We’ve still got weeks before Christmas so we’re happy to keep suggesting books — perhaps to put on your list (send your elves here, please) or for you to buy for a lucky loved one. Maybe you just need to know about these so you can order them later. Whatever the case, we are thankful for your willingness to “shop small” and support our very indie family business. We are grateful for you all.

Here are a dozen very recent books (some brand new) and then I’ll remind you of twelve others that we’ve already highlighted but that are so great I wanted to mention them again. If your stuck for gift ideas, just ask. I love playing book match-maker.

As always, scroll down to the end of this column and click on the link to the secure order page. All books mentioned are 20% off.  If you need them much before Christmas, be sure to let us know. We’ll figure it out for you. I’ll reply promptly to confirm everything.

TWELVE BRAND NEW ONES — all 20% off

Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair Christian Wiman $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

Those who have seriously followed serious poetry in the last decades know Wiman; he was rightly known in the last 20th century as poet, translator, editor. When his memoir My Bright Abyss took the literary world by storm — it was a luminous book about his return to faith after his seemingly terminal brain tumor — he became known in wider circles and more conventional Christian readers took up his volumes of poetry and a few on the work of writers and artists. Few writers are esteemed in the New York Times Books Review and The Christian Century and CT. I have followed him closely, especially after sitting next to him at an IAM event (hosted by Mako Fujimura) in New York years ago. Zero at the Bone just came this week.

You may have seen a number of interviews Wiman has done already and if you, you know this is an important work. The flyleaf notes that Zero at the Bone begins with Wiman’s “preoccupation with despair, and through pity brief pieces, he unravels its seductive appeal.” Some have linked his serious work to novelist and essayist Marilyn Robinson; like her work, he is very highly regarded as a public intellectual. Amit Majmudar says this quintessentially Wiman work is “astringently, transcendently human.”

 If there is one word to describe this beautiful and unsparing book, it is ‘truthful’: Christian Wiman interrogates pain, joy and God with a rare depth of honesty and a wonderful range of conversational partners, literary, mystical, scientific and more. — Archbishop Rowan Williams

Jesus Through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages Grace Hamman (Zondervan Reflective) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I know I’m not the only sucker for good stuff on the Middle Ages. From knights and peasants, high literature and remarkable art, weird theology and amazingly astute thinkers (not to mention nuns and monks and mystics!) this was a truly generative time in Western history. And this brand new book looks like a lovely masterpiece — not even 200 pages, so not overwhelming, but great.

Good, classical thinkers like Jessica Hooten Wilson remind us that we enter a “school of love” under author Grace Hamman’s tutelage. Endorsements are robust and lovely, from the poetical Catholic writer Fritz Bauerschmidt to black literature prof (and pastor) Claude Atcho. Knowing how appreciated she is by sharp folks, I invite you to turn these pages and encounter Margery Kemp (1373-1440) and Fra Angelico (1395-1455) and the likes of Marguerite of Oingt (1240-1310.) And so much more.

Jesus Through Medieval Eyes has a foreword by historian Beth Allison Barr. You can hear Hamman on her podcast “Old Books With Grace.” Hooray.

Working from the Inside Out: A Brief Guide to Inner Work That Transforms Our Outer World Jeff Haanen (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I hope to describe this in greater detail later, but for now you should know three quick things, three audiences for this fabulous, accessible work.

First, if you are (as we are) a fan of the faith and work conversation — that is, thinking Christianly about labor, careers, the vocations we take up, our call to work, to serve in marketplaces and labs and schools and homes and cubicles and more — if you like those Christian perspectives on serving God in the work world, you will love this. There are a lot of books on this (and yet, some churches still speak nothing of the 9 – 5 lives of most congregants) but don’t miss this one. It is for us, friends, direct from one of the epicenters of this movement, the Denver Institute for Faith and Work, where Haanen has creatively served.

Secondly, if you do not know much about this impressive movement, the organizations and think-tanks and ministries and blogs and books about Christ’s Lordship over our labor, and how to relate work and worship, then this book really is for you. Not as dense as some, and yet not simplistic as some, it really is a truly excellent primer on all things about work. That it carries rave endorsements from two leaders of the movement (Katherine Leary Alsdorf, founding director of Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s Center for Faith and Work and Tom Nelson, president of Made to Flourish) speaks volumes. Philip Yancey doesn’t endorse many books, but there he is, opining that Jeff is an expert in this crucial “intersection of faith and work.” He’s right.

Thirdly, maybe you don’t care about this crucial intersection. This book is still for you. Catch the title’s theme — how does our interior life effect our normal lives? How does our “outer world” come to be shaped by our “inner work”? This “pulls back the veil on the deep emotional and vocational challenges faced by the majority” of North American folks, offering a way out of the “disintegration” both of our culture and our lives. In this, he is a master of the literature and theology of our emotional, relational, vocational, intellectual, and civil health. He wants to change the world and knows it has something to do with our inner worlds.

If you are into this topic, you have may even have been waiting for this. It’s here! If you’re new to this call, start here. If you aren’t particularly interested in the marketplace and shop floor, still, you surely care about the relationship of the journey inward and the journey outward and how discovering a reintegrated life can help heal our land. I highly recommend Working from the Inside Out.

A Different Kind of Fast: Feeding Our True Hungers in Lent Christine Valters Painter (Broadleaf Books) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I know, I know, a Lenten book listed during Advent? Well, there are connections between the seasons — read the magnificent Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge if you don’t believe me — but in any season, this invitation to reflect on your true hungers as a way to nourish your soul (as she puts it) is a blessing. Right?

Fasting is an act of letting go, she says “making more internal space to listen to the sacred whispers of our lives.” In this stunning, little book she unpacks seven different kinds of fasts (including fasting from control, from our attachments, from our grasping, from multi-tasking and inattention, from the idol of certainty, and more.)

This is arranged very nicely, in a handsome compact paperack with a great cover. It has been called a “multistory approach to contemplation that is sensitive, thoughtful, and inclusive.”

Adam Bucko, author of the recent Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide: Lessons in Engaged Contemplation, says, simply, that it is “a transformative pilgrimage of self-discovery and spiritual growth.”

“A transformative pilgrimage of self-discovery and spiritual growth.”

The Book of James: The Power, Politics, and Passion of LeBron Valerie Babb (Public Affairs) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I’m just going to admit it: I have no interest in basketball. At all. I hardly knew who LeBron James was until, reading a collection of essays by a writer I adore (David Giffels) about growing up in rust-belt Akron, Ohio (The Hard Way on Purpose) he told of the importance of the sport to his high school, the town, and the general importance of King James who had lived and played there. I came to realize that he was a larger than life figure, a black role model, philanthropist, activist. If Giffels liked him, I would care, too.  I started to pay attention.

And now we have this brand new volume that is said to be stunning, brilliant, exquisite, sharp. It is about the ethics of fame, the loyalty to place and family, about race and injustice. Mirin Fader says it is “an outright clinic on how to write about basketball, race, culture, and America itself.” It just came out, but it’s on my wish list. Ha.

 The Book of James is bigger than LeBron and bigger than basketball. Be careful handling this work because Babb’s insights are so sharp you might hurt yourself. Basketball fan or not, this book will take you places you never intended–and you will enjoy every moment of the ride.– Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

You Are Changing the World Whether You Like It or Not David LaMotte (Chalice Press) $19.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, David LaMotte is not a cool, urban, basketball staff. With his signature cowboy hat and acoustic guitar he may be more akin to Neil Young or maybe Wendell Berry. But yet, he’s a mystic (and has a great endorsing blurb on the back by author and poet Kathleen Norris.) He is friends with Bishop William Barber, who knows a thing or two about the “rhythm and artistry” that fuels changing the world for the better.

This recent book is truly one of the best guides I’ve ever seen to learn how to put feet to your ideals, to get involved in deeper forms of activism and social change. We are all planting seeds, all the time, he notes, and the question is whether we know it or not, and whether we are asking about what kind of seeds we are sowing. This book will help you take steps to be more wisely and fruitfully involved.

David LaMotte himself is a gift and he comes through in this new book. It is, in a way, a large gift, a resource, a manual, a hope-filled antidote to the myth of powerlessness. We can make a difference. He has the stories — some global and exciting, others more routine and local — to prove it.

He knows a bit about toxic movements, too, organizations and groups that are not empowering, not healthy. His discernment about this (sometimes learned the hard way) is excellent. He’s a fun and funny teacher, a fine folk singer, and a great storyteller.

LaMotte, from the Black Mountain area of North Carolina, is rooted in the Christian faith. Indeed. Yet he is generous and gracious about others, interested in collaboration and interfaith work. He has done thousands of concerns and talks all over the world. He is a Rotary Peace Fellow, has started a non-profit in Guatemala, and has set down here just about everything one needs to know to become a better human, engaging in the world, willing to work to turn around hopelessness and find joy in service. Brian McLaren is really right: it “rings true and will touch you deeply.”

Pilgrim: 25 Ways God’s Character Leads Us Onward Ruth Chou Simons (Harvest House) $34.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99

I’m not always a fan of social media influencers and instagram stars and fashion gurus; okay I’ll admit, I don’t even know who most are, but I mostly don’t care. Increasingly they all have books and it irritates me. Too much rizz, not enough substance.

And then comes along an artist who is a conservative evangelical, an obviously Godly woman with much to say and a lovely touch. I’ve been won over by Ruth Chou Simons and her artfully illustrated journals and Bibles and all the stuff. Her actual books are good and this one is a hefty, larger-sized devotional inviting us on pilgrimage, to “travel the path Jesus sets before you.” This uplifting mediation on the character of God can accompany you on your pilgrim journey.

There are here twenty-five mature devotions that explore God’s faithfulness, explore a theological teaching about God’s attributes, supplemented with hymns that “illuminate the timeless truths about who God is.”

I think what is so appealing about this solid hardback are the pastel flowers, the illumination, the design, the tender watercolor art. She calls it a collection of “guideposts of grace” and some of that surely is in the presentation itself. Very handsomely done.

Sacred Seasons: A Family Guide to Center Your Year Around Jesus Danielle Hitchen, art by Stephen Crotts (Harvest House) $29.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Kudos to publisher Harvest House (who did the nice Chou Simons book, above) for doing a evangelically-rooted family prayer book that is attentive to the liturgical calendar. Some of you enjoyed that webinar we did with Paul Louis Metzger last week (around his book Setting Your Spiritual Clock ) and had I found time, I would have given this new resource a great shout-out. It is just slightly oversized, a nice hardback, with some etchings and woodcuts in gold and red ink — it’s fabulous, very cool without being too glitzy.

Malcolm Guite has a great endorsement on the back (which is sort of rare) saying that Sacred Seasons is “a warm, winning, and above all practical introduction to the traditional church year.”

“A warm, winning, and above all practical introduction to the traditional church year.”

It is a handsomely designed book but it also has fun activities, delicious recipes, alongside the meaningful liturgies. It gently invites families into the ancient Christian disciplines of attending to the rhythms and cycles of the church calendar with a clear gospel focus on Jesus. Nice.

Meaning in the Moment: How Rituals Help Us Move Through Joy, Pain, and Everything in Between Amy F. Davis Abdallah (Brazos Press) $19.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Amy Davis is an amazing writer, poet, liturgist, pray-er. She is a theologian and minister and here she quite simply offers tools for “creating effective rituals that explore their meaning and mystery.” She invites us to mark “ends, middles, and beginnings of life.”

Get this: she’s got a PhD from Drew and she teaches practical theology and worship at Alliance University. She has been involved in Missio Alliance and the North American Academy of Liturgy. She obviously gets around.

In our forty years of bookselling we’ve seen some fads come and go, trends both good and weird. Ritual studies are fascinating and while some of this sort of thing can go off-kilter pretty quickly, Abdallah is a reliable guide and Meaning in the Moment never gets too woo-woo. It may not be what your fundamentalist grandma wants and it may be a bit much for some strict dogmatists, but for most of us in the vast middle — wanting healthy faith, solid doctrine, practical ways to live out faith in the real world, and a pinch of mystery and ritual — this is fantastic.  As Mimi Haddad of Christians for Biblical Equality International puts it, “If life’s transitions find you confused, discouraged, and stuck, this is your book!”

It is, I should be clear, more than a handful daily liturgies or mystical rituals. It actually has plenty about the topic so you can get under your belt the key notions of ritual, how it all works and why, what ritualization means and ways it can enhance our sense of God’s inbreaking Kingdom. There is a short but wise forward by David O. Taylor (who recently wrote the stunning A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship.)

Somebody I trust in all of this is Dru Johnson (we reviewed his Human Rites quite favorably when it came out years ago and still commend it.) Now at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, Dru  writes:

Davis Abdallah gives us a feast of ritual thinking and actual rituals to ponder and practice. This is not just a book about rituals; it helps us navigate our ritualed world with a trustworthy guide. — Dru Johnson, author of Human Rites and Knowledge by Ritual

Receiving This Life: Practicing the Deepest Belonging Kara K. Root (Fortress Press) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

I hope you recall that more than a year ago I reviewed Kara Root’s amazing, rich, heart-rending, moving story The Deepest Belonging: A Story about Discovering Where God Meets Us. She is a pastor of a small Presbyterian Church (and the wife of scholar Andrew Root, whose serious work on the church in the secular age we’ve touted here.) That book, the first of Kara Root’s, was on our “Best Books of 2022” list and, importantly, was honored by others. It told a few stories about church life and, somehow, drew us into care about God’s love shown in the reality of hospitality, a church of where people belong. Mark Yaconelli wrote, “This is simply the best book of Christian faith I’ve read in over a decade.”

Okay, so this brand new one, Receiving This Life, is a bit of a sequel, a follow-up, offering devotional reflections, prayers, practices, and liturgies that “invite attentive receptivity to ordinary moments.” She invites us to think about resting, noticing, surrendering and “empowers readers to embrace life as sacred, practice belonging to God and each other, and receive all of life as a gift.”

I loved this book! Being with Kara Root in these pages is a pure gift. Part spiritual director, part kitchen-table friend, Root gently unzipped every article of anxious faith I own and left my “worry time” self on the floor. Every chapter was a flood of relief. Don’t reach for this book. Receive it. — Kenda Creasy Dean, Professor of Youth, Church, and Culture, Princeton Theological Seminary, and author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church

Receiving This Life is a true gift of a book. Root is an inspired storyteller, and the wisdom and care shared in these pages will be life-giving and faith-shaping for pastors and lay readers alike. I will be quoting from this book and drawing from it as a resource for my own ministry for years and years to come. Again, what a gift. — Austin Carty, author of The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry

Dancing in My Dreams: A Spiritual Biography of Tina Turner Ralph H. Craig III (Eerdmans) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Eerdmans long-standing series of religious biographies is respected for their scholarly acumen and, usually, for their accessible writing style, bring pleasure to countless, curious, nonfiction readers. Some are about admirable religious leaders, others less so. All are fascinating, combining history, social context, surveying the religious landscape, and the foibles of the personal faith of the person under consideration. Some, like Dr. Allen Guelzo’s Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, have been very widely recognized, others less so. In recent years they’ve done great ones on Sojourner Truth, Ruth Bell Graham, Jackie Robinson, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, and more. I’m looking forward to the February release of A Prairie Faith: The Religious Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I applaud their newest in this Library of Religious Biography, one of the few they’ve done on a pop star, and a pop star who is, in her own way, a Buddhist. Who knew?

Ralph Craig here explores Tina Turner’s spiritual journey from her Black Baptist upbringing to her “uniquely syncretic Buddhism.” As the back cover invites, you will discover “how the Queen of Rock n Roll found power and enlightenment against the dynamic backdrop of late twentieth-century America.”

Read these early reviews. Some folks are very, very excited about this, and not just as fans, but as those seriously pondering faith in the modern setting. Fascinating.

Ralph H. Craig III has gifted the field of religious studies and the world with this critical, ambitious, and beautifully written religious biography of Tina Turner, Black Buddhist woman and pop culture icon. . . . This indispensable volume blends together the myriad worlds and religious ways of knowing at the helm of Turner’s artistic and aesthetic productions, and it offers a daring challenge to earnestly sit with and learn from Tina. Dancing in My Dreams is, without question, a must-read. — Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Harvard Divinity School

A deep, exciting journey through Tina Turner’s Black Christian roots, adult explorations of American metaphysical religion, and embrace of Soka Gakkai International Nichiren Buddhism. This insightful biography casts new light on Turner’s ‘combinatory religious repertoire’ and artistic spirituality beyond lay status. For religious studies and Africana studies, Ralph Craig’s comprehensive scholarship introduces a fresh understanding of spiritual leadership with Tina — a Black woman, survivor, global music superstar, and Buddhist teacher. — Vaughn A. Booker, author of Lift Every Voice and Swing: Black Musicians and Religious Culture in the Jazz Century

The New Revised Standard SBL Study Bible Society for Biblical Literature (HarperOne) hardback; $50.00 / paperback; $39.99 OUR SALE PRICES = $40.00 (hardback) / $31.99

Someone more knowledgeable about Bible translations and such might have more insight but I can say four quick things about this long-awaiting, nearly magisterial, newly updated SBL study edition.

First, it is in the updated NRSV and while there have never been many options for good study Bibles in the NRSV, this is the only study edition we know of in the NRSVue (with ue, standing for “updated edition.”) It includes the Apocryphal / Deuterocanonical Books.

Secondly, it is prestigious in its own way — SBL is the professional gathering of the best ecumenical scholars working in the field of Biblical studies. There are some evangelicals involved (some of great standing who helped with this, such as Nijay Gupta and Ray Van Leeuwen.) There are towering figures in the field (Beverly Gaventa, John Goldingay, Leander Keck, Ralph Klein.) There are many contributors who seem to be from the global church, lots of women, lots whose names I do not recognize. Some are classic — Patrick Miller on the Psalms, Kathleen O’Connor on Lamentations, Richard Hays on Galatians. From Carol Bechtel on Esther to Richard Bauckham on 2 Peter and Mark Allen Powell on Matthew, it’s a grand and diverse set of experts helping illuminate the texts.

Thirdly, it is, for those who aren’t aware of this, very ecumenical, and, frankly, fairly guided by critical scholarship. (That is, I gather they just assume there are three Isaiahs, not one; that the Genesis narratives were shaped over time by various sources, and, happily, that the shape of the canon and canonical context matters.) It is very different than, say, the lovely spiritual guidance offered in the plainspoken and generally very helpful Life Application Study Bible and the dogmatically conservative and generally Reformed ESV Study Bible. All study BIbles have their biases, and while these may be what some call theologically liberal, they are nonetheless often helpful and generally honest about all of that. I’ve only skimmed it and it will take years before a consensus develops about how good it is. For now, it seems to be the best of its kind.

Fourth, it is handsomely done, with a fairly decent size print, lots of sidebars and such (no color pages or photos, though, like, say, in the NIV Study Bible.) However, all of the ones we got in (and we got a lot) have page bleed through. It may be a deal-breaker for some that the gray sidebars that look so handsome on one page bleeds through to the other side, making reading the backside less than pleasant. Same with bold type, lines, graphics. HarperOne really dropped the ball on this. I don’t know what to tell you but to be honest about this unfortunate feature.

TWELVE PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED 2023 THAT WE WANT TO HIGHLIGHT AGAIN. All 20% off.

The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts Jeff Crosby (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

You will recall that I said much about this, how it is so nicely written, gracious, thoughtful, with lots of stories and allusions to music. One of of my favorite books of spiritual formation this year. I’m pretty sure this is going to be on a number of year’s end “best books” lists — it sure is on mine. Highly recommended.

N.T. Wright (Zondervan) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

What can I say. Wright has developed some new thoughts on Romans, seen largely in this close reading of one of the most important chapters in the whole Bible. If you love God’s Word, I’d say you should read this book.

“Like a falcon in a dive, Tom Wright takes readers on a majestic and soaring flight through Romans 8, the heart of Paul’s letter to the Roman house churches. There’s so much to see on atonement, spirit versus flesh, adoption, love, and hope, and Tom does not disappoint with his amazing mix of explanatory insights and easy readability. For many readers, reading this book will be the first time Romans actually makes sense to them.” — Rev. Dr. Michael F. Bird, Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia, author, Seven Things I Wish Christians Knew About the Bible

What If Jesus Was Serious About Heaven? Sky Jethani (Brazos Press) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Do you know this little series of “What If Jesus Was Serious?” There is one about the Christian life, one about church life, one about prayer. This new one is about the Kingdom of God, the reign of Christ over all things. It is not far off to say this is a quick and playful intro to stuff like Surprised by Hope or How God Became King by Tom Wright. There are illustrations, full-color graphics. It is a hoot, and brilliant. Yay.

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

I am not kidding to say this is one of the best books on discipleship that I’ve read all year. Give it to anyone who loves nature, and anyone concerned about the environment, anybody who understands ecology — or those who don’t. Fantastic!

How To Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told Harrison Scott Key (Avid Reader Press) $27.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

When a sophisticated humorist writes a book about his wife cheating on him and you realize it isn’t a joke, it becomes a page-turning train wreck that you want to look away from but can’t. And you shouldn’t because this book is tragic and funny, awful and hopeful, good and bad and better. It’s complicated and weird — the life of recovery from bad relationship habits and bad religion and newfound trust and hope makes this one of the best memoirs I’ve read all year. I couldn’t put it down. I’m not kidding, I laughed and I cried.

Now I Lay Me Down to Fight: A Poet Writes Her Way Through Cancer Katy Bowser Hutson (IVP) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

This small book of poems and essays means the world to some of us who care about the author, but, more, to anyone who needs honest lament, and serious reflection on God’s grace and the gospel’s hope, even in darn hard things. She is amazing. Get a few to have on hand…

Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination: A Theological Biography  Conrad L. Kanagy (Fortress Press) $24.95  OUR 20% OFF SALE PRICE = $19.96

I hope you recall my long review of this first and very good “theological biography” of one of the most important religious leaders of our time. Brueggemann’s recent friend, central Pennsylvania’s Conrad Kanagy really gets him, and the many interviews he did with Walt pulled out bunches of stories from Brueggemann’s storied past. This is a great read. At the very least, if yoiu are in a mainline denominational church, you could give this to your pastor and she will be very impressed.

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis Karen Swallow Prior (Brazos Press) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Karen has made a vital contribution to our understanding of the religious landscape, to our understanding of the vital history — the good and the bad — of revivalism and evangelicalism. She works on the metaphors that have shaped the imagination of many, and unpacks the weight of those stories and images as they have both motivated and damaged so very many. This is a must-read, and it is truly fascinating.

The Spacious Path: Practicing the Restful Ways of Jesus in a Fragmented World Tamara Hill Murphy (Herald Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I hope you recall my little review of this, a gentle and thoughtful guide to the spirituality of spaciousness, of rest, of the ways of following Jesus. She is a spiritual guide and invites us to live well in Christ’s grace. Lovely, insightful, helfpful.

“Many people feel overwhelmed by life these days, and for good reason. ‘Normal’ appears as a distant dot in the rearview mirror. But what if instead of normal, we sought a graced and spacious life? Tamara Hill Murphy invites us into such a life. In The Spacious Path, we are reminded that God has provided wide-open spaces for us, and that we can live a life ‘earthed in Christ.’ Tamara graciously invites us, and then walks with us, on the path toward engaging a rule of life–one that points to Jesus as our firm foundation.” —  Gem Fadling, cofounder of Unhurried Living, Inc., and author of Hold That Thought: Sorting Through the Voices in Our Heads

Holy Unhappiness: God’s Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life Amanda Held Opelt (Worthy Publishing) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Oh my, this caught me by surprised and I loved it. Give it to anyone who is struggling and wants to be okay with not being okay. Just maybe it is “holy unhappiness” and a gift, actually. Being “blessed” as typically understood maybe isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Held Opelt showed in her great book about grief (A Hole in the World) that is she a good writer. Here she is a good thinker, too, fun and nearly brilliant. Exceptional.

How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South Esau McCaulley (Convergent) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

If you follow Hearts & Minds and this BookNotes newsletter you know of McCaulley. His name comes up in recent months since he curated and edited that series called “The Fullness of Time” about the church calendar and the liturgical seasons. Previously he wrote the excellent collection of New Testament studies Reading While Black. He has a kids book, too. Here he tells his life story, from growing up poor in the Pentecostal south to his journey towards Anglicanism. It is a glowing memoir, fascinating, well-written, and surprisingly entertaining. It includes some hard stuff and is important for all of us. What a gift of vulnerable storytelling. Get it. Give it.

Where the Waves Turn Back: A Forty Day Pilgrimage Along the California Coast Tyson Motsenbocker (Worthy Publishing) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Back in the summer I did a long review article of maybe ten different memoirs that we were big on, and this was one. Tyson is a singer-songwriter, an indie folk guy who has released albums and done very artful work. In this meandering memoir he tells of his life, his faith, his doubt… it is grounded in a forty day hike in California as he carried his mother’s ashes, waiting for the moment to spread them in an appropriate place. This is a fabulous memoir, a great story, and his journey on the road is illuminating and quite the adventure. Cool stuff. Give it to any young adult who wants to be “on the road” or is trying to work out grief and confusion. He’s a good guy and this is a very fine book.

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available and seems not to be too delayed.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper than Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Keep in mind the possibility of holiday supply chain issues and slower delivery… still, we’re excited to serve you. Blessed Advent.

BookNotes

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20% OFF

Among other things both wondrous and mundane, two revelations stand out from our day-to-day work last week that lead me to this BookNotes listing of some new books about the arts, creativity, the imagination, and such.

First, we did that fabulous hour-and-a-half webinar conversation with Dr Paul Louis Metzger on his fabulous book Setting Your Spiritual Clock: Sacred Time Breaking Through the Secular Eclipse on the significance of the church calendar. Thanks to all who joined in — we’ll soon offer a free link (at least at the Hearts & Minds Facebook group) to that Zoom discussion so you can join it. One of the things that struck me — besides Paul’s cheerful charm in his serious call to radical discipleship (not to mention his love of rock & roll and the blues) — was that conversations about the church calendar pretty quickly move towards symbols, metaphors, images. Talking of sacred time and practices to attune ourselves to the holy requires some imagination. To press against the encroaching modernist secularism — “secular creep” Metzger playfully called it — we need all the help we can get and some sort of sanctification can happen (slowly, perhaps) when we pay attention to rhythms and rituals and colors. We didn’t talk about aesthetics and the arts as such, but I know we were on the edge of that mystery that evening.

Secondly, some saw on my own Facebook page (and, again, at the Hearts & Minds group page) a link to an informal Sunday school class I helped with to kick off the first Sunday of Advent. We are doing a series at First Presbyterian Church (of York, PA) on poetry called “Waiting Words.” Our oldest daughter, Stephanie, did a really fabulous job setting the table with a little talk on Advent, slowing down, and how the practice of listening to or reading poetry can help. She cited, nicely, from the introduction to the marvelous book When Poets Pray by Marilyn McEntyre. After reading this BookNotes, jump over to our Facebook group to hear her good words, at least, and stay, if you’d like, to hear words by the great Presbyterian pastor and poet, Thomas J. Carlisle, Madeleine L’Engle, Luci Shaw, Drew Jackson, and Joan Rae Mills. I was inspired to think about how creativity and the arts, imagination and aesthetics can help us all.

And so, here are a handful of recent books which you may or may not know about. I hope you consider them for yourself, for creatives you know, and certainly for anyone interested in the art world.

We have many BookNotes lists — some quite extensive — showing some of the selection we have regarding books about faith and art. From classics like Madeleine  L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art or one of my all-time favorite books, Rainbows for the Fallen World by Calvin Seerveld, to the must-have anthology edited by Ned Bustard (It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God) published by Square Halo Books or even their lovely, small one called Naming the Animals: An Invitation to Creativity by Stephen Roach, there are so many good ones. For serious folks, we have all the IVP Academic ones in their great “Studies in Theology and the Arts” series. Visit our website, click on BookNotes, and enter “the arts” or “creativity” into the little search box and you’ll be surprised by how much it will bring up from past BookNotes. The prices might have changed, but some of those old lists are really good. Enjoy!

For now, here are some fairly new ones, all 20% off. Order today.

The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective edited by Roger Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker (IVP Academic) $45.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $36.00

This splendid, extraordinary, remarkable book deserves its own full review but that will have to wait. For now, just a few quick words to say how much this means to me, how much we recommend it, and how wonderfully affirming it is to those who are both seriously theological and intentional about forging a faith-informed sense of aesthetics, a Biblical-driven vision of the imagination, and a critical (if gracious) view of art history.

First, this: the “neo-Calvinism” in the title is a faith tradition emerging from Holland in the early 1900s. The preacher/social reformer/Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper and his associates created a fresh take on the ways in which the sovereignty of God works in the world, and a call to be serious about cultural renewal. There are some who appropriate this tradition in stodgy, doctrinaire ways, but the thinkers — some art historians, some philosophers, some artists —  show that the tradition (with its delightful emphasis on common grace for the common good) need not be sectarian. dogmatic, or traditionalist (as some pitch it these days)

Two names come up on occasion in this fascinating collection who represented various strains or tones of Dutch neo-Calvinism; one is Hans Rookmaaker (whose artful daughter co-edited this volume from Holland), a Dutchman who found faith in a Nazi concentration camp (and who had, perhaps, the best record collection of American jazz and blues in all of Europe in those years) who later influenced early Francis Schaeffer.

The other is the extraordinary legal scholar and Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd, whose followers nearly started a  movement which in the 1960s and 70s created Toronto’s Institute for Christian Studies. Co-editor Roger Henderson studied at ICS (with Calvin Seerveld, the legendary philosopher of aesthetics there) and so represents that unique, mostly North American form of culturally engaging, smart, neo-Calvinism. These are two streams of the theologically-Reformed “neo-Cal” tradition that influenced Beth and I; those that know the origin story of Hearts & Minds have heard us talk of friends from Toronto’s ICS and the Swiss L’Abri that formed our vocation as booksellers.

This big, new book does have a tiny bit of insider baseball lingo, I suppose — Henderson gives us a good chapter on Dooyeweerd’s view of spheres of life and it is a gift for any serious thinker, it seems. There is a chapter swiping a line from Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn (“Rumors of Glory”) that explains how the theme of the Kingship of Christ over all of life in Abraham Kuyper reformed Calvin’s view of the arts. Whether readers are Reformed or not it’s a great chapter!

Most of The Artistic Sphere, though, will be fabulous for anyone even vaguely interested in the conversation about faith and the arts. I can hardly think of a better follow up to, say, the Square Halo Books anthology, It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, or the good books by Mako Fujimura. It is truly interesting, a winning case study of what folks mean when they talk about the integration of faith and scholarship. With the variety of top notch authors — from E. John Walford to Nicholas Wolterstorff to William Edgar to Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin to Calvin Seerveld (whose essay is spectacular, by the way) just to name a few — this book is nothing short of magnificent.

And it is a visual delight. Kudos, again, to IVP. Most authors have been given a way of showing how their theories or insights work out in practice by them doing a second, companion chapter where they celebrate and evaluate art pieces. From James Romain on “I See the Promised Land” in the collaborative work of K.O.S. and Tim Rollins to Seerveld’s piece on the meaning of the crucifixion in Grunewald and Perugino to several pieces on contemporary protest art, the book is a full color feast. It is serious, of course, but there are playful design touches and light colors throughout. Full color art enhances every chapter.

