm of ordinary faithfulness” and how he learned as a pastor to feel “the weight of people’s questions” “but also the ache beneath them.” When he writes about coming to realize that there is “sacred ground” as we seek for God amidst our confusions I scribbled in the margins! He writes of the “slow discovery that holiness often hides inside the ordinary” and that what perhaps we most need, or what we’re really talking about, is that matter of attention.

Yes, there was great tragedy in his story, but here is the start of his journey: restlessness and yearning. He wanted to find God and trust that God was at work “even when I couldn’t locate him in the noise of my own life.”

I don’t know if you have experienced this restlessness or what some call spiritual anxiety, or if you sometimes fear exhaustion if not clinical burnout, but I bet you can relate. To hear god over the noise of our own lives?  Jeremy picks up on Brene Brown’s curious phrase emotional granularity and his rumination about that in the full-chapter introduction to the book is worth the price of whole book. It’s that good.

This book is not the first to invite us to “the slow unlearning of hurried faith” — Jamie Smith, above, talks about unlearning, as does Timothy Jones in Fully Beloved, but Jeremy’s invitation to this holy work is exceptional.

A few quick things about the structure The Way of the Spirit.

First, as I’ve said, he is on a journey to find a deeper more ancient sort of faith without leaving his Pentecostal practices or his role in his denomination. But he does push back against what he has seen as perhaps extremes or unhealthy aspects of holy-roller habits. Eugene Peterson, by the way, emerged as such a deep practitioner of the slow work of spiritual disciplines in part because he wanted something more lasting than the splashy sort of holiness shouting he heard growing up. Jeremey remains happily AG and teaches at a legendary Pentecostal school, but he has been shaped and deeply formed now, for much more than a decade, in the company of the medieval mystics and spiritual classics.

The subtitle is helpful in that he is guiding us to discern the movement of God (the sometimes subtle movements of God) and he calls these “waypoints.” The big center of the book offers seven waypoints, each by inviting us to the wisdom a particular saint or writer. This is so, so good, but I’m ahead of myself.

Before the middle “pilgrimage of the Spirit” and the waypoints on that pilgrimage, Sims offers two very important starting points, about the cultivation of attention. There are essential and consequential chapters. He offers in Part 1 two marks, which he describes as “attentive presence” and “spiritual naming.” I do not think this is utterly new but it was fresh and vivid for my heart and mind and rang so true I underlined almost every paragraph. This invitation of a “way of being in the world, a posture of open-hearted presence” is so good.

Sims insists that his book is not offering a new task, but is about unlearning — “unlearning distraction, releasing control, and recovering the ability to truly be here” as he puts it. He is offering not skills or techniques or disciplines but a new lens. It is beautifully written but sensible; it would be good to read alongside Smith’s more daunting Make Your Home In This Luminous Dark. It is an invitation to spiritual space-making. His Biblical reflections helping us see this are rich and lovely.

He says he learned much of this, not incidentally, in his appointments with his spiritual friend/ director.

During the long decade of Tiff’s illness and the grief that followed, there were many seasons when I avoided God. When Scripture felt hollow. When prayer felt impossible. But I showed up to direction, month after month. That is its quite power. It became my anchor, not because it changed my situation but because it tethered me to presence.

I do not want to summarize every section for you, but he does follow this lovely line about being “tethered to presence” with a little bit about Simon Weil and then ends up arguing that “this is the quiet tragedy of inattention: it slowly erodes our capacity for love”

Oh my. Underline that!

Have you ever felt that? Maybe just apathetic and numb? Do you ever host the insight that fast-paced inattention “dulls our hunger for what is real.” Here’s what he means: “ It slowly convinces us that silence is empty, that nothing important is happening here and that we are safest when we are guarded.”

The Spirit will use this small section of this book to help us wake up — it can help you and it  can help me. His invitation to “surrender” and then to “behold” points us to what he calls “the full arc of attentiveness” which is “softened by mercy, trained by slowness, and reformed by grace.”

And the second mark of attention in Part 1 is even better, about the role of naming. Wow – what a chapter.

