I’ll make this quick but it’s a great little BookNotes with a big ask: can you help share about this free upcoming webinar (November 17th) with those who you think might be interested?

All are very warmly invited. It’s going to be a blast. Maybe for some, a blast from the past.

PLEASE REGISTER RIGHT HERE: https://ecpa-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4dmCc5iTSAW_rELfzvBLzw

I know there are those who like tuning in just to hear me chat with folks — a small town bookseller and a big-time author — and so if you enjoy learning about books and writing and being an author, come on! Thank you for your support of our efforts.

This webinar (November 17 at 8:00 PM EST) is one that is very special for several reasons.

First, the author Jeff Crosby is a great conversationalist, a careful and graceful writer, a guy with decades of experience in the book world. This will be the first time we’ve had an author on a Hearts & Minds webinar three times! We hosted Jeff for an online book talk when his fabulous first book came out, The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts (published by Broadleaf) and then again when his wonderful and wonderfully-relevant World of Wonder: A Spirituality of Reading came out (released by Paraclete.) And now, we’ve got him coming to this Zoom-like event to talk about what is his most fun book of all, Spirit In the Sky: The Power of Music in Our Search for Graceland (recently released by the storied, prestigious Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.)

Those who follow BookNotes but missed my remarks about  The Spirit in the Sky all our reviews are archieved. Visit HERE. We still have it at 20% off.

For those who haven’t read my comments, here’s the skinny just to share with a friend — The Spirit in the Sky: The Power of Music in Our Search for Graceland is an easy-to-read and nicely informative book with inspiring chapters about the search for meaning and faith in popular music.

I hope you got the Graceland album reference. Right?

Jeff’s wonderful, wonderful introduction is “Listening to the Wiind” which is a reference to the beautiful short song “The Wind” from Cat Steven’s iconic Teaser and the Fire Cat still beloved after fifty-five years.

In a way (not unlike Crosby’s Language of the Soul and World of Wonder) The Spirit in the Sky is autobiographical. It has stories of his musical discovering and what it means to him, even as a teen, like in a memoir. Yes, you get mini-biographies and enchanting discographies of all these pop singers and recording artists, but, more, you get Jeff’s story about how those artists captured his imagination, how they shaped his journey, how they lead him to Christian faith, or formed his faith as he grew in discipleship.

You know this (even if not everybody at your church says it out loud) —we Christians can grow in faith and faithfulness to God’s ways by listening to so-called secular music.

And here’s the thing: even music put out on secular, corporate, even sometimes corrupt recording labels scan be laced with faith, and can be channels of common grace and faithful insight and beauty and provocation. I think you’ll sometimes hear more gospel insights in some of the songs of Paul Simon and Van Morrison and Marvin Gaye (and pre-conversion Bob Dylan, for that matter) than in some highly praised CCM albums. So, yes, through the likes of these singer-songwriters and rock bands we can grow in faith and courage and commitment to Christ; we can learn to wonder about God’s world; we can learn wisdom and deepen our desire to be people who forgive or to be those who work for justice (etc. etc.) all from listening to the sometimes subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) songs from these folk, pop, rock, blues, and soul artists. Pink Floyd? Cat Stevens? Tracy Chapman? George Harrison? Laura Nyro? You bet. Jeff has grown through them all.

And he’ll tell us all about it at the webinar on 11-17-26. I can’t wait.

The Spirit in the Sky has a seventeen chapters, each telling about a certain artist and Jeff’s personal experience with their recordings and concerts. It isn’t a deep, detailed study of the lyrics but it isn’t just a simple overview of their music; it is more of an impressionistic survey of God’s work in and through these musical acts. It’s going to be joy (and mayber enlightening for some) to hear us talking about it all.

Please join us, won’t you? And tell others?

Tell your kids, or your parents, or your grandparents. Jeff and I will banter about our favorite songs of some of these favorite artists. You’ll know many of them (Seals & Crofts, Cat Stevens, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Tracey Chapman, Bill Withers (who doesn’t love Lean on Me?), The Staple Singers, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, Pink Floyd, and more who are household names. Some are lesser known artists — Mickey Newbury, Laura Nyro, Chris Rea, Brooks Williams, Bruce Cockburn.

In any case, it’s going to be an entertaining conversation, and hopefully you will be introduced to some new ways of thinking about pop culture, contemporary music, and artists who are used by God to touch us all.  As Paul Simon hopes, maybe we all will be recieved at Graceland.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER:

https://ecpa-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4dmCc5iTSAW_rELfzvBLzw

When you click on the link and fill out the little form you are registered. You’ll then get a reply which includes a free Zoom-link that will get you into the conversation on November 17th. Again, remember – it starts at 8:00 PM, Eastern Time (7:00 Central.) You’ll have opportunities to ask questions via the “chat” feature, too. Sign up now, please. It’ll be nice to have you with us.

Spread the word, okay?

Jeff Crosby’s writing is spacious, inviting readers to recover from their own lives the times music helped them over rough spots, propelled them toward greater insights, led them toward joy. At another level, Crosby, by his own admission, is a spiritual seeker who struggles with doubt and ambiguity while also chafing at the certainties of religious dogma. Over and over he tells us how music has instead helped him to embrace mystery, to be a quester and questioner, to — in Van Morrison’s words — be ‘a soul in wonder’, a ‘dweller on the threshold’. Crosby helps us understand that thresholds are the leading edges of spiritual growth and are surrounded by the vibrations of music that both challenge and comfort us. — Dr. Richard R. Guzman, author of Voices and Freedoms: A History of Jazz

Why do we so treasure the music of our favorite artists? Isn’t it because of the way that these artists celebrate our experiences in this beautiful and broken world? Isn’t it about the way they ask honest questions about what it means to be human, how we can make sense of our lives and loves, and whether we can somehow make a connection with something (or someone) who can help us transcend the pain and triviality of our everyday existence? Jeff Crosby explores these issues in his latest book, which, if you’re like me, offers a fresh engagement with some longtime favorites and an introduction to some whom you didn’t know much about, but now you want to dig into. What a fascinating and delightful book! —Terry Glaspey, author of 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know

Again, you are warmly invited to this free conversation with author Jeff Crosby as we talk together about his new book The Spirit in the Sky: The Power of Music in Our Search for Graceland. It is November 17th at 8PM Eastern Time.  You must pre-register HERE. 

As I’m sure you know, the book is available at Hearts & Minds for 20% OFF. The list price is $32.00 and at our BookNotes discount it is only $25.60. To purchase, use the link below.

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

As you receive this in your inbox, mid-term campaigning is still going on. Depending when you read this, maybe they will be wrangling about results. In any case, we’ve all been thinking about our citizenship these days (and our political systems.) That our President months ago threatened to bring in ICE or paramilitary groups to “monitor” elections — in direct opposition to our Constitution! — is frightening and the fact that there had to be court rulings last week about his plea for some states to not count some votes surely aggravates patriots who think his over-reach in this is dangerous. I’m sure you are distressed no matter your party affiliations. With an administration that pardoned rioters at the Capitol about other election results that famous January, who knows what will come next?

[A quick aside: if you are interested in a serious study of the history of claims of stolen elections and voter suppression see Stealing Elections, American Style by David F. Albert (Bloomsbury; $27.00 // our sale price = $21.60.)]

These days, being a good citizen is on one hand harder than I recall it ever being (I voted for the first time in the early 1970s)  but, also — forgive me if I overshare — simpler than ever. I’d say we must vote against anyone who has not spoken out against the current reckless and vulgar regime. His crimes and comments, policies and mockery of prayer (you know about that, I assume, those prayer call scams) are so inappropriate that any leader who has not protested should be voted out. I care less about party than principle, and resistance to Trump is, as I discern the times, a moral necessity.

Further, I’ve signed the Bread for the World pledge to vote for candidates who make it a priority to work for policies that help the poor. We can hold our candidates and elected officials accountable to support legislation that helps fight hunger, at home and abroad and BFW shows you how. You can sign it HERE.

In any case, regardless of your views about, say, Trump’s playing footsie with the Russians or his disinterest in the rape victim dishonored by his Vice President, or his lying about elections, or his weaponizing of the DOJ far worse than any President ever, we should all agree that we simply have to keep studying up, reading to know what professing Christians ought to be known for in our civic concerns, how we should relate to the public square, and what a Biblical-informed view of statecraft ought to be. We have seen (across parties) what it is not.

I’ve written about this often. On the positive side, some great books about faithful Christian thinking about civic life and faithful politics, see, at least HERE.

On the critical side, some books about the dangers from the increasingly influential extremists and far-right ideologues who want to erode our Republic and our constitutional democracy, see, at least HERE or HERE.

For now, to inspire you this mid-term season take a look at this short list. Even if you don’t buy them now, maybe it is helpful just to read my comments about them, knowing a bit about the state of appropriate scholarship on the topic.

I trust it is helpful to hear about these titles, but I do hope some folks buy them as it isn’t easy making a living promoting these sort of resources. We’ve got the goods. All are 20% OFF. What may we send yoiu?

+++

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

This is one of the most important books of the year, certainly in this genre of public affairs books and thinking well about civic life. I’ve raved about this before, celebrating it when it first came out so will be brief, here.

Let me say a quick thing or two to set this up.

First, as some might think I’ve done, even above, there is an insinuation that because the anti-democracy, far-MAGA-right that extols some sort of evangelical theocracy or Christian nationalism (often, but not always, driven by a racism and unrighteous xenophobia) are motivated by their religion, that therefore the safest thing for a democracy is to discourage religion from the public square. Who doesn’t know how harmful religious zealots can be. Granted. But to try to bad religion from the public square is down-right unAmerican, and impossible, anyway.

The first major critique of that nonsense in our era came perhaps from Richard Neuhaus in the 1980s with his classic Eerdmans book The Naked Public Square. It showed that we can’t be neutral, ever, anyway, so disallowing religious convictions from our civic conversations only then priviliges a secularized view, which is not “naked” but a particular sort of view, religoius-like in it’s privileging of secularity. There’s no escaping the ways in which our ultimate concerns shape our public values and political debates — whether religious or not, it’s how everybody, everywhere acts — so trying to silence some religious-aligned voices simply won’t do. We don’t want a theocracy, obviously, but not a secularized “naked” civic space, either but a pluralistic one. Liberty and justice for all, you know? Muslim or Morman, Sikh or Seveth Day Adventist, atheistic secularist of any sort all are welcom to bring their valued-laded views to the public conversations and political discourse. So because some extremist Muslims are terrorists, and because Christians have acted in bad faith — smashing stuff in the Capitol with their Jesus tee-shirts and vile language, comes to mind — does not mean we should therefore resist religious language and convictions in our public life. The authors of this book understand all that and explain a theological (and practical) argument for pluralism that is as compelling as anything I’ve read along these lines. Hooray for “more religion, not less.”

Secondly, besides their commitment to religiously-informed principled pluralism and a welcoming of all sorts of viewpoints from all sorts of motivations and worldviews, I’ll note this. As I explained in the previous review, Kaemingk and Hamid are friends (they do a podcast together) and their friendship is sincere. An evangelical and Reform Christian and a moderate Muslim talk about their differences in their podcast, which is both advocating for (and modeling) wholesome disagreements among Muslim and Christian thinking but also showing the world how civic minded public intellectuals, if you will, can disagree and yet work together to advance the common good for all. This is political discourse at its finest.

(If you are like most people, I’ll bet you’ve never read a book co-authored about political differences by a practicing Christian and a devout Muslim. This book is a rare gift, and you should have it if for no other reason than this project is so rare, so wonderful. Can you help us spread the word?)

So, Can Religion Save Democracy pushed back against a view that at times seems repressive against religiously-oriented citizens (be they Christian or Muslim or Jewish or other.) Yes, they think we from the faith communities can be a healing force. It is audacious, given how extremists of all sorts have wrecked havoc on our world, but it is the right vision. Together they show a better way.

David Brooks — who has studied and read and interviewed countless scholars and ordinary people from across the political spectrum — says “This book is original and profound. Kaemingk and Hamid take the wisdom from two great religious traditions and use it to bend your mind — especially if you are secular.”  Exactly. This is mind-blowing for any of us.

Don’t miss the chapter “From Cancel Culture to Covenant Culture” and the great pair of chapters “Schools of Democracy” and the wonderful follow-up bit (or so it seemed to me) “Praying for Democracy.” This is wise, thoughtful, good stuff — offering at least a posture and some practices rather than simple solutions. Kudos to Kaimingk and Hamid and to all who buy this great book.

Unity in Diversity: How Critically Recovering Our Sense of a Nation As a Body Can Offer Us New Paths Forward in an Age of Division Donald Roth (Cascade) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

This isn’t a simplistic book about listening well or getting along — although we have plenty of recommendations on civility if you need any suggestions — but is a deeper study of what sort of metaphors we use to discuss our society in our social contract. (Speaking of which, I almost said it above, but Jamie Smith has argued why “the public square” isn’t a helpful metaphor. Fair enough.)

Unity in Diversity is drawing on (as the lengthy sub-title notes) the image of the body. As a Bible believing Christian, he obviously draws on Pauline lingo about the body. He is in the tradition (as is Matthew Kaegmink, by the way) of Dutch neo-Calvinism — think of Abraham Kuyper at the turn of the 1800s into the 1900s who became Prime Minister in Holland on a platform of religious pluralism and the common good.( Roth teaches at Dordt University in Iowa and co-directs the Kuyper Honors Program there.

This is a serious, principled study of a Kuyperian sort of social arrangement that includes a profound pluralism, and a realization that the metaphor of “the body” really does help us get around the pressure we have these days (some might call it binary.) Winners vs losers, suffer or sue, “wage war or wait it out.” Can we reimagine our role in society in a way that “promotes flourishing for our communities and the pursuit of our ultimate purpose: the glory of God?”

I’m not sure it is quite right to say that Dr. Roth is Burkean but he’s in that ball-park. Kuyper’s party was the Anti-Revolutionary Party, one holding to reformation principles that were not aligned with the modernist spirit of the French Revolution. He is a conservative who calls his view “organic.” Fascinating.

Roth rescues us from our damaging mechanical metaphors for politics and restores to us a more ancient, organic kind: the body. To escape the cage of our machines of polarization and dysfunction, Roth offers Reformed organicism: not unity despite, or against, but in diversity. What’s in a metaphor? Roth shows us the very task, purpose, and dignity of justice. This book deserves to convince and convict, and I hope it will do so very widely! — Robert Joustra, Spoelhof Chair, Calvin University, author of Christ and Covenant in Global Politics: A Christian Introduction to International Relations

Dispatches from Rural America: Sixteen Essays Wendell Berry (Counterpoint Press) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

With Saint Wendell’s recent death I’d have thought we’d have had more orders for this brand new one. Thanks to those who pre-ordered it or those who saw our announcement of it in that BookNotes we did about small towns, rural life, small churches and the like. It fit that theme, obviously.

But, as with most of the other (many) gathered collections of Berry’s essays, Dispatches may be from rural America, but they are not all directly about rural life. And so, we list this here as an election year commentary, whether you are voting or not, whether you are concerned about politics, per se, our social ethics and cultural reform. Healthy citizenship is more than voting once every so often, but an enduring care for your place, an ordered sort of love for your commonwealth. These sixteen pieces are about our lives together from a great public intellectual who (as you all know) was also a working farmer. And part time poet.

Berry may have been the voice of sustainability and localism and what is often called an agrarian worldview, but listen to this assessment, from The Washington Post: “Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness.” We would do well to hear him.”

I invite you to read Brian Walsh’s nice piece about Berry, (HERE)  calling him “a prophet of exile.” Brian observes:

In a secular world of self-reliant autonomy, Berry was a man of prayer. In a disenchanted world reduced to scientific explanation, Berry was grounded in a good creation birthed in love. In a world of propaganda and duplicity, Berry longed for truth. And in a world teetering between despair and cheap optimism, Berry was a prophet of hope.

And so, I commend his new set of dispatches. From the sad details of children dead due to handgun violence to the very big picture of his critique of industrialism, from the granularity of barn raising to the large questions about God, faith, and science (and page or two in that chapter, “Without God” about politics and the Christian right.) One chapter is called “Wild and Domestic” which could easily shape our political views and another granular one is “For the Neighbors.” (There are a few charming essays here about friendships, actually, which seems instructive, too.) The chapter “That Wondrous Pattern” is about a poet and her vision of how “everything that lives in holy.” I wonder how that might change our political action? Anyway, this is not about political science as such or even about civic life, mostly. But the implications of Berry, the Mad Farmer, are huge. It makes an important companion here near the end of 2026.

By the way, speaking of Berry, in a “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast a year ago I named three books about Wendell Berry and a favorite of mine included Wendell Berry and the Cultivation of Life: A Readers Guide by Matt Bonzo & Michael Stevens (and, not coincidentally, done by Brazos Press, back when Rodney Clapp [mentioned below] was still working there.) Matt Bonzo had a very nice tribute to Berry which you can read HERE.

Reimagining Biblical Politics: What Scripture Says About Public Life and Why It Matters Michael J. Rhodes (Baker Academic) $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Again, this is a recent one that we raved about a month or so ago. I know of know better introduction to a directly Biblical view of politics than this. I think we need more than this — I’ve described often the careful detail in the method for thinking about voting offered by Ron Sider years ago in his must-read Just Politics: A Guide for Christian Engagement and I’ve suggested the brainy but vital Political Visions & Illusions: A Survey & Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies or his less hefty one released in 2024, Citizenship Without Illusions: A Christian Guide to Political Engagement.) Maranda Zapor Cruz has given us Faithful Politics: Ten Approaches to Christian Citizenship and Why It Matters a spectacular evaluation of 8 reasonably Christian styles or approaches to faithful politics (and two that are clearly wrong-headed) which I’d call a must-read. But Reimagining Biblical Politics does offer the foundational stuff we need to think as Biblical people about our role as citizens and has plenty of good practical stuff (even guidelines for forming political discernment groups.) It is excellent.

Michael Rhodes is a mighty thinker and amazing Biblical scholar. He wrote the detailed and nearly comprehensive text on why justice should be a priority in our daily discipleship (Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World and he co-wrote a fabulous guide to economics for the ordinary Christian household called Practicing the King’s Economy: Honoring Jesus in How We Work, Earn, Spend, Save, and Give.) He is currently a lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand. I think this recent release is really, really good. I highly recommend it.

Don’t believe me? Read these good comments about its importance.