There is, for those who care, a re-printed chapter from a previous book by Hans Rookmaaker and his lovely “Letter to a Christian Artist” from The Creative Gift. Also, Victoria Emily Jones has an excellent closing essay about the books and movements and scholars who have contributed over the last decades. It will be very important for scholars, students, and fun for aficionados.

More should be said — this is one of the grand releases of 2023. Whether you are familiar with the broad themes of a good creation that is drastically damaged by sin but that is being redeemed by a saving Lord, who promised to bring restoration even as we now live into the Kingdom of “all things (re)need” or not, The Artistic Sphere will inspire you to want to live a more full, more human, more full, richer life.  Five stars — very highly recommended.

For many decades, the Kuyperian tradition has been at the forefront of nourishing a Christian imagination in the world of the arts. This excellent collection proves the point, as well as demonstrating how Neo-Calvinism can resource artists and Christian thinkers to tackle together the challenges of the future. — Jeremy Begbie, Duke University, author, Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionist World

The Artistic Sphere is an engaging antidote to stereotypes that often cluster around Calvinism and visual images. These essays are not characterized by a uniform viewpoint. There are refreshing differences of emphasis and interpretation in the way topics like beauty, the imagination, or the social roles of art are discussed. This book is an excellent introduction to how the visual arts were and are shaped, understood, and used in Reformational cultures. — Theodore Prescott, emeritus professor of art at Messiah University, author, A Broken Beauty

Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionist World Jeremy S. Begbie (Baker Academic) $39.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

I’ve highlighted this previously, but surely it is, as one reviewer insisted, “A remarkable achievement that breaks new ground.” So it’s very worth whilte naming again.

We’ve obviously appreciated — and carried — every Begbie book since his extraordinary (and scholarly) work on music, released years ago. A few years ago he did one exploring what theology has to say to the arts, and another one on what the arts have to say to theology. He is prolific, academic, passionate, and a master of classical music. He is one of our finest writers in this whole genre, at least for those who want rigorous, dense prose.

Here he is surely doing much more than affirming that God cares about our creative juices or saying that our faith should give us lenses through which we can perceive goodness and delight in the arts of our fellow humans. It is even more than saying that beauty should be a key notion for our theological efforts. Sure.

In Abundantly More Begbie is making a major argument against one of the grand themes of Western philosophy and culture, what is summed up in the word “reductionism.” Think of C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, perhaps, or other critics that explain how reducing life to just this or that is always troubling and never ends well. No, we need a robust, opened-up, multi-dimensional view of things, the very “teeming” creation God has given us.

As it says on the back, “In a culture that so often seems to shrink and flatten our vision, reducing the world to mere atoms and us to mere things, the arts can break our imaginations open.”

James K.A. Smith has written much against this anti-creational vision or reductionism, and recently, in a column in Image (the arts journal he edits) he explained how very important this new book is.  Here is what Smith said on the back cover:

As only Jeremy Begbie can do, this book weaves theology and music, philosophy and poetry, science and Scripture to explore and celebrate the uncontainability of the triune God and the irreducible complexity of creation. Beginning with an astute analysis of our modern tendency to reduce, flatten, and de-complexify the beautiful, swirling kaleidoscope of divine and created reality, Begbie articulates a creative, constructive pneumatology that deepens our understanding of the resonance between theology and the arts. A remarkable achievement that breaks new ground. — James K. A. Smith, Calvin University; editor, Image; author How to Inhabit Time.

Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking At and Learning from Art Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt (Baker Academic) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Funny, as I pulled recent books off the shelf that I wanted to list alongside our lead title on the neo-Calvinists insights about the “artistic sphere” (above), this is the one I first grabbed. I selected it because it is the brightest, most interesting, best-done arts book of the recent past and it just shouted to be listed again. It is colorful and wise. Fun,too.

Yes, I highlighted it last February — we had it before the official release date and celebrated it by releasing it at the CCO’s great Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh last February. Now, this coming year, Elissa is a keynote, plenary speaker there and doing a workshop on the arts. Hooray. This is righteous!

Redeeming Vision is somewhat like other books which invite people of faith to a deeper awareness of the aesthetic gift, of redemptive moves in interpreting art, in seeing goodness and learning from it by way of engaging classic and contemporary art. It is a Christian guide but, frankly, is so very well done with so many full-color reproductions and insightful comments, that nearly anyone could appreciate it. It is rich and thoughtful and gives actual tools for evaluation and a helpful framework — so much so that Rachel Hostetter Smith of Taylor University says it provides a “useful toolbox.” It is one of those books that deserves a very, very wide readership. We are very happy to suggest it.

Redeeming Vision is an erudite and yet wonderfully hospitable invitation for the layperson to engage deeply with art and art history through a profoundly Christian theological perspective. A vital contribution to the library of any sincere student of visual culture and its central importance in our lives. — Bruce Herman, gallery director, Barrington Center for the Arts

Weichbrodt has provided what Christian discourse about the visual arts over the last fifty years has lacked: an on-the-ground guide to looking. Redeeming Vision is a remarkable text that will play a crucial role in helping to initiate countless curious but often confused seekers into the practice of looking at art. — Daniel A. Siedell New York City, author, God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art

Rembrandt Is In the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith Russ Ramsey (Zondervan) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Okay, this came out late last year and isn’t brand new. We celebrated it as one of our favorite books of 2022. I mention it here, now, not only because it fits this column so nicely but because I wanted to suggest it as a great gift for a wanna-be art lover. Russ is a good writer, a beloved pastor, a cool guy, but he is not a professional critic, not an artist by vocation, not one who is known for this sort of book. But that’s it’s strength — call it “growing your faith by learning a bit about the arts” and coming to appreciate art more by learning some of the spiritual backstory of the artists. It does what it sets out to do, which is, frankly, to help ordinary folks learn to appreciate visual art better and to do so religiously.

In this sense, this fabulous 2022 narrative reminds me of two favorites we very often recommend — Terry Glaspey’s tremendous 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know: The Fascinating Stories Behind Great Works of Art, Literature, Music and Film and his very useful Discovering God Through the Arts: How We Can Grow Closer to God by Appreciating Beauty & Creativity.

But Rev.Ramsey’s Rembrandt Is In the Wind is so, so interesting! The foreword by Mako Fujimura is excellent, the full color plates are great, and the back-cover endorsement of Karen Swallow Prior is punchy and to the point. She says, “The artists featured in these pages, artists who devoted their life and work to that which is good, true, and beautiful, remind us that we can — and should — do the same.

Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy Mary W. McCampbell (Fortress Press) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Again, this is a 2022 release, another of our favorite books of last year. It deserves another big shout-out, as does the fabulously interesting author, the great Mary McCampbell. Anyone who has heard me speak about the importance of books and reading have surely heard me insist that reading widely has a benefit of deepening our sense of empathy — walking a mile in another’s shoes, ya know. This documents that with as much vigor and passion and scholarly wisdom as you can imagine. The opening chapter on what empathy is and the Biblical warrant for it is excellent and shapes her evangelical vision of why and how narrative works its magic on us.

Imagining Our Neighbors… is, unlike the other books on this list, about narrative art, which is to say novels, movies, plays, TV shows, music. She explores graphic novels, YA fiction, the big classics of contemporary fiction, and pop culture. I simply cannot say enough about this but it is a gem; thoughtful, serious, but utterly engaging. Hooray.

McCampbell takes the ingredients of the familiar and invites us on a theological and experiential journey to self and neighbor compassion. In her book, both storytelling and story analysis, from film to Holy Scripture, inspire and equip us to grow what seems so lacking today: empathy. — Christina Edmondson, psychologist, cohost of the Truth’s Table podcast, and author of Faithful Antiracism: Moving Past Talk to Systemic Change

God and Wonder: Theology, Imagination, and the Arts edited by Jeffrey W. Barbeau & Emily Hunter McGowin (Cascade Books) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

This book is not brand new but it is new to me, and perhaps new to you. I discovered it from two sources — there was a great review in the recent Christian Scholars Review that made me sit up and wonder how I missed this great anthology. And then I realized the co-editor, Emily Hunter McGowin, is the author of the little “Fullness of Time” book on Christmas, called Christmas: The Season of Life and Light. I loved that little book (that precedes the equally brilliant Epiphany:The Season of Glory by Fleming Rutledge.)  Maybe I was right, as I alluded to above, that thinking about the liturgical calendar and church year allows one to think about the imagination, about wonder and light and glory.

God and Wonder is a rigorous set of various academic pieces, mostly by theologians of sorts, some academics, some not. Here you’ll read an array of multi-ethnic and trans-denominational voices (Scott Cairns, a poet, is Orthodox; Karen An-hwei Lee is a provost and poet at Wheaton College and here writes on the Psalms; Cheryle Sanders is a beloved and respected professor of ethics at Howard University in DC (and a pastor of the well known Third Street Church of God there.) Nijay Gupta is a New Testament scholar and seriously published  Pauline scholar — he teaches at Northern. In any case, these various writers are weighing in on the question of wonder. How does a Biblical and spiritual sense of awe lead to not only an enhanced imagination but a passion for the arts?

There are chapters on children, on a theology of the imagination, of “radiant awe.” Jeremy Begie has a piece called “Encountering the Uncontainable in the Arts” that is akin to his new book that I mentioned above.

A few chapters that I’m diving into soon:

• “Making as an Act of Longing and Lament” by Tish Harrison Warren
• “The Artistry of Place” by Andrew Peterson
• “Placed Wonder through the Arts” by Jennifer Allen Craft
• “The Wonder of Cinema in Dorothy L. Sayers and Spike Lee” by Crystal Downing
• “Songs and Symbols for an Overcoming Church” by Cheryl J. Sanders

Doorway to Artistry: Attuning Your Philosophy to Enhance Your Creativity Esther Lightcap Meek (Cascade) $32.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

This, my friends, is a very impressive book with which we have great affection. Esther Lightcap Meek is a friend and a retired philosophy professor we admire very much. Her other books are about (get this) knowing. That is, to use the fancy-pants works, epistemology but she brings a common person’s tone to it because her deeply Biblical / covenantal view of knowing is, as the Bible seems to teach, with head, heart, and hand. That is, we are full-bodied creatures, not only brains, and to “know” in the Bible is much, much more than mere cognition or brain knowledge. We know with our bodies, actually.

She makes this point in several important books drawing on the amazing 20th century philosopher of science, Michael Polanyi (and, I’d guess, somewhat in league with that great popular writer, Steve Garber.) In any case, Esther has inspired students — even a rock band who did an album called Esther to show how much her courses influenced their artistry — and now, here, she is showing how all that works for artists.

The subtitle says it all — this is about attuning one’s philosophy so that we might have a proper framework that elicits an attentiveness to our creative impulses. Being an artist — or inhabiting that “artistic sphere” whether an artist, formally, or not —“involved you intimately with the world around and beyond you.” So, she says, “your artistry involves profound but simple philosophical matters.” It goes to the very core of your being.

This book is grand, with a big, caring vision. It offers philosophy for the common person, but, especially designed to help them with their creative side, offering exactly what the title promises: a “doorway to artistry.”

There are nifty illustrations by Martin Smith and a great, collaborative foreword by Makoto Fujimura. She draws on thinkers and writers from Wendell Berry to Robert Farrar Capon to Lewis Hyde to D.C. Schindler — especially his Love and the Postmodern Predicament.  Can you know in order to love? Want to learn to love in order to know? This book will help.

Oasis of Imagination: Engaging Our World Through a Better Creativity Ted Turnau  (IVP-UK) $39.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

We import this one from the UK and we couldn’t be happier. Well, it is a bit big and a bit pricey, but, man — what an inspiring manifesto. Turnau is a leader in both church and the arts community in Prague. He wrote a very thoughtful book a decade ago called Popologetics, which offers a method of classic apologetics drawing on popular culture. (He also wrote last year and published on New Growth Press one called The Pop Culture Parent.) He is currently Chair of Literature and Culture at Anglo-American University in the Czech Republic.

This book is upbeat and readable — even at 450 pages you will not be wearied — and although he draws on serious philosophers and theologians (from Heidegger to Kundera to N.T. Wright, from Dooyeweerd to David Dark to Neil Gaiman. Wow.)

Turnau here offers a consistently Christian, thoughtful overview of a theology of imagination, drawing on worldviewish thinkers like Al Wolters and artists like Makoto Fujimura. He is indebted to Tim Keller and even Francis Schaeffer. And like each of those thinkers (each in their own way) he interacts with contemporary scholars, European thinkers, playwrights, artists, cultural critics. He has Biblical work (including some great footnotes) and helps Christians in their creative culture-making. His hope is to “help the Christian church enter into and contribute to this conversation in ways that build bridges, ways that heal rifts, even in a world that might no longer welcome Christian commitments.” We excited about this.

Imagination Manifesto: A Call to Plant Oases of Imagination Ted Turnau & Ruth Naomi Floyd (IVP-UK) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Okay, this (as you can tell from the cover) is a companion volume to the bigger Oasis of Imagination. This is, as they put it in the back of Oasis, “to put theory into practice.” Nice

Three quick things: Jesus calls us into the world so we should be intentional about our engagement with our cultures. This book helps us quickly get up to speed about how the imagination is an important part of how God made us and why it is part of God’s call to seek the good of our communities. It is about why Christian artists need the church but also about why the church should not only be helpful to artists, but should be planting some kind of artistic / creative works in our community.

Secondly, you should know that Turnau’s co-writer here is, in fact, a vibrant black woman — from Philly! — who is a jazz composer and singer (and who has worked with the anti-trafficking work of the International Justice Mission.) She is known for exciting lectures of art and justice, on music and beauty and racial reconciliation. We are fans.

Thirdly, this is not only a distillation of his bigger book, but this team-effort offers a path beyond culture wars with a compelling call to action; Naomi is an artist and activist and perfect for this on-the-ground manual. This little guide offers practical suggestions for “getting started with planting oases right where you are.” Wow.

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• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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BookNotes

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PLEASE REGISTER NOW FOR OUR FREE WEBINAR WITH PAUL METZGER

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 28TH – 7:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time.)

REGISTER HERE.

I know it is a busy weekend with many folks travelling to be with relatives, meeting up with turkeys and parades and — hopefully — offering prayers of gratitude and hopes for peace. Our last BookNotes was sent into the holiday maelstrom of Facebook ads, email spam, and social media posts about everything from great family meals to profound losses. I hope, somehow, you saw it, and spent a little quiet time pondering the great books we described about Advent. We’ve got ‘em, and if we can help, we’re here to serve you further. Thanks.

In that last BookNotes column I started with a book by my friend Dr. Paul Louis Metzger, and now we are inviting you to join me as I chat with him in a free webinar this Tuesday evening. Maybe you tuned in to the last conversation I had with him and if so, you know the time went fast. We think this one is going to be a blast.

Paul is a scholar at Multnomah University and Seminary in the Pacific Northwest town of Portland, Oregon — it’s the place where, among other things, the popular Bible Project guys came from. Metzger teaches there and also directs The Institute for Cultural Engagement: New Wine, New Wineskins, which is a think-tank/learning center to help Christians more intentionally and faithfully engage, as they say, the culture of which we inevitably are a part. As Calvin Seerveld has written, “culture is not optional” — it is where God has placed us, like it or not. We can study our context and enjoy God’s world and work to repair the dark and broken parts — alert to even the subtle things that erode human flourishing in this secularizing era —or we can go with the flow and get carried along by the ubiquitous social forces and steams, which, well: you know how that ends. For God’s glory and our neighbor’s good, we’ve got to put on holy armor and (with whimsy and joy and faith and hope) resist with all we’ve got.

It isn’t just the big stuff we must fight — starvation, racism, ecological destruction, elder abuse, porn, war, dishonest politics, the ideologies that give us the idolatries of nationalism and technicism and such. (As a matter of fact, Paul has written a scholarly work of applied theology about these very things called More Than Things: A Personalist Ethic for a Throwaway Culture.) Actually, though, the deeper questions are matters of the heart — sure, they flow out to shape culture and society for better or worse, but the Bible suggests there is a profound interplay between the state of our hearts (the things we love and value) and the state of our cultures. Idols are personal — oh, so personal — but also social, communal. We live within our social contexts, our habitus, as some call it, and yet we shape the very contexts. If we’re not careful, we end up looking like the idols we serve.

We need the mind of Christ and the practice of virtues and some friends along the way. We need churches who are aware of all of this and whose worship is thoughtful, intentional, and formative for us. I think this is why the Setting the Spiritual Clock is part of a series (“Worship and Witness”) put out by the Calvin Institute on Christian Worship.

It is not uncommon knowledge that we live in a secularizing culture, what the grand philosopher Charles Taylor has famously called “the secular age.” James K.A. Smith is an expert and helpful companion as we try to learn Taylor’s insights (see his How (Not) To Be Secular: On Reading Charles Taylor) and I am glad that Paul Metzger has studied this stuff well.

This Tuesday night we here at Hearts & Minds are hosting a webinar with Paul to help us figure out how — even in the hectic month of December — we can keep this secular age from eclipsing the meaning and joy of our days. Please join us.

REGISTER HERE:  https://bit.ly/3G8XOR8 

If the page this takes you too seems a little funky — no worries. They’ll send you a conformation for the event 7:00 PM this Tuesday. You’ll be able to chime in with questions and comments, too, via a Zoom chat, although your face won’t be on the screen. 

The word “eclipsing” in the subtitle is important, as we will see. Paul is drawing on the sorts of cultural studies offered by Smith and Taylor (and others) to make a case why the seasons of the church year are so important.  What some call the “liturgical calendar” is that orientation we get as people in the church (or at least we should!)  Waiting in Advent, honoring the incarnation at Christmas, standing in the glory of epiphany, moving with Christ towards the humility and sacrifice of the cross during Lent. You know the rest, right? Holy Week, the death and bodily resurrection of Christ, the promise of power and presence, ascension, Pentecost.

If we are attentive to this cycle of events our days will, sooner or later, be less attuned to or shaped by back to school and Halloween and April 15th and Memorial Day and July 4th but rather more profoundly by the moments and seasons that teach us, year by year, about the life of Christ and the Triune God of the Bible.

Paul’s book Setting the Spiritual Clock has a lengthy introduction which includes some of the best writing I have read about all of this. The bulk of the book is a big devotional (not exactly a daily devo, but a bit sporadic, weekly, seasonal) just chock-full of teachings, explorations, inspirations, and applications of the practical stuff of this kind of life, a life shaped by sacred time. I love it.

One need not be a high church Episcopalian (I am not) to appreciate the gist of this approach to time, to seasons, to counting our days in truly Biblical fashion. And one need not be a cultural historian or social critic to realize that we live in a fast-paced, ever-changing world, what Len Sweet used to call “hot wired” and it is getting to us, eroding our faith, deforming our habits, hurting our children. We need to learn a new way of considering not just our daily discipleship, but the frame that gives it all meaning, subconsciously informing all we do. This framing context for a uniquely Christian habitus to counter the secular creep comes from our understanding of our calendar. It comes, by keeping time, in church and at home.

Join us, won’t you, for this free Zoom presentation. All you have to do is REGISTER HERE and then you’ll get the free access code sent right to you.

The fun begins at 7 EST this Tuesday. We’ll go a bit more than an hour, I’d guess.

Our event is graciously co-sponsored by the great Calvin Institute on Christian Worship in Grand Rapids and the publisher, Wipf & Stock, out in Oregon. What a joy that these institutions are trusting me to interview Paul and give him some Hearts & Minds hospitality, setting the stage for him to share a bit about the book, why he wrote it, its goals and value, and how we might make sense of this new year, Advent season 2023.

I know this is short notice — could you please share this with folks who might appreciate it? I’m sure most BookNotes fans will enjoy it, but we’re especially hoping pastors, worship leaders, church liturgists and musicians, educators, youth ministers, and other ministry workers might join in. It’s going to be lively, interesting, and I believe helpful as you set your face to the new year.

HERE IS WHAT I SAID ABOUT THE BOOK IN THE LAST BOOKNOTES:

Setting the Spiritual Clock: Sacred Time Breaking Through the Secular Eclipse Paul Louis Metzger (Cascade) $34.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

I’m starting our BookNotes Advent list here for two reasons, at least. First, this is an absolutely fantastic devotional with some excellent Advent content, one I can hardly speak of with enough vigor and enthusiasm. I’m absolutely not just saying this because I did a Facebook Live session with Paul around his previous IVP Academic Book More Than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture when it first released last August. Granted, I loved that heady book and came to admire the author very much (and had a blast chatting with him.) But, no, I’m not just pushing the work of a friend. I really, really value Setting the Spiritual Clock and think it adds much to the conversations on these themes about the importance of understanding time and the flow of our days. There is hardly anything like it (as Gordon Lathrop implied in a fabulous Christian Century review.) I will speak in greater detail in another BookNotes, soon.

We are doing another Facebook Live gathering on the evening of Tuesday, November 28th where I interview Paul about this book (register here) and I couldn’t be happier, set, as it will be, right after Christ Our King Sunday and what will then be the week before the first Sunday of Advent. Paul is an ecumenically-informed, learned evangelical scholar, and he will tell us why the church calendar is important, how understanding sacred time helps us focus our lives around the life of Jesus. It’s going to be fun (really, it will be.)

Setting the Spiritual Clock is not only an Advent devotional although there are a good handful of excellent devotional readings for the season. It covers the whole year, so you’ll find good pieces on Christmas and Epiphany as well. From there, he has smart and theologically wise reflections on all the major church seasons (and a few other important days, from Black History Month to Mothers Day to a fascinating entry on Hanukkah.) We all worry about the “secular creep” in our lives and not only has Paul read Charles Taylor and Jamie Smith’s important How (Not) to be Secular, he realizes that one of the great tools to resist creeping secularity is keeping the ecclesial year. This is part of our spiritual formation and his book can help. As Kristen Deede Johnson of Western Seminary puts it,

“This is a gem of a book…. Its content deserves to be mined and treasured as we seek to follow Jesus in these complex cultural and political moments.”

If you purchase this hefty volume you not only get some great ruminations on Advent and Christmas and Epiphanytide, but more than 275 pages on the whole year through. Whether you are in a high liturgical church, part of a more moderate mainline Protestant congregation, or worship in a free-flowing nondenominational auditorium, this is a book that “serves as a guide and traveling companion for the liturgical year, which circles the glorious Son as he breaks through the secular eclipse.” Fantastic.

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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I want to open this 2023 Advent book list with a heart-felt appreciation for the customers and friends who wrote thoughtful, supportive (and occasionally scolding) replies after my last BookNotes listing some recent books about war and peace from a Christian perspective and a handful about Jewish, Palestinian, and Christian perspective on the going crisis in the Middle East. As Israel’s war to root out Hamas terrorists continues, the savagery is to be lamented and only the most heartless or ideologically-driven are glib about the sorrows and complexity in this sad situation. Our friends understand this and we are grateful.

Our customers are exceptional folks and even though I am sure many would disagree with one another on this, and with me — some thinking I’m too critical of Israel, others thinking I’m too generous to them — we keep reading widely, talking together, trying to figure out a faithful response. We listen to scholars and ethicists, theologians and wise Christians who have worked hard to develop Biblically-informed, nonpartisan perspectives. We listen to the hurting and the fearful, especially. Sometimes, poets and novelists, and memoirists and journalists, say it best. In any case, thanks for being such a great crew of customers who read books about the world God so loves. Beth and I and our staff are grateful. We hope we are helpful in your long obedience in the same direction.

Please know we have a large selection of a variety of Advent and Christmas books which we have written about in past years. I’d love for you to study those BookNotes columns, here, here, here, here, or here. I like this one a lot, too, here. You’ll find treasures including things like the great poetry volume God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God’s Unexpected Coming by black poet and justice advocate Drew Jackson and the popular, liturgical poems and devotional reflections of Anglican priest Malcolm Guite, Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany and classics like Watch for the Light from Plough Publishing. From Fleming Rutledge to Tim Keller, you’ll find something to ponder. A few of the older items may, in fact, be out of print, and we don’t have everything we have ever mentioned, but do study those older lists and see if something seems right for you and yours. Prices may have changed, naturally. Happy reading.

We will do a list full of fun children’s books for Christmas later in December.

BOOKS FOR ADVENT 2023

The new church year begins with Advent Sunday on December 3rd. Here are some anticipated book suggestions about, well, anticipation. But first, some about this whole liturgical calendar thing. Here we go.

Setting the Spiritual Clock: Sacred Time Breaking Through the Secular Eclipse Paul Louis Metzger (Cascade) $34.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

I’m starting here for two reasons, at least. First, this is an absolutely fantastic devotional with some excellent Advent content, one I can hardly speak of with enough vigor and enthusiasm. I’m absolutely not just saying this because I did a Facebook Live session with Paul around his previous IVP Academic Book More Than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture when it first released last August. Granted, I loved that heady book and came to admire the author very much (and had a blast chatting with him.) But, no, I’m not just pushing the work of a friend. I really, really value Setting the Spiritual Clock and think it adds much to the conversations on these themes about the importance of understanding time and the flow of our days. There is hardly anything like it (as Gordon Lathrop implied in a fabulous Christian Century review.) I will speak in greater detail in another BookNotes, soon.

We are doing another Facebook Live gathering on the evening of Tuesday, November 28th where I interview Paul about this book (REGISTER HERE.) and I couldn’t be happier, set, as it will be, right after Christ Our King Sunday and what will then be the week before the first Sunday of Advent. Paul, an ecumenically-informed, learned evangelical scholar, will tell us why the church calendar is important, how understanding sacred time helps us focus our lives around the life of Jesus. It’s going to be fun (really) and I invite you to stay alert for our next column all about it. You can register now for this free event by clicking HERE. 

Setting the Spiritual Clock is not a just an Advent devotional although there are a good handful of excellent devotional readings for the season. It covers the whole year, so you’ll find good pieces on Christmas and Epiphany as well.  From there, he has smart and theologically wise reflections on all the major church seasons (and a few other important days, from Black History Month to Mothers Day to a fascinating entry on Hanukkah.  We all worry about the “secular creep” in our lives and not only has Paul read Charles Taylor (and Jamie Smith’s important How (Not) to be Secular), he realizes the one of the great tools to resist is keeping the ecclesial year. This is part of our spiritual formation and, as Kristen Deede Johnson of Western Seminary puts it, “This is a gem of a book…. Its content deserves to be mined and treasured as we seek to follow Jesus in these complex cultural and political moments.”

More info will be coming soon, but if you get this hefty volume you not only get some great ruminations on Advent and Christmas and Epiphanytide, but more than 275 pages on the whole year through. Whether you are in a high liturgical church, part of a more moderate mainline Protestant congregation, or worship in a free-flowing nondenominational auditorium, this is a book that “serves as a guide and traveling companion for the liturgical year, which circles the glorious Son as he breaks through the secular eclipse.” Fantastic.

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Speaking of the liturgical calendar, I hope you recall us speaking of this marvelous set of small books (curated by Esau McCaulley) called “The Fullness of Time” series. There are not daily devotionals, as such, but are short studies of each particular season. Some of you have gotten Esau’s 2022 inaugural volume in the series, Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal and Emily Alvarez’s Pentecost: A Day of Power for All People that came out last Spring. Both were quite good.

But the next three are spectacular.

Advent: The Season of Hope Tish Harrison Warren (IVP) $20.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00 out of stock

Already this season, many have gotten from us the brilliant Advent:The Season of Hope, which is so wonderfully written it made me weep. I love the Advent season and all its yearning and longing for new creation and I admire Tish a lot. Her husband Jonathan helped a bit, making this the best little overview of the significance of Advent I have ever read. I very highly recommend it. As one reviewer put it, “Her effort to ‘make Christmas weird again’ succeeds from start to finish.” Alas, we are out of it now, but I felt like I needed to name it, for the record.

[Please note: we are out of this item, as is the publisher and they have no more to send to us for now. It seems a large, faceless online seller bought up more than they need, as is their habit, so smaller stores can’t get inventory. Be that as it may or may not be, we are hoping against hope, awaiting more, and promise to keep you posted. It seems that there won’t be more until next year.]

Much like Mozart’s music and Shakespeare’s plays, the season of Advent satisfies at so many different levels–theologically, imaginatively, affectively, ethically, liturgically, and so on. In this beautifully compact book, Tish Harrison Warren invites readers to experience the multilevel richness of Advent and to discover thereby the full richness of the triune God. Tolle lege, friends; take up and read, and let Christ himself fill you to the fullest with a life that was and is and is yet to come. — W. David O. Taylor, associate professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, author of Open and Unafraid

Christmas: The Season of Life and Light Emily Hunter McGowin (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Oh my, this is so fantastic I am reading it through for my second time. Like the others in this great series, it combines some historical information (so interesting!) and personal anecdotes (McGowin is, happily, quite a zany Christmas person.) But its greatest strength is the clearly explained but fairly deep theological truths of the season. From her reflections on the speculations about the dating of Jesus’s birth (I don’t think I ever quite understood this but there are good reasons) and her discussion of the nature of incarnation, Christmas is simply one of the best seasonal books I’ve ever read. It is short and solid, thoughtful and enjoyable, wise and serious, even with her fun stories.

Theologically rich, historically anchored, liturgically alert, socially alert, wide ranging, culturally connected, and all this always with an eye on the church–such expressions reveal the value of this small, timely, and wonderful book about Christmas. Buy it during Advent, wrap it up under the tree, and give your friends or family a gift that will stimulate their faith during Christmastide. The gift of Christmas will be made more generous by the gift of this book. — Scot McKnight, professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, author of The Audacity of Peace

I’ve wanted to make Christmas more spiritual without nagging about nonreligious symbols or being an impolite guest while partygoers sip champagne to the melody of ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.’ Thank you, Emily, for showing the way! Christmas: The Season of Life and Light both reveals the history and mystery of the birth of Jesus and shows us how to celebrate it in truly spiritual ways. —Todd Hunter, founding bishop of the diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others, author of What Jesus Intended: Finding True Faith in the Rubble of Bad Religion

Epiphany: The Season of Glory Fleming Rutledge (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Well, if Tish Warren’s warm but serious study of Advent made me cry and McGowin’s remarkable study, Christmas, made me gape in wonder, this brand new one by the great Fleming Rutledge is nothing short of spectacular. I was so very glad when I heard that she was invited to contribute to this series — how could she not be included! — and while she has the magisterial, definitive collection of sermons on Advent and Holy Week (in Advent and , respectively) she has not written much about Epiphany.

I have skimmed this already, not really wanting to study and underline and ponder its glory quite yet — it feels like cheating — but I can tell you that it is substantive, serious, excellently researched, loaded with Bible exploration and preacherly cadences.  It is just over 160 pages (granted, the compact sized hardback isn’t huge) and she offers wisdom, insight, some rebuke, some warning, and lots of very good news. This little release is, in fact, a huge publishing event. I don’t know if it is Fleming’s last book but it is important and to be cherished.

