The great new books keep on coming, friends, and despite concerns about book buying — especially from real bookstores like ours — we are ever glad to be a part of the (decades-old, now) renaissance of thoughtful, diverse, Christian publishing. Hardly a day goes by that we are not blessed with fascinating orders from all over the land, eager, curious readers who are sometimes desperate for just the right thing to read or to share, to study or promote. We are heartened and humbled by the chance to serve.

We are honored to play a small role in your own formation and your ministry of book-sharing; ha — I know some of you give away as many books as you buy for yourself. Thanks for reading BookNotes and thanks for watching or listening to our “Three Books from Hears & Minds” podcast. Thanks for sending orders to us here in our south central corner of the Keystone State. We are told that what we do matters, and we are grateful for your support.

ALL 15 OF THESE NEW ONES ARE 20% OFF.

As always, scroll to the bottom of this BookNotes column to see all the books discussed and find that order link which takes you to our secure order form page at our website. Or just give us a call (at 717-246-3333.) We’re here 10 am – 6 pm EST Monday through Saturday and we’re happy to chat.

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In no particular order, here are fifteen recent ones that we’re very eager to highlight.

Remissioning Church: A Field Guide to Bringing a Congregation Back to Life Josh Hayden (IVP) $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

What a good price this detailed book is, so even if your only slightly worried about the health of your local church, give this a read and you’ll be at least a bit more aware of the issues facing congregations in decline. I’ll cut to the chase: it notes, “the Spirit of God is inviting established churches to embrace the cross as a pathway to new life to grow in missional presence and see the flourishing of their neighborhoods.”

I’ve been impressed with so many books that carry the word “missional” in the title or subtitle these days, although a few years ago it nearly became such a buzz-word as to be considerably less meaningful that in the early, heady days of quoting Newbigin and insisting that we follow a radical Christ into our post-Christian culture by serving well even as we embody the reign of God breaking into our midst (within or, more likely, outside the conventional church walls.) I have long admired the extraordinary books by Howard Snyder (like his must-read Community of the King) that in the last century said that the real point of the Biblical narrative is the coming new creation restoration of “all things” (Ephesians 1:10) under the rubric of the Kingdom of God. The local community of worshipping believers is the hub of that broader wheel, with the scattered people of God being spokes of the church even as they head off to various spheres and callings throughout the work-week. That emphasis on strong community and a large sense of sent-ness was missional before missional was a thing.

Yet, despite the missional / Kingdom vision (and very good work in so many books and talks and podcasts and confabs around the world) churches remain in the doldrums. In recent years, those that use the overtly Biblical language of justice or reconciliation or even community service are under attack, sometimes from their own members, fearing their leaders have gone “woke.” Which, of course, is a darn shame, how the MAGA movement has stolen even our Biblical language, as if justice and liberation and reconciliation are bad things!

Enter Josh Hayden, a church leader who runs trainings for various denominational leaders (and within global networks as well.) Without giving up on a missional vision of cultural contextualization and “reading the signs of the times” he does some basic church revitalization stuff “through a transformational process from death to new life.”

This is brand new so I’ve only skimmed it but I think it may be a truly stand-out book in this genre where there is already a plethora of congregational leaders offering programs and plans to help your church get out of the doldrums.

Dying? How’s that for a plan.

Still there are plenty of field-tested and quite practical strategies offered in Remissioning. It is called “a field guide” after all. United Methodist former Bishop Will Willimon, notes how Hayden loves the local church and that his new book “is destined to help scores of churches find their way to the future.” Maybe you need it, or somebody you know…

1 Corinthians: A Theological, Pastoral, & Missional Commentary Michael J. Gorman (Eerdmans) $39.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

We don’t often write about the many scholarly theological books and serious Biblical commentaries that we carry; not as many of our customers seem interested — I guess the readers who wade in that part of the deep end of the book buying waters don’t follow us, much — but there are a few masters of the work whose work I will always shout about, glad for their continued efforts and how their research and writing serves the body of Christ (not to mention interested skeptics or seekers.) You know some of the biggest working names in Biblical scholarship these days, I assume, and surely, Mike Gorman is on that list. I’d read anything he does, and you should, too.

His last major volumes were on the spirituality of Paul and the call to “cruciformity.” (There is even a book about his work, with great scholars weighing in, mostly in tribute and fine-tuning.) He has a heady book on John and an accesible one on Revelation. He’s done a major project on Romans and now, in an amazingly insight hardback, he brings his Pauline studies to bear on this beloved (if at time perplexing) letter of the great Apostle to the gentiles.

Gorman, who teaches at St. Mary’s Ecumenical Institute in Baltimore, MD, has given us in his 1 Corinthians, for those who care about such distinctions, what we might call a theological commentary. That is, he is not limited to merely literalistic and grammatical details and pure exegesis. He moves beyond the simple exegetical exposition and invites us to ponder more carefully what Paul meant and how we can understand this letter not only in its historical and canonical shape but in the framework created by other Pauline letters and the theology that emerges from them. That is, it’s a careful study, line by line, but framed by this bigger, missional concern, for living the truth of the letter in our very 21st century lives.  There is that word missional, again, right in the subtitle, which should alert you to his passion for both big picture theological thinking and very contemporary application.