This is the book I have been looking–and praying–for! Rhodes blends rich biblical exegesis with robust theological insight and practical wisdom. I will personally reach for Reimagining Biblical Politics often, and I will recommend it to pastors, small groups, and any Christian seeking biblical wisdom for political life. — Kaitlyn Schiess, author of The Ballot and the Bible and The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor

Rhodes gallops from one end of the Bible to the other at an exhilarating pace, yet with a keen eye for how subtle word choices, overlooked narrative details and characters, and even whole biblical books that we might have neglected bear upon our exercise of political discipleship. One of the most exciting and trustworthy biblical theologians currently at work, Rhodes offers not prescribed choices but rather guidelines for discernment of a variety of faithful responses to the text as read and lived out in community. Practical exegesis such as this keeps the Word of God alive in the church. — Ellen F. Davis, Duke Divinity School, author of Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament and Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible 

Scripture declares, ‘God reigns’ and ‘Jesus is Lord’–political language from Genesis to Revelation. But what do such claims mean and not mean? In readable, perceptive (and provocative) prose, with real-life examples and practical guidance, Michael Rhodes invites us to reimagine the Bible’s varied political texts as manifestations of ‘outpost politics’ and ‘pilgrim politics.’ This is a timely and much-needed book as political division and even political idolatry pervade countries and churches. — Michael J. Gorman, Raymond E. Brown Chair in Biblical and Theological Studies, St. Mary’s Seminary & University, author of Life Transfigured: A Contemporary Pauline Theology

Compassion (&) Conviction: The and Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement Justin Giboney, Michael Ware & Chris Butler (IVP) $24.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

The fabulous book came out in 2020 and I raved then, and often since then. I suggested it was good for those who felt too conservative for the progressive crowd and too liberal for the conservative groups.  Especially when (or so some suggest) the Democratic Party is increasingly led from the far left and the Republicans have abandoned conservatism, where do we go when we feel we’ve got no political home?

At the very least, how can we be properly holistic in terms of what the Bible teaches. How do we hold together stuff that sometimes seems in tension and how do we faithfully navigate these troubled waters?

I really appreciate the hopeful tone and clear remarks of Chris Broussard (a black FOX Sports broadcaster with whomI  have shared a stage — laittle known fun fact) who says this:

At a time when America’s body of Christ is as divided as our nation itself, the AND Campaign has presented a much-needed model for those who aspire to stay true to biblical principles–all of them!–in their civic engagement. Free of partisanship and cultural bias, this book provides a framework that, if adhered to, could lead to unity, healing, and perhaps even revival. Just in the nick of time, the AND Campaign has given us a gem, a light, a guide for how Bible believers can accurately represent Christ in a public square so desperately in need of our true and faithful witness. —Chris Broussard, broadcaster for FOX Sports, founder and president of the K.I.N.G. Movement, producer of DVD curriculum Share the Dream Video Study: Shining a Light in a Divided World Through Six Principles of Martin Luther King Jr.

Chris Broussard is right — this book offers a framework we need to consider. It has a nice tone, blending passion and urgency but balance and consideration. Here is the Table of Contents, just so you can see:

Foreword by Barbara Williams-Skinner
Preface

1. Christians (&) Politics
2. Church (&) State
3. Compassion (&) Conviction
4. Partnerships (&) Partisanship
5. Messaging (&) Rhetoric
6. Politics (&) Race
7. Advocacy (&) Protest
8. Civility (&) Political Culture
9. A Closing Exhortation
– – Discussion Questions (&) Exercises

Wake Up Running: Building Democratic Space at the Crossings Walter Earl Fluker (Broadleaf Books) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Do you recall a few years ago when most White folks and certain most responsible Christians from across the theological spectrum were agreeing that we all should remember to keep the voices of people of color in our reading menu. I hope you continue to read widely and we are eager to suggest this as a classic take the struggle for peace and justice by an impeccable Black leader. Fluker is the MLK Emeritus professor (in ethical leaders) at Boston University and is  the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project. He has written in the field of leadership and has appeared in various PBS and NPR news shows, as well as academic and religious forums.

Anyway, this book is (and I have only started it) brilliant. It is eloquent. It is exciting. It is scholarly, but not too difficult.  He introduces the word fugitivity. Cornel West calls it “a remarkable achievement” (inspired by his intellectual mentors, King and Thurman) and “a philosophical and poetic text that speaks to the core of our grim moment.”

Take a deep breath before you begin this book, and expect to burn some calories while you read it, because Walter Fluker is counting on you to keep up. Like the sower in Jesus’s famous parable, he has a bag full of good seed that he flings with gracious abandon. There is shamanic storytelling in one handful and broad scholarship in the next; stirring hymnody in one swing of his arm and taut prophecy in the next. Fluker won’t calm down and he won’t be contained — which is what he asks of his readers as well — because his mission is too urgent: to seed the field with new, nonlinear leaders of faith who are willing to make a way out of no way at the crossroads of madness and hope.”— Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Always a Guest and An Altar in the World

Wow. Right?

In our current climate of political authoritarianism and social uncertainty, Fluker offers a compelling and eloquent argument on faith, leadership, and democracy, insisting that democratic possibilities can yet be imagined. In a context of clamoring perspectives that often lean toward pessimism and despair, Fluker reminds us of the deep, rich Black faith tradition that fugitively reimagines not optimism, but hope. — Keri Day, Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion, Princeton Theological Seminary, author of Notes of a Native Daughter: Testifying in Theological Education 

Living Out of Control: Political & Personal Faith in Waning Christendom Rodney Clapp (Fortress Press) $25.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00

This came out in 2025 and this is some of what I said at BookNotes back then. I’m convince it is urgent, if a tad dense, and I highly recommend it.

Rodney Clapp is a storied, thoughtful writer and publishing industry rock star. Okay, maybe he isn’t well known, but for those of us who follow these things, Clapp is emblematic of the best thinking in broader evangelical and ecumenical publishing in the last 40 years. He was an editor in the last millennium at IVP doing very good work; he acquired many legendary authors and his own books include ones we still stock, such as Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options, and a book on consumerism, one on pop culture, and one on the church. He released one on Johnny Cash and the lovely and wise Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels which I just loved!

Clapp, I’m told founded Brazos Press (now a part of the Baker Publishing Group) and then went to work as editor for Wipf & Stock. With them he did one of our favorite books of late, New Creation: A Primer on Living Between the Times. You really should read that. We’ve got it at 20% off, too!

Just a few years ago he did a major hardback book with Fortress called Naming Neoliberalism: Exposing the Spirit of Our Age which we reviewed here. It was a complex and vital study of the “panoply of cultural, political, and economic practices that set marketized competition at the center of social life.” Naming Neoliberalism was truly amazing, and now this somewhat slimer Living Out of Control seems to pick up where that left off. The neoliberalism critique places that ideology, of course, within the post-Christian era in which we live…. Living Out of Control revisits that, asking how we might engage Christian political life without assuming Christendom, rejecting dominionisms of any sort, inviting us to reject being in control.

Read that line again!

It isn’t too hefty even it may be slower going if your not used to this kind of close reading of contemporary ideology, but, whew, we need it.  How might this spunky study spark your own imagination? Might this be the sort of public theology we need? We highly recommend it.

Rodney Clapp has given us the book we all need at this moment. With vivid writing, theological depth, and an abundance of wisdom, Living Out of Control will help you make sense of this moment and hear again the call of Jesus Christ to follow within it. Timely and rich. — Andrew Root, Professor of Youth and Family Ministry, Luther Seminary, author of Evangelism in an Age of Despair

In his latest book, the inestimable Rodney Clapp offers a great gift to the Christian community for this moment. With remarkable brevity, drawing on his wide-ranging and eclectic reading interests, and always deeply rooted in the biblical text, Clapp diagnoses a major current Christian problem — a desperate grasp for control — and offers a way to get us to a solution: learning to “live out of control.” I learned a great deal from this book and commend it strongly. — David P. Gushee, University Professor of Christian Ethics, Mercer University, author of After Evangelicalism

Poverty Abolitionists: Faith, Activism, and Hope for Difficult Times David Beckmann (Bloomsbury) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

With a nice forward by the popular travel writer and Lutheran lay leader, Rick Steves, Beckmann’s new call to political activism for the sake of the poor is so very, very good. Steves says “we need this book now” and he is right. Jim Wallis notes that “David Beckman always connects facts to faith. He tracks reduction of poverty in recent decades and directly relates it to the moving of a loving God in history. He documents how the US government is now making life harder and even deadly for poor and hungry people.”

You know about the unrestrained destruction of USAID by President Trump and Elon Musk and for that reason alone the blood of the innocent cries out to heaven; if we hear it we will work to remove Trump from office. The mass destruction of programs of life-giving medicines, mosquito netting, development protocols, water purification, human rights advocacy, education for girls in places where that was unheard of, and on and on — mostly cost-effective programs honed by sacrificial years of work in the fields around the world — was nothing but evil run amok.  The MAGA-supported policies of greed and destruction are cruel to the poorest of the poor but US farmers are hurt by all this too , which should be obvious.

Here, now, with plenty of data and lots of lessons learned (Beckmann worked at the World Bank before leading Bread for the World, the Christian citizenship movement that advocates for anti-hunger policies here and abroad)  we are all given tools to become Poverty Abolitionists. Sounds like the Biblical Year of Jubilee to me.

From stories of ordinary citizens fighting for programs like SNAP and WIC to examples of international projects funded largely due to the advocacy of US citizen (including church folks from the many Bead for the World groups in every state in the union) Poverty Abolitionists: Faith Activism, and Hope for Difficult Times is informative and inspiring. Eugene Cho, who took David’s place as President of BFW, celebrates that in his book, Beckmann “discusses an inspiring array of other ways that people are helping to move us toward the abolition of hunger and poverty.” An inspiring array of options for involvement? Yes. This is a fabulous resource to keep you going with Godly care about Biblical justice.

We need to act now to defend democracy and protect vulnerable people. We also need to raise up and make room for leadership from younger generations. Poverty Abolitionists will help us on both fronts. — Barbara Williams Skinner, Co-convener, National African American Clergy Network; President, Skinner Leadership Institute

 

The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on The Moral Meaning of America Raphael G. Warnock (Penguin Press) $31.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.80

I’ve admired this exceptional Black leader who has been a scholar, a pastor, and a sensational Senator. This collection of essays is tremendous if one wants a vigorous, faith-oriented, liberal, even prophetic, take on everything from climate change to gun violence to “squeezing out the rest of us.” Read his passionate chapter “Two Thousand Verses” and his moving “Humble Ourselves, Heal the Land.” What a book, giving this reader hope for the future of our politics.

Raphael Warnock is the lodestar of our time of holding fast to Christian faith while pressing hard and realistically for the ends of justice. This book is a luminous sermon to the nation on voting rights, gun violence, mass incarceration, poverty, dark-money politics, and the eco-crisis, delivered with Senator Warnock’s characteristic eloquence. — Gary Dorrien, author of Over from Union Road and Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary

In The Crooked Places Made Straight, Senator Raphael Warnock stands in the ancient shadow of the prophet Isaiah and dares to ask whether America has the courage to straighten what it has allowed to bend. A must read, his words flow like a steady stream of truth; a moral reckoning for the nation’s soul. This book is a prophetic summons to lift the valleys, lower the mountains, and build a beloved community where justice for ‘the least of these’ is an obligation not an aspiration.  — Bishop Vashti Murphy Mckenzie, President and General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA

The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life Michael Wear (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

In recent posts we’ve written a bit about good books on spirituality. From the excellent one I’ve raved most about The Way of the Spirit: Recognizing and Responding to God’s Subtle Movements by Jeremey Sims to Ruth Haley Barton’s Leading a Transforming Community: Foundations, Practices, and Strategies for Opening to God Together to Into the Quiet: Following Jesus in a World of Noise by John Mark Comer to the beautiful work of Laura Kauffman in her new The Meeting Place: Quiet Spiritual Practices for Dwelling with God in Prayer this has been a season of excellent new books to encourage your interior life with God.

The Spirit of Our Politics is, in many ways, a follow up to the last question I asked Jeremy Sims in our Hearts & Minds webinar with him. (You can hear that hour-long-plus conversation HERE.) I asked about how all this mystical grappling with discerning the Holy Spirit in our quiet practices funds or fuels our public and social lives. Does prayer have anything to do with politics? Does our habitual formation through spiritual disciplines influence how we vote?

If that question haunts you there are specific books about how social activists can do their advocacy work out of a contemplative ethos. My friend Wes Granberg-Michaelson wrote the must-read on that — The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action (on Orbis Books.) Or consider Looking Inward Living Outward: The Spiritual Practice of Social Transformation by Daniel Wolpert (published by Upper Room) or the clear and fabulous Good and Beautiful and Kind: Becoming Whole in a Fractured World by Rich Villodas. Done by Water brook, which I am reading a second time — it’s so good.

However, aside from these contemplative practices that might make us more expansive and generous and bold for our public witness, how does all this inform and shape our politics as such.

I hope you know the name Dallas Willard. All the above authors — most of our favorite writers about spirituality — draw on his thoughtful work on the spirit of the disciplines and the spirituality of what he called “the divine conspiracy” and the renovation God is able to do in us from the inside out.  Now, imagine that Dallas Willard went to Washington.

Yep, our respected friend Michael Wear has written a book like no other. Literally, I don’t know anything like this and that says something. For as many books as there are about our spirituality and as many books as there are about ethical and intentionally Christ-shaped politics, nobody has brought them together as Michael does.

I’ve said in other BookNotes reviews that Michael’s first book (before his part in the above-mentioned Compassion (&) Conviction) was Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House about the Future of Faith in America. As a young politico shaped by his early experiences with black soul music and idealist politics, he joined (and later resigned) from the Obama administration. But the theme of hope remained and his Reclaiming Hope was a great book. (So much so that we hosted him here at a very crowded event here at the shop in 2018.)

In this very smart and hopeful book, Michael offers this sense of how we are shaped to think about political life and asking what it would be like if a gentleness and interior quiet captured our busy civic lives. How can we have our political activism truly emerge from as part of our daily discipleship to Jesus? What kind of person does that? What kind of people can we become so we can enter the political sphere of our vocations as citizens as Christ-like ambassadors of Christ’s divine conspiracy? Wow.

We are going to have to, in the poetic words of Rudyard Kipling, learn the grit and composure to “keep your head when all about your are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” This problem of our deep divide in our society and increasing violence about politics isn’t going away. This book, The Spirit of Our Politics, is increasingly urgent. All of these listed could help. I hope you find them of use. Let us know how we can help.

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

I don’t know your exact book needs — maybe you don’t even know what you most need — but I am sure of at least three things. First, we know books can be allies on your life’s journey;  reading is not only good entertainment value but stimulating reading can help your brain and emotinons. And it’s inexpensive advice, good stuff written by wise guides. Whatever you need help with, we’ve got books for that. Let us know. We’re here to help — just click on the “inquiry” button at the end of this column.

Secondly, we know that you may not know what to buy right now;  we hope our regular BookNotes help you learn about titles you may need.  We are unspeakably grateful that you allow us into your inbox and share these missives with your firends. Wanting books is no crime, and we are glad for those who order widely and read promiscuously, as the classic John Milton put it. (Karen Swallow Prior taught us that, which goes to show you cool stuff you can learn in books.) Just click on the “order” button at the end of this column when you see something you want.

Thirdly, I have heard that many who cannot order often still enjoy our lists. Perhaps you seek out the recommend titles at libraries or used places, maybe. (Not at Amazon, of course; none of our faithful friends would do that!) Some of you just like reading the reviews and we are gratified by that. Thank you. We hope these BookNotes columns are worth your while, even if you can’t send us orders routinely. We get it. Enjoy, with no guilt or shame.

+++

Speaking of shame, oh my goodness: a lot of good work has come out lately about healing and hope, about grit and grace. The best book on shame is the deeply Biblical and soundly theological study The Soul of Shame by neurologist Curt Thompson, whose groundbreaking first work on brain science, faith development, and life insight is The Anatomy of the Soul.

We were just with Curt Thompson and the team from his nonprofit, The Center for Being Known (and those from the New Story counseling practice) for their annual “Connections” conference. As Curt describes in his amazingly thoughtful and excellent volume The Soul of Desire there are formed all over the country intentional “Confessional Communities” that are healing cohorts of those wanting to know and be known, who are willing to tell their stories in vulnerable ways to supportive friends. Out of the training they do for these Confessional Communities emerged these yearly gatherings with some of the top communicators and practitioners in this therapeutic space. It was a privilege being their on-site bookseller.

From psychotherapists to recovery group facilitators to counselors to social work professionals, and (mostly) other interested folks, hundreds of delighted people gathered to be an ad hoc community and interact with amazing speakers and teachers and musicians for a couple of days.

Here are some of the books that we sold well at this 2026 Connections Conference (held not far from us, this year, in the Baltimore area.) We have each of these at 20% off. 

First, the speakers at Connections 2026.

DR. CURT THOMPSON

Curt is founder of the Center for Being Known and head honcho and best friend of the event. Dozens of his team made it very special for us all, but up front, he was the man! I hope you know his books. Put his name into our BookNotes archives and see the many times I’ve highlighted each. He is the author of four books.

The Anatomy of the Soul Curt Thompson (Tyndale) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This was Curt’s first book and as an old acquittance I was thrilled to see the Doctor writing so refreshingly insightful and solid stuff about the interface between brain studies and spiritual practices. When I hear him speak today — and he has just gotten better and better as a compelling and delightful public speaker and teacher — I think that bit was in his first book. I think it is essential and it is often used in seminary and college classes. It isn’t daunting, either, although it does have a lot of substance. These surprising connections “between neuroscience and spiritual practices can transform your life and relationships.”

The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe about Ourselves Curt Thompson (IVP) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

This, for many, is one of the most important books they’ve ever read and I understand why that is so often said. It is the best book on the subject (and there are a lot of great books on this topic, from the science of Brene Brown to the lovely Louis Smedes to the older one by Sandra Wilson to the brand new Shame Redeemed: Learning to Live in Christ’s Freedom by the black author Toni Kim.) Read ‘em all, and more if you want to, but everybody should read Soul of Shame. It is nearly a foundational book for a Christian view of things, and is nicely rooted in the unfolding Biblical narrative — you know, a good creation that went haywire, the move from Eden to East of Eden, and God’s own redemptive process through the Story of Scripture. There is some neuroscience which is clear and solid, and theology which is winsome and helpful. What a great book.

The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community Curt Thompson (IVP) $29.99 //  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Oh my, this is one of the most moving and beautiful books I have ever read even if it is hardly known in many circles. It isn’t simple but the gist (I oversimplify) is that for real healing to happen in our broken inner lives, we need others. And, together, we need to reframe or re-wire our desires. (Think of James K.A. Smith and his important work on ‘we are what we love’ and the role of desire that shapes our thinking.) So — get this! — Thompson shows how music and art can be used to re-wire what we might think of as our brains, but, perhaps, are really our hearts. By using beauty in therapy — he shows people abstract paintings by Mako Fujimura, who wrote a fabulous foreword explaining why his paintings appear in glorious full color in the book and how he values collaboration with Dr. Thompson’s innovative, allusive, suggestion-rich therapeutic model — he finds that those with relational problems are able to see deeper into what they really want. Like good sessions of psychotherapy, these communities that he forms to consider art together are transformative. Can we re-work our deepest yearnings? Can beauty experienced in community help us discover stuff and name it and learn to see God’s hand in the wreckage and glory?

Out of the suggestions in this book folks are forming what Thompson terms “confessional communities.” It isn’t exactly what you think, but we really do need safe spaces to confess, to name stuff, to be supported and given care and hope. The Soul of Desire spells it out. It seems to be Curt’s most substantive book, and his most beautiful. Highly recommended.