In Epiphany: The Season of Glory, Rev. Fleming Rutledge shows how recovering a delight in the glory of God in Jesus Christ is ‘needed by the church right now as a drowning person needs a lifeboat.’ Written with joyful urgency yet patient wisdom, this book should be required reading for pastors seeking to recover the wonder of Epiphany. Veterans and newcomers to celebrating the liturgical year will find a treasure of biblical and theological insight in this succinct yet potent work. Moreover, anyone who aches for an alternative to the empty ‘glories’ so widely pursued today will be nourished by this exposition of the strange yet beautiful reality of God’s resplendent glory, displayed in the crucified Lord. — J. Todd Billings, professor of theology at Western Theological Seminary, author of The End of the Christian Life

With palpable reverence and predictable erudition, Fleming Rutledge unearths the riches of the most overlooked season of the liturgical year. Epiphany is all about glory, chiefly the glory of the person of Christ revealed in majesty and power as the King of the Jews and Lord of the Gentiles in key moments of the biblical drama. In Epiphany and the season leading up to Lent, the church gathers a fresh chance to behold the glory of her Lord and to renew itself in the work of proclaiming his glory to the world. — Katelyn Beaty, journalist, author of Celebrities for Jesus

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The First Advent in Palestine: Reveals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope Kelley Nikondeha (Broadleaf) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I won’t say much, but we raved last year, and highlighted it in our previous BookNotes on titles to read to understand some of the situation in Palestine.  Have you ever heard of the “Women Behind the Wall” podcast, produced by Shadia Quit, a Palestinian Christian peacemaker? She says of this that Kelley “makes the Palestinian experience visible in a world that has made them invisible. If you are looking for an Advent read that divers into new and raw paths, then The First Advent in Palestine is for you.”

I recommended this last year and one globally-known, internationally-influential Christian leader got it from me. He wrote the other day to remind me how much he appreciated it, truly one of the best books on the Nativity, he said, that he had ever read. So there ya go. Now, with the Gaza war sadly not over, we commend this more than ever.

Naim Ateek (director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem) writes that many Palestinian Christians “connect with the Holy Family” during Advent. It makes sense, given that Jesus was born to parents on the margins of society, where ruling powers sent death squads to kill the baby. In this age of massacres and Middle Eastern atrocities, Kelley’s amazing book should be on the top of your list.

Fully Human, Fully Divine: An Advent Devotion for the Whole Self Whitney R. Simpson (Upper Room Books) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I could write a lot about this but I’ll just say that it is by the founder of Exploring Peace Ministries and it is holistic, thoughtful, full of vivid insights about our senses. It is a four-week devotional that “invites you to embrace this opportunity and experience an embodied Advent.” With guided prompts, exercise suggestions, prayer suggestions and full color art to ponder, this really does lead readers though daily contemplative practices (such as breath prayer, mindful movement, lectio divina) engaging the whole body.

The Afro-centric art in Fully Human… is done by Rev. Lauren Wright Pittman, Director of Branding and Founding Creative Partner of Sanctified Art, a multi-media ministry.

The Advent of Glory: 24 Devotions for Christmas R.C. Sproul (The Good Book Company) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Those that know very much about us know that I was in some ways influenced by R.C. back when I was still in college, and then in campus ministry, in Western Pennsylvania, when the famous Reformed theologian and wonderkid was still in Ligonier, PA. Part heavy, Puritan scholar, part North American Francis Schaeffer, I was a dumb enough punk to argue with him about any number of things (and I recall it was Sprouly that turned me on to the classic Jonathan Edwards volume on serving the poor, Charity and Its Fruits. Years later he would remind me that he was friends with rock star Alice Cooper.)

Be that as it may, Sproul’s dramatic voice here is much-loved and he offers thoughtful, doctrinally astute, evangelical messages, coupled with prayers by Sinclair Ferguson, Joni Eareckson Tada, Steve Lawson, Tim Challies, Rosemary Jenson, and others. Each chapter has a one-word title, drawn from the Christmas narratives. It’s good, even if no quotes from Alice Cooper.

A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season edited by Leslie Leyland Fields and Paul J. Willis (IVP) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

This may be my favorite new devotional this year — okay, it is! — and I think many of our BookNotes readers will love it. If you’ve thrilled to the literate glory of the good essays in God with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas (edited by Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe) or loved the theological breadth of the must-have Plough volume, Watch for the Light, this, then, is, quite simply, the best new volume in years. Kudos to the great Alaskan writer Leslie Leyland Fields and her co-editor and colleagues at IVP for pulling together such an amazing volume.

This reader of short reflections (and some poems) offers wise and beautiful pieces by Richard Foster, Matthew Dickerson, Tania Runyan, Lauren Winner, Philip Yancey, Walter Wangerin, Eugene Peterson, Luci Shaw, Marilyn McEntryre, Madeleine L’Engle and other top-notch mostly evangelical writers. I was thrilled to see Dordt College’s James Calvin Schaap and older readers may know Jill Pelaz Baumgaertner.  I’m a fan of poet and outdoorsman John Leax and the philosopher and memoirist Daniel Taylor. I was glad to see moderns Diane Glancy and Sarah Arthur, right alongside a piece by St. John Chrysostom. A Radian Birth is imaginative, a bit contemplative, yet often vivid, as befits this season of incarnation.  Hooray.

This is destined to become a true classic. You might want to order more than one.

Star of Wonder: An Advent Devotional to Illuminate the People, Places, and Purposes of the First Christmas Angela Hunt (Bethany House) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I ordered this sight unseen, knowing the author is a fine storyteller and writer. We knew it would be engaging, uplifting, fun, even, if captivating in a way that brings forth wonder — and the realities — of the first Christmas. With a deft endorsement from evangelical novelist Francine Rivers (who says it is “written with passion, showing patterns and prophecies that filled me with renewed hope and wonder”) you’ll know it is touching, straight forward, but lovely. The author “weaves together visceral storytelling and overlooked biblical historical truths.”

I take that back — it isn’t fully straight-forward, although it is not obscure and it is not overly poetic or clever. This is just good, engaging stuff, with Scriptural insights and nicely explained historical truths to help us learn about the “people places and things” of the grand drama leading up to the Nativity.

Explore Bethlehem and Nazareth. Walk with Mary, Joseph, and others, Be amazed by the words of the prophets of old. And be warmed by God’s great purpose that culminated in the birth of the Messiah.

I really like the woodcuts that accompany each chapter, giving it a classy sort of feel. Nice.

Light From Afar: An Advent Devotional from Around the World Nadiyka Gerbish, Joel Bengbeng, Claudio Carvalhaes & Sidwell Mokgothu (Upper Room Books) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

There is nothing like this as far as we know, quite apart from the fact that one author is from Ukraine, and serves to be supported. Advent is, of course, celebrated differently throughout the world. As it says on the back cover, “Some cultures barely observe the waiting and focus on the Christmas celebration. Others feel deeply the contrast between present circumstances and God’s promise of a better future, making for a season of fasting and prayer.”

Nicely, almost everyone focuses on Christ as the Light of the world.

Light from Afar is a daily Advent devotional that illuminates the season from the unforgettable stories and reflection of four writers who are themselves from four very different global settings.

One writer is from Ukraine, one from the Philippines, one is from Brazil and one from South Africa. Each share cultural and religious traditions of the Advent season in their pieces, including a Scripture reading and prayer. A cool feature is a link to a song from the author’s home country.

Heaven and Earth: Advent and the Incarnation Will Willimon (Abingdon Press) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I suppose many readers of BookNotes know the name William Willimon. A few weeks ago I highlighted his clever ABC book of Christian belief called God Turned Toward Us. He has done major, big volumes, and smaller, inspirational volumes. He is known for calling us to complete dedication to Christ’s Kingdom and has written with charm but substance on everything from preaching to worship to racism to sin to the Lord’s Prayer.

Yet, I do not think he has ever done an Advent devotional. He does have a great little book on the incarnation in the “Belief Matters” series (Incarnation: The Surprising Overlap of Heaven & Earth; $16.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59) that could warm you up to read the early church classic On the Incarnation by Athanasius — we stock that year-round. In any case, Heaven and Earth is the first Willimon book for the holidays.

It shouts out on the back cover, “Watch out. God is on the way.” He wisely continues, “It’s not within our power to make a fresh start. If we’re to have a future different from the past, it must come as a gift, something not of our devising. What we need is a God who refuses to be trapped in eternity, a God who not only cares about us but is willing to show up among us and do something with us, here and now.”

That’s gospel good news. Willimon, in a way that is both punchy and somehow comforting, introduces us to the God who does just that, “bringing heaven to earth and changing everything.”

“In Advent we celebrate and anticipate the earth-shaking, life-transforming good news that God is coming to us. Watch out. Get ready. God is on the way.”

There is also a DVD ($39.99; OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99) of Will briefly teaching these four lessons and a separate leader’s guide to enhance conversation. ($15.99; OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79.)

Winter Fire: Christmas with G.K Chesterton compiled and edited by Ryan Whitaker Smith (Moody Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

This, my dear literate readers, is what some of us have been waiting for. We know that the great G.K. wrote much about Christmas but never have I found such a clear-headed, useful, and delightful arrangement, turning his many random essays, letters, and oddball pieces (“Conderning Hearty Breakfasts and the Pleasures of Being Flung Headlong into the Sea”) into a marvelous Advent devotional. I’d say that for solid, Biblical, Advent teaching, read Fleming Rutledge to get that under your belt. The aforementioned Setting the Spiritual Clock is a must for the broader liturgical calendar.

But for sheer holiday cheer (from a bit of a curmudgeon about some things) for wit and wonder, snark and joy, philosophy and mythic story of the truest myth of all, this rare collection is hard to beat. He ruminates on the “liberal and conservative balance of Christmas” and how Christmas is an antidote to a disenchanted imagination.”  He believes Christmas is “a litmus test for spiritual buoyancy” and famously noted the season’s “utter unsuitability to the modern world.”  One of the readings is “In Regard to the Enormous and Overwhelming Everything.” But then, again, another offers a brief “celebration of the boomerang.” Chesterton insists that we “pause, reflect, and laugh — that we draw warmth and wonder amid the winter frost of life” Young artist and filmmaker Smith has done a marvelous job — he knows a lot about Chesterton, I can tell you that.

Listen to this marvelous Chesterton line from which Smith has drawn the title of this collection:

Chirst is not merely the summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate.

Perhaps you, like many, need a winter fire. Could Christmas be “the story from which all stories draw their fire”? Smith guides you through it with added Scripture and reflection questions.

Besides 30 readings there are eleven poems, five essays, two short stories, a good number of recipes (everything from wassail and mince pies to fruit crumble, hard sauce, and giblet gravy.) Oh yes, and don’t miss “A Word on the Wholesomeness of Christmas Pudding” published in The Illustrated London News in 1906.) There is even a description by the happy Chesterton on all manner of games traditions.

As you might expect this is laden with period illustrations, lavish (if often pastel) pictures of Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus, and all kinds of Victorian stuff that might be seen as nearly campy, at least fun and festive. Ironic or not, this is way cool. Thee cheers and cheerio!

Stay Awhile: Advent Lessons in Divine Hospitality Kara Edison (WJK) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

This special volume has four major chapters and then shorter ones for Christmas eve and “Christmas Day and Beyond.” Cool, thoughtful stuff, very nicely done. There are discussion questions that can be used on one’s own, but this would be good for an adult ed class or book group since it has daily readings plus these weekly conversations ideas. There is also a free code to a companion video link to enhance study and conversation for each week. Nice!

There are also in the back pages lots of suggestions for worship leaders or liturgists with prayers and liturgies and even a short Christmas Eve children’s program. She has a degree from Duke, has been a United Methodist campus ministry in the midwest, and knows how to add lots of extra resourcing to make the most of this title.  Adam Hamilton says Stay Awhile brings “a scholar’s insight, a pastor’s heart, and a storyteller’s gift…” And who of us doesn’t want to learn more about the habits and practices of hospitality as a Christian witness? Very nicely done.

The Holy in the Night: Finding Freedom in a Season of Waiting Shannon W. Dycus (Herald Press) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Shannon Dycus is an exceptionally thoughtful (black) Mennonite leader so, naturally, there is teaching in here hinting and Scriptural peace and justice themes, but is mostly about how we are waiting for something, and our waiting isn’t wasted. Hear that! The book is asking, in various, creative ways, a huge, provocative question: “What if we were free enough to long for God?”

The Holy in the Night follows the lectionary texts for the seasons and draws in voices of black and brown folks, inviting us all to search for God amid the waiting. It draws on deeper contemplative spirituality, with a “breath prayer” for each session. There is a thorough six-session leader’s guide for a small group, book club, or class. Like the above listed one, this is a daily reader (good for personal use) but they are grouped into six sessions. There are some responsive readings, prayer ideas, even a few sermon hints if a church is using it together. Fabulous and really useful.

An Unlikely Advent: Extraordinary People of the Christmas Story Rachel Billups (Abingdon Press) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

This is a great new resource this year and we are happy to recommend it. The author is an upbeat, conversational woman who has pastored at the United Methodist megachurch in Ginghamsburg, a quintessential place that blends the best of mainline denominational identity and evangelical fervor. You can tell in her style, which is both broadly ecumenical but warmly spiritual, inviting personal awareness of God’s action in the lives of people. Maybe even in ways that are a bit unlikely, even.

There are four weeks to the structure of An Unlikely Advent as she brings new insights about the characters of Christmas; Billups tells lively stories and cites a number of known Biblical scholars. Smart and fun.

There is a DVD, too. It says on the back “expect the unexpected this Christmas.” Billups is a good communicator and you’ll enjoy these brief lessons, leaving plenty to talk about with your group.

The An Unlikely Advent DVD sells for $39.99; OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99) and there is a separate leader’s guide to enhance conversation. ($15.99; OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79.)

Prepare Your Heart: A Guided Advent Journal for Prayer and Meditation Fr. Austin Torres, illustrated by Valerie Delgado  (Ave Maria Press) $11.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $9.56

We’ve carried each new edition of this resource each year and are happy to suggest this new one for you. (The others are excellent, too, Behold by Sr. Miriam Heidland and Adore by Fr. John Burns.) These are each guided journals that invites a close reading and meditative experience around the Biblical text. There are questions for consideration, prayer prompts, some nice, bright, almost icon-like contemporary artwork/illustration, and some lined spaces for journaling. It is designed with some colored ink, making it handsome and inviting. Although most likely designed from Roman Catholics, it is our sense that anyone from any faith tradition could enjoy it.

Ordinary Blessings for the Christmas Season: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations Meta Herrick Carlson (Broadleaf Books) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Do you know the previous two prayer books done by Meta Carlson — Ordinary Blessings and Ordinary Blessings for Parents? These are edgy and contemporary, using accessible language to unhand meaningful ritual. She likes to say that her words are “inspired by God’s delight in our real and ordinary lives.” She’s upbeat and fun, progressive theologically and adept at inviting people to seek the holy in the ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) moments of the holiday season.

There are short prayers for holiday anticipation in families, poems about church, prayers for seasonal travel, and a particular blessing for each day of Advent. There is a prayer for each of the 12 days of Christmas, too.

Filled with ancient truths and modern realities, the seasonal blessings in this book flow from Carlson’s sacred gift of noticing. Her honest wonderings and reflective words invite us to exhale, reminding us that we aren’t alone–and never have been. — Kayla Craig, author of Every Season Sacred and To Light Their Way; creator of Liturgies for Parents

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CHILDREN’S & FAMILY ADVENT DEVOTIONALS

The Christmas Promise: A Three-Session Curriculum with a Family Service Outline The Good Book Company) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Several years ago we shared — as we have every year since — the tremendous hardback children’s book The Christmas Promise, and then again the handsome, colorful board book in the same “Tales That Tell the Truth” line of excellent Bible stories. Now they’ve taken that great book (and/or board book) and developed these comprehensive, easy-to-use lesson outlines to show children how God promised a unique forever rescuing King, how God kept that promise in the birth of the son, Jesus the Christ, and the joy it is for us today to live under the living rule of King Jesus.

This detailed leader’s guide contains everything you need to run the sessions, including good Bible teaching, age-differentiated discussion guides, and even application questions. There are game suggestions, craft ideas, things for children to do at home during the week, and even generous links to downloadable resources.

These can be used as Sunday school lessons for ages 3-5s, 5-8s, and 8-12s. The Family Service outline is nice, solid, creative but not eccentric. I am inspired by it and hope you will be too. Whether you are in a small congregation or a house church or  have a small group of parents with kids, there’s a whole lot to use here, and it is a truly great, inexpensive investment. Love it!

The Jesus Storybook Bible Advent Activity Book: 24 Guided Crafts, Plus Games, Songs, Recipes, and More Yoli Brown (Zonderkidz)  $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

One of our very favorite children’s Bibles is, of course, the rightly famous Jesus Storybook Bible (where “every chapter whispers His name”) authored by Sally Lloyd-Jones and creatively illustrated by the designer Jago. A few years ago they released the  The Jesus Storybook Bible: A Christmas Collection: Stories, Songs, and Reflections for the Advent Season which we made a big deal about. It had little buttons children could push to hear songs, and some other Bible-based devotions, with the cool art from Jago. Yay.

This season sees another new product in this line inspired by Sally Lloyd Jones, a lovely and jam-packed activity book with daily stuff to do, from recipes to games, craft items and more. It includes a set of punch-out Advent ornaments, too. It is really great with lots of pictures and arranged well so will provide hours of fun and edification, even if you don’t do all the activities. Wow.

’Tis the Season Family Advent Activity Book Ink & Willow (Ink & Willow/ Waterbrook/Random House) $19.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

This is a great new hardback book that has a retro sort of lift-the-flap Advent calendar (with nice drawings of bunnies and gnomes and classic, homey, Christmasy scenes.) Retro as it may be, this is good stuff, with family devotions, reflection questions, prompts for various age levels, games, activities, fun facts, recipes, even a place for keeping record of family traditions — use it as a keepsake of Christmases past.

This lovely hardback opens with a delightful quote from Henri Nouwen, and invites families to prayer practices and nuanced Bible reflection, around the four themes of hope, faith, joy, and peace. It has guidance for making a wreath and the “games of anticipation” are pretty neat. If you use the recipe for Christmas Morning Caramel Rolls, let me know.

Families Celebrate Advent and Christmas 2023-2024 card deck (Augsburg Fortress) $10.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $8.79

As we search for great ideas for our customers, we were delighted last year to discover the Augsburg Fortress card deck, and they happily did them again this year. Slightly smaller than usual playing cards, this little deck has 56 cards. Each card features a ritual, prayer, reflection, or activity for families with kids ages 3 – 12. Cards are dated for use each day from the first Sunday of Advent (December 3, 2023) to the first Sunday after Epiphany, January 7, 2024. With some extras thrown in… what a blast.

God’s Big Promises Advent Calendar pack (The Good Book Company) $9.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

This pack contains an Advent calendar and devotional booklet to help families enjoy the story of the first Christmas through each day of December.

This is drawn from the recent hardback God’s Big Promises Storybook Bible done by the great Carl Laferton (who did The Christmas Promise and other clever titles in the “Tales That Tell the Truth” series.) We are excited about this new Bible and about this lovely little Advent calendar and booklet. 

Call us if you’d like us to describe other Advent calendars, from bigger and rather lavish to inexpensive. We have a pretty great selection — for now, at least…

Jesus Calling Advent and Christmas Prayers Sarah Young, illustrated by Katy Long (Tommy Nelson) $9.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

This is a cute board book with padded cover that tells the Christmas story, with little circles throughout with one-phrase prayers of worship and praise interspersed. This may have been one of the very last projects the late Sarah Young did. Frankly, it seems to have nothing to do with the famous Jesus Calling series, and has none of the “Jesus speaking directly to you” imaginative, narrative style of those books. This just tells the story and offers prayers.

I’ll mention this again in a list of kid’s Christams books but I’ll note that it is not an Advent book and I wonder why the publisher was misleading in putting that on the cover?  It does start with a prophecy of the coming of a King, noting two texts from Isaiah, and the prayers for the children thanking God for loving us and for the promise of Jesus. Then it dives to Mary and Joseph and the more typical Christmas Eve story. It’s fine, I guess, if mis-titled, but the little one phrase prayers are actually pretty useful.

The Light Before Christmas: A Family Advent Devotional Marty Machowski illustrated by Sarah Bland-Halulko (New Growth Press) $16.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

We listed this last year, but it is such a popular guide for Advent family devotions that I wanted to suggest it again It’s a fairly simple four-week Advent devotional on the theme of light and darkness following the story of eleven-year old Mia and her blind grandmother —who loves Jesus and loves to share her faith as they prepare for Christmas. Maybe Mia can help your family see Light in these dark days…

All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings Gayle Boss, illustrated by Sharon Spitz (Paraclete Press) $20.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

In the last few years many customers have ordered — and re-ordered, to give away to friends and loved ones, even seekers who are not yet in the Christian world of Advent devotions — the original book by Gayle Boss, All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings, which wonderfully explores animal hibernation to allusively open up insights about night, waiting, new possibilities after a quiet season. The black and white illustrations in that volume are excellent, and it made sense when Paraclete last year issued a very handsome, bright red, deluxe, hardback gift edition. (And, as an aside, you should know the paperback Lenten edition, about animal extinction, called Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, also with stunning illustrations by David Klein.)

This year, Paraclete released a stunning, full color children’s picture book edition. It has similar but considerable abbreviated text, amazing artwork, and is a generous, lavish, children’s Advent book unlike any you’ve ever seen.

In a nice word of advice in the beginning, author Gayle likens this book to an Advent calendar and encourages readers to only read one spread a day, reading and pondering, slowly. She writes,

This will not be easy. The pictures are beautiful and the animals amazing and you likely will want to rush ahead and see and read all twenty-five at once!

A bit later she explains,

You can join creatures in their Advent waiting by staying with just one animal each day. One Advent 1, sink down with Painted Turtle. On Advent 2, huddle with Muskrat. You’ll be excited to see who’s waiting for you each day. By December 25, you will have discovered that the animals companion us and speak to us.

There is more animal wonderment and facts at the end, with some very nifty ideas of things to do, so they should surely follow along with those things to learn and do. Hooray.

The World Waits Elizabeth Pham, illustrated by Jen Olson (Sophia Institute Press) $16.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.56

Oh my, this is a remarkable book, very simple, a few words on each page, poetically opening up our hearts to the notion that the world may feel sad or cold but can be warmed as it remembers and waits. The artwork shows the globe, with hints of the Nativity narrative, wise men and such, too, even as some picture show modern items (cargo boats, telescopes, cityscapes) and then transitions to allusive scenes of worship, lighting candles (in a Catholic Church, presumably) and the reminder that every moment the world waits. I love the simplicity of this, even as there are glimmers of sophistication beneath the simple clarity. Many faithful BookNotes fans will know what I will say next: I love how it shows the whole world waiting, the globe, hinting at the cosmic scope of the redemptive moves of God. Yes!

There is in small print on the title page saying the story was inspired by this line from Saint Thomas Aquinas, paraphrased, they tell us, by the great poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:

The Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore, masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more/ Gerard Manley Hopkins

Winter Gifts: An Indigenous Celebration of Nature Kaitlin B. Curtice, illustrated by Gloria Felix (Convergent) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

For those who want some wintery feel to their little children’s reading habits this month but don’t want to jump to Christmas quite yet, this is a nice, even provocative choice. Alert readers will recall that I highlighted it a few weeks back in a BookNotes dedicated to children’s books. Here is some of what I said, then:

This is a lovely, sweet book showing the life (and interior thoughts and fears and joys) of a modern-day American girl of Native descent. It is unclear from the story what tribe the girl, Dani, is part of, but the story describes her friends who are Anglo, black, and Asian American as they play in the snow and drink hot cocoa. The author, herself a follower of Jesus, is an important writer of indigenous insights (we carry all three of her books) and how they inform her Christian faith.

The plot is simple — she learns from her family about listening well to Grandmother Nature and caring for creation, but her friends don’t get her. She shares with her parents how she was teased and they resolve to be faithful to their indigenous wisdom, looking for gifts from creation itself. Dani takes comfort in speaking with a favorite tree. Eventually her classmates come around and want to see her tree and a fort she built and all ends well.

It was moving, actually, that there was this tension in the story when the kids didn’t understand her wisdom about Winter being a time of receiving creation’s gifts of darkness, waiting, resting. That a few Potawatomi words are used makes this a special treat.

By the way, the girl’s name in the story is Dani, and a brief note tells us that Dani (Dah-nee) is the Potawatomi word used to describe the affection toward a beloved or special daughter. Curtice tells us that “Dani represents not just the special love we share with our human families but also our special status as the beloved children of Creator and of Earth, who was made by Creator to be our mother.”

Gloria Felix, the illustrator and animation artist, is Purepecha, born and raised in Uruapan, in Michoacán Mexico.

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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This is a hard column to write, but I have felt led to do this for a while, now. We have a lovely Advent book list in the wings, but need to do this first. A few customers asked, so here we are: a few recommended titles to help us think about the ongoing sorrows in the Middle East.

Please know this isn’t comprehensive; it’s not even close to all of the titles we have on our shelves on this topic here at the Dallastown shop. We may be a small-town bookstore but we’ve carried a wide range of selections about this topic since we opened almost 40 years ago. And we still have some on the shelf, solid, if a little dated.

In this arena, there are so many adjacent topics, too, on which we have many good books— from Christian-Muslim dialogue (and evangelism) to theological questions about Christians and Jews and the God of the Hebrew Bible, not to mention Christian postures towards the secular nation of Israel. How to grapple with a just response to terrorism has been a hot topic since even before 9 -11 and we are glad for those who raise profound questions about the nature of such a fight. Of course there are questions of what sorts of principles or values should guide US foreign policy and their relationship to Biblical teachings about peace and public justice.

I have been engaged in some good discussions online in recent weeks with a handful of friends who take issue with my own calls for a cease fire in the war in Gaza. Everyone I know (except for some extreme Trump followers) opposes Russian aggression in Ukraine. But regarding Israel’s war in Gaza, views are seriously divided. Those I’m reading, and friends who write to me, are good thinkers, well-informed historically, and most are deeply agonized by the horrors that they believe need to be inflicted on the terrorists who have been a vile menace to Israel for decades.

We should all be shaken by the horrific massacre of innocent civilians in Israel on October 7th. There is no justification at all, ever, for such gross evil.

Still, everyone should know that this whole last year has been an increasingly dangerous time in the Gaza Strip with an unusual number of Palestinian deaths, long before the atrocities committed by Hamas on 10-7. This has long been more than a cold war; my own friends with connections in the region are all just devastated. Please pray.

I observe two things about my friends who routinely try to hold my pacifist feet to the fire. One is related, or so it seems to me, to the thesis of that famous book by Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind; they send me articles from nothing but secular sources. That they are often from unusual, far-right papers only highlights the main problem of Christian citizens forming their opinions largely by reading secular thinkers and ideologically-driven reporters. From this camp, there seems to be no desire to “think Christianly” or to nurture the particular habits of the Christian mind; they seem immune to concerns found in Noll et al and offer nothing theological, distinctive, uniquely Christian. This is not good.

For instance, a person of long involvement in church life (in a conservative church more fussy about doctrinal details than most) has little to no theological substance to his opinions, knowledgeable about one side of the conflict as he may be. I don’t know if he is right or not, but his method, the way he comes to his political opinions, are, for a serious Christian, wanting, if not scandalous. When he is advocating for violent methods to achieve the peace of Jerusalem, I keep pressing for a methodology to his analysis that is consistently Christian. A simple read like The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor by Kaitlyn Schiess (IVP; $18.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40), which asks how we form our political opinions, would be good for such folks. I also recommend the heavier, more scholarly call to resist ideologies of both the left and the right, found in the brilliant Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies by David Koyzis (IVP Academic; $35.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00.)

Another concern about recent discourse here in my inbox. One correspondent essentially thinks that the direct teachings of Jesus and Paul are not exactly relevant in the public complexities of contemporary geo-politics. He is a principled guy, morally serious, ethical, even, and I admire him immensely. His ethical approach seems to be one of counting up the greatest good outcome and then sadly limiting overt Biblical political teachings. Some thinkers in this camp call themselves realists, admitting that their approach smacks of pragmatism, teetering near the bad adage that “the end justifies the means.” Some who tend to think like this wouldn’t exactly say out loud that specific Bible texts are inadequate for social ethics but might say that as we use our sanctified imaginations to “work out with fear and trembling” our views, we can support terrible violence as the least of other awful options, no matter what a Bible prooftext says.

One guy worries that my own tendencies to side with the most suffering people — clearly in this situation the Palestinians and civilians in devastated Gaza — is naive. Even if motivated by a desire to show God’s love and follow Christ’s command to be peacemakers, hopes for diplomacy and gospel-centered peacemaking initiatives finally are unhelpful (they say) as such proposals fail to deal adequately with real evil; in this case the deep hatred of many Jihadists (and fighters in Hamas) and their tenacity in their goal to destroy Israel. Not a few Christian pundits have been saying this lately, at least those who justify the thousands being killed in Gaza. (Many other generic evangelical folks I see on Facebook and other places don’t even try to think Christianly/ethically about the war, they just parrot the uncritical, pro-Israel line that they somehow think is proper. I guess they’ve never read Amos or Jeremiah.)

I do not believe it, exactly, but it is a helpful way to remind us of the complexity of Middle Eastern peace talks: some say that if Palestinians lay down their arms there could be Middle East peace but if Israel lays down their arms, they would be annihilated by those who have promised to do so.

Do the Bible and the teachings of the Lord Jesus matter in a world like this? Is there a way to lean into the thrust of the Scriptures’ call for reconciliation, for us to take up the way of Jesus and to be lovers of enemies and peacemakers, without being naive or resorting to immature proof-texting? What should honest, Biblically-shaped citizens think and do in this fallen world? These are admittedly big, hard questions. Most of us just gape at the complexity and struggle to discern some good thing we can do.

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A FEW MOSTLY RECENT BOOKS ABOUT WAR and CHRISTIAN FAITH

Before we look at a handful of books about the Middle East, and particularly the Israeli/Palestinian conflicts, here are a few titles to help us think about the hard teachings of Jesus about what some call Biblical nonviolence and the more typical position that suggests that war is sometimes the best option, even for those who love God and want to do right in the world.

I’ve written about this before and commend at least these two BookNotes columns to you: HERE and HERE, for instance. Use the search bar at the website to perhaps find other pieces I’ve written.

War: A Primer for Christians Joseph Allen (Texas A&M University Press) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is as thin and easy a book on the topic as you’ll find, an entry-level overview of three perspectives. It has succinct chapters on those who hold to Biblical nonviolence, seeing all war as always sinful, those who hold to the historical just war theory (a model that allows that war might be the tolerable, best option to restore just order, even if it must be determined to be legitimate and constrained) and those who fall into a crusading mentality, suggesting it is God’s will and a noble thing to fight for the good.

Too many fall into that foolish third option, I think, but the debate between the two responsible options down through church history, remains a live conversation. This little book is a fine orientation to the different views.

