Welcome, again, to the regular BookNotes newsletter from Hearts & Minds, an indie bookstore in Dallastown, Pennsylvania. After that last, large BookNotes listing recommending books on faith and politics (grouped in four sortings, from easiest to most sophisticated, and then another group of a few on the dangers of Christian nationalism and the alt-right) I thought I would do a shorter listing of titles that are being featured at an off-site event we are helping a bit with this coming weekend.

We do a number of off-site events and we so appreciate those who invite us into their spaces of learning and renewal, allowing us to enhance their conferences and retreats with book displays.

Currently we have a hefty set of books at the Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature, this year hosted by the good folks at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA. While the scholarly workshops are on a variety of seriously literary topics the general theme is on the imagination of one George MacDonald, so we were thrilled to be invited to share titles there. The great UK poet and writer Malcolm Guite is speaking as well, so, again — thanks to SERCCL and Covenant (and one of our favorite customers there who is heading up book sales for us.) Wish we were there.

Soon we will be in Western Pennsylvania at one of our favorite annual events, the 2024 Wee Kirk Conference. Wee Kirk is Scottish brogue for small church and we adore this down-to-Earth gathering of Presbyterians (held at the lovely Laurelville Mennonite Retreat Center.) It’s always a great event with gathered faithful from small towns and rural areas. We hear church leaders, seminary professors, Bible scholars (and me, this year, doing both a keynote talk and a set of workshops.) Pray for Beth and I, please, and for all those salt-of-the-Earth folk attending the lovely Wee Kirk event.

At the end of October we will sell books at a very different sort of event, an always captivating, rather sophisticated gathering of Christian attorneys and jurists and religious freedom advocates who come together under the auspices of the Christian Legal Society. It’s an important event held in a swanky venue and they treat us very well; we work hard to bring a helpful array of titles curated for this sort of audience, exploring their vocations. From speakers like Os Guinness and Rebecca McLaughlin (and a prominent Supreme Court Judge from Uganda!) we will be on our toes, hoping to serve them well.

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s World Missions Initiative McClure Lecture and WMI Conference / October 11 – 13

For this BookNotes we are showing books which will be on display at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s World Missions Initiative annual McClure Lecture and the following WMI conference. The theme of the event is “Mission in the Margins: Lessons and Practices from the Global Church.” Participants there will have a QR code linking to this BookNotes for each of these titles (selected by the WMI speakers) which obviously relate to the authors and presentations at the event. Isn’t that cool? We wanted to share this with our broader audience and subscribers, knowing that, firstly, at least, it is designed for the PTS missions conference and 2024 Don McClure lecturer, Dr. Harvey Kwiyani.

We thought you’d enjoy seeing — alongside the previously mentioned events — the sorts of stuff we find ourselves involved with, giving thanks to God for the various ways God’s people are on the move, serving here and there, in literature programs in higher education, in rural and small churches, in law practices and judiciaries, and, as shown below, among those working out innovations of faithfulness in gospel proclamation throughout the globe.

As always at BookNotes, the titles we show are all at a 20% off discount. We’ll show the regular prices and then the special BookNotes / WMI conference discount.

Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see the links to our Hearts & Minds Bookstore secure order form page where you can safely enter credit card info. Just tell us what you want, fill in the data, and we’ll reply promptly to confirm everything.

Freeing Congregational Mission: A Practical Vision for Companionship, Cultural Humility, and Co-Development B. Hunter Farrell & S. Balajiedlang Khyllep (IVP Academic) $26.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

I so admire Hunter Farrell (the director of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s World Mission Initiative and the great association director, Bala Khyllep. Hunter was once the director of world mission for the PC(USA) and has studied at both the Sorbonne and has a PhD in anthropology from a prominent seminary in Per. Bala is a pastor in the Pc(SA) with a ThM from Princeton; he belongs to the Khasi people and grew up in northeast India. Together they are heros in the world missions movement, combining evangelical zeal and ecumenical study and academic acumen and deep, deep awareness of the continuing crisis facing mission as it is practiced by North American congregations. I have reviewed this remarkable book before but as you can guess it critiques the colonial-era assumptions of mission “launched from a position of power” and, instead, invites local congregations to resist the harmful effects of such “selfie” approaches and move to partner with churches from the global south and majority world Christian movements.

As it explains on the back, this book offers a Christ-centered theology of mission rooted in companionship, an appetite and competence to engage across differences with cultural humility, and insights and strategies to accompany local and global neighbors in what they call co-development.

Sent Forth: African Missionary Work in the West Harvey Kwiyani (Orbis Press) $40.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

While Orbis Press is a legendary and storied Catholic publisher that became known for publishing books of liberation theology (out of their Maryknoll Society offices in New York ) and rigorous theological works that advocate for a missional mindset that is culturally relevant and framed by a passion for the poor, they are also known for extraordinarily thoughtful scholarship on global missions (from a variety of perspectives.) This important book, by an African leader and missionary to Europe [did you get that!], is quintessentially cutting edge missiology, a book which is part of the ongoing series of the American Society of Missiology. It’s an important read by an important scholar/practitioner.  Congratulations to Dr. Kyiyani for doing the Donald McClure lectures at PTS this year.

Harvey Kwiyani is a Malawian theologian at the Church Mission Society in Oxford, UK, where he leads the Centre for Global Witness and Human Migration, and manages the World Christianity and Diasporas programs. He serves as Executive Director of Missio Africanus, an intercultural mission training initiative that seeks to equip and empower the global church for mission in Europe.

Africa Bears Witness: Mission Theology and Praxis for the 21st Century edited by Harvey Kwiyani (Langham Publishing) $34.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99

What a joy it is to get to serve organizations like the WMI and what a joy to suggest books by globally-relevant books published by the Langham Partnership’s publishing program. Langham, you may know, emerged from the evangelical work of holistic preacher and leader, the late Rev. John Stott. Stott’s multi-faceted mission vision is perhaps taken more seriously in other parts of the world and not enough people in the US know the books coming from the Langham’s UK organization, but this is one great example.

Africa Bears Witness is said to be a “remarkable collection of essays which explores the role of African Christianity in God’s mission around the world, offering an empowering look at the work God is accomplishing in and through the African church.”

Harvey Kwiyani is a Malawian theologian at the Church Mission Society in Oxford, UK, where he leads the Centre for Global Witness and Human Migration, and manages the World Christianity and Diasporas programs. He founded Missio Africanus, an intercultural mission training initiative that seeks to equip and empower the global church for mission in Europe. Having long-served in mission in Europe and North America, he writes on cross-cultural mission and leadership, and has authored several books, including Sent Forth: African Missionary Work in the West (Orbis Books.)

A Practical Discipleship Model That Fosters Maturity: Responses to Tradition, Divinities, and Witch Doctors in the Context of the Anyuwaa Church Owar Ojulu (Wipf & Stock) $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

This African leader is a pastor in a small town and a very rural part of Western Pennsylvania — I did some student teaching in 1976 in one of the villages where he now pastors a Presbyterian Church — and he is known and beloved. This book tells his story and ministry insights from his work in both Western Ethiopia and Western Pennsylvania.

“Standing on the bridge between God’s word and God’s beloved world among Anyuwaa people, Owar Ojulu insightfully traces the touchpoints where the gospel takes distinctive shape. In this work we receive a compelling, urgent, and universal call to discipling; the model that Ojulu has provided for doing so with contextual sensitivity, prayerful partnership, and spiritual hope is a gift to the Anyuwaa church and Christians everywhere.” — Beth Lindquist McCaw, associate professor of ministry, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary

Based on a lifetime of ministry in western Ethiopia and among the Anyuwaa diaspora in North America, Owar Ojulu proposes a culturally appropriate discipleship as a strategy to help the Anyuwaa church reclaim the gospel in their own context. This book can help the Anyuwaa church and US Christian leaders seeking to help their churches become more faithful and relevant to the world.” — B. Hunter Farrell, director, World Mission Initiative, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary

“Discipleship is difficult in any cultural context, but especially with those whose pre-Christian cultural influences continue to permeate every aspect of their worldview. Owar Ojulu’s excellent study on practical discipleship is not only for the Anyuwaa church, both in Ethiopia and the Diaspora, but for all who work among people groups who are struggling with the proper balance between their old way of life and their new life in Christ.” — Larry W. Caldwell, professor of intercultural studies and Bible interpretation, Kairos University

Migration and the Making of Global Christianity Jehu Hanciles (Eerdmans) $47.99 /  OUR SALE PRICE = $38.39

I suppose this could be described by using the annotation from the publisher — it is called “a socio-historical study of the spread of Christianity through the lens of human migration and intercultural exchange.” Yes, it is a scholarly contribution, beautifully published by Eerdmans, and considered magisterial. But it is also passionate and insightful, offering a new conceptual framework for the role of migration in the formation of the global church. It has rave reviews from The Calvin Theological Journal and Religious Studies Review, and, importantly, a lush and wonderful foreword by the amazing Philip Jenkins.

Jenkins writes:

In Beyond Christendom and other writings, Hanciles did so much to define an emerging field. Now, it is wonderful to see him applying his insights about migration and mission to an earlier era — nothing less than the first three-quarters of Christian history, the years before 1500. This is a remarkably ambitious goal, which he accomplishes with great success. Throughout, we must be impressed by his range of scholarship, and his acuity, as he roams through so many diverse eras and locales. He never lets us forget the links and parallels that bind those early centuries to our own day. This is an adventurous transnational history, which demands to be read and cited.

Jehu J. Hanciles is the D. W. and Ruth Brooks Associate Professor of World Christianity at Emory University. Originally from Sierra Leone, he is also the author of Beyond Christendom: Globalization, African Migration, and the Transformation of the West and Euthanasia of a Mission: African Church Autonomy in a Colonial Context.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Ilan Pappe (One World Publications) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

In a previous BookNotes where we recommended resources to help us understand the ongoing tragic situation in the Middle East and ways to be thoughtful peacemakers during the war in Gaza, we named this searing, illuminating volume. We noted that it is historically significant — written by an Israeli historian! — breaking ground by reporting on facts not widely realized by many in the West. It is edgy and passionate and vital reading. 

Here is how the publisher describes its project; read this, please:

The renowned Israeli historian revisits the formative period of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred, and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called “ethnic cleansing.”

Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel’s founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the Middle East.

Alongside some Pittsburgh area activists, this workshop is led by Shireen Awwad Hillal, Director of Bethlehem Bible College Community & Outreach and Samuel Munayer, a Palestinian theologian.

Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, The People, the Bible Mitri Raheb (Orbis Press) $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

Again, we have highlighted this before and it is important to have it there at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary WMI conference. Decolonizing Palestine powerfully exposes the ties between “settler-colonial geopolitics” and various faith claims, decolonizing not only the land in which he lives, but our own theological discourse and attitudes. It is a short but weighty book.

Rev. Mitri Raheb is a Lutheran pastor (he served as the senior pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem from June 1987 to May 2017 and as the President of the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land from 2011-2016) and continues to speak around the world, inviting support for his various NGO works and his efforts to do public theology. He is also the founder and President of Dar al-Kalima University in Bethlehem. He has published dozens of books and we have stocked many over the years, from Faith in the Face of Empire to In the Eye of the Storm, and more. Decolonizing Palestine is his most recent.

Urban Ministry: An Introduction Ronald E. Peters (Abingdon Press) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

There are many many books on urban missiology and this good one rings true in many ways, on many levels. It is a serious text, a guide for preparing those doing ministry in urban settings, but it is written nicely, standing among other classics in the field. One of the great strengths is that the author himself is an exceptional example of savvy urban leadership, both in church and the broader community. Ron’s work in the Metro-Urban Institute at PTS is one example of the integrity of this important text.

As the publisher writes, Ronald Peters clarifies the nature of urban ministry as a theological discipline by showing how its core values of love, justice, community, and reconciliation (among others) engage the issues of economics, education, family life, public health, ethnic relations, and religious life in the urban environment. Arguing that the city has always served as an arena of God’s activity, Peters articulates a theological rationale for urban ministry that is both hopeful and yet realistic, affirming that God loves the city and its people and encouraging practitioners to do the same.

Ronald E. Peters is Henry L. Hillman Associate Professor of Urban Ministry and Director of the Metro-Urban Institute at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion Gregory Boyle (The Free Press) $19.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

We are glad that the urban ministry workshop at the WMI conference will be recommending this as it is a true, modern classic, a great read by a great man. We have long stocked all of Fr. Boyle’s books (also Barking to the Choir and The Whole Language and the art-filled, full-color devotional, Forgive Everyone Everything.) For those that may not be familiar, Boyle works with great compassion and care within the gang culture of south L.A. and offers jobs (and spiritual transformation) through his famed Homeboy Industries. Considered nearly a modern classic, this is a fabulous book.

By the way, we are now taking pre-orders for his forthcoming volume, to be released in early November, Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times. ($30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00.)

An astonishing book . . . about suffering and dignity, death and resurrection, one of my favorite books in years. It is lovely and tough and tender beyond my ability to describe and left me in tears of both sorrow and laughter. – Ann Lamott, author, Almost Everything: Notes on Hope

Heaven’s Passport – For a Fuller Life on Earth Samuel Calian (Sam Calian) $19.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This new, self-published book by the former President of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary is a special addition to the books on display at the “Missions in the Margin” WMI conference. Sam has an accomplished past and has written widely in his context serving both Presbyterian higher education (a book on pursuing excellence in seminary training), for ordinary church leaders (The Spirit Driven Leader), and on congregational vitality within the mainline denominational setting (see, for instance, his 1999 volume, Survival or Revival: 10 Keys to Church Vitality.) I recall fondly a splendid book he did decades ago featuring dialogue between Protestant and Orthodox churches.

This new one uses the metaphor of a passport, a guide to purpose and faithful stewarding of our gifts and hopes. He offers clear-headed and devotional insights about living an ethical life and allowing God to work in us…

This is what he says about it:

Each of us is created in God’s image, the imago Dei, with all that implies about our lives to be spiritually empowered to leave the world a better, more just, and humane place honoring God’s creation. Readers will use this book not only as a resource for strengthening their own inner sense of living under God’s grace, but also as one’s biblical passport.

As we noted, all of these books are related to specific workshop or speakers at the 2024 WMI conference at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Folks there, as well as any BookNotes readers, get 20% off. Just click below which will take you to the secure order form page. Tell us what you want and we’ll take it from there. Happy to help, eager to serve. Thanks, all.

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

• United States Postal Service has an option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.83; 2 lbs would be $5.58. This is the cheapest method available and sometimes is quicker than UPS, but not always.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.70, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.50. “Priority Mail” gets more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
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If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you.

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Thanks to those who have recently sent orders our way. We literally depend on your support to keep our lights on here in Dallastown and we are more than grateful. In the last months of BookNotes we’ve highlighted titles on spirituality and birdwatching, work and Bible study, poetry, ecology, disciple-making, the arts, family relationships, church life; we’ve featured books on wonder, grief, social media, vocation, a Christian philosophy of history, and on practical virtues like discovering habits of joy. We’ve featured fun travelogues and unforgettable biographies, but not as many novels as we wished. From our interior lives to our culture-making, from theology to the arts to the sciences, we’ve enjoyed inviting folks to read widely so as to freshen our imaginations for that sort of discipleship Peterson called “a long obedience in the same direction.” We are proud of our friends and readers and appreciate your involvement in this movement of reading for God’s Kingdom. Hooray.

In this BookNotes I am going to do an epic listing (with fairly brief remarks, hard as that may be for me) about the vocation of our citizenship. Yep, here’s a big list of books on politics. I’ve mentioned many of these before, but wanted to offer these again.

If you feel so inclined please share this (if it doesn’t cause you too much grief. Or maybe, especially if it might!) Thanks.

ALL OF THESE ARE ON SALE AT AN EXTRA DISCOUNT FOR TWO WEEKS ONLY. Order now and get 30% OFF. After that they will return to our customary BookNotes 20% discount.

AND — we will offer a free book that we have selected for you, to be sent (while supplies last) with any purchase from this list. Cheers.

I’ll group the recommendations in a few categories or levels of sophistication. The categories are a bit fluid, I’ll admit. I hope you read through the whole important list.

101 – BASIC, ACCESSIBLE  BOOKS ON POLITICS & CITIZENSHIP

201 – MORE SERIOUS, READABLE BOOKS ON POLITICS & CITIZENSHIP

301 – MODERATELY ADVANCED READS ON POLITICS & CITIZENSHIP

401 – IMPORTANT BOOKS ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY & CULTURAL ANALYSIS –

URGENT BOOKS ON THE DANGERS POSED BY THE EXTREMIST RIGHT WING

Again, all books are 30% off until October 17, 2024. And we’ll send a free one, while the bonus supplies last.

101 – BASIC, ACCESSIBLE  BOOKS ON POLITICS & CITIZENSHIP 

The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life Vincent Bacote (Zondervan) $18.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.29

This little classic makes the simple case of why we must think about the call to engage culture and care about political life in light of God’s call to holiness. A lovely, very brief introduction to a wide-as-creation, Biblically-informed vision of public life. Buy a bunch!

Dr. Bacote teaches at Wheaton College and has published widely about the Bible, the Holy Spirit, public thinking, civic life, racial justice, and the theology of Abraham Kuyper.

 

Politics for People Who Hate Politics: How To Engage Without Losing Your Friends on Selling Your Soul Denise Grace Gitsham (Bethany House) $16.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $11.89

A really basic guide to American citizenship and Christian faith by an experienced Republican politico. Although she tilts right, her first allegiance is to the gospel and for building unity.

There are endorsements on the back not only from a Fox News commentator but a Democratic Senator. Maybe not my own favorite but a good starter resource for someone you may know.

How To Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor Richard Mouw (IVP) $18.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $12.60

I adore this little book, always in awe at how Mouw can bring his professional training as a political philosopher in the Reformed tradition to bear in a way that is readable and enjoyable and instructive and helpful. This lovely book is a great starter for reminding us of why patriotism — properly understood — is a good thing, even though it can go ugly and even idolatrous at times.  I appreciate his “on the other hand” balance and his insight that our patriotism should be an avenue of love of others. Solid.

 

Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christians Guide to Engaging Politics Eugene Cho (David C. Cook) $17.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $12.59

Many of us have admired Cho for his passionate work not only as an innovative evangelical pastor but his radical work on poverty and wages. His work with immigrant communities in his home state of Washington has been studied and praised. But now he is most known as the CEO of Bread for the World, the premier citizens action group that works on legislative efforts that help mitigate hunger, both globally and in the US. BFW is a group we should all appreciate — their long-time President, the late Arthur Simon was a friend and regular customer — and Cho wrote this upbeat book about civility and effectiveness in political activism before he took over the leadership of Bread. This is a very fine book, thoughtful and insightful. Enjoy!

Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant Patrick Miller & Keith Simon (David C. Cook) $17.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $12.59

I know that some of our customers enjoy the provocative Truth Over Tribe podcast where these dudes regularly remind Christians that they dare not be loyal primarily to a tribe, a party, a group other than the church of Jesus Christ. Like the book, it is enjoyable and yet really thoughtful. Many of us feel exhausted by tribalisms of all sorts and while this does not shy away from political involvement, it puts it within the context of the ideologies of tribalism that are so very hard to avoid these days. Can truth and love win out over tribalism and fear?

The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics Curtis Change & Nancy French (Zondervan) $19.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.99

  Chang is a long-time, thoughtful theological scholar having written on the likes of Augustine and Aquinas. Now a working psychologist, he partners here with long-time civic activist — until a few years back, exclusively with the Republican Party — Nancy French. Both have come a long way in pondering how a Biblical view of humility and hope can guide us through the “how” and “what” of complex political conversations. They offer some “types” of approaches and postures, ranging from the harsh ideologue to the hurting cynic. There is a better way of conversing and they invite us to think Christianly less about political philosophy but about comporting ourselves with graciousness and Christ-likeness.

The Party Crasher: How Jesus Disrupts Politics as Usual and Redeems Our Partisan Divide Joshua Ryan Butler (Multnomah) $17.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $11.90

I, at least, couldn’t put this one down and hope you will also find it engaging and helpful.  It is really helpful and a necessary guidebook to understanding the lay of the land in ways that are a bit more wise and interesting than the routine left vs right continuum. Using a matrix quadrant of four views, Butler suggest these perspectives are almost like religions for some people and people of Christian faith ought not be taken in by any of the four tendencies. I think he is right in exposing the religion-like commitments that undergird these orientations of progress and responsibility and identity and security (as he names them.)

After this astute orientation, he offers Biblical insight rooted in a vivid understanding of who Jesus is as Lord and how his disruption (as Party Crasher) can bring hope to our partisan mess. He offers ten political commandments for Christlike engagement, too. Some are pretty common sense (and oh-so-necessary) and others are surprising and nearly brilliant. A fun and provocative book.

Kingdom and Country: Following Jesus in the Land That You Love edited by Angie Ward (NavPress) $16.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $11.89

As you may know, I’m often frustrated that the media and many thoughtful Christian leaders put all evangelicals in the same far-right basket of those who go along with the MAGA movement’s nutty claims about the last election being stolen and who are willing to support a candidate who gives the nod to racists in the KKK and  violent thugs like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Of course this is not at all the case, and this collection of informative and inspirational pieces is such a good example of ordinary evangelicals who care about justice and the common good, who see the Bible as guiding them to resist overstating the ideologies of the right or the left. What do you do when the priorities of God’s Kingdom clash with political trends? A great handful of rising leaders within the broader evangelical movement. There are women and men from different social locations and ethnicities, too, giving a fresh batch of insight and passion. Most admit there are few easy answers and following Christ is complicated. Very highly recommended.

By the way, see another in this “Kingdom Conversations” series edited by Angie Ward called The Least of These: Practicing a Faith Without Margins (NavPress) $16.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $11.89

Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies N.T. Wright & Michael F. Bird (Zondervan) $22.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $16.09

I have previously reviewed this one, of course, and we have been proud to feature it at events over the summer and fall — there is no doubt that these Biblical scholars have thought well about public life and the threats to democracies around the world in these dangerous days. But, to be clear, they are Bible guys, and here they study the Scriptures, especially the New Testament teaches about “the powers” and what it means that Christ has conquered them. I’ve read a few other theological studies of the powers — think Berkof, say, or Walter Wink, or Marva Dawn — but this is doubtless the best, most readable, study of a Biblical basis for our Christian political witness. Of course we love how it explores the nature of the Kingdom of God, framing the upheaval of our day by the light of the here-but-still-coming reign of Christ.

201 – SLIGHTLY MORE SERIOUS, READABLE BOOKS ON POLITICS & CITIZENSHIP 

The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor or Kaitlyn Schiess (IVP) $18.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.29

A generation of young Christians (and old ones, too) are weary of the political legacy they’ve inherited and are hungry for a better approach. This asks how we should form our political convictions and how we can explore the habits and practices that inform our visions of citizenship and the public good. This is nearly brilliant, a must read for one and all.  Blurbs on the back sing its praises from Makoto Fujimura, James Skillen, Karen Swallow Prior, Molly Worthen, Matthew Kaemingk, Michael Wear. Right on — an absolute must-read for anyone interested in political faithfulness.

This explains it well and why you will value it. Not only for you own earnest self-evaluation but as entertain others in conversations about how they form their views.

How should Christians vote? In the last several years, this question has become a dividing line in the church, polarizing the people of God into opposing camps and fracturing the Christian community along worldly fault lines. With wisdom beyond her years, Kaitlyn Schiess recognizes the folly of centering on this question and instead focuses on a better one: What sort of people are we being formed into? With biblical grounding, theological depth, and the spiritual urgency of a next-generation leader, Kaitlyn lays the groundwork for a better, more faithful approach to political engagement. After finishing this book, here is the one thing I know for sure: we have not seen the last of Kaitlyn. — Sharon Hodde Miller, author, Nice: Why We Love to Be Liked And How God Calls Us to More and The Cost of Control: Why We Crave It, the Anxiety It Gives Us, and the Real Power God Promises

Compassion & Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement Justin Giboney, Michael Wear, and Chris Butler (IVP) $24.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $16.80

This is a fabulously rich, enjoyable read that explores questions of social justice and moral order as it pertains to the common good. These authors worked in what they called the “AND” campaign — think of the gospel called to speak the truth in love. Or, as the title summarized, compassion and conviction. This shows how we who follow Jesus in light of a Biblical orientation may sometimes feel too progressive for conservatives and too conservative for progressive. We needn’t be stuck in this continuum, really, but this campaign is trying to help us be more faithful, wholistic, balanced approach.

What an honor for the to have the black political activist Barbara Williams-Skinner write the powerful foreword.

The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life Michael Wear (Zondervan) $18.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.29

When I reviewed this at BookNotes earlier this year I raved and now I want to rave again. This is not a simple guide to thinking faithfully about politics (let alone about how to vote) but is more foundational, inviting us to ask how our hearts are, what sort of soulful approach we should have as we think about political service in God’s complicated world. Few books related prayer and our political responsibilities so well, that’s for sure.

Surely most of us need a deeper interior life, a view of knowing the world and how things work that is informed by the spirituality of a Biblical worldview. I love Michael Wear and would read anything he does. In this book he is deeply and wonderful informed by a wide reading of the whole corpus of the great Christian philosopher Dallas Willard. There is simply nothing like this one in print. Don’t miss it.

Wear’s 2017 book about working for and then leaving the Obama administration (as a very young man) is still very well worth reading — it’s Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House about the Future of Faith in America (Thomas Nelson; $16.99.) / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $11.89

The Bible and the Ballot: Using Scripture in Political Decisions Tremper Longman (Eerdmans) $25.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $18.19

The good Dr. Longman is one of the great Biblical scholars and teachers working today and here he has several significant chapters on what we might call a political hermeneutic; that is, how do we read the Bible to ascertain a “Biblical perspective” on modern civic life? These are well done, thoughtful, nuanced but not overwrought or arcane. It’s complicated, granted, but he offers some warnings and advice. The second half of the book offers a nuanced Biblical orientation towards a number of hot topics from immigration to pro-life concerns to questions about nationalism to racism, poverty, and more. After amassing the Biblical data, he wisely calls for a principled pluralistic in applying Scriptural wisdom into our modern, secular, political landscape. This is, at least, a handy resource to have around.

Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit Parker Palmer (Jossey Bass) $17.95 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $12.56

I do not need to say much about this, I trust. Parker Palmer is a gentle, quiet, insightful author, a Quaker who has written with passion about public life most of his life. He has written about teaching, the reform of higher education, famously about vocation and “listening to your life” and about how concern,generally, about the spirit (or the Spirit) of our lives matters, also to our public and cultural endeavors. From the journey inward to the journey outward he has been a good and wise guide.

Here he draws us into this invitation to listen well, to be decent neighbors, to work hard for a civil and gracious public order that invites reform and human caring. I’m not sure if his nonviolent circles and kind initiatives of finding common ground are potent in this polarized age, but I’d like to think they are. We are, I think most agree, in this together. We can appreciate others and we can hold tension in life-giving ways. Right? Can we form community among our own often tense communities? Palmer offers here five “habits of the heart” that can be developed in everyday settings like families, neighborhoods, classrooms, congregations, and workplaces to help restore an ethics of government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” A distinctively Christian contribution might want to say more than that (in fact, Palmer wants to say more than that) but it’s a good start, eh? A lovely and heartening book.

301 – MODERATELY ADVANCED READS ON POLITICS & CITIZENSHIP 

Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement Ronald J. Sider (Brazos Press) $26.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $18.20

I have maintained ever since this first came out years ago that it was simply the best book on a Christian approach to political life that I have yet read. He draws on a wide range of thinkers and activists, offers an impeccable commitment to the authority of Scripture, and calls us not only to research the Bible well but also to, in light of a broad Christian vision of life and society, evaluate well the data on the ground about key issues. (That is, for example, even if we agree that social policy ought to be biased in favor of the poorest among us, good folks can disagree about whether or not, in fact, for instance, raising the minimum wage helps the poor in the long run.) So, here, Sider gives us an inspiring process of how to think well about politics as such and how to humbly but responsibly develop a consistently Christian view of best approaches to policies and, finally, to voting. The late Ron Sider badly wanted us to be biblically grounded and factually responsible and graciously active. It isn’t a difficult read, really, but it is thorough — although not even 250 pages. You can do this!

James Skillen, founder of the nonpartisan Center for Public Justice, says,

Ron Sider builds on years of experience and conversations with Christians across a very wide spectrum. His balance is better than that of most who want to influence politics for the better. And biblical faith is the solid platform on which he builds and balances. Listen to Ron carefully before taking your next step. Just Politics — that’s what we need!  — James W. Skillen, founder and former president, Center for Public Justice, author The Good of Politics

The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship. Daniel K. Williams (Eerdmans) $19.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.99

Now out in paperback this is, as the publisher puts it, “a theologically and historically informed treatise on a Christian approach to politics that foregrounds the priorities of God’s Kingdom instead of blind partisan loyalty.” It has been called “judicious” and Williams has been called “one of our finest historians on evangelicals and politics.”

Listen to this:

We live in a time when far too often partisan politics and catchy slogans replace thoughtful Christian engagement. Fiery rhetoric is often detached from fair-minded assessment of the past and present. It occurs on both sides of the aisle. Thankfully we have people like Daniel K. Williams, who offers both the nuance of a historian and the concerns of one committed to the fullness of ancient Christian concerns. This book will at times surprise, but also hopefully inform and encourage, those seeking to more faithfully navigate the debates of our age. — Kelly M. Kapic, author You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

Citizenship Without Illusions: A Christian Guide to Political Engagement David T. Koyzis (IVP Academic) $18.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $12.60

Wow! Hooray! This shipped to us more than a month early, arriving before I had time to do the major review that it so richly deserves. This thoughtful project is a somewhat more accessible and practical follow up to his magnum opus, one of the more important books of civic life to have been published in the last 25 years, Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies (see below.) That major work shows the deep roots of Western culture and how the binary fountainheads of political ideologies of our times — simply but, the left and the right — are more related, philosophically, then many realize. How can people of serious faith navigate the complex ideologies that pull us towards these particular (if distorted) visions?

Once one realizes the dangers of imbibing too deeply from the wells of these secularized visions, that is, once we reject the illusions and most profound claims of the left and the right alike, how then shall we vote? Well, it isn’t that simple because, for Koyzis, responsible citizenship is much more than showing up to vote every four years. What does it look like to engage wisely “without illusions” in our day by day citizenship? Can we enter the public square without betraying our own deepest convictions? Can we wisely compromise and yet offer a faithful, gracious voice? This book is fabulous, serious, important. It is just out — we’ve got it now at 30% off. Hooray. Don’t miss it.

In an age of heightened political division and widespread insistence on individual rights, often to the detriment of a vision for the public good, this primer on the task of being faithful Christian citizens is a breath of fresh (principled!) air. While reflecting the erudition of a senior political science scholar, Koyzis’s book is eminently readable, theologically grounded, and insightfully practical for anyone wanting better to live in the tension between the heavenly kingdom of God for which we pray and the broken earthly political and social contexts in which we all live. — David Guretzki, president, CEO, and resident theologian, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada

Citizenship Without Illusions is the best one-stop treatment of political citizenship written by the most significant evangelical political theorist of our day. In it, Koyzis makes a case for political engagement as a divine vocation in which our allegiance to Christ is primary and our allegiance to political parties and platforms is secondary. His ability to turn complex political realities into practical frameworks for action is second to none. Highly recommended. — Bruce Riley Ashford, senior fellow at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology

Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters Miranda Zapor Cruz (IVP Academic) $24.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $16.80

My, my, let me tell you that this is perhaps my favorite new book on this topic of the season so far — stunning almost, brimming with insight, remarkable clarity, page-turning writing, balanced, wise, vital views. This “helps us learn from Scripture and from Christians of the past as we discern how to be salt and light in our own time and place.”  The author is a popular professor of historical theology at Indiana Wesleyan University. She holds a PhD in religion politics and society from Baylor University and an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary. Wow. This is one you should have to last nearly a lifetime.

The most comprehensive understanding of the role of the Christian believer in national politics from a biblical, theological, and historical perspective to date. A classic for generations. — Jo Anne Lyon, general superintendent emerita of The Wesleyan Church

This book is a trust guide for any and all believers who are struggling to faithfully navigate the oft-bewildering and sometimes downright distressing landscape of American public life. — Heath W. Carter, Princeton Theological Seminary, co-editor, Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism

The Good of Politics: A Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Introduction James W. Skillen (Baker Academic) $24.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $16.80

Jim Skillen has been a hero in my view (especially for his work in founding the Center for Public Justice) and has been a good friend to Beth and me over the years. He has written a lot, some of it brilliant, some a bit arcane. This is his magnum opus, or so it seems, with a detailed survey of how the government has been understood by different thinkers throughout church history. As he honors the unfolding of social diversity and the rise of the possibilities of the modern state Skillen stands solid on Augustinian notions of the sovereignty of God and yet shows how even Augustine’s seminal The City of God, as important as it is, is itself mired in more than one political theory. Ditto with Constantine, Aquinas, Althusius, Calvin, John Locke, etc. There is so much to know and this is more than an introduction, believe me.

The detailed second half of The Good of Politics offers a birds-eye view of various political issues in light of his argument for what Kuyper called “sphere sovereignty” and both principled pluralism and  structural pluralism. If you take it slow this repays the work tenfold. One of the primer Christian political thinkers in our lifetime, a quiet scholar and patient gentleman. You should read his astute, important work.

Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views edited by P. C. Kemeny (IVP Academic) $35.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $25.19

This book came out in 2007 and remains as important now as it was then. One of these back and forth that can be so illuminating as five authors offer their particular viewpoint and the others offer critical feedback. We have here top notch authors representing what might be called a Roman Catholic view, an Anabaptist / Mennonite view (by the great Ron Sider), a mainline Protestant social justice perspective, a principled pluralist view (informed by the legacy of Dutch and Reformed leader Abraham Kuyper and modern advocate Jim Skillen) and a classical separationist view by a  Baptist professor at Baylor.  This is really fascinating and truly informative. Your head might spin a little but we all need to consider the various options and learn the strengths and weaknesses of those who have spent their lifetime in Christian political service and scholarship.

Five Views on the Church and Politics edited by Amy Black (Zondervan Academic) $19.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.99

Not unlike the above volume edited by Paul Kemeny, this one, edited by Wheaton professor Dr. Amy Black (author of the lovely, lively, Honoring God in Red or Blue: Approaching Politics with Humility, Grace, and Reason) includes five scholars from robust religious traditions, each going back and forth with the others. Here is how they arrange the debate:

An Anabaptist view (which they call “Separationist”, being the most limited possible Christian involvement in politics) is represented by Thomas Heilke; a Lutheran approach (called “Paradoxical” includes a robust witness and a strong separation of church and state) which is represented by Robert Benne; there is a “Black Church, prophetic” witness (which reminds us that the church’s mission is to be a voice for communal reform) and is represented by Bruce Fields; there is a Reformed (or “Transformationist” vision which emphasizes God’s sovereignty over all things, including churches and governments) and is represented by James K. A. Smith and the Catholic view (which they call “Synthetic” which encourages political participation as a means to further the common good of all people) and is represented by J. Brian Benestad. For what it is worth, Jamie Smith’s reply to each one is itself a stellar example of solid ecumenical insight and helpful, gracious critique. Smith’s role in this is brilliant.

Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation edited by Ronald J. Sider & Diane Knippers (Baker) $24.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $17.49

This big, now out of print, book is one we still recommend (we have only a few left) as it is nothing short of extraordinary, fabulously conceived and deliberately edited with a wide range of thinkers. The two editors (now both solving their differences in heaven) were themselves representing two very different orientations (Sider was at the time the often lefty President of Evangelicals for Social Action and Knippers was the President of the very conservative Institute for Religion and Democracy.) The contributions to this 380+ page volume include scholars we respect — from political writers and leaders like Paul Marshall and Stephen Monsma to profs of public theology like Dennis Hollinger and Max Stackhouse and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Some are known on issues around life and bioethics (Nigel M. De S. Cameron) and others think Biblically about peacemaking (like Glen Stassen.) On the ground congressional staff like Mark Rodgers contribute and other women and men with evangelical theology and public policy experience contribute. This is not only a call to sophisticated civic responsibility, but a handbook of big-picture thinking and specific topical policy proposals. Included is the impressive document “For the Health of the Nations.” Perhaps a bit dated? I’m not so sure…

401 – IMPORTANT BOOKS ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY & CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies David Koyzis (IVP Academic) $35.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $25.19

I have alluded to this above — his new one is more practical and designed for ordinary citizens — and I insist it is one of the most important volumes in decades. He insists that the philosophical movements that gave rise to what today we might call “liberals” and “conservatives” are much more alike that we often realize and as we unearth the assumption behind these ideologies, we realize that as Christians attempting to be faithful in our formulations of our political theories, we really ought to be careful not to fall into visions of change inspired by these essential pagan illusions. What a book! Careful, thoughtful, wise, this is complex and rich, important for anyone serious about developing a uniquely Christian discernment about modern politics. The newer expanded edition has a great introduction by Richard Mouw.

David Koyzis introduces readers to the range of political theories that have emerged and competed for dominance since classical times. He carefully and respectfully separates wheat from chaff in each of them in terms of a Christian worldview, and in a style that is clear, irenic, and persuasive. The second edition helpfully updates the first in terms of major political events of the past two decades. In an increasingly polarized world, this kind of book is essential reading for concerned citizens of all political and religious leanings.” — Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, professor emerita of psychology and philosophy, Eastern University, author Gender and Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World

This second edition of David’s great book is a gem. The brighter light he now shines on his assessment of modern ideologies comes from an in-depth assessment of the story each tells and the idolatry exhibited in each one. This also pushes Christians to examine the extent to which we may be compromising our dedication to God by bowing (even unconsciously) to other gods for political guidance. In this day of heightening nationalism, racism, terrorism, and sheer ignorance, the message of this book could not be more urgent or important. Read and discuss it carefully even if it takes weeks to do so. The multiple forces at work in our homelands and around the world will not be thwarted or redirected by one election or one major event. Christian love of God and neighbor demands responsible civic service and that requires the kind of understanding provided by Political Visions and Illusions. — James W. Skillen, founder and former president of the Center for Public Justice, author, The Good of Politics

Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology James K.A. Smith (Baker Academic) $27.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $18.90

This is the third major piece of the “Cultural Liturgies” trilogy. You may know Smith’s summarizing volume You Are What You Love which captures in lovely, readable prose the profound insights of these three major volumes. What you may know now is that he wrote that one — You Are What You Love — before he wrote this third major one and, in fact, as he explains in the beginning, he changed his mind a bit. So good as that third section of You Are What You Love is, Awaiting the King explores political theology with other conversation partners and with other conclusions. It’s mind-blowing, serious but important. Kristen Deed Johnson of Western Theological Seminary (and co-author of The Justice Calling) says it is “masterful” and “constructive.”

One of the great contributions is how seriously he takes the important scholarship of Willie James Jennings (The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race) and his deft, detailed examination of the heady work of Oliver O’Donovan. Whew.

Not every book of public theology has endorsements from Yuval Levin and Stanley Hauerwas and even Eric Gregory of Princeton. This is impressive stuff as he sets out “to reform Reformed political theology.” Wow.

Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis James Davison Hunter (Yale University Press) $40.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $28.00**

**This book is currently out of stock and we are unclear when they will be available again. We have a waiting list.

Called his “melancholy masterpiece”, the recent, weighty, Democracy and Solidarity is certainly one of the books of the decade, exploring with in-depth and scholarly rumination what sort of shared values a democracy like ours needs to survive and if we have lost such plausible unity in our era of nihilistic culture wars. When I first announced this a few months ago at BookNotes I cited Jon Meacham’s back-cover blurb which reminds us of its importance.

Meacham, author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, writes:

With his characteristic wisdom and acuity, James Davison Hunter has written an important and illuminating work on the cultural roots of our current democratic discontents. For those seeking to understand how we got here – and what we can do now – this is a vital book.

I first heard of social historian Jackson Lears from Ken Myers on his astute Mars Hill Audio services. Lears continues to be an astute cultural critic and it makes sense that he would know Hunter. Lears writes about this fresh and challenging interpretation of America in crisis:

Hunter has the insight to discern the nihilism pervading our politics, the courage to see its authoritarian consequences, and the wisdom to imagine humane alternatives.

Calvin in the Public Square: Liberal Democracies, Rights, and Civil Liberties  David W. Hall (Presbyterian & Reformed) $19.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.99

I have been dipping into this big volume again for a class on politics I’m teaching at my church — it came out as part of the Calvin 500 series of books from P&R in 2009 — and I must say I’d love to be able to teach more of this, even if it is above my pay-grade. Hall is a rigorous historian and informed Calvin scholar and this makes the case (whether one likes the magisterial Institutes or not) that the experiment in local governance in Geneva in the mid 1500s was a vanguard of new thinking about human rights and the common good, shaping much of the development of Western political science and even revolutionary transformations. There’s a reason why, centuries later, the British King George squawked about “that Presbyterian war” in 1776. What a major work this is.

In the past two decades, a small cottage industry of important new scholarship has emerged documenting the distinctive Calvinist contributions to the development of Western theories of law, democracy, and human rights. In this engaging volume, David Hall offers a crisp distillation of the latest scholarly findings and a clarion call to reclaim the Calvinist pedigree of some of our most cherished political ideas and institutions. — John Witte, Jr., Professor of Law, Director, Center for the Study of Law and Religion Emory Law School, author Christianity and Law: An Introduction

Why Liberalism Failed  Patrick Deneen (Yale University Press) $19.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.30

It is above my pay-grade as a small-town bookseller, I’m afraid, to say much about this short but much-cited volume. Professor Deneen teaches at Notre Dame and, if you are reading this part of BookNotes, I suspect you know that he does not mean “liberalism” in the sense of being a contemporary Democrat (a lefty on the continuum of liberal to conservative) but classical liberalism, the ideology from the Enlightenment, written into our Declaration of Independence, inspired by the likes of John Locke. That is, in liberal modernity we are free of the superstitions and constraints of the Medieval world and extol a value-free world where each person does what they want — highlighting individualism and freedom and rights and the like. In a way, this understanding of classic liberalism is part of being modern in the secular age. Does that sort of political ideology (that often animates the right and the left in contemporary American political discourse) really work? Can it be sustained? Is our liberal political order in disarray, in part, because it has succeeded? Rod Dreher wrote in the American Conservative back in 2018 that it was the most important political book of the year. David Brooks says, in a blurb in the expanded second edition, that most debates these days are really less about policy but more about “basic values and structures of our social order.” He’s right, I think.

And listen to this:

Bracing. . . . Deneen comes as a Jeremiah to announce that Tocqueville’s fear that liberalism would eventually dissolve all [its] inheritances . . . may now be fully upon us. –  Ross Douthat, New York Times, author, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success

American Covenant: How the Constitution United Our Nation – And Could Again Yuval Levin (Basic Books) $32.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $22.40

What an amazingly well-informed book this is, just chock-full of new insights and ideas. In the words of a recent review by the young scholar Brad Littlejohn, “the basic structure of the book is methodical and easy to follow. After articulating (his) basic theses, Levin devotes one chapter to each of to the basic building blocks of our constitutional system: federalism, the Congress, the Presidency, the courts, and our party system (a slightly later innovation, to be sure, but one that he considers “a missing piece in the constitutional puzzle”).

He continues,

Each chapter begins with a masterclass in constitutional history, mining the Convention debates and the Federalist papers for insight into how each element of our political order was designed to build consensus through friction. Each then explains how and why we have lost our way, either by misunderstanding the purpose of these institutions, failing to nurture the norms that sustain them, or by consciously trying to do end-runs around them in order to achieve more decisive policy action.