The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope Curt Thompson (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I have said before at BookNotes that I love this book. I wasn’t sure the book ecosphere really needed yet another book on suffering —we have a hundred good ones! — but I figured if Curt was writing it, it would be special and good. Little did I know just how very special and very good it is.

Yes, he is still a Christ-loving, Biblically-informed, faith-based therapist. Yes, he specializes in neuroscience and there is plenty of that in this book, as with this others, too. Not scholarly or off-putting, but just enough brain studies to help us see how we are wired and how God’s choose, usually, to work with humans. But — oh my goodness — this is mostly a Biblical study of a section in Romans about endurance and hope. How we suffer and what might emerge from it is a perennial question and having a doctor who is a psychiatrist and neurologist and Bible student do this work is extraordinary. I do not quite know another book like is, and it is, oddly, not as well known as his others.

The Deepest Place is a provocative title and “the formation of hope” is a phrase that is nearly worth the price of the book. Can hope be formed in us? Read this book, even if you’re not that interested in his others. It is well worth it.

RICH VILLODAS

It was a real delight to be with Rich, who treated me like an old friend. Yes, I’ve said good things about his good books, and we’ve corresponded a bit, but his graciousness to me was more than lovely. I thought his sermon at the Connections thing was spectacular and his workshop on contemplative prayer — his next book, next year, I gather — was dynamite. Not every evangelical pastor is so fluent in this stuff. His books are very readable, a bit challenging, really interesting. They fit in perfectly at the conference. What a joy. He is the pastor of New Life Fellowship in Queens, NY.

Deeply Formed Life: Five Transformative Values to Root Us in the Way of Jesus Rich Villodas (Waterbrook) $19.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

This came out in the thick of the Covid years and yet it became known and sold well. It had a cheerful tone, rooted in his mentor Peter Scazzero’s “emotional healthy spirituality” approach, and yet, as a Latino New Yorker had some spunk that sometimes aren’t in books on basic Christian living. I liked his call to not just being a disciple but being formed in the way of Jesus, including on issues of racial justice.

The blurbs on the back and inside are mighty and persuasive, from important voices. Karen Swallow Prior, Brenda Salter McNeil,  Brian Zahnd, Ken Shigematsu, Bryan Loritts and more.

The book invites us to slow down and go for more depth to get away from the endless noise and glitter and shallowness of big evangelicalism. He invites us to five main values —  contemplative rhythms, racial justice, on-going interior examination, sexual wholeness, and nurturing a missional presence.

Good and Beautiful and Kind: Becoming Whole in a Fractured World Rich Villodas (Waterbrook) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

With a forward by the wonderful and gracious writer Ann Voskamp, this book which has some prophetic bite to it is lovely and delightful. But yet, yes — the title comes from a poem by the great Black Harlem poet Langston Hughes.

Rich is not the first pastor to preach about racial diversity and multi-ethnic ministry to much applause, but who was then blasted for suggesting that (in the world as we know it, and in the Biblical world as well) there are systemic injustices, structural questions, principalities and powers that bake racism into our ongoing world system.

Eugene Cho was the President of the nonpartisan anti-poverty citizen’s action group Bread for the World at the time and he celebrated this nicely:

It’s not a secret that we are living in difficult and fractured times. Such times can be reasons for not just helplessness but more dangerously, hopelessness. Thankfully, there are servant leaders like Pastor Rich Villodas who don’t pretend to have all the answers and yet are not afraid to invite us to walk ‘a better way.’ –Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of Bread for the World, and author of Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics

Reconciliation and justice require new frameworks and practices to reach the next generation. In this book, Rich Villodas has given us a path toward goodness, beauty, and kindness when we are rooted in the way of Jesus. — Latasha Morrison, founder and CEO of Be the Bridge, and author of Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation

The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls Rich Villodas (Waterbrook) $18.00  // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We highlighted this when it first came out in hardcover and we are glad it is not in paperback. Rich preached from this book, among others, at Connections and his focus on a couple of lines from the Sermon on the Mount (on poverty of spirit) was powerful.

The fun story (and I don’t doubt he’s not the only preacher to use this illustration) of that great seen in Harry Potter when the tents at the Quidditch competition seemed so small but once you go in, it is expansive — so expansive. That was his teaching about the “narrow way” that Jesus insists upon. It may be a narrow gate, but, indeed, it’s expansive in the Kingdom. What a wide-open, beautiful and good kind of generous life we can live once we enter the Kingdom. Together, we live in this expansive, blessed, happy way of life, hard as it may be.

In what he reminded us as one of the greatest and well known and consequential talks in the history of the world, Jesus’s short Sermon on the Mount becomes a reset on the way to a good life.

A book written for all those ‘who are weary of anchoring their lives in the unfulfilling promises of the surrounding culture, ‘ those who find the broad way, essentially, ‘do whatever you want and follow the crowd, ‘ to be revealing itself as exactly what Jesus warned–a path toward death, not life–and those who are interested, intrigued, and deeply drawn to the possibility of Jesus and his narrow way. — John Mark Comer, author and founder of Practicing the Way, author of Into the Quiet

Rich Villodas is one of the necessary voices of our time. As we wrestle to understand how Jesus speaks to our current day, Rich makes the words of Christ accessible. Leaders like him are rare. This book is needed. — Lecrae, Grammy Award-winning artist and producer, author of Set Me Free: The Good News of God’s Relentless Pursuit  – Poetry and Essays

Waiting for Jesus: An Advent Invitation to Prayer and Renewal Rich Villodas (Waterbrook) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This small-sized hardback makes a great little companion for the upcoming Advent season (or a great small gift) but don’t let the brevity or size fool you. This is beautiful writing, good stuff, convicting and transformative. I’d like the four-fold format even if I didn’t really trust the author. Rich is a rare evangelical preacher with Spirit fire in his bones, but who is being shaped by the quiet, contemplative style. He is deeply Biblical without being stuffy. He’s got a broad social vision without being a stereotypical activist. What’s not to like?

In each of the 24 Advent readings you’ll find:

• Silence and prayer Pause for a few moments. Take a breath. Rest.
• Scripture Read a short passage about the wonder of Jesus.
• Quotes Read short, inspiring thoughts from Christians through the ages.
• Self-reflection Bring your full self to God and enjoy his presence.

JO SAXTON

We had the joy of selling books at an event where Jo Saxton was the speaker a dozen or more years ago. (It was a Fresh Expressions event in Alexandria, Virginia, with all kinds of very cool folks; it was an ecumenical weekend I’ll never forget.)  Jo at the time had one handsome and powerful book (published by IVP) called More Than Enchanting and it was in the vein of missional theology, whole-life discipleship making a relevant difference in the social context we find ourselves in. Just about then the missional church movement was asking how ordinary people have this same culturally-savvy, critically-engaged way of being in but not of the world. She was a fun, snarky, upbeat, powerful communicator. She really does inspired others to consider their callings and perhaps step into fresh leadership roles. That first book was about being a history-maker and world-changer, for women. Nothing like it, really, to this day. Thanks be to God for her.

She’s a bit older, now, and just as spicy. What great talks she gave at Connections. As an African woman raised in London, she has a great accent. You can almost hear her global vibe in her punchy, inspiring writing. I’m not kidding. She is the courageous founder of the Ezer Collective, an initiative “dedicated to investing in women leaders around the world, giving them the tools to own their voice and boldly step into their calling.”

More Than Enchanting: Breaking Through Barriers to Influence Your World Jo Saxton (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

This is it, her first book. It was given a new cover a few years back and I know that most people really dislike the cover and are turned off from the book by the look. Trust me, please. This is a great book. See above. Thanks!

As a woman in leadership, More Than Enchanting made me want to yell out, ‘Somebody gets me!’ Jo Saxton is a leadership coach, an encouraging mentor, a thorough theologian, and a consummate preacher. Her use of Scripture and storytelling creates a practical guide on how to navigate the challenges and triumphs of leadership. I want every woman in leadership I know to have this book! — Amena Brown, spoken word poet, author of Breaking Old Rhythms

Dream of You: Let Go of Broken Identities and Live the Life You Were Made For Jo Saxton (Waterbrook) $17.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

This is a readable book, a bit of a memoir, seemingly, and a good follow up to her powerhouse book of coaching and exhortation, More Than Enchanting. It offers insights for all of us, but seems especially for those that need to reset their send of call, looking at their own vocational disenchantment, maybe. It seems to me there is a play of words in the title — what has been your own dream of your life? And what is God’s dream for you. As one who edited a book called Serious Dreams, I am really interested in this word play. I know many of our customers will love this book.

As the child of Nigerian immigrants raised in London, Ms Saxton knows firsthand how quickly the world can cause us to doubt our dreams and question who we are. As the cover says, “She understands how easily we can exchange our true child-of-God selves for an identity built on lies, guilt, and brokenness.”

In this powerful book, Jo examines Biblical figures and shares her personal story as she invites you to “turn to the One who knows you intimately and loves you deeply. He sees all you’ve struggled to hide. He hears the voice inside you that others have silenced. He knows the potential and purpose that no one valued”

The God we know in the person of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit,  wants to redeem the story of our lives.  This is what she means when she says this book can help you find the path to reclaim The Dream of You.

Ready to Rise: Own Your Voice, Gather Your Community, Step into Your Influence Jo Saxton (Waterbrook) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I think this PR bit from the publisher captures the vibe of this lovely, inspiring, but prophetic paperback.  It came out in 2020 and they wrote: “In this particular cultural moment, where the momentum of #MeToo meets raised voices over injustice in wage equality and minority representation, popular speaker and podcaster Jo Saxton wants to move women beyond disempowerment. Instead, she draws women together to grow their grit and to establish new partnerships that will have a powerful chain effect.”

Yes, and more. This isn’t just for women, even it is written in a woman’s voice for other sisters. I’m telling ya, this is good stuff.

“Our ability as women to own, shape, and steward our experiences and stories will directly influence how whole and healed our communities can be. In a world brimming with hopelessness, brokenness, and sin, this is the exact book we need to fully step into our leadership to restore not only our broken communities but our broken selves in the process.” — Jenny Yang, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, co-author of Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate

ADAM YOUNG

Adam was in some ways one of the centers of the Connections event. He’s only got one book but his theme — making sense of your own story as you courageously face up to your wounds and consider how God can do new things out of all that — was central. He studied under the therapist and scholar Dan Allender He had studied under Dan Allender (and continues to work as a visiting fellow at the Allender Center.)

Make Sense of Your Story: Why Engaging Your Past with Kindness Changes Everything Adam Young (Baker) $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

I cannot tell you how powerful this speaker was and what a joy it was to be with him. I had reviewed his book a year ago, maybe, and we’ve sold a few whenever people are browsing back through old BookNotes. I have cited it in a workshop I have done on story and storytelling (along with stuff like the fabulous peace building book, Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us by Mark Yaconelli or the recent Story Work: Field Notes on Self-Discovery and Reclaiming Your Narrative by G.G. Renee Hill, both on Broadleaf Books.) So I went into this as a fan of Adam Young. (As did a number of participants, we learned, as he has a popular podcast called “The Place We Find Ourselves.”

As I’ve said, Adam studied under Dan Allender (and continues to serve the Allender Center as a Fellow) and is a practicing trauma-informed therapist. He’s grappling with his own healing and unwrapping the memories of his own convoluted past. His talks were vulnerable — telling of the need for physical touch as a calming presence — and practical (he told about various parts of the brain and how they respond to music!) Anyway, I was really impressed — especially when he was citing Walt Brueggemann as one who understands him. Anyway, I really value his book — I agree with the publishers promise that it will help you engage your own story “as seriously as God does.”  If you are at all intrested in this sort of stuff, yoiu should order Make Sense of Your Story. It’s so good. I hope he has another book in him.

Without a doubt, you will not be the same person you were when you began this book. — from the foreword by Dan Allender, author of The Wounded Heart

 

Adam Young has become one of my favorite people to learn from. Make Sense of Your Story has the power to lead us into the whole and healed life we all long for. To do this work requires much of us, but we have a trusted and incredibly skilled guide in Adam. I can’t recommend this book enough. — Rich Villodas, pastor of New Life Fellowship and author of The Narrow Path

SARA GROVES

The speaking and sharing and live performance of Sara Groves, with the songs so poignant and tender and honest, was a prefect supplement to this creative weekend. What a blessing she was. I hope you know her albums (and I hope she writes a book sometime.) Her workshop on creativity and the arts — we had a big section of appropriate titles on writing and creativity and aesthetics in our lives — was very well received.

+++

In this sort of space there are deep and significant overlaps of interest — speakers cited Walter Brueggemann and Brene Brown and Dan Allender and Desmond Tutu and the powerful C.S. Lewis fictional project, Til We Have Faces and Miroslav Volf. We sold books on trauma and relationships and anxiety and mental health, of course, but also sub-categories like loneliness or friendship or sabbath or cultural studies.

(Also, there was interest in payer and inner transformation, spiritual disciplines and formational practices, not to mention books about the skills of spiritual direction. What a joy to feature  brand new books by Jeremy Sims and John Mark Comer and Ruth Haley Barton and Jen Pollock Michell alongside classics by the likes of Ronald Rolheiser and Dallas Willard and Howard Thurman. I’ll list a few of those further below.)

Here, below, are some random ones that give a glimpse of that part of the display. All are 20% off and you can order them using the simple order form link below. Come on!

I am again reminded, passionately, how important this kind of reading is. Many at the book display at Connections told us how this author or that book was so very helpful; healing, even. Please don’t miss some of these life-giving books. Maybe start a reading group at your church or a book club in your living room? Let’s spread good words in these hard times.

+++

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

I could describe this again, as I did briefly before, but, wow, Degroat gets better with every single book (and we have them all!) I admire him greatly. This really is about virtue and the formation of character. Let’s just listen to what other impressive folks say. Don’t skip these — they say so much about the man and the new book. Dan Allender calls him a “soul cardiologist” and “a brilliant reader of the human heart.”

Chuck DeGroat’s latest book, Who You’re Becoming, is a powerful and much-needed invitation to the slow, sacred work of becoming a whole person. In a world that rewards image over integrity and platform over character, this message could not be more timely. What makes this book especially compelling is that Chuck doesn’t just write about this kind of inner formation he embodies it. Chuck is a person of deep integrity, humility, and courageous self-awareness, and that is exactly why his is a voice we can trust–and why this is a book every single one of us needs to read. — Dr. Alison Cook, author of The Secure Soul and host of The Best of You podcast

We’re in crisis. Abandoning our ancient commitment to character, to integrity of soul, we are being ravaged from the inside. These pages, from such a wise, heart-full guide, are truths to heed if we want to be whole. Chuck is a beloved professor and therapist — but more, he’s a friend committed to loving well and telling the truth. And God knows, we sure need the truth right now. This is a book for our disintegrating time.     — Winn Collier, director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination and author of Love Big, Be Well and A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson

Rarely do I refer to a book as a “must read.” But rarely do I come across a book as incisive and inspiring as this one. It is indeed a “must read” for anyone taking up the mantle of ministry and leadership. With timeless truths spoken directly to our particular age, Chuck has given us a great gift in this remarkable and healing book. — Amanda Held Opelt, author of Holy Unhappiness

And read this, carefully, by one of the most eloquent t writers of our time, Steve Garber, whose book Hints of Hope we also had at the Connections event:

At our best and truest we are pilgrims, called into lifelong journeys, which are “cultivated through faith, strengthened through hope, and embodied through love.” In his deeply imagined new book, it is clear that Chuck DeGroat is a true doctor of the soul, paying attention to what matters most in our desire for a coherence born of the reordering of our loves and longings. Drawing us into a prayerful examination of our selves, always both honest and yet hopeful, with his poetic blessing we are invited to ponder more carefully and to live more faithfully. Threaded through with the wisdom of church history and the insight of contemporary science, in their different ways addressing our disposition to fragmentation and our yearning for integration, Who You’re Becoming should find its way into conversations and classrooms the world over–with sons of Adam and daughters of Eve who are becoming more whole people, and therefore more holy people. — Steven Garber, author of Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate and Senior Fellow for Vocation and the Common Good, the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust

Order it today from us and we’ll send it right out at our 20% off discount. You won’t regret it.

Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself–And to God–When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering Chuck Degroat (Tyndale) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, if those many quotes about the new Degroat book don’t strike you, try this one. This is a game-changer kind of book, a study of the deeper stuff inside, the stories that have Mal-shaped and misinformed us of our very lives. My goodness, this was a blessing and a provocation as I ponder this stuff anew. You too?

I could pick so many words in Healing What’s Within that ministered to my soul. But I choose just two now: redemptive remembering. Those healing words gently guided me as Chuck reminded me of how our extraordinarily kind and loving God is looking for me.— Laura Barringer, advocate and coauthor of A Church Called Tov and Pivot: The Priorities, Practices, and Powers That Can Transform Your Church Into a Tov Culture

God’s messengers come in many shapes, forms, and sizes, and I believe Chuck DeGroat is one of them. Here, his words wave a bright sword of truth, not swung menacingly to keep out but joyously to welcome in, calling with the tender voice of Jesus, “Here! Here is the way home!” — Tara M. Owens, author of Embracing the Body: Finding God in Our Flesh and Bone, spiritual director, and founder of Anam Cara Ministries in Colorado

While we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made, we are often wounded, weary, and wandering. Healing What’s Within supports our journey toward a holy wholeness. –Christina Edmondson, cofounder of Truth’s Table Foundation; coauthor of Truth’s Table and Faithful Antiracism

The Secure Soul: Finding Inner Strength and Connection When Trust Doesn’t Come Easy Allison Cook (Thomas Nelson) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

With each Allison Cook book she becomes more well-known and has earned the right increasingly to be heard. She is a popular level write but with serious academic chops. She knows her stuff, has studied trauma and other hard times, and we were right to bring her books to the Connections book display. Some readers there loved her I Shouldn’t Feel This Way: Name What’s Hard, Tame Your Guilt, and Transform Self-Sabotage into Brave Action and her break-out book, Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings Into Your Greatest Allies. If anybody thinks that is just a replay or rip off of Boundaries they couldn’t be more wrong. Think attachment theory and codependence and emotional regulation and sweet, healthy freedom!

The Secure Soul brings it all together and looks fantastic. It is quite new, still, and those who have read it are raving. Yes, it is about attachment theory, Do you know Cyd and Geoff Holsclaw’s Landscapes of the Soul: How Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You Into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection? Or Sacred Attachment: Escaping Spiritual Exhaustion and Trusting in Divine Love by Michael John Cusick? Or The Emmanuel Promise: Discovering the Security of a Life Held by God by Summer Joy Gross? This is in the ballpark of those deeply spiritual works, although I gather Cook is a therapist, not a pastor or theologian.) Yay.