War, Peace, and Violence: Four Christian Views edited by Paul Copan (IVP Academic) $26.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

This is one of those great back and forth volumes with four different authors from four different perspectives. When you are finally done, you’ve got four main arguments under your belt, and everybody’s rebuttals. What a classroom this book can be. (And only in about 225 admittedly dense pages.) I very highly recommend it.

You’ll have to get into it yourself to see how compelling each argument can be but the four views are described as a “just war view”, a “Christian realist view”, a “nonviolence view”, and a “church historical view.” All of these writers are dedicated Christians and good scholars of topics such as Christian ethics, political philosophy, and international affairs. In a sense, two have two different takes on why Christians should sometimes go to war and two others are less clear about that, standing with those who resist the worldliness and brokenness of war.

Is coercive force and the violence of war ever legitimate? Must Christians always advocate that their country turn the other cheek? Are pacifists who take Jesus’ injunctions literally the only ones that can help us do justice and love mercy? If we should endorse war, are there ethical limits that must constrain the waging of battle? These are huge questions for any time and in any place, but are burning for us now. Please consider this book.

(For what it is worth we have a copy or two of a very old book just like this, published in the 1970s by IVP called War: Four Christian Views edited by Herman Hoyt.)

A Basic Guide to the Just War Tradition: Christian Foundations and Practices Eric Patterson (Baker Academic) $22.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Patterson is a scholar-at-large who has served in the US military and at the US State Department. I’ve read a number of books about the history and execution of the just war theory and this may be the very best. It is thoughtful but lively, a very accessible introduction showing, then, how the just war theory works out in a number of specific areas of statecraft and security issues.  I highly recommend it.

Patterson has written widely on public theology and international issues, including the 2022- released, edited volume, an anthology (co-edited with Robert Joustra) Power Politics and Moral Order: Three Generations of Christian Realism: A Reader (Cascade Books; $39.00.)

A Basic Guide to the Just War Tradition has been getting great reviews, too.

A marvelously clear book on just war. Patterson shows a profoundly deep grasp of the two-thousand-year-old Christian tradition by explaining when war is just and when believers may participate. This is no dry treatise; it is loaded with examples: from The Hunger Games to Harry Potter, from The Lord of the Rings to Narnia–not to mention Augustine, Tertullian, and Origen. A must-read for church leaders.” — Captain David Iglesias, JAG, US Navy (retired); Wheaton Center for Faith, Politics, and Economics, Wheaton College

A Field Guide to Christian Nonviolence: Key Thinkers, Activists, and Movements for the Gospel of Peace David C. Cramer and Myles Wentz (Baker Academic) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

It may be that this book — co-authored by a Mennonite with a PhD from Baylor and a Baptist professor from Abilene Christian University — is one of the most indispensable such books offering excellent and fresh explorations about the Biblical basis for peacemaking. It looks at eight slightly different forms/styles of Christian nonviolence — who knew?  As Eric Gregory of Princeton University writes, “this book lifts up diverse representatives that reveal the breadth and urgency of Christian nonviolence in a world where violence wears many faces. This accessible volume is highly recommended for the church… and all who care about peace.” Yes!!

Whether you argue with their interpretations or relish the gift of their expansive vision, you will find an impressive Christian exploration of lived practices and traditions of nonviolence. — Traci C. West, Drew Theological School

Disarming the Church: Why Christians Must Forsake Violence to Follow Jesus and Change the World Eric A. Seibert (Cascade) $40.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

I bristle at the high price, but the book is almost 325 pages and covers as much as almost any we know. It has Biblical study, theological reflections, true stories and careful analysis leading to concrete proposals for conflict resolution and hope for a better way that war and violence.

Dr. Eric Seibert is a Professor of Old Testament near us at Messiah College and has struggled long with healthy approaches to the ugly and violent texts of the Bible discerning how to use them within the church and public life. This fairly recent book is a major compendium of much that should be known, moving from Biblical studies to practical application in both international issues, and in our personal lives. Whether you are most interested in the basic doctrinal/Bible content or the complicated geo-political concerns or how to be a peacemaker in various aspects of daily life, there is much here. What a book.

Dr. Siebert’s brand new one, by the way, is Redeeming Violent Verses: A Guide for Using Troublesome Texts in Church and Ministry (WJK; $25.00; OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00.)

It makes a case why we should include these hard passages in preaching and Christian education and offers seven constructive ways to do so. It is readable and well-considered, with good reviews from Philip Jenkins, Caryn Reeder, O. Wesley Allen, and others. Adam Hamilton says, “Every pastor and those responsible for teaching children and youth in the church should read this book.” Wow.

Speak Your Peace: What the Bible Says about Loving Our Enemies Ron Sider (Herald Press) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I recommend this whenever anyone asks (rare as it is, admittedly) for an easy to read, Biblically-sound, evangelically-grounded, nicely written survey of the topic of Biblical nonviolence. It is an adapted, easier-to-use version of one of Ron’s major works, If Jesus Is Lord: Loving Our Enemies in an Age of Violence (Baker Academic; $28.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40.) Whether you chose the adapted, shorter edition or the bigger one, everybody should grapple with this beautifully compelling stuff. As Duke’s Stanley Hauerwas writes in the foreword of, “By providing close readings of Jesus’ work and teachings, Sider helps us see that nonviolence is not a side issue in Jesus’ ministry, but rather is at the very heart of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed.”

In times when most Christian institutions are focused on how to preserve, protect, and gain more earthly positions, a prophetic voice emerges to remind us of our core calling and duty in life as followers of Christ. As does any prophet in history, Ron Sider reminds us and challenges us to become the true peacemakers that Christ calls us to be. —Sami Awad, founder and programs developer of Holy Land Trust

Speak Your Peace is a timely word in a world where violence is a daily global occurrence. Ron Sider’s love for Jesus, Scripture, and others comes through in his humble and thorough exploration of nonviolence as radical action. Sider dares us to consider Jesus’ call to love our enemies not as an idealistic goal, but as a realistic policy to be implemented in word and deed by individuals and communities.  — Kathy Khang, co-author of Loving Disagreement and Raise Your Voice.

The Gospel of Peace in a Violent World: Christian Nonviolence for Communal Flourishing edited by Shawn Graves & Marlena Graves (IVP Academic) $40.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $32.00

If ever there was a book that proves the silliness of the claim that theologically traditional evangelicals have little to say about social concerns or public ethics, this surely lays that old story to rest. Shawn and Marlene are pious, Godly folks and sharp scholars. They’ve spent enough time in the trenches of activism to know the important issues and they know their Bibles well enough to weigh in thoughtfully and graciously. It is a bit on the academic side, but, whew, what a fresh batch of essays and a great resource this is. I have announced it before, but it’s good to recommend it again, now, when it is so needed as the world’s issues are pressing down upon us urgently.

Here in The Gospel of Peace they have gathered contributions from all sorts of pastors, theologians, peace activists and social change practitioners, showing how a Biblical nonviolence framework can help bring light and hope around any number of contentious issues, from race and gender to disability and immigration. A holistic vision of shalom will call us to resist war but to work against food insecurity, to care for the ecology of Earth and the outcasts on the earth.

I’ve raved about this grand resource before, and think it is useful now more than ever. There are (to just name a few) contributors such as Drew Hart, Mae Elise Cannon, Randy Woodley, Kathy Kang, Ted Grimsrud, Lisa Sharon Harper, Thomas Yoder Neufeld, and more. Hooray.

Nonviolent Action: What Christian Ethics Demands But Most Christians Have Never Really Tried Ronald J. Sider (Brazos Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Those who follow the just war theory — as does the Reformed thinker Richard Mouw, who wrote the excellent forward — are supposed to believe that war is to be a last ditch effort. Every imaginable option is to be tried before moving to death and destruction. In this extraordinary book — drawn somewhat on the classic research of Gene Sharp, among others — Sider documents how war has been turned away or lessened and mitigated the damage and suffering, when citizens unite to resist the war-makers. Can nonviolent direct action work? Can organized citizen action play a truly helpful role?

We know the famous stories of Gandhi and MLK in the racist American south, but are they just anomalies? Sider shows that, no, they are not. Nonviolent intervention has worked and sometimes worked remarkably well. This book was close to Ron’s heart as he attempted to make a case that Biblical nonviolence was not idealistic Mennonite wishful thinking, but should be aggressively pursued by people who claim to love the ways of Jesus. Sider’s Nonviolent Action is an exciting and inspiring book and, as Mouw and others have shown, it really is a must for those in the just war theory, who promise to support war only when it is the last resort after other peaceful efforts have been tried and found wanting.

Listen to Dr. Robert George, an esteemed, conservative ethicist at Princeton:

When Ron Sider talks, I listen. When he writes, I read. Whether or not one is a pacifist — I am not — one has something to learn about the power of nonviolent protest and resistance from Dr. Sider’s careful and thoughtful study of successful nonviolent movements against tyranny and oppression.

 

Not In God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Schocken Books) $16.95 OUR SALE PRICE = $13.56

I do not want to spend too much time explaining the exceedingly thoughtful, deep, compelling, and wise insights from the late and greatly esteemed thinker and Jewish leader, Jonathan Sacks. Published in 2015, this was, still, seemingly done in the awful years after 9-11, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ISIS. Many of us in the West learned about suicide bombers and fatwas and jihad. Of course, Christians have their own ugly history of crusades and religious wars and disgusting inquisitions. It seems that from time past to now, God is used to motivate religious violence.

What does an astute scholar and Jewish leader say about all this? This book is nothing short of brilliant — and he warns that ISIS-like extremist attacks will be more prevalent as years march on. I highly recommend it for serious readers, those wanting an eloquent study of this complicated topic.

The rave reviews go on and on. Here are two:

Sacks’s sobering yet soul-stirring new book . . . [offers] an ingenious rereading of Genesis. . . . His brilliance as a theologian radiates. — Irshad Manji, The New York Times Book Review

Sacks’s analysis reflects an erudite mind fully engaged with philosophy, politics, and social studies of the most rigorous kind. It is when he turns his attention and all these resources to a theological engagement with the connection between religious faith and violence that he makes his greatest contribution . . . I cannot think of a more important new book for people of faith to read and study together . . . Jonathan Sacks is an enlightening presence for the whole world, and his message resonates today more powerfully than ever. — Michael Jinkins, President, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

ABOUT THE ISRAELI / PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

in no particular order…

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

When I want a balanced, faithful, astute, and caring guide into the complexities of the Holy Land I think of Mae Elise Cannon and her leadership at the outstanding nonprofit ministry, Churches for Middle East Peace. With a PhD in history (and a speciality area of studies on the history of American Protestant church engagement in Israel and Palestine) and a host of books about the interface of spirituality and social justice, she is nothing short of an international treasure.

A Land Full of God (the back cover says) “gives American Christians an opportunity to promote peace and justice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The 30-some essays are accessible, from diverse authors and perspectives, and sure to be received as immensely informative. From the historical, political, religious, and even geographic tensions, this book “walks readers through a biblical perspective of God’s heart for Israel and the historic suffering of the Jewish people, while also remaining sensitive to the experience an suffering of Palestinians.”

I like that they talk about being pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, for the poor and for public justice. Ultimately, it is “a pro-Jesus approach to bring resolution to the conflict.”

Ron Sider was still alive when this came out and he was happy to offer a lovely blurb. He was a friend to Mae and her team and admired them greatly. He wrote:

If you care about peace and justice in the land where Jesus lived and died, then read this excellent collection of thoughtful, probing essays from a wide range of viewpoints. The writers are scholars, pastors, activists, theologians, all struggling — from their vigorously different perspectives! — to be faithful to the Prince of Peace. A good read that will leave you much better equipped to understand all sides and therefore work more effectively for just reconciliation in the Holy Land.

A Day in the Life of Abed Salam – Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy Nathan Thrall (Metropolitan Books) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Several years ago there was a bus accident in Israel. The bus was filled with Palestinian school children. As Nathan Thrall explains in this captivating, immersive bit of world-class reporting (it has been called “luminous and “a masterpiece”) five-year old Milan Salama died in the crash. This is a gripping and poignant story of his father (Abed) as he gets word of the accident and sets out to find if his little boy is alive.

“The scene is chaos — the children have been taken to different hospitals in Jerusalem and the West Bank; some are missing and others cannot be identified.” Abed sets off on an odyssey, of sorts. It is, of course, every parent’s worst nightmare.

The dust jacket explains that horror is compounded by the “maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles that he must navigate because he is Palestinian. It was in the early parts of this book that I realized the accuracy of the apartheid (for which, you may recall, Jimmy Carter was criticized as it was in the title of his book on the Middle East conflicts.) From being on the wrong side of the separation wall, to holding the wrong ID to get t through military checkpoints, to having the wrong papers to enter Jerusalem, “Abed’s quest to find Milan is interwoven with the stories of a cast of Jewish and Palestinian characters who lives and histories unexpectedly converge.”  The story has been acclaimed with Thrall being hailed for his “indelibly human portrait.”

Please read these illustrative endorsements. They are important.

I know of no other writing on Israel and Palestine that reaches this depth of perception and understanding… One could read the book as a précis of modern Palestinian history embedded in the personal memories of many individuals, each of them drawn in stark, telling detail. To get to know them even a little is a rare gift, far more useful than the many standard, distanced histories of Palestine. — David Shulman, New York Review of Books

Propels the reader across a geography that is partitioned behind walls and into enclaves, revealing in visceral, human detail what Israeli subjugation means, and how it shapes the most intimate corners of the Palestinian experience. With empathy and grace, Thrall transforms this incomprehensible, avoidable loss into an ode to a father’s love. — Tareq Baconi, author of Containing Hamas

Nathan Thrall’s book made me walk a lot. I found myself pacing around between chapters, paragraphs and sometimes even sentences just in order to be able to absorb the brutality, the pathos, the steely tenderness, and the sheer spectacle of the cunning and complex ways in which a state can hammer down a people and yet earn the applause and adulation of the civilized world for its actions.    — Arundhati Roy, Booker Prizewinning author of My Seditious Heart

The Vanishing: Faith, Loss, and the Twilight of Christianity in the Land of the Prophets Janine Di Giovanni (Public Affairs) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

This is one of those little known books that has gotten extraordinary acclaim.  Aidan Hartley of the Daily Telegraph says she is “One of our generation’s finest foreign correspondents.” While a write for the Financial Times says, commenting on how crucial it is to real the human stories behind the news, that “Janine Di Giovanni does this with heartbreaking eloquence” Michiko Kakutani wrote in the New York Times that Ms di Giovanni “writes here with urgency and anguish — determined to testify to what she has witnessed because she wants “people to never forget.”

Even the for the first five hundred years of its existence, the Christian church hardly left the Middle East — it spread to Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, and Syria. The Vanishing is, in a way, a study of how the story since then “is of a slow-moving catastrophe, a gradual but seemingly inexorable erasing of the Christian faith from the land its origins.”

Apart from the wars and persecutions of recent years, this is a fascinating and beautifully rendered story. She is a war reporter, though, and as she set out to document the stories of disappearing people, she traveled to “some the most beleaguer Christian outposts” (many that had been neglected or mostly abandoned. To get at what she is writing about, think of Iraq’s Assyrians to Egypt’s Copts, to the few remaining Gaza Christians. About a fourth of this remarkable 2021 book is set in Gaza.

Blood Brothers: The Dramatic Story of a Palestinian Christian Working for Peace in Israel Elias Chacour (Baker Books) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I will not go on and on about this as I am hoping you have heard of it. The book that first came out in the 1980s is now maybe in its fourth cover design and we have had them all. Elias Chacour is the Archbishop of the Melkite Church (with a degree not only from a seminary in Paris but from Hebrew University in Jerusalem) and is, to put it simply, considered the MLK of the Middle East. He is Arab (he grew up in a small Palestinian village in Galilee.) When the tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed (and nearly one million forced into refugee camps in 1948) Fr. Elias began “a long struggle with how to live out his personal spirituality.” As the back cover puts it, “In Blood Brothers he blends his riveting life story with historical and Biblical research to reveal a too-little known side of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is an international bestseller and one of the most enduring books we’ve sold here in the past 40 years.

I’ve got some stories around this book, how it has influenced many — not to mention a fun story of how Chacour charmed his way into a Bible study at the home of then US Secretary of State, James Baker, shown hospitality by Baker’s wife, Susan. (Baker surprisingly met with him and they became dear friends in faith and now has a great afterword to the updated edition of Blood Brothers.) Elias Chacour has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and we could pray that someday his witness will bear fruit. This book is simply unforgettable.

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

I have friends that helped arrange and speak at a major conference several years ago called “Christ at the Checkpoint” which called for contextualized theology set in the horror of the checkpoints, symbolizing the crass repression commonly known by Palestinians. That event and movement is now directed, actually, by this Lutheran pastor, who is pastor of — get this — Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Yes, that Bethlehem. You know where it is, right? This is a deeply moving story, starting with Rev. Isaac’s boyhood amidst the decades of occupation and war. As his friend Mae Elise Cannon writes, “The reading of Isaac’s Palestinian narrative in no way negates Jewish ties to the land” but it does tell an often-unheard side of the story. It is, in the words of Mark Labberton (President of Fuller Theological Seminary) “a clear, passionate, honest, rendering of this ignored and distorted narrative of Palestinian Christians.”

Did you know there is a wall encircling Bethlehem which, for many, stands as a sad symbol of the segregation between Palestinian Christians and Muslims in this era of occupation. This sort of political and social context is unsustainable Biblically speaking and Pastor Isaac — who has a PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies — exposes the disinformation and misuse of Scripture, not least around uncritical North American evangelical support for Israel.

Evangelical mission educator and leader Vinoth Ramachandra says The Other Side of the Wall is “a heart-rending cry for truth and justice on behalf of the Palestinian church.”

Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace edited by Paul Alexander (Pickwick Publications) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

At the time of compiling and editing this, Paul was the Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary at Eastern University and a leader of Evangelicals for Social Action. Not bad for a Pentecostal guy (who has done remarkable research on the early anti-war views of the Assembly of God denomination.) I admire him a lot.

This book invites us to think about everything from land in the Bible to the end times, memories of the holocaust and the possibility of peace in the Middle East. Is Christian Zionism a faithful stance, and what about the possibility of a Palestinian state? Palestinian evangelicals along with others from the USA and Europe gathered to pray and talk, seeking insight about these crucial topics. This book came out of that historic event and is exceptionally important. I think it should be known as important testimony (a record of the hearts and minds of those gathered in those years) and for the wisdom and guidance that emerged. As one critic put it, “the result clarifies difficult, complex issues and points the way toward a just solution.”

There are thirteen serious chapters from authors you should know — Jonathan Kuttab, Mitri Raheb, Alex Award, Colin Chapman, Gary Burge, and Mae Elise Cannon, among others.

Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land Gerald McDermott (Brazos Press) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

I suppose most BookNotes readers know that there is more than one view of the relationship of Christians and the Jews and the land of Israel. Some think that since Acts 10, at least, when the gospel went out to the Gentiles, the church of Jesus Christ is the “new Israel” mentioned in the New Testament. Such folks think that all peoples (including Jews) need Jesus and God plays no favorites, as Peter preached. Jewish or not, people need the church.

But what is the church if not a movement following the Messiah of the Old Testament people of God, grafted in to that very people of God. It isn’t hard to realize that to think about covenants and God’s promises will make complicated a simple “supersessionism” (the theology that the church replaces Israel in the grand drama of redemption.)

This book is at once wary of uncritical dispensationalist Zionism but yet, in the words of one reviewer, “not content to only take on supersessionism, McDermott reworks covenantal theology to argue that there remains a covenant with Israel, which includes the land.” Ecumenically-minded Lutheran scholar Robert Jenson (of the Center of Theological Inquiry) suggests that “this book could be a historic breakthrough.”

Israel Matters is, in the words of Rabbi Eugene Korn (of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation, in Israel)

…a balanced interpretation of Christian theological tradition regarding Judaism and a close reading of the Bible that both strengthens Christian belief and makes room for the Jewish people in their covenantal homeland.

For what it is worth, after a bit of fiesty conversations around this book, Dr. McDermott — the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School — complied and edited a major volume of various contributors entitled The New Christian Zionism: Fresh Perspective on Israel & The Land (IVP Academic; $30.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00.) With serious scholars on a variety of topics, this is a major rethinking.

One of the chapters that might be important now is “Theology and Morality: Is Modern Israel Faithful to the Moral Demands of the Covenant in Its Treatment of Minorities?” by Shadi Khalloul.

Zionism Through Christian Lenses: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Promised Land edited by Carole Monica Burnett (Pickwick Publications) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This is edited by a woman who is a Catholic scholar (specializing in the patristics and church fathers) who also teaches New Testament Greek at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC. She has several advanced degrees and here pulls together a Lutheran, two Roman Catholics, two Episcopalians, an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and a UCC pastor, all who explore the ramifications of ancient Israel’s covenant. What should we think, today?

Naturally, she invites her team to explore the early church’s theological insights as well as post-reformation experiences of these various branches of mainline Christianity. It is a rare ecumenical project and urgent, so urgent.

In the midst of the dilemma and crisis of the quest for peace, each contributor uses his or her lens to analyze the problem and offer helpful suggestions to promote a solution based on the demands of international law, as well as a solution worthy of faith in the God who loves all, cares for all people equally, and works through us to include rather than exclude the other. . . . It is time to listen to the voices of these insightful contributors.  — from the foreword by Naim S. Ateek, Director, Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, Jerusalem

Mapping Exile and Return: Palestinian Dispossession and a Political Theology for a Shared Future Alain App Weaver (Fortress Press) $39.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.20

Wow, what a scholarly, imaginative, and fascinating read book this is! Weaver is a big name in the prominent Mennonite Central Committee relief organization but before his job as Director for Strategic Planning he served Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and was a project coordinator in the Gaza Strip. (Did you know that peace-loving, Jesus-following Mennonites have a presence there?) With a degree from the University of Chicago Divinity School, Epp Weaver is ecumenical and a brilliant scholar. He has written widely on the Middle East (for instance Under Vine and Fig Tree: Biblical Theologies of Land and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.) Weaver knows how vexing “issues facing not just theology but also political theory, sociology and other disciplines” are for this Middle Eastern conflict.

Get this: he here studies Christian appropriation of Zionism but — through an analysis of Palestinian refugee mapping practices for returning to their homeland, he argues against “political theology embedded in Zionist cartographic practices that refuse and seek to eliminate evidence of coexistence” Can we redraw the territory? Yep, he studies mapmaking as a key to understanding how home-coming is dreamed of.

As one writer said about this head volume, saying that this is a “beautifully conceived and beautifully written book.”

Stan Hauerwas exclaims:

Maps and trees: good God — is it all about maps and trees? It is about maps and trees if Alain Epp Weaver’s brave and no doubt controversial reading of  the Palestinian exile and return is close to being right.

He continues,

Agree or disagree with Epp Weaver, no one will come away from reading this book without a better understanding of the complex relationship between Israel and the Palestinians. But more important is that Epp Weaver’s philosophical and theological suggestions give hope.

Chosen? Reading the Bible Amid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Walter Brueggemann (WJK) $14.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.20

I’ve highlighted this before and affirm Rabbi Michel Lerner’s words when he says that “Brueggemann has done a great service to the Jewish people and to all who rely on the Hebrew Bible as a guide to life by demonstrating in the this book that there is no straight line between those ancient holy texts and the oppression of the Palestinian people by expansionist Zionist government in modern Israel.” Okay, wow.

Brueggemann is a wild scholar, a passionate thinker and preacher, and he loves justice (as he knows the God of the Bible loves justice.) He also has very close relationships with Jewish scholars and modern day Israelites. Was the promise of land to Moses permanent and irrevocable? How should we read the Bible in light of the modern situation? It is complicated and we think this is a useful tool to help us understand more of how to read the Bible well.

Chosen? has four succinct chapters and a Q & A section with Brueggemann, even a glossary of terms and a good study guide. There are even some guidelines for respectful dialogue as this could get heated. This is a good little resource and we are glad to recommend it.

The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope Kelley Nikondeha (Broadleaf Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

When we do our 2023 Advent list next week you can be assured that this will be high on that list. It came out last year and we were thrilled to recommend it. The author, as I’ve explained, has written two other excellent books — she is a white woman married to an African and has written evocatively about themes of adoption (literally and theological.) When she told me she was hoping to study this topic of Palestine by way of an Advent devotional I thought it was nothing short of brilliant.

Now, with war waging, there is a deeper urgency for this moving set of 10 good chapters. Brueggemann is right when he says as only he can that “the good new of Advent-Christmas is news that destabilizes and emancipates.”

Kelley Nikondeha eloquently weaves together the first Advent story and the present-day stories of Palestinians, creating invigorating insights for present-day Christians. Palestine then and now, its people, and the politics of the land are a common thread throughout the book, bringing us to a place to genuinely grapple with the meanings of deliverance, peace, justice, and hope. Through her personal encounters, Kelley makes the Palestinian experience visible in a world that has made them invisible. If you are looking for an Advent read that dives into new and raw paths, then The First Advent in Palestine is for you. — Shadia Qubti, Palestinian Christian peacemaker and co-producer of Women Behind the Wall podcast

After On the Incarnation by Athanasius, The First Advent in Palestine by Kelley Nikondeha is the best book I’ve read on the incarnation, peace, and hope. Buy it, read it, and embody it in your community! — Peter Heltzel, author of Resurrection City: A Theology of Improvisation

Jerusalem: The Biography Simon Sebag Montefiore (Vintage) $23.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.40

I recently started a book about entrepreneurs in Israel looking at data that explores why there is so much tech, art, so much good health, a lot of happiness regardless of attacks from neighbors and the routine threat of war. (It is called The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World by Dan Señor & Saul Singer, the new follow-up to their bestselling Start-Up Nation.) I wanted something more historical, though, a really big picture. Jerusalem by Montefiore (which has sold over a million copies since its release in 2011) is magisterial, a New York Times Notable Book and a Jewish Book Council Book of the Year. This big book is what I wanted although I’ve only started it, finally.  Some have said that it helps you fall in love with the city, that it is itself a treasure. Bill Clinton said it is “spectacular.”

At over 735 pages, you can imagine that it tells the whole epic history. The Wall Street Journal said it is “Magnificent… showing it’s “breathless tension.” The Economist says the author has “an elegant turn of phrase and an unerring ear for the anecdote that will cut to the heart of a story. A joy to read.” In these hard days, this might be a joyful and wise read.

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BookNotes

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I sometimes like to switch it up a bit, as they say, doing at BookNotes here a little thing we call Five About Five. I’ve got five categories of books and I’m going to name five fairly new or recent books in these five categories. I’m going to try to be brief, at least in comparison to our usual wordy BookNotes, and hope the five new books I mention for each grouping are sort of in conversation with each other. I could do other categories, of course, and name other new books, too, but, for now, let’s do five recent books in five categories. That’s 25 titles. This is fun.

FIVE NEW BOOKS EACH in FIVE CATEGORIES

HOW TO READ THE BIBLE

The Beginning of the Story: Understanding the Old Testament in the Story of  Scripture Timothy J. Geddert (Herald Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I want to suggest this as a great guide to the Old Testament, maybe especially for those looking for a fresh approach that shows both the integrality of the story, how it holds together, and also how the violence and hard sections are to be understood. Can we rediscover the essential beginning of the most important story ever told?

Geddert understands the Bible as a grand story (which is not that unusual these days) but his teaching about it is fresh and powerful, clear and helpful. It is informed by good scholarship but it is easy to read. It points us to the God of the Bible, who, of course, is seen most clearly in the person of Jesus Christ. This, therefore, is a “must read” for followers of Jesus (as Derek Vreeland author of Centering Jesus puts it.)

Timothy Geddert is a long-standing professor of New Testament at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary; he has a PhD in NT from Aberdeen in Scotland. We’ve carried his other books and we are grateful for his visionary, solid, helpful work.

Light of the Word: How Knowing the History of the Bible Illuminates Our Faith Susan C. Lim (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

As Randolph Richards puts it, “Lim invites you to walk alongside, to see how faith in Jesus is enriched by faith in God’s Word.” Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociologist (and host of The Disrupters podcast) notes that she “absolutely loves how Light of the Word reads like a poignant memoir and drops wisdom like a well-researched history book.”

I like that this book “unpacks how the history of the Bible bolsters our faith and anchors us through the changing tides of time.” It is designed to help Christians not only acknowledge that the Bible is God’s Word but, more, that we can have confidence in the reality of its trustworthiness.

Being in a Bible study with Susan and her family for the last five years, I have witnessed firsthand Susan’s passion for the Scriptures and the powerful and gracious work God has done in her life through the Scriptures. My confidence in Scripture has been strengthened and my heart has been refreshed by reading Light of the Word, and I believe this book will serve you well, no matter where you are in your faith journey. It is a book I will come back to again as a trusted resource. — Eric Geiger, senior pastor of Mariners Church

Reading the Bible Around the World: A Student’s Guide to Global Hermeneutics Federico Alfredo Roth and others (IVP) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

As the back cover shouts, “It’s an exciting time to be reading the Bible.” We are, most of us, encountering readers with perspectives, experiences, and cultural  orientations different than our own. Anyone honestly learning about how to read the Bible simply must grapple with the diversity of perspectives. This is, of course, a question of hermeneutics, and how our social location influences the questions we ask, even the naive reading of the text. That some of our diversity comes from other cultures around the world is a given. This book helps us gently enter this varied, complicated world.

Who we are shapes how we read, as it says on the back cover. Guided by these expert teachers, readers will gain a deeper understanding of the influence of theor own social location and how to keep growing in biblical wisdom by reading alongside the global Christian community.

Behold and Become: Reading Scripture for Transformation Jeremy M. Kimble (Kregel Academic) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Kregel is a conservative Christian publisher that is respected by evangelicals, and this book highlights a fairly creative, surprisingly open minded perspective on how the Scriptures can help us “not merely for information, but for being saved by God and changed through his words.”

We all know the stories of the Bible are often rhetorically powerful. And those who believe it is God’s Word, believe the power is also, well, Spirited. Right? But how does that work? How can we more properly understand and explain that the Scripture’s authority is based on the truthfulness of the texts? Can the Bible’s own efficacy operate in a way that helps us come to know the Triune God?

This is a complex book — I haven’t studied it carefully enough to say if I even agree with it all. But if, as they say, we “become like what we behold” it may be important to ask what the Scriptures allow us to behold.

The prophet Isaiah assures us that God’s Word will accomplish the purpose for which God has sent it, but what is that purpose? To give God’s people need-to-know information for salvation is clearly part of the answer. The title of Jeremy Kimble’s timely book gives us the other part of the answer: Behold and Become. Head knowledge alone is not enough. The church needs to retrieve this Pauline insight: beholding the glorious God with unveiled faces is a gracious means of becoming more like him (cf. 2 Cor. 3:18). God’s Word gives God’s people what they need to grow, the material for formation unto godliness and Christlikeness. — Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

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

I have written about this one in more detail in a previous BookNotes, explaining how I so very much respect this learned, eccentric, solid Biblical scholar. He has studied a lot, and brings so much together, from reformational philosophy to Christian aesthetics to solid hermeneutics to a palpable passion for living out the Biblical story, in the modern world. In a way, Listening to Scripture is sort of a shorter and more personal version of a much more academic, scholarly text that was widely acclaimed. I’m so glad for this rigorous read, aimed at thoughtful laypeople.