Here is how Andy Johnson, a fine, emerging scholar who teaches at Nazarene Theological Seminary, puts it: Gorman, he says, “engages with culturally, historically, and theologically diverse voices to bring the concerns of this ancient letter into conversation with challenges facing the church today.” Johnson insists that “it is now my first choice for classroom use and the first recommendation I’ll have for pastors teaching and preaching on 1 Corinthians.”

“…it is now my first choice for classroom use and the first recommendation I’ll have for pastors teaching and preaching on 1 Corinthians.”

Likewise, Lucy Peppiatt (of Westminster Theological Centre in the UK) notes that this volume is “a treasure trove” because Gorman not only “provides a wealth of background information and explanation of the text, but he also captures the spirit and heart of what Paul longs to communicate to this complicated community.”

Paul says (in 1 Cor. 10:11) that this was written “also for our sake” and Mike cares deeply about local contemporary churches of all sorts, hoping they will hear and do what the letter inspires. In this sense he is theological, yes, but also pastoral. It isn’t every major commentary written by a world-class scholar, who offers discussion questions for pondering or even for a group studying together. These are really amazing and very useful for anyone teaching or preaching the text.

(I love, also, how in his “recommended reading” section after the superb introductory chapter, he suggests the most basic titles, the some mid-level ones, and those that are more rigorous or demanding reads. Hooray for this. He offers plenty of good suggestions after each chapter, too. Bibliophiles will love this guy who seems to know something about everything related to this project.)

From his earliest days, Professor Gorman has had a heart for the global church and is aware of the diversity (theologically and ethnically and culturally) of God’s people. He is attentive to this — I hope the word ecumenical doesn’t scare you away — and even as pastoral as he is, Gorman (as Issac Augustine Morales, OP, puts it) “brings out important elements of the text that continue to challenge believers today.”

In other words, this is just what a good commentary can be. Granted, I have not studied every chapter yet, but believe me — if you are a Bible lover and read commentaries at all (and even if you do not) Gorman’s new Eerdmans 1 Corinthians: A Theological, Pastoral, & Mission Commentary is one you will want to have handy. Order it today.

Walking the Way of the Wise: A Biblical Theology of Wisdom Mitchell L. Chase (IVP)$26.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

Often when a new volume is released in the Essential Studies in Biblical Theology, I want to whoop about it. This fabulous series of small books {we stock them all] brings a down-to-Earth, Biblically-robust, big-picture overview for thoughtful readers who want to dig in without wading through a 400-page hardback tome. The volumes in the InterVarsity Press ESBT series — a bit like the similarly small “Short Studies in Biblical Theology” published by Crossway — are ideal for those new to focused Biblical study and for anyone who likes the overview vision of seeing how a certain theme is played out throughout the Biblical narrative.

And so, the brand new one in the ESBT series just came out and it is on wisdom. Who doesn’t need more wisdom in their lives, more careful assessment of the many unwise options in our social contexts, more faithful application of Biblical truth in admittedly complex situations? Wisdom is a key to reading Scripture and while the Wisdom literature doesn’t seem to advance the storyline of the unfolding Biblical narrative, we ought to recall that wisdom in the Bible is found in more than the co-called wisdom literature. This book shows just that.

Mitchell Chase here traces the themes of wisdom (and folly) throughout Scripture. This book is, in the words of J. Daniel Hays, “strong academically, but it is also very readable and engaging, enriching to one’s one personal walk with God.”

And, of course, as is the custom in these ESBT books, every text is read in light of the bigger Biblical story and (in the words of Matthew Y. Emerson of Oklahoma Baptist University) “in its culmination in the person and work of Christ.” Walking in the Way of the Wise “sheds light on how every text is written for the instruction of the people of God in every day and age.” Nicely done, with a some study questions in the back.

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

You know how I stand on the big stage at the Jubilee conference to highlight important books for the gathered crowd? I regret not having read this before the last conference as I now wish I had highlighted it for one and all. I had a hunch I was going to like it and pondered putting it on the short list of those few I was promoting at Jubilee, but I just hadn’t spent enough time with it in February.

Now I’m ready to say that I love this book, that I found it challenging and entertaining, well-written and hard-hitting, with a perspective that is so solid and good. Culture is all around us, Buck reminds us, and all we think and do and say is shaped by the cultural air that we breath.  But yet, the subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) values that seep into our souls may not be in keeping with a social imagination shaped by Holy Scripture. What would Jesus say about our very identity to those of us stuck in the dominant culture, absorbing it’s deformed values?

This question is the wonderful topic of this beautiful and thoughtful book. I don’t want to say In God’s Good Image is about race and racism, or even ethnicity as such, but that comes close; that’s part of it. It is about who we are and who Jesus was and is (he did embody a particular identity as a Jewish man in first century Palestine, of course.)