Alison Cook was given to the church for such a time as this. Writing as both a trained therapist, a spiritual sage, and a devoted follower of Jesus, Cook engages one of the biggest felt needs of our generation, but with the kind of wisdom and authority our culture has not been able to provide. If you have ever struggled with identity or insecurity, you are going to soak up every word of this book! –Sharon Hodde Miller, Author of Free of Me: Why Life Is Better When It’s Not about You

With The Secure Soul, Alison Cook had not merely offered us a book to be read. Rather, she has prepared for us a feast, one with several courses, each of which could be — but should not be — devoured. No, they must instead be slowly ingested, digested and metabolized. For herein lie words of vulnerability, healing, conviction, and recommissioning upon which the reader must meditate slowly over time so as not to miss the depth and richness of what we have come to know and expect from our author. Read this, and encounter the liminality of the God of love who is with us. — Curt Thompson, MD, Psychiatrist and Author, Anatomy of the Soul and The Deepest Place

Strong Like Water: Finding the Freedom, Safety & Compassion to Move Through Hard Things — & Experience True Flourishing Aundi Kolber (Tyndale) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Perhaps you’ve heard of her big seller Try Softer. This is even better, for the “exhausted, burned out, and those maybe disconnected from their truest God-given selves.”

I love how this reframes the notion of strength and what it means to be “the strong one.” Although Kolber is a licensed professional counselor that is especially appealing to women, I think men should read this. She has a specialization of trauma-and-body-centered therapy, I think this is wise for anyone who is tired of just coping, holding stuff in, and wanting to learn a new sort of flourishing. What if strength is “more than pushing on and pushing through pain on our own? What if, instead, it’s more like the tide: soft and bold, fierce and gentle, moving together as one powerful force?”

Shame Redeemed: Learning to Live in Christ’s Freedom Toni Kim (IVP) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is brand new and I haven’t looked at it yet, much, other than to know that Curt Thompson wrote a very impressive forward. She is a strong, Asian-American writer and it is good to have a person of color in this space of books about healing and trauma and resilience and hope. There are 15 chapters and a good study guide, staring with our status with God (that gives us freedom) to finding freedom from unhealthy shame, and then what it means to find “freedom to be unashamed.” She invites us to “follow the crucified King” and consider our eternal glory. This is the true redemption of shame and I am eager to read it. You, too, maybe?

Listen to this, by the great author and psychologist Sheila Wise Rowe:

In Shame Redeemed, Toni Kim gives voice to the struggles of those bowed down by shame. Toni is a compassionate truth-teller who shares powerful stories from her own life and the lives of others. She offers insights, spiritual exercises, and the Word as weapons that expose, combat, and extinguish internal and external voices of shame. This book is a gift to anyone who seeks to heal and learn to embrace and walk fully in their identity as beloved children of God. — Sheila Wise Rowe, author of Healing Racial Trauma and Seeds of Racial Healing and coauthor, with Nicholas Rowe, of Healing Leadership Trauma

Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Our True Calling Dr. Dan B. Allender & Cathy Loerzel (Zondervan) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I could do a whole BookNotes just on the books by Dan Allender (some co-written with his old college roommate, the great Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman.) Allender famously co-founded (with his co-author Cathy Loerzel) the Allender Center which is affiliated with the graduate program  The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Our Connections speaker Adam Young came out of those institutions and brought a raw sort of energy and honesty to his amazing talks. This book is one of the great resources in this genre of our time. I would read anything Allender has written, but this really is a vital, key, important text.

When they suggest that the pain of your past “has prepared you for great joy in your future” they are not at all minimizing or dishonoring the story of our past hardships or trauma. As Kay Warren puts it, “Dan and Cathy insist there is a way to metabolize headache, allowing it to be themes by which we become a beautiful blessing in our world, a living testament to the redemption and goodness yet to come.”

It Dan’s great book Sabbath he says that weekly celebration of feast and rest and fun — re-creation! — allows us to imagine and rehearse and in some way inhabit the goodness and beautify of the new creation. Here, they make a very compelling case that looking backward to our past hurts and suffering can help us with a present healing that points us to some joy-filled future. I don’t think they call it eschatological, but that’s part of it. They provide “a powerful and biblically trustworthy method for transforming emotional pain and trauma.” Your wounds “are the unlikely guides to living out your deepest calling.”

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

I’ve highlighted this before, along with his other best-sellers — his breakout The Common Rule,  the one applying those principles to family life, Habits of the Household, and his most recent, The Body Teaches the Soul: Ten Essential Habits to Form a Healthy and Holy Life which was a tremendous read and very stimulating. Made for People may be his most important, though, welcoming us to a life of being known. As Kyle Edelman put it, it is “A clarion call to covenant friendship — a deep, abiding love that comes from vulnerability.”

At Connections, Curt, Adam, Jo, Rich, and Sara all spoke about community, about how we are built to need others. Loneliness is not only an epidemic these days (affecting the health and happiness of millions) but it is a deep impediment to Christian discipleship. I really, really appreciated this easy-to-read but very thoughtful study. Don’t miss it!

The Great Belonging: How Loneliness Leads Us to Each Other Charlotte Donlon (Broadleaf) $16.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

This compact sized paperback is brilliant. A forward by the great writer Lauren Winner illustrates how well-done it is. You will read it more than once!

I’ve reviewed this before and was glad we thought to take it to this book display at this conference. It was noticed.

Here is some of the PR from the publisher that explains it nicely:

“In an age of mobility and fraying civic life, we are all susceptible to its power. But what if loneliness is a necessary part of the human condition? What if it is a current that leads us deeper into belonging — to ourselves, to each other, and to God? In The Great Belonging, writer and spiritual director Charlotte Donlon reframes loneliness and offers us a language for the disquiet within. Instead of turning away from the waters of loneliness for fear they will engulf us, she invites us to wade in and see what we find there. In vulnerable, thoughtful prose, Donlon helps us understand our own occasional or frequent loneliness and offers touchpoints for understanding alienation. We can live into the persistent questions of loneliness. We can notice God’s presence even when we feel alone in our doubts. Ultimately, Donlon claims, we can find connection that emerges from honesty, and she offers tools, resources, and practices for transforming loneliness into true belonging.”

Charlotte Donlon is the author, also, of the recently released Spiritual Direction for Writers: Everyday Rituals for Your Writing Life, which we also have, by the way, at 20% off as well.

The Connected Life: The Art and Science of Relational Spirituality Todd W. Hall (IVP) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Oh my, this book was perfect for the Connections event (and it didn’t hurt that Curt Thompson himself has an exceedingly complimentary foreword.) As IVP has written to describe it’s context:

We live in an increasingly isolated and lonely world. How do we find genuine relational connection? According to psychologist Todd Hall, real human growth doesn’t come through head knowledge alone but through relational knowledge and strong attachment bonds. This accessible introduction invites us into lasting relationships — with God and others — that lead to authentic transformation.

In our shop we don’t know where to put this, exactly, so we have it under relationships (a shelf in our general self-help and psychology section) and under spirituality. Where else to put a book on “relational spirituality.”  Much of the theme of this is attachment theory so we have it with the good handful of titles on that sub-topic, too. Read it and you will learn so much about so much, and want to form better bonds, deeper bonds, with your own spiritual friends.

I love that the thoughtful engagement with neuroscience, attachment psychology, theology, and more from Todd’s previous book is now offered in this engaging and accessible work. The Connected Life offers a kind of antidote to our disconnected lives and to the hidden suffering we endure as a result. It envisions a way back to each other and to God. — Chuck DeGroat, professor of pastoral care and Christian spirituality at Western Theological Seminary, author of Who You Are Becoming

The Connected Life just came out in a paperback edition and we highly recommend it.

You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News Kelly Kapic (Brazos Press) $23.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19

We were pleased with ourselves that we brought a couple copies of You’re Only Human and the accompanying devotional, You Were Never Meant to Do It All: A 40-Day Devotional on the Goodness of Being Human (Brazos Press; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = ) Both were on point for some of the good conversations. We can’t get to a place of honoring our need for others if we see ourselves as somehow above that. Of course that would be the super-ego or a narcissism causing us to think that but for many, it’s just a failure to recognize our limits and the goodness of our creatureliness. Right next to these great books by Dr. Kapic we had Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters by Carmen Imes which has fabulous teaching on the created order and particularly on what it means that humans are made in the image of God.

There was plenty of talk at Connections about God’s created order. The theme this year was wisdom and there was astute analysis (Curt is always really insightful about this stuff) of contemporary culture and the history of the development of our current malaise. His overview of how we moved from an intuitive society to the Enlightenment way of knowing to the information age (and now how we are nearly seen to be machines) seemed to lean on Iain McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World) and maybe Paul Kingsnorth (Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity), maybe even Herman Dooyeweerd (The Roots of Western Culture, maybe. IYKYK.) I wish I had thought to bring Parker Palmer’s little book about education To Know as We Are Known which explores education as a spiritual journey, not mere the accumulation of head knowledge. One wise participant reminded me of We Are What We Love by James K.A. Smith (whose magisterial Desiring the Kingdom, by the way, is coming out in a new very revised and updated, expanded edition any day now.)

I say all that to say that in the exploration of wisdom (not just knowledge) there were reflections on the wisdom literature, citing Brueggemann and others, noting how we must absorb the truth of our created-ness and our creatureliness. (Oh how I wish I had brought The Art of Being a Creature: Meditations on Humus and Humility by Ragan Sutterfield.) We did have those several books by Kelly Kapic and I think You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News and the accompanying devotional, You Were Never Meant to Do It All  were both spot on for this event.You will return to them time and again!

Blessed Are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole Micha Boyett (Brazos Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Oh my, we had this, too, which seemed really germane as well. The back cover shouts, “A must-read for those seeking solace and spiritual wisdom.” Yep. She is a very good writer— decades ago I raved about her book Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Pray and have smiled often about A Rhythms of Prayer that she did with Sarah Bessey.

The blurbs on the back of this show that the writing style and gracefulness are of a different sort, maybe, than Kapic’s above. He is a great theological educator (he has academic books on Reformed doctrine and a book or two n Jonathan Edwards.) Micha Boyett’s book has lovely endorsements not he back from memoirist and poet Mary Karr and renegade Lutheran church planter and feisty author Nadia Bolz-Weber.

One of the unique ways into this conversation about our limits and need for others is in the subtext of this book, the fact that Boyett’s son was born with Down syndrome (and was later diagnosed with autism.) And she was then drawn to the Beatitudes.  Wise, indeed, passionate and clear about honoring our limitations (in a world that values performance and perfection) is countercultural. My, my, what a read!

In God’s Good Image: How Jesus Dignifies, Shapes, and Confronts Our Cultural Identities J.W. Buck (Herald Press) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

At a conference designed to inspire people to connect, to unpack their stories, to flourish by learning a bit about neuroscience and spiritual formation and the like, obviously there was discussion of identity. What does it mean that God really loves us and how does that foundational truth shape how we see ourselves and think of others? We had books like The Gift of Being Yourself by the psychologist and spirituality writer David Benner. We propped up the wonderfully-written resource called You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer by the fabulous Joy Marie Clarkson. (As I noted in a previous BookNotes review, that colorful one pushes back against the impersonal way of viewing ourselves and the world by opening up various metaphors in Scripture for who we are.) But we are especially excited to add this to the genre, as well. We have a good number of books about who we are in Christ and how a gospel-centered worldview shapes who we see ourselves to be, and a few of them mention race and ethnicity. This is the best with that approach and I very highly recommend it.

In God’s Good Image reminds us that cultural identity matters — to us and to Jesus, as it says on the back cover. This offers practical but thoughtful advice about how cultural identity fits into our walk with God and how we can foster space for others.

There’s  lot about minority cultures and socio-ethnic identities in the Bible. Jesus embodied one particular identity, of course (a Jewish male in first century occupied Palestine) and perhaps stuff about our own heart language and home culture plays a role in shaping how we learn to follow Jesus. The diversity of the Body of Christ matters and that “collective journey” can help point us all to a better expression of God’s good image.  The book is well worth reading, exciting and enriching. It has been called “thoughtful and expansive” and, as Jenai Auman (author of Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized) notes, it can help us “become more spacious, welcoming people who see the cultural other:  as our beloved neighbor.”

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

This is a deeply Christian and truly insightful book that is in the classic “self help” genre. It isn’t about resilience for the wounded or inner meditations for those deepening their spiritual practicers. And yet, it was just right for this event, those seeking ways to be intentional about their unfolding story, those willing to re-think their assumptions about change and health and hope.  It takes courage to face great chance and, as was often said at the event, much of the best human response (in community) to true flourishing comes when we — as this book puts it — “face the pain and longings that come with change” and “do the inner work of waking up and letting go.” This book does invite us to listen well to God’s guiding voice, but, to do that well, we must know ourselves (“really” — as O’Donnell and Slayton say.)  From finding friends for the journey to “staying attuned to your rhythms and values” moving forward, Life in Flux: Navigational Skills really is a treasure chest of a book. I highly recommend it to anyone.

Michaela O’Donnell, by the way, is at the Fuller Seminary Max De Pree Center for Leadership and has contributed to the conversation about integrating faith and work (see her excellent Make Work Matter.) Lisa Pratt Slayton is a good friend of Hearts & Minds and known as an esteemed consultant in these spaces as well.

The Sacred Pulse: Holy Rhythms for Overwhelmed Souls April Fiet (Broadleaf) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

It makes sense that some Christian therapists are also certified, or at least use, spiritual directors, and that there was an interest at the Connections event in books about spiritual formation, contemplative spirituality, prayerful attentiveness, slowing down, and the like. We had a whole shelf of books there on sabbath — from our latest fav The Sabbath Way: Making Room in Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight (by the lively Travis West) to the classic Sabbath by Abraham Heschel to the recent heady text called Sabbath Gospel: A New Narrative of Time, Rest, and the Work of the Church by Amy Erickson & G.P Wagenfuhr and standards like the great ones by Marva Dawn, Dan Allender, Walter Brueggemann, Ruth Haley Barton, Norman Wirzba, Wayne Muller, and more. And more generic ones about our pace of life, like, for instance, The Radical Pursuit of Rest: Escaping the Productivity Trap by John Kossler or The Quiet Resistance by the excellent writer Andrea Burke which is really creative and practical “invitation to slow down and find a richer life.” And, of course, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer. We take that almost everywhere!

But there is something about The Sacred Pulse that made it seem a natural to feature. Maybe it’s the foreword by Chuck Degroat, but there is a very human-scale, down-to-Earth and gentle about this wise invitation to “holy rhythms.” And who isn’t overwhelmed and a bit frazzled these days?? This book seems sort of a combo of an invitation to explore our pace-of-life, a bit about a sabbath lifestyle, and some reflections on healing and joy.

April Fiet welcomes readers into a space that is both contemplative and practical. The book draws on a wealth of spiritual insight to help readers retreat from the busyness of life and recenter their lives around rhythms that heal, restore, and sustain. — Kristin Kobes DuMez, Live, Laugh, Love

I felt seen by this book, in a way that was uncomfortable at first. The unsettling insight into my frenetic performance for God was the opening I needed to hear April Fiet’s invitation: to learn to dance with God again, finding rhythms that are, paradoxically, like rest in motion. — James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love, On the Road with Saint Augustine, and How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now

April Fiet shows us how to find our way to wholeness through intention, community, creativity, and a life-giving embrace of sacred time. The rhythm of this book can be heard as a joyous dance to which we are all invited. — Sophfronia Scott, The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton

SPIRITUALITY

This is such a large section in our store — it always has been, but my how the selections have grown in recent years. From deep writers like the exquiste Martin Laird to the accessible John Mark Comer to the lovely and transforming books by Tish Harrison Warren — her recent on spiritual resilience (by way of reading the desert fathers and mothers) called What Grows in Weary Lands was displayed noticeably next to her powerful Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. Here are just a few more we had at the event, among others.

Leading A Transforming Community: Foundations, Practices, and Strategies for Opening to God Together Ruth Haley Barton (IVP) $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

I adore this writer and we have explained each of her titles here at BookNotes. We celebrated this one a few weeks ago (also at our Three Books from Hearts & Minds podcast.) Many of the participants that the gathering who were browsing our book display noticed it and some were glad it was newly available, but some already had it!  Whew! It is a good one, believe me.

As you can tell from the title, this one — while absolutely good for anyone — is a bit less focused on the spiritual practices (like Invitation to Solitude and Silence and Sacred Rhythms) but more on how to lead a community going through these sorts of processes together. We grow in community and community formation which needs friendship and fellowship and forgiveness, of course, but also needs the experience of transformation, the real-world embodied embedded in spiritual communities.

This new book (whether you are a seasoned leader or not) will equip all of us to think well about transforming communities, and will inform and guide those awaiting to form cohorts of spiritual friendship working at stuff together.

Into the Quiet: Following Jesus in a World of Noise John Mark Comer (Waterbrook) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

This may be the biggest seller in this genre of books this season, and we are very grateful for that. We love the free video curriculum from The Practicing the Way course, based on the book of that title.)  Comer and his team have done a number of study guides recently on various practices and faith experiments — from service to solitude, Bible reading to fasting — and yet this one took a whole book. Read it before or after Practicing the Way but don’t miss it. It is appreciated by old and young, evangelical and mainline church folk, for the spiritually experienced and mature to younger beginners. What a book. Countercultural stuff, to be sure. Yay.

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

This was one of our best-selling books at the Connections conference and it was a bit surprising since it is so new. A few folks from Florida (who did not know him or us, so didn’t catch our webinar / program with Sims two weeks ago) knew the book and were raving about it. Some others overheard and the little micro-buzz spread. That we pitched it as an excellent, readable, tender, and moving guide to the classic tradition of monks and mystics (by an Assembly of God pastor / teacher) was attractive. Some of us who have read deeply and widely in that field have said that this is one of the very best guides to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Saint John of the Cross and the Cloud of Unknowing and Julian and Theresa and Brother Lawrence caught peopel’s attention.

If you haven’t watched that hour long conversation I had with Jeremy about the book, please do (HERE). And then order a bunch. It is one of the most helpful books of this sort in many a year.

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

Again, this sort of resource — a beautifully written one at that — is good not just for those drawn to contemplative spirituality or the work of the medieval saints and prayerful thinkers. Granted, she draws on the monastic “rule” of Saint Benedict, but she invites us to use such a construct to “meet God in the life you’re already living.” That is, one does not have to go on a silent retreat or study the mystics or pray the hours like a monk. You can have your life develop with guardrails and guideposts, a rule of life, that pushing you in health directions. A rule that articulates faithful habits helps you stick with them.

Michel has won awards for her great books (such as Teach Us To Want about ambition and desire and Surprised by Paradox: The Promise of “And” in an Either-Or World) and a Hearts & Minds “best of the year” award for her book almost a decade ago called Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home. Just to say she’s a good thinker and a very fine writer.

A Rule for the Rest of Us gives us structure and guidance about keeping company with God, about how flexible we want to be, given our season, role, and limitations; it remind us to attend to our desires and by revising, always re-creating or refining “systems for ongoing reflection as life changes.”

This author and this book knows the complicated realities of modern life. She has five children and lives in Cincinnati Ohio. It promises to “help you live with clarity, courage, commitment and care.)  Very nicely done.

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

I suppose this isn’t exactly a book about spiritual disciplines or contemplative practices or that monastic sort of spirituality. But, man, what can be more appropriate for an even about imagining a healthy, (being) healed and whole humanity, honoring our brokenness and seeking renewal than a book on Jesus, the Divine One that shows us, in his own humanness, what it means to be fully human.