SEVEN WAYPOINTS

As I said, the middle Part 2 of the book, then, is his explanation of each of seven saints, most who have written a classic text of spirituality. These are the “waypoints” along the journey that he invites to; he says “waypoints are markers on the road. They will tell you where you are and invite you to notice what’s happening in the landscape of your soul. They give shape to your movement. They orient you to when you feel disoriented.”

The first Waypoint, a chapter called “Holy Threshold” is about Mary and it is rich and good, rooted in the Biblical narrative.

The second Waypoint is in the chapter called “Desert Formation” and it is on the famous 3rd-century Egyptian desert fathers and mothers. It is perhaps the best brief explanation of them I have ever read. Geesh, now I might take back some of my old criticisms, fearing they were merely anti-cultural and nearly gnostic. Jeremy’s words resonated so much that I have read that chapter three times.

The next marker on the road is “Repentent Reordering” and while there is much these days written about Ignatius of Loyola and the Ignatian methods, it is, again, very clear, relevant, and moving. Look: he’s not Catholic and surely no Jesuit, but he explains the helpfulness of this as well as anybody. If you are interested in Ignatian spirituality, you’ve got to read this chapter.

Waypoint 4 is directly about the “Inner Journey” and, again, it is about the best summary of Teresa of Avila I have ever read. There is lots on Teresa these days and most of us need as much help as we can get entering her interior castle. Jeremy says some things about Interior Castle that I’ve not noticed or read before and I am grateful. Wow.

Waypoint 5 made me think again of Jamie Smith’s Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark and Sims’s take on Dark Night of the Soul is appropriately heavy, but, even through lament, it just sings. He tells us that John of the Cross was born in a small village in Spain in 1542 and gives you needed background about what happened when he joined the then-new order, a reformed branch of the Carmelite order (the Discalced, which simply means barefoot.) Jeremy notes that “John’s life was marked by intensity, by prayer, by suffering, and by love.” Did you know he was imprisoned and tortured by his own brothers in Christ? I didn’t realize or remember how persecuted he was (and realize now why Sims related him in passing to Catherine of Sienna and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, too.)  But here’s the thing: we use the phrase “a dark night the soul” to mean almost any depression or doubt but Sims dissects it a bit, explains what all it more specifically means and implies and how to find God in the midst of that sort of particular angst.  He walks readers through a process including “holy dissatisfaction” and “purposed wandering” which can lead to what he calls “infused contemplation.” It is excellent; a real help in taking up and appreciating the famous but often misunderstood text.

“Divine Encounter” is the next section and this 6th Waypoint is guided by Julian of Norwich. We know her line about “all shall be well” but Jeremy really needed this. We all need this. We have so much of Julia in the store (including a book written decades ago called Why Julian Now? asking why in our new postmodern times we need this ancient mystic.) She is beloved for a reason. His description of being on silent retreats and in liturgical settings (not his natural worship habitats, recall) and, like with the other chapters, weaves historical info and spiritual insight and his own story into a very sensible introduction. He has these little pointer charts, too, in each chapter, making these true Waypoints. In this chapter the flow moves from “wounded openness” to “transfigured truth” to joyful oneing” which leads to “steadfast assurance.” This is great stuff, believe me.

I loved the final Waypoint, Waypoint 7, which is on the “sacred ordinary” teaching of Brother Lawrence. Who doesn’t love the “God of pots and pans” described in his classic Practicing the Presence of God. I could say much about this chapter — I thought I knew most of what was to know about Lawrence and about putting into practice his prayerful openness of the Spirit’s presence in the mundane. But I felt like a novice, joyful and enthused to learn this afresh. I pondered Jeremy’s good teaching about liminality and about liturgy. His flow in this chapter (and in the title chart) is too good to mention — you’ll have to order the book and read how he gets from “subversive sanctification” to through several other lovely steps to “expanded wonder” and eventually to “deepening gratitude.” Again, one doesn’t have to be Pentecostal to need the advice: “In the sacred ordinary the Spirit does not dazzles with spectacle. Instead the Spirit teaches us to see again, not with naive eyes, but with renewed ones.”