Here’s a heads up: as it says on the back cover, “Jesus empowers those from minority cultures to resist pressure to assimilate in unhealthy ways and instead live into their God-given identity.” And of course, those formed by the majority culture are to “humbly embrace their identity as they foster space for others.” Buck explores all that and more.

This is a book about the glories of a robust doctrine of creation — God made us with differences — and it is, also, between the lines, a book advancing social pluralism. Can we get along, making space for others? Can we see God offering dignity as a key aspect of a healthy culture (and how that might allow us to be both at home and sometimes exiles of that very culture)?

After three chapters about understanding culture (including our sacred identity in Jesus) the next 15 chapters are each grounded in a Biblical text from the Old or New Testaments. What an illuminating Scriptural study about culture!

Then, the last four chapters offer what Buck calls a “Cultural Discovery Process” applied first for individuals and then for churches. There is a closing chapter on “God’s Good Image for Pastors” which is good for all of us, but certainly for congregational leaders.

I love this complex and delightful book by this very good and orderly writer. Three cheers for In God’s Good Image! Buck is a film-maker and church-planter, a creative entrepreneur and social activist as well as a family man, now living in Tucson AZ. I previously loved his visionary and yet very practical handbook to social activism called Everyday Activism: Following 7 Practices of Jesus to Create a Just World (Baker; $20.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00) and now hold this new one up as a major, lovely contribution.

The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone in Between Ian Morgan Cron (Zondervan) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I love Ian Cron and while he may not remember me — he’s a very successful author, now, after all — I highlighted his first book, a fictional novel (or was it?) called Chasing Francis about a disgruntled pastor who made a trip to Assisi and brought back exciting Franciscan wisdom for his boring parish and, well, they mostly yawned. (Zondervan; $19.99 //OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99) I loved that book! Then he wrote one of my all time favorite memoirs, a book I still cite in workshops and gladly press into the hands of anyone interested in this genre: Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me: A Memoir. . . of Sorts (Zondervan; $18.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19.) What a story!

Cron then grew pretty well known by co-writing one of the most popular (and clear-headed) enneagram books of all time, The Road Back to You, followed by, as his enneagram type must do, I guess, another: The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self. We’ve got them both although my enneagram type might say we’ve got enough books on the enneagram now. But that second one he did was very moving and I liked that big picture true story stuff.

Which brings us to a book that I think we really, really need. It is a book on the 12-steps (and, iinterestingly, comes out on the heels of another similar book, the wonderful, new, thorough book by John Ortberg called Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn’t Enough (Tyndale; $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99.) I loved Ortberg’s introduction to the 12 steps of AA (for anyone) and am sure Ian’s new work — written, they say, with “his signature wit, wisdom, and transparency” — will help us understand the importance of these twelve steps and, perhaps, to “see the world in a startling new way.” That’s the promise on the back cover and I’m betting on it.

Look; Ian Cron is a great writer. He’s seen some things and knows both about contemplative mystical stuff and practical psychological stuff. His worldview and social vision remains nearly Franciscan — love God, self, others, and the planet, too — and he is all about transformation (again, for self, others, and the cosmos. Think Richard Rohr.) He is God- centered but knows we all need a fix for the pain of living in a broken world.

Jen Hatmaker, an energetic writer herself, says this book “should come with a warning label” and she insists, “This is not an inconsequential book.” I have hardly ever seen such an enticing and serious blurb on a book jacket (especially one where the author is known for his good humor and wit.)  Not. An. Inconsequential. Book.

Curt Thompson writes of it beautifully and I think he says it best:

With The Fix comes a herald who pulls the curtain back on what we all sense in the deep: that we are people of insatiable longing, that our longing is often brutally and fathomlessly entangled with our pain, and that as a result, we are all addicts. But our author and guide does not leave us there. With the balm of humor that is required if we are to face the bracing reality of our lives as revealed on these pages and with a compelling vulnerability that never seeks its own notoriety, Ian Cron invites us all to come home. And home is where I want to be. Read this book, and begin to find your way there. — Curt Thompson, MD, psychiatrist and author of The Soul of Desire and The Deepest Place

Knowing and Being Known: Hope for All Our Intimate Relationships Erin F. Moniz (IVP) $18.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I won’t say too much about this as it will be described with much enthusiasm in our next podcast, set to drop any day now. I adore this book and am slowly working my way through it. I gush about it in the “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast saying just why it is so very important.

Firstly, I’ll note that this is just a tad academic, but not too much so. Not a scholarly work, really, it is thoughtful and wise, careful and insightful. As many books on relationships are sort of dumbed down and made almost too chatty and casual, this gives the huge topic of intimacy it’s due. It is serious and wise and well-written and important. Wow.