Please consider this. It is one of the best books of its kind — how to read wisely and thoughtfully and fruitfully — that we have seen in quite some time. Highly recommended. Know and Bible study leaders, Sunday school class teachers expositors of Scripture, Bible thumpers, preachers or pastors? This is solid and a serious but engaging read.

FAITH & SCIENCE

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

You might recall that I raved about this the week it was released, just a few months back. It is a “joy filled expedition into experiencing God’s majestic, everywhere presence.”

In a way, this book isn’t a sophisticated philosophy of science, seeking to integrate general revelation in nature and Biblical revelation. It isn’t even exactly about what some call the “faith and science” conversation. It is a flat-out, wholesome, energetic, celebration of Christian folks who serve in a variety of scientific callings and how their insights can enhance our common knowledge. — scientific information matters! — and our faith. It is, finally, a book about doxology.

“We were made to wonder, “ Van Sloten says. As a Calgary-based writer and former pastor, he knows how to touch people’s lives, and in this exceptional book, he honors those who do scientific research by explaining, in each chapter, something about their work, and blesses us all by showing how these insights of common grace can point us to God and the Kingdom of Christ. We can live with greater awe of our Creator when we know a bit about how science works.

Whether you are a beginner in learning about the sciences or whether you are yourself a serious scholar in a certain scientific discipline, you will enjoy this upbeat, deeply ponderous book. Hooray for John and his lovely curiosity and fabulous storytelling.

What Hath Darwin to Do With Scripture: Comparing the Conceptual Worlds of the Bible and Evolution Dru Johnson (IVP $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

This new book is written not by a scientist but by an impressive, multi-disciplinary Biblical scholar. He is extraordinarily gifted, theologically wise, solid and reliable, and yet — get this — says that “Believe it or not, the book of Genesis might have been the most Darwinian text in the ancient world” Throughout the opening books of Scripture, we find ideas, he says, “that would become prominent insights of the biologist Charles Darwin, interlaced with the Bible’s one-of-a-kind origin story.”

The Hebrew creation accounts, Johnson argues, “weave together three key themes” on the origins and development of humans and animals. These are nearly Darwinian, it seems — the connection of scarcity, cooperation and violence, the fitness of creatures to their environment, and the genealogical aims of sexual reproduction.

Granted, this is intriguing, even provocative, thoughtful stuff. It is what might be considered imaginative. It is what the famous University of St. Andrews scholar Andrew Torrance says is “at once both cautious and creative.” It is what the IVP Academic editor calls “mind-blowing.”  For what it is worth, Dr. J is not a wildly liberal theologian, but has exceptional regard for the Holy Word.

He admits it is a bit of a “weird project” and, among many others, from Templeton Research grants to folks at the Creation Project at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, he thanks philosopher Esther Meek. Wow.

What hath Eden to do with the Galapagos Islands? As Dru Johnson explains, more than one might expect —  Kenneth Keathley, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

Christianity & Science Herman Bavinck (Crossway) $32.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I am not theologically learned enough nor scientifically informed enough to say much of great import about this book other than to say that Bavinck helped create (with his colleague the great Dutch statesman Abraham Super) a movement of Reformed Protestants who desired to honor God by thinking Christianly about all of life. Before the “culture wars” made Darwinism and climate change and such fighting words, he wrote clearly, if densely, about how a uniquely Christian worldview would help us shape our thinking about the natural sciences. First published in Holland in the  very earthy 20th century, this shows our orthodox, Biblical faith can inform the natural sciences and how a Biblically-infused worldview can enhance our scientific learning. Indeed, Bavinck was influential in shaping the first non-governmental, Protestant Christian University (the Freje, in Amsterdam.)

This was translated by N. Gray Sutanto, James Eglinton, and Cory C. Brock.  Any Kuyper or Bavinck fans out there?

The God of Monkey Science: People of Faith in a Modern Scientific World Janet Kellogg Ray (Eerdmans) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, just to be clear, Janet Ray is an enthusiastic science educator, explainer, and communicator. She holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction and has been teaching biology in colleges for nearly twenty years. She has great experience and, as a person of faith, understands the debates and conversations and what is often behind them. She gets it. She is hoping readers will learn how to hold true to your faith and also embrace modern science.

As an evangelical Christian and science educator, she dives into various contemporary hot button issues, from Covid-19 and vaccines to genetic research and (of course) questions about the compatibility of the Bible, Christian theology, and evolution. As Thomas Jay Oord puts it, “Janet Kellogg Ray writes like a journalist, thinks like a scientist, and makes connections to everyday life like a pop-culture expert.” She’s got wit and moxie and doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Jim Stump (of BioLogos and host of the Language of God podcast) says the book is “accessible and engaging.”  Love that! Highly recommended.

Navigating Faith and Science Joseph Vukov (Eerdmans) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Joseph Vukov is a professor of philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago. He is sharp and thoughtful, deeply aware of the philosophical assumptions surround this conversation about science and faith. The relationship of the two (faith and science) need not be oppositional, of course, and the discussing don’t have to be inherently full of contention. The book and its approach seems really, really wise.

Curiously, the aforementioned Janet Kellogg Ray has a nice endorsement. She explains:

Joseph Vukov has good news for you! Vukov sets the table and invites us to sit down. He asks us through three frameworks for productive dialogue and skillfully equips us to know how and when to apply them in the context of science and faith.

WOMEN IN THE BIBLE

Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church Nijay K Gupta (IVP Academic) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

I’ve mentioned this before but Gupta is such a rock star in the guild of Biblical scholars that we are delighted to recommend it again. This book is fascinating, well researched, clear, passionate without being strident.  One reviewer called it a “an important journey throughout the New Testament” Another says he “skillfully uncovers the stories of a range of female leaders, teachers, and missionaries, and highlights their relevance for today.

With a PhD from the University of Durham, Dr. Gupta is professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary. He has several commentaries and edited the huge second edition of the IVP Academic Dictionary of the Paul and His Letters.

Mary and the Interior Life Jeremiah Miriam Shryock, CFS (Paraclete Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

While some of the latest batch of books about women in the Bible are exegetical and making a case about women’s role and tasks and work, this is a different sort of work, careful, thoughtful, but contemplative and meditative. It seems to be a delightful read (I’ve only dipped in briefly.) The foreword is by Father James Dominic Brent, OP (who is at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington) notes how complex it is to write about Mary and our relationship with her. Catholic or Protestant, it is an important question and while this book is more than a study of what some call Mariology, it is, Brent says, well done, showing how a love for Mary points us to a love for Jesus.

Father Shrycock, a Franciscan, studies spiritual direction and it shows; in this book he tells of his own devotion to Mary, how he learned that “the whole world needs your ‘yes’ to God.” We, too, can learn from Mary how to follow Christ with all of our heart.

Fr. Donald Haggerty (who wrote a notable book of St. John of the Cross) says it is “a must-read for everyone aspiring to enter more deeply into the life of holiness…”

Jesus Through the Eyes of Women: How the First Female Disciples Help Us Know and Love the Lord Rebecca McLaughlin (The Gospel Coalition) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I have written about Rebecca McLaughlin before, highlighting her books of apologetics, the award-winning, Confronting Christianity and it’s follow up, Confronting Jesus, and her small screed, The Secular Creed and honor her work as a thoughtful, sharp, writer. Geesh, she has a PhD in Renaissance literature from Cambridge (not to mention a theology degree from Oak Hill College in London.) We notice whenever she gets a new book published.

This is a trim-sized, smaller book, fairly brief (about 175 pages) easy-to-read and helpful, even, a book that Julius Kim (of The Gospel Coalition) said was “mind-stimulating and soul-stirring.” That’s a great endorsement, eh?

Naturally, we see and learn more about Jesus than just about the women, and as we use their eyes to see the Master, we can find new angles and fresh insights. These life-changing accounts of women who met the Lord are mostly well-known and often-discussed. There are lots of books like this. And we should never tire of them.

Rather than view women as risks, liabilities, or burdens, Jesus invites them to draw near. With her characteristic and refreshing blend of scholarship and empathy, Rebecca McLaughlin invites us to examine the stories of women woven throughout the ministry of Jesus, searching for the common threads of good news. And a clear, unhesitating message emerges: ‘Suffer the women to come unto me.’ Herein is instruction and encouragement for women and men alike seeking to live as brothers and sisters in God’s family. — Jen Wilkin, author, In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us to Reflect His Character and None Like Him: 10 Ways God Is Different from Us (and Why That’s a Good Thing)

Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels Holly J. Carey (Eerdmans) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Holly Carey is professor of biblical studies and chair of the Biblical Studies Department at Point University in Georgia. She examines here what it means to be a dispel — and makes the narrative-critical case that women best embody discipleship in the Gospel and Acts. What? Whoa!

As Joel Green of Fuller Theological Seminary notes,

If asked to name Jesus’s disciples, most of us would focus on the well-known men — Peter, James, John, and the rest. In this important, well-crafted study, Holly Carey fills out that picture by emphasizing Jesus’s overlooked female disciples.

We need books like this — granted it is not the first on this topic, but still feels pioneering. In their socio-political context, this really is something, and her unpacking “women who do” is surely going to be inspiring for many women and men. As Joel Green writes, “If we want to talk about what it means to follow Jesus, we do well to take her advice: Follow the women!”

“If we want to talk about what it means to follow Jesus, we do well to take her advice: Follow the women!”

Eve Isn’t Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend Our Assumptions Julie Faith Parker (Baker Academic) $22.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Again, I have highlighted this one already, but wanted to give it an encore push. Julie Faith Parker is a fascinating and perceptive writer. With a PhD from Yale she is a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary and “biblical scholar in residence” at Marble Collegiate Church. She has taught at General Theological Seminary, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, at New York Theological Seminary and among incarcerated students at Sing Sing Prison. She is a good teacher and very deeply respected. She writes with energy and has great empathy.

The great Lutheran New Testament scholar Mark Allan Power writes,

A wonderful book. Readers will inevitably be convinced of two things: feminists can love the Bible, and Bible lovers can (and probably should) be feminists!  — Mark Allan Powell, professor (retired), Trinity Lutheran Seminary, author of Introducing the New Testament

AFRICAN AMERICAN and MULTICULTURAL STUDIES

Black Theology and Black Faith Noel Leo Erskine (Eerdmans) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I suppose it isn’t important but the hardback cover is striking to me, seeming to harken back to a 1970s title, something seminal, pioneering. Yet this is fresh, new, if connected to the great tradition of black theology. Erskine, who teaches at Candler School of Theology (at Emory), has written several scholarly books about faith and black history, about Caribbean theology (even one about Marley and Rasta.) He feels deeply and has been involved in the project of decolonizing theology, has reflected on pastoral care from a third world perspective. A book of his from years ago that influenced me a bit is King Among the Theologians.

The important Dwight Hopkins (now at the University of Chicago) has said that:

Noel L. Erskine has gifted us with the definitive argument and persuasive proof that Black faith and Black religion in the western hemisphere began with the majority populations of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean and Latin America, and not in the United States. This is a foundational paradigm shift, and Black theology and womanist theology, if they are to remain authentic, must shift as well.

After a lifetime of these unique books about subsets of black scholarship, he now brings to us what might be his magnum opus. He covers Marcus Garvey and various views of sin and redemption in the older black church. He works with salvation and liberation, womanist writers, theology after Cone, up to BLM activists.

Kamari Maxine Clarke of the University of Toronto says it is “a phenomenal contribution to the field.”

Troubling the Water: The Urgent Work of Radical Belonging Ben McBride (Broadleaf Books) $27.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

When Cornel West has a blurb on the front cover saying a book is “visionary and courageous” I take notice. We all should. Agree or not, this is important, vivid stuff, and West is an extraordinary scholar whose advice we should heed. Another blurb that I found compelling and made me want to stock this one is Father James Martin (whose new book, Come Forth, is about the resurrection of Lazarus) who called it “an urgent, vibrant, and necessary call for justice, which is just what God asks — demands — of all of us.”

This really is a clarion call, a manifesto, an exploration, of the call to justice. Yet, it brings into that “urgent work” the question of belonging.

This author is a seasoned urban activist (you’ll love his insightful story about a public hearing about bike lanes in Oakland) and you’ll appreciate, I hope, his drawing on the great work of Bryan Stevenson and Rev. William Barber. The deep stuff here is going to be helpful for anyone on the road to this kind of witness, or anyone who has been in the trenches.

Listen to Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel and Fortune:

At once practical and profound, Ben McBride’s Troubling the Water reflects the hard-earned wisdom of the author — a practitioner and prophet. McBride’s own story offers invaluable guidance for all who wish to be healing agents in our writhing world. But this is not a simple how-to book. McBride leads readers to the heart of the problem–we are failing to see each other (and ourselves) as human. Then he casts a vision and points the way toward a radical kind of belonging that challenges us all to the core. Read this book. It will change you.

Read this book. It will change you.

A Longing to Belong: Reflection on Faith, Identity, and Race Michelle Lee-Barnewall (Zondervan Reflective) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I just started this and it is gracious, kind, and thoughtful, a book about belonging, also, but not from the vantage point of a seasoned black activist (see above) but by an Asian American professor at Talbot School of Theology at Biola in Los Angeles. She has written a good book on the parables of Jesus and won a number of awards by the gracious, reasonable Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian. In this book she does nothing less than “exhorts readers that standing in awe of God transforms us.”

This looks to be an excellent, excellent, uplifting study of identity, who and whose we are, in light of her own passion for reconciliation. Can our longing for belonging “shape the way we think about ourselves and our life together?” She says yes, and that includes our mutual responsibilities to and for one another.

She is a good writer, a gracious storyteller, a beautiful person, surely, with lovely endorsements from colleagues like Octavio Esqueda.

Although it is a lovely, challenging thoughtful read, this endorsement cuts right to the chase:

This book can facilitate a conversation that will reduce the racial divines in our Christian organizations, ministries, and churches. — Sheryl Takagi Silzer, multicultural consultant for SIM, author of Biblical Multicultural Teams

Unfractured: A Christ-Centered Action Plan for Cultural Change Shot Welch (Chosen) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I first read Skot Welch a few years back when we highlighted the powerful and important Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith & A New Way Forward (Herald Press) that he co-wrote with Rick Wilson and Andi Cumbo-Floyd. It was very good and I’ve had my eye on him ever since.

I ordered this sight unseen, and thought maybe it would be about more general questions of societal change and renewal within the institutions of our saying culture. But, no, it is, quite specifically, about racial and multi-cultural tensions and the need for a Christ-centered plan to do, well, all the things the above books are lamenting and proposing. Can Unfractured be a tool to actually live out in practical ways answers to our fractured world?

So far, I can say that this is clear-headed, honest, not too controversial, practical, useful. It is for the church, thinking that Christian organizations must get their own house in order and that we “hold the redemptive solution our world needs, one that puts Christ at the center, modeling conciliation that leads to lasting reconciliation.”

He invites readers to “celebrate your identity in Christ and our diverse cultural makeup.” I like that he proposes that we “embrace a new kingdom language” and, as said, that we explore a Christ-centered perspective. Can we build united, diverse community? Can we create a setting where hard but crucial questions are explored with compassion? If you don’t need help with any of that, you can skip this book. But I am sure that we all need a lot of help. This is, at least, for those new to this project, or those who are faltering.

Welch has been a key advisor on diversity and inclusion (he tells stories from churches but also from Fortune 500 Companies and folks in the arts and entertainment world.” He is the founder of Global Bridgebuilders.

The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth Jermaine Fowler (The Row House) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I have not yet studied this recent New York Times bestseller but it has gotten excellent advanced publicity and critical reviews. It is one of those books that is going to be talked about and perhaps considered a must-read for those working in this field of equity and inclusion, justice and reconciliation. Fowler is a clear writer, a good storyteller — the couple of pages I’ve dipped into had me captivated. I like that he calls himself an “intellectual adventurer.”  (And, yes, he grew up going to the free library, being inspired by books of all sorts.)

There are those, even in religious circles these days, who say that slavery was somehow benign. There are those who, even if they are disgusted by the injustices of slavery or the years or Reconstruction that gave us the growth of the KKK, still care to know little about black history. This offers good words in the context of broader human history. I think it is going to be tremendous and want to suggest it here.

Fowler sees historical storytelling and the sharing of knowledge as a vocation and a means of fostering empathy and understanding between cultures. A deft storyteller with a sonorous voice, Fowler’s passion for his material is palpable as he unfurls the hidden histories.—Vanity Fair

CULTURAL CRITICISM AND ANALYSIS

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling – Expanded Edition Andy Crouch (IVP) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

When this book first came out — 15 years ago (hence, this new anniversary edition) I could hardly believe it. This. This. This was much of what we were about here at Hearts & Minds, why our little contribution to the world mattered, and why we tried to create a bookstore that was somehow a different sort of place than most Christian bookstores (remember them?) Or most big chain bookstores that were popular. Andy explained, with erudition and wise insight, so much about the Bible and faithful discipleship and social responsibility and the possibilities of change and the nature of our cultural artifacts. The phrase “culture making” became a watchword, and his stuff on various postures, if heeded, might have prevented the worst of the subsequent culture wars and church-influenced disasters. It is one of the most important books we’ve seen in the forty years we’ve been in business and we were glad to have had a very tiny connection to its promotion early on. We admire Andy and he and his family are, I am proud to say, customers of ours. We are grateful.

We are now glad for this new, updated edition. It is mostly the same magisterial volume it first was — but with a lengthy afterword which takes the shape of a dialogue between Andy and Tish Harrison Warren. It is excellent, insightful, provocative and such a joy to read thoughtful Christians (who aren’t so arcane as to make us scratch our heads.) They note that one big cultural artifact that isn’t discussed in Culture Making is the iPhone, which had not come out yet, 15+ years ago. Of course, Crouch has gone on to write about our digital culture (I adored The Life We’re Looking For) and the conversation with Tish in the new afterword explores wisely this new milieu and the ongoing call by God to steward well the potentialities of our life and times.

In this expanded edition there is also a very extensive study guide, good for anyone, of course, but especially designed for small groups, book clubs, entrepreneurs, or church folk wanting their congregation to learn to be more faithfully savvy about the world God calls us to. It’s important, not incidental or only for artists. Lauren Winner said, “I am hard-pressed to think of something that twenty-first century American Christians need to read more”  Indeed.

“I am hard-pressed to think of something that twenty-first century American Christians need to read more”

Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement – 15th Anniversary Edition Steven Bouma-Prediger & Brian J. Walsh (Eerdmans) $39.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

Speaking of 15th anniversary editions, this, too, is one of my all-time favorite books and I am thrilled that it has recently been reissued in a new, expanded 15th anniversary edition. It is a fairly hefty volume but there is so much going on that it could nearly be seen as several books in one. Yet, in holds together brilliantly, moving from studies of the poor and unhoused to the ways in which we disregard place (our individualistic, nomadic culture) and why, for some, we are less enthused about placed embodiment because we have a view of heaven that is disconnected to the real world of creation. That one of the authors — the great Steve Bouma-Prediger at Hope College in Holland, MI — is an ecologist (his own recent book Creation Care Discipleship is one of my choices for “best books of the year”) the disregard for climate change and creation care fits into this study of why, really, we have a crisis in housing. They offer a big picture and they connect the notes with pathos and hope.

There are vivid Biblical vignettes scattered throughout showing just how very “Jesusy” (to use Anne Lamont’s famous word) their project is.

This is no simple call to care for the poor, although nothing would please the authors more if we and our churches opened our doors to those in need with a bit more conscientious energy. More, this is a multi-dimensional study of our “culture of displacement.” Why is it, they ask, that there are people with houses (perhaps multiple houses) but who have no sense of place, no belonging, no true home, really, and even while there are, in fact, people who are unhoused or under-housed and yet who have a network of loved ones, people they care about, a place to belong. In a way, they may not have houses, but they have homes. What is a home? What is the task of homemaking? How does the Biblical meta-narrative shape our understanding of home, exile, and homecoming? What might be done for those on the margins of our society when we learn to counter our “culture of displacement”? This book is more urgent now, and more relevant, than it was when it first came out.

There is, in this new anniversary edition, a new foreword by Ruth Padilla DeBorst which is excellent. And, significantly, there is what is called a Postscript but which is really a long, new chapter. It is amazingly good. In this full, new chapter the authors bring their story up to date, looking at the current crisis of homelessness, they cite some more moving poetry and songs and Bible verses, interact with some good theologians (such asThe Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything by Miroslov Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz) engage some philosophers and ethicists (and of course, Wendell Berry) as they propose a “phenomenology of homefulness.” Importantly, they spend some time in a place in Austin, Texas with a guy named Alan Graham, creator of Mobile Loaves and Fishes and author of Welcome Homeless. (You can listen to a podcast of Graham chatting with Brian about the new edition of the book and Graham’s work HERE. Check it out.)

I can’t say enough about this new edition, it’s big picture cultural criticism and it’s imaginative reforms for how we think about these matters. It really is a graduate course in contemporary contextual theology and the best thinking I’ve seen yet on these very themes. The book, in that sense, is a bargain.

We are hoping to arrange having a livestream online conversation with Brian about the book that will be hosted by their good publisher, Eerdmans, before long. Stay tuned! In the mean time, buy the book, now on sale.

The Church in an Age of Secular Mysticisms: Why Spiritualities without God Fail to Transform Us Andrew Root (Baker Academic) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I may have given this a shout out previously but it is so important it deserves to be on this little list of five about culture. As I hope you know Andrew Root has a series of five other books about how the culture of the world around us has infiltrated and shaped the thinking that goes on in most churches. He draws on various important social critics (think of Charles Taylor and his influential work on our “secular age”) and shows how congregations and pastors have to think hard about all that in order to find faithful renewal and appropriate growth. (I love the title of one The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time Against the Speed of Modern Life and The Church After Innovation: Questioning Our Obsession with Work, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship. See what he’s doing there?

Well, this one explores our recent fascination with spirituality, with (again) our view of the very self. He brings in some pretty heady social critics, and you will learn a lot. His helping us get a better grasp on the cultural context in which many perceive our talk about spirituality is a great gift. Wow, this is really important stuff, cultural astute, insightful, and somewhat provocative.

It is also (he says in the introductory pages) the final book in this six-book series. He has to make some arguments about late modernity, do some review, build a framework and then tackle the “spirituality” question. Near the end he goes to the Rhineland mystics and tells of an encounter with Jewish scholar Franz Rosenzweig, connecting that with Martin Buber.  It is what a prof at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary calls “a theological gem.”

Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West Andrew Wilson (Crossway) $29.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

One might think this would be put in our history section, and I suppose that is where it goes. It is a close and fascinating reading of things that happened in 1776, starting with seven events, actually. So, obviously, history, right?

However, the creative argument Wilson makes in this extraordinary book has such implications for our understanding our times, too, I’m listing it here with other titles of cultural and social concern. In short, he maintains that the seeds of the post-Christian West were sown in the late eighteenth century. This revolutionary era was decisive in many ways — he explores 7 — shaping the way in which faith and life developed subsequently. This is cultural analysis of the highest sort — and fun! For what it is worth, this isn’t a woke liberal complaining about Jefferson enslaving people (which, of course, is it’s own valuable criticism that must be said, over and over) but it is a moderately conservative evangelical theologian wondering how we became “Western” and “Democratic” and “Romantic” and more. While historian Thomas Kidd says it is “an intellectual tour de force and a model of Christian scholarship” it is, frankly, more. Matthew Lee Anderson says it is “arresting.” It certainly is interesting.

Note this, from two of our great Christian public intellectuals:

Andrew Wilson’s book is extraordinary in every way: extraordinary in the breadth of research; extraordinary in the multitude of world-significant events that Wilson identifies for 1776; extraordinary in the depth of his insight on what those events meant (and continue to mean); extraordinary in the verve with which he makes his arguments; and, not least, extraordinary in the persuasive Christian framework in which he sets the book. Remaking the World is a triumph of both creative historical analysis and winsome Christian interpretation. — Mark Noll, Professor of History, Regent College; author, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911

Andrew Wilson is a wise and witty guide through the eventful year 1776 (eventful in, as he shows, sometimes surprising ways). He convincingly demonstrates that we’re still living in the wake of that historical moment–and offers shrewd suggestions for how Christians might navigate those rough waters. — Alan Jacobs, Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Baylor University, author of Breaking Bread with the Dead

Christ Among the Classes: The Rich, the Poor, and the Mission of the Church Al Tizon (Orbis Press) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

I respect my old pal Al Tizon very, very much. He has written much (including some great record reviews) and even in this book there is an appendix, a tribute written to his friend and mentor Ronald J. Sider, who died almost two years ago, now. For those of us who knew Ron, Al’s tender and helpful eulogy is nearly worth the price of the book.

It isn’t am inexpensive book, though, so you need a bit more than his tender and wise overview of Sider and his influence nice as that is. And you get it, for sure. This is an exceedingly thorough, careful, rigorous study of the Biblical visio not economic justice and how, in fact, our income inequality is such these days that God surely groans, along with the oppressed. It is no surprise this bit of liberative economics is published by Orbis Press.

Professor Tizon (He teaches adjunct at North Park in Chicago ad pastors Grace Fellowship Community Church in San Fransisco) is known for his book Whole & Reconciled: Gospel, Church, and Mission in a Featured World which is one of the very best evangelical studies of the wholistic nature of the gospel and how Kingdom visions of reconciliation ought to be central to the redemptive mission of God’s people in the world.  Here, he provides the prophetic denunciation of injustice a bit more bitingly and invites us to understand, really understand, classism. As Fr Benigno Beltran puts it, “Al Tizon’s book goes right to the heart of the matter: classism is an affront to the God of justice, and if the wealthy do not repent, the human are will soon perish from the face of the earth.”

All sorts of missional leaders and missionary thinkers have endorsed this as a powerful bit of cultural critique. An East African worker for SIM International, a Bishop in the Church of Uganda, even Jonathan Bonk, executive director emeritus of the Overseas Missions Studies Center. Bonk, by the way, raves, saying how everyone could benefit from a careful reading of this volume. He notes that if change is going to occur, “it might begin with this modest but hard-hitting book.”

Rev. Eugene Cho (President and CEO of Bread for the World) says it calls the reader and Church “to deeper self-examination of classism, while calling us to follow and embody Christ.”

As the good pastor and evangelical he is, Tizon has provided thoughtful discussion questions so Christ Among the Classes can be used in a small group, book club, or adult ed class. There are also sidebars of “action steps” and proposed ideas for further engagement with the material, moving us to experiment and work towards a more reconciled world. This is a really useful resource.

By the way, on this theme, we recently got into the store the new book by bestselling nonfiction author Stephanie Land, author of Maid, which was made into a popular Netflix show. Land’s new one is called Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education (1 Signal Publishing / Atria) $28.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40. I know that is six in this category, but I had to sneak it in. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “stirring” and Neil Gaiman says it is “a beautiful memoir.”  Insofar as economic anxiety and class differences are part of our cultural make-up, this could be important for anyone wanting to understand the times.

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• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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Our hearts are full — there is a new Sufjan Stevens album and some new friends have signed up for our BookNotes newsletter, giving me hope that there are those who care about literary quality without being stuck in a snooty, classical elitism. Good folks, good books, orders coming in from all sorts of places, folks needing various kinds of help. We’re here, eager to serve. Thank you.

I have been wanting to celebrate some of the many recently released good picture books that we have in our children’s section; with Beth away visiting a grand baby, I’ve been thinking about reading to little ones. Here is a random selection of some new, recommended titles. I know it is a limited style (mostly) for a certain young age group, but these are fun and I’m so happy to tell you just a bit about them. Enjoy.

All get the BookNotes 20% off discount. Scroll to the very bottom to see the links to our secure website order form page. Thanks.

Walter Brueggemann’s Big Imagination – A Biography for Children Conrad L. Kanagy, illustrated by Audrey Kanagy (Mastof Press) $12.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

This little paperback, simply done with pastel illustrations, is an oddly moving book that (as Duke Divinity School Professor Ellen Davis notes) “has to be a genre unto itself.” Indeed. It is a biography of a (post-critical) Biblical scholar, for little ones. And it is really something!

I hope you know that Conrad Kanagy (a sociology professor and former Mennonite pastor) recently spent years talking with Walter Brueggemann about his life and crafted an authorized, insightful (and for Bible geeks, at least) hard to put down biography of Saint Walter. Walter Brueggemann’s Prophetic Imagination tells the story for adults and Conrad kept thinking, as he was writing this biography, that he wanted his grandchildren “to know this remarkable man who has learned that despite his failure and shortcomings, he is deeply love by God and held in God’s arms.” Amen, right?

This little book shows how the shy Walter came to find words and stories as a way to understand the world, learning to love books in his rural upbringing, and most obviously in the stories of the Bible. As a world-famous scholar, seminary professor, critic, author and churchman, Brueggemann has called us (in his over 100 books) to be creative and imaginative, trusting that somehow the God of the Bible is present, now, calling us to be prophets against our own idolatrous culture. Mostly, Brueggemann deepened his confidence about the mysterious ways of the God of the Bible. Kanagy wanted to help children see all this and a small central Pennsylvania publisher agreed. Walter Brueggemann’s Big Imagination is a hoot. It even ends with the rare line these days, “The End.” What fun. Hooray.

I love children’s books. And I love Walter Brueggemann. So this is a magical combo, a holy cocktail, like cookies and cream or ice cream and sprinkles. It is just spectacular. Here’s a book that can be read and reread, loved and cherished by kids and kids at heart. May it inspire you to celebrate who you are and make the world a better place just like Walter!” — Shane Claiborne, activist, author, Rethinking Life: Embracing the Sacredness of Every Person 

Something, Someday Amanda Gorman, illustrated by Christian Robinson (Penguin) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

We all know the brilliant Presidential inaugural poet (and bestselling author) Amanda Gorman. Her collaborating artists, Christian Robinson has won the coveted Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Honor awards. What a handsome, lovely, good book.

On the flyleaf it says, “You’re told that / This won’t work / But how will you know / If you never try?

Even children know that sometimes the world feels broken. Problems seem too big to fix. Amanda reminds us that  we all have the power to make a difference. As it says on the flyleaf, “With a little faith, and maybe the help of a friend, together we can find beauty and create change.”

Did you love her boisterous, fun (poetic) children’s picture book Change Sings (illustrated by Loren Long)? Are you aware of her “Writing Change” initiative to support grassroots organizations dedicated to advance literacy? She’s a Harvard grad, esteemed poet and this book for kids  maybe 4 – 8; it is a fabulously fun, wise work.

A Walk in the Woods Nikki Grimes, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney & Brian Pinkney (Neal Porter Books / Holiday House) $18.99

To even mention this chokes me up a bit; Jerry Pinkney was one of the great illustrators of children’s books in the last decades of the 20th century and, importantly, into the 21st. A black leader and artist, he illustrated many of our favorite picture books and when his son Brian started working, we were thrilled. This was, as far as I know, the last book Jerry Pinkney was working on when he died in 2021. Son Brian picked up the work in what must have been an honor and, maybe through tears, a blast.

