Sorry this is so long. That’s why I placed it as a monthly review column — it’s too long for a BookNotes blog post. But at least I didn’t do numerous posts like I did for Love Does. Whew.
Thanks to those who wrote nice remarks about yesterday’s prelude of a post about the ne
w Rob Bell book, What We Talk About When We Talk About God (HarperOne; regularly $25.99, now on sale for $20.00. Just click on the order link below.) I tried to generate some interest in purchasing the book from us — it’s what we do, after all, as a bookstore — but mostly reminded readers to be gracious and fair in expressing thoughts about Bell or the new book. Like with the 2011 Bellapalooza battle about Love Wins, already some are weighing in with strong views about the new one, even though they admit they haven’t even read the book. We think this is beyond tacky. My piece last night mostly hoped to set a little higher bar for discourse. Writing, as one person did, that this book will be bad because in his last book Bell didn’t use “true Scriptures” simply is inadequate. Saying he is a bad boy looking for attention, again, just won’t do. So, if you didn’t see that post about how to engage this new book, you might appreciate it. I’m no saint when it comes to on-line debating, but I do wish to honor God and be more understanding, and kindly. I bet you do, too.
But I did promise a few more thoughts about the new book.
It is hard to be succinct since reading Bell is, for me, a very enjoyable, thought-proving, and yet sometimes a frustrating experience. I was irked by the second page, in fact. Ha. I needn’t digress about my own experience of turning his pages, but I can at least say this: I don’t mind his style. I like his moody versification, his writing as if narrating a Nooma video. Some don’t care for it — fine. Some go too far, though, suggesting it is somehow intentionally vague (which I think is an unfair accusation: one can say it may be ambiguous, or sloppy, but to say it is intentionally slippery enters into a judgement of his motives, which isn’t yours to know, without evidence, at least.)
So, mostly I like his style; in fact, it actually helps me focus on his thoughts, line by line. I thought a few of the Nooma’s, by the way, were absolutely brilliant and many were quite good (even if a few were disappointing, in both style and content.) But saying that his books can be read/heard as one might hear a Nooma I mean to be a very sincere compliment.
Sure, I read dense theology sometimes, and still – when I want to think about God – I might pull down a copy of the rigorous J. I. Packer’s Knowing God or mull over the lovely depth of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and I hope our readers know A.W. Tozer’s Pursuit of God. Rob Bell himself routinely (and in this new one, too) raves about the tedious, but important, The Divine Conspiracy by the remarkable Dallas Willard. Most of us like different sorts of books in our literary diet, and so appreciate Bell’s bohemian edge, even if it isn’t the only kind of medium we like. People that gripe about his style strike me as a bit myopic. Would you critique a poem for being a poem? A reflective meditation for being a meditation?
Further, I like books with which I can converse, and his flamboyant style is well suited for this. I like books to which I can talk back, scribble in the margins, smack my head, call my wife. Listen to this, can you believe this? Agree or not, being provoked to think, to engage, to exercise the mind, to piece together parts of a growing worldview and wonder what difference it may make, all of this makes for a good read, and Bell delivers in spades.
Maybe you are a very young Christian, or at least unfamiliar with reliable Christian books about basic Christian beliefs. I don’t think this interesting Bell book will hurt you – and it just might help! – but there are tons of other books that lay out the basic orthodox views of faith with greater systematic clarity, and you should own a few. Those are important to read, and we regularly recommend them to our customers depending on what they tell us about their needs. New to Christian reading? Unsure of the basics? Mentoring a new believer? Shoot us an email and let’s talk. But don’t badmouth Bell because this book is not quite right for that purpose. Okay?
In yesterday’s post I wondered who is intended as the primary audience for Rob Bell. As I insinuated, it seems to me that there are several key audiences. Certainly, it is suited for seekers, agnostics, those who have given up on God. It is an old apologetic retort, but it is common to hear it said that when somebody says they don’t believe in God, we might reply “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. Chances are, I don’t believe in that God, either.” So right!
R
ob Bell is very effective in reaching out and speaking with those who feel exiled from traditional faith communities, who are ex-churched or de-churched, or even hostile to Christian convictions. There are lots of people who may not feel comfortable in the most conventional of congregations (conservative or liberal) but yet are willing to consider Biblical claims when shared creatively, as Bell can. It is a cliché to say he is post-modern, and almost as clichéd to say he is artsy, even if he is as cool as they come, cites a number of very cool bands, uses his share of irony, and embodies – as do his stylized book covers – a very particular aesthetic. It’s how he rolls, it’s who he is, it is his own subculture. (He mentioned Sigur Ros in his live streaming event on Tuesday — see what I mean?) Nobody writes off the work of Larry the Cable guy because of his cut-off flannel sleeves or the business casual slacks of Bill Hybels as we works the suburban crowd or the numbered jerseys of the many sports stars who have been given platforms to express their understanding of the gospel in terms to which jocks can relate. To criticize Bell because he has a certain look is unfair and I think betrays a misunderstanding of cross cultural witness. I do not think this is a marketing ploy but it is just who Rob is, and it is just who naturally likes his work, his ethos, his books. Coach Tony Dungy talks about Christian leadership using sports images while wearing expensive athletic shoes; Bell cites ironic mustaches and en vogue art installations.
Yet, as I said last night, I think others, too, are in that tribe of core readers, besides the hip un-churched and the interested but exiled. There are many of us who are not necessarily jaded, not de-churched, but we are sensitive to those who are. We want to be sure faith isn’t unnecessarily turning people off. Like Rob, we have heard harmful things said about God, and harmful things said in the name of God. We want this to stop, and we are looking for allies in the campaign to share the gospel in meaningful ways, learning how to contextualize faith in and to the 21st century, especially to younger adults. So we are drawn to Bell’s honesty and his hopeful vision, appreciate his speaking out against the dumber versions of faith, and his creative and earnest desire to help those alienated from faith imagine a different kind of religious exper
ience than those that have turned them off.
As he says in his apropos Oldsmobile metaphor, for many, faith is outdated, for then, not now, for others, not themselves. Kind of like the great old cars that are not even made any more and are soon to be seen as merely a relic of the olden days. Bell, it should be repeated, does not say that God has to change or be made to seem fashionable, but only that our way of telling the old old story may need to be updated; how we talk about God is what may need to be revisited. (I wish he were more clear about this in the video, frankly, but I think is is adequately clear about it in the book.) Do you disagree with this idea, as a matter of principle? Why or why not? Saying God doesn’t change isn’t necessary to say, since that isn’t the point here, as Bell does not suggest otherwise. God is God. We don’t make up what we think God should be like. But we may need to wonder why ways of talking about God and faith and salvation are considered by some to be irrelevant, or worse. Bell does not use the word missional or evangelistic, but those of us with a heart for outreach will surely appreciate his intent, here (or at least we should.) For those bloggers who have already taken him to task for this “we have to update God” meme, I’d suggest reconsidering, since that is not what he says, and I don’t think that is what he means.
And there are other readers. You, perhaps. You maybe are not a cynic or agnostic. You aren’t particularly interested or called to a ministry of reaching out to design-conscious, edgy, young post-Christian professionals who are jaded and de-churched. Maybe you are in a solid church, and know most of the right answers, you trust God and know His Word. But you still feel like something is wrong. Something isn’t computing, stuff you hear doesn’t fully seem right. Or answers with which you were once satisfied no longer ring as true as they once did. This can be scary, or exhilarating, or both, and I think Bell’s way of talking about things may be helpful for you.
You realize, I assume, that there are quandaries galore. There just are. For instance, many churches thank God for specific good things that have occurred, but does that mean God has caused the bad things? (For every person for whom we give a “praise report” there are more whose similar prayers were not answered in that happy way, right?) We thank God if a tornado shifts it’s course and doesn’t hit our town, but what about the town it did hit? What we say when we say things about God’s work in the world is complicated and it isn’t wrong, and may be helpful, to just admit that. So, maybe, this book isn’t just for the skeptic seekers or the jaded cynics, the prodigals or the exiles (or those who want to learn how to be in conversation with them.) Maybe it is also for anyone who has the curiosity (faith? courage?) to want to learn more, to follow their noses, to think through some big ideas about the very nature of what we can know about the God who is there.
So, give it to your scientific agnostic friends, give it to your cynical de-churched friends, and give it to anybody who wants a fresh, inviting take on some very heavy questions. Young or old, seeker or disciple, scientist or artist, I think there is content in What We Talk About When We Talk About God that can point you to new and appropriate ways to think about God and to embrace the goodness and wonder of God’s Spirit in our midst. As I said last night, it isn’t the only book to read, and it doesn’t cover everything – not at all. It is not prefect. But what it does, it does with verve and passion and candor, fascinating illustrations and great stories. As a bookseller, I think this is a fine specimen, and you will get your monies worth. (By the way, it is available as an audio book and we stock the CD as well.)
WHAT HE DOES NOT SAY
What does Mr. Bell actually say about how we talk about God?
Well, (sorry) first I want to note, briefly, two things he does not say, which I think are notable.
He doesn’t say anything about the various attributes of God – God’s omnipresence, God’s holiness, God’s power, and the like. At least he doesn’t catalog them systematically and explicate them. Other books do that (it is a time-honored habit, although the Bible itself, we might note, doesn’t actually give us a formal list like that, but we pick it up along the way of narrative and songs and mysteries.) Anyway, if a person isn’t even sure there is a divine being or intelligent designer or higher power, detailed descriptions of omniscience or immutability maybe isn’t what’s needed. (Some have argued that these ways of getting at our knowledge of God is itself perhaps more entangled with pagan Greek philosophy than the Bible, anyway, but that is a different discussion.) For those who are convinced the God of the Bible, or at least the one they’ve heard about, is not glorious, perhaps even a moral monster, we need a different way to even get at this question than a listing of attributes.
Secondly, Bell doesn’t spend much time telling us that much of what we know about God is revealed to us in the Scriptures. He cites the Scriptures, so there is this clear assumption that they are the primary resource for what we know (that, and our experience, itself a common enough insight.) But he doesn’t go on about this. Many will wish he’d have talked about that, this question of revelation, and how we know anything about God at all. (Happily, as we will see, he is clear that the best illustration of who God is is seen in the person of Jesus, so he is more than solid there.) So that, in my view, is a weakness, to not even discuss this.
Well, if he doesn’t offer a standard fare cataloging of the attributes of God, and he doesn’t offer a perspective on the authority of Scripture as that which mediates the stories of God for us, what does he do?
What We Talk About When We Talk About God is fairly simple in format and the chief points it makes. And, I think, he right about them.
His three big points about God are preceded by three big preliminaries. These are important for Bell, and for us, and are about half the book. Let’s start there.
HUM // OPEN
Not unlike the Nooma videos, and his other books, if I recall, each chapter title is one evocative word. After a grand opening chapter called “Hum” where he suggests we all know there is something bigger than us, something going on, something alive and meaningful loose in the world, and in our lives, Bell invites us in a chapter called “Open” to be open to the plausibility of God, and he does this mostly by explaining quantum physics, black holes, the expanding universe and a whole lot of wacky stuff like Einstein’s theory of relativity and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
This is the same Rob Bell the science guy we met in his amazing long-form DVD “Everything Is Spiritual” so we shouldn’t be surprised, and it is very nicely done. This is as painless and wondrous a study of this stuff as you can find, so it will be beneficial to those of us who struggle to stay awake, despite the wonder of it all. (The next step up for lay folks can be found in the short and glorious book by Barbara Brown Taylor called The Luminous Web: Essays on Science and Religion (Cowley; $13.95) which has a similar jaw-dropping wide-eyed wonder to it, offering a theological/doxological response to these stupefying discoveries. Rob himself offers some other suggestions in the endnotes, including the work of Anglican physicist, John Polkinghorne. We carry his books, too, by the way.)
Bell says we all know there is some sort of Something going on out there as we consider the magnitude of the universe – or inside us, as we are enjoying a good meal with dear friends and we know it has moved us deeply, in a soulful sort of way. Why do we feel as we do when we see a newborn baby? Many human experiences seem to only make sense if they point to something Beyond us. He is poetic and honest and good on this, very good. As another excellent book puts it (that I describe briefly below) we are “yearning for more.”
This is nothing all that new, of course — it’s just the argument from design spoken with edgy examples for post-moderns; it’s the the “signals of transcendence” argument for ordinary folks, as we are invited to wonder why we glory at the birth of a baby or are so stunned when we hear of heroism or tragedy or beauty. Life simply is not meaningless, there is a hum just below the surface, and if you don’t think this is helpful to say when you’re talking with atheists or agnostics, I suspect you haven’t talked deeply with folks like that very much. The sublime reality of the reality of God around us in this glorious but sin-damaged universe can only be said in countless metaphors and images, and Bell offers us a fabulous way to get it said, one more time. What he says and how he says it isn’t all we need to say – Something is Out There – but it is a good start, and he does it delightfully, with a moral seriousness that is more than commendable, it is honorable. In his heart, it seems he is an evangelist, wanting to share gospel news, blessings of grace and peace, to those distrustful or immunized against it.
I think of conversations I have had about these most deeply important things and I am nearly moved to tears just wondering if my agnostic friends would resonate with this…
CRITIQUE OF SCIENTISM
An important part of this conversation is a huge, huge matter in our culture (and has been for more than a hundred years, as he explains) and What We Talk About… broaches it head on with gusto. It is the matter of scientism, the ideology that goes beyond saying that science is good, that the deductions we make using the scientific method can yield amazing data about how the world works, but insists that this is the only way to know anything at all.
Beauty, love, justice, dignity? How does one measure such things? To those under the boot heel of scientism – perhaps the largest competing religion to Christianity in the last few hundred years – we cannot talking meaningfully about such matters. If it cannot be measured, it cannot be known as true. (I was told this directly by more than one college professor in my days as a special ed major!) We may experience things like that — awe, beauty, love — but they are inconsequential, chemical firings in an evolving brain, and we cannot speak of such things as anything other than cause and effect, data, chemicals, accidents of nature, so to speak. This is sometimes called scientific materialism (not meaning that greedy scientists want a lot of consumer stuff, but that all that matters is matter.) This reductionism to the merely natural/material is a dead-end worldview, and fundamentally inhumane. Interestingly, Bell says that our best scientists themselves reject this view. I don’t know how true that is, how many scientists reject naturalistic reductionism, but the mystery and wonder of the world is certainly discussed by the likes of Einstein, just for once example. (It was his call to wonder, you might remember, that led Madeline L’Engle to study quantum physics, deepen her Christian faith, and write Wrinkle in Time.) One needn’t fully agree with all of the woozy Ken Wilber stuff that Bell is enamored with to celebrate his primary point: there is some weird goings on in this crazy world of ours, and most of it points to something grand, nearly inexplicable, and many of the deepest scientific thinkers are nearly mystical about it. String theorists nearly sound like poets. Scientism and naturalism is boring and intellectually unsustainable in comparison.
An aside. Last week we had the opportunity to set up a book display at a Veritas Forum discussion at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania. The agenda – which attracted up towards 1000 participants – was to explore this question: is scientific knowledge the only true knowledge? A winsome Christian professor from MIT, Dr. Ian Hutchinson, exposed the hegemony of this sort of scientism, and we sold his book with a very important title: Monopolizing Knowledge: A Scientist Refutes Religion-Denying, Reason-Destroying Scientism (Lulu; $18.95.) An popular atheist professor from U of Penn replied, and the event was educational, enlightening in some ways, and altogether cordial. But Hutchinson the scientist is right, and in reading Rob Bell this week, I realized, again, how important his thesis is. “Monopolizing Knowledge” is a way to describe how traditional ways of knowing and therefore traditional religions have been marginalized or mocked in the modern world, that scientific naturalism, itself founded on shaky presuppositions, cannot adequately account for the very nature of the complex universe we all experience. (Ahh, remember that Walt Whitman poem, When I Heard the Learned Astronomer?)
Bell is not strident in rebuking this dumb idol, but he makes no bones about it: such a mechanistic view is not liberal or open-minded or generous, but is closed-minded and ideological and stuffy. I wonder if Bell been reading Hutchinson?