Secondly, the insights found in Knowing and Being Known have developed based on years of experience — field research, I’d call it — with emerging young adults. She is an Anglican pastor who works as a college minister at Baylor University in Waco, TX. Hooray for her and a shout-out to anyone working with college-age young adults: you need this book as I suspect you already know. But here’s the thing: it is not only for those working with young adults and it is not primarily a book about campus ministry. That is her context and social location but, man, she understands the human condition, our deep need for connection, and the important of intimacy within all of our human relationships.  Sheila Wray Gregoire (author of The Great Sex Rescue and a new one on marriage) puts it, “Erin’s vision of churches transformed by real intimacy is both scary and exciting.” Are you ready for it?

Listen to these two profound authors raving about this marvelous new book.

At one level, this book may strike you as old hat. Yet another book on relationships and faith by an evangelical Christian author? But look closer. Here is a sensitive study of intimacy written by a seasoned pastor, informed by extensive fieldwork, leavened with wit and humor, and — above all — strikingly in tune with the overarching story as well as the micro details of the Bible’s grand story of redemption in Christ. If you or someone you know longs for deeper friendships, and especially if you work with emerging adults, this book will enlighten, instruct, inspire, and equip you for the lifelong work of nurturing mutual love. — Wesley Hill, professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary, author of Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian and Easter: The Season of the Resurrection of Jesus

In an American Christian context awash in pragmatic — but often reductive —takes on marriage implying that marital intimacy is the best or only way to address loneliness, Moniz points us to a robust, theologically rich, and biblical understanding of intimacy. Amid our epidemic of loneliness, she expertly offers us humane, approachable, and expansive theological resources to broaden our imagination about friendship, love, and the relationships that shape our lives. This book shows how the gospel is good news for relationships and points the way toward greater relational flourishing for us all. — Tish Harrison Warren, Anglican priest and author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

The God of Story: Discovering the Narrative of Scripture Through the Language of Storytelling Daneil Schwabauer (Baker) $18.99 // OUIR SALE PRICE = $15.19

As one of the great new books of this season, I’m impressed with The God of Story for a couple of reasons, in part because it both understands the bigger picture flow of the Biblical story as a story — the “narrative” of the subtitle — and because it helps us understand better why that is important. The language of storytelling is itself both ancient and, it seems to me, nearly postmodern, which is to say it isn’t merely about communicating data and facts (as if that’s what the Good Book is all about.)  Nope, we need to understand the power of mythic storytelling to understand the power of the Book.

As I sometimes say when I do workshops on the reading life, stories come to us through narrative (but not only through books and literature — a good hip-hop song, a country ballad, an opera or TV show each have narrative elements and count as some of the best storytelling around. You know; of course you do.)

And so, this author (who is new to me) helps us understand what makes us tick as humans, what language is, why stories matter, how they work, all so that we might more insightfully understand our own storied lives and, frankly, to more faithfully read the Bible. Not bad, eh?

Making it even better, the book comes with a fabulous forward by Leonard Sweet, who has said this sort of stuff his whole long life. Sweet notes some great insights from the book — he writes a good forward, believe me — and ends with a fabulous anecdote about a time when Frederick Buechner and Maya Angelou shared a stage.  I’ll let you read how Len tells of what Maya Angelou said, but I’ll quote Buechner, who, reflecting on our shared humanity, despite our differences, said “We all have the same story, and therefore anybody’s story can illuminate our own.”

You understand more about why that is after reading The God of Story. You’ll be thrilled to learn more about this “language of life” (as Schwabauer calls it) and how the core aspects of a good story (whether a novel or movie or epic poem) can illuminate reality for us all. Daniel Schwabauer is an eloquent and good guide and he is both a fantasy and sci-fi novelist and a English prof at MidAmerica Nazarene University.

Novelist Allen Arnold (and author of The Story of With) says that this is “the most important book on story in decades.” He predicts “you’ll never read a novel, watch a movie, or see your own story through the same eyes again.”  Not bad for one book. This is one you should pick up.

Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman Patrick Hutchison (St. Martin’s Press) $29.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

Well, speaking of stories, want a rip-roaring one? Okay, maybe not rip-roaring but certainly riveting. Is this office worker dude going to make it in the wilds of the great Pacific North West? And, more to the point, is he going to make his own house? Who would have thought that the narration of a building project could be so darn interesting? Writer Jospeh Menninger (himself author of A Barn in New England: Making a Home in Three Acres) calls it “a hammer-and-nail mini saga.”

I’m a fan of these kinds of books, writers learning to work with their hands — the wood carver David Esterly of The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making is just so eloquent and wise about the beauty of his work and the recent bestseller Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Scotsman Callum Robinson is so well done about woodworking, building a business, and learning to be responsible. One of our all-time favorite reads is the breathtakingly profound The Sound of Life’s Unspeakable Beauty by German woodsman and luthier Martin Schleske, published in 2020 by Eerdmans, who spends considerable time in the woods. And don’t get me started about the many great books about moving off the grid to farm a homestead or live on the land. Hutchison, too, importantly, learns to love his place there at the end of the gravel road called Wit’s End.

Anyway, Cabin was a hot item in many stores this past Christmastime and we were glad to have a few on hand. It isn’t brand new, but it is new enough that I just had to list it here, now. Part Walden, I guess, but funnier, with that Thoreauvian self-reliance thing.