We had this propped up for all to see and a number of folks raved about it. A few folks asked if we knew Kennth, a beloved writer and pastor at Church of the Holy Redeemer in Michigan. This book is remarkable and I was proud to have it there. I hope you consider it.

As I noted in our first review, not only did I find it deeply moving and consoling and challenging, but other great writers of various sorts of raved. On the back cover we get recommendations by Rich Villodos and Malcolm Guite and Scott Erickson. Wow.

Our Aussie friend, Pastor Mandy Smith and excellent author notes that Tanner shows how “our ordinary human experience reveals not only our need for God but God himself, more like us that we dared hope.” This book may make you weep. And it may make you cheer. Don’t miss it.

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Welcome back to another BookNotes from Hearts & Minds. A special thanks to those who logged in to the fabulous interview with Jeremy Sims we did as a webinar last week. From his decades of work doing youth ministry in an Assembly of God church in Alabama to his study of philosopher Paul Ricoeur, from talking about the numbness that comes from hard, hard seasons to his current effort to shape pastors in his Masters degree classes in pastoral care and the like, we heard fabulous insight Sims has gleaned over the years. Most of the more than an hour conversation was about the ways in which the grand church tradition of saints and exemplars (including medieval mystics) can provide waypoints for us as we sense movements of the Spirit, even in the granular texture of realizing God’s presence in the small and the quiet, here and now.

His Way of the Spirit is a great, great read and arranged very thoughtfully. And he is a delightful and very capable conversation partner. Check it out for yourself right here:

And then send us an order for the book — at 20% off, no less. Hooray. You won’t regret it!

Speaking of Hearts & Minds conversation partners and my informal on-line interviews with authors we admire, our next free webinar will be on November 17th as I chat with my much-admired friend, Jeff Crosby. Maybe we’ll touch on his first book about his own spiritual journey (Language of the Heart) and his must-read book about the reading life (World of Wonders) but we will celebrate his recent release Spirit in the Sky: The Power of Music in Our Search for Graceland. I’ve already reflected on this book (twice) at BookNotes, but we do hope you’ll join us for a lively conversation about the power of popular music, the recording and performing artists that have most influenced us, and how people of Christian faith can have their lives enhanced by paying attention to a broad palette of recording artists. I can’t wait to chat with him about Van Morrision and Pink Floyd and Marvin Gaye and Paul Simon and more. Get this down on your calendar now, please, and save the date. You should order the book, too, if you haven’t. We have it at 20% off.

+++

Last week we made our annual trek across the great Pennsylvania Turnpike to attend the Wee Kirk small church conference. Despite the windshield wipers slapping for hours and hours, we enjoyed the changing leaves (and, oh my, what a glorious trip home with blue sky and even brighter leaves.) We love the PC(USA) sponsored gathering for those in small and often struggling congregations and are appreciative that the leadership of Wee Kirk brings in both practitioners that have experience in small churches — with custom-made workshops on stewardship or worship or hospitality or ministry with the aging — and top-notch, world-class scholars. This year we were struck by the brilliance of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary prof Dr. Tucker Ferda (no greater a Matthew scholar than Dale Allison says Tucker’s book, Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins (Eerdmans; $69.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $55.99) is one of the most important in the field of historical Jesus studies in the last quarter of a century.”  I hope Tucker’s reflections on reading postures and images and attitudes and styles as we approach Scripture might become a book someday. I also liked that he recommended Exploring the Spirituality of the Gospels by Roman Catholic scholar Patrick J. Hartin. In any case, whether you live in a small town or a metropolis, whether you attend a country parish or a megachurch, reading well and widely, especially in the Scriptures, is a core Christian practice.

And so is caring about your place, or locale, your region or watershed. And that’s what I want to write about in this special issues of BookNotes.

Here are some of the best books that we had in that part of our big display for those in small churches. ALL ARE 20% OFF. Use the link shown at the end to order any of these. 

The Power of Place: Choosing Stability in a Rootless Age Daniel Grothe (Thomas Nelson) $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

As I explained in a book announcement up front at Wee Kirk the value of Wendell Berry’s work, his agrarian localism (and the importance of the soon-to-be-released Dispatches from Rural America.) I mentioned this one, as I have before at that gathering, as my favorite introduction to the wonder of stability, the need for roots, how to dig in for the long haul. Pastor Grothe is a fine, fun writer fronm nd this is a great guide to important stuff.

I like how the publisher tells it:

In The Power of Place, pastor Daniel Grothe speaks to the human ache for home and makes a countercultural case for staying put. He calls us to reject the myth of Christian individuality and instead embrace the richness of commitment and community, arguing that we must stay in one place as long as we can, plant our lives, and let roots take hold. Because only then can we experience the deep fulfillment, friendship, and fruitfulness God created us for.

I told one person at least at Wee Kirk that this was the book to start with in all of this. We should all have a few books under our belt that examine this, and this is one of the best.

Sure, maybe you’ll move to bell hooks’s Belonging: A Culture of Place or the magestierial study Beyond Homelessness (about our culture of displacement) by Brian Walsh & Steven Bouma-Predigar, but for starters, this is a grand title, higly recommended. Thanks to Dan Grothe and his The Power of Place.

No Home Like Place: A Christian Theology of Place Leonard Hjmalmarson (Urban Loft) $ // OUR SALE PRICE = $

This is another standard classic in our bookstore’s “place” section.  I’m told most other bookstores don’t carry this. We think this topic is so important we wouldn’t want to be without it. Hjmalmarson has written stuff about service-oriented missional spirituality and lives in Thunder Bay, Canada. He’s a very impressive thinker.

I will lift for you a quote from the PR from the small indie Urban Loft press:

Fragmentation, mobility, dualism — these forces work against our belonging, and work against our richly dwelling in the places we live. Add to these the rise of “virtual” place and relationships, and our sense of displacement only increases. It has been difficult to embrace a call to life as mission in this world under these conditions, and equally difficult to embrace a call to place. Are there “sacred” places? If every place is sacred, does the word lose its meaning? What is it that God loves about place? Can architecture contribute to our ability to engage in a place? How do experiential human questions like “belonging” intersect with a theological lens? Does a biblical view of place imply an ecology and an ethic? How do pilgrimage and place relate? How can the arts assist us in place-making? This book addresses these questions and more, in a lively dialogue between theology and culture.

I appreciate the forward by the great Loren Wilkenson of Regent College. His Earthkeeping (published by Eerdmans in 1980, was simply seminal.)

Every Somewhere Sacred: Rescuing a Theology of Place in the American Imagination Ben Norquist & Brian Miller (IVP Academic) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

This is another that I highlighted at BookNotes, saying how very important it was; important and urgent, even — almost one of a kind. For anyone deep into this topic and field of study — place, how we imagine notions of landscape, social history and such — this 2026 book really is one of the more significant titles on this topic to come out, perhaps ever!  I’m not kidding.

Norquist and Miller appropriate and wisely unpack the themes of place and a Christian understanding of home and land and space and this necessarily includes how in many locales (and obviously in North America) the land has been occupied if not stolen. It has been viewed as a commodity. Knowing the way sin and ideologies like colonialism and Manifest Destiny have distorted proper, neighborly ways of relating to others and the land makes this study of place particularly important.  (And the case studies are fascinating.) There are a lot of thorough chapters and the book weaves together theology and geography, stories of stolen land and stories of justice and goodness in place. I love the title — every somewhere sacred. Thank about that. Kudos to these two excellent thinkers and their very good work. As one reviewer put it, “this book is a clarion call to people of faith to tell truer, more honest stories about the places we inhabit. Profoundly hopeful, this book will change the way you think about who you are and where you’re from.”

For what it is worth, I’ll be naming this as one of the Hearts & Minds Best Books of 2026. Order it today!

Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place Today Craig Bartholomew (Baker Academic) $35.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

I get it that this doesn’t sell often when we take it out to book displays (especially at places like Wee Kirk where there are lot of down-home folks that are beyond doing academic work.) But, still, for anybody looking for the premier text on placemaking, based on the Bible and philosophy and theology, this is both compelling and liberating. Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis says it is “unprecedented.” Eric Jacobsen (who wrote Sidewalks of the Kingdom with a foreword by Eugene Peterson) says, “Ever since Walter Brueggemann’s groundbreaking study The Land in 1977 we have been waiting for a comprehensive Christian theology of place.” This, I’d say, is it!

Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind Grace Olmstead (Sentinel) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

I did a long review of this when it first came out, raving about her eloquence and elegance as a writer and her “important work of examining perhaps the most overlooked aspect of American identity: place” (as Sarah Smarsh, author of Heartland put it.)

Norman Wirzba notes that Uprooted helps us understand what is lost when people lost their connections to particular lands and communities. It also helps us appreciate what is gained by a patient and enduring commitment to nurture the places and people that nurture us.”

Wirzba continues:

“Reading Olmstead’s book confirms that the need for roots in one of humanity’s universal and essential needs.”

Staying Put: Making a Home in a Restless World Scott Russell Sanders (Beacon Press) $19.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

Oh my, do you know Scott Russell Sanders? His writing is often called luminous or lyrical and so very well crafted that he wins awards for the nonfiction essay. Some liken him to his friend, the late nature writer Barry Lopez. One of my favorite books of Sander’s is his essay collection The Way of Imagination (Counterpoint; $16.95 // $13.56.) The majestic Private Mystery of Awe (from North Point Press) is oddly out of print — we have one left, I think.

In any case, the calm Staying Put is a collection of pieces about his home on a tree-lined street in central Indiana. It would seem to me that any decent human would want to be a better citizen of their locale and a good neighbor to their immediate neighbors. Sanders shows us how it’s done, caring for the low-key and plain, proposing, as one reviewer put it, “a different kind of citizenship.”

Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove (Paraclete Press) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Some of the best insight about resisting the downsides of our overly-mobile and fast-paced culture and thinking well about what Simone Weil called “our need for roots” comes from the ancient writer now known as Saint Benedict. The Benedictine monastic tradition called participants to the pledge of stability (more colorfully put, above, as “staying put.”) Yep, the monks knew that they could not form communities without the trust of loyalty to place and people, and so their vow… Hartgrove-Wilson has lived in intentional communities and has other books calling the church to a sort of new monasticism that lives together in a world falling apart, with the strength of community nurturing a brave and tenacious sort of solidarity with the poor. This book is less about Neo-monastic practices or social concern and just a wonderful, wise, radical reflection about our rootlessness and the virtues gained by staying in one place for a while. Of course our truest home is found in God, so in a way, we might call this a spirituality of place.

There is a marvelous foreword by Kathleen Norris, who knows a thing or two about all of this. A lovely reflection, a very fine book.

Stability may be the virtue that 21st-century Christians most ignore — and the virtue we are most called to embrace. This fine book will inspire you to look at your own life, asking, ‘Where am I restless? Where might God be calling me to be rooted, to stay put? — Lauren Winner, author of Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, and the forthcoming The Entangled Word: Keeping Company with Scripture Through the Church Year

Rooted and Grounded: Essays on Land and Christian Discipleship edited by Ryan Harker & Janeen Bertsche Johnson (Pickwick) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

This is part of a series called the Studies in Peace and Scripture: Institute of Mennonite Studies but this amazing, potent collection is not written only by Mennonites, nor is it mostly about peacemaking, as such. It is, as the title says, more broadly about Christian discipleship and what it meets to serve while “rooted and grounded” in our place. We stock it here in the store both in our ecological section with books about land but also in our sociology section with other books about space and place. It is as much about geography as it is about Biblical studies. It’s an amazing resource. Hooray.

Rooted and Grounded includes all kinds of great, random essays, most very, very good (all written specifically for this volume.) There are some very good writers on board. For instance, Winn Collier has a great piece called “Holy Ground: Considering a Sacramental Ecclesiology in Berry’s Port Williams” and Hope College prof Steve Bouma-Prediger has a great contribution entitled “Eschatology Shapes Ethics: New Creation and Christian Ecological Virtues.” I loved the piece by Matt Bonzo (“A Curse More Ancient”) and the one by Laura Schmidt Roberts, “The Theological Place of Land: Watershed Discipleship as Re-placed Cultural Vision.”

Duke professor Ellen Davis has a very good chapter called “Land as Kin: Renewing Our Imagination” and Patricia Tull writes on “Vineyards, Fields, and Trees Among Israel’s Prophets” in a chapter called “Speaking from Ground Level.” From Barbara Rossing to Douglas Kaufman to the great Nathan Stucky (of Princeton’s Farminary) there are so many more authors here — more than 20 pieces in about 250 pages. We are grounded in God and rooted in place and informed by ancient Scripture. As Norma Wirzba notes this “deserves a wide readership.” We are glad to tell you about it again.

Telling the Stories Right: Wendell Berry’s Imagination of Port William edited by Jack Baker & Jeffrey Bilbro (Front Porch Republic Books) $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Anyone thinking about the topic of place or small towns or rural life surely knows about Wendell Berry. We are getting pre-orders for his forthcoming Dispatches From Rural America coming next week) which will be his last collection of new non-fiction essays. I’ve seen it, I’d admit, and it is going to be good.

In the meantime we’d all be better if we read some Berry, not only his fiction and poetry but his essays. (Or if you’re into nonfiction, then do read his poetry and novels and short-stories.) In any case, a lot has been written about him. This one, compiled nearly a decade ago, is a gem, a lovely and masterful collection by those who love his stories. Even before his famous Unsettling of American broke into American consciousness 50 years ago, he had already published three novels. These authors are convicted that “any consideration of Berry’s work must begin with his stories.”

And so, this volume was one of the first that studied his characters and the lives of those in Port William, that fictional Kentucky town. “His exquiste rendering of this small Kentucky town” they say, “challenges us to see the beauty of our own places and communities and to tend to their health, threatened though it inevitably is. Amen!

Important voices from Stanley Hauerwas to the aforementioned Scott Sanders have weighed in with nightly blurbs on the back. (Hauerwas says “the next best thing to reading Berry is to read those who write about Berry’s writing.” Again, Amen!)

Here we have important writers from Gracy Olmstead (see above) to Jake Meador to Geneva College historian Eric Miller to the Rabbit Room founder, author and singer-songwriter, Andrew Peterson. Doug Sikkema is here as is Michael Stevens, and others we so appreciate. Don’t miss Kiara Jorgenson’s chapter “Called to Affection: Exploring the Ecology of Christian Vocation in Port William.” Yes!

Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life Jennifer Allen Craft (IVP Academic) $33.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $27.19

This is part of the great “Studies in Theology and the Arts” series by IVP and, believe me, I adore this one. Alas, we didn’t take it to Wee Kirk this year, but it would have fit in nicely either in our little display of books on creativity and arts, there, or, better, right here among the books about place and small town life. Jennifer Craft, while doing a book on the arts, opens up vistas to understand space and place, giving a book that contends that “the arts place us in time, space, and community in ways that encourage us to be fully and imaginatively present in a variety of contexts: the natural world, our homes, our worshiping communities, and society.”

At the Wee Kirk event I made a quip from up front noting that we had books on nature and creation (like books on birdwatching and fishing and creation-care) right next to our section on AI and tech / digital culture. We need to be embodied, I said, in place, even as we study the concerns and possibilities of screens and more. This book does just that, invites us to embodiment, to a sense of place, and suggests that local art can, in fact, help enhance our sense of our places. It may seem counterintuitive, but looking at a painting of a place or an arts creation about a thing in your town, could help us then see the real thing that much better. Isn’t that the bit from T.S. Eliot, about “knowing the place for the first time.” This lovely, thoughtful book will help you experience just that, and more.

Place Matters: The Church for the Community Coz Crosscombe & Bill Krispin (CLC) $13.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

This little book is a powerhouse of a resource, helping any church (although it is perhaps aimed at urban congregations) lean into it’s ministry of place and come to know the community in which it is embedded. Crosscombe and Crispin have been legends in inner city Philadelphia and know the unique networks of streets and cultures and folkways and institutions as well as anybody around. (Bill died earlier this year and his loss is felt in the City of Brotherly Love, believe me.)

This book is very accessible and a readable intro to a theology of place and how congregations can step up and learn more about their region and their neighborhoods. Using Bible study and strategic sociological principles (and plenty of real life stories) this fun book is sure to inspire you.

As they say, “if you seek to share the powerful, life-transforming gospel of Jesus Christ in your surrounding community, this book is for you.”

Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation David P. Leong (IVP) $24.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

Another book that isn’t uniquely about smaller towns but could very easily be used in small town settings as it declares that “geography matters.” Yes! And David Leong (a professor of missiology at Seattle Pacific University) knowns much about the “street signs” (the name of his first book, by the way) that indicate space and place in urban settings. The theory works well anywhere.

Race and Place of course shows — in well written prose and compelling storytelling — more about the truths of that well-worn saw about “the wrong side of the tracks.” Yep, there are literally railroad tracks that often divides classes and ethnicities and cultures in many towns and cities across the land. Knowing how this has developed (in your own place) and how to think well about it is crucial for our ongoing local missional presence.

Leong “envisions a future of belonging and hope in our streets, towns, cities, and churches. A discussion about race goes hand in hand with a discussion about place.” As they rightly assert on the back cover, “This book is a welcome addition to a conversation that needs to include both.” Highly recommended.

Good Places for All Mark D. Bjelland (Calvin College Press) $10.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $8.79

This little volume is in the series of small books called Calvin Shorts, little volumes for ordinary readers about the specialty concerns of various professors at Calvin University. I am a big fan of these small books — sharp little books on everything from sports to special education to American history to immigration and diversity — but Good Places for All is especially good. It is, I think, an ideal introduction to this whole sociology of place, a very little bit about urban, town, and rural planning issues, and why we need unique insights about how to care well about neighborhoods in various social locations.

Using the Bible as a lens, Bjelland (a geography and environmental studies prof) looks at urban planning and regional concerns and the nature of suburbs, inviting us to wonder how to love our neighbors as we advocate for thoughtful zoning codes, housing policies, transportation systems, ecological values, real estate issues and the like. We need faith-based advocates for our places and this is a great little book to kick-start your thinking.

The Bees of Rainbow Falls: Finding Faith, Imagination, and Delight in Your Neighbourhood  Preston Pouteaux (Urban Loft Publishers) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Oh my, what a lovely and sweet book this is, a missional memoir, so to speak, done by the small indie press Uban Loft. You may know them from one of our lead titles (above), No Home Like Place. They get the daily texture of ordinary life and how people of faith can enter locales and spaces to offer a Godly perspective, to bear witness to creation’s place, and even use that, appropriately, as a form of bearing witness to God’s Kingdom. Can a story about bee-keeping be missional? Can the art of bee-keeping be a way to show God’s care for the local neighborhood? You bet it can.

I rave about this when we first discovered it a few years back, writing:

This book has been called “enchanting” and “captivating” and “charming” and “delightful” and “elegant.” But even as Pouteaux tells his story, it does call us to imagine “living in our neighbourhoods in a way that transforms our whole outlook on faith, hope, and love.” Pourteaux writes about this unlikely journey and how it changed how he saw his neighbors.