Another aside: I have mentioned Dallas Willard. He has written amazing books about the process of becoming more Christ-like, works like the aforementioned The Divine Conspiracy (HarperOne), The Spirit of the Disciplines (HarperOne) and Renovation of the Heart (NavPress.) He is interested in questions of spiritual formation and disciple-making. But he is also a top-notch philosopher, and has done in his own profession some important work on how we know what we know, and what kind of knowing counts. He has written about this, and although it is a tad heady, it is very important. You should know his book Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (HarperOne.) It has gotten blurbs by the likes of sociologist Peter Berger. Richard Foster calls it a “must read” and says, that Willard “focuses like a laser beam on the issue of moral knowledge as a
legitimate source for understanding reality and applying it to daily
life.” I wonder if Rob Bell is reading this one of Dallas Willard?
Another aside. Bell does not explore this question, but we might as well bring it up: if there is only a closed system of atoms and material, and no possibility of Something Else, that is, if mere naturalism is the worldview that is true, then it also must be said (although few are courageous enough to follow this out to its logical consequence) that therefore there can be no binding right or wrong. My friend Dick Cleary wrote a good novel about this, set on a modern college campus where the monopolizing of knowledge has been being played full court. In The Absence of God (Xulon Press; $24.99) is a captivating fictional story that imagines the conversations among faculty and students who want to be revolted by a sadistic killer loose on campus, but are unclear how–given what they’ve been taught about relativism and atheism–to make moral judgments against it. If there is no God, there can be no absolute truth, and therefore no real right or wrong, so whose to say, ya know? It is a book about campus life, faculty politics, collegiate football, a bit of romance, and a suspenseful thriller, too, but it is finally an exploration about the reductionism and inhumanity of the modernist worldview that says what you see is all you get. I wonder if Bell has been reading Cleary?
BOTH
The next preliminary chapter doesn’t take much to explain, but it is fascinating. It is called “Both” and, as you can guess, Bell criticizes black/white dichotomous thinking, and insists that this is part of our starting problem when thinking about religious truth and God and faith. Things are most often both/and, not either/or, he says. This could get funky, and I suspect it does, but Bell is persuasive insisting that simple answers and knee-jerk reactions and bolting down rigid formulaic replies aren’t adequate to explain the deepest matters of the heart. One could say that this is a “straw man” argument but I think that it mostly is not, and to say so is nearly a cheap shot. There are, in fact, overly simplistic formulas and narrowed down views of truth and God that are too often promoted, with no questions or nuanced allowed, and this is not good or helpful, and Mr. Bell is not wrong to say so. Not everyone with orthodox views is such a reductionist and it would be silly to suggest that traditional faith always leads to dry, dead black/white constructions. Bell draws on the classic Promise of Paradox by Parker Palmer here, if that gives you a sense of where he’s coming from. Yet, as Trevin Wax at the Gospel Coalition has noted, traditional, robust, historic orthodox faith holds many paradoxes, perhaps more profoundly, than the somewhat one-sided “God is for you” view of Bell’s book.
This both/and approach is important to Bell, though, and he makes his point talking about a very honest, forthright, but kind counselor he had once. Of him, Bell says,
He was kind and humble and open, and yet firm and rock solid and unshakable.
All at the same time.
He was a man of faith,
deeply grounded in his convictions,
and yet those firm convictions didn’t close him down or harden him or make him brittle and close minded; they had the exact opposite effect. They seemed to make him more flexible and limber and engaging.
Like a tree,
planted near the water,
with deep roots.
A storm comes and the tree doesn’t break because it’s ground enough to… bend.
He continues,
I believe this is one of the most urgent questions people are asking at this time about the very nature of faith: can convictions and humility coexist as the dance partners we need them to be?
I say yes, they can. I have seen it up close, and it’s possible. It requires that we pay as much attention to how we are talking as to what we are talking about, and it requires us to leave the paradox as it is, the tension unresolved, holding our convictions with humility.
THE THREE BIG WORDS
WITH // FOR // AHEAD
You are going to have to read the book yourself to get to the heart of his teaching, and grapple with the implications, but it is found most clearly in three central chapters. His one word starters are “With” (as in God is with us) “For” (God is for us) and “Ahead” (God is calling us into a future of God’s own making, a restoring/healing/hope that is already on the move.)
The first half of What We Talk About… is not at all inconsequential – these questions with which he starts are vital, and I am glad to have allowed Bell to remind me of them, for my own sake, and to give me more tools and insights as I speak with others.
I am glad to be called to attend to the hum in and around all things, to be reminded of the inadequacy of scientistic ideologies that are closed to wonder and mystery, even in spite of the direction the greatest scientific discoveries are pointing us, and for the invitation to a both/and, wholistic vision of the meaning of life that is more than brittle formulas. An early review noted that these sorts of questions seem themselves to have a Hebraic stamp on them. I hope this is not “foolishness to the Greeks” but it may be. On the other hand, in this new postmodern era, these reflections themselves offer wise hints towards bearing witness in fruitful ways. Scientism has its limits and despite the upswing of the “new atheists” it seems that many people know, deeply, that there is more to life than meets the eye. Geesh, just watch TV for one night and look at the best-seller list of highbrow novels.
But it is the second half of What We Talk About When We Talk About God that will be most interesting to some. It explores how the Bible teaches that God is with us, upholding every bit of life in this material world; God is known in Jesus Christ, Immanuel, which makes evident that God is truly for us, which draws us into God’s rescue work in a world made new. His discussions of the cross are fine, and the role of the Spirit is interesting and obviously informed by the magisterial work of Jurgen Multmann. (Bell cites as “incredible” Moltmann’s The Spirit of Life in his endnotes. Do I need to mention that we stock a number of the famous German’s books? Yes, we do.)
You should grapple with this yourself, but I was frustrated that Bell seems disinterested in the sovereign transcendence of God. That is, he is so intent on telling us about God’s nearness, that he avoids talk of holiness, Otherness, and such. And, in this “advance” bit, he seems to suggest that everyone, everywhere, is caught up in this good news, an implication of the position developed in his last book, a view that leaves some Biblical teaching out, or so it seems to me. You will hopefully talk about this kind of thing with others as you are provoked to deeper thoughts by reading this for yourself. I am glad Bell offers good news and seems so full of hope, but I also hope it isn’t mere wishful thinking, a one-sided account of the end for which the world was made.
Bell’s helpful teaching about the way in which God is so very near all things, and how God’s own Word upholds all things is good. Again, as I said last night, this is not pantheism, a wrong-headed view he directly renounces. (Some may call it panentheism and that will be debated and criticized, I predict.) Call it what you will, but it is, I think, just what the Bible teaches. You should see Barbara Brown Taylor’s lovely Altar in This World: A Geography of Faith (HarperOne; $14.99) for a wonderful set of meditations on this; we have a whole shelf of these “finding God in the ordinary” sorts of ruminations, by the way, and Bell suggests a few in his own endnotes, too.
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br />Bell’s view of the immanence of God, and God’s upholding Word of power, over ground that can now be called “holy” is something close to what Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd taught, I think, and leads more conventional theologians to the doctrine of creational ordinances, the discovery of which can happen through common grace. That Bell sees God’s hand in all manner of things and sees the flourishing of the planet as part of God’s merciful desires in a world Christ loves, shouldn’t be shocking, although some may find it somehow irreligious.
I hope you know Richard Mouw’s fine book on this notion of common grace called He Shines In All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eerdmans; $14.00.) If Bell’s exotic vision sounds controversial, perhaps critics should read the exquisitely careful Mouw — who draws on that fine line from the famous hymn “This Is Our Father’s Word” — and then go back and re-read Bell. Or maybe serious readers should struggle with the huge argument made in the weighty Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement by Stephen Bouma-Prediger and Brian Walsh (Eerdmans; $27.00) who make a powerful, intriguing, complex case for why we feel so ill at ease, nearly displaced for our earthly homes (and for some, literally so), and how bad theology is partially to blame. It opens up remarkably just how such displacement from place leads to a less than sustainable economy, carelessness about the environment, and our needy brothers and sisters. In great and prophetic detail, this is the sort of stuff that Bell’s argument about God’s nearness to all creation, God’s saving work for us, and God’s restoring work around us naturally leads us to.
SO
Which leads to the last chapter of What We Talk About When We Talk About God called “So.” I have my tongue in my cheek a little when I say there ought to be a publishing world law: every book should have to have a chapter like this at the end, asking “So what?”
For Mr. Bell, this isn’t a tacked-on quick ending, an epilogue, but a substantial and vital rumination on how all this matters. This is the part where he lists a handful of peculiar illustrations, and a few people who had heard about this right away mocked him for saying he was going to talk about monkeys eating peanuts, for instance. Well, hey, the monkey/peanut eating research is pretty darn amazing, and it works well as an illustration. Bell uses some other equally fabulously interesting illustrations to get to his point about what N.T. Wright might call “realized eschatology.” In Bell’s rubric, it is how we are pulled into the future of God, by God, into a way of life that is Christ-like and perceives the presence of God in all things.
Here, in this last strong chapter, Bell offers some very helpful suggestions about seeing God behind our common sayings (getting something off our chest; being struck in such ways that we go “over the moon” etc.) and how we might confess our sins to one another, being in touch more with our shadow sides (which, too, disclose God’s activity in our lives and can become holy ground.) He alludes to some neuroscience research, invites us to consider ways to be more integrated as whole people, becoming more Christ-like in the process. Not surprisingly, he mentions architecture and aesthetics, reminding us (has he been reading Jamie Smith?) that embodied practices and habits learned in concrete communities matter profoundly. I like this call to (counter-cultural) reverential practices that might help us re-enchant our daily lives and help create the sort of renewal in the world we long for. Be the change you want to see, you know… Again, this is helpful, good stuff, but not terribly controversial. It is fresh and fascinating and funny and I enjoyed it a lot. You just might, too. And I bet you know somebody who would.
Bell puts it eloquently in the second to last page (before a less than satisfying closing) when he describes Paul writing in Philippians 1:6
Paul does something really, really clever here in this letter that many of his contemporary Jewish writers often did: he uses particular words in a particular order so that he can say multiple things at the same time. Paul uses the words begin and good work and complete very deliberately; those are loaded words, because they’re used in that same order in the Genesis creation poem that begins the Bible… So when Paul, a man thoroughly versed in the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, uses those particular words in that particular order in his letter to his friends, he’s connecting their story to the creation of the universe.
His point is that the same creative bang that formed the universe is unleashed in us through our trust in what God is doing in the world through Jesus. His insistence is that this extraordinary energy in all its diverse and expansive forms is deeply personal and readily available and on our side.
I believe this is true.
HERE ARE SOME OTHER BOOKS THAT COME TO MIND
Here are a handful of books that I thought of when I read through What We Talk About When… This is not to say that any of these were influential to Bell or that these authors would appreciate being connected to Bell’s project. I like the head-bone’s-connected-to-the-neck-bone approach where one thing sort of leads to another. Check these out.
Yearning for More: What Our Longs Tell Us About God and Ourselves Barry Morrow (IVP) $15.00 If you liked his opening chapter “the hum” this will be amazingly helpful, really interesting, and I am sure you’ll order more to share with others. Kenneth Boa writes the foreword where he affirms the author for “a penchant for leveraging culture to illuminate timeless spiritual issues.” This is one of the best books of the year, and I very highly recommend it.
Monopolizing Knowledge: A Scientist Refutes Religion-Denying, Reason-Destroying Scientism Ian Hutchinson (Lulu) $18.95 I wrote about this above, and, again, suggest it as a great example of one of the largest philosophical matters of our time. Lewis approached this in The Abolition of Man and it is the topic of the amazing recent Oxford University Press book Where the Conflict Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga. Even more philosophical, the atheist philosopher of science Thomas Nagel recently released, to much publicity in journals of opinion, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinist Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (Oxford University Press.) Hutchinson’s is new and interesting and accessible, and a fine one with which to start.
Rationality and the Calvinian Tradition edited by Henk Hart, Johan Van Der Hoeven & Nicholas Wolterstorff (Wipf & Stock) $58.00 This rare book used to be on waiting lists at used bookstores everywhere, and is finally been quietly re-issued. These were the papers from a hugely important and much-talked about conference in the early 1980s co-sponsored by the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, asking this major question of what is the best way to explain the legitimate role of reason (while rejecting Rationalism) within Reformed thinking. If Rob Bell has helped us expose the secularizing assumptions of Enlightenment modernity and its idol of reductionist rationalism – he does this astutely, by showing how it effects ordinary people and their search for meaning – then what is the proper use of reason? Who has most helped us see this, and what theological traditions have wrongly wedded our rhetoric and ideas to Enlightenment rationalism? From Al Wolters to John Frame, Danie Strauss to Charles Partee, Alvin Plantinga and many others, this is a truly amazing band of world-c
lass scholars! As Wolterstorff himself put it in his small but powerful treatise, we must seek Reason within the Bounds of Religion (Eerdmans.) This is a perennial matter and this heavy, complex, and radical rethinking of it all is essential for serious philosophers. I’ve been wanting to tell our scholarly readers about this and waiting for the right moment. Here it is utterly germane. The last section of it, by the way, is about the problem of our language about God. Rob Bell, call your office. This is amazing stuff.
Your God is Too Safe: Rediscovering the Wonder of a God You Can’t Control Mark Buchanan (Multnomah) $15.99 I love this writer (Eugene Peterson wrote the foreword, by the way) and commend him for those who want fine writing that isn’t odd or deep. He is more substantive, I think, than Max Lucado, but he’s warm like that. But a bit wilder, as the book title suggests. Listen to what the conventional Reformed heavy weight J.I. Packer says of it: “Within a framework of biblical orthodoxy, Mark Buchanan’s jabbing insights minister a salutary pastoral shake-up, drawing and driving us sluggards to come closer to our God.” Ha. Sluggards. I dare ya to read this, you sluggards. I admit, this isn’t exactly how Rob Bell puts it, but if you like Bell, you don’t mind being jabbed a bit. This is a great book.
Finding the Lost Images of God: Uncover the Ancient Culture, Discover Hidden Meanings Timothy S. Laniak (Zondervan) $12.99 This full color, handsome handbook series (“Ancient Context, Ancient Faith”) includes several lovely books, each drawing on key insights from the original languages and cultures of the Biblical lands. Informed by good scholarship from middle eastern cultures – informed by writers like the brilliant Kenneth Bailey, for instance – this series allows us to realize fabulous insights embedded in the Bible that we might not otherwise see. In this case, these are nice cultural studies about buildings, warfare, fields, flocks, and the like. What divine images are used to tell us about God? How can our own creativity relate to God’s? Bell does some of this sort of stuff, opening up basic insights about the culture from which the Bible was written, and helps us learn more. This is a very nice book, clear and helpful for anyone.
The Unfolding Mystery of the Divine Name: The God of Sinai in Our Midst Michael P. Knowles (IVP Academic) $22.00 I noted that Bell’s book was not strong on using the Bible as the key document for knowing about the nature of God. He uses the Bible a lot, often creatively, but this is the sort of book that as you work slowly through it, will pay off in loads of wisdom and insight. John Goldingay says “How marvelous it would be if Christians started believing that God is as Scripture portrays him and as Dr. Knowles expounds its portrayal with such a wideness of vision and breadth of insight.” This is about God’s own self-disclosure in Exodus 34, and Walter Brueggemann says of this close textual study, that it “teems with fresh insight and will reward a careful reading.”
Jesus Made in America: A Cultural History From the Puritans to The Passion of Christ Stephen J. Nichols (IVP Academic) $20.00 One of the big beefs that drives Bell, as well it should, is how God has been domesticated and how those who claim to follow Jesus often seem to have a culturally-created image of the Master. (Who was it that said you know you’ve made God in your own image when God tends to have the same enemies that you have.) Well, this is the best — and surely most fascinating — historical study of the uniquely American usage of Jesus. Nichols is good at pop culture, and he is a conservative Reformed thinker (from nearby Lancaster Bible College.) I doubt if he’d see himself similar to Bell, but they share this in common — they are interested in deconstructing how God (and in this case, the second Person of the Trinity) is misconstrued and abused by what we might call cultural captivity. With rave reviews from historians like Mark Noll and D.G. Hart and Doug Sweeney, this is a masterful bit of legitimate scholarship, and a huge wake-up call, warning us against distorted images that creep in to the popular vocabulary and mindset. No wonder Bell has to shake us up with this nonsense in the air. A very interesting and very important book.
The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction Peter Rollins (Howard) $14.99 Rollins is a hot young theologian, storyteller, mystic, who is deep and not just a little eccentric. Bell likes him, as do those who tend to identify with the emergent conversations. Some serious thinkers esteem him and I’m told he is a captivating speaker. I enjoy and have read many of the authors who like him, but, to be honest, I just don’t quite get him or his several books. I get that he affirms questioning and doubt. Fine. I like the title of his first book (even if the book was boring to me) How (Not) to Talk About God (Paraclete.) Bell draws on him from time to time, it seems. One of the major points of his project and most of his books is both sensible and yet profoundly unsettling: when we talk to confidently about God we’ve already transgressed, making some sort of idol, reducing God to the words we’ve said about God. We confuse the image and the Reality. Ancient Jews knew this – even Abraham Heschel, for instance, gets at this, another vital author Bell cites. This new book of Rollins’ (which the back cover calls “incendiary”) invites us to embrace our brokenness and our unknowing. This is some funky stuff.
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quipped that they sure got
that particular gathering (especially the books at
offered 
We have often reviewed books on vocation and calling, as well as books about work and career (not to mention offering for free at our website the extensive bibliographical tool 
ago. The Career Development office put together the service, and they included a responsive reading from the book The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life bu Os Guinness (Nelson; $17.99.) Did they know it is one of my all-time favorite books? Did they expect that I would cite it? It was such a fitting way into a liturgical celebration of God’s call into His kingdom, and the subsequent duties to serve the great King in every zone of life. Of course we shouldn’t reduce our many callings to only our paid jobs, and, in fact, the director of the Career Development office explained to me that they (ironically) try not to use the word “career” for a variety of reasons, noting the baggage and ass
Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be edited by Mark Schwehn & Dorothy Bass (Eerdmans) $26.00 With their huge involvement in the Lily grants programs to encourage vocational thinking at Christian colleges and seminaries, it was natural that they compiled this great, great (and great big) resource about living lives with purpose and influence. I’ve raved about this at BookNotes from time to time as it includes great literary figures (many not necessarily Christian) and is just such a rich and wonderful resource—at least for those who love great writers, etc. Poets, mystics, reformers, philosophers, writers and leaders of all sorts are excerpted nicely, from Homer and Milton to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dorothy Day, Wendell Berry to Robert Frost. Highly recommended.
$12.99 Some have told me this was the best combination of the Biblical overview of creation-fall-redemption-restoration story of Scripture and the language of purpose (exploring, then, the themes of vocation and call) that they’ve ever read. Rev. Drew is certainly a solid writer, well crafting mature sentences in wise and wonderful ways. We suggest it often and heartily commend it for any readers. Endorsements from the likes of Tim Keller remind us that it is highly regarded, well considered, helpful and theologically rich, without being arcane or abstract. Excellent.
What Is Vocation? Steven J. Nichols (P&R; $3.99) This is a wonderful, small booklet, similar to the companion booklet What is A Christian Worldview by Philip Ryken (P&R; $5.00) that we often promote. It could be used in small groups, a quick adult ed class, or given to high school seniors. Steve gets it just right; he’s a nearly local guy, by the way, a Lancaster friend, writer of popular level books on church history and several biographies of folks like Luther and Edwards. This brief staple-bound booklet is as handsome as it is readable and could be life-changing. Steve is evangelical and Reformed but I am confident that this little book could be used in any sort of congregation. Maybe you should order a dozen or so and pass ’em out—at least to youth who are thinking about going off to college, or young students needing to be encouraged to think about calling as they consider their majors, or for adults who may be longing to be affirmed in their line of work but aren’t up for reading a big study. (Oh, if only pastors did this more for their flocks, affirming the work-life of the laity! What a difference it could make!) The best small (and least expensive) resource of which we know.
Here I Am: Now What on Earth Should I Be Doing? Quentin Schultze (Baker) $14.00 What a great little book, wise and helpful, about being stewards of the various gifts God gives us, in the various spheres he calls us to! Easy-to-read, this is one of the best, with reasonable theological foundations and lots of great illustrative stories and anecdotes Quent is a great storyteller—he is the head of the communications department at Calvin College in Michigan (and has a remarkable book on virtues needed for our electronic age and another which is the definitive book on communication and mass media from a Christian perspective) What a story this guy has, and how wonderfully he’s used his own scholarly vocation to help others with these basics. Highly recommended. 
(Orbis) $22.00 All right, forgive me for pushing your envelope a bit here. This is liberation theology (at best) and is a bit odd theologically (we’re one with the universe, you know.) Still, there is something really right about this, about how our callings and vocations are discerned somewhat in light of the great needs of the world. How can we be transformed to care deeply about the injustices of our day, and how can we “hear” God’s call to work in ways and places that are touched by the griefs of this broken world? You may not appreciate all of the author’s theological baggage (or maybe you will) but, regardless, the heart of this book and its h
What Do I Do With My Life: Serving God Through Work Kenneth Baker (Faith Alive) $9.99 This is a small group resource that is excellent for small Bible study groups or adult Sunday school classes. There is a bit to read —five short readings for each day of the week (so each member will need one) but it is mostly designed for good conversations. It has helpful discussion questions, some activities, lots of Bible verses to consider exploring what the Scriptures say about the 9 to 5 and our other callings to work in various aspects of our lives. This is a very fine and solid overview of missional thinking and how our various labors matters to God—I don’t know of any resource like this for small groups. Thanks to the CRC publishing arm for doing such quality work. in this case for small groups.
Work Matters: Lessons from Scripture R. Paul Stevens (Eerdmans) $16.00 Paul Stevens, long-standing professor at Regent College in B.C., has been one of the best voices and most steadfast allies in the effort to educate about the meaning and dignity of labor. He has encouraged this conversation for decades, and we’ve included several other books of his on this list.
$15.99 A few friends of mine have had some opportunity to teach and consult with the folks at Tom Nelson’s church and it seems to be nearly one of the nation’s best centers of culturally-engaged, thoughtful nurture of the gifts and insights of laypeople and professionals for marketplace service. After years of reflecting on the Word as it is broken open in their midst and equally paying attention to the contexts of the various workers at the church, this brave pastor has learned to equip the people for relating faith and work, Sunday and Monday, prayer and public life. Reverend Nelson and his staff and congregants are really doing it, and their vision for why it all matters is nicely spelled out in a way you’ll surely appreciate. There are numerous two-page sidebars, too, documenting the stories of some of the folks in the church—a brilliant, Christ-honoring architect, an ethical businessperson, a good teacher, a Christian lawyer, and the like. 
Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Plan for the World Timothy Keller (Dutton) $26.95 NOT YET RELEASED, DUE NOVEMBER 2012. I hope you know about the Redeemer Presbyterian Center for Faith and Work, one of the premier ministries offering encouragement to professionals in several spheres of service. This book emerges from Kellers good concern for the laypeople in his Manhattan church and his strong realizations that we are all called to serve in various institutions across all of culture as agents of God’s Kingdom. You can 
Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor Ben Witherington (Eerdmans) $18.00 This is pretty short but don’t be deceived by its simple size and shape. Ben Witherington is one of the finest New Testament scholars on the planet (he teaches at the United Methodist seminary, Asbury) and has a profound awareness of the teachings about the Kingdom of God deep in his bones. As he writes about work one can sense his great vision, his good concerns, his practical, Biblical insight, especially as he unpacks some of the parables of Jesus to help us get a Kingdom vision of our jobs and labor. This helpfully breaks down the pagan sacred-secular divide and calls us all to a robust way of life where discipleship colors all we do, even our daily 9-to-5 labor. Very, very good and its Biblical teaching makes it ideal for adult Sunday school classes or to inspire a sermon series on work. 
Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good by Amy Sherman (IVP) $16.00 We have celebrated this excellent book on several occasions, thinking it to be one of the very best books in years on this topic. Truly, this is masterful and adds excellent new insight, new layers of meaning, and teaches in great and helpful detail about four ways of relating faith and work. See our comments here and here. Kingdom Calling is a serious, thorough, study of how our jobs can become avenues of social change honoring God and loving neighbor as we steward our vocations for the sake of the common good. Not for beginners, but if you’ve read a book or two on calling and on work, this is simply a must-have, must-read. 
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work Matthew Crawford (Penguin) $15.00 I hope you recall how we touted this when it first came out, and the buzz it gathered (including a “notable book” of the year award from the New York Time Book Review.) This is beautiful, thoughtful, rousing—Crawford was a white-collar scholar at a think-tank who hated his job, and felt the disconnect between what he was doing and who he was becoming untenable. He quit, opened a motorcycle repair shop, and offers here this extended meditation on shop classes, liberal arts, unhelpful education, working with one’s hands, and finding fulfillment in blue collar jobs. How many philosopher/mechanic’s do you know? This is entertaining and profound, hoping to restore greater honor to the manual trades.
$26.95 It is worth recalling that King lost his life while organizing garbage collectors. He often spoke of the dignity of all work, the need to serve God with the work of one’s hand, to strive for excellence and integrity in any job. And, of course, he spoke out against injustices in our economic system, advocated for worker’s rights. This is an amazing collection of his writings and speeches–most never published before!—on this topic.
Taking Your Soul to Work: Overcoming the Nine Deadly Sins of the Workplace R. Paul Stevens & Alvin Ung with a foreword by Eugene Peterson (Eerdmans) $14.99 If there was a “lifetime achievement award” in the field of Christian marketplace ministry, daily discipleship for ordinary folks, for “seven days a week faith” (as one of his many books puts it) Paul Stevens would be just such an honoree. He has given his life to thinking hard and writing well about the interface of faith and the work-world, and, especially, Christians in the business environment. He is professor emeritus of marketplace theology and spirituality at Regent College in Vancouver, perhaps the finest place to study this topic. (You can see a bit about his books here.) As we’ve suggested above, anything he writes is commendable, serious, important. 
Paddison (Zondervan) $14.99 People who we trust say that this is truly helpful; several sharp young women who care about their own unique struggles studied it over and concluded it was worth purchasing. Everybody wonders if the shoes on the cover work. The allusion to Eat Pray Love in the title, isn’t developed at all in the book; it would have been a hoot if she had. The author is a top-shelf executive, does important work in the corporate world and brings both Biblical vision and practical advise for women in the work-world. It is pretty interesting to see how she was able to raise her children and hold down a demanding job, and how she maintained a solid and inspiring faith through it all. It may be a cliche to say she understands how to juggle career and family and how she and her husband navigated their otherwise conservative, two-career marriage. Early reviews have been passionately favorable—“buy this book for your granddaughters” one grandma writes. Another said it was the first book she ever read that understood the tensions of her own life. And ya know what? Not surprisingly, several folks at a recent conference said that it would be very helpful for husbands of career women, too.
Our Souls at Work: How Great Leaders Live Their Faith in the Global Marketplace edited by Mark Russell (Russell Media) $19.95 This is a vibrant, colorful, book, handsomely designed with some contemporary, graphic pizazz and exciting testimonials and clear-headed insight to match. One of the best new books in this whole “marketplace ministry” field, it is essentially a gathering of short pieces by a variety of business leaders, arranged by topic, most quite practical. So you’ll hear a handful of businessmen or women talking about balance, or integrity, or leadership, or character. There is a section on calling, a section on handling money, a section of stories on relationships. There is one called “pluralism” which is very strong (and still a vexing matter to some, how to respect and honor the diversity of views in the modern workplace.) There is a section on sharing one’s faith, and a section of important lessons about ethics. The section on giving could inspire young philanthropists and remind us about giving back, as they say.
Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation Parker Palmer (Jossey Bass) $18.95 This is short and contemplative, written by a passionate, sweet Quaker with huge concerns about inner integrity and public justice. He’s all about finding that place where you can best serve by being reflective and intentional about one’s own heart’s truths. Yeah, he’s a bit touchy feely for some, but it is honestly written, elegant in a subdued manner, caring, and full of gentle passion. Very impressive for such a short rumination. A lot of people love this, making it one of the biggest sellers in this topic. Is it wrong to say “to thy own self be true?” Or, as Beuchner has, “listen to your life?” Lovely.
Stephen Martin (Sorin Books) $14.95 The first section of this wonderfully written, recent book is nearly a memoir as Martin tells of his growing dis-ease at his journalistic job, his struggle to understand his ill-health and anxiety, his religious confusion, and his mental state–worrying about death, almost unable to finish even a simple task.
The Fabric of This World: Inquiries into Calling, Career Choice, and the Design of Human Work Lee Hardy (Eerdmans) $20.00 If the previous few are a strong because they are anecdotal, testifying to God’s own tender leading in the lives of their authors, useful for those wanting gentle guidance, this is strong because it is painstakingly clear about his solid, Reformed worldview and the distinctives of a Biblical view of work. This, actually, was one of the early, really good books, written in the late 70s that we promoted then; a recent look through reminded me how good it is, how thoughtful, how nicely rooted in what some call a Kuyperian or reformational vision. It does have a bit about the corporate world, so is especially good for those entering that milieu. His insights on management (and his critique of classic management philosophies that are not congenial to Christian convictions about calling) are foundational and very important. Dr. Hardy teaches philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids.
Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God expanded and revised Dallas Willard (IVP) $16.00 I suppose I should end on a note like the one above, directly about calling and career, vocational choices and practical tools for assessing one’s life. But I’d like to end here, a basic, solid, mature, and thoughtful guide for any and all of us. Do we all not want to learn how to hear God’s voice? Can we align ourselves with the promptings of the Spirit? Do these wise and practical spiritual disciplines form us in ways that allow us to take up our discipleship callings into all of life? Of the many books exploring what we mean by “God’s will” and the practices of determining our life direction, this is simply the best.. A must-read, in my view. 
HHS mandate forcing Catholics who work in partnership with federal programs to pay for contraception against their consciences, to the legality of colleges forcing campus ministry organizations to have people who do not share their convictions to be in leadership, there has been plenty of legal theories and legal rulings to consider. Not to mention Attorney General Holder being held in contempt for lying to congress, which, oddly, some think is justifiable and has caused a lot of heat on both sides. Some of us have ignored most of this, others are staying quiet, but reading, learning, keeping abreast, and others of us have been engaged in advocacy and debate. I’ve spent a few too many hours typing too furiously last week, so I know.
We are glad for your permission to speak into your already noisy world, and hope this essay is helpful. One of our core convictions—part of the story that animates why we review and sell the books we do—is utterly germane: the Bible, we believe, teaches quite specifically that we ought not to align ourselves too closely with any worldly ideology. 
central to the possibility of being “transformed.” We dare not be “conformed”–squeezed in to the mold of, as Phillips puts it— to the typical ideas that are commonplace on the political left or the political right without a conscientious and intentional move to think things through in light of a B
reason. Twain was once asked if he believed in infant baptism. “Believe in it?” he retorted. “Hell, I’ve seen it!” Well, hell, I’ve seen Christian Marxists and Christian Libertarians. I think they are wrong, in violation of the spirit of these two texts about the Christian mind. They should redoubled their reflections on Romans 12:1-2 and pray for a renewed mind so they can show off what God’s will really is, which isn’t Marxism or Libertarianism, at least not according to how the church has traditionally understood the Bible’s view of these things. But, having said that, Twain was right. There are folks who identify themselves that way and as incoherent as I find their views, some of them are my friends, and I honor them as such.)
From Augustine to Luther, Calvin to Menno Simons, Wesley to Wilberforce to Witherspoon, from the new England Puritans (and Roger Williams, God bless his freedom loving soul!) to Catholic human rights leaders like Bartolome de Las Casas, from the famous Catholic encyclical Rerum Novarum to Populorum Progressio, from Abraham Kuyper in Holland to Martin King in Alabama, from the pronouncements of the National Council of Churches and our mainline denominations and the NAE’s “
Honoring God in Red or Blue: Approaching Politics with Humility, Grace, and Reason Amy Black (Moody Publishers) $14.99 Okay, let’s start simply. I just had a review that I did of this short book published in the column I write in Capitol Commentary of 
Body Broken: Can Republicans and Democrats Sit in the Same Pew? Charles Drew (New Growth Press) $15.99 This was out years ago as A Public Faith and we appreciated it. I thought it was just so very sensible, wise, even. Now it is updated and expanded, making it a strong, good book to read for anyone wanting a genial and solid study of Christian citizenship. He does a couple of things here in mature and pastoral language, firm, and clear: our unity in Christ precedes and transcends our political differences, so regardless of how strongly we feel about certain issues, those who are in Christ are one. I think the ideas presented in this book will be very, very important for some of us this fall. Yet, we are citizens and whole people, so we certainly shouldn’t avoid in church the implications of our faith for public life–we just have to learn to be thoughtful, theological, fair-minded, balanced and civil. The church, as church, shouldn’t become politicized but should proclaim the gospel in grace for all and create space of us to talk about the implications of God’s Kingdom for all areas of life. Drew (who pastors a church in New York City) is very big on the sorts of things I care about—developing a uniquely Christian view of things, holding up first principles and the most basic ideas, first, and he is candid that good people can disagree. He affirms a diversity of views that, within reason, can be held by faith-based folks, and he shows how to navigate the most urgent issues in thoughtful, faithful ways, without allowing our stances to get in the way of the unity of our faith communities. Drew is a sophisticated thinker and a strong, clear writer and would be good for anyone, including those in churches where there is some conversation going on about politics. Fabulous!
The Scandal of Evangelical Politics Ronald J. Sider (Baker) $15.99 You should know, if you’ve read this column for long, that I esteem Ron Sider immensely, that I appreciate his commitments to the Bible, and his humble spirit. I’ve read every book he’s writ
[Addition: a few years ago this book with the red cover was somewhat revised and re-issued with the title Just Politics: A Christian Guide for Engagement published by Brazos Press; $22.00. It is excellent, offering a methodology for discern something akin to a “Christian perpsective” on basic matters, out of which wise policies and positions can be developed. It’s one of the most useful tools I know for nurturing skills at “thinking Christianly” about politics and policy.]
Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies David T. Koyzis (IVP) $20.00 Okay, I trot this out nearly every year when there are elections or political debates or if there are matters on the news that seem to exhibit the “culture wars” debates. And now is that time, for sure. This is a very serious work, exposing the background ideas and philosophical foundations of both right and left wing writers, pundits, movements. It grapples with the “every thought captive” idea as I suggested above, digging around the ground from which both conservative and liberal political thinking has come. In this complex and important book Koyzis adeptly explains where ideas come from, what principled liberals and conservatives really believe (or assume) and whether those guiding ideals do or do not comport with a consistently Christian worldview. How do legitimate ideas end up becoming idols and get hardened into ideologies? What are the dynamics of ideological conflict in our new century? Why does the typical “liberal vs conservative” story not really do justice to the more complex realities behind political movements? This is beyond astute, it is genius, the best and most comprehensive overview of political thinking that I know of. It uses words appropriately, explaining how political philosophers have used phrases and ideas in the past, and helps us all get a handle on what is going on in our heated civic debates. Highly recommended, although it takes some deliberate study. If you are passionate about the political stuff goi
Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views edited by P.C. Kemeny ( IVP; $19.00) This back and forth debate type book shows that there are several major traditions or “schools of thought” operative within the church these days, and allows a proponent of each view a shot at explaining his view. Then the other four, each representing their own particular understanding of the nature of a Christian view of politics, replies. You get five views and each person critiquing the others, making for a learning experience that is rich and diverse—many college courses for which you’d pay hundreds of dollars wouldn’t teach you this much. It does, mostly, show the general commonality of the discourse (that is, they agree on a lot) despite the very large differences of opinion on many details. That is, they all agree that there should be something like a Biblically-based, theologically-driven, understanding of the relationship of faith and politics, but they differ on what that actually looks like. The five views represented include a very thoughtful Roman Catholic view consistent with Catholic social teaching, a liberal main-line Protestant proposing a standard social gospel view, an Anabaptist/pacifist Mennonite view, a Kuyperian, Reformed “pluralist” view and a strict separationist Baptist view. I like this because it reminds us of the differing nuances and views—the media and many Christian pundits do us a disservice by suggesting that there are only “left and right” or “the religious right and the secular left” or “progressives and fundamentalists.” It is more complex, more interesting, more challenging, and more important than that overly simple way that plays to culture wars. A great, great resource for serious Christians wanting the big picture of this specific topic.
Left, Right & Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics Lisa Sharon Harper & D.C. Innes (Russell Media) $22.99 All right — I’ve been idealistic and invited you to think outside the box of “left vs right” and to study a “third way” option that draws on the best of radical Christian thinkers that have robust imaginations which generate trans-partisan political ideas. I don’t think we should wallow in the simple two-sided debate. I’ve suggested books that I think are very important. But, let’s face it, most of our fellow citizens (and, unfortunately, the best known candidates) are aligned with one of the two major parties, representing one of two major ideologies. So, as the election season proceeds I am sure I will revisit this good book, drawing on each author’s important points as I write, teach, and talk about a Christian perspectives on politics. Perhaps it will serve you in such a way as well.
The Case for Civility: And Why Our Future Depends on It Os Guinness (HarperOne) $23.95 I reviewed this when it came out, declaring my huge appreciation for it, and have mentioned it time and again. One needn’t agree with all the proposals but it is a must-read for anyone interested in conversations about church and state, faith in public life, and the like. This is not just about public manners or civil etiquette—which itself would be helpful, but not quite the point of this volume— as Guinness here explores how the first amendment offers a framework for freedom for and from religion. We must not move towards any God-based theonomy or any kind of state church, of course. But a “naked public square” that privileges secularism is equally faulty and unfair. This “case” challenges the religious right and the secular left calling us all to take steps to solve the impasse of of our times through what he wonderfully explains in vigorous and inspiring prose as a “cosmopolitan public square.” I do hope you consider reading this and living out his important vision and urgent call to decency, civility, and, urgently, a robust commitment to the principles of our First Amendment. If you tend to be liberal and are annoyed by Christians wanting their values enacted, this will help you appreciate the legitimacy of their desires (if not the substance of any particular policy they propose.) If you tend to be conservative and are annoyed by liberals who think you should just keep your faith out of things, this might help you learn to be more civil and to counter their resistance in ways that are democratic and reasonable and compelling. Here is a 
is wonderfully written, based on his wide reading, but aimed at helping ordinary citizens help our culture heal, working for a framework that honors the first ammendment and a civil public square. Read it soon, as he will have a new blockbuster paperback on these issues coming late this summer. The forthcoming one will be called A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future (IVP; $16.00) and I have already read an early manuscript. It is a very important, eloquent manifesto, indeed. I’ll dedicate a full review of it when it comes out. You can pre-order it now from us, if you’d like.)
Uncommon Decency: Christian Civility in an Uncivil World (Revised and Expanded) Richard Mouw (IVP) $16.00 Here is what I wrote a year ago when this book was re-issued in an expanded version, explaining that it is one of my all time favorite books. It, too, would make a great, fun, study this fall and it isn’t difficult reading at all.
Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics Alisa Harris (Waterbook) $14.99 This isn’t exactly a study of balanced and fully Biblical political views, but her sad journey might not have been so weird and dramatic if her family wouldn’t have been so firmly and deeply involved in very, very far-right politics. I’m mostly astonished at this young woman’s story, her being raised in a very active Christian right-wing family—she picketed abortion clinics as a child, holding signs that she surely couldn’t have known what they meant—and becoming active (oooh, how she was active!) in Republican politics as a teenager. This memoir narrates how she has came to a different understanding of her faith through no small amount of serious anguish. Ms Harris is a fantastic writer, making this one of those great memoirs that is easy to read, fun and well-told, and yet very memorable–what a story! Has she just shifted, as many of her twenty-something young evangelical peers have, from a right wing faith to a left wing one? Is her organizing demonstrations at the Bank of America and her advocacy for the poor, at the end of the book just the flip side of her still politicized faith? As she untangles and rethinks things, she lets us look over her shoulder, watch as her rather exciting New York life unfolds, and we get to be a part of the religious coming of age of a very sharp young woman, who is a reporter and fine writer. I suggest that the story isn’t over and I predict she will write more. I hope so. I do hope she reads some of the sorts of books I list above. Harris’ conservative family and their passionate political life left its marks, in ways that are good and not so good, and we can all learn from that. One story, one family, one very thoughtful twenty-something. I could hardly put this book down and trust you find pleasure, empathy and insight, regardless of your thoughts about faith, politics, or social justice.
On Social Justice St. Basil the Great (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press) $15.00 It is important to realize that, these sermons were proclaimed long before representative democracy, even before the rise of the modern nation state. (See, by the way, Calvin in the Public Square: Liberal Democracies, Rights, and Civil Liberties by David W. Hall [Presbyterian & Reformed; $19.99] for a very important study that shows how the Calvinist Reformation influenced these rising notions and institutions.) But, still, the power of these passionate words by the famous church leader, written 1600 years ago, about wealth, the demands of the poor upon us, the evils of usary, including stern words for lenders who abuse their power, might offer us an important reminder about the needs of the poor, the dangers of debt, and how Christians must care for their neighbors and the institutions that may do them great harm.
From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought edited by Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan (Eerdmans) $64.00 Okay, this isn’t for everybody, but it sure would be good if every church had one in their church library. If you are doing any academic work in political theory, or if you are active in speaking out as a Christian citizen or pundit, this is the masterpiece collection of some of the earliest sources from the first century fathers up to Grotius, who, it could be argued, influenced the West with gr
Jeffrey Bailey, and Craig Hovey (Eerdmans) $50.00 When we got this book in the shop a month or so ago, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It includes truly some of the most significant and influential political theology of the 20th and 21st century, writings from all over the globe. This includes radical stuff indeed, post-colonial, prophetic critiques of power, some pretty arcane. But some of the pieces are truly representative, making this a great primary-source reader of 49 major essays. From Barth, Bauckham, Bonhoeffer to Cone, Gutierrez and Hauerwas; from Jean Bethke Elshtain to John Courtney Murray. Where else do you see Ched Myers and Delores Williams alongside both the Niebuhrs and conservative Catholic, George Weigel? I love that they have classic writers like Johann Baptist Metz and Alexander Schmemann and John Howard Yoder alongside third world women activists and global theologians like Desmond Tutu and Emmanuel Kotongole. One drawback is that many are very academic, and most are, as the title suggests, examples of political theology or social ethics, not political theory, as such. Still this is an important new sourcebook for those who really want to dig in.
Here is a large list of some of our favorite titles that may be of interest to those who love the great outdoors, do ministry in the wilderness, are trying to be more attentive to the beauty of God’s creation, or who are interested in outdoor adventure trips.
Christian, are faith-based, Jewish or mystical, perhaps. These are suggested because they offer good insights or exercises that even traditional evangelicals can use with some adaptation and discernment. Not every book on this list is suitable for every outdoor educator or church camp, and we try to hint at the author’s tone or perspective (and academic level) in these annotations. We hope you enjoy browsing through these descriptions and invite you to contact us if you have any questions, concerns or suggestions. We here at Hearts & Minds believe in reading widely and believe much wisdom can be gathered from various sources, and are therefore delighted to share this unique list of titles that, we trust, will help you and your team in your appreciation for God’s creation and your enjoyment of your outdoor adventures.
Christian Outdoor Leadership:
The Role of the Instructor in the Outward Bound Educational Process
Playing: Christian Explorations of Daily Living 
The Christian at Play Robert Johnson (Wipf & Stock) $20.00 Long considered a classic, this is a serious text exploring why we are called to playfulness, what it means to “recreate” and a theology of leisure. Important for outdoor educators and those pondering experiential education.
Guide for Recreation Leaders
How to Use Camping
Adventure and the Way of
Lessons on the Way: Using
Teamwork & Teamplay:
Tips and Tools: The Art of Experiential Group Facilitation Jennifer Stanchfield (Wood N Barnes) $27.95 Here is what it says on the back cover: Facilitation is an art, by its very nature an experiential practice. It
Silver Bullets: A Guide to Initiative Problems, Adventure Games, and Trust Activities Karl Rohnke (Project Adventure) $37.95 Truly a classic in the field, it is a treasure chest of games, initiatives, experiences, and activities to create group cohesion, cooperation and trust.
Open To Outcome: A Practical Guide For Facilitating & Teaching Experiential Reflection Mari Rudy & Micah Jacobson (Wood N Barnes) $14.95 These two authors are renowned as trainers in their “five questions” process for debriefing experiential learning activities. Excellent for mentors, coaches, trip leaders who embrace this sort of community-based, educational philosophy.
Controversial Issues in Adventure Programming Bruce Martin & Mark Wagstaff (Human Kinetics Press) $49.00 What an amazing resource for serious leaders. These respected authors have assembled a team
Beyond Learning By Doing: Theoretical Currents in Experiential Education Jay W. Roberts (Routledge) $41.95 The author is Professor of Education and Environmental Studies at Earlham College, and is long been both a scholar and practitioner of outdoors-based, experiential education. This is one of the more scholarly, foundational texts in the field, recommended for anyone serious about understanding the latest pedagogical theories applied to wilderness experiences. Roberts is widely respected in the field, and writes from a Quaker perspective.
Colors of Nature: Cultural
Allen & Mike’s Really
Cave Exploring: The Definitive Guide to Caving Technique, Safety, Gear, and Trip Leadership Paul Burger (Falcon Guides) $15.99 There are many good books that serve as an introduction to caving; we suggest this one because it does have some helpful material on leading trips.
Rock Climbing: Mastering Basic Skills Craig Luebben (Mountaineering Books) $22.95 One of the standard books, written by a master teacher (and leader in the American Mountain Guide Association) including not only skills and exercises, but comments on safety, understanding hazards, risk management, group trips, and other helpful material for outdoor leaders.
Bouldering: Movement, Tactics, and Problem Solving Peter Beal (Mountaineering Books) $18.95 Laden with pictures, this is an ideal book for anyone interested in the art and skills of solving boldering problems. There aren’t many books of this sort and we are happy to recommend this one, which includes photos, illustrations and 10 useful strategy charts.
Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills (8th edition) The Mountaineers (Mountaineers Books) $29.95 This is considered a, if not the classic for all climbing enthusiasts. A must-have for any aspiring mountaineers library. Almost 600 pages, 7 x 9 with over 425 pictures.
The Backpacker’s Field
AMC Guide to Outdoor Leadership Alex Kosseff (Appalachian Mountain Club Books) $19.95 Many customers have found this to be an exceptional introduction to all sorts of important matters for trip leaders: trip planning, group Dynamics, decision-making, risk management. Includes a section on leading youth. 
Lessons Learned II
Wilderness Ethics:
Backwoods Ethics: A Guide
Soft Paths Rich Brame & David
Landscape as Sacred
You Gave Me a Wide Place:
Landscapes of the Soul: A
Landscapes of the Sacred:
The Solace of Fierce
Where Mortals Dwell: A
Earth Works: Selected
Ancient Practices: The Sacred Journey Charles Foster (Nelson) $12.99 Going on pilgrimage is an ancient religious practice, and this fine Christian thinker explores what it is about us that makes us want to “go” and be on journey. He pays little mind to the need for “a sense of place” and thinks the geography of faith is ever-moving as we hike, travel, explore and, yes, take intentional journeys of sacred pilgrimages. What a fun, provocative, and energetic book by a guy who has hiked all over the world.
All Creation Sings: The Voice of
Nature as Spiritual Practice
A Field Guide to Nature as
Worship Feast Outdoors: 25
A Hunter’s Field Notes: Inspiring
Devotions for Outdoor Adventures Larry Wiggins, Jack Harris & Amy Garascia (CreateSpace) $12.95 Created by friends who work in outdoor education, we are happy to promote this neat little paperback full of devotional thoughts from and for (as the subtitle puts it) “Backpackers, Hikers, Climbers, Canoeists, and Other Outdoor Enthusiasts.” These are solid evangelical reflections on the Word and the world, inspiring, insightful and perfect for the outdoors. Handsome pen and ink drawings of cliffs, crags, birds, and such are themselves worth meditation upon.
An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith Barbara Brown Taylor (HarperOne) $14.99 This elegant and eloquent writer is honest, vivid, profound, about how faith is enhanced as we embodied practices of faithfulness which allow us to be attentive to God in daily living. Not all of this is about the out of doors, but some of it is; see especially her chapter about walking, another about physical labor (“The Practice of Carrying Water”) and a splendid chapter called “Getting Lost.” Wow.
Water, Wind, Earth, &
When the Rain Speaks: Celebrating
Cairn-Space
Bridges, Paths and Waters; Dirt,
Indescribable: Encountering the
Earth’s Echo: Sacred
A Wild Faith: Jewish Ways into
God in the Wilderness:
Renewal
The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature Gerald May (HarperOne) $13.99 May is a renowned spiritual director, a counselor and genteel, literary scholar. (He was often associated with his friends Parker Palmer and Henri Nouwan.) Who know he was an avid outdoorsman, and he writes here beautifully about how doing solo tenting trips–canoeing, encountering a bear, paying attention to creation’s awe–helped him through a very difficult time in his life. Well written, profound, and enjoyable.
Spiritual Adventures in the Snow: Skiing and Snowboardering
Fly-Fishing The Sacred Art:
When the Trees Say
The Green Bible Devotional: A Book of Daily Readings taken from The NRSV Green Bible (HarperOne) $14.99 Taken from the “Green Letter” New Revised Standard edition, this includes short meditations from a wide array of fine Christian thinkers, leaders, activists. Easy to carry –and very uplifting.
A Spiritual Field Guide:
Meditations of John Muir:
Wilderness Time: A Guide for
Permanent Vacation: Twenty
Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at
Surprises Around the Bend: 50 Adventurous Walkers edited by Richard Hasler (Augsburg) $14.99 Hasler is both a pastor and a hiker, and he has offered us this delightful gift: a compilation of various excerpts of the journals of many famous walkers (from Francis of Assisi to John Bunyan to Dietrich Bonhoeffer), their observations and insights, pleasures, adventures and, in many cases, spiritual insights. Arranged almost like a daily devotional: very nicely done.
The Way is Made By Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino Santiago Arthur Boers (IVP) $16.00 Although this pilgrimage along the El Camino trail is more of a spiritual practice than an adventure trip, the insights gathered as the merry band of folk travel this ancient trail are fascinating. Not a few backpacking trips into the wilderness have used this as a study book. Includes a nice foreword by avid day hiker and Bible scholar Eugene Peterson.
Hiking Through: One Man’s Journey
AWOL on the Appalachian Trail
Wild: From Lost to Found on the
Two in the Wild edited by Susan Fox Rogers (Vintage)
A Leaky Tent is a Piece of Paradise: 20 Young Writers on Finding a Place in the Natural World edited by Bonnie Tsui (Sierra Club Books) $19.99 This is not your father’s nature writing or sportsman’s guide. Here are edgy young writers doing essays about integrating nature into their lives, and how they struggle to balance travel and home, branching out and having roots, going far and eating local. Some are pretty outrageous, some inspiring, a couple pretty amazing. These short pieces are all by serious, under 30 writers, kicking back and telling it straight. Actually, it is pretty remarkable, although most are not at all religious. 
Back to Earth: A
Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey Bill Roorbach (Dial Press) $14.00 Some of this is a wonderfully written memoir of the author trying to learn to appreciate his own small town in rural Maine. There are great blue herons and yellow birches, but there are equally colorful characters at the local diner and a whole bunch of run down properties and the stories behind them. He writes lovingly—National Geographic Explorer says it is “a marvel in a genre that’s tough to master”—and his sense of place will make you homesick for Farmington, or a place like it. But here is why I list it now: Professor Roorbach is determined to explore a local stream from its mouth to its elusive source. He is a paddler, a nature writer, a curious explorer, and anyone who enjoys canoeing will surely love this grand, quiet book. 
Out There: In The Wild in
On The Ridge Between Life
Into the Wild
Into Thin Air: A Personal
Soul Survivor: A
Deep Survival: Who Lives,
The Wilderness World of
Living on Wilderness Time: 200 Days Alone in America’s Wild Places Melissa Walker (University of Virginia Press) $17.95 This heavy paperback is made well, rugged, I suppose, like the content. Here the author is one the road, on the loose, in the wilderness (as one reviewer noted.) She thinks and lives outside the boundaries, and has been likened to the glorious and influential writer Rick Bass. What an odyssey, this mid-life woman, setting out to discover adventure in order to discover life. Risky, solid, rare.
Nature and Walking
Desert Solitaire: A
Wind River Winter
Reading the Mountains of Home John Elder (Harvard University Press) $24.95 This is a splendid book, important and enjoyable on many levels. Firstly, it is a memoir of a set of day hikes near the author’s beloved Vermont county. Elder is a professor of enviromental literature at Middlebury College, and he is actually doing a series of outdoor experiences following the general plot of a rare Robert Frost poem (which has him getting lost, building a canoe, etc.) As he hikes and observes both poem and landscape he concludes that it is important to know your own locale. This is, as he explains, a huge controversy within American nature writers, conservationists and modern moutaineers: must we always go “out West” for the dangerous, rugged terrain, or might there be (as Thoreau chided Muir) wilderness in less dramatic locations? This is an argument for finding joy in the local, taking up outdoor adventure wherever we are, and not necessarily presuming that the best experiences are the most dramatic or far-away. For anyone who loves well-written stories, a bit of poetry, some New England geological lessons, and a wonderful insight about “reading the mountains of home.”
My Story as Told By Water David James Duncan (Sierra Club Books) $16.99 I hope you know his intriguing, spiritually-based, hilarious novel The River Why (about, among other things, fishing.) Here, in a series of chapters–some long and serious, some short and creatively crafted–the passionate writer tells of his love affair with creation, rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water. The subtitle reads: “Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-watchings, Fish-stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting from Light, From Living Rivers, In the Age of the Industrial Dark.” Oh yeah.
Riverwalking: Reflections on
Pine Island Paradox: Making Connections in a Disconnected World Kathleen Dean Moore (Milkweed Editions) $16.00 This is, quite simply, one of my all time favorite books, inspiring and moving, eloquent and profoundly insightful, even as she tells fabulous tales of her beloved hikes and camping trips and writing projects, conjuring up the beauty of nature, the meaning of the cosmos (she’s a philsopher, after all) and her daily work as a college prof, mother, and wife, who lives in an ordinary neighborhood. Captivating and provocative and truly lovely, full of deep insight and wonder-full lines.
Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from
Lessons of the Wild: Learning
Jesus, History, and Mt. Darwin:
Sea Fire: Tales of Jesus and
Early Spring: An Ecologist and
Teaching a Stone to Talk:
Holy the Firm
For the Time Being
Who Owns the Mountains?
The View From Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World Carl Sanfino (Picador) $18.00 This award-winning work is considered one of the great books of natural history in the 21st century, upbeat, interesting, hopeful, even as he describes birds and water creatures all over the globe, fish and fowl whose habitats are threatened by global climate change. Sanfino waxes philsophical, a deeply caring, moral, and enjoyable scholar and outdoorsman, although he makes it clear that he does not believe God. Still, there is much inspiring here, and much enjoyable reading, especially for those who love birding or who enjoy lovely descriptions of beach and wetland ecology.
American Earth: Environmental Writings Since Thoreau Edited by Bill McKibben (Library of America) $40.00 I cannot tell you how solid this sturdy hardback is, with ribbon marker and solid pages full of the best nature writing of our recent centuries. Essential writings from Walt Whitman to John Muir, Frederick Law Olmsted to Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot; Aldo Leopold, John McPhee and Paul Hawkens and Buckminister Fuller. There are those who we ought to have on our shelves: E.B. White, John Steinbeck, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and a few surprises (P.T. Barnum, Woody Guthrie, Lyndon Johnson, Philip K. Dick) and some contemporary classics such as Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver and Barbara Kingsolver. Happily, a few important theologians are included such as Cal DeWitt, a fine evangelical voice. The introduction to each writer’s excerpt is exceptionally useful and are themselves an education in literature, science, ecology, and beauty. We cannot recommend this enough.
Remember Creation: God’s World of Wonder and Delight Scott
EarthWise: A Guide to Hopeful Creation Care Cal DeWitt (Faith Alive) $14.99 This is a fabulous, insightful, very useful Bible study guide with short chapters, incisive, rich ideas, and good study questions. The best little paperback study of it’s kind, written by a legendary evangelical, scientists and outdoorsman. Recently updated. Great for studies on the trail or camp.
Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet
Making Peace with the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile with Creation Fred Bahnson & Norman Wirzba (IVP) $15.00 This is part of the remarkable series of books about reconciliation published by IVP and Duke Divinity School’s Center for Reconciliation. And it is truly one of the very best, a moving and nicely written study of God’s reconciling work bringing together all things on heaven and Earth. From serious study of unsustainable agricultural practices to daily living in alternative communities, this splendid study helps us appreciate creation and embody stewardly lifestyles, aware of God’s great care to bring healing to the land itself. Highly, highly recommended. Forward by Bill McKibben.
For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care
Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God’s People Scott Sabin (Judson Press) $18.00
Green Revolution: Coming Together to Care for God’s Creation Ben Lowe
The Gospel According to the Earth: Why the Good Book is a Green Book Matthew Sleeth (HarperOne) $22.99 Dr. Sleeth, of Asbury KY, is known for his great, little Serve God, Save the Planet (Zondervan; $14.99) and this is his more mature, ecumenical manifesto on why Christians simply must actively attend to and care for the beauties of the creation. There is some very insightful Biblical study here, and tons of great information.
Song of a Scientist: The Harmony of a God-Soaked Universe Cal DeWitt (Square Inch Books) $14.99 DeWitt has been an evangelical, Reformed voice in the movement for Christian creation-care for decades and in this recent book he shares his own faith, his love of Scripture, creation, enviromental science, and offers keen insights about how it is all integrated together. Very nice, insightful but not difficult reading at all. Highly recommended.
The Wonder of the Universe: Hints
Besides Dr. Wright’s duties, now, as a professor at The University of St. Andrew’s in Scotland (founded, by the way, in the early 1400s!) he writes both scholarly works and popular level books, Bible commentaries, and apologetics helping explain the Christian faith in ways that are fresh, relevant, orthodox, if a tad counter to some tellings of the gospel. We hope you looked at the two brief video interviews we had posted as they hint at how very interesting and urgent his last two books are. Having these two new ones to sell makes us happy as they are faithful and well-written, thoughtfully mature but accessible for most readers, critical of business as usual but not nutty or off-putting. They will help inspire (please, Lord!) a new wave of serious followers of Jesus who want to be winsome and principled, Biblically faithful and eager to make things happen. As booksellers committed to selling books of this very sort, for this very purpose, we are delighted, and look forward to hearing how these books make a difference, or at least prod you to think and act with greater intention for God’s glory and our world’s good.
narrative of the Bible but of our own lives, as well. We become part of this story, and Christ becomes our very life. In union with Him, tied, then, to each other, we become what we sometimes call “Kingdom people.” Our community of reconciled folk are the first fruits of the eschatological hope; that is the future blessed hope. Christ inaugurates this rescue plan that is global in scope and could be somewhat understood, at least, in what Martin Luther King called “the beloved community.” Wright says all this so much better than I, but much of it we learned from Al Wolters’ Creation Regained or Howard Snyder’s Community of the King or Richard Mouw or Jacques Ellul or Herman Ridderbos or Samuel Escobar or even John Bright, whose book on the Kingdom of God my pastor gave me back in the early 70s, thinking I’d like it. 
Church (HarperOne; $24.99) gets at this same thing, too, that Christ’s redemptive work isn’t primarily to get our souls to go to heaven, but to bring together heaven and earth (as the Christmas carol puts it.) Joy to the World, indeed! Yes, reading the Bible as Wright teaches us to keeps us Christ-focused, glorying in the cross and the mercy it shows, but doesn’t fixate only on that: it moves onward as the Bible does, pushing us into mission, service, restoration, renewal, reformation. Getting the end of the story right can really help us get our vision of discipleship and life’s very meaning right. This book is very, very important, and at the heart of the whole project of N.T. W. 
N.T. W. is sound theologically, and it amazes me the snarky comments (from critics on the left and the right) we sometimes get when we display his books at events and conference. He is sometimes criticized by liberals for being too evangelical (and traditional on a number of issues, including sexual ethics) but is severely criticized by some who claim to be the most Biblical for his willingness to create some new ways of saying things; he offers some rather innovative theological positions, especially around how Jesus brings righteousness to us, and how that is parsed in his understanding of justification. This has caused some painful controversy, especially on this side of the pond. 
lecture (presented at Calvin College a few months back, 
There is no doubt that he is, indeed, an important scholar who has done the heavy lifting in studying historical documents most of us have never even heard of! He writes about the historical details of second Temple Judaism, for instance, or the nuances of the relationship of law and gospel at the end of Romans, or the ways in which Greek words about body and soul are mistranslated often as people read Corinthians, or ways words like “righteousness” from 8th century Isaiah or 19th century theologians may be quite different. His prayerful study is daily done in the Hebrew and Greek. He reads classic stuff–from Josephus to Ben F. Meyer, say—and is in routine conversation with other scholars, like, just for instance, Kenneth Bailey and Richard Hays. He debates those who mock or deconstruct the resurrection, takes on the likes of John Piper in complex discussions about the details of salvation and justification, and yet rarely gets stuck in in-house, obscure arcania with those who want to argue all day without truly serving the church or the world. He wants us to serve the church and the world. You can see why we appreciate him so, and why his work gives us encouragement to keep on trying to sell books as we do. With authors like this, doing books like this, we have to keep going! God’s Kingdom may be advanced because of what God does though folks reading seriously these books. We believe that. Reading matters. I think Tom might like our phrase, “read for the Kingdom!”
Empire (IVP; $23.00) he asked Tom tough questions week by week about the application of Biblical exegesis as Wright was writing the popular Colossians and Philemon commentary for the Tyndale New Testament Commentaries of the Bible. Tom rather reasonably insisted that the political and cultural questions about application didn’t quite belong in a standard commentary like the Tyndale one he was writing and challenged Walsh to write his own radical commentary on Colossians. Which he did, eventually with the able collaboration of his wife, Sylvia. (That Wright and I both have a blurb on the back is one of the great joys of my literary life, such as it is!)
N.T. Wright (selling books for a lecture he gave on character formation, based on the splendid After You Believe, with Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City) he had just co
They complimented Wright for his call to societal renewal and for his work doing Kingdom theology that generated a commitment to mercy and justice. They cited some pretty dramatic lines from Wright (like a passionate speech he gave in response to the Queen’s speech about economics in the House of Lords) and wondered if he was taking advantage of the “time” that is so ripe as the Western story collapses. Is there enough prophetic critique and prophetic hope in Wright’s work? Is he pressing that enough? Is there energy for action at the heart of his otherwise excellent work? It was a tough question, perhaps a bit awkward to ask publicly, but they are good friends. It wasn’t a prophetic stunt, it was a pastoral question: how does your work, Tom, doing good exegesis and detailed historical research and clever re-articulation of the nature of the gospel, make a difference, really? 
parables. They go back and forth exploring Sylvia’s breathtakingly insightful reading of one of the most famous economic parables. These readings reminds us of the economic injustice in Jesus’ day, and points to Jesus’ demand for covenantal justice. 

You can find that remarkable exchange in Jesus, Paul, and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright edited by Nicholas Perrin and Richard B. Hays (IVP; $24.00.) and, importantly, includes N.T. Wright’s response. Their presentation about bearing fruit for justice, feisty as it was, is
Wright has more famously co-written a book with Marcus Borg, a back-and-forth argument about the historicity of Jesus, Christ’s own sense of calling, the reliability of the gospel accounts, and the character of the resurrection. Borg, as you may know, disagrees with the typical views of these matters, so it is a serious debate. It is in paperback and is called The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions (HarperOne; $15.99.) Wright also co-wrote and edited a book with Dom Crossan, called The Resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and N.T Wright in Dialogue (Fortress; $19.00) which includes some chapters by other participants, too. Crossan is another progressive scholar who teaches that the physical resurrection didn’t happen and that the gospel accounts are not reliable testimonies of what actually happened, but more like parables. Crossan has a view somewhat like Borg’s, and then some… 
Among more conservative writers who have crossed swords with Wright, a book-length evaluation of his views of Paul and justification was written by the passionate Baptist pastor, John Piper called The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright (Crossway; $17.99) and it is well worth reading (we commended it when it first came out and continue to stock it.) His critique illustrates the concerns that many in the PCA denomination, particularly, have found troubling (they passed a study report against Wright at their General Assembly a few years ago.) Wright’s response to Piper’s book is called Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, published by IVP ($25.00.) The first half is mostly a reply to Piper’s critique, and the second half is Wright’s exegesis and explanation of every key verse in the New Testament that deals with the nature of justification. It is very, very informative, even if you don’t buy all of his unique take on things.
Well, I’ve said that Wright captures, and deepens for us, a lot of what we’ve long tried to articulate, and he does it with graciousness and eloquence, even has he defends and clarifies his views in dialogue with others across the spectrum of thinking found through the range of the church. I, frankly, am a bit less interested in the details of the new perspective debate, and celebrate his singular work on the gospels, and this Kingdom vision he brings to our reading of the whole Biblical canon. It is one reason I am so excited about the two latest books, on Jesus and on the Kingdom. I’m glad that he does this by seeing both the big picture of the arc of Scripture and a close, informed reading of specific texts. And, yes, he reminds us (to put it terribly simply, to “read Paul in light of Jesus, not read Jesus in light of Paul.” Or something like that.) 
Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (HarperOne) $24.99 I’ve discussed this at great length before and think the world of it. The first part is a rumination on the deepest concerns and anxieties folks have nowadays (about war, poverty, sexuality and such.) The middle part is essentially an overview of the grand Biblical narrative. The final part wonders out loud: what if this story answers those questions? Could this Biblical vision provide the best way to understand and work on these large areas of brokenness and dysfunction. The books ends with a call to faith, and some practical stuff about church, eucharist, worship and fellowship. Sort of a Mere Christianity for today. 
Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did and Why He Matters (HarperOne) $24.99 I hope you saw the video clip we offered in the previous post, but you will see there that Wright is passionate about Christ, seriously eager to have folks examine his teachings and see how they can transform us, our churches, and our world. What a great, great introduction to the nature of Jesus and who is claimed to be and what he taught us to do. This is a fabulously interesting, fresh and convincing view of Christ and faith and how it matters. I know you want to be touched by His grace and learn to more faithfuly follow Him. This will help.
How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels (HarperOne) $25.99 There are a dozen reasons why we have missed the central heart of the gospel narratives, and how this announcement and teaching about the Kingdom coming is central to the entire Biblical story. But there it is, heart and soul, front and center. Wright takes our blinders off, invites us to consider why we’ve fudged on this stuff, and how to regain and truly Biblical picture of the nature of God and the saving work of Christ. Christ does, in fact, rule the world, as the carol says. Let Heaven and Nature Sing! A must-read.
For Everyone series Westminster/John Knox) 18 volumes; $16.00 each.
best commentators usually do, Wright translates the text from the Greek line by line as he walks us through each book of his “For Everyone” commentaries. He isn’t fully convinced the NRSV or the NIV get the words quite right, so with his expert knowledge and Kingdom vision, he re-translated the whole NT for each commentary. Voila, he ended up with a whole New Testament. Very neat.
When Kicking at the Darkness: Bruce Cockburn and the Christian Imagination by Brian J. Walsh (Brazos; $18.99) hit the bookstore shelves in late fall 
Woodpile” nearly knocked me to my knees. Sure, In the Falling Dark had glorious praise songs (“Lord of the Starfields”, “Starfields”), sweet stuff about pregnancy (“Little Seahorse”) and a light little song with some prophetic edge insinuating that the cities of this world are somewhat like Babel (“Laughter”–ha, ha, ha) and the lovely view of heaven described as a “Festival of Friends.” But the slower “Woodpile” song is a hard, acoustic story about mercury poisoning and the “curse of these modern times.” I listened to it coupled with the vision of the whole creation groaning in “Falling Dark” which described the glory all around, and our ignorant lack of appropriate response. He sings that we are all caught “taking a dive.” 
early Elton John, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Dan Fogelberg, Roberta Flack, and the occasional prog rock or jazz record. And there was some of that new energy of punk. And a bit of soul and R&B. (Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, War.) Since the 60s I’d been moved by good tunes; pop music moved my feet just a bit but, more, it allowed my heart to be touched. My earlier girlfriends, my best guy friends, and my then new wife Beth all could attest that I’d talk about music til the wee hours if I could. From “Bridge Over Troubled Water” to the genius of the White album, from Harry Chapin to John Prine to Joan Baez to CSN to Gordon Lightfoot. My faith, my politics, and my whole worldview were shaped by John Lennon, James Taylor, and the wooly stuff from the Dead to the Allman Brothers. Bob Marley was young and interesting. I liked
eccentric stuff like The Incredible String Band and It’s A Beautiful Day, the soul of Van Morrison, the lefty activism of Graham Nash. I heard Pete Seeger a time or two at anti-nuke protests and tried to listen to old Woody Guthrie. I would eventually be an early fan of a young band from Dublin, who fused passion and politics and prayer, but that would be years later, long before the brilliance of Arcade Fire or Radiohead. 
Kaiser, for instance. And, eventually, the spectacular work of 
knew Neil Young from up in Alberta, somebody said) turned bluesy rocker. Even then, after only a few hippy-folk albums under his belt, he was considered one of the great guitarists around. It was being circulated at the time that evangelical rocker Phil Keaggy was considered—by Jimi Hendrix, at least—to be the world’s best electric guitar player. Keaggy was later quoted as saying that he couldn’t hold a candle to Cockburn. A drop-out of Berklee School of Music where he studied jazz, Cockburn could do extraordinary finger picking, could find new chords and tunings that made the guitar gods gently weep, and could barrel house with blues like nobodies business. 
ballads. He has worked with jazz violinists, wild trumpeters, gospel singers like The Blind Boys of Alabama, politico folk-singer Ani DiFranco, and slide guitar master Bonnie Raitt. He has released hot live albums with raging bands and, a year or so ago, Slice of Life, which is a double live album of his solo performances. Anything, Anytime, Anywhere is a compilation of single hits he had out, from 1979-2002. 
a bike through “the Tibetan side of town.” Indeed, a 2004 albu
Dawn Skies” (“little boys and girls from the Red Army underground, they’d blow away Karl Marx if he had the nerve to come around”)—is still one of my favorite records of all time. With clever lines about “fascist architecture” and Bergman films and allusions to T.S. Elliott; there were harsh lines like “gray-suited businessmen pissing against the wall” and the slo-mo horror of watching a car crash in Tokyo, and I knew I was in deep. This is incarnational stuff, the Word turned flesh, some heavy mix of poetry and passion, gospel and culture, clarity and distortion that I simply had never encountered before. 
Over the next decades, Cockburn would continue to bless us with artful tellings of amazing grace amidst ambiguity and pain, doubt and searching, alienation and struggle, horror and good humor. He would testify about “grass growing up through cement” and invite us to find the risen Christ in “this prison camp world.” He would do an acoustic Christmas album that included some stunning songs, played provocatively in a minor key, before current hipsters learned to capture the angst of Advent. He would whistle, he would moan, he would protest, he would move back to the country (doing a few lovely country-tinged albums with producer T-Bone Burnett, Nothing But a Burning Light and Dart to the Heart), take up serious biking, tour endlessly, would do an album of delightful instrumentals. He would re-work crowd pleasers like “Wondering Where the Lions Are” with scat singing in falsetto, rework his earliest “Jesusy” songs even as he’d often sound like a mystic Unitarian. He would play a resonator guitar, raise up the plight of native peoples, and sing about sex and pleasure in ways that pointed us to the Divine moment in it all, all while reporting from various humanitarian projects he was involved with, sometimes through Canadian relief agencies. There are only a few artists whose life-time of work I continue to follow, and who continue to challenge and impress and delight. Cockburn is at the top of the list. 
fail. His lyrics usually match his passionate playing, and his musicianship continues to be entertaining, if sometimes demanding. (From his earliest work he has shown serious jazz influences, sometimes world-beat tinges, and in Small Source of Comfort, his most recent, some neo-classical overtones, even using a string section for the first time ever.) I think this newest one may be my least favorite since his first few folkie ones, but even a mediocre Cockburn album, with a few misses, is better then most.
Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age, (IVP; $22.00) (both co-authored by J. Richard Middleton) or how a serious postmodern study of a Biblical book like Colossians might help us change the world (Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire, co-authored with his wife, Sylvia Keesmaat, a New Testament scholar of considerable renown, published by IVP; $23.00.) His work co-authored with Stephen Bouma-Prediger, a deep study of our “culture of displacement” (Beyond Homelessness Eerdmans; $27.00), is demanding but one of the more profound examples of Christian scholarly cultural criticism written in recent decades. What an audacious book, naming so much of the malaise and dysfunction of our time. I’ve reviewed each of these before and commend them all for your serious study and edification. 
Walsh is a serious Cockburn fan. He has long been a student of Cockburn’s work, paying particular attention to his allusive lyrics, using his lyrics to help unlock insights from the Bible (and using the Bible to help us appreciate some of Cockburn’s not-so-hidden meanings.) Walsh hasn’t written a book where he hasn’t quoted Cockburn and he has even taught college courses on the “prophetic imagination” of the radical, Christian poet.
Trouble with Normal.) If faith in progress through science and secularized Reason and economic growth ever was a worthy savior, by the time we began to see what Os Guinness called “the striptease of humanism” and felt the dis-ease of cultural disintegration, early signs of the downsides of globalization, the ecological crisis and the like, it was time for Christians to offer a clear “no” to capitalism and progress. Informed by Christian thinkers like the Dutch economist Bob Goudzwaard and Canadian social justice activist Gerry Vandezande, careful reformed thinkers like Richard Mouw and even aesthetic theorist Calvin Seerveld, Walsh became increasingly clear about denouncing our accommodation with the story of, values of, and truncated ways of living as we do in the standard consumerist North American way of life.
imagination. I don’t know if Brian would say this, but it seems that The Prophetic Imagination and The Hopeful Imagination, extraordinary, dense studies by Brueggemann, and his generative work on the Psalms (especially the Psalms of lament) funded a shift, a powerful, prophetic edge that has, I might note, gotten him into some trouble. Brian is a sweetheart of a guy, a good friend to many and a kind, gracious fellow, but he does speak his mind. And he despises the ways the church has failed to offer critique to the idols of the land, the way we can’t even imagine that things might be, as Bruggey taught us to say, otherwise. To awaken us from our slumber, we have to be aroused; apathy must be eroded by pathos. We need prophetic art to break us open.
writing in free verse) to talk about a Christ-shaped imagination, helping us envision and embody a story that is shaped by the story of God. Yes we need
this book, whether you care much about Cockburn or not. I’m thinking of those who have read or knows about the excellent, if weighty, Worldview: A History of a Concept by David Naugle (Eerdmans; $30.00), the helpful, brief, Naming the Elephant by James Sire (IVP; $16.00), the fascinating Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff (University of Chicago Press), the often-cited Creation Regained by Albert Wolters (Eerdmans; $14.00) or Nancy Pearcey and J. Mark Bertrand, who are equally important contributors to this area. I always appreciate Walsh’s fresh descriptions of how worldviews work, how stories shape us, and the relationship between the big worldview questions and the imagination and he says it well, again, freshly, in this new book. By the way, speaking of Brian’s renown on these very themes, I hope you know that the first portion 
of N.T. Wright’s historic The New Testament and the People of God (Fortress; $38.00) comes largely from Walsh’s influence; it is not inconsequential that it is dedicated to him! Ends up the good former Bishop, by the way, besides a debt to Walsh, is quite the Cockburn fan himself. 
His illuminating discussions in this chapter of songs like “Dancin’ in the Dragon’s Jaw” and “Creation Dream” and “Hills of Morning” are splendid, and it is good to start with perhaps Cockburn’s most popular album. (He played one of these songs on SNL in 1980—Bob Newhart was the host— and they remain standards.) Brian opens up their meanings, helps us realize the method of his madness, relating theology and art, Bible and culture, faith and social discourse. 
Next, Walsh uses his exceptional insight about the Biblical teaching about creation, but not so much the ways in which creation is under threat by the unsustainable visions which lack any sense of faithful stewardship these days, the idol-driven assault which he explored with co-author Steve Bouma-Prediger in the important Beyond Homelessness (Eerdmans; $27.00.) He explores Cockburn’s insights about the creation under threat in a later chapter, a chapter that I would call a “must read.” Space does not permit us to even list the songs he covers here in this early chapter about the joy of creation and the “world of wonder” which we are given as gift (or the creative way he uses excerpts of Lewis’ The Magicians Nephew.) But it is a lovely, lovely chapter, and Brian’s own poetic rumination at the end is itself a gift of playful rhetoric and artful retelling. 
It has been my custom to share a rather long post this time each year, reflecting on our role at the annual 
have touched upwards towards a million students since their humble beginnings at a few Pittsburgh-based schools, so my own role isn’t large. But I have been given the opportunity to teach a lot of classes, speak at a lot of campuses, helped consult with Jubilee committees over the years and sold a boatload of books in the last decades, so we are (how to say this?) humbly glad to see the CCOs Jubilee vision continue to be articulated and lived with integrity so consistently over the years. CCO does excellent work partnering with churches and colleges and the Jubilee event bears witness to their slogan “transforming college students to transform the world.” Beth and I and our store staff are honored to get to play a small role in it. It is the coolest thing we do all year! Thanks be to God and thanks to the CCO.
Reformational Worldview (Eerdmans; $14.00) explores the significance of the full-orbed realities of creation-fall-redemption-restoration for our worldview and has been a CCO fav for years. This book really does explain what is unique and helpful about what he calls a neo-Calvinist approach, noting that while nearly every Christian tradition holds to some similar formulation, his Dutch Calvinist tradition takes the implications of these doctrines perhaps more generously and broadly and draws more implications from them than most other denominational traditions. His famous chapter on “structure and direction” is essential reading, I think, to appreciate the best proposals of the Jubilee vision, and is a good tool to help us explore what is creationally good about something (money, sex, sports, politics, art, race) and what is misdirected and dysfunctional. Any social reformer needs to know what is good and what is bad, what should be changed and what should remain, in her arena of influence and no one books lays a foundation for helping us with that cultural discernment as does Creation Regained. A few other speakers at Jubilee agreed, since it was a book that was
new translation of Kuyper on common grace, a book we featured called Wisdom and Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art (Christian’s Library Press; $14.99) Francis Schaeffer, who some of you may know, was important to the CCO in its early years, and he gleaned some of this Kuyper narrative worldview stuff from a Dutch art historian named Hans Rookmaaker, who himself learned it from a philosopher named J. P. A. Mekkes, who had been a student of the Free University of Amsterdam’s heavyweight Herman Dooyeweerd. Mekkes and Rookmaaker met in a POW camp during the Nazi occupation of Holland, and CCO and Jubilee stand, if a bit indirectly, in this grand tradition of Christ’s clear call over all of life and culture, as Kuyper taught. We not only had a few Francis Schaeffer books at Jubilee, but a Rookmaaker book on the arts, and a thin but dense philosophical treatise by Mekkes published by Dordt College Press. The best book on Dooyeweerd is the highly-acclaimed one by Jonathan Chaplin, Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian Philosopher of State and Civil Society (University of Notre Dame Press; $68.00.) This is the precise intellectual movement that so influenced Al Wolters and which gives Creation Regained its vision and heft. Who knew that Jubilee existed as it does because God in His mercy had Mekkes tell Rookmaaker about Dooyeweerd. Years later, Shaeffer spoke at Grove City College and the next night at Geneva College, both in Western Pennsylvania. Young CCO workers were in those crowds and they learned to appreciate this worldview stuff from Pete Steen who was acquainted with the work of each of these scholar-activists. 
I am glad that so many these days invite us to think in terms of story and storied theology—think Donald Miller, for one example. I promoted A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: How I Learned to Live a Better Story (Nelson; $15.99) which I adore, not least because Jubilee speaker and friend Bob Goff plays a role in it.) I even like a little, inexpensive book by John Eldredge called Epic: The Story God is Telling (Nelson; $2.99) that reminds us that life unfolds like a drama, a play, and we get to take up our role in the epic adventure of it all. The second in the fascinating trio of novels by Brian McLaren is called The Story We Find Ourselves In (Jossey-Bass; $14.99) and brings together these themes that our life is a story and that the Bible is best understood as a story God has and is telling. The respected work of missiologist Leslie Newbigin has helped us think of the role of narrative in theology and thanks to the Nazarene Barefoot Ministries his little gem of radio talks, showing simply how the Bible is one continues story, is now reprinted. It is called A Walk Through the Bible ($12.99) and is wonderful. Do you know about the recent, big 
God and His People ($19.99; there are other pieces, too—youth versions, DVD curriculum, etc. which we happily promote. Do check out that link as it’s pretty spiffy.) We awarded last year as a best book of 2011 one of the more creative Bible overviews published these days The Story of God, the Story of Us: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible by Sean Gladding (IVP; $17.00; the fabulous DVD sells for $30.00.) Or, thinking of story and narrative, think of N. T. Wright, who insists that the even the didactic teaching of New Testament letters like Romans are to be understand best within their narrative context, the story that was going on in those places in first century Judaism. Think of political theologians like Stanley Hauerwas that talk about narrative theology. (I’m showing off, but you should know the important name of Thomist philosopher Alister MacIntyre who has written astutely about this topic.) 
was Michael Witmer’s book Heaven is a Place on Earth: Why All You Do Matters to God (Zondervan; $16.99.) Specifically exploring this broad, storied view for college students, Don Opitz’s book, co-written with Derek Melleby, was a hit: The Outrageous Idea of Academic Faithfulness: A Guide for Students (Brazos; $14.99.) Their short and playful chapter on worldviews—conflicting ones in the college textbooks and the coherent one from the Scriptures—and how these narratives/value systems/worldviews influence students is as succinct and clarifying and important as anything in any such book. 
Dr. Mouw’s Sunday morning talk was so reasonable and clear, but yet–there is no doubt about this–it rocked the world(views) of many who were there. Do we really believe that God’s good news is so broadly good that “all things” will be restored to original goodness? Yes, he did quip that Lady Gaga’s work will take a bit more purifying than some, but do we really believe that the work of our human hands, our cultural artifacts and inventions, our art and our games, will be with us–transformed by healing fire– through-out our urban life in eternity? That there is some continuity between this world and the next? That is the serious trajectory Mouw sees in his text from Isaiah and, as he often does, he ended with good preaching from Revelation 5 and then the new city stuff from Revelation 21 & 22. This book is not difficult nor extensive, but it is more than fanciful speculation. It offers a really eye-opening theology of culture, based on careful exegesis, showing why, well, why “everything matters.” For obviously understandable reasons, vans and buses from the hundreds of college represented at Jubilee had to get going after the event ended, so we sadly didn’t get to sell as many of Mouw’s books as we wished. This little study, though, is a must-read. We hope CCO staff will share it with their students if they have not yet, and that those want a bit of the happy Jubilee vibe might pick it up. 
Does your church or fellowship group grapple with the implications of this “four chapter story” as Gabe Lyon nicely puts it in The Next Christians: How a New Generation is Restoring the Faith (Doubleday; $19.99)? Gabe’s book was a hit not only because it captures the Jubilee vision in fresh language with tons of great stories, but we had them at a very special half off price (making it just $9.99.) The Next Christians–as much as any recent book, I’d say–shows the ways in which a vision of being restorers of broken culture inspires this rising generation of post-culture-wars young evangelicals. (We have some left at that 50% off price, too and we do recommend it highly! It will come out next month in paperback, but here you can get the hardback cheaper than the paperback will be.) We have a bunch, at least for now… 
is a good novelist who has a series of well-crafted, intense crime fiction (Back on Murder and Patterns of Wounds [Bethany House; $14.99 each] with the third coming later this year)–but his first book is a must-read in my view. It is called (Re)Thinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway; $16.99) and he takes the “worldview conversation” a step further down the path. Check out his 
folks who like our mix of titles and topics here at Hearts & Minds, those who are nearly shocked how we tend to hold together more liberal and more conservative views, how we patch together in some sort of coherent vision the wide array of authors and denominational traditions that we do. We heard it a hundred times at Jubilee –folks aren’t used to seeing these sorts of books in a religious bookstore. I’m really encouraged when customers write nice notes or ask questions as if they are piqued about where we are coming from. Some say that we have helped them re-think what a religious bookstore might be. Yet, most often, new friends don’t really seem to want to understand what most drives us, they don’t really seem to get the way our study of worldviews has helped us become who we are here at Hearts & Minds. Many thoughtful friends still don’t seem intrigued enough to want to ponder, as one writer puts it, the “metaphors we live by.” So, if I may be forthright, if you like Hearts & Minds, or, similarly, if you like Jubilee, you should read books like Al Wolter’s Creation Regained, the equally important The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian Worldview by Brian Walsh & Richard Middleton (IVP; $16.00) or Mark Bertrand’s more recent (Re)Thinking Worldview. 
You should know, too, that the person who has advanced a somewhat new understanding of worldviews and how they work (what some might call a more thick account) is philosopher James K.A. Smith who, as we’ve noted, rocked the house and fired us up Friday night at Jubilee this year. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (BakerAcademic; $21.99) is doubtlessly the most important book on this topic in decades and one simply cannot be conversant in the latest sorts of socio-theological conversations without knowing it. There are two other massive volumes a-coming, making it eventually a trilogy, so you should man up (can women, “man up” — I think so!) and just get it. We’ve reviewed it here at BookNotes and many others (more important than me) have affirmed its significant merits. For instance, 
the sides of heads after midnight when our ears are ringing. Besides the big gatherings and the numerous break-out sessions (on engineering and education and race and art and politics and poverty and sex and so, so much more) there are oodles of late-night options, from swing dancing to attending a screening of the new Blue Like Jazz movie with director Steve Taylor, to prayer meetings and impromptu jam sessions. There were helpful booths from organizations like Compassion International and Toms Shoes,
the Humane Society and Urbana. There were several graduate schools represented and mission agencies and summer opportunities for students, from working in Christian camping to serving in urban missions to options for leadership development in places like the Ocean City Beach Project. This is an event that works hard to network people, to dream big, to get kids thinking about their lives and their choices and their affiliations. 
are right to do this by using books. I’m tickled, of course, that as an Associate Staff of the CCO, I’m given such wonderful opportunities — making book spiels at Jubilee, for instance. But I’m not talking necessarily about about myself or my role, as glad as we are for it, but about their commitment to Christian learning. Our role at Jubilee is an indication of the CCOs vital insight that books have been used by God in the history of redemption (from the oldest of Bible times and throughout church history) to further God’s Kingdom and to equip God’s people for faithful service. 
and re-learning things, entertaining new ideas, and move forward with new hope of transforming discipleship in fresh and faithful ways. Semper reformans, semper reformanda and all that, you know.
To not promote reading as a spiritual discipline, I’m afraid, short-circuits the sustainability and longevity of young disciples. Just read David Kinnaman’s You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving the Church (Baker; $17.99) if you don’t believe that we are losing a generation of younger church kids because we don’t engage their minds, offering resources to think about civic life, science and the like. Students loved David at Jubilee, by the way, as he invited them to consider why so many of their peers walk away from church and faith and what they might do about it. It just blows me away to consider that one of the truths uncovered in the research that David did (and that is explained in this book) is how many high school students going off to college express interest in science-related majors and how many of them report that their church (or youth group) has never once in their memory offered any affirmation of the sciences. It’s no wonder they drift from faith, if they don’t realize that there are any number of ways to reconcile the alleged conflict between faith and science. Students like David’s books and more than a few stood amazed when they saw our large display of books on science, engineering, math and such.
Just as the apostle Paul ordered books near the end of his life (see 2 Timothy 4:13) CCO staff buy books for their students. It was a joy watching some of them walk students around the book tables, asking us to help suggest a book for this or that major, this or that interest, this or that topic. How humbling to be invited into this face-to-face ministry! Again, this is a huge take-away for me: I want to be more intentional about doing relational ministry and, naturally, think that books are necessary tools to enhance that. Do you, dear reader, invest in those around you, giving away books, sharing enthusiasm for authors, inviting people to lectures, classes, book clubs and reading groups, coming alongside others as they seek to think and learn in faithful ways? Jubilee’s book table isn’t incidental to the CCOs work with students, and commitments to reading has long been central to the reformational worldview perspective that drives the conference. Is reading central to your vision of discipleship?
With every order you get a free book. Here’s the one we are giving away: 

Caring for Creation: Responsible Stewardship of God’s Handiwork by Calvin B. DeWitt and others (Baker/CPJ.) This is perfect to share as a free give-away since it is not only illustrates the sort of thing Jubilee cares about — creation care and public policy — but these presentations were originally delivered at the 
God and Gadgets: Following Jesus in a Technological Age Brad J. Kallenberg (Cascade) $22.00 Friday night speaker James Smith recommended this; and we had a stack of ’em. He was talking about how although the possibilities for gadgets and gizmos is rooted in the good creation order, such things can come back to haunt us. This is theologically meaty, written by a former engineer who is fluent in serious philosophy and astute cultural discernment. 
InSideOut Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives Joe Ehrmann (Simon & Schuster) $24.00 This really may be one of the great sports books of our time, written by the very wise and honorable Christian star of the old Baltimore Colts (whose story is wonderfully told in Jeffrey Marx’s award winning Season of Life ($21.00). In this one, Ehrmann tells of how caring coaching can transform players into better people. Sounds like a Jubilee-type book! Highly recommended.
The Bond: Our Kinship with Animals, Our Call to Defend Them Wayne Pacelle (William Morrow) $26.99 One of the Jubilee speakers was Christine Gutleben, a charming and passionate spokesperson for faith-based understandings of animal welfare. (She made an important documentary about factory farms.) This is written by her boss, and is a very moving, reasonable argument.
Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us Christian Pohl (Eerdmans) $20.00 There is always an interest among younger adults about community. We sold Bonhoeffer’s Life Together and books by Jean Vanier. But this new work is as good as it gets, offering serious, mature reflections on four key practices that allow our congregations and fellowships to be more authentic communities.
View from an Urban Loft: Developing a Theological Framework for Understanding the City Sean Benesh (Resource Publications) $23.00 We have a large section of books on urban ministry, social work and such. And we have some on urban design, new urbanism, stuff for architects and planners. This is foundational for any, ruminations on how to embody our discipleship amidst the cityscape. Very nicely done by a guy in Vancouver who directs the Epoch Center for Urban Renewal.
Through a Screen Darkly Jeffrey Overstreet (Regal)
The Existential Pleasures of Engineering Samuel Floreman
An American Childhood Annie Dillard (Harper) $14.00 Not only is this lovely memoir written by a former Pittsburgh Presbyterian, the cover illustrates a classic scene overlooking the “Cathedral of Learning” at the University of Pittsburgh. Jubilee workshop leader Eric Miller (historian and lecturer on intellectual history) suggested that this was a wonderful way to gain a “historical consciousness.” You want that, you know you do. Here ya go.
Socrates in the City: Conversations on “Life, God, and Other Small Stuff” edited by Eric Metaxas (Dutton) $27.95 Eric was one of the big hits at the previous year’s Jubilee (and we sold his Bonhoeffer bio quite well.) This is a collection of some of the talks given at a program Eric runs in New York, that hosts some of the best spokespeople for Christian thinking in the world today. A fantastic, helpful anthology of Os Guinness, John Polkinghorne, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Alister McGrath, Francis Collins and more. Highly recommended, especially at this discounted price!
With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God Skye Jethani (Nelson) $15.99 A a young Baptist pastor friend of mine just got a tattoo of “Immanuel” (in Hebrew.) This is a huge, huge theme with younger adults (as it should be with all of us) –God with us. Jethani is a good writer, a creative thinker, a helpful guide allowing us to reject less than fully faithful assumptions about our walk with God. Margaret Feinberg says “You can’t read this book and not see yourself and others differently.” I almost promoted this from up front at Jubilee, but ran out of time. I’m a fan.
One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow Scot McKnight (Zondervan) $14.99 All of life is service to God, not our so-called “spiritual life.” McKnight explores this radical and yet delightful vision of daily discipleship very, very well. One reviewer said that reading this was like “having my heart massaged and taking a round-house kick to my head.” I didn’t know what a round-house kick was until the Chuck Norris jokes about me at Jubilee, but I get what she was saying. This book is tender and sweet and yet pushes us deep into the life of God, and Christ’s call to serve the world.
The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited Scot McKnight (Zondervan) $19.99 With a forward by Dallas Willard and N.T. Wright, one would think this assessable book would be a must-read. It explores the theme of the Kingdom of God and helps explain so, so much of what we are about. I am convinced we can’t understand the gospel without this important material about the Kingdom and Christ’s reign. Love it. The cover is classy, if a tad dark, but the book is upbeat and informative. Highly recommended.
Barbies at Communion & Other Poems Marcus Goodyear (T.S. Poetry Press) $12.00 This won an award a year ago from our friends at the Englewood Review of Books and it is well deserving. You may know Marcus as a key leader in the helpful High Callings blog. He spoke at Jubilee, but not about poetry, so we have a stack of these. Worth every dime; they make lovely little gifts, and is worthy of repeated readings.
Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God J. Brent Bill & Beth A. Booram (IVP) $15.00 There were a number of outdoor eduction leaders at Jubilee and lots of students enjoy wilderness trips and naturey stuff. With the emphasis on creation/new creation I’d think this would be quite popular. I think that some mountaineers and kayakers have their hands full, and don’t think they need a resource for experiential education about God’s presence. Sad, though, because this is a gem of a book, a treasure chest full of specific ideas, using all our senses. Parker Palmer calls it “superb.”
Transforming Care: A Christian Vision of Nursing Practice Mary Molewyk Doornbas, Ruth Groenhout, & Kendra Hotz (Eerdmans) $20.00 I wish anyone who works in health care would consider reading this…very insightful, co-written by a nurse, a philosopher and a theologian/pastor, all from Calvin College. Very impressive, with great ideas about how to relate faith and health care.
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools Jonathan Kozol (Harper) $14.99 Long a hero of mine, this passionate work rages against the obvious injustice of how poor school districts have so much less than wealthy one. The Jubilee speaker for education majors this year works in a underfunded city school, and knows first hand the challenges and rewards of this. I say read anything Kozol writes. Here is one of his most popular, searing as it is.
Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and t
The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions Karl Giberson & Francis Collins (IVP) $20.00 Remember the bit I wrote (above) from You Lost Me that laments how many young Christians think there is something anti-religious about science, that we need to equip them to think about science in faithful ways? This can help, a great go-to resource. Get a few now while they are on sale! 
Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and The Historians Vocation edited by John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller (University of Notre Dame Press) $35.00 All three of these good guys have spoken at Jubilee and they are truly rising stars in their field. This collection brings new pieces and important voices to this big question, one that is pressing for any discipline: how does faith color and shape and inform our task? Does the vocation of being a historian get worked out differently if one holds to basic Christian convictions about things? Rave reviews on the back from Mark Noll, from Grant Wacker, from Donald Yerza, director of The Historical Society. Making these kinds of scholarly books available to young students is a good witness, we believe, and we hope that those going on to advanced studies will recall having at least seen this sort of integrated Christian scholarship at the Jubilee book display. Kudos to these fine friends, gentlemen and scholars.
In a wonderfully delightful sermon that was at once pleasant and challenging, Fuller Seminary’s President Dr. Richard Mouw started the event alluding to the themes of his book He Shines in All That Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eerdmans; $14.00) and drew from the rich neo-calvinist insight so clearly explained in his study of Dutch theologian and statesman, Abraham Kuyper, the one simply called Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Eerdmans; $16.00.) Both books are excellent and mean a lot to us. (See my recent reviews of the book about Kuyper 
available in a handsome, small paperback (Zondervan; $14.99) and figured Redeemer folks would benefit from it. 
After a characteristically culturally-insightful and gospel-centered call to join God’s work in the world by having our own hearts clearly transformed by Christ, and our minds set on His glory, Tim Keller interviewed Bashir, asking about the unique foibles and temptations found in his particular field of celebrity journalism. Many, many of the ambitious, young professionals surely resonated when Bashir warned against both narcissism and cynicism. Keller is always helpful, intelligent, sound, and honest about very real things. 
Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Gods of Money, Sex and Power and the Only Hope That Matters (Dutton; $15.00) I have often said, is the best thing I’ve ever read on idolatry, and it is urgent, smart, and touching. (And it is just now out in paperback—yay!) I wondered if Mr. Bashir knew it.
Interestingly, though, the first book that came to my mind as he reflected on these duel trouble spots was Steve Garber’s Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (IVP; $16.00) as its profound view of long-term, sustainable hope in daily living (and how to keep it) is a large part of the antidote to narcissism and cynicism. I got to hand-sell it to a few thoughtful participants and trust it will serve them well. (I found myself recommending some of the excellent essays at his 
What Do I Do With My Life: Serving God Through Work Kenneth Baker (Faith Alive) $9.99 This is a small group resource that is excellent for small Bible study groups or adult Sunday school classes. There is a bit to read —five short readings for each day of the week (so each member will need one) but it is mostly designed for good conversations. It has helpful discussion questions, some activities, lots of Bible verses to consider exploring what the Scriptures say about the 9 to 5 and our other callings to work in various aspects of our lives. This is a very fine and solid overview of missional thinking and how our various labors matters to God—I don’t know of many resources like this for small groups so we hope you keep it in mind. Thanks to the CRC publishing arm for doing such quality work. Nicely done.
Work: A Kingdom Perspective on Labor Ben Witherington (Eerdmans) $18.00 This is pretty short but don’t be deceived by its simple size and shape. Ben Witherington is one of our finest New Testament scholars and has a profound awareness of the teachings about the Kingdom of God deep in his bones. As he writes about work one can sense his great vision, his good concerns, his practical, Biblical insight, especially as he unpacks some of the parables of Jesus to help us get a Kingdom vision of our jobs and labor. This helpfully breaks down the pagan sacred-secular divide and calls us all to a robust way of life where discipleship colors all we do, even our daily 9-to-5 labor. Very, very good and its Biblical teaching makes it ideal for adult Sunday school classes or to inspire a sermon s
To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World James Davison Hunter (Oxford University Press)
A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good Miroslov Volf (Baker) $21.99 Again, Rev. Keller alluded to this recent work in his address as a very important book. Dr. Volf, a professor at Yale Divinity School who became famous for his very important Exclusion and Embrace (Abingdon; $28.00), is one of many who are asking tough questions about uniquely Christian cultural witness in our pluralistic world. Nicholas Woltersdorf writes that it is “a wonderful guide for the perplexed.” Richard Mouw endorsed it, too, saying it is “an important book, packed with wisdom” and (yup) I wanted to stand up and shout–hey, both our keynote speakers, Mouw and Keller, recommend this book. Why isn’t everybody rushing to buy it? I figure if the leaders of the whole day both cite something, that is no small indication of it being a must-read. We will be with Volf in a few days, by the way, and hope to get a few autographed. Let us know right away if you want one…
Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just Timothy Keller (Dutton) $19.95 Okay, I suppose that most folks at the event are members of Keller’s PCA church and I suppose they’ve heard these talks, listened to the podcasts, and have a chance to buy the book at their meetings. Still, this little book should have been a central resource for our thinking about the gospel and culture and I was surprised we didn’t sell more. Keller is as solid as anybody relating the core truths of the gospel to the urgent demand for social justice in the world. Can justification make us just? Can we root our longing to see the world and the workplace transformed and just in God’s own justice? Please, please, buy this book and share it with somebody who yearns for evangelical faith and social transformation. Or read it yourself and realize the deep, deep connections between the benefits of the cross and the demands to be active working for a just social order.
repeatedly that this is an all-time favorite book and one very sharp customer (and very thorough reader) told me again today, for about the third time, that this was maybe the best book he’s read in five years. All of us interested in making something of our time in history, that want to engage the built environment and witness to the goodness of God by making creative contributions, will be inspired by this insightful, foundational book. Andy touches on so much here—the implications of being made in God’s image, the need to grapple with questions of power, the benefits of practice and creativity, how to be faithful in small things, inspiration for starting some new iniative in your own locale–that it is hard to describe. I gave a shout out to it in my short talk at the conference and wish I could have explained more clearly why I think it is an essential resource for our efforts at social, cultural, and work-world reformation. I wonder what might come of it if a small group committed to reading this together with a prayerful openness to see if some helpful social initiative, civic involvement or ministry might arise. Or maybe a new hobby, or, heck a new job? Read it and hope for the best!
The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work and Ministry in Biblical Perspective Paul Stevens (Eerdmans) $27.00 Stevens teaches at one of the greatest institutions of higher learning in North American, Regent College in Vancouver, and they have one of the best programs of serving Christian lay people as they take faith into their vocations and callings in the world. Stevens is one of the reasons why they have this emphasis and he has written a lot. This is a masterpiece of studying the Biblical foundation for thinking about what we make of the distinctions between clergy and laity and why we all need to see ourselves as agents of God’s Kingdom, in all aspects of our daily lives. Seriously excellent.
Work, Love, Pray: Wisdom for Young Professional Christian Women Diane Paddison (Zondervan) $14.99 Okay, I’m not going to lie: I don’t know much about this topic so can’t really say if this is truly great or not. People who we trust say it is, several sharp young women at the Redeemer conference studied it over and concluded it was worth purchasing. Everybody wonders if the shoes work. The allusion to Eat Pray Love is in the title, but she doesn’t develop it in the book; it would have been a hoot if she had. The author is a top-shelf executive, does important work in the corporate world and brings both Biblical vision and practical advise for women in the work-world. It is pretty interesting to see how she was able to raise her children and hold down a demanding job, and how she maintained a solid and inspiring faith through it all. It may be a cliche to say she understands how to juggle career and family and how she and her husband navigated their otherwise conservative, two-career marriage. Early reviews have been passionately favorable—“buy this book for your granddaughters” one grandma writes. Another said it was the first book she ever read that understood the tensions of her own life. And ya know what? Not surprisingly, several folks said that it would be very helpful for husbands of career women, too. Right on.
The MBA Oath: Setting a Higher Standard for Business Leaders Max Anderson (Portfolio)
$24.95
Business for the Common Good: A Christian Vision for the Marketplace Kenman Wong & Scott Rae (IVP) $24.00 This publisher has four or five excellent books of varying levels and writing styles on business and I recommend them all. I like this one for a couple of reasons. It is meaty, thorough, serious, and yet offers stories of real business folk making efforts at “another way of doing business.” This is more than a survey of business ethics, but offers transformational principles and practices for integrating faithful ideas into every aspect of the business enterprise. It significantly asks which things in the corporation can be practiced “as is” and which must be rejected or transformed. It covers various aspects of the business, too, from management to environmental impacts, to honest marketing, etc. I appreciate that they have this notion of the common good as primary, as it radically relativizes the role of profits. Certainly, profit-making isn’t wrong, but it isn’t the ultimate thing. Very thoughtful. For a quick exposure to just one bit of his work, see 
$17.95 I’ve written about this interesting “game changer” book before and almost every week or so find myself re-tweeting Mike’s fascinating and learned 
story—first named in Al Wolter’s Creation Regained and
Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View
This is a book that invites us all, men and women, to reflect on
You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving Church…And Rethinking Faith David Kinnaman (Baker) $17.99 David Kinnaman was catapulted to fame when he produced for the Barna Group the research that became the bestselling book UnChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity and Why It Matters (Baker; $18.99) which explored what unchurched North American young adults thought about Christianity and church life. I hope you know that book because it is a wonderfully written and powerful glimpse into the religious attitudes of many young adults. Author and leader of
stories of younger adults who were, in fact, raised within the Christian churches, but who have chosen to leave. He wanted to find the church dropouts and hear their stories. Many of us are so, so glad for these findings since we now have more data and more tools to think about this problem that we so seriously care about. We all have intuitions and hunches. We have had conversations about this. We have our own stories, perhaps, and those of our children, our friends, our colleagues or classmates. But beyond these individual episodes, what are the documented trends? What does the research show? What can we make of it? Kinnaman can help, and, because of his own great passion for this topic, he’s a perfect person to interpret the data for us. I couldn’t recommend this book more strongly.
Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood Christian Smith et al (Oxford University Press) $27.95 Well, if Kinnaman does a spectacular job doing basic research through his Barna Group research firm and then popularizing that into usable, enjoyable, insightful books like unchristian and You Lost Me, Christian Smith is his serious big brother. Professor Smith is a research sociologist par excellence and with titles like Moral, Believing, Animals (Oxford University Press) and What Is a Person? (University of Chicago Press) he has made a notable and significant contribution to the social sciences rooted in his ecumenically-minded, catholic faith. This new book, Lost in Transition, is nothing short of magisterial, offering serious and stunning research on the ways in which this young adult cohort has emerged without a clear sense of morals. The book immediately became a conversation topic last month when New York Times columnist and NPR talking head David Brooks 
Tweet if You *Heart* Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation Elizabeth Drescher (Morehouse Publishing) $20.00 Morehouse is the publishing arm of the Episcopal Church and, as you might guess, offers here a book that brings the wisdom of the ancient and medieval faith into conversation with contemporary theories of cultural change and the realities of new social media. Drescher, who has great interest in spiritual disciplines and practices, has studied spirituality at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. She writes for the online magazine Religion Dispatches. All of this to say that she is an ecumenical, mainline Christian who is very sharp, very funny, and has a very sophisticated way of combining the postmodern and the ancient, all so we can understand the new ways faith is being practiced, especially among youth and young adults. The title is a tad tongue in cheek, of course, and although she is quite enmeshed in new social media, her study is astute and her insights profound. Very nicely done. 
Worlds Apart: Understanding the Mindset and Values of 18-25 Year Olds Chuck Bomar (Zondervan) $14.99 Chuck is a good guy and has a huge heart and amazing passion for doing college ministry. (He has written two books on how large churches near campuses can do young adult outreach ministry among their collegiate neighbors.) Here, he backs up and gives us his most important book yet, a study of this stage of life—what Sharon Parks has called “the critical years.” As the back cover puts it, Bomar brings “understanding, comfort, and direction to all interested in this age group.” Yes, understanding. He gets young adults. Comfort? Well, he is full of hope that God can reach this generation and that we can build meaningful and sustained relationships with this younger cohort. So it may be comforting, I suppose. He offers such clear-headed and practical insight (like “learn to listen”) that it really does give us great encouragement. (Older readers, take note. This really may be a comfort insofar as it will help you with tools to relate to your mosaic-aged friends.) And direction? Oh yeah, he guides us towards paths of understanding, helping us appreciate the mindset and ethos of 21st century college-aged young adults. Huge endorsements from Chap Clark and Dan Kimball on the back, showing that at least evangelical thought leaders are taking this book seriously. You should too.
Generation Rising: A Future with Hope for the United Methodist Church edited by Andrew C. Thompason (Abingdon) $16.00 Whether you are United Methodist or not, this collection of essays by some of the Gen X leaders within Methodism is a real book treat. (John Wesley was in his 30s, by the way, when his heart was “strangely warmed.”) There are unique cultural shifts which those who were coming of age in the past decades experiences and as they now rise to adulthood, they’ve got a particular angle of vision within the church. I liked this quote by Will Willimon who noted “Generation Rising made me marvel at the ability of Wesleyan Christianity to reinvent itself in each generation. Here is Wesleyanism and our church imagined as having a future as bright as our noble past.” Granted, this offers the United Methodist church a prophetic challenge from its younger pastors and thinkers, but all of us should listen to these vibrant and forceful voices. The editor is the writer of the popular “Gen-X Rising” column in the United Methodist Reporter. 
Wandering in the Wilderness: Changes and Challenges to Emerging Adults’ Christian Faith Brian Simmons (Abilene University Press) $14.99 This is a fantastic book, surveying the vast quantity of research done in recent years on the “emerging adulthood” stage. (The term was coined by psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, by the way.) Besides helping us understand the research and get a handle on the common changes emerging adults experience these days, Wandering…helps offer guidelines for how they (and their parents) can navigate those changes. The subtitle explains the them
Greenhouses of Hope: Congregations Growing Young Leaders Who Will Change the World edited by Dori Grinenko Baker (Alban Institute) $18.00 Some books just really intrigue me and although not everyone will appreciate them, I just have to tell our readers about them. This is an somewhat odd book—deep, serious, playful, remarkable in many ways, describing congregations, including some multi-ethinic ones, that are doing some unusual stuff to attend to and minister with youth and younger adults. Walt Brueggemann says it is “a primer on how to recover vitality and fidelity of the church” although that may be overstating it. Paker Palmer’s offers a more straight-forward observation—these are “well-tested green-house approaches” and notes that it will make you hopeful for the church and world. (The opening rumination on what constitutes Christian hope is marvelous.) Carol Howard Meritt, whose two books, Tribal Church and Reframing Hope I have written about before, notes that it “provides tools, probing questions, and significant resources to grow hope in your own community.” The rich array of stories here are exceptional: they include essays about “radical welcome” in interfaith dialogue and “converging streams.” One chapter by Presbyterian Sinai Chung explains the Korean idea of “mozying” which means “when the young mentor the younger.” An African-American community leader offers a good chapter on the African word (and the theology implied in it) Sankofa. Joyce Ann Mercer writes a very important chapter looking at two congregations (one Lutheran, one Episcopalian) and how their church conflict effected the youth.
Congregational Connections: Uniting Six Generations in the Church Carroll Anne Sheppard & Nancy Burton Dilliplane (Xlibris) $21.99 This is a brand, spanking new book and it is nearly one of a kind. Much of the research drawing on the work of Howe & Strauss (Generations; The Fourth Turning, Millennials Rising) and other generational cohort theory appropriated for the church is a bit dated and is often done using language and vocabulary and congregational models presuming an evangelical reader. (Think of One Church Four Generations by Gary MacIntosh, for instance, The Millennials by Thomas Rainer or Generation iY by Tim Elmore.) Carroll and Nancy are Episcopalian leaders (one a priest, the other a licensed preacher) from Philadelphia and out of their interest and pastoral work they researched this well. And they draw out the largest picture I’ve yet seen about the distinctives of six generations as they live and serve together in a liturgical parish. I like their inter-generational approach. This is short and incisive, has discussion questions that are very useful and is a fine survey of generational theory that can be used with a vestry, adult education class, or in any setting eager to learn and grow. Congratulations to these friends for making this nice contribution to the health of God’s church.