Nikki Grimes, I’m sure I don’t need to say, is an esteemed black writer, a poet and respected children’s writer. She has done overtly Christian work, worked with publishers like the esteemed Eerdmans line of books for children, and is an award winning writer at the top of her craft.

As the cover writing tells us,

Confused and distraught after the death of his father, a boy opens an envelope his dad left behind and is surprised to find a map of the woods beyond their house, with one spot marked in bright red. The woods had been something they shared together. Why would his father want him to go alone?

The treasure trove he finds reveals something more for them to share, and some peace amid the grief. His dad knew what he really needed was a walk in the woods.

Art mirrors life in this remarkable picture book by New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes, Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Jerry Pinkney, and Jerry’s son Brian Pinkney, who complete the artwork after his fathers passing.

Art mirrors life in this remarkable picture book by New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes, Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Jerry Pinkney, and Jerry’s son Brian Pinkney, who complete the artwork after his fathers passing.

Colorful Mondays: A Bookmobile Spreads Hope in Honduras Nelson Rodriguez & Leonardo Agustin Montes, illustrated by Rosana Maria & Carla Tabora (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Eerdmans, the great theological publisher out of Grand Rapids, travels the world to acquire often eccentric and artful books, some of the best the world has to offer. This grand, colorful, and wonderfully illustrated book is based on a real bookmobile program in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. It focuses on the strength of disadvantaged children and, as the back cover says, “the creativity of those helping them to imagine a better future.”

Luis loves Mondays, the day the bookmobile comes to his sad neighborhood (called Villa Nueva.) The bookmobile brings stories that “burst with life, laughter, and color.” Every Monday fills Luis and his friends “with a joy they can’t wait to take back home.”

The contrast between the somewhat somber first pages and the bright splashes of color that enhance the pages as the bookmobile arrives is nothing short of glorious. I’d say this should be nominated for a coveted Caldecott Award. Kudos to translator Lawrence Schimel and to Eerdmans for bringing it to English speaking children. Buy a few and give them out to book lovers (and librarians) everywhere!

When I Go to Church, I Belong Elena Evans, illustrated by Rebecca Evans (IVP Kids) $18.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I’ve got three quick things to say about this very, very special book. First, I was a bit unsure at first, but a few years ago, when IVP started earnestly doing kids books, I was quickly won over. If you buy children’s books, just buy as many as you can afford from this thoughtful, fun, list.

Secondly, it is striking to me that so many publishers do so many good books for children about faith and God and the Bible and spiritual growth, but there simply are not that many books about church life. A few of the more liturgical publishers do some nice ones for those in “high” churches but, be that as it may, it is striking how few good books there are like this one. And this one is perfect.

Thirdly, this is, to be honest, about kids with disabilities, differences, and is for neurodiverse kids, kids for whom going to church might be scary or off-putting or might bring out some small bits of weirdness. Actually, my guess is that this is most kids from most families. Has anybody had a fully smooth and lovely experience getting kids to feel at home in church?

It does say this on the back: “Finding my place in God’s family as a child with special needs.”

In this lovely picture book it says “I like to go to church because I know I’m always welcome.”

“I like to go to church because I know I’m always welcome.”

This great book offers a strong view of the Body of Christ as a real community that cares and a local congregation that, in the midst of doing ordinary church stuff, creates space for differences, helping everyone feel God’s love. When I Go to Church, I Belong is for little ones, but for us all, really, offering a glimpse of the holy work of hospitality and inclusion. To be honest, I think every church should have one or two of these laying about.

God Hears My Song Heather Lean, illustrated by Morris Handbook (Lucky Hippogriff) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

We get enough poorly constructed self published books that we’ve grown cynical about some indie presses and small publishers, but this is a great relief, a gem, a treasure. We were lucky to discover the odd little Lucky Hippogriff outfit. Hooray.

This book — dedicated to all children! — is sweet, classy, and heartwarming It uses the conventional styling of rhymes, offering an inspiring tribute to the beauty of God. It has lines like this:

You fill my days with sun so bright / That bathes the world with warmth and light.”

Nice, sweet, expressions of gratitude about as we are reminded that we are never alone. God is there. God hears. God loves.

There are some tears, some fears, and a lovely array of global kids in various scenes. Nice.

Psalms of Wonder: Poems from the Book of Songs Carey Wallace, illustrated by Khoa Le (Flyaway books) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This may be our vote for one of the very best children’s picture book of the season. There are many great ones, but we are really charmed with the artful telling, the subtle, lovely illustrations, the classy, solid presentation. Flyaway makes some very good books for children and this is a rich, alluring, keeper.

We have been fans of the writing of Carey Wallace since being introduced by mutual Christian friends in NYC years ago. Her first book was an unforgettable novel (The Blind Contessa’s New Machine) about the invention of the typewriter. Her first children’s book is one of the great books of the last decades (I’m not kidding) called Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace, and Courage lushly and creatively illustrated by the great Nick Thornborrow. In any case, she ought to be well known and this new collection of retold Psalms is a great book to have, to hold, to read, to share.  A Psalm, she says, “is a song that we sing to God.” As it says on the back, “Through many generations, people have called on the beloved ancient songs to express their deepest emotions to God and one another.” Yes!

Actually, I think putting these Biblical Psalms in a book calling them poems, from a book of songs, is helpful.

These are arranged, by the way, with several Psalms put (sometimes with full page art) around themes of “Songs of Wonder”, “Songs of Courage”, “Songs of Comfort”, “Songs of Joy”, “Songs of Protection”, and “Songs of Love.” Thanks be to God. And thanks to Carey and Khoa. Well done.

A Wild Promise: An Illustrated Celebration of the Endangered Species Act Allen Crawford with an introduction essay by Terry Tempest Williams (Tin House) $35.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

I don’t know if this is mostly an art book with excellently alluring graphics (illustrations and bright, wild calligraphy) and some text, or an encyclopedia of good information, that is nicely illustrated. I think the vivid portrayals — some exceptionally striking, believe me! — will grab you first, but the details of the facts about various animals is very interesting and, somehow, cumulatively, a song of lament. Or mourning. Or maybe celebration, since the 1973 bipartisan passage of the Endangered Species Act protected — ensured — so many of God’s vulnerable species a good chance of survival. In one of the masterpieces of beautiful bureaucracy in the 20th century, this lovely act of conservation is now, sadly, being eroded. Terry Tempest Williams — whose adult book Erosion has several sobering chapters on the former President Trump’s decrees to undo the 1973 Act — has a beautiful introduction to this stunning book.

Read it and weep, yes. But enjoy, too, in awe and wonder. Know that most of the book is just a glorious tribute to wonderful creatures a fabulous book for older kids and youth. How artful! What fun!

A Wild Promise is done by an acclaimed artist who beautifully illustrates over eighty animals that embody the spirit, legacy, and commitment of the Endangered Species Act. Forgive me for cross-referencing here, but it pairs wonderfully with the amazing Lenten book by Gayle Boss (and wonderfully illustrated by David Klein) Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing. Or, for that matter, the new children’s version of their Advent book about animals in hibernation, All Creation Waits:The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings. I’ll be saying more about that lavish new edition in an upcoming Advent book list. In any case, A Wild Promise is nothing short of spectacular. Spectacular!

The greatest enemy of life on Earth is not fossil fuel, but human hubris. In our eleventh hour, the art of Allen Crawford and the words of Terry Tempest Williams offer witness and warning. A Wild Promise celebrates the lives that have been saved by the Endangered Species Act, even as that half-century act itself is endangered. This gentle, strong book marks this moment of peril and promise. We can ignore, and thereby accept, the dark tsunami of extinction moving through sea and air and across the land faster than any previous wave. Or we can find the power of our humility and our wider kinship. We can reconnect our children and ourselves to the rest of nature. We can reverse the deepening loneliness of our species. We can turn the tide. — Richard Louv, author of Our Wild Calling and Last Child in the Woods

The World God Made Hannah Anderson, illustrated by Nathan Anderson (B+H Kids) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I hope you know the contemporary wordsmith Hannah Anderson. She is a young theological writer, inspirational but real, glorious, even. I respect her immensely and she and her husband, Nathan, himself a professional illustrator, have done a fabulous and popular book of wonderful nature writing called Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit.  Now they’ve done a splendid children’s book, a creative rumination on Psalms 104.

I like the way B+H Kids tell about it:

God gives us all the earth and calls it home.

Celebrating the wonders of nature, this retelling of Psalm 104 invites you to enjoy and explore the world God made. Moving from one feature of the natural world to the next–from the sky and earth to the animals and oceans–the book’s lyrical language introduces questions from a child’s view. What about when strong winds blow? When birds fly far away? When the night is long? Each uncertainty is met with a truth about God’s character to comfort children and give them the confidence they need to explore the world around them.

Hannah Anderson’s stirring words are joined by Nathan Anderson’s soft, realistic watercolors. Together they have created a book with a timeless aesthetic and readability, one that will resonate with families who celebrate the beauty of nature and the wisdom that comes from the world God made.

Winter Gifts: An Indigenous Celebration of Nature Kaitlin B. Curtice, illustrated by Gloria Felix (Convergent) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is a lovely, sweet book showing the life (and interior thoughts and fears and joys) of a modern-day American girl of Native descent. It is unclear from the story what tribe the girl, Dani, is from, but the story describes her friends who are Anglo, black, and Asian American as they play in the snow (they go “sledding”) and drink hot cocoa. The author, herself a follower of Jesus who is an important writer of indigenous insights (we carry all three of her important books) and how they inform her Christian faith, lives in Philadelphia, so this book seems to be a story of an indigenous girl in a dominant culture school somewhere where there is snow. Maybe in Pennsylvania, even.

The plot is simple — she learns from her family about listening well to Grandmother Nature and caring for creation, but her friends don’t get her. She shares with her parents how she was teased and they resolve to be faithful to their indigenous wisdom, looking for gifts from creation itself. Dani takes comfort in speaking with a favorite tree. Eventually her classmates come around and want to see her tree and a fort she built and all ends well.

It was moving, actually, that there was this tension in the story when the kids didn’t understand her wisdom about Winter being a time of receiving creation’s gifts of darkness, waiting, resting. That a few Potawatomi words are used makes this a special treat.

By the way, the girl’s name in the story is Dani, and a brief note tells us that Dani (Dah-nee) is the Potawatomi word used to describe the affection toward a beloved or special daughter. Curtice tells us that “Dani represents not just the special love we share with our human families but also our special status as the beloved children of Creator and of Earth, who was made by Creator to be our mother.”

Gloria Felix, the illustrator and animation artist, is Purepecha, born and raised in Uruapan, in Michoacán Mexico.

African Heroes: Discovering Our Christian Heritage Jerome Gay, Jr., illustrated by John Joven (New Growth Press) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

This is a super cute book and a great addition to the many, many books highlighting black history and African American kids. But wait! These kids are learning not about African-American history but about Africans. This is an amazing book happily accomplishing any number of things, including helping children (uhhh, and their parents) learn about the earliest years of church history.

In this story, the kids, Jordan and Jasmine, ask their dad, who loves history, if there are any Christians who look like them that God used in the past to help the church grow.  And dad playfully gives a lesson we all need. What fun pictures there are of Lactantius and Pachomius the Great, Cyprian of Carthage and  Cyril of Alexandria, Perpetua and Felicity, Athanasius and so many others. These are church leaders of the first few centuries and (like Augustine, from Africa) were not white. Did you know Tertullian grew up in Carthage which is in Tunisia.

In a Bible study just the other night somebody asked about the faithful Ethiopian who worked in the Queen’s court and his encounter with the gospel through his conversation with a Spirit-directed Philip. When I mentioned that he was black, one friend gasped. She had never thought of that!

This is a great, great book, highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn about early church theologians, what they did, what they were known for, their apparant qualities and robust faith.  Congrats to Rev. Gay — he’s done a number of books but I think this is his first for children.

The Treasure: Ancient Story Every New of Jesus and His Church Marty Machowski, illustrated by Flavia Sorrentino (New Growth Press) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

At almost 250 pages, this is one of the more hefty kid’s books we’ve gotten in the store lately. I like the vivid, colorful design of this one a bit more than than the pictures in his popular The Ology and Wonder Full. This one is a bit more zany, edgy without being over the top odd, with nice color and standard children’s illustrations that could be in a Disney-type book.  Ms Sorrentino, by the way, lives and works as a freelance illustrator out of her hometown of Rome, Italy. She loves creative expression and in The Treasure does the work of a lifetime, as Machowski weaves a Bible study of the books of Luke and Acts (with a fictional story, too.)

Readers follow the adventures of Mira and Theos, who discover a sea captain’s personal  journal that offers clues to a hidden treasure. The can only solves the riddle of the treasure, however, by studying two ancient scrolls. (Yep, that would be the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts.)  What a book!

The Peace Table: A Storybook Bible Chrissie Muecke, Jasmin Pittman Morrell, & Teresa Kim Pecinovsky (Shine) $32.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

You may recall us promoting the Shine On children’s storybook Bible as one of the very best out there, a large-sized, creative project done by a collaboration between The Brethren Press and Herald Press. The Peace Table is in that spirit, by those two Anabaptist publishers, and it is perhaps the best children’s storybook Bible we’ve yet seen. There are several favorites, each with strengths, but the color and drama and interactive prompts and allusive invitations to enter the story are simply stunning. We are excited and true fans of this stellar, new storybook filled with Bible stories, respectfully told.

The design is expert and while creative, not so artsy as to be distracting. There is lots of color, but much is pastel or muted. The art (from 30 different artists) is diverse with different fabulous styles from around the globe. Most are exceptionally compelling. There are 140 stories, all accompanied by prayer ideas, questions to ponder, and action ideas for families to discuss and consider. There are twelve “peace paths” that encourage children to “explore the ways that peace themes are woven throughout the Old and New Testaments. (There is a nice resource piece, too, that explains how God’s promises of shalom, fulfilled in Christ, equip us for peace with God, self, others, and creation itself.) This book is extraordinary and very highly recommended.

God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook Carl Laferton, illustrated by Jennifer Davison (The Good Book Company) $22.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39 

Many faithful followers of Hearts & Minds know that we are very fond of the good work of Carl Laferton and his great series (all illustrated wonderfully by the clever Catalina Echeverri) called “Tales That Tell the Truth.” Each of those tells a Bible story with a unique angle (what some theologians might call the historical-redemptive hermeneutic) that points to Christ’s redemption and the hopeful promises of His coming Kingdom. From God’s Very Good Idea Storybook: A True Story of God’s Delightfully Different Family to The Christmas Promise to Goodbye to Goodbyes Storybook: A True Story about Jesus, Lazarus, and an Empty Tomb to The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and so many more, we’ve enjoyed surprising customers with these great books. I like Laferton a lot.

Now, finally, Mr Laferton (who lives in London and spent his life teaching the Bible to children) has done a storybook Bible for young children. Here he offers these 92 “foundational stories faithfully told.”

The children’s illustrations are vivid and colorful and mostly realistic in style. The artist is based in Northern Ireland. It is not a giant volume but it is over 400 pages. Very nicely done.

The Story of God Our King Kenneth Padgett & Shay Gregory, illustrated by Aedan Peterson (Wolfbane Books) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

It is hard to explain the glory of this book for indie publisher Wolfbane. It is slightly larger than most typical picture books and gloriously so. The artwork seems to be computer generated, with a certain edge of graphic novel realism. As such, it is beautiful and gripping, a good edition to any home or church library. It is a follow up and companion volume to The Story of God With Us which we have promoted before.

What makes this exceptional, though, and why we were eager to track it down and make it available to our customers is because (or so it seems to me) it is nearly one of a kind. It looks at the kingship of God, the coming of Christ as the reigning one, the King of His Kingdom. The theme o fGod’s kingship over the whole creation and the royal nature of His people (and, the subsequent, eventual defeat of all evil) is expressed Biblically and theologically. This ancient story is still unfolding as we live in this now-but-not-yet world.

There are splendid blurbs on the back cover by Melissa Kruger (of the Gospel Coalition) and the great Matthew Bates (I’ve recently recommended his powerful, readable book Why the Gospel?) and the thoughtful Hebrew prof Michael Heiner. It’s fascinating how they have serious writers and theologians weighing in on this colorful kid’s book.

I hope your church celebrates the feast of Christ the King Sunday (right before Advent begins), what Roman Catholic Churches mightily call the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. The Story of God Our King by Kenneth Padgett and Shay Gregory can help.

Big Feeling Days: A Book about Hard Things, Heavy Emotions, and Jesus’ Love Aubrey Sampson, illustrated Natalia Basilica (NavPress) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

You may know the very touching contemporary books by the young writer Aubrey Sampson. I have raved about her book describing her sorrows and how she learned the language of lament (The Louder Song) and a good one about intimacy with God called Known.

Big Feeling Days is sweet and solid and honest. My fear is that some will find it a bit corny. It is not. It uses great imagination (and nice, basic, modern-looking illustrations) to show children in various states of emotion, often of hard stuff, sadnesses of all sorts, running to the arms of and often smiling Jesus. I’m very sure this will be a blessing to many, if used with discretion, at just the right time. It really can help little kids with big emotions know “that God loves them and is right next to them, no matter what they feel.”)

The kids are often wearing colorful costumes — symbolic, perhaps? — and Jesus (did I mention?) is often smiling. This is gospel-centered goodness. Knowing that all of us have God-given emotions and all sorts of complicated feelings makes this lovely book ring true. It even has small touches of sparkles. I highly recommend it. So does psychologist and writer Dan Allender Listen to him here:

I love children’s books if they tell the truth, engage the heart, and invite one’s imagination to grow. Aubrey Sampson has exquisitely told the truth about emotions that feel too big for one’s little body and soul to bear. The simple but profound reality that big adults and little children feel overwhelmed at times and don’t know how to manage bad days that make us mad and sad touches the heart and invites us all to imagine and receive the care of Jesus, who can calm the winds and still the raging seas. I can’t wait to read this brilliantly written and illustrated book to my grandchildren. — Dan B. Allender, PhD, professor of counseling psychology and founding president of The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, author of The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions about God

The Brothers Zzli Alex Cousseau, illustrated by Anne-Lis Boutin (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers) $17.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

I mentioned how sometimes Eerdmans finds international books that have a rare feel for those who read pop American kid’s books. This is a good example. It is bright and charming, yes, but a bit odd. It is a poignant story about a bear family’s search for home and belonging.

Who knew that it would spark lasting conversations about the struggles of refugees, the impact of prejudice, and what it may mean to welcome others, even outsiders.

Would you give a home to somebody who has been on the road for a long time? They’d be good company, it is said. But they are bears. Very funny, active bears. The story is dense and the art is busy and detailed (and funny.) This is an amazing work of children’s art. Kudos to this French pair, famous there, for storytelling and vivid illustration. Wow.

Saints: A Family Story John Cavadini & Catherine Cavadini, illustrated by Anastassia Cassady (Paraclete Press) $25.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

This is brand new and, I am sure, destined to become a classic in the genre. There is simply no other book of which we are aware on the topic of Catholic Saints that is so informative and so exquisitely captivating with this realistic, superb portrait art. In a way this is not a typical children’s book, although the writing is upbeat and lovely. It is designed to be read together, to help encourage families to read about saints (from history or from the Bible.) The art is stunning, and somewhat diverse. (Besides a wild, wild-eyed, long-haired John the Baptist, on the other page there is a big bug, I’m guessing, uh, a locust. Yep, there are these smaller depictions and insets. A few of the pictures are edgy and iconographic, others (like the cover) more realistic. The picture of blessed Franz Jaegerstaetter hugging his wife over his scrippled letters is heartbreakingly powerful.

There is a great bibliography at the end, and a GR code for even more content.  An excellent resource for families with older kids. Or no kids. It’s amazing.

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TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

This has been a fun week sending out bunches of pre-orders — almost all that we mentioned as forthcoming in that BookNotes a few weeks ago have now come into our Dallastown store. From the raw, brave poetry of Katy Bowser Hutson (Now I Lay Me Down To Fight) to the extraordinarily beautiful leather-bound prayer book, Every Moment Holy III to the fascinating new Mark Noll study of the early reception of C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis in America, we are eagerly sending special orders out. A few of you asked us to hold your orders until the release of Eugene Peterson’s sermons for the church year (Lights a Lovely Mile) which just arrived and David Dark’s creative and compelling We Become What We Normalize and that is scheduled to arrive quite early, any day now.

In this BookNotes we want to alert you to a book which just arrived and about which I’m thrilled. Agree or not with all of David Brooks views as he does his PBS punditry, he is a fascinating gentleman. We’ll describe his brand new How To Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen and then I’ve put together a small handful of a dozen other similarly thoughtful, (mostly) recently published, culturally-savvy titles that I might call “smart self help books.”  This is a delightful column to do, but also urgent, very urgent. With an epidemic of loneliness and too much despair among all sorts of people — ages, classes, races, religions, demographics — we need all the help we can get. I hope you know how important these books about personal growth and health can be and that you don’t scorn (as some serious literary types do and as some gospel-centered zealots do) this genre of sensible, useful books helping us live well.

As always, thank you for your support of our family business. Most of us have seen our share of sorrows and even comedians are now doing riffs about how hard daily life can be, so we hope this short BookNotes list gets shared widely. We believe bookselling is a ministry, and we earnestly hope this helps serve you as we we strive to be holy and human and known.

How To Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen David Brooks (Random House) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

We first discovered Brooks with his book done in the early days of the new millennium that I just adored — if you knew us then, I probably tried to press it into your hands: Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. What a fun and frankly breathtaking array of insights around a somewhat snarky critique of bobos. For those who aren’t familiar with it, you really should order it from us; here is how the publisher says sets it up:

Once it was easy to distinguish the staid Bourgeois from the radical Bohemians. This field study of America’s latest elite — a hybrid Brooks calls the Bobos — covers everything from cultural artifacts to Bobo attitudes towards sex, morality, work, and leisure.

Brooks went on to do another fascinating study on somewhat similar territory about home landscaping and lawns and the worldviews of forward thinking young Americans, again, a book I so enjoyed and really loved, entitled On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense.

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement came out a few years later and took “obscure but potent social science research” and made it what the New York Times Book Review called “startling.” Listen to this quote about it from The Philadelphia Inquirer about the genius (and big vision) of the creatively written The Social Animal: “Provocative and fascinating… seeks to do nothing less than revolutionize our notions about how we function and conduct our lives.”

While known as a moderately conservative thinker (having moved more centrist over the years, I think) with a congenial presence on many talk shows and in The New York Times, as a writer (fabulously popularizing interesting social science research) Brooks became an even bigger bestseller with The Road To Character which, for those with the eyes to see, indicated a journey the serious thinker was on: what does it mean to be good? Can we serve others, care about our civic and public lives, and be happy? What sort of virtues are needed for such decent work?  He was writing about the likes of Dorothy Day and other social reformers, and admitted in the acknowledgements that he was in conversations with some evangelical scholars and his pastor friend, the late Tim Keller. Rumors in our circles were that he was becoming a Christian. He married a very, very sharp young thinker, a journalist from Wheaton College. The Road to Character became well known across the spectrum of mainstream readers but evangelical Christians were among his most alert followers. I liked that book a whole lot, serious and readable as it was. The Guardian sad it was powerful, a “haunting books that works its way beneath your skin.”

When he did his major release about mid-life and the third season of life, asking what comes next for the successful professional who achieved worldly success and was still seeking — cue U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and catch the Christian themes in that great quest song — and realize that perhaps Mr. Brooks had, indeed, found something lasting and something eternal. It seemed as if he was identifying himself as a practicing Christian. That aside, even for the most secular reader, The Second Mountain: The Quest for the Moral Life was a lifeline. The Washington Post called it “Deeply moving, frequently eloquent, and extraordinarily incisive.” He was, I’d say, a public intellectual, respected if not always understood. Perhaps a bit of a bobo himself, a social animal on a road to character and on a second mountain (okay, somebody stop me!) he now tells, in the start of this new work, that he was raised with a slogan “Think Yiddish, act British.” Raised in a well-educated, thoughtful, verbose family, he was taught well. He says “there was love in our home, we just didn’t express it.”

One needn’t be aware of the arcane details of elite institutions of higher education to get the gist of his education and culture when he admits that his alma mater (the University of Chicago) was, as the saying goes, “A Baptist school where atheist professors teach Jewish students about Saint Thomas Aquinas.” He says wryly that he fit right in. Ha!

By the next few pages of How to Know a Person you learn about his stodgy intellectual neediness and his emotionally repressed self reserve. He talks about the joy of being on a panel discussion about the arts in public life with some theatre people, a singer, a famous actress. Unlike DC confabs that he was used to there was comradely and joy, joint purpose and congenial caring. He didn’t quite know how to emote, but he tried. It was fantastic. He resolved to explore this more, and he quips, “Yes, I”m the guy who had his life changed by a panel discussion.”

Funny? Yes. Serous — given the horrors of mounting rates of suicide and the nearly routine accounts of chronic loneliness — yes, again, yes. How to Know a Person is about the art of relationships, of being seen, and of seeing others. It is a bit surprising for most think-tank, political pundits, but fans will not be surprised. We’ve seen it coming.

I, for one, am delighted and glad. He is still pushing us to think well about civic life and challenges my own left of center politics a lot. I admire him, his graciousness and wit, and how sensible he often is, reminding those on the right to care for the poor, say, and those on the left that a major legislative victory about a social service safety net still isn’t enough — we need to care for our neighbors and be involved in the lives of others.

He doesn’t say anything about it, but I think an important bit of information that may be important to some of our BookNotes readers is that the wife of David Brooks, the impressive Ann Snyder, is the editor of Comment magazine, a rigorous, artful, deep journal of public opinion, standing somewhat in the older heritage of Abraham Kuyper and reformational worldview perspectives. Brooks cites a piece in the new book from Comment written by black memoirist Dante Stewart where he explains how notions of memory and history were important for black folks inspired by writers like Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes — it is a good section. That Anne and David share a love for literature and the arts is vital as they see that our faithful presence as God’s agents in the world must include the sort of ineffable (and often sublime) awareness that comes as we attend to the aesthetic dimensions of our social lives together.

(One of my favorite books in recent years is the nearly 500 page anthology Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year co-edited by Anne Snyder, published by Plough [regularly $35.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00.] That Snyder guided and contributed to that project of conversation and meaningful social discourse with writers as diverse as Marilyn Robinson, Tara Isabella Burton, Jeffrey Bilbro, N.T. Wright, to the aforementioned Dante Stewart and dozens more is an indication of her strong, ecumenical gifts; surely that hospitable practice of good conversations has shaped David’s own sense of the nature and possibilities of a healthy life in these times. I’d like to be the first to suggest that there is a connection between that book and this new one, both emerging from the Brooks/Snyder household.)

To cut to the chase, Mr. Brooks observes that “there is one skill that lies at the heart of any health person, family, school, community organization or society: the ability to see someone else deeply and make them feel seen — to accurately know another person, to let them feel valued, heard, and understood.”

As the publisher notes, “The act of seeing another person,” Brooks argues, “is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.”

“The act of seeing another person,” Brooks argues, “is profoundly creative: How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves? How to Know a Person is for anyone searching for connection, and yearning to be understood.”

Oh my. How does this happen? What a generous and curious question!  Brooks’s “trademark curiosity” pushes him to research the fields of neuroscience and psychology — not to mention theatre, philosophy, history, and education. He has his own personal desire to grow and change, so the book seems well researched, finely crafted, and deeply heartfelt.

In his acknowledgments he notes a crew of friends, writers and editors and pundits. He mentions two good guys who were close to him who he now misses: Mike Gerson and Tim Keller. He doesn’t cite either in the book, I don’t think, but, as with his wife Anne’s connections to Comment, if these authors and Christian leaders were in his own circle as he was writing this, it seems to add an exceptional degree of poignancy and even heft. I’ve got a dozen books waiting on my most urgent stack. I’m bumping this one up and starting it asap. Won’t you join me?

TEN MORE (MOSTLY) NEW BOOKS ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS, PERSONAL GROWTH, SMART GUIDES TO SELF IMPROVEMENT (and a gorgeous one about civility.)

Humility Illuminated: The Biblical Path Back to Christian Character Dennis Edwards (IVP) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I have read other books of Edwards — now an academic leader and dean at North Park Seminary near Chicago — and I respect him immensely. He’s done Bible commentaries (I Peter in the Story of God Bible Commentary series) and, most recently, a splendid book that we highlighted just a few years ago at BookNotes, Might from the Margins: The Gospel’s Power to Turn the Tables on Injustice published by the good folks at Herald Press. To read about such empowering social transformation based so clearly on the upside-down Biblical teachings of God’s Kingdom was thrilling and I’ve been awaiting anything new from this wise brother.

There have been a few other important books on humility in recent years (think of the extraordinary 2022 one by Richard Foster, Learning Humility) but I have a hunch this brand new one is going to become a classic. It explores this paradoxical power, especially in the New Testament, showing how it is a distinctive mark of the Christian.

This seems to be a book for us all, but certainly for serious-minded followers of Christ who want the church to be a community of those following the revolutionary path of Christ.

In a way, this might be an important, even urgent book to read in tandem with the one by David Brooks — Edwards offers a more explicitly Biblical and theological study and my hunch is it would be a good pairing.

Dennis Edwards eloquently writes that the (all-but-extinct) virtue of humility ‘brings truth’s light by throwing back the shutters of arrogance and opening the window of curiosity.’ Similarly, this wonderful book–by someone who embodies its subject–offers a window into the multifaceted Christian identity marker of humility before God and others, throwing back the shutters of distortion and misunderstanding. Well-researched, wise, and highly readable, this is a timely book for all Christians in an age of competition, self-promotion, and division. — Michael J. Gorman, Raymond E. Brown Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, author of Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

The Science of the Good Samaritan: Thinking Bigger About Loving Our Neighbors Dr. Emily Smith (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Dr. Emily Smith is a professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine / Surgery at Duke University and at the Duke Global Health Institute. She became known as the “friendly neighborhood epidemiologist” through her social media outlets during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is my sense that we need her now more than ever.

What does it mean to love your neighbor in todays’ fraught, divided world? She takes us to Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan, which is good, but not surprising. But then she brings her expertise as a scientist and, as she tells of her journey from small-town Texas to a prominent university position, you realize this is a very entertaining and special book. With some lovely teaching and inspiring vignettes, she invites us to a pretty radical vision. We can find shared values with people from different backgrounds, faiths, and cultures. We can reach outside our immediate circles to bring in those on the margin. Can we bridge the gaps that so divide us?

She has lots of lovely chapters, upbeat and energizing, moving from “Centering” to “Cost” to “Courage.” Her appendix of great books that have influenced her is wide-ranging and fascinating. This new book looks really, really nice.