As it says on the back cover, “The Bees of Rainbow Falls reminds us that we matter to our community, that goodness is found all around us, and that new life emerges out of the small and sublime.”

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity Charles L. Marohn (Wiley) $26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

I know that not every small town church person is going to become an activist for renewing their communities and not every church can advocate for civic policies at the local level. I think sone of the theological books mentioned here would be good starters for church groups and parish book clubs, asking the bigger questions about the role of place in a Biblical worldview and the need for an embodied, local involvement in caring for the flourishing of our places.

Sooner or later, though, one has to ask the big questions of what makes for a flourishing town? Marohn has done the work on this, and his organization (Strong Towns) invites folks of all sorts to take up these orienting features of renewal. What he calls a “bottom-up revolution.” It is what Richard Florida calls “the playbook.”

Here’s how they put it:

American cities of all sizes financially struggle to do basic things: maintain streets, keep public safety workers employed, pay pensions, etc. The conventional response to these struggles is: more growth. If a city can induce more development, more construction, and more infrastructure, then it can grow its way to prosperity. Yet what if the American approach to growth is the problem? What if the wealth generated by all that new investment isn’t enough to support the infrastructure? That is the core premise of Strong Towns, a movement to change the way cities approach growth and development. While modern city development creates a short-term illusion of prosperity, it results in more long-term obligations than the community can handle”…”

Strong Towns offers a different model, a better vision. Few want more sprawl and everyone knows we must learn to be more sustainable. We need beauty and goodness. As Jeff Speck (author of Walkable City) says, “the gem of Strong Towns is our current moment’s most cogent, practical, and necessary response to the problem of urban economics.”

Recovering Abundance: Twelve Practices for Small-Town Leaders Andy Stanton-Henry (Fortress Press) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

You may know I’ve written about this before and I hope you can see why I’d feature it on display at a conference for small churches. Many smaller congregations are rooted in smaller towns — whether rust-belt exurbs or charming villages in the country. Most are in fairly ordinary, not-too-dramatic, mid-sized towns.  This is a very sophisticated study, an invitation for leaders to get involved and, with God’s help, make stuff happen.

The author is a mid-West Quaker and is known for not only pastoring a smaller church but for equipping folks to care about their small-town places. As he researched and listened and travelled around his Ohio locale, Stanton-Henry learned about what he calls “ordinary leaders” who envision co-creating a positive future. He documents one practice demonstrated in a Bible study and then embodied by people he’s observed in small towns and rural settings with leaders and community groups.

As J. Brent Bill puts it, “as a former country-church pastor, I wish I would have had this book when I was starting out. It’s packed with practical wisdom and tools to be a faithful leader in parts of our country too long neglected.”

I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me: Essays on Rural Political Decay Matthew Ferrence (West Virginia Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Less than a year ago I did a large review of Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by the great Beth Macy and a fabulous, riveted memoir by third generation dairy farmer, Ryan Dennis entitled Barn Gothic: Three Generations and the Death of the Family Dairy Farm. In the middle of those two reviews I went on and on about I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me. Ferrence grew up in the small town of a rural county where I went to college (Indiana PA, home of Jimmy Stewart.)

After an account of how a hot shot politico did him wrong in his run for a state office (from Meadville, PA, another small college town in Western PA) realizes that there is a disdain for those small small towns and rural spaces (and burned-over rust belt places as well.)

I wrote:

Much of I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me is about how both rural and rust-belt, postindustrial towns (not to mention inner cities) have much in common. They are passed over, mocked, despised and the people, for reasons sociologists are still trying to parse, often vote for candidates that do not have their back. This prophetic rant is the latest, and in some ways, the most tender and compelling, treatise to be read alongside Paper Girl by Beth Macy and, also, her Factory Man, or maybe Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild (not to mention her amazing 2024 book Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right.) But his is beautiful and personal.

From lovely writing about the county fair (and great sections about showing animals) and the anguish of polarization between Red and Blue America and the details of running against a do-nothing, blustering right-wing incumbent (who he ungraciously calls every name in the book) I Hate It Here, Please Vote for Me: Essays on Rural Political Decay is a fabulous, striking, unforgettable read.

Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse Timothy P. Carney (Harper) $17.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

We appreciate books that are ideologically complex and a bit unpredictable. I wasn’t sure what to think of a book with a rousing quote from Charles Murray on the back. (It does say that “this book transcends politics” and that it can help those who are willing to understand why some people voted for Trump. I’m not sure that is necessarily the reason to read it, but it does offer explanations for healthy places that are not merely material, economic, or demographic. He shows that  (as Arthur Books puts it, “the deepest disparity facing Americans today is one of community. Clear and compassionate, Alienated America offers a road map for the restoration of our nation.”

The provacative question (or at least one of the provocative questions” Carney was trying to suss out was this: should you be more worried about a church closing in your town, or a factory? Through is travels all over the land, his startling good conversations with people and his study of county-level maps and data, his exploring the role of mediating structures and sturdy institutions (including churches) and tries to show that the reality of failing social connections is responsible for much of the great divides in America. The death of the American dream is a social phenomenon, not mostly an economic one.

I enjoyed this book a lot and it gave me better vocabulary and stories to talk about the sociology of American small towns and the ups and downs of rural life. This author reports on some fascinating places (from dim country bars of southwestern Pennsylvania to the bustling Mormon wards of Salt Lake City.)

The Overlooked Americans: The Resilience of Our Rural Towns and What It Means for Our Country Elizabeth Currid-Halkett (Basic Books) $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60

As we are indicating, we have a number of books about what might be called the sociology of place, books looking at new urbanism as well as small town and rural life titles. At the Wee Kirk conference we displayed some of these right alongside the titles about rural churches and small town ministry. We would like to think that smaller churches in smaller towns are particularly attentive to their social location and care about their often overlooked places.

The Overlooked Americans is considered to be a much-needed reassessment of small town life, done by a major scholar — she was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and holds a chair of Modern Culture at the Library of Congress. As an expert on regional planning, she sees the big picture, but knows that the devil is in the details, as they say.

This data this book offers shows that most rural American’s are better educated and have a better quality of life than many will suppose. Rural American’s are not all extremists or politically estranged. This is tremendous stuff to consider, no matter where you live; it is an urgent and much-needed reassessment. I really hope some of our readers order it.

Richard Florida (a name I’ve already mentioned) says that the book reveals “life in rural America to be complex and varied — and in many cases better off than conventional wisdom would have us believe.” Happily, she will make a case that urban, suburban, and rural Americans may have more in common than we think. Currid-Halkett combines both quantitative research and fine storytelling to offer a new understanding of what’s going on — the grit and the grace — among rural and small town Americans. I’ve mentioned this before, and wanted to show it off again, now.

What is America really? Currid-Halkett pierces through the noise and challenges mainstream narratives with this timely, rigorous, and heartfelt analysis. The Overlooked Americans tears down entrenched definitions and stereotypes and builds a new image of rural America that is not hopelessly divided from urban America. Nuanced, cogent, and empathetic, this book deserves attention from politicians, pundits, and the public. —  Jane Harman, USC Presidential Scholar, Former Member of Congress (CA, 36)

The Injustice of Place: Uncovering the Legacy of Poverty in America Kathryn J. Edin, H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson (Mariner) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

One needn’t read too much in the literature about American poverty to know that hunger and being unhoused is not only a problem of the center city or the urban underclass. The fact is that the majority of those who experience what we call food insecurity are white and often rural. That small churches have to ministry to this reality is daunting, but from what we gather, most who attend Wee Kirk are doing valiant service to the poor and forgotten, have gracious people helping where they can, and many have food pantries and clothing closets and other such social service ministries.

For those on the front lines of doing this kind of work —the kind delightfully explored in the memoir-esque Five Loaves, Two Fish, Twelve Volunteers: Growing a Relational Food Ministry by Elizabeth Mae Magill (published by Upper Room Books)  — this solid text will help you understand your context and what you are up against. For those not yet in the struggle, this may be compelling and orienting.

As Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond (you know his Evicted and Poverty, By America, I hope) says, “This book forces you to see American poverty in a whole new light.”

That is, as these researches so passionately show, there are places where fellow citizens and neighbors live and “the places in which we live shape so many aspects of our lives — from our jobs to our health to our children’s prospects.” There’s plenty of big data, here, but also what I suppose we could call ethnography.  One reviewer (a pediatrician) says it is “woven with first-hand counted and bolstered by fresh data, The Injustice of Place convincingly knots present-day disadvantage to the long tail of racism and extractive capitalism.”

Yup. As another scholar of these injustices notes, “there is no book on poverty in America quite like this one” From dramatic reporting to serious analysis to compassionate storytelling this book is both enraging and vital.

American Christians and Poverty Myths: Beyond the Veil of Meritocracy Mark T. Mulder (Fortress Press) $34.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

Professor Mulder teaches sociology at Calvin University in Grand Rapids and has written a major sociological expose called Shades of White Flight: Evangelical Congregations and Urban Departure trying to fairly tell the stories of 1960s and ‘70s “white flight” from urban Chicago into the suburbs. What structural factors drove that and how dit that create other sorts of problems? On the heels of that, Mulder here argues that “evangelical Christians too often misunderstand the fundamental causes of poverty.” (Yet, as the back cover notes, “progressive Christians, who tend to recognize structural factors at hand, often respond much as evangelicals do.’) Either way, even our most sincere efforts are mired and hampered. We’ve got to understand the terrain better, and know where we’ve most often failed to serve effectively.

American Christians and Poverty Myths really does present “a vivid portrait of poverty in the US to help both evangelical and progressive Christians alike to reevaluate how they advocate fora more just society.”

Decades ago I brought in my friend Ronald Sider to lecture on his book Churches That Make a Difference where he documented mainline churches (that generally did good social concern but little gospel proclamation and more evangelical churches that generally did good evangelism but not very good social ministry. A few of the churches he studies (especially Hispanic and black congregations) did it all.

I wonder if over time both mainline/progressive congregations and conservative/evangelical ones have matured in their wholistic vision. I suspect so. But have they grappled with the causes and textures of poverty? Do they still assume certain myths about the poor? This book really offers new insights about what we need to know and how to better serve.

Reginald Smith (whose memoir about urban ministry in Grand Rapids I highlighted a few weeks ago at BookNotes) says that Mulder has “done the hard work of diagnosing harmful stories about poverty and offers a better story of biblical wisdom, along with rigorous scholarship that moves readers to examine their own Christian stories.”

Jonathan Tran, professor of theological ethics at Duke Divinity School says:

This myth-busting book, full of compassion and conviction and with the data and evidence to back it up, it tells us the truth — with every hope that the truth might set us free.

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

I have highlighted this here often, and, in fact, help it up and promoted it at Wee Kirk 2025. We sold a number last year, even though only a few folks were from the greater Great Lakes area. Still, who doesn’t live in a watershed? Who doesn’t know the Wendell Berry line about do unto others downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you. Right? This is the story of how a group of leaders at Calvin University in Grand Rapids mobilized college students to clean up one of the most polluted waterways in Michigan. From speaking in churches, learning to work with indigenous First Nations leaders, understanding the chemistry of water pollution and the infrastructure systems of water run-off, the Plaster Creek Stewards started talking about “reconciliation ecology” since even our reconciliation with the Earth is often mediated by our structures of injustice between people groups. Just think of the much-researched topic of “environmental racism” and how racial reconciliation leading to justice is a context for doing environmental work.

Anyway, this is a book about place and while it is about the Ken-O-Sha (the Native Ottawa name for Plaster Creek) it models a decades-long project of intergenerational organizing to care for the local watershed.

Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial Corban Addison (Vintage) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I don’t know if CAFAs are a threat to the health of your communities, but the air-born toxins, the industrial-scale water pollution, the environmental racism, the uncaring abuse of land and animals makes these huge industrial centers a blight on the dignity of rural life. I raved about this riveting book about fighting a pig-farming monopoly in North Carolina when it first came out — I cited the rave review by novelist John Grisham (who wrote the foreword), explained its legal “David vs Goliath” plot-line, and suggested it was a page-turner that educates folk about what is so wrong with these ugly and brutal super-farms; I insisted that it will have you cheering when the public interest legal activists put it all on the line to get justice for rural folks so wounded by the very duplicitous bad guys from Smithfield Foods.

As a GoodReads review put it:

With journalistic rigor and a novelist’s instinct for story, Corban Addison’s Wastelands captures the inspiring struggle to bring a modern-day monopoly to its knees, to force a once-invincible corporation to change, and to preserve the rights—and restore the heritage—of a long-suffering community.

This is one of the most unforgettable books I’ve ever read and while I didn’t feature it at our Wee Kirk event — I have, other years, right next to the Wendell Berry titles — it does offer a glimpse into one part of the varied struggles of working for flourishing in rural places these days.

Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) $26.00 hardcover // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80 OR  $16.95 paperback // OUR SALE PRICE = $13.56

Some will be glad to know this, the last novel Berry wrote before his death last month, just came out last week in paperback, at a very affordable price. (As shown above, with our BookNotes sale price it’s $13.56.) Some will also be glad to be reminded that do still have some of the hardcover that I suspect may go out of print sooner or later.

In any case, Marce Catlett is a lovely story (in part, about the power of story and memory) in the grand but gentle Port William series of novels and short stories by the great agrarian storyteller. It is about Andy Catlett’s father and grandfather, the formation of their buyer’s cooperative after being ripped off in the Louisville market. The plight of small farmers — Berry so eloquently put it so succinctly into a fictional format in the middle of his ground-breaking nonfiction book fifty years ago, The Unsettling of America — has never been clearer, although it is firstly a novel, a shorter, poignant tale of the coming of age of a boy as he takes up the family tradition of Kentucky farming.

Marce Catlett, Berry’s new Andy Catlett novel, brings the interplay of fiction and history to a new level. Though the novel ostensibly remains in Port William, it reads like a memoir, albeit one written in third person and cast in fictional form. As Berry lives into his tenth decade, he meditates on the way a simple story — one held in place and handed down from one generation to another — can shape our lives beyond all expectation . . . A story remembered in its place exerts a moral force. This is what Berry’s new novel shows us. But its inheritors must decide how they will respond to this force. As this novel narrates the history of this story’s life in this place, the Berry family myth takes on a public life and force, requiring its readers to decide how we will respond. May it inspire the local work that produces local benefits, but even more profoundly, may it inspire gratitude for the divine patience and forgiveness that scripts all our stories, even when they are marked by the loss of beloved goods. —Jeffrey Bilbro, Plough, editor of Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms 

Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story seeks to reclaim an enduring, time-honored notion of prosperity by means of a fictionalized account of real Berry family history — and real American history . . . Marce Catlett’s story remains for any who wish to claim it: a story of historic injustice — the ‘unwillingness to pay farmers for their work or the land for its yield’ — and the structurally effective means by which it was, for a time, combated. Marce Catlett offers a path forward.  — Eric Miller, Commonweal; Geneva College history professor, author of Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings

Readers, new or longstanding, will be grateful to have read Marce Catlett, and will appreciate it as a conduit once more for Berry’s important perspective and critique on our belonging to community and land. The book deeply implores us to acknowledge the stories that we ourselves live into and that shape our understanding of the world around us. Whether familial, biblical or fictional, we are all shaped by stories, and Berry reminds us through his that tending to them is important work.  — Chris Taylor, The Presbyterian Outlook

Be sure to sell us which edition you want, hardback or paperback. Both are 20% off.

Your Fellow Americans: Dispatches from Across the Country We Call Home Peter Santenello (Simon & Schuster) $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

This is not exactly about small towns or local places but it is a new travelogue of the sort I really like, (Do you remember the fantastic, thick book called Back Roads and Better Angels by Frances Barry? It remains a favorite for anybody wondering about how ordinary people (along Route 30) view democracy.) Your Fellow Americans seem less overtly political and is just a big collection of a whole lot of front porch stories. Santenello hard this bee in his bonnet to find ordinary folks and, man, he meets a lot of characters. He meets with Amish Snowbirds in Florida and searches for reindeer with Siberian Yupik people in Alaska. He is hosted on a houseboat deep in the Louisiana bayou and visits tiny town in Appalachia and hangs out on the streets of East LA.  I dipped in first to a chapter about the Mississippi Delta.

Your Fellow Americans is written with “humor, exuberance, and reverence for the human spirit” and is a celebration of the people of the United States of American. He says it is an invitation to “sit down, open up, and rediscover the soul of this place we call home.” Nice, huh?

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

This was one of our biggest sellers at Wee Kirk and one I glowed the most about. Charley is a friend and small town pastor in Western Pennsylvania himself, so he knows the social location of many of our Wee Kirk conferees. In fact, he runs a think-tank and study center about rural church life (The Center for Rural Ministry) even as he works on occasion with the Brookings / American Enterprise Institute on US Rural Prosperity. He’s a Vineyard pastor, and this is not his first book.

Strip Mine Jesus is a book every congregant in small towns or rural spaces needs to have in their library. This is a conversation we all must be having, wondering how our often forgotten places can be ripe for important ministry. As the back cover notes, “Jesus hasn’t given up on small, exploited, and overlooked places, and neither should we.”

There are a good handful of titles on rural life and rural churches. (See, for instance, God’s Country: Faith, Hope, and the Future of the Rural Church and Flyover Church: How Jesus’ Ministry in Rural Places Is Good News Everywhere, both by Brad Roth and published by Herald Press) or the fabulous collections from the Rural Church Institute,  The God of Small Places: A Rural Church Institute Resource, edited by Glenn Daman & Jeffrey Clark and Retooling the Rural Church for the Twenty-First Century (both published by Wipe & Stock.) We’ve got ‘em!

I’d very highly recommend starting with this. Strip Mine Jesus is a much-needed book and we are thrilled to help promote it.

Fresh Expressions of the Rural Church Michael Adam Beck & Tyler Kleeberger (Abingdon) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

We’ve got bunches of books on maintenance and congregational health of small churches. From worshipping well in a small congregation to doing education in a small church, there are a number. Write to us if you need more info. But this one is unique and I thought I’d tell you about it again.

Fresh Expressions is an ecumenical movement (rooted somewhat in Wesleyan circles) helping empower congregations to do something in ministry that isn’t (as far as I understand it) not exactly traditional church planting. We don’t need to start fully new congregations, but we can tweak and expand our outreach, maybe even deepening a project we already have going. I know of a church that started offering hikes on a local trails and ended up with a real ministry on their hands. As they learned to worship together at the trail’s end, it was almost like that was a fresh expression of more conventional church. Some of those folks would have never darkened the door of a church so they did ministry — not unlike what campus ministry teams do, or maybe missionaries — finding way to host programing where people can be enfolded into faith communities of sorts. From meetings of a handful of seekers at a coffee shop to random gatherings of specialized groups — quilters, birdwatchers, bread makers, social service helpers — how can these good project becomes inroads to spiritual formation and worship and, maybe, church? I think that is an experimental vision of outreach that is intentional about helping the unchurches feel comfortable with Scripture and praise and worship and service together. Not exactly church planting, but new and creative efforts at starting new worshipping communities.