None of this is about escape for the world or being overly concerned about our interior lives (always a caution when moving in these circles) but about being transformed into Christlikeness and to bearing the fruit of “cultivated attentiveness.” The book’s first part comes together in the final two chapters, among the most stunning of all. His two “Marks of Granularity” in the Part 3 are “Shared Recognition” and “Sustained Attention.” I could write a review just on these two amazing chapters and they are worth reading again and again.

Two final words. At the end of each chapter there is a one page sort of summary, take-away, and exercise. It is prayerful and experiential and a good thing to do to begin to inhabit the points along the way. As these guides and their books that Jeremy teaches about come to life, to practice their insight with these excellent experiences is good. It’s one more feature of The Way the Spirit that illustrates the author’s hope that it truly helps God’s people along the way.

Secondly, there are also discussion questions at the end, making this even more useful to process and explore, and, importantly, to consider using with a small group. If you do spiritual direction, tell your director about it. If you are a pastor, hand a few out to the spiritually hungry in you congregation. If you are a fan of spiritual classics, you’ll love this. If you are not familiar with the contemplative tradition this really is a moving and clear introduction (and more!)  Find some friends and start a book group. These questions will help it take hold. There is lots to reflect on, lots to enjoy, things to learn about “spiritual granularity.” Skip the spectacle. Read (slowly) The Way of the Spirit.

As the great A.J. Swoboda says in his foreword:

My encouragement to you: read slowly. Take in the movements that Jeremy has given voice to. Don’t rush past the burning bush that is this book. Stop. Watch. Listen. Talk. Respond. And mull.

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TO ORDER, PLEASE USE THE LINK AT THE END OF THIS BOOKNOTES.

There is an excellent new book about spirituality coming soon that I want to tell you about next time — linking it to two other great ones. Stay tuned for that. I actually wanted to do this BookNotes later in the summer, but after a creepy seven-hour long drive back from Ohio through smoky smog and days of dangerous AQI readings from the tragic wildfires, I have to tell you about these riveting books now. Thanks to those valiant CCO friends who helped us load the book boxes back into the van through that serious heat and haze. We hope you got home safely.

Here in the mid-Atlantic (and beyond) the smoke from wildfires to our North descended upon us hard, making it difficult to breathe well outdoors. Even inside, the smoke came through the cracks in doorways and windows. For those of us with illnesses (just for instance, Beth’s breast cancer, and my less serious but still cancerous diagnosis) and anyone with asthma or other health issues, this is more than an inconvenience. It has been scary.

We are fortunate not to face the immediacy of horrific flames as those around our continent have, time and again, and our prayers go out, again and again and once again. The whole creation groans (Romans 8:22) and we along with it. Heaven help us.

Yet, thoughts and prayers (as our friends who have lost loved ones in mass shootings have reminded us) are not enough. We must understand the problem and do something. We must study up. As good neighbors and faithful citizens we must advocate for policies that might serve the common good, this time regarding the pressing problems from pollution. My dear friend Steve Garber’s book, Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate (Paraclete Press; $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99) reminds us that in this fallen world we cannot do it all, we cannot change the world in anything close to ultimate ways, but we can do something, providing some healing — maybe a bit shy of what Schaeffer suggested in True Spirituality as “substantial healing” — but real, offering tangible hope. I thought a lot about that book this week.

One of the joys and obligations of my vocation is to find books that are not only informative and helpful but that are inspiring, maybe even fun to read. We listed novels in our last BookNotes (and there are plenty more where that list came from) but we tend to specialize here in nonfiction. Sometimes authors we suggest are writing directly from a Christian perspective, other times not. In any case, we recommend books that we think you ought to read, that are helpful and important. Here, with a smoky smell I can’t yet wash away, are three that feel existentially vital. And, believe me, they are rip-roaring, amazing reads.

Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World John Vaillant (Vintage) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Perhaps if you’ve seen me on any of our every-other-week podcasts you’ve noticed some books stacked up — I’ll admit, somewhat staged — on the desk, over my shoulder. One of the books there has been nominated for a prestigious Pulitzer Prize and also nominated for the almost always impeccable American Book Award. I put that hardback copy of John Vaillant’s Fire Weather there in honor of customers of ours who have lost much in tragic fires. I’ve been wanting to describe it here at BookNotes and I am sorry I am only now, with Canadian smoke in my nose, even through a mask when outdoors, telling you about it. It is now in paperback and it has been for me one of the most interesting and compelling books of the year.

Mr. Vaillant’s meticulous style is clear and detailed, the book arranged in three major sections. It is not quite as personal as the two that follow (they feature real-time glimpses of life in communities effected with first-hand journalistic verve and humane storytelling.) Fire Weather is a tad more scholarly, telling of an event that happened a decade ago, but even at its most detailed, it isn’t dense or plodding. I found it a page-turner, full of interesting facts and brilliant descriptions and touching episodes. One reviewer said it is “astonishing on every page.” Agreed.

The opening intro is breathtaking in its brief retelling of one of the worst disasters, and the costliest, in Canadian history, the 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray in the far northwestern part of Alberta, Canada, not that far from the rugged Saskatchewan border. It is, as you may surmise, a book about forest fires and how climate change —  aggravated by our polluting the atmosphere so terribly — has made such fires more common and more severe. And that riveting introduction to the horror of the inferno in the boreal forest and the oil refinery town in the middle of the tar sands region in the otherwise very rural region heading towards the Arctic circle, sets the stage; wow!

As the good writer he is (he has previously published significant fiction and nonfiction) Vaillant has to do the background, setting the historical context of what in the world is going on in the near arctic regions of northern Alberta. The first three chapters, surprisingly, are worth the price of the book. In vivid prose he writes about how isolated and rural and expansive the geography of Alberta is. He describes the (rare) weathered buildings, the long, long roads, the Boreal forest, the animals — deer giving way to moose, crows giving way to ravens, coyotes to wolves, with the wild bison and 100 pound trout in huge lakes and big sky landscapes. Almost every page I noted something to quote for you, and after pages of post-it notes and so much stimulating writing, I realized I couldn’t retype paragraph after paragraph, pages of quotable writing. It’s fascinating, all of it.

He has to look at the history of this region — it hangs together as the dots slowly are connected — including telling the gruesome history of the Hudson Bay Company. A Scotsman named MacKenzie was the first European to traverse to the West Coast of Canada (years before Lewis & Clark did so in the US) and the Hudson Bay Company became more rapacious and profitable and extractive than their counterpart in the south, The East India Company, about which Edmund Burke said it was “a merchant masquerading as a State.” Vaillant studies the discovery of what we now call the Tar Sands region and a bit about the history of the oil and gas industry (including the discoveries in Titusville, Pennsylvania.) There’s even an old photo of derricks in Venango County, which many Pennsylvanians will recognize as south of Erie. That whole chapter is very important, as you will see.

(By the way, those who follow BookNotes who knew the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and the Canadian Citizen’s for Justice & Liberty (CJL) in the late 1970s will recall John Olthius and Gerald Vandezande then leading faith-based activism against the MacKenzie Valley oil Pipelines that would only add to our dangerous oil addictions and commitments to the false gods of economic growth and hurt the indigenous First Native peoples, who declared “Our Land Is Not for Sale.” Yes, it is that MacKenzie whose name is seared into my memory from those heroic Christian lawsuits against big oil and in solidarity with the Dene so many years ago. By the way, earlier this year, the University of Toronto Press published a major work by Olthius telling of his life’s calling to bring legal action around Native people’s claims. It is called Dismantling Settler Colonialism: An Insider’s Perspective on Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples (University of Toronto Press; $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00.)

Vaillant’s bit about J. Howard Pew (founder Sun Oil / Sunoco and funder of Grove City College and Christianity Today and other groups that blended his freedom-loving entrepreneurial spirit with capitalism and Christianity) is not just illuminating but vital to understand. Even in his old age in 1967, Pew threw a huge celebration about “man developing the Earth” in the seemingly forsaken region of Alberta, as they invested millions into the development of the tar sands industrial sites. Vaillant notes how many clergy were among the invited dignitaries commemorating this new stage of development at Fort Mac. How faith in progress, nominally driven by evangelical religion, justified all manner of polluting inventions — he talks about some of the largest machines in the world, some of the tallest industrial structures for thousands of miles around — is haunting.

I am a bit embarrassed about how I have not much considered the ways in which industrialization was linked to the early oil and gas industry, starting in part in Western Pennsylvania and eventually spread throughout the Americas. The amount of stuff under the ground in Alberta is truly vast, but not usable as the crude in, say, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Oklahoma, or Texas. A whole, expensive lot has to be done to the oily gunk in the Alberta tar sands — using Canada’s natural gas and creating lakes of stored industrial wastewater and huge piles of tailings like sulphur — to make it sellable.

Some of you may recall those of us who protested just a few years ago the pipelines criss-crossing the US to sell this gross and inefficient bitumen; religious nuns here in our area (in Lancaster, PA) went to jail rather than concede land and lend complicity to this unstewardly project. Anyway, this Fire Weather book has these great chapters about the origin stories (as he calls them) of the famously notorious project at Fort McMurray that is something like gigantic strip mining and mountainous, sloppy refineries, in a place that frankly sounds like working on the harsh landscape of the moon.

Vaillant has a chapter in Fire Nation about the processing of turning the gunky sand tar into something that is almost sellable in the global oil market, and, believe me, I was so intrigued I read much of it out loud to Beth, who also leaned in. (I was interrupting her reading a Madeline L’Engle novel, but this bit kept us both wondering how Vaillant learned so much about this secretive process and place.) In a region that otherwise seems like the Russian steppes of Siberia, 90,000 people live in Fort McMurray, many who describe it like Tolkien’s Mordor. Working dangerously for long, long hours in brutal temperatures ruins a man — they are mostly men — and the stories of workers there are worthy of a whole book. From the strip clubs to the church planters to the drug pushers to the truck dealers to the civil servants and industrial leaders, the info on this oddest place in North America is really fascinating. Even the complex chemistry of transforming this sludge was fascinating. He likened the process to something akin to putting molasses in a giant sandbox and trying to make rum out of it.

Some of the big Caterpillar vehicles used at the Suncor and Suncrude plants there have tires that sell for more than $8000 each and can explode like a bomb when the friction from the hundred-ton loads causes sparks. Things freeze up, too — the huge bulldozers are made for below freezing, but at below -40F even human eyeballs freeze. You can imagine the complexity of the working conditions for machines and people. The writing about all this is spectacular as he describes this center of the worst air pollution in North America and its unfathomable global impact.

I so agreed with a blurb by a writer from Slate who says that “Vaillant writes so vividly that he can make subjects like the mining of bituminous sand fascinating.”

And, slowly, we learn about the horrible scarring of this huge patch of Earth processing bitumen — one of the few things, like the Great Wall of China, that can be seen from outer space — and why it matters to the heat rise of the planet, and, yes, the increase in and severity of out of control wild fires. I do not recall Vaillant using the word ironic, but it is even now ringing in my ears that the place that contributed to global warming ends up being the very sport of one of the modern era’s worst fires.

Vaillant writes that,

The dramatic transformation of Fort McMurray from trading post to petroleum hub has been as rapid and radical as any on the continent, and it has followed the manic-depressive pattern of all petroleum boomtowns before it. Boomtown stories are part and parcel of American lore, but Canada has its share, and some of the most exuberant examples come from Alberta.

Vaillant cites an amazingly breathy report from 1914 of folks clamoring to buy shares of the oilmen’s profits, from a single day of trading where investors drove up the share price of the Calgary Petroleum Products Company by more than 1,600 percent.

He continues that first part of the “origin stories” before the heart of the book about the nature of forest fires, with this reflection on that financial boom.

Explosive growth of this kind mimics that of fire, and humans seem particularly prone to it. Fire is known to physicists as an exothermic reaction — that is, a reaction that unleashes more energy than was required to initiate it. Just as a single match of cigarette can burn down a house or ignite a landscape, a handful of men with novel trade goods, a drilling rig, or an IPO can set off a commercial explosion of buying and selling. Each of these events has the power to change the fortunes of a region and its inhabitants overnight.

The first 70 pages are surprising and captivating and important. Knowing the historical backstory is critical, believe me. And you’ve only just begun. Part Two (before the final, shorter third portion called “Reckoning”) is the hot heart of Fire Weather. Chapter Six starts with a haunting Seamus Heaney poem, “Mycenae Lookout.”

Buckle up, gentle readers, buckle up.

The story of how the historic fire at Fort McMurray developed and how the leaders there — the highest paid firefighters on the continent, trained, oddly not for boreal fires coming at you like a tsunami, but as typical urban firefighters — mishandled some of the early days of the terrifying battle, is, again riveting. I don’t usually read books that are thrillers or laden with action, and this learned and thoughtful study isn’t a cheap ride. But, man, you are on the edge of your seat, wondering, page by page, what they experienced and how it might resolve. More than one reviewer praised the visceral storytelling. There are a dozen more chapters, including a brief study of the explosive 2001 Chisholm fire that was first discovered by US atmospheric experts (some say NORAD) when they saw the exceptional high and energy-laden smoke plume, thinking it had to be an unannounced nuclear test, which it obviously was not. The hottest fire on record, these sorts of fires don’t just destroy, they vaporize nearly everything; the Chisholm burned as ferociously as if exploding multiple nuclear blasts per minute.

The famously huge McMurray fire is tragic — one spoiler I’ll share is that they evacuated almost 88,000 people, using the only road out of the city in the middle of nowhere with its complex of pipelines from the refinery stations — but we learn quickly part of the moral of the story. With climate change the air is hotter, even in the North, and dryer, in even supposedly rainy seasons. Fires are increasingly worse than ever. We simply must (I would say) elect bi-partisan public officials who take climate change very seriously. Ten years ago, when the McMurray inferno happened and this center of this exceptionally well-researched book is set, it was a relatively naive time in climate-change-informed firefighting. It was then an unprecedented episode and much has been learned about the strategies and skills of this kind of extreme firefighting in huge forest areas.

What is the larger lesson?  Fire Weather isn’t preachy or overly didactic, but the lessons are clear. The book could be called Fire/Weather as it explores the relationship between fire and weather. But when weather conditions are ripe — the heat and humidity in rural Alberta Canada mimicking Death Valley Arizona temps and humidity index — the word “fire” becomes an adjective to describe the weather. Either way, fire weather or fire weather you will hear again the pairing of these words, so expertly explored here by Mr. Vaillant. This is a wake-up call.

The original hardback (which we still have with its deckled edges and full color photos) of Fire Weather had the subtitle A True Story from a Hotter World (Knopf; $32.50 // OUR SALE PRICE = $26.00.) The paperback edition (the price we actually listed above) has the subtitle On the Front Lines of a Burning World. Either way, it is a fantastic read, a report that moves carefully with important historical context and which builds with thrilling narrative momentum, and ends with lots of mature reflection about recovery, science, policy, and citizenship. Highly recommended.

Before It’s Gone: Stories from the From Lines of Climate Change in Small-Town America Jonathan Vigliotti (One Signal Publishers / Atria) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I waited for this to come out in paperback before pushing it as I thought with the somewhat lower price more folks might take me up on my invitation to read it. It is a sprawling, vivid report, a book I couldn’t put down. One learns a bit about the realities of climate science but it is mostly a narrative of a TV reporter who specializes in heading to danger zones to report on floods and fires and the like. I mean it: it’s an incredible read. As Publishers Weekly put it, “The prose is transportive, and stirring portraits ground the climate science.” They note that it is thoroughly reported and “disquieting” which is a nice way of saying it is troubling as hell.

Vigliotti is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award-winning CBS News national correspondent; his work has taken him to over forty countries and territories across six continents. He’s been on CBS Sunday Morning, Face the Nation, 48 Hours, etc. I hope his acclaim in the industry (and the way he has put his life on the line to bring us up-to-the-minute live reporting) earns him respect. You really should read this, his only book!

Before I realized his award-winning reputation I picked up this book because of the “small-town America” line in the sub-title. I read another book (see below) about how climate change is effecting real Americans from Alaska to Florida, from Annapolis to California, and this, too, seemed to be the sort of book of immersive journalism that takes us into the locales of ordinary America. And this is done wonderfully well. He flies in — often being awoken in the middle of the night when he fetches his packed “go bag” to catch a plane somewhere — where perhaps after the first immediate report of a tornado or flood, heads to the local diner or main street cafe or grange hall or wherever else he can talk to real locals.

As Jeff Goodell (author of the best-seller, The Heat Will Kill You First) says, it is,

An account of a TV journalist on the climate beat that reads like it was written by Indiana Jones on Red Bull.

Exactly.

Vigliotti may be fearless and wired with Red Bull but he is gracious and kind, wanting to understand the pathos and human drama around the episodes of tragedy. He meets people, using his journalistic charisma and delightful personality, to (usually) get them to open up, even in moments of hardship. Some of it is heartbreaking, some of it infuriating, all of it beautifully told and candid and captivating. (Need to revigorate your prayer life? I dare you to read this book and not bow your head to pray for these real-life folks, and for him, that he could keep going in this valiant work.) Jonathan Vigliotti documents the people, families, communities, fields and landmarks impacted by climate changes of various sorts. For two decades or more he has criss-crossed the land, bringing us first-hand reports, making this book with a bit of his backstory almost feel like his own work-world memoir. Of course the spotlight isn’t really on him, but is about the devastation (and signs of hope and change) in real-world America. The prologue is called “A World Away Hits Close to Home.”

As it says on the back cover:

From massive forest fires in California to hurricanes in Louisiana, receding coastlines in Massachusetts and devastated fisheries in Alaska, we learn that warnings of a future impacted by climate change are no more; the catastrophe is already here.

Before It’s Gone: Stories from the From Lines of Climate Change in Small-Town America is arranged around four sections: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. I can’t tell you how interesting all of this is, with little known backgrounder detours into historical matters that are utterly fascinating. (Payments made for white folks to move to Alaska to do permafrost farming; dust-bowl issues among farmers in the midwest and a chapter cleverly called “The Father of Soil” about an early agronomist.) The batch of chapters under the section “Air” is about the rise of both the amount and severity of tornadoes and his time with a twister chaser is breathtaking.  Don’t miss the chapter there called “Coffee, Grits, and Motorcycle Greats.”  Each time, I wondered what could be worse than the infernos or the floods. But that tornado secant — whoa! The land section — as complex as any of them — interviews Wendell Berry, too, as he studies the impact of the bad stewardship of big agribusiness.

As tragic and scary as the flooding chapters are and as tragic as the hurricanes and tornado parts are, it’s the fire section that starts the book that will have you glued to you seat, turning page after page of high-octane prose. The Pulitzer Prize winning Elizabeth Colbert (author of Under a White Sky) says it is “at once vivid and terrifying.”  Indeed it is, but it is the humanizing style of his conversations with fellow citizens, our own neighbors and relatives, even, that makes this such a moving portrait. There is urgency and drama and this personal touch. It is different than Fire Weather in style and, of course, covers more than the wildfires.

I hate it when I hear of people mocking the mainstream media or those who roll their eyes at secular journalists, as if they are all hucksters behind some desk, with some elitist ulterior motives. Jonathan Vigliotti has gulped his Red Bull and found himself in danger zones, just to show us and tell us what is happening in America, here, there, and in places some of us call home. It isn’t a screed about carbon emissions, although there are some side-roads into climate science. But it is mostly about the ways small town Americans are resilient. And need to be.

Again, it is not a screed, but he does make clear what happens when the icebergs start melting and the slight change in the temperature of the ocean effects the wind and weather patterns (starting in Africa, actually. Actually!) What a read.

Friends, this is not going to get better soon, and we simply must know more about what to expect in years to come. Before It’s Gone is a must read to help us understand, plan and prepare, and — please, Lord — work to remove the current administration from Washington who is doing so much to harm those fighting climate change. From cutting the budgets of life-saving climate research to cutting the caring work of FEMA, from rolling back EPA regulations to unleashing fossil fuels, Trump has put us all in danger. There is no debate about the facts of his policies. This good book isn’t about that, but it might inspire you to care and vote for candidates that realize the times and know at least some of what we must do. Whether you care about this topic much or not, this is an amazing book, full of energy and story. Thank you, Mr. Viigliotti.

At Home On An Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth Madeline Ostrander (Holt) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Even before I started Vigliotti’s Before It’s Gone: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small-Town America I thought of this, a book I had read a few years ago and which I’ve raved about often.. At Home on an Unruly Planet has been one of my go-to recommendations for anyone wanting a glimpse into the hard reality of what’s going on in recent years with encroaching changes in climate. It a powerful read and you’ll learn so much, and learn to care about so much.

You know we’ve got theological and Biblical studies on ecology — see, just for instance, anything by Steve Bouma-Predigar, like his delightful Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping is an Essential Christian Practice (Baker Academic; $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79) or, say, the fabulous collection of short pieces called Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care edited by David Warners and Matthew Kuperus Heun (Calvin College Press; $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39) — and we have more scientific books documenting carbon output and melting icebergs and changes in weather patterns.

But this one, At Home on an Unruly Plantet, like Vigliotti’s, brings it all home in very readable, even enjoyable, writing. Like Vigliotti, Madeline Ostrander is a brave reporter and a great writer with a good heart and keen insights. Like Vigliotti, she blends historical and scientific data with captivating, on-the-ground, first person accounts of the amazing resilience folks need to display in the aftermath of climate-related tragedies. This is very much about how we can protect our homes and our communities, knowing what is happening, and what will continue to happen, in the months and years ahead. It is a rich, serious book.

I raved about it in a previous BookNotes, and I’ll quote just a bit of what I said then; it explains it’s basic structure well, I think.

The four locations and contexts about which Ostrander writes in luminous detail include the wooded rural areas north of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest (and the crisis of forest fires, seen mostly through the eyes of a forest biologist and smoke jumping firefighter), the East coast of Florida and extraordinary drama of life-changing hurricanes (seen, fascinatingly, through the eyes of a woman who works in historic preservation in the oldest European-settled town in America, St. Augustine), a northern California urban landscape plagued by fossil-fuel disasters, including a toxic explosion (seen mostly through the eyes of a black, urban farmer) and, finally, the sea-rise in Alaska forcing the a village of Yupik people to start a decades long effort of moving to a new location as their land warms and erodes beneath them.

As the At Home on An Unruly Planet book cover says, rightly, “Ostrander pairs deep reported stories of hard-won optimism with lyrical essays on the strengths we need in an era of crisis.” Some may appreciate the essays in between the reporting of these four unfolding dramas, although those major four stories had me up late at night, sweating it out.

Like Vigliotti, Ostrander takes us on a firsthand tour of places, but while his book was places he was sent to because of immediate tragedies on which he was reporting, and goes from there, she traces, with in-depth and longer-term visits, her insights about four key places that have experienced hardship from climate change. As I noted in my above paragraph, she looks at rising water levels in historic Saint Augustine, Florida (and Annapolis, Maryland), she looks at forrest fires in some of the most riveting prose I’ve encountered, in the rural pacific NorthWest, she explains what is happening in an Alaskan village as they must head for higher ground as the permafrost melts under the village. (These Yupic peoples are perhaps the first real climate refugees among our American citizens and it is an amazing tale.) Whether it’s the firefighter who has to rebuild her own town after wildfires or an urban gardener and community activist rebuilding a harshly hit minority neighborhood in the Bay Area of San Francisco after a fossil fuel disaster (that many of us haven’t even heard of) At Home on an Unruly Planet is not only richly reported but includes “lyrical essays on the power of communities to find solutions and resilience.”

There is what one reviewer called “uncommon empathy” in At Home… and there is no doubt we will need more of this in coming seasons. The US citizens complaining this week about Canadian wildfires need some of that empathy, of course, as we all do. We need hints of hope that can encourage us to act responsibly, fully realizing we are in this together. Madeline Ostrander has reflected well on this crisis that is truly global in scope, but she focuses on our fellow citizens and neighbors here in the US. Bill McKibben is right, this book is “marvelous.” And urgent, troubling, and, yet, oddly enriching. It’s a good read, one you will never forget.

Which brings me back to Garber’s serious and profound Hints of Hope. Now would be a good time to get that one if you have not yet.  You know how much in means to many of us. Let us know if we can send one of those, too. We recommend it, now more than ever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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