Let’s Look Together: Henri Nouwen as Spiritual Mentor Robert Wicks (Orbis Books) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Again, this is a new title for us and we’re thrilled to highlight it, although I’ve yet to study it carefully. I hope you know the prolific Robert Wicks. We heard him speak more than 30 years ago and knew then that he was a saint and a true publishing force. He’s since written many books from his position (now emeritus) at Loyola University in Maryland, where he specialized in pastoral care, psychology, nursing, theology, and education — from Merton to medicine, as somebody quipped once. A Catholic renaissance man with a broad, caring vision, this is a book that, despite the cottage industry of books about Nouwen, is one that has never done. What a great idea it is!  Let’s Look Together unpacks for us things from Henri’s extraordinary life and his many books as it relates to how he did spiritual direction, guided others, mentored people. Both in the fairly formal settings of monastic life and in the looser campus ministry world of higher education (and later, as a teacher) Fr. Nouwen cared for others and influenced them deeply. He cared, he walked with, he listened, he guided, through good times and bad.

In the middle section, the heart of the book, Wicks invites us to explore four key themes in Henri’s spirituality and how they were generative and influential for how he leaned into the practice of mentoring others. These four topics are (1) desert wilderness, (2) ordinariness, (3) compassion and community, and (4) vulnerability and prayer.

There is a nice chapter on influential mentorship now, not only how Nouwen did it, but how we can do it today. We, too, are called to inform at least ourselves and perhaps take up the high calling of walking with others through their own spiritual formation as we make disciples. This little book should appeal to anyone who is intrigued by Henri Nouwen and, I’d think, those who read about leadership, disciple-making, mentoring, teaching. Hooray.

No Greater Love: A Biblical Vision for Friendship Rebecca McLaughlin (Moody Press) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

I do not mean to suggest, by putting this fresh new book on this list, that Rebecca McLaughlin is cut from the same cloth as David Brooks. But she does have a PhD in Renaissance Literature from Cambridge (not to mention a theology degree from the impressive Oak Hill College in London.) She writes for The Gospel Coalition, often following up themes of her important, popular book Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World Largest Religion. Her little book The Secular Creed is one done by TGC which many find succinct and clear. She is known for imaginative and creative apologetics from a conservative Protestant viewpoint and here she surprised some by writing about the tenderness of true friendship.

She notes how good it is to have friends, how supportive and gracious they can be as they comfort us and spur us on. Yet, she says, “friends can also grind us to the ground, exploit us, or invite us to sin.” Okay, then. This happy little paperback may be covering some important, hard ground.

McLaughlin continues about what she hopes to share in this book about what she calls a “love that’s been neglected and malnourished in our modern world” saying:

Slowly, tenderly, with many stumbles along the way, I think I’ve learned to better navigate the contours of this glorious and hazardous gift called friendship.

Love Big: The Power of Revolutionary Relationships to Heal the World Rosella Haydee White (Fortress) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This isn’t brand new, but it isn’t that old and I thought of it, again, now. I list it here because it was a thrilling, easy read but also to put it perhaps in conversation with the conservative evangelical vision of McLaughlin, say, and the thoughtful traditionalism of Mr. Brooks. This is less about friendship as such, but more generally about relationships and the power of love. She is a bold storyteller, a leadership coach, a visionary who cares not only about personal friendships but about this generative power that love unleashes, a power to make a difference in the world, hurting and hollow as it often is. One reviewer, journalist and good author Jeff Chu, says her “vulnerable storyteller offers a much-needed reminder of the expansive holistic love of an incarnate God who creates, liberates, sustains.”

There is a lovely blurb on the back (perhaps the last one she ever offered) by Rachel Held Evans who says Roze White “is the mentor you’ve always wanted — kind, wise, insightful, and incisive.” I gather that Rachel knew her well.

The excellent forward is by the always surprising writer and former pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber who speaks honestly about Roze’s ministry of encouragement to her during an agonizing time of self-doubt. Nadia doesn’t use these words, but I gather she felt known, and per David Brooks, “deeply seen.”

Living Connected: An Introvert’s Guide to Friendship Afton Rorvik (New Hope Publishing) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Okay, this isn’t brand new, either, but I just had to list it here. It is a book like no other, and I am sure there are folks out there who are going to love it. Yep, some of us are introverts (or whatever Enneagram or Meyers-Briggs numbers that includes) and well, gee-whiz. A friendship book for introverts!  Introverts do so much well, as Jorvik notes. “They listen well, feel deeply, and think carefully. They also take delight in quiet, and they happily spend time alone.” Do you get the tension, here? Listen up: even if you are not an introvert, if you are in relationships with any, you need this book as well.

Introverts, like it or not, need friends, and, yes, God calls introverts to “live connected.” As Rorvik understandably quips, “No small challenge!”

Three cheers for this friend of Hearts & Minds who is a fine writer (she tells us that she “savors words”) and who loves the outdoors. She embraces her introversion as a gift. And has given us a great gift in this book which will be a real gift for many.

Please read these two great recommendations by two trusted friends:

Afton Rorvik gets me. If you’re an introvert, she gets you too. She knows a bit about what it is to live in your skin. In Living Connected, Rorvik leads the reader down a path of discovery and self-understanding. I discovered grace to embrace how and who I am as well as fresh strategies to live well―and to live loved―as an introvert. No one who’s an introvert should miss this book!” ― Margot Starbuck, author of The Grown Woman’s Guide to Online Dating

Living Connected is not just for introverts. It’s for anyone navigating friendship in the twenty-first century. If you are an introvert, Afton Rorvik gets it. She will validate your needs while encouraging you to come to the table with your unique offering. If you’re in relationship with introverts, Living Connected, will help you to better understand  what it’s like for them to live in an extroverted culture. Anyone wanting to be a better friend will find encouragement and wisdom in this book. — Dorothy Little Greco, author of Making Marriage Beautiful

Beyond Chit-Chat: Sharing Stories That Matter to Build Deeper Connections in Faith Communities Dave Daubert & Elaina Salmon (Day 8 Strategies) $12.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $9.60

We have mentioned other small books by Dave Daubert — an ecumenically fluent Lutheran church consultant and wise coach and leader — such as several short books about being Lutheran in the modern world, a great book on being an online/in-person “hybrid church” and the practical and energetic The Invitational Christian. He knows a bit about congregational health, personal growth, framing it all with a missional sense of being God’s agents of justice and peace in the world.  We are pleased to announce his newest here. What a fun, little book with a down-home, plain-as-day title — Beyond Chit-Chat.

In a way, this is not a self-help /personal book and we hardly should put it in the relationships section — we have a growing good section about talking together, communication skills, listening well, managing conflict, and the like. It is really more a guide to how Sunday morning conversations can be deeper than talk of sports, weather, and the like. He’s a church consultant, recall, and know this is pitched to congregational folks.

As Rev. Dave puts it, “People don’t have the safe space, the tools, or the encouragement to share deeper and tell about the places where God has healed, brought joy, accompanied them in suffering, and all the other things the gospel declares God does all the time in their own lives.”

Beyond Chit-Chat is about learning to at least begin to “crack the veneer of mere niceness.”

It can be read alone but I think it might be good to read it with a friend or a group. Want to find tools to not only share our lives more but to have that spill over into congregational life, even stories to share in worship? This is a simple read, a handy guidebook, an open-hearted, real-world, down to Earth, (and super witty) guide to help you learn to listen well and tell better stories. It helps us with conversations with consequence, as one friend of mine puts it. Hooray.

The Six Conversations: Pathways to Connecting in an Age of Isolation and Incivility Heather Holleman (Moody Press) $14.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is a very nice study, a bit more substantive than the great beginners guidebook, above. It offers practical skills for connecting to others (including her “Four Mindsets to a Loving Conversation”) which is one among many best practices she has accumulated and experienced and describes. She has researched well and, yes, practiced it all. (Dr. Holleman is a beloved teaching professor at Penn State University in central PA.)

This one is short and a fairly quick read, and yet invites us to consider really serious stuff like how God has actually made us — she names the social, physical, emotional, cognitive, volitional and spiritual aspects of our humanness —which is a more accurate and rich description than many religiously oriented books. This multi-dimensional orientation is really helpful. Conversation may be harder these days (note the subtitle about isolation and incivility) but she invites us (and teaches us how) to grow in the art of “the six conversations.” Nicely done.

As a communication professor, I am constantly looking for resources and guides to help my students better engage in the process of relationship building. I am so excited about The Six Conversations by Heather Holleman. At a time when people are increasingly divisive, we need more trained communicators who are willing to build bridges.  — Heather Thompson Day, author of It’s Not Your Turn: What to Do While You’re Waiting for Your Breakthrough

Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship Justin Whitmel Earley (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Here is what I wrote in an earlier BookNotes a few weeks ago. I wanted to share it again:

I hope you know Justin Earley’s amazing previous IVP book called Common Rule: Habits of Purpose in an Age of Distraction. (It was just re-issued in a slightly expanded edition with a new study guide.) It offers nice graphics and charts and nicely colored ink on creatively designed pages to show how there are things in our lives we need to do less of, and things we need to do more of, daily, weekly, monthly. It is one of the very few self-management books that makes sense to those of us with allergies to such stuff, and its design is a gift for those who like grids and charts to make things do-able. He roots his advice in theories of habits and desires and inner transformation, even as he offers right-on, whole-life advice about Christian maturity. The book is a very wise blast of really helpful info and we get orders for it regularly. Yay.

The second one applied much of this same approach and writerly energy (and nice design) to family life, parenting and whatnot. It was called Habits of the Household and, again, is simply stellar, useful, fun. Give it to any young parents you know! It’s really, really good.

This brand new one seems to carry a similar edge and elan, written with energy and honesty (and some multi-colored ink on the cleverly designed pages, complete with line drawings and cartoons.) What fun.

The Made for People book is not cheesy nor simplistic, and the topic is deadly serious. It is, as Kyle Idleman put it, “a clarion call to covenant friendship — a deep abiding love that comes from vulnerability.”

Loneliness has become a cultural epidemic and it literally affects the health and happiness of millions. As it says on the back cover, “busyness, fear of vulnerability, and past pain often stop us from developing the deep friendships we long for. But it’s not supposed to be this way. You were made for people.”

God has made us in God’s own Triune image as people to be in relationship. We, these days, for various reasons, need to relearn key habits that “foster a lifestyle of friendship.” Isolation is not helpful and it need not be the story of our lives. Earley — a busy dad and business lawyer — has a lot to tell and a lot to teach. Just the table of contents is inspiring. I’m going to check it out. Maybe you should start a group to read it together, folks who might deepen in Biblical wisdom for deeper relationships.

Who You Are: Internalizing the Gospel to Find Your True Identity Judy Cha (Zondervan Reflective) $22.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I almost didn’t list this here because I wanted to a longer more substantive review and because it seems at first blush to be a major contribution to Christian psychology. Dr. Cha (who has am MA from Westminister Theological Seminary and a PhD from Eastern University) is a licensed marriage and family therapist specializing in relationship counseling. Much of her work focuses on what we used to call “self image” but perhaps might more properly be called identity. Much of this, in her New York City practice, includes conversations around ethnicity and multicultural issues. Her deeply integral view of therapy and her balanced philosophy of counseling is profoundly Christian, even if it seems her approach is somewhat other than mere “Biblical” counseling. For what it is worth, she serves as the Director of the counseling services at Redeemer Presbyterian Church, hired, I suppose you could say, by one of her profound spiritual mentors, the late Reverend Timothy Keller.

For those that know Keller, some of this will seem familiar, her emphasis on rooted out the heart idols of whatever one rests their deepest identity in, the gospel transformation that comes from a profound grasp of grace, of justification, of adoption. This handy guidebook to self improvement and personal growth really is seriously rooted in a gospel-centered (and might I suggest, Reformed) worldview that affirms what Kyle Idleman says about it, ” the Biblical remedy to our contemporary ailments.”

Beth and I have a dear friend who is a professional therapist and her counseling practice was significant influenced by Judy Cha. Our friend assures us that she is the real deal, wise and practical, seriously spiritual and yet helpful in the most useful ways, Biblical, gracious, and good. Throughout Who You Are, Dr. Cha explores what she calls her “Gospel-Centered Integrated Framework for Therapy” that she developed at Redeemer Counseling Services. Naturally it will be useful for counselors, psychologists, pastors, and others who help others, but it is so readable and upbeat that nearly anyone would surely benefit from it.

Gwen White (of Circle Counseling in Philadelphia) notes that Cha “takes complex psychological material and makes it accesible and compelling.”

The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves Alexandra Hudson (St. Martin’s Press) $29.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

This brand new book is, as Jonathan Haidt says on the front cover, “Beautifully written and meditative.” There are a lot of books on civility these days, some quite lovely, inspiring, hopeful. But few get that kind of accolade from such a serious scholar and respected public intellectual. This is one you should know about.

Here is the fuller quote from Professor Haidt about The Soul of Civility:

As face to face interactions have been replaced by digital interactions, incivility has exploded, with dire consequences for democracies. In this beautifully written and meditative book, Hudson shows us the treasure we are losing in civility, and how to regain it. She reaches back into history and up to a vision of human potential. Along the way, she touches your soul and inspires you to do better. — Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, New York University.

Here is another earnest recommendation from another wise leader, Don Eberly, a long advocate for what used to be called “civil society” which can be enhanced by supporting “mediating structures.”  Don Eberly writes:

In The Soul of Civility, Lexi Hudson, one of the most original thought-leaders of her generation, plumbs the depths of American and classical thought on the centrality of a robust civic community in nurturing the habits of pluralistic democracy. This book should be at the top of the reading list for anyone who is eager to reconnect with a vital part of our heritage, and to rediscover a proven path to renewing America’s social institutions. –Don Eberly, author of Restoring the Good Society and America’s Promise

The Soul of Civility was just released and I’ve already stayed up late skimming it, struck by its moving watercolor cover and the author’s opening story about heading to Washington DC and living by rules from her upbringing, mostly about politeness and manners. She said it worked well. Until it didn’t.

You can read how she handled the shock and awe of her early years in DC and her being driven to deeper study and sturdier habits of heart. You should consider her excellent opening bit about the differences between civility and politeness. Her story is pretty great, and it is inspiring to follow along as she studies, thinks, reads, teaches, and talks about civic grace and what is really at the root of our dismaying, dangerous divides. She is a remarkably learned person, having read deeply in ancient books and contemporary issues.

Hudson eventually created a TV series (Storytelling and the Human Condition) for The Great Courses and founded of Civic Renaissance, a publication and an intellectual community dedicated to reviving the wisdom of the past to help us lead richer lives in the present. I wonder if she is working with Braver Angels, a stellar, thoughtful, citizen movement working to restore our frayed republic which has some deep resonance, I think. If you know them you’ll love Alexandra Hudson.

(There is a lovely free offer on the last page, too, inviting you to her content on the Wondrium platform. As she puts it, you’ll enjoy a “globe-spanning, time-jumping, media-traversing tour of the human narrative tradition” that helps us understand who we are and our place in the world. Consider it a thank-you gift for reading and an invitation to be a life-long learner.)

Faithfully Present: Embracing the Limits of Where and When God Has You  Adam Ramsey (The Good Book Company) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

It isn’t every day that a throughly evangelical / gospel-centered book starts off with a Wendell Berry quote, but when I saw Ramsey’s choice epigram about “The Given Life”, I knew he was a wise pastor and most likely a fine writer. So far, I have not been disappointed in this recent release by this hip, Australian pastor. As hip, Seattle pastor Alex Early puts it in his solid forward, making the case that the author lives what he preaches, “Adam has joined the off-key band of those of us who lives our lives upside down, exchanging ambition for faithfulness, being present to where and when we are, rooted in what Jesus describes as abundance (John 10:10).

The first 8 chapters are under the heading of Time. With all the self-help guidebooks to managing our time, not so many reflect on the meaning of our moments. Here, Ramsey ruminates in rich, lovely language about time, the times, seasons, lulls, hurry, pauses, memory, and funerals. The next section of chapters appear under the heading of Place and include reflections on here (“earthly places”), bodies (“human places”), others (“relational spaces”), and eternity (“heavenly places.”) A beautiful epilogue (I jumped ahead, I’ll admit) has the hope-filled title of “Time Unlimited in a Place Uncursed.”)

The writing is peppered nicely with great quotes from fabulous writers; it isn’t every book that cites Lewis Mumford and Anne Lamott, Tish Harrison Warren and (again) Wendell Berry, Alan Noble, Andy Crouch, N.T. Wright and Craig Bartholomew, all alongside the poet Anna Akhmatova.

We are so busy thinking about the next thing, Ramsey warns, that we are “at risk of missing the main thing: the people and places God has put in front of us, right here, right now.” Can we find contentment with our given life? This is a wise, joyful, vital resource to help us find joy in little things and freedom from at least some of the idols of the age.

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With the tragic news in the world of the Middle East I was tempted to share books about that extraordinary, pained part of the world. We have books on the remarkable history of Israel, the pros and cons of Christian Zionism, about the daily grind of vile repression — more horrible than most realize — experienced by the Palestinians. Demands for justice for Palestinian civilians living in Gaza does not for one second in any way indicate support for the evil done by Hamas soldiers. Of course, not everyone living in Gaza supports such terrorism. (Interestingly, we just got in the new Orbis Press book by Mitri Raheb, one of the best known Christian theologians in Bethlehem, Palestine, and, not long ago, the fabulous book Blood Brothers by Palestinian Christian peacemaker Elias Chacour, was given a new cover and reissued. There are, of course, a lot of Arab Christians living alongside their Muslim neighbors.)

I also considered sending out a list of books about the ethics of modern warfare, the Biblical basis for nonviolence, the pros-and-cons of the just war theory. Certainly, that scholarly apparatus has formed the basis of most Christian thinking about war, insisting that the ends do not justify the means, that diplomacy is ever vital, and that military might must be restrained and constrained. Israel, now, must hear — but under current leadership will not, I am afraid — that their violence must be restrained; war should not be waged for revenge. Christians, of all people, should be clear about that. Those who understandably want to stand with Israel after the recent horrific savagery against civilians should serve them well by insisting they not stoop to the awful methods of their enemies. Anyway, we have books on all of that.

If you have a sincere desire to read more about the conflicts of colonized Palestine or the ethics of warfare, say, please write to me and we’ll see what suggestions might serve you best. I realize there are tons of columns and essays and articles on the internet now and I don’t want to add to the noise.

Here, then, are ten fairly recent books that I explain with my typical wordiness, and five more that I say a bit less about. These are all to be commended, good, good work that will help shape us as decent, Biblical people in a complicated world. Read on — scroll down to order, all at 20% off. Thanks for caring and for your support of our independent bookstore.

Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World Michael J. Rhodes (IVP Academic) $32.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

There are many, many books that have come out in the last two decades (thanks be to God, finally) from evangelical publishers speaking clearly about the Biblical basis of the work of social justice and how such wholistic resistance to the forces of evil should be a natural part of our discipleship, central to our spiritual formation, integral to the proclamation of the gospel. Those backlash books saying such talk is worldly or leftist or worse are mostly awful and we don’t need to even talk about all that. The Bible is so very clear and Biblically-inspired justice work is part and parcel of the Christian life. We’ve said that and tried to offer resources on that since the day we’ve opened.

Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World by Michael Rhodes (a lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College) is prime among the many good resources that have come out lately and may be the best, most thorough, most illuminating call to this wholistic understanding of the gospel I’ve seen in years. It explores what justice is in the Bible and it probes about how to be faithful to the mandates of Scripture in our very broken world. It is what M. Daniel Carroll says is “a clarion call.” Other blurbs on the back are from reliable thinkers such as the great Carmen Imes of Biola University and Malcolm Foley (director of Black church studies at Truett Seminary.) The famous Pauline scholar John Barclay of Durham says it is “a timely challenge to the church to become just people in a deeply unjust world.” Amen! This book is a solid, Biblical guide and at just under 300 pages, seriously amazing. We very highly recommend it.

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

Like books on social justice (see above) there have been plenty, lately, of fine books about eco-theology, Earth-keeping, Christian stewardship of creation and such. Some are quite focused on the Bible while some are faith-based but pretty scientific and ecological; to be honest, some are fascinating but nearly theologically suspect, promoting a new age sort of pantheism. With the climate emergency becoming more obvious, books keep coming out and we are grateful.

No one has written more passionately, expertly, generatively, and faithfully than professor of Reformed theology (at Hope College) and adventuresome outdoorsman Steven Bouma-Prediger. His For the Beautify of the Earth (first released in 2001) remains, in its updated second edition, a must-read classic in the field; his book on ecological virtues called Earthkeeping and Character is truly exceptional and a real favorite — again, a must-have book, I’d say. He has amplified the work of Lutheran scholar Paul Santmire and, with Brian Walsh, recently had re-issued an anniversary edition of the exceptional Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement. Bouma-Prediger’s work should be more widely known and when I heard he had a new volume coming out on why creation-care should be a natural, integrated component of our discipleship, I was excited. I’d read anything Bouma-Prediger writes (especially knowing that, with luck, there would also be a quote from singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn among the pages.) He’s that good.

But, I’ll admit, I wondered what else more he had to say, having said so very much of such great value already. Was this just going to be a dumbed-down re-hash of his earlier, major volumes. I’d take that, of course, but was curious and eager to see what his new one would be like.

And, wow, was I happy to see how lovely and good this new one is.  Creation Care Discipleship may be now my favorite book on the subject, certainly “a decisive case that creation care is necessary, not optional, to faithful Christian practice.” There is fresh thinking, great stories, and tons of Biblical vignettes with insightful, even profound take-aways.  With rave, rave reviews on the back from the likes of Norman Wirzba, Debra Rienstra, Ben Lowe, Jonathan Moo, and others — including his mentor H. Paul Santmire — Creation Care Discipleship is a masterpiece, readable, upbeat, Biblical, practical. I adored this book, liking so many of the details (not least of which is that it is dedicated to staff at a camp that he loves, set in the heart of the Adirondacks.)

I was twenty-one years old when I read my first Bouma-Prediger book. From that moment on, my life has been a sequence of events reverberating from reading this brilliant thinker. This book will have the same effect on a whole new generation. I can’t commend it enough. — A. J. Swoboda, author of After Doubt

On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts James K.A. Smith (Brazos Press) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

When Jamie was at the height of his popular fame, running on the slipstream from You Are What You Love (and the three more meaty books that You Are What You Love summarizes, Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and Awaiting the King) this book came out in hardcover and was in almost all circles immediately praised. It was at once an honest travelogue, a nearly postmodern account of angst and searching, an introduction to the life of Augustine, a reminder that faith influences daily life, and an invitation (especially for younger adults) to be shaped by some of the deepest instincts of the “patron saint of the restless heart” as Augustine has been dubbed. Of course older adults read it, too, more older than younger, I suspect, and I announced it as one of my very favorite books in 2019. I am sure I re-said it in 2020 and put it on our “Best of the Year” books of that year again. I’d have done it yet again if I could have gotten it by you. Ha.

This is an engrossing volume on a mid-life crisis where Smith and his wife literally go to Italy and follow the footsteps of the quintessential restless pilgrim. The Northern African young dude wanted fame and fortune and it didn’t work out. Jamie’s book is less a systematic study of St. Augustine and more a guide to living, how to ask questions as he did, to follow one’s quest, to make room, finally, for God. As Bob Crawford (of the Avett Brothers) put it, “This book is Smith’s Born to Run.

It is now out in paperback (and, thankfully, the full color plates of the artworks seen on their trip are still there, in lovely full color.) We are grateful for this less costly volume, and we cannot be happier than to once again suggest it to our BookNotes readers. It really is one for those of us who find ourselves in this orbit of books often recommended by Hearts & Minds. (I mean, even just this: where else do you find a book with a blurb on the back by one of the most prominent philosophers of our time, Charles Taylor and the roots rocker from the Avetts?)  Restless or not, how cool is that?

You will hear more about this long-awaited, brand new paperback edition, I hope. It is a tour of the human heart, a search for down-to-Earth spirituality, a deeply faithful study of one of the most important figures in Western history. It is one of the grand releases in this year of 2023. Why not buy a few for your group or friends?

The Augustine Way: Retrieving a Vision for The Church’s Apologetic Witness Joshua D. Chatraw & Mark D. Allen (Baker Academic) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Perhaps you will recall that I mentioned this one a month or so ago; I really feel like it needs to be highlighted again, especially in light of Smith’s Augustine book coming out in paperback. Who was this Saint Gus, anyway? There are numerous scholars who have rave blurbs on this one, serious, good thinkers, from Kristen Deede Johnson to Curtis Chang to Rowan Williams to Sarah Coakley to Keith Plummer. It is a book that is not just for academics, but is meaty enough to stimulate almost any good reader. As the ecumenical accolades indicate, it is both deep and wide, both savvy about contemporary culture and deeply committed to the local congregation. It shows much about Augustine and retrieves his early church vision and approach for twenty-first century faith.

This glorious hardback book is essentially a thought experiment: what would Augustine likely say or do as a pastor today; how would he articulate and defend the faith? As Alister McGrath puts it, “This ‘apologetics of retrieval’ opens up some theologically rich and apologetically compelling approaches.” That’s putting it carefully. I’d say it’s a heck of a read, lighting a fire to connect ancient dots to today! Yes!

I love how Justin Ariel Bailey (who wrote Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age notes that Chatraw and Allen “calls us to recenter the local congregation and to renew the polluted cultural ecosystems where we live.” He explains how it offers not merely a sophisticated plan to control a conversation (or win an argument) but offers,

A more excellent way: a non anxious posture of persuasion that is critical and contrastive, intellectual and imaginative, humble and hopeful.

Called Into Questions: Cultivating the Love of Learning Within the Life of Faith Matthew Lee Anderson (Moody Press) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

For those who aren’t quite up for the “back for the future” approach of the above retrieval of Augustine project (above) this easier to read, upbeat book could be just what you need. Anderson is a researcher and professor in Baylor University’s Honors College and is one smart guy (he holds a DPhil in Christian Ethics from Oxford University.) But still, he’s down-to-Earth, youngish and upbeat; he even hosts a fun podcast (Mere Fidelity.) His earlier book was a lovely little guide for college students, say, or others, who wanted to explore faith with intellectual curiosity which we have called The End of Our Exploring: A Book about Questioning and the Confidence of Faith.

This new one is an expanded and updated version of that smaller one, and it is an excellent call to think well, to ask good questions, to appreciate creativity and curiosity, and to have the courage to follow through one’s seeking.

He explores “the anatomy of a questioning life” suggesting that healthy questions (and seeking for reasonable answers) is not the same thing as a destructive sort of deconstruction. It ought not be seen as troubling, but should build a playful sort of confidence in Christ.

We will not be free of doubt’s shadow, he says, until we see God face-to-face. “Faith gives us confidence in Christ; it empowers us to live and die based on God’s goodness despite our struggle to see or understand it.”

Makes sense, huh? For Anderson, questioning can be liberating, but we must approach our curiosity and doubt in a redemptive way. Very nicely done.

Centering Jesus: How the Lamb of God Transforms Our Communities, Ethics, and Spiritual Lives Derek Vreeland (NavPress) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Every now and then a book comes along that is basic, simple, clear, but yet upon greater attention, it reveals just how exceptional it is. Such a book rocks your world, or, maybe, says everything so well that you may well have long believed, but you see your old assumptions in fresh energy. It’s the kind of book you want to pass out at church or within your fellowship circles and say this. This. This is what I mean.

I resonate so with Derek Vreeland’s new book and it may be because it is bold enough to say what need to be said, a common sense thing, but radical: Jesus should be at the heart of our faith, our lives, our discipleship, our churches, our evangelism and our disciple-making. “When we lose our focus on Jesus,” he insists, properly, “the church’s credibility suffers.”

We wonder how to proceed with all the hostility brewing in our world? He says we need a renewed vision of Jesus as the Lamb of God who can lead us into the peaceable way of the Kingdom of God.

As it says on the back cover,

When we fail to keep Jesus at the center of our lives, we lean into the desires of our hearts more than the desires God has for us. As a result, our entire spirituality becomes driven by the self.

Centering Jesus shows us how to keep the focus on Jesus in three central areas of our lives — our spiritual formation, our morality (by which he means our virtues and ways of living) and our common life together within the local church.

From the prelude citing Johnny Cash to the final grand quote from Saint Augustine, Vreeland gets around. He draws in Jamie Smith and Miroslov Volf, he is fluent in Orthodoxy (and the formational traditions of the Jesus Prayer, citing Frederica Mathewes-Green and Kallistos Ware.) He knows much about Desmond Tutu and John Perkins and he quotes Dallas Willard and Michael Gorman and of course, N.T. Wright.

You may not know his previous book with the somewhat cryptic BTW as the title, which stands for By the Way which is actually a very strong book on evolving and deepening spirituality that shapes our daily discipleship. The subtitle of that often missed one is Getting Serious About Following Jesus which includes a lovely bit of teaching about what we might call liturgical prayer. That one pretty obviously led to this new one, Centering Jesus. In light of our current politics awash in religious fundamentalism and right-wing nationalism, I think focusing on the Lamb of God (that is, not a donkey or an elephant, as he whimsically notes) is just what is needed. Highly recommended.

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

I could go on and on about the many books done by the creative and prolific Dr. Craig Bartholomew; he has published book of Christian philosophy, cultural studies, explored the relevance of the reformational worldview thinking of what has come to be called the neo-Calvinist or Kuyperian movement. He has been a farmer and a scholar, a public intellectual and (perhaps) a preacher. He is currently the director of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge and is perhaps most known for his astute, creative, fruitful Old Testament scholarship. From small books (like The 30-Minute Bible) to more hefty ones, introductory guides to technical commentaries he is — trust me on this — one of the great scholars in Old Testament work today. (Just a month ago, for instance, he co-authored a major work on IVP Academic called The Minor Prophets: A Theological Introduction [IVP; $45.00.])

This recent book, Listening to Scripture, is plenty meaty, ideal for a college course or serious adult ed class. It is, actually, a brand new work, not an abridged, popularization of his more scholarly work on hermeneutics, even if it emerges from that valuable work. I love the way he can cite technical scholars from across the theological traditions and yet offer reflective study questions that are more akin to devotional lectio divina sorts of prompts. He can talk about Newbigin’s missional theories or the need to use the Psalms of lament around issues of injustice even as he invites us deep into the story, using our imaginations to meet the God behind the text, and hear the Spirit from the text. This is thoughtful and pious, creative and useful. I can’t tell you now much I hope it is used in church groups and for Bible study leaders all over.

Here a few who agree that this is a book worth having:

Like Aaron Copeland in his classic What To Listen for in Music, Bartholomew helps readers of the Bible to know what to listen for in Scripture and how to do so with attention and intelligence, in spirit and in truth. He uses both ears, the academic and the devotional, and three hermeneutics (liturgical, ethical, and missional) to listen especially to what is most important: God’s address, words that guide and govern the church today. — Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Listening to Scripture is remarkably expansive and accessible in its vision and applicability as it guides Christians through an integrative journey of personal devotions, academic study, preaching and teaching, and missional outreach. It is the integrative vision that I have been hungering for and that my students and fellow congregants so desperately need. — Megan C. Roberts, Prairie College

No one has taught me more about reading Scripture seriously as both an academic and a committed Christian than Bartholomew. While I –and you— may not agree with all of his methods or conclusions, this book is without a doubt an excellent primer for hearing the voice of our triune God in the text of Holy Scripture.  — Matthew Y. Emerson, Oklahoma Baptist University

Loving Disagreement: Fighting for Community Through the Fruit of the Spirit Kathy Khang & Matt Mikalatos (NavPress) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Every now and then a book comes out that I can genuinely say (a) I didn’t see that coming, and (b) I don’t think anybody did: there is no other book like this, and (d) hooray and thanks be to God — we really need this! I might even add, why didn’t anybody think of this sooner?