Beck and Kleeberger have documented in this remarkable book ways the Fresh Expression movement have taken hold in small towns and rural spaces. Can small rural churches really find the energy and people to do such innovative outreach ministries? Can there be Fresh Expression ministries in rural locales? Surprisingly, yes.  We really can, as this book says on the back, “learn to cultivate the extraordinary gifts of Christian community in the countryside.”

This book collects very inspiring stories from diverse rural contexts across the US. It offers a readable, fresh theology for rural life and “offers principles for harnessing the potential of what some consider the forgotten spaces.” Each chapter includes a helpful “Field Exercise” (questions to ponder and suggested actions for teams to work through together” as they think through possible application in their own setting. Beck is co-pastor of two churches in north central Florida and Kleeberger is in small town Ohio. This is a very cool book.

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

Besides a dozen different books on small church life, and small church leadership, from The Strategically Small Church: Intimate, Nimble, Authentic, and Effective by Brandon O’Brien (published by Baker Academic) to Jason Byassee’s lovely The Gifts of the Small Church (Abingdon Press) to The Gift of Small: Embracing Your Church’s Vocation by Allen Stanton (Fortress Press) and so many more, we also had dozens of books for pastors. Lot’s were rather specific — facing burnout, handling adaptive change, being bi-vocational, navigating church conflict, etc.

The Pastor as Gardener is one that I invited everyone to read, whether they are clergy or not. In fact, I suggested it’s a good thing for collegial and supportive congregants to read books about the calling of the minister. And this one is a great, fun, exciting one to read.

As I have said more than once here at BookNotes, this is a splendid, well written book shaped by the metaphor of gardening and informed by the agrarian localism of Wendell Berry. Erickson is a more colorful writer than Berry and he isn’t too deep into the regenerative farming, but he really does imagine pastoring work as a sort of farming, in the fields of the Lord. Alan Jacobs (a fairly sophisticated scholar) says it is a “quietly, deeply, sweetly, meditative book.”  Vincent Bacote says it “will bring great benefit to all who love Christ and his church.”

There is a fabulous, wonderfully written foreword by Winn Collier, director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination and saying that at Wee Kirk (since Peterson has been our speaker there in the past) was a great way to place this good book. Oh yeah, and Winn wrote one of my favorite small-town, small church books, himself. See below.

Love Big, Be Well: Letters to a Small Town Church Winn Collier (Eerdmans) $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

I did highlight a novel or two in my up-front book promos at Wee Kirk — Alan Levi’s Theo of Golden, obviously, and Guite’s Galahad and the Grail. Some years we pitch Gilead by Marilyn Robinson for obvious reasons and this year we sold a few Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter. Perfect.

This novel is a splendid small work written as a series of letters from a somewhat cranky, no-nonsense pastor who takes a call to pastor a broken-down small church. Jonas is a bit weary (working in a dead end insurance job) and when Granby Presbyterian calls him—- they too are plenty weary — he agrees to be their shepherd, as long as they don’t expect a CEO or manager or coach. He’s going to be an old school pastor and these letters span a handful of years in his ministry, “ruminating on everything from fly-fishing to the Nicene Creed.” Attentive readers will realize that Winn was, while writing this novel, deeply influenced by the style and vision of Eugene Peterson and it makes sense that Winn went on to write the authorized biography of Peterson, A Burning in My Bones. I do not mean to suggest that this is a Peterson-inspired story, altough the earth spirituality and the gentle effort towards a long obedience in the same direction seems about right.

Peterson said:

This book is a tour de force–an angle on understanding the life of both congregation and pastor that exceeds anything I have ever read. No directions, no programs, just an immersion into what really takes place in the life of a congregation and a pastor. Winn Collier’s writing is alive.

 

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

Wee Kirk includes some serious thinkers, laypeople and pastors, even if most prefer reading a bit more on the accesible and practical side. But for those up for it, Baal and the Gods of More seemed to me to be spot on, a serious, heady, contextualized critique of the idolatry of growth. Growth ideologies give us unspoken assumptions that bigger is better and works against the Wee Kirk vibe of “small is beautiful.” I thought this would be one they’d really appreciate.

Appreciate it they did. We had some good conversations next to my stacked up and nicely displayed bunch. But you know what? Small churches in most places know that they can’t grow much. They aren’t going to do zippy programming in their often older buildings and with their own aging demographics, they aren’t on the front lines of edgy evangelism. They do more funerals than baptisms.

And they are mostly okay with that. Some are nostalgic — the older ones remember when their churches were booming — and some wish for innovative ministry of one sort or another. But they haven’t worshipped the gods of more and they didn’t need to read an academic treatise on the American church growth culture and a denunciation of the idols of the age.

But you maybe should. Am I wrong? Most churches are infected one way or another with this drive towards innovation and efficiency and growth. Just the other day we got a new book called Against Convenience: Embracing Friction in an Age of Endless Ease by Gabe Bullard (Hanover Square Press; $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60.) I can’t imagine a church leader thinking that’s a good idea, but, in the long run, somehow, maybe saying no to the idols of “more” and “bigger” (and cheaper and quicker) will demand some countercultural habits. There is a cost to all the gimmicks to create a frictionless church growth mindset, and Andrew Root is the best guide to help us break free of the spirit of the age. Highly recommended.

Lost, Hidden, Small: Finding the Way of Jesus Where We Never Think to Look Kate Haynes Murphy (Broadleaf) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I started my little up-front announcement about this one noting the Anne Lamott quote on the front cover: “I loved this book for its wisdom, message and welcome, its depth and its many charms, especially the clear and deeply human voice of the author, Pastor Kate.” Not bad, eh?

I could have named Wesley Vander Lugt, a theological and excellent writer — we loved his Beauty is Oxygen: Finding a Faith that Breath — who has on the back cover these words:

Walter Brueggemann has written about how the true work of ministry is rejecting the dominant cultural script — what he calls therapeutic, technological, consumeristic militarism — and living by the counter-script of God. Kate Haynes Murphy casts a similar vision and invites us to embrace an appropriately uncomfortable counter-script that challenges typical American ways of viewing church. Murphy vulnerably recounts her own faith and leadership journey; the temptation to desire a church that is large, in charge, and the talk of the town; and the humbling discovery that the way of Jesus often leads in the opposite direction. This book is an honest and encouraging saga of how someone who feels like a train wreck can participate in the subversive script and ministry of God. It’s an invitation to find kinship and delight in the league of holy losers.

Who doesn’t want a church that is “large, in charge, and the talk of the town.” But, oh, what if we invited and hosted a different vision among us? What if we found the way of Jesus by exploring his parables about the lost and the hidden. Could a small, quiet, gentle, counter-cultural faith spring forth in the ashes of the recentered gods of more?

With Murphy’s storytelling and honesty and effort to “burn down the illusion we’ve built around our faith” (as Rachel Marie Kang put it) this eloquent book could help us find a refreshing way to live. She asks “what if the abundant life lies in finding what’s been lost, uncovering what is hidden, and learning to hope in what is small?” Lost Hidden Small” Finding the Way of Jesus Where We Never Think to Look is an amazing book, serious and profound, even as it is written with a light touch. We are all lost. This book — written by the  somewhat edgy pastor of The Grove Church in Charlotte NC — could help. Even for those of us who are not in wee kirks or small places. Buy it today!

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

YOU ARE WARMLY INVITED to our upcoming webinar this Thursday evening.

You are warmly invited to our upcoming webinar this Thursday evening (October 15, 2026) with the debut author Jeremy Sims, author of the InterVarsity Press formatio release, The Way of the Spirit: Recognizing and Responding to God’s Subtle Movements. You must register at the link (HERE) and you will then be sent a Zoom-like code that gets you free access to our conversation on Thursday night. You will be able to type in questions to us, too, so I can ask Jeremy the questions you may have about his ministry, his story, and his book. It starts at 8:00 PM Eastern Time and will go about an hour or so. All are invited. It’s going to be a blast.

I’ve already done a lengthy rave review of The Way of the Spirit although, truth be told, I knew I’d want to have Jeremy on a special Hearts & Minds conversation webinar no matter what he was writing about. He buys remarkable books from us, can name key titles that influenced his journey, and he’s had a rich, complicated life. He lost his first wife to a very difficult disease and, while sobered by that, is a very fun guy, a happy husband and fabulous dad, and a vibrant educator at an Assembly of God university in Florida. I’d read anything this dude writes.

On Thursday night we will talk about his life and the writing of the book, but I suspect the big take-away will be how this book so very wisely invites us into the grand tradition of deeper Christian spirituality. Dr. Sims has chapters on the desert fathers and mothers, he writes on Julian of Norwich and Saint John of the Cross. He knows the interior castle of Teresa of Avila and he understands the Ignatian methods. From a great chapter on Mary to one on Brother Lawrence (and finding God’s presence in the ordinary) Jeremy offers to ordinary readers great and practical insights from these great devotional classics. It really is a great read, well-informed and accessible and full of good stories.

Sims calls what he’s learning and what he’s encouraging us to learn “spiritual granularity.” This really is a process where we cultivate the down-to-Earth ability to discern what God’s Spirit is up to in our lives. Can we sense God’s presence anew in transforming ways? Can we survey the landscape of God’s movements, even in hard times? That is what Jeremy’s book will help us do, and the conversation with him — which I trust will be lots of fun, actually — will guide us towards this capacity to be responsive to the Spirit of God. He has learned about attentiveness both personal and shared. I can’t wait to hear his southern drawl as he tells us how it’s done.

We must gently practice this way of the Spirit, and the book’s title is exactly what is proposed: a way of life (think Eugene Peterson’s reflections on the way the Way is the way) and a way of the Holy Spirit. Did I mention that Jeremy is a former pastor and now professor in the Pentecostal tradition? Yep.

Jeremy knew something about the workings of the Holy Ghost long before he grew restless, before his first wife died, before he went to Portland Seminary, before he did the deep dive into the mystics that yielded this book. But God has taught him plenty. Now he is one of the more precious and tender voices writing about spiritual formation today.

Esteemed Pentecostal writer (and ecological scholar) A.J. Swoboda, says in his forward to The Way of the Spirit:

The life of the Spirit, Jeremy wisely shows us, is one that looks deeper into things than the surface. The “subtle movements” of God— as he calls them — don’t often come in the big, grandiose, and famed. Rather, they are the quiet places, the whispers, the gentle breezes, the little shakes that are the movements of God’s presence….it is not that God is not speaking. It is that we are prone not to listen. What this book does is invite us to put down our phones and talk to the burning bush for a little while.

Who knows? Maybe this fun conversation between Jeremy and me will show tiny sparks from a burning bush. In any case, I hope you are able to join in. Please register today.

Register now and then  join us this Thursday night at 8 PM Eastern Time.

SIGN UP HERE

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

There is lots happening in the broader book world this season. Here at Hearts & Minds  I can hardly contain myself, wanting you to know about some key forthcoming titles we’re excited about. Then I’ll mention four very, very important books that I will implore you to consider and a fifth more philosophical one that might intrigue some readers.

But first: we finally have a date and registration link for our October 15th webinar with the great Jeremy Sims. I’ve written about his IVP book The Way of the Spirit: Recognizing and Responding to God’s Subtle Movements HERE and have mentioned this free evening with him, an hour or so of good conversation, learning about his story, his writing, the book and what he hopes folks get out of it. I am sure it’s going to be a great time, so hold the date (and tell others, please.) I number a number of customers have asked and there’s a lot of us eager to engage.

You can register for free right now. CLICK HERE:  https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XSBeJUbXSHisGW0L9sZBfg

October 15th is about a week away and I’ll write more again next time, but do (please) help us spread the word.

It’s free and at 8:00 Eastern Time. You can ask questions and we’ll hvae a great time together.

(AND, while we’re on the topic of yours truly gabbing with great authors, get October 27th on your calendar as well. I’ll be hosting Jeff Crosby about this fabulous new book Spirit in the Sky. More about signing up to join that free program will come soon, too, but, again, please help us get the word out about this fun conversation. You may recall previous conversations Jeff and I have had about his earlier books and they were lovely and got great feedback. So we hope you’ll join us. We’ll have a registration link for that soon.)

+++

Besides these two planned online goings-on — I’m honored to be able to do this kind of work, connecting readers and authors — new titles keep rolling in. I finally got to lay eyes on the forthcoming Wendell Berry, Dispatches from Rural America: Sixteen Essays which we really are not allowed to sell until its official release date October 27th. If you want on the pre-order list, drop us a line asap, either at our email or by using the order form page at our website. (Counterpoint Press; $27.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60.) I think it was his last book, although there will be some new short stories appearing in a very special Library of America edition coming out maybe a year from now.

The new John Mark Comer, Into the Quiet: Following Jesus in a World of Noise released this week and we’ve sent out the pre-orders at our BookNotes 20% off. (Waterbrook; $30.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00.) I hope you saw my earlier review and know how much we appreciate this accessible, upbeat work. Wow.

Not to mention Partita, the first Barbara Kingsolver novel since she won the pulitzer Prize for Demon Copperhead. (Harper; $32.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $25.60.) There’s lot of other new fiction, but Beth and I both are very eager for this, although neither of us has touched it yet. We’d be happy to send it out to you or any other novels you’re looking for.

And this: we’re getting more pre-orders for the November 9th release of Malcolm Guite’s sequel to the exquiste Galahad and the Grail which will be entitled The Return of Arthur. Again, this second in the Merlin’s Isle saga is truly an historic literary event; it’s the first time a major poet has done an epic ballad retelling the whole Arthurian cycle of stories in more than a century. Part two will be handsomely illustrated and designed like the first by the exceptionally talented Stephen Crotts. (Rabbit Room; $34.99;  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99.) We are grateful for the many who ordered the first one from us and delighted to know how it was so enjoyed by so many.  Kudos one and all.

Before that arrives, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for the for October 27th release of Into the Heart of Isaiah: The Meaning and Message of Isaiah 40-55 by N.T. Wright (Zondervan; $29.99 //OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99.) For those who pay attention to such things, the Advent lectionary texts this year will be from the middle of Isaiah, so this is going to be just in time. I hope we’ll have it early, even.)

Speaking of books we are eager to celebrate, we have been privileged to get an early sample of what is going turn out to be one of the most creatively arranged — I don’t know what other word to use, although I’ll have to find some when I review it in earnest later — book of many a year. I’m referring to a breathtakingly energetic and structurally magnificent forthcoming title called This Is a Door by the award-winning Daniel Nayeri. I’m sure you know and love his other work, at least his most popular YA novel Everything Sad Is Untrue (A True Story.) His new one, This is a Door, comes out October 27th. (Stonefruit Studio; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.) Pre-order it now, or wait a bit and I’ll tell you more about this adventure story (featuring a boy named Nothing the Younger.)

In early November we will get a book that I have been waiting for for years — finally, a new book from the exquiste Lauren Winner. It will be called The Entangled Word: Keeping Company with Scripture Through the Church Year (Brazos Press; $22.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39) which is a collection of sermons, actually. Years and years ago she wrote a magnificent forward to the IVP book Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God by Bobby Gross which I read regularly. In fact, I read it out loud to my adult Sunday School class just this past Sunday. I am looking forward to the new work by Ms Winner and invite you to pre-order it now.

The best way to preorder is to jump on our website’s secure order form page (below) and tell us what you want. If your getting more than one, tell us if you should consolidate them, sending them together, or if we should send one as soon as it comes, and the others whenever they arrive. We’re at your service.

+++

I’ve got five books I want to tell you about and I want to say this as sincerely and soberly as I can. These are very, very important because they speak to the complicated crisis of our time. With the current President cavalierly speaking about nuclear weapons use, and candidly about the possibility of (illegally) dispatching military or paramilitary troops over surely untrue claims of election fraud, we need to consider the presence of authoritarian rule (acting in violation of the rule of law) as more and more upon us. I am not sure it is helpful to name it fascism, but as at least one of these well-researched books note, some of the architects of Trump’s zietgist and policy proposals are big fans of Franco’s Spain. All the deep thinkers behind his movement have studied German Nazi jurisprudence. Others seemed to like the death squads of the 1980s El Salvador. As I’ve shown in other books in other BookNotes, there are at least a few bona fide neo-Nazi’s in the MAGA movement. We cannot deny the threats to our civic order. And we cannot allow loud and well-funded voices to talk about faith in ways that are horribly inconsistent with the ways of Jesus without understanding them and discerning how best to respond with a better public witness. These books will help.

As a younger man I was given — I believe that is the best way to say it — what some call a life verse, I Chronicles 12:32. I’m not sure I even had read Chronicles in 1977 when it hit me, but I love this description of the tribe of Issachar. They “understood the times and knew what God’s people should do.” I’ve tried to be diligent in reading widely and curating books for our BookNotes readers and the broader circles of Hearts & Minds friends. I hope we’ve helped a little bit nurturing in you a sense that you can be a son or daughter of Issachar. Or at least a Narnia, but I digress…

Here, then, are a few vital books for our complex days, for those who know, or want to know, the signs of the times. I hope they give you some new information, inform your desire to be a good citizen and help you to think about what some call public theology,. May these books help you pray harder, give to new causes, perhaps, become active in local organizations for the common good, and to speak up wherever appropriate about what John Adams called these “serious times.” They are my top suggestions on this topic for Fall of 2026 about our lives here in the USA.

I do hope you are inspired to keep learning about this unfolding topic.

(For bigger book lists about faithful Christian political views and a critique of distorted ideologies like religious nationalism, see this good list from a year ago HERE and, from this past Spring, HERE.)

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

I highlighted this before and suggested it seriously but now that I’ve read every page, I’m very very confident to say that I agree with Kristen Kobe Du Mez who says “Every American Christian should read this book and take its message to heart.”

E.J. Dionne (a moderate Christian thinker of faith and democracy, now of the Brookings Institute) says Jones is “one of the country’s most intelligent and fair-minded explorers of the American religious and political minds.”

Jones was raised a deep south Southern Baptist and studied in college both mathematics and faith. As a younger man he enrolled in an evangelical seminary but eventually — a long story he shares more personally in Blackslide than he has in any of his other blockbuster books about race and white supremacy — he gets advanced training in statistics. Yep, he’s a theologically and socially aware social scientist who founded a research institute to poll Americans about their faith, values, concerns, and hopes about our civic life. Like his other books, his research from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) figures into the book as he crunches numbers about what white evangelicals think, who is for or against Trump, what subgrouping of religious or nonreligious groups of various sorts have changed their attitudes in recent years. For instance, he asks who thinks that breaking the law may be necessary to keep law and order (as Trump has said and as the J6 rioters did.) More white evangelicals say that than do any other subgrouping polled and this book is jam-packed with data that I find exceptionally helpful to understand the socio-political landscape of our current context. You should have it, I think.

Those of us who believe the gospel must be contextualized and proclaimed in ways that are attentive to the ideologies and values on the ground simple need to know this stuff. And, more, those who want to keep fighting for a robust Republic, keeping democracy alive and well, have to know what we are up against. Again, this is a really helpful resource giving us courage and wisdom for the living of these days (as the famous hymn puts it.)