Bob Drury, a pretty funny and imaginative guy himself, says:

Imagine if Bill Bryson had decided to put down stakes during his walk in the woods and asked Charles Bukowski to help him refurbish a derelict shack deep in the forest of the Cascade Mountains.

The Wages of Cinema: A Christian Aesthetic of Film in Conversation with Dorothy L. Sayers Crystal L. Downing (IVP Academic) $29.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.20

I am not exaggerating when I say that only Crystal Downing could have pulled off such an audacious project as this; her love of semiotics, her brilliant knowledge of all things Dorothy Sayers, her passion for contemporary art and film. Her wit, coming up with that amazingly clever title for this serious book. It’s the latest in the prestigious and fabulously interesting “Studies in Theology and the Arts” series which we gladly keep in stock. Although most in that series are about the visual creativity and the standard painterly arts, one big one (by Malcolm Guite) is on the literature of Coleridge, and now, this new one, on film.

In light of Dorothy Sayers.

One reviewer, Krista Imbesi, of Messiah University, calls Wages… “thought-provoking and insightful” and says “this work offers a fresh perspective on cinema’s artistic and spiritual dimensions.” I’d say that is an understatement! Nobody has done anything quite like this before. I like Jim Beitler (of Wheaton) who says, more vividly, that this is “a blockbuster of a book.” Yes!

I have only begun to skim the almost 250-page work, but I can assure you it has lots about Dorothy Sayers. And lots about movies. Dr. Downing has written scholarly works on Sayers and on cinema, but this new one isn’t just a simple combo,  bringing her previous two together, cobbling together a half-and-half summary of previous work. Not at all. This seems to be a new and major — dare I say landmark or groundbreaking? — contribution to both film studies and Sayers (and therefore, by extension, Inklings) studies even as it skitters around questions of linguistics and aesthetics, culture and society.  Note: we learn that Sayer’s interaction with cinema in the middle of the 20th century was formidable and yet has regularly been dismissed or underestimated; Downing is re-channeling Sayer’s insight. Who knew?

Plus, it sure looks like sustained fun — you’ll get more hours of reading pleasure here than the standard two hours of going to the cineplex. As it says on the back, she explores theological topics “with examples ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Barbie… Downing presents different approaches to film theory and how they can be enriched by the truths of the Christian faith.”

We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine Alissa Wilkinson (Liveright) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Well, Crystal Downing, in the early pages of her book (see above) The Wages of Cinema quotes my favorite philosopher of film, William D. Romanowski, observing that her method differs from his, but that he indeed pays close attention to the aesthetics of film without implying that serious film criticism must be all about the high-brow “hoity-toity” films that nobody has seen. I appreciate that. Alissa Wilkinson, author of this brand new We Tell Oursleves Stories, loves popular culture — she co-wrote a book about zombies and the politics of apocalypse, after all — but also tends to gravitate to not a few films that few people see; she is one of the rising film review stars in our contemporary culture, now writing regularly for The New York Times. She is well grounded in a profoundly Christian worldview and has written a bit about the implications for a public theology for culture studies. She is a robust thinker, as her last book surely showed, the delightfully imaginative story of four famous women eating a meal together — Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women (Broadleaf; $25.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $20.19.) She does tend towards the important and profound.

Just released last week, We Tell Ourselves Stories is a major project about the extraordinary writer Joan Didion, who had connections not only to the high-brow New York literary scene, but with Hollywood, and, as one writer puts it, “with politics, and American itself.”  I was at first surprised that Christian film critic Wilkinson was doing a book about Didion but it began to make sense. The more I learned about Didion, the more I couldn’t wait to see what Alissa would do with her storied life. The title itself, as you will discover, is taken from a line by Didion herself…

Emily Nussbaum says the book is “the prefect guide to one of America’s most celebrated literary pioneers.” Perhaps hinting at the theme of the book, she continues, saying that We Tell Ourselves Stories, “explores ways in which Didion taught herself to resist America’s deepest mythologies — even those she had originally embraced.”

Did you catch that? This book is going to somehow be incisive and, as Tracy Daugherty, author of the highly regarded The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion, puts it “an invaluable education and a timely warning.”  A warning. By way of looking at the movies.

Didion famously wrote books capturing the disillusionment of the 1960s generations. One critic (who has written about Sylvia Plath) says “Wilkinson expertly conjures that time and place” and say the book is a “moving and lyrical account of Didion’s California dreams.”

But, as Wilkinson clearly shows, Didion was not rosy about the human condition and the stories we tell ourselves (most obviously, in films.) What sort of California dreamin’ did she do? Perhaps, I wonder, something like Jeremiah’s nay-saying when thinking about Babylonian exile?

I am looking forward to learning much about this remarkable woman’s evolution and development and how her deepest perspective perhaps influenced her own sense of life and times. As Julia May Jonas says, We Tell Ourselves Stories is “more than an essential contribution to the Didion canon.” She says it “delves into the evolution of American consciousness with dizzying intelligence and insight.” This, my friends, is an important book. You heard it here. I suspect it is going to be rewarded with many serious accolades by the end of the year.

Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful: How Gratitude, Grief, and Grace Reflect the Christian Story Drew Hyun (Zondervan) $19.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is one wonderful book and we are so excited to tell you about it. I will be brief, but know that this is one of the great books of its kind that I’ve read in a while. It is, in many ways, an apologetics project — a book making the case for Christian truth and the viability of the Christian faith perhaps written for skeptics and seekers. (The author is clear about that, inviting skeptical readers with a hospitable welcome.) Whether you have serious doubts or significant struggles with the legitimacy of standard Christian belief, or you know someone who does (and who doesn’t?) then this book by Drew Hyun is going to be very reassuring.

First, it is not a preachy sermon or strident philosophical push-back against atheists or secularization. It is not about the culture wars. It doesn’t rebuke those with doubts or disappointments. Rather, it is offering a lens through which we can understand real life, a lens that is rooted in the primary themes of the Biblical drama. Some refer to those highpoints of our story as creation / fall / redemption (he doesn’t put it that was as far as I recall) but the primary chapters of this book seem to parallel that same narrative flow.

That is, the world is good — beautiful, even. And yet, we all live East of Eden and in our fallen world we all experience various sorts of disappointments. Life hurts. And thirdly, given the power of the story of redemption and final restoration, we can be hopeful. If the trilogy of “beauty-disappointment-hope” ins’t a parallel to our slogan of “creation-fall-redemption”, I don’t know what is. And therein lies the goodness of this fine book: who among us doesn’t know beauty and sadness and still hold out for some sort of hope? It is all so real; we don’t have to make a “case for…” or argue about it, but we can, as Beautiful, Disappointing, Hopeful: How Gratitude, Grief, and Grace Reflect the Christian Story does, just shine a light to illuminate these distinctive aspects of our human condition. Playful as it is at times (with fun stories and apt allusions to pop culture) the book is deeply, deeply human. It is one of the best invitations to a more real life that I have read in a long while. I hope you buy a few to give away.

The big question throughout this book, then, is how we make sense of a world that is filled with both beauty and disappointment. And, then, given that, where can we find hope? Can the Christian faith give an account for all this stuff we all really feel? Akin to the strategy of Mere Christianity or N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian, can these universal longings point beyond us to something fine?

Rich Villlodas (who knows Hyun from church circles in NYC) is surely right when he says:

Beauty, disappointment, and hope are not words we string together every day, but maybe we should start doing so. These three words capture the essence of life and are core to the Christian story. Drew Hyun has offered a compelling resource for those of us who are longing for a faith big enough to embrace these realities. Drew has brought about beauty and hope for so many people living with deep disappointment. If you read this book, you’ll see why. — Rich Villodas, lead pastor, New Life Fellowship, and author of  The Narrow Path: How the Subversive Way of Jesus Satisfies Our Souls

The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create A New Way Forward Malcolm Foley (Brazos Press) $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Every now and then a book comes along that offers us truly something new, even if we are fairly well-read in a certain topic. I’ve noted that a few times in this very column and I hope you don’t grow tired of me exclaiming when a book truly says something fresh or good or extraordinary. There are lots of good books on lots of important stuff, but it is special — and deserves our support — when a title truly brings innovative insight, fresh takes, a new perspective, offering in a captivating manner. Rev. Dr. Malcolm Foley — I think this is his first book! — is such a writer and thinker and I have rarely read anything quite like this.

That racism is deeply structural in American culture is so self-evident that only the ideologically-captured refuse to see it. Many people may not all be that individually prejudiced but we all live in this system created, historically, with things (not that long ago) like Jim Crow laws, crass red-lining in the real estate business, inequities in home mortgages, injustices in hiring and firing. Read The New Jim Crow or Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy to see how racism is embedded in the courts and prisons. There is no getting around it that those of us wanting to love our neighbors well and stand for justice as the Bible demands that we do, with a passion for social righteousness simply must do an architectonic critique of the systems and habits and instincts, the principalities and powers and politics that have been structured in ways that are harmful for the common good.

Racism, says Foley, is not mostly about hate, as many popular placards say. It’s about greed.

What?

Wow — this searing critique is one that simply must be read, offering (in the words of Christina Edmondson) “a necessary antidote to racism” by putting down “the delusions and temptations of greed.”

I’m going to have to think about this a lot, and I’m still trying to ponder how to relate the work of anti-racism and being anti-Mammon. Major scholars such as Jonathan Tran (who wrote the important but quite scholarly Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism) have weighed in, and Tran’s remarks about this book are weighty:

Tran writes, simply:

Foley reminds us that the church’s fight against anti-Black lynching and its struggle for economic justice and solidarity are the same fight.

MLK said these very sorts of things and the best of the civil rights movement worked for the poor and for workers rights even as they lobbied for equal rights legislation and the like. Rev. Foley is clear — racism and Mammon are not siblings (two different if connected problems) but racism is the offspring of our love of money. Wow.