I’ll tell you why — it takes these two wild, funny, outspoken, good writers to do a book like this, for starters. Khang has written a power book called Raise Your Voice very much about how to make a difference by speaking up, and is known as a mighty voice herself for racial and social justice and Matt has, as screenwriter, novelist, Biblical scholar, and creative devotional writer, has made me laugh more than most evangelical authors. They both know a bit about conflict, about how to work with a diversity of folks (Kathy has long lead multiethnic ministry and has published on being an Asian American woman leader) and — get this -about the power of the Holy Spirit to bring virtues and graces into our lives that actually allow us to be peacemakers in a very rough world.

Who would have thought that a story on the “fruit of the Spirit” (and there are only a few really good ones on that theme) could be harnessed to the realities of forming community where disagreement and conflict will occur? Where it must be asked, “What does it look like to love someone you disagree with?”

Whether it is contention within the local church or disagreements in the broader culture — and the sins of commission and omission that plague our speaking poorly or not speaking at all — this book will bring “unique insights into how the fruit of the Spirit informs our ability to engage in profound difference and conflict with love.”

The cover is so striking, you should have the book laying around — buy a few because friends are going to pick it up and wonder about it. Loving Disagreement is a treasure-trove; I’ve just begun to read it and I’m sure that good things will emerge into our lives when we follow the principles taught and modeled and celebrated in this feisty book. There is gentle strength to be found, friends, and the fruit of the Spirit can be brought to bear into areas where community is disrupted. This — there is nothing like it.  What a book!

Learning Our Names: Asian American Christians on Identity, Relationships, and Vocation Sabrina S. Chan, Linson Daniel, E. David de Leon, La Thai (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Perhaps you, too, have been moved by the cry to “say her name” and to commemorate those people of color killed by police. The movement to say their names is potent (and rooted in the way, also, Latino people would cry presente! When commemorating those killed (with US weapons) in the repressions in El Salvador so many years ago. Saying a name is vital, humanizing, a simple kindness, with vast repercussions.

This book is less directly political but there is much social significance, it seems to me, in the title. Of course, it also addresses an elephant in many rooms, the resistance some folks have to learning names they fear are hard to pronounce or even to learn the different cultural and national backgrounds of those who are Asian American. This lovely, wise, and inspiring book invites us all to glimpse into the lives of Asian Americans and join them in learning about names, about cultures, about issues and identities and joys and sorrows. This book is worth its weight in gold, I’d say, so very important and so very precious. Knowing somebody’s name.

Interestingly, many Asian American Christians have thought hard about questions not only of racism and discrimination and such, but just good stuff about self-awareness, faith, friendships, cross-cultural friendships, and, yes, in this book, the huge question os discerning one’s vocation.

I think that his book is somewhat designed for Asian American Christians; some would say that many in their community are being set apart for God’s very special purposes in our time. It will help those in Asian American contexts to celebrate who they are and their own sense of being seen, named, accepted. The team that put this great resource together are from East Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asian backgrounds (one from Hong Kong, one who is Indian-American, one who is Philipino, and another who is a Hmong American) living faithfully in the US after striking family stories of migration and more. The multiple tensions that have shaped ethnic minorities in unique ways come to the fore, of course, but this book also is a beautiful example of affirmation and learning. Kudos to IVP for once again putting together this sort of volume. 

And, by the way, for more theologically-minded specialists, don’t miss Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice by Daniel D. Lee which IVP Academic ($28.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40) which draws on interpersonal neurobiology and trauma theory, released about a year ago.

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

Okay, I want to say this book is a pioneering effort, the first of its kind and so forth but it really isn’t. But it certainly feels that way, fresh, energetic, vital, new, challenging, groundbreaking. Stollar has written often and some of the chapters had early expression in the Unfundamentalist Parenting blog run by Cindy Wang Brandt (and who wrote the forward to this brand new book.) She deserves and gets plenty of credit.  So does Marcia J. Bunge, author of Child Theology and editor of the big volume, The Child in Christian Thought.

Stollar proposes a liberation theology of the child that puts children in the center of our churchly life. As the book says, “By lifting up children — truly valuing and learning from them —we can build up the Kingdom of God here in our communities.”

I have not studied this carefully yet (it just came a day or two ago) but I know that Stollar (who studied at St. John’s College and has worked in child protection advocacy, offers a prophetic call, which is said to be thoroughly compelling.

Christian educators of course have to grapple with this, as should parents, Sunday school teachers, pastors, youth leaders, those who work in various capacities serving kids. At 325 pages, it’s a lot. But this is important, innovative, and one of the very small handful of books that explore this mighty theme. I think it’s important.

In this prophetic, compelling volume, R. L. Stollar calls attention to the rampant manifestations of anti-child discrimination that often go unnoticed and offers an urgent, compassionate alternative. The Kingdom of Children paves the way forward by calling people of faith to realize their professed commitment to children through child liberation theology. Anyone who cares about the Christ child will benefit from this much-needed book. —Julie Faith Parker, author of Valuable and Vulnerable: Children in the Hebrew Bible

With a passion for data, strategy, and the good news of Jesus and other prophets, R. L. Stollar has given us a gift of spirit. The Kingdom of Children is profoundly original, profoundly challenging, and profoundly encouraging. Children, Stollar insists, are bearers of prophetic imagination, and we must learn to regard them this way. We get to honor and revere their clairvoyance instead of fearing it and shutting it down. The world children bear witness to, through curiosity and creativity, is our actual world, one in which God sees everything our violence tries to hide and deny, a world in which children, our resident actualists, have the right to not be beaten or driven to despair by parents and other alleged adults, the right to liberation. Take up and consider what Stollar sets down in this actionable text. We have holy work in front of us — David Dark, professor of theology at Belmont University, author of We Become What We Normalize

Although I did not describe each of these ten stellar titles adequately enough, I hope you got the gist and the reasons for our sending these recommendations to you. Here are some more new ones that I won’t describe in detail. I suspect you’ll know if they happen to have your name on ’em.  Again, all are 20% off. Scroll down to the end to see the order link.

The Bible Is Not Enough: Imagination and Making Peace in the Modern World Scot McKnight (Fortress) $19.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

I think Scot McKnight is one of the great thinkers and Bible teachers writing these days, and I’d recommend, without hesitation, anything he writes. This is on one hand brilliant and needed, but yet feels (in the first few chapters) a bit cranky; a bit dense, not even all that appealing (to me, a Biblical pacifist, no less.) But yet, he continues to crank it out, short and not so sweet, offering good reasons why Biblical peacemaking is required work and takes imagination and improvisation. The Bible is sufficient for teaching us about salvation, of course, but for most of life, it simply is not enough. We’ve got some sanctified work to do.

There are fabulous, rave reviews from Joel Green (of Fuller) and Greg Carey (of Lancaster Theological Seminary) and Myles Werntz (of Abilene Christian University) among others. I loved his little Fortress paperback The Audacity of Peace (in the “My Theology” series) where he explains nicely his intellectual grappling with the Biblical instruction from Ron Sider and the theology of Bonhoeffer and the like. Reliving his own thoughtful struggles with the Biblical texts about violence was fabulous, and shapes this punchy, wise, and urgent volume. I am grateful to McKnight for his honest, frank, and deeply Biblically-influenced survey and invitation. 

Eve Isn’t Evil: Feminist Readings of the Bible to Upend our Assumptions Julie Faith Parker (Baker Academic) $22.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

It should go without saying that church history is replete with even good people doing bad exegesis and terrible interpretation. Augustine on women, horrible Southern Presbyterians affirming slavery during the civil war, modern preachers telling us to be rapture-ready as we claim promises of health and wealth. Even as brother McKnight shows in his manifesto, above, we need wise interpretation, and imaginative ways to live out the texts that we understand as God’s Holy Word.

And so, this is, as one reviewer put it, “an amazing book of power, insight, and challenge.” There is great Bible study here, good history, and fascinating storytelling. Do you need to have your assumptions “upended”? Don’t we all? This may or may not be for you the final word on so many complicated Biblical stories about gender, but is is honest and very interesting and a good example of a feminist scholar who obviously loves the Bible. Check it out!

Centering Discipleship: A Pathway for Multiplying Spectators into Mature Disciples E.K. Strawser (IVP / Praxis) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Whew-ie, there’s a lot to say about this book, but I want to be brief. Co-published with the good folks at Missio Alliance (and with a foreword by JR Woodward) this woman, with a degree is Osteopathic Medicine) is bi-vocational lead pastor of an innovative church in Hawaii. This is an executive leader with the V3 movement, so has been influenced deeply by the evangelical energy of the very thoughtful missional movement. It is not surprising to see Debra Hirsch (of Forge) offering a good endorsement. She observes how transformational it is when a church gets serious about helping members follow the way of Jesus and notes that this amazing book is “both compelling, as it is rooted in a lived story, and impressive, as it suggests practical ways to make this happen in your church.”

There are oodles of books about mentoring, disciple-making, putting discipleship (and thereby disciple-making) at the heart of the local church, pushing for whole-life faithfulness in ways the influence congregational mission and local culture. But there is something about this one, as it is smart and relevant and hopeful and practical. As it says on the back cover, Centering Discipleship is a gutsy, practice-based guidebook for leaders who are doing the hard work of reimagining and restructuring their churches and communities to turn spectators into missional, mature, followers of Jesus.

When Religion Hurts You: Healing from Religious Trauma and the Impact of High-Control Religion Laura E. Anderson (Brazos Press) $19.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I have been working on a book list for those in the throes of deconstruction, or those scared by their doubts, or others who are entering into new phases of their faith lives, maybe experiencing what Sarah Bessey called being “out of sorts.” There’s a lot — memoirs, sociological studies, evaluations from various theological angles and perspectives. More on all that later…

This, though, is an urgent title for those who have experienced religious trauma — and it seems like the numbers are frighteningly high — or know someone hurt by toxic religiosity. There may be other books from other orientations, but this one seems unique in that it is by a woman with a PhD who is a trauma-informed psychotherapist (and cofounder of the Religious Trauma Institute.) She knows this stuff from a clinical perspective and has tallied horror stories from dozens if not hundreds of clients. Can those who leave a super high-demand, high-control religious system (whether a bona fide cult or an extreme fundamentalist organization) survive, move forward, find healing (and be open to trusting God again?) This is said to be both compassionate and wise, with lots of data and help.

It is ideal for those who, in the words of Sarah Edmondson (who wrote a book about her escape from the NXIVM cult), are in the “muddy aftermath” of their exit from extreme religious groups.

Matthew Paul Turner says it is “the most comprehensive, reflective, and helpful book about recovering from church abuse that I’ve ever read.”

Rooted Faith: Practices for Living Well on a Fragile Planet  Sarah Renee Werner (Herald Press) $18.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I’ve got a pet peeve. I hate seeing people leave their car engines idling, like in the grocery store parking lot (or the Hearts & Minds parking lot; ahem!) It is so wasteful — don’t people care about pollution? Their own pocketbook when they have to fill up with gas? Yet, it is a different era than it once was — I recall when PresidentJimmy Carter said we need to conserve energy and put on a sweater on national TV like Mr. Rogers. Yes, he was mocked mercilessly, but some understood and many agreed. When I was a younger Christian there was a topic called “simple lifestyle.” We knew the Bible rejected crass materialism and we desired — out of love for neighbor and love for the planet — to walk more gently on the Earth. There were a bunch of books on this question of simplicity and wise use of natural resources and it was often even a category when we’d go out to do book displays. Ron Sider wrote about it, true enough, but so did a lot of non-Mennonites.

Well, the other day, gripping about a car needlessly spewing out exhaust for what seemed like an hour in a parking lot, I wondered why there aren’t more books on living well on our fragile planet. Why aren’t we more robust in being careful, stewardly, frugal?

Enter the brand new title Rooted Faith: Practices for Living Well. This is the book that could help re-ignite a church-wide conversation about the ethics of our consumerism, our carbon footprints, the impact of all our stuff. I am so very happy to see it.

“Drawing on Scripture, Christian history, and practical theology, Sarah Renee Werner invites readers into a new way of seeing ourselves in relationship with the rest of creation. She offers tangible practices for opening up our hearts to both the beauty and tragedy around us and guides us toward meaningful action to restore creation.” It is winsome, practical, and actually, quite lovely. Hooray!  Debra Rienstra of Refugia Faith, says, “…begin here.”

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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

BookNotes

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We’re grateful for the Facebook “likes” and the kind words sent after my big review of the new Conrad Kanagy book The Prophetic Imagination of Walter Brueggemann. It is an amazing biography, so interesting and helpful to understand some of the quandaries and issues in contemporary Biblical scholarship (not to mention church life.) Brueggemann is an immeasurably important scholar and preacher and we are grateful for Conrad’s diligence in telling his story. I’m not going to lie: I wish more people had ordered it. Maybe you’re putting it on your Christmas list. Don’t forget to tell your loved ones, we have it at 20% off. Walter, with all his Biblically-driven anti-capitalism, wouldn’t want you going to Bezos.

Hope you also enjoyed the follow-up BookNotes, a summary of many of Brueggemann’s best. A serious Biblical scholar said it was the best such list he’s seen. Actually, I’m working on another (shorter) list like that, diving into the deeper Brueggemann backlist, the album cuts, as the late night FM DJs used to say. But that must wait because now, I’ve got the great privilege of telling you about some really important and truly wonderful books that are coming out soon. A few are coming very soon, a few in a few weeks, some later in November. We suspect we’ll have a few of them here in the Dallastown shop before the due date. You can pre-order them now — we will appreciate it if you do.

(If you are ordering more than one, be sure to tell us if you want us to send them as soon as they arrive or if we are to consolidate and send ‘em together. It’s up to you. Our order form page at the website is pretty easy to use and you can type in notes to us to clarify just how you want us to serve you.)

Please consider these coming down the pike: serious faith-based, nonfiction volumes that are worth knowing about. All 20% off. I won’t say too much, as this is urgent. Here ya go:

Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive Into Paul’s Greatest Letter N.T. Wright (Zondervan Academic) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99 // RELEASING OCTOBER 17, 2023

It has been several years since a new book by Tom Wright and many of his faithful fans and friends have been long awaiting this one. He said years ago that he has revised his own views (as portrayed in his Romans contribution to the respected New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary) and we can all now benefit from his years of grappling with this central bit of kerygma.

This is one of the biggest titles of the year in the field of Biblical studies and I am sure it will be brilliant and inspiring. Even if you disagree some, as you well might. (Between you and me, I’m eager, too, to see what great Romans commentators he cites. Michael Gorman? Douglas Moo? Beverly Gavanta? Frank Matera? Scot McKnight? NT wrote the forward to Conformed to the Image of His Son by Haley Grandson Jacob. How about the book by his former student Sylvia Keesmaat and her brilliant Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice, co-written by Brian Walsh, a very old pal of Tom’s)? I’m really looking forward to this and it will be hard to keep working here the day it comes. Ha.

You should know that, from what I can gather, it is not a full-on line-by-line study of the grand epistle but focuses on “the heart of Romans” in Romans 8. That makes sense, and there is so much packed in there that it will be a great way into the bigger picture of the way the book heralds God’s Kingdom coming.

Having spent his life studying and living the writings of Paul, N. T. Wright offers Into the Heart of Romans with his hallmark exultant themes and dense yet conversational prose. With this fresh foray, he teaches readers not only how to understand this chapter but how to read Paul. Excellent for personal study, group discussion, or congregational preaching, he allows those who might feel nervous around such a vital theological chapter to gain their bearings. This book offers not just a detailed map but a personal guide through the intricate pathways of Paul’s proclamation. I was led to gratitude for the clarity I gained, wonder at the brilliance of Paul, and praise for the grace of God in the victory of Jesus Christ. — Amy Peeler Professor of Biblical Studies, Wheaton College

In his engaging, inimitable style, Tom Wright leads us into a profound encounter with one of the most profound chapters of Scripture. Challenging typical interpretations and offering new ones, he helps us see Romans 8 as a call for the church to enter the world’s polyvalent pain in sync with the triune God. A much-needed challenge.             — Michael J. Gorman, Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, St. Mary’s Seminary & University

N. T. Wright has long made it clear that Romans 8 is a text that is dear to his own heart and understanding of Paul. In this book, we encounter Wright as pastor, professor, and scholar. He teaches us how to read a text (as professor), what he discovers in the text (as scholar), and why Paul’s message in one of his most significant passages still matters for the church today (as pastor). It was also refreshing to witness Wright model the ability to grow as an exegete revising one’s opinion when better readings present themselves. This book is an exemplar of a pastorally and exegetically rich analysis of a dense but rewarding section of Paul’s most famous letter. — Esau McCaulley, Professor of New Testament, Wheaton College

Lights a Lovely Mile: Collected Sermons of the Church Year Eugene H. Peterson (Waterbrook) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60 // RELEASING OCTOBER 31, 2023

I have seen an advanced copy of this and am positive that it will be a lovely, handsome hardback, solid and helpful, full of previously unpublished sermons. I suppose you know that before his iconic Biblical paraphrase (The Message) he was a working pastor. He faithfully preached for decades to the small congregation of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, MD. We still have customers there and we are grateful for how his years there shaped them, and him.

There have been a few other collections of Eugene’s sermons from his early years —  As Kingfishers Catch Fire is a must-have anthology for those who want solid messages and This Hallelujah Banquet actually offers a series of sermons he preached on the book of Revelation! This forthcoming one is arranged them from his messages during different seasons of the church year, so you’ll get several for Advent, one for Christmas, five for Epiphany (thank you!)  a bunch for Lent, a bunch from his many Easter Sundays, a lot for the season of Pentecost, and, of course, many set in “Ordinary Time.”

There are 41 sermons here, in 300 pages. It’s going to be a great book.

Paul Pastor, a writer who helped compile these, says in the beautiful introduction, “Like any good writer, every good preacher is an artist who paints by means of words. But while the writer paints on the still surface of space (the page, kept blank), the preacher paints on the flowing surface of time.”

As editor, he continues:

Whether this historic seasonality is part of your faith tradition or not, it’s our hope that by encountering Eugene’s preaching in the season in which he delivered it, you’ll experience some of the “fit” his words were intended to encourage, as truth of Christ dovetails with some space you create for it in your daily life.

Epiphany: The Season of Glory Fleming Rutledge (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00 // RELEASING NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Last year the first of these small sized hardbacks came out, introducing us to the meaning of a certain season of or event within the liturgical year. In a series edited by Esau McCauley called “The Fullness of Time” we saw McCauley’s Lent and, shortly thereafter, Pentecost by Emilio Alvarez.

A month ago we received the wonderful Advent: The Season of Hope by Tish Harrison Warren and Christmas: The Season of Life and Light by Emily Hunter McGowin. Maybe you got them alread — we’ve got plenty (for now, at least.)

Soon, we hope to receive the next in the set of “Fullness of Time” guidebooks, penned by one of the great theological writers of our time, the Rev. Dr. Fleming Rutledge. We have prayed for her as she was writing this succinct book and we cannot wait to see this little volume, which will surely be a treasure. All we know is that it will be, like the others, a small sized hardback, maybe about 175 pages. J. Todd Billings of Western Seminary says it is “written with joyful urgency yet patient wisdom.”

With palpable reverence and predictable erudition, Fleming Rutledge unearths the riches of the most overlooked season of the liturgical year. Epiphany is all about glory, chiefly the glory of the person of Christ revealed in majesty and power as the King of the Jews and Lord of the Gentiles in key moments of the biblical drama. In Epiphany and the season leading up to Lent, the church gathers a fresh chance to behold the glory of her Lord and to renew itself in the work of proclaiming his glory to the world. — Katelyn Beaty, journalist and author of Celebrities for Jesus 

Watch this short video by Dr. Esau McCauley as he describes the “Fullness of Time” series:

We Become What We Normalize: What We Owe Each Other in Worlds That Demand Our Silence David Dark (Broadleaf) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59  // RELEASING NOVEMBER 14, 2023

I finished an early review galley of this late last night and I didn’t want it to end. I esteem David so much and while his prose can border on the eccentric and I sometimes have to read a sentence twice to conjure its meaning, I have to say that the experience of reading this was one of the most creative encounters I have had in a long while. David is a poet, a deep thinker, a usually plain speaker, and a genuinely gracious, good person; he is gentle, even, even as he calls for forthright rebuke of evil and invites us not to be complicit in the unrighteous stuff going down all around us. And you know, it’s going down all around you.

He knows what he’s talking about. He has shifted his views a million times — humans are “a process” he says — from being a passionate disciple of Rush Limbaugh to nurturing a lasting admiration of the blunt Godly witness of Daniel Berrigan and Dorothy Day. That he writes a bit like poet / resister Fr. Daniel is, perhaps, no accident. Yet, he was born and bred in the South and he has that going on, maybe a bit like a postmodern Will Campbell.

I have told some of his story before, and will return to this book again here at BookNotes, I am sure. Space does not permit me to hold forth now, but know that this is, in one way, a bit of an extension of his wonderful explorations of pop culture in his book Everyday Apocalypse and the yearning, prophetic reminder that we all live in stories and have agency of one sort of another to make a difference, as expressed in the must-read (newly edited, altered, and seriously expanded) Life’s Too Short To Pretend You Are Not Religious.

We Become What We Normalize is a reminder that we are shaped by the stuff we do, and the stuff we allow, and, as he puts it, we “become” the water we swim in. We are always becoming. Our choices reverberate, they make culture. Nobody is above the fray; life is political. God is not mocked, Empires are going to Empire, and, yet, we can take up “transformative justice.” We can bear witness. HIs stories are vivid, sometimes even embarrassing as he bears his soul and admits his struggles. Like from the first paragraph.

I gather that Dark thinks that we are always and everywhere either being reactive or reflective. We are too often driven by shame and fear. Yet, maybe some realization can break on through — if we receive the gifts of artists and poets and activists and children of all sorts — and repentance can lead us to refreshing ways of being alive, present, real, raw, agents of the day of the Lord. He explains all that in uplifting prose that just never gets tiresome, even if it is ponderous. Without a hint of condescension, he invites us in. Controversial as some of his views may be to some readers, his tone is utterly honest and utterly hospitable. His radical commitments to nonviolence just seep through into his writing style, generous and gracious even as he offers firm rebukes, mostly to himself.

As he asks, “Is this thing on?” Are we connecting? Is it working? He only does it a few times, but when he says “Reader, it gets worse” or calls to us with that personal line — “Reader” — he builds a bridge that movingly deepens our engagement. Yes, this is risky stuff. He invites us to perform exorcisms. Yes, David, it’s on. I hear ya.

I promise you that this remarkable book has some gonzo weirdness within and that it is not just bohemian hipster talk. He is playfully getting us to see, to play along, to own and manage our feelings — maybe with a little help from Mister Rogers. I bet you’ll love the chapter “What Does Apocalypse Wants from Me?” But, uh, when he gets to “Robot Soft Exorcism” and names the demons as “White Supremacist Antichrist Poltergeist” your head will be spinning. He does not beat around the bush. No worries. It’s just “observational candor.” You can do this. Tune in. Stay with him. This is a great, witty, honest, complex, and healing book, edifying and challenging, irritating and inspired..

He quotes so many artists and thinkers and writers and Tennessee activists, it’s a blast, really. Learn, here, from LeBron James and Octavia Butler, Lupe Fiasco and Wendell Berry, Greta Thunberg and Larycia Alain Hawkins.

Noting how our “presumed consent functions as a free pass for abuse” (and making the case that we ought not let “deferential fear do our thinking for us”) he offers a line from Thoreau, who, David says, once asked himself:

“What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”

He, too, in jail in the 1840s seemed to have known that “we are what we normalize.”

David continues,

“In the land of the free, what do I owe people whose lives are endangered by my silence? We are not without resources. Courage, it often turns out, is contagious. Group courage is righteously intoxicating. Others have been here before. Come together. Education, the practice of freedom, is forever.”

Every Moment Holy, Volume III: The Work of the People edited by Douglas McKelvey, art edited by Ned Bustard (Rabbit Room Press) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00  //  RELEASING NOVEMBER 10, 2023

If you know Every Moment Holy (Volume I) and Every Moment Holy: On Death, Grief and Hope (Volume II) then you know well the beauty of these classy, eloquent, modern prayers for ordinary life. You know the impeccable design, the linocuts by Ned Bustard, the hints of red ink on rich cream paper, the satin bookmarked. Mostly you know how these responsive readings and liturgies can bring you to tears or offer theologically-rich language for very human situations.

This forthcoming third volume, unlike the first two, offers prayers not only by Doug and offers art not only by Ned. A host of sharp folks are involved in helping us consecrate “every moment” and find words to pray in particular situations.

As the good folks at Rabbit Room put it, “Every Moment Holy: The Work of the People is a book of over 100 new liturgies (and lots of new art) for daily life, drawing on a range of writers, artists, poets, songwriters, pastors, and illustrators (with Douglas Kaine McKelvey both writing and editing). With prayers by Malcolm Guite, Ellie Holcomb, Philip Yancey, Ruth Chou Simons, Sho Baraka, Andrew Peterson and more, this collection represents a community of believers engaged in the work of reminding all of us that our lives are shot through with sacred purpose and eternal hopes even in the midst of the everyday moments that make up our lives.”

C. S. Lewis in America: Readings and Reception, 1935-1947 Mark Noll (IVP Academic) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00  //  RELEASING NOVEMBER 14, 2023

I am sure you know that there is a virtual cottage industry of books about C.S. Lewis. We love them and stock bunches. From Pursuing an Earth Spirituality: C.S. Lewis and Incarnational Faith (a favorite done last year by Gary Selby) to A Compass for Deep Heaven: Navigating the C.S. Lewis Ransom Trilogy (edited by Diana Pavlac Glyer) to Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis (by the great Gina Alfonzo) to The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind (a must-read by Jason Baxter) — just to name a few recent ones that are excellent — our shelves are jammed. Not to mention many biographies and, of course. Jack’s own writings.

This one, though — whew! It ought to be a publishing-world event as it seems to be exploring new material, new content, new perspectives — just when you thought everything important that needed to be said about Lewis has been said. These were lectures given by a world-class historian, offering some great new insight on the post-war reception in the states of Lewis’s early work. Many may not know that Lewis was being read here in the US before the international sensation of The Chronicles of Narnia or the apologetics of Mere Christianity (which were, of course, first given as live lectures on the BBC in the 40s but not released in the US until 1952.) Mark Noll here explores (in what were the fabulous Wade Center’s Hansen Lectureship presentations last year) his research and assessment of who, really, was reading Lewis and how he influenced Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and evangelicals (not to mention ostensibly secularist and elite journals and papers) in his early years of writing. Drawing on two seminal essays done in the popular Catholic America in 1944 (which are reprinted in an valuable appendix) Noll makes a remarkable case. We learn about Lewis, about why people took him seriously, and we learn, yes, a bit about American religiosity.

After each chapter there is a brief response from another religious scholar. It’s all so informative and helpful (to understand Lewis, to understand how to present the gospel in a winsome voice, and a bit about the US mid-20th century religious landscape.) Jerry Root eloquently compares this book to a brilliant painting summarizing, “What emerges is a masterpiece.”

From elite, secular newspapers to denominational magazines, C. S. Lewis’s writings commending the Christian faith had an enthusiastic reception in America. In this prophetic and timely book, preeminent historian Mark A. Noll has uncovered the secret of Lewis’s success: he was deeply learned, theologically focused, and unusually creative. Noll himself brilliantly models how to embody these traits today.  — Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and author of George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles

This is a deeply informed, fascinating account of the varying fortunes of C. S. Lewis’s writings in America. Initial misunderstanding and mistrust give way to respect, and then to reverence, and ultimately to something not far from idolatry. Noll tells the tale vividly, and the responses from Johnson, Farney, and Black point out some vital implications of this history for Christians today. A welcome addition both to Lewis scholarship and contemporary Christian self-reflection. — Alan Jacobs, distinguished professor of humanities at the Honors College, Baylor University, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind

Now I Lay Me Down to Fight: A Poet Writes Her Way Through Cancer Katy Bowser Hutson (IVP) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80  //  RELEASING NOVEMBER 14, 2023

I cannot tell Katy’s story but should know that she is an artist and friend, a customer we admire very much. She and her musician husband (yes, he once played with VOL) have made their home in Tennessee and have used their creativity to raise kids and nurture friendships and serve churches and make goodness. Katy has played and sung on the excellent children’s albums (you should know Rain for Roots) and is a mom and working poet. Beth and I have followed her as a writer — she had a piece in the great Square Halo Book It Was Good: Making Music to the Glory of God and co-wrote the lovely books of children’s prayers with Tish Harrison Warren and Flo Paris Oakes Little Prayers for Ordinary Days. (In fact, for those who follow this stuff, you might want to know she has a piece in the volume about children’s literature edited by the late Leslie Bustard and others, Wild Things and Castles in the Sky.)

And then she got cancer.  And has lived to tell about it, making poetic beauty out of the horrible. The publisher notes that she “writes in resistance to sickness, of wrestling toward beauty.” Word has gotten out about this forthcoming volume, so boldly written, and nicely accentuated by art of Jodi Hays, and we already have a waiting list. Why not join it now and send us a pre-order?

Our friend Margie Haack has been Katy’s friend and wrote this:

What do you do if you wake up one day to find your breasts are insanely on fire with a vicious invader who plans to kill you unless you take the chemo journey without so much as a promise of survival? Because you are young, a wife and a mother with hopes to live for other stories, you have no choice. You take the journey. And if you are a poet, you ‘walk this poisonous way’ hoping, praying, negotiating, and writing all the while. In this collection Katy moves through the halls of medicine and the corridors of pain to find she is only a ‘tiny speck of glory, barely sparking,’ but one carried in the arms of Jesus. Out of the crucible of cancer comes this rare collection of poems sure to be a comfort to any who have cussed, fought, and cried their way through an unwanted diagnosis or any of the heartaches and griefs common to humankind. — Margie Haack, author of The Exact Place and No Place and is co-director of Ransom Fellowship

Hear this, from the forward by Tish Harrison Warren, author of her own harrowing, hopeful exploration of prayer in hard times, Prayers in the Night,

The poems in Now I Lay Me Down to Fight are luminous, honest, heartbreaking, and at moments even funny. They are at once defiant yet surrendered, buoyant yet profound, faithful yet never trite. To read them is to encounter a beautiful and brave soul who invites us into her vulnerability, illness, and mortality through images and stories as human as they are hopeful. I cried reading these verses — no surprise given the subject and my love for the poet. What did surprise me was how much I smiled as well. Katy Hutson has descended into the darkness of cancer and there wrought beauty, goodness, wisdom, and even abundance.

+++

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

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

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be a little slower. For one typical book, usually, it’s $4.12; 2 lbs would be $4.87. This is the cheapest method available.
• United States Postal Service has another, quicker option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, if it fits in a flat-rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. Sometimes they are cheaper that Priority. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF