The other day a long-standing customer and friend asked why I don’t push my own book more here at BookNotes. There are a number of reasons, I suppose, ranging from a slight embarrassment in doing so — tooting your own horn seems a bit unseemly — to a fear that, well, I have highlighted it every other year or so, and I don’t want to bore or annoy our faithful readers.

Yet, some of our recent subscribers may not know of this little gem, a book I am quite proud of. More importantly, niche as it may be, there is really nothing like it on the market and it could be very helpful for the right person — a young adult or recent college grad, especially. So, here I go, a little rumination on why you should order Serious Dreams: Big Ideas for the Rest of Your Life for college grads or young adults (or, if I may — ahem — for yourself, no matter your age or stage in life). It was nicely designed by Ned Bustard and published quietly by Square Halo Books in 2015. It goes for $13.99 but our BookNotes SALE PRICE = $11.19.

I’ll even autograph it, which sounds a bit weird to say, even now, having signed dozens and dozens over the years. Just let us know if you want that and, if so, to whom (if anyone) we should make it out.

Let me tell you the back story.

Nearly a lifetime ago Beth and I were newly married and working out of a Presbyterian Church near Pittsburgh, sent there by the CCO (the Coalition for Christian Outreach), an ecumenical, evangelical, campus ministry that helps college students understand and live the gospel of God’s Kingdom. Although it wasn’t the only influence in those early CCO days in the 1970s, we did learn then about that great Dutch statesman, public theologian, and writer, Abraham Kuyper, who is known particularly for his advocacy of a world-and-life-vision that relates seamlessly knowing and doing, thinking Christianly and living vibrantly, in but not of the modern world. When Kuyper founded in 1880 a major Christian university in Amsterdam — before his famous trip to American where he lectured at Princeton — he preached that often-cited line about the resurrected Christ who, as Kuyper put it,

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”

The Biblical basis for that vivid claim can be seen in texts such as Psalm 24:1 and Colossians 1: 15-20. In Kuyper’s speech, the broader context of that line was about rejecting a compartmentalization of faith, as if the arts and sciences are somehow disconnected from a privatized faith. Oh, no: Kuyper deeply valued pluralism but also insisted on the Kingship of Christ expressed in all of society. A cultural renaissance man as the 19th century turned to the 20th, he understood (long before the postmoderns) that all of life is inherently biased, committed, situated; nothing is neutral. (Ya gotta serve somebody Bob Dylan growled in my own generation.) From technology to economics to art to education, human culture-making is shaped by deeper idols or ideologies, so followers of the way of Jesus have to be discerning and winsome and creative about everything. As we used to say in the CCO, we believe in “all of life redeemed.” .

The great Dorothy Sayers said something to the effect about religion that is relegated to one part of one day a week is ultimately boring. Who wants a religion so puny? She’s right, and our years working with the hungry hearts of youth taught us that a big picture faith is not only more faithful to the full epic Biblical drama of redemption, but it is, frankly, more appealing.

(As an aside: for a great modern-day exploration of the implications of Kuyper’s broad teaching about faith lived out in every sphere of life, see the excellent Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures edited by Jessica and Rob Joustra.) Richard Mouw wrote the most accessible and inspiring little introduction to Kuyper in his Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction. Dr. Mouw also nicely told my story about CCO folks learning about all this, including notions of common grace and the vocation of doing uniquely Christian scholarship, in a few pages of his lovely, provocative book All That God Cares About: Common Grace and Divine Delight. The Dorothy Sayers quote animates much of the great book by Paul Marshall, Heaven Is Not My Home: Living in the Now of God’s Creation.)

Inspired by this sort of Dutch neo-Calvinism about the Lordship of Christ over all aspects of creation, alongside the slightly counter-cultural  approach of our Jesus movement forebears, the CCO set out not only to invite students to a gospel-centered faith but to nurture and equip disciples of Christ who might be salt and light in the universities where they found themselves.

We wanted to help students to show forth the implications of the Christian mind, discover fresh new ways of advocating for Christian scholarship, and to stand for Biblical principles of public justice (fighting poverty was a major concern for Kuyper) and racial reconciliation. We brought to our campuses rising Christian leaders such as John Perkins and Os Guiness and Becky Pippert and Tom Skinner and Tony Campolo and R.C. Sproul. Eventually we brought in and learned from big thinkers like John Stott and Ron Sider and Bob Goudzwaard, spiritual leaders like Ruth Haley Barton, Bible scholars like Kenneth Bailey, pastors like Timothy Keller, philosophers like Jamie Smith, activists like Lisa Sharon Harper, who all influenced our staff of mostly young college ministers.

Naturally, if we wanted to honor the Lordship of Christ and create signposts pointing the way of His Kingdom coming, and we wanted students to sense a calling to their academic work (not to mention leading Bible studies in their dorms and going on mission trips, and all the rest of fairly standard faith formation) we had to show not only that academic discipleship matters — loving God with all your mind — but that the college years were times to discern one’s vocation, to hear God’s call, to figure out what it might look like to serve God in the professions and careers for which they were studying. In other words, we had to teach them that work matters to God, and not merely as a way to pay the proverbial bills. God actually cares about your job.

Remember that great line by Martin Luther King, Jr?

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper. He should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all hosts of heaven and earth pause to say; Here lives a great sweeper who did his job well.”

Most campus ministry organizations (and, frankly, most churches, even today) don’t say that nearly enough.

A Lutheran businessman, a steel executive named William Diehl, gave a talk at an early CCO conference called “Thank God It’s Monday” which eventually became a book by that title. Books like Os Guiness’s The Call: Finding and Fulfilling God’s Purpose for Your Life and Tim Keller’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work or Joanna Meyer’s Women, Work, and Calling had not been written yet, but we pioneered on, creating the now famous Jubilee Conference (still held every February and our biggest bookselling event each year.) Inviting students to a robust theology of work and inviting them to think Christianly about what they are learning as they prepare for vocations in the world became important for CCO’s vision of “whole life discipleship.” I’m not sure they always think about the implications of it all, but they still have as a slogan reminding them that they do their ministry in order to “transform college students to transform the world.”

Just for fun, here is a main-stage Jubilee talk by cultural thinker Andy Crouch, (where he plays some Bach), here is another by the fabulous Biblical scholar Carmen Imes, unpacking Genesis 1 and 2, and here is one — you’ve got to watch this — from Sunday morning’s challenge just last year by New York pastor Abe Cho. And here is an audio of me going on for nearly an hour at a workshop about the Christian mind and reading widely as a Kingdom practice designed for Jubilee students. These are all well worth taking in and will inform and inspire you but will also give yoiu a bit more background about some of our influences at Hearts & Minds and some of what we are about.

It was, by the way, out of this vision that our good friend Derek Melleby wrote a number of years ago a small book for young college students called Make College Count: A Faithful Guide to Life and Learning (Baker Books; $13.00; OUR SALE PRICE = $10.40.) It is, to this day, the best little book inviting those heading off to college to make choices that are fruitful and wise, including thinking well about vocation and calling. There is nothing like it, and we highly recommend it.

And, then, also out of this hope within CCO to mentor students into taking their course work seriously and find God in their labs, classrooms, and lecture halls, Derek joined up with another eloquent former CCO staffer (and now college chaplain), Don Optiz, to write the hilarious, breathtakingly good, upbeat volume Learning for the Love of God: A Student’s Guide to Academic Faithfulness (Brazos Press; $19.00; OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20.)

That book was dedicated to me — what an honor! — and, again, illustrates how our involvement with the CCO shaped the vision we have of our small town, mail-order bookstore. I am sure that this little book by my two good pals, Derek & Don, is the best introduction to all this talk about a missional, relevant, thoughtful, sort of discipleship on campus. Anybody that is a life-long learner and wants a quick, fun, read on thinking might well appreciate it. We all could use some “academic faithfulness.”

(Another interesting aside, if you please: many know and many more have heard that Steve Garber’s book, Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior initially had, in its first edition, the same subtitle of weaving together belief and behavior, but with the additional phrase “in the college years.” You see, he did the research for the extraordinarily thoughtful and influential book about higher education (and what contributes to lasting, transformative learning) in the years immediately following his stint with the CCO in Pittsburgh. He was active, also, as leader of the Jubilee conference for a bit, and even though Beth and I had long left CCO staff to start our bookstore in Dallastown, it was through those circles that he interviewed me for my little episode in the book, talking about a Dutch philosopher (Peter J. Steen) who was important to me, and to Steve. Steve’s research for that book was taken seriously by a host of church-related colleges and they used his principles to attempt to make their learning communities more meaningful and faithful in what Sharon Parks calls “the critical years.” Yep, in that rather tangential way, Fabric of Faithfulness is part of the backstory of Serious Dreams as well.)

It was out of this visionary and educational mission to be something other than purveyors of a personalistic piety (or, on the other hand, a socially-engaged activism unmoored from the Bible or orthodox theology or the local church) that Beth and I came to sense a calling to open a bookstore, shaped by these years of talking about these very things, relating faith to all of life. Unlike many so-called Christian bookstores in those years we wanted to be a bit more thoughtful and carry less silly stuff and, importantly, to be ecumenical. We wanted to show that what Richard Foster came to call the “streams of living water” across the broad Body of Christ each had something vital to contribute to a relevant and timely sort of Kingdom lifestyle.

And, also uniquely, it seemed, we wanted to offer books about all of life being redeemed — creation regained — developing a prophetic imagination that would offer critique to the idols of the time and real hope for fresh ideas for the reformation of all of life and culture. That is, we had books about science and art, nursing and education, business and architecture, law and psychology, home-making and church life, too. We have sections of books on urban design and neurology and gender studies and history and agriculture. From parenting to politics, we think we need to find better ways to promote a Biblically-informed worldview and offer fresh hope for a culture in disarray.

(I don’t have to reiterate here what I’ve written about recently — that books are tools for serious discipleship and that reading is, in fact, a much-needed spiritual discipline in this modern, secularizing world. To understand and care about and engage with the spirits of the times, we’ve got to read widely. HERE I shared a list of a great handful of books about books. Hooray.)

All of this led me a few decades ago — besides running the shop, ordering books on all manner of things from all manner of perspectives, hoping customers will enjoy our call to read widely — to take up an advanced degree in the philosophy of higher education. I was helping with CCO by doing some of their staff training in those years and we have been their bookseller for decades. I figured I should revisit some of our interests in institutions of higher learning. The first and at that time the only place that offered a distinctively Christian approach to the study of higher ed as a graduate discipline was the Masters of Arts of Higher Education degree program of Geneva College, in Beaver Falls, PA. I got a chance to study with others and reaffirmed our calling to offer books to all, but with an interest in campus ministry and college life, too. That has never panned out that much, to be honest — most of our customers are adults in ordinary churches, I’d guess, not rising Christian scholars or leaders in campus ministry, let alone faculty which makes us quite happy — but it is part of who we are here at Hearts & Minds. And we are grateful for those situated in colleges that send business our way. You know who you are and we are thankful.

Which brings me to the occasion, nearly a decade ago, of being asked to give a commencement address during the graduation ceremonies of the various Master’s programs at Geneva College. They even gave me an honorary doctorate which I rarely mention, but, well, it was pretty special. When you write, you don’t have to call me Dr. Borger, but you could…. Ha.

I preached, as I sometimes do, about raising up “Sons and Daughters of Issachar” — those who, according to I Chronicles 12:32 “understood the times and knew what God’s people should do.” I was as rousing as I could be in that setting and a number of folks asked afterwards if I could send them copies of my talk. There was even some talk about publishing it as a booklet or something. Oh my.

Which got me to thinking.

There really was no exact book to give as a gift to typical churched college graduates that invited them to take their faith into the marketplaces of their future jobs, to continue being life-long learners for the sake of the common good. There was nothing rather brief for college grads that was both inspiring and substantive, easy and exciting to read but relevant for a young adult wondering what comes next in their post-college years.

Beth and I started reading other college commencement addresses that were delivered to Christian graduates. Naturally, these were mostly from Christian colleges, and, wow, some of them were really good. I found more than enough examples of tremendous talks, graduation speeches, and invitations for young adults to serve God as they move out into the world of work, inspired by things which they learned in their college years. Bingo.

I was delighted that some very famous authors and important Christian scholars (and a lesser known person or two) gave me permission to reprint their commencement addresses. We added some discussion questions, some clever graphics — acorns, oak leaves, growing into the big trees you see on the back cover — and gave it the title Serious Dreams: Big Ideas for the Rest of Your Life. Compiled, curated, and edited by (Dr.) Byron K. Borger of Dallastown, PA.

The collection of talks make for good reading for anybody, I’d say. They are inspirational and  touching and motivational, but, as the best sort of presentations are, they are well-written and full of important ideas, big truths, helpful guidance, exceptional insight. Some are a bit more visionary while some are a tad more practical. Each are set in their own context but I promise that is not odd or off-putting. We edited them in such as way as to retain the uniqueness of each address but made sure each was useful for ordinary readers who know nothing of that particular college or university where it was first delivered. Serious Dreams is not designed only for those who attended a church-related or Christian college but for any young adult searching for meaning and purpose, hoping to live faithfully in these days. These are exciting to read and I am nearly overwhelmed to find my own message alongside those of important writers like Nicholas Wolterstorff and John Perkins and Amy Sherman and Richard Mouw.

I rarely say this sort of thing but as we curated and edited these I felt directed by God to write a different sort of introduction, sharing a different tone in what became the longest chapter in the book. Unlike the rather breathy and celebratory pieces from the various guest authors, I felt led to write a framing chapter that, while still upbeat, was a bit more sober. Some college grads do not get their dream job. Some move home into their parent’s basement. Some have a high degree of anxiety (including over all this talk of a high calling, implying a great clarity about God’s role in shaping our hopes and dreams and visions of vocations.) Let’s face it: few get to “change the world.” There may be some disorientation when a young person moves to a new town or takes up a new job in their summer after graduation. They need to find a new church. They need friends and they need to set up good habits. They might have financial hardships; they may experience loneliness, a let-down after the enthusiasm of their college years. So I wrote that first introductory chapter as a way to assure readers that they are loved and that despite the “big ideas” to which they are called in the exciting chapters to come, it’s okay to settle down, start small, stay put, breath. It’s going to be okay.

Here are the chapters and authors of Serious Dreams:

Live Well, Be True, Do Good: an Introduction by Byron Borger

In this introduction I frame the messages in the book, and remind young adults that starting small and living locally with an attentive sense of place, is a fine, good thing. We actually don’t have to change the world.  “Small things with great love” Mother Teresa once said. I have been deeply gratified to hear back from some readers who found this chapter particularly helpful, especially as they face less than inspiring circumstances. It’s going to be all right…

What It’s All About by Richard J. Mouw

Dr. Richard Mouw is a prolific author and hero to many who want to “think Christianly” and relate evangelical faith to public life in civil, fruitful ways. This nice chapter reminds young grads to remember that which they’ve learned in their college years and live it out in the real world, for the glory of Christ. It is basic, clear, and delightfully compelling. Mouw is a Kuyper scholar and past President of Fuller Theological Seminary and this is a very nice opening chapter, first shared at Messiah University, near us here in central Pennsylvania.

You Need Two Eyes by Nicholas Wolterstorff

Arguably one of the preeminent philosophers working in the world today, this very helpful chapter powerfully reminds us that we need both competence and compassion, Christian excellence in thinking well and the virtue of caring for the hurting. I have read this a dozen times and it still inspires me. One reader wrote and said this chapter alone was well worth the price of the book! I am sure you’ll agree.

Rejoicing Your Community by Amy L. Sherman

Ms Sherman delivered this very upbeat and inspiring talk drawing upon insights from her excellent book Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good. (And, in years since, fleshed out in a broader study called Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society, a hefty book that I highly recommend.) This fabulous chapter invites us to the many implications of Proverbs 11:10 which reminds us that faithfulness to God must be connected to service of the community, responding to the needs of the hurting world. Her longer book — or even this great little chapter — if taken seriously, could change how we think about our own work, and could truly transform our part of the world!  Hooray.

The Memory in the Seed by Claudia Beversluis

This was actually the speech, delivered at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, that so moved Beth and I to compile this book and have this chapter be a centerpiece. Claudia’s use of a Wendell Berry poem is itself beautiful, and the call to long-term, whole-life, culturally transforming discipleship is priceless. The world needs you, she said, and she is right. Do you believe it, really? Do the young adults you know believe it? How might they draw on the best visions of their past as they move with virtue and depth towards the future, God’s future? What “hard earned” memories do we carry with us? I am moved every time I read this.

Common Grace for the Common Good by Steven Garber

I suppose you know that Garber is one of my good, good friends, and his three books (Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior and Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good and The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work) are among my own personal favorites. He is morally serious, always eloquent, drawing here profound connections between the Biblical use of the word covenant and the sorts of work and the kind of economy we want to envision in our times. And he cites Wendell Berry and U2. This address was delivered at Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis and although offered for those going into vocations in ministry, it is substantive and offers thoughtful words and big ideas for us all. Garber fans? You’ve got to have this in your collection.

Three Cheers for Sons and Daughters of Issachar by Byron Borger

Here is the one where I preach about cultural relevance, personal transformation, the integration of faith and learning, the need for hearts aflame and a robust, coherent worldview, through thick and thin, bearing witness to God’s ways in every area of life. I was so honored to speak about Geneva College’s heritage of promoting the Kingship of Christ and how that can inspire ordinary folks to live out their faith in the rough and tumble of a post-Christian society. And I tell about Mahalia Jackson singing to Martin Luther King, long before that great scene portrayed in the movie Selma. I hope you enjoy it.

The Three Roads and the Three Rs by John M. Perkins

I hope you know John Perkins, a Mississippi-born, evangelical, civil rights leader, racial reconciliation mentor, and social justice advocate who has earned a number of honorary doctorates even though he only formally has a third grade education.  Considered a true elder statesman by many of us, I thought early on that if I were doing a book like this, I wouldn’t do it without Dr. Perkins involved. I was honored that he gave us his exceptional sermon delivered at graduation ceremonies at Seattle Pacific University.  You may have heard or read in his many books about his vision of the 3 Rs but his “three roads” message was fully new and just fantastic. Right on — we all need to be on those three roads:  Damascus, Emmaus and Jericho.

Launch Out, Land Well: an Epilogue by Erica Young Reitz

The sermons and speeches offered as chapters in Serious Dreams are all exciting and stimulating, provocative and inspiring. I think the little discussion questions after each are helpful. I framed the big picture, breathy messages of the book in my introduction with a more quiet call to live well in our own unique context, inviting readers to listen to their hearts and pay attention to small stuff.

We wanted one more piece in the book, though, an epilogue by a wise guide to help young adults make transitions well with some clear-headed, practical advice. Erica Young Reitz is a dear friend whose own book After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationships and Faith came out to great acclaim in August 2016. Erica has done college ministry with the CCO mentoring seniors, helping them “launch out” well into their post-college lives. Her own book wasn’t out yet, but she was known as one of the leading experts on this topic so we were very, very glad for her willingness to offer a practical afterword. Her suggestions are good for those leaving college or, actually, for anyone in times of change or transition.

If you know any young adults (especially if they are recent college grads) I hope you consider getting Serious Dreams for them. And, for that matter, while you’re at it, also get Erica’s excellent book that is so full of interesting guidance and faithful wisdom, After College: Navigating Transitions, Relationships and Faith. (IVP; $18.00; OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40.)

To be honest, I’d like to think that the upbeat commencement speeches I compiled for Serious Dreams are inspiring for nearly anyone, even if they are not recent college graduates. Anybody wanting to be reminded about the call to live well and serve others and make a difference will enjoy these chapters. It is a book that we wish was better known. None of the authors make anything in royalties so it is a true labor of love, each chapter unique but with a common vision. Bold ideas, indeed.  Can you help us spread the word? Order some today — it would mean a lot. Thanks.

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• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.33; 2 lbs would be $5.07. This is the cheapest method available and seems not to be too delayed.
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The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary edited by Esau McCaulley, Janette H. Ok, Osvaldo Padilla, and Amy Peeler (IVP Academic) $60.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $48.00

This extraordinary, brand-new resource, The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary has released a month early and we have it here, now, cheaper than other well-known internet suppliers and we’d invite you to order it from us now.

We have cared deeply about questions of Biblical hermeneutics — that is, the philosophy of interpretation, which is a wild and fun and frankly pretty practical thing to consider, actually — and have stocked and promoted books by and about people of color since we opened more than 40 years ago, so I guess I’d say this is in our wheelhouse. When we started writing reviews (decades ago) we routinely highlighted both religious and mainstream titles about racial diversity and systemic injustice, which is only to say that we’ve tried to pay attention to some of this kind of stuff for a long time. And The New Testament in Color, I am here to tell you, is unlike anything yet done and is nothing short of magisterial.

One of the chief editors and curators of this big volume is Esau McCaulley, who I hope you know, produced in 2020 the essential volume Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (IVP; $22.00 / our sale price = $17.60.)

We will list (below) other recently published Biblical resources, but we will start here as this is truly a watershed release. While The New Testament in Color is not exactly pioneering, it is a landmark.

Without getting into the deep weeds of serious evaluation, I’ll say simply that there are (at least) two things that stand out here, making this a truly major contribution. Firstly, it offers a variety of scholars from a variety of ethnicities and social locations from our diverse North American context. I know of no other book of its kind. Secondly, although it is quite adept at engaging with the latest hermeneutical and critical thinking, it is rooted in a beautiful sort of orthodoxy, with high regard for the author of Scripture as God’s Word as conventional understood. Kudos to IVP Academic and their important, long-standing legacy representing evangelical thinking at its best.

To the first matter: there are a few other outstanding, vital texts which offer an exclusively African American approach to New Testament studies and I’ll highlight them below — see, for instance, True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary edited by the great Brian Blount (published by Fortress) and Race and Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament by Love Lazarus Sechrest (published by Eerdmans.) Stony the Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretations is a classic, first released in the early 1990s, edited by the legendary Cain Hope Felder also published by Augsburg-Fortress. The New Testament in Color, insofar as it is multi-ethnic, is just a bit different than these, bringing other voices to the room, so to speak.

Secondly, besides this being more multi-ethnic and multicultural than others that are specifically about Black Biblical studies, it can also be said, I think, that while those particular contributions are unique and radical and shaped by the cultural distinctives of the diverse authors, The New Testament in Color is, perhaps singularly, orthodox in its theological trajectory and is not so race-conscious as to overstate the highlighting of or the role of racism and colonization and the like. In other words, socially-aware ethnic angles of vision are offered so that readers of all sorts (including many whites) can hear how people of color may do their interpretation, but it isn’t so exclusively shaped by the narratives of oppression that it misses the core, liberating gospel message of the Scriptures. These are, broadly speaking, evangelical Christian interpretations. It is, as one reviewer put it, “exegetically precise, theologically orthodox, and prophetically challenging.” Exactly.

This big volume is said to offer “fresh questions and perspectives that would be fruitful for biblical interpretation.” That we dare not rely on only older (white) scholars from older eras — some deeply enmeshed in sinful attitudes and racist practices — and that we always need to consider newly revised interpretive lenses is, for me, a given. As such, this is a necessary treasure, a needed gift. As Nijay Gupta puts it, this volume reflects a “beautiful mosaic” and the “many-colored hermeneutic” is thrilling.

The New Testament in Color starts with six great introductory chapters on African American Biblical Interpretation (by Esau D. McCaulley), Asian American Biblical Interpretation (by Janette H. Ok), Hispanic Biblical Interpretation (by Osvaldo Padilla), Turtle Island Biblical Interpretation (by T. Christopher Hoklotubbe, who is Choctaw, and H. Daniel Zacharias, who is Cree-Anishinaabe) and (perhaps surprisingly, but wisely) Majority-Culture Biblical Interpretation: Reading While White (by Michael J. Gorman.)

These sound, insightful, diverse essays frame the work of more than a dozen men and women of various hues and cultures who then weigh in on each book of the New Testament making this a large, one-of-a-kind resource. I have not dug deeply into the substantive book-by-book commentary, yet, but I am sure these pieces are critically-informed, evangelically-minded, thoughtful but clear, combining some fairly standard exegetical work but colored by the ethnic backgrounds and social locations of the particular scholars and their people-groups. Nobody works in a vacuum, of course, and God will surely use the self-awareness of scholars regarding the needs and biases and angles of insight from those across the multi-ethnic landscape of American culture. What a treasure this is.

Alongside the studies of each book of the Bible, there are even more essays and Biblically informed, general contributions. There is a piece called “Resources for the Mental Health of the Oppressed in the New Testament” by Christian J. Fort; there is a stunning study of “Multilingualism in the New Testament” by Ekaputra Tupamahu; there is a valuable chapter called “Immigrants and the Kingdom of God: Do They Have a Home in God’s City?” by Rodolfo Galvan Estrada III. There is a solid piece on “Gender in the New Testament” as well, by Lisa Bowens & Amy Peeler. I’m glad for that.

There are many other books by minoritized Biblical scholars, many written in recent years, but this is surely the most useful volume I have yet seen. It is a must for serious scholars but I think accessible enough in its nearly 800 pages that many ordinary church folk would appreciate it, too. Thanks be to God.

(Do you have a church library or resource room? This is pricey, even at our discount, so it makes sense to share costs and have one or two on hand in the church or for your study center or fellowship group. How can we help?)

Scripture and Its Interpretation: A Global, Ecumenical Introduction to the Bible Michael J. Gorman (Baker Academic) $36.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.80

This is not brand new; it came out in late 2020. I wanted to list it here not only because Dr. Gorman did an extraordinary chapter in the above The New Testament in Color but because it is one of my very favorite resources for this sort of topic. It does not have an exegetical, book-by-book approach, however, so it is — as its subtitle says — an introduction. There are twenty-five chapters from authors representing various Christian traditions and perspectives and from every continent, I think. Although most authors are white — N.T. Wright, Edith Humphrey, Craig Keener, Joel Green, Patricia Fosarelli, just to name a few — there are excellent writers with roots in non-US settings such as Bungishabaku Katho of Congo (DRC) and K.K. Yeo (born in China but raised in Malaysia) and M. Daniel Carroll R whose people are from Guatemala. In any case, Scripture and Its Interpretation is a fine text, ecumenical and delightfully useful.

True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary edited by Brian Blount, Cain Hope Felder, Claire Martin, Emerson Powery (Fortress) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

What an amazing work, with essays including slavery in the Scriptures and womanist interpretation and African American preaching and the Bible. There is a section of art that is exceptional. Great scholars from Monya Stubbs to Cleophus LaRue to James Early Massey to Mitzi Smith.  Highly recommended.

Race and Rhyme: Rereading the New Testament Love Lazarus Sechrest (Eerdmans) $39.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

What a remarkable book, provocative, scholarly, maybe a bit eccentric at times, offering a womanist evaluation of some of the “ugly details” of some biblical narratives. As Gay Byron of Howard School of Divinity puts it, “This book shows how critical biblical interpretation leads to responsible acts of leadership and justice.” Highly recommended by the important Brenda Salter McNeil. Dennis Edwards, of North Park Theological Seminary, says her practice of “associative hermeneutics” might prove to be a game-changer. Whew.

With Race and Rhyme, Love Sechrest has addressed a huge problem–how to help people who take their faith seriously to also take seriously how to think about race and Scripture. This is simply the best introduction to biblical hermeneutics that is also an introduction to thinking about racial justice. — Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School, author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race and Acts: A Theological Commentary

The Africana Bible, Second Edition: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora edited by Hugh Page, Jr., Valerie Bridgeman, Stacy Davis, Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, and Madipoane Masenya (Ngwan’a Mphahlele)  (Fortress Press) $59.00   NOT YET RELEASED – DUE OCTOBER 2024  / PRE-ORDER NOW  OUR SALE PRICE = $47.20  We won’t process your credit card until we sent the book mid-October.

We used to stock the first edition of this hefty, critical landmark volume, gathering scholarly essays by various African and African-American scholars on the Old Testament. The first edition is out of print and will be seriously revised and expanded in this forthcoming edition.  As the publisher puts it:

The Africana Bible opens a critical window into the world of interpretation on the African continent and in the multiple diasporas of African peoples, including the African American experience, with attention to Africana histories, literatures, cultures, and backgrounds for understanding biblical literature.

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

I have reviewed this book before but just want to celebrate it now, here, since we’re offering suggestions about serious commentaries that bring forward alternative perspectives by scholars of color. This is a book that just fits in and I’d be remiss not to name it.

Rev. Chavis is a very sharp young man, ordained in the PCA and a RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) campus minister. He works at the mecca of Black higher education, Howard University.  His degree is from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.

This clever book invites intellectually curious Black young adults to check out the possibility that the Bible can be read seriously in a way that can be personally and socially transformative. I like his briefs that we first must present that Bible in a way that is both exciting and understandable, so this is an entry-level apologetic for those in college who are not particularly compelled to read the Bible. It is pretty fun, but not looking for terribly creative or unusual interpretations. He’s doing the yeoman work of standard, evangelical campus outreach. Yay for that.

Although the book is written for Black students, especially those at historically Black colleges and universities, I think the book is ideal for any beginner or seeker. As he says, “Whether you are considering Jesus for the first time or have been a Christian a while, come and see that God is more glorious and enjoyable than you ever knew.”  Highly recommended.

Reading the Bible Latinamente: Latino/a Interpretation for the Life of the Church Ruth Padilla Deborst, M. Daniel Carroll, R. and Miguel Echevarria  (Baker Academic) $19.99 NOT YET RELEASED – DUE OCTOBER 2024 / PRE-ORDER NOW  OUR PRICE = $15.99  We won’t run your credit card until we send the book in October

I have not seen this yet, but simply couldn’t miss this opportunity to name it with these others. We respect Ruth Padilla Deborst immensely (and still am astonished she showed up with her famous father in our store one day years ago) and we love Danny Carroll who we met years ago as well. Echevarria haș a contribution in the above-listed New Testament in Color; his PhD is from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is professor of Greek at Southeastern in Wake Forest, NC. He did the recent Engaging the New Testament: A Short Introduction for Students and Ministers published just this Spring, also by Baker Academic.Together they have given us what Justo González has called an “unexcelled” introduction to the topic. Perfect, eh?

Again, to be clear, we list these books not just for, in this case, Latino or Latina readers. No, this is for the breadth of God’s multi-ethnic people.

An unexcelled basic introduction to Latina and Latino readings of Scripture. It tells the church at large that the Bible is still relevant in our day and will be relevant wherever believers are willing to take the risk of reading it with new eyes.” –“An unexcelled basic introduction to Latina and Latino readings of Scripture. It tells the church at large that the Bible is still relevant in our day and will be relevant wherever believers are willing to take the risk of reading it with new eyes. — Justo L. González, author, The Bible in the Early Church

Reading the Bible Latinamente reminds us that the only way to understand the word of God honestly and clearly is to see it through one’s cultural identity and social location. The authors make the case for a beautiful and transformational reading–a reading that liberates rather than discriminates, marginalizes, and oppresses people. This book is not just for the Latino/a church but for the whole of God’s people. — Al Tizon, North Park Theological Seminary, author, Christ Among the Classes: The Rich, the Poor, and the Mission of the Church

Global Bible Commentary edited by Daniel Pattem, José Severino Croatto, Nicole Wilkinson Duran, Teresa Okure, Archie Chi-Chung Lee  (Abingdon Press) $45.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $36.79

Much has rightfully been made in recent years about how the global church is growing and good work has been done on how even church history needs to be understood (and taught) with the awareness of the non-European and North American parts of the Body. We’ve got whole books about global voices and their unique theological angles. (For one great one, see, just for instance, Simon Chan’s Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up or Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice by Daniel D. Lee, both released by IVP Academic.)

Christianity has a big, global story. Here is one example of how this is effecting at least mainline, ecumenical, Biblical scholarship. Here is how the publishing house explains this very diverse volume collection very diverse Biblical scholars:

The Global Bible Commentary invites its users to expand their horizon by reading the Bible with scholars from all over the world and from different religious persuasions. These scholars have approaches and concerns that often are poles apart. Yet they share two basic convictions: biblical interpretation always matters; and reading the Bible “with others” is highly rewarding. Each of the short commentaries of the Global Bible Commentary is a readily accessible guide for reading a biblical book. Written for undergraduate and seminary students and their teachers, as well as for pastors, priests, and Adult Sunday School classes, it introduces the users to the main features of the biblical book and its content.

Yet each short commentary does more. It also brings us a precious gift, namely the opportunity of reading this biblical book as if for the first time. By making explicit the specific context and the concerns from which she/he reads the Bible, the scholar points out to us the significance of aspects of the biblical text that we simply took for granted or overlooked.

NIV God’s Justice Bible: The Flourishing of Creation and the Destruction of Evil edited by Tim Stafford (Zondervan) $39.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99 

This rather global NIV study Bible has gone out of print but we have a few left. Each book of the Bible has a fine introduction and study notes by exceptional scholars, many from what was once called the Third World. With evangelical voices from every continent who have a good sensitivity to justice issues, these notes, while fairly standard, frankly, do highlight Biblical texts which relate to issues of justice, creational stewardship, peacemaking, human trafficking, poverty, cross-cultural ministry, theodicy, empire, and the like. The graphics are nicely done, the insights useful, the global perspective interesting, making this a reliable, full-on study Bible in the popular NIV translation.

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Here are some mostly new books of Biblical studies that we have on our shelves; I’ll start with some about how to read the Bible and its big picture narrative and list some that are about the Old Testament and some that are about the New Testament. All are 20% off. Enjoy.

Note that a few are PRE-ORDERS. Of course, we can pre-order any book you want to order aheady of time, but these seemed too good to not mention.

INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE

The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story: Third Edition Craig G Bartholomew & Michael W. Goheen (Baker Academic) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Can you believe that this book, a very big seller in this field, has been out for 20 years? This brand new anniversary edition has been updated and expanded; it remains one of the best college-level, introductory texts about the grand narrative of the Bible we’ve ever seen. As it now says on the back, “The authors explore how the story of the Bible and its account of God’s action in the world give meaning to our lives and provide us with the basis for our actions” This great book carefully points to and explores each section of the unfolding drama of God’s cosmic rescue plan. Congratulations, Craig and Mike!

By the way, just so you know: the abridged version of this, first done for teens, The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama, was updated a year or two ago, expanded just a bit, but remains the very best easy-to-read intro to the Bible we know of and one we most often recommend for small groups or Sunday school classes, young or old.

Listening to Scripture: An Introduction to Interpreting the Bible Craig Bartholomew (Baker Academic) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

We have enthusiastically reviewed this before but wanted to highlight it briefly again as it is so, so good. It is accessible and theologically well-grounded, a lovely guide to interpreting the Bible which “helps us read Scripture with an ear toward hearing God’s address.” While this still is a major work and a vital contribution to the field, it is, just so you know, an adapted and somewhat slimmed down version of his magisterial tome, Introducing Biblical Hermeneutics: A Comprehensive Framework for Hearing God in Scripture. There are discussion questions and devotional experiences that he expertly offers. Very nicely done in just under 200 pages.

The Bible Reset: Simple Breakthroughs to Make Scripture Come Alive Alex Goodwin (NavPress) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Are you intuited by the Bible, actually? Maybe you struggle to read it regularly? This book insists that you are not alone. We have been “set up to fail at reading the Bible”, Goodwin suggests. He set up his Institute for Bible Reading to help folks uncover “vital elements about the ancient texts that have been overlooked or forgotten” which can, actually, help us make Bible reading and proper understanding more approachable for anyone.

I have some friends who know this author and who love this book; they’ve enthusiastically commended it to us and I think they are right. There is something fresh and exciting here. It uses helpful illustrations and examples and it is written in everyday language.

I love how he invites us to three major practices that can help. He says to “Read Big” and he says to “Read Together.” The third — “discover the Bible’s world” — is obvious, but he unpacks it helpfully.

And — Goodwin has read Bartholomew and Goheen — he gets the grand story that the Bible is telling and how it invites us to participate in God’s work of restoration and renewal. He has three chapters exploring this big picture stuff about “the story we find ourselves in” and “new creation improv.” Wow.

Nice, eh? This little book could be transformative for many and we are glad to suggest it.

The Light Shines Through: Our Stories Are God’s Stories Carole A. Wageman (Church Publishing) $18.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

This is such an interesting book it can surely be used for your own reading or daily devotions. It seems to be written as a small group resource, though, a Bible study. Yet, it does a lot more than just offering dry recapitulation of the text or asking self-evident inductive questions. No, this colorful and wonderfully written book invites us to see how a Bible story where a person encounters faith might inform or shape our own. Each chapter is confronted with “uncertainty, anxiety, and the drama of facing an unknown future much like we do in our own life events.” We, too, might be searching for answers, trying to figure out which way to turn, how to make sense of our lives.

This offers “productive connection exercises and pondering questions” to help us relate to our Biblical forebears. The author has worked in the nonprofit world, has been a guide to her Episcopalian colleagues, and has been a parish priest, she knows the role of stories and how Biblical stories might inspire us to ponder our own. Right on.

Each of the almost 20 chapters offers a reflection about our own lives or stories, told with a sweet New England simplicity. Then there is the invitation to read the text, followed by questions she put into the category of “pondering.”  Many of the stories are from encounters in the gospels although a few are from the Hebrew Bible, Genesis, Isaiah, the Psalms. This is nicely done.

Liberating Scripture: An Invitation to Missional Hermeneutics Michael Barram & John R Franke (Cascade) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

We have highlighted this recent book before (as we had reason to be with John Franke at an event and came away soooo impressed.) This is the first of a new series which intends to explore the details of a missional hermeneutic as it relates to “theology and praxis.” That is, how do we read the Bible with a vision or assumption that it is to lead us to outreach, service, cultural engagement, prophetic denunciation of injustice and the like. Too many books just tell us to read the Bible so we know God and organize our thoughts about doctrine in proper ways. Fair enough. But what if we opened up the Word in fresh ways to make a difference for our social imagination. What if it really spoke to us, pushing us out, into but not of the world.?

This creative new volume has a serious foreword by Drew G. I. Hart — a black professor from Messiah University who once studied with Franke and now co-teaches a class with him at Fuller Seminary — and a fine afterword by Lisa Bowens.

Co-author Michael Barram, by the way, did a book which I highly recommend called Missional Economics: Biblical Justice and Christian Formation. Anybody that seriously grapples with the Jubilee text from Jesus’ first sermon is on to something in my book.

There is a good study guide in the back that will help you process and apply this fresh take on how to interpret the Bible and is excellent for study groups, small home Bible studies, or adult ed classes…

The Progressives’ Bible: How Scriptural Interpretation Built a More Just America Claudia Setzer (Fortress Press) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Whew, is this interesting! Whether you see yourselves as progressive, liberal, moderately mainline, evangelical, or conservative fundamentalist, you need this book. It does a couple of things, making it hard to know where to even put it on the shelves of our store — we have one under Bible and one under history — and I needn’t belabor the fascinating details.

Here is what it does: it shows how the so-called “progressive” movements in American history used the Bible. For instance, obviously, the abolitionist movement to abolish slavery was often led firmly by preachers with Bibles in their hands; so, too, often, the suffragist movement to demand that women have the right to vote used Scripture directly. Think of the anti-war movements, or even the temperance movement of the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s. And, famously, the mid-20th century civil rights movement drew on Biblical faith and Biblical overtures overtly. Not all activists and social reformers were Biblical people but many certainly were. Not all hermeneutical moves made sense, but many did. This fascinating book explores it all, even with a chapter about today’s setting and issues.

By examining the ways in which intelligent, critical, and creative readings of the Bible have played a pivotal role in advancing some of the most significant social reforms in US history, Claudia Setzer offers us a powerful counter to interpretations of the Bible that have served what she calls “the wrong side of history.” The Progressives’ Bible is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of American history and a more complete sense of the Bible’s place and role in America. A book I have long needed for my university classroom, it will no doubt be a revelation to all readers. — Mary F. Foskett, Professor of Religious Studies, Wake Forest University, author of Interpreting the Bible: Approaching the Text in Preparation for Preaching

This is a must-read volume for all who are captivated by how the Bible has been interpreted in the (North) American context. From abolitionism to women’s rights to temperance, progressive thinkers grappled with conflicts in light of the wider culture’s investment in biblical interpretation, which became a guide for biblical interpreters in the Civil Rights era. Prof. Setzer navigates these conversations with skill and expertise and allows readers to follow how our nineteenth-century forebears both tackled exegetical quandaries and expressed moral sensibilities in their interpretive strategies.— Emerson Powery, professor of biblical studies, Messiah University, author of The Good Samaritan: Luke 10 for the Life of the Church

Holy Imagination: A Literary and Theological Introduction to the Whole Bible Judy Fentress-Williams (Abingdon Press) $40.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.79

Okay, I admit it: this isn’t brand new; it came out in 2021 we’ve highlighted it before. Still, this is one that deserves to be on any list of fairly recent titles that give us a superb, engaging, and enjoyable introduction to the big picture of the whole Biblical drama. She asserts (as does the back cover) that studying the Bible demands dialogue. That is, we must engage, enter into, interact with, perhaps push back upon, the stories and formulations of God’s redemptive plan in the complicated narratives of hundreds of authors in this library of 66 + books. Hooray. (Ohhh, I wonder what she thinks of Richard Middleton’s Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God, for instance? Or, in a somewhat different tone, say, How the Bible Actually Works by Peter Enns?)

Fentress-Williams is a beloved professor of Old Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary (and has a commentary on Ruth that was previously published.) As a Black professor for many years and a scholar of African American studies, she has seen a lot and her own experience gives her a certain capacity to see how voices of the marginalized are often included in Scripture. As a Baptist woman at an Episcopal seminary who loves the Word and knows the various genres and literary styles and the rhetoric of it all, she is an expert teacher. Like poetry, she says, “words must be read with attention.” Holy Imagination helps us attend well.

As the great Ellen Davis (of Duke Divinity School) puts it, this is an introduction “that students will enjoy reading, because it is at once engaging, informative, eye-opening, as well as completely lucid.”

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OLD TESTAMENT

The Old Testament as Literature: Foundations for Christian Interpretation Tremper Longman III (Baker Academic) $34.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99

I knew this was good — I love the work of Longman, have some mutual friends from way back, and think he is simply one of the most important Bible scholars of our generation. It’s nice to know that my layman’s hunch is born out by a wide variety of ecumenical scholars who say as much. Hooray.

For instance, Stephen L. Cook, of Virginia Theological Seminary, says he “unhesitatingly recommends Longman’s masterful new exploration of the literary dimensions of the Old Testament.” Another critic says it is “an essential volume” which another calls it “thoughtful and lively.” It is clear that Longman is widely respected and that this may be the best book of its kind.

Brittany Melton, of Regent College in British Columbia, says, nicely, that Longman has

…returned to his first love, with his Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation (1987) standing at the beginning of a long shelf of his books and The Old Testament as Literature as its complementary bookend. This work offers insight from decades of biblical reflection and foresight from the contemporary field of literary studies.

I love how John Goldingay — himself a thoughtful and prolific scholar/teacher — put it in his rave review. He notes that Tremper has “immersed himself in scholarly study with an open mind but has never forgotten his commitment to the fact that it is the Holy Scriptures he is studying.”

That’s the best sort of authors, I think — those that engage the wildest and most creative of critical readers and interpreters, and yet whose open minded never becomes sloppy or shallow. They know the holiness of God and the denseness of the sacred text. Longman gets all this and more. He understands the latest in literary studies and archeology and cross cultural reading and the rest. In this book he brings us up to date.

Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1 Peter J. Leithart (IVP Academic) $40.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

I’m a sucker for studies of Genesis 1 and I’m a sucker for those who argue boldly that there is something more going on than the obvious. When a scholar like Kevin Vanhoozer notes that “Creator is theological exegesis at its finest” and calls it “intoxicating.” I want to take notice.

When a heavy, Reformed/Catholic scholar like Hans Boersma (of Nashotah House) said it is “scintillating” and that his “makes for joyful music, echoing the triune song that sings creation into being” I’m eager to learn more, heady as it may be. Whew.

Who else engages the work of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Sergius Bulgakov, Barth, Robert Jensen, Katherine Sonderegger, Meredith Kline (of course), David Bentley Hart, and Michael Polanyi, and more? I supposed this could be called a “metaphysics of Genesis.”

Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters Carmen Joy Imes (IVP Academic) $22.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

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

Again, these two are not brand new and we have reviewed them more than once. I just have to list them here, as Bearing God’s Image is a personal favorite and Dr. Imes is one of the more energetic and ministry-oriented Biblical scholars I know, doing deep research and serious study — and, man, she is among the best of the best! — and yet so eager to serve the church, campus ministry organizations, conferences and events, even offering informal teaching on her weekly internet thing (“Torah Tuesdays.”) Somewhat mentored by the great Sandra Richter, Carmen is a national treasure, a good friend of Hearts & Minds, and a scholar / teacher your church group should know.

Being God’s Image: Why Creation Matters, like its predecessor, Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, does all of the above just perfectly. Both are rooted in expert scholarship, bringing to the educated lay-person’s view all manner of great background and insight, and then — and here is where she delightfully shines, too — applies it all to nurturing a Biblically-informed worldview and a way of being faithful in the world. In our times. As individuals and communities. To say she helps us “apply” the text may be a bit simplistic, but that’s the trajectory — these Biblical narratives and teachings are God’s “light before our path” and as God’s Word, are to be lived into and out of with faith and joy and courage.

If it gives you any sense of her reputation and theological place, the first (on the law) had a great foreword by Christopher J. H. Wright and the second (on creation) by J. Richard Middleton.  I’m praying for her as she writes yet another in this practical, thoughtful series.

Old Testament Ethics: A Guided Tour John Goldingay (IVP Academics) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I can’t say much about this other than to say that I admire Goldingay immensely, appreciate his popular level “Old Testament for Everyone” series, and am astonished by his heavy but fairly readable major works on the likes of Jeremiah and Daniel and Proverbs . I simply adored his must-read The Lost Letters to the Twelve Prophets: Imagining the Minor Prophets’ World which imaginatively conjures up imaginary letters to each of the Minor Prophets so we have some clue about what their context was and what in the world gave them such unction and hope.  I recommend his Reading Jesus’s Bible: How the New Testament Helps Us Understand the Old Testament, among others. Did I mention he was prolific?

This is a very, very useful ethics text, both introducing the field of ethics, but insisting that our ethical systems, applied to our admittedly complex daily lives, can be informed by the Hebrew Bible. Yep, we can learn something from about ethics from the Old Testament. As David Lamb (God Behaving Badly) says, it is “illuminating, challenging, and inspiring.”

He says that “instead of searching for support for our positions or pointing out problems with certain passages” (we should) “let the Old Testament itself set the agenda.” In this volume, readers will encounter what the Old Testament says about relationships, work, Sabbath, character, and more.

It features his own colorful translations and discussion questions for group use.

There are a lot of chapters, grouped under the categories of “Qualities” (like Godlikeness, compassion, honor, anger, trust, truthfulness, etc.) and “Aspects of Life” (in which he summarized stuff about wealth and violence, shalom and justice, reparations and work, animals and rest, and more.) The next section summarizes the complexities of
“Relationships” (which includes friends, neighbors, women, sexuality, marriage, children, nations, migrants, and more.) Part Four is a study of specific passages, listed as “Texts.”  He looks at 8 representative texts, from Genesis 1 to Leviticus 25, from Deuteronomy 15 to the story of Ruth to Psalm 72 and a bit about sex from the Song of Songs.  Curiously, the last section is called “People” and he draws ethical principles from the odd lives of seven key individuals and their ancient stories.

Wisdom for Faithful Reading: Principles and Practices for Old Testament Interpretation John H. Walton (IVP Academic) $26.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

I’ll admit I have not touched this yet, although I’m itching to. Aren’t you? The very title is inviting — who doesn’t want “faithful reading” and who doesn’t appreciate that this questions of interpreting well is a matter of learned wisdom, not mere technique or strategy. We need “principles and practices” to read wisely and faithfully. One reviewer, from the University of Cambridge, says that Walton’s appreciation for the Bible’s “beauty and richness” shines through.

Walton is one of these very impressive, open-minded but solidly evangelical Bible profs from Wheaton College. He is astute and hard-working, having written bunches of books in recent years, both scholarly ones and those on a more popular level. He’s a quintessential author for us, and we are honored to recommend his work.

You may know his popular six-book “Lost World” series, that includes books like The Lost World of Genesis One, The Lost World of the Flood, and The Lost World of the Torah: Law as Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context which offers cultural background of when books of the Bible were written or compiled and how that historical awareness might help us read the Scriptures well. (There’s a new one — see below.) He has done numerous introductory books to various aspects of the O.T.  on

This new one on interpretation is needed. It is reasonable and sound. It seems serious, but I am sure it is quite readable. It may not be the only book you’ll read on how to approach the Old Testament, but, for sure, it should be on most people’s lists. Highly recommended.

The Lost World of the Prophets: Old Testament Prophecy and Apocalyptic Literature in Ancient Context  John H. Walton (IVP Academic) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

You know the question: Are the prophets speaking about their own times, about our present, or about some still-unrealized future? The publisher explains: “Applying his signature method, John Walton provides a clear, helpful guide to the nature of biblical prophecy and apocalyptic literature that will help us avoid potential misuse and reclaim the message of the prophets for our lives.”

One can hardly understand even a portion of the prophets without knowing which side of the civil war they were one (that is, were they speaking to Judah or Israel) and were they before or after the exile. Were they primarily speaking to kings or to priests or to common people? Where they messengers mostly of doom and judgement or hope and renewal?

Listen to this from a very reliable scholar and friend of Hearts & Minds:

John Walton has distinguished himself as one of the foremost interpreters of the Old Testament for the church today. The Lost World of the Prophets makes accessible serious biblical scholarship on the cultural context of the Old Testament prophets. This book is a superb guide to reading the message of the prophetic literature with integrity and faithfulness to the God of Israel and Jesus Christ. I am deeply grateful for this outstanding work. — J. Richard Middleton, professor of biblical worldview and exegesis, Northeastern Seminary at Roberts Wesleyan University, author of The Liberating Image, A New Heaven and a New Earth, and Abraham’s Silence.

Biblical Typology: How the Old Testament Points to Christ, His Church, and the Consummation Vern S. Poythress (Crossway) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This is a brand new book by an author who is, again, prolific, learned, and (with a couple of different PhDs, in science and theology) who has an amazing gift of doing extraordinary scholarship and yet sometimes making things accessible and useful. This looks very good on this precise topic.

There has been a huge renaissance in this sort of “historical redemptive” reading, and although the narrative of creation-fall-redemption-restoration” and the language of the “unfolding drama of a cosmic redemption” with a Christological reading of it all, is more popular than it used to be (just think of the fabulous The Jesus Storybook Bible:Where Every Story Whispers His Name by Sally Lloyd-Jones) there are still questions. A lot of questions. (And we have a good number of books about this very matter — Christ in the Old Testament.) Is this really the best way to understand the Hebrew Scriptures? How do Old Testament stories point us towards the reign of Christ and the renewal His Kingdom brings? Does it really point to (as the subtitle here puts it) “Christ, His Church, and the Consummation” (by which he surely means the consummation of all things, a la Ephesians 1:10, say)?

This book isn’t simple but it isn’t an arcane academic textbook. It’s pushing towards 300 pages and it offers not only an overview of the storyline of redemption, but shows how there are signs and symbols and pointers and overtures to the person of Jesus.

Richard Pratt writes,

Poythress’s knowledge of the Scriptures and the interpretive principles necessary to handle them responsibly is unsurpassed. He presents the complex topic of biblical types clearly and simply so that laypeople and scholars alike will benefit. This is a book that you will not want to miss.

Solomon: Israel’s Icon of Human Achievement Walter Brueggemann (Fortress Press) $39.00  NOT YET RELEASED – DUE JULY 2024 / PRE-ORDER NOW – OUR SALE PRICE = $31.20 We won’t run your credit card until we send the book in mid-July.

How can I list a handful of creative Biblical studies volumes without celebrating a few of Walt’s most recent volumes? There have been several edited collections of his many (many!) short pieces lately, most recently The Emancipation of God: Postmarks on Cultural Prophecy pulled together and edited by Conrad L. Kanagy, Walter’s friend and expert biographer (hisThe Prophetic Imagination of Walter Brueggemann that came out last year is a must-read) and the very new Alternatives to the Bread of Affliction and Other Essays, pieces Walter recently pulled from his many years of writing at the Journal of Preachers. It is dedicated to its editor, who appreciated Walt’s contributions, Erskine Clarke. There is a forward by Theodore J. Wardlaw.

This forthcoming volume, though, is not a collection of pieces, as valuable as those are, but a major, sustained work on the person of Solomon and his expansive role “in the larger consciousness of Israel.” Brueggemann considers what narratives reveal about the ideals of the ancient Israelite people.  As the publisher puts it, “Paying attention to nuances of the biblical text, he exposes the competing voices that claim to offer a reliable rendering of Solomon and invites critique of accepted beliefs.”

I suspect it was from Walt that I first heard point out specific Bible verses that are critical of Solomon. What did I know, having not read the Hebrew Bible and its storyline all that carefully? I hadn’t yet learned to think of prophets as being in the South or the North, before or after exile. I didn’t know Chronicles was a sober re-telling of the era of the Kings, but, well, reimagined after their hard times. And I had no idea that there was an ideological role in Israel’s own songs — Oh say can you see? — and that some are critical of Zion. (I read twice in a row and still recommend his little book from the 1980s, Israel’s Praise: Doxology Against Idolatry and Ideology.) Oh well, I only say this to say that for some of us, there is much to learn to embed ourselves in the nuances of God’s Word as it unfolded through thick and thin without ancient Israel. Who else who looms large alongside Moses and Elijah and David? Yes. Solomon. And while he was praised there is, at least, irony in some of the claims about him, something just below the surface, often.

Hold on: here is what the publisher says is going on here:

The tradition of Solomon becomes an arena for interpretive contestation in Israel, and the text makes available not historical reportage but a conflicted, pluralistic attempt to sort out the reality of human power in the matrix of covenantal faith.

Beyond the primary narrative of 1 Kings 3-11, Brueggemann evaluates the derivative traditions of Solomon in Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the Wisdom of Solomon, and some of the Psalms. He also considers references to Solomon in the New Testament.

Through close attention to nuances of the biblical text, Brueggemann exposes the competing interpretive voices that claim to offer a reliable rendering of Solomon and invites critique of accepted beliefs.

By the way, this cool, contemporary-looking volume is part of a new series Fortress has begun by some classic authors from this fading era of world class Biblical scholars. Job by Samuel Balentine is coming soon; we have Qoheleth: The Ironic Wink by James Crenshaw, Ezekiel: The Prophet and His Message by Ralph Klein, and Abraham: Trials of Family and Faith by Terence Fretheim. I’ve not read any but look forward to the Brueggemann one, for sure.

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NEW TESTAMENT

The Gospel of Peace: A Commentary on Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the perspective of Nonviolence John Dear (Orbis Books) $34.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

Rev. John Dear is an internationally known Bible teacher and peace activist, a priest and organizer who served for years as the director of the international Fellowship of Reconciliation. He came to know Thomas Merton, the famous Berrigan brothers and their resistance to nuclear weapons, the black civil rights leader (and proponent of nonviolent direct action) James Lawson, and Cornel West. It is said he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by none other than Desmond Tutu. He has written dozens of books; you should know John Dear.

(I do not know of any other gentle spokesperson for the gospel who, while reading the Sermon on the Mount at an evangelical Christian college chapel, had students loudly stomping their feet in protest on the bleachers where they sat and literally started walking out. While reading the Bible!)

I love these kinds of committed works, like this study of the synoptics, standing on the shoulders of radical commentaries like, say, Binding the Strong Man by his pal Ched Meyers, or Wes Howard-Brook’s Becoming Children of God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship or Howard Thurman’s old Jesus and the Disinherited or Andre Trocme’s older still Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution. Obviously he knows Yoder’s Politics of Jesus and is informed by Walter Wink’s extraordinary volumes on the powers. He likes Sister Megan McKenna’s 1999 book, Blessings and Woes: The Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke.

I could go on. It is evident that Dear knows everybody in the global peace movement and is rooted well in progressive Catholic and even some evangelical Biblical scholarship. From the Catholic Pax Christi ministry to the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Rev. Michael Curry, there have been great blurbs and heart-felt endorsements. It is unique, though. As Bill Wylie-Kellerman notes, “Reading the Gospels in jail can alter one’s hermeneutic.”  Indeed.

A Handbook on the Jewish Roots of the Gospels edited by Craig Evans & David Mishkin (Hendrickson) $27.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.36

This book is not new but it is new to me; I don’t think we stocked it when it first came out a few years ago and I discovered it a few months back when I was writing a bit about why Christians ought not support the idolatrous and vicious militarism of the current right wing Israeli administration. Which leads, of course (even if one is careful to not equate a critique of the Netanyahu government’s slaughter of the innocents or ongoing Israeli human rights violations with any hatred for Jewish people, as such) to the question of a Christian theology of Israel and even questions about the relationship of the Old and New Testaments. Obviously, one sub-stream here is how to understand the Jewishness of Jesus and the influence of first century Judaism on the entire New Testament. We have long been interested in this — N.T. Wright, just for one, insisted on such things and recent books like the lovely, thoughtful, Finding Messiah: A Journey Into the Jewishness of the Gospel by Jennifer Rosner have driven the point home. In any case, I discovered this fantastic, informative, scholarly collection of world-class authors weighing in on various aspects and specific topics in this on-going learning curve. I haven’t read them all and I am not sure what I think about each.

The authors of these more than 30 pieces, are, we are told, a “who’s who” of eminent scholars. Some names I have heard of — Mark Struass of Bethel University, Andreas Stutz, working on a PhD in Lancaster, then at the Israel College of the Bible, Michael Wilkins of Biola, Darrell Bock, Craig Blomberg, Catherine Sider Hamilton of Wycliffe in Toronto and Kyung Bake of Trinity Western. Pastors are here, too, such as  Hannah Pachael of Denver and Michael Brown (of the Messianic FIRE School of Ministry.)

Endorsements are from rigorous scholars such as Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Simon Gathercole, a scholar of early Christianity at Cambridge, insisting that this work helps us understand how the New Testament can be read as Jewish literature.

Interpretation Bible Commentary: Matthew Mark Allan Powell (WJK) $45.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $36.00

I’m not going to lie: I’m not sure what the relationship is between this WJK new “Interpretation Bible Commentary” series is to the older classics in the famous Interpretation series. In the series Foreword they say they are intending to “extend and reframe” that series in light of the vast literary and historical insight that has been uncovered in recent decades, not to mention new schools of interpretive and theological thought. It isn’t just a cover design change, but seems to be an inauguration of a whole new series. (The senior editor of this series, we are told, is Brian  K. Blount.) Since this series goes by the same name, I’m guessing it is sort of Interpretation 2.0, with a fresh and updated approach, perhaps by a new generation of writers.  Like that older series it was often esteemed mainline commentators, offering solid scholarship for preachers and teachers. That is, they weren’t super technical or academic, but drawing on the best of mainline Protestant and some Catholic scholarship.

Mark Allan Powell has written a lot, so isn’t exactly a fresh young turk. Marva Dawn told me about him decades ago and he has done commentaries and books about Jesus. His Introducing the New Testament: A Historical, Literary, and Theological Survey was recently reissued by Baker Academic in a large, lovely second edition.

Kudos to WJK for offering this new, inaugural volume in what we hope will be a useful commentary set developing over the next many years. This one has been described as “masterful” (R. Alan Culpepper of McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University) and “engaging and highly readable” (Cynthia Campbell, President Emerita of McCormick Theological Seminary.)

Engaging Jesus with Our Senses: An Embodied Approach to the Gospels Jeannine Marie Hanger (Baker Academic) $24.99 NOT YET RELEASED – DUE OCTOBER 2024 / PRE-ORDER NOW – OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99 We won’t run your credit card until we send the book in October.

We want to celebrate this and invite you to pre-order it although, truth be told, I have no idea what it will be like. Many of us are fascinated these days with questions of embodiment, both theological questions (we are are not Gnostics, we understand that we are embodied creatures in God’s real world of physical matter, as God intends) and on the ways to use our full set of senses as we read and learn and grow as Christians. So this sounds just tremendous, doesn’t it?

Dr. Hanger has PhD from the University of Aberdeen and is a professor of New Testament at Talbot School of Theology (at Biola University in L.A.) She invites us to a multi sensual reading, centering Jesus’s own incarnation and his use of physicality in his ministry. I’m excited, and scholars no less than John Barclay of Durham raves about this good effort to draw us in as full-bodied readers.  Here is the table of content. Remember: this isn’t out yet and isn’t due until mid-October 2024. If you pre-order it from us now, we would be grateful.

Introduction: Why the Physical Senses Matter for Reading Texts

1.  Our Sensory Approach: Reading with Our Senses Intact
2.  The Focus of Our Sensory Approach: Introducing the Gospels
3.  Tasting the Good Life: Jesus, Bread for the Hungry
4.  Seeing and Not Seeing: Jesus, the Light and the Giver of Sight
5.  Hearing the Divine Call: Jesus Who Speaks and the Sheep That Follow
6.  Smelling Death and Life: Jesus Makes Scents of Memorable Fragrance
7. Just a Touch of Love: Jesus and the Potency of Touch
8.  Sensing Jesus Together: Concluding Thoughts

Proclaiming the Parables: Preaching and Teaching the Kingdom of God Thomas G. Long (WJK) $50.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $40.00

Anytime there is a new book by Tom Long, we rejoice. He’s a good thinker, a very fine writer, and a long-time servant of the church. From his fabulously usable commentary on Matthew to his eloquent work on funerals to his several classic books on preaching he is an ecumenical (but Presbyterian) leader well worth reading.

And now this — over 400 pages of astute, readable, exciting, radical reflections that, as Barbara Brown Taylor notes, “secures his legacies for generations to come.”

Ponder this thoughtful lines which hints at something important about this book; it says a lot:

This book is a literary revelation that intellectual reorientation is possible when one encounters a God with whom nothing is impossible. Tom Long, a major influential theological scholar who taught on the parables for over forty years, demonstrates that scholarship, ministry, and life are nonlinear but can be disrupted through the inbreaking of the kingdom of God from the parables. Long humbly admits his change in perspective on the parables after many years. He awakens to the fact that a parable is not solely a literary device but also a theological reality, a kingdom-of-God event that preachers should proclaim is ‘at hand’ yet not ‘in’ our hands. Parables are more than stories, metaphors, or ideas but are the power of the living God on earth as it is in heaven. Get this book into your hands to be reminded once again that the kingdom of God is at hand!  –Luke Powery, Dean of Duke Divinity School Chapel

And enjoy these:

Be very afraid! While masquerading as a book about preaching and teaching the parables, in this splendid volume, the parables begin to do their work of unsettling, rearranging, and finally inviting. They preach themselves. Tom Long’s extended conversation with Jesus’ teaching has born fruit, thirty- and sixty- and a hundredfold. I, for one, am grateful. — Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Emerita of New Testament Literature and Exegesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, Romans: A Commentary

Every pastor has a favorite class from seminary or divinity school — a class that utterly changed their way of looking at the faith, a class that reaffirmed that ministry is a worthy calling, a delving into meaty and inspiring matters that merits every ounce of energy and creativity a person can possibly muster. For me, that class was Tom Long’s class on the parables. This book is that class. It is one blessing after another, after another. — Scott Black Johnston, pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

The Scandal of the Kingdom: How the Parables of Jesus Revolutionize Life with God Dallas Willard (Zondervan) $29.99  NOT YET RELEASED – DUE OCTOBER 2024 / PRE-ORDER NOW – OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99 We won’t run your credit card until we send the book in October.

Of course we have not seen this forthcoming book yet, but I’m told with confidence that it is carefully crafted from previously unpublished material of the late Dallas Willard. You may know his extraordinary book The Divine Conspiracy and The Divine Conspiracy Continued, among his other excellent works on spiritual formation such as Spirit of the Disciplines, or, my favorite, Renovation of the Heart. He was a philosopher teaching at the University of Southern California’s School of Philosophy but was most known for helping Christian disciples make choices to learn to hear God and allow themselves to be trained in the ways of Christ, to become more like Him. The fantastic, upbeat, readable recent book by John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way is in many ways indebted to Dallas Willard.

In any case, this is the forthcoming volume on how the parables of Jesus can help us in our daily discipleship and help us enter into the process of formational discipleship. We are told it is indeed a serious bit of Biblical reflection but is also a handbook, a manifesto, a call to action. May it lead many to become more passionate about living the gospel in delightful ways in our disenchanted world.

Christmaker: A Life of John the Baptist James F. McGrath (Eerdmans) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I do not want to weight this edition of BookNotes too much towards scholarly and expensive Biblical resources, so I will only note that this brand new book by McGrath is a lay-reader-oriented, seriously abridged version of his forthcoming (October 2024) master-work, John of History, Baptist of Faith: The Quest for the Historical Baptizer (Eerdmans; $59.99 / our sale price = $47.99 — you can PRE-ORDER it now, of course.) That book will surely be considered the primary work on the topic, which takes up an “astonishingly rich and polyglot array of secondary sources” and reads closely reflections and research from across church history. It is this quest for the historical John the Baptizer, that forthcoming volume will be referenced in scholarly circles for years to come.

And this? It may be considered “essential reading for all interested in Jesus’s spiritual formation as well as the later ‘parting of the ways’ between John’s teaching and Jesus’s.”  McGrath, who teaches New Testament at Butler University and proved himself a vastly educated and whimsical writer in his The A to Z of the New Testament: Things Experts Know That Everyone Else Should To. I have not yet studied Christmaker and I am sure I’m not alone in sometimes wondering what the life of John the Baptist would have been like. His influence was obviously far-reaching. Who doesn’t love that painting of John pointing to Jesus?

One reviewer (Edmondo Lupieri of Loyola University) says this fresh approach, which is “readable like a novel”, will create “large and lasting ripples in scholarship as well as the thinking and lives of its readers.”

The Good Samaritan: Luke 10 for the Life of the Church Emerson B. Powery (Baker Academic) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Dr. Powery is a professor of Biblical scholarship at Messiah University, near us here in central PA. He has his PhD from Duke and has written any number of academic and serious works. (He also co-edited the aforementioned True to Our Native Lands African American New Testament Commentary.)

This fairly short, fabulously readable, and excellent volume is the fourth in the Touchstone Texts series which addresses key Bible passages “making high-quality biblical scholarship accessible for the church.” (Other volumes include ones on Psalm 23, The Lord’s Prayer, and “The Suffering Servant” text of Isaiah 53 — all “for the life of the church.”)

Along with a vivid introduction, a preamble, so to speak, here are the five chapters of Powery’s The Good Samaritan:

1.  Who Is My Neighbor? Luke 10 for the Life of the Church
2.  The Good Samaritan in Christian Tradition: What You See Depends on Where You        Stand
3.  Mercy and the Neighbor: Reading the Parable
4.  Samaritan Lives Matter: Is the Church Engaged in Good Trouble?
5.  Conclusion: Imagining a “Samaritan” for the Life of the Church

I love this nice endorsement by our friend Carol Lytch, President Emerita, Lancaster Theological Seminary:

Those who are seeking a simple explanation of the parable of the good Samaritan should instead be prepared to be stretched by Powery’s analysis. He invites the reader and the contemporary church to experience the transformative power of the parable through the eyes of historical and contemporary interpreters, honoring their many lenses — including those of context, social location, race, ethnicity, religious identity, and politics. Powery is present in his work in a winsome and authentic way and models the best of biblical scholarship and pedagogy in theological education. — Carol E. Lytch, president emerita, Lancaster Theological Seminary

Romans: A Commentary (New Testament Library)  Beverly Roberts Gaventa (WJK) $70.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $56.00

Well, speaking of classic, mainline, critical scholarship published in an earlier era of the great WJK publishing venture, the New Testament Library is nearly as prestigious as it gets. Maybe not as arcane as the Anchor series nor quite like the respected Word Commentary series, this is weighty stuff. Excepting Culpepper’s Matthew: A Commentary contribution a few years ago, there hasn’t been anything updated in this series, which began in the last century, as I recall. This is, for commentary geeks, a major, major cause for celebration.

Gavanta has done some semi-scholarly stuff on several books of the Bible and some academic work on the Apocalyptic Paul. She has served the church by editing several volumes of good lectionary-based commentaries.

And on the epistle to the Romans, I adored her brief but potent, When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel According to Paul (which we gladly still stock; it first came out in 2016 and has endured as it invites readers to see how Romans “reframes our tidy categories and dramatically enlarges our sense of the gospel.”

This new scholarly work has been years in the making, long-awaited by people in the know. For my tastes, I doubt if it will be as lively as Romans Disarmed by Keesmaat and Walsh — few commentaries can match that! — but for those wanting the latest in this sort of ecumenical scholarship, this latest contribution to the New Testament Library will be a must-read.

Commentaries for Christian Formation: Hebrews Amy Peeler (Eerdmans) $39.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

Above I was speaking of Jewish influences in the first century church and how Jesus’s people then were shaped by the Hebrew Scriptures — wow! Well, who doesn’t love the Epistle to the Hebrews? At least I hope you do.

I also hope you know this fairly new, limited commentary series, designed to bridge the gap of what is often arcane and technical Biblical studies and how the scholarship of commentaries can come to life in shape the actual discipleship of people in the pew.  That is not to say these “Commentaries for Christian Formation” are shoddy or light-weight. They just have this subtle hint that this stuff should help us form our lives of faith. The first two in this series were Galatians by N.T. Wright (2021) and Proverbs by John Goldingay (2023.) We are thrilled to announce the new Amy Peeler one. It is said to be really well written and really, really wise. And she is a fine, fine scholar.

Amy Peeler’s Hebrews is lucidly, beautifully written, excelling especially in rich theological reflection and an uncommon depth of pastoral good sense. Committed followers of our Great High Priest, rejoice! You will find here both an enjoyable read and much encouragement for enduring in the race of faith. — George Guthrie, professor of New Testament, Regent College

Hope Ain’t a Hustle: Persevering by Faith in a Weary World Irwyn Ince (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I highlighted this at BookNotes with great verve last winter — I read it almost in one sitting one chilly February day. I was so blessed by reading these upbeat, conversational messages that I wanted others to know. I suspect it was in a list of new books and maybe got lost amidst other more famous releases. In any case, having revisited it, I’m convinced it is a gem, a great read, with as much insight about Hebrews as many might need and good messages about endurance and persistence, and bold faith in a discouraging world. It reminds us, of course, that Christ alone is our great high priest and in Him, we can have a solid hope.

Ince is a vibrant PCA pastor in urban Washington DC and everybody that knows him and his church knows that, despite grave difficulties these days, his congregation is formed to be a witness, a multi-ethnic light illuminating the goodness and grace of the Kingdom of God. Hooray.

Our world glimmers with false hopes, offering financial gains, political power, and earthly efforts as conduits of blessing that promise much but fail to provide the peace and unity we desire. We need a better hope if we want to persevere. Thankfully, Irwyn Ince’s new book Hope Ain’t a Hustle wisely guides us through the book of Hebrews, reminding us that the object of our hope — Jesus himself — is the power of our endurance. –Melissa Kruger, vice president of discipleship programming at The Gospel Coalition

This wonderful book is a pastoral, homiletical gift to those in need of encouragement. Diagnosing the problem of our era as a failure of hope, Irwyn Ince shares the fruit of his profound meditations, study, and preaching of the book of Hebrews. This is the kind of strong medicine needed to restore hope in a generation that has been disappointed by apathy, injustice, and scandal. He shows us that the hope of the gospel is the secret to joy and endurance. For those who are discouraged, sorrowful, and struggling, this wise book helps us to have eyes to see the beauty of Jesus anew.— Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest and author of Prayer in the Night

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• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.33; 2 lbs would be $5.07. This is the cheapest method available and seems not to be too delayed.
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Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and the Spiritual Life William G. Carter (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

FREE AUTHOR EVENT with BILL CARTER. FRIDAY NIGHT JUNE 28th. FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF YORK. 7:00 PM. 

There’s a lot of reasons to attend an author appearance at your local bookstore or event venue. Some writers are rather solitary and to be in the presence of a writerly artist is its own sort of gift. Some — quite often nonfiction writers — are real experts on their topics and are often great and lively teachers; there is so much to be learned, and who better to take in than a freshly published author, telling about her book? There is the energy of being in a room with like-minded book lovers, and there is the treasure of getting an autographed book. (And for some, the idea of knocking off your list a very special Christmas present — maybe with the signed book actually made to your loved one— is fabulous.) Who doesn’t like an author event and book signing?

Hearts & Minds here in South Central Pennsylvania is very excited to host an author, for all these reasons and more, if you are anywhere near-by on Friday night June 28th, you should come. You’ll learn a lot. You’ll be inspired. You’ll laugh. Maybe you’ll cry. You’ll be with others. You’ll meet Bill Carter, an outgoing Presbyterian pastor and great writer whose new book is on the relationship of jazz and the spiritual life. And you know what? He’s not only going to talk about the book and respond to questions (and, of course, sign books) but he going to play some tunes, too — maybe some classic jazz standards and surely some of his own mind-bending piano compositions. The fun starts at 7:00 at First Presbyterian Church in downtown York. All are welcome.

Hearts & Minds has partnered with various local venues to host a number of great authors over the years, from journalist and faith activist Jim Wallis to musician and writer Michael Card, memoirist Lauren Winner to lit prof Karen Swallow Prior, medical missionary and peace activist, Jeremy Courtney to contemplative teacher Ruth Haley Barton, historian John Fea to parenting guide Joanne Miller, public scholar Andy Crouch to public politico Michael Wear, from Amish novelist Beverly Lewis to world-famous Biblical scholar N.T Wright. Wright also played some music, some of you will recall, as he did a Dylan song on a borrowed guitar. (“Did Brian Walsh,” — most recently co-author of Romans Disarmed and a new edition of Beyond Homelessness — “put you up to this?” Tom laughed, knowingly. Indeed. And then went viral for a hot minute.)

So our old pal Bill Carter is standing on the shoulders of a pretty esteemed crew who have joined us here in the Dallastown area to present on their books. We’re delighted that FPC, our home church in York (on the corner of Queen & Market) is willing to co-sponsor this, since they have a great piano in the sanctuary. This isn’t Bill’s first appearance at First Pres, either: years ago his band, Presbybop, led a jazz worship experience for us to a packed house. Our event isn’t a concert, per se, but a talk on his recent book and a conversation about the role of the arts — in this case, jazz — and how it can enhance and accompany the Christian life. But there is going to be music. You might even want to bring your dancing shoes.

Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and the Spiritual Life came out a few months ago, published nicely by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. I reviewed it HERE and we were grateful that a number of folks pre-ordered it even before it came out. It has gotten really good reviews in various places. Recently, the great Green Room folks, who usually focus on faith in the work-world and the sanctification of the ordinary callings of ordinary folks, wrote about it HERE. 

Others who have written about this topic, like Kirk Byron Jones (author of The Spiritual Treasure of Jazz and The Jazz of Preaching) wrote,

The stories, insightful connections to theological thought and spiritual experience, and unabashed passion of Thriving on a Riff will be memorable music to your soul. Take your time and savor; there is vibrant reflective inspiration here.

Yes, indeed. Order the book and savor it. Slow down, learn a bit about the arts and jazz, sense the importance of this exceptional American art form (often drawing on black cultural histories and advancing the cause of racial justice) and see how it might move you. I bet that you, like me, will not want to put it down and not want it to end. It’s a book worth having.

It’s a book that helps — get this! — in both the ups and downs of our Christian lives, the happy, fun times, the exquisite moments of awe and mystery, and for the lament of great sadness, personal and social. Believe me, I need these different styles to help me find ways to cope with my own different sorts of human experiences and emotions. Don’t you?

Thriving… is also a book worth experiencing live, hearing the author tell his stories and play his songs. If you’re able, please just us as our guest does just that; as he playfully teaches and educates us well, through storytelling and reading from the book and by playing the keys. He’s a gifted orator/preacher, a good storyteller, and a very talented pianist. Without being goofy or maudlin about it at all, playing is a deeply spiritual thing for him and his listeners; as Bill puts it, he was born to “pray the piano.”

Don Saliers — the famous mainline Protestant organist and church music scholar (and father to Emily of the folk-rock duo the Indigo Girls, who wrote a terrific book with her dad called A Song to Sing, a Life to Live) — is a big fan of Reverend Carter. Saliers notes that Thriving on a Riff is a “feast” and “no less than a love song to the art and genius of improvisation.”

He continues, perfectly,

“…it is also a musical primer about transcendence and the risks of Biblical faith.”

Transcendence. Many of us know the experience, having had a glimpse of the ecstatic, a mystical moment, a bona fide encounter with the Divine, perhaps even ineffable. And it sometimes happens through music.

Perhaps it is through a sacred piece by Bach or the upbeat majesty of well-known works like “Brandenburg” or “Pachelbel” or the famous adagios by Barber or Albinoni. I have my reasons, but I almost always weep when hearing a good version of “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.” But such an emotional sense of something sublime happens for many of us in rock music, too — from the soaring prog rock of the three Yes songs on “Close to the Edge” to the incredible, long coda of Layla to some of Paul Simon’s most literate pieces to those blazes of genius from Dylan to the scat singing of Van Morrison to nearly anything by U2 (and did I mention the Indigo Girls?) I encounter God often when listening to Bill Mallonee or Bruce Cockburn; many of our BookNotes readers have their own favs, but many would say listening to music is a spiritual practice. From rock and folk, soul and funk, for some, hip hop and for some, old-school country, from the mass choirs of black gospel to the quiet brilliance of Orthodox Arvo Part to the evocative mood of Irish ballads this is all sacred ground. It’s another post but I could list dozens of very recent pop artists who move me very, very deeply, such that I would say listening to them is a blessing of common grace.

But jazz.

Oh my, that is a style that is almost quintessentially laden with deep spiritual concerns.

Largely instrumental, the layers and rhythms, the collaboration and experimentation, the improvisation and often the very minor keys, the longing and yearning and then the final hints (or blasts) of resolution — all so very often point beyond themselves, offering nothing short of signals of transcendence. From the early works of the great Duke Ellington to John Coltrane’s famously raw prayer, A Love Supreme that released in 1964, to complex worship services composed by modernist jazzman Dave Brubeck (Bill’s friend, by the way) to the demanding weirdness of Sun Ra, there are overt spiritual themes that become obvious for those with ears to hear.

Bill Carter’s easy-to-read but often very moving introduction to faith and jazz is, by far, the best thing I’ve read on this notion that the jazz can speak to us, move us spiritually, and (for followers of Jesus) be an aid in our awareness of the Spirit and somewhat of a guide towards living faithfully in the world. This book, by way of history and stories and first-hand episodes and examples, gives us those ears to hear.

Jazz critic (and author of Vince Guaraldi at the Piano) says that “jazz is born of diversity; it requires openness” He maybe learned that from Carter but he says (on the back cover of Thriving on a Riff) that jazz can “overcome bigotry and unite all who embrace it.” That’s a big dream, of course, but as Bill “rhapsodizes about the timeless euphoria of wholly embracing a transformative jazz performance” we get glimpses of how this works. One of the really great themes of Thriving is how racial justice concerns have been woven throughout the history of the genre. For those who care about racial reconciliation and for the church to be more multi-ethnic and diverse as it should be, I’m confident that Thriving on a Riff will help.

Carter is a Presbyterian preacher and pastor so he knows Reformed theology, and could easily note how the possibilities for art and music are rooted in a robust doctrine of creation. We Calvinists understand something about sin and idolatry, too, so Bill could also easily explain how jazz grew out of very hard times in US culture, from racism and economic disenfranchisement (not to mention weed and heroin and other unsavory pressures.) But, yes, the Biblical story unfolds from a good creation distorted by sin towards a cosmic redemption in Christ as the suffering and Risen Lord brings the reign of God to bear into all of life. We are — as another book that Bill wrote put it, “on a pilgrim road.” We don’t always yet see God’s healing and wholeness and shalom and goodness breaking out over all creation, but we see glimpses. We keep moving towards the new creation.

What better art form to tell this nuanced and subtle story than jazz?

In one chapter, after a “lesson in dissonance” he talks about “That Healin’ Feelin'” which he calls “The Soundtrack of Restoration.” Right on, man.

Thriving on a Riff shows us where jazz comes from, tells stories from the lives of some of the greats, illustrates his points with his own expertise and piano-craft, and moves effortlessly between the smoky clubs of late Saturday night to the dawn of Sunday morning church. Jazz has a lot to do with human spirituality, generally, and a lot to do with Christian discipleship, specifically; Thriving makes it clear, inviting, exciting.

With chapter titles like “Prayers Lifted on a Saxophone” and “Babel and Bebop” and improvisational interludes like “Swinging with Purpose” and “Late-Night Thoughts on Listening to Coltrane’s Ascension”, with chapters like “Broken and Beautiful” exploring “what it means to be human” and improvisations like his “Homily from the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Guaraldi Mass”, this is all exciting, theologically rich, and will, in his words, help you “listen for Selah.”

Look. You don’t have to be artsy or bohemian to like this book and you sure don’t have to be a jazz aficionado. If you are, then you know this book if for you, and you need to get it A-SAP. But even if you don’t read a lot in the arts or about music, particularly, my sense is this will be informative and inspirational for you. It could fill in the missing colors in your reading palette and be a bit of strong food or drink for your reading diet.

Come on out if you can to hear Bill next Friday night, June 28th, at 7:00 PM in the glorious sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in downtown York. Books and some of his CDs will be available for purchase. There will be some light refreshments.

If you can’t attend, please order the book now. As always, we have them at 20% off so if you are a BookNotes reader, please send an order our way. We’ll send ‘em out promptly.

OR, HOW ABOUT THIS:

You can order an autographed copy now. We will get them signed for you, either just with a signature, or made out to somebody special (if you clearly tell us to whom you want the inscription.) It will be a busy, fun night and we’re happy to add your request for signed books onto the stack.  We can then send them to you in early July. No extra charge for this nifty added value.

We’d be delighted to do this leg-work for you so if you want a signed copy, don’t hesitate to make that clear. If you want the inscrption to go to somebody’s name, just write the name as you want it written in the blank space at the Hearts & Minds order form page. Or give us a call at the shop before Friday night.

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.33; 2 lbs would be $5.07. This is the cheapest method available and seems not to be too delayed.
• 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 much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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We sure have appreciated the fun notes from friends and customers about that last big BookNotes. For those that missed it, it included a dozen great books about the nature of reading, great titles on the demands and joys and benefits of the reading life. Books like the recent Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age which I am astonished by. In this age of distraction, it is more important than ever to foster such dispositions and practices and renewed (or re-ordered) loves, and reading well can help us. Disciples of Jesus are, of course, called to be life-long learners in the way of Jesus and, these days, there is more than ever to learn. So, as the Spirit said to the restless ancient Saint Augustine, tolle lege.

One of the things we want to read about is other people. God’s Kingdom a-coming includes all of creation — art museums and baby-care stuff, earth and space sciences and politics, architecture and integrative medicine, and so much more — it all matters. But I suggested in that BookNotes that reading about how people understand and narrate their lives is a key resource for helping us understand we humans, sinners and saints that we are. Reading fiction and memoir is an usually enjoyable and often provocative way to come to understand our fellow creatures who are, obvious or not (or even if we like it or not) made in God’s image. I think it is a Christian discipline to read memoirs, opening ourselves to others, for love’s sake. I try to read one each week. (I just finished the plainspoken but deeply moving Devout: A Memoir of Doubt by Anna Gazmarian, which was, admittedly, about doubt and deconstruction, but mostly about her navigating her faith after being diagnosed with nearly untreatable bi-polar disorder. More on that later, I hope.)

We shared in last week’s BookNotes a link to about 75 annotated novels and I shared another link to nearly 75 memoirs. You can find all our old BookNotes archived at our website. Find that last one right here.

One person quipped that this gave them enough reading ideas to last a lifetime. Another said we hardly have to do another BookNotes for the rest of the summer. Ha.

And we omitted so much.

Beth thought for sure I would have listed Trust by Hernan Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize winning novel written as a book within-a-book, about big business, power, and oh so much more. I loved the amazing book about a mainline denominational pastor’s dysfunction in the great Jonathan Franzen novel, Crossroads. I can’t believe I neglected to list Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos, a great novel for small-town clergy (and a favorite of our old Maryland friend, Presbyterian pastor, Eugene Peterson.) I adored the memoir (which also won a Pulitzer) about coming of age in the 1980s-era college life of Berkley (mostly about rock music, friendship, ethnicity and race — what a deeply moving book) by Hua Hsu, Stay True and I might someday write pages about.

Alas, as much as we love the books we listed, they were limited to those two genres — memoir and fiction. (Well, I listed a few spectacular journalistic stories that read like novels, or in the style of memoirs as the author embeds themselves among folk to explore something we all need to know about. I love those creatively done works of nonfiction and shared a handful of them, too, must-reads in my view, like Beth Macy’s provocative Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis and Corbin Addison’s thrilling Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial.)  But, yeah, we focused on memoirs, biographies, and these journalistic reports, memoir-like, exposes of injustice. What a list, if I do say so myself.

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So. Now we need to list a few other new books in a genre that we might describe as a basic sort of spiritual formation or about our lives as disciples. These are books to help us all grow in faith and discipleship – not theology, per se, not deep mysticism, but applied faith, “for the living of these days” as the great hymn puts it. Most are quite new and all are highly recommended. We hope you send us some orders for helpful, summer-reading.

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 hope you know how much we appreciate the wisdom and perspective – not to mention the creative writing chops and his way with words – of this thoughtful, accessible writer. He has written some Lenten-like reflections, a tremendous book on Sabbath, another on the delights of caring for creation. He is recently known for an excellent book on doubt. He is a professor who knows young adults well, but, it seems to me, is appreciated by readers of all ages and stages. He’s an author we value and trust immensely.

This new book is not the easiest to sell. The pink cover does not indicate any gendered interest and the allusive title, while maybe a tad off-putting, should be embraced with open arms. Or at least somewhat open arms. Who wants thorns in their lives? I get it that it might seem (if you don’t know the author or the book’s profound approach) like a cheesy self help title telling you to accept whatever comes down the pike. You know, those sentimental and cheery books that Kate Bowler rails against. It isn’t that at all.

What The Gift of Thorns is, at least, is a serious study of the questions of desire. I alluded to our “disordered” or “reordered” loves in my little intro above – do we really want to be the people of empathy and substance that deep readers can become? Do we want to be wise and informed and insightful? As James K.A. Smith notes in his exceptional You Are What You Love, much of life happens “under the hood.” We can’t merely think our way to new ways of being. We need a community that offers an ethos of health and growth for those who have just had heart transplants. A good way to see spiritual growth and Kingdom formation, eh? We’re given new hearts and then, with God’s help, we must nurture our new status and our new direction in life with suitable new virtues.

Swaboda has just given us a master-class in discerning the state of our new hearts and inviting us, in the spirit of Smith, I’d say, to take up a time of self-reflection and rehabilitation. We have to know what we love and why we love it; we have to dig deep to ponder our own motives and longings. We need to learn what to do with our wants. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants is an excellent book of naming and reforming (through the power of the Spirit) our very desires. If you liked Jamie Smith’s work, you’ll value this. If you were among the many blown away by John Mark Comer’s Live No Lies, you might find this a helpful follow up. Highly recommended.

Fully Alive Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times Elizabeth Oldfield (Baker) $24.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This is a very new book that I believe is going to be talked about in months to come. Oldfield is a popular podcaster and here (surprise!) she uses the seven deadly sins as a framework to explore the classic questions of every disciple, of every seeker, nearly of every human. Okay, maybe not everybody asks “how do I move from sloth to attention?” but it is a profound question, classically discussed under the rubric of acedia. Again, not everyone wants to move from gluttony to awe, but her framing of this question (about numbing) is remarkably profound and will attract many who are in recovery (or maybe ought to be.) She shows how we have this human propensity to mess things up and a judgy, negative approach just digs us further into the vices that plague us.

There are a lot of good books on the seven deadly sins and several we like on holiness and virtue. This may soon be on the top of many people’s lists of favorite books along these lines.

Here is the table of contents; I’m sure you’ll agree this looks absolutely fascinating.  When authors as diverse as Francis Spufford and Krista Tippett and David Zahl all rave, you know  you have a winner on your hands. The popular historian Tom Holland calls it “luminous.”

1. The Human Propensity to F— Things Up
2.  Wrath . . . From Polarisation to Peace-making
3.  Avarice . . . From Stuffocation to Gratitude and Generosity
4.  Acedia . . . F rom Distraction to Attention
5.  Envy . . . From Status Anxiety to Belovedness
6.  Gluttony . . . From Numbing to Ecstasy
7.  Lust . . . From Objectification to Sexual Humanism
8.  Pride . . . From Individualism to Community
9.  The G Bomb

The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor Lore Ferguson Wilbert (Brazos Press) $18.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Oh my, this is the very best book I’ve read in months! I couldn’t put it down and finished it in two days. It isn’t that long and the writing is spectacular. The story is clear, although she covers a lot of territory. Literal territory, which becomes the backdrop and stage for the inner dilemmas and spiritual struggles she faces in her interior life. Sure, it is, as many good Christian books are, a resource for your growth, a wise guide pointing the way, a nice bit of spiritual rumination to help in your own (ailing?) formation. But, believe me, it includes more than standard fare cliches or simple Biblical truths. She invites us to walk in the woods with her, and what stories she has to tell. New Testament scholar Nijay Gupta calls it “a breathtaking combination of personal vulnerability, biblical wisdom, and pastoral hope.”

The Understory is written as memoir, and it is laden with fabulous first-hand nature writing. That is, she explains what she sees, poetically and creatively, and it is mostly down-to-Earth. She gazes at the stars in a pitch-black, midnight, kayak expedition (until some beavers are aroused and become a bit territorial.) But most of the creation-care she attests to, the beauty of the Earth she reports on, is, in fact, not skyward, but the very soil. She adores plants and trees and “the understory” is somewhat of a play on the popular theme these days of the “overstory.” (Perhaps you read the great novel by Richard Powers which Beth and I regret leaving off our big list of novels in the last BookNotes. Wilbert cites it, too — hooray!) From the canopy of the highest forest to the very floor and roots of old-growth majesties, she helps us appreciate these creatures of God.

If you loved Braiding Sweetgrass – that beautiful blend of wonderful command of the language and natural history and indigenous insight by Robin Wall Kimmerer – you will appreciate Wilbert. If you liked (or even heard about) those batch of books about the language of trees and how they communicate (like The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben or The Language of Trees by Katie Holten) you’ll love her take on all of that.

However, even though this memoir is about Wilbert and her husband’s caring for some land in upstate New York (with the occasional digression to climb or canoe) and her focus is on flora and fauna, especially trees, the story under the understory is her growing up in faith, leaving a toxic sort of fundamentalism behind, coming to see her loyalty and allegiance (and therefore identity) as less to a denomination or church tradition but to the person of Jesus. Years of strict dogma and complex theology are sifted – I hate to use the word deconstructed, as that isn’t exactly it – as she resettles in this place, with her small-town neighbors.

I highly, highly recommend this for anyone who likes beautiful writing about God’s world – think of Annie Dillard, say, or the moral vision of nature writers like Terry Tempest Williams or Kathleen Dean Moore. Geesh, she wisely quotes Thoreau and Muir. This is a rare and delightful bit of Christian writing.

I also recommend it for anyone who has felt the strain of tested relationships if you came out in favor of masking during the pandemic or wanted to stand with Black Lives Matter or couldn’t imagine Christians happily supporting the MAGA agenda. She seems like such a lovely person – she wrote an award-winning book on Broadman-Holman on the need and ministry of human touch, and another which we promoted( on Brazos Press) called A Curious Faith. She is thoughtful, reasonable, and yet deeply hurt by how some folks ghosted her or doubted her faith when she didn’t follow their extremist ideologies. Man, I feel for her and I know many will want to see her reflections on how she handled this season of our American life.

It becomes clear in the course of the story – the joys of it and the scars she describes – that appreciation of and caring about creation has been healing for her. Her sense of rootedness, like the trees in her beloved Adirondacks, have enabled her to bend but not break.

“Part Wendell Berry, Eugene Peterson, and Madeleine L’Engle. The result is sheer magic.” – A.J. Swoboda, After Doubt

Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus, Become like him, Do as he did John Mark Comer (Waterbrook) $26.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

This one is not brand new — it came out mid January and we sent out pre-orders way back then. Thanks for those who ordered it back when we first announced it in a previous BookNotes column a half a year ago. However, it is just so good, so germane, and still fairly recent that I wanted you to indulge me as I list it again.

Our own church is using the free video curriculum based on the book and it is so incredibly impressive, well done, professional and engaging. The “Practicing the Way” website has a downloadable workbook (that is very good) and the whole video presentation is excellent. The discussion questions are pointed and helpful. If you’ve got a small group Practicing the Way is a great read and the online classes would be great to watch together.

Comer insists that we are all being formed, all the time. A complex ecology of habits and stories and relationships and our environment play upon us, of time. Only intentionally practicing new “counter habits” can re-form us, pushing back against the malformation we’ve had from the forces of the culture. It’s not easy swimming upstream but new habits and practices can allow us, in the power of the Spirit, to go with the flow of the stream, as we become one with our Rabbi, becoming more like Him, for the sake of His Kingdom coming. It is no surprise that the likes of James Houston and, of course, Dallas Willard are cited. Ken Shigematsu (God In My Everything) and Tish Warren (Liturgy of the Ordinary) are in the videos, too. Some of the best teaching on spiritual formation I’ve seen, informed by all the standard best writers, from Ron Rolheiser to Ruth Haley Barton to Janet Hamburg to Kallistos Ware to David Banner and a great array of poets, thinkers, mystics, and theologians. Solid stuff.

Brown Faces, White Spaces: Confronting Systemic Racism to Bring Healing and Restoration Latasha Morrison (Waterbrook) $27.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Latasha Morrison is an extraordinary, evangelical leader, a vivid spokesperson, caring educator, Godly mentor. Her first book, Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation was a break-out best-seller in that too-quick season when books about race and racism and black culture were all over the best-sellers list throughout the land. We pushed it alongside the other popular titles – some Christian, some not – and she became a rock star. We rejoice in the influence she has had and are glad that it remains a steady seller (insofar as any books on race sell well these days, which they don’t.) We appreciated her Be the Bridge because it used the language of church folk, it was thoroughly rooted in a fairly conventional take on Biblical teachings and spiritual formation. She helped countless evangelicals wake up and was a popular author for many others as well.

This, ladies and gentleman, is her long-awaited sequel. Wowza! Three big cheers! You should order this book — and her previous one, if you don’t have it.

Brown Faces, White Spaces shows her own deepening of her analysis of race and racism and offers fresh insights about what we should do next, where we go from here. Many churches bravely tackled race and racism (and too many pastors were criticized for doing so) and many were quite intentional about exposing the evils of white supremacy (no matter how subtle) with a solid Biblical orientation. I suppose some opted only for secular authors and trendy book clubs but most rooted their analysis and their hopes in the good news of the gospel and offered a Biblical basis for our anti-racism work. Latasha Morrison showed “God’s heart for racial reconciliation” and now shows where that will lead.

And, yes, it will lead to bolder, even more faithful activism and Godly empowerment to confront systemic problems, all with the goal of bringing God’s shalom – healing and restoration. Brown Faces White Spaces is an ideal primer on these things, deeply rooted in the best of our faith traditions, clear-headed and inspirational, and a necessary gift for most of us.

She calls on us to pattern our preparation and study towards dedication and liberation. She explores nine aspects of American life where systemic racism still sadly flourishes. (She explores racial injustice in health care, the justice system, education, and more (including, yes, the church.) Through its call – like, for instance, say, Jamar Tisby – she insists that we know a bit about history and “the color of compromise.” She is honest and she is hope-filled. You will appreciate that, I’m sure.

The small group discussion questions will help you facilitate an adult book club or Sunday school class or summer ministry program.

The forward to this solid book is by Eugene Cho, the current executive director of Bread for the World, the renowned anti-hunger citizens lobbying group and the thrilling, upbeat afterword is by Dr. Anita Philips, a black church leader and important trauma therapist.

The Age of Grievance Frank Bruni (Avid Reader / Simon & Schuster) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Although not an overtly, or even subtly, Christian book, this mainstream journalist has offered one of the most meaningful, thoughtful, interesting, and I believe, helpful studies I’ve read in a while. Although a serious bit of cultural and political analysis, it is, also, a call to a sort of prudent decency that sounds to me like a fruit of the Spirit, like a call to virtue that comes from attention to our own spiritual formation. So I’m putting this book here on this list about discipleship and formation rather than on a later list on political stuff. It’s that good. You should read it prayerfully, to see how it might (a) help you understand our world and, perhaps (b) uncover some of your own habits of heart that have shaped your own instincts about current affairs or the lives of our neighbors.

Bruni is a long-standing, well-respected New York Times op-ed guy and a heck of an energetic writer. What fine phrases he can turn, with balance, nuance, and even humor. It’s a book I very highly recommend for anyone wanting to — as the famed “sons of Iscahaar” in Chronicles were known for — “understand the times.” He is a serious critic of the corrupt and maddening ways of Donald Trump and even more alarmed by the increasingly violent machinations of power not only on the far, alt-right, but from many bullying Republican leaders. His insistence (through lots of documentation) that the cultural dangers now are much, much, worse from the conservative side of the culture wars are compelling and in my estimation exactly right.

However, here he is also notably nuanced and exceptionally balanced, knowing that our “age of grievance” is pre-partisan and effects the air we breathe, at home, at work, at church, and in the public square. For many, seeing life (and blaming others) through the lens of grievance is core to their identity and a part of the architecture of their very worldview. He shows how acting out of grievance and insisting that everyone tow the line on every jot and tittle of a new regime of political correctness, for instance, is (especially on the left and in higher education and media) increasingly dangerous. And dumb — like some college standards that say we dare not use the word brave as a compliment, or “hip, hip, hooray” because it has roots in Nazi ideology.

I have noted scores of great paragraphs making the point about how those harboring legitimate concerns about real injustices have those concerns washed out by those demanding reparations for every little slight, blending truly historic wrongs that endure and smaller and less obviously hurtful matters. He argues this case very, very carefully — if colorfully — and makes what I think to be a thoughtful, civic-minded appeal not only for common ground and nuanced choices, but a return to former standards of decency and respect and giving each other the benefit of the doubt. The work of re-formation of our language and policy is slow, but serious.

Bruni has great insight into the overly picayune enforcement of speech codes in higher education (and he now teaches at Duke and knows something about the postmodern moods on campuses.) Anybody in higher ed should get this book. He also studies the fraught field of anti-racism training; hint: he’s not a fan of Beverly Diangelo and her White Fragility bestseller, but, again, anybody interested in helpful anti-racist efforts should consider his views. He is fair and persuasive in his assessment of the possible overreach of the #MeToo movement, as creepy lunch dates are lamented as loudly as and may be seen as similar to rape. Yet unlike some conservative work I’ve read blasting away at political correctness by exposing the oddest examples for ridicule, Bruni seems sympathetic, even if a given tendency has gone off the rails a bit.

He is rightfully aware of the need to listen well, and while he may not be quite as winsome as is John Inazu in his tremendous Learning to Disagree, he seems to be pointing towards the sort of principled pluralism to enhance civility that Inazu has written about previously. Bruni may be a political liberal, helpfully warning us of the ugly grievance ideologues of the right these days, but he quotes conservative writers like Yuval Levin and draws on the creative work of the likes of John McWhorter which is a nice surprise, again offering nuance and balance. It is an interesting author who can mock Molly Hemingway and the odd-ball Trumpians at The Federalist and the gross, nutty stuff from the likes of Tucker Carlson who minimized the blood on the floor of the Capitol as election deniers rampaged on January 6th, who yet affirms much of the thoughtful insight of some of our best conservative thinkers. I like Bruni a lot for that, making this a really energizing, even surprising book. That he cites a piece from Comment magazine or mentions David French is a remarkable sign these days.

As a gay man, he knows something about repression and marginalization, actually, but, again, he worries about how presenting some causes with such vigor and working to right some historic wrongs with such zeal may end up creating a counter-force of push-back, grievances against named grievances. That is pretty much the driving force of Fox News and the MAGA movement, now, he thinks, and shows (with vicious quote after quote, from Trump and his minions) how vile language and dangerous rhetoric is now common in pushing back against the liberals and their grievances. When conservative leaders like Mitt Romney fear for their lives from their formerly staid Republican backers in a place like Utah, you know there is danger in these times.

Is there hope? Indeed. He points the way.  The last two chapters are thrilling suggestions (okay, not overly sexy or dramatic, but wise insights about gerrymandering and election reform and ways to defuse continual battles and grudges.) Are there courageously moderate heros? Indeed; he highlights a few — celebrating a few key governors who are either Democrats in largely red states or Republicans who won and are supported in largely blue states.

His closing riffon humility is wonderful and even moving (and he cites a text in Philippians.) This book will help you be a wiser follower of Jesus in the public square. Perhaps in league with Shirley Mullen’s Claiming the Courageous Middle (a Baker Academic release we reviewed a month ago) we can learn to be nuanced advocates for a way that rises above the weary right vs left grievance wars.  We can become better neighbors, resisting our “descent into a society of metastasizing grievance” which turns everything into a battleground — in part because we don’t really know our political opponents as people. He knows “it’s complicated” but he invites us to a whole batch of do-able moves near the end. Hip, hip, hooray.

Get The Age of Grievance on your reading list asap, please. I might hold a grudge against you if you don’t.

From Weary to Wholehearted: A Restorative Resource for Overcoming Clergy Burnout Callie E. Swanlund (Church Publishing) $19.95 OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

Okay, this is certainly for our readers who are clergy or church leaders, or to be purchased by those who care about their ministers, pastors, or other professional church staff. Franky, as a non-ordained lay person, I found this extraordinary, but it is written to and for our congregational staff. There are others about this that I’ve written about before and this one, now, is a major contribution and a must-read for anyone tasked with caring for clergy (such as judicatories, say, or even Boards or Councils or Sessions.) It’s really, really, good. If you care about pastors, you should know this as a good resource.

Callie is herself an Episcopal priest and beloved in her own Diocese (here in Pennsylvania, I might add.) She’s a youthful voice and energetic leader within mainline denominations  and knows the ins and outs of standard church ministry. She is esteemed among her colleagues and knows a lot about the bigger picture of the contemporary state of clergy health and well-being. She will tell you – upbeat and delightful as she is – that it is not a pretty picture.

I suspect the seeds of this have been in her heart for a while as she obviously cares about the integrity of her vocation and her associates with the same sort of calling. But I also suspect that the uptick in church struggles – think Covid; think Trump; think BLM, think sexual abuse coverups; think about the stress on clergy about finances and innovation and more – has driven her to write what she knows. Clergy burnout is, as everyone knows, nearly epidemic. Clergy (and lay ministry professionals who serve the church) are often exhausted. At best.

You know the painful statistics. From stress over declining congregations (and declining financial support) to collegial loneliness, and even the high rates of illness and early deaths among clergy, church leaders are reporting, consistently, these days, less health and more stress.

As the publisher puts it, “From Weary to Wholehearted isn’t a quick fix, but a much-needed companion to remind faith leaders that they are not alone, support them through sustainable tools for finding joy and rest, and re-ground them in spiritual nourishment.”

As these books (like Glen Packiam’s The Resilient Pastor: Leading Your Church in a Rapidly Changing World or Carol Howard’s Wounded Pastors: Navigating Burnout, Finding Healing, and Discerning the Future of Your Ministry) tend to do, there is plenty of data and she is informed by recent surveys, good sociology, and incorporates important research findings. But it is more (much more) than a lament, even more than a cri de couer. It really is a guide to help clergy figure out some things, take some steps towards fresh starts and helpful practices. She asks them to “show up with their whole heart, vulnerably and courageously” and then walks them through the sorts of topics and guidance that is sure to be appreciated.

Callie is a retreat leader and spiritual guide. She is certified as a ministry coach. Most deeply, it seems, she wants to be a pastor to pastors; that is, to remind them of their own belovedness, offering encouragement and empowerment. As one reader (himself not a clergy-person) put it, From Weary to Wholehearted “helped me center and calm the chaos around me.” (She is, also, a Certified Daring Way Facilitator, if there are any Brene Brown fans who would appreciate that about her.)

The Emmanuel Promise: Discovering the Security of a Life Held By God Summer Joy Gross (Baker Books) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This may seem like a standard-fare book on knowing God, trusting God and coming to realize God is for you. That “life held by God” line is nice. But what this extraordinary book does – while accomplishing a great reminder of those vital and classic truths – is to do so by way of the author’s expertise in attachment theory. Yup.

Knowing that the book is about that, you can see the layers of meaning in the title: the promise of  Emmanuel, God-with-Us. God is the One who holds us best, even when (maybe especially when) our frail human parents failed to hold us, in large or small ways. Do you have a human parent full of foibles (or outright sins)? This book is for you.

Attachment theory is a complex, developmental, neurological approach, to oversimplify it, what happens when we are not held well as infants and children. When we fail to develop the normative bond between trusted parents and children. For a complex array of reasons – some obvious, others less so – some kids cannot attach with a loving parent figure. In these saddest of cases, kids grow up not knowing how to trust others, can’t bond, find it difficult to have reliable relationships. Attachment theory provides some needed diagnosis – what went wrong – and some guides to what we might do to heal our alienation, As many note, the Bible describes our primordial condition of being alienated from the Earth, from others, from our own very selves. All, of course, because of a fractured relationship with God.

Summer Joy Gross seems to be a really fabulous counselor, a very sharp practitioner, and a vulnerable storyteller of those with painful insecurities and those who have found healing and hope. The Emmanuel Promise helps us all learn to rely on God, to realize God can hold us well.  She draws on the likes of Curt Thompson, whose work is excellent and eloquent. She is an Anglican priest who works with Healing Care Ministry, a very well-respected counseling and spirituality center in Ohio, led by Terry Wardle (whose books you should know.) The brand new The Emmanuel Promise looks really, really impressive, a must for anyone interested in the interplay of deep psychology and spirituality. I think it is one we could all benefit from, and we highly recommend it.

Now and Not Yet: Pressing In When You’re Not Waiting, Wanting, and Restless for More Ruth Chou Simons (Thomas Nelson) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

You may know, if you’ve followed Hearts & Minds for a while, that we love this phrase — the now and the not yet, or, similarly, the already and not yet — and have used it often. At its most basic, of course, it is a statement about the true state of things: God’s Kingdom is here, but not fully here. We live in the “now” of a world being redeemed by a loving creator who, in the person of Jesus Christ, inaugurated His reign and promises to “make all things (re)new(ed)” but we now long for what is yet to be. In Advent, especially, the church focuses our collective attention to this deep paradox of the Christian life. I love this as a way to explain the reign of God and the Kingdom that is already even if obviously not fully yet.

Ruth Chou Simons is not a person I think of when I think about this historically-redemptive vision of cosmic hope — that is, creation-regained and all-of-life-redeemed. She writes beautifully (and often illustrated her work with remarkable water-color art) and her graphics and cards and gift books are truly lovely. Her writing is warm, personal, spiritual, deep in the way good evangelical piety can be.

Any new book of hers is a big deal in the religious publishing world, I’d say, and this will be a balm for many. It is (perhaps in a way unlike her previous books such as Beholding and Becoming and When Strivings Cease or her popular Gracelaced) for those with mental health frustrations or deep disillusionments; those just hanging on. She hints in the title that it is for those who are restless. It seems to me it is even for those who are experiencing difficult aspects or seasons of their lives and who are “feeling trapped.” In this sense, some of her analysis and insights are deeply psychological. Yet, if you know her work, she is decidedly gospel-centered and committed to foundations of informed Christian living.

Personal and tender as she is, Simons knows that we need fresh habits and that this includes time and space with God, learning to trust and move towards His ways. Further – get this – she knows these capacities to “flip the script” can be enhanced by guided liturgies. In Now and Not Yet she poetically and almost liturgically holds up our anxieties to God, helping us come to realize that our “right now matters.” We can live faithfully in the tension between what is and what is not yet.

Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life W. David O. Taylor with paintings by Phaedra Taylor (IVP) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

I will not say much about this other than to say it is a surprise release, added into the great IVP late Spring / early Summer list and it happily just arrived. It is a handsome, thoughtful, well-written collection of prayers, cased in a fine hardback. It looks like a winner, a great little gift item or for your own prayer life. Even casually slip it to your favorite worship leader or pastor as it surely will be a useful resource for those planning worship, prayer events, or for the opening of church meetings of all sorts.

And here’s the thing: Taylor is known for heady theology and sharp thinking about forging creative and faithfully thick worship in the contemporary age. His last book, A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship was a Hearts & Minds favorite for 2023 which explored various aspects of how and why our human bodies come to play in faithful Christian worship. We are embodied people, so our very bodies (including our sense of aesthetics, our emotions, our physical maladies and more) are both the way we experience and engage in weekly worship and, naturally, are influenced by our experience of said worship. Right?

As one-hundred percent true as this is always, everywhere, (even if we are participating in worship on-line, which is still embodied if not “in person”) it is notable how very little writing there is on this. His footnotes are amazing, but A Body of Praise is the first major release of a book on this topic.

Anyway, perhaps it was during the time of writing that book that this Prayers for the Pilgrimage came out. It is lovely, rich, thoughtful. The tone is an interesting blend of informal and formal, not quite as high-church in liturgical / rhetorical style as the Episcopalian/Anglican Book of Common Prayer or ad classy like Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie but not quite as informal and creative as, say, Ted Loder (Guerrillas of Grace)r or Malcolm Boyd (Are You Running With Me Jesus?) or the many lively ones by the eloquent Walter Brueggemann. It tilts a bit formal, but the topics are (like so many others these days) very much about daily, ordinary life. There is a collect for changing a diaper, prayers for school, for when one is caught in a grumpy mood, for “the little things.” There are momentous prayers and quiet prayers, one for “the proper numbering of our days” and some for healing and wholeness. There are prayers for virtues and vices as well. What a rich and lovely volume this is.

Prayers for the Pilgrimage: A Book of Collects for All of Life is a great prayer book and the gentle watercolors, earth tones and blues showing some connections between the heavens and the earth, done by his very talented wife, are alluring and a lovely, earthy adornment.

A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation: Finding Life in Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Community Alex Sosler (Baker Academic) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

I hope you know Alex Sosler’s name – he is a friend and a fan of our work, and we obviously care deeply about his scholarship and ministry. Besides being an author, he’s a professor at Montreat College and an assistant Priest in Redeemer Anglican Church in Asheville NC. He’s also a bit of a pop culture aficionado, having done scholarly work on The Avett Brothers. We love this dude.

About a year ago I raved about a book he wrote for incoming first year students at Christian colleges (although methinks it would be useful for any student if they can translate it to their own setting) called Learning to Love: Christian Higher Education as Pilgrimage which draws on everybody from Wendell Berry to Esther Whitecap Meek to Steve Garber. He’s a thoughtful theological voice but his heart’s desire is to serve the church. In A Short Guide… he does the good work of retrieval, searching for classic ways to help ordinary Christians create habits and practices that shape our longings and desires. He knows the old literature, but writes very accessibly, for contemporary readers. How can we “inwardly digest” these disciplines that allow for us to know God more deeply and grow into holiness and wholeness? (And what does it look like to do that in the context of the local church? Is there a relationship between liturgy and life?)

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to have a spiritual director or wondered how to take next steps towards the deeper spiritual life, this potent guide may be just what you’re looking for. We highly recommend it.

As Russell Moore puts it in the foreword:

You will not leave this short book burdened down with a sense of all the things you can’t ever seem to do. You’ll instead start to see the possibility of how you, in your own life, can seek holiness and formation.

Singing Church History: Introducing the Christian Story Through Hymn Texts Paul Rorem (Fortress Press) $34.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

I hope that all of our Hearts & Minds readers – even those who don’t necessarily see themselves as members of churches or followers of Jesus – know something about church history. History is so important and we regularly recommend, for starters, our friend John Fea’s book, newly updated and expanded, Why Study History, and, then, something like Why Church History Matters: An Invitation to Love and Learn from Our Past by Robert Rea. These vital and enjoyable reads will give the argument for and an overview of why people of faith should know something about these things of our communal past.

One way into this fascinating field of church history – and we have our favorites which I suppose should be a whole other BookNotes post – is to pick up this brand new, fairly academic, serious study of the details of church history by way of a close reading of the history of hymns. What a great idea, a fresh, new angle!

We all know that hymns have assisted the church in good times and bad and have both sustained and shaped the faith of believers — for both good and for ill. Did “Onward Christian Soldiers” enhance our propensity to what another hymn-writer called “our warring madness”? Did Reformation emphasis on the glory and majesty of God get wired into the Protestant worldview? How did the medieval monks come to write enduring lyrics that are still sung today?

This book invites us to consider what we might learn about shifts in theology – just say, the rise of Pentecostal renewal of personal holiness and the rise of the social gospel movement, both in the early parts of the 20^th century – by closely examining the hymns that emerged from those movements.

Professor Rorem (a retired professor of Ecclesiastical History from Princeton) brings together fabulous stories and insights from well-known hymns and he offers theological analysis of what was going on in the social and religious context which gave rise to the lyrics of various hymns. He draws on music familiar to Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist, historically black and other faith communities from around the world. That is, I’m guessing there will be some chapters here where the music might not be familiar. But, those very chapters might prove most enlightening for you as they explore streams of church history that have brought us to where we are today. We are “singing church history” every Sunday, as he notes, and this book will help us understand our long history.  It is about 230 pages, solid, even hefty, full of the tunes of our great cloud of witnesses. Alleluia for Singing Church History.

A brilliant idea brilliantly done. There is no book we can hold in our hand that contains as much history as a hymnal. The story of each hymn in its particularity can teach us moments in church history that, together, give us the entire sweep of the past from Miriam to Lina Sandell. A great treasure and resource for congregations. – Gracia Grindal, professor emerita of rhetoric, Luther Seminary

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.33; 2 lbs would be $5.07. This is the cheapest method available and seems not to be too delayed.
• 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 much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

I know last week’s BookNotes included some thick heavy volumes. What with the important and fascinating new Charles Taylor and the big new one by James Davison Hunter and Life After Doom by Brian McLaren, you might now enjoy some suggestions about fiction and well-written memoirs, most as good as fiction. Read on, friends read on.

Last week I had the great opportunity to lead a retreat with a handful of Western Pennsylvania Presbyterian clergy. I gave four big presentations (some almost 2 hours long) and preached (in one of the most beautiful contemporary Catholic chapels I’ve seen.) It was about what Jennifer Holberg calls “nourishing narratives” in her great book by that title and I rambled on and on about why the reading life is essential for pastors and how creative memoir and novels and poetry can enhance the pastor’s imagination and make her a better preacher.

I read out loud from some very good books and told some stories and shared some dumb jokes. I trust it was as interesting for them as I had hoped and I pray it was as inspiring for them as it was for me. Thanks much to the Shenango and Beaver-Butler Presbyteries for hosting this refreshing time for your clergy and thanks for trusting me to offer something of use. I am humbled and grateful.

We only talked a little about the very real evils of Amazon and the detriment they have been in the publishing industry, to local economies, and to me and my family; Bezo’s promise to shut down family bookstores is still ringing in my ears, a haunting dark cloud over everything we do, every single day. Their theft and bullying and selfish lobbying is disgustingly immoral and so I invited clergy to consider that as merely a quick case study of why we need Christian folks in every zone of life, thinking Christianly about economics and work, business and politics, and all the other sorts of callings and careers, from engineering to education, health care to lawn care. While my theme was the role of stories and reading in the life of the pastor, one thing good books and serious reading can do is remind clergy of their vocation among God’s people who are necessarily sent and scattered into the ordinary world,  marketplaces and schools and homes and hospitals and offices and factories. Helping parishioners want to read about their own callings is itself an uphill battle since most clergy are ill-equipped with a theology of the marketplace and a Christian view of work (and some laity hardly know their Bibles or theology 101 so find it complicated to live out their Sunday faith in their Monday worlds.)

One way into this conversation, by the way, that is enjoyable and accesible, is by taking up the collection of short essays in the eloquent little book The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work by Steve Garber (IVP; $20.00 –  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00.) While he does have a few entries on business ethics, Garber writes beautifully about  all sorts of good work and callings and worship and spirituality, and, actually, often cites novels and films and artists. Reading one of two of his pieces for them was lovely. Do you know it?

Still, stories can help. Widening the imagination can help. We can all take great pleasure and solace as we find we are not alone, allowing authors to give voice to our own crazy lives and to our deepest and finally most ultimate concerns.

HERE IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO SHARE WITH YOU IN THIS BOOKNOTES COLUMN:

I have offered, below, links to two very big handouts I shared with these clergy which list (with brief annotations) some of our favorite novels and some of our favorite memoirs.  Some have been asking for this…

Please click through to open each one. Maybe print ’em out.  We’ll do 20% off any of these,

This is a bit scary for us. After forty years of bookselling you might think we are used to recommending ending titles. It’s what we do, after all, on our podcast and here at BookNotes, not to mention every single day via email and during in-person shopping conversations.

But this is something else.

My favorite novels? Like asking for my favorite albums (or my favorite children, for that matter) it’s hard to say. And it may depend on what day you ask. And who you are, since I rarely like to suggest one book for everybody, since reading is such a uniquely personal matter (and, as they say, there is little accounting for taste.) One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor and all that.

To be clear, Beth’s great reading choices are reflected here, too.

We’ve been asked a thousand times, and I almost always wiggle out of answering.

Here, then — coming up in just a moment —  are two big lists of excellent titles created for these mainline denominational pastor friends last week.

• ONE BIG LIST IS OF MEMOIRS and some CREATIVE NONFICTION REPORTING.
• THE OTHER LINK IS TO A BIG LIST OF NOVELS.

These are shared as Google docs and I hope the formatting works. This is sort of a new experiment for us here at BookNotes. Let us know if you experience difficulties opening these.

FIRST, though: a dozen books that formed the foundation of the retreat I lead and books I very, very highly recommend to one and all. Even the ones for pastors are so very good, I think any Hearts & Minds friend or fan would adore them. These are all very highly recommended. All are 20% off.

Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith Jennifer L. Holberg (IVP) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

I’ve highlighted this often, lately, as it is such a fun and inviting study of stories, literature, good writing and the call to read and, more, to live robustly inspired by the stories (and Story) of which we are a part. Fantastic! Jennifer is the esteemed director of the Calvin University Festival of Faith and Writing.

Threading her own stories with rich reflection on biblical narratives and on the novels and poems she has taught and loved, Jennifer Holberg offers here a beautiful way of understanding what it means to live by stories. Nourishing Narratives is a rich celebration of cookbooks, dog walking, Dante, college life, embracing solitude, and living in communities bound together by shared stories that equip them to see one another through whatever life brings. Every page offers food for thought and thanksgiving. — Marilyn McEntyre, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies and When Poets Pray

On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books Karen Swallow Prior (Brazos) $21.00

I love this for a host of reasons, and I applaud her thoughtful study of virtues and how various virtues can be discerned and taken on by reading classic literature. Each chapter is essentially an extended reflection on a virtue gained from a novel or short story. Some are older, a few are quite contemporary. By the way, I don’t always say this, but I love the feel of the recent paperback edition.

There’s a very cool linocut for each chapter, too, done by none other than the great Ned Bustard of Square Halo Books and World’s End Images. Huzzah.

Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice Jessica Hooten Wilson (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This. This. This. It explores how we read and why, exploring a few key strategies from past Christian thinkers.  She asks (and offers a quiz to explore your style): “What kind of reader are you?” She asks, with Karen Swallow Prior (of course you know her On Reading Well) “Do Good Books Make You a Good Person?” She’s creative and interesting and, importantly, has a chapter called “What Does the Trinity Have to Do with the Art of Reading?” What a great book.

The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I think I cited a little section she has on C.S. Lewis’s own narration of his conversion and how it focuses more on his life-long love of books and how reading shaped (“baptized”) his imagination. Shout out to George MacDonald. Only then could Lewis come to Christian conviction. In any case, this is a fabulous book. You should have a few and share them in your church or school.

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

I have said here at BookNotes and I said it to these pastors in Western Pennsylvania, that this is, truly, one of my favorite books, a book about the importance of reading, how all that works and why, and ways to become a better and more efficient reader. (That is, there is a chapter on taking notes, another on filing stuff so you, as preacher or teacher, can find good quotes or notions, even years later.) I had copied the fun Foreword by Tom Long which led to a bit of good discussion about how it is hard to find time for extensive reading. I get it. We all do. Still, this book will helper-inspire you to do this sort of formational reading which will pay off in the long run.

The Pastor’s Bookshelf is fun and fabulous — you should buy one for your pastor but read it yourself first. You won’t regret it, I promise. Very, very highly recommended.

Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists Cornelius Plantinga (Eerdmans) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

It is a hard call to say which I like better, the aforementioned The Pastor’s Bookshelf by the wonderful Austin Carty or this genius of a book by the fabulous thinker and great, great writer, Neal Plantinga. I call him Neal as if he’s a pal because he feels like a friend, so intimate and clear-headed is this lovely book to inspire preachers and teachers. I told my clergy friend that, even apart from his book-ish program of general reading that he extols here, it is, truly, one of the best books on preaching I’ve ever read. (Oddly, I’ve read a bunch; it’s a strange hobby, reading homiletics books, I know.) Anybody who is a pastor, public speaker, teacher or communicator (podcaster, or blogster or Substacker) should take up Reading for Preaching. Yes, yes, yes.

Your Minds Mission Greg Jao (IVP) $8.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $6.40

I so enjoy quoting a long paragraph where Greg mentions a “worship experience” in a high school science class and how his science textbooks became for him almost like prayer books; later, his humanities studies became like a vespers service. This is the most succinct and yet quite powerful introduction to the topic of the Christian mind that is short enough to be read by anyone, with implications for everything. Greg is a long-time Hearts & Minds friend and we value his gracious, book-loving leadership. This booklet offers so much, nicely put.

I really enjoyed reading a bit from this out loud to our Presbyterian friends.

The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationships in a Technological World Andy Crouch (Convergent) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

I try to weave books by Andy Crouch into talks I give and so esteem his work from the seminal Culture Making (now out in a new, expanded edition) to his latest on the questions which arise from the ubiquitous nature of screens and digital culture. He obviously is not against modern devices and he spends his fair share of time on screens and computers. This, though, is his beautifully-written manifesto about what it is we really are seeking as we spend time online. We cited older classics like Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death and the essential works of Maryanne Wolf (Proust and the Squid and Reader, Come Home) not to mention The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. The Life We’re Looking For, though, is wise and beautiful and a must-read for us all.

Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age Rachel B. Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel M. De Smith Roberts (Baker Academic) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

If the workshops I was leading were geared to a slightly more academic setting — in higher education, say — I’d have drawn much more on this amazing new book. It is a great read and wonderfully researched and has been an extraordinary resource for me. I cannot imagine anyone who cares about the lack of a good and generous reading in our society (even in our churches or even among our college educated adults) who would not be greatly blessed by spending time with this. It is, as they say, “for all readers who desire to read deeply and live deeply.”

While exploring certain contemporary sins and foibles — they call them vices — like distraction and hostility and consumerism, this shows how significant and careful immersion in the world of books can help us be better people; books can help us live into a better story as they pull us away from the current foibles of our age. It is a treasure, and gift, with rave reviews from sharp, lovely folks like Mary McCampbell, David I. Smith, and Jeffrey Bilbro. Susan VanZanten calls it “a jewel of a book.”

Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just Claude Atcho (Brazos) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

As I weave together stories of my own life-long engagement with the works of MKL and my own passions for cross-cultural and anti-racism work — I didn’t even mention the threats we got under our door from the KKK — I’ve discovered that this recent book says so much of what we’ve longed to say well, for decades. We are thrilled that this amazing work is available and we take it everywhere we go. Please consider it. It will do you good.

Steeped in Stories: Timeless Children’s Novels to Refresh Our Tired Souls Mitali Perkins (Broadleaf Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

People sighed out loud when I read a passage from Mitali’s wonderful book. We talked a bit about how children and youth have a certain innocence and idealism and hope which can be crushed (or which might just slowly seep away) and revisiting as adults the books that so inspired children could be a very wise practice. This is a fabulous book making the case — allusively and indirectly — that books matter, that stories matter, that novels are formative. Each chapter explores a different children’s classic, plumbing its depth for insight, wisdom, faith, courage, hope, love…

Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies Marilyn McEntyre (Eerdmans) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I wanted to end my lectures at the retreat by highlighting the good work of author (and poet) Marilyn McEntyre. I had already cited a paragraph from her amazing book When Poets Pray so I hoped they recalled that gracious, elegant writing. But time ran out and we ended on another good note.

To wit, here’s what I would have shared:

The Princeton lectures once given by Abraham Kuyper (who I would be quoting in my sermon during the closing communion service), were called “The Stone Lectures” and they still are offered most years at Princeton Theological Seminary. A good number of years ago Marilyn McEntyre got to give those lectures and they, naturally, became a book. Her thesis and format were both radical and sensible: we are made by God to steward things in God’s world and, like with natural resources, failing to do so conscientiously can be disastrous, as water and air are fouled and life is endangered. Similarly, she notes, we can suppose that language is a gift of God that we are called upon to steward well. If we don’t, things can get toxic, quickly.

It was going to be somewhat of a big ending. I hoped to have read to them out loud her table of contents — stewardship strategies, she calls them — as somewhat of a benediction. I leave them with you here, now: Love Words, Tell the Truth, Don’t Tolerate Lies, Read Well, Stay in Conversation, Share Stories, Love the Long Sentence, Practice Poetry, Attend to Translation, Play, Pray, and Cherish Silence.

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Here are our (big) lists of some of our beloved NOVELS and MEMOIRS by some favorite wordsmiths, writers, and reporters. My, my, there is something here for everyone — from artsy stuff from Slant books to bestsellers from Random House; Noble Prize and Pultizer winners, self-published titles, overtly Christian work, and, well, some that are not quite so wholesome. Reading widely, friends. Enjoy.

LIST ONE: Some favorite NOVELS available from Hearts & Minds.

LIST TWO: Some favorite MEMOIRS and CREATIVE NONFICTION available from Hearts & Minds 

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.33; 2 lbs would be $5.07. This is the cheapest method available and seems not to be too delayed.
• 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 much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Thanks to those who sent kind thoughts about our last BookNotes in which we talked a bit about (and shared some links about) the war in Gaza. We tried to offer a bit of balance, knowing that no side is innocent in that complicated part of the world. The state of Israel has neighbors who are out to destroy them. Yet, I said, I wished that the government and citizens of Israel might be shaped by the Scriptures of the Jews which, finally, has a trajectory towards a city of shalom. Jesus wept over Jerusalem’s lack of awareness of the “things that make for peace” and if that is what moved him in the first century, imagine his weeping today, as Israel — with billions of dollars worth of military aid from the US — is one of the most brutally militaristic powers on Earth. I listed some books that might help us understand various sides of the conflict and which might help us be more drawn to being peacemakers in God’s broken world. Anyway, I understand that not everyone liked it, so we were warmed by those who spoke graciously to us. Even more by those who bought books. Thanks, all.

In this BookNotes we will list seven brand new ones, each important, again books that ask big questions about important matters, hoping to provide some reading pleasure and helping us be more wise as we live in our culture. I’m leaving other new good releases out, I know, but these few new ones seem most worthy of comment. All are 20% off.

Scroll down to the very end to see the links to our secure order form page. Thanks.

Beauty Is Oxygen: Finding a Faith that Breathes Wesley Vander Lugt (Eerdmans) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This is one I’ve been waiting for as I am sure it will be a cut above the many pop ones on the topic that have come out lately; this brand new one is said to be exceptionally thoughtful and yet delightfully inspiring. I mean no criticism of the handful of volumes about creativity that have come out lately or the one’s with “beauty” in the title or subtitle; I’ve reviewed several here in the past year and we are truly thrilled for this emphasis among those writing books that might be best described as helping shape our daily Christian living. And we are glad for those more weighty theological tomes that explore beauty in more abstract terms. (Just think of the moving Beauty Chasers: Recapturing the Wonder of the Divine by the great Timothy Willard on one hand or the hefty but brilliant Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionist World by Jeremy Begbie on the other. Both are excellent in their own way.)

But this — wow! Natalie Carnes, a theology prof at Baylor University, says the writing offers “lucid, expansive prose worthy of his title.” Karen Swallow Prior says it is “breathtaking.”

The back cover tells us simply what is going on here: “Beauty is oxygen because it comes from the lungs of God.” This is an extraordinary claim, pushing us somehow beyond the mere “divine fingerprints” in creation we hear about often, to a more ambient, real “traces of divine glory.” The book itself seems to capture this, written as a meditation, with pull quotes and citations galore, quotes to sit with, to ponder alongside Bible reflections and theological jaunts. I’ve been waiting for this and can’t wait to spend considerable time with it. I’m going to show it off at a retreat I’m leading this week.

That Vander Lugt quotes one of my favorite writers, Calvin Seerveld, in the early pages (and one of Seerveld’s former students, James K.A. Smith) tickles me. That Annie Dillard comes up early is sweet. Later, flipping through, I see quotes from famous artists and painters and a surprising array of thinkers, from Cole Arthur Riley to Makoto Fujimura, from Dana Gioia to Father John Misty. One chapter reflects with Ippolit and Prince Myshkin by asking “What sort of beauty will save the world?” That’s a very good question.

And there are more questions, including some that are quite tender, personal, provocative, even. Beauty Is Oxygen is a book loaded with conversation starters and pointed questions to work through in meditative reflection or candid conversation with friends.

Sho Baraka wrote a great forward. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, a new friend this year, has a great endorsement. Vander Lugt directs the Leighton Ford Center for Theology, the Arts, and Gospel Witness at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and with this major, accessible work, he should catapult onto the list of go-to scholars and leaders speaking about aesthetics, creativity, and the arts. Oxygen gets our highest recommendation.

Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart Brian D. McLaren (St. Martin’s Essentials) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

This book deserves a long review and, if he is even mostly right, it deserves to be urgently promoted, shared widely, discussed and prayed about and discerned with the utmost of intention. I’m with him: we are facing what some of the best scientists are calling civilizational collapse. It might be too late given the rates of the ocean temperatures changing, the ice caps melting, and so forth. Anyone who allows themselves to think about it — and Brian is very careful not to push us too hard and is gracious in his reporting of the dangers — knows that, at best, things are going to be painfully difficult for many North Americans in the coming generations. It is increasingly difficult for many throughout the globe as climate change has affected some of the most vulnerable. The beautiful and fascinating book I reviewed and named one of the Best Books of 2023 was Madeline Ostrander’s At Home on a Warming Planet comes to mind as it looks at those coping — with great heroism and resilience — with floods and fires, pollution and, amongst the Yupic Americans in Alaska, the tundra melting under their very homes. It’s a terrific read, if tragic in many ways.

Brian’s book, too, is a terrific read, if alarming. Yet, it is about so much more than the barreling force of climate change disrupting our economies, supply chains, information systems, food, schooling, jobs, and more. It is about the ups and downs of human wisdom, about God and the future, about hope and despair, about courage and goodness. He’s a kind teacher, honest, considerate, thoughtful, and mostly right, I am afraid.

Here are three things I’d say about Life After Doom, too quickly.

For those who have heard that Brian was a leader in the movement among those shifting away from conservative evangelicalism, you are right. We have followed his many books charting this move and we admire his courage and thoughtfulness. He is a long friend and I would read anything he writes, even if I may disagree a tad with this or that formulation. In this book he talks about the development of his own faith from fundamentalist youth to evangelical pastor, to post-denominational visionary (my words, not his) including some tender writing about a beloved fundamentalist grandfather and an earnest reflection on the worldviews of those who taught him a rapture-oriented theology in his youth. His love for the Scriptures remains clear and his early passion for nature writing, for science, and for literature (and music) is, as always, evident. In any case, he is not writing about doctrine as such and he clearly says he is hoping for a wide readership of this book so he isn’t pushy about faith.His faith shines through, though, as he invites people to deep consideration of their own deepest views and values, and while he says he’s not doing a theological or religious work, he can’t help himself.

Once an evangelist, always an evangelist, it seems, even though he is writing about current events and science; again, this is finally a book about true hope and, finally, about true love. As his friend (and a wonderful writer herself) Debra Rienstra puts it, Life After Doom is a book written with “patience and clarity” that helps us discover “the magnificent and beautiful task set before us.”

Secondly, this “magnificent and beautiful task set before us” is not merely a matter of better management of resources or of tightening our belts or shifting to renewable energy. It is not only a prudent matter of living ecologically in an era of climate disasters. Rather, this is a book that — urgent and gloomy as it may sound — is exciting in its analysis of a whole bunch of interlocking issues.

I think McLaren’s 2008 book Everything Must Change, which drew upon the work of the late, great Dutch economist and Biblical visionary Bob Goudzwaard, took the right approach: he exposed the idols and ideologies of what he called the “suicide machine” underneath the issues that most of our churches were ignoring or complicit in, or even blessing with civil religious gestures. McLaren showed how certain worldviews and ways of life were underneath the interlocking problems of world poverty, global ecological disruption, war and political authoritarianism.

Surely each of these concerns have only gotten worse and the ways in which some churches have underwritten these matters with false Biblical teaching is only more evident. Brian does not rant against the Christian nationalists or MAGA ideologues as much as you might expect because he realizes we are all in this together. There must be higher ground we can find and he suspects that most everyone (regardless of their partisan politics) has anxieties and fears about our futures. So, finally, this is a book about becoming communities of care that can offer alternative approaches to social arrangements (can anybody say the Year of Jubilee, just for instance?) and take up the spiritual work of becoming activists on a variety of fronts, in a variety of ways. It is about what one section calls “agile engagement” where things like beauty matters to us deeply. As another of his good books puts it, “we make the road by walking.” Let’s go!

Thirdly, besides the nice tone and the broad range of vision, there is this: it really is about life after becoming aware of our doomed situation. How shall we comport ourselves in these days, knowing what we know? It isn’t for mere crisis management but, as the subtitle puts it, about finding “wisdom and courage.” (Ahh, I think of the refrain of the hymn “God of Grace and God of Glory.”) How does that happen; how do you find such capacities, such lasting virtue?  Well, Brian has been studying this for years now, and it has led him to some interesting findings about neuroscience and how people (and societies) tend to respond to crisis.

This is fascinating stuff, and he deploys his curiosity and faith to help him understand all kinds of insights about trauma and resilience and memory and ritual and song and science — it’s a fascinating read that I guarantee will teach you something new and valuable (even if you don’t happen to share his utter urgency about the vast repercussions of the climate changes we are facing.) Life After Doom really is a remarkable read.

So.

It is not intentionally written about or even (only) to the Christian faith community (but still feels religious, even sacred) and it looks at a bunch of inter-related, deeper drivers of the many social dislocations and problems we are facing; it does so by exploring psychology and brain studies and anthropology and all sorts of interesting disciplines that can inform our resilience and courage, granting us a mystical hope. Not every chilling book cataloguing the crisis of our times is written with this kind of charm and grace.

Yet, Brian, pastor that he seems still to be, is gentle and wise and careful as he guides us through this hard stuff. He tells you to skip a chapter here or there as it might be triggering. He invites you to the practice of journaling at the end of each chapter and he is wise about the sorts of questions he asks and the reflections he invites. This deep processing of the information is really important to him, and he is right. He often warns that some of the pages are sad, a grace that I appreciated, even if I am not unaware of the data he was documenting. He wants us to take this at our own pace, but he does want us to take it seriously, or at least in ways that we are able.

Here’s the thing: many of us know much of this. Yet, we avoid reading about it, for any number of reasons, I suppose; we seem not to want to dive deep, to ponder it all too much. Brian speculates a bit about why we are reluctant to face honestly that which must be faced and again, he is kind and gracious.

I recall in the worst years of the dangers of the nuclear arms race the book by Jonathan Schell — famously called The Fate of the Earth — captured the nation and brought us face to face with what came to be called psychic numbing. Nearly a decade later, Bill McKibben passionately penned a similar warning in his powerful 1989 book The End of Nature. Through it all, I heard Brueggemann speaking and writing about the prophetic imagination and how our imaginations are often co-opted and captured by forces of the consumeristic empire, our modern day Babylon. Later, he wrote that we are usually either in denial or despair.

Brian cites Brueggemann and it is a key point in Life After Doom. He also draws on indigenous wisdom, dropping quotes from a forthcoming book by Randy and Edith Woodley Journey to Eloheh which is coming out later this year. And he draws on Steve Charleston, the Native American Episcopal Bishop who has written books like Ladder to the Light and We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope. Yep, McLaren reads widely, has friends all over, and is the perfect teacher to guide us towards nothing short of apocalypse and hope.

For what it is worth, besides the journaling prompts, there is a study guide, an appendix of questions, a proposed action guide, a piece about talking with children, and a guide to evaluating biases. And, of course, a fine, annotated resource list of print, media, and online resources. Life After Doom is very highly recommended.

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

Hunter is certainly one of the major public intellectuals of our time, a deeply learned scholar and Christian intellectual. Rumor has it that he is the one who coined the phrase “culture wars” (in a book by that title published in the early 90s.) I’ve read his work for years and still recommend his Oxford University Press volume, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Agree or not with its assessment and recommendations, it is a major work that anyone serious about cultural engagement and social change should ponder.

This brand new one is a heavy book (literally — Yale makes lovely, sturdy hardbacks and this is weighty in more than one way.) I have not started it and, frankly, don’t quite understand what it is about. I am sure it will be clear enough when the pages start turning but we wanted to announce it here for those who are aware of his significance.

This doesn’t clarify where Dr. Hunter is going with this, but if Jon Meacham recommends it, that’s vital. Meacham says:

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. — Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

I first heard of 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:

A 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. — Jackson Lears, author of Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street

Kathleen Sands (of America’s Religious Wars: The Embattled Heart of Our Public Life) is a fan and suggests that Hunter’s cultural analysis of how we lost our way is a “powerful, clear, and original argument.”

The book opens with three epigrams, one from Reinhold Niebuhr, one from Abraham Lincoln, and one from Frederick Douglas.  With notes and index it’s 483 pages.

Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment Charles Taylor (Belknap Press / Harvard University Press) $37.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $30.36

Speaking of scholarly books that are big and fat (how’s that for some down home parlance, not quite suitable for such sophisticated scholars from elite schools?) Taylor has done some heady ones, eh? If you attempted to work through his often-cited and exceptionally important A Secular Age you are a better man or woman than I am. Still, we’ve raved about James K.A. Smith’s complex but very helpful intro to Taylor, How (Not) To Be Secular. (And the late Tim Keller’s one chapter on insight from Taylor on preaching to our culture in his little Preaching offers a very succinct overview of Taylor’s magnum opus.) Besides Smith’s beautiful popularization of it, Rowan Williams had an important review in the Times Literary Supplement. Even David Brooks took a shot at reviewing it (and he did a fabulous job) in the New York Times.

After that amazing big volume which was a blast into the intellectual conversations about “our secular age” and the implications, Taylor did another important work that didn’t get nearly enough popular acclaim. (I get it, too; it was dense and philosophical, which is to be expected since Taylor is, actually, a philosopher.) It was called The Language Animal and it was about linguistics. Here’s a good take-away quote about its importance. Here Akeel Bilgrami (of Columbia University):

There is no other book that has presented a critique of conventional philosophy of language in these terms and constructed an alternative to it in anything like this way.

Enter this brand new Cosmic Connections. It is, they tell us, a sequel or follow up to his explosive theories in The Language Animal. One need not read that (I gather) and it is going to be much discussed in the world I am sure.

Here is what it is about:

Charles Taylor delves into the poetry of the Romantics and their heirs, a foundation of his distinctive philosophy of language. Taylor holds that Romantic poetry responded to disenchantment: with old cosmic orders depleted, artists groped to articulate new meanings by bringing connections to life rather than merely reasoning abstractly about life.

This big book will appeal, I suspect, to those who are fans and readers of his work, naturally. Further, those interested in the general flow of culture — the “ping pong over the abyss” from the disenchantment brought on by the materialistic reductionism  of the Enlightenment ideologies to the rise of the a more humane counter-culture; from Rationalism to Romanticism — and also for those who care about the cultural context of the Romantic poets.

That is, this is for those who read bona fide philosophy (especially linguistics and, I would guess, those who follow the phenomenology of the likes of Maurice Merleau-Ponty) and cultural studies aficionados, and those who study poetry, might find this meaty volume helpful.

As the cover says:

Reacting to the fall of cosmic orders that were at once metaphysical and moral, the Romantics used the symbols and music of poetry to recover contact with reality beyond fragmented existence. They sought to overcome disenchantment and groped toward a new meaning of life.

Professor Taylor studies in Cosmic Connections, among others, Keats, and Shelley, Hopkins, Rilke, Baudelaire, Mallard, and on to T.S. Eliot and Czeslaw Milosz.

Strange Religion: How the First Christian Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling Nijay K. Gupta (Brazos Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I have written about this before but I have not spent a bit more time with it and felt like I should give it another lively shout-out, noting how very good it is. This is not overly academic, neither gloomy nor preachy. It isn’t mocking our too-often common place “ease at Zion” as the prophet Amos might put it, nor a screed against our cultural accommodation. Yet, there is, underneath it all, a reminder that at our best, the church simply has to be something other than what the world already has on offer. We must be some kind of third way beyond the polarization of our time. It is a more scholarly (but quite readable) study of what missional activist Michael Frost explored in his little pocket sized gem, Keep Christianity Weird: Embracing the Discipline of Being Different.

According to professor Gupta, a fresh New Testament scholar and expert of all sorts of first century curiosities, this is exactly what propelled the early church to make a lasting difference in its time. Yep, like Frost playing with the branding slogan of Austin, they “kept Christianity weird” and “embraced the discipline of being different.”

How so? Well, you’ll have to read Strange Religion for the juicy details (and, as Preston Sprinkle raves, it is “an absolutely joy to read!”) But here is the fabulous table of contents:

Part 1: Becoming Christian

•  1.  Roman Religion and the Pax Deorum Keeping Peace with the Gods
•  2. “Believers”: The First Christians and the Transformation of Religion
•  3.  A Dangerous and Strange Religion: Christianity as a Superstition

Part 2: What the First Christians Believed

• 4.  Believing the Unbelievabld
• 5.  Cult without Smoke and Blood: Strange Worship
• 6.  Possessed by the Spirit of God
• 7.  Beginning at the End of All Things: A Strange Reckoning of Time

Part 3: How the First Christians Worshiped

• 8. A Household of Faith: The Family Practices of the Early Christians
• 9. A Priest-God and a Priestly People: Church as a Liturgical Community

Part 4: How the First Christians Lived

• 10. Dangerous Contact: Becoming Godlike
• 11. To Treat All as Equal
• 12. The Christians Were Not Perfect

There is a fine concluding section entitled “Strange Religion: Putting It All Together” in which Dr. Gupta circles back and “pulls together the different threads of his book to see what themes and ideas emerge.” He offers a synthesis, admitted to painting with a broad brush, and brings it all home. He writes with a light touch and it delightfully invites us to be willing to resist the tendency to uphold the state quo. Hooray.

Untangling Critical Race Theory: What Christians Need to Know and Why It Matters Ed Uszynski (IVP) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.00

I am very, very glad for this brand new book and I’m eager to highlight it, even though I’ve only skimmed it. (It arrived just yesterday!) I almost hate to have to describe this book as the accusations against CRT seem often like a mean-spirited ruse from the far right these days, criticizing those who are “woke” as if that’s a bad thing. Those who follow BookNotes know that we have carried books about racial justice since the day we opened four decades ago and have no qualms about insisting that racial reconciliation is key to the gospel itself. Every church should be an anti-racist church and every believer should be wide awake to the pain and hurt of injustice in our world which the Bible says is sometimes embedded in social structures and cultural patterns. We honor that older phrase of being “woke” from black culture and try to be as faithfully woke as we can be.

When Fox News and other disreputable sources started a cynical campaign to use “CRT” as a nasty shibboleth, a litmus test to critique those who were not adequately conservative enough, I realized we needed a good book to discuss what is right (and what is wrong) with CRT, honest but open, written from a truly reliable Biblical worldview. That first evangelically-wise and thoughtful book came out a year ago and was called Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation by Robert Chao Romero and Jeff Liou (Baker Academic; $23.95 – OUR SALE PRICE = $19.16.) It was rigorous, thoughtful, mostly favorable of CRT with some uniquely Christian insights about how to interact faithfully with this diverse (and sometimes Marxist) scholarly movement. I told a lot of pastors that they needed it since I’m sure every church in America who has spoken about race has had somebody bring this up. I know our church has.

(And, for the record, some who complain about it are stupid and ill-informed. It’s just a fact; they heard from Fox News or the 700 Club that CRT or DTT or RTC or whatever they heard was bad and they are out to condemn without concern about the facts or who they slander. And on the other hand, there are those that have studied the topic a bit and know there are legitimate concerns to be discussed with faithful, spiritual discernment and mostly likely offer their critique with humility. Understood.) That is a very good book.

This brand new book, Untangling Critical Race Theory by Ed Uszynski, is perhaps an even better choice than our previous fav for those who are not terribly familiar with the philosophical assumptions underneath CRT but want a sensible, layperson’s overview, translating what started in the postmodern academic world to the general public. Untangling is serious but conversational — the first chapter is about how a blue-collar white guy (the author) got involved in the conversation about race. He grew up in an ethnically-diverse high school and came to evangelical faith in his college years among several good black friends. It’s a good story.

Ed Uszynski has a PhD in American cultural studies (from the prominent program at Bowling Green) so knows critical theory and neo-Marxist philosophers and the sorts of influences that have shaped (for better or for worse) those scholars influenced by CRT. He has fairly conservative instincts and yet seriously asks, even as he unpacks this bloated baggage, what Christians can learn from it all.

The back jacket promises that Dr. Uszynski goes below the surface and provides a “reliable path of just discernment and cultural engagement.” I gather he is a practical man as well. For what it is worth, he has been a specialist for the evangelical campus ministry group called Cru and Athletes in Action for decades. He has written for “Desiring God” and Mockingbird and The Washington Times. That might earn him some street cred for those who don’t approve of the other Times.

Listen to what Tim Muehlhoff (a professor of communications at Biola and author of several good books on fair and honest communication) has to say about this author and his new book:

As co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project, I can assure you there is nothing winsome about our current discussions of race. As soon as Critical Race Theory, white privilege, or systemic racism is uttered, walls go up and voices rise. While many books have been written on race and CRT, Dr. Uszynski is my most trusted source on how to have productive and honest conversations on difficult issues, especially race. Whether you agree or disagree with Dr. Uszynski, his insights will provoke, inspire, and help us communicate and not separate. — Tim Muehlhoff, professor of communication at Biola University and author of Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church

I’m a big fan of Chris Broussard, a well-known sports broadcaster and producer of the excellent “Share the Dream” DVD curriculum on learning from MLK that we highlighted a while back. Here is what Brousaard says; wow – note this:

What a refreshing, absolutely necessary read Ed Uszynski has given us in Untangling Critical Race Theory. As I lament the state of our country and its growing antagonism toward biblical Christianity, I can’t help but blame the American church at large. If we were united as we should be around the undeniable social ramifications of the gospel, society would see biblical Christianity as the answer, not the problem, to our stubborn racial divide. If we as American Christians have one last gasp at true unity across racial lines, salvaging our public perception, and perhaps sparking revival, reading Untangling Critical Race Theory is a critical first step. — Chris Broussard, sports broadcaster and founder of the K.I.N.G. Movement

Order one or two today, please. You’re going to need it.

Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life Nicholas D. Kristof (Knopf) $32.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

I hope you know the world-wide reporting of the great Nicholas Kristof, one of the great (and somewhat unpredictable) journalists of our age. Kristof has been a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize (and co-wrote, among other great reads, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.) He is a generous humanist, one who cares about the poor and oppressed, and reports on what works to solve vast global problems. He is a hero.

For what it’s worth, he is a hero, too, because he has been a good voice — rare, for a while, in the mainstream secular press — to document the horrors of sexual trafficking and modern-day slavery. He heard the cries and valued the work of groups like The International Justice Mission and realized that some Christian mission groups were not mere neo-colonialists or trying to be white saviors but were genuine and capable and experienced. He followed his nose, followed the money, followed the pain, followed the solutions. I can’t wait to read this big book, which tells his whole, big, exciting story. Who knows, it may show that he even followed the Spirit.

Listen to these great blues by important, knowledgeable folks:

A gripping memoir by a world-class reporter. Nick Kristof takes us behind the scenes as he risks his life to shine a light on the world’s most pressing problems and blaze a trail to a better future. In a time when trust in journalism is in jeopardy, his honesty, humility, and humanity are rays of hope. — Adam Grant, author of Hidden Potential

In these dark, swirly times, Nick’s reporting and this page-turner offer us a sharp light of a hope that will not be shuttered. Doors are not exactly kicked open, but bullets are dodged, bad luck too. It’s a thriller, a chronicle and a set of keys to our most undervalued resource – hope. Nick’s not just chasing hope, he is it… a most reasoned, polite, persistent, insistent finger in the eye of injustice. — Bono, author of Surrender

Nick Kristof is a journalistic exemplar, practicing the art of storytelling in its purest form. He has a penchant for covering the stories too many shy away from — rolling up his sleeves and getting his hands dirty with the hope that it will motivate us to act. His North Star has never wavered. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in journalism, or for those who need to be reminded that, in the right hands, it can be a truly noble profession. — Katie Couric, author of Going There

It’s fun to see a number of really good writers raving about this. From Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry) to Lee Child (of the Jack Reacher series) to the great Kristin Hannah, this brand new volume seems to be an illuminating and inspiring book. As Hannah puts it, Kristof believes that truth matters. And that “is a lesson that is sorely in need of reposting in our modern, chaotic, divided world.” Chasing Hope is going to be a great read, I’m sure.

+++

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BookNotes

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In a previous BookNotes last November I recommended a large number of books to help us understand some of the complexities of the background of the brutal war in Gaza; it was extensive, listing a lot of titles we had on our shelves here at the shop, even if it was not comprehensive. From an older, award-winning history of Jerusalem by Simon Sebag Montefiore to one that went on to win a Pulitzer Prize (announced just last week) by Nathan Thrall, A Day in the Life of Abed Salam (Metropolitan Books; $29.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99) to the must-read memoir of Arab Christian leader Elias Chacour (Blood Brothers: The Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel (Baker Books; $17.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39) we did our best to offer some good ones.

In that BookNotes column I framed the books about the war in the Middle East by a bunch of suggestions of various sorts on the Biblical-theological debate about the legitimacy of violence and the ethics of war— some on the just war theory, some on Biblical nonviolence, some that were point-counterpoint arguments showing several views. For a readable intro to the Biblical basis for peacemaking, might I suggest Speak Your Peace by the impeccable Ron Sider? (Herald Press; $16.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59.) 

You can read that BookNotes, here. 

After Easter my adult daughter, Stephanie, and I, started an informal course we put together for our small adult ed program at First Presbyterian Church in York, PA on peacemaking in the Middle East. We adopted the hard but thrilling vision of The Telos Group, calling us to be pro, pro, pro — pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian, and pro-peace. It should be obvious that lasting peace for all has to allow for the flourishing of all, so we cannot be one-sided. We are no experts (that is obvious) but we did our best in this class and you can see those presentations at our First Presbyterian Church of York Facebook page or the church’s website. (I’m speaking rather off the cuff, so forgive my stumbling around for the right words sometimes. Ha.) In the last two weeks we’ve borrowed a bit from Walter Brueggemann’s book Chosen? Reading the Bible Amid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (WJK) $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40.

As I write, Israeli IDF bombs are falling in Gaza’s Rafah City, where many refugees from previous bombs have been forced to flee, even as IDF troops renew ground assaults in the North. Those who know or care about the historic constraints of the just war theory can determine if these further attacks are morally warranted, but we know that tens of thousands of Palestinian people, most civilians, have died, and their infrastructure has been almost totally decimated. The International Court of Justice will perhaps rule further to determine if this constitutes genocide but it certainly is, at least, as Brian Walsh said on a webinar with us a few months back, domicide. Those who have been displaced from their homelands now even have their houses and culture destroyed.

And yet, this is, admittedly, a complex and even morally ambiguous war. Hamas is committed to terrorism. While most of their attacks have not been grand, that changed on October 7th when they performed their hideously evil attack on thousands of civilians. It is a day that will live in infamy.

I hope our reading suggestions can help some of us learn more and create some sort of theologically-wise response that is balanced and fair and rooted in an awareness of the social, political, ethnic, and theological contexts. And push us to take whatever action we can as citizens and, most of us, I suspect, members of the world-wide Body of Christ. See, for instance, the letter from Churches for Middle East Peace here.

This recent article in USA Today nicely shows a variety of views of what church folks are thinking and doing and it quotes at least two friends of mine, Todd Deatherage of The Telos Group and Mae Elise Cannon of Churches for Middle East Peace. 

It seems both morally obvious to me and a common sense low barre to now demand a ceasefire. Most mainline churches have called upon their members to contact their congressional leaders to press for such a ceasefire.

And yet, our Congress passed — agreeing on something for the first time in a long while — and our President signed an authorization for billions and billions more military aid to be given to the government of Israel. They are (in opposition to Biblical teachings, I would say) zealous about military superiority and one of the mightiest war machines on the planet. And yet, our leaders give them more firepower, which the prophet Micah might have called “the beginning of sin for you” (see his denunciation of the military warehouse in Lachish in Micah 1:3.)

What galls me now — sorry to speak bluntly to our gentle bookstore customers — is how the far right (and others, who should know better) are denouncing Biden for this small gesture of temporarily withholding some of the military materiel as a plea for Netanyahu’s armies to slow their vengeance against Rafah. Journals such as Commentary have written egregiously wild accusations suggesting that those who protest Israeli military policies are “celebrating” the Hamas attacks. Christian Zionist organizations have grossly mischaracterized the anti-war movement which, as all should know, includes Jews and Christians, both in Israel and in the US. There are one-sided, pro-Hamas activists, of course, but I am confident that most who speak out against the violence perpetrated by both sides are decent people trying to give voice to their decent social ethics or public theology. Shame on those disparaging all who stand for peace by overstating the influence of the violent and anti-Semitic.

Some of us are haunted by the hope of Isaiah 65 that enemies will reconcile and no one will be hurt in the Holy City of Jerusalem. The inclusive vision of Isaiah 2 stimulates my imagination. (I quipped in Sunday school class that of course you need to beat swords into plowshares to prevent serious fighting when all the various cultures show up in town, as promised.) One might wish that the current administration of the Israeli nation-state would care even a smidgeon about the normative principles in their Torah and prophets.

And don’t even get me started on what an obviously sick and unfaithful interpretation of Islam has captured the jihadists in the ranks of Hamas or Hezbollah. Heaven help us.

So times are bad and we must each determine what we think, what we believe, and what we will do. I hope we can help.

Here are a handful of books to help us further understand. All are 20% off.

This Burning Land: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Greg Myre & Jennifer Griffin (Turner Publishing) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Three things about this marvelously captivating read, a page-turner and a personal favorite for understanding the texture of life in the Middle East.

First, This Burning Land was mostly written by Myre, but is co-authored by his wife; they are a pair of seasoned war correspondents; Myre has filed reports with any number of mainstream media outlets (The Associated Press and The New York Times) and Griffin worked for Fox News. So that’s sort of intriguing, eh? They lived in Israel for decades and raised two children, which, in some chapters, become part of their story. This isn’t a memoir but there is moving stuff here, wonderful, honest, painful, and at times inspiring storytelling.

Secondly, it offers more information about various segments, factions, locales and sides of the conflict than nearly any book I’ve read. In good journalistic fashion they tell the backstory, bringing up up close, episode by episode. One author has called it “stunning” while Aaron David Miller (author of The Much Too Promised Land) says it an “extraordinary story — personal yet hard-hitting.” As he puts it, there are no punches pulled here. It is full of pathos and background, stories of friends and some hair-raising episodes. As yet another Middle Eastern author put it, “you will be swept up in their story of tragedy and hope.” And you’ll learn a whole, whole lot. I sure did.

Thirdly, it is not up-to-date. This isn’t a criticism, just noting that it doesn’t cover recent events. The horrors of the height of the suicide bombings of the second intifada (roughly 2000 – 2005) finally sent them home and the book came out in paperback in 2010.  It may not be current, but it is still “devastatingly insightful.” Very highly recommended.

Side By Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine edited by Sami Aswan, Dan Bar-On, & Eyal Naveh (The New Press) $24.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

Created by the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) this is innovative and an amazing resource for those who want greater understanding from two often contrasting perspectives. Yep, this is a side-by-side narrative, written in parallel (the one page from the Israeli perspective and the other facing pace offering a Palestinian perspective.)

Side By Side is almost 400 pages and was created by a group of Israeli and Palestinian teachers. Naturally, the conflict can be explained and taught from just one side and these heroic university educators wanted to be fair and teach “both sides.”

Interestingly, the Library Journal, in a very favorable review, said it “underscores the problems” which, I suppose, it does. But what a healthy way into the conversation, showing in a nearly pioneering way, how various people understand their often different histories. Wow.

Christ and the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace edited by Paul Alexander (Pickwick) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

This is an excellent resource offering a variety of authors each sharing a speech or lecture or sermon they gave at a peacemaking conference in Bethlehem ( yes — that Bethlehem, located in the West Bank, Palestine.) It is especially concerned about the role of evangelical Christians (often presumed to be Zionist and disinterested in the human rights of the Palestinians.) Some chapters are more academic than others and every one is worth reading. A few are brilliant and many are quite inspiring.

I recommended this before but didn’t share the details.

Because I’m eager to promote this, here is what you’ll find, chapter by chapter.

“Palestinian Christians in the Shadow of Christian Zionism” by Alex Award. Award starts the conference off with some moving stories of his experiences as an Arab Christian, including awful discrimination from fellow evangelicals experienced at global Bible conferences. He’s honest, upbeat, and inspiring.

“The Holocaust and the Evangelical Movement: From German Pietism to Palestinian Christians” by Manfred W. Kohl. One of the more scholarly pieces about anti-semitism, various understandings of Jewish people throughout church history, and a moving ending listing ways to help evangelicals develop a more balanced approach.

“A Palestinian Christian Evangelical Response to the Holocaust” by Sami Awad. Sami is a youngish, esteemed evangelical and here he tells movingly of an experience of anti-Palestinian ideology experienced while on an educational retreat to the death camps in Europe. Don’t miss it.

“Theology of the Land: From a Land of Strife to a Land of Reconciliation” Salim Munayer. I have read a lot on this topic and it is one of the best overviews I have seen, carefully interpreting the various themes of land-promises in the Bible. Good, good stuff. Dr. Munayer is founder of Musalaha, in Jerusalem, a charitable organization that works for reconciliation.

“What Can Pentecostals and Charismatics Do for Peace with Justice in Israel and Palestine?” by Paul Alexander. Paul is an old friend and the compiler of this collection of papers given at the Checkpoint conference. It is conversational, informal, passionate.

“Strange Freedom: Existential and Social Liberation from a Christian Perspective” by Mae Elise Cannon. We so admire Cannon’s good work (with the organization Churches for Middle East Peace) and here she offers a profound essay on the liberation God can bring as she frames the conflict in light of principles from the gospel of Christ’s Kingdom. Very thoughtful.

“The New Testament and the Land” by Gary M. Burge. Dr. Burge teaches at Wheaton and has written two books on this topic; he is an expert and this summary piece is extraordinary.

“The Land in Light of the Reconciliation of Christ: A Dispensationalist View” by Darrell Bock. Professor Bock (of Dallas Theological Seminary) is a well known and exceptionally thoughtful evangelical scholar. He was born Jewish and became a follower of Jesus which makes him that much more interesting. He offers a pretty generic overview of the dispensationalist worldview and insists that, despite his solid loyalty to Israel, they dare not do whatever they wish and are, like all of us, obliged to live well in the land, working for justice for all. Not bad.

“The Ethical Responsibility of the American Church Toward Palestinian Christians” by Tony Campolo. I have always enjoyed listening to Tony and am honored to call him a friend. He naturally preaches about Jesus and calls us to a wholistic vision of Kingdom living, trusting Christ and working for peace. He tells some great stories, too. By the way, Tony, raised in a vibrant Italian-American community was sent to a school in which he was one of only a few non-Jewish kids, so he knows the Jewish community well. This is good stuff.

“Evangelicals, Islam, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” by Colin Chapman. Chapman is an impeccable British scholar who at the time was teaching Islamic Studies in Beirut, Lebanon. He is exceptionally reliable, thoughtful, a tad scholarly, and here offers a brief but solid introduction, inspired by his must-read Whose Promised Land?

“Peaceful or Violent Eschatology: A Palestinian Christian Reading of the Psalter” by Yohanna Katanacho. The Christ and the Checkpoint Conference was held at Bethlehem Bible College in Bethlehem, Palestine, and Dr. Katanacho is a professor of Biblical Studies (and an Academic Dean) there. This is the most academic piece in the book with Katanacho interacting with important work on the Psalms by the likes of Gerald Wilson and Robert Cole, whose interpretations seems to fund a militant Zionist project, which he finds unfaithful.  His most recent book is Praying Through the Psalms.

“Contextual Palestinian Theology as it Deals with Realities on the Ground” by Mitri Raheb. Raheb is a rock star of global, post-colonial theological studies, a  Palestinian Lutheran pastor and life-long resident of Bethlehem. His chapter was somewhat informal even as he offers 7 key points to help us think faithfully about the occupation of his homeland by right-wing Zioinist forces.

“Where Do We Go From Here?” by Jonathan Kuttab. Kuttab should be better known, an important voice of human rights and the rule of law in the region. He is a lawyer and co-founder of the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence and a variety of other advocacy organizations.

Some of these chapters and really, really informative and some are quite stirring. Kudos.

A Land Full of God: Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land edited by Mae Elise Cannon (Cascade) $40.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

This is another anthology, a really great reader, that would be useful to have on hand for a lifetime. There is so much in here. Mae Cannon is a friend and customer and we so value her important, evangelical work for peace and justice. (She has done a few handbooks of faith-based involvement such as The Social Justice Handbook and the excellent follow-up, Beyond Hashtag Activism: Comprehensive Justice in a Complicated Age, both published by IVP.)

She is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church and serves as the executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP). Previously, she learned her chops as the senior director of advocacy and outreach for World Vision US on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

This edited volume done for CMEP, A Land Full of God, is simply one of the best big volumes on the topic, unprecedented for this kind of overview. There is so much in here, from so many perspectives. The forward reveals some of their approach; it is called “Multiple Narratives Toward Peace.” It’s a big book, but well worth having.

There are more than 30 chapters in Land Full of God, most original for this volume, although a few were previously done. It is nearly 300 pages and is arranged in seven sections:

PART I starts off with “Contextualizing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” with helpful pieces by Dale Hanson Burke, David Neff, Rich Nathan, and His Holiness Pope Francis.

PART II includes essays under the rubric of “God’s Chosen People and the Family of Abraham” and includes four very impressive chapters about the Jewish claims to the land (one written by a Jewish author, another about the larger family of Abraham, and the questions around supersessionism.)

PART III “Land and People” has four chapters about the land, culture, and peoples, including a marvelous survey (by Dr. Clayborne Carson and Rev. Troy Jackson) about Martin Luther King’s 1959 trip to the Holy Land and what we can surmise about his views of the contemporary conflict based on his diaries and comments from his trip There’s a bit on the rise of so-called Christian Zionism that’s important. Please don’t miss the stand out chapter by David Gushee on “Christian Just Peacemaking and Israel-Palestine.” Gushee is a world-class ethicist and a scholar of the holocaust.

PART IV is called “Political Paradigms and Perspectives” and includes the famous piece by Desmond Tutu in which he compared Palestinian conditions under the occupation with his experience of apartheid in South Africa, and an important historical piece by The Honorable John Kerry. I loved the piece on a Pentecostal view of interfaith learning by Paul Alexander (the editor of the above-listed book.)

PARV V offers voices for peace in four chapters in  a section called “An End to Violence and Vision for Peace.”

PART VI offers pieces under the section heading “We Belong to Each Other: Relationships Across Divides.” It has fabulous messages by Shane Claiborne, Lynne Hybels, Carolyn Custis James, and now Bread for the World President, Eugene Cho.

PART VII is entitled “Future Hope: Action and Engagement Toward a Just Peace.” It leads off with an excellent piece by Jim Wallis, which I highly recommend, an inspiring one by Joel Hunter, and more. These are really good.

There is included the full draft of the “Atlanta Summit of Churches in the USA and Holy Land” declaration called Pursuing Peace and Strengthening Presence. What a resource! Kudos to Christians for Middle East Peace. Highly recommended.

The Other Side of the Wall: A Palestinian Christian Narrative of Lament and Hope Munther Issac (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I recommend this hefty book because it is so clear, so conversational, so obviously heart-rending and honest. Munther Isaac got his PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and is an academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in Palestine (and directs the ongoing Christ and the Checkpoint Conferences there.) He is the pastor of the famed Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. I bet you saw pictures on facebook of the baby Jesus in the rubble posted from there last Christmastime.

This is a voice that must be heard. As an evangelical biblical theologian and church leader, Munther Isaac speaks on behalf of sisters and brothers in Christ whose story and very existence is ignored and marginalized in the West. A wealth of historical and personal experience, including his own, authenticates the educative challenge of his biblical and theological perspectives. The Other Side of the Wall helps us appreciate the other side of an argument that is all too often assumed to have only one legitimate side for Bible-believing Christians. — Christopher J. H. Wright, Langham Partnership, author of Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament

Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Christian and as such an heir to the unbroken Christian presence in the land of Jesus going back to the early church. In this provocative book, he writes with the passion and urgency of an Old Testament prophet, offering a direct challenge to theologies from the West that have been weaponized against him and others like him in the Holy Land. His words will surely challenge and discomfort many American Christians, but if we are ever to become the makers of peace and the agents of God’s kingdom we are called to be, we must learn to listen to prophetic voices outside our own culture and traditions, and especially to the vulnerable, the powerless, and those who seek justice and peace. — Todd Deatherage, co-founder and executive director of the Telos Group

Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth (Herald Press) $10.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $8.00

This is a handsome, large-sized study guide put out by an ecumenical coalition, published by the Mennonites, but drawn up from within and among Palestinian Christain community. Drawing on language that might remind one of the Barman Declaration (about resisting Hitler in 1940s German) or the Belhar Confession (naming the sin of racism in South Africa) this document and the four week study offers a great resource for church or small group conversations. It argues for nonviolent resistance to the militarized and repressive Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  You can read more about it here at the Kairos Palestine website.

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• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.33; 2 lbs would be $5.07. This is the cheapest method available and seems not to be too delayed.
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Before we launch into this week’s BookNotes, please allow me to ask a favor. While we are always hoping that our friends and customers will invite their book-loving friends to subscribe to our Hearts & Minds newsletter and while we are ever grateful for those who re-tweet or share on Facebook our book-ish missives, the last one we did — about an extraordinary, thorough study of restoring a Michigan creek that runs through the city of Grand Rapids, describing a vision of creation-care called “reconciliation ecology” — is one that really needs to be known. It tells of a Christian group mobilizing citizens of all sorts to get involved in their particular watershed, but, yet, it is a great read for anyone who cares about creeks (or canoeing or kayaking or fishing) or, frankly, anybody who cares about clean water.

The best stories are rooted in specific particularities and Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed by Gail Gunst Heffner & David Warners is no different. It is not abstract or theoretical. They get their hands dirty and their feet wet in this particular tributary of the great Grand River called Plaster Creek. Indigenous people (who, no surprise, lived with it in quite different ways than the settlers who arrived with a different worldview and approach to waterways) called it Ken-O-Sha.

As I explained with glee last time, the new book tells one story in one place but it is widely universal: we all live in watersheds and we all know, as the epistle to Romans puts it, that the whole creation is groaning. This book is important and will be entertaining and informative, stimulating and challenging, to all kinds of readers in all kinds of places. It is not only a story for those in Western Michigan. Would you consider passing my last BookNotes on to somebody who might care? Can you share it on Facebook or Twitter, or just cut and paste and forward the last BookNotes link  https://www.heartsandmindsbooks.com/2024/04/a-new-book-that-brings-me-great-joy-reconciliation-in-a-michigan-watershed-restoring-ken-o-sha-by-gail-gunst-heffner-david-warners-michigan-state-university-press/ to a friend or two? We are proud to get to tell about this marvelous, hopeful book and invite you to join us in spreading the word. Thanks.

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Even as we continue to feel the good residue of being with so many book-loving literary types at the Calvin Festival of Faith & Writing two weeks ago, and having the great privilege of speaking at that great event, we are, truly, back down to Earth, boxing up books, using extra stuffing paper to make sure they are wrapped carefully as we jam-packed carton after carton into our big van. We drove nearly two hours to a yearly gig where we set up dozens of big tables full of books for Presbyterian church educators; how glad we are to be invited back, year after year, decade after decade, to the Eastern region of APCE (Association of Presbyterian Church Educators.) Long-time acquaintance (and former Pennsylvanian) John Franke was the main speaker, inviting the gathered educators and church workers to embrace a missional vision of the church that would offer a foundation for doing risky ministry.

The PC(USA) has a bit of a quiet campaign going, asking congregations to consider being Matthew 25 Churches. Not a bad thing to be known for, what with all that end-times sheets and goats language of Jesus, eh? If anything matters, surely, it is this, caring for “the least of these.” Anyway, it was a good event.

Here are some books I featured there at that central Pennsylvania event. This will not only give you a feel for a tiny portion of what we displayed but some of the titles I highlighted in my own hour-long workshop there. Thanks to those who showed interest in some of these books. Now you can order, too, at our BookNotes 20% off.

Of course, we had many, many categories of adult titles, from theology to prayer to congregational life to memoirs and devotionals to citizenship. On and on, from disability studies to Biblical studies, from books about the cultural ethos to books about trauma and recovery and body image. And tons of kids books of all kinds. Anyway, here are just a few of the titles we had, most designed for those who care about or work with children.

ALL ARE 20% OFF. ORDER BELOW.

Improvising Church: Scripture as the Source of Harmony, Rhythm, and Soul Mark Glanville (IVP Academic / Missio Alliance) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Of the good handful of books we had about church life — some rather academic like, say, the important series by Andrew Root (the most recent being The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticisms) or Joseph Small’s Flawed Church, Faithful God: A Reformed Ecclesiology for the Real World, and some more practical like the immensely helpful Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers That Can Transform Your Church Into a Tov Culture by Scot McKnight and Laura Barring — this recent one strikes a good balance. It is fairly academic and thorough; at just over 200 pages, it isn’t daunting, but it isn’t a simple breeze-through, either. Glanville is an amazing scholar (with a PhD from Bristol) and professor at Regent College in Vancouver. This book is informed by important thinkers (like Lesslie Newbigin, for instance, and the work of Brian Walsh & Steve Bouma-Prediger and many others.) He’s a jazz player and fan, too, and uses musical phrases and images and insights to frame this developing thesis about the Bible’s own story and our improvising our way into living it. This is, truly, as the back cover promises, not only a critique of our post-Christian malaise, but a look at twelve “notes” that give us a dynamic solution. It’s very impressive.

Ordinary Church: A Long and Loving Look Joseph S. Beach (Spello Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I’ve highlighted this before and want to quickly say that Joe is a great, great guy, a good customer, a lover of books (and novels) and is what I might want to characterize as a fairly normal, small-church pastor. I trust he would take that as a compliment. Yes, he was mentored by Eugene Peterson, who pulled him just a bit out of maybe a stricter evangelical culture and into a deeply Biblical, deeply spiritual work of caring for his flock there in Denver. He’s not about flash or pizzaz (although he drops the Dylan quote from time to time.) He’s friends with Brian Zahnd (who offered a foreword and who raves about the book) and the thoughtful Brad Jersak (who wrote a lovely afterword.) It is, as Jersak says, a “nourishing meal.” Anybody who goes to church, is part of a church, and, especially, anyone leading this funky organization cum new family we call the Body of Christ, needs this calming, sober, hopeful guide.

Four Views of the Church’s Mission edited by Jason Sexton (Zondervan Academic) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I love these books that give the best arguments for various theological views and then each of author’s responds to the primary chapter by the others. By the end, one gets four views and everybody’s critiques and rebuttals. Talk about clarification of thoughts! This is like sitting in on a long, drawn-out (civil) debate. In this case the four views of the nature of the church’s most succinct calling and task are explained differently by Christopher Wright, John R. Franke, Peter Leithart and Jonathan Lehman. John, who is a theologian in residence at a PC(USA) church in Indianapolis, offers what he calls a “contextualized mission.” He has taught all over the world and currently does a grad class each year at Fuller with his former student, Dr. Drew Hart so he is a particularly informed and good communicator. Nice.

Liberating Scripture: An Invitation to Missional Hermeneutics John R. Franke & Michael Barram (Cascade) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

It was good seeing John Franke there at our event leading this group of church leaders, inviting them to a missional sort of hermeneutics. Can the Holy Scriptures themselves be set free from the too-often less than helpful assumptions in the very read we read, work with, understand, and apply these texts as the Word of God? John has written widely on missional theology and seems to me to be a healthy both/and sort of thinker, rather than the either/or type, so this book is sure to be refreshing and healthy. I’ve not read it yet, but surely will. The co author wrote one I read year ago which was very good — Missional Economics: Biblical Justice and Christian Formation (Eerdmans; $27.50.) Happily, Franke’s former student, Dr. Drew Hart (of Messiah University), has a good forward and Lisa Bowens (a prof at Princeton, and author of African American Readings of Paul: Reception, Resistance, and Transformation) does the good work of an afterword. We’re excited about this recent book.

The Wise Leader Ali Chi (Eerdmans) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Chi is, according to friends that know him, a truly remarkable person and a wise and solid leader in church circles and the business world, having worked also in the nonprofit context and in the theological academy. This is his insight gleaned from a lifetime of leading and mentoring. I assure you it offers some new insights (even for those who have read a lot of leadership books) and it is loaded with stories, illustrations, and good, good sentences. My, my. This is highly recommended. My friend Steve Garber says offers a way of seeing “over his shoulder and through his heart.” Since most of our participants at the regional APCE event were not ordained clergy, I liked having this one there.

Katerine Leary Alsdorf explains it very well. Hear her:

The brand new The Wise Leader  calls us to a deep and rich journey into the source and nurture of wisdom. Uli Chi draws on his own life experience as a follower of Christ, mentee and mentor, student and professor. Those who are leaders, he says, share the vocation of being faithful ambassadors from the Creator to the created order. To help us distinguish between wisdom from God and the wisdom of this world, he guides us through practices that cultivate humility, a healthy vision of power, and the wisdom to see the world as it is and as it could be. I love Uli’s focus on imagination as ‘the incubator of God’s Spirit’ that enables us to envision that better world. I look forward to sharing this book with seasoned and aspiring leaders as they seek to serve God and the people he loves in some small way. — Katherine Leary Alsdorf, coauthor (with Tim Keller) of Every Good Endeavor

Jeff Van Duzer is the author of one of my favorite books on business. He writes:

At one point in this remarkable book, Uli Chi writes that ‘wisdom is about formation, not just information.’ For me this short phrase captures the essence of his work. This is a book that does not so much define ‘wisdom’ as allow it to unfold. As we read through the book we observe different fabrics — visual art, biblical teaching, fantasy literature, poetry, business books and articles, and more — knit together with examples from Uli’s own career until a truly multifaceted image of the wise leader emerges. I strongly second Mark Labberton’s encouragement in his foreword: ‘If you are seeking wisdom, don’t rush reading this book. Savor it.’ — Jeff Van Duzer, author of Why Business Matters to God (And What Still Needs to Be Fixed)

Attentive Church Leadership: Listening and Leading in a World We’ve Never Known Kevin G. Ford and Jim Singleton (IVP) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This is brand new and while I have hardly cracked the cover, I am sure it is one of the great books in this field of this year. Tod Bolsinger, the author of the very important modern classic on adaptive change, Canoeing the Mountains, has a very nice endorsing blurb on the back, noting that it has great insight and “exhorts church leaders to discern and truly pay attention to what matters most a deeply disrupted, often anxious, and rapidly changing world.”

Ya think our churches exist in a disrupted time? Ya think it has produced some anxiety?

The global businessman turned urban pastor with a deeply contemplative tone, Ken Shigematsu (author of the terrific God in My Everything) calls it “brilliant, beautiful, nourishing.” Can God provide us with “living water” which can sustain us, as church leaders, in these perplexing times? Can we be leaders of discernment and attention?

I’m very excited about this brand new book and was proud to stack a few there for the regional APCE leaders to see. I hope BookNotes readers care about thriving pastors and leaders and maybe will recommend this book widely. Both authors have worked with the Leighton Ford Ministries; Ford has written other books on leadership, strategic planning, and the like; Singleton is a long-time ECO Presbyterian pastor in Texas.

The Spiritual & Educational Vision of Parker J. Palmer: The Birthright Gift of Self Elena Soto (Pickwick Publications) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I figured most everyone in the educational world — church educators, Christian school teachers, Sunday school teachers, servants in public schooling, and of course those in higher ed — know of the work of Parker Palmer. The Harper book To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey is seminal and remains a must-read for those thinking seriously about education (or, I might say, disciple-making.) His The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life is a modern-day classic. After writing that and doing many workshops with professional teachers he realized how many teachers viewed their work as a holy vocation, a calling, which led to the lovely reflection Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. Many working for a more gentle, spirituality for organizations and churches know him too. (His Hidden Wholeness is a great book, influenced a bit by his Quaker contemplative style but not only that.)

Who can take all this — his early stuff on public theology and his latest on aging (On the Brink of Everything) and tie it all together with a robust philosophy of education? Who can write for the broader public square about the spirituality of education? I do not know Elena Soto (other than to realize she teaches in the Religious Studies Department at Fordham Preparatory School in New York.)  She moves as briskly and wisely as does Parker from the complexity of the classroom to the quiet of the soul, from questions about educational workshops and seminars to the big matter of the teacher’s truest self. It is a masterpiece of bringing together the educational philosophy and spiritual perspective of Palmer, set in the context of her own encounter with Palmer and how it impacted her own life and work. There is nothing like it in print.

I learned so much reading Elena Soto’s book about Parker J. Palmer, an extraordinary public intellectual, and his thinking on living an authentic ‘undivided life’ — a life directed toward grasping the fact that education itself is a religious activity, enriching and ennobling both students and teachers. — E. Doyle McCarthy, professor emerita of sociology and American studies, Fordham University

Thriving on a Riff: Jazz and the Spiritual Life William G. Carter (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

This is not precisely on church leadership, but I sure can imagine a creative church staff reading it together for ministry inspiration and Kingdom insight, and it isn’t about children’s ministry except, well, if inspiring kids to take up the arts and understanding jazz and race and loss and joy and holding up the example of one young Presbyterian kid who didn’t choose between his love of music and his love of the Word, between jazz and Jesus, well, maybe this is a good book to celebrate at an APCE event.

And celebrate it we did, since Bill has been at our little, regional, Eastern APCE event. (He gigs in the finest concert halls and cathedrals, and, yes, small camp and conference centers and church basements.)  Several of the educators there know him well and some knew of him, certainly. He makes us Presbys bop and we’re glad for his witness. And, man, we’re glad for this book.

I hope you saw my energetic review previously at BookNotes noting how this very well written book combines a well-informed history of jazz with his own low-key stories of life in the jazz scene, combined with his earnest, mainline denominational sensibilities as pastor and preacher. We learn about minor keys and openness, we learn about the “wow factor” and we hear stories of injustice. From improvisation to cooperation, there are spiritual principles embedded in this music and it’s a blast to learn about it all from just a thoughtful author. As one reviewer, Diane Stephens Hogue (a spiritual director and former convener of the Liturgy & Spirituality Seminar Group) puts it: “This is prayer.”

The Kingdom of Children: A Liberation Theology R.L Stollar (Eerdmans) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I suppose this may be a bit too academic for some in congregational leadership or children’s ministry, but it is provocative, stimulating, challenging, and a boat-load of fun for those who like reading theology and church studies. Stollar proposes a liberation theology of the child that “centers the children in our ecclesial life.” As the back cover puts it, “By lifting up children — truly valuing and learning from them — we can build up the kingdom of God here in our communities.”

It doesn’t sound that complicated or radical, but as Stollar teases out the implications and to ask if we truly care — truly care — about the children in our communities, it could inspire a radical reconsideration of the tone and structures and practices of our churches. Obviously, in this day and age, every faith community or organization that includes children has to be diligent to protect littles from abuse (and this must include guarding against what some might call religious abuse.) This means rethinking a lot, I’m afraid…

It has long been said, but not adequately grappled with, that the phrase “family values” has been co-opted by a far right political and theological agenda, and more moderate and non-extremists must take back the phrase, struggling to know what family values means through the Jesus lens. The Kingdom of Children will help.

The forward is by Cindy Wang Brandt. At the Eastern-APCE event we featured her 2019 book (I think the last one with a preface by Rachel Held Evans) Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness. Want a better world, asks Brandt, one shaped by justice, mercy and kindness? Try raising our kids that way. Yes!

The Gifts They Bring: How Children in the Gospels Can Shape Inclusive Ministry Amy Lindeman Allen (WJK) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

Amy Lindeman Allen is an ordained Lutheran (ELCA) minister and a professor of New Testament at Christian Theological Seminary (Indianapolis, Indiana.) I appreciate her emphasis that the church not only ministers to children but invites us to relate to the children as contributing participants. This child-centered theological approach helps her interpret Biblical passages with a fresh eye, gleaning new insights from old texts. This is inspiring.

The Gifts They Bring is part Biblical scholarship, part devotional reading, and part children’s ministry handbook. As a professor of religious education at Brite Divinity School puts it, “this is biblical scholarship and practical theology at its best. Allen helps us see and hear the children who were among Jesus’s first disciples as well as the children whom we must recognize as Jesus’s disciples in our churches today.” What a visionary, multigenerational approach.

Shepherds as children? Children as full participants in worship? Kids as central followers of Jesus? This book will radically transform how you read scripture, revealing children where you’ve never noticed them, and not as bystanders but as powerful actors. And once you begin to see children — suggests biblical expert, wise pastor, and caring parent Amy Lideman Allen — you cannot help but envision Christian community as far more inclusive than you’ve ever imagined before. — Bonnie Miller McLemore, author of Let the Children Come: Reimaging Childhood from a Christian Perspective and In the Midst of Chaos: Care of Children as Spiritual Practice

Raising Kids Who Care: Practical Conversations for Exploring Stuff That Matters, Together Susy Lee (598 Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I wrote quite positively about this a few years ago and when I heard that E-APCE was studying the initiative called becoming a Matthew 25 Church, I was sure I wanted to take a few of these. I know some of the participants saw it and we sold a few. Still, it deserves to be better known as it is a tremendous guidebook and resource. As one author put it, it is “brightly and clearly written, with real personality.” It evokes in us an understanding that, unlike the way we typically think, we don’t make kids happy by typical means, but, in fact, by helping them learn to make others happy. As kids become agents of change in the world themselves, they find a greater joy and gusto, a purpose beyond themselves. As another psychologist and social researcher noted,

Wise, warm, imaginative and intensely practical… Raising Kids Who Care is like a blueprint for building strong families and caring communities. Highly recommended for anyone who cares about the future of our children and our society.

You may not have heard much about this great title as the author is Australian. She has a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies; rousing blurbs come from her down-under pals Michael Frost and Tim Costello, the former CEO of World Vision Australia. Believe me, it’s a fabulous read, a big and witty resource, and, fun as it is, very, very important.

Spiritual Conversations with Children: Listening to God Together Lacy Finn Borgo (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

We highlighted this book when it first came out here at BookNotes and, that year, in a book plug I do for Eastern-APCE each year. I am sure I went on and on, explaining how wonderful and interesting, and useful, and enriching this book is. Borgo provides spiritual direction with children (at a transitional housing facility for homeless kids, in fact) and knows well what it is like to talk about God with kids. Perhaps when they listen to God, they hear the divine voice as well and — whew! — maybe they have some leading and revelation themselves, eh? This is a beautiful book with step-by-step guidance about how we, too, can have not just theological or Bible-teaching sessions with children, but profound spiritual conversations, learning to, as she puts it, “listening to God together.” What a joy, a rare and beautiful guidebook.

Strong Girls, Strong World: A Practical Guide to Helping Them Soar — and Creating a Better Future for Us All Dale Hanson Bourke (Tyndale) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Bourke is the sort of writer and author who we really appreciate. She has been a thoughtful evangelical throughout her career and has written on a wide variety of topics, about which she just seems to know so very much. She is clear-headed and yet inspiring, a fine wordsmith and a caring soul. She has served groups like World Vision International (and has visited 62 countries) and has often written about the people she has met along the way. Her vision is wholistic and caring and now she has turned her talent and passion towards a topic that is quite personal: how we can make a global impact, one girl at a time.

This is a fascinating book, not only for parents (or grandparents) of girls, but for anyone who wants to understand the need and benefits of investing in the lives of girls. She names eight areas that create “high-impact” outcomes. She even reports on effective organizations and what they are doing to change the lives of girls. Not since From Risk to Resilience: How Empowering Young Women Can Change Everything by Jenny Rae Armstrong have I been so excited about a book that helps us help children soar.

By the way, almost every other page has a sidebar and pull-out section either called “Did you know?” or “What you can do.” What a resource to have handy — we are in debt to Dal Bourke for this solid title, a great gift to the world. Cheers!

Grace for the Children: Finding Hope in the Midst of Child and Adolescent Mental Illness Matthew S. Stanford (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

It would seem to me that nearly anyone working with children would be blessed by this lovely, helpful, wise, good book. Stanford has a PhD from Baylor University and is CEO of the Hope & Healing Center & Institute in Houston (and he teaches in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine and the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston. That’s a lot, eh? He’s a pro, for sure.)

This explores everything from disruptive behavior disorders to depression, post traumatic stress disorder to anxiety, from eating disorders to various aspects of being on the autism spectrum. Based on the DSM-5 diagnoses, this invites the church to her uniquely positioned role to offer things that, frankly, our mental health system often lacks. Grace for the Children is a fabulous resource, a good tool to have on hand, and what has been called (by Siang-Yang Tan at Fuller) “an excellent and comprehensive clinical guide.” The author has compassion and theological chops, care and insight. Unless you already have something like this on hand, we highly recommend it.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Naturally, this question is always on the minds of anyone who works with children — parents, school teachers, educational professionals, Sunday school volunteers, youth pastors, those doing children’s ministry, and (yep — say it loud!): grandparents. Anyone who cares for kids obviously is asking this million dollar question.

I am not sure of Haidt’s full position as I have not read this yet. It is brand new, but has immediately become a best-seller and will surely be on everybody’s lists of books about all this. The statistics are clear: the kids are not okay. Susan Cain, the wonderful writer of Quiet (on being introverted) and the moving, richly-construed Bittersweet (on the mysterious relation of sorrow and longing and wholeness) says that Haidt is a “modern-day prophet, disguised as a psychologist.”

You may know his vital work on polarization from more than a decade ago, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion and his important 2018 book (which I found a tad cranky) The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. With this brand new one he is being called “the most important psychologist in the world today.” Johann Hari (author of Stolen Focus) says, “Every single parent needs to stop what they are doing and read this book immediately.” Okay then.

It is, admittedly, an urgent and provocative book, an alarm. As some quip, it isn’t alarmism if it is true; it isn’t paranoia if they are after you.

As Adam Grant writes,

Jonathan Haidt makes a powerful case that the shift from play-based to phone-based childhoods is wreaking havoc on mental health and social development. Even if you’re not ready to ban smartphones until high school, this book will challenge you to rethink how we nurture the potential in our kids and prepare them for the world.

Perhaps Russell Moore describes it best:

This book poses a challenge that will determine the shape of the rest of the century. Jonathan Haidt shows us how we’ve arrived at this point of crisis with technology and the next generation. This book does not merely stand athwart the iPhone yelling ‘Stop!’ Haidt provides research-tested yet practical counsel for parents, communities, houses of worship, and governments about how things could be different. I plan to give this book to as many people as I can, while praying that we all have the wisdom to ponder and then to act. — Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

SOME CHILDREN’S BOOKS WE FEATURED AT THE PRESBY EVENT

The Apostles’ Creed For All God’s Children Ben Myers; illustrated by Natasha Kennedy (Lexham) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

The Lord’s Prayer: For All God’s Children Harold L. Senkbeil; illustrated by Natasha Kennedy (Lexham) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

The Ten Commandments: For All God’s Children Harold L. Senkbeil; illustrated by Natasha Kennedy (Lexham) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

We have told you about these “Fat Cat” books before and we are big fans. As I told these Presbyterians, those who are astute will recall that these three topics — the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commands, and the Apostles’ Creed — form the basis of Luther’s catechism of new believers, and has long served as a foundation for teaching youth the foundations of Christian thinking and living. With these playful but exceptionally sound books, you’ve got a great start of what kids need to know most. We adore

Seeing Jesus: Social Justice Activities for Today Based on Matthew 25 Phyllis Vos Wezeman (The Pastoral Center) $33.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $26.40

I mentioned that the Eastern-region APCE conference was, in part, floating the idea of being a Matthew 25 Church. Well, for that agenda (which should be taken up by every congregation naming Jesus as their Lord) there is simply nothing like this. Wezeman is a long-time leader and experienced curriculum writer for children and here she offers six chapters (each with ten learning activities which explore one aspect of the chapter’s theme.)

Each lesson plan is organized into three parts: Learn, Locate, and Lead. It has tons of practical guidance and lays out the design of each activity and its lesson. While each lesson is related to the passage Matthew 25:31-46, it is also organized around another story or verse from the Bible which further illustrates the specific topic.

As they promise on the back, Seeing Jesus provides creative, concrete methods for responding to Jesus’ commission. It once again challenges each and every learning with the question, “What will you do?”

Over 215 pages — some of this was found in an earlier form in the now out of print Ave Maria volume, When Did We See You? This is ideal for fourth through eighth graders and comes with a permission and authorization to make limited copies for use in your class or group.

Zion Learns to See Terence Lester & Zion Lester (IVP Kids) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I so, so appreciate all the IVP Kids line, and this one is a stand out. It is written with such joy and warmth, but yet, quietly at times, shouts “every person matters to God — and that means every person should matter to us.” But, of course, that means we have to see — really see — each person in their need and glory, their hurts and their dignity.

Zion is a young black girl who wants to understand and do something with this important message and her father reminds her of this lesson when he takes her to a community shelter at which he works and introduces her to house-less and other hurting folks, his friends from the streets. She decides to help raise awareness and funds through a project at school and it becomes, well…. You’ll see. It’s a great story.

Zion Learns to See is a lovely book for little ones inspired by the adult book by Terence Lester called I See You: How Love Opens Our Eyes to Invisible People. There’s a bit of the follow up on in this kid’s book, too, the one called When We Stand: The Power of Seeking Justice Together, which comes with a great foreword by Father Gregory Boyle. Both are by IVP.) Terence is a great author of adult books and now he has partnered with his daughter to do this lovely, inspiring kid’s book. Kudos to them both.

Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer: A True Story of How You Can Talk to God Laura Wifler, illustrated by Catalina Echeverri (The Good Book Company) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

As you most likely know (and may tire of hearing, here) we are quite taken with the Biblical insight of these “Tales That Tell the Truth” books that highlight a historical-redemptive sort of wisdom about how to connect various random stories in the Bible with a gospel-centered vision. Plus, we adore the whimsically serious art by the great Catalina Echeverri. In any case, we had ‘em all, and this one was propped up and shown nicely along with the workbook, which gives kids a way to interact with this material and end up with a big view of God and a resource that Kristie Anyabwile says is “chock-full of gospel.” 

We’ve got the small, companion, full-color 15-day workbook/devotional study too; it’s wonderful.  Any Time, Any Place, Any Prayer  Family Bible Devotional (The Good Book Company) $5.99; OUR SALE PRICE = $4.79.

The Anytime.. Family Bible Devotional is really nice, a great price, and includes some optional extra sections for older children and bonus puzzles and art activities for younger children. If I were a Sunday school teacher, by the way, I’d have one of these at the ready when you need a quick lesson plan.

God’s Beloved Community Michelle T. Sanchez; illustrated by Camila Carrossine (Waterbrook) $12.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

The message is clear: when we love others the way God dreamed, we help build God’s beloved community! This content-rich, fun storybook reminds us that God created a world filled with vibrant variety (and called it good!) Now God calls us, it says on the back, “to move from being color-blind to color brave and to proclaim with him how precious all people really are.”

I love how it roots ethnic diversity in the created order and invites us to honor and include all; this is pushing towards anti-racism in a lovely, evangelical way, affirming creation, fall, and redemption. Plus, it rhymes.

God’s Beloved Community takes young readers on a biblical and historical journey to learn more about the notion of “beloved community.” Naturally, it draws a bit on the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King and explores how we can create communities filled with God’s love “as we delight in our differences, stand up to bullying and unfair rules, and declare with our lives and our love that everyone matters to God.” I so appreciate this writer and storyteller, author of Color-Courageous Discipleship, both the adult version and the teenaged, youth edition. And now this one for children maybe from 3 – 8.

Celebrating My Baptism: The Day I Joined God’s Family illustrated by Estelle Corke (Paraclete Press) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I love this small sized book with lovely, upbeat illustrations including all kinds of and ages of people celebrating a child’s baptism. It is truly a “delightful collection filled with biblical promises, prayers, and poems. It has good content — a lot more than some kid’s books — and yet is playful and colorful. I’m a fan. I like that it has pictures of children at a fairly conventional font (in a mainline or liturgical church, it seems) and another in an outdoor setting, getting dunked in a lake, making it useful for all sorts of congregations. There is an emphasis on the new family of God’s community that surrounds and enfolds the child and the joy of learning about church, the Trinity, including the Holy Spirit’s guidance. There’s a nice little ribbon marker, too, and a presentation page to fill out. Hooray!

God’s Holy Darkness Share Green & Beckah Selnick; illustrated by Nikki Faison (Beaming Books) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

We featured this and talked about it in my workshop last year, so I wasn’t surprised that it didn’t sell too well this year. Still, for those that didn’t see this — we featured it during Advent and during Lent — it is a year-round wonder. This book celebrates the beauty of darkness and with beautifully, creative, modern art, accomplishes at least two things: it celebrates that (as Barbara Brown Taylor books it) we can walk with God in the dark and it “deconstructs anti-Blackness in Christian theology.” By exploring instances when darkness, blackness, and night are beautiful, good and holy, it opens up a new layer of imagination for your smart kids. There is nothing like this and we recommend it.

The Story of Water: God at Work in the Bible’s Watery Tales Caroline Saunders; illustrated by Jade Van Der Balm  (B+H) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

The Story of Home: God at Work in the Bible’s Tales of Home Caroline Saunders; illustrated by Jade Van Der Balm  (B+H) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

These two lovely books have the look of creative but fairly normal children’s picture books; the artful illustrations are clever and multi-ethnic and full of interesting stuff going on. In each story there is an upbeat and solid Biblical teaching about water and about homes, about new life and a safe home. From thirst to homesickness, this author realizes something deep about the human condition and uses some imagination to realize that the Scriptures address these universal longings and needs. Jesus brings living water and welcomes all who are homesick. Years ago there were two somewhat similar books, maybe more liturgically connected and more evocative. I really like these two books which are clear and evocative even as they share the gospel in creative ways with little ones, ages 4 to 8.

A Very Big Problem Amy-Jill Levine & Sandy Eisenberg Sasso (Flyaway books) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

You may know Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish prof of New Testament and popular author of books about Jesus in his first century context. Sandy Sasso is a retired Rabbi , a beloved and popular children’s picture book author, and an instructor of an arts and religion program at Indiana University and Purdue University. Together they’ve given us a real midrash, a reflection on what I might call the original sin, or something like that.

The story begins cheerfully enough in a retelling of the creation story. Then, to cut to the chase, each creature – animal and human – starts saying that they are the most important (and, of course, that, therefore, God loves them most.) On and on they go, hilariously (even if a bit sensibly, at times) saying why they are the cream of the crop and most beloved by their Creator. You can just imagine what God thinks of all this one-upmanship. No, the features of each special creature do not make them better or more worthy of God’s love, it is just an example of why God loves them and how wonder-full it all is. Even humans are put a bit in their place — a wise move, I think — assuring us that the whole of creation is good and loved. Is God’s love big enough for everyone? One could hardly ask a more urgent question and one could hardly find a more enjoyable way into the conversation. Highly recommended.

What Is God Like? Rachel Held Evans & Matthew Paul Turner; illustrated by King Hui Tan (Convergent) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Some forget that the late Rachel Held Evans, author, agitator, memoirist, speaker, conference organizer, was also a mother. As she reconstructed her own previously too-strict faith (her first book was called Evolving in Monkey Town which was about growing up fundamentalist in the town famous for the Scopes trial) she also raised some children and, obviously, taught the Bible to them. Here she answers a child’s first big question about God in what some have called a “gorgeous picture book.” It is a real favorite, full of metaphors and similes, lovely illustrations and a book to encourage young hearts. And their parents. It will make you feel brave and make you feel loved.

Given that Rachel had just died (so suddenly) when this book was in the works, it is fitting that her husband, Daniel Jance Evans wrote a little foreword, telling of their son Henry and their daughter Harper, who was still a baby.

My Heart Sings a Sad Song Gary Alan Shockley (The Pilgrim Press) $18.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

Shockley is both an author and artist and he knows grief intimately from his work as a hospice chaplain (and certified grief counselor.) He has done adult books (one I liked on leadership comes with a foreword by Graham Standish) and several children’s books, generally on themes of empathy and social awareness.

This brand new one is said to be “caring and honest” as it helps children process their grief after the death of a loved one. It is “lovely, comforting, uncomplicated” as a story and “a valuable tool for grieving children and adults.”

You may have had reason to talk with a little one about their emotions and their memories after they lost a loved one. If you haven’t, you will. We have a lot of books on this topic and this new one is gracious and done with obvious love.

When God Makes Scribbles Beautiful Kate Rietema, illustrated by Jennie Poh (B+H) $14.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is a simple, sparse picture book, just a bit bigger than some, and a real sinner. It imagines that the hard things in a child’s life is like a scribble following him everywhere. The child can’t get rid of the scribble, no matter how hard he tries.

As they say on the back, “His story offers reassurance to all readers, young and old, that God will take care of their own hard things and turn them into something beautiful.”

Rietema has mothered bunches of kids as an adoptive and foster care parent and knows a thing or two about the hard stuff in the lives of children. And, even though sometimes hard things happen to children, she is confident God can make a way, bring redemptive care and renewal through all things. This book is artful and evocative, a real glory. Artist Jennie Poh is obviously very talented in a cool, creative way; she lives in Surrey, England. If you’ve got a church library, you should have this book. There is extra content online too.

Bible History ABCs: God’s Story from A to Z Stephen Nichols;  illustrated by Ned Bustard (Crossway) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

This is not as large as the majestic, big picture book these two friends did previously (The Church History ABCs: Augustine and 25 Other Heroes of the Faith) and , as such, is designed for little hands. Don’t be fooled, though, this has some great content, giving kids not only the fun of the classic ABC book, but solid information and witty details about everybody from Adam to Zion and lots in between. This is fine for children up to about 6 or 7, easily, and might be interesting for even old ones. In any case, it’s a substantive, playful, interesting book and we are delighted to show it off. Naturally, we had the fascinating companion volume Reformation ABCs: The People, Places, and Things of the Reformation–From A to Z, also by Mssrs Nichols & Bustard. What a blast!                                                                                           

The World of the Old Testament: A Curious Kid’s Guide to the Bible’s Most Ancient Stories Marc Olson, illustrated by Jemima Maybank (Beaming Books) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

The World of the First Christians: A Curious Kid’s Guide to the Early Church Marc Olson, illustrated by Jemima Maybank (Beaming Books) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I suspect I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: I would have loved these books when I was in elementary school, or what they now call Middle School even. I was inquisitive and curious, I think, but didn’t read much fiction. I loved encyclopedias and clever books with lots of information. This series does the trick with lots of content and just enough quirkiness to keep reader’s studying the pages. There are fun infographics, maps, charts, diagrams and besides the visual appeal, it teaches real stuff about the life and times of the Biblical eras. This does not offer fundamentalistic proof-texting but solid history, culture, complexity, and truth. Great for ages up to maybe 14 or so.   

God’s Big Picture Bible Storybook – 140 Connecting Bible Stories of God’s Faithful Promises N. T. Wright, illustrated by Helena Perez Garcia (Tommy Nelson) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I talked about this in my E-APCE workshop last seek and for you, here, I’ll just reprint what we wrote a month ago:

If this isn’t the coolest thing for kids and families — heck, for anyone! — this season, I don’t know what is. We had heard Tom was doing a children’s Bible story book and, of course, we were thrilled. It is fantastic, just fabulous. I respect his Biblical insight and his theological worldview that shapes his deep understanding of the interconnectedness of Scriptural episodes, so this book which will amplify the unfolding nature of the drama is sure to be a fabulous resource for any family wanting to not only get the stories right, but the Story.

Often, after the telling of a story, you will see the phrase “What else in God’s big story links up with this?” When that nicely appears there are one or two little colorful circles with a word and a page number to show how those themes show up in other stories. I’m not saying it is like the old Thompson Chain Study Bible, but it sure is a very nice (and useful) feature.

There are other children’s Bibles these days that show the interconnectedness of the overall biblical plot, and we are grateful. There are some that may have a more edgy sort of artistic appeal to young parents, or a higher quality of illustration, but this has fairly typical art for kids. More could be said about what might have been done better and while it may not be my choice for the best looking design, it is still quite engaging and very, very good. The fabulous text is on the left of the spread and the vivid picture is on the right (with a hint of color or symbol or a bit of the picture spilling over just a bit onto the page of text, which is a nice, integrated touch.) For ages 6 to 10 or 11, I’d say, this is a fabulous new resource. Certainly it would be good for children growing out of the popular Jesus Storybook Bible. Every church library should have one. Hallelujah.

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I am dedicating this special Earth Day BookNotes to a long review of one new book, one that we are particularly excited about, for a variety of reasons, as you will see.

We’ve done other lists of ecological books, and we suggest revisiting those BookNotes columns and lists that are important to us, HERE, HERE, or this long and somewhat dated essay about, among other things, being disappointed by Kurt Vonnegut and living near Three Mile Island, HERE. Some of the books mentioned in passing may not even be in print anymore, and the prices are surely different, but many from these three BookNotes are easily available. I hope you enjoy my reflections. Thanks for caring.

Other than this big brand new one I’m reviewing today, I’d also most eagerly recommend these four fabulous books offering foundations for a Biblically Christian view of creation care; interestingly, the authors of which admire the work of the Gail Gunst Heffner and David Warners, who wrote the book that today’s book review explores. We’ve highlighted these others before so I won’t say much but had to highlight them as they are so good. The fourth one listed, published by Calvin College Press, is one where the authors of today’s book appear, as well. They obviously have a lot to offer.

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Creation Care Discipleship: Why Earthkeeping Is an Essential Christian Practice by Steven Bouma-Prediger (Baker Academic) $25.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

I’ve raved about Steven’s previous works from his classic For the Beauty of the Earth to the fabulous Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic. This recent one is smart and not at all simplistic, but really foundational, if you will. Everybody should read this. It’s a must, showing how creation-care should be an ordinary part of faithful discipleship.

Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action by Kyle Meyaard-Schaap (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

Kyle Meyaard Schaap is one of these fabulously passionate, delightful young leaders who is good at Bible teaching, theology, storytelling, knowing theoretical insights and offering down-to-earth practical guidance about faithful steps. Richard Mouw calls it “marvelously engaging.” Highly recommended.

Refugia Faith:Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth by Debra Rienstra (Fortress Press) $23.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

This hardback is one of the most moving, graciously written, glorious book about eco-care that we know of. It explores with faith-informed glory all about caring for the Earth. Debra is cited by the book below as she should be (but she does teach with the authors at Calvin University in Grand Rapids.) This is one of the best books I’ve read in recent years, and it repays multiple reads. Truly lovely even as it makes you re-think much.

Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care edited by David P. Warners and Matthew Kuperus Huen (Calvin College Press) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I’ve explained this amazing collection of essays before and, curiously, all three of the above mentioned authors have chapters included. It should be better known, I’d think — there is a lovely, good foreword by Bill McKibben and an important afterword by Loren Wilkinson. Although the book is not overly heady or academic, it is audacious in many ways: it invites us to ponder whether the paradigm of “stewardship” of creation it itself a helpful way to think about our relationships with other creatures in God’s world. Maybe not, they say, in many ways, from many angles. There’s a lot in this rare volume and I find myself coming back to it for time to time. It would make a fantastic study book for those wanting to dig deeply into the subject. Here’s a fun bit of extra stuff designed for those wanting some visual aids in reading. And there is a podcast with a lively interview with each author of the chapter’s of the book. Hooray. What a good book this is!

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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

While on a panel at Calvin University’s Festival of Faith & Writing a week or so ago, I was asked, while sitting next to the wonderful Anne Bogel and Karen Swallow Prior, by our conversation partner, Jennifer Holberg, what books these days have brought me joy.

I rattled off a handful of fun, recent reads, books I’ve delighted in, either because they were a touch silly (like the great, smart novel by Bob Hudson, The Beautiful Madness of Martin Bonham telling the wild fiction of starting a college department about the love of God and how a local seminary objected) or just because they were so very well-written (Beth and I simply adored Lost and Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness by esteemed writer Kathryn Schulz) or that were truly funny, if dark, such as the most recent by a fabulous author Harrison Scott Key (How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told.) I could have mentioned Jennifer’s own book, Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape our Faith which is a book-lover’s dream and promises great delight for those that value reading and stories.

One that I mentioned is not intentionally funny or overly joyful, even, but it has brought more delight than anything I’ve had in my hands in ages.

This is one I’ve been waiting for.

Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha by Gail Gunst Heffner and David P. Warners is a book of hope, telling a remarkable story with great care and nuance, teaching, preaching, exploring, and documenting a decades-long, brave, hard, journey into reconciliation ecology as it informs the cleaning up and care of a creek that runs through the city and regions around Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed tells of the restorative work of many community partners organized through teams at Calvin College (now University) and their Office of Community Engagement.

It is a story I want to celebrate now — here in this special Earth Day edition of BookNotes —  because it is stunningly important and exemplary (as we shall see) but also because it is a long labor of love by two dear friends of ours. One of the authors, Gail Gunst Heffner, is one of our best and oldest friends in the world (who helped us launch our store in the early 1980s.) You should know we want to be a champion for her extraordinary work.

Gail has a PhD in urban studies and used her graciously outgoing personality to expertly serve the greater Grand Rapids area by harnessing the social capital and resources (and sometimes, sheer person-power) of Calvin College, finding ways to partner with agencies doing good work in the area. From racial justice topics to housing and public health concerns to big ecological issues, she served the Provost of the college by building neighborhood networks, serving on the Boards of nonprofits, writing grants, meeting with church, community, and civic groups, listening well so as to help the college learn what the city might need of it. I don’t know if other colleges have such an “Office of Social Engagement” but Gail has done remarkable work in this important role.

Her previous work for the college on academic-based service learning (twenty-some years ago she co-edited a ground-breaking book called Commitment and Connection: Service-Learning and Christian Higher Education) already had cache as Calvin became recognized as one of the best examples of such academic-based service learning, department by department, helping students learn well by serving the community in particular ways, suited to their disciplines. That Gail and some of her colleagues from the service-learning world were asked to offer guidance to institutions of higher learning in the aftermath of the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa indicates her mature leadership in discerning and living into God-honoring initiatives of transformational social change.

And so the Plaster Creek Stewards came into being and was one of the many projects Gail (co)-organized and managed. Many Calvin colleagues — from the hard sciences to oral historians to computer science techies and more — joined the movement to recruit folks to clean up Plaster Creek, then considered one of the most polluted waterways in Western Michigan. We have followed her leadership on this from afar for more than a decade and have prayed for this book’s pages for years. What a joy to now hold it. And to tell you about it.

The other author of Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed, David Warners, is a brilliant scientist (with a specialty in botany), a scholar of creation care theology, and an excellent, beloved Calvin biology professor. He co-founded the Plaster Creek Stewards and took up the cause of stewarding Plaster Creek with whole classes of eager students, realizing early on that simple riverside restoration is incredibly complex. History, as they say, is messy, and such ecological projects are, like most everything else, rooted in history.

Gail understood better than most some of the deeper implications of the study of environmental racism (see her chapter on this in Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care called “Making Visible the Invisible”, mentioned above) while Dave knew well the exceedingly detailed webs of ecological complexity; together they and their teams started to share with those living in the watershed stuff about healing the degradation, reparations such as bioswales and rain gardens; they researched and warned about the dangerously high E-coli levels in the water, and why industrial pollution and agricultural run-off (that is, fertilizer from farms and lawns) upstream simply must be understood as it damages everything downstream. What does it mean to love your downstream neighbor, they asked. It’s an important question for all of us, since we are all situated in watersheds.

(Did you know there is a sub-science and movement of those helping care for urban waterways, coping not only with rainwater flash floods and sewer drains and underground streams and such, but urban wastewater and more? It is not a major part of this book, but you will learn a bit about this little understood scene; Plaster Creek is, largely an urban watershed.)

To start even small projects of river restoration one can clear brush and replant native plants and do any number of simple gestures of inhabiting a watershed in healthy ways. But, again, the bigger questions, as Reconciliation in A Michigan Watershed so painstakingly shows, have to do with how early European settlers understood water and their practices of managing it in certain ways, the rise of industrialization and urbanization and ways storm run-off and sewage treatment plants work. It has to do with agricultural policies and factory farms (and, yes, other sorts of factories that even in our day and age dump chemicals into creeks and rivers.) Plaster Creek Stewards very quickly became much more than happy college kids volunteering to clean up waterside litter or plant some lovely native flowers. They faced what we sometimes call structural and systemic matters, and questions of who gets a voice (“a seat at the table” as they say) and who calls the shots becomes urgent. They tell the story with flare; it is a bit unclear if they realized, starting the project so many years ago, what all they were getting themselves into!

I will never forget as long as I live the exact place Beth and I were — in our van while returning home from an out-of-state trip — when Gail called us to ask for immediate prayers. Their ongoing work in community development and grass-roots organizing led to sometimes contentious community meetings, town hall forums, civic gatherings, and zoning debates in boroughs and townships around Grand Rapids about policies and protocols. As the book tells — it’s a page-turner but not overly flamboyant — they had just received bomb threats!

Was it from industrial scale farmers? Racist opposition from anti-indigenous people movements? Fancy but ill-informed suburbanites who thought native plants would hurt their little near-by park? I’m paraphrasing here, but you can imagine the sorts of people that get up in arms (in this case, literally) when college activists, no matter how gracious and willing to listen, start talking green. One person got into the faces of our friends and spit out that they don’t trust academics and they don’t trust scientists. David and Gail are among the nicest people on the planet, and I wish the book told even more about how they felt and handled these egregious opponents, some most likely packing heat, as they tried to help restore this messy, abused waterway.

Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha has as its subtitle the indigenous people’s name for what the European settlers re-named Plaster Creek, and this is a very important aspect of the book. David and Gail learned early on that to truly understand the devastation of the watershed — that had been cared for wisely for centuries by the Hopewell people, the Anishinaabeg clans, and then what the French called the Ottawa — they would have to learn from and partner with Native peoples.

The chapters about the history of 18th and 19th century friendships and broken treaties, forced removals and residential schools, and all the rest of the devolving of peaceful, cross-cultural relationships, are captivating and compelling and tragic. Their accounts of visiting local burial mounds (most were destroyed by those forming the city of Grand Rapids, even as they drained the landscape starting in the mid-1800s) is very moving and their respectful citations of Native sources is fabulous.

For anyone who has been reading First Nations stuff (or learning about the Doctrine of Discovery) this will be good to take up after, say, The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery by Sarah Augustine (Herald Press) or Mark Charles & Soong-Chan Rah’s Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery (IVP.) I think Randy Woodley’s Shalom and the Community of Creation: An Indigenous Vision (Eerdmans) is essential reading, here, and would be a good companion volume to pair with Reconciliation… In fact, with their good section comparing worldviews and the assumption different worldview communities bring to their engagement with the natural world, and water, particularly, they might have cited his Indigenous Theology and the Western Worldview: A Decolonized Approach to Christian Doctrine (Baker Academic) Woodley is a respected Cherokee teacher, missiologist, and historian who brings a good word for any of us who think about these things.

Those of us not from the Great Lakes regions, I think, have much to learn from this quick but solid overview. We may know about the Appalachian Trail of Tears or the storied Plains Indians or the great struggles of the Sioux against Custer and the like; we are eager to learn about the lively cities in the American Southwestern deserts but for some of us, the Hurons and Ottawas are less known, I suspect. I might want to give a shout-out to last year’s National Book Award Winner The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk, published by Yale University Press, but Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed nicely does some of the heavy lifting for those wanting a glimpse of the history of Native Peoples and their encounters with the influx of Europeans into their homelands. To be clear, Heffner & Warners want to learn from the worldview of those who once lived in the watershed area not only as a justice issue but also for practical reasons: the Ottawa seemed to know a thing or two about rivers, fishing, farming, developing culture, housing, and watershed care long before we coined the phrase “sustainability.” Could we, even now, learn from local Native people? This book tells some stories and offers some good guidance, an aspect of the watershed restoration project that I had not quite expected. If you liked the beautiful, powerful Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer [Milkweed Editions] you’ll appreciate their efforts, I’m sure. Kudos!

In any case, Heffner & Warner’s eagerness to integrate the history of Native peoples and honor their capacity to live well within the watershed is a great value of the book.  How great it is that a major blurb on the back cover is from Ron Yob, Chairman of the Grand River Bands of Ottawa Indians, who found it “extremely interesting.” He is right in saying that it is “written for the benefit of all living creation.” And non-living creatures, too, all of which, as these Reformed Christians so deeply understand, praise their Maker and give glory to God.

There are three units or parts of Reconciliation… that frame the telling of this story that unfolded year after year in Grand Rapids. The first they call “Discovered Ignorance” which is how they came to recognize the depths of the problem From some of Ken-O-Sha’s geologic past to the Plaster Creek watershed today, they explore the native peoples that once cared well for the river known (then, as the name, translated, indicates) for plentiful Walleyes.

And they tell how pollution was an early feature of white European colonial impact — missionaries and pioneers and those running trading outposts discovered gypsum along the banks of the Ken-O-Sha and they mined it fiercely, creating buildings and barges and railways to send the cheap fertilizer as far away as San Francisco. Coupled with the notoriously savage clear cutting of old-growth forests for the lumber barons — Grand Rapids still is considered one of the fine centers of the furniture industry — the stewardly care for the ecology of Western Michigan has been a disaster. Such disregard for creation came to a symbolic head when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland (just a bit south) caught fire in 1969! Of course, the polluted river had caught fire plenty of times before that and it was legendary in those parts, south of Lake Erie, the lake into which it flows. Ken-O-Sha, or Plaster Creek, flows directly into the Grand River, which not far away flows into the beautiful, but troubled, Lake Michigan. This, frankly, is part of the story of most of our regions and it is good to see how these authors invite us not to guilt but to honesty about our past and possibly present complicity in ecological brokenness.

After two chapters on naming the problems, the important Part 2 “acknowledges our complicity” by teaching us more about the interactions between the Ottawa and European immigrants, the fascinating development of European settlement in West Michigan and what they’ve learned from careful archival study about the impact upon Plaster Creek. There have been violent episodes in the harsh periods of colonization and too often attitudes of white, Christian, supremacy (that are seen yet today.) Their section called “Worldview Contrasts and Ecological Fallout” is a tremendous case study in how various groups perceive and engage in the world around them and what those with a more modernist worldview might learn from indigenous wisdom.

As social and natural scientists informed by what some might call a neo-Calvinist or even somewhat Kuyperian sort of world-and-life orientation — Calvin University is known for its legacy of “thinking Christianly” as they integrate faith and scholarship —  these author’s insights into the influences of world-and-life social imaginaries is delightfully evident; that a book on a major, scholarly publishing house like Michigan State University Press includes footnotes from the likes of James Sire, for instance, is notable. Naturally, our authors are fluent with many of our best eco-thinkers and writers, from Wendell Berry to David Orr, from Fred Bahnson and Norman Wirzba to Gretel Van Wieren, and the important Doreceta Taylor and the inspiring Richard Louv. It isn’t every day we see citations from Ched Myers’s edited volume, Watershed Discipleship: Reinhabiting Bioregional Faith and Practice but, obviously, it is important for them. You want “ecological literacy”? Dave can tell you the names of hundreds of plants and they both know the best books and authors which makes reading this a learned delight. Hooray!)

The biggest part of this 280 page book is Part 3, “The New Story of Plaster Creek: Committing to Restoration and Reparations” which is not only a history of their multi-pronged approach but  nearly a handbook for social change organizers anywhere. What a delight learning how they wrote grants, organized work crews, evoked artists and poets, partnered with civic leaders, faith leaders, science writers, municipal officials. How diligent, playful, and (often) effective they have been. What a joy — I’m not just saying this! — to be caught up in the energy of living out hopes and dreams, experiencing frustrations and set-backs, learning and teaching, building networks and finding new ways to engage others in caring for ecological responsibility in the local watershed.  They tell of working with schools and civic groups, with children and youth, and, obviously, with churches. Interestingly, in one page-turning part that built momentum, they are invited to speak at a local mosque, helping Muslim congregants do their part in caring for the environment. (And there is always the very real, human touch: they admit how Dave thought he was supposed to take his shoes off when entering the mosque, until he realized, later, he was the only one in sock feet. Ha!)

This last third of the book is thrilling, I’d say, and, as many books as I have read about environmental care, Biblical earthkeeping, stewardship, and the like, I have never quite pieced together quite so much about the incredible significance of watersheds and bioregions. (We live near the mighty Susquehanna, that flows into the Chesapeake, by the way, and there is good, good work going on in our area with The Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association, The Watershed Alliance of York,  etc.) Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed is, obviously, a Great Lakes story, but, frankly, it could be easily adapted and used anywhere; it serves as a way to not only motivate and challenge but guide us all into being River Keepers.  If you think this is something your not interested in, I’d invite you to prayerfully give it a go — who knows, it might stir something. Who doesn’t value clean water and lovely streams and rivers?

There are colorful chapters on “developing engaged citizens through place-based education” and how to “asses the problems with applied research.” You will be delighted by their stories of “reconciling the human-nature relationship through on-the-ground restoration.” I learned the phrase “green infrastructure” by which they mean various sorts of low-impact development plans to enhance local ecosystems and “rainscaping” like vegetated buffers, channels, rain gardens, bioswales and such.

I mentioned that Gail has already written (a chapter called “Making the Visible Invisible”) on environmental racism and the structures and cultural habits that tend to put people of color at greater risk from toxic sludge and the like, so it is no surprise that this comes up in their fight for Plaster Creek / Ken-O-Sha. They have a section called “Loving Our Downstream Neighbors — a Call for Environmental Justice” which is informed and at times, dramatic.

How local congregations have taken up their call to public justice and cared well for their own facilities is a lovely part of the chapter on engaging faith communities. They tell a variety of stories (including a neat partnership with the National Wildlife Federation and their Sacred Grounds programs resourcing local congregations learn to plant and steward native plantings.

Ahh, and it isn’t always easy — they tell in the book about the EPA calling them asking them to create plans to educate churches upstream about the detriment of dumping farming wastes into the creek; when the feds call the local Christians saying that the polluters “… won’t listen to us but maybe they’ll listen to you”, you know it is a fascinating — and urgent — story!

(And, let’s face it — I suspect most of us don’t have freinds who end up with their smiling pictures on the EPA website, congratulating them on their hard work. Reading this book will help you understand why. Hooray.)

Some of you will love the chapter about raising up young ecological leaders — watch the inspiring Youtube video from the website Plaster Creek Steward showing highschool kids doing good work, trained by PCS.  All will be inspired by the last piece, entitled “An Invitation to the Work of Reconciliation Ecology Everywhere.”  Wow.

Two other quick notes about the book:

One of the ways David and Gail got academic colleagues and students involved was recruiting some to do oral histories of those who once lived near, or still do live within, the Plaster Creek Watershed. The Plaster Creek Oral History Project has not only been charming and interesting but really, really important. These first-hand accounts of the memories of the creek of older folks, the stories of post-WW II neighborhoods and their relationship with the streams and watershed, the stories of modern-day, local, urban kids or contemporary testimony of regional farmers, all make the book come alive. You will not want to miss a single one of these fascinating transcriptions of ordinary folks (some quite unaware of the dangers of chemical pollutants, say, and others who were very involved in working for cleaner waterways.) From stormwater run-off specialists to those working in the sewage-treatment industry, from the mayor’s office to ordinary folk who played and fished in the stream, these first hand stories are magnificent and occasionally quite arresting. This brings the book context and texture — even when the conversation partners called it a “crick.” I get that!

Also, and importantly, their language of reconciliation ecology is somewhat unique, but may be the vanguard of new and faithful ways to describe our projects of the future. They insist that God desires reconciliation between estranged people groups and between people and the creation itself. The interface of peacemaking and justice work between races, genders, and other conflicted groups with the disorientation we all experience when not in harmony with the creation itself is the nexus (they might say) of their gospel work.

That this vision is underpinned by their deep, serious, convictions about Christ’s redemptive arc and the creation-wide scope of Kingdom restoration should be evident, but the work, somewhat funded by Calvin University and inspired by their own life as disciples of the Lord of creation, fundamentally Christian as it may be, isn’t the focus of the book. In plain language, it bears witness to their faith and talks about congregations and worldviews, but it doesn’t feel like a “Christian” book, let alone a theological treatise. It is, of course, shaped and informed by their own wholistic Christian worldview, but it can easily be read by one and all as it is for the general public. In fact, that is one of the great genius points of this profound study — it is for the reading public, to mobilize ordinary folks, for the sake of the world.

This book deserves a wide readership, in part because it is so well told. And it does hope to inspire action; in that sense it has an agenda. It wants to serve the creation that is both glorious and groaning. The first line in the first page of the preface of Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed notes, “We live in a world of beauty and of wounds.”  After a few sentences, they say, “This book tells a story of splendor and provision while also revealing a story of disorder and degradation.”

This is the sort of book that we need more of — thoughtful, Christianly done, but with faith more between the lines, happily accessible to readers of various philosophical views, working out a Christian worldview for the sake of this world of “beauty and of wounds.” I am honored to tell you about it. Beth and I hope many purchase it and commit to working through it over this next season or so. I’m sure you will learn a lot. Maybe, just maybe, it will inspire us all to be agents of God’s reconciling work, even into our own unique places, embedded as we are, in our own particular watersheds.

“A fascinating and moving tale, and a fascinating and powerful book. Reconciliation ecology is a discipline we badly need, and its motto could well be “Unhealthy water reveals unhealthy relationships.” — Bill McKibben, author The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon

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Please know, you can pre-order anything, anytime, from us. We’re delighted to secure your place on a waiting list for any forthcoming titles. Almost anything. Anytime. Here’s one that’s coming soon… It’s 20% off, too, as usual here at BookNotes. Thanks for reading.

For the last few days Beth and I have been at the breathtakingly exceptional Festival of Faith & Writing, sponsored biennially by Calvin University. Due to the dangers of Covid, they didn’t run the event for a few years, so this was a big year, bringing back old friends and new writers, publishers, booklovers and readers of all sorts. Due to work schedules, we’ve not attended often, actually, but it is always a great highlight of our year when we do. I am sure there is simply nothing like it anywhere with presentations by poets and novelists, children’s authors and essayists, filmmakers and critics. And a bookstore owner.

Thanks to those there who were so encouraging as I gave a whirlwind summary of our 40 years in the biz. And how about that panel conversation I got to be in with conference Director Jennifer Holberg (of Nourishing Narratives: The Power of Story to Shape Our Faith) and Ann Bogel and Karen Swallow Prior? What an honor to be with these smart women. For those that want a taste of the event, I’d seriously recommend Dr. Holberg’s wonderful book.

Plenary addresses were by Mitali Perkins, former poet laureate Tracy K. Smith, the wonderful Yaa Gyasi, and Anthony Doerr who gave a talk on similes. Wow.

Over the past years there we’ve heard the great Katherine Paterson (whose lecture decades ago really was important for me — she even mentions it in her marvelous autobiography, Stories of My Life) and John Updike and Anne Lamott (we just got her brand new book in, last week, called Somehow: Thoughts on Love) and a workshop by Bruce Cockburn and presentations by Margot Starbuck and talk by James McBride (ooooh — I hope you know his recent novel The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.) As with those older events, the FFW 2024 was excellent; it’s rare for us, being with so many like-minded people who care about the printed page and who champion, in various ways, the reading life.

I suppose it is obvious that these people who are often very serious about Christian convictions but who hold their faith in a manner that makes room for others, who glory in what some might call “common grace”, and who value writing that raises the deepest questions of life (in novels and poetry, especially) that need not hammer down all the doctrinal details — yes, I suppose it is obvious that these are, in many ways, our tribe.

As I said, it was an amazing honor to get to do a workshop presentation, to be on a well-attended  panel (with the energetic new friend Anne Bogel (her little gift book I’d Rather Be Reading is fabulous!) and the brilliant, longer-time pal, Karen Swallow Prior, author, most recently, of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis) and even say a few words at a reception for poet and memoirist Jeanne Murray Walker (celebrating her Slant Book Leaping from the Burning Train: A Poet’s Journey of Faith. I had named that one of my favorite books of last year.) To get to celebrate Beth’s 70th birthday with our dearest friends and to spend days hanging out with book people is a rare joy indeed.

What a blast to hear authors we have written about here at BookNotes — Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See is a modern classic; Cloud Cuckoo Land, which Beth finally loved, is a bit more eccentric.) Yaa Gyasi (her Homegoing is truly epic, a must-read, and the follow-up, Transcendent Kingdom, as I’ve quipped before, is itself transcendent.) Tracy K. Smith’s latest is To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul, about which it has been said to be “a stunning meditation on ritual and collectiveness that explores how older forms of inquiry — from song to prayer to ways of public gathering —might help us all survive violent times and address America’s shared history.” Imani Perry says she is “one of the most beautiful and profound writers of our time.” I very much loved her 2015 memoir Ordinary Light.)

Anyway, it has been busy and exhausting and intimidating and refreshing. Thanks to those who prayed for my talks. We are grateful.

And it is true, so true: we would not have any standing to say anything at these sorts of events if we had not a loyal legion of friends and customers who have supported our efforts over these last decades to somehow reimagine and redefine the nature of a Christian bookstore. I know we’ve not pleased everyone, but we will be forever grateful for those who have hung in there with us, who send us orders regularly, who support our small-town shop here in south-central Pennsylvania. Thank you, readers and book-buyers. Without you, our customers, there would be no Hearts & Minds.

And so, a short but pointed BookNotes, inviting you to pre-order a soon-to-be released book coming from Baker Academic. I’m sure it has the name of a few of you on it, and I’m hoping others will generate some conversations around this forthcoming title. It’s remarkable, if a tad on the heavy side.

Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age Rachel B. Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel M. DeSmith Roberts (Baker Academic) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99 // NOT YET RELEASED – Due May 28, 2024  PRE-ORDER NOW. (Scroll to the end of the column for the easy, secure link to the Hearts & Minds order form page.)

This is a book that captures so much about the nature of reading for people of faith these days that it seemed perfect, now, to highlight it. It is written by three college professors (all who have PhDs from Baylor University) who have followed diligently the recent spate of Christian books about the reading life, the values of reading, and the ways in which books can be an asset to our formation as Christian people. They bring us up to speed with a gracious bunch of hat-tips to authors and books that we love to promote, including:

• Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me by Karen Swallow Prior (T.S. Poetry Press) $19.99
• On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books (Brazos Press) $21.00
• Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish C. Christopher Smith (IVP) $18.00
• Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just Claude Atcho (Brazos Press) $19.99
• The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction Alan Jacobs (Oxford University Press) $21.99
• The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints Jessica Hooten Wilson (Brazos Press) $24.99
• Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice Jessica Hooten Wilson (Brazos Press) $24.99
• Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry Into the News Jeffrey Brilbo (IVP) $27.00

Just their opening introductory chapter — laden with a tone of academese as it sometimes is — is nonetheless thrilling, engaging a growing consensus that reading is a spiritual practice, that fiction and non-fiction both can be used by Godly folks seeking to be more alive to God’s world, and that in a culture that “amuses ourselves to death” with “restless devices”, we simply have to encourage the habits of reading widely and well. We must “care for words in a culture of lies” as Marilyn McEntyre puts it in her wonderful volume of that name.  And, yet, they are not re-iterating what has been said; they are not preaching to the choir. This brings something new and important, if a tiny bit tedious, to the table.

In fact, these authors are being a bit cheeky — carefully so, maybe too carefully so — in suggesting that while these books are helpful and good and proper and even transformational, they, in some ways, miss the mark by not going deep enough. That is, all of these aforementioned books, they claim, are mostly about the content of the books we read; we read in order to (however imaginatively and wisely) grasp the content, or at least be influenced by the content. I did not notice if they discussed C.S. Lewis’s famous lines in Experiments in Criticism that we are not to seek to “use” a book, but to “receive it” but it’s a helpful insight and apropos.

Their call to slower, engaged reading — “deep reading” as they call it — is less about what to read, but how to read.

And (big spoiler alert) they do not think the classic How to Read A Book by Adler and Van Doran is the right approach!

Their argument is bookish and they obviously enjoy reading widely. And they are very aware of the world in which we live, maybe more than most since they are teachers involved in the lives of young adults. There is no doubt —Griffis, Ooms, and Roberts, young, intelligent, women teachers that they are, get it.

They cite just the right stuff in their discussions of digital culture, including the fabulous research done about digital learning [done before the pandemic caused students everywhere to experience online learning, like it or not] called Digital Life Together: The Challenge of Technology for Christian Schools by David L. Smith, Kara Sevensma, Marjorie Terpstra, and Steven McMullen published by Eerdmans. What a joy to see them engaging the work of Maryanne Wolf (Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Reader, Home Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World) and one of the very first serious books about reading that I read, the lovely The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts. Naturally, Nicholas Carr of The Shallows shows up, as does Neil Postman. They are not alarmists about Google or ebooks, but they are helpful by offering a balanced critique and refreshing ways to counter the ubiquity of the virtual and helping us find ways to read well in these digital times. They have a bit about “digital tools and equity”, too, which I found fascinating.

They are also astute about reading literature by and about people of color, of reading books by those different than ourselves, understanding well the liberative results of engaging black books or those written by those who are not from the dominant culture. From The Pedagogy of the Oppressed to James Baldwin through Claude Atchko and Esau McCaulley to bell hooks and, then, authors writing from the perspective of those who have disabilities, they offer fruitful insights. You will be struck, as I was, by their section called “Beyond the Diverse Reading List” offering “inclusive practices to cultivate listeners.” Oh my, this is vital, potent stuff.

By the way, they interact with the work of Daniel Bowman, college English prof (and editor of a fine lit mag / poetry journal) and author of On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, and the Gifts of Neurodiversity. They have a section on “neurodiversity, accommodation and attention.” Kudos, there. Well done!

One of the big projects going on here in Deep Reading — beside the insistence that we must learn how to read in a truly Christian fashion, not merely refining what to read, causes them to look askance at canon-making and book lists — is how the movement promoting the formation of a Christian worldview (especially in Christian higher education, although I’d say, we, too, here at Hearts & Minds) can become wooden, ideological, overly rationalistic. We’ve never tried to promote some dogmatic ideology of “worldview” but I hear their concerns.

There is more than can be said, I suppose, but they learned some of this critique of certain expressions of wordlviewishness, it seems, from the wonderful worldviewish scholar, James K.A. Smith and they happily cite many of his works. From the deepest tracks in Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom to the one from the Top Ten Charts (You Are What You Love: the Spiritual Power of Habit, obviously) they use his work well, reminding us that we are shaped by habits, liturgies, ways of being in the world. The things we do, do things to us. That some people in Christian publishing and conservative circles promoted a rather rigid sort of worldview analysis, as if the notion of “worldview” was pretty much just old-school apologetics, is true enough, but not all uses of that word are connected with that kind of orientation.

(Decades ago some of those who most popularized worldview language in at least some corners of evangelicalism, published a book called After Worldview edited by Matthew Bonzo & Michael Stevens, reflecting on ways not to use worldview rhetoric as a tool against others; it was a plea to rethink worldview language in an era of dogmatic weaponizing of what was once life-giving and imaginative. But I digress.)

I am not ready to say if I understand or agree with the ways Griffis, Ooms, and Roberts critically engage notions of worldviews, but I am glad whenever folks speak out about the things that matter most, and they are surely onto something that I think most Hearts & Minds readers will care about. Again: kudos.  Again, Deep Reading, strikes a chord and is intriguing. You really should consider pre-ordering it.

They use David Smith’s pedagogical work a lot, too, like his “Reading Practices and Christian Pedagogy: Enacting Charity with Texts” found in Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning edited by David L. Smith and James K.A. Smith. They even quote the rare David Smith book (co-written with Barbara Carville) on the habits of hospitality needed to teach foreign languages well, The Gift of the Stranger: Faith, Hospitality, and Foreign Language Learning, which we always carry. All in all, they understand that our social imaginaries, our ways of being in the world, our world-and-life views, are embodied through formative habits, not merely by dumping more data (even if that data is good Kingdom content) into our brains. By drawing on the unrelated Smiths — David and Jamie — they bring a depth and vitality to this project of helping us nurture a big vision of why and how we read and how deep reading can undo and redo our worldviews.

Which brings us back to the main premise of this fabulous, rich, deep, important work.

They believe — and show, in impeccable detail — that reading deeply will equip us to be shaped by virtues that can help us withstand the onslaught of unhelpful forces (shall we call them vices?) emanating from the principalities and powers of our fallen world.  In this sense, this heady study of reading seriously ends up being really, really influential about very basic matters of Christian formation.

They name three relevant vices in the subtitle, and they are potent — distraction, hostility, and consumerism. If reading well can help unseat the power of these disordered forces in our lives, then bring on the books!

And to think we can take pleasure in reading while fighting the unseen forces that surround us? Yes, ma’am. This is great!

These three women are giving us a great assist in spiritual formation and anyone who cares about Biblically-wise, vibrant, intelligent, whole-life discipleship in our culture, will find this immensely helpful and, I’d think, gratifying. It isn’t simple or even always fun, exactly, but it is nicely written, in a serious sort of way, and it is stimulating and challenging and generative. These teachers help us develop practices for discerning wise reading and for them, wise reading can be (must be?) subversive. That is, this is not a book merely making us feel guilty for not adequately wading through the important bibliographies from the classic Western canons.

Rather, Deep Reading says, we must learn to pay attention. (The first chapter is about cultivating temperance — you’ll be fascinated with the connection.) And then, their “prudent reading practices” help us move “beyond dogmatism.”  Wow, this is provocative stuff.

I could offer more, but I’ll note one more thing. They talk a lot about reading communities. They are college educators, so I get that much of their experience is with professional colleagues who fret about efforts to shape their students. But I think many more of us are in “reading communities,” and even if their context is intentionally Christian higher education, if you are in a church, a Sunday school class, an on-line book club, a small group, or whatever, I think these deep reflections on deeper reading would be very influential in your ministry. Their reflection on “conversation as gift-giving” is beautiful stuff. This is not about reading for self-improvement or developing skills or becoming super-smart. The final chapter is about enjoyment, finally about “being human.”

Their earlier critique of consumerism leads them to big questions about what leisure is and the differences between entertainment and amusement. I had forgotten that pithy quote from Screwtape that they cite in a section about “practices that subvert consumerism” where a person says, after death, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.” Wow. This big afterword invites us to “reread.” It is a mighty ending piece, and it may leave you inspired or perplexed. Either way, it is unforgettable.

There are helpful summaries at the end of each chapter of the suggested practices. There are reflective questions to discuss (of course there are — they are inciting us to do this together, to become reading communities, after all.) These resources increase the value of the book quite a lot and you will be glad.

“This book eloquently joins the other voices calling us to soul-forming kinds of reading that can resist our descent into superficiality and hostility. Importantly, it goes beyond them in describing the actual practices that might get us there. All those who use text to teach others should read it. Anyone else who cares about reading and spiritual growth should join them.” — David I. Smith, Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, Calvin University

 

Pre-order this now and we will send it out at our 20% off discounted price as soon as it arrives. 

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