In comparing and contrasting Yuval Levin’s view of our fellow citizen’s shared assumptions with the more pessimistic evaluation of Hunter (see above) he muses:

Our politics increasingly takes place within the funhouse mirrors of a thousand overlapping media ecosystems, each purporting to tell us what our fellow citizens and governing authorities really believe. Judging by many of those data points, it is certainly not implausible to conclude that we are in uncharted territory, and perhaps past a point of no return: we no longer have sufficient agreement on the basics of anthropology and morality that can serve as the starting points for political negotiation.

Zero Hour America: History’s Ultimatum Over Freedom and the Answer We Must Give Os Guinness (IVP) $23.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $16.79

Guinness has been one of my favorite authors for decades and he writes about a variety of topics and themes, but he has done in the last six or seven years a trilogy of titles that speak to his perception that America has drifted from her balance of ordered liberty, sustained by the virtues of the citizenry, and that we are in a serious crisis point. Zero Hour is a punchy, passionate cry from the heart, informed by his extraordinary knowledge of Greco-Roman civic philosophy and insights from the America Founders who shaped a new set of political ideas (in contrast, he is wise to remind us) to the secularizing and finally authoritarian impulses of the French Revolution. Over and over Guinness brings new evidence, fresh explanations, and renewed energy to this big project of understanding the decline of the United States. He is worried, but not hopeless. As Steve Forbes (of Forbes Media) notes, Os “longs to see it return to the grand vision of its founding ideals.”

If Zero Hour insists that America has lost its way and will fall (“unless…”), his naming seven key foundation stones of freedom is a helpful pathway towards defining and ordering our life together. These are eloquently offered, as always, but, in a way, are keys to further (much-needed) conversation. As always, Guinness is realistic but proclaims a message of hope. His passionate reminder of the urgency should not be minimized and his gospel-driven reliance on God dare not be forgotten.

For more detailed and thorough teaching — important books that came from Os before the succint and feisty  Zero Hour America — I recommend his 2021 release The Magna Carta of Freedom: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom (IVP; $22.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $16.09) which brilliantly relates the book of Exodus and a Jewish view of freedom with the secularizing ideology of the French Revolution. It is dedicated to the great British Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks. This is one of Guinness’s most important and foundational books to understand what is behind the motif of freedom in the American revolution. I have read it twice and while there will be sections you may not fully agree with, it is simply indispensable these days.

Before that, he wrote in 2018 his political masterpiece, now out in paperback, Last Call for Liberty: How America’s Genius for Freedom Has Become Its Greatest Threat (IVP; $26.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $18.89.) The publisher summarizes this robust call for active and informed citizenship like this:

The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War. Will conflicts, hostility, and incivility tear the country apart? Os Guinness provides a careful observation of the American experiment, offering a stirring vision for faithful citizenship and renewed responsibility for not only the nation but also the watching world.

Christ and the Common Life: Political Theology and the Case for Democracy Luke Bretherton (Eerdmans) $35.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $24.50

Big and thick and richly drawn, this magisterial volume is one of the best examples of Christian political theology I have ever seen. David Gushee calls it “a monumental achievement” and Cambridge University scholar and author Sarah Coakley says it is written “with incisive clarity and remarkable accessibility” and is a “scholarly achievement of great note.” It is also, I’d say, inspirational, drawing as it does on Biblical insights about being a neighbor and about the most foundational ethic of all: love. It is a major, important, lasting contribution.

Bretherton is a distinguished professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.

Deeply learned and humane, Bretherton’s book surveys the landscape of political theology while making its own argument for ‘why Christians should be committed to democracy as a vital means for pursuing a flourishing life.’ Bretherton’s five case studies — on humanitarianism, Black Power, Pentecostalism, Catholic social teaching, and Anglicanism — are nothing short of a master class in different Christian conceptions of political flourishing. — Cathleen Kaveny, author Prophecy Without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square

Luke Bretherton has been thinking hard about the polis, plurality/pluralism, and democratic citizenship for a long time. This erudite synthesis and expansion of [Bretherton’s] work over the last two decades brims with insights into essential and interrelated topics, such as secularity, toleration, economy, sovereignty, and populism. This book makes the case for democracy and establishes the framework for discussions in Christian political theology for the next quarter century. — Amos Yong, author, Renewing the Church by the Spirit: Theological Education After Pentecost

The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here Kaitlyn Schiess (Brazos Press) $19.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.99

I hope you know the name Kaitlyn Schiess (I commented on her Liturgy of Politics above.) She is a PhD student (studying with Luke Bretherton, in fact, at Duke) and has already shown herself to be an astute observer of the unfolding conversations about solidly, graciously, Christian political options. This isn’t, granted, heady political philosophy, but I listed it here as it is less about forming a Christian political mindset as it is an overview on how the Bible has been too often misused in public discourse. There have been many who have written about this exact thing — I still like a book by a Jewish scholar in 2007 called Thumping’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics — but this historical study is without a doubt the best work on the topic to date.

Beth Allison Barr has called it “clever, judicious, and remarkably persuasive” and Skye Jethani says it is a “must read.”

Whether you lean left or lean right, whether you come from a red state, blue state, or a purple one, if you are a Christian who seeks to apply biblical principles to your political thinking, you will find something instructive, challenging, and enlightening in this book. — Karen Swallow Prior, author of The Evangelical Imagination

Recharging the American Experiment: Principled Pluralism for Genuine Civic Community James W. Skillen (The Center for Public Justice) $9.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $6.99

I have mentioned Jim Skillen often and highlighted above his major, wonderful volume The Good of Politics. This is a more complex work, but not super-scholarly. It might be a bit demanding only because it is written out of a framework and using arguments that are not typical within our assumed binary political continuum. Skillen here sets out to bring an innovative vision of building civic community by explaining both principled pluralism and confessional pluralism and how that political lingo and governmental agenda from a reformational worldview  — with roots in Kuyper’s political party in early 1900s Holland, actually — might recharge our nearly bankrupt America civic life. Fascinating and, for those who are eager, a vital project.

This Is Going to Hurt: Following Jesus in a Divided America Bekah McNeel (Eerdmans) $24.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $17.49

This isn’t a book about political philosophy, as such; heck, it is hardly a book about politics since it is so centered on people’s stories. But McNeel is a talented, snarky — and, really, really funny — political reporter. As an old-school investigator she has carted herself all over, talking with people about their hopes and fears and hurts. And this book — shocking in some regards — is a vividly told report from the front lines of our divided culture where people are not only arguing, but, often, ignoring the bruised and bleeding, nearly right under their (our?) noses. It is, finally, a book about compassion. It is an unashamed call to care.

Former conservative/evangelical Frank Schaeffer wrote a remarkable foreword, noting that the sacrifice of self for another is “the highest sacrament of all.” He continues, “The promise of sacrificial mercy McNeel offers is unconditional, based only on faith and love. And that alone is the answer to suffering”

This book offers, as another reviewer noted, “a compelling challenge to the narratives that separate us from the suffering of others and, for the sake of healing, calls us to deeper compassion for all humanity.”

In this fiesty, remarkable read, McNeel tells of kids who are facing huge mental health challenges; she writes about immigrants, about those who are victims of climate change; about the poor and the abused. She is candid about re-thinking some of her narrative around the Covid crisis. There’s a great chapter about (as she calls it, “the mockumentary”) of critical race theory (and “why kids use the n-word.”) In a chapter that will disturb some, she offers human-scale and tender reports from the complicated abortion debates. As a Texan, she knows quite a bit about gun culture, and enters the discussion about mass shootings. Holy smokes, this is a brave, caring book — clever, passionate, raw, real. As the wonderful Mae Elise Cannon (author of The Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World) tells it, “McNeel doesn’t shy away from addressing critical divisions within the church while calling us to respond ore faithfully as witnesses to the cross.”

At the end of each chapter MnNeel offers the same set of bullet-points showing where the key fissures are, what might be done to build bridges, what trade-offs might be necessary, and how the “Us vs them” mindset has damaged our conversations on this topic. Despite these keen take-aways, Ms McNeel is a master storyteller and believes in the power of stories; that’s the heart of it. One chapter is called “Turning the Stories Inside Out.” This is one heck of a book and I name it here because I am sure this sort of human solidarity with those who suffer injustices is, frankly, a core piece of any political philosophy that dares to suggest it is Christ-like.

URGENT BOOKS ON THE DANGERS POSED BY THE EXTREMIST RIGHT WING

Your Jesus Is Too American: Calling the Church to Reclaim Kingdom Values over the American Dream Steve Bezner (Brazos Press) $19.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.99

This lively author trains church planters, is an executive of the Texas Baptists, and a professor at Truett Theological Seminary. He’s beloved and respected for an evangelical vision that calls us to confront the idols of power and influence that have eroded principled Christian ways. Although he is beloved in his context — Beth Moore wrote the lovely forward; Beth Allison Barr says she’s giving it away to friends and family — others esteem it as well. Philadelphia African American pastor Eric Mason affirms the book’s Christ-centered worldview. Michael Wear says the author has “put his heart into this book” even as he calls for obedience to the way of Jesus. This warns about how the ideologies of various political movements can quickly erode the clarity and power of our Christian discipleship. This is a great, readable book, a good reminder for one and all.

American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church Andrew Whitehead (Brazos Press) $24.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $17.49

I have highlighted this several times in recent months and find it to be both warm and semi-scholarly, a clear-headed and inspiration book by a serious academic; he is, by the way, trained as a sociologist and he follows the data in ways most of us do not. He’s written on other prominent publishers and here distills much of his research and thinking for a Christian audience. It is one of the best studies of so-called Christian nationalism, explaining what it means, exploring how prevalent it is, and reflecting on why it all matters to those wanting an effective, Biblical faith. Excellent.

American Christian Nationalism: Neither American Nor Christian Michael W. Austin (Eerdmans) $17.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $12.59

This is brand, brand new by an author we’ve followed for years. (It was just a few months back when we were celebrating his lovely book (Humility: Rediscovering the Way of Love and the Life of Christ. Professor Austin also wrote the very important book QAnon, Chaos, and the Cross: Christianity and Conspiracy Theories which grows more timely and urgent with each passing week.

This succinct new one shows how nationalism is contrary to both American values and Christian virtues and then he offers a simple vision for a better form of civic engagement. This is, as Daniel Williams writes, for Christians who are “dismayed by the contemporary state of American politics.” Joel Looper (of Another Gospel) notes that it avoids “any hint of a polemical tone” Wow.  By the way, there is a very good foreword by the respected and eloquent Marlena Graves. We obviously need this short (86 pages) but potent book.

The Violent Take it By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy Matthew D. Taylor (Broadleaf) $32.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $23.09

When historian Kristin Kobes Du Mex says a book is “required reading for anyone seeking to understand Christian nationalism” I take notice.

After hearing him one Sunday morning on NPR I realized he is a vibrant Christian with a charismatic church past, and that his passion is more than academic or even patriotic, but from a place deep in his own heart. He understands his topic — the New Apostolic Reformation movement of so-called prophets and apostles — and understands well their interest in spiritual warfare, the Seven Mountains mandate, the Jericho Marches, the Cyrus stuff, and more. That January 6th was organized in part using conference calls from Pentecostal preacher Paula White’s office in the White House should be front page news. That these neo-Pentecostals, who call themselves Apostolic prophets, are very different then the older school fundamentalist Moral Majority (who at first rejected Trump as too worldly) and are all-in about the lies of the 2020 election steal and the like, is vital to understand.

Other authors who have written about the extremist Christian right — Bradley Onishi (of Preparing for War) and Katherine Stewart (of The Power Worshippers), and Samuel Perry (of Taking America Back for God) and Jim Wallis (of The False White Gospel) all give urgent reviews for this being not only meticulously researched but a major contribution to our understanding of public religion in our age. The radical charismatic movement has catapulted from the fringes and into the center of MAGA politics and the implications are fast. This “propulsive” account of the network of this new version of the Christian right is an important expose. This is a piece of the puzzle we have to understand.

Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor Caleb E. Campbell (IVP) $18.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $12.60

One of the longer and most heart-felt reviews I’ve done this year was in the BookNotes last July when I explored the importance of this beautiful, painful, energetic, and very helpful book which helps us realize that the very far fringes of the QAnon / Proud Boys / alt-right that approves of militias and winks at the KKK and the like is, frankly, not really Christian. That is, to counter this cult-like devotion to this extremist ideology will take more than kind conversations but a serious-minded missional strategy that is committed to loving others and sharing the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian Nationalists are neighbors to be loved and we need a pastoral response that is gospel-centered and gracious. Yes, it is, as one reviewer put it, “ a sobering assessment of the heretic elements of American Christian nationalism” but it also is written by one with “a deep love for those who have fallen into its trappings.” I so appreciate the love and grace and commitment to truth that pastor Campbell shows in this guide to ministering faithfully to “Christian” nationalists.

The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Tim Alberta (Harper) $35.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $24.50

Tim Alberta is a respected journalist and a Christian — an evangelical pastor’s kid, in fact — who has covered the ugliness of the far right, having written a mainstream bestseller (American Carnage.) When Trump loyalists and MAGA believers assailed him at his own father’s funeral, he realized that he had to write more intentionally about extremist Christians and the theologically weirdness of our times. He is not only one of our best political reporters, but he is a gracious and solid Christian; he cares about this stuff a lot. There is a large amount of sordid detail here, but you will need to keep turning these 475+ pages. Even those who follow political news will be shocked at the ways in which the GOP has co-opted so many on the religious right. This is trenchant and revealing, compelling and deeply moving. If you saw him in his many media appearances (watch the one on The View, for instance) you will know how good he is at explaining complex matters with care and insight.

Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity Joel Looper (Eerdmans) $19.99 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $13.99

This one was highlighted alongside my BookNotes review of Disarming Leviathan and it “offers his fellow evangelicals a theological rationale for resisting Christian nationalism.” Politicized evangelicals seem to think they are fighting liberal and secularizing forces but Looper shows that it is they who are eroding the first things of the gospel, mixing up the church and the state, reducing religion to civic values from a (mis)remembered past.

I hope you saw the excellent review of this in Christianity Today that highlighted that while the author firmly exposes the nonsense of some of the leaders of the Christian nationalistic right — Eric Metaxas, Robert Jeffress, Stephen Wolfe — he also explores the public theology, such as it is, of others who are lesser known. This not only reflects on Trump’s inadequate view of Christian faith but critiques others of the Christian right for grounding their civic views in ideologies other than the gospel of Jesus Christ. Remember the Apostle Paul’s warning about adopting a false gospel? We should all take heed. Looper helps.

Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America Sasha Abramsky (Bold Type Books) $30.00 / OUR EXTRA SPECIAL SALE PRICE = $21.00

This just recently came out and I am almost finished with it already. I have to admit there were times I had to stop to catch my breath; reading this has brought up great turmoil in my own life, mostly around the radicals who — despite thousands dying of Covid in 2021, with hospitals and morgues on overload — started movements, sometimes violent, against anyone who believed in masks, social distancing, or quarantining. As the awful virus spread, there were thousands and thousands who formed groups to take over small town councils and push back against what they thought were draconian policies. To this day it is a hot-wire topic and those who were anti-vax seem to often deny the reality of their neighbors who were dying. Of the morgues. Of the stress of the nurses and doctors. Add to this the complexities of the BLM protests and the political tensions around, eventually impeachment trials and the like. From Trump to George Floyd to wild fires to school closings to the so-called lock down measures, the first half of our current decade was pretty horrid. Abramsky is understanding of the vast tensions in our cultural air and he tries to be fair to all involved.

(He is a fair and honest reporter, telling the backstory of lots of colorful characters, but doesn’t cover up the nutty stuff that happens — rumors that Antifa activists were coming in a white bus to destroy a small town, for instance and citizen vigilantes brought out their long-guns against their neighbors who were peacefully protesting about racial injustices.)

This riveting report studies a town in Washington and the ways in which well-meaning, even conservative public servants were hounded (sometimes with the most vile, sexually abusive and threatening language — utterly by otherwise super-spiritual Christians, even) by those who had entered this extremist campaign to make America great again. This is a book full of trauma and local conflict. It has been called chilling and disturbing. We all know it is true. There are, as Jeff Sharlet (author of the must-read Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War) writes, “real people in this ultimately reported book, real consequences — and also real hope.”  Is authoritarianism a problem? You bet. Do many want to upend standard institutions of civic life? Sadly, more than you may know.

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BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

30% OFF

How about that last BookNotes — some fabulous brand new books and some important ones to consider pre-ordering. You can pre-order anything, of course —- just visit our inquiry page or our secure order page at the website — but we wanted to let you know about a few especially good ones coming in the next few weeks. Most we’ll have a bit early, I’m sure. We were proud of that mix of suggested titles, so if you missed that, check it out, HERE.

And at least one or two customers are still talking about the special Labor Day BookNotes, not only with books about work and a Christian view of our labors, but a handful of fabulously-written memoirs or creative nonfiction that explore various work settings. Fun, huh? Check that one out HERE.

The last two podcasts were fun, too — one listed three sorts of books about work (that was a Labor Day feature) and then in the next one I told about three good books about reading the Scriptures. Another “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast (describing three books about prayer) is about to drop today (you can find it at our Facebook page, eventually; you can watch us on Youtube or just listen on Apple or Spotify.) They release every other week.

And, yes, the 20% off discounts are all still good. Hooray for that.

We’re looking forward into the fall when there’s a new commentary on Acts coming from N.T. Wright (see below), an important collection of pieces on preaching coming from Baylor University Press by our friend Fleming Rutledge, and the previously mentioned Reading the Bible Latinamente edited by Ruth Padilla Deborst & Danny Carroll, R is coming in early from IVP. In early November will have the next Norman Wirzba book (Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis on Yale University Press) which I know I need, and the new one by Catholic priest and gang-land activist, Gregory Boyle (Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.) In what will surely be seen as one of the great publishing events of the year, a long-waiting new volume (with the curious title The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World) by the exquisite author of Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer will be available in mid-November. It’s only $20.00 in hardcover and with our BookNotes discount, you’ve got to get it.

It’s going to be a good season (and I’ve only named a few of the best nonfiction highlights) and we’ve got some great and rather practical ones here, now. Thanks be to God, right?

Here, then, with no further ado, are eight brand new ones that we have here at the Dallastown shop and four excellent forthcoming ones you really ought to pre-order now.

Longing for Joy: An Invitation into the Goodness and Beauty of Life Alastair Sterne (IVP) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

What can I say briefly about Alastair Sterne and this extraordinary book? Please know it is very, very highly recommended. I know a number of customers loved the excellent book we pushed a year ago, The Invitation to Joy: The Divine Journey to Human Flourishing by Daniel Denk (which was released by Eerdmans) and I wasn’t sure we needed yet another book on joy; to be honest, many such titles seem less than serious, glib almost. But Sterne is an amazing person (who has worked closely with more than one of our favorite friends and customers) so we realize how good he is, as a thinker and writer and, well, as a person. You may recall his excellent previous book (that came out maybe four years ago) called Rhythms for Life: Spiritual Practices for Who God Made You to Be which was a down-to-Earth reflection on spirituality with a solid vision for vocation and our real-world callings. That book should be better known among us, I’d say.

Longing for Joy is now his brand new one and his thesis is both lovely and profound. True joy (not cheap happiness) is connected to goodness and beauty. We long for this — is being haunted too strong a word? — and he invites us into this desire, even if we struggle with what might be generally called mental health issues. It is hard to describe how moving this nicely construed and excellently rendered work is. I’m only part way through and concluded I had to lead off with it in this BookNotes. As a reader, you are going to appreciate it, I’m sure.

There is something here for all sorts of readers, by the way. The gorgeous first chapters are about our longings, including profound meditations on presence and absence, joylessness and cultivation of virtues. The second portion includes “the story of joy” which is Trinitarian, which chapters on the Father, Son, a pair entitled simply Crucified and Resurrection, and one on the Spirit. The large third section are pieces about the possibilities of joy in all manner of settings and contexts. It’s all so good.

And I’m not alone in thinking this. Karen Stiller (we reviewed her excellent book on holiness — Holiness Here — a month or so ago) says that “Like a master craftsman, Sterne weaves story, Scripture, and meaning into the most convincing case for joy I’ve read yet.”

I was delighted to see an author who has not released anything new in quite a while who is a writer I esteem immensely, Mike Mason (The Mystery of Marriage, The Mystery of Children, Champagne for the Soul) had a solid endorsement on the back. Mason writes,

Through rich storytelling and wise teaching, Alastair Sterne is an excellent guide to those cozy rooms, fireside parlors, and old summertime porches in that beautiful place you may have forgotten–the House of Joy.

Reconnected: How 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks and Amish Farmers Helped Me Recover the Lost Area of Being Human Carlos Whittaker (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 / OUr SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is another book that I can only mention briefly as too long of a review would be unfair. This unfolds as part memoir, part report from the front-lines of a rather unique set of experiences, and a guidebook to practical ways to live more faithfully and fruitfully amidst the noise and blessings of the internet. I don’t want to spoil the fun.

One need not, in fact very few could, do what this creative writer did. He takes nearly two months off to live in a fresh place and context (two fresh places, actually) to see what he could learn about our lives with screens. I love the cover, crossing out “Dis” and replacing it with “Re” since that is sort of the end game, here, disconnecting for a while to find ways tog et reconnected, rightly.

(By the way, even though he doesn’t mention it, this reminds me a bit of the older book by my good friend Sam Van Eman who wrote The Disruptive Discipleship: The Power of Breaking Routine to Kickstart Your Faith which is about how we might change up our lifestyle for a bit, trying some odd experiment or fresh change to learn some new patterns of faithful discipleship. This Whittaker book doesn’t work the theory the way outdoor educator Van Eman does, but he shows it — this is one heckuva disruption and one heckuva kickstart to some new patterns. It really is a fascinating project and you’re going to want to listen in, reading along for fun, and for good ideas to take home into your own life.

Simply put, as you might get from the title, Carlos Whittaker goes to a monastery to hang out with monks and then he goes to an Amish farm and joins their household for a time.

As it says on the back cover, most of us “have gotten so used to notification and alerts, pings and rings, that even if we don’t want to be on our phone so much, we don’t know what to do about it.” I can relate, can’t you?

(Aside: there are a lot of good books on what to do; I’d recommend at the very least the splendid The Life We Always Wanted by the astute thinker and wonderful writer, Andy Crouch.)

If you like chatty conversational books with a lot of storytelling, this work of creative nonfiction covers what Whittaker learned in his several weeks with the monks at Saint Andrews. His very first encounter with Father Patrick (who he likens to a brother of Patrick Swayze and Gandalf) will make you smile, and from there on out your in with him in this rather intense Benedictine way of life, which, of course, at first, he hates. This is not the famous Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris, which I have a sneaking suspicion he’s never heard of. For their part, the monks didn’t know or care that he is a popular evangelical writer. (And he was surprised that, uh, monks these days have phones. So there’s that.)

The second section is written of his time with the Miller family (in what he calls the Amish School.) In this section he’s in Ohio, working on a farm with a fascinatingly simple Anabaptist family. Although at least they talk (a lot) there is an awkwardness here for this black, very modern gent, not unlike what he first experienced with the monks. It’s a different experience for sure — no silent meal partners here — and he learns quite a lot. It’s a breezy, fun account, and we’re sure it will off some “tools and motivation” for living a bit less encumbered. It’s fun and a bit funny and — with his brain scan with his hero Dr. Amen (I tempt you, but no spoilers in this review!), Carlos’s last era (at his own home) shows just how to finder deeper relationships in a tech-saturated world.

Living With Grief Nicholas Wolterstorff (Cascade) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This is a book that is short and simply stunning. I’ll admit I was so taken in part because I hadn’t heard it was coming, although many have wished for it for decades. It is short and seriously profound and my hands shook when I turned the first pages. Let me explain.

Nicholas Wolterstorff is arguably one of the world’s most renowned philosophers, having done major, heady works on Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Oxford, etc. He is a theologian, as well (at least in the sense of doing philosophical theology) and has serious books about the nature of God, the experience of knowing God, the importance of liturgy, and has written widely about the relationship of worship and work, prayer and politics. His passion for Christian thinking about what we might call political philosophy (what is justice?) is equal to his knowledge of aesthetics and his interest in the arts. His wonderful autobiographical book ,In This World of Wonders, tells his own story as a Calvin College graduate and his journey into the wider world of intellectual renewal within evangelicalism, his role in the scholarly community, and his efforts for public justice. He even contributed a wonderful graduation speech to my own edited book, Serious Dreams: Big Ideas for the Rest of Your Life and we admire him greatly.

A key moment in his life, in 1983, however, was and remains horrible. His adult son died suddenly in a hiking accident, and, as any father would be, he was overcome with grief. A personal journal he kept in the aftermath — passionate, powerful, poignant — called Lament for a Son is a near classic among those who read about the topic of grief. Nick notes often that it was not written to be published or read widely but friends convinced him it would give others a model of honest, raw, Christian grieving. He published it reluctantly in the late 1980s, and we have had it regularly in our big grief section at the shop ever since.

This, then, a half a lifetime later, is one in which he offers some systematic and serious ruminations on how to cope with life’s sorrows. It’s been a long time coming.

There are just a few dense, short chapters. He explores “What is Grief?” and “What to Say.” He has a major chapter called “Owning and Disowning Loss and Grief” followed by “Owning Loss and Grief Redemptively.” The final chapter — succinct but wise — is “Where Is God in Loss and Grief?”

If Lament for a Son was a cry of grief, a cry of the heart, Living with Grief is “descriptive, reflective.” If the first was called passionate and poetic, he says this one is “dry, literal, prosaic.”

This extraordinary and I’d say nearly historic book has its genesis in some lectures Wolterstorff gave at Fuller decades ago; he had even lost the manuscripts in the subsequent years. A friend of his who had used those lecture notes in a class at a local prison (that also reads together Lament for a Son) had Nick joined that class a time or two to speak. It was at these prisoners urging that he revisited (and revised) those long lost Fuller lectures and now offers them here, finally, now. It is not for everyone (and neither is Lament for a Son.) But it is one many of our readers should read and some will cherish.

Ignite Your Soul: What Exhaustion, Isolations, and Burnout Light a Path to Flourishing Mindy Caliguire (with Shawn Smucker) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Many of us who have followed the many books that have come out in the last twenty-five years or so about spiritual formation, soul care, and spiritual direction might know Mindy Caliguire’s name. She did a small, quiet book about spiritual friendship and another that I thought was brilliant called STIR: Spiritual Transformation in Relationship which explored the stages of growth and how intentional relationships allow us to explore our faith formation together. (You’ll see some of her influences in the important work of Ruth Haley Barton at the Transforming Center, if that helps place her a bit for you.) So if she does a new book, it is going to be upbeat and delightful but also very well considered and helpful.

A second feature of this, besides the significance of the author and her solid reputation and experience in this space — she works with folks in churches and marketplace settings and offers guidance in a superb, online community named the Soul Care Collective — is that it is co-authored with a dear friend, central Pennsylvania’s Shawn Smucker. Sean is an amazing person, a novelist, co-writer, blogger, podcaster, and (get this!) a fairly recent bookseller having opened, with his wife, a lovely little shop in Lancaster, PA. Sean has an eager passel of followers and they will be delighted to know he has come alongside Mindy and helped her with this nice, new book.

To be clear, this book carries weight; a sort of hopeful seriousness, I’d say, but it shares pain and seems to really understands the complex moods and conditions of many modern readers. Are you burned out?  Might you say you are in a “bone-dry existence” or in a season where you miss (or don’t even miss) a once fiery (or at least glowing) experience of faith? She, too, has walked through this valley of the shadow. She gets it.

She writes, with exquisite honesty,

“The destruction that tore through my parched soul was not the end of the story. Nor does it have to be the end of yours.”

 

Our Church Speaks: An Illustrated Devotional of Saints from Every Area and Place Ben Lansings and D. J. Marotta (IVP) $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ve been waiting for this book for months (having chatted with the author last winter) and it just came in —nearly a month early!  Hooray. We’re very excited by this handsome, illustrated guide to various sorts of saints, done on heavier stock paper, making this a grand volume, if slim, with some true heft. D.J. Marotta is a savvy, young, Anglican priest in Richmond (who has a great vision to reach college students, by the way and works with the CCO for that purpose.) Marotta wrote a wonderful previous book that we highlighted here at BookNotes a while back, called Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord’s Prayer Shapes the Imagination of the Church in a Secular Age. Readable but astute, informed by the best thinkers, with some prophetic oomph to it, that little volume is a delightful gem.

But this one is perhaps even more delightful as it is a co-authored project with an artist who is involved in Redeemer Anglican there in Richmond. He has been doing these string “modern icons” on social media for quite some time. It is fabulous to have pastor/writer D.J add his thoughtful devotional essays. The sense that we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses is nearly palpable.

This sort of book (a saint-a-day, so to speak) is time-honored and so very useful. Those who use them love them! From the important devotionals of Orbis editor Robert Ellsberg like All Saints or Blessed Among Us to the soon-to-be released artfully designed work of Kreg Yingst, Everything Could Be a Prayer: One Hundred Portraits of Saints and Mystic ( I hope you saw our invitation to pre-order it) this brand new one can stand comfortably, wisely, even, with them. And the art — wow. It’s a full color illustrative graphic style (very different than the wild work of Yingst) and drawn to hint at the stylings of icons.

I like how there are some short essays in here — how to pray over these pictures, an overview of church history, a bit about why such diverse, global folks are portrayed and held up as those who bear witness and speak to us today. It shows their feast day (if they are formal saints in the Catholic or Orthodox churches) and helpful stuff about them all. There are favorites here and, I suspect, some you do not know much about, if at all. Marotta’s insights and Lansing’s art are a great combo. This book is a blessing.

Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spirituality Hungry Brad East (Eerdmans) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’m not going to lie: this cover doesn’t grab me. I’m not sure who it is for. But you know what? It’s a thrill nonetheless, a fabulous resource, a great guide to Christian faith and growth. It’s not goofy or dumbed down, but its epistolary style makes it warm and gracious. East is a professor of theology at Abilene Christian University (and has a rather academic work on the church and another on reading the Bible in the church.) Here he is inviting God’s people to think about the task of saint-making. I’m part way through and it is inviting, warm, personal.

Is it for young people? I think so, I guess, but not just teens or young adults. It is written not by the good Professor as a scholar, but as a fellow pilgrim, perhaps something like a mentor, or even a confirmation sponsor. If you’ve ever hoped to disciple another, you need this fabulous guide to the spiritual life in Christ.

Yet, even if it is for “future saints” (we are all currently saints, if yet sinners, so I’m not pleased with the title) it is, clearly, of great value (and enjoyment) for those of any age or stage. This is one of the best guides to the habits and practices and convictions and insights we need as saints moving into deeper friendship in the church of Christ.

Since these are letters there are no shown footnotes or citations. But the back is jam-packed with endnotes, by sentence, citing, more often than not, Scripture and church Fathers, ancient theologians and a few more recent, from Lewis to Barth to Bonhoeffer. It ends with a small, black and white icon. Kudos.

Blurbs and rave reviews on the back of this are impressive. Wow — Rowan Williams, Alan Jacobs, Tish Harrison Warren, Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew Levering, Miroslav Volf, all top-class leaders, writers, thinkers. They all affirm East’s serious invitation to those who may be familiar with the faith, having been raised in the orbit of the church, but who are restless, bored, distracted, and mostly untutored. Letters to a Future Saint is a rare and vital work.

The Practicing the Way Course Companion Book: An Eight-Session Primer on Spiritual Formation John Mark Comer (Waterbrook) $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

I am not always a fan or workbooks and supplemental resources that go with primary texts. I know some enjoy the questions and blank spaces for journalling or reflection, but sometimes it just feels like an add-on, as if the publisher needs yet another item. But not always.

This is one of the best study guides I have ever come across and I can’t say enough about it. (Except to say that it is also available for free for download at John Mark Comer’s “Practicing the Way” online ministry, and, despite that, I still want to commend this oversized, thorough companion guide.)

If you’ve been around me lately you may know we have a huge stack of Practicing the Way here at the shop and have been talking about how much I appreciated not only the book but the fabulously made, really solid, really interesting free streaming classes based on the book. When our Presbyterian adult ed class went through it this summer we all agreed it was so good. We downloaded the free discussion questions and wished for more time to explore the extra content offered in the handouts.

That free extra content is designed to be used with the free online class, and I very highly recommend that visual content. But it parallels the book, so even if your not interested or able to stream the course, The Practicing the Way Course Companion Books is tremendous to own, to use, to share. Good, good stuff.

The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World Christine Rosen (W.W. Norton) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This is named, by the prestigious publisher, as “social science” and I suppose I cannot argue. It is also profoundly theological, deeply philosophical, and, so far, a heck of a great read. I’ve appreciated Ms Rosen since her serious memoir, ahead of its time, I think, My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood, and have appreciated her scholarly presence with books on, for instance, the history of the eugenics movement. She has been affiliated with Hunter’s Institute for Advanced Studies of Culture at UVA and works currently as a Senior Fellow at the the important, conservative American Enterprise Institute in DC.

I love the title (the subtitle, though, is odd since we clearly are not in a disembodied world, even if there are online tendencies and some odd ideologies that suggest as much.) Still, we get her drift, don’t we? And for anyone cares about this anti-Gnostic concern, the question of how to experience real life in an increasingly technologically mediated world, Rosen has thought hard about it all.

She is no Luddite, as far as I can tell, but she does want to know “what kind of a person is formed in an increasingly digitized, mediated, hyperconnected, surveilled, and algorithmically governed world?” Well, wow. What do we gain and what do we lost when, as she suggests, we “no longer talk about the ‘Human Condition’ but the “User Experience’?

Yep, if you worry at all about all this talk of AI and the metaverse and venmo and TikTok challenges and (yes) online conspiracy culture, this book could provide insight and solace.\

Just listen to this, which ain’t no algorithy, but my own selection to share with you, for real; I’ve met Alan Jacobs and I’ve read Alan Jacobs; you can trust this:

Christine Rosen has written a wonderful book. It is not merely a warning against algorithmic control of our lives, but, more essentially, an encouraging guidebook to the recovery of personal experience in all its manifold forms. The Extinction of Experience reconnects us with our own lives in marvelous ways.–Alan Jacobs, author of Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

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When PRE-ORDERING more than one forthcoming book please let us know if we should send them as soon as they release or if we should hold one and consolidate it with another, sending them together. Whatever you prefer…

Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway Stephanie Duncan Smith (Convergent) $26.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80  – ON SALE DATE = October 15, 2024

I’ve had an advanced copy of this for a while and have been itching to tell you about it. The opening epigraph is a line from a Madeleine L’Engle poem and early on she tells about a YA novel by the great Gary Schmidt, so I knew I was going to love it.

Even After Everything is, in my view, one of the best books I’ve read all year; it will, without a doubt, be in our annual Best Books of the Year list. It’s very well written, very raw and yet beautiful. I respect this good writer and her remarkable gifts of crafted fine sentences, fine paragraphs, fine pages. This is a great read, a very good book.

It is so well written and captivating I suspect that for some of us who value glorious spiritual autobiography and memoir will not even care (at first) what it is about. Her subtitle makes it sound a bit like a standard-fare guide to Christian growth, and insofar as she offers insights and hard-learned wisdom, it does give readers fresh perspectives and solid ideas that can help them along the way on their journey. It reminds us that we are not alone and in her story one can take away much.

But, wise as she is, I don’t want to invite you to this only because you will learn or grow or be aided in your spiritual practices. Rather, this is one of those texts that, as Lewis reminds us in Experiments in Criticism, we should first “behold.” That is, enter in, with eyes wide open.

Not only is Duncan Smith’s prose surprising and vivid, this is a rare memoir in that it chronicles her own deep grief and pain (she experienced two miscarriages) and arranges the narrative alongside the church calendar. I suspect a book of sorrow though he liturgical year has been done before, but I can’t think of such a work.

This is more than a clever device; it is central, substantive, important, amazing. In her telling the tale this way, something odd happens. There is an interaction (I think of Crowder’s song “Beautiful Collision”) of disorientation and reorientation.

She lost her first pregnancy on the winter solstice’s longest night (“just as the world readied to celebrate its most historic birth on Christmas”) and, oddly, gave birth (after an unexpected and rather uncertain pregnancy) to a daughter nearly one year to the day of her loss. This marked — tears stream down my face as I even write this — “the peak of pandemic death in their city.” As my advanced galley copy puts it, “This clash prompted a desperate search for steadiness, in which the liturgical year became an anchoring force.”

An anchoring force. What a phrase.

This is the best (and I’ve read a few) books on the liturgical year I have ever read, even though it isn’t a book that we will put in the nonfiction section of our church room it is a memoir, a story, a book of marriage and sexuality, of progeny and death, of loss and birth and sadness and joy

She writes, in Even After Everything, alongside personal episodes, reflections like this:

Shauna Niequist writes of a friend who was in a session with his spiritual director. He was chronicling the great disappointments of his life when, “all at once the usually reserved priest book in and yelled his name. “These are the terms! Now what’s the invitation?”

These are the terms: Every one of us is loosed into a world where anything can happen, nothing is secure, and anxiety has a hell of an imagination. We are haunted by the whole kingdoms of hypotheticals — ghost futures spiraling out in every direction. And when the contractions come calling and the what-ifs start wilding, our vital systems begin to clench.

It’s enough to make anyone forget how to breathe.

I read that newborns learn to breathe from their mothers, by synching the rhythms of their heart rate, their inhale and exhale, to hers. In the closeness of chest to chest, they learn the most vital sign. Heart to heart, they learn how to live.

So maybe that’s the invitation: Stay close to the beating heart of love…. Let love be the tempo, trust its steadiness, lean in close.

Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age Rod Dreher (Zondervan) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99  – ON SALE DATE = October 22, 2024

If the above mentioned memoir is beautifully written and raw and enlightening, so, too, this one, in a different style, is captivating, very well-written, smart and inspiring. I cannot do justice to the many remarkable stories and the great, substantive chapter. Dreher is a great memoirist, a potent cultural critic (I did not like his last two books much) and here, has given us a splendid bit of perusal storytelling — his own deepening of faith in a season of very hard times — shaped by his sharp social studies. If you know the names of the amazing Iaian McGuilchrist, say, or (of course) Charles Taylor, you will be pleased to know their serious work has informed some of his teaching about the secularizing forces of the post-Enlightenment West.

I, for one, need tiring of reading yet another take on how we got into our modern mess. In this excellent telling, we significantly lost a sense of a social imagination that supposed what some might call the “supernatural.” We are a people who scoff at miracles (even as we deeply long for them.)

We have more than a dozen great books that explore the shift in the cultural milieu given the rise of the secular age; in various ways and with various strengths, many help us place ourselves historically, know what time it is, so to speak. Knowing why our friends and family think as they do, dream as they do. They help us discern at a deep level what went wrong and why even for those of us with lively faith, it is hard, sometimes. Really hard.

And, we have books that share with readers a vision of the spirituality of the ordinary, affirming a sense of wonder. We have a shelf full of just such books and a few are well known — A Tree Full of Angles, Tortured Wonders, A Liturgy of the Ordinary, Eyes to See: Recognizing God’s Common Grace in an Unsettled World, and so many more. Yet this new Rod Dreher book is more than an eloquent plea to recapture wonder, to stand in awe, to enjoy the goodness of God’s world and our place in it, but it is a guide to how to do that, even when it seems complicated. This is more than sighing at the beauty of a sunset or being attentive to how glory streams all around. And it is more than a theology of the possibility of miracles, but it is both, actually. It is one of the most stimulating, thought-provoking, and excellent books I’ve read in ages.

If time permitted I’d quote fabulous paragraphs and great quips, but I’ll just note this: he starts the story with a reasonable guy who has been haunted by his experiences with UFOs. And then another who fears he has been plagued with demons. Dreher is an Orthodox Christian so he does not rule out the possibility of the demonic; indeed the sensor wonder of much of Orthodox faith sets the stage for some of his opening us to the fullness of life. Although this book isn’t about the paranormal, as such (see the fairly recent Encountering Mystery by brilliant New Testament scholar Dale Allison or the anticipated book [coming in a few weeks, also by Eerdmans] by evangelical Bible guy Alan Streett called Exploring the Paranormal: Miracles, Magic, and the Mysterious.) But I would say read Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. I am working through it and it is more than a delight, it is itself wondrous. Wow.

Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us about the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive Russ Ramsey (Zondervan) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99 – ON SALE DATE = October 22, 2024

I wonder if you recall that about a year or so ago Russ Ramsey — who has written well about his own near death experience, and other theologically-rich topics of practice living — did a stunning, fabulous, easy-to-read, but so informative book called Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith. Like a few other excellent and enjoyable introductions to art appreciation from a Christian orientation, Rembrandt…. was not just about Rembrandt (although that first chapter about him was spectacular) but each chapter invited us to discover some of the world’s most celebrated artists and their work. I enjoyed it a lot and said so here at BookNotes.

Earlier this year Ramsey’s people — him or the publisher I do not know — invited me, of all people, to offer an endorsement of this new one, sort of a sequel to the Rembrandt one. Wow! I’m no art critic and I at first almost demurred.  But then I wondered if they invited me to this sacred task because they wanted to have potential reader realize that ordinary folks can enjoy such a book, that is it is not primarily about aesthetics or deep art criticism or for those who already know plenty about paintings old and new, Like it’s predecessor, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart it is full of stories, the glorious stories of we humans who ache, who sin, who fear, who need to struggle to even stay alive some days. Van Gogh did have a broken heart and therein lies some of his artistic beauty. That is why we need such paintings and artwork in our lives, to “teach us about wonder and the struggle…”

This forthcoming one, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart is, I think, better than the first.

Here is what I said for my book blurb. I wonder if it will be in the real books once they come out in a few weeks; if so, probably in an edited, slimmed-down version. I do love the book and am glad for it’s energy, honesty, and how it invites us into these stories of fascinating artists.

In Russ Ramsey’s fabulous follow up to the fabulous Rembrandt Is in the Wind he offers more well-told stories of artists — some who you will know, some who you may not — which becomes a door flung wide to big questions, urgent questions, about the very things that matter most. With verve and gusto he tells us about details of the artist’s lives and helpful interpretations of their work, sharing his own journey to appreciate these paintings done by other hurting humans who, flawed as they may be, still carried the imprint of the image of God. Among the many contributions this book makes is how great creativity sometimes emerges from great sorrow and how, therefore, we who also ache can take comfort in the gestures and symbols and colors and stories of great art. Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart is a book to own and a book to share.  — Byron K. Borger / Hearts & Minds

The Challenge of the Book of Acts: Rediscovering What the Church Was and Is N. T Wright (Zondervan) $26.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80  – ON SALE DATE = October 22, 2024

Okay, friends. I have no idea what to say about this, other than that Wright is the sort of author who ordinary readers can benefit from and to whom deeper scholars will want to pay attention, just to see what the prolific New Testament scholar has to say… in other words, this book should be on your list.

I love the book of Acts and although we’ve got our favorite commentaries on this grand story by Dr. Luke, I’m positive this one will be on the short list of the most often recommended. I think any of us who care about the Bible will be glad to hear Wright is doing a new one; I do not know this for sure, but I’m guessing it is somewhat analogous to but maybe more detailed than his lovely Into the Heart of Romans. The forthcoming Challenge of Acts is 176 pages

(For what it’s worth, The Bible Speaks Today: The Books of Acts by John Stott is absolutely splendid and just about the only one you’d need for most ordinary readers and Willie James Jennings Acts in the “Belief Theological Commentary” commentary series is nothing short of brilliant at times. We love the “Story of God Commentary” series and Dean Pinter did the Acts on in that fabulous series and so interesting; F. F Bruce’s NICOT is, of course, a classic.)