Backslide is not just another book asking about has become the biggest question of my lifetime — how did the evangelical world turn so massively towards Mr. Trump and embrace his America First ideology? — although it does lay out much of the backsliding religiously and politically among conservative American Protestants (and others.) And it offers an alternative vision, too, Jones naming in great detail how to understand some of the faultlines in the culture wars that are upstream of the political polarization we now so deeply sense. There is some very good history and I bet you’ll quickly realize you’re learning quite a bit. If you are like me, you’ll be really grateful.

For instance, there is a spectacular chapter on Columbus; if you want a summary of why many on the left (and many in some churches) are critical of the mercenary Spanish explorer, and why it behooves people of Christian faith to reconsider their loyalty to the ways in which his mythology has pervaded our civic lives together, you’ve got to read this chapter. I had no idea that Columbus Day was created in part to appease pressure from the Italian government after white citizens mass-murdered (in part through the largest lynching in American history) hundreds of Italian immigrants in New Orleans. This is a historically-informed bit of vital information but Jones is adept in showing how the mythology grew and how developments like the forming (and selling) the Pledge of Alligence helped create a civil religious canopy over American life.

His chapter on the contemporary war on empathy is excellent (and he names names.) His stuff on race is always good; his research and teaching on other key aspects of (some) religious leadership turning in favor of forces that are antt-democracitc is very helpful. I think that the most important chapter for me was one on how we ought not frame our concerns in terms of navigating polarization. That is, civility and grace (always good values and habits, of course) are not helpful when conversation partners are not committed to preserving the nation, when they fundamentally oppose principled pluralistic democracy. We can’t just be nice to those who want to override the Constitution. We can’t wax eloquent about moderation and reaching across the aisle as if that is going to be adequate in resisting the shift towards fascism.

(His data about the popular vote and the Electoral College and his brief subsequent evaluation of the difference between the  prevelant US two-party system in contrast to European proportional representation and multi-party systems was fascinating to me. I know my friends at the Center for Public Justice have long advocated for thinking through better ways to do elections and voting and campaigning and such. Not super sexy, but maybe a long-term structural solution to the corruption and deadlock in both major parties. Anyway, Jones is really interesting in this.)

Backslide is an urgent cry, a invitation to think and learn the facts and pay attention to authentic faith (vs the civil religious fundamentalism of Jones’s upbringing that has morphed into something different.) As one reviewer put it, Jones “infused his call for an American reawakening in the language of faith so many of us grew up with — one that prioritizes brotherhood over seperation, and care for the lead of these over selfishness and hate.”  Eddie Glaude Jr, a much respected Black scholar at Princeton, says “Jones stands as one of the most important Christian voices of our time.”  With Backlash, I agree. It’s a fantastic read.

American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords Are Turning America Into a Monarchy Bradley B. Onishi (St. Martin’s Essentials) $29.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Onishi wrote in 2023 a prescient and exceptionally powerful book about the rise of the extremist, nationalist right called Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism–and What Comes Next, published by Broadleaf. It was riveting and scary, documenting (once again) the harsher side of the evangelical and fundamentalist far fright. From white supremacy groups to the right of the KKK and churches praying death threats against ordinary Democratic leaders, this sort of expose shows the underside of what is a pretty zealous movement at its best.  He would know as he was part of that world! As Randall Balmer writes:

In Preparing for War, Bradley Onishi traces the history of White Christian nationalism from the John Birch Society to the Big Lie and the January 6 terrorist assault on the U.S. Capitol–a narrative enlivened by the author’s own intersections with the movement. This is an excellent and important book, both chilling and prophetic. — Randall Balmer, historian author of Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right

Now, in the years since, Onishi has dug deeper, beyond the gripping history of these guys, but a further investigation into some of the recent players. He looks at anti-democracy activists (some who very directly say that don’t believe in the Constitution and would prefer a monarchy, a king!)  Of course, some just want Jesus to be enthroned as King of the country in different sorts of configurations of a theonomy or theocracy. Who knew the relationship of church and state could be so thorny?

He looks at the largely Catholic movement (called intregalism) which was being discussed even in mid-20th century conservative circles; think of the famous internal debates between William F. Buckley and his brother-in-law, Brent Bozell. And the way some political theorists shaping things like the Heritage Foundation and their infamous Project — you know, the one Trump so dishonestly said he had never heard of days before he appointed some of their drafters — are drawn to that worldview. They have the direct ear of J.D. Vance, of course, somewhat of an champion of their philosophy. The closing chapter on Vance is not to be missed.

Of course, he has to look at Doug Wilson, a “kinder, gentler” sort of R. J. Rushdoony, who was known for his obscure but prolific publishing for decades arguing for theonomy. It  is said that some of his writings and some of his followers think that we should stone rebellion children and execute unrepentant homosexuals. Saying that women shouldn’t vote as Wilson has, is catching on due to the ways in which Wilson’s church planting network has drawn in Department of War head, Pete Hegseth. Hegseth doesn’t strike me as a mature or experience leader, anyway, but his deep commitment to these almost-cult-like weird Calvinists ought to give us all pause.

I know a lot of this genealogy of Reformed thinking and have read some Rushdoony and some Wilson. I get their call to hold up the Lordship of Christ over all of life — it sounds almost like Bonhoeffer’s Barmen Declaration against Hitler, right? Or Francis Schaeffer, even.  But Onishi wouldn’t see any such decent similarities and he is right to point out the dangerous direction this anti-democratic movement is taking us. He call us to disgust and to resistance to these influences. He is not the first to expose the ugliness in Moscow, Idaho, under the leadership of Wilson who has a long rap sheet — from stupid books affirming Civil War-era slavery to his insensitivity to domestic violence and marital rape. He’s not like the Christian Identity cult in Idaho, of course, but there are certain authoritarian overlaps.

Most surprising to me was his study of Peter Thiel, the “frenemy” of his more famous and flamboyant Silicon Valley counterpart, Elon Musk. Both are billionaires (Thiel famously sold his invention — PayPal — for billions!) and both have eccentric political and religious backgrounds. Thiel has, in recent years, been speaking about the Anti-Christ and the End Times (but, oddly, not as a dispensational fundamentalist, but as one who studied under — get this! — Rene Girard. In any case, there is much to know about the “tech bros” and how the far right is deeply influenced by their desires for a strong leader who is not beholden to “we the people.” He has another chapter called, simply, “Techno-feudalism” and that, coupled with a theocratic Caesar-ism, really does capture some of the behind-the-scenes influencers of the current GOP, whether ordinary Christian nationalists are into the “postliberal alliance” that Onishi shows is brewing.

I liked how Onishi tracks some of the personal history of these characters, trying to fairly describe their views and where those views come from. It is not as academic or as thick as one I promoted last summer — the excellent and detailed Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right by Laura  K. Field. But man, it is well documented and colorful. And, yes, the influence of Nazi-legal theorist Carl Schmitt comes up, as does the complicated Leo Strauss and his followers.  Some of it is almost too weird to believe. Some of it will give you the creeps. The chapter that includes the constrasts between Vice-President Pence in Trump’s first term (and his classic, old-school Reagan-esque conservativism) and J.D. Vance and his integralist beliefs that are so different is really remarkable and very helpful.) Yep, the subtitle says it all —it really is about “how theocrats and tech lords are turning American into a monarchy.”

I could say this about any book, of course, but for what it is worth: no book is perfect and no book says everything that needs saying. For the record, I found a slight error regarding the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (obscure, right?) And I think he misreads (ever so briefly) the Yale Lutheran scholar George Lindbeck. But my-oh-my, this is serious stuff and often exceedling insightful. It is very important. I very highly recommed it.

Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism Rick Pidcock (Broadleaf) $28.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

This may be one that not everybody will find helpful, but for those who are familiar with the contemporary praise and worship music of most big evangelical churches, or the stuff they play on many formerly CCM music radio stations, this exploration will be edge-of-your-seat amazing.

You all know the movement in the 1980s when CCM — contemporary Christian music — became an industry filled with often really good musicians, from Charlie Peacock to Amy Grant to Rich Mullins to the Rez band, and, eventually indie rock types, what we called “alternative” like The Choir or the 77s and then Christian heavy metal and punk, too. We were in the thick of it, carrying CDs (that we still have for sale, by the way), having music video showings. and doing stuff at local festivals. Anyway, more than a decade ago that artful, creative stuff gave way to worship songs, and arena sized bands — think Hillsong, say — took over. Now you’d buy tickets not to a rock concert but to a worship service. Many cool alt-Christian rock radio stations now just do praise songs by sound-alike bands with a big, big following. And, naturally, the music directors at big churches duplicate these songs on Sunday. It is an industrial-sized complex, and is the topic for another day. (We have a handful of excellent books studying how modern worship music does or doesn’t faithfully shape folks at the churches that listen to these songs and how this massive movement of certain sorts of music has influenced the rise and sustainability of many large community churches. Let us know if you want some suggestions to read up on this.)

For our purposes here, though, the former evangelical worship pastor Rick Pidcock now deconstructs the songs that are often used in the pro-Trump, Christian nationalist, and MAGA movement, showing how many of the popular worship songs have been co-opted for political purposes.

Or, have they been co-opted, really? Or is there something extremists and Christian supremacist about much of the worship music industry? What comes first, songs about slaying enemies or January 6th worshippers carrying weapons? Songs that teach a certain sort of aggressive approach to culture wars and making God’s enemies our own, or the actual (sometimes violent) activism of street fighters like the Proud Boys and other toughs serving Trump in the name of Jesus?  At the very least the undiserning lyrics of some of the big worship hits have been used to motivate people doing harm in the public square.

Pidcock starts this book with the riveting but obvious starting story — Sean Feucht.  The poster-boy for long-haired boring rockstar worship in service of Trump and election lies and battle lingo to fight God’s — the GOPs, that is — enemies did a tour with a few fringe election deniers, Pentecostal preachers, New Apostolic types and other MAGA prophets, and Pidcock tells it first hand. (Okay, he wasn’t in the White House when Feucht had the special sing-along with the appreciative President, but he narrates the episode well.) This book blends what Katherine Stewart calls “sharp analysis, in-depth reporting, and insights gleaned as a former worship pastor.”

Is worship music battle music? Is it partisan? Is there some sense in which many of your favorites (they are Pidcock’s favorites, too) have within them the seeds of a move to “sacralize the drive to a theocratic and autocratic order”?

As North Park Seminary dean Dennis Edwards (author of Might from the Margins) writes:

Weapons of Worship gives us a clear picture of the power and influence of white evangelical music to fuel Christian nationalism in both subtle and overt ways… Pastors. Laypeople, and educators will find this book illuminating, and, hopefully, it will propel us all to think seriously about what it means to worship God with music.

Former pastor Pidcock is not having this. He cares about worship, he cares about Jesus, and he can’t abide the misuse of even somewhat Biblically-influenced music being used as a backdrop towards authoritarianism, racism, brutality, and lies.  Can music designed to glorify our Servant King Jesus really be a soundtrack to extremism? What a book!

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

Oh boy, what a book. I hope you know that Matthew Taylor’s previous book, The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, is a book I think is nearly essential for our times, a study of the way the mostly Pentecostal New Apostolic Reformation movement developed increasingly towards a dominionist worldview, using what thought were words from God, intense prayer and politicking to try to take over what they call the “seven mountains” of society. I would hope, naturally, that people of Christian faith would indeed be “salt” and “light” and “leaven” in these seven spheres, and more, but I see no mandate in the Bible to conquer anybody or take over anything. They are weird in their sensational spirituality, naming apostles and prophets and anointing people to call down angels to fight territorial demons. Even for those of us who believe in the power of angels and demons and know we inhabit a supernatural world, this hyper-spirituality leading to power-mongering and corrupt politics (and considerable wealth) is beyond bizarre. Matthew Taylor was more gracious about it all than I might have been, and The Violent Take It By Force explores that sub-culture of evangelicalism and shows how their prayer networks were used to get people to the January 6th protests. No wonder that Bible verse was one of the most used tags as prayer warriors by the hundreds misquoted it to approve of the riot.  The New Apostolic Reformation is a global force, linked to authoritarian regimes and, in the name of an understandable desire to bring God’s healing and hope to every zone of life, have gone way, way off the rails.

In this new book, I expected more of the same, exploring and exposing the cutting edges of these platoons of crusaders. I thought it might be like American Dominion: The Rise and Radicalization of a New Christendom by Keri Ladner or the aforementioned American Caesar by Onishi, documenting, again, the bad players. But I was wrong — it is less a critique of the new religious right (a very different sort of beast than the old religious right) but a “theonomist-informed” manifesto of what Kingdom living ought to be like. What should faithful Christians say and do and who should we be in an age when these false doctrines and dangerous fellow citizens naming the name of Christ (often in violent tones) for their authoritarian, racist agenda are rising in prevelance and influence? When too many give cover in this odd ideology of power?

Drying Tyrants does indeed explore the dangers of Christian nationalism and the long introduction is a great summary of the dangerous times we face. I found it informative, clear-headed, and fairly concise. But then, the heart of the book is more than naming and resisting those things that are anti-Christian, but offers an alternative vision for Christian living in resistance to the idols of the age, even when those idols are most promoted by church folks.

Two quick things. First, I said in my announcement of this a few weeks ago that I wasn’t fully comfortable with what seems like an over-the-top slur, calling our misguided brothers and sisters “antichrists.” (My friend David Dark has a brilliant bit of rhetoric about that nomenclature in his must-read We Become What We Normalize, especially his bit about soft exorcisms.) Taylor notes that this language was used in the early church and by some of the esteemed Fathers, so I’ll temper my concern a bit. I hadn’t read that part when I griped about it earlier. It is still harsh, but it is true that there are political statements and policy moves that are against Christ. He is not being unfair or ugly about it.

Further, know that the first part of this (two chapters, about the first 50 pages) offers a very good study of what he calls “the fever swamps of Christian supremacy”  which looks at the first few centuries “from Jesus to Christendom” and a great chapter called “wheat and anti wheat.” It’s useful history, believe me.

The next parts are essential a fiery argument with the conservative worldview and authoritarian politics of the fundamentalist and Pentecostal right wing of the MAGA movement. In this sense, it is a manifesto of contemporary Christian living, a social theology based on the incarnation and God’s Kingdom, a gospel that developed as subversive to Caesar and how the early Christians were consider enemies of the state. All of this is based on readings of the New Testament, on Christ’s own words and deeds, and the notion of the slaughtered Lamb that we follow into His apocalypse. There are shades of radical Anabaptists here and it sounds like Jim Wallis at his most fiery, or Dorothy Day, or Jacques Ellul or Oscar Romero. If you’ve taken our suggestion and worked through Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, you’d have a good feel for some of this impeccable scholarship opening up the gospel as a subversive movement against the powers that be.

Taylor knows his stuff. There are citations from historians who document the horror of the crusades; there is stuff about stuff like the “Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII” and insights from those who resisted the Third Reich. He hears voices from the margins, from Frederick Douglas and Howard Thurman, but most footnotes are from the likes of Athanasius and Gregory Nazianzen and Ireneus and Augustine. He is rooted in Scripture and driven by a desire to offer an answer to the question of “Christian awfulness” that is faithful to the God who “entered humanity as a colonized peasant in the hinterlands of the Roman Empire.”

It has been described as a “searing polemic” and a “lyrical meditation.” It shines a light on the  great counter-tradition, telling of the generous lives and sacrifice of those who have stood up to authoritarians through the centuries. As he notes, “the gospel of Jesus pulls the rug out from under all human hierarchies.”

In Defying Tyrants, Taylor goes beyond his academic bone fades to become a powerful preacher —  illuminating Scripture and culture alike to inspire, empower, and activate all who dare to read this book.” — Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians and Disciples of White Jesus

Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era Susan Neiman (W.W. Norton) $27.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

If you were reading carefully, a few weeks ago, or just above, you’ll recall I offered a bit of an apology for using the language of “antiChrists” when talking about those involved in extremist political ideologies, in this case, of the fascist leaning right. In my observation there is nothing on the left that compares to these dangers of authoritarian anti-democratic ideas or lawless, violent behaviors in the streets. But still, I hate to use exceptionally freighted words in ways that might seem like hyperbole. With this book, eminent philosopher and scholar of the subject, struggles with a similar sort of question — is it fair or decent or helpful to use the language of evil in referring to the hoodlums on the far right and those who embrace the likes of President Trump. I’m glad she frets about the wisdom of her whole project and I found the opening mostly compelling.

Neiman is the director emerita of the Einstein Forum who has worked as a philosophy professor at both Yale University and Tel Aviv University. She has written many serious academic works, including her most famous, Evil in the Modern Thought. (Not too long ago her book Left Is Not Work got some attention in some arcane circles.) Now, Neiman, at the invitation of her publisher, takes her theories from Evil in Modern Thought and applies them to the question of whether it is proper to use the language of evil when talking about the current extremists movement of technocrats and Christian supremacists. Drawing on moral failures of those under European fascism, she highlights the failures of contemporary leaders.

This is academic and distinctly philosophical.  There are lines when she is citing philosophers as different as Theodor Adorno and Ludwig Wittgenstein. She’s asking what a social right is, for instance, and the reductionism that captures the imagination of more liberal leaning politicos in saying “It’s the economy, stupid.” Clearly, for her, it is not merely about dollars.

Of course she has do deal with Hannah Arendt’s account of evil (its banality) drawn from her coverage of the Eichmann trials. She finds fault with Arendt’s understandings of Eichmann and struggles with the role of intention (even in matters of genocide.) Her analysis of Communism is astute (she cites Tony Judt) and, as a secularist and progressive, explores much about modern culture even as she rejects religious insights. (Her chapter on socialism is very interesting.) The book isn’t for everyone, and I wasn’t even sure many BookNotes readers needed to know about it, but Call It Evil is asking hugely important questions about “an entire postwar order and its wicked premises: profit, powers, and the punishment of the most vulnerable” (as James Wood put it in his review.)  At least for those who like detailed academic reflections, it is interesting to see a secular scholar using such robust moral language. Fintan O’Toole (of We Don’t Know Ourselves) said it was “as brilliant as it is bracing.”

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Anything here entice you? Any look interesting, helpful, even? Please use the convenient link to our secure order form at the end of this BookNotes column.

Or call — we are always happy to talk books.  Enjoy! 

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

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

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

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

+++

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

 ANY BOOKS MENTIONED

order here

this takes you to the secure Hearts & Minds order form page
just tell us what you want to order

inquire here

if you have questions or need more information
just ask us what you want to know

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to these quotes, please:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The publisher tells us this much:

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

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

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

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

Here are some blurbs about it:

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

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

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

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

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

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

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

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

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

These are (most of) our favorites this month.

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

15 NEW BOOKS WE VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zahn writes:

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

He continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wright continues,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+++

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

READ LAST WEEK’S BOOKNOTES POST HERE.

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

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

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

limited Labor Day week-end special

30 – 50% OFF

 ANY BOOKS MENTIONED

order here

this takes you to the secure Hearts & Minds order form page
just tell us what you want to order

inquire here

if you have questions or need more information
just ask us what you want to know