I love how some authors (like Aimee Byrd) note how very hopeful this book is. She admits says that such hopeful work is “disruptive” but she also says it is “full of wonder.” That’s a take-away I bet you didn’t see coming…

Foley started out a math and science nerd, ended up at Yale Divinity School, until studying the Puritans and reformation thinkers in a PhD program. He calls them his Nineveh, in that he didn’t feel inclined to want to add his voice to the anti-racism and civil rights movement so he ran from that calling. Well, you know what happened to Jonah, who ran from God’s will. Thank God that Reverend Foley (now with a PhD in history from Baylor) stopped running and did what he had to do: he wrote one of the most amazing books on Christian social ethics and racial justice we’ve seen. Drawing on everyone from early church Fathers to the Westminster Divines to the Grimke sisters to Ida B. Wells, he is a fabulously informed historian. How many books cite Herman Bavinck and James Cone, Basil the Great and Walter Brueggemann? Hooray.

The Anti-Greed Gospel is, at least, a book we should be talking about.

The Deep-Rooted Marriage: Cultivating Intimacy, Healing, and Delight Dan B. Allender & Steve Call (Thomas Nelson) $29.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I hope you saw the book I reviewed up above, the one called To Know As We Are Known, which is about intimacy in relationships. It is less about sexuality and marriage, but is a landmark work on how emerging adults need to think about such things. It really is for all of us and highlights true intimacy within authentic community.

This new Dan Allender book is a similar sort of book, good for nearly anyone, but created for married couples who need to be reminded that marriage is designed (as they put it) “to be a glorious, transformative, joyous union of two imperfect people seeking profound love, empathy and connection.”

(Take note, fans of Elon Musk, I want to interject: empathy is not a bad thing.)

I nearly weep as I write these words as I know several couples — and you do, too — who simply do not come anywhere close to this normative sort of transformational, healing relationship, but are barely hanging on, and maybe doing emotional damage to one another. Is there hope? Is the gospel big enough and powerful enough to heal the hurts and bring couples towards a life-giving partnership? Can deeply-rooted marital intimacy be cultivated?

This book — called “deeply personal and richly insightful” — is a guide to exploring one’s own stories and how those stories have influenced your relationships and then which offers a plan to “quite the whisper of shame and its corrosive effects.” Can we learn to “lay down our weapons and lean into humility?” How can we live well with our past hurts and learn to “repair rupture”? Can we suffer together and bless one another?

Look: marriage is not about “merely getting along or learning to compromise; it reveals who you are and invites you to who you can become.” Such a vision of radically graceful transformation can finally be a place of honor and rest, of play and joy, of delight and home. Maybe, as they suggest, it can be “a taste of heaven.”

I love Dan Allender who has written deep books on the nature of our stories, on how Psalms can reveal and give voice to our emotions, how love calls us to give our lives away in bold, costly service, on the delight of sabbath, on holy sexuality, and — his most famous I suppose— books about healing the hurt of sexual abuse. Dan has co-written many books with his old pal and world-class Bible scholar Tremper Longman, but here he pairs up with Steve Call, a clinical psychologist who specializes in reconnecting couples in marriage counseling. They work well together at Allender’s Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. This book will be a great gift to many, I am sure. Let us hope and pray. Kudos.

The Traveler’s Path: Finding Spiritual Growth and Inspiration Through Travel Douglas J. Brouwer (The Reformed Journal Books) $22.00 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

For those who may not know, The Reformed Journal is an older, historic Christian print magazine from the moderate and wisely culturally-engaged Reformed community, mostly from the old CRC and RCA denominations. Delightfully rooted in their “all of life redeemed” worldview that animates much of what some call neo-Calvinism and mostly in communion with other mainline denominational folks, they, historically, it has been a great journal alongside, say, The Christian Century or Christianity Today. I have no direct connections with the famous Dutch Reformed tradition (folks that founded, for instance, Dordt College, Calvin University, Hope College, and Western Seminary in Holland, MI, say, or the ICS in Toronto) but loved the old Reformed Journal. We even still have a few of the great anthology Eerdmans put out decades ago of some of their greatest articles and essays (by the likes of Cornelias Plantinga, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Lewis Smedes, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Allan Boesak, and Rich Mouw) called The Best of the Reformed Journal, edited by James Bratt & Ronald Wells, back before the print journal folded. You should order that!

I tell you that to invite you to follow the updated, online, 21st century itineration of RJ with contemporary writers like Kristen Du Mez and Debra Rienstra and Wes Granberg-Michaelson and Marilyn McEntyre and a big and lovely array of excellent thinkers and writers, many who are working pastors. You can see their RJ featured pieces and their many bloggers HERE.

And I say all that to celebrate, again, that they have started a little, indie publishing outfit, Reformed Journal Books. Their first release was a stunning and important book by Buechner scholar and earnest storyteller and very fine writer, Jeffrey Monroe called Telling Stories in the Dark: Finding Healing and Hope in Sharing our Sadness, Grief, Trauma, and Pain (which I have previously reviewed at BookNotes – $21.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59) and now, their second official release just came out, the lovely and wise The Traveler’s Path by PC(USA) pastor and writer Douglas Brouwer. (Yes, Central Pennsylvania friends, the Rev. Doug Brouwer that used to pastor in Harrisburg, PA. Hooray!)

Brouwer has pastored in several US locations, and did a stint in Switzerland and, before retirement, in The Hague, Netherlands. Some of this is described in his lively, touching memoir Chasing the Wind: A Pastor’s Life that came out in 2022. His new book is quite a good read and we’re glad to highlight it here.

I am not much of a traveller — many of us simply can’t afford the time or money to do fancy vacations or exotic voyages. Some of us don’t like the hassle and uncertainty of far-away trips. But you know what? Some of us love reading about those who do venture into the wilds, and it is a venerable sort of writing, a genre with its own section in many good bookstores. Mostly written as memoir-like journalism and many even as self-help sort of guides to awareness and what is learned on the road, there are some (but not that many) that are overtly spiritual and pleasantly theological. We’ve got a handful.

Brouwer’s new book highlights travels of all sorts— including mission trips and spiritual pilgrimages — that open up new vistas of adventure and spiritual self-understanding. Brouwer wrote a fine little book years ago on discerning one’s vocation and calling so he has a very solid perspective on these things. He has a sense of place and values that. But yet…  As one reviewer, a travel agent and tour guide, put it, The Traveler’s Path will “stir the soul, beckoning us to explore the deeper meaning of travel, to walk in the footsteps of the divine, and to serve with open hearts wherever we are called.” Nice huh?

Brouwer thinks that travel can be transformational. Those who have done experiential education or service learning know that this can be so. Getting out of our comfort zones can help us with cultural understanding, too, and he reflects about that. He has one chapter (“Making Room for Those Who Cannot Travel”) about those who are incarcerated, and the poignancy of imprisonment.  It was a surprising and great chapter. In this easy-to-read delight of a book, Brouwer tells us about all kinds of travel (include job relocations, another somewhat surprising section) which allows us, in the words of James Bratt, to be guided toward “going abroad and to searching deeper within.”

From William Least-Moon to Cheryl Strayed, Jack Kerouac to Alain de Botton (and the interior journeys of Annie Dillard and Henri Nouwen) Brouwer knows the best writers and enters into conversations with them in an enriching way. The Traveler’s Path is more than a collection of travel narratives, although there are plenty stories. It is not a philosophical treatise, but he invites some good thinking. Thoughtful readers — travelers or not — will enjoy it, I’m sure.

Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possible Stanley Hauerwas (Plough Publishing) $12.95 // OUR SALE PRICE = $10.36

We love the classy, handsome books done by our friends at the Bruderhof — Plough Publishing, who also does the must-read, exquiste quarterly journal, Plough — and this series of well-printed and designed compact sized paperbacks are on the top of the list. We stock all of their books — their brilliantly conceived graphic stories, their old-school Anabaptist stuff, their poetry and devotionals and memoirs. All of them.

Jesus Changes Everything is edited by the ever-editing Charles Moore, a great behind-the-scenes treasure in serious Christian publishing, and he brings together (but edits) mostly previously published excerpts and chapters and talks by the controversial Duke theologian, picking and updating readable bits and pieces from here and there, making this practically a brand new collection. I am sure even Hauerwas’s biggest fans haven’t seen all of these pieces, and certainly not together in one succinct, portable (and handsome) little volume. Standing well alongside the others in this handsome series of “Plough Spiritual Guides” like collections of the writing of Oscar Romero, Dorothy Day, Amy Carmichael, Clarence Jordon, Simone Weil, and Abraham Heschel, this new release is one to be treasured. Or cussed at, as the case may be. Let him who have ears…

The solid and helpful introduction to this collection is by Tish Harrison Warren, a fellow Texas Anglican (is Hauerwas a cowboy Episcopalian, as singer-song writer T-Bone Burnett once called himself? His theology may be somewhat Anabaptist and he teaches at a United Methodist related seminary, and he is, after all, a philosopher by trade, I think he  is Episcopalian; he father was a Texan brick-layer.)

In any case, Tish’s splendid introduction is long and serious, almost a full chapter, with very insightful and nicely written explanations of the importance of Hauerwas and his core teachings. As she simply reminds us, “Hauerwas is provocative, but not for provocation’s sake. Instead, he calls us back to the disruptive words of Jesus, and to the church.”

Amen?

The back covers notes that while he is known for zinging insights into today’s ethical questions, he says that “Christians should stop bemoaning their loss of cultural and political power. Instead, they should welcome their status as outsiders and embrace the radical alternative Jesus had in mind for them all along.”

If you haven’t read much in Hauerwasian studies, this is a great starting point, drawing from many of his most serious and widely-discussed books. It is accesible and brief and powerful — just what we need as a fabulous introduction. Very highly recommended.