That Wright is asking questions about the nature and task of the church (drawn from a culturally-sensitive reading of Acts, of course) is important. In this day and age it is among our greatest needs, getting clear about the local church. I trust he’s going to be really helpful on this.

Here is the bit, swiped from the publisher website:

Acts is a substantial book. It sits right in the middle of the New Testament, looking back to the four Gospels and ahead to the mission of the early church. It provides a framework for our understanding of the letters; but it does more than that. Acts offers a sophisticated and nuanced view of what it means to think of the gospel of Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, going out into the world over which Israel’s Messiah claims the status of Lord.

This Christian movement and thinking, detailed in Acts, entailed confronting the wider culture of the Greek and Roman world, as well as the culture of the Jewish world, which provides us today with an important message as we ourselves face new questions about gospel and contemporary culture.

From the renowned author of Into the Heart of Romans, N. T. Wright brings to the book of Acts his expert’s eye on theological nuance and cultural context, distilling it down into an introductory commentary, perfect for anyone looking to take their own reading a little deeper and discover the profound (and often forgotten) potential of the church and the Way of Jesus Christ.

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Every Moment Holy Volume III “Pocket Edition” edited by Douglas McKelvey (Rabbit Room Press) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

At last, the beautiful third volume of the exceptional series of prayer books for ordinary folks on ordinary days, is now out in a lovely compact sized, flexible, soft leather. The first had responsive prayers (in their lingo, “liturgies”) in two-color ink for all manner of events in one’s life, from drinking morning coffee to having a yard sale, from going on vocation to going to bed, from praying about having “too much information” to putting up a Christmas tree. There are just an amazing array of heart-felt and eloquent liturgies here for every imaginable occasion. It comes in larger size, leather-bound hardback and the compact sized, soft leather edition.

The second one has liturgies for recital or meditation, to be prayed during times of grief, loss, sorrow, and lament. Again, this one (in handsome tan) is available in both the regular size, leather-bound hardback or in the smaller sized, soft/flexible leather. This one is a must for pastors needing words and liturgies for all manner of sadness, sickness, and sorrow.

The third one — again, on random, daily experiences — is compiled by McElvey but composed by a handful of scholars, parents, pray-ers, and poets (some whose names you may know) and had only been available (until now) in the striking, blue leather-bound hardback. We are thrilled to announce that now Volume III is out in the smaller, compact-sized, soft, flexible, blue leather edition. Hooray. These three are all designed with good linocuts and art, done sharply in classy typography, nicely printed on good paper with sewn in ribbon markers. Kudos to Rabbit Room and our friend Ned Bustard who did artistic oversight.

Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to Poetry for the Church Abram Van Engen (Eerdmans) $26.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Yes, as above, poets can write prayers. Liturgical renewal needs writers of hymns and fresh writing of laments and more, but what about poetry, as such?  This book reminds us of the value of poetry, a theological framing of poetical gifts, and makes the case that slowing down to attend to the play of words for which poetry is known, is a spiritual necessity. When it says “the church” in the subtitle it does not necessarily mean in worship or even congregational use. This book is for God’s people in their reading lives. Yes, we all need to think faithfully about the creative arts, both beholding and creating, especially the literary arts. This is one of the best arguments for the value of poetry we have yet seen. Poet Christian Wiman says it is “brilliant, humane, intelligent, and necessary.” Wiman notes, and I agree, that this great book has something for everyone, the novice or the expert. Whether you love poetry or are a bit unsure, this is a great read.

Please (please) read these excellently-put endorsements from two authors whose voices and suggestions we trust:

I’ve been waiting for someone to write this book. Sensitive to newcomers and even skeptics, Abram Van Engen is a warm, wise, generous guide into the manifold gifts poetry offers. A master teacher and thoughtful scholar, Van Engen writes as a fellow human, a pilgrim on the way with us, sharing his experiences with poetry to entice us to find our own. At once practical and existential, this book is a master class and a love letter. Like the Ancient Mariner, I will be grabbing people by the lapels and pressing this book into their hands: Here’s why poetry is the song you didn’t realize your heart wants to sing. — James K. A. Smith, Calvin University, author of You Are What You Love and How to Inhabit Time

We need poetry more than ever. In our moment in history, words have often been rendered cheap, combative, and manipulative. But poetry calls us back to the beauty, depth, and power of careful, crafted words. A gifted teacher and writer, Abram Van Engen is a deft guide for those new to poetry and those who have enjoyed it for decades. His vital exploration and expert curation of great poems rejuvenates our imagination, giving us new eyes to notice our own lives–with all the joy and pain they hold and hide–and to glimpse God’s work in and among us. I will return to this luminescent book again and again. — Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

Flyover Church: How Jesus’ Ministry in Rural Places Is Good News Everywhere  Brad Roth (Herald Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I’ve written about Roth before as I loved his book God’s Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church, also published by this astute Mennonite press. There are a good number of books about small churches but most do not look at the uniquely rural context of many small churches. And while this book isn’t exactly about small churches, it is about small places. What some of the big-wigs on the coasts call, sometimes with diversion, flyover states.

Flyover Church invites those in rural or even small town places to ponder how this unique context — both the strengths and weaknesses, so to speak — can shape how we incarnate the good news of God’s Kingdom in those often out-of-the-way places.

Brad Roth is a pastor in rural central Kansas. He grew up baling hay, tending sheep, and shearing Christmas trees on a farm in Illinois. He is a graduate of Augustana College, Harvard Divinity School, and Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. Brad obviously has a heart for serving God and God’s people in rural communities and helps us all appreciate that, and he seems passionate about sharing faith in word and deed. While we all aspire to such seamless living, integrating what we do and say and how we live, there is something notable in his Mennonite tradition that reminds us to incarnate the gospel in real community. And, maybe something about rural USA, too, that thrives on this kind of down-to-Earth show and tell. The Flyover Church is a great read, thoughtful and interesting and important. Hooray.

In this book, Brad Roth opens the soul of the small-town pastor, describing our struggles and challenges, not to cause us to abandon ministry but to give us hope and perspective by helping us understand ourselves and the communities we serve. Writing with personal reflection, insightful research, and theological clarity, Roth gives us insight into what it means to be a rural pastor. Like his previous book God’s Country, this book is invaluable and is on the must-read shelf of books on rural ministry. — Glenn Daman, author of The Forgotten Church: Why Rural Ministry Matters for Every Church in America

Flyover Church is a gift to the whole church. Brad Roth offers a compelling portrait of rural churches, a portrait whose beauty is drawn from the hope and hardships of ministry in rural places. This book offers important truths about the rural church, and in doing so reminds us that these congregations are full of deep and meaningful ministries. — Allen Stanton, consulting fellow at University of the Ozarks and author of Reclaiming Rural: Building Thriving Rural Congregations

Technology and Christianity: Essays on the Interface Egbert Schuurman (WordBridge Publishing / Paideia Press) $24.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

This is a rare book, published in the Netherlands, imported through Paideia Press in Canada. It’s important and we are grateful to announce it. I’ve been a fan of the often difficult but deeply insightful and therefore rewarding author Egbert Schuurman since I first came across a little book he wrote in the 1970s published by Wedge Books, affiliated with the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. He was evangelical, broadly Reformed, culturally aware, prophetic in its Biblical orientation, bringing a Godly orientation to the details of our mechanistic and engineered world.  I used it with engineering students, glad that it was not as cryptic or negative as, say, the important Jacque Ellul, without allowing for any idolatry or neutrality in our perspective on the applied sciences. He continued to write philosophical work on technology and it’s role in the modern world, mirroring (or maybe even influencing) Albert Borgman (who, interestingly, became friends with Eugene Peterson, who often got his friends reading Borgman.)

Technology and Christianity brings this reforming view to the theories of technology and is, in essence, a greatest hits or collection of best essays of professor Schuurman — some newly translated for the first time in English! We cannot stress enough how important it is for all of us to be pondering how we relate our faith to our lived experience of a world mediated by so much engineering, so much technology. To think faithfully about the sciences and creation, about the goodness of the built environment and the ideologies of growth and efficiency the deform it, about how the zeitgeist causes our imaginations to suppose it is normal for things like algorithms to do our thinking for us, even as we should know in our bones that the possibilities of technology is a blessing from God who put human minds to the task of discovering possibilities in the realm of technique. Capitalism and philosophies of reductionism have deformed our imaginations and we want to, with Schuurman, insist that God’s world is good, fallen, and yet, in fresh obedience to the ways of Jesus, being redeemed. This collection of heavy essays about Christian views of our technological world is a gift for those thinking about such things. Kudos.

A funny aside: some know that we have greatly promoted two books by our friend Derek Schuurman — Shaping a Digital World: Faith, Culture and Computer Technology, and one he co-authored, A Christian Field Guide to Technology for Engineers and Designers; they’ve got the footnotes of Professor Egbert Schuurman, and they obviously shared the reformational roots, in the line of Abraham Kuyper, even. I assumed they were father and son, and maybe said that publicly. Curiously, the younger Derek is no relation; the last time I saw him at Calvin University, we chuckled again about that. So similar but no obvious relation.

The Mystics Would Like a Word: Six Women Who Met God and Found a Spirituality for Today Shannon K. Evans (Convergent) $26.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

This is another brand new one that we just got in and while I haven’t studied it, I am sure it is going to be fantastic. One of our staff was quite taken by one chapter, and I know folks we admire have greatly appreciated it. For instance, Sarah Bessey (we raved about her recent Field Notes for the Wilderness) says it is “illuminating and powerful.. and one she has “wanted for ages.”  K.J. Ramsey (Book of Common Courage) says Evans writes with “humor and humanity.” And, Ramsey teases us with one of the better lines in an endorsing blurb I’ve read in a while, Evans “welcomes us into a larger, weirder, and more compelling spirituality than we commonly encounter today.”

As a Catholic mystic feminist, Evans can be a bit weird for some, I suppose. And others have given us feminist analysis of saints before (think of the remarkable work of Mirabai Starr, who endorses this one, too, by the way.) But there does seem to be something about this one. She cares about this hurting world and is candid about why a feminist vision can be helpful. She is the author of the Brazos Press gem Feminist Prayers for My Daughter. Do you know it?

Still, unique as this may be, it is finally about mystics you have known of, but maybe don’t know much about. This looks like a great primer for those wanting to become familiar with Margery Kemp, Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, Therese of Lisieux, and Catherine of Siena.  It’s hard not to want to know more about these amazing (audacious) women who “forged a spirituality that is more inclusive, surprising, and empowering than we ever imagined.”

Calvin for the World: The Enduring Relevance of His Political, Social, and Economic Theology Ruben Rosario Rodriguez (Baker Academic) $27.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

Wow, there are so many things going on in this fabulous book that I hardly know where to begin. I guess you can tell from the title itself that this author must be an extraordinary scholar — he’s got a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary and teaches theology (and Latin American politics) at Saint Louis University so he is obviously learned, even, we find, in quite an interdisciplinary manner. Who can speak knowingly into the idols of our time and the principles of Reformed thinking about public theology, knowing a bit about political theology and economics? I’m excited just to learn new stuff about the application of long-revered Christain principles to our very modern world.

And, obviously, this isn’t just any generic sort of public theology, but he is asking how we might appropriate the life and teaching of the Frenchman who lived in Geneva in the 1500s, Jean Calvin. Can the controversial Calvin be fruitful for funding our faithful discipleship today?  Smarter folks than I will have to weigh in on if Rodriguez accomplishes his audacious goals in this relatively short book (it’s about 175 pages.) Some — like Dr. Luis Rivera Pagan, an emeritus professor at Princeton — have called it “an excellent contribution to the analysis of the importance of Calvin.” Dr. Elsi McKee, another retired emerita professor, says it is lively and relevant, even exciting.

One of the things this engaging (if academic) writer is doing is putting Calvin in his original context. Those who know anything about Calvin’s ministry knows (although may not think about it) that he lived in a city rife with debate about the wisdom of allowing immigrants and refugees. (Calvin was an immigrant, of course, exiled, in a sense and was active in his support of the refugees.) He has long been considered one of the early public theologians that gave us a framework for thinking about democracy (and, boy, do we Presbyterians like to vote on things!) Not a few American revolutionaries, we can recall, were Calvinists. (For a quick primer on this, see, just for instance, The Legacy of John Calvin: His Influence on the Modern World by David Hall, published by P&R during the 500th year commemoration in. 2008; for more detail see Calvin in the Public Square: Liberal Democracies, Rights, and Civil Liberties or, from a traditionally free-market perspective, see Calvin and Commerce: The Transforming Power of Calvinism in Market Economies, both co-edited by Hall, also published in the “Calvin 500” series by P&R.)

Dr. Rodriguez is not the first to suggest there are solid connections between Calvin and third world liberation theologians — read Reformed thinker/activist South African Alan Boesak, for instance (as Rodriguez does.) Rodriguez’s chapter on Calvin’s reception in Latin America is itself incredibly informative. Even if you’ve not read Bonino, say, this is good stuff.

Can the theological legacy of the Reformed, social leader, pastor, and public theologian John Calvin be expanded from mere systematic formulations about predestination and the like? The tradition of neo-Calvinists (or Kuyperians) from Holland do that well. Here, a major thinker is evaluating the ups and downs of this Reformed legacy and — in the words of Kenneth Woo of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary — “unveils that vision’s liberative potential for theologians during and since the Reformation era.”

Jesus for Everyone – Not Just Christians Amy-Jill Levine (HarperOne) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

A year ago Any-Hill’s acclaimed 2020 The Bible with and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently was released in paperback by HarperOne and this one is her second serious, if popular-level book with them. We admire her in many ways and enjoy her verve and writing style, that has been described as scholarly work “that reads like a good sermon.” This very new one, Jesus for Everyone, is a major, long-awaited release, written, at first, for those unfamiliar with the facts of Jesus’s life and teachings and the fascinating complexity of taking it seriously. Professor Levine, as you should know, is not a Christian, but a more liberal Jew who attends an Orthodox synagogue. She makes her living at a Christian seminary teaching mostly Christians on their way to do gospel ministry. And she knows about our Lord as well as most, believe me.

This new hardback should instigate a lot of lively conversations. It’s lively, thoughtful, funny and provocative. You should know about it…

To be clear, she is not a believer and certainly not a Christian. Yet, she is upbeat and passionate (if creative and quirky) about teaching the Bible, especially the gospels on the life of Jesus, particularly doing close readings of texts and what they do and not not say, and wondering what they may or may not mean. In a sense she is in a tradition with others searching for “the historical Jesus” and seems to know and cite everybody across history and the spectrum of denominational and scholarly persuasions. Her footnotes are simply fascinating.

Levine is firm in rebuking wrong-headed stereotypes about Judaism (including those who insist that Jews didn’t allow men and women to talk in public, which the gospels themselves refute often, or that Pharisees believed that keeping the law would save them.) She is hard on mainline liberal theologians and some evangelical pastors, less for the pastoral skills or church leadership (she would be agnostic about such things) but about their lack of honesty about the texts and their lack of awareness of first century Judaism. She’s a piece of work, and we enjoy her feisty writing. Barbara Brown Taylor has said her writing startles with its “brilliance and pluck.”

This book — originally started to invite atheists to consider Jesus, but broadened her scope to any (nones and dones, for instance, or fellow Jewish congregants) —covers a lot of how the gospel accounts speak to 21st century concerns. From economics to health care, women’s concerns to race and ethnicity, from marriage and singleness to politics, and more, she invites us to “meet Jesus in His time and ours”

The Gospel of John: The Beginners Guide to the Way, the Truth, and the Life Amy-Jill Levine (Abingdon Press) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

DVD – The Gospel of John DVD: A Beginner’s Guide to the Way, the Truth, and the Life (Abingdon Press) $44.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $35.99

Leader’s Guide – The Gospel of John: The Beginners Guide to the Way, the Truth, and the Life Leader’s Guide (Abingdon Press) $15.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Amy-Jill Levine, described above, also just released this brand new, six-chapter book and video series on John (you can also buy the DVD and/or Leader’s Guide at our sale price) which is a paperback Abingdon Press companion to one she released last year in short book and/or video format, The Gospel of Mark: A Beginner’s Guide to the Good News, so she is a busy scholar, popularizing her many lectures (at Vanderbilt where she teaches first New Testament and early Jewish studies) into easy to read, if sometimes provocative books and video presentations. What fun. As noted above, she is not a Christian but teaches any who are interested — mostly Christian seminarians — about how to study the gospels while sensitive to the truths about first century Judaism. She is quick to point out anti-semitic notions and wrong-headed ideas about Jews, Pharisees, or Middle Eastern customs, which she knows a lot about. These are fiesty, fun, easy to read, and should provoke hearty conversation…

The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story Richard B. Hays & Christopher B. Hays (Yale University Press) $28.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

This book came into the shop a bit early and we have sent out the pre-orders already. We are thrilled to see a new book by the eminent New Testament scholar whose long-awaited book reverses his previous position (after 30 years) on same-sex relations and their permissibility within the context of Biblical sexual ethics. Aided by his son, also a Biblical scholar of considerable seriousness, this is said to be a major work, obviously on a prestigious university (peer-reviewed) academic press. It is important.

I’ve got two quick things to say about this since I have not yet studied it. Firstly: anytime Hays speaks or teaches we should pay attention. I know of people who disagree with him about a few things he writes or ways in which he relates a Biblically informed worldview and social ethic to the world around us, but they still like and respect him greatly. He’s a good, earnest thinker, a significant scholar, and a very nice guy who should be honored as such.

Secondly, his vital and wise books such as Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Baylor University Press), Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (Yale University Press), The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture (Eerdmans) or his magisterial The Moral Vision of the New Testament: a Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethic (HarperOne) and certainly the large collection of miscellaneous pieces and essays, Reading with the Grain of Scripture (Eerdmans) all show his deep commitment to the Scriptures and the unfolding story of the canon. That he (Emeritus NT Professor at Duke) and his son Chris — an OT Professor at Fuller —have worked hard on this volume is significant. As one reviewer noted, the release of this book “is an event of historic significance.”

Quarrels regarding the Bible and human sexuality have ossified in recent decades, afflicting entire denominations and ostracizing many. In this remarkable book, Christopher Hays and Richard Hays combine intelligence, humility, and generosity in a conversation that is instructive both within and beyond communities of faith. — Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Princeton Theological Seminary, author, Romans: A Commentary

When the best interpreters reread the Scriptures with intellectual acumen and humility, as well as keen attention to the Spirit’s call for reconciling love, both church and academy are strengthened. Praise God for this book. — Ellen F. Davis, Duke Divinity School, author, Biblical Prophecy: Perspectives for Christian Theology, Discipleship, and Ministry

Briefly, I suppose it might be helpful to note that a sharp and gracious thinker who disagrees with Hays and Hays, Preston Sprinkle, has written a long and detailed critical review at his own Center’s website. If Sprinkle is correct, I am a bit disappointed that the book didn’t forge the new ground that I assumed that it would. I appreciate the general graciousness of Sprinkle’s strong critique, and yet wonder what he misses in this book that has been admired by many others. All I can say is read it yourself and make up your own mind.

Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right Arlie Russell Hochschild (The New Press) $30.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.70

Perhaps you know Arlie Hochschild for her previous, much-discussed 2016 volume Strangers in the Own Land which developed from her time living among conservative and right-wing workers in a polluted area of Louisiana. As a social scientist and liberal activist (from Berkeley, California, no less) she wondered why folks would support government policies that, in fact, enabled the pollution that was killing them. She famously befriended a lot of such folks and that book was laden with insightful reports. She tells of a Tea Party activist whose whole house was swallowed by a sinkhole, yet who championed the rich New York candidate whose policies would not help them one bit. As she warms to the people she meets, she writes about the “anger and mourning on the American Right.” The humility of the book’s author and it’s tone earned it accolades among smart readers across the political spectrum. And, yet, the quandary remains.

I have not even started this brand new one, Stolen Pride, but I am sure I will. I’ve read several advanced descriptions and I’m confident that it is as important (and as empathetic) as Strangers in Their Own Land. One “starred review” at Publisher’s Weekly says she is in this new one revisiting the same humane themes and sociological concerns as Strangers but this time interviewing Appalachian residents of Pikeville, KY, considered to be one of the whitest, poorest, and most conservative counties in the country — “to understand how the once purple coal town turned deep red.”

She discusses “the pride of paradox” which is (quoting the PW review) “the tension between dwindling economic opportunities and the belief that one’s successes or failures in life reflect one’s abilities.” The upshot? Get this: as she will show, residents “blame themselves and feel ashamed when their lives don’t turn out as they hope.” And how does this cause them to vote for the likes of Trump? That is the question of her thesis, that his “shamelessness proves a cathartic release” when they support him, failing to acknowledge obvious systemic wrongdoing ( such as the opioid addictions foisted on them or awful extractions like mountain-top removal.)

In a recent interview Hochschild notes that “red states are a prime target for someone for whom shame is almost a political ore that he picks for.” She continued:

“Trump has what I would call a ‘shaming ritual.’ First, he’ll say something transgressive. Then, he’ll make himself the victim of shaming from a punditry that says “you can’t say that, that’s not American.” Then he’ll roar back at his shamers. I think of this as a very powerful ritual that satisfies. Some of the people I came to know, I ran my interpretation of this by them and they would know what I was talking about — this cathartic performance of shame was recognized as part of his appeal.”

Like other academic studies of rural and poor white regions, it becomes clear that not all of the disadvantaged fully favor the MAGA movement; this impressive study will give us much to think about and ponder about why and how people construe their lives and work out their public values.  Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right is going to be cited, I predict, for years to come.

Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class  Sarah Smarsh (Scribner Books) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I’m delighted to tell you about this, as I so, so loved her previous two. This collection of essays might include a few pieces you’ve seen if you read widely in journals and magazines and online places, but I bet for most of us, this is going to be fresh and new writing from a woman who loves her midWestern identity. Her memoir, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth told a somewhat different sort of story than the one drawn by J.D. Vance, and was often talked about alongside social conscious works such as Nigel and Dimes and Evicted. I adored it, mentioned it often, and was moved by her honest, upbeat writing about her hardscrabble upbringing in rural Kansas and eventually going off to college, with a complicated set of cultural expectations and experience.

If I like Heartland I enjoyed her spectacular, short but astute, and wonderfully realized study of Dolly Parton called She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs. Sort of a tribute to all women who grew up poor and work firmly in the working class, Smarsh gets Dolly’s poverty, her work ethic, her congenial feminism, and her roots music that becomes a huge pop culture empire. What a story!

And so, this new one is a collection of essays. Bone of the Bone. The prestigious Kirkus Review gave it a rare starred review calling its impact “staggering.” They say, “This powerful reckoning with the costs of being poor should be required short-form nonfiction reading.”

One of my big disappointments this year at the wonderful Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing was that my schedule was such that I just couldn’t get to her workshop there or to another gig where she was speaking at the Festival. It would have been a blast, and I was curious about her conversation about faith and culture and art and social progress. I suspect reading this won’t be quite as much fun, but it’s a good call, anyway. I’m looking forward to it.

Plundered: The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Injustice David W. Swanson (IVP) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I could write an entire BookNotes on this spectacular volume but I will be brief. For those who followed his previous book Discipling the White Church, you know that Swanson is a theologically evangelical, passionate, well-read pastor of a multi-racial church in a mostly black neighborhood in urban Chicago. With neighborhood has roots in the black freedom struggle going back to Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells and MLK and Gwendolyn Brooks, those who lived, preached, worked, or wrote there have taught Swanson a lot.

Including this expansive understanding that the damage done by white supremacy and economic systems that have been extractive, simply must be repaired; we are partnering, as Christians, with a God who is restoring all things, including these two most systemic and vile aspects of our modern world — racism and environmental injustice. As others have shown in great detail, the two overlap in what is sometimes called environmental racism. Swanson admits he has not written a book making this case, really, but assumes it. What are the Biblical and theological resources we have in our faith communities to create practices of creation care and racial justice in our own places? Plundered does help us understand the problem but, more, digging deep into the idols of greed that have deformed our place in the world, invites us to ways to reverse the urgent situation.

The conversations about moving beyond mere stewardship (oh, if he had only cited the best collection of short pieces on this, the must-read Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care, edited by Dave Warners and Matthew Kuperus Heun published by Calvin College Press in 2019) towards a more wholistic approach to humankind relationships to other creatures naturally leads Swanson to draw on wisdom from ingenious thought leaders (from Robin Zimmerman of Braiding Sweetgrass fame to Randy Woodley, who wrote  Shalom and the Community of Creation and Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview) and black scholars and activists. (Indeed, he cites bell hooks, often, including the famous interview she did with rural, white, agronomist, Wendell Berry.) In my limited reading in this field, I would suggest that there is simply nothing like it. Thanks be to God!

You know I’ve recently featured the book by the aforementioned Calvin University biologist David Warners called Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha. His co-author, Gail Gunst Heffner has a chapter on environmental racism in that previously mentioned collection, Beyond Stewardship and it, too, is an excellent overview of this interdisciplinary topic. Her brief chapter brings into focus some important questions that shape the book Gail and Dave did on this Western Michigan watershed. They know, like Swanson, that our rationalist and often individualistic ways of doing theology have got to shift so that we can learn from Native peoples and other marginalized folks. This book models this and shows us how to proceed.

Another writer who is also an inner-city Chicago pastor is Jonathan Brooks (lead pastor of the famous Lawndale Christian Community Church) and he says of Swanson’s Plundered that it uses “beautifully written imagery, amazingly honest narratives, and sound biblical and historical research.” Indeed. As many who have endorsed it note, it is really interesting, very honest and super inspiring. And I would say very, very important. 

For what it is worth, Swanson has long loved the great outdoors, studied environmental science in college and was especially keen on wilderness trips, camps, adventure education and outdoor ministry. That God drew him to the life of a pastor, in an urban setting, no less, is a surprising story he tells a bit in the beginning. That he now is uniting his old love for creation and passion about creation-care with his insights learned from living as a part of the black community our nation’s third largest city, is a sweet, perhaps nearly ironic, gift of God. Read this book.

Sharing the Crust: A Communion of Saints in a Baltimore Neighborhood Mark Gornik (Cascade Books) $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

We will have this book in stock any day now and I can’t wait to see it. Mark Gornik, now an urban pastor and educator in New York, wrote this book about his early work — legendary, actually — forming a socially-engaged, intentional PCA church in an economically hurting 70-block neighborhood in Baltimore, called Sandtown. The multi-faceted work attracted a lot of attention in the 80s and everybody from John Perkins to Habitat for Humanity leaders to Joni Eareckson Tada crossed their paths.

Joni? Yep, because, you see, one of the main movers and shakers of this wholistic Kingdom outpost was himself wheelchair bound. His name was Allan Tibbels and those that knew him (and his wife, Susan) remember them as amazing people. The work Allan did, as a white guy in a largely black neighborhood, and how this PCA church (called New Song) got off the ground and into issues like housing and healthcare, education and the arts, is the stuff of urban ministry legend. Gornik tells of the small changes and slow growth, the serious peacemaking and community development done in and through New Song. Mark Gornik’s To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City remains a must-read standard in the field or urban ministry, and now this, a personal story which is said to be exceptionally inspirational and informed by solid Kingdom theology. Yes!

Can pain, loss, and hope co-exist? Injustice, deprivation, and celebration? How does individual calling, communal vocation, the search for justice, and commitment to place relate? Mark Gornik’s evocative ode to radical friendship and community building ‘on the journey towards new creation’ offers embodied and generative responses to such urgent questions. I could not put it down! — Ruth Padilla De Borst, associate professor of world Christianity, Western Theological Seminary

For what it is worth Allan’s moving story was written about very well in a concise chapter by Gornik in a big hardback book (that perhaps inspired the writing of this broader one about the folks at New Song) called People Get Ready: Twelve Jesus-Haunted Misfits, Malcontents, and Dreamers in Pursuit of Justice edited by Peter Spade, published by Eerdmans.

One of Us: Reflecting on the Radical Mystery of the Incarnation A.D. Bauer (Square Halo Books) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99   DUE SEPTEMBER 17

I am always happy when somebody I know writes a book and this forthcoming one is no exception. Alan — his pen name is A.D. — is a pastor and seminary prof and, importantly, one of the chief leaders/owners of Square Halo Books. You know Square Halo for their beautiful gift books of Christian art, and their truly essential books reflecting on creative, aesthetics, the arts, and books about that interface of faith and the artistic realm. Square Halo Books is one of the great gifts in the faith-based publishing world and every Christian bookstore should carry their stuff. We’re glad our customers have grown to appreciate their many title. A.D. Bauer is behind most of that, just so you know.

Here he is at his geeky self, though, pondering big questions that theological types think of. The start of the book suggests it may be a bit of a personal help in one’s own struggles of faith and life, but, frankly, he doesn’t connect those dots much. It’s a grand, readable, down-to-Earth exercise in theological speculation. doctrinal teaching, and Biblical study. And if that isn’t practical, then nothing really is. So even though some authors may be more chatty and help you apply the lessons learned in a more lively or intentional manner, few are as honest and systematic and careful. This is a lay-person’s introduction to one of the chief matters of the Christian faith: who Jesus is and, if, as we all say, he is fully human and fully divine, how, then, did he live? And does it matter?

A. D. asks questions like whether or not Jesus could really be tempted. I mean, really tempted? Or, he wonders why Jesus, if fully God, had to grow in knowledge as it says in Luke 2:52. When he heals, is he doing that as God, or as a faithful human? (The gospels give examples of when Jesus couldn’t heal. What’s with that?) And what is going on with Jesus being filled with the Spirit? (You thought He was one with the Spirit, right?) When He dies and descends into hell, what happens to the Trinity? As a human, can we really understand us mere mortals?  Admit it — you’ve asked these sorts of questions yourself, and what Bible study group doesn’t have at least one (annoying?) person who keeps asking these oddball kinds of curious questions? I sure wish Bauer was in our Bible study when these kinds of things come up. He knows his stuff.

Of course, these questions actually aren’t odd at all. And the answers A.D. gives are solid, Biblical, informed by his own diligent pastoral study of the texts of Scripture. He brings in a lot and it’s fun and a good example of doing Scriptural study.(You can see this care in his other Square Halo Books, The Beginning: A Second Look at the First Sin, The End: A Readers’ Guide to Revelation, and the very helpful How to See: Reading God’s Word With New Eyes.) He doesn’t tell a lot of stories, he doesn’t get cute or fancy, he just plows onward, following the lead of this question or that, answering the best he can, with a conviction that such insights will lead us to a deeper understanding of who Jesus was (and is!) and how his humanness can be formative for us in our own spiritual growth. This stuff is not simplistic, but it is clear-headed. It is not easy, but it isn’t arcane.

As you might guess — and if you haven’t guessed this, you really need this book! — he spends some times reflecting on what some call the “self emptying” of Christ’s power and divinity (the Greek word is kenosis) described most vividly in the famous passage of Philippians 2: 5-11. Frankly, I think he doesn’t say all that should be said about this key text and I’d have wished for greater clarity about a thing or two. It is clear that in some sense, Jesus gives up the privileges of his divinity, although no orthodox theologian suggests he gives up his divinity.

Some theological teachers use examples of extreme views to show what they do not teach, and Bauer does this a bit, almost caricaturing writers or thinkers who, for instance, overestimate (or underestimate) the human nature of Jesus or the divine nature of Jesus. Maybe in his circles this is a live concern — I frankly don’t know if I know anybody who is unaware that we must fully emphasize both/and; that is, Jesus isn’t half and half, part human and part God, He is fully human and fully divine. This was settled in the 4th century (with Saint Nicholas famously bloodying a heretics nose over it.) I don’t think I know anybody Christian who denies, in theory, the full humanity or deity of Jesus, although some may not think through the implications of it all. Which is why this book, and others like it, are so important.

There are a lot of books on this these days, and while One of Us doesn’t engage with any of the recent ones that insist we can learn much from Jesus’s humanity (or even the classic, On the Incarnation by Athanasius) but it can happily stand next to the others on the mystery of the what we call the incarnation. It will, Bauer promises, help you see that Jesus really is “one of us” and that will lead you to love Jesus all the more.

Priests of History: Stewarding the Past in an Ahistorical Age Sarah Irving-Stonebraker (Zondervan Reflective) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99  DUE SEPTEMBER 24

I love a good book about why history matters, about how we should view history Christianly, and how we can “steward the past” as this author puts it. I’m excited to see this — it looks fantastic. It is, for the record, I suppose, nice to see a woman historian writing warmly about this matter of historiography and why it is so important in this rootless age. I love the evocative title, don’t you?

By the way, Irving-Stonebraker is Professor of History and Western Civilization at Australian Catholic University. She received her PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and held a Junior Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford. (She converted from atheism to Christianity while an Assistant Professor at Florida State University.) Her first book, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire, won the Royal Society of Literature and Jerwood Foundation Award for Nonfiction. She and her husband  live in Sydney, Australia, with their three children and are members of an Anglican church in the Diocese of Sydney.

The Message Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00  DUE OCTOBER 1

I bet most of our BookNotes readers have at least heard of the award winning, brutally honest, and very compelling writer, Ta-Nehisi Coates. We have carefully recommended reading Between the World and Me his vivid anti-racist manifesto, and his collection of essays Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. Not as many have purchased from us, even though we have long touted, his very moving memoir of growing up in urban Baltimore, The Beautiful Struggle. And many know his Black Panther comics and that fantastical novel, The Water Dancer.

Now, after many years, he has returned to his long-form essay style, giving us a collection long awaited by many. It was going to be a book about writing, but…

Here is what the publisher tells us:

Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories–our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking — expose and distort our realities. In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city–a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground.

“Coates is intellectually fearless . . . unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.” —The New Yorker

 

Confessions of an Amateur Saint: The Christian Leader’s Journey from Self-Sufficiency to Reliance on God Mandy Smith (NavPress) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19   DUE OCTOBER 8

Oh my, this is one I had the great privilege of reading in an early manuscript form, and have even written an endorsement for. I don’t know what of it will actually be on the book, but here is what I said on reading my friend Mandy Smith’s amazing, honest, new work:

“Years ago Mandy Smith wrote an exceptionally important book called The Vulnerable Pastor about ministers being real — honest about their fears and doubts and weakness. Here in Confessions of an Amateur Saint she shows us exactly what she means and how it is done, modeling a painful vulnerability that is rare, especially among professionally-trained clergy. I came away stunned, amazed, a bit disturbed, and very, very grateful. I promise you that you have never read a book like this. Her creatively-written meditations, laments, questions, and prayers reveal a deep longing for God and candor about the hard stuff of life and ministry which will invite you to own up to your own struggles that, when named, will lead to healing and hope. Vital for pastors and truly useful for all.”

I could say more. I think I’ll just invite you to read this (no matter who you are or what your relationship is to church leadership.) It’s that interesting, human, real. And if you are, in fact, a Christian leader, and certainly if you are a pastor with any complications or difficulties at all, you need this book.  I hope we get some orders!

Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself–And to God–When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering Chuck Degroat (Tyndale) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19   DUE OCTOBER 8

This has truly been one of the most anticipated books of this season for many of our friends. Degroat is a very fine counselor, an excellent writer, and an astute observer of the human condition, even in congregations (see his stellar When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.) We came to admire him greatly when we discovered his very first book, nicely done by Faith Alive, called Leaving Egypt: Finding God in the Wilderness Places. When it came out more than a decade ago there were less honest, readable, Biblically-informed books that honored our “wilderness” experiences of fear and lack of clarity. That one invites us to a faithful sort of freedom, and it has influenced his other mature books (like Wholeheartedness which was on being too busy, being exhausted, and coping with what he called “the divided self.”)

In any case we haven’t seen this one yet and we look forward to getting our hands on it soon, We may get it a bit early, and if so we’re eager to send out our pre-orders. Want to add your name to this list?

Your Jesus Is Too American: Calling the Church to Reclaim Kingdom Values Over the American Dream Steve Bezner (Brazos Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99   DUE OCTOBER 8

My goodness, there are a lot of good books these on this question of Christian nationalism, civil religion, and the idols of American greatness and power. I’ve recommended several. Bezner is a well-respected pastor, a southern Baptist, and is said to be able to speak clarity about these things without causing too much offense; he wants to reach conservative Christians, especially, and I suspect this will not be an off-putting screed full of “prophetic” fervor. As BookNote readers know I don’t mind those sorts of hard-hitting studies of the far right and we need to expose those who would drag Christ into the gutter of Q-Anon nonsense, KKK racism, the vile and violent Proud Boys, and other sorts of ungodly extremism. But, for most, we are not into all that (although we may be considering aligning ourselves with those who have given the nod to that stuff) and we just need to focus a bit on who Christ is, the Kingdom values that should guide our patriotism, and how to sort out the worldly ways of the American Dream from authentic Biblical values. My hunch is that this is nothing too new, but spoken in an accessible and fresh way. My hunch is it will ruffle some feathers, but not needlessly. My hope id that it will be read widely and used wisely.

A Whole Life in Twelve Movies: A Cinematic Journey to a Deeper Spirituality  Kathleen Norris & Gareth Higgins (Brazos Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99  DUE OCTOBER 15

Wanted to highlight this, quickly, to let you know about it if you haven’t heard. This might win our award for the most unexpected book of the year! You hopefully know our admiration for the wonderful spiritual writer and memoirist Kathleen Norris. She wrote in the mid 1990s the hauntingly beautiful Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and then became even more famous for her best-seller The Cloister Walk. She did a thoughtful memoir about her college years (the Virgin of Bennington) and another about her seasons of depression (Acedia and Me.) Some adore her playful, Buechner-esque theological dictionary, Amazing Grace. And I love her very small book (one of my personal all-time favorites which I’ve read numerous times) called The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women’s Work.

But movies? Who knew?

Gareth Higgins, on the other hand, is a genius from Northern Ireland , a real film maven and an informal contemporary theologian. He did a book on film on the old Relevant publishing venture decades ago, which I loved, and we are one of the few bookstores who still carry his spectacularly interesting (and wonderfully named) Cinematic States: Stories We Tell, the American Dreamlife, and How to Understand Everything which looks at movie by or about or set in each of the 50 states. His social justice activism and his care for the arts — especially film — is legendary. His most recent book was the exquisite How Not to Be Afraid: Seven Ways to Live When Everything Seems Terrifying (to which, I’m now recalling, Katherine Norris wrote a good foreword.)

The respected (and often funny) Jesuit priest, James Martin, writes the foreword and says, among other things:

“Reading this beautiful book is like having an endlessly fascinating conversation with two friends about film, when those two friends are always wise, thoughtful, and funny and have inspiring things to say about the movies they love.”

Everything Could Be a Prayer: One Hundred Portraits of Saints and Mystics Kreg Yingst (Broadleaf) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99   DUE OCTOBER 15

I really hope we get some pre-orders on this — what a blast to get to recommend and sell it. Yingst is an amazing writer, a profound thinker, and a quirky folk artist, doing colorized woodcuts and lithographs, block prints that are full of earthiness and joy and pathos. This book has already gotten a lot of buzz and I’ve been curious how many seem to know him from different circles and movements. Hoooray.

I first discovered the visual art of Kreg Yingst because he did some stunning album cover work for Bill Mallonee. Those who know me know how I adore his 1990s Athens-based band Vigilantes of Love, and how I loved even more his prolific solo work. Bill’s Neil Young-like blend of Americana country and folk and some blazing guitar work and heart-felt, gritty vocals and brilliant lyrics combine to create some of my all time favorite records. Yingst had small cartoon-like illustrations capturing something about every song on one of Bill’s fairly recent CDs (2019’s Lead on Kindly Light) and not long ago, Bill re-issued an older CD from the VOL days, Welcome to Struggleville, in high quality vinyl and got Yingst to do the stunning album cover art design. I don’t play vinyl anymore but I almost bought it for the artwork.

And then I realized he enhanced the beautiful little Lenten book called A Different Kind of Fast by Christine Valters Painter. Wow.

And now we realize he is a great writer as well, doing these extraordinary devotional essays on various saints and mystics, here accompanied by his unusual, folk-style portrait art. I want to say it’s part Robert Crumb / part Ned Bustard, but that’s not quite right. It’s breathtaking, provocative, endlessly curious. And the writing shows his wide sense of God’s presence amidst lots of different kinds of saints. Rave reviews are from Ruth Haley Barton (who recommends it for visio divina) and Karen Wright Marsh (who has written her own books on how such a cloud of witnesses can inspire us) and mystic Carmen Acevedo Butcher and poet Drew Jackson. Everything Could Be a Prayer is unique and powerful. Highly recommended.

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BookNotes

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Happy Labor Day!

Let’s start from a beautiful quote about work from a book about praying the Psalms, a book by an Alaska fisherwoman (and remarkably wide-ranging author), Leslie Leyland Fields. The quote is from Nearing a Far God: Praying the Psalms with Our Whole Selves. (NavPress; $16.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59.)

In a chapter called “Beholding Creation” (on Psalm 8) Leslie writes beautifully about the nature scenes around her on Harvester Island where they’ve spent the winter building their house, looking out at “a brilliant azure bay and emerald mountains, some still with snow.” She is with her young children. Her husband is about to go out to work on an overnight shift on their fishing skiff. “Two figures in neon orange roars past the beach, off to the fishing nets around the island.”

“There’s goes Daddy!” Naphtali calls in her munchkin voice. “When will he be back?”

“He’ll be back around midnight, when you’re sleeping,” I tell her. But you’ll see him in the morning.”

As Duncan’s skiff disappears around the island my mind and heart follow him. I know what’s ahead for the skiff tonight. It’s take-up night, when arm over arm they pull all the nets out of the water, as directed by Fish and Game. We do this at least a dozen times a summer, often in crisis mode: sometimes when storms rage, or the nets are full of fish or kelp or both. I think of the last time I went out to help. My back remembers. My hands remember, crabbed with carpal tunnel syndrome as I picked fish from the nets as fast as I could.

In a perhaps incongruous manner I think of a line by scholar and teacher, Calvin Seerveld, who writes in the memorable piece “The Flash of a Fish Knife” about his father, a fishmonger, and his fiesty but ethical retail sales work with his Long Island customers eyeing up the fresh catch. But that isn’t the connection that first came to mind for me. Seerveld, in another essay, tells of preparing lectures on the history of the philosophy of aesthetics from a Christian historiographic perspective, and was working all night at the kitchen table when his teenage son got up — as I recall it was like 5:00 am — to deliver morning newspapers. Their eyes caught, as the son saw his father still working hard, “the night shift” as Seerveld simply but movingly put it.

Different folks in different careers — a fisherman and the son of a fisherman — and many, many of us, work the night shift sometimes.

Our hats are off to you, no matter your employment, paid or unpaid… Happy Labor Day.

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Most years about this time I honor a few of the books that have come out about living Christian faith in the work-world. It’s been a passion of ours since we opened and we’ve been glad more and more church folk realize that a missional vision of advancing God’s kingdom and influencing the world for the better must include equipping folks to think about their jobs as holy callings — vocations, avenues of service, mission fields. We love God and serve our neighbors by adding to the world’s economy (and faithfully understand that in ways that are often immeasurable by the reductionistic metrics of money and Mammon; some of our best work isn’t even paid, but it contributes so very much to the common good.) We are, as Andy Crouch put it so memorably in Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, one of the great books that can help think creatively about our vocations in the world, “culture makers.” As humans made in the very image of our Creator, it’s what we do. As we reflect the  image of our worker/maker-God, we do work and make something of the good (now fallen and being redeemed) world of wonders in which we live. To use the language of Genesis 2, we cultivate.

We celebrate today not only with the typical stuff of Labor Day (the dignity of work and justice for workers) but try to remind anyone within listening distance that this is nearly a high holy day in the church of Jesus Christ. If only pastors and people understood it so.

In this BookNotes, in PART ONE, I’ll list a few newer resources (most published within the year) and then, just for fun, will share a big handful of memoirs and other titles set among various careers or jobs (see PART TWO, below.) I loved so many of these books and will just give a shout out to a bunch across the spectrum of workplaces and job opportunities that are captivating and illuminating. Holy spaces, all, even if the writers don’t always know that.

Please see some of the older BookNotes Labor Day columns HERE, HERE, or HERE. I am fond of a story or two I tell HERE, even though we had to take down the link to the powerful James Taylor song, “Millworker.” I hope you those old BookNotes columns (knowing the prices on these old lists are in most cases no longer current.)

PART ONE

Here are fifteen rather new-ish titles to know about, perhaps to pair with some of the older ones listed at the links above.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation: 25th Anniversary Edition Parker Palmer (Jossey Bass) $25.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This has been on the top of the lists for many who have appreciated his generous, broad, deeply spiritual (but plainly spoken) invitation to pay attention to our interior lives and discern God’s call upon us. Perhaps best combined with something more robustly theological (like, maybe The Call by Os Guinness or Visions of Vocation by Steve Garber, or Calling and Career by Gordon Smith) this book by this thoughtful, honest, Quaker, is a classic. The brand new edition includes a short new chapter, which is gracious and good, reflecting, too, on the most popular chapter in Let Your Life Speak, the one about suffering. This concise meditation is warm and elegant and beautiful and has been for some a true life-line.

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

Surely most Christians know that life is worth living, and living well, even when we’re not “sharing the gospel.” But there it is: the “great commission is not the only commission.” Our jobs, our work, our vocations, and such, all matter. “From baristas and entrepreneurs to stay-at-home parents and coaches” our daily jobs have intrinsic value. Thought this has been made abundantly clear in any number of good books, so wasn’t (I”ll admit) fully enthused with another book on the topic, but man-oh-man, this is one of the best I’ve read in years, and it’s combination of research, Scripture, storytelling, and vivid illustrations and case studies makes the case powerfully and helpfully. His footnotes are splendid, he’s read widely in the field, and he offers inspiring ways our work can “reveal God’s Kingdom on Earth” here and now. I agree with Randy Alcorn (best-selling author of Heaven) when he says “I think the smile of God is on this book.”

(Jordan Raynor, by the way, wrote one of the great books about these very themes for children, a delightful and informative picture book called The Creator in You, illustrated by Jonathan David [Waterbrook; $12.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39.] It came out in 2022 and we’ve happy to stock it.)

Faithful Work: In the Daily Grind with God and for Others Ross Chapman & Ryan Tafilowski (IVP) $15.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.00

Below I will mention Jeff Haanen, the recently retired founder of the highly regarded Denver Institute for Faith & Work. To put it bluntly, Ross Chapman took his place as CEO of the Denver Institute and has stepped up to fill those shoes. While he has theological training and has worked in community and economic development in a medium sized mid-Western town, he was made for this job and is at the helm of one of the great think-tank/resource centers for helping people relate to work, economic systems, professional institutions and the structures of our modern world as redemptive influences. Chapman’s good co-author, Ryan Tafilowski, is a pastor in Colorado and has served as a “theologian in residence” (his PhD is from University of Edinburgh) for the Denver Institute; he brings some pastoral care to the topic as well.

It is a short, compact-sized book which proves not only their ability to introduce the complexities of this hefty topic in concise and sensible ways, but their profound ability to inspire and cast visions of vocation for one and all. It fills a real need in this growing library of books on relating faith and work, for sure.

Faithful Work is general and basic, short and sweet, and you should buy a couple to give away; pastor’s should keep ‘em on hand, at the ready when conversations about “following Jesus everywhere” comes up. It is among the best concise one’s we’ve got.

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

Although this came out a few years ago, it is relatively recent and, as one of the very best books on this topic, it deserves an extra shout out here and how. O’Donnell is executive director of Fuller Seminary’s Max De Pree Center for Leadership. She has a brand new book with faith-at-work leader, consultant (and Hearts & Minds champion) Lisa Slayton called Life in Flux: Navigational Skills to Guide and Ground You in an Ever Changing World. More on that anon.

O’Donnell’s recipe includes discovering what God is calling you to do in a changing world, defining where you are in this season of work, embracing what the Bible says (and doesn’t say) about calling, developing a mindset and habits suited for the new world of work, and reflecting, then, on how to work out ways that sustain you on the journey. Not bad, huh?

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

There is so much that I like about this book, not least of which is the lovely, little pen and ink drawing scattered through-out. (They are reminiscent of an old hippy cookbook we used to love, and the illustrations here are tremendous.) Also, this collection of reflections, while rooted in a solid worldview that affirms the God-saturated nature of reality and the broad scope of Christian redemption, has a different tone than some, offering testimonials of the lived experience of ordinary folks, what the Academic Dean of Austin Presbyterian Seminary (David Jensen) says it “a beautiful interweaving of story and theology, testimony and tradition.” He notes that it is “a model of how theology is done in community, always connected to the Christian life.”

I am not sure the doing of theology proper is the goal of Christian discipleship or that the theologizing done in the workplace is the best part of it all, and, in fact, this book affirms that. This is a complex matter, and lay folks doing good work (often in frustrating settings) do indeed think on their feet about God and the role of the Spirit, about broken systems and Kingdom alternatives, about how to live and more and have their being empowered by knowing God. Sure, but they also tell stories of service and grace and getting jobs done. This is no simple guide to finding meaning at work, but the ethnography pays off with profound insights as you hear reports of person after person in everyday life.

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

I love these sorts of collections with a number of authors weighing in from their own professional expertise. And what fun this is, with chapters by a pharmacist, a counselor, a lawyer, a nurse, a business person, a public health worker, and a coach.

The first part includes several strong Biblical studies (about work in both the Old and New Testaments) and a good piece by Loy on human and cultural flourishing. There is a chapter on economic systems, and a rare piece on “preaching to professionals in a secular world” by Concordia Seminary prof, Peter Nafzger.

For what it’s worth, Concordia is a conservative Lutheran publisher so most of these contributors bring an evangelical tone and a Lutheran theological orientation to the task. Even if you are not Lutheran (heck, you may not even be Protestant) this is well worth reading.

Faithful is Successful: Notes to the Driven Pilgrim edited by Nathan Grills, David Lewis, & Joshua Swamidass (Outskirts Press) $19.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

We were delighted to discover this — a book that emerged from a discipleship training school known as the Harvey Fellows program — as it shows a real variety of practitioners sharing about how they think and live faithfully in their respective fields, from arts to finance to higher education to international affairs. Before the thoughtful testimonials, though, about half the book offers significant rumination on questions that haunt us all —there is good writing on questions of how we discern vocations, what we mean by “integration” and how we might balance our various callings, especially when family and career may be in tension. There are good chapters on ambition, on how we measure success, what a “full-time life” looks like. And then the chapters on “God in the work.”

For what it is worth, Grills is a Public Health Physician, working in disability and chronic disease prevention in India — he is Australian, but his PhD is from Oxford. Lewis is a political science professor at Vanderbilt in TN and Swamidass is a professor of Immunology and Pathology,  Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.

Proving Ground: 40 Reflections on Growing Faith at Work Graham Hooper (Christian Focus) $14.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

It isn’t every book that has an endorsement saying it is “…warm, witty, biblical, personal, and kind.” Don’t we all want that kind of a Barnabas-type character coming alongside us to give encouragement and assistance? Indeed, Graham Hooper (who was once “a Senior Executive with a global infrastructure company” – whatever that is) is an Australian business person working in Tanzania. So he’s been around. And, this message is universal — God cares about all manner of work, in all sorts of places, done by all kinds of people. There is good news here: Jesus is present to all of us (not just ministers or priests, not just missionaries or those in church work.) Our loving God is real, and cares, and can help us through the pressures and “tests” of our faith. If you’ve experienced conflict or confusion, setbacks or frustrations at work, this book is for you.

Working from the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work That transforms Our Outer World Jeff Haanen (IVP) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.29

Jeff, a writer and entrepreneur, was the founder of the Institute for Faith & Work in Denver, CO, and is one of the grand leaders of this ongoing movement in the world these days, helping people think Christianly and live faithfully in their jobs, careers, and workplaces. As many good books as there are, now, on this, I’d read anything Haanen writes as he has earned the respect of so many. And, further, this book surprisingly is a rare read, a book about cultivating the interior lives for faithful living in-but-not-of the workplaces we find ourselves in. As it says on the back,

“Many today are experiencing social isolation, deep anxieties about the future, and various difficulties in the workplace. For too many of us, work seems tedious, painful, or meaningless. And we don’t know what to do about it.”

Blurbs on the back are from the great writer Philip Yancey, pioneering pastor who wrote Work Matters and founded “Made to Flourish”, Tom Nelson, the great leader at Redeemer Center for Faith and Work (and co-author, with Tim Keller, of the premiere book on this subject, Every Good Endeavor) and more. This really is a lovely, exceptionally wise, deeply balanced and very important resource showing the emotional, relational, vocational, intellectual, and public aspects of our “seamless lives.” So good.

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

I’ve mentioned the Denver Institute; their staff have been busy writing, lately, sharing the fruit of their years of groundbreaking work in cultural renewal, championing the integration of faith and labor, and equipping many to be faithful stewards of the many gifts of work and career God has given us. Hooray. Joanna Meyer has been a leading contributor to their work of social flourishing and here offers her unique voice as a woman in the faith and work conversation, and offering keen insight about how women can serve God, even despite some unique challenges and obstacles around gender in the marketplace.

This small book is worth its weight in gold, as they say, and I commend it to women and men. I really enjoyed it. It covers various aspects of this on-going movement, bringing foundational insights up to date (that is stuff about the value of work and the nature of our callings) but also notes how, in fact, the church has often not only been lax in helping workers relate faith to their career areas, but has particularly missed opportunities to disciple women.

I knew of a big church, once, that was getting on board with helping folks discern their true vocations and was starting to have seminars on workplace witness and thinking about the essential value of work done in occupations and careers. And guess where they located and hosted these critically important events? Within their men’s ministry. Can you imagine?

Joanna Meyer is upbeat and gracious, wise and practical, theologically sharp and fully aware of the challenges of many women as they take up their influence in their working lives. Hooray.

Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life David Bahnsen (Post Hill Press) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

This author’s father was a prolific Bible scholar (and working pastor) appreciated by many, a visionary within the seriously Reformed camp as he was compelling. This son, David, here, shows himself an equally important voice. The book captures his serious views of the good and revelatory nature of creation; he knows his Kuyper and his Bavinck and his Puritans and his Dorothy Sayers. Besides being well read in economics (I love it when I see a reference to the much-discussed Deirdre McCloskey) he is, in his own job, a private wealth management firm. He not only thinks that hard work is good for the soul, but he thinks we have to know a bit about finances and economics. Fair enough. I’ll live with the charts and graphs to follow his passionate stuff about “compounding and accumulating sufficient assets” and something that is apparently called “liquidity events.”

Not only does Bahnsen offer some thinking about retirement and finances and more (he worked for Morgan Stanley for a while) he fairly interacts with other books on the market. For instance, he spends considerable time exposing the false binary (rooted in a dualism between nature and grace, to use theological lingo) of a popular author who invites professional types to rethink their mid-life lives as “halftime” (and move from “success to significance.”) Bahnsen puts it very well, in a manner I’ve often said myself about that well-intended popular book.

He writes, that:

‘Success panic’ does not come because we need to make a different plan for the second half of life. It comes because too many people are being misled about the first half of their lives. If you aren’t taught that your work is inherently valuable to God, and is an integral part of His Kingdom, it’s no surprise that you’d panic upon finding yourself successful in a career you thought was existentially meaningless. A financial survival objective at least keeps your head in the game. But would we have an epidemic of midlife success panic if we taught the existential benefits of work to people of all ages? I think not.

Exactly.

If you, like me, wondered whether a book with a non-ironic, old school telephone on the cover could be relevant, just try to skip that aesthetic and marketing snafu. And skip the forward, where a buddy of his speaks all manner of outlandish untruths about the current state of the literature about faith and work. He must have not been following our BookNotes lists for these past decades and suggests there isn’t anything much of worth out there. Huh? I found it hard to read on, assuming Bahnsen agreed with this puff of nonsense. He is wrong about that, but, still, Full-Time is a vivid, smart and even fiesty reminder of what is at stake in getting this stuff right.

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

This book is academic in nature, a serious bit of researched and peer-reviewed scholarship, but stands as one of the exceptionally significant studies of this faith and work movement, the most important book of its kind since David W. Miller and the Princeton University’s “Faith and Work Initiative” released Faith at Work: The History and Promise of the Faith at Work Movement in 2006.

In fact, David Miller himself offers keen insight about Saving the Protestant Ethic.Miller writes:

The faith at work movement is an ongoing and evolving social movement, not a flash in the pan or a passing fad. Andrew Lynn brings us a strong contribution to the growing number of scholarly studies of the surprisingly diverse nature of the faith at work movement. Lynn’s provocatively titled Saving the Protestant Ethic focuses on and brings us fresh insights into the conservative evangelical Protestant wing of the movement, whose search for meaning and purpose drives their economic activity.

There is much going on here, and the reviewer of a good piece in FareForward about it is right to say, (her) “brief summary surely fails to capture the depth and breadth of Lynn’s extraordinary descriptive project.”

Lynne get the nuances of Protestant sorts of faith traditions and here focuses a bit on the differences between fundamentalists and evangelicals, and has intriguing chapters like “The Four Evangelical Theologies of Work”, “From the Christian Right to the Corporate Right”, and (in chapter seven) “From Culture Wars to Cultural Stewardship.” Wow.

Andrew Lynn (who has a PhD in sociology) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia where he works with James Davison Hunter. His work spans organizational theory, religious studies, and the history of ideas surrounding ethics and economics.

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

You may recall that I’ve mentioned this a time or two, once before it came out, another time as I did a recap of great books we sold at the Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh last winter, and I know I’ve named it to customers looking for books on rest and sabbath and the like.

Justin is a good friend, a great artist, a singer-songwriter (and now published poet) and life coach.

I want to highlight Sacred Strides here, again, too, on a list for Labor Day, since it offers what many find to be a whole new way to approach the struggles of finding balance between work and rest. You know how many of us have work or church or civic demands even as we hunger for play and recreation, caring for friends and family, not to mention ordinary tasks like shopping for groceries and doing the laundry.  For too many, being busy is like some badge of honor and even as we know it isn’t right, the books that insist we slow down and knock off the idol of finding our worth in our work are fine but not altogether useful. Our work does matter, and there are public callings that are equal to the vocations of parenting and marriage, say. If all of life is being redeemed and work and place, worship and work, are intertwined, how do we do this full life in God?

Justin flips the script just a bit and invites us to realize that, like with walking, we don’t think left foot, right foot, so much as we stride, following a natural, balancing rhythm of interconnected movements. He says it better but his fun and often funny stories invites us to “adopt a new posture toward our day to day lives.” That is, we don’t “balance” work and rest and neither fully affirms our essential belovedness. We start there, embracing a deeper sense of God’s care for us and then discover how to care and work, rest and share, all in ways aligned with our gifts and temperament.

Justin says, “Rest has helped me know I am Beloved in and through my work, and not as a reward for it.” Amen? Read this upbeat, creative set of chapters, linger over them, work your way through them and fine new energy for worship and work, play and prayer, rest amidst our running. Stride, friends. This book is a fun and wild ride, one I very highly recommend.

Plenty Good Room: Co-Creating an Economy of Enough for All Andrew Wilkes (Broadleaf) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

As mentioned, in God’s good but fallen creation, we are called to work for the common good. We love God by loving our neighbors and a major way most of us do this is by doing something productive with our time; we work, entering that complex network that MLK waxed eloquently about. As he noted, for most of us we’ve interacted with workers from all over the globe even before we’ve left the breakfast table. And so, it is wise when talking about faith at work, being creative in the marketplace, living into a vision of vocations, that we also attend to the structures and contexts of our idol-rich culture of late modernity.

People in the Republican movement these days, mostly Trumpian MAGA folk, are always complaining about socialism (as if paving roads and having laws about air pollution or regulations on surgical units at the local hospital, or, heck, even funding schools and libraries are some how left-wing.) Well, I’m no socialist, although I rejoice daily for the simple health care reforms (inadequate as they were) of the Affordable Care Act. I’m no socialist, but it doesn’t hurt us one bit — and could help a lot — if we know something about the best arguments made about the traditions of democratic socialism. This book can help.

Andrew Wilkes is a black pastor in Brooklyn and a self-professed black socialist with a degree in political science. Trained in a thoughtful, mainline seminary, and well schooled in black history, he draws on older sources like W.E.B. Du Bois and Fannie Lou Hamer as well as modern thinkers from womanist scholars like Keri Day and Katie Cannon and minority theologians like Cornel West or Gustavo Gutierrez or Peter Paris. Happily, he cites the great collection of Martin Luther King Jr. compiling speeches on work and labor, All Labor Has Dignity edited by Michael Honey.

I was struck by how this book draws not only on the great traditions of black theorizing and work for the re-ordering of society, but also Wilkes deep awareness, as an activist, of working groups and think tanks and movement networks like the New Economy Coalition or The Transnational Institute or The Economic Policy Institute. Not too many books have citations on economic details alongside quotes from Karl Barth or inspiration lines from Howard Thurman.

As a scholar-activist for economic democracy, Rev. Wilkes is on the board of the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York and the Institute for Christian Socialism. He knows his stuff. This book isn’t overly academic, though, and offers to readers some faith-based ingenuity for systems that offer “plenty good room — not just for a few, but for all.”

Life in Flux: Navigational Skills to Guide and Ground You in an Ever Changing World Michaela O’Donnell & Lisa Pratt Slayton (Baker Books) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I have announced this previously although since it is quite new, I wanted to list it again, even though it isn’t precisely about the interface of work and spirituality, callings and careers, or jobs and our daily discipleship. Because Michaela wrote Make Work Matter and because Lisa has worked mentoring leaders as Christians in secular work spaces (and consults with many, now, through her Tamim Partners firm) they both are heros in this whole field. They here are writing as leadership coaches and while this wise guide to knowing yourself and how to “do the inner work of waking up and letting go” is generally written for nearly anyone to read, it is (or so it seems to me) especially useful for those in the flux of career changes, job stress, professional challenges, and the like

The stories are great, the metaphors rich and useful, the skills and insights and prayers are perfect. Do you need encouragement, vision (and practical help) to navigate (as they put it) in the fog? Welcome to one of the very best books I’ve read on living in flux.

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PART TWO:

THIRTY fun memoirs or essays by authors with different careers, reflecting on their work and passions. All all 20% off, while supplies last.

A FUNERAL DIRECTOR  The Depositions: New and Selected Essays on Being and Ceasing to Be Thomas Lynch (Norton) $27.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.36

Lynch is a poet and an undertaker and his first book, The Undertaking: Life Notes from the Dismal Trade is one of my favorite books, ever. I’ve written elsewhere how much it meant to me when my father was unexpectedly killed in a car accident. It’s an eloquent and rare book. Except Lynch followed it with others, and those are equally splendid, and in this anthology of pieces from five of his prose volumes, there are also some new chapters. He is a spectacular essayist, a splendid person, and a person who has given voice to the sense of vocation that many funeral directors have. There are other books on being a funeral director (if your interested, you should read the two great ones by central PA undertaker Caleb Wilde, and a great, edgy memoir called Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by the great Caitlin Doughty, about working in a crematorium) but this introduction to Lynch shows forth his holy calling in working with the dead.

AN AMATEUR HOME-BUILDER All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House David Giffels (Harper) $20.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

Those who know me well know that this is one of my favorite authors, a guy from Akron, Ohio. Who knew Akron was once a high-brow town, laden with arts and culture and new money. And who knew that, by the end of the 20th century, it was crumbling and fine old mansions that were falling apart at their glorious old seams, were going for a steal.

Author and rock and roll fan and part time woodworker David Giffels buys such a place and he and his wife and a group of beer swilling pals set out to rebuild that house, turning it into a home, a real home. Pitched as a “delight” and “a truly wonderful books” and “full of heart and cheer” the reviewers are right. It is also exceedingly poignant, even as he learns what it means to grow up and make a home. Surely home-making is one of our most human of callings, and this book which starts as a comic story of a fixer-upper, ends up being a beautiful (if hilarious) reflection on satisfaction and love and grace.

SCIENTISTS God Speaks Science: What Neurons, Giant Squid, and Supernovae Reveal About Our Creator John Van SLoten (Moody Press) $15.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

I love preacher Van Sloten; his first book was called The Day Metallica Came to Church and his second was as much of a spot-on Labor Day title as any listed above, called Every Job a Parable: What Walmart Greeters, Nurses, and Astronauts Tell Us about God. I have gone on and on about that before, as I have this one. Of course science can point us to God, and the glories of creation remind us of all kinds of holy things. The point here, for our purposes now, though, is that each chapter of God Speaks Science is John’s telling of an interview with a scientist. A different specialist reveals her secrets, describe their calling, tells of their work in the field. From biology to chemistry, from brain science to the vocation of being a hydrologist, these chapters remind us in a delightful way how seemingly secular work can be deeply, profoundly spiritual.

A TRUCKER The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road Finn Murphy (Norton) $16.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I did a long review of this when it first came out, so taken was I about this trucker’s life story that drove him to drive. He’s a really smart dude, a good writer, and his life as a long-haul mover was really, really entertaining.  In sharing with you about it, again, now, I recall just how much I enjoyed and respected this fascinating guy and this remarkable story.

The Long Haul got a lot of rave reviews and I was glad to see the UVA philosopher turned motorcycle repair guy, Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft commend it. He called it “funny and sad and wise, and it shows us the lives of people we depend on.”

A SMALL BUSINESSMAN and HEMP FARMER Rocky Mountain High: A Tale of Boom and Bust in the New Wild West Finn Murphy (Norton) $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I don’t know which of Finn Murphy’s books I liked best; as a small business guy (who shares his opinion that the word “entrepreneur” is too long and snooty), I loved this book, set in Boulder, Colorado, and other locations along the Front Range. You will learn a lot about legal CBD which is actually fascinating, and there are vivid scenes of working in the building trades — his $35,000 run to Home Depot is pretty amazing!  As you join Finn Murphy on this thrilling ride into the world of small acreage farming, business start up, global sales, cops, shipping, and growing legal hemp. Murphy literally bought the farm out near Boulder and decided to plant this crop that had been in legal exile for almost a hundred years. The introduction alone will have you wanting to keep turning the pages, excited to find out what happens next in this upbeat, funny, tragic, delirious story. The title is clever but a bit of a misnomer, as he grows this crop not for getting high, but for non-hallucinogenic, medicinal and other quite noble uses.

I might mention that I think this dude is the real deal (I loved his “voice” and perspective in The Long Haul, too.) I trust him and would follow his antics anywhere. His care for the chronically underemployed, transients, and cash-only workers is beautiful. The description of the Polish guy (formerly a PhD in industrial engineering from Krakow) who comes to empty his worker’s porta-potty, on page 105, and what Tadziu says about his new job on page106 is worth the price of the book. However, just for the record, Murphy doesn’t articulate a sense of holy calling or even a serious sense of vocation, even though he is clearly excited and driven. He got into The Hemp Space to strike it rich, make some much needed dough, likening himself to others who followed a boom (like the Gold Rush or the Silver Rush) into the Rocky Mountain State. Still, his descriptions of the work and the workers, are a blast, and, frankly, pretty honorable.

Murphy has some experience of starting up a business — for a while he was one of the premier importers of premier cashmere, complete with a private jet in swanky New England, but this, out in the Wild West —I’m telling you what: this is one start-up story you won’t forget…

A GARDENER and WRITER Soil: The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden Camille T. Dungy (Simon & Schuster) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Ha, yet another Colorado story. Like most of our best nature writers there is indeed a sense of calling, indeed, a sense of transcendence even, when they explore, stand in awe and wonder, and write, when they put pen to rugged journal (or fingers to sturdy laptop) as they see and ponder the great outdoors. Dungy is a literature professor living in Fort Collins, Colorado, and her sense of vocation as a teacher seems clear enough. Her husband, too, is a very dedicated, caring prof.  But she is also a writer, a published poet, and she is under contract to write this book — something about land and flowers, gardening and earthkeeping. She is taking care of her own plain lawn, nurturing indigenous plants, and more. It’s hard but beautiful work.

Her ability to write such luminous prose about foliage and bugs, slugs and butterflies, grasses and trees, is nothing short of remarkable. That she is called to this work, in a white neighborhood, as a black woman, adds to the drama and passion. This is glorious; very highly recommended.

A CHEF Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection Robert Farrar Capon (Modern Library) $20.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Capon was known as a theologian and Bible teacher; he was a writer (a book called Bed and Board on family life, a theological novel and a handful of extraordinary books of Biblical studies, among others.) But if his calling was to be an Episcopal priest and writer, his avocation of cooking (and being a food critic for the New York Times for a season in the 1960s) is what he is perhaps most known for. Certainly is it why he is most beloved; or, should I say that his most popular book, Supper of the Lamb, is so beloved. I can count on one hand the number of books that seem well known and appreciated by folks across the theological and denominational spectrum, and I can tell you of bunches of folks who have actually tried to replicate the extraordinary recipe for lamb that makes up the heart of this rare, gorgeously written, treatise.

Of course there is more than that, here. As the back cover says, it is “on everything from prayer to poetry to puff pastry.” And there is fabulous stuff about knives and that unforgettable bit about the glories of the onion. The subtext might be a book on the holy work of cooking and the calling that many have to create dishes — and maybe a life — that “will alway be more delicious than it is useful.”

COAL MINERS and LAWYERS and ADVOCATES Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia Chris Hamby (Little, Brown) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

This big book illustrates a sense of calling in so many ways — the call of the lawyers, the advocates of justice, the journalists, the medical docs who testified, over and over, the Union reps, and, of course, the writer, Chris Hamby, himself, are noble people fighting a “David versus Goliath” sort of campaign for justice. The dignity and hard, hard work of the coal miners themselves, men (and some women) who lived in the coal mining towns and suffering the consequences of going to work underground. I mentioned in my hefty review of this (the BookNotes that was posted November 1,2021) that my paternal grandfather died of complications from black lung, and this book was very, very important to me. I really recommend it.

If you know the kind of workers and unions and social service folk in the small mining towns of Appalachia (in this case, mostly northern Appalachian, from Southwestern Pennsylvania into West Virginia and Western Virginal) you will so appreciate this. If you don’t know much about Appalachia, this is the book to read. If you like stories of the struggle for justice against all odds, exposing the corruption of big business (and, sometimes, the complicity of the government) you have got to read Soul Full of Coal Dust. Yes, some jobs are exceedingly hard, even dangerous. The dignity of those growing up in this industry and portrayed beautifully. What a book.

A CIVIL SERVANT IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS Chasing the Devil at Foggy Bottom: The Future of Religion in American Diplomacy Shaun A. Casey (Eerdmans) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I wanted to list this as it is a serious, careful, heady study of the author’s role in John Kerry’s State Department and his leading the newly formed “Religion and Global Affairs project at State. He studied at Harvard Divinity School and taught public theology at Wesley in DC when he was tapped to enter the world of global conflicts and US diplomacy by helping train a team of those who could help leaders navigate the religions driving much of the complexity of the world’s politics. I’ve read books about spies and books about soldiers and while this doesn’t (on the face of it) have as much adventuresome doom, I kept turning pages, wanting to know more about how early 21st century statecraft was or wasn’t influence by Christians called to help the world understand the spirituality of geopolitics. It’s quite a calling and quite a book.

For what it is worth, I suspect Madame Secret Madeline Albright’s book, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs (Harper; $18.99) would also serve to scratch this itch, to see how world-class, major players in geopolitics were shaped by a sense of the call to public service and how, as Christians, they navigated their complicated work, day by day. I haven’t read her book yet, but it ought to be known as an example of a woman of integrity doing difficult work, as prayerfully as she could.

A WOODWORKER The Lost Carving: A Journey to The Heart of Making David Esterly (Penguin) $24.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

Watch for our every-other-week podcast (“Three books from Hearts & Minds”) to drop on Wednesday of this week where I regale listeners with my opinions in three sorts of books about faith and work, one genre of which served as an inspiration for this column: stories of people who found a sense of calling in their work or describe their passion with such gusto that is surely seems like a true vocation. This book is one of those and the writing is glorious, the story amazing, but the plot is easy to explain.

The oh-so-short version is that David Esterly is so taken with the beauty of the woodwork — done by master craftsman Grinling Gibbons in the late 1600s — in a certain British cathedral that he visits as a child that he cannot help but take up the career of being a woodworker. Years later, that very cathedral catches fire and the wonderfully artful woodwork is destroyed. Spoiler alert: craftsman David Esterly is brought in to repair the very place that drew him to the art of woodworking in the first place. As one reviewer put it, it is uncommon that he is “a visual artist who can coax as much beauty from words as he can from his primary medium.” What a story!

Laura Miller wrote in Salon that the book was “profound and wondrous, rich in thought and lovely in style.”

A VOCATIONAL LEADER The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work Steve Garber (IVP) $20.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This is not a memoir or a study of any one job, but it beautifully illustrates Steve’s rare ability to capture in his own unique and eloquent writing style, the ordinariness of so much that glorifies God. From how hamburgers are made at Elevation Burger restaurant to his own growing up with a scientist dad (and a rancher grandad) to stories of economic reforms being promoted by the global candy makers, Mars, Corporation, he tells (in short chapters) something about how folks long for an integrity that relates faith with life. There is a real tapestry here, and that woven fabric is pictured in the first photo that goes with the first essay.

You see, each short piece is enhanced with a photo, usually directly related to the theme of the essay. I once described this as an on-to-road journal, with Steve telling of talks he’s given, people he’s met, organizations he has consulted with, groups he has taught. From colleges asking about the vocation of teaching and learning to film makers creating some of the world’s most famous movies to business execs yearning to get behind the emptiness of a crass bottom line, he invites us into stories of integrity where (as he has said in another book) “vocation is integral, not incidental” to our faith and discipleship.

The quiet, gentle, eloquent storyteller who listens to others so very carefully and writes such compelling vignettes has, himself, had a lot of jobs. He writes about some here. And he sees the high calling of ordinary people in songs and books he reads too — you’ll appreciate his words on the importance of Charles Dickens and I hope you love his comments about Les Mis.

One of the first lines is typically intense, profound, and vital, until you realize it is also a joke. Most of life, he says, is pretty autobiographical. Garber’s small and easy to read collection yearning for a seamless life, named A Seamless Life, is mostly autobiographical and so it is a joy to read, near Labor Day, or any day. Highly recommended.

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

I have highlighted this wonderfully written before here at BookNotes, celebrating how its tender prose captures much about the land, the place, the contours of a life of faithfulness caring for this place. As mid-Western scholar and writer Phil Christian puts it, she turns “the fragments of American history into a story of repentance and renewal, and a beat up bit of land into a life-giving farm.”

Kriner, an English prof at Wheaton College, is attentive to stuff that matters, and it seems to me this is the sign of one called to this sort of work; to any work, really. In this beautiful combination of memoir and literature and nature wiring and social analysis, she invites us to care about our place, which is a calling we all have.

A FURNITURE MANUFACTURER Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local — and Help Save an American Town Beth Macy (Back Bay Books) $17.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

Beth Macy is clearly an example of one called to a vocation — she is a journalist and her books have inspired many. (She is more recently known for Dopesick, made into the captivating, must-watch, Netflix series, and it’s sequel, Raising Lazarus, where characters who respond to the call to care rise up to help those addicted to fentanyl and other crazy-making third-wave opioids.) In this older one, though, she tells a businessman in Bassett, Virginia, who fights to save the storied furniture factories and realizes he must fight the cheap, off-shore imports coming from China. In scenes to vivid to explain easily, he walks the factory floors, encourages the struggling workers, meets with distributors and retailers, and, yes, finally goes to China to track down the cheap knock offs and find out why the government is facilitating this fiasco that is destroying one of the great regions of manufacturing in the US.

Macy tells of “leal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, sheer grit, and cunning” to grow the company and save hundreds of jobs. Yet there are these hidden truths about the modern industrial practices in our neoliberal and globalized economy.

This is narrative nonfiction at its very best and I couldn’t put it down. Macy’s soul as a writer meets the souls of the workers, here, and she traces their fearless leader John Bassett III, a “shrewd and determined third-generation factory man.” I do not know if the words vocation or calling even appear in this epic story. They don’t have to.

A STEEL MILL / FOUNDRY SUPERVISOR Stronger Than Steel: The Wayne Anderson Story R.C. Sproul (Harper & Row; Value of the Person Consultants) $20.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I knew Wayne Alderson a bit when I worked at a Presbyterian Church in McKeesport, PA in the years of transition from the greater Pittsburgh areas being known as the City of Steel and the Steel Valley to being, by the end of the 1980s, a quintessential rust-belt city, writ large. Before all that, in the mid-1970s Wayne Alderson worked for management, running a struggling and racially tense foundry called Pittron in Glassport, PA. There was a hard and ugly strike there and things were bad, as the book explains. Seeing his work as a Christian — Alderson was being mentored at the time by his pastor and also Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul, who later wrote this book about him — he felt that he was called by God to do respectful work with others and his grace and imagination and Godly grit changed the face of the factory. He felt called to encourage his workers and he invited blue collar union guys to a Bible study, which had a huge impact. From there, they resisted racism and alcohol abuse and more. Anderson’s efforts at reconciliation between labor and management went nearly national — an innovative program teaching respect caught on in several places in various industries.

Wayne’s team of new followers of Jesus (and some who liked the respect and sense of calling to the community of dignified work who perhaps were not followers of Jesus) brought change and productivity to that Pittron Plant.

This second edition of the book tells more of Wayne’s story, penned by his daughter, Nancy, who carries on his legacy of taking up the vocation of being a change agent in industrial relations. What an example of somebody taking their faith into their work-space.

A WRITER Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life Anne Lamott (Anchor) $17.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

There are bunches of books about writing and most illustrated what Annie Dillard calls “the writing life” or how Wendell Berry writes about “standing by words.” (I adore, by the way, Wendell Berry’s under-appreciated honoring of the writing of New Jersey medical doctor and poet William Carlos Williams in his The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford.) Of the many helpful, and often autobiographical volumes we have for writers, I still most often recommend Anne Lamont’s, which is funny and wise, a good story and with much helpful stuff on being a writer. The opening pages alone, tell about her father, a writer, are always inspiring to me every time I open the book. Writing is, of course, about paying attention — “bird by bird, buddy,” as her father put it when her ten-year-old brother was overwhelmed doing a huge report on birds for school. Bird by bird, indeed. Bird by Bird is a modern classic.

A PROSECUTOR / SOCIAL WORKER Confessions of a Former Prosecutor: Abandoning Vengeance and Embracing True Justice Preston Shipp with Eric Wilson (Chalice Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This new book is an extraordinary example of someone who senses a strong call to being an agent of god in the world and who lives that out. There are complications along the way, including a twist of fate that “revealed how he enabled an unjust sentence for a 16-year old girl.” He discovered that “in the justice according to Jesus, adversaries can become allies.”

As David Dark notes,

Preston Shipp shares the microphone with a great cloud of loving and mostly living people you’ll want to look up and possibly track down to enter the healing game he describes…. The door to it is right here in these pages.”

Yep, his “ongoing conversion” is described as he steps into a life-long vocation of reforming America’s juvenile justice system.

Shipp’s calling led him to become an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Tennessee. Now he is the Associate Policy Director for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.

A PHILOSOPHER and COLLEGE PROFESSOR In This World of Wonders: Memoir of a Life in Learning Nicholas Wolterstorff (Eerdmans) $27.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

Talk about a life well lived. Wolterstorff is certainly one of the leading Christians scholars of our lifetime and in his impressive career he has written as a philosopher who is drawn to several reassuring themes. He has written about aesthetics and about justice; curiously, he has written exceedingly deep tomes about the nature of God, the nature of Christian worship, and the ways in which the arts might enhance such worship. Not everyone cares about his justice work, his political science or his philosophical examinations of liturgy and worship. But they care about his suffering.

Years ago, Nic lost a young adult son and his private journal, short, honest, compelling,  and called Lament for a Son became a best seller and remains a classic in some circles. Many feel like they know him as he feared his hurting soul in that little volume.

This autobiography tells vignettes from his life about his marriage and his Christian growth, about his experiences in South Africa and (years ago) in Palestine as he became increasingly an advocate for peace and justice among the world’s most marginalized. He continues to think and speak and write with a Christ-like sensitivity to those who are hurting and excluded.

Surely being a scholar, a teacher, indeed a philosopher, is a unique calling, not for everyone. But for anyone who is a beneficiary of the teaching and writing of such scholars, knowing their own backstory, how they came to be where they are, their own sense of calling, is a beautiful gift. In This World of Wonders: Memoir of a Life in Learning is, I think, a splendid must-read for anyone who follows his Dutch and Reformed church background. (His role in founding a CRC church in Grand Rapids known for gorgeous and somewhat innovative liturgy which helped give rise to the immensely popular Calvin Institute of Christian Worship is told here, as are fascinating details such as his collection of well-crafted furniture and his artful consideration of architecture, including building their own home.)

This is the memoir of one called to Christian scholarship, the story of a professor who has traveled as a public intellectual around the world. It’s a wonder, in a world of wonders.

TEACHERS What Teachers Make: In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World Taylor Mali (Berkeley) $15.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.00

Do you know this impassioned defense of teachers and why we need them now more than ever. Written a few years ago when at a dinner party somebody seemed to scoff at his work as a teacher and asked, “What do teacher’s make?” Well, in a talk that went viral, a poem/sermon that is breathtaking for its power, he replies You can imagine the good stuff that teachers make. It is sharp and funny and in this book he not only offers that famous reply but offers other poignant t stories of a life committed to teaching.

Kirkus Reviews called it “A valentine to teachers everywhere. Big, bright, life-lessons in a pocket-sized package.” I loved this and hope others taking up the calling of education would be inspired in this kind of way.  Only one with a high sense of calling says stuff like “I teach for the fire.”

A TEACHER The Flourishing Teacher: Vocation Renewal for a Sacred Profession Christiana Bieber Lake (IVP) $25.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

While this is wonderfully written and is packed full of school and personal life stories, I’ll admit it isn’t a memoir or even a happy sort of collection of tidbits like the wonders in the little Taylor Mali book, above. The Flourishing Teacher is a major work, a standard, now, I’d say, in our education section. There may be other great ones about developing a Christian viewpoint on pedagogy, books about how to Christianly conceive of schooling and teaching, but this gets to the heart of things in a way that most teachers will deeply appreciate. The very subtitle is the tip-off — “vocational renewal for a sacred profession.” Amen to that, eh?

The way Lake helps her readers understand the sacredness of their profession, and the way she invites vocational renewal is by walking the teacher through twelve months of her year. Starting in August (otherwise known as “Embrace the Lace”) she offers stories and guidance and episodes in this call to enter more conscientiously the rhythms of the academic calendar. Whether you need help in or out of the classroom, whether you work in public schools or are a college teacher, this introduction to the “landscapes of self-care, student engagement, and in structural struggles” is sure to help. Even as one who is not a teacher, I resonated with her call to “rediscover your passion for this vocation.”

ARTISTS Art and Sacrificial Love: A Conversation with Michael D. O’Brien Clemens Cavallin (Ignatius Press) $14.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96

There are dozens of great books about aesthetics and creativity, the calling of the Christian artist and the theology or spirituality of being a creative. So many are among my favorites, but most are, if witty and delightful, still didactic. For this list, I mostly wanted stories, and this short book is written nearly in the style of a novel, a nicely told report of the conversation between two Roman Catholic artists. While O’Brien is better known as a novelist — Father Elijah, The Fathers Tale, Eclipse of the Sun, Sophia’s House, and more) — he started as a painter. (There are full-color reproductions of some of Cavallin’s visual work and some of O’Brien’s paintings as well.) This is a tender and personal and deeply religious conversation about the anguish and the joy of being a Christian in the late modern world, and, particularly about being an artist.

As Cavallin (who is Swedish) prepares you to enter this conversation, he writes,

While writing this book I had in mind especially those of you who …  feel drawn to art as an expression of a strong Christian vocation. It need not be sacred art, but any form of art that takes the Christian beliefs and life of the artist seriously and who does not accept a strong division of reality and oneself into secular and religious, private and public, matter and spirit.

ECOLOGISTS and COLLEGE PROFESSORS Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha Gail Gunst Heffner & David P. Warners (Michigan State University Press) $29.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.96

I have reviewed this major work twice before and now I want to suggest it yet again, to be read through the lens of one’s sense of call and how God guides folks to commit to decades long work, work that matters over the longer haul.

Gail and David are friends and I know what some might call their social imaginary, their Reformed worldview, their own sense that the grace they’ve experienced in Christ should set them into the world as culture-makers and Kingdom witnesses, pointing the way to goodness and justice and social healing. They’ve got this stuff in their bones and Beth and I enjoy and admire them greatly.

Yet, this book is a detailed and captivating story less about their faith and motivation — although they speak explicitly about it at times — but more about this dream that they had, this project, this hope to recruit college students, institutional authority, church and state, together, to help heal an old and very polluted stream that ran through downtown Grand Rapids, where they lied. What started out as a hope to study and document and eventually restore this notoriously depleted and depleted waterway in a complex watershed (of rural, suburban, small town and highly urbanized environments) because a decades long campaign, funded in part by the DEA and backed by numerous neighborhood associations and river keepers, to literally reimagine how watersheds are seen and how faith is expressed. Their passion for this educational and culturally-reforming movement — resisting some of the chief idols of our time — shines through, even as they share (as is fitting for a peer-reviewed, semi-academic work) the scientific, ecological, and policy matters they were working towards.

Much of the story shows not only their dream of ecological faithfulness (and their faith’s engagement with what some call “reconciliation ecology”) but their work as educators and Christian college leaders. Dave is a scientist and his calling to do research, and teach students to engage in meaningful science work, is more than a delight, but a real  privilege to see. Gail’s tireless efforts to harness the social capital of the university to seek the common good of the community and her long-standing efforts in academic-based service learning are clearly a high calling. To read how the two of them, in their respective vocations, with lots of others joining in, sustained this large project of empowering others to care for the clean up of Plaster Creek is a great, great example of faithfulness explored together, being guided by their respective vocations. That they have stewarded well this project steadfastly over many years is what this book finally shows us. Hooray.

Breaking Through: My Life in Science Katalin Kariko (Crown Publishing) $28.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Dr. Kariko is a Hungarian-American biochemist who specializes in RNA-mediated mechanisms. She is an adjunct professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania, and her research was foundational in the development of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines. Which is to say, she saved lives, tens of thousands of lives.

What an inspiring story, filled with the hardships of growing up in the bleak, communist Hungary where her father was a butcher their home lacked running water. She tells of her remarkable immigration to the US and the gift of a postdoctoral fellowship (in 1985) with the hope of remaking a corner of the field of medicine. She documents her struggles as a woman researcher doing studies in what was considered (then) rather arcane. She was disrespected, experienced failures, yet was persistent. She knows the power of tenacity — geesh, there’s a scene where is is plagued with cockroaches in a windowless lab — and the importance of this virtue as scientists search for answers in the gaps of establish knowledge. She was being methodical in her research, pushing for years for innovation and, when the Covid-19 virus caused a global pandemic, her work on mRNA became vital. She tells her story, here, in what Jennifer Doudna (a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry) “a riveting testament to resilience and the power of unwavering belief. ”

WAREHOUSE WORKERS, ETC. Fulfillment: American in the. Shadow of Amazon Alec MacGillis (Picador) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

As you know, I love narrative nonfiction, that creative sort of reporting and expose that draws us in, giving us well-written descriptions and backstory. This is one of the very best, and important book and a book whose value (according to a piece in the Financial Times) “at this moment in history is unmistakable. Sarah O’Connor continues that this richly reported portrait is “not of a company, but of the country it has helped to reshape.”

There are other books that look in greater detail about the unjust and corrupt business practices of the Amazonian behemoth, but this book mostly features the workers for the many fulfillment centers Amazon has built all over the land. It features extraordinary stories of extraordinary goings-on, from Seattle to Texas to Washington, DC to the way in which they turned a famous, storied steel mill outside of Baltimore and rehired the steel workers to work the conveyor belts in the fulfillment center. In Ohio, “a hard-bitten cardboard maker moves from job to job, while his employers supplant auto manufacturers and bring dead-end work to dead shopping centers.”

To show how Amazon has impacted the retail world, MacGillis studies the now shuttered central Pennsylvania chain, The Bon Ton (and has a section on the Queen Street shopping plaza that is just a few miles from our shop.) It spends some time showing how Jeff Bezos ushers lobbyists and government contractors into his Kalorama mansion.

Fulfillment vividly details the devastating costs of Amazon’s dominance and brutal business practices, showcasing an economy that has concentrated in private hands staggering wealth and power while impoverishing workers, crushing independent business, and supplanting public-governance with private might.

As hurtful as this outfit has been to us and our bookstore (and to the health of the bookstore industry at large) and as bitter as I am about this sordid story, my heart went out to the workers, those in trucking and transportation and warehousing, those who work in data centers and delivery hubs. As the back cover of this wonderfully written book puts it, across the country, “civic fabric is unraveling and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.”

A SOLDIER Waging Peace: One Soldier’s Story of Putting Love First Diane Oestreich (Broadleaf) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I hope you recall our big review of this when it released in 2020. The book was a very memorable read and I hope the author is continuing to reach out to many, telling her story of a vocation misunderstood, and the crisis that obliged her to reconsider.

You see, Diane was in the US Army and as a combat medic was deployed to Iraq and, in an episode that seems shocking but should not be surprising, she was commanded to run over an Iraqi child to keep her convoy rolling and keep her battle buddies safe. As she entered the country and was faced with the war, she pondered her own faith, what Jesus taught (as she recalled from Sunday school) and what she really thought she would do if she had to kill. Alas, she was quickly confronted with this choice she never thought she’d have to make.

The story is moving and poignant, adventuresome and well told. I shouldn’t spoil it, but I suppose you can guess that she must speak up and refuse to fight in this awkward setting in the war zone. She ponders long and hard what faithful Christian discipleship entails and wonders what it means for her to be a Christian called to love our enemies.

Waging Peace is a moving book, obviously written by a person with a large patriotic streak. This is no left-wing screed from an old hippy pacifist. But she does conclude that God comes first and that her faithfulness to the way of Jesus her Savior means she also must stop waging war and must, as the title say, wage peace. Let’s just say this threw the proverbial monkey-wrench into her workplace. My heart went out to her, I admired her so, and hold this book up not only as a clear-headed testimony of one soldier who walks away, but as an example of the courage some of us may need if we are forced to compromise our convictions or values in our various jobs. Take courage.

A NUN Cloistered: My Years as a Nun Catherine Coldstream (St. Martin’s) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I have had this on my stack to read this summer and I’m about to dive in…. It’s going to be a slow, careful read, I think, as it is considered “a memoir of emotions felt viscerally.” There are spiritual insights, I’m told, and “beautifully crafted lessons.” It is about her idealist call to this vocation, her deep loneliness, and in what might be a mesmerizing style, a glimpse not into the rigors of a conventional, cloistered, monastery, but her discontent and her conclusion that she had to leave the religious life.

Many list Kathleen Norris’s spiritual memoir, Cloister Walk, as an all-time favorite, and perhaps this will be somewhat similar. I adored a book I read years ago about the long call into the Jesuit priesthood, A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, written by Andrew Krivak, a guy who ends up falling in love and after years of taking up that vocation, followed his heart out of the priesthood and ministry. I have heard nothing but fantastic things about Cloistered: My Years as a Nun and I’m eager to join Coldstream in her own journey towards sensing a call, and the realization— think of Henri Nouwen’s moving failure to discern a call to live among the poor in Central America as described in Gracias. — that this was not for her, or at least not anymore. Wow.

A DOCTOR The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine Ricardo Nuila (Scribner) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40  We also have a handsome hardcover on sale for $20.00 if you’d like that…it would make a nice gift.)

Called “gut-wrenching” and “unforgettable” and “lyrical” and “as warm and humanely written as it is urgent and necessary”, The People’s Hospital is “an antidote to hopelessness” and is said to be “a call to action wrapped in powerful storytelling.”

Ricardo Nuila is a physician who follows five uninsured people from Houston, Texas as “their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care.” The story unfolds around each of these patients — one is a restaurateur whose insurance doesn’t cover his growing cancer expenses, another is a college student and retail clerk, yet another is a young mother with a high-risk pregnancy, and the fourth is an undocumented immigrant. Geronimo is a 36 year old whose liver failed puts him in a situation where his meager disability check disqualifies him for Medicaid.  Yet, despite the detail and poignant storytelling as we follow these main characters, the county hospital called Ben Taub is the place that becomes the main character and Dr. Nuila works with empathy and care to explore how the broken medical system can be restored in a way that could help these clients. Nuila works like a saint called to these ill patients (even though he would not put it that way) and his story will give you hope.

Besides his writing and his work at Ben Taub, Dr. Nuila is a professor of medicine and medical ethics and health policy at Baylor College of Medicine where he directs the Humanities Expression and Arts Lab (HEAL) program.

A MOTHER and WIFE Stretch Marks I Wasn’t Expecting: A Memoir on Early Marriage and Motherhood Abbie Smith (Kalas) $15.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.76

We have so many good books on parenting that they are falling off the shelves. From every possible perspective and on every imaginable topic, there are Christian (and otherwise) books for almost anyone. Many are very good. Some convey good information but are a bit didactic.

Every now and then we get one that is less a parenting guidebook but a story, a memoir, as this one is, of a young woman who traces the ups and downs of her interior life as she navigates the newness of her recent marriage and eventually her new motherhood. There is nothing tragic or even odd about all this except insofar the woman is a thoughtful Christian leader and was unmarried for quite a while. And there are now some new things to adjust to, some new self identify, some new sense of this new season of calling.

I have long admired Abbie and Beth and I were delighted to promote this book when it was new. Somewhat literary (but not arcane or overdone) it is a honest account of her taking up her vocation as young mom as a young woman. We adored it. Enjoy!

A PREACHER / PASTOR The Preaching Life Barbara Brown Taylor (Cowley Books) $17.95 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.36

There are chapters in this first book of Barbara Brown Taylor that I nearly have memorized. As an occasional public speaker, there are paragraphs here that are great to quote, stories from her memoir that I retell and cite. There are a few great pages about how a holy sense of sacrament can color how so many ordinary people do their jobs and she recounts the — a truck driver, a gardener, a doctor, a word processor. As she tells of her own story of vocation, coming to sense she was called to ministry, I was mesmerized and inspired.

The second half of this book is a collection of her famously well-crafted sermons. They are well worth reading and as I recall, most are very good. But it is her life story, her girlhood, her sense of vocation, her early approach to imagination and Bible reading, and worship that captivates me. And, again, those sections on vocation are precious. This is a great, short collection of essays that essentially form an early auto-biography of Taylor’s own call.

UNEMPLOYED and THE BUILDING TRADES The Cliff Walk: A Job Lost and A Life Found Don J. Snyder (Back Bay Books) $21.99 / OUR SALE PRICE – $17.59

This is a beautiful, provocative memoir that has stayed in print since the mid-1990s and I will never forgetting reading it, being so dumbfounded at the author’s stupid pride — he lost his job as a college professor and couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife or others near him. For months (!) as he struggled to find work. This reflection (the first half of the book, mostly) about unemployment, especially among the previously white collar, may seem dated, now, but the feelings and shame and financial worries are clearly the same, if not worse. Snyder’s hope to quickly find another job dissipated and soon he was living a lie. As an English prof and writing teacher, at least he could, later, tell the story with candor and great feeling.

Of course, driving the narrative is this sense of his own lack of identity; he still viewed himself as a college professor: it is who he is.

The second half of the book offers what I have often said is some of the most brilliant writing about blue collar work, being a construction work and roofer, that I have ever read. The job he gets is working on is for mansions overhanging the spectacular cliffs off the New England coast, in Maine. The work is dangerous and in dangerously cold weather. It is painful to read about; just dreadfully painful. And here his epiphany kicks in.

As Snyder finds his groove, comes to loves his new job, he finds what he now can say is some sense of calling and we waxes eloquent about the sanctity of working with ones hands. This, this, this is what he was meant for, and his vivid writing about this difficult work in the building trades is nothing short of stunning.

A ROCK STAR and SOCIAL REFORMER Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story  Bono (Knopf) $34.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

I’ve got my list of favorite books by or about rock stars, and this, doubtlessly, is on the top of the list. (Yes, even better than the great big memoir by Bruce Cockburn, Rumours of Glory and the hard to forget and even bigger volume by Jann Wenner, Like a Rolling Stone. ) What is so amazing about this one, besides just how very interesting it all is, and how overtly Christian it consistently is, is how grand of a life Bono and his boys in the band have lived. The way they have leveraged their fame for the good of the world, advocating against world hunger and singing in war zones, and lobbying key world leaders for justice and peace. He knows famous artists and statesmen, he knows religious leaders (and reads good Christian books) and yet can rock and roll (and sometimes party) with the best of them. By turns exciting, sad, tragic, hopeful, radical, provocative, sensible, inspiring, Surrender tells a long and important story in a fun but important voice. I’ve said it before at BookNotes and will say it here, again: this is a great book, and a great illustration of somebody who felt called by God to do this work, and through it all, found ways to live into this vocation, this odd vocation, of being one of the most important rock stars the world has ever known.

A FAILED MISSIONARY and his MOTHER Runaway Radical: A Young Man’s Reckless Journey to Save the World –  When Doing Good Goes Wrong Amy Hollingsworth & Jonathan Hollingsworth (Thomas Nelson) $15.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

I suppose on Labor Day as we celebrate a sense of calling that many fell about their jobs I can name one that seriously went awry. I wrote about this when it first came out and I have thought about it often over the years. As we fan the flames of Kingdom enthusiasm, as we invite people to discern the still small voice of God guiding them along their way, can we overdo it? Might there be safeguards in place to assure us that those we love or advise or influence don’t go off the deep end?

Jonathan Hollingsworth writes his story with honesty and bravery. His mother, writer Amy Hollingsworth wrote every other chapter, telling her side of the complicated and painful story. (Amy Hollingsworth, by the way, has written a number of very good books, but is perhaps best known for her friendship with Mr. Rogers and his book on him, The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers — speaking of a guy with a calling to work in media.)

If I was doing a more lengthy review I’d explain more of this extraordinary story, but the short gist is simply this: having read a number of popular “radical” Christian books in his college years, young Jonathan is taken with a passion to serve the poor. He gets rid of most of his stuff, rejecting American commercialism and materialism. On the face of it, it seems to me, it is troubling, with just an extreme view, but I’ve known Catholic Workers who have built an honorable life in radical resistance to injustice and it may be a live, Christian political option. But something was amiss, this quick turnaround, this extremism, this — may be call it youthful arrogance?

The story continues that Jonathan strikes up a friendship with a mission school in Africa and he goes there with a guitar to teach music. It does not go well. The school is not as progressive as he had been led to believe and, eventually, he realized they are strictly fundamentalist, and toxic. They are abusive, and, almost as bad, they misrepresent themselves to their gracious donors stateside. His attempt to discuss these concerns gets him branded as a troublemaker and (you have to read it to fully understand) they essentially hold him captive. He wants to leave and he simply cannot.

In retrospect he and his mom write this story of what it means to follow one’s heart in Christian service, what it’s like to live into a calling, what it means to serve well but not be weird or dysfunctional or harming about it all.

Obviously we don’t please God by doing this or that, let alone getting involved in less than healthy missionary projects. This painful story not only harms the idealistic faith of Jonathan, but for a while confuses his relationship with his mother and father, his home church, his old friends, and, eventually, the children he went to help in the first place. What a book this is, a cautionary tale, and more.

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Our jobs and callings are, as we say, cursed with thorns. Even as redeemed children of God, we see through a glass darkly. We long for the day about which we sing at Christmas in that great line from “Joy to the World.” Jesus comes to make his blessings known — where? The famous line does not say “in our hearts” but, properly, “far as the curse is found.” Does the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus effect how you think about the creation goodness of work, the fallen nature of the thorns, and how Christ is bringing His redemptive Kingdom to bear “far as the curse is found” — even in your workspaces?

Many of the stories above are not particularly religious, but they offer a creative window into different kinds of ways people follow their passions and do their jobs. Some end well, some do not. Let’s continue to read and write about this, working, always, as my friend Steve Garber puts it, for a “seamless life.”

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BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Can you believe it is almost September? Oh my.  Here are some books that are coming soon, good for you to PRE-ORDER NOW.

Of course you can pre-order nearly any book, any time, and we are delighted to serve you by getting you on a waiting list of whatever you’re most eager to receive. There are so many good books coming out this fall, so stay tuned.

For now, here are six that many of our customers will surely be interested in. They are important. Three are adult books, there’s one kid’s book, and two study Bibles. We list the dates they are to be released and in some cases I suspect we’ll get them early.

ALL ARE 20% OFF. If you are ordering more than one, please tell us if you want them shipped consolidated together when they all arrive, or if we should send each one out promptly as soon as it releases.  Whatever suits your fancy. Thanks.

The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance Jemar Tisby (Zondervan) $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99  RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 3, 2024

I hope you know Jemar Tisby, PhD — the popular, if controversial, scholar / activist from Mississippi who has done great work educating church folks (and others) about American history and fighting racism. (Dr. Tisby’s PhD is in history from the University of Mississippi, an esteemed, Southern institution of higher learning and he has been an active Christian leader and spokesperson for racial justice for a long time. We respect him greatly.)

Tisby’s first book (and excellent, accompanying video curriculum), The Color of Compromise, explored the ways in which church people of various sorts compromised at strategic times throughout American history to accommodate themselves to the racial animus at the heart of much of the American experiment. It was well-researched, honest (about both the good and the bad) and a real wake-up call for those who may not have realized just how very implicated and complicit many Christian churches were to both overtly evil racism and more subtle sorts of institutional discrimination and systemic harms. It garnered some push back, I suppose, but was most very highly regarded. I helped lead an online group using the videos and it was a fabulous learning experience.

The second book picked up where the last chapter of The Color of Compromise ended, with the natural question of what we are to do; how shall we then live, to use Biblical language. It was called How to Fight Racism and was excellent. There is a video curriculum for that as well with a lively study/participants guide. How To…came out in 2021 (with a paperback release in 2023) and by then the harsh voices of the evangelical right were now on higher alert, making (foolish) public accusations that Tisby was a Marxist, that he was teaching a pagan sort of CRT, etc. etc. (Yes, as if you couldn’t guess, the sloppy, attack journalist Megan Basham makes an inaccurate statement about him in her recent, disreputable, Shepherds for Sale.) We have promoted Jemar’s work gladly here and we are grateful for his research, his prophetic clarity, and his steadfastness. You should order this book and support this brother.

The soon to be released, The Spirit of Justice is, in a way, a return to his first passion, telling the stories of the history of race and racial justice in the US. Pitched as a follow-up to The Color of Compromise, it is, in a way, the reverse: this is the story of those who stood up to be counted, who did the right thing. Just as there were those who perpetuated racist ideas and unjust policies, those who compromised, so, too, there are those who told a better story. There were those who created positive proposals, whose churches took stands, who raised the bar, paid the price, made a difference. These true stories are extraordinary examples of those who realized their faith demanded that they (in various ways in various places) agitated for justice.

The back cover gives one great reason why this book is so very urgent. It says:

When the struggle for racial justice gets discouraging, history can give us hope. These true stories from the past will inspire you to keep up the fight.

As Tisby notes, “we cannot be passive in our efforts to learn the lessons from the past. We must recommit ourselves to gaining hope, inspiration, and wisdom from our ancestors…”

This historical survey covers a lot. There is some stuff about the colonial era, the pre-Civil War years full of colorful characters and abolitionists; this is all very, very interesting and inspiring. He moves to an era of “building black institution” and names leaders and organizations that were thrilling to learn about. He has the requisite (and always fascinating) stuff on King and the others of the largely faith-based civil rights movement. He names women, of course, all along the way, but has one chapter dedicated to “women of the movement.” His section on the latter days the civil rights movement (the late 1960s into the 70s) introduces us to amazing stories of the theologians like James Cone and political leaders like Shirley Chisholm, and the extraordinary Myrlie Evers-Williams who brought renewal to the troubled NAACP in the 1990s. I was only a little surprised and really delighted to see his tribute to famous Roman Catholic sister Thea Bowman. This guy knows his stuff!

Near the end of the book Tisby looks at the rising generation of young Christian activists and writers (and, again, we were delighted to see that he honors Cole Arthur Riley and offers a sampling of some of the other great Black Christian writers who have emerged in recent years. His curation of who to highlight and his explanations about why they are important is beautiful.) All of this gives me great hope. I bet it will for you, too.

A short review like this can only hint at the great amount of good content in this book, and we invite you to get it on your shelf as soon as possible. Sure there are other books on black history, even others on black Christian leaders. Not long ago I celebrated Awakening to Justice: Faithful Voices from the Abolitionist Past from the “Dialogue on Race and Faith Project” published by IVP Academic ($28.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40. And just a day ago we got the brand new book Yonder Come the Day: Exploring the Collective Witness of the Formerly Enslaved by Jasmine L. Holmes (Baker Books; $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19.) We’ve got so much to learn from our American past and the “great cloud of witnesses” of people of faith who have gone before are cheering us on. Let’s get on with it. Don’t worry if somebody calls you woke. This is a path for the righteous, and this soon-to-be-released book by Jemar Tisby will help us all. Highly recommended.

The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust Francis S. Collins (Little, Brown and Company) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00  RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

I trust that you have at least heard of the great scientist, physician, public health leader (and exceptionally gracious Christian) Dr. Francis Collins. Known world-wide as an advocate for the disabled and sick (he discovered the gene issue that causes Cystic Fibrosis) and for a part of his public life was the director of the NIH program that was mapping the human genome. His work has been groundbreaking and he gives the credit to God for his abilities and for the ways in which science and medicine can be a blessing.

He wrote a lovely, powerful book about how the glories of science can point to God (The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief) and a popular-level but somewhat detailed study of genetics in 2011 entitled The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine. As his fame grew and he had more opportunities to share his faith with the watching world, and, importantly, colleagues in labs and research institutions, he put together a reader, a great collection of essays or book excerpts that presents the Christian faith for smart skeptics. (That fabulous anthology is called Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith.) Eventually, his team successfully sequenced all three billion letters of our DNA. He went on to serve three presidents as the director of the National Institutes of Health.

Collins was instrumental with a few other Christians whose vocations had them working in the field of science to start a think-tank and resource center that proclaimed a perspective on the integration of faith and science that is called BioLogies. Rejecting “young Earth creationism” for a more nuanced sort of Christian appreciation for evolutionary data, he co-authored a very helpful guidebook for understanding this congenial sort of Christian worldview that “thinks Christianly” about the task of science. It is called Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions, published in hardcover by IVP in 2011.

When Covid hit and the pandemic ravaged the world, his work increasingly became focused on public health; even though at one point 3,000 people were dying each day, some people (including those who identified as evangelicals) resisted taking precautions and we know many agitated citizens got very angry about the government’s efforts to mitigate the crisis. (My recent study of a handful of books about the rise of the far right and the militias and what led to the attack on the Capitol on January 6 of 2021 are connected to this.) It grieves me to think that one of the finest scientists and public voices of evangelical faith in our day has been maligned and attacked…

And so, this forthcoming book is not only a sight for sore eyes — it has been a while since Collins has published anything new — but it was written from and speaks about these last hard years and into this cultural moment as wisely as anything I’ve read lately. Yes, there are stories of science and the ways in which we should or shouldn’t “trust the science” (and what that even means.) But besides his hope to reinvigorate a similar (if somewhat more generic) public conversation as has BioLogos about what science is and isn’t, The Road to Wisdom does something more profound: it is inviting us to question what we mean by truth. And how we might even get beyond the mere reliability of facts and data, to a deeper sense of truthfulness, something akin to fidelity, to deep knowledge, to wisdom. Yes, the title is apt: Collins sees these four components of his subtitle (truth, science, faith, and trust) as part of a path towards wisdom.

It is just lovely to see a book that has such a wide and prestigious list of endorsers. From cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Kay Redfield Jamison (author of the An Unquiet Mind) to Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel laureate who wrote A Crack in Creation, to the aging statesman former President Bill Clinton, to Philip Yancey who calls him “a national treasure.” Listen to Jane Goodall, certainly one of the most known scholars of our era:

This book should be read by anyone, Christian or non-Christian alike, who is seeking meaning or trying to make sense of our troubled times. — Jane Goodall

The Goodall quote is an indication of a few good things: The Road to Wisdom could be enjoyed by nearly anyone, regardless of their own faith or philosophical views.  In a way, there is a bit in here on our deepest beliefs — what is truth is religiously-laden, of course — and his call to faith is potent but gracious. I’d give this book to anyone who is even mildly open to religious reading.

But, more, a bit of the book is about trust, and he mostly means trusting one another as a culture, as fellows in our land. He addresses our polarized society directly and he tells some tragic stories about the hostility he faced as he stood nearly at the center of the storm about Covid regulations, masking, vaccines, and more. I could write a review just on the penultimate  “trust” chapter…

The last section is called “Hope and a Plan of Action.” I’ve read it twice. I will revise it again — it’s very good. It is not rocket science, and he could have gone deeper, but it is a lovely and powerful message, a good guide, a helpful plan for moving forward.

The book is dedicated “to the memory of my friend and spiritual mentor the Reverend Tim Keller.” Order it today and we’ll send it out promptly. Thanks for caring.

To Gaze Upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice Samuel Parkison (IVP Academic) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00 RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 9, 2024

I know not everybody who reads our BookNotes cares about hefty historical theology, but I was excited about this as soon as I saw it announced. The publisher entices us to work through this serious stuff — which has fabulous advanced reviews — by saying this:

Though the doctrine of the beatific vision has woefully been forgotten in the church today, Samuel Parkison argues that the beatific vision is central for the life of the church today. Through close readings of Aquinas, Dante, Calvin, and more, Parkison reminds us of the beatific vision’s historical and contemporary significance.

I’m very eager to see this and hope some of you may be, too. I just want to make one concern — not really a disclaimer, since I haven’t seen the book.

One of the things that has most transformed much of the best evangelical thinking and living these days has been a recovery of the full gospel story — which is the announcement of the Kingdom of God, inaugurated in Christ — and the trajectory that the Bible gives us towards the renewal of all creation. Since we are not going to spend eternity in heaven, but Christ comes down to be with us (see the last chapters of the Bible!) that is, since everything in life matters, we need a piety which embraces the spirituality of the ordinary and worldview that affirms our embodied, day-to-day living in a good, if broken, creation that is truly being restored in Christ Jesus.

Although eschatology isn’t the most important matter in theological knowledge, I suppose, it could be argued that what we think of how our story ends, where we and history are going, what our lives are about as we hope in the future, decisively effects how we live now. And if we are right about what (just for instance) Richard Middleton so beautifully lays out in his major work, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology or, about what N.T. Wright invites us to in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, we will have a missional vision that is gritty and down-to-earth, seeing the connections between creation and re-creation, between incarnation and resurrection. All of life is redeemed as Christ Himself is glorified by summing up “all things in Himself” as it is allusively put in Ephesians 1:10. So I want nothing to distract us from our calling as stewards of creation and nothing to detract from the Bible’s own narrative trajectory of creation regained. Behold, it says at the end of Good Book, God is making “all things (re)new(ed.) Right? You betcha!

Now the notion of the beatific vision, insofar as I understand it (which I probably don’t — another big reason why I’m eager for this book to release soon) is that we are caught up at the End with the beautiful vision of Jesus, upon whom we will gaze in extraordinary splendor. In heaven we will see Him face-to-face. What a hope! Who doesn’t want that?

I do hope, though, that this author and his book, Gaze Upon God, does not pit one aspect of the true story of the whole world that says we will live in a renewed Paradise, enjoying God’s world as God wanted us to in the beginning, as if seeing Jesus somehow removes the context (what Al Wolter’s once called “the circumference”) of the scope of redemption. I hope it is not either/or but both/and (we see the glories of the new creation and we see God face to face, in the very face of Jesus.)

Some who have taken great inspiration and have staked their very lives on a transforming vision from pondering the implications of a conviction about a (re)new(ed) creation (and the consequential affirmations of cultural duties and enjoyments in the creation that God so loves, here and now) have needed to get past an otherworldly sort of spirituality and an ethereal eschatology. Speculating about the rapture and fixating too much about heaven, have, in fact, crippled many of us and we have learned to resist such misguidedness. Rather, with a proper understanding of God’s story, we’ve championed books with titles like Heaven Is Not My Home: Living in the Now of God’s Creation by Paul Marshall and Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Why Everything You Do Matters to God by Michael Wittmer. Both of these, by the way, are by authors who love Jesus with all they’ve got and I’m sure are eager for his promised return to heal the “vandalization of shalom” that sin has caused.

So what should we believe about the mystical significance of this encounter with the face of God? What even is the beatific vision? Is it mostly a Roman Catholic thing? Can its insights and power and solace and hope be harnessed for more faithful living in these complicated days? I’m sure that Parkison will show us how a retrieval of this doctrine will inform our daily Christian lives.  (In fact, see chapter 6 for this exact theme.) We must resist (as G-C professor Adonis Vida puts it, “a captivity to a pragmatist and naturalist understanding” of the nature of our faith and salvation. Perhaps this is — to draw the matter very broadly — part of our need to think about “re-enchantment” in a so-called secular age. Hmmm.

Here’s the table of contents:

1.  What Is the Beatific Vision?
2.  Biblical Foundations for the Beatific Vision
3.  A Cloud of Witnesses, Part One: Pre-Reformation Historical Witness
4.  A Cloud of Witnesses, Part Two: Reformation and Post-Reformation Historical Witness
5.  Retrieval for Reformed Evangelicals
6.  The Beatific Vision and the Christian Life
7.  Postscript: The Beatific Vision and Global Christianity

It makes perfect sense that one of the great ecumenical, historical, and dare I say sacramental theologians of today, Hans Boersma, likes this book and heartily commends it. Boersma says:

This is easily the best primer on the beatific vision today. Samuel Parkison’s scholarly yet wide-ranging treatment — Scripture, history, philosophy, theology — makes To Gaze upon God a valuable resource and accessible textbook. Grounded in a realist metaphysic, Parkison’s moderate Reformed approach judiciously encourages evangelicals to take seriously the tradition’s teaching on the transformative vision of God. Parkison effectively puts to rest the notion that the Reformation did away with belief in the beatific vision. Here is a book sure to rekindle our longing for happiness in God. — Hans Boersma, Nashotah House Theological Seminary, author of Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry

Listen to Michael Haykin, a Baptist church history prof and scholar of the Puritans, who seems to anticipate my own concerns and makes me think that Gaze Upon God is not going to fall into the things I worry about (above.) It might have proven nice for author Sam Parkison, too, since he himself writes, as a Baptist, “Should I even be talking like this?” Ha. Check this out:

This overview of the history of Christian reflection on the beatific vision is an extremely important study, for it rightly reveals the central place that the hunger to gaze upon God has had in Christian tradition. But this is a hunger that far too many Western evangelicals in this ‘Secular Age,’ as Charles Taylor has termed it, seem to have lost and even rejected as pie-in-the-sky pietism. May this study be used by God to reawaken this hunger and so empower our witness to the ever-present God in this day! — Michael Haykin, professor of church history

Hey, one other nifty thing about this forthcoming title. The author — who has penned several other books on God, the Trinity, and such — is a theology professor in (get this): The United Arab Emirates. Did you even know there is a seminary there? Hooray for this.

NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Bible edited by Preston Sprinkle (Zondervan)

gray hardcover $49.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $39.99

tan imitation leather $79.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $63.99

When ordering don’t forget to tell us which edition you want.

RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 10, 2024

The Zondervan company that manages the rights to the NIV translation does many nice study Bibles, and we stock a lot, from the seeker-oriented Quest Study Bible to the rigorously evangelical Biblical Theology Study Bible edited by D.A. Carson, from the excellent globally-minded Justice Study Bible to the gospel-centered The Jesus Bible, from the NIV Faith & Work Study Bible (where there is even a sidebar entry about me, believe it or not) to the lovely Encouraging Word Bible by Max Lucado, from the various artful ones that have room for coloring (Journal the Word for Woman, for instance) to the useful Cultural Background Study Bible. Of course, by far, the best-selling, classic study Bible is the NIV Study Bible which has been around for decades and updated several times. Each of these many study edition comes in hardback or softer, nice imitation leather-bound editions, so there are plenty of solid options.

[And these are only some of the ones available in the popular NIV translation. Give us a holler if you want to know about other good translations, from the NLT, NRSVue, ESV, CEB, NASB, KJV or NKJ, or the Roman Catholic American Standard translation, among others. And we are fond of Peterson’s great paraphrase The Message. We have a lot!

And now, one more in the NIV family of study Bible editions.

The NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Bible draws its name from a often-used trope in various quarters that God’s coming but not fully here yet Kingdom is “upside down” from the ways of this world. I’m pretty sure that Preston Sprinkle, who edits this multi-author, major Bible resource, read the classic on the Sermon on the Mount, The Upside Down Kingdom by Donald Kraybill, a remarkable book published by a Mennonite publisher, Herald Press, decades ago. I think of Kraybill’s provocative study whenever I hear the phrase, but I know it has been used by all manner of speakers and preachers. There is no doubt that it rings true: everything about Jesus’s ways is counterintuitive. Let’s hope the notes of this study edition bring that out, showing the alternative community God’s people are to be shaped into if we allow the unfolding drama of God’s Word to color and form our posture and imagination, our faith and our practice. I’m assuming the notes will be mostly centrist evangelical in their theological persuasion, using writers from a variety of denominations, informed by up-to-date scholarship without being overly critical or trendy. They promise to pick up on themes in the Biblical text that point us to ways we are to — as their marketing slogan puts it — “Think Deeply // Love Widely.”

Like any good study edition the soon to be released Upside-Down Kingdom Bible will have hundreds of side-column notes, good introductions to each book of the Bible, full-page articles throughout. Zondervan Bibles uses a type font that has proven to be easy on the eye for sustained reading and this is in an 8.5 font. There is a two-color page design and ribbon markers.

You know that we believe that God calls believers to (as the promo for this study edition puts it) “live faithfully in a way that flips the wisdom of worldly kingdoms on its head.” We are excited about this one, for sure.

I’m sure it will have textual notes that open up our understanding of a Biblical perspective on topics such as race and ethnicity, creation care, the arts, leadership and power, science, abortion, wealth and poverty, lament and grief, gender and sexuality, politics, baptism, singleness and friendship, technology, immigration, mental health, social justice, violence and warfare, and many others contemporary topics. Few study Bibles offer comment on big social issues of this sort and I’m hoping this will help some of us who are have developed habits/instincts of using a more personal sort of interpretive impulse to see how the Bible shapes even the most public and social of concerns. These notes and essays alongside the Scripture are all indexed in a large set of pages in the pack, too. Hooray.

I haven’t seen it yet (and not everyone always agrees with Sprinkle, the team’s project overseer; for instance he has written a book about being committed to Biblical nonviolence, which puts him at odds with most evangelicals, and he is as gracious as he can be while still holding conventional views of sexuality and gender, which puts him at odds with most mainline churches that are inclusive of LGTBQ sisters and brothers.) I don’t know all of the contributors, but they will surely be men and women of depth and integrity. It’s a great idea for a study edition and we look forward to having it here at the shop soon. Here is what their marketing team says about it:

In a culture that has become exponentially polarized, it can be difficult to think deeply and love widely. The NIV Upside-Down Kingdom Bible provides readers with thoughtful, Scripture-based notes from a diverse set of trusted Christian voices and explores difficult issues facing Christians today, with features that are honest, nuanced, and filled with grace.

The Book of Belonging: Bible Stories for Kind and Contemplative Kids  Mariko Clark & Rachel Eleanor (Convergent Books) $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99  RELEASE DATE SEPTEMBER 24, 2024

There are so many great new children’s books coming that it is hard to know what to highlight but we certainly want to celebrate this forthcoming release that already has considerable buzz. The Book of Belonging is (as they explain) designed for families seeking a Bible storybook that reflects the diversity of God’s people and for every reader seeking a more expansive and wondrous view of God. I don’t want to label it “progressive”, really, and many religious books these days feature a multiethnic caste of colorful characters. But the exceptionally thoughtful text and rich illustrations present “some of Scripture’s most important and overlooked stories — including many female-centered ones — alongside old favorites reimagined to convey greater inclusivity, diversity, and historical representation.”

Taking a cue, perhaps, from the “wondering” approach of resources like “Godly Play” or the lovely children’s Bible Growing in God’s Love: A Story Bible by esteemed educators Elisabeth Caldwell and Carol Wehrheim, this Book of Belonging offers more than narratives, but and guided wonder moments, mindful practices, and other creative ways to engage the text of Scripture. With this theme of “belovedness” that appears, children will learn who God is and much about God’s heart and the fact of their being loved and delighted in. As the authors like to say,  “When it comes to the love of God, everyone belongs.”

This gentle, gracious Bible story book offers forty-two Bible stories with aesthetically-pleasing colorful illustrations on every page.They would want you to know that the art showcases a variety of body shapes, ages, abilities, and skin colors and, also, uses historically accurate depictions of Jesus and God’s people, including original Hebrew and Greek names with historically accurate depictions. This is going to be great.

Here is what the publishers tell us about the creators of this long-awaited resource:

Mariko Clark is a Japanese American author, mother, and storyteller on a mission to help kids embrace diversity and wonder. Her time as an editor with National Geographic Learning sharpened her ability to make complex topics accessible and engaging. She lives near Indianapolis where she equips kids and caregivers with spiritual resources to navigate the messy middle, wrestle with tough questions, and find community in the journey.

Rachel Eleanor is an illustrator known for doodles of questing travelers, friendly spirits, and all manner of creatures. She uses drawing as a way to explore the wilderness within and without, focusing on themes of spirituality and mindfulness. Her whimsical characters have inhabited books and stationery, championed brands, and even bedecked beverages. She lives in Atlanta.

NRSVue Westminster Study Bible with the Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal Books (Westminster/John Knox) hardcover $55.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $44.00  RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 1, 2024

If the above NIV “Upside Down Kingdom” Bible has a contemporary feel, it is surely upbeat and useful for ordinary readers. It is not aimed at scholars or those that follow postmodern literary devices or critical theory. Although it is interdenominational, it will no doubt tilt evangelical and theological traditional.

No so, the Westminster Study Bible. I haven’t seen this, yet, either, but my hunch is that it will be geared to a much higher academic level (not unlike the NRSVue, the translation it uses, which is a tad more demanding to read, unlike the more colloquial NIV (or, even more so, the New Living Translation, say.)

The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) has been the chosen translation in many mainline denominational churches for decades, so PCUSA, Episopalians, Lutherans, most United Methodist and UCC folks would all know this translation as their pastor’s preaching Bible. As of last year, the NRSV has itself been updated — the “ue” at the end stands for “updated edition” making it the NRSVue.

Not only is this study Bible a bit more on the scholarly side, the social context of the interpreters and the theological persuasions of those writing the notes are, it seems, more mainline denominational and therefore more open to fresh, even critical, takes on the meaning of a given text.

Listen carefully how the publisher puts it:

The first entirely new study Bible to utilize the recently released New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition (NRSVue), The Westminster Study Bible includes interpretive materials from over eighty leading biblical experts who, as teachers in a variety of educational settings, are sensitive to how the biblical texts have been received, what their cultural and social consequences have been, and how readers might hear them now in multiple contexts. Paying close attention to interdisciplinary connections, contemporary students, teachers, and other readers from diverse backgrounds will find the WSB both useful and relevant.

They continue:

The key features of the WSB attend to the cultural impact of the Bible in its original setting as well as its impact on later readers and communities, up to and including the present day. Study notes open up the biblical texts and explore cultural insights from the ancient world as well as help readers to grasp how certain texts may have functioned in much later periods and far different settings. Together, these two points of access—back then and since then—allow readers to have a richer, fuller discussion about the meanings of the Bible.

There are plenty of articles and sidebars as well. Some of the pieces will be on topics such as:

The Bible, Gender, and Sexuality, The Bible, Race, and Ethnicity, The Bible and Social Justice, The Bible and Visual Art, The Bible in Film and Media, The Bible in Music, The Bible in Literature, The Bible in Museums, The Bible, Science, and the Environment.

Unique, eh? And fascinating.

There are excursus topics, too, on themes such as “woman wisdom” and “Black and beautiful” and “Slut-shaming as Prophetic Discourse” and one called “Frederick Douglass, Paul, and Onesiumus.” Whether you are interested in questions about “the divine mandate to exterminate the Canaanites” or examples of feminine imagery for God or Revelation in popular culture, there are all kinds of these extra features to help readers grapple with how the Bible has inspired certain attitudes and practices and how maybe we need deeper conversation about what these texts actually say and how they can be faithfully construed.

There are nearly 100 ecumenical scholars who have contributed to this major new study Bible. The general editors are :

• Emerson B. Powery, Professor of Biblical Studies and Dean of the School of Arts, Culture, and Society at Messiah University
• Stacy Davis, Professor of Religious Studies and Theology and Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Saint Mary’s College
• Mary F. Foskett, Wake Forest Kahle Professor of Religious Studies and John Thomas Albritton, Fellow at Wake Forest University
• Brent A. Strawn, Professor of Old Testament and Professor of Law at Duke

Go Forward in Love: A Year of Daily Readings from Timothy Keller Timothy Keller (Zondervan) $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59  RELEASE DATE OCTOBER 1, 2024

This book will arrive late in September and since most of the world is just learning about it now, we are delighted to be able to assure you that we will stock it. We’re so grateful to get to write a bit about it here, now, and, of course, offer it at our BookNotes 20% off.

I do not have to reiterate the importance of this eloquent, thoughtful, and widely-read, generous thinker. Keller was a pastor who came to a deeper faith during his college years here in central Pennsylvania and studied at Westminster Theological Seminary near Philadelphia. His own intellectual journey and that which most influenced him is beautifully explored in the fascinating biography by Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation (Zondervan; $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59.) Keller was honored in a book of tribute testimonials (that are fantastic, by the way) called The City for God: Essays Honoring the Work of Timothy Keller edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books; $24.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99) and it is a book Tim saw before his death last Spring. He loved it, and so will you.

In any case, this new collection is compiled from selected excerpts of his many beloved works. Like most devotionals, it offers a thought for each day, on the many things he wrote about, from prayer to cultural engagement, from forgiveness to our callings in the work world. He has written about Bible characters, about evangelistic encounters, about social justice, about love for God and love for neighbor. He is known both for tender stories of grace (as seen in one of his most popular, The Prodigal God) and for rigorous, culturally-wise apologetics for the modern world, like in his important Making Sense of God. And, of course, there are pieces drawn from a book he wrote while dying of cancer on hope in the power of the resurrection. Once can hardly go wrong.

Some folks may not have the time or energy or capacity to read through his many books which, while not academic, may be a bit more rigorous than many books on Christian living. This way to dip in to his body of written work in very short snippets is ideal. 365 days of Keller. Hooray.  It would, it seems to me, make a great Christmas gift for anyone who might be longing for an intellectually respectable and yet deeply spiritual book.  Pre-order it now and get our 20% off.

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BookNotes

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DISCOUNT

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If you intended to read the last BookNotes but didn’t, here’s a quick link. I described (mostly) recent books that I found compelling, even transformative; perhaps life-changing. There were creative books on the Christian life but before I listed those I briefly listed 10 very different kinds of books on sharing faith with others. I know using the “e” word (evangelism) doesn’t sell books, but at least I tried, right? Check it out and note how I explained the tone of each.

This week I’m in a bit of funk — it’s been going on a while, I know — in part because of my research into the history of the Republican Party and how the far, extremist right wing (many who are armed and dangerous) has infiltrated the party that was once known for traditional family values and the free market. For a variety of reasons that vex political scientists, social analysts, and contemporary historians the MAGA movement has become the ideological home for militias, border vigilantes, skinheads, the KKK and newer Trumpians like the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters. How did that happen? What are we to do?

(For those that wonder, by the way, I find no comparable infiltration of violent far left extremists into the Democratic Party. This is not to say that there is nothing to criticize about the Left or the Dems, but I am not, here, describing books about either Party. I’ve been reading for more than a year about the violent extremists found in unholy organizations such as the KKK and Aryan Nation and Oathkeepers. Black-masked (anarco-leftist) Antifa has been disruptive in some cities, usually countering the far right, but they have not been involved in party politics, as such. As far as I can tell Homeland Security are not documenting much of a threat from domestic terrorists on the left; in this era, at least, the threat is from the fringes of conservative moments.)

In this BookNotes I want to highly recommend several important books, including two riveting reads each about brave undercover cops who infiltrated these dangerous (and sometime murderous) extremist groups. These are fingernail-biting, page-turning books that will keep you up at night. I can’t say which is better so get ‘em both. They are both remarkable. Let’s start with those. And then we’ll explore another very different book called We Become What We Normalize by David Dark. As always, here, they are all on sale – 20% off.

The Hate Next Door: Why White Supremacists Are All Around Us — and How to Spot Them by Mason Browning, with his wife Tawny Browning (Sourcebooks) $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.32

This came out a year ago and I’ve just discovered it and I burned through it, staying up late on work nights, as I was so drawn in to his wild expose of the cult-like “changing face of hate.” A good-hearted Mormon cop becomes (with only minimal support from his PD) an undercover detective hanging out with various sorts of skinheads and neo-Nazis which lead him to ever more dangerous militias — some which were not necessarily driven by racism but were seriously anti-government and some who were explicitly racist, even organizing “hunting trips” to murder immigrants sneaking across the Arizona border. These seemingly fringe groups (well, not the skinheads) were often involved in Republican politics and had covers as community minded legitimate civic groups. These militas and their training camps (some affiliated with churches) were often overlapping with other White Power groups and Matt Browning, under a pseudonym, got to know most of the major players in the Western US. After eventually being outed, and having jailed many of the violent offenders, he and his wife became international experts, serving law enforcement all over the world about the growing scourge of hate groups.

Part way through his career, when bumping into violent border militias or skinheads at the local Walmart, say, his wife got involved and became, curiously enough, an unofficial gatherer of intel. Tawny was serving as a producer of a TV series on fundamentalist Mormon cults that engaged in polygamy and was helping women and girls escape that scene when she realized the overlap — one of the reason a particularly fearsome cult of polygamists practice their incestuous worldview was to keep their “seed” racially pure. She was as passionate as her husband to study and learn and connect the dots of these groups. Together they had a front-row seat to the rise of White supremacy. From learning about the sorts of Doc Martens favored by real skinheads to the various symbols, tattoos, numbers, patches and slogans of the various iterations of the Klan or the militias, The Hate Next Door is eye opening, well told, and — at times — inspirational.

Inspirational? Browning works hard to be a good dad and husband and speaks about the stress of undercover work and the PTSD that set in as he lived with so much evil. He worries, still, about guys that got away, about murders he maybe could have prevented, about losing ground in the work to expose these dangers. He’s a good guy and there is a light touch as he chats about all this. There is even some humor. I’d like to meet this guy; after reporting about all the groups he infiltrated and all the tension, you feel like you know him. His writing style is super approachable. And I’d love to meet Tawni, too. If they made a movie of this I wondered who would play her?

The book offers some good advice near the end, offering wisdom on coping if you know somebody in one of these hateful cults. He ends with a balanced (if brief) treatment of attending Trump rallies and noticing “so many guns” — guns among the leftist protestors and, even more, among those with racist slogans and anti-Jewish sentiments in plain view. He recognized the tattoos and symbols and patches on many of the January 6 insurrectionists, proof that many who attacked the Capitol had extremist connections; he and his wife were on a first name basis with the head-dressed QAnon Shaman. (Browning is quick to remind us, by the way, that many fellow-citizens who think the 2019 election was rigged are not therefore racist nor necessarily violent.) He loves his country, he loves seeing the good in things, and yet he has this passionate calling to inform us about this crazy, alarming stuff happening, often under our noses.

At the Trump rally in Harrisburg a few weeks ago the local news team covered the large lines waiting to get in to the rally on an exceptionally hot day and had footage of those at the event before they entered the building. As often happens, happy folks mugged for the camera, knowing they’d appear in the background of the newscaster. One guy walked by and flashed an odd hand symbol. It was weird. Having read this book, I now know what it was; I have gone back and watched it over and over. Right at our central PA Republican Party event, there it was. I wasn’t shocked. Hate next door, indeed.

White Robes and Broken Badges: Infiltrating the KKK and Exposing the Evil Among Us Joe Moore (Harper) $32.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

Holy smokes, what a book. (It’s brand new – maybe you heard him on Fresh Air earlier this week.) Joe Moore is a fine, clear, writer. He clearly tells a story that I just couldn’t put down. Like the above-mentioned The Hate Next Door, it is a page-turner and one that I think is vitally important for us to read and talk about. I’ve mentioned before our own run-in with the Klan here at our shop in Dallastown, and although racist hate groups have changed much over the years, they remain the granddaddy of all the variations of hate groups. Like most of the far right groups, they hate blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, and nearly anyone who does’t fit their view of conservative, American rightness.

Their story has been well told. You know about their rise after the Civil War and then their revival in numbers and hatefulness in the early 20th century. (One of the great, award-winning books we highlighted a year or so ago is A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over American, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by the great nonfiction scholar and bestselling author, Timothy Egan (Penguin; $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40.) I suppose you know some Klan chapters — often called klaverns — view themselves as explicitly Christian. (Ahh, remember that book I highlighted last month called Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity by Joel Looper – duh.) Some groups seem more taken by their anti-Semitism than being anti-Black and most use the Heil Hitler salute as much as their other secret codes, like KIGY. Many are willing to commit heinous acts of intimidation and perhaps murder.

Joe Moore was an Army Special ops guy. He was a sniper and notes that he served in locations that are sealed and he may not tell us. Throughout the book he draws on his military training — skills of observation, ways to drive, ways to enter a room, and obvious hand-to-hand combat strategies. When he was working as a welder — coping with PTSD from what he suggests included the sorts of shootouts and killings you see on TV shows about spies that he encountered in special operations — he was recruited, almost out of the blue, by a Florida FBI guy. They asked him how he liked rednecks.

So begins his complex plan to become a Klansman which, in Central Florida, in this secret organization, it isn’t simple. The initiation ceremony (held out on a side road in the middle of no-where, near Lochloosa Lake, which made him think he had been found out and they were going to kill him) was described in detail as he became a Knight. This outfit was different than the Klansman we got to know in the amazing Everything You Love Will Burn: Inside the Rebirth of White Nationalism in America by Vegas Tenfold, who, as a left-wing journalist somehow got embedded in a whole gang of alt-right groups, including the guys who planned the infamous Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville VA. In that story some of the KKK guys were nearly bumpkins, as I recall, and their cross burning ceremony was almost laughable. Not so the armed men Moore was getting to know, who met under the Saltire Cross, the older mystic insignia of the KKK, also known as the Blood Drop Cross. Some guys were friendly enough, but Joe had seen Mississippi Burning that is based on the investigation of the 1964 murders of civil rights workers. He knew what these guys could do. And they had the firepower to back up the horrendous stories they told him.

Joe’s awareness of makes and models of weapons certainly helped him earn cred within this new circle of brothers. He was often “carrying”, himself — he had no back up in this undercover work — but his appreciation for rare weapons (including old German pistols and handguns) made it clear that he could be an asset to the Klan. I won’t spoil all the details but he is assigned a major assassination attempt on a candidate running for US President that they especially hated: one Barack Obama. As the day approached they gave Moore a high-end Barrett M107A1 sniper rifle and he had to somehow figure out how to botch the job without his cover being blown. He had done all the necessary recon and various associates were going to be in place, including a getaway car with false plates gathered from a Klansman in the Department of Transportation. It was, as they say, down to the wire.

As it ends up, they did not kill Obama that day during the Kissimmee Florida campaign stop, he was soon enough elected, and the network of various sorts of Klansmen were elated. The election of our nation’s first Black President caused an immediate, almost overnight, increase in interest in the Klan. As the KKK learned the art of the deal (by using the internet and changing their image a bit) they recruited, in nearly every state of the union, hundreds and hundreds of angry, white men.

I do not want to blow the story for you as it unfolds like a novel and you’ll be on the edge of your seat as he attempt to balance this real-world life of being undercover among serious haters — some redneck rural guys, some who went to church, maybe, and others who were fairly sophisticated workers in law enforcement, themselves!  There is a reason Moore hates bullies and why he took this job so seriously. The book explores the interior life of such a detective and the psychic wear it does being around foul-mouthed and despicably hateful people much of his working days. That he had a wife and kids and was trying to keep them safe is part of the story. It doesn’t always go well, and, as you will see, there are issues with the feds, local cops, the FBI, and more. If only he had a pal like Matt Browning.

Joe Moore gets out of the undercover biz for a while and, when an opportunity presents itself, he is sucked back in. There is family drama, concern about his kids, obviously questions about his safety and his mental health. The extended connection with border militias and white supremacy groups and KKK klaverns, who are not unlike the New York mafia families, is dreadfully stressful. His spy work put him in danger. (Did you know that when the government puts you into a witness protection program you can only take a limited amount of your stuff; family heirlooms, pictures, his children’s beloved toys were all lost as they were rushed to another state.) Moore’s passion to help expose these thugs.

As he puts it, “I watched a group that had long proclaimed itself he “Invisible Empire” gradually emerge from the shadows to unite the disparate forces that continue to roil this country today.”

Best-selling author Brad Meltzer says “White Robes and Broken Badges is a gut-punch of a book… this is one you shouldn’t miss.”

The forward is by Congressman Jamie Raskin who was a member of the House Select Committee on the January 6th attack. He obviously knows much about these radical groups that have become part of a political assault on America. He compliments Joe Moore’s bravery, and notes that Joe shows how there are sheriff offices and police departments that allow the Klan to work and sometimes commit crimes with impunity. (Hence the “Broken Badges” of the title. That is a theme in The Hate Next Door as well.) Some of these groups have toned down their hate-speech a bit and have found welcome in the Republican Party which should be concerning to all Americans, but especially morally-serious conservatives. Moore, like Browning, is a military guy, a law-and-order type, and not particularly interested in liberal activists, let alone anti-police rhetoric or Marxist stuff.

They want the facts and they have risked their lives to bring us these dramatic stories. Moore, like Browning, is convinced we must know about the danger. There is much to learn.

We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism Andy Campbell (Hatchette) $29.00  / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

I won’t say much about this because I’ve highlighted it before at BookNotes. It is a brave book, a book that tells exactly who this right-wing fight club is and what they are about. It starts with an exceptionally vulgar overview of the early cable show Gavin McInnes (founder of The Proud Boys) ran and how show after show he spewed anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-women, sexual politics, mocking men who did not live into his views about exceedingly toxic masculinity.

It is, as a former FBI special agent Ali Soufan puts it, “an investigative feat” and “essential reading for those wrestling to understand how homegrown extremist movements take hold and wreak havoc in America.”

This study of creeping fascism and violent extremism is so unbelievable it is almost funny at times — indeed, Vegas Tenfold, who knows extremist groups as well as nearly any reporter in America, says it is hilarious. I don’t know about that, it does explain how this movement with their cute little uniforms became popular among nationalists and more conventional white supremacists, and how they came to become enforcers for many in the MAGA movement and even the Trump campaigns. Beyond just normalizing street violence and crude attacks, they are endangering much of what we value as Americans. This book will be hard to forget.

Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love: How a Violent Klansman Became a Champion of Racial Reconciliation Thomas A. Tarrants (Nelson Books) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

For those who wonder how one can get out of the depths of the far-right worldview, I should remind you of an older book we have highlighted before, but that we still happily stock. It is written by a friend who I’ve admired for his kindness and grace and gentleness and his gospel-centered missional vision. Thomas Tarrants (formerly of the C.S. Lewis Institute in DC) writes in Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love of his own deep, dark involvement in anti-semitic and racist actions affiliated with one of the most violent of KKK chapters in the Mississippi Klan. You’ll have to read the almost unbelievable story yourself, but in 1968 Tom was arrested — after a bloody shoot-out — for attempting to bomb a Jewish leaders home. The short version is that Tom went to jail and while in prison started thinking and reading and he became a Christian. After many years his sentence was commuted and he ended up co-pastoring a bi-racial church with a black pastor. This book tells, as the subtitle puts it, “how a violent Klansman Became a Champion of Racial Reconciliation.”

Another book he wrote that is now out of print was done with his friend and mentor John Perkins, each pondering how they hated the other race and how God changed their attitudes. In this one, he more fully and candidly tells his terrible story and gives glory to the God who is able to change the heart and life of an extremist turned terrorist. What a story! Tom is quick to say that God’s work in his life is “undeserved mercy.” What a testimony!

Consumed by Hate Redeemed by Love come with rave reviews and heartfelt endorsements. John Perkins, of course, has said much about it, including that it is “amazing.” Mark Batterson calls it “simply astonishing.” Os Guinness writes that, “…in showing how grace and forgiveness broke into his own life to give him a second chance, Tom Tarrants points the way for all who strive to rid America of this terrible scourge and the hatred that breeds it.” Exactly.

Listen to this from novelist John Grisham writes:

As a kid in Mississippi in the late 1960’s, I remember the men of our church discussing the Klan’s bombing campaign against the Jews. The men did not disapprove. Later, I would use this fascinating chapter of civil rights history as the backdrop for my novel The Chamber. Now, one of the bombers, Thomas Tarrants, tells the real story in this remarkable memoir. It is riveting, inspiring, at times hard to believe but utterly true, and it gives some measure of hope in these rancorous times.

Cherie Harder of the Trinity Forum beautifully notes:

Tom Tarrant’s extraordinary, often horrifying, and miraculous story offers both insight and instruction. He shows the ways in which hate warps the mind and corrupts the heart, as well as the allure of scapegoating and rigid ideology and the human carnage left in their wake. But this is ultimately a story of amazing grace — how one blinded by hate learned to see, to love, to reconcile. And it offers hope, showing the possibilities for the flowering of such grace, even on the cultural battlefields of our own riven land.

The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War Jeff Sharlet (Norton) $18.99  / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Again, just a reminder of this eloquent, elegant, and expansive bit of reportorial courage that we have highlighted before. Highly acclaimed, it is not mostly about the KKK or skinheads; it doesn’t focus on high-profile Proud Boys or anti-semitic stars such as President Trump’s, on-again/off-again friend Nick Fuentes, but rather, ordinary people in small towns and seemingly inconsequential places. A master of the art of compelling, creative non-fiction expose, this is “attempting to capture the mood of the nation at this fraught moment, that others in the future may know how it felt to live through the present…”

The Undertow explores the religious dimensions of many who are unhappy with the culture as it is and are deeply troubled and troubling people. This is beyond what he explored in his books on “The Family.” As the back cover notes, Sharlet “journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread.” And yet this book isn’t only an expose of dark stuff. They say this book explores “a geography of grief and uncertainty amid rising fascism, and reckons with a decade of American failures — all while celebrating the courage of those who sing a different song of community, of an American long drama of and yet to be born.”

Across the country men “of God” glorify guns while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war. Political rallies are aflame with giddy expectations as religious revivals. On the Far Right every thing is heightened — love into adulteration, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.

Jeff Sharlet has written for many major publications, teaches writing at Dartmouth, and had his book The Family turned into a popular Netflix documentary. What a glimpse this is of the “slow civil war” brewing, about which we should all be concerned.

Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis James Davison Hunter (Yale University Press) $40.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

Okay, we’ve highlighted this one before as well and we are pleased to have sold a few. But I wanted it on this list, even if it is different in style and tone than these other gripping page-turners described above. If those keep you up late waiting to see what the hell happens next, this might put you to sleep. But, no matter: keep trying to wade through this. It has been a struggle for me, I’ll admit, but I know enough to know that Hunter is always on to something. He does a major, academic, book about once a decade or so — his last was Science and the Good: The Tragic Quest for the Foundations of Morality (Yale University Press in 2018) but before that the much-discussed To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World on Oxford University Press released in 2010, I think.)

Democracy and Solidarity is not a boots-on-the-ground look at white supremacy or a memoir about investigating goons racists. It isn’t even a spicy survey of the vile stuff coming from the extremes these days, but, rather, it is a scholar’s deep search into the underlying currents that give shape to civic life within our Republic. Can our democratic ways be sustained, and if so, what is needed? For those who are alarmed by the far right, as we all should be, this will put it into a deeper, and perhaps, finally, even more alarming context.

From various quarters, from the far right and the moderate right, to the moderate liberal view to the progressive left, there is a breakdown in shared assumptions about what makes our pluralistic culture tick. Can we renew the cultural assumptions of classical liberal democracy? Call it, as some have, a “sweeping history of American culture wars” or “a fresh and challenging interpretation of American in crisis”, this book is insightful and wise, a cry against the nihilism that seems to be an undercurrent of much of the breakdown of our discourse and shared values.

If you are the sort that likes to read one or two major, challenging books a year, this should be on your list. If you are a scholar, political scientist, professional theologian, or cultural critic, this obviously is a must. If you read the likes of Aaron Renn, Carl Trueman, Os Guinness, the late Jean Bethke Elshtain, Yuval Levin, Patrick Deenen or even Hannah Arendt, you should read Hunter. By the way, he thanks Tim Keller in the acknowledgments.

I especially liked this paragraph from Democracy and Solidarity:

As it was at time of the Founding, so it is now: liberal democracy in the late modern world will not find renewal without the moral imagination to envision a public life that transcends the present warring binaries, and with it, a fresh vocabulary with which to talk about and pragmatically address the genuine problems the nation and the world face. It would be a renewed ethical vision for the re-formation of public life, for the institutions that sustain it, and for the citizens who put it into place. This vision would be embedded in a mythos that doesn’t deny the story of America, but reframes it toward what it could yet be. Democratic politics would not be that vision, as I say, but it would serve it all the same. To imagine it and to give it voice would require poets more than power brokers

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I am sure most of us have heard of neo-Nazis and other cult-like extremist groups and maybe have had first hand encounters. Certainly we know those who have fallen under the sway of conspiracies and far-out propaganda. (Just a day or two ago online I saw a comment on a friend’s Facebook page alleging the Democratic Party of sexual trafficking. Really??) It is hard to know what to do; certainly, despite Sharlet’s language of an approaching “slow civil war” we should pray for no government shoot-outs like at Ruby Ridge or the terrible horror of the government bombing of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas or the infamous police fire-bombing of the black MOVE headquarters in a Philadelphia neighborhood in1985. There has to be a better way (and one such way, centering the gospel of Jesus Christ to so-called Christian nationalists, is explained in Disarming Leviathan, which I have mentioned several times last month.)

Of course, most of us just have to cope with ordinary relational conflicts, awkward conversations, daily questions of when to speak up and when to stay silent, how to care well for others and steward our own agency and use our moral compass in helpful ways. Maybe we are called to resist the Nazis and protest candidates who give them cover, but, for many of us, our fidelity will be less dramatic. Reading up about the dangers of the alt-right is an urgent matter for us all, I think, but pondering how to respond — beyond the obvious of being kind to all, trying to “speak the truth in love” and speaking graciously — is tricky. I think one way to consider that big question, one of the puzzle pieces, comes from the pen and big heart of a good friend, David Dark. The title of his book (which we’ve highlighted previously but would invite you to consider once again) is We Become What We Normalize. That is a phrase worth pondering.

We Become What We Normalize: What We Owe Each Other in Worlds That Demand Our Silence David Dark (Broadleaf Books) $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

This is another book that we’ve highlighted before and yet I want to revisit again, here, now, too quickly. It is a book to read more than once and it is a book to ponder, maybe discuss with others. If the brave Joe Moore and Matt & Tawni Browning (above) are right that we must be vigilante and speak out against racism and anti-semitism and violent militias, and if the scholar Hunter is right that we need poets more than power-brokering pols in this fraying culture, then this book may be the life-line we need. It will poke and prod and — as a poet often does — make us scratch our heads. I can’t say that enough, and it is mostly a good thing; this book is a bit weird. In a good way.

And there are so many great lines to underline, commit to heart. “Courage is contagious”, he says. Yup. Our “presumed consent functions as a free pass for abuse.”  “In the land of the free, what do I owe people whose lives are endangered by my silence?

I’ve alluded to this before and I trust it doesn’t scare anybody off. He uses some funny words and he writes creatively. He’s deeply rooted in popular culture and can cite Bono and Kendrick and his friend Jessica Hopper (we carry her amazingly thoughtful work, The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic) and he goes on about Octavia Butler, who, among other things, was a highly-awarded a black sci fi writer. Ya dig? No, he doesn’t say that, but he does invite us to “slow your roll” and offers, in a beautiful section about Fred Rogers, what he calls a “psychic blast of care.” He recommends what he calls “observational candor.” He thinks basic self-respect demands of us that we, at least, “not disgrace oneself” by being aware of our “embodied particularity.”

Is this thing on? Yes, he says that often, and explains exactly what he means.

Ya dig?

Here is one of the provocative and vital chapter titles: “What Does Apocalypse Want From Me?” In other words, as he also puts it, we are called to “the prophetic task of naming what’s happening.” And ponder what it calls forth from us.

You see, what we allow to pass as speakable and acceptable will become normalized. Think of it simply: when we don’t protest a racist quip, racism becomes, or at least joking about racism becomes, acceptable. Normal. Our decision to not resist this has normalized it, for the room, and, perhaps — is this thing on? — for ourselves. Who is watching and listening as we make decisions? Certainly at least our own souls. David knows that as Biblical people we are called to conversions, to be transformed. We are called to be prophetic, to be open to the Spirit as the Spirit moves us to care for the common good, to create beloved community.

He is from the South, a former fundamentalist (and Limbaugh ditto-head, which he owns beautifully) and having discovered Southern folks like MLK and John Lewis, Clarence Jordan and Will Campbell, Fannie Lou Hamer and Wendell Berry, R. E. M. and Anthony Ray Hinton, plus a host of others who were religiously motivated agents of justice and goodness, he took into his worldview writers and activists from outside his culture of birth — Dorothy Day and Daniel Berrigan and James Baldwin and Larycia Hawkins, all agents of shalom.

You know me and my book-evaluating habits: I love seeing who informs the authors we commend and their footnotes are usually a good sign of how interesting the book is. David is a goldmine. He contains multitudes (a line he swipes from Whitman.) He’s a literature prof, too, so he knows his Jane Austin and his Thoreau and his Shakespeare. Just saying. Right next to LaBron James and rocker poet Pattie Smith. What a fun, fun book.

There is a method in the madness and it is this: we must learn to see the brokenness and the sin in ourselves and in our culture, and make wise decisions when and how to speak up against it. We become what we “sit still for” he says. What we “let slide.”  We become what we abide and the culture reflects the very ideologies and bad spirits we allow free reign. To use the language of Berrigan, we must resist.

As Dark puts it, “Honoring and remaining fully alive to your own conscience is the human assignment.”

Call it a postmodern riff on the old Edmund Burke quote about how all that really evil needs is for decent folks to remain quiet.

Again, what do we owe people whose lives are endangered by our silence?

We are, many of us, deeply aware of that, knowing we are implicated; wanting to be faithful, we may even be used to saying out loud what we think, of bearing witness, of letting our lights shine, but, David suggests, only up to a point.

And then he notes,

“Moving past that point is the risk of drama and the privilege of comedy. Both serve as a form of catharsis and both, at their most intense, can be difficult to categorize. …”

That is interesting, I think, but just an illustration of how he invites us to consider the arts — classic and contemporary, written or live — to help us see what we may not want to see. His own appreciation for artists and poets has helped him, and it could help us. (For a more conventionally written study of this, just for instance, see Mary McCampbell’s Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy Fortress Press; $28.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40. She too is a Southern Christian thinker who writes about the poppiest of pop culture and seriously classic European lit.)

Can we grow? Can we learn about the violence poured out on the least of these, the way public figures have become complicit with abuse and injustice, how we have become complicit? Want to do something about the rising dangers explored in the above books? David notes, “We don’t want to know what we don’t want to know until we do.”

That’s why we do what we do here at the bookshop: we believe God’s Spirit is alive and well, inviting people, wooing people, to be so full of the awareness of the grace God gives and so full of regenerate wonder at the goodness all around — I don’t like Blake as much as David does, but I get it, a little at least —that we can’t help but sing along with “How Can I Keep From Singing?” We break out in awe and become something new, the new humanity of peacemakers (described so beautifully at the end of Ephesians 2, for instance.) Which means, maybe slowly, maybe suddenly, we now want to know more. We are ready to take new steps. We just can’t normalize the bad stuff any more.

Bad stuff within our own lives (perhaps our apathy) or that the complex sorrows and damages of the world.

David gives us in this book a lot of stories, some wild speculations, his own vivid ruminations, some candid confessions about his mistakes and confusions. It is beautiful to see an outspoken voice for justice, a witty teacher who nicely embodies that old saying that good religion should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” On Twitter and in this book Dark boldly calls us to confront the powers, even as he admits his own complicity and failures. That sort of honesty isn’t in every book you pick up, ya know. We Become What We Normalize is a very rare book, indeed. I am happy to recommend it.

David uses two words that I wish he’d define a bit better — I’m slow, I guess, or not fluent in his spiel. I stuck with it and it all made good sense (so I guess he might say, what’s the problem, then? Fair enough.) But, still, a heads up. He talks a lot about being a reactive person or a responsive one. There’s a difference. One is not so good, the other is more richly human and humane and righteous. The goal of this book is to resist the shame and ego and fear and whatever else is causing us to be reactive and to “slow our roll” and consider our own lives, our own hearts, our own motives and concerns, and to be responsible humans, using our God-given agency, even on and in God’s good internet and what more formal guys call the public square. Can we do that? I suspect we all need some help.

You know that I’ve commended thoughtful tools for helping us be faithful in how we speak (a key component of a peacemaking lifestyle) that respects others well. Titles like Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict by the poet and writer Marilyn McEntyre, Love is the Resistance by Ashley Abercrombie, Six Conversations by Heather Holleman, Learning to Disagree by John Inazu, and the fabulous, one-of-kind Loving Disagreement: Fighting for Community Through the Fruit of the Spirit by Kathy Khang & Matt Mikalatos, are some of our favs that we suggest. These days we all need some extra skills in this area.

But We Become What We Normalize by David Dark is on another level — playful and creative, yes, deadly serious, indeed, full of humble stories and holding up heros who might inspire our own creative resistance. For instance, he tells about Bree Newsome, that brave woman who shimmed up that South Carolina Capitol flagpole and removed the pro-slavery rebel flag, “in the name of Jesus.” Yes, she was arrested, but so? She also made history.

David also lifts up the testimony of Greta Thunberg, his own Sunday school teacher dad, Tami Sawyer (of Shelby County, Memphis, TN who campaigned to make more public a public park by removing statues of terrorist Nathan Bedford Forrest), the whistleblower Reality Winner, alongside the aforementioned Fred Rogers, and others who are, in his memorable phrase, “artisans of moral seriousness.”

There is one thing that I think I highlighted in the BookNotes review I did previously. I wrote about what may be his two most remarkable chapters. First, he describes how to be more discerning about what he playfully calls “White Supremacist AntiChrist Poltergeist.” That’s a mouthful and a headful and you’ve got to read it. What a chapter! (Later, he also names these as “reigning deceptions.”) Then he writes about what he playfully calls “Robot Soft Exorcism.” It is a bit odd but exceedingly curious in how it explains and explores what the Bible calls principalities and powers. (See Michael Bird and N.T. Wright’s recent Jesus and the Powers for a sensible, book-length treatment.) I like how in this chapter about exercising robots, David largely explores how to delineate the humans within the robots.

To be, as some put it, both pastoral and prophetic.

He writes,

I wrestle not against flesh and blood. But I do get a little punchy with our reigning robots. I owe it to the flesh and blood within the robots to get punchy. I owe it to myself. This calls for discernment.

With enough care (breathing and speaking slowly) I can choose contemplation over projection, responsiveness over reactivity. I can gather my wits and remember, The robots aren’t people, but they do contain them. They, in fact, are powered by them…

He wants our engagement “to bend towards love.” He wants us to “address our fellow human beings as something other than their robots.” I don’t know any other book that struggles to make clear our complex contexts and milieu, laden as they are with idols and ideologies, in zeitgeists and social imaginaries, our decisions shaping institutions and bureaucracies, that then in turn shape (captivate?) us. Ha — you’ll be glad he doesn’t write like that!  He does say “reactivity can’t drive out reactivity.” He doesn’t want “power-over” another, but shared humanness, “power-with.”  It is not “us vs them.” “There is no them, as the healing mantra has it,” he says.

A line to share from his chapter 6, a bit more than half-way through: “beauty prepares the heart for justice.” He writes movingly about the famous story of contralto Marian Anderson not being allowed to sing at a DAR event in 1939 when Eleanor Roosevelt gave up her spot among the DAR and invited Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for an integrated audience.

Near the end of the book Dark quotes one of my favorite Wendell Berry books, Berry’s study of poet (and doctor) William Carlos Williams of Rutherford, New Jersey. Berry expands on William’s adage “No ideas but in things.”  Again, this is granular.

Did I mention that this book uses a lot of poetry and visionary stuff to make some very profound points? Or at least to raise up stuff that might become profound points for us?  Bringing our most responsible selves into the world (“especially when we feel belittled, shut down, or silenced” ) is, again, as David suggests, “our most essential task.”

He closes the book with this great and hopeful and generous line: “Let’s have at it together.”

What do you say? Order one today, please, and maybe spread the word.

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BookNotes

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My heart still aches from the confusion I caused in the way in which I announced to a group of folks I care about the complexities of the book Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor. You can read the whole story and my discussion of the book by finding the last BookNotes here. (All of our previous BookNotes are archived at the website, by the way.)

The book, as I explained in great detail in last week’s BookNotes, clearly and with great pastoral care, critiques the unBiblical ideologies behind the extremist, often conspiratorial, far-right wing in American politics these days. Not unlike the new N.T. Wright paperback (Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies) it asserts that while good Christian folks can disagree about any number of policy recommendations and party affiliations, nowadays, much of the Republican Party in the US has become implicated in what must be named as ethically unacceptable views of race and economics and governance and truthfulness and has failed to distance itself with some exceptionally bad actors (from former President Trump’s friend (of infowar fame) Alex Jones, who viciously accused the families of murdered children at Sandy Hook of being involved in a hoax, to the guy with the proud Nixon tattoo, Roger Stone, to those with violent intentions (like the KKK and the Proud Boys and several popular militia groups) even to — my God! — holocaust deniers. The book is about that sort of extremist ideology that is an important part of the MAGA movement these days.

I tried hard in my big essay last week to explain that I do not think that all conservatives are part of the monstrous “Leviathan” that Campbell describes when he exposes the cult-like vibe of QAnon-tainted Christian Nationalism. Not at all. I’ve held multiple party affiliations in my own years as a citizen and most serious Christians, I am sure, are fully aware that they may not personally endorse every plank of their party’s platform, let alone like every person who is a media celebrity or political operative for that party. Maybe not even their primary candidate. Granted.

Still, I recommended another new book Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity by Joel Looper (now out from Eerdmans) who does a careful reading of Pauline texts about not falling for a false gospel to show how so-called Christian Nationalism could be understood not as a tawdry, alt-right sort of populism nor as a legitimate Christian political option as an acceptable part of a Christian worldview, but as a false gospel. Looper is a conservative evangelical, a Bonhoeffer scholar, and theology prof at a Baptist university and his assertion of heresy is profound.

Disarming Leviathan agrees, but Campbell writes as a brokenhearted pastor who has realized that some of his flock have simply gone off the deep end, confusing their former faith with MAGA ideology and fear-filled, politicized activism. This phenomenon of allowing the faith to be co-opted by political / cultural forces has been a constant threat in America — Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about it in several chapters of Christ and Culture in 1951 — but it has not been seen so weirdly with such vigor, in my lifetime. (You know the news, stuff one can hardly make up like the prayer of the Shaman during the Capitol riots and the President who pays off porn stars and uses tear gas to disperse protestors so he could get a photo op at a church he doesn’t attend, getting blessed by prosperity preachers.)

Pastor Campbell realizes, and explains in his new book, that having more gracious “common ground” conversations and being more civil so we learn to disagree well (as important as that is) isn’t enough for a time such as this.

Folks who have lost their way need to be called to faith, back to their first love (if they once were Christians) and, in any case, to Christ-centered discipleship. Serious social science shows that, oddly, many who self-identify as evangelicals in the polls who are fans of the MAGA movement are, in fact, often not familiar with basic Christian doctrines and rarely go to church. The very word evangelical has oddly come to stand for a certain sort of extreme  politics similar to what we used to call civil religion, on steroids. While the political polarization concerns us all, Rev. Campbell wants us to see Christian Nationalists mostly as an unreached people group (as missionaries call such subcultures) and for us to learn how to be caring evangelists of the gospel. As I said last week, there is no other book like it.

This week I’d like to list a handful of books that I think can be transformative for those who need to hear a fresh articulation of the true gospel in a way that is profound, deep, serious (and readable.) I’ve shortened the list to just twelve, each a winner in its own way, books that might grab you or someone you are in discussion with. But first, ten books on evangelism, quickly highlighted for you, since that was the main point of Disarming Leviathan.

FIRST, TEN BOOKS ABOUT EVANGELISM

Disarming Leviathan is remarkable in suggesting that the answer to some of the problems plaguing our culture is introducing folks anew to the gospel of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. Which is to say, evangelism. He gives some helpful advice, and the last chapters of that book are wise and dear.

I thought it might be helpful to name just a few more that go into more helpful detail about sharing the gospel. Many of us are not terribly well-practiced at this and we understandably shy away from anything that seems pushy. While these are not set in the context of the various political ideologies of our culture, they are books that could inspire almost anyone. Talking about faith and “telling a better story” is a perennial question yet it seems especially urgent now. Anyway, here are a few — if you haven’t read in this genre, any of these would be a good start. ALL ARE 20% OFF.

Growing Your Faith by Giving It Away: Telling the Gospel Story with Grace and Passion York Moore (IVP) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I appreciate this older book that invites us to grow in our own faith by learning to articulate it, share it graciously, invite others to receive God’s gift of salvation. The chapters are short, there are good stories, and exceptionally helpful extra books and resources recommended. The second half has remarkable insights about sharing the gospel with “those who don’t like you” and another on sharing with “those you don’t like.” Ha. This covers a variety of settings and invites us all to stretch a bit for the sake of loving others well. York is a friend and a thoughtful leader; I like this book a lot.

Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace Harvie M. Conn (P&R) $10.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $8.79

If you read the very interesting recent biography of the late Timothy Keller (Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen) a good number of books and authors stand out. You won’t miss Harvie Conn, a Reformed thinker and missionary (who ministered among abused women in the sex industry in Asia back in the 60s.) He came back to Pennsylvania and taught a very wholistic, Kingdom-centered view of evangelism at Westminster Theological Seminary which particularly caught Keller’s attention. This little book emerged from Conn in those years and it is astute and visionary, passionate about living out the gospel by caring for people’s lives. It is sophisticated in bringing together “word and deed” and yet not overly complex. As he notes, evangelism includes the ministry of listening and serving as well as speaking. As we used to say in those days we must “meet people where they are.”

As Harvie put in it his classic little preface:

“My prayer is that this book will not emerge as one more exercise in blackboard evangelism, one more excuse to learn a little bit more and do a little bit less, to keep off the streets and out of the kitchen. May it direct us to the streets and not, pray God, to the study.”

Of course he was teaching this in an exceptionally rigorous academic community (so he didn’t object to time in the study) but his heart for others and his ground-breaking, wholistic, missional theology was captivating. Could this old book stimulate a new generation to be more  passionate about both justice and grace, about word and deed?

Out of the Saltshaker and Into the World: Evangelism as a Way of Life Becky Pippert (IVP) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

This is one of the most read and beloved Christian books of the last 50 years. It is not hard to read but it covers a lot (it’s over 300 pages) and I’d say it is a true classic. I hope you know it. She spoke at our Pittsburgh Jubilee conference decades ago and we at Hearts & Minds hosted her here for a series of workshops in our early years. She is charming and alert, a clear, thoughtful writer, and loves good stories. She is confident we can share the gospel easily with others if we just do it and suggests that folks are actually more interested than we realize.

Pippert’s more recent one is called Stay Salt: The World Has Changed: Our Message Must Not (published by Good Books; $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59) and it is very good, too. I highly recommend it. The late Timothy Keller wrote:

Out of the Saltshaker was one of the most important books on evangelism written over the last generation. Stay Salt may be the best book on witness for the next generation. I don’t know of a more lucid or penetrating book on evangelism to put into the hands of a Christian.

Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did Randy Newman (Kregel Publications) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Randy, who sadly died about a month or so ago, used to work for Cru in the DC area; we crossed paths several times and he was a gem of a guy — a great, funny, thoughtfully well-read, Christian leader. (His last book offered lessons from C.S. Lewis on evangelism, cleverly entitled Mere Evangelism.) For years, years ago in his evangelism with college age students, he had a fairly simplistic approach, clear and earnest, and he led many to make a profession of faith in Christ. Then a few decades ago, seemingly suddenly one year, it just didn’t work any more. Students were aloof or disinterested or would agree with everything he shared about God’s love and Jesus’s sacrifice, and, yet, walk away. He was ready to give up campus evangelism and he wrote this book as a way to rethink how to share the good news, mostly around asking questions and listening well. It’s the perfect sort of postmodern turn away from easy answers and formulas to remind us of the social context of seekers and to ask good questions. He is “questioning” old styles of rigid and simplistic evangelistic tactics and he is replacing them with earnest conversation and listening well. We carry all of his interesting books and we recommend them all.

The Invitational Christian Dave Daubert (Day 8 Strategies) $9.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $

I enjoy mentioning this small book from time to time because it is so winsome and useful (and short, making it ideal for a small group study or adult class or for an outreach committee.) For those who don’t read heady theology or missional theory, it’s a fabulous little read.

Here’s what’s unique about it. Dave is a Lutheran who has worked as a mainline church consultant for years. He knows his way around older, mainline churches — our buildings, the styles of our life together, our worship, our financial anxieties, our concerns. Further, while many of the books on this list are about engaging others in conversations about God’s love and Christ’s Kingdom, about personal faith and conversion, this is less about inviting people to faith and discipleship but about inviting people to church.

Let’s face it: that is a big ask for many of us but, frankly, a little less intimidating than inviting them to receive Christ’s grace anew and commit to trusting him. Yep, this is a simple book inviting people to become invitational even as their congregations form that sort of ethos. As our local congregations become hubs of meaning and purpose and service and spiritual renewal, it’s natural to want others to join in. With lots of stories from original research and great Bible and discussion questions after each chapter, The Invitational Christian is a very nice book about being more invitational, and why things might be holding us back. Can ordinary churches that are pretty non-dramatic learn to be more invitational in ways that truly recruits folks to join in our (admittedly low-key) fun? Yes, yes indeed. This book can help.

Trauma-Informed Evangelism Cultivating Communities of Wounded Healers Charles Kiser & Elaine A. Heath (Eerdmans)  $19.99  // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I hope you saw my longer review of this when it first came out. We commended it, glad for how it integrates a trauma-informed instinct, and is so deeply aware of the hurt people carry in their very bodies and how often bad religion has been part of their deep pain. Many are scarred and scared and reluctant to trust those who dare to speak of God or the church when they have been hurt, demeaned, maybe even traumatized by less than gracious encounters with toxic faith.

Naturally this includes those who have walked away from faith, including some who have done so reluctantly, out of self-preservation. For instance, this book asks how we can gently share good news with LGTBQ persons and others that have been shamed and mocked and rejected. This is not a simple book (it explains what we mean by trauma-informed psychology and struggles to understand what evangelism has been and could be) and it invites an expansive and generous alternative to the sorts of messages that too often seem to carry shame and rejection. This is about caring and appreciating “Christ’s own relatable human suffering.” There is much to ponder here.

Tongue-Tied: Learning the Lost Art of Talking About Faith Sarah Wenger Shenk (Herald Press) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Kudos to Herald Press, a Mennonite publisher that has released some very provocative, thoughtful, culturally-engaged, and surprisingly fresh books of late. I wrote about this when it came out a few years ago, noting that it really does invite us to think about the words we use to describe our faith and how to regain a refreshing sort of vibrant way to describe theology and truth and Bible and spirituality. There are no cliches, no easy answers, and her lovely project is both prophetic and sophisticated and yet so very down-to-earth and caring, so much that Walter Brueggemann says it is a “wise, much-needed book.” Indeed.

Perhaps our most tender faith stories are really love stories, she suggests, and amidst polarizing cultural arguments, maybe this is just what we need: deeper conversations about our shared humanity and things that matter. Words made fresh.

As it says on the back cover, we don’t need to “relearn Christianese or brush up on churchy cliches. We need a language of faith that is authentic, candid, and robust enough to last.”

Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing–And How We Can Revive Them Jonathan Merritt (Convergent Books) $17.00  // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

Here is another that observes that many in our post-Christian culture simply don’t know anything about church or Christian faith and we have less of a need to convince them of its truth but to invite them into a sense of belonging to a story they’ve never really encountered. But how can we do that when the words we have learned to use to explain our faith and our convictions and our experiences are themselves unfamiliar to our post-Christian friends?

Sometimes (at least in many sophisticated urban areas) folks know our words — grace, sin, gospel — and they are turned off. Our God-talk (fairly or unfairly) has less than “good news” connotations. How do we learn to speak a faith language from scratch? Jonathan (raised a preacher’s kid in a Southern Baptist culture is now a New Yorker and an occasional writer for the Atlantic) has learned a thing or two about this. His story is fascinating.

As we all know, to further complicate things, not only is there sometimes negative baggage, sometimes people may truly not know what our “sacred” words mean. Other words they simply haven’t heard. For some, I’m guessing especially in middle America, they may be inoculated against them, too familiar with the lingo so as to fail to realize their stunning brilliance. How do we rethink how we talk about faith? As the old hymn puts it, “what language can I offer?”

There’s a very nicely written foreword by Shauna Niequist, an artful writer who knows well this quandary of using words in fresh ways.

In a time when thoughtless opinions run rampant, Jonathan uses his brilliance to help us think better. He is a masterful writer, who has a gift for language and communication. How fitting that he would use his gifts to help us communicate on the highest level! — Lecrae Moore, two-time Grammy winning hip-hop artist, author, I Am Restored: How I Lost My Religion But Found My Faith

Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion Os Guinness (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I did a long review of this one when it first came out, noting how exceptional it was; Dr. Guinness is an amazingly smart and erudite scholar and social critic (who is related to the Guinness beer people and thinks deeply about vocation and calling and business and society.) This is the most sophisticated, important, serious study of how to actually convince others of things, and, also, is one of the most detailed and fresh takes on serious apologetics I’ve ever read. It’s quite a book, thoughtful and profound, drawing on insights from three huge influences on his own life and thoughts over the years: C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and sociologist Peter Berger. These were important writers who Guinness reports were the three most important figures in his own faith formation. In a way, he spent most of his life preparing to write this magnificent book.

Fools Talk is informative and wise. It attends to cultural forces and the plausibility of conversation with folks and reminds us of the importance of the power of persuasion, never coercion. It insists that the gospel of grace must always be presented gracefully. It is very highly recommended.

Many Christian leaders and ordinary readers have said to us that it is one of the most influential books they’ve ever read. Here is a nice blurb (among many) that captures some of what it is about:

In a day when Christian apologetics seems to win battles but lose wars, when evangelism is abandoned by the church and biblical strategies are ignored, Fool’s Talk by Os Guinness is necessary and vitally important. Insightfully, he not only guides in the use of wit and weightiness, but also restores winsomeness to the art of communicating Christ. He teaches the reader to ‘relativize the relativists’ and build on the ‘signals of transcendence’ with brilliance. He acknowledges his debts to Peter Berger, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, G. K. Chesterton and many others. Readers will be indebted to Guinness for the syntheses and wisdom we have come to expect from him. The benefits of the past are freshly and insightfully applied to the present. All people need to know they are deeply loved and forgiven by God. Fool’s Talk will better equip us to tell them. I heartily endorse this book. — Jerry Root, professor of evangelism, Wheaton College, author The Neglected C.S. Lewis: Exploring the Riches of His Most Overlooked Books

How To Reach the West Again: Six Essential Elements of a Missionary Encounter Timothy Keller (Redeemer City to City) $7.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $6.39

This is nearly a pocket-sized booklet, but it is worth its weight in gold! What a brilliant, serious lecture this first was, expanded, edited and printed up a potent little guide to thinking well about the decline of Christian faith in the West. It shows concisely how to have vital conversations about the gospel in a helpful “missionary encounter” and what it means for the church to respond well to our particular cultural moment. This was written as Tim was dying and yet remains a joyful, perspicacious, guide typical of his blend of deep cultural analysis, citations from the best social critics, and clear-headed, gracious, gospel-centered ideas. It really is about how to proclaim Christ well in this day and age. And, yes, he reflects on “the challenge of political polarization in a fragmented culture.” Short and sweet, this is solid stuff.

TWELVE (MOSTLY) RECENT BOOKS THAT REPRESENT A LIVELY, THOUGHTFUL, RELEVANT FAITH THAT COULD BE TRANSFORMATIONAL

This is a hard caption to live up to, curating a list of books — mostly those published recently, no less — that could be surprising to folks, deeply rewarding, touching, transforming. I have my personal list of those that suddenly impacted me or that left me pondering in a slow burn. Many of us resonate with that line from Thoreau who noted something to the effect that many people “mark a new chapter in their lives” based on a book that they read. I can’t promise that these will mark you for life or chauffeur your friends into a deeper, fuller life in God, but who knows? These are exceptional and seem somehow germane for those wanting to turn over a new leaf, lean in, be renewed. Scroll down to the very end to hit that order button. Don’t forget, ALL ARE 20% OFF.

The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Way That Jesus is the Way Eugene Peterson (Eerdmans) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

In the years of the first decade of this century, Pastor Pete was at his height, writing seriously, deeply, speaking at events, also doubling down on teaching the quiet, holy work of the pastoral vocation. In these years Peterson released a set of five books, sort of his magnum opus. These are a bit more dense than, say, his beloved Long Obedience in the Same Direction, its potent sequel, Where Your Treasure Is,  Run with the Horses (on Jeremiah) or Traveling Light (on Galatians.) Yet, the “spiritual theology” set that started with the exquisite, complex, must-read Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, are not only for pastors or theologians. Anyone can read them even if they are a step above the somewhat lower bar of popular religious reading. Again, they are not too difficult, but they can best be read slowly and carefully. Trust me.

The Jesus Way is one of the most mighty and necessary in this set and it is a conversation about what he calls “ways and means.” Jesus says — in a line often underplayed, if even noticed — that he is “the way” and not just the truth. Peterson means this rather literally: Jesus shows us not only the what of faith but the how. If there are any few books published in the last twenty years that speak to the ways in which Jesus should guide our discipleship and frame and shape how we live, this is one of the very best. Curiously, he starts — after a stunning, plain, wonderful introductory chapter — on those who came before Christ, prefiguring his way: Mose, David, Elijah, Isaiah. The American church, Peterson thinks, needs a strong dose of Bible, showing “in stark relief how what we have chosen to focus on — consumerism, celebrity, charism, and so forth — obliterates what is unique in the Jesus way.”

The three hefty chapters at the end are on what he simply calls “other ways.” His case studies there are Herod, Caiaphas, and Josephus and it is remarkable how up-to-date these ways are. Tempting, still.

Can we learn to “pray on the way” with other resurrection Christians, living with a style that is consistent with the message we claim to embrace? Can we. With God’s help, bring ways and means together? Maybe this book will help us see, and hopefully reject, much of the manner of the American way that has seeped into the way of being in the world of the church.

The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, The Flesh, and The War for Our Wants A.J. Swoboda (Zondervan) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I highlighted this before and while it could be the bland pinkish / caucasian colored cover, this book has not taken off (as far as I know) as it surely should have. This, my friends, is one of the most moving books I have read in ages and while I am not quite finished my slow plough through it, it is one that for many, will be underlined and dogeared, journaled about and discussed with a spiritual director or pastor or friend. It opens us up and asks deep questions.

It starts reminding us that the first of Jesus’s many questions in each of the gospels are something along the lines of what do you want? James K.A. Smith has pondered that Augustinian question in his extraordinary You Are What You Love (and that surely is one of my all time favorite, accessible books, alongside the bigger trilogy of which You Are is a summary.) A.J., however, works in this area of desire and writes so honestly and so lovingly, that it seems like (as New Testament scholar Nijay Gupta puts it) “a breathtaking combination of personal vulnerability, biblical wisdom, and pastoral hope.”

Too many in our culture have nothing but bad to say about desire, warning us of thinking too highly of our selves, our hearts, of our bodily needs, of raging desires. Others almost deify who we are — “you do you” and the like, honoring the essential human dignity by nicely ignoring our brokenness and rebellion. Swoboda neither demonizes or deifies our human creatureliness and he invites us to explore how our desires — good but disordered as they may be — can be reformed.

One of the ways this happens, he suggests, is through the limits and even pain of our “thorns.” He has a stunningly small adjustment to our common reading of a verse in Genesis where thorns are “for you” — that is, a gift, not only a curse — and by playing with this, he offers an urgent appeal to take up this gift. There is exciting news here, and great comfort. It’s a big, broad, paradigm-changing book that for many will not only point them to God’s goodness but to the cross of Christ, to navigating being transformed by thorns, and living well, not falling for false myths and inadequate stories.

The wonderful writer of many popular level books on spirituality, James Smith (author of, for instance, Good and Beautiful God) says:

This book brilliantly explains the essential role of desires in our formation into Christlikeness. As such The Gift of Thorns deserves a place among the essential books in Christian formation.

I was struck by how Smith in his good foreword noticed that the book had a light vibe, too, and was even funny at times. He like how he notes that there is a link in Swoboda between “desire and doxology, healing and hope.”

As the late great Dallas Willard once said, we are “at the mercy of our ideas.” This book will help you think better, to feel differently, to be transformed, no longer at the mercy of bad ideas. At least about this topic. Very highly recommended.

Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times Elizabeth Oldfield (Brazos Press) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

In early June I highlighted this, indicating that it looked very important, had rave reviews, was very well-written, and was arranged as a study of the seven deadly sins. For instance, she explores the move from “Polarization to Peace-making” (under a study of wrath) and “From Distraction to Attention” (acedia) and, for envy, the journey from “From Status Anxiety to Belovedness.” In this it almost strikes me a bit like some early Henri Nouwen who shows these moves from one thing to a better way in several of his books.

But this summary, as fair and right as it is, fails to capture what is surely one of the most intriguing books of the year. Ms Oldfield is British so there is that charm/annoyance of the occasional Brit-chat — “motoring” down the highway, you know. And she doesn’t often fail to wear her intellectual culture on her sleeve. Indeed, that is part of the story, as so many in her peer group and class are the sort that long ago gave up on gospel stories and anything other than the most remote cultural sort of Christianity.

Oldfield, as she explains in a riveting, long (must-read) introduction, became a Christian in her high school years at a camp; eventually she concludes this is intellectually weak and no longer sustainable. After losing her faith she is brought back — she cites feelingly the “Hound of heaven” line — and her depiction of anxiety and angst, longing and hope, the need to be alive, well, it strikes me as all very, very relevant. Maybe she is Gen X but who doesn’t ponder life’s deepest questions and yearn to make sense of things. To have a faith that brings true life, for the rest of your life? Oldfield is honest about her foibles and disordered values and she describes a thoughtful Christian discipleship as fairly and as convincingly as any I’ve recently read. It is no wonder that there is a rave review on the back by thoughtful, intellectual convert Francis Spufford.

Spufford calls it, “the bridge for the present moment, across which seekers for more meaning in their lives can travel in the knowledge that they won’t be bullied, browbeaten, or talked down to.”

“This book. This one. In your hand. Right now.”  – Francis Spufford

The book opens with her bursting into tears, praying, too, as she listens to her children singing in the back seat of their beat-up family car. I won’t spoil it, but it’s a moving story — the book is full of moving and even entertaining glimpses into her life — about the hope for meaning, for life — total (dare I say “abundant”) life. From the textures of this increasingly secular age to specific concerns (like, say, climate change and what that portends for her children) she shares her thoughtful, sophisticated Christian perspective fully aware that many readers may not share her faith or even an appreciation for the Biblical story and the church that holds it. She’s got plenty of her own baggage, after all, so she is an earnest apostle to the postmodern lost, or nearly dead, it seems to me. This is a book that deserves a readership and is the sort that you will want to give away to that particular person to whom it will make much sense. Get one or two, and have them at the ready. This is a great, great book.

Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation Lanta Davis (Baker Academic) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

This brand new book is going to appeal to many of our best Hearts & Minds customers, and this is for an array of reasons. It is a strong book. Let me name two of the most vital aspects of the project.

First, it is, in fact, a deeply theological and rigorously thoughtful view of the imagination. There are less than adequate books on the topic, alongside excellent ones that use the notion, like, say, Karen Swallow Prior’s great history of evangelicalism called The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis, or Ted Turner’s big book on the need for a church-based arts ministry, Oasis of Imagination: Engaging Our World Through a Better Creativity or even Walter Brueggemann’s profound Biblical exploration called The Prophetic Imagination. Becoming By Beholding: The Power of Imagination reflects on what the imagination is and how we can restore it to its central role in spiritual formation. Drawing on writers and practices and art and thinking from across the broad church spectrum (Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox) she offers great, great wisdom.

Besides offering insights into the nature of and role of imagination (at least in regards to its influence in spirituality) she does this by exploring art pieces from the great Christian tradition in the West. That is she walks us into a “rich, strange, and beautiful art gallery that unveils our own hearts and minds” (in the words of Calvin University professor Rebecca Konydkyk DeYoung.)

Becoming by Beholding has a nice section of full color glossy pages including photos of grand stained class, the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral, moving icons and paintings and sculptures. These are essential for the book as she guides you to behold them, gazing and reflecting, pondering and taking in not only their artful craftsmanship and excellence, but their deeper, aesthetic meaning and the God to which they point. It is, as David Smith puts it, “food for the Christian imagination to linger over and savor.”

This is not just an introduction to Christian art, as lovely and good as those sorts of books often are. (See, just for instance, two we’ve raved about, 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know: The Fascinating Stories Behind Great Works of Art, Literature, Music and Film by Terry Glaspey or Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art by Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt.) Rather, Becoming by Beholding is about taking in, in the words of Jessica Hooten Wilson, “the astonishing breadth and beauty and magic of the kingdom of God.”

Lanta Davis (who has a PhD from Baylor and is a professor of humanities and literature in the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University) is a lovely and exceptional guide. It actually offers (in the words of Dordt College prof and cultural apologist Justin Ariel Bailey, “encounters with holiness.”

Can a book like this be transformative for one who never considered ancient art as a way into a deep relationship with God? Can we renew our imaginations in surprising ways that make us deeper, richer, fuller, even as we become better informed? Yes, yes, yes. But, again, this is not just about the good content and fascinating information. We are to behold. So we can become.

Becoming by Beholding is a work to behold. Not only is this book a study in beauty, imagination, and spiritual formation; it also models the very practices it preaches. To read it is to witness beauty and imagination at work and thus to leave its pages better formed and more ready to be formed by all the goodness the world has to offer.           — Karen Swallow Prior, author of The Evangelical Imagination

Do you think nonfiction is more serious, grown-up, and useful than moving stories, beautiful buildings, and pretty pictures? Let Davis guide you through the Christian artists and makers who testify across the centuries that the stories and images we behold indelibly shape our souls. — Jeffrey Bilbro, author of Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry Into the News, co-editor of Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place

Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art and Culture Makoto Fujimura (NavPress) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Speaking of books on the arts which can be so very transformative, there are a number of books that open us up to seeing all of life as a stage of God’s glory and once one gets a Biblically-soaked vision of al of life being redeemed — including the aesthetic dimension — one truly can never look back. It happened for me with the little book by Francis Schaeffer called Art and the Bible and even more with the superlative book (that we continue to stock and sell from time to time) Rainbows for the Fallen World by the inestimable Calvin Seerveld.

One of my favorite people happens to be Mako Fujimura, both a writer standing on the shoulders of Schaeffer and Seerveld (notice how he is cited in the excellent The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective edited by Roger Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker) and an actual visual artist; he is known world-wide for his exquiste work.

His very first book is now out in a brand new anniversary hardback, printed on nicer heavier paper (and shown above, in bright white.) The original (which we still happily stock — in some ways it is more attractive) was handsomely designed in a great looking paperback and included a set of reflections, essays he called “refractions.” These ruminations emerged mostly out of his extraordinary experience of being a rising artist (and Christian) in New York during the hard aftermath of the destruction and sorrow of the attacks on 9-11. He notes in the new preface that some were written in airports and airplanes as he travelled advocating for the arts.

One of the reasons Mr. Fujimura’s first book was so astonishing is how it wove together themes of culture care (even in a time of war) and the arts. He wrote about how forming nearly impromptu art shows in the sacred space of lower Manhattan near Ground Zero helped give people a chance to mourn, to grieve and share grief, to regain some sense of beauty in a very tragic/ugly time, to find how the allusive pull of aesthetics could help. Few books that I have ever read have captured this Christian hope. While it perhaps felt to some like cheap idealism, it was compelling enough to win people over and showed how God’s people could work with others to honor the pain of our tragedy (and the worlds) and offer a way into a better story, a way better than rage or denial. Over time, Refractions absolutely holds up; I dip into it often and Beth and I rejoice now that there is a new edition. Kudos, Mako.

Gratitude: Why Giving Thanks Is the Key to Our Well-Being Cornelius Plantinga (Brazos Press) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I think I have said before, when this topic comes up, that I am not a fan of most books or popular speaking on gratitude. TED-talks and the like notwithstanding, I have an allergy to putting too cheery a spin on the sadnesses of this fallen world. The whole creation groans, we are told, and too many friends are hurting — myself included, too often — to be glib. I think in one of my reviews I shared how very surprised and blessed I was to enjoy the book on gratitude by Diana Butler Bass. Her Gratitude: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks rocked my world and since she is herself well attuned to the Biblical call to care for the hurting and is more alarmed than most about the weight of social injustice and climate disaster and the like, she, if anyone could, could get through to me. I loved that book and smiled when I said to God (and to her) that I am grateful for it. It mattered for me, greatly.

Enter another writerly hero, the author Cornelius Plantinga who is on my short list of authors I’ve promised myself to read anything they write. He can make anything inspirational and has rarely written a bad sentence. He’s got pastoral wisdom, a good bit of wit, and a big, broad, hope of creation regained.

Gratitude is the best theological exploration I have yet seen on the habit of gratitude and the spiritual practice of resisting the temptation to not be grateful. It has long been understood as a signal virtue of the Christian life. Diana helped me see how good and right and healthy it was. Plantinga will help us realize it is righteous. He makes the case that it is “the very key to understanding our relationships to one another, the world around us, and God.”  A transforming vision? Start here.

Beechdale Road: Where Mercy Is More Powerful Than Murder. A True Story Megan Shorter & Tim Rogers (Beechdale Road) $15.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

In making a list of mostly recent books that might really touch someone deeply, books that can be life-changing, even, I didn’t quite know what all to include. I wanted to name at least one memoir, a life-story, as true testimonials are often most compelling, even if simply and plainly told.

This little book is beautifully created, a trim size with nice touches inside, making it immediately inviting. The story, though, is harrowing. Tragic. The subtitle gives it away, and the forward by Donald Kraybill — known worldwide for co-writing the bestseller (made into a movie) Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy — offers another hint. The authors are related to a man who captured and murdered an Amish special ed teacher in Lancaster County a while back. The story was in the news, but the quiet story of forgiveness and mercy were not as well known as in the riveted Nickel Mines shooting (about which Kraybill famously wrote.) This little book, though, tells a similar story and therein lies its genius and its ability to literally change a life. Through the “Amish grace” of tangible forgiveness so nicely documented in this hard story we learn of the capacity of people to forgive, of communities of faith that foster counter-intuitive, even radical values. As Dan Allender puts it in his good review, Beechdale Road “is an agonizing, compelling, and wholly redemptive story.”

Lisa Stoltzfoos of Bird-in-Hand was eighteen years old when kidnapped and killed and while her family’s grief is surely never forgotten, this story tells of the families of the killer, asking, as surely any family would, why? The horror and shame and sadness and anger become palpable as the members of Justo’s family (he is serving a life sentence) ask tough questions, live with remorse and anxiety and heartache of their own. It is honestly told. In this sense, the book is elegant and authentic and helpful.

The mercy shown by the Amish community in this episode, however, not unlike more well-known examples, is breathtaking. The book offers (as Chip Ingram puts it) “a story of hope and healing.” Indeed.

Anyone who reads Beechdale Road will be moved, and the “raw transparency” with which the story is told makes it compelling. But, again, the costly forgiveness offered and embodied in the midst of this horrendous tragedy surely comes from above. Only God could enable such graciousness. You have to read it to believe it.

The book is told in two voices; Tim Rogers (Justo’s brother-in-law) is a pastor who has served in our central Pennsylvania Susquehanna Valley for years for and Megan Shorter (Justo’s niece) is an advocate for adults in a Paradise, PA nonprofit. Some of the money from the sale of their book goes to aid in Amish special education, honoring the late Linda Stoltzfoos in that way.

An Intimate Good: A Skeptical Christian Mystic in Conversation with Teresa of Avila Laurel Mathewson (Whitaker House) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It isn’t every book on this particularly Protestant, holiness-inflamed, revivalistic publishing house that offers such a fresh, moving take of one of the great Catholic mystics of the 16th century, Saint Teresa of Avila. Many know her name from her famous work Interior Castles although one sharp friend — not unfamiliar with this sort of mystical writing — quipped that he got lost in that castle. Yep, I did too, I’m afraid. She is deep.

(An entirely gratuitous aside: I’ve been slowly reading the magisterial They Flew: A History of the Impossible by Harvard historian Carlos Eire, which documents cases of medieval levitation commonly experienced by Teresa — at the dawn of modernity — which was, I’ve come to learn, much more common than most contemporary contemplatives enamored by this stream of church history realize or discuss.)

Which brings me back to why — given the almost impenetrable spiritual depth and eccentricities of the likes of Teresa — we need guides and interpreters, showing the human reality of these mystics and prophets and clarifying what they were about. (Richard Foster has done this impeccably in the two weighty devotional volumes he edited, Spiritual Classics and Devotional Classics.)

Laurel Mathewson does this kind of work, thoroughly, with Teresa, explaining how at age twenty-one she (Laurel) lost her mother to cancer and, despite being a bit of a skeptic, she ended up with an overwhelming sense of God’s love. It was then, in her existential crisis, she discovered the sixteenth-century mystic.

As the back cover says,

An Intimate Good is a beautifully written and moving memoir about the upheaval of loss, spiritual skepticism, and the dawning discovery that God is near, God loves us, and God is good.

One of the things that first drew me to this honest book was the endorsement by Winn Collier of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination who said Laurel Mathewson writes “from the heart of a pastor with the pen of a poet.” He would know, good pastor and writer that he is. I started it and was hooked.

It does seem to me that there are a few things going on here that are not in more standard treatments of classic contemplatives or the mystical tradition. Firstly, there is this very human journey; the book in many ways is a memoir of Mathewson and her journey to faith and to the work of ministry. I had seen her name in Sojourners so it ends up that it is no surprise that there is a great preface by Jim Wallis. That this book  — written by a poet, pastor, and social justice activist who works with refugees and immigrants — brings together the journey inward, so to speak, and the journey outward, is both beautiful and essential.  Jim quotes one of her last lines, playfully noting that some of us want the spiritual “high but avoid the hike.” Uh-huh. Some of the writers who wade in the deeper waters of such mysterious faith often remain in the world of the soul. That Mathewson does not is to the book’s credit (and maybe with a little help from the levitating, cloistered, troubled, reformer, and writer, St. Teresa.) Wallis recounts in his forward a great encounter with Laurel Mathewson and the notable, black mystic and civil rights leader, Vincent Harding. It’s worth the price of the book.

An Intimate Good can be transforming especially for those who are a bit afraid of the deeper mystics and who want a good story of very human stuff, and who want a intellectually solid exploration of themes in Teresa such as seeking and commitment and awe and finding belovedness. She walks you through that dense prose, those weird images, the complicated hallways of her interior castle.

Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life Karen Stiller (NavPress) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I’ve been wanting to list this book for a while because it is so very, very well written, both eloquent and casual, in a rich and thoughtful way. Few books are so conversational, but not chummy, so winsome without being zany. Her study of this “sacred and mysterious” matter is, as she puts it, “breathtaking and beautiful” and we are meant to live it daily. Few realize, though, what it means, what it looks like, how to do it.

Sure, she draws on classics like the famous, fat, and rather imposing 19th century tome by Ryle, the beloved Anglican Bishop from London. And yes, she knows modern Anglicans like J.I. Packer and John Stott. Her writing is lovely and better than any of these, even as her content is a fabulous blend of storytelling and illustration and lots of Biblical reflection. It is a great read, and Stiller is a great guide.

I think this book could be transformative for any number of us, and she hopes that it will — it is evident she wants to help others along the way as she herself has learned to live out holiness in its many wondrous facets. I like how she invites us to a lived experience, even to social holiness. In chapters with one word titles — Body, Money, Hospitality, Humility, Beauty, and more — she indeed shows how holiness can be lived, now.

Here are two great quotes (by excellent writers, themselves) among many who admire this Canadian and her writing:

Karen Stiller’s always beautiful, always poignant writing invites us to reexamine the seeming ordinariness of our daily lives with new eyes cleansed by tears and in search of hope. From reveries to realities, from hospitality to humility, from giving away to growing up — Stiller pays sacred attention to what has lost our attention and, in doing so, shows us that holiness is here, in lament and in joy, in complaint and in praise. Holiness is our reflection of the divine image in each of us as we strive to discover our truest selves: beings who are beloved and therefore able to love deeply from that first love. Sit with Stiller’s book and be still: Holy, holy, holy is this Lord Almighty, indeed.         — Carolyn Weber, author of Holy Is the Day, Surprised by Oxford, and Sex and the City of God

Karen Stiller has given us a remarkable gift in the pages of this book. She has dusted off an old, theological word that can be loaded with misconceptions at best and shame at worst and has polished it into a beautiful diamond of an invitation to pursue a ragged and rough and incomplete holiness in the everyday. In doing so, she has become a trusted and wise companion to all of us. What warmth, insight, vulnerability, and understanding you will encounter in Holiness Here. This book has changed my understanding and pursuit of holiness. — Jeff Crosby, author of The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts

The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life Michael Wear (Zondervan) $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I told myself that I wasn’t going to put any books about politics on this list, hardly even any that are mostly about public life. I wanted generic but excellent books about transforming faith that might surprise or delight someone who may not even know what they are looking for. Certainly, as vital as they may be, books studying the themes of the 2024 election cycle are not, usually, utterly transformative in the way I’m imagining it in this short list.

However, this book. This book!  I adore Michael and his thoughtful balanced consideration of civic engagement (and he knows his stuff, having worked in the White House.) But in The Spirit of Our Politics he brings the insights of spiritual formation via his mentor Dallas Willard, into play in order to shape our souls in ways that will enable us to be better citizens. I’ve joked that this book could be called “Dallas Willard Goes to Washington” and that is so true. In The Spirit of our Politics Michael teaches about the “allure of gentleness” and transformation of our character through the “spirit of the disciplines.” He evokes Willard’s “divine conspiracy” and, helpfully unpacked one of Willard’s central (if sometimes vexing) notions — “the disappearance of moral knowledge.” Yep, he cites Willard’s philosophical textbook of that name, and the popular essays that emerged from it on what it means to know, even to know Jesus.

He is delightful in proclaiming grace and resisting the simplistic “sin management” even as he applies that to our political lives. He studies spiritual disciplines and shows how they might shape and inform our political efforts as citizens. So, okay, this is a book about political faithfulness. But he gets there in the most transformational way possible, by taking the rigorous, contemplative, profoundly evangelical (if drawing on ecumenical and ancient sources) to practice the way of Jesus, even in our citizenship and public and civic lives. This book shows the relationship between spiritual practices and Christ-likeness (as taught by Willard and his student Richard Foster) and politics. There is simply nothing like this on the market and it is a rare and rich book. Very highly recommended.

It’s rare to find a book so wise and helpful that I want to put it in the hands of every pastor, parent, and future leader I know. The Spirit of Our Politics is such a book. Michael Wear weaves together his expertise on American politics and Dallas Willard’s vision for the centrality of discipleship in the Christian life. In doing so, he accomplishes the rare feat of merging political theology and spiritual formation in ways that are profoundly necessary yet virtually absent in the current political discourse both in the church and in broader society. This book opens a window, letting a new, hopeful breeze blow into the dark, airless room of American politics. The Spirit of Our Politics should be required reading for every Christian in America. — Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing Emmanuel Katongole & Chris Rice (IVP) $20.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

This one is a bit older, being the first book to be released in a series organized by the Center for Reconciliation at Duke Divinity School. It remains a life-changing book for some and pages have been written about it and the handful that followed. Like the others, Reconciling All Things is co-written by a scholar and a practitioner. In this case, Kantongole is a black African Roman Catholic priest and Rice is a white guy who has worked in justice organizing, mostly around racial reconciliation, most of his adult life. They both have life-changing stories from their lifetimes and it makes for a page-turning, heart-moving, extraordinary read.

The point of their work is that our world is broken; there is hostility and pain, alienation and division everywhere. The gospel of Christ, though, promises unity and restoration. The gospel word is reconciliation. Whether it is geo-politics or tribal hostilities, whether it is among broken families or broken social systems, God’s newness can break in and bring hope and healing.

They tell stories of how this happens and thread through the tales plenty of Biblical teaching. They insist that nobody gets it fully right, that we are on a journey, that as those who embody a message of hope, we must lament and be present. There is so much here it will take a life-time to live out, but God is present and powerful and they invite us to live into this Biblical story of redemption with fresh eyes to be agents of God’s reconciliation of all things. What a book!

Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age Richard Beck (Broadleaf Books) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Often, we celebrate when a paperback edition comes out. Usually they are cheaper and if we’re lucky, maybe have an extra blurb or endorsement. In this case, Beck has given us several new chapters, important good ones, and this recent paperback release is remarkable. Will it be the key to transforming your life, helping you see anew, live afresh? Maybe, maybe not. It isn’t for everyone.

As the title suggests, it is allusive. It’s a side-ways glance, telling it slant. Maybe I should just say it’s a bit odd. Granted. But as it says on the back of this lovey paperback:

With attention, we can cultivate the capacity to experience God as a vital presence and so experience an enchanted faith— even in this skeptical age.

Yep, he’s diving into the deep waters of the likes of Charles Taylor; for many of us Jamie Smith’s amazing, deep, How Not to be Secular: On Reading Charles Taylor was nearly enough. But then Andrew Root — in his ongoing series of books about church life, like being A Pastor in the Secular Age — revised our interest. It seems almost anyone who is an astute cultural critic these days has been citing Charles Taylor. Naming our secular age. Puzzling over how to find a better story than the one we imbibe.

Beck does this with aplomb. He’s a great thinker, a quick study, an amazing scholar. While he is in his day job a psychology prof (he tells about this often in his fabulous Substack blog) at Abilene Christian University, he is also a devout Christian and radical disciple of Jesus. He has books like Stranger God (get the double way to read that?) and a book on Johnny Cash. Right on.

Here he is trying to show how in our secularizing, modern world most are searching for ways to be spiritual. To construe some meaning in the mess, to find Something. The Truth is Out There was the saying of the X-files, right? Beck knows it is so — it’s out there. But discovering and encountering it as really real demands more of us than merely the quaint call to be in awe, to stand in wonder. I can do that on a beautiful day (especially if I’ve been listening to Van Morrison’s Visions of Wonder, say, or “It’s a Beautiful Day” by U2.) Beck guides us here to resist cheap understanding of doubt and skepticism because he thinks this is not exactly a crisis of belief but a crisis of attention. Yes, we need to gaze at the world in wonder, but this not only takes attention but a rejection of the forces and ideologies that prevent us from experiencing a sense of transcendence.

One person I know likened some of this to the great, heavy Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, at least in theme, if not style. Beck is 21st century, though and through, even though he draws heavily, in the last chapter, on Zosima’s sermon in The Brothers Karamazov. It is, you may recall, about love. From there he moves to Golgotha, a “hard-won, cross-shaped love” that is “dearly bought.” Maybe even what Dorothy Day called “a harsh and dreadful love.”

Beck goes big at the end, upbeat, even, inviting readers to “Recover your sacramental wonder. Count your blessings. Look to the horizon in the Valley of Dry Bones…. “ On and on he riffs and rants, “God is everywhere present, breathing on this world, turning it to fire…”

What an ending for an amazing book.

+++

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BookNotes

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A bit ago I was describing books in a conversation with some folks I care about. As happens sometimes, I flub up a bit — I’ve been known to say that Dostoevsky wrote The Brothers K rather than James David Duncan or that Kuyper founded the Free University of Amsterdam in the early 1900s (it was 1880.) Everybody knows it is a Matisse on the cover of the best-seller The Body Keeps the Score, not a Picasso, as I’m sure I’ve said. There are seven Chronicles of Narnia (although we can argue about the proper order) and nine Little House books (even if the last was published after Wilder’s death) and seven thick Harry Potter books. Or at least I think. After 42 years of bookselling, it’s a lot to keep straight.

But sometimes I don’t just make silly errors about book covers or titles but I hurt someone’s feelings, implying more than I should. And I really, truly, regret that.

Sometimes we joke about our wild diversity here at the bookstore (since some Christian bookstores play it safe and only carry items that their specific customer base approves of.) We say with a smile that one of our marketing mottos is that we have “Something to offend everyone”, but when it actually happens it can be hurtful. And we are sorry.

This week I’ve felt awful and it’s going to take a bit to explain it all. I want to tell you about the book I told them about and want to be careful since the potent title and style of the book, good as it is, could be off-putting to some. It is rather ironic, I suppose, that the book that got me in trouble as I seemed to insult our guests is one about learning to care for and love well those with very different political convictions. I guess I’m struggling with that. Maybe you are too. I hope you bear with me as I meander through what might seem like contentious territory.

(As an aside for those that enjoy these sidebar notes: I’m thinking very much about two richly wonderful books by Marilyn McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies and Speaking Peace in a Culture of Conflict. Both contain deep wisdom and model great grace and counsel that we speak even the hard truth the best we can. She also likes long sentences, but I digress…)

Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor Caleb E. Campbell (IVP) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

One person said we should think twice before promoting this new title but I think it is a very, very important book and while there are plenty of loose cannons around in our polarized political culture, and too many simplistic memes, this is no off-the-cuff, ill-considered jab.

Disarming… was written by an evangelical pastor who is heart-broken by the ways in which the gospel has been distorted or lost among some in his church, with some members more concerned about political vengeance and getting folks to hear their wild conspiracy theories than they are with faithfulness to ordinary Bible teaching and the ways of Jesus. In some places, in Sunday school classes where there used to be lessons about books of the Bible or Christian living, say, now some highlight the violent, camo-wearing Oath Keepers or how to remove books from the local library. Where Christian used to gather to pray for world missions, now some gather to pray against the government. This is a book, as you can tell, about the idolatry of far, alt-right (usually white) Nationalism and the toxic sort of extremism that is seen these days on the right side of the political spectrum. Disarming Leviathan is written by Rev. Caleb Campbell of Desert Springs Bible Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

I read just a day ago the sure-to-be-infamous lines by a big supporter of the Trump Arizona campaign, Patrick Byrne, who talked about getting the “deep state” to drop its charges against  an allegedly corrupt Republican election worker. Byrne threatened, repeatedly, that there will be “piano wire and a blowtorch” coming at them if they don’t drop the charges. This kind of anti-law and order stuff is pretty common among some Republican Party officials and supporters these days, so as shocking as it sounds — in the interview he admitted it was most likely a felony to suggest murdering a prosecutor, and used the F-word to describe his feelings about his stated intentions — it is not surprising. This is happening in Arizona, and there are militias and KKK-affiliates and dangerous neo-Nazi types there. The co-founder of a conservative PAC in that state said she would “lynch” a government official who oversees elections (which she said was a joke) so Campbell really is in the thick of it. He is, it seems to me, a brave writer.

Rather than jump right into describing the book, I’d like to ponder out loud a bit about the milieu in which it was written, circling around the topic before getting more directly to it. I hope you keep scrolling and follow along. I know you are busy and I’m presuming on your time and energy. Thanks.

For what it is worth, I came of political age in the late 1960s when political violence was in the air and it was scary. I used to say that whoever said the ‘60s into the early ‘70s were nothing but groovy must not have been there; the left-wing Weathermen made bombs and Daley’s cops pummeled protestors. The National Guard gunned down unarmed students at Kent State (and the Pennsylvania Guard killed an unarmed black visitor in York, near where we live.) Some of us recall the horror of cult-like groups such as the Manson Family and the way Patty Hearst was kidnapped and quickly programmed to become a far-left criminal. Many will never forget the horror of the anti-Jewish massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics. These were bloody, weird days.

However demoralizing Watergate was for many, Nixon was held to account in a bi-partisan way for his lies. Nixonian Republicans put country over party and joined with others to oust the crook. But within a decade or so, things changed and grew much more partisan; a few weeks ago I listed at BookNotes a few books about the rise in the last decades of the 20th century of the often violent far right — militias that made the John Birch Society that I grew up hearing about seem nearly quaint — and how the far right media amplified their voices. Grossly racist and deeply dishonest and often vulgar, Rush and other wannabe shock jocks provoked and pushed right wing populism further far out as the Tea Party movement turned increasingly violent. Newt Gingrich seemed respectable at first but was deeply flawed and became dangerous before even he was run out. Right-wing talk radio daily broadcast bizarre conspiracy theories beyond those promoted by Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan, and, eventually, a troubled real estate mogul turned media star, Donald Trump.

You’ll recall how deceitfully Trump treated Barack Obama using racist tropes and rude comments about him not being a true American. As the animosity grew it seemed worse than the regrettable, infamous “Willie Horton” strategy pushed on an otherwise gentlemanly Bush in 1988. It was relentless. It got even more ugly after that, with his contentious slander against Hilary (who I was not a fan of, by the way) time and time again trying to prove she was grossly at fault with the attack in Benghazi; Trump continued to press untruths about that, over and over, knowing full well that the repeated investigations exonerated her. He seemed to love controversy and chaos; once elected he fired dozens of staff and grew uglier with his mocking of former prisoner of war John McCain and other former POWs, had dust-ups with Gold Star parents, continued to use nasty language about women. Conservatives were repulsed — from Mitt Romney to Condoleezza Rice to George Will to Al Mohler — but eventually many gave in. Regularly, President Trump made references to despicable players, from the Proud Boys to former KKK-Wizard David Duke to Vladimir Putin. The GOP has changed immensely since I was growing up (I liked Ike as a boy and my parents were decent WWII-era patriots, even if my dad for a while liked Goldwater.) My favorite political figure ever, who I visited in DC more than once seeking advice, was a Republican Senator (Mark Hatfield) who was a noble peacemaker and respected by nearly everyone on both sides of the aisle. There’s nobody around like him anymore.

It seems to now be a fact as plain as day, even if it sounds uncivil to say so, that Republican leadership and the MAGA movement on the ground has shifted from conservative and thoughtful and gentlemanly and traditional to raw and angry and revolutionary, too-often connected with corruption and meanness, not to mention bizarre Q drops and icky conspiracy theories.

When Trump tells his audiences to rough up the media, folks go crazy. When he repeats Q-Anon messages about a pizza restaurant in DC that is a hub for pedophiles, far right guys come in with weapons. When he doesn’t distance himself from his pal Alex Jones who said 9-11 was an inside job and that the horrible murder of children at Sandy Hook was a hoax and that Hillary Clinton murdered and chopped up people by the dozens, nobody speaks up. (Do they?)  It is nearly inconceivable to me, I’ll admit, that Godly people can stomach this stuff but I’m willing to listen to those who may want to explain why they put up with it all.

This is what was hurtful in my remarks made while promoting this book the other day: I said that the Party has nearly capitulated to and often overlooks this kind of impropriety (to put it nicely.) I assumed that it is a matter of record, but to say so seems to imply that my good friends who are normal Republicans are asleep at the wheel, or worse. I implied, I guess, that they were complicit. I did not mean that.

I do not necessarily think that.

I am sorry this is awkward, wanting to applaud and commend this book that suggests that so-called Christian Nationalists are caught up in a monstrous system.

Disarming Leviathan is not suggesting that all conservatives or Republicans are mired in dishonesty and seduced by idols. Like Democrats or Greens or Libertarians or any other party loyalists, they may or may not be.

As one not affiliated with the Republican Party it may not be my place to ask these unpleasant questions and I do not mean to impugn the motives of customers I don’t know well, let alone those Republicans I like and love, who have not felt a need to distance themselves from the worst of the MAGA extremism.

But to set the stage for talking about this book we have to name the stuff it addresses and the language it uses about it.

Pastor Campbell’s book is not a critique of Mr. Trump and those who are still pushing the lies about the election or losing their opposition to those who tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power by trashing the Capitol (now implying it was not really so bad, despite the footage of guys using a flag as a spear against police and the high numbers injured in the riot.) The book (and my column) certainly is not about Republicans, per se, but it is about the extreme ideology represented by the shorthand phrase of so-called Christian Nationalism.

It should be obvious to say that not all Republicans and not even all Trump supporters who identify with the MAGA movement are ideological extremists of the Q-Anon sort. Some pride themselves in being thoughtfully Christian (even if they still slander anyone to their left as “Marxist”, use the word “woke” as a mocking pejorative, and cite questionable sources like Breitbart News, The Epoch Times and the like.) There are those who are religious-sounding but in one way or another are adjacent to a far-right movement that seems close to fascism, as if that is kosher. We all know how Viktor Orbán, the dangerously strong autocrat from Hungary, claims he holds to Reformed theology, so there’s that. He comes to DC to speak with Republican leaders, at places like the Heritage Foundation and CPAC, so our times are, admittedly, complicated.

So if the shoe fits, I suppose, we invite you to wear it. If it does not, then you won’t take offense (right?)

I know and often say that good people can disagree about any number of things — and remain friends. I know and say often that good folks can certainly disagree about policy positions and speak about their differences with nuance and respect.

(Heck, I disagree with myself on some policy questions month by month and trying to be a Biblically-informed citizen on a whole array of policies causes me to be ill-at-ease with most Party affiliations across the political spectrum, feeling like an exile from all parties. That’s exhausting and painful, but is another post for another time.)

It is awkward, though, to introduce a book that suggests that some (many?) in this movement are captured by idolatry and that the best way to engage in good conversation is to introduce the gospel of Christ, rather than quibble about policy concerns or culture wars topics.

My point is that I am naming what should be seen as a non-debatable fact of our political reality these days. Despite horrible and deranged stuff from the left sometimes (and the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump a few weeks ago) it is clear that some Republican Party officials have given the wink to very bad people, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and neo-Nazis and business charlatans. Many Red-state Congresspeople have used exceedingly incendiary language and are funded by very dark sources which do not bode well for our Republic.

Insofar as some of us are part of a party that is somewhat in bed with Q and the likes of Roger Stone and Alex Jones, we must ask about our complicity and integrity. There are many books asking just that these days and I’ve mentioned them before, from The Kingdom, the Power, the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta to The Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace by former Homeland Security agent, Elizabeth Neumann, and, of course, David Gushee’s Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies. Each asks about the role of evangelical Christians in the broader movement of the extremist, far right.

Disarming Leviathan does two things, though, that no other book does.

You see, while many sociologists, theologians, historians, and pundits analyze the ways in which self-identified people of faith have been complicit in touting MAGA’s more extremist views, Disarming Leviathan — again, written by a conservative pastor in Arizona — asks how we can minister to those caught up in so-called Christian nationalism. It is exceptional in this regard, well-written, readable, and practical.

He laments for a chapter or two, telling his story and bringing folks up to speed on the current discussions about church and state and far right ideology and Biblically-based foundations for civic life leading to Christianly understood politics. He is firm that the far right ideologies inspired by infowars and Q and white supremacists and para-military extremists are not just bad Christianity, but are simply not Christian at all, no matter how many praise songs they are blasting at their firing ranges and protest mobs. There. You. Have. It.

He is willing to draw a line in the sand and while he doesn’t want to sound judgmental or unkind, he suggests that those who deeply and consistently embrace anti-Christian ideology and language and worldviews, may not be, actually, disciples of Jesus at all. Or, more likely, they have some connection to the church (many, statistics tell us, self-described “evangelicals” actually do not go to church) and need to be shepherded, discipled well, invited to return to their first love.

Or, I might add, they might have such a bifurcated faith, such a dualism between their personal and public lives, that they don’t connect their Sunday love for Jesus and His cross with their far-right cultural warring. (As mega-church pastor Robert Jeffress put it, he doesn’t really care about Christian faith when it comes to elections!) Yikes! Talk about a disconnect! That is a problem, those who don’t even wish for “a seamless life” (to use the lovely phrase from the book by Steve Garber from the great little book by that title.)

Campbell is very clear in stating that he is not saying that anyone in favor of the former President’s campaign is surely not saved. He has a full-page side-bar making this very clear. He does suggest that if they are dedicated to Christ and hold to the constellation of views that make up so-called Christian Nationalism they may not have gone very far along in their faith journey, haven’t studied Scripture or theology or haven’t been guided towards Christ-like spiritual formation. They have been influenced by something akin to propaganda by those who are not astute about solid, historic, Biblical faith. He tries very hard not to seem harsh and he is always inviting readers to grace and kindness and offers caveats and heart-felt stories. It is by far the most personal book about all this I’ve ever read, even more so than the excellent Red State Christians: A Journey Into White Christian Nationalism and the Wreckage It Leaves Behind by the fine and caring writer, Lutheran pastor Angela Denker.

Once again: our author is not some progressive outlaw smearing anyone who holds conventional doctrine or conservative social convictions nor is he unconcerned about the traditionalist values many hold when it comes to our quickly secularizing society. He’s a Bible-believing evangelical who knows that the Word teaches that we can discern a person or movement’s value by their fruits.

He tells (on page 50) of going to a workshop on “Biblical Patriotism” which included “Constitutional Defense” gun training where the largest conversation was about the question  “at what point it is okay to shoot government officials?”

There is a lot of anxiety about big government out there and promoters of this movement imply that the faithful need to sign up for the “righteous army” in the coming good versus evil end-of-the-world battle. So, they imply, we should start practicing the killing now as we hone our skills of so-called Biblical citizenship.

It just may be that those who have been captured by the cult-like extremes of the alt-right aspects of this ideology, do not need talked out of their odd politics of grievance but more urgently need to come to really know and trust their Maker and His great love through accepting the good news of the saving work of Jesus the true Christ and to come to understand the Biblical teaching of the Kingdom of God. To put it crassly, these folks don’t need to reconsider their politics and vote against Trump, they need to understand God’s gift of salvation and come to more consistently follow the Biblical Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The very first part of this book explores the notion of Leviathan, a beast-like image in the Bible that conjures up the principalities and powers. It’s potent and good. My favorite full book on that these days is another we’ve touted, Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies by N.T. Wright and Michael Bird (Zondervan; $22.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39.) Campbell is well-informed by this balanced, serious, Biblical orientation and it is helpful to read him as he exposes pagan nationalism as such, and the movement around it that is often nearly toxic. It is hard hitting but I think he assumes that most readers attracted to this book already understand something about how irreconcilable nationalism is with Christian faith. He names it and worries about those caught up in it and offers a sobering assessment of what we might call (quoting the National Association of Evangelical’s Matthew Soerens) the “heretical elements of American Christian Nationalism.”

If this is the case, that the more anxious extremes of the nationalist movement are engaged in heresy, then the answer isn’t only more civility and healthier political conversation (although civility in political conversation is always necessary and Campbell provides good guidance about that) but the answer is winsomely sharing the full gospel and the call to the cost of discipleship.

Yep, brazen and somehow hopeful as it may be, Disarming Leviathan is ultimately about evangelism. About outreach and being an agent of God’s reconciliation. About offering a better way.

Here is a very short YouTube clip of Caleb saying why he wrote the book which he describes as a “on the ground” guide to learning to reach those who have given themselves over to Christian Nationalism. Check it out but come back to keep reading, please. 

Decades ago a hero of mine, Dr. Richard Mouw, wrote an early book entitled Political Evangelism. It is long out of print but I loved that book, one of the first I read about integrating a view of politics with the social ethics and perspective that emerges from Biblical teaching. I have since read dozens and dozens of other such books on nurturing the Christian mind when it comes to faithful political discernment and advocacy. But none of those books are about evangelism, as such, about calling people into a better story. Disarming Leviathan does not attempt to develop a full Christian view of political life or offer a detailed alternative to the alt-right movement. Rather, it explores how to effectively share the gospel with neighbors or friends or family who have embraced white Christian nationalism and its attendant mixed bag of values. It really is about “political evangelism.”

Campbell does a great job in explaining how to best go about sharing the gospel with people and in this case he says we have to study what missiologists teach us about culture and context, about listening and maybe finding common ground.

That is, if a missionary is going to a foreign land to share Christ’s love and the good news of His Kingdom, she has to learn the stories and values, traditions and customs, symbols and metaphors used by that particular culture. Cross-cultural relationships are always complicated and we sometimes don’t pay adequate attention to cultural and religious assumptions that color  stories and values. The patterns of our thoughts and the habits of our hearts are greatly shaped by stories and epic myths, informed by secular liturgies — remember what Jamie K.A. Smith taught us in You Are What You Love?

Caleb Campbell calls us to do this sort of cross-cultural, deeper-level, missiological study of our contemporary political landscape. If we want to present a better story of the meaning of life and a plausibly more wholesome political vision we will have to be astute in knowing how to tell the story of Christ and His grace in a fresh way. Can we be missionaries to so-called Christian nationalists? It is going to take some thinking and gracious relationship-building and Disarming Leviathan has done a great job starting our education and offering guidance for our conversations. If you are interested in a fairly quick read examining from a balanced Christian perspective this dangerously autocratic and extremist movement, with the hope of reaching out to its adherents, this is a really great place to begin.

WE MUST LOVE PEOPLE

However, as important as it is to learn about the symbols and myths and values and stories of a subculture, we also have to really care for the people, to in some ways (I am saying this to help you understand the book, not quoting him exactly) see their stories from the inside. We cannot win folks whose stories we utterly disdain. We need to listen; to care, to offer and receive hospitality. We need to show empathy and respect.

Like Paul in Athens, Greece, on Mars Hill (in Acts 17) we have to be fluent enough to know something about what it is they are looking for with their false gods.

(By the way, a really, really good read on how idols work in the human heart is Counterfeit Gods by Timothy Keller. I really recommend it, even as he explores the seductions of money, sex, and power – and “the only hope that matters.” More about the idols of our public lives is “Here Are Your Gods”: Faithful Discipleship in Idolatrous Times by Christopher Wright.  Much heavier, in terms of deeper-level political idols showing up across the political spectrum see the exceptional Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies by David T. Koyzis. )

In Acts 17 Paul did not yell at them and at the end of his message they invited him to come back for more discussion the next day. Isn’t that brilliant? He was a wide reader and apparently read the poetry and even false religious tracts of the Greco-Roman world, well enough to be able to engage the hipsters in the Areopagus and invite them to dialogue. It is a great story of winsome, contextualized missional apologetics.

Can we do that effectively with the far Christian right if we don’t love them?

And that is another major point of this book, that we must share the gospel with lost neighbors and those sucked into harmful political visions, by caring for them as people. He longs for “gentle restoration” not winning arguments or defeating a viewpoint. “The people we are trying to reach are not our enemies,” he reminds us.

The subtitle of Disarming Leviathan says much of it clearly: we must love our nationalist neighbors as neighbors, as friends. Without condescension, we have to care for those whom we have reason to believe have lost their way. We don’t do this because we disapprove of Mr. Trump or because we can’t stand the conflating of our beloved gospel with such nasty political rhetoric. No, we do it because we love people and desire for them to know the goodness of the full gospel. We need heart-level conversations about the gospel and that always happens best in a culture of love, with a posture of care.

He invites us to reflect on “the art of table setting.” Transformation, he notes, “starts in the heart.”

Although Campbell has chapters about the emptiness of American Christian Nationalism and exposes the dark spiritual power behind the far-right extremists, some of this many of us may already know.  Still, the first part is a refreshing, personal, at times even tender summary. The best chapters that set this book apart are on “engaging our mission field” and, importantly, a chapter called “Preparing Our Hearts for the Work.” Read them honestly and slowly. He also offers what he calls a “field guide” to these sorts of contextualized, careful conversations. Some of this “humble subversion” includes reflections on fairly high-level missionary strategies about cross-cultural evangelism, but it also is fairly common sense stuff, too. He applies it all nicely to our contemporary ideological contexts and conversation partners that you can imagine as your own church members, your own relatives, your own work associates, your literal neighbors right up the street. Disarming Leviathan is wise and practical and very highly recommended.

Listen to pastor David Swanson, who writes,

This urgent and gracious book is an answer to prayer for those of us heartbroken by the power of Christian nationalism over our loved ones. Now we have a resource brimming with practical wisdom to equip us to approach family and friends with the liberation gospel of Jesus.

Or listen to the lovely and cheerful Bible scholar Carmen Imes (of Biola University) who notes that,

What I love about Caleb Campbell’s approach is he recognizes that Christian nationalists are neighbors who need discipleship in the way of Jesus. Caleb has taken the time to understand the movement from the inside and he offers practical ways to engage in substantive conversations without shutting people down. If you share concern that Christian nationalism distorts Biblical principles, then this book will show you what to do about it. It’s not enough to disagree. We need to engage.

I’ve read a lot of books on political views and philosophies and, lately, on the rise of the alt-right and its adjacent groups and movements, leading to the terrible attack on the Capitol. I’ve read books about those embedded with the KKK and another about the Proud Boys. I am baffled when I learn about the apparent religious affiliations of those involved in the nationalist worldview. (Geesh, even the murderous KKK view themselves as a Christian outfit!) How can we have meaningful conversations — about faith and truth and Jesus and church — with those caught up in this stuff? From eccentric, goofy loudmouths like Majorie Taylor Green to seemingly Christian intellectuals like Eric Metaxas to the brainy ugliness of neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, those you know and love are each different. Get Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor and start there. By the end you really will be helped in being humble and spiritually motivated with lots of empathy and care. It won’t be easy, but it may be the best way to move towards truly profound engagement and spiritual conversation.

Here’s what Campbell writes at the end of the first chapter. After a reminder that we will need “thousands of conversations at kitchen counters, cafe tables, and small group gatherings” and a word of caution that some of these encounters will not go well, he continues,

The seductive power of American Christian nationalism can consume those who give themselves over to it. The methods listed below are not guaranteed to bring about redemptive transformation. Only the living God can do that. Even now as you read, I invite you to pray that the Spirit of God will give you strength and guidance as you set out on this journey.

Amen?

Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity Joel Looper (Eerdmans) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I just finished this good book and I might write about it more, later. For now, it seems so germane and a helpful, deeper, study of the thesis assumed in Disarming Leviathan, so I wanted to highlight it briefly in this BookNotes. It officially releases in a few weeks but we unpacked it just yesterday and we are allowed to sell it now.

First: this is a somewhat more serious study than Disarming Leviathan but is still not an academic tome. It is readable and conversational in tone. Looper is a church history, political science, and theology buff who teaches at Baylor University; his previous (scholarly) book was Bonhoeffer’s American: A Land without Reformation which documents what Bonhoeffer wrote about the American religious landscape when he visited the US in the 1930s and explores how what we might call mainline denominational churches and their national leaders (like Reinhold Niebuhr) failed to take the gospel seriously enough.

Another Gospel hints at some of this nicely as Looper insists that the gospel of Jesus Christ should be our ultimate concern and therefore His church should be the central location of our whole-life formation.

In other words, our values and habits and politics and economic opinions, our sexuality and our voting and our relation to society, should all be informed by the ethos of the community of which we are a part. We are to be, of course, catechized and liturgically shaped by our church, enfolding us into the Body as we are transformed by our union with Christ. Dr. Looper sees the church as our true home and that the Body of Christ — His Kingdom — demands our most full allegiance. No Christian should pledge allegiance to any other thing. Although many US Christians reflexively put their hand over their heart to recite the Pledge to our flag, it seems that no serious Christian would disagree about Christ’s singular, ultimate, Lordship if you stop to think about it.

(For a lovely and not particularly controversial survey of this specific sub-topic, how we can be totally dedicated to Christ and yet be a patriotic citizen, see the very nice How to Be a Patriotic Christian by Richard Mouw (IVP; $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39) that reminds us that our love for our homeland is not a bad thing in itself and can be a way to show love to our actual neighbors in our place. Looper might wish for a stronger warning and renunciation of the state’s claims upon us but Mouw encourages a benign patriotism as long as we don’t elevate it to an idol or ultimate thing.)

Professor Looper insists that in America, we have reversed the roles of church and state, or maybe as we say around here, we have the cart before the horse. The famed British thinker G.K. Chesterton said that America is a nation with the soul of a church, but Looper suggests it is actually the other way around — our churches have the soul of a nation! And that is not good. This illustrates his provocative thesis that many — and certainly the Trumpian MAGA movement —  are proclaiming what St. Paul called “another gospel.”  This will be a hard truth to speak to some, for sure.

The first part of this book is a study of Galatians and the various “other gospels” known in the early church and what the Biblical teaching about ultimate loyalty to Christ — during the persecutions and even after Constantine — meant for those who took up the cross to follow Jesus. He says that most knew they were paroikous — foreigners, as 1 Peter 2:11 puts it. Our civil religion has infected mainline churches and evangelicals, it seems, and we fail to put Christ first and want to feel at home with the surrounding culture. He doesn’t use this word, I don’t think, but we could say this leads to syncretism. Or accommodation, carving pieces out of our faith, slimming it down so it fits nicely with the surrounding culture. Such is the opposite of the rousing call to not allow the world to squeeze us into its mold spoken of in Romans 12: 1-2. Jesus says we are to be “in” but not “of” the world and this failure of seeing ourselves as those not at home here, non-conformed (or what MLK called maladjusted) allows us to form a too easily cozy relationship with the values and ways of the surrounding culture.

Looper helpfully draws on church fathers and ancient extra Biblical documents illustrating the radical posture the early Christian community had regarding their surrounding emperors and governments. He helpfully unpacks just a bit from Augustine’s magisterial City of God (that starts out reminding us we are pilgrims) and opens up the claim that we dare not baptize the national body. He looks at Puritans and the “city set upon a hill” language of the early colonists.

We must not, as some might put it today, wrap the Bible in the flag. Many of us have heard this stuff before but here it is punchy and serious and relevant, perhaps with shades of Stanley Hauerwas. This, he insists, is the rationale for resisting Christian nationalism: it erodes our trust in Christ and supplants the centrality of the role of the church in our lives.

To cite Paul, again:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who calls you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. (NIV)

Looper notes that his book which analyzes Scripture and church history (and includes an amazing chapter on Russian state nationalism under Putin) is polemical and intentionally provocative. Okay; it frankly isn’t that spunky. He thanks in the preface the conservative thinker Justin Lee, associate editor at First Things, where they have debated the culture war and the future of the church for years; Lee may not agree with Looper’s view of what most ails the church these days but it gives you a sense of who his conversation partners have been as he has struggled with the way American politics — and these days, more the Republicans than the Democrats — have distorted the gospel so very badly.

The opening pages of the book recounts verbatim an incident I know a little about.

Our old friend and customer Eric Metaxas, a proponent, now, of what Looper would say is a Pauline false or “other gospel”, was on a video show with then Pennsylvania Gubernatorial candidate, far-right Pentecostal nationalist, Doug Mastriano. (You may recall the stories about his involvement in a weird cult in Pennsylvania that used an AR-15 rifle in their actual liturgical worship.) They were on the phone with President Donald Trump, days after it became clear that he had lost the election. Although it was understandably contested at first, it became extraordinarily, unequivocally, clear that President Trump had not gotten enough votes to win.

Eric says, “This is the most horrible thing that’s ever happened in the history of our nation.”

After some banter with the President in which he says his reversal of fortune among the electorate was “the greatest scam in the history of our country”, Metaxas replies:

“We are going to win. Jesus is with us in this fight for liberty. There was a prayer call last night and you cannot believe the prayers that are going up. This is God’s battle even more than it is our battle.”

After the President comments about some court rulings, he says, “if we don’t win this thing, we’ll never be able to bring our country back.”

Eric earnestly replies that “I would be happy to die in this fight. This is a fight for everything. God is with us.”

This is the sort of language (Looper seems to be suggesting) that one uses about truly ultimate things, about religion. For Metaxas, this unhinged cause that is “everything” and for which he is willing to die. Not the cause of Christ, but overturning the election. Which he says is what God wants, so, for him, it is a religious-like commitment. You see?

A few weeks later, Looper reminds us, there was the odd Jericho March where participants converged on DC and prayed and prophesied and spoke in tongues and listened to vile Alex Jones of infowars conspiracy fame and the disgraced Michael Flynn. On January 4th and 5th there were two more rallies where, as in Judges 6, they blew shofars and marched around the Supreme Court Building and the Capitol Building seven times. Some of these religiously-motivated citizens found their way the next day into the riot at the Capitol. We all have seen the ugly pro-Nazi signs next to posters about Jesus next to the scaffold that was to “hang Mike Pence” next to crosses and Confederate flags. Most of us have heard the weird prayer by Q-Anon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, once they had stormed into the Senate chambers. The crowd roared “Amen.” It’s no wonder The Atlantic’s writer called it “a Christian insurrection.”

What are the contours and essentials of the very heart of the gospel? Do those who say they’d die for this movement to reinstate Trump really believe that Christ is the Savior and our identity in Him transcends political opinions? Looper is careful, if blunt, citing remarkably bad theological statements by, for instance, Jerry Falwell and Robert Jeffress. He spends too much time dissecting the infamous theonomist Stephen Wolfe, and his much-twittered about The Case for Christian Nationalism. Looper is 90 pages in when he offers the penultimate chapter “A Gospel Politics” (which was good as far as it went but was less helpful than I’d have wanted) which lead to the more urgent and germane “Trump and the Gospel of America.” It is important and astute.

Obviously with his keen insights into Bonhoeffer and his passion for texts like Hebrews 11:10 (we work and wait for “the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God”) and his use of phrases like “resident aliens”, Looper is not a progressive Democrat dissing his political opponents. He is a gospel teacher wanting God’s people to be clear about first things, about the very gospel itself. To those who are hardened to the gospel he hopes they can turn back to their first love. He assumes there will be a reckoning (“or what used to be called a judgement.”) Short of wide-spread repentance, there is no other way out of our current spiritual cul-de-sac.

Politicized evangelicals believe themselves to be fighting secularization, but Joel Looper argues that his fellow evangelicals are in fact making it worse: the church is secularizing itself by replacing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with cultural conservatism, and the church with the nation. No wonder people are walking away from the church! Looper calls those who have accepted Donald Trump as their personal lord and savior to return to the Jesus of the Bible.  — William T. Cavanaugh, DePaul University, author of The Uses of Idolatry

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BookNotes

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After last week’s hefty (and important) BookNotes, describing a handful of books studying the history of the extremist politics of the far right in the last decades (and a few that are very contemporary) I want, now, to list six wonderful summer reads. Three are just now out, three you can pre-order now. Of those, two will be released in early August, and one is due mid-August. Of course, we can take pre-orders of nearly anything, any time, but now would be a great time to get on the waiting list for these three soon-to-be-released, forthcoming August ones.

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Let us know how you want us to serve you. Again, all are at our 20% off.

The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies our Souls Rich Villodas (Waterbrook) $25.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00  AVAILABLE NOW

This one just released last week and we’re eager to send some out. We liked his first one, Deeply Formed Life which seemed to me to be a lovely combination of classic, evangelical piety with a bit of spiritual formation informed by the broader contemplative tradition and attentiveness to the issues of the day. We love it when pastors of very lively evangelical churches – Rich is the pastor of New Life Fellowship in Queens, New York – draw on the riches of the wider church and are unafraid to invite us to serious formation in the way of Jesus. (He has his undergrad degree from Nyack College and his seminary MDiv from Alliance Theological Seminary.) He is a wise young leader in a thriving multi-ethnic church. For those who have been following the fantastic (free) on-line video curriculum by John Mark Comer called “Practicing the Way” (in conjunction with the book by that name) you may recall Rich sharing his own conversion story in the first episode. He clearly knows something about the deeper practices that shape us into people who are like Jesus.

Rev. Villodas did am excellent second book that drew on line from a poem by Langston Hughes (again, something you don’t see in most evangelical books about Christian living) called Good and Beautiful and Kind. It showed the sort of personal and public virtues we are looking for when we take up the “deeply formed life.” I liked that book a lot as, again, it drew on evangelical faith language and his own experiences as a pastor in an CM&A church and invited readers into a culture of goodness and beauty, including the call to be engaged in anti-racism work and the like. Solid, delightful, beautiful stuff.

Now in this brand new one, The Narrow Path – I wish I had time and space to summarize each chapter – he invites us into this paradoxical Christian vision of finding a richer, fuller life by pursuing what Jesus calls “the narrow way.” He notes in the beginning just how odd this sounds to the modern mind; who wants to be “narrow”, right? The very phrase connotes closed-mindedness, restrictive, maybe self-righteous. Nothing could be farther from the truth, he insists. Jesus’s call to discipleship certainly is a narrow way but it is a way that leads to a much fuller life. How this is and what it looks like is the theme of the book.

So, The Narrow Way.

It is a reflection on the Sermon on the Mount. I put most books about this into one of two categories: there are great exegetical works, straight studies, rooted in Bible and history, from John Stott’s great Bible Speaks Today: The Message of the Sermon on the Mount to Scot McKnight’s Story of God Bible Commentary: The Sermon on the Mount. We have one showing how various important exegetes, writers, and preachers from the past handled the texts. And then there is the stunningly broad and useful Following the Call: Living the Sermon on the Mount Together (published by Plough) which is an edited devotional of 365 varied readings on the Sermon from across the centuries.

And then there are those that are most aimed at calling us out of our American materialism and militarism, even arguing – as does the must-read The Upside-Down Kingdom by Don Kraybill – that we put up “detours around Jesus” to avoid the hard teachings of his counter-cultural way. There are many serious reads by Anabaptist peacemakers and Catholic justice workers and others who have written books that invite us to radical commitments to citizenship in Christ’s new regime, his kin-dom.

I trust Villodas a lot and I’d like to say this book draws on both the heady exegetical texts and the rousing calls to counter-cultural discipleship. But yet, The Narrow Path seems to be doing something yet again, a subversive call, yes, but really readable and not off-putting. It is warm even as it is challenging. He’s a pastor and a wholesome preacher and he obviously cares about his flock and he, as a writer, cares about his readers. He isn’t wearing his woke cred on his sleeve (although he easily cites Howard Thurman and King and Bonhoeffer and Hauerwas, even.) He draws on one of the very best commentaries on Matthew (by Dale Bruner) and yet never seems the least bit arcane. He is a practical, inspiring, preacher and it shows. It should surprise us as two of his mentors were Peter and Geri Scazzero (known for their several books on emotionally healthy spirituality.)

The Narrow Path is written in a way that seems safe and grace-filled with no heavy-handed, shaming calls to self-sacrificial obedience. It’s almost like a lovely, inspiring, Christian self-help /motivational book, inviting us away from self-defeating and toxic ways of thinking and being, and inviting us into the way of Jesus.

Which is not to say, good and beautiful and kind as the book may be, that it doesn’t pack a wallop. It does!  Maybe that’s part of its subversion — it sneaks up on you, inviting you into a careful reading of the words of the Master, the context of this famous sermon, and the many implications for living in our twenty-first century, fast-paced lives. From sexual ethics to the question of personal wealth and giving, from love of enemy to being honest as people of utter integrity, there is a lot here in this short, punchy sermon. Villodas explores it all quite nicely.

The first part of the book is under the rubric “Understanding the Narrow Path.” After a brief interlude on prayer, actually, the second part is arranged as “Walking the Narrow Path.” These good chapters are entitled Our… Witness, Anger, Words, Desires, Money, Anxiety, Judgement, Decisions, and Enemies. Although it is brief there is a wonderful Afterword that I’m going to come back to, I am sure, simply called “Practicing Obedience.”

The ending, like the whole book,  is immensely practical and invites us into the language or practices, hoping to encourage habits and lifestyles, things that will, indeed, yield happiness, joy, freedom, or (as the classic translations put it) blessed.

Who doesn’t want that? The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies our Souls by Rich Villodas is highly recommended, indeed.

Watch the trailer here that advertises the book (but be sure to come back here to keep reading, and order at our secure order form page.) https://youtu.be/gq6xv_YeEv8?si=LKL6Yj042ranA458

The Hope In Our Scars: Finding the Bride of Christ in the Underground of Disillusionment $22.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39  AVAILABLE NOW

We have quite a large selection of books from a real variety of perspectives for those who are deconstructing their faith, for those who are restless in their current faith tradition, for those who have doubts or those who have been hurt by the church and are wondering what to do. That so many have come out lately — from all angles and perspectives — is an indication, it seems, that we are well on our way towards what one author calls “the great dechurching.” More and more we have learned just how many people bad religion has hurt.

I suppose I shouldn’t conflate these different sorts of books and memoirs, those who have been hurt by toxic fundamentalism, those who have legitimate doubts about complicated Biblical or theological assertions, and those who have ben burned by a dumb local parish with hurtful people or systems. Deconstruction and doubt are not always the same thing and leaving a bad church can be a sign of great faithfulness to the gospel. I get it. All of that may be for another post.

For now, though, I want to highlight this brand new book by the fabulous (and relatively conservative and delightfully Reformed) author and speaker and social media gadfly, Aimee Byrd. She wrote the excellent Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and one on the sexual revolution (called, cleverly, Sexual Reformation.) She’s been cited in First Things, Sproul’s Table Talk, the PCA By Faith, etc. She is not particularly progressive nor is she deconstructing her core doctrines. We appreciate her bold voice and tenacity within evangelical and Reformed circles. But she has paid a price for her moderate concerns against sexism and such. Some have viewed her as “dangerous” because she dared to invest in the education and agency of women.

As with her other recent books, Byrd is showing a huge capacity for empathy for those who have been disillusioned or hurt. She gets why some are walking away from conventional faith and from the church. The Hope in our Scars maintains, with great grace, that we can create “healthier forms of trust” that can assist those wounded by the church. This trust can be deepened by recognizing the power structures that are at work in local congregations and bigger church systems.

We can free ourselves from tribal thinking and even celebrity culture and focus, with a healthy skepticism about authority (which has limits!) and give ourselves to relationships and postures that honor our discomfort and are honest about our stories. Our stories matter to God, she reminds us, and there can be “hope after harm” in the church as we are clear about that. This book, although written with a light touch, offers deeply theological and candid reflections, about our scars. She’s born scars and she knows many readers have worse.

As Kristin Kobes Du Mez (professor at Calvin University, and author of Jesus and John Wayne) puts it, this is:

“A book for the bruised ones, for the smoldering wicks, for the disillusioned.”

I appreciate other approaches and those who are even more hard hitting in exposing abuse in the church. But Aimee Byrd has an important voice in this movement of voices because, in part, she points us mostly to Christ Himself.  As it says on the back cover, The Hope in our Scars offers, “…a passionate plea to work through our disillusionment with the church and rediscover what’s true and beautiful about our covenantal union with Christ.”

I love the allusive and gentle titles of the chapters. The introduction is called “Beauty Rises.” Part one includes two chapters under the heading “Partners in Affliction” which includes “Disillusioned Disciples” and “Boatloads of Shame.”

The next two sections are “Partners in the Kingdom” and “Partners in Endurance.” These invite us to hold on to what matters most, to fight to love Christ’s church, and invites us to be “a church that sees.” I loved that one chapter alludes to the old Indigo Girls song, “Closer to Fine.” Hey, it’s not every book that alludes to the Indigo Girls, alongside lines from old Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck, British poet Malcolm Guite, Christian neurologist Curt Thompson, modern artist Makoto Fujimura, and medieval mystics like Brother Lawrence. And has a bit about erotic love and a good bit about laughter and beauty. And more than one quote by Frederick Buechner.

None of these are exactly underground, but in The Hope in our Scars she has opened herself even more to those marginalized and hurting folks, making this a searing but gracious invitation. She has been demoralized herself; she admits some of her own wounds, and she has learned to laugh at the incongruity of it all. She can help us find the very Bride of Christ in our pain. We can help others be heard and be healed. There is hope; we don’t have to walk away. This book is a gift and I bet you know somebody who would appreciate it.

This Sweet Earth: Walking with our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse Lydia Wylie-Kellermann (Broadleaf Books) $18.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19  AVAILABLE NOW

What a wondrous, thoughtful, eloquent, honest, poetic, rare books this is. It is somewhat about ecology and the horrors wrought by unstopped climate change. If we are paying attention, we know this is happening and in tender prose she mentions many sad truths — fewer birds, less rain. She tells how her dad, activist Bill Wylie-Kellermann, used to spray the hose in their backyard during cold Detroit winters a few decades ago and, as children, she and her siblings could skate; no longer; the winter’s are different for her young boys. There is much such sadness in this short, beautiful book and it is tender and personal. I found it very moving.

The book is, despite all, an homage to the beauty of the Earth. I don’t know if you had a chance to listen to our latest Three Books From Hearts & Minds podcast, but I highlighted three books about enjoying the outdoors, finding God in the wilderness, and helping children with a robust theology of creation by doing Christian educational work in nature. This was, had I had it when we were recording that pod, one I surely would have cited. It is beautiful, warm, sad, and touching. She tells great stories of her inquisitive children and their love for other creatures — there is a scene about feeding birds right out of their hands which is really nice. There are urban stories as well (Lydia grew up in Detroit and her parents were activists there, fighting principalities and powers and often joining picket lines or doing civil disobedience.) But even there we find a tender and profound reverence for the beauty of life.

(Although, I have to say, as much rolling in the grass and walking barefoot through the weeds that her boys do, one might have thought she’d have mentioned what can be the devastating impact of Lyme disease, the tick-born disaster that is growing — yep, due to global warming. She is attuned to the groaning of creation, even though she doesn’t cite Scripture, and I kept waiting for something about this growing public health danger. Lyme, some researchers are thinking, is likely behind the rather sudden recent rise in sudden onset psychosis and the rise in Alzheimer’s.)

There is poetry and prayer-like verse scattered throughout. And a lovely little ending listing lots of practical stuff you can do; there is something for everyone to take new steps towards being in awe and in wonder even as we deepen our resolve to care for what Bill McKibben calls, in his very positive endorsement, “The deep tension between environmental despair and joy in the still-lovely-if-tattered creation we inhabit…”

Wylie-Kellermann, who directs the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center, edited a stunning book just a few years ago that I have reviewed here at BookNotes —The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World, which brings together friends and elders and colleagues she knows from editing Geez magazine and writing in Sojourners and various Catholic Worker papers. She stands in that broad, radical tradition of faith-based resistance and in this book, mostly about climate anxiety, she writes beautifully and honestly and hopefully about our fears and grief and anger.  The future is precarious — we all need to admit that rather than live in denial about it — so, as indigenous writer and theologian Randy Woodley writes on the back, this book is needed right now. He says we should gift it “to parents and grandparents and everyone who needs hope during this time of despair.” Because, it is a book about hope, even as we learn to follow the abandon and joy of our little ones.

“Wylie-Kellermann invites us to pilgrimage and prayer walk, toddler walk and tween race, to stand in silent reverence and thunder like the holy prophets as we work to protect a world that is fragile, fractured, and still so fecund! Read this book aloud with friends and build community; share it with the kids in your life to start to see nature as they see her; read quietly to yourself, and your tears will cleanse, challenge, and change you.” — Frida Berrigan, author of It Runs in the Family

Another Day: Sabbath Poems: 2013- 2023 Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) $27.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60  DUE AUGUST 6, 2024

Since I have not laid eyes on a single page or poem, do not have much to say about this new poetry volume coming the first week of August other than to say it will surely be one of the big sellers of the summer. Or at least we hope so.

Mr. Berry is known for his exceptionally thoughtful, sometimes even dense, prose essays, mostly about our common life and about how he cares for the broader culture by living close to the land, learning about his place, and stewarding older practices of farming (one book is called The Art of Clearing Brush.) He is a contemporary Agrarian and his insights into community and economics and patriotism and land use, even sexuality, are localist and often overtly Christian. Many of these insights – collected in the title of one of his best anthologies called The World-Ending Fire, or in the great one put together by Norman Wirzba, The Art of the Commonplace – are delightfully explored, and sometimes even clearly explained, in the plots and conversations and characters of his many novels and short-stories.

His slow, unfolding novels are all set in the same fictional Kentucky town and are rural, about agriculture and kin-ship, about food and friendships. Some of our customers read his essays first so to more fully appreciate his novels, while many read his fiction first and only then study his nonfiction. I sometimes think of him as a rural companion to Marilynne Robinson, a person of faith writing both world-class fiction and nonfiction who is respected for her social vision and excellent craft in the modern world.

But Ms. Robinson isn’t known for poetry, and Wendell Berry certainly is. He is a farmer and ecologist and public intellectual and social activist, but he is most known for his writing. And he has written a body of poetry scanning back a half a century.

We have learned that Berry often walks through his woods and farmland on Sundays, a sabbath practice, a lovely, reflective, prayerful habit and out of these weekly walks – saunters, John Muir might have called them – he has created a body of Sabbath Poems. There was a small collection or two, and soon enough they were compiled in a bigger volume, This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems (that came out nearly 20 years ago.) This forthcoming one, Another Day, due August 6, 2024, compiles 225 pages worth of poems that he did since 2013. Perhaps, for some of us, these show the very heart of his work.

As the publisher puts it:

A companion to his beloved volume This Day and Wendell Berry’s first new poetry collection since 2016, this new selection of Sabbath Poems are filled with spiritual longing and political extremity, memorials and celebrations, elegies and lyrics, alongside the occasional rants of the Mad Farmer, pushed to the edge yet again by his compatriots and elected officials.

Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church Eliza Griswold (Farrar Straus Giroux) $30.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00  DUE AUGUST 6, 2024

I have read several books by the great writer, reporter, and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Eliza Griswold and think she is now on that list of writers who I’d read anything they do. She is that good. My favorite of hers was Amity & Prosperity, a study of two neighboring Western Pennsylvania towns and how the influx of fracking effected them. It remains a classic of contemporary creative nonfiction, one I recommend often. This new, forthcoming one — I have an advanced reader copy — is a novel-like telling of the rise and fall of an innovative Brethren in Christ church plant in the Philadelphia area (which grew to several locations.) It started a few decades ago when Rod and Gwen White, former “Jesus People”, felt led to start an unusual, deeply honest, organic, community of faith that served the poor in an urban part of Philly. Among their earliest colleagues and friends (if not a formal member, as far as I know) was the young Shane Claiborne, whose first book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical captures much of the earnest ethos and risky-taking vibe of the radical, Anabaptist, church for seekers and others on the fringe of the American empire. Shane and his pals went off to start The Simple Way and were clearly inspired by Rod and Gwen and the early days of Circle.

I spoke in that church on two occasions, actually; it is a long story how I got connected but they were young, very informal, worshipping  on a Sunday night where the snacks were big bowls of Fruit Loops. From what we’d now call exvangelicals to unkempt street people to Messiah College students studying at Temple University to youthful Jesus-loving hippies to straight-arrow Brethren, I recall that it was a wild mix, an exciting, evolving place to bring people together to worship and be formed in the ways of God’s Kingdom.

Eliza Griswold was raised in the Episcopal Church (her father, Frank, was a former Presiding Bishop of the denomination and himself a fine thinker and writer.) But I suspect that she had little awareness of all that was brought by church planters Rod and Gwen White — the fiery evangelicalism, the passion for evangelism among the hurting and lost, the small group strategies called “cells”, the uniquely Anabaptist social ethic and expectations for building a truly alternative spiritual community. It seems to me that the leadership offered by aging Jesus freaks who were Anabaptists (who loved the nonviolent anarchism of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement) and the youthful zeal of those they attracted, was a far cry from the Diocesan styles Griswold knew best.

Which makes for a fabulous journalistic project; she cared about this eccentric church project and admired the various leaders who arose over the years. She understood (even if it was not her own particular tradition) their faith orientation and realized how very much was a stake. She set out to tell their story, in many ways, the perfect writer for this odd story.

(Maybe you saw the recent Atlantic article about all this that appeared just a few weeks ago.)

Here’s the wild, hard, sad, thing, the unexpected turn of events that made Circle of Hope the book that it became: before 2020’s Covid quarantine hit, Circle had become four main churches, a network of sibling “congregations” that met in different parts of Philly or in Eastern New Jersey, across the river from the city. As the book evolves we come to realize that the primary characters of the story are the four pastors of the four locations. Two men, two women, some people of color, all in admiration of Rod and Gwen’s robust and demanding leadership in the previous decade, and all, each in their own way, in profound conflict with them. And, it turns out, with each other. It’s enough to make you weep.

Although Griswold mentions her initial interest rather briefly, and acknowledges all manner of scholars of religion and alt-type pastors who she looked to for input (from Nadia Bolz-Weber to Kristin Du Mez to Drew Hart to Richard Rohr to Michael Ware to Dante Stewart, all thanked profusely) Griswold doesn’t say much about what drew her to this innovative church in the first place. I guess the best journalists have a good nose for great stories. This one ended up being a great story which, if not exactly exploding in her face, did turn ugly as she started to do years worth of interviews, forming friendships, being a part of what they would all eventually realize was the beginning of the end of their visionary faith community.

She tells us that she started to interview each of the leaders and decided to tell each of their respective back stories — a few came from central Pennsylvania, so it was especially interesting to us — when, a year or so in, the conflict between various leadership styles, different theologies, and different agendas become unreconcilable. Almost any other group of church leaders, I suspect, would have pulled the plug on the writing project, telling the hopeful author that it just wasn’t going to work out. But, no; they endured, invited her into the full, honest, story, a story full of pain and joy, growth and deepened faith, great love and huge disagreements. As the relationships devolve (somewhat around the self-interrogation needed as they engaged in inclusive habits and anti-racist goals) the story devolves and they allow her to look over their shoulders and tell the truth. Amazing.

In Circle of Hope, the book’s subtitle looms large: “A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church.” In this sense it is a page-turning read, a human-interest story about idealists and struggle and relationships, but it is, also, a cautionary tale of sorts, an allusive lesson for us all, no matter the shape and tone of our own institutions of faith.

Although the raw stories of Ben, Julie, Rachel, and Jonny (and a few others; there is a chapter on Bethany that is very important to the story) are each unique and fascinating and makes for great reading, their interactions, their own personal cutting edges of their own faith journeys, their ways of coping with everything from isolation (due to Covid) and on-line / virtual worship, and the large social disruption caused by the Black Lives Matter movement and other allies of anti-racism, took hold in their already rather socially progressive ethos. The role of women in leadership was not in principle a contention, but, as everyone knows, even trained and strong women leaders have unique barriers and complicated contexts when they take up leadership in most churches. That many of Circle’s leaders were not professionally trained but called up from within the community / congregations, is itself a fascinating aspect of the story. The folks all knew and loved each other well, even as the tensions devolved to awful and hurtful accusations and too, too many fights.

From full LGBTQ inclusion to the significant nuances of “doing the work” to become anti-racist to questions of how to keep up the demanding routines of social services, protests, and public witnesses of the churches became front and center. I suppose it isn’t really a “spoiler alert” since it is clear when one starts the book that these social and political and theological questions come to tear them apart.

It is a book that vividly and honestly tells the story of a rather unusual set of congregations — unlike any most of us have been a part of, I’d guess — but in a way, it is a story for all of us. Really.

Circle of Hope is a riveting, detailed story of a handful of early 21st century Christians trying to offer something fresh and compelling that, in a way, is nearly unique in American church history. Neither a staid, liberal mainline denominational church or a conservative evangelical congregation, Circle embodied the vision of the alternative communities not unlike those formed a generation earlier like those at Sojourners or The Other Side or even places like Koinonia Farms. They were new, post-modern contemplatives, eager to share the Good News, informed by constant conversations and embodied practices of joy and lament, hope and praise. Alas, despite regular conversations about repentance and new life, fresh starts and new creation visions, they simply could not restrain the brokenness.

But, yet, as I say, the issues that tore them apart and the ways leaders did or didn’t lead well or faithfully, are for all of us. No matter how conventional or even boring your own church may be, these concerns about power and justice and relationships and gender and leadership and keeping the message of the gospel clear, are concerns for all of us.

Circle of Hope: A Reckoning… is a great read, interesting and in some ways, maybe some small ways, hopeful. It looks at hard stuff, about how even those with socially progressive and faith-based values can’t always do the work to become fully inclusive of those who are seen as marginalized. Even when all voices are invited to the proverbial table, sometimes power and tradition win out. Does love win in the end? It is a live question. Any of us in even slightly contentious spaces need to be reminded of these best hopes and hard dreams. And what can go wrong.

Listen well to Ben, Julie, Rachel, and Jonny. Get to know the White’s who started the whole big thing. And listen to Eliza Griswold, writer extraordinaire, as she works for years to be able to understand these dynamics and report this story well, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And the deeply spiritual and truly beautiful. Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church is an unforgettable book and it may surprise you. It may even, in an ironic, counter-intuitive way, inspire you. Pre-order it today.

Life in Flux: Navigational Skills to Guide and Ground You in an Ever-Changing World Michaela O’Donnell & Lisa Slayton (Brazos Press) $19.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99  DUE AUGUST 20, 2024

You have got to get this book, especially if you feel as if your life is in the fog, in flux, if you are a bit overwhelmed or uncertain about choices (quotidian or large) that you must make. Who among us doesn’t face sometimes daunting decisions and lifestyle choices? Starting with a fabulous story about a guy — Lisa Slayton’s husband, it turns out — who navigated a small boat in a sudden, dangerous fog off the coast of Maine, the book offers navigational skills. The title and subtitle, unlike some books, are perfect. This book delivers the goods and plays with the metaphor with wonder and grace.

I am not a big fan of self-help books, business books, personal growth stuff that feels gimmicky or overly focused on getting stuff done. I know there is a huge, huge market for leadership titles and practical guides to betterment, but I just don’t find most of them that engaging or that helpful. Man, am I glad I gave this a try. Life in Flux is the best book of this sort that I’ve read in a very long time. Thanks be to God.

Lisa Slayton is a leadership coach and old friend from Pittsburgh; she has worked as a consultant and even CEO of nonprofits and leadership development organizations.  A lively, thoughtful Christian I admire her very, very much. So, naturally, I wanted to read this, and I was blown away by just how good it was, and how tenderly it spoke to my own quandaries about business, inner work, influence, and sustainable health in the marketplaces of life.

Michaela O’Donnell is very sharp (with a PhD) and is a friend of some of my most respected friends. She directs the fabulous Max DePree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary (we still keep Max DePree’s two books on leadership in stock) and is the author of one of the very best books on faith and work, the 2021 Baker release, Make Work Matter: Your Guide to Meaningful Work in a Changing World (Baker; $19.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.)

What a joy to see that these two have collaborated so nicely, and written this book in an elegant, fascinating, captivating voice. It is Biblically-wise and really very helpful. There are stories, case studies, social science research reports, reflections on seminal works in social psychology and work-place theory, leadership studies, Biblical reflections, and a great sense of integration of a Christian worldview with the best of seemingly secular scholarship. None of it feels tedious or laborious, and flows very nicely, even as they write about hard, complex matters of the heart and of the culture.

I like that about Flux. It assures us that living in the liminal times, between holding on and letting go (think of the trapeze artist), is generative and hopeful, scary as it may be. And it clearly says, often, that there are our personal life issues to contend with, our stage and age and disposition, as well as the cultural forces and social pressures from the world that come into play. Even if we must grieve our personal losses — there is a lot on this, actually, which was beautiful and wise — we must be aware of the tension and maybe unrealized anguish that bears down on us from world conditions, wars and rumors of wars. We live in serious times and things need to be interrogated in our own lives as well as in our communities and churches, and in the broader culture and world at large. Oh yeah, they have the big picture about the zeitgeist, about flux and change and fog and risk.

Yet, the book is clear-headed and nicely arranged, with just enough bullet points and little charts to seem very, very practical. And there are poetic prayers and blessings at the end of each chapter as we take up the practices — they are all about the practices — that might allow us to slowly embody the habits of new and fresh ways of being in the world. Nice!

Which is to say, Flux is not mostly about work-world changes or growth in one’s professional life, even if many of the examples and case studies are about leaders, managers, supervisors, or workers in industry or other work-world roles. They consult with executives and entrepreneurs but the book is really about whole-life discipleship. It explores questions about how to bring a more wholesome sense of balance and life-giving energy for navigating the changes pressing all around us, in home, community, among friends and family, and, yes, in the job market. The way Michaela and Lisa move so seamlessly from sphere to sphere, from work to home to our most secret foibles of our interior lives, is nothing short of brilliant. They appreciate how things overlap. It is not only wisely whole-life in orientation, but draws together, as I’ve said, the public and the personal — offering what Garber calls “a seamless life.” It is both intellectually sound and written in a lovely, personal style.  Life in Flux is a great, great book, firmly in the self-help genre as it may be and as practical as it may seem, rooted in a wholistic faith perspective and grounded in great truths, lived out in gracious, kindly ways.

And the wisdom is good. For instance, they write:

When things around us start moving faster, it’s tempting to lean in had to productively hacks and time management tools in an effort to make space for more. (Hello. The calendars I just described, above.) The assumption is that because there’s more coming at us and it’s happening faster, we need to do more and go faster to keep up. But the data shows that when we implement these tricks and tools to try to master our time or get it back, we most often end up simply filling our new space with more stuff to do. Oof.

As they later say,

We cannot frenetically make our way through life in flux. It simply won’t work. Trust me, though: this is good news. Our humanity is good news. Our limits are good news. They force us to choose a new way forward, limitations and all. But of course, that is easier said than done.

And they they explain how, “when we are in the midst of disorientation, counterintuitive shifts are often needed. We have to move slowly and differently.”

There are, in each chapter, little boxes that contrast a commonplace posture or way of  doing things, and their “uncommon posture” which offers a fresh take on basic life patterns. These simple but profound sidebar boxes with these concisely contrasting postures, makes the lively prose and updated teaching as clear as can be. Hooray.

Life in Flux, due nearer the end of August, offers navigational skills, to be sure, but part of the first story (of Lisa’s husband stuck in the fog of a threatening storm in the rough Atlantic Ocean) shows how cutting the engine and wisely proceeding with intentional care is key. These portions are really good — and they just may save your sanity in these odd-ball times.

They coin a word, “unfigureoutable” and write with wit about “unfigureoutable” situations:

Unfigureoutable spaces are still uncomfortable. Why? Because they are ambiguous. They’re messy, they’re risky, and they can’t be controlled. Even if we trust God and will find us in the unknown, the reality of facing that which we cannot see clearly is difficult.

It’s natural to long for resolution when tension is present. However, it’s in the tension that growth and learning occur, so resolving it too quickly  (or sometimes even at all!) won’t take us where we want to go.

Do you have some unfigureoutable times in your life? Tension anyone? Pain and longing that come up when thinking about change? Flux? Fog?

If so, you need to engage inner work, develop spiritual disciplines, and find healthy community. That’s another big key: as they say in chapter 8, one of their many “Navigational Skills” is “Don’t Go It Alone.” Their wise call to deeper friendships and Christian community is wonderful. Their piece about knowing oneself is essential and their insights about vocation and calling are excellent. Their bit about craft and skill sets, “Stay in Your Headlights”, is really useful; so useful. They have tons of points and take-aways for learning to be “At Home In Flux.” You’ll want to take notes.

From “Checking Your Speed” to “Choosing to Let God” to “Setting Your Compass”, this is all clear-headed, deeply profound insights, drawn from the many years of interviews, cohorts, leadership, and in-the-trenches work these two women have done. They know about “coming home to yourself” and they want to help us all be the culture-shapers and history-makers that we are meant to be. I admire them, their work, and, now, their forthcoming book. I very highly recommend it to anyone wanting a deft and gracious connection of visionary writing about vocation and calling with pretty down-to-Earth and actionable steps towards navigating the ever-changing contexts in which we find ourselves. Ends up, navigating through the fog of flux is an essential skill for human flourishing. This book can help. Pre-order it today.

This book is a life jacket, a compass, a sextant, and a steady voice of calm for anyone trying to navigate the storms of a life in flux. I am going to be assigning it to every one of my students and recommending it to every one of my clients. O’Donnell and Slayton have brought years of deeply attentive listening, wide-ranging scholarship, leadership experience, and their own authentic vulnerability to guide people through the most turbulent moments of life. You’ll want to read, reread, and pass along the wisdom of this book to anyone in your life who is facing rough waters. —Tod Bolsinger, professor of leadership formation at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Canoeing the Mountains

In a whatever world, it is very difficult to know who we are, why we are, and therefore what we are to do. How would we ever know? And what difference could it make anyway? In their new book, Michaela O’Donnell and Lisa Pratt Slayton draw on years of unusually reflective and thoughtful experience with scores of people and places to offer windows into the integral relationship of ideas to life. Born of their unique ability to see and hear into the questions of honest people longing to make more sense of leadership, Life in Flux is the best of professional competence formed by theological maturity, rooted in every paragraph by hard-won wisdom about the nature of a True North and why it critically matters for individuals and institutions. —Steven Garber, author of The Seamless Life and senior fellow for vocation and the common good, M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust

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