I’m grateful for the good feedback on the last BookNotes — we’re glad that customers care about what we do here at the shop and especially our involvement in the big, hectic, and, frankly, visionary college age conference, Jubilee, run by the CCO out in Pittsburgh. People know that there is, with Jubilee, in the words of Bob Dylan, a “tight connection to my heart.” The CCO was influenced early on by those calling for a Christian worldview that would fund a movement for the reformation of scholarship, nurturing habits of heart and mind that would “think Christianly” in light of the grand story of the Bible (from creation to new creation)  and, in some low-key and ecumenical way, that is the genesis of our bookstore, too. It’s why we carry books on nursing and art, engineering and politics, urban planning and neuroscience, education and business, law and agriculture. It was fun showing you just a few of the many books we had at Jubilee, an example of the good literature available to help ordinary folks serve God across every sphere of life.

Here is the link to three 7 or 8 minute book announcements I made at Jubilee, captured live by a good friend. Order these at 20% off, too. Whew.

I mentioned how enthusiastic young adults can be when they hear this full gospel proclaimed, when they hear in a compelling way that God truly takes delight in their love for science or wilderness backpacking or creative writing or health care or sports. The arts and sciences, the trades and careers, are not secular or sequestered off from our spirituality and discipleship, but are, as Steve Garber sometimes says, “integral, not incidental.”

Although this week I’m reading Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal by Esau McCaulley and The Good of Giving Up: Discovering the Freedom of Lent by Aaron Damiani and Malcom Guite’s poetry-driven devotional Word in the Wilderness, I can’t get Jubilee’s holy hubbub out of my head. So, for your enjoyment, here are a bunch of other very random selections of a few of the books we showed at Jubilee. Part two, so to speak.

It’s a random list, but coheres in that, for each topic, it must be said that Christ Himself holds it together (Colossians 1:17.) And that these are urgent books of the sort that many religious bookstores may not feature. All are 20% off.

Heaven Is Not My Home: Living in the Now of God’s Creation Paul Marshall (Thomas Nelson) $15.98  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.78

One of my all time favorite reads, this is whimsical and profound, upbeat with great stories, but rock-solid, offering a reformational worldview’s implications for science, politics, work, rest, art, play, technology, and more. There’s a good overview of the “creation/fall/redemption” Biblical narrative and a great chapter on worship and another on evangelism within this “all of life redeemed” perspective. For decades this has been one I’ve recommended to illustrate how distinctive a Kingdom vision for living out faith in all areas of life can be. It’s a blast, by a playful but serious-minded political scholar. Kudos to the great Lela Gilbert for helping turn this book into a masterpiece of enjoyable prose.

Call this nearly a Jubilee handbook but, to be honest, truly, it will be good for you!

A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology J. Richard Middleton (Baker Academic) $31.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $25.59

If Marshall’s book, above, offers a delightful introduction to a realized eschatology where God isn’t rapturing us to some ethereal heaven but it returning to judge and renew the good creation, renewing it into a livable creation laden with shalom, the Richard Middleton’s volume is the scholars best study of this topic from this perspective. I am sure you recall us raving about Richard’s excellent (if always somewhat provocative) works, from the magisterial The Liberating Image to his recent, ground-breaking Abraham’s SIlence. Two of the most important books in the history of the CCO and their Jubilee conference were co-authored by Richard, 1985’s The Transforming Vision and 2000s, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be. He gave a great main stage keynote presentation at Jubilee when this A New Heaven and A New Earth came out.

Besides his almost tedious explication of hundreds of Biblical texts and his careful connecting of so many Scriptural dots, there is a closing pair of chapters on how Jesus, in Luke 4, preaches on Isaiah 61, drawing on the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus. These are under the rubric of the “ethics of the Kingdom” and while the book may be more meaty than some young students are used to, it is a must-read resource for anyone needing this corrective or want a Biblical reason to care about the flourishing of all creaturely life.

Not Home Yet: How the Renewal of the Earth Fits into God’s Plan for the World Ian K. Smith (Crossway) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Maybe life is too short for you right now to wade through the big Middleton book, listed above. It is your loss, of course, but I get it — we can’t all afford major volumes and may not have the capacity to work through such a hefty tome. Okay. No worries –  try this one. Not Home Yet offers, in the words of ethicist Scott Rae of Biola University, “a vivid picture of how this earth matters to God — our work, our communities, and the physical world.”

In fact, the great Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman (who knows a thing or two about all of this) says:

“I have never seen such a clear articulation of the theme of creation and re-creation anywhere.” Tremper Longman III

Okay, then. This book’s discussions of the covenant promises and the future hopes and how it all matters now sounds a lot like the theme of the Jubilee conference. How our understanding of our future restored home in a renewed creation influences us now is a key matter and Smith (a Greek professor in Sydney, Australia, by the way, who has worked in the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu) explores it succinctly and persuasively. Three big cheers for this small book.

What Are Christians For? Life Together at the End of the World Jake Meador (IVP) $22.00          OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Jake spoke at Jubilee a few years ago and he was a fabulous speaker, a good guy to be around, and a fine example of a young, excpetionally orthdoox thinker who has an open mind and a passionate heart. He knows the importance of the creational realities — “thick” Keller calls it — and how we can (we must!) find an alternative to the predictable polarizations of the left and right. In personal faith and public theology, in deep spirituality and robust civic commitments, Jake seems to truly live in a better way than this fragmented world has to offer.

The book title, of course, is a bit of a double entendre. What are we “for” (as in, we should be known for what we are for, not what we are against) and, the bigger question — what’s the point of it, all. Why does God call us to mission in this world and what difference does all that make?

I love that this wise young scholar talks about his embeddedness in his Kansan home and struggles with the powerful work and trenchant critique of whiteness found in Willie Jennings, in light of the neo-Calvinsim of Herman Bavinck. Who does that? Who reads that widely?

A voice in the wilderness of current culture wars, Meador has written a provocative and unsettling Christian critique of modernity. Deftly incorporating an arresting selection of voices, many far too lightly dismissed by Christians as their ideological antagonists, Meador presents an inspiring, bracing, and rigorously orthodox vision of Christian life, thought, and community as a hopeful response to its challenges and possibilities.  — Alastair Roberts, adjunct senior fellow, Theopolis Institute

By the way, don’t miss his first book, which I loved (and had at Jubilee, naturally) called In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World. 

Post-Truth? Facts and Faithfulness Jeffrey Dudiak (Wipf & Stock) $12.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $9.60

This thin book, co-published by ICS (The Institute for Christian Studies) in Toronto and their Center for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics, is a gem, but it was hard to navigate conversations towards it. We had it under philosophy proper (the smallest book in that category) and under cultural analysis. The book has only 50-some pages and they are edited transcripts of three lectures given about the nature of truth in our society.

As a reformational worldview philosopher, he has some keen insights into what we mean by truth and what “facts” are. Naturally, he notes that all facts are understood within the contingencies of human creatureliness. Everybody sees and interprets things in light of their own point of view. You know the C.S. Lewis quote about that, I’m sure. So he doesn’t just drill down on an Enlightenment epistemology to counteract the so-called “post truth” era. It’s better than that.

Further, he “eschews the kind of easy response that trades pluralistic solidarity for tribalistic certainty.” Okay, that’s a mouthful, but this succinct book really is a joy to read, very interesting, underline-able. He looks at what and how we know, what social trust is and why it is fraying, and how we can find a deeper vision based on a Biblical worldview, not just a simplistic “correspondence” theory.

Three rave blurbs are on the back, from Curt Thompson, Gayle Beebe (of Westmont College who says Dudiak writes “with the depth of Dallas Willard and the clarity of C. S. Lewis”) and James K.A. Smith, who calls Post-Truth “a manifesto for the university.” Curt Thompson notes:

Dudiak delivers wisdom that startlingly overtakes us . . . and kindness, the depth of which in many respects is the very vehicle that carries it so compellingly. . . . Our author has tossed our world, drowning as we are in the deep end of the pool of late and postmodernity, a life vest that, should we dare to put it on, will not simply keep us from dying. It will teach us to live.

That We May Be One: Practicing Unity in a Divided Church Gary B. Agee (Eerdmans) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I have to say a thing or two: unchurched or even most churched college students are pretty clueless when it comes to the variety of congregations and denominations that make up the Body of Christ. If they are nondenominational or Baptist or go to a Community Church, they don’t know what that implies. They may be United Methodist or CM&A and not know that; many Presbyterian Churches, for instance, don’t even say on their website whether they are PCA, PCUSA, EPC, ECHO, or whatever. (And don’t get me started about historic black churches or Protestant Latino congregations.) I think Roman Catholic kids know they are Catholic, at least.

And so, CCO’s bold tradition of being interdenominational, challenged as it sometimes may be, remains a passion of ours and we always take books to any church or faith gathering on being ecumenical. Indie Bible guys like Francis Chan have weighed in (many collegiates know him, so his Letters to the Church and Until Unity were happily noticed.) We always carry the books by our friend John Armstrong (such as his must-read Tear Down These Walls: Following Jesus into Deeper Unity but, I know, it’s a hard sell to college kids, whether they are Anglican or Lutheran or Reformed or Orthodox.)

This one seemed fairly simple, full of amazing content, by a Church of God pastor from Ohio. He has written about racial reconciliation, and has an amazing book on a Roman Catholic publisher (Liturgical Press) on the black Catholic leader Daniel Rudd. (How, you ask, does a white Church of God guy come to know so much about a black Catholic. Good question. It says something about the author’s integrity and experience, knowing a bit about different denominations and theological traditions other than his own.)

Anyway, this book offers what Doug Pagitt (director of Vote Common Good and fiesty author) calls “the ideal guide for faith leaders and people of faith who take seriously Jesus’s call for unity that goes beyond simply ‘getting along.’” Enough said?

Here’s more, from Curtiss Paul DeYoung:

Gary Agee issues a bold call for unity to a highly polarized church. He honestly deals with the challenges facing a church divided by race, politics, gender, sexual orientation, denomination, and the like. Yet Agee invites readers to embrace a posture of unity and implement a hermeneutic of inclusion. That We May Be One is hopeful, practical, and compelling–a must-read for twenty-first century Christians!

I don’t think any of these sold at Jubilee at all, despite all the leaders from partnership churches that were around. We try. Maybe you should give it a shot? It’s a good one!

Your Calling Here and Now: Making Sense of Vocation Gordon Smith (IVP) $18.00                      OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We have bunches of books on calling and vocation and some are quite profound. Some are upbeat and practical, a few more are theologically serious. Gordon Smith (an author whose books I would read on any topic) has a classic in this genre, Courage and Calling. His small Consider Your Calling is very short, a guide to praying about discernment for one’s sense of call. Both are superb.

Your Calling Here and Now is a lovely blend of both his more foundational book about calling and his short books on praying. This does a bit of both, showing how our vocation is “more than a job” but how to understand the notion well. He expands his book about prayer, knowing that for many, God may call us to different places and jobs in different seasons of our lives. The question posed in this book is what are we to do at this time and place. Who are we meant to be and what are we called to do — here and now.  As Mark Buchanan puts it, “this book is both a primer and compendium.” Lots of good insight and lots of good stories, too. Yay.

The Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith Barbara Brown Taylor (HarperOne) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

When I am doing talks on vocation or calling or sensing God’s presence in the ordinary, I often quote long passages from Barbara Brown Taylor’s first memoir, The Preaching Life. It never gets old. This one is another of my favorite books (ever) and while it doesn’t seem to attract interest among the evangelical college student set, their leaders and other older folks in the room noticed. (And also the companion, Learning to Walk in the Dark, another personal favorite.)

I liked that the Dallas Morning News reviewed this saying, cleverly, “Not a page-turner, it is a page-lingerer.” As Barbara puts it, it is exploring the turf “where our feet hit the floorboards.” Lauren Winner (another Jubilee veteran speaker) says, “I have been reading Barbara Brown Taylor for years now, and nothing she has written has stirred and inspired me quite as much as An Altar in the World.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work Matthew Crawford (Penguin) $17.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

Although this best selling book may be a bit academic for some in the blue collar trades, there is always an expertly run conversation or panel with dozens of trade school guys at Jubilee — this here they interviewed a famous ecologically-aware, creatively-minded builder whose clients rave about his vision of stewardship — and, as expected, this wise book came up.  It is the eloquent story of a white-collar philosopher type who got tired of what seemed to be the ambiguous meaninglessness of his pushing papers, who left it all and set out to open his own motorcycle repair shop. As a mechanic, now, he offers — in really glowing and at times even funny prose — a lament for the loss of shop classes, and reminds us of the benefit and joy of working with one’s hands.

I hope you know this extraordinary book, and the amazing follow up, The World Outside Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction and his most recent, Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road. He may not identify himself as a follower of Jesus but he not only gets a sense of purpose and care about the world, but he is so obviously rooted in and attentive to the particularities of a real world, what we at Jubilee call “creation.”  This book about the connections to our work and our bodies and our world is nothing short of brilliant.

The Missional Disciple: Pursuing Mercy & Justice at Work – A Six-Session Course Redeemer City to City (Redeemer City to City) $14.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

We are thrilled to stock this extraordinary, handsome, unique study guide for those wanting to go a step deeper into the project of relating faith in the workplace. As disciples of Jesus, our workplaces are often our primary place of mission — this missional vision arising from a high and holy view of vocations in the workweek is increasingly well known. But, as they suggest even on the back cover of this great resource, “We sometimes fail to recognize two key dimensions of our work — mercy and justice.”

This is designed around short videos presented by leading practitioners and theologians (with links to the videos in the book), The Missional Disciple explores this very matter, how mercy and justice are not only central to the biblical story but are also at the heart of God’s character. It’s created for small group use (but you could do it yourself, of course) it is “packed with case studies, community discussion questions, simple practices and prayer prompts” and “will help you discover a holistic paradigm and equip you to become a restorative presence in your everyday workplace.

Whether tending to beds in a hospital or starting a business, sitting at a call center or waiting tables in a restaurant, this workbook invites you to grasp hold of your identity as a missional disciple and to integrate mercy and justice within your industry.

There are case studies from education, finance, filmmaking, hospitality, the commercial arts and more.

The Missional Disciple: Pursuing Mercy & Justice at Work Six-Session Course doesn’t presume you’ve read Keller and Leary’s magnum opus on this, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work but it doesn’t hurt. We pushed that at Jubilee, of course.

The Power of Place: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Thoughts, Emotions, and Actions Winifred Gallagher (Harper Perennial) $14.99          OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

At Jubilee students and others are nicely interested in our sections about place, about urban planning, even architecture and design. General titles like this (and her lovely previous one, House Thinking) — or the more rigorous Poetics of Space — show, quite practically, why place matters to us. Drawing on research in behavioral and environmental sciences, Gallagher explores our reactions to light temperature, the seasons, and other natural phenomena, and our interaction with the built environment. What fun.

It goes alongside more theological books like Finding Holy in the Suburbs by Ashley Hales or The Suburban Christian by Albert Hsu, say, or books we have about small town life or rural ministry. Naturally, we had a stack of the wonderful The Power of Place by Daniel Grothe. We love Eric Jacobsen’s Sidewalks of the Kingdom (including Eugene Peterson’s brilliant forward) and his exquisite The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built Environment. We love the short book by old Pittsburgher Lee Hardy, The Embrace of Buildings (a “second look at walkable city neighborhoods.”) I seriously think Walsh & Bouma-Predigar’s Beyond Homelessness: Christian Faith in a Culture of Displacement is a very serious must-read in this whole area of home and place, exceptional and formative. It’s hefty and a truly great book.

Technopoly:The Surrender of Culture to Technology Neil Postman (Vintage) $15.95         OUR SALE PRICE = $12.76

We often sell Postman’s remarkable Amusing Ourselves to Death and we are glad. What a combo of history, cultural studies, observations about mass media, and the need for a renewal of reading and thinking well. This one is in many ways a follow up and it is riveting. Is it dated? Perhaps. But yet, I think it’s stirring call to be “loving resistance fighters” seems resonant with Romans 12:1-2 — the things we do, literally, with our bodies are, in fact, worship. But we dare not be conformed to the ways of this world, must have a renewed Christian mind, as we show forth God’s good plans for life in the world. Can this (now deceased) Jewish scholar help us? Yes, yes, indeed. As one reviewer put it, this provocative book is “a tool for fighting back against the tools that run our lives.”  Whether it is in politics or health care or entertainment or religion, we’ve given over many aspects of our lives to a realm of technology. What an indictment!

The quote isn’t too sexy, but the important New York Times Book Review highlights how well written and cogent this book is:

Mr. Postman puts his ideas across with energy, conviction, and considerable verbal dexterity. His illustrations of how new technologies can alter society are vivid and thought-provoking.

 

Techne: Christian Visions of Technology edited by Gerald Hiestand & Todd Wilson (Cascade) $34.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

We so appreciate the thoughtful Center for Pastor Theologians (co-founded and directed by Todd Wilson) and their ongoing series of books from confabs they pull together for working pastors with intellectual chops, combining scholars, practitioners, and clergy to figure out how the church can help folks navigate the peculiar quandaries of our contemporary culture. They’ve done thoughtful and edifying books on sexuality, or creational theology, on ecumenism and the sacraments. This is a major contribution (from a 2019 conference) asking about our increasingly complex (and often conflicted) relationships with technology. It is very new and we are thrilled to commend it. It isn’t, by the way, a guide to using screens in worship or directly about how digital culture affects congregations or being hybrid in our church meetings. It’s more foundational and philosophical.

There are 15 mature chapters coming in at about 250 pages. I do not know most of the contributors (except Andy Crouch, whose chapter I read immediately, Karen Swallow Prior, who has a good word on the technologies of reading, and Christian sociologist Felicia Wu Son, author of Virtual Communities: Bowling Alone, Online Together, which we stock, and her extraordinary volume Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood Presence and Pace in the Digital Age.)

I’m not sure who I thought would buy this at Jubilee — engineers and computer sciences had the good books by Derek Schuurman [see last week’s post, for instance] and others, and church leaders had lots of choices more directly engaging congregational ministry. Still, this is really good. I think it should be widely read.

God and Gadgets: Following Jesus in a Technological Age Brad Kallenberg (Cascade) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

We promote this each year at Jubilee, but it is burned into my brain from the year Jamie Smith was a keynote MainStage speaker, riffing on the goodness of creation that can be distorted by the idols and ideologies and habits and practices of the age, and he had this book on the big screen. He was citing it, saying that we should all read it. Bookseller that I am, I was thrilled. And then the beeping started, what I thought was a fake fire alarm that Smith had contrived to go off as part of his spiel about distrusting our technologies. Nope. A first in Jubilee history, it was the real fire alarm and all 2500 of us had to evacuate the building. Over an hour later we reconvened and Smith heroically tried to start again, only to have the darn mis-firing alarm start up again — beep, beep, beep, all the way through his call to “occupy creation.”

Anyway, as Smith would have said, this is a very good book, asking how technologies are embedded in the modern West. Drawing on his engineering background (and, admittedly, schooled by Wittgenstein) and informed by his study of theology, Kallenberg (of the University of Dayton) invites us to see “the blind spots of modern, technological culture.” It will help you ask better questions, redemptive questions, even.

Why Study History? Reflecting on the Importance of the Past Joh Fea (Baker Academic) $22.00   OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

This short book is not the shortest call for Christian students to take up history studies but it is by far the best and at about 175 pages, is very, very readable. We really respect Dr. Fea’s good work (he teaches at Messiah University near us here) and his love of the craft of being a historian is (as history prof from Geneva College, Eric Miller, put it) “infectious.” Miller continues, Fea’s “knowledge is inspiring. Serious readers of Why Study History? will find their own love and knowledge of history deepened in satisfying and fruitful ways.’

You may know Fea from his online work with the popular Current journal or his award-winning Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Or his co-edited volume (with Eric Miller and Jay Green) called Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation. That big text is published by the University of Notre Dame and is also highly recommended. But everybody should consider Fea’s Why Study History? Yes!

The Mind of the Maker Dorothy L. Sayers (HarperOne) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Every year at Jubilee we try to sell a few of these, a quintessentially important book written by the esteemed Oxford graduate, friend of Lewis and the Inklings, playwright, mystery novelist, Dante scholar, and reluctant Christian apologist. Her Anglican reflections on the creativity of God, the meaning of art, the call to do good work, and to reflect in our very lives the redemptive purposes of the Triune God are foundational, important not only as a historic, evangelical manifesto, but truly wise and useful for each of us today. Three very big cheers that this is still in print and that the Inklings-related authors are still viable.

The introduction to this fine collection is my none other than Madeline L’Engle.  For a nice collection including an overview of her various sorts of writing, by the way, see her Plough Publishing volume The Gospel in Dorothy Sayers expertly edited by Carole Vanderhoof. We had that whole series at Jubilee, of course.

Dear Doctor: What Doctors Don’t Ask, What Patients Need to Say Marilyn McEntyre (Broadleaf Books) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I’ll admit that this didn’t fly off the shelves at Jubilee. Knowing that many young adults aren’t concerned about speaking honestly to their primary care physician (they may not even have a relationship with a primary care physician) we thought this book would be of interest to those going into health care fields. Certainly every doctor (as I have said before when I reviewed it two years ago) should read it as professional training, but so should nurses and physical therapists and others who have authority over the bodies and lives of patients. It is really, really good and very, very important.

So we put it next to other books offering up a faith-based perspective on medical matters and the reform of health care, from Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words by Brian Volck to Called to Care: A Christian Worldview for Nursing by Judith Shelley and Arlene Miller and Care: How People of Faith Can Respond to Our Broken Health System by the great urban doc from Memphis, Scot Morris.

Marilyn, you may know, is someone who we read earnestly and recommend regularly; her day job is teaching literature in a med school, helping those preparing to become doctors know well the literature of illness, the memoirs of chronic pain, the poetry of grief. Her (faith inspired) view of the humanities as being helpful to med students is inspiring and good. So she has a lot of first hand experiences with medical professionals.

This, though, is written from the point of view of a patient, and each fairly short chapter reads like a memoir or maybe a devotional. She evokes so much, insists on our agency and integrity, and calls on well-paid doctors to pay attention. So good. So important.

Disability and the Way of Jesus: Holistic Healing in the Gospels and the Church Bethany McKinney Fox (IVP Academic) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

As we said in the last BookNotes, we have a hefty collection (in the store and showed off at Jubilee) of books about disabilities, special education, being inclusive in the church, and living well as a person with particular disabilities. From Same Lake, Different Boat to Disability and the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace to On the Spectrum to My Body Is Not a Prayer Request and so many more, we are glad for the many books coming out. If only we could sell some, getting them out there.

This is a major work, a blending of Biblical studies, ethics, and disability studies, all with a practical eye to congregational life. She interviews doctors and disability scholars and pastors to more fully understanding Jesus’s own healing narratives and why “Christian communities are better off when people with disabilities are an integral part of our common life.” Bill Gaventa called it “a joy to read.” There is a major foreword by John Swinton. Keep an eye on Bethany McKinney Fox — she is amazing.

Completing Capitalism: Heal Business to Heal the World Bruno Roche and Jay Jakob (Berrett-Koehler) $19.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

We have followed these guys for years (and one has been to Jubilee, in fact.) Our good friend and Hearts & Minds fan Steve Garber writes about them in his lovely collection of short, eloquent essays, A Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning Worship and Work. (Steve has also explained this business book by saying it is “Neither charity nor corporate social responsibility, but rather a way for sustained profitability, Completing Capitalism argues for making money in a way that remembers the meaning of the marketplace.”

Bruno Roche has been the chief economist for Mars, Inc. since 2016 and Jay Jakub has been the senior director of a research project — he links it to the Bible’s teaching about shalom within the year of Jubilee’s vision, actually — to help Mars (yes, the world famous candy company) could be more faithful, stewardly, wholistic, caring for land and workers, supply chains and processes, even while turning a profit. Can a global business corporation really find different metrics for measuring success, putting the goal of maximizing profit for shareholders in a broader, better context?

Driven by an astute sense of Christian values, the book doesn’t present their work as a “Christian perspective” but is making a major contribution for the world at large. We have been very glad to promote this kind of book whenever we can. Bruno and Jay are heros, and this book is vital.

A major breakthrough on creating an economy that works for all. The thinking is rigorous and backed up by careful research on how mutuality-based practices in social, human, natural, and financial capital can change the economic well-being of society. This work now sets the gold standard for how the private sector can go beyond lip service in making a major positive impact on the world. — Peter Block, author The Answer to How is Yes

Some endeavors require intellectual, emotional, or spiritual courage. Bruno and Jay have demonstrated all three in fleshing out this valuable piece of work on behalf of Mars, Incorporated, our associates, and all stakeholders, including the planet. I truly hope it evolves, as I believe it can and must, the dialogue regarding capitalism’s future and its crucial role in our world going forward. — Stephen Badger, Chairman of the Board, Mars, Incorporated

Kingdom and Country: Following Jesus in the Land That You Love edited by Angie Ward (NavPress) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

This is another in the “Kingdom Conversations” series and it is really, really good. Not exactly developing a uniquely Christian view of statecraft or an academic study of politics (and, boy, we have plenty of those) Kingdom and Country does what many really want, at least for starters. It explores our alliance to God’s Kingdom and asks how we can navigate the polarizations and stresses in our public life. The authors are mostly youngish, missional, a bit edgy, well-informed, vibrant. I’ve read every chapter and can’t say enough about it. Kudos.

In this we have excellent, inviting, conversational chapters by Rod Wilson, Mandy Smith, Alejandro Mandes, Juliet Liu, Sean Palmer and more. It’s highly recommended. See also, Ward’s edited volume When The Universe Cracks: Living as God’s People in Times of Crisis which we also had at Jubilee. We’re taking pre-orders for the third in this series which comes in early April, The Least of These: Practicing a Faith Without Margins. Jubilee’s dynamo Danielle Strickland will have a chapter in that one. Hooray. (NavPress; $16.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $13.56.)

Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day Kaitlin B. Curtice (Brazos Press) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Okay, I’ll admit it: we didn’t have this at Jubilee because it just came. But we sure would have; it releases officially any day now, and we are thrilled to just show it off, here. We had her first two at Jubilee (and sold at least one of each!) We adore her first Paraclete Press spirituality book Glory Happening: Finding the Divine in Everyday Places and her much-discussed Brazos Press book from 2020 which expertly explores more about her indigenous (Potawatomi) spirituality (Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God.) Living Resistance, in a way, picks up, it seems, where Native ends, carrying out a public theology and native Christian approach to resist the brokenness of the world.

‘Resistance’ has become “tokenized” these days and (as her friend Glenn Doyle put it) “while ‘resistance is a hashtag and ‘wholeness’ an industry, Living Resistance is a lifeline reconnecting us with our human calling.” It is a fierce book (in an era when that word is used too often, as well.) But she is gentle and fun, a great storyteller and activist.  She quotes fellow wordsmith poet Padraig O Tuama and Native writer Patty Krawec and others I’ve never encountered. Wow.

A Year of Playing Catch: What a Simple Daily Experiment Taught Me about Life Ethan D. Bryan (Zondervan) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

A book written by one of our favorite people on the planet (and not his first, nor his last, we hope) Ethan Bryan’s book about playing catch with somebody new every single day for a year was put in two places in our big Jubilee display. First, obviously, we had it under sports and recreation. There are a number of very astute books (some pretty academic) about sports and play, including some that expose the idols and corruption in some of the big sport industry, asking how theologically-aware folks can be agents of transformation, in but not of, that big professionalized world. Others are maybe more devotional in nature, and there are some, like Game Day for the Glory of God, that are good not just for athletes but for anybody who is a sports fan, short, pointed, helpful.

Ethans’ book offers a delightful reminder of what we might call — he’s more eloquent and narrative driven, so he doesn’t quite say this — the normative principle for sport, and that is play. He enjoys tossing the ball back and forth and as his year unfolds it becomes its own kind of competitive match — can he do it? And my, oh my, what redemptive things goes on between the planning and the throwing and the catching. As one friend of his put it, between the dreaming and the coming true. So, yes, this is a book about sports and baseball, play and recreation. Is there a career in recreational planning or play therapy for adults? If so, this book is a must!

We also put it under memoir because it is, after all, a rip-rolling read about a guy spending a year doing this great project. Whether one is really interested in baseball or having a catch or not, the writing is captivating and his tender stories are sure to inspire. What a fun and wholesome and powerful book.

The Big Story: How the Bible Makes Sense Out of Life Justin Buzzard (Moody Press) $13.99           OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19      

Some years at Jubilee I promote this from up front, hoping to persuade many to consider it.  It covers some of the same “big story” around which the conference is organized but, also, it really is designed for beginners or even seekers who wonder if life makes sense. Does that story (of unfolding redemptive history) speak to our stories, now? Justin Buzzard is himself a great storyteller and invites us into the Bible’s dynamic plot, wondering if we can jump into it, or, better, whether it can jump off the pages and into our own lives? It is a great intro to the Bible, an apologetic for a truly Biblical imagination about life and times, and a call to embrace the truest story of all, which can make sense of both the beauty and the brokenness of our lives and our world.

I think we need to be reminded every single day that we are part of a Bigger Story, part of something greater than ourselves, and that each of our stories matter a great deal. To be reminded of that truth is to live in Hope.”The Big Story”gives the reader that gift of Hope. — Sally Lloyd-Jones, author, The Jesus Storybook Bible

The Bible is the story of God’s great love for His creation, what He once called very good. And this incredible story culminates in the coming of Jesus, and our being invited, throughHim, to find our true place in His story. My friend Justin captures this with earnestness, care and clarity as he paints for us the beautiful picture of what God is doing in the world, and where we find our place in His story. — Leonce Crump, Renovation Church, author of Renovate: Changing Who You Are by Loving Where You Are

Post-Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture Gene Edward Veith (Crossway) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Sometimes the best way to communicate the distinctives of a Christian social imagery, a Kingdom vision, as we say at Jubilee, is to use contrast. We are all called to be discerning and agile in our (gracious) critique of society’s formulations and ideologies and practices. This book is a guide to this practice, offering serious, historical, cultural analysis about things such as views of the meaning of our humanness, our roles as social institutions, our understanding of family and sexuality. In our rather barren culture — a secularized society with a dizzying array of wrong-headed ways to think and be — Veith offers a conservative, more-or-less Lutheran alternative. I don’t think he is fully right all the time, and I wish he’d have worded a few things a bit differently, but, still, it is what Karen Swallow Prior calls “a library in miniature” that should be on all our bookshelves.

Can a book offer undaunted hope in a post-Christian world? Can it give us some resources for distancing ourselves from the worst of our secularized worldview and invite us to a more robust and multi-faceted Christian mindset? This popular author (a lit proof and culture editor of World Magazine) can help. He likes the early reformation artist Lucas Cranach, so there’s that.

The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place Andy Crouch (with an afterword by Amy Crouch) (Baker) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

My Tech-Wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices Amy Crouch & Andy Crouch (Baker) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Andy, as I said in the last BookNotes naming his Culture Making and the superlative, recent The Life We’re Looking For, has been a speaker at Jubilee often. We’ve promoted his pocket-sized Tech Wise Family even for those who are not parents as it offered, in my view, some of the best insights and practical guidance for navigating this digital culture of ours, and we’ve highlighted it often. Written several years beore his exquiste The Life We’re Looking For it is still a fabulous little book and highly recommended.

Amy, his daughter, wrote much of My Tech-Wise Life while a student at Cornell. In a way it is a sequel to the previous book, showing how she, as a young person, experienced digital devices while having such conscientious parents. She attended Jubilee as a student and it was so, so good to have her back this year as a workshop presenter. Hooray.

My Tech-Wise Life incorporates a bit of recent research data from the Barna Group making it very interesting for anyone who works with youth or young adults (or anybody who has a smartphone, laptop or computer, for that matter.) This bit of data shows how urgent fresh thinking about all this is. But the heart of the book remains Amy’s good insights, down-to-Earth and practical, about growing up in these days and the technological choices she has made. After each chapter, dad Andy chimes in with some lovely affirmation, a little fatherly advice, a few choice stories, and the occasional scholarly push-back. Together, this daughter/father team has given us a truly great little book. We were happy to feature it at Jubilee and we are pleased to remind you of it here. Pick up a few, while our supplies last.

Jesus, Beginnings, and Science: A Guide for Group Conversations David A. Vosburg & Kate Vosburg (Pier Press) $14.95                                   OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96

Speaking of family projects, this duo includes a professor of chemistry at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California and an IVCF campus minister. Both, obviously, are deeply engaged in higher education, wanting to invite others into thoughtful engagement with academic discourse and Biblical truth.

This good volume — endorsed by the likes of Wheaton College Old Testament prof John Walton and Research Associate for the Faraday Institute on Science and Religion Dr. Ruth Bancewicz — offers various Biblical insights about creation’s enduring role in the Biblical narrative and invites open-ended conversation, even leaving room for gracious disagreement. They tend towards a theistic evolutionary view, but this conversation surely is useful for those with creationist impulses or those who are aware of the intelligent design school.

What does the Bible say about creation? About human origins? About science itself as a noble human enterprise? This is ideal for anyone wanting to have faith-based conversations about science and certainly should be in the tool kit of anyone doing campus ministry or working in science circles. With 12 sessions, this Bible study workbook is a treasure trove for interested and curious folks. The wide-ranging bibliography in the back is itself worth the price of the book.

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

I was deeply touched by a few quick conversations I had at Jubilee with Asian American students and also with several international students. (There were students from Africa, China, and South America that I chatted with.) This book — asking “what’s your name?” — is so very important and maybe the best evangelical resource we’ve yet seen about Asian American ministry. With ongoing violence and tension and marginalization and an array of cultural stories and backgrounds, this book is vital.

The authors are a team of East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian backgrounds and they explore “what it means to learn our names and be seen by God as we are shaped by migration, culture, and faith.” There are tensions for all of us, but certainly the multiple tensions of being Asian American Christians there is much to discover and many ways to lean into God’s work.

Learning Our Names is a sorely needed reflection on how God is healing and setting apart Asian American followers of Jesus to be instruments of transformative hope.      — Russell Jeung, cofound of Stop AAPI Hate

On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts James K.A. Smith (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

At our conference, Jamie Smith is well-known, at least among older Jubilee aficionados, and he has spent time with CCO staff talking about his essential book, You Are What You Love and the heady but important How (Not) To Be Secular: On Reading Charles Taylor. Students sometimes pick up his wonderful collection of short essays, Discipleship in the Present Tense: Reflections on Faith and Culture which I’d gladly press into anyone’s hands; it is so good.

We didn’t sell many of his most recent (How to Inhabit Time) but this one, man, this one is one every young adult should read. On the Road with Saint Augustine is about the patron saint of restless hearts and explores Augustine’s ancient journey to Italy in search of… well, Jamie and his wife retraced these steps and there are art pieces and more in this fabulously designed book. It is a spectacular read, highly recommended.

Sure, it’s a bit more than your typical Christian self-help book, and there are allusive lines on the back like this:

“This is not a book about Saint Augustine. In a way, it’s a book Augustine has written about each of us.”

On the Road with Saint Augustine is a learned, large-hearted, and quite lively introduction to Augustine, or to life by way of Augustine, or to God by way of both. The variety of Smith’s references is astonishing, as is the seamless way he moves among them. I expect many modern readers will find themselves–and, crucially, much more than themselves–in this book.  — Christian Wiman, author of My Bright Abyss and Every Riven Thing

Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children edited by Leslie Bustard, Carey Bustard, & Thea Rosenburg (Square Halo Books) $29.99                                  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I suppose we could have added this to our parenting section — we had plenty of titles shown, since, well, it’s never too early to help students think about this possible side of their lives (not to mention displayed for the many married adults in the space, including CCO staff, many of which have little kids.) But we featured it in our education section, since school teachers more than anybody care about good kids books.

I’ve highlighted this often before so won’t go on and one, but you know this great book had dozens of fine authors sharing about why a certain genre of kids books is important and suggesting things they particularly recommend. There are a variety of different sorts of authors (across the spectrum of denominations, races, ages) and the books they highlight are unique — some you’d expect, some that might surprise you, and some, I bet, that you’ve never heard of. This is a vision for “why you should want to help little ones see castles in the sky.” If you know a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, or anyone who cares for children, this book makes a great gift.

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

I can hardly think of an off site event, a conference or book show that we do not take this elegant collection of chapters about being good stewards of the words we use. This is what one reviewer called “a wonderfully composed treatise” and it is just that, what I might call an eloquent manifesto. This second edition is timely and enhanced, allowing a new generation of readers to apply McEntyre’s wisdom “in a world that struggles with truth and graceful language more than ever before.”

This truly is one of my most often-recommended books, strategies for being wise in this world of hype and spin and conflict. The discussion questions make it ideal for a book club. At Jubilee we displayed Caring for Words in the section about reading literature, we also had it in the section for writers, and we had one (next to her very literate Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict) in a section on engaging culture. Not many books get displayed in three different spots!

Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit Hannah Anderson with illustrations by Nathan Anderson (Moody Press) $15.99             OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Hannah Anderson is a great writer and we had all of her books at Jubilee. In fact, I heard one workshop leader recommended her All That’s Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment. We had this slightly oversized, artful one, though, in our big section about appreciating nature, creation-based Biblical studies, and outdoor adventure stories, from John Muir to contemporary black mountaineer, James Edwards Mills. [Okay, that is two different categories at Jubilee, adventure education and appreciating creation.] Hannah’s lovely book fit right in,; Tish Harrison Warren says it “delights, mesmerizes, intoxicates…” and Sandra McCracken says it “captures my heart at the core.” It’s a real celebration of beauty and a call to pay attention to God who shows everywhere, even among the things you see and hear, season by season. Nice.

Discovering God through the Arts: How We Can Grow Closer to God by Appreciating Beauty and Creativity Terry Glaspey (Moody Press) $16.99           OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Terry has long been a good acquaintance and we’ve admired his many books over the years. We promoted this one when it first came out and named it as one of the Best Books of 2021. We had it all propped up at Jubilee, hoping students would take a look, see its beauty and good design, and realize it offers one-of-a-kind guidance on using the arts as a spiritual practice. Of course we Jubilee would say, and we would affirm (and so would author Terry Glaspey) that in terms of God’s call to be mature in our aesthetic life, we don’t need to “use” the arts; as Hans Bookmaker once put it “art needs no justification.” Granted.

But yet, there is this way in which — call it intersectional, maybe — that good art can be read in terms of our own spiritual formation and this book invites us to allow good paintings, sculptures, poems, novels, music, to invite us to pray, to care for the poor, to be aware of so much that directly impacts our discipleship. Can you grow closer to God and mature in your faith walk by learning to appreciate the arts? Yes, yes, you can. Terry Glaspey is a genius for putting this compendium together, a finely crafted and brilliantly conceived volume. It was just one of very many in our arts section, but wanted to highlight it as a particularly good one.

Everyday Activism: Following 7 Practices of Jesus to Create a Just World J.W. Buck (Baker) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Jubilee great (who has appeared often over the years, from the late 1970s on) John Perkins has a nice endorsement on this for his friend, church planter and leader of Pax, J.W. Buck. If Dr. Perkins says it is worth reading, we should listen. He writes:

In Everyday Activism Buck helps us imagine a more just world by living like Jesus on a daily basis. I recommend this book for all Christian who want to see justice roll down.  — Dr. John Perkins

Osheta Moore (who wrote Shalom Sisters and Dear White Peacemakers, both which we had at Jubilee) says it is a book that “shows us how to love and seek justice from a wholehearted and grounded place. I cannot recommend tis book enough.”

“I cannot recommend tis book enough.”  — Osheta Moore

Not bad, eh?

The seven practices for “slow social change” include thoughtfully resisting over thoughtlessly complying, loving your neighbor over fearing your differences, seeking forgiveness over revenge, resting over endlessly working, practicing nonviolence over violence, and more. He has something he calls “the Justice matrix” which is worth the price of the book and an appendix called a “Jubilee Action Plan.”

With endorsements from Walter Brueggemann to Kathy Khang to Randy Woodley to Drew Jackson, and more, this young buck is a rock star. If you’ve wanted to get involved in some kind of justice work but aren’t sure where to start, this practical book will “show you how you can develop everyday habits drawn for the life of Jesus that make the world a better place.” Yes!

Healing Conversations on Race: Four Key Practices From Scripture and Psychology Veola Vazquez, Joshua Knabb, Charles Lee-Johnson, Krystal Hays (IVP Academic) $24.00                                  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

For as long as we have been selling books at the Jubilee conference we have had a mighty big section on prejudice and racism, on what we might now call being anti-racist and agents of God’s reconciling racial justice, and much about diversity and multi-ethnic ministry. Each year we bring more and more, from older civil rights-era classics to edgy new stuff. We offer a lot of different angles and perspectives, too, so there is something there for everyone. The related consolation of topics in their field are key issues of our age, and it would be foolish to think we can be Jubilee people, living into God’s dream of a restored world, without addressing that elephant in the room.

Of the many new ones, I’ll just share this one since it shows not only how race complicates our relationships (even when we reject racism and seek to walk a better path together.) This book is well rooted in scholarly research and unites behavior and social sciences to help us learn essential information and Biblical perspectives, offered with helpful case studies, discussion questions, journaling prompts and more. It uses research from psychology, attachment theory, emotionally-focused therapy and more, helping us all build our knowledge and capacities, our self awareness and our sensitivity to the way the world works.

The authors are colleagues on the College of Behavior and Social Sciences faculty of California Baptist University. This is brand new and looks really, really interesting for those wanting to go further and deepen our skills and habits.

Practices of Love: Spiritual Disciplines for the Life of the World  Kyle David Bennett (Brazos Press) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

We had rows and rows of books about spirituality at Jubilee, from devotionals to prayerbooks, books about praying and books about spiritual disciplines. From ancient classes to modern leaders like Henri Nouwen and Ruth Haley Barton, Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, Howard Thurman and Jan Johnson, we covered a lot of territory. Students have heard of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and, interestingly, the brand new Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools. So, yeah.

We are always just a little worried about any gnostic tendencies, any navel-gazing habits, too much inward focus leading to what Dennis Ockham has called “sanctified narcissism.” We have to get all this properly understood. I think of a fabulous book warning about all this that I read thirty some years ago called Being Human: The Art of Spiritual Experience by Ranald Macaulay & Jerram Barrs which I told one student about when he wanted Cloud of the Unknowing. Sometimes one just wants to say to read Eugene Peterson instead and let it go at that.

Alas, here is a book that emerged, in part, in conversations about all this, by a guy who has been to Jubilee (as a student and year later as a presenter.) This book simply calls us to imagine our spiritual disciplines in light of their capacity to allow us to love our neighbors well. Can even spirituality, at first blush the most intimate and personal aspects of our faith, actually have public implications. Can our silence help us listen well? Can our fasting cause us to feast well with neighbors in acts of generous hospitality? You get the drift. This book is nearly one-of-a-kind, complete with an allusion to Kierkegaard in the title. James K.A. Smith wrote the excellent intro. Check it out.

Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? Timothy Keller (Viking) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

I have suggested that part of Jubilee is designed to inspire students to integrate their faith into their studies of their various academic disciplines, to think well and Christianly, about their course work and majors. I regularly celebrate Learning for the Love of God: A Student Guide to Academic Faithfulness (written by my pals Derek Melleby and Donal Optiz very much out of their experiences as campus minister’s working with students after hearing such talk at Jubilee) and great little booklets like Greg Jao’s Your Minds Mission or the always eloquent Cornelius Plantinga and his beloved Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living — a must-read for anyone who loves learning, but certainly for college students.

But, as you might guess, as I insinuated in the previous post about Jubilee, many students are hurting, anxious, full of hard stuff, and haven’t really read much about anything in their short lives. So they gravitate to self help books, resources on coping with stress or books about dating or titles about finding your identity in Christ. I get it.

This is one we featured as it is a cut above or a bit deeper than some that are very, very useful. (I adore the simple eloquence of Lewis Smedes oddly named Forgive and Forget.) We always feature the one by Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness.  As you might expect, Keller draws on them both, moving from the broader scope of social and political forgiveness (and the argument that it is not socially useful) to the most intimate, soul-searing moments of personal forgiveness.

This is obviously a book about forgiveness, its many implications, and, further, the gospel of Christ that invites us, and even empowers us, to do what we might not otherwise want or be able to. This is theology 101, made personal, practical, but with a keen sense of the social and cultural implications. It is brand new and highly recommended.

Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious David Dark (Broadleaf Books) $18.99       OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

We had a several of these displayed in two different places at Jubilee — for seekers, those hip, aware, skeptics that the book was clearly first written for, and under basic discipleship, since, really, this is a wide-ranging book that is about, well, everywhere, everywhere, all at once.

I’ve shared about it years ago when it was out in a lovely first edition, and I wrote about it a few months back when the second, revised and expanded edition came out. David has changed a bit over the years (“he not busy being born is busy dying” said Saint Bob) and he wants people to know that he not only has added some good writing to this already spectacularly written book, but that he has excised some things as well. He has, as he says, repented. I’m not sure about all of that (I loved the first edition) but this really is a fiesty volume that notes that we just can’t be “done” with religion. It is, broadly understood, the witness to everywhere we’re up to. And who isn’t up to something, right?

This revised and reframed text weaves new stuff about the pandemic, vaccine responses, Black Lives Matter, #churchtoo, the hullabaloo about critical race theory and more. It’s provocative, urgent, poetic, a bit mystifying at times, and, frankly, one of the most amazing books you will ever encounter.  One chapter reminds us that “Policy is Liturgy Writ Large” and in another he says “Hurry Up and Matter.”  The blurb from Richard Rohr on the front says it is “a call to consciousness and compassion.” Yup.

Ordinary Saints: Living Every Day to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

It was a blast to give a quick description of this brand new book up in front of thousands on Jubilee stage. Even those that couldn’t spring for it were delighted, it seems, to hear about a collection of spiritually-aware, theologically-informed essays about movies, knitting, working in retail, reading comic books, roller skating, coping with chronic illness, lovemaking, drawing, making playlists, Muppets, and more. We noted that there is a chapter about therapy, about mental illness, about poetry (and another about pretzels.) The shout-out chapter that got a cheer was when I said there was one on napping. “It’s a spiritual activity we must practice,” I quipped.

From Calvin Seerveld on knowing to Bruce Herman on painting to A.D. Bauer on grand parenting Margie Haack on raising chickens to Curt Thompson on being present, there is so much richness here I can hardly explain it. It’s a practical application of the CCO’s Jubilee vision: there are no “sacred/secular’ dualisms and in a Biblical orientation, God can be glorified in nearly everything. Even Malcom Guite’s chapter on smoking a pipe is pretty compelling.

The book is lavishly illustrated and is a suitable, lasting artifact for the 20th anniversary of Square Halo Books. It was my honor to highlight it at Jubilee 2023. Soli Deo Gloria.

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.85; 2 lbs would be $4.55.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50,  if it fits in a flat rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

– DON’T FORGET TO LET US KNOW WHAT SHIPPING METHOD YOU PREFER –

BookNotes

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I am sitting with my laptop in a cavernous space with piles of empty cardboard boxes and stuffing paper scattered around, waiting to be recycled. It’s a mess, cluttered but still, eerily different than it was a day ago when the huge pop-up bookstore we created as part of the CCO’s Jubilee conference was jam-packed with books on dozens of tables and – the point of it all – busting with collegiates browsing books which will hopefully help them on their journey of living out a robust and wide-as-life vision of the gospel of the Kingdom of God. This picture (taken before the crowds showed up) doesn’t even show all the tables.

Jubilee is run by the CCO (the Coalition for Christian Outreach) an evangelical para-church ministry with whom Beth and I have had long affiliations, that, while trans-denominational, has been influenced (at least in its earliest days) by what some call Dutch neo-Calvinism. It’s a cool story for another time, but Jubilee tells us much about the CCOs vision.

The story of the cosmic scope of Christ’s redemption and the future hope of “all things (re)new(ed)” has rich implications for the arts and sciences, for the humanities and the trades, for academic learning and public careers, for home life and urban planning. A Kingdom-centered and wholistic understanding of the Lordship of Christ at its best (and this is not exclusive to the neo-Calvinists like Kuyper and Bavinck) feeds a desire to serve our neighbors by forging a public theology that resists the idols of the age. It is missional and feisty, “in but not of” the surrounding world, as Jesus put it near the end of the book of John, capturing what Richard Mouw once termed “holy worldliness.” I like that.

(Speaking of Mouw, he cites me and explains a bit about the conference in his lovely little book All That God Cares About: Common Grace and Divine Delight which we obviously recommend, certainly when thinking about the impulses of the Jubilee event.)

The conference at its best unfolds some of this, offering glimpses of thinking Christianly about collegiate life and after-college times, work and worship, spirituality and sex, prayer and politics. You get the big picture, I’m sure. Imagine unchurched kids and serious seekers and a whole lot of lively Jesus-following young adults (from Anglicans to Presbyterians, Methodist youth to Assembly of God kids, Pentecostal grad students from Africa and frosh fresh from their nondenominational churches back home) all fired up for joining God in this story of stories. The worship singing was soulful and lively, that’s for sure. What a gig!

The Teamsters union that works at the Pittsburgh Convention Center are now using forklifts to move the pallets of boxes of books and supplies we lugged to Jubilee and are now taking them back to the loading dock. Beth and two amazing friends are carefully loading up the unsold books and placing lamps and crates and boards and shelves and supplies and paperwork into the rented truck just so for the rough ride back across the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Dallastown. We are exhausted and exhilarated.

The empty boxes are, of course, tangible proof that we sold a lot of books. (And the hours and hours of lugging the full boxes down to the truck reminds us of all that we did not sell.) After doing the conference for the two worst years of the pandemic virtually, we were a bit nervous to be back in public (this Covid thing is not over yet) and we are a bit rusty. The CCO has been working hard to rebuild the reputation and brand of Jubilee and they pulled it off without a hitch. Even though attendance (counting guests with display booths and campus staff and donors and speakers) was a bit over 2000, sales were a bit less than most years.

The whole country – not just the rising Gen Z – is in a crisis of not reading as much as we once did. Bookstore sales are down all over; it is unclear if many of these students had ever been in a bookstore before, let alone a thoughtfully-curated store like ours. Some obviously knew some popular evangelical names (John Mark Comer, say, or Lysa TerKeurst or hip-hop artist Lecrae who performed there) but many authors we promoted were new to them. (That a few knew that their campus ministers liked Fleming Rutledge or Eugene Peterson or Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Esau McCauley or Jamie Smith was encouraging.) Yet, the very notion of reading from a uniquely Christian worldview which shapes a public theology helping them live into their future vocations with vigor and fidelity was pretty new.

Why is that?

We wonder what sort of good church nurtures in its community this kind of whole-life discipleship, thereby creating a hunger for reading about the implications of faith for all of life? I wonder why when I highlight books (here at BookNotes) on a Christian philosophy of engineering or law, education or creativity, journalism or business, nursing or ecology, few people buy them. And yet, this is one of the markers of churches that are retaining young adults, showing how Christian faith affirms work and cultural engagement. (The great book by David Kinnaman & Mark Matlock, Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus Digital Babylon, has a full chapter on this which actually has a page describing students eager to buy books about their particular callings and careers – from Hearts & Minds at Jubilee! It’s a great moment in the book, actually, illustrating the importance of this work that we do.) The point is that buying books about the missional expression of faith in the workworld just isn’t that interesting to most church folks, and I think it indicates that they haven’t had that vision cast for them. They are not inspired to care about such things — unless, maybe, they went to Jubilee as a young adult.

The CCO staff on campuses from Western PA to central Indiana to Florida to Fresno love doing relational evangelism, gently sharing the gospel in winsome ways inviting students into the movement of God’s mission in the world. At Jubilee we saw during a late night time many students transformed by “stepping into the Light” (as York Moore put it.) I am always grateful to see healthy, fruitful, evangelism and we pray that these new commitments are enduring. I really like York’s handsome little book Do Something Beautiful: The Story of Everything and a Guide to Finding Your Place in It which helps frame the gospel in such lovely ways.

But CCO staff also encourage what they call “academic discipleship”, which means inviting students not only to take their studies seriously (itself nearly a countercultural message in some circles) but to do so as an act of worship, practicing the presence of God even in the classroom. The book Learning for the Love of God: A Student’s Guide to Academic Faithfulness by Donald Opitz & Derek Melleby, in fact, emerged from CCO circles and Jubilee enthusiasm and is a delightful starting guide to this project. It regularly sells for $17.00 but OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60. You should buy one for every college student you know. Seriously.

What does it look like for an eager student to learn well from their professors but also to bring supplemental insights from Biblically-shaped authors, or, perhaps to offer a counter-narrative, bringing winsome critique to the ideologies and prevailing notions in their department? To be “in but not of” the psychology department or engineering program or chem lab or athletic team or outdoor club or student Senate can be an adventure. I’ve heard of students who have found the joy of the Lord when they realized that God cares about their ordinary lives in higher education. I’ve heard of some given extra credit and accolades when they bring God-given principles to bear offering true wisdom to their classroom conversations. I’ve also heard of students banned from speaking religiously in classes or being told they dare night cite serious Christian scholarship in the footnotes of their papers. Calling students to this dramatic vision of a life well lived in the university or community college or med school or trade school is what Jubilee is designed to do. As old Abraham Kuyper said, there’s not “one square inch” of their places where Christ does not lay claim.

(We didn’t try to push it at Jubilee since most undergrads aren’t quite ready, but Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-first Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures edited by Jessica & Robert Joustra (IVP Academic; $28.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40) is a remarkable contemporary study of the current relevance of Kuyper’s famous lectures given at Princeton in 1898 affirming the Lordship of Christ over all of life. See my review of it here.)

Despite our best efforts to hold out this big story of God’s coming Kingdom and the visions of vocation that should shape young adult faith, still, many of the books we sold were about Godly ways to cope with anxiety, romantic breakups, shoring up one’s identity. There is among younger adults a real need for these sorts of resources. Happily, they are also learning about the systemic ways racism and injustice have so vandalized the shalom of God’s good creation and those sorts of topics sold well. Of course we sold a bunch of books by C.S. Lewis and his pals (JRR Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, and George MacDonald) and fun stuff ranging from popular culture to the sermons of MLK, from Ruth Haley Barton and Henri Nouwen to (yes) a couple of the brand-new Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction by Gray Sutanto & Cory Brock. We really did have something for nearly everyone.

As I type the Convention Center staff are continuing to lug our pallets of boxes down to the truck. Beth is meticulously loading the back of the U-Haul. Our helpers must make their way back to their own lives and work and we have a guy waiting back at the shop that will lend a hand as we unload the U-Haul a couple of hours down the road.

HERE you can watch my three 7 or 8 minute book announcements made before the crowds at the plenary session, filmed nicely on the spot by a quick-thinking friend. They are more or less geared to the themes of creation/fall/redemption. The books mentioned there, too, can get the BookNotes 20% off so check all of those out. No laughing at me, though, as I perform the bookselling spiel for the college crowd. I get pretty excited.

To give our BookNotes friends a bit of further glimpse into the diversity of titles we sell at Jubilee, here’s just a random handful for your consideration. As somebody up front at the conferences said about us, if you wonder if there is a resource on a certain topic, “ask Byron and Beth if there is a good book about that. There probably is.”

I hope you enjoy the diversity of topics illustrated, knowing this is just a tiny example of the fascinating books we took to Jubilee which is only a small portion of the stuff we have here at the bookshop. God is making all things new, so, well, that’s a lot of territory.

All books mentioned are, of course, 20% off.  Order some today. Thanks for your support.

The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right Lisa Sharon Harper (Waterbrook) $17.00         OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

Although the conference is arranged around the “chapters” of the unfolding Biblical drama — creation / fall / redemption / restoration — Lisa Harper frames the great news of the gospel as shalom/alienation/reconciliation. Further, she explores the implications of the gospel call of being agents of reconciliation in a variety of spheres. This is a tremendous book by the famed activist and author of a riveting memoir, Fortune.

He Saw That It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life To Repair a Broken World Sho Baraka (Waterbrook) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE =17.60

Sho was at Jubilee and was on the main stage the first night. What a good guy (and funny, too.) This is a grand, persuasive call to use our God given creativity to help heal the world. Artists and creatives love it, sure, but I think it is truly for everyone, everywhere. Yes!

Pursuing an Earthy Spirituality: C.S Lewis and Incarnational Faith Gary S. Selby (IVP Academic) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE =19.20

We had a lot of books by C.S. Lewis and the Inklings; here is one that is about the “earthy spirituality” that Jubilee is promoting. As spiritual leader and counselor Gary Moon puts it, “Selby beautifully reminds us that Lewis lived a spirituality that was at least as deeply rooted in emotion, imagery, beauty, and the body as it was in his keen intellect.” Other rave reviews come from Simon Chan and Malcom Guite.

Interpreting Your World: Five Lenses for Engaging Culture Justin Ariel Bailey (Baker Academic) $21.99              OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

Justin Bailey, who teaches at Dordt College in Iowa, is now a friend, he’s a professor whose books we’ve reviewed and who we admire greatly. So good to have crossed paths with him at Jubilee. We sold his great book Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age, too, but this is the one he spoke on in a crowded workshop. Really profound and exceptionally wise stuff.

All Shall Be Well: Awakening to God’s Presence in His Messy Abundant World Catherine McNiel (NavPress) $15.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

If you saw the video of me up front you’ll recall we highlighted this the first night explaining that it is a memoir full of eloquent nature writing; McNiel walks us through a year in her life, arranged around four seasons. Yes, the world is both messy and abundant; broken but good. Her keen eye is a joy to behold. Highly recommended as a good read.

By Bread Alone: A Baker’s Reflections on Hunger, Longing, and the Goodness of God Kendall Vanderslice (Tyndale Momentum) $17.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

Brand new, this great reflection is related to her previous Eerdmans title, We Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God. If that offers an earthy, communal, vision of a missional sort of Kingdom church, this is on baking as a spiritual practice. What a book!

By Bread Alone is a soulful, searching glimpse into trusting the goodness of God when it seems most opaque. Kendall Vanderslice trades toxic positivity for the promise of sustenance, and the result is deeply honest and curiously comforting. These pages are dusted with the flour of daily bread. If you are lost, longing, hope-weary, or barely hanging on, read this and be nourished. — Shannan Martin, author of Start with Hello and The Ministry of Ordinary Places

I am grateful for Kendall Vanderslice’s By Bread Alone — a sustenance of hope, a needed nourishment for us hungering to create beauty faced with the bitter gaps of our divided cultures. Her words give rise to our tenderness, and her memorable chapters fill our hearts with compassion. Every page of this book (full of recipes) is brimming with refractive colors shining through the broken prisms of her life, a communion journey of service in tears, as a sojourner baker, a fellow maker into the aroma of the new.            — Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Art + Faith: A Theology of Making

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

This is another brand new release that we were overjoyed to display at Jubilee. Somebody who knew the author (who teaches in the art department at Covenant College in TN) took at screen shot declaring it the first “in the wild” bookstore spotting of this new masterpiece. Kudos to Baker for the expert design, full color art, and a delightfully appealing approach to what is surely going to be known as a major text in the field. We’ve got a lot, and this new one is great.

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

Transforming Care: A Christian Vision for Nursing Practice Mary Molewyk, Doornbos, Ruth Groenhout & Kendra Hotz (Eerdmans) $26.50  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.20

We have a large section in the store of books about health care, medicine, doctoring, and nursing. This is one of the great ones and it was good to feature it at Jubilee. Three clear-headed and big-hearted profs from Calvin University weigh in, showing us an intregal vision for nursing care. It’s so good, I’d recommend it to anyone in any health-care related field, from docs to physical therapists.

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

I hope you recall that we honored this as one of the Best Books of 2022. It is eloquent, engaging, thoughtful, learned, and moving. It’s everything a good book can be and its vision is balanced, wise, helpful. I regret not pushing it from up front (I highlighted his Culture Making as a quintessential Jubilee book.) This one, though, takes my breath away. Highly recommended.

A Christian Field Guide to Technology for Engineers and Designers Ethan Brue, Derek Schuurman, Steven Vanderleest (IVP Academic) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Derek Schuurman was a presenter at the conference again — he has spoken at previous Jubilees about his excellent Shaping a Digital World: Faith, Culture and Computer Technology  — but this time he got to share about the new one for engineers. I have been eager for this because the books which explore a philosophy of technology (of which we have many) are sometimes a bit abstract for ordinary engineering majors. This, though, brings it home, principled and practical about guidelines for normative engineering design. Simple put, it is a must for anyone in this field.  Allow me to say that again, with feeling: Simply put, it is a must for anyone in this field.

The Locust Effect: Why The End of Poverty Requires the End of Violence Gary Haugen & Victor Boutros (Oxford University Press) $18.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

It was so good to see Victor Boutros again and so see him interviewed on the main stage, telling about his effective work mitigating trafficking in several regions of the country when he worked at the Department of Justice. Now the head of the Human Trafficking Institute, it was an honor to have him at Jubilee and a joy to sell this serious, Oxford University Press book that he co-authored with Kingdom rock star Gary Haugen of IJM. Excellent.

There Is a Future: A Year of Daily Midrash Amy Bornman (Paraclete Press) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

We have highlighted this lovely poetry volume before here at BookNotes and it was a delight to know Amy was speaking at Jubilee. She is a Wheaton grad, an artful business woman, and a working poet, living in Pittsburgh. So, so  good.

God and Guns: The Bible Against American Gun Culture edited by Christopher Hays & C.S Crouch – with an introduction by Stanley Hauerwas (WJK) $30.00                                     OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

We had maybe eight different titles on this topic; each with their own tone or approach.This one is a bit heady, done by Biblical scholars offering different insights drawn from their academic work with Scripture. It’s fascinating and urgent. It may be the only one that actually approaches the topic — the urgency, the sociology, the data, the political philosophy — through the lens of Biblical studies. It is important.

Rethinking Life: Embracing the Sacredness of Every Person Shane Claiborne (Zondervan) $19.99                       OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I hope you remember our pushing this a month ago; we thank those who pre-ordered it. The Friday night speaker at Jubilee (Carmen Imes of Biola) spoke passionately about our dignity and worth, gave a vivid call to honor the embodied worth of everyone, no matter their station or productivity. Here, Shane offers a lively denunciation of lop-sided anti-abortion views and invites us to a consistent Biblical nonviolence, honoring the worth of all, from the unborn to the prisoner, from the racially other to the aged. He explores powerfully why it is that many religious people don’t have this robust vision, making this a captivating, nearly prophetic work. I’m glad a few students noticed it and were intrigued.

Vivid blurbs on the back are from past Jubilee speaker Bob Goff, from Kristen Loves Du Mez (who calls it a “clear-eyed and hope-filled gift to the American church”) and Lisa Sharon Harper who says it is a book “you will cherish and quote for the rest of your life.” Let’s hope so!

Resisting Denial, Refusing Despair and Other Essays Walter Brueggemann (Cascade) $22.00                               OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Of the many authors we’ve been privileged to meet in our four decades of bookselling, few have been as rewarding and interesting as informal time spent under the tutelage of Walt Brueggemann. Naturally we had many of his books at Jubilee (Prophetic Imagination remains one of the most important books I’ve ever read!) This new one is short, the chapters fairly concise, and although the prose is Brueggemann-esque and passionate, it is not dense. A fantastic, provocative primer.

Beautiful People Don’t Just Happen: How God Redeems Regret, Hurt, and Fear in the Making of Better Humans Scott Sauls (Zondervan) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I don’t know him well but given his other books on befriending others with grace and making a difference in the culture through love and goodness (like Irresistible Faith, say) I’ve recommended him to be a speaker at Jubilee. This is his newest and maybe his most intimate. Self-help sorts of things are in demand at Jubilee as so many young ones are lonely, stressed, anxious, hurting. This one offers real hope in solid ways. Who doesn’t want to be a better human?

Emotionally honest, confessional, and full of grace . . . this book reads like a rope ladder of mercy, lifting us out of the pit of suffering and into the sunlight of God’s wisdom. Scott makes space for our brokenness and gives testimony to the grace that delivers us out of the low places of our shame and sorrow, up onto the high ground of God’s strength. Sandra McCracken, singer-songwriter and recording artist, author of Send Out Your Light: The Illuminating Power of Scripture and Song

For those whose trauma and pain seems large or small: read this book and be prepared for God to draw forth your beauty, emerging as it will beyond your imagination and from the places you would least expect. Curt Thompson MD, author, The Soul of Desire and The Soul of Shame

Color-Courageous Discipleship: Follow Jesus, Dismantle Racism, and Build Beloved Community Michelle T. Sanchez (Waterbrook) $18.00                            OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I was going to promote this from up front at Jubilee but couldn’t work it in — too many books, too little time, literally. We might have sold a bunch if only people knew about it. Here’s the short, short version: this is a book which nicely combines conventional evangelical disciple-making visions with anti-racism work. Building “the beloved community” is certainly part of what mentors of others should aspire to build into their young Christian mentees and any disciple-making program, if it is to be faithful and timely, simply must deal with this burning issue of the day. So, yes, this is a great combo approach, showing how wholistic Kingdom vision and racial justice efforts can be integrated into discipleship efforts in the local faith community. Yay. (There is even a teen version, by the way.)

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief Francis Collins (Free Press) $18.00                             OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I wish I had taken a photo of the many science books we had at Jubilee and the crowds of science majors eagerly checking them out, some seeing this sort of somewhat scholarly work from scientists who are Christians. We had a section about the origins debates and stuff on various sub-categories within the natural sciences.

This one is an older classic, with the esteemed and kind geneticist sharing his overview of how his faith informs his science and, more, how he as a scientist, sees in the stuff of his daily work, the glory of God. This is a great book, good for anyone with basic interest in science and/or apologetics.

Disability: Living Into the Diversity of Christ’s Body Brian Brock (Baker Academic) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

We had a large section of books about disabilities studies, about how churches can be more inclusive, how those who care for the handicapped can find hope in the gospel. There’s a lot going on in this field and this book is just one example of a thoughtful, justice-oriented, liberative theology for the disabled. Give us a ring if you want others.

Why Business Matters to God: (And What Still Needs to Be Fixed) Jeff Van Duzer (IVP) $26.00                                OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

We have a lot of business books, some more on economics, some more on management, some visionary and enthusiastic, some sober and sharp. In any case, this is one we most often recommend most readily — even the title illustrates the themes of teachings of Jubilee, that God made things good and yet things are not as they ought to be (due to sin and idolatry, of course.) Yet, we can work in hope, making things better. This is a book every business person should know, at least.

Reading Buechner: Exploring the Work of a Master Memoirist, Novelist, Theologian, and Preacher  Jeffrey Munroe (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

Jeff is a customer of ours and a good, good man, a thoughtful scholar (at Western Seminary in Holland MI) and a close reader of the incredible Mr. Buechner. He offers a glimpse into the various genres Buechner works in — and they are all good — and gives us insight about why he still matters. At Jubilee I gathered that most young students have no idea who he is (even though he was nominated for a Pulitzer and has given us some of the best memoirs and most clever lay-theology books ever.) In any case, Munroe’s book is great for beginners and will be really enjoyed by fans. We had a ton of books about books, lit and poetry, but this is a good example of some of what we enjoy most.

Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition Christine Pohl (Eerdmans) $21.99                         OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

I hardly have to say much about this as we’ve mentioned it often. It isn’t simplistic (and we had some easier ones for those less inclined to hefty studies) but it is well worth working through.  There are a lot of other books on this practice of being hospitable, some quite nice (and quite practical.) This is the mature classic, though. See also her amazing Living into Community. These two are major works, seminal and vital for CCO folks.

The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection Robert Farrar Capon (Modern Library) $18.00                                  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We had a large food and eating section (complete with some More With Less cookbooks) and a section on food and farming. What a great case study this all is, learning to be faithful in this essential part of daily life. (Eat With Joy by Rachel Marie Stone is still a favorite, by the way; there is a picture out there on the internets of me highlighting it at Jubilee years ago with a picture of the book cover on the screen behind me.)

Capon was an Episcopal priest (and food writer for the New York Times back in the day) and we stock many of his books. Supper of the Lamb, though, is classic. Written in 1969, it is funny and theological and while offering reflections on life and cooking in God’s good world, it is, in fact, an extended recipe for a feast. What a book!

Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age Alan Noble (IVP) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

You may recall that I named Alan’s most recent (You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World) one of the very Best Books of last year. He’s such a good guy. (And, by the way, I’ll be announcing soon that we are eager to take pre-orders for his soon-to-be-released little volume On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living — now that would have been a Jubilee best-seller had it been available. It comes in April 2023.)

This Disruptive Witness is his first and it remains a standard book for those wanting a discerning understanding of the texture of modern life and how to be faithful in these complex, secularizing days. It’s brilliant and quite readable. Kudos all around.

Listen to Rich Mouw’s words about its importance:

I puzzle a lot about how to bring the claims of the gospel to bear on a changing culture that regularly bewilders me. Now I find out in this book that Alan Noble checks his Twitter account before he gets out of bed in the morning, and he watches Netflix while doing the dishes. He also knows a lot about vampirism. And then he reflects on all of this in the light of what he has read by Charles Taylor, John Calvin, Jamie Smith, and Blaise Pascal. Wow! IMHO this book is awesome. — Richard J. Mouw, president emeritus, professor of faith and public life at Fuller Theological Seminary, author of How to Be a Patriotic Christian

The Other Side of Hope Danielle Strickland (Thomas Nelson) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

Danielle Strickland’s Saturday night Jubilee talk was one for the ages — energetic, funny, culturally-savvy (she riffed on “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once”) and deeply moving. Her story about the wedding on the streets among the addicted and homeless was unforgettable. And that redemptive call to receive God’s love (and be a conduit of that unstoppable love for others) offered just a tiny bit of the energy and pathos of the many moving anecdotes found in this story-laded book The Other Side of Hope is nearly two books in one, one side packed full of stories, the other part a reflection on hope in a cynical, disbelieving age. Hooray.

Reweaving Shalom: Your Work and the Restoration of All Things Hugh C. Whelchel (The Institute for Faith, Work and Economics) $9.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $7.99

We have a plethora, a passle, a whole bunch of books on the integration of faith and work and we took a lot of them to Jubilee. There was a tremendous, well attended workshop at the Pittsburgh event this year since serving God in the workplace and vocations of all sorts captures much of the end game of our hopes for the conference. Of the many lively, thick, or provocative titles we have, this little one is clear and inspiring, framing our feeble efforts in light of God’s good promise to make all things new. Work matters. We are called to be agents of flourishing, reweaving shalom. Hugh is a great gift to many on this topic and we are glad to highlight this rare little gem that is a succinct as it is powerful.

Practice of the Presence : A Revolutionary Translation Brother Lawrence (Broadleaf) $25.99                                   OUR SALE PRICE = $20.70

What a gift this grand, if simple, spiritual classic is and what a story it tells. With Carmen Acevedo Butcher’s fresh, lively translation, this teaching about praying while doing mundane chores is remarkable for anyone, perfect for Jubilee-type worldview thinkers. Mystic Cynthia Bourgeault calls the new translation “radiant” and Mirabai Starr (no slacker in the translation biz, herself) says it is “a bold, vibrant, and potent translation.” So taken was I with the good, helpful introduction about Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman was his birth name) that I read out loud some of it to a student at Jubilee.

Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord’s Prayer Shapes the Imagination of the Church in a Secular Age D.J. Marotta (Moody Press) $14.99                                              OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

CCO, you may know, is a bit different than other well-known college ministry organizations in that they partner with local churches that are near campuses. This author is an Anglican priest who is, in fact, the pastor of a CCO partnership church in Richmond. So when we realized that, it was all the more germane. But we’d have enthusiastically promoted it anyway as it is nearly brilliant, a sleeper of a book, highly recommended.

Liturgy in the Wilderness offers us a fresh and engaging perspective on the Lord’s Prayer. Though this widely known prayer can be uttered in less than thirty seconds, this book shows us how it can — and should — impact every single area of our lives. Marotta takes us by the hand and guides us to see that while we may never get out of the wilderness, we can always move forward in hope. This book is thoughtful, filled with wise insights and engaging stories. And best of all, Marotta doesn’t merely write about this important message in his book; he lives the message, too.  — J. R. Briggs, author The Sacred Overlap: Learning to Live Faithfully in the Space Between

Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation Collin Hansen (Zondervan) $26.99                                            OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I’ve mentioned this already at BookNotes, and now that I’ve read it, I’m really enthused. Agree or not fully with Keller’s theology and church practice, it is an intellectual biography that starts with the influence among others things with — get this — the CCO. From the hyper-Reformed teaching of R.C. Sproul in Western PA to the wholistic justice-influence evangelistic work of Harvie Conn at Westminster to Keller’s study in collaboration with James Davison Hunter which gave us To Change the World, this documents his visionary creation of a third way between the often theologically unorthodox progressives and the theologically overly-dogmatic conservative evangelicals. His culturally-engaged and winsome apologetic in this secular age has been nothing short of phenomenal and this study of his influences is stellar. Beyond interesting, it is, in many ways, commendable, a witness for us all no matter your own denominational afflictions. It’s very highly recommended, even if it didn’t sell well at Jubilee.

The kids have no idea how important this dude is, and can’t imagine how even the Jubilee conference’s vision overlaps with his creative and fruitful program. Yes!

Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good Steven Garber (IVP) $20.00                                     OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

One of our all time favorite books, Garber once directed the Jubilee conference and his fingerprints are all over the place. His first book, Fabric of Faithfulness is iconic for serious thinkers concerned about higher education and the faith formation of those in their “critical years.” His small collection of essays, The Seamless Life ought to be bought by the boatload.  Sometimes when thinking about the 45 year history of the conference, I think of how in God’s providence, Garber showed up at the right time and stewarded the event well, continuing on its remarkable trajectory.

I’m deeply, deeply grateful that he has written these amazing books and have them propped up each year at Jubilee, knowing that they can be transformational.

The Need to Be Whole: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice Wendell Berry (Counterpoint) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

I have commented about this and many reviewers have weighed in. Even those who adore Berry’s rural commitments and agrarian vision find this problematic. Others think it is brilliant. It is, doubtlessly, one of the most serious, sustained arguments he has made, a major work (not a collection of essays.) In a way it is an ongoing conversation started in the must-read The Hidden Wound. I told a number of newbies to Berry’s work at Jubilee to start with Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community or the great collection edited by Norman Wirzba, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry. We sold a few of Norman’s important books, too. Hooray!

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption Bryan Stevenson (OneWorld) $17.00                                               OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

We had a large section on criminal justice (not to mention a section on incarceration and on policing, near our section on law and legal thinking.) Anyway, this story of Stevenson’s extraordinary work with the Equal Justice Initiative, legal aid advocacy organization he started is simply one of the best books I’ve ever read. That he spoke at Jubilee a decade or so ago — thanks to his mentor Tony Campolo — makes it that much sweeter when we stock this one at there. I hope you know this contemporary classic. The book is better than the movie, but the movie is great. Thanks be to God.

The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity Jason Thacker (Zondervan) $22.99                    OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

Thacker has a number of books, from his small but potent Following Jesus in the Digital Age to the brand new book about legal theories about digital freedom (The Digital Public Square: Christian Ethics in a Technological Society) but this first one on artificial intelligence was ahead of its time. Rich Mouw wrote a good forward.

Here is how the publisher describes it: “In The Age of AI, researcher Jason Thacker explores how the prevalence of artificial intelligence shapes what it means to be human today – and how the fact that we are made in the image of God transforms everything about how we use it.”

Reforming the Liberal Arts Ryan C. McIlhenny (Falls City Press) $14.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.96

We’ve mentioned this and other good books from the Western Pennylsvania indie press Falls City and it seemed right to highlight it here. We did have a section on higher education (hoping professors and collegiate student affairs staff might swing by) and this surely is one of the fiesty, wise, and helpful contributions to an on-going discussion about what needs to be done to keep our colleges and universities on track. This remarkable little volume literally draws on neuroscience and Reformed theology, contemplative spirituality and pop culture. He brings what some might call reformational philosophy to bear on this lively conversation, contenting that higher education can provide “a religious experience, a greater knowledge of self, the world, and God.” This is fresh and provocative, short and sweet. A great read.

By the way, we had little pre-order postcards featuring a forthcoming title from Falls City Press that will release in a few weeks. It is by my friend Alex Sosler who teaches at Montreat College in Black Mountain NC. That  forthcoming one is hopefully going to become well known as it is simple and clear but just remarkably wise, digging deep, inviting students to the journey of formation that is higher education.

PRE-ORDER: Learning to Love: Christian Higher Education as Pilgrimage Alex Sosler (Falls City Press; $18.99 – OUR SALE PRE-ORDER PRICE = $15.19.) I’ve read the whole thing carefully and can’t say enough about how valuable it will be for incoming college students. Even though it is designed for use in faith-based settings, I think any Christian kid in college would benefit from it. It’s alongside the delightfully basic Make College Count (by Derek Melleby) and, of course, the aforementioned Learning for the Love of God (by Melleby and Donald Opitz.) Lots of good folks who work in education — from Erica Young Reitz to Drew Moser to Jeffrey Bilbro all rave.

Heaven and Nature Sing: 365 Daily Devotionals for Outdoor & Nature Lovers edited by Sharon Brodin (Brodin Press) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

What fun that an outdoor education team leader for CCO has three entries in this compilation of nature-loving, wilderness/adventure devotionals. From day hikers to kayakers to campers to other adventure sports folks, this collection is one of a kind. We had a lot of books of nature writing and a good number on backpacking, leadership in the outdoors and the like. This devotional, though, is great for anyone who appreciates the great outdoors, works in camp settings, or appreciates wilderness expeditions.

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

Brand new, we were tickled to share this new potent book written by the young Vice President of the Evangelical Environmental Network. Previously, he was the national organizer and spokesperson for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, and he has been featured in news outlets such as CNN, PBS, NPR, NBC News, and U.S. News and World Report. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan would have fit right in to Jubilee, I’m sure. We had a lot of faithful ecology stuff, and if I could have I would have pressed this one into the hands of many.

This book does far more than share compelling facts about a warming world. It tells the story of how following Jesus leads us to protect a world threatened with ecological catastrophe. Kyle Meyaard-Schaap shares the stories of real people on this journey and offers pathways for us to follow. We often say, ‘Let’s hear the voices of young people shaping our future.’ Kyle has empowered them. But those voices are shouting, ‘Our future is on fire!’ Reading this book doesn’t just tell us what to think but shows us what to do. — Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, general secretary emeritus of the Reformed Church in America; author of Without Oars.

While fellow Christians remain apathetic or dismissive, Christians concerned about the climate crisis can feel they are walking a lonely journey. For these lonely journeyers, Kyle Meyaard-Schaap is a patient, trustworthy, experienced encourager. His irresistible passion calls us back from deceptive narratives into the real story of God’s redemptive love for all creation. This book is a deeply scriptural call to advocacy for people and planet as both moral necessity and spiritual discipline. What a gift! Finally, Christians can take courage and hand this book to others, saying, ‘This. Read this.’ — Debra Rienstra, professor of English at Calvin College and author of Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth

Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind Alan Jacobs (Penguin) $16.00           OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

I’m not sure if this sold at Jubilee (maybe one or two at most.) But, whew, what a book. It is mature, thoughtful, exceedingly eloquent as we’ve come to expect from Dr. Jacobs. (I know we sold at least one of his nice How to Think and one young lit major was delighted to find his The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. We had The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis in the history section of course.

But this. Wow, what a treatise, an argument for reading older books. He connects it with the dis-ease many young adults feel these days and although not everyone will find emotional serenity this way, it sure makes sense. Highly recommended.

Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds That Came Before edited by Jessica Wooten Wilson & Jacob Stratton (Zondervan Academic) $29.99  Foreword by David I. Smith  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I reviewed this at BookNotes and was beside myself thinking of the many values of this great resource. There are bunches of chapters by Christian scholars who in readable prose invite us to learn from the best thinkers of the long history of the West. In that review I raved about the creative choices — good contemporary writers on mostly well known past thinkers. What a joy.

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

The title and subtitle pretty much says it all. I love Claude Atcho and would have been delighted to have him in our gathering. His book is lively and helpful, introducing folks to classic black literature, from Ellison’s Invisible Man to Wright, Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston and so many others. As any deeply Christian pastor and critic will do, he shows how these can help us in our faith formation and worldview.

Many contemporary friends have eloquently showed how important the book is, but I’ll just quote the publisher’s words:

Reading Black Books helps readers of all backgrounds learn from the contours of Christian faith formed and forged by Black stories, and it spurs continued conversations about racial justice in the church. It demonstrates that reading about Black experience as shown in the literature of great African American writers can guide us toward sharper theological thinking and more faithful living.

How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-Women, Anti-Science, Pro-Violence, Pro-Slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture  Dan Kimball (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

We had a huge section of books about the Bible at Jubilee. We had basic stuff, serious stuff, academic work and curiously unique things. From Bible overviews to Bible introductions, from Old and New Testaments to sub-categories (like Jesus in the Old Testament or women in the Bible) we had a lot. This is just one that seemed useful for college beginners. Kimball is a fun guy, raising important questions with a bit of wry wit and goofball energy. It’s really readable, really solid, and really helpful.

Dan Kimball has long been a guide for a generation trying to find their footing in a post-Christian world. For those of us who want to believe, yet struggle to make sense of the Bible in our age. Yet again, he steps in to offer kind, intelligent, wise, and, as you’d expect from Dan, funny guidance; this time around, on how (not) to read the Bible.       — John Mark Comer, author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry

More of You: The Fat Girl’s Field Guide to the Modern World Amanda Martinez Beck (Broadleaf) $24.99               OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

There are a number of books like this one by my friend Amanda Martinez Beck. She is such a good writer and sharp thinker and this raises a matter that is awkward for many and yet so important — liberating, even. It is a theology of the body designed to de-stigmatize being “fat”  — an often hurtful word that is being reclaimed and reused in mighty ways. It’s a great read.

Practical and straightforward with beautiful prose and a message of hope and freedom. Beck offers helpful tools for navigating a world designed to exclude fat people. She weaves together the strands of self-advocacy, history of the fat liberation movement, intersectional justice, and compelling memoir to provide a guidebook for all of us who want to live in such a way that we are at home in our body and in this world. — Nicole Morgan, author of Fat and Faithful: Learning to Love Our Bodies, Our Neighbors, and Ourselves

Counseling and Christianity: Five Approaches edited by Stephen Gregg & Timothy Sisemore (IVP Academic) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

There are a few other books in this “spectrum” series and it is cool to explain them to students. I say something like this: each of these five authors agree with our Jubilee vision, that as followers of Jesus we need to have the mind of Christ, integrating our deepest, Biblical views with the ideas within our majors. Each affirms this whole project of being uniquely and distinctively Christian, but here’s the thing: they disagree about what that looks like. In this case there are five different models for doing this “Christian perspective” thing and they nicely discuss back and forth the approach they think is most faithful and fruitful.

I remind students that they, themselves, are going to have to hammer out their own view and that this is a handy (if a bit daunting) tool to process the varying perspectives and models for thinking about how a Christian in counseling should do her work. Yay.

ReFounder: How Transformational Leaders Take What’s Broken and Make It Better Patrick Colletti (Per Capita) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

Patrick Colletti spoke at Jubilee and by all reports hit a real home run — students came to the book room after his presentation all fired up about business and corporate service and leadership. As a long-standing Western Pennsylvania business leader, Patrick has a lot of stories.

The main story is of his struggle with failure and restoration as a business servant leader with Godly tenacity and creative leadership capacities, Refounder is not only about how business leaders can “take what’s broken and make it better” (and the major case study of his tech biz) but how this impacts our own faith and discipleship. This is a rare and vital book and we are delighted that he made some available to us. Thanks, Patrick.

Patrick has written an important book for all of us, wherever we are in life. The world needs a movement of leaders reimagining what ought to be in our institutions, ventures, cities, and relationships, and Refounder is full of principles and ideas from someone who has done just that. — Joshua Margolis, Harvard Business School

A Little Manual on Knowing Esther Meek (Cascade) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We so appreciate Dr. Meek, a philosopher with a multi-dimensional orientation and practical bent. Her books — from the quite deep (on a “covenantal epistemology”) to the mid-level (like Longing to Know), to this one, short and concise — are fabulous; they are informed by a knowing appreciation for Michael Polyani, with a bit of Parker Palmer. Here is what the publisher says about this one:

In refreshing challenge to the common presumption that knowing involves amassing information, this book offers an eight-step approach that begins with love and pledge and ends with communion and shalom. Everyday adventures of knowing turn on a moment of insight that transforms and connects knower and the known. No matter the field — science or art, business or theology, counseling or athletics — this little manual offers a how-to for knowing ventures. It offers concrete guidance to individuals or teams, students or professionals, along with plenty of exercises to spark the process of discovery, design, artistry, or mission.

Pillars: How Muslim Friends Led Me Closer to Jesus Rachel Pies Jones (Plough Publishing) $17.99                     OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

We had a number of great Plough Publishing titles at Jubilee but this one found its way to our world religions and missions section. It’s a great story set in rural Somalia. She set out with a lot of antipathy towards Islam and, happily, locals showed compassion for “this blundering outsider who couldn’t keep her headscarf on or her twin toddlers from tripping over AK-47s.”

Amy Peterson says it is filled with “hard-won insights of a mature faith lived in long community” with Muslim neighbors. “Jones finds her faith unravelled and rewoven, strong for what she’s learned in the Horn of Africa from her Muslim friends.”

Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues Joshua Chatraw & Karen Swallow Prior (Zondervan) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

This is a solid hardback that is for many a great example of ways the diverse Body of Christ can agree to make a difference in our needy world, even if we disagree with some of the details. Two really great things about this “crash course.” First, it covers a lot — from hot button issues like complex bioethics and evangelical relations with the LGTBQ community and topics such as work and the arts and creation care. Secondly, there are top notch authors from a variety of generally evangelical perspectives.  Who wouldn’t want to have a book with authors from Vincent Bacote to Katelyn Beaty, Lisa Fields to Mako Fujimura, from Anglican priest and writer Tish Harrison Warren to young politico Michael Wear, from organic farmer Joel Salatin to conservative brainiac Robert George. So good.

The Liturgy of Politics: Spiritual Formation for the Sake of Our Neighbor Kaitlyn Schiess IVP) $18.00                     OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We have admired Kaitlyn Schiess since this spectacular book came out a few years ago — it is ideal for younger readers, of course, but we commend it widely, hoping for many to take in its balanced, remarkably thoughtful perspective. In a nutshell, she is asking — perhaps in light of some of James K.A. Smith’s insights about cultural liturgies and character formation from our habits — how, exactly, we form our political opinions. She invites us to think Christianly about this aspect of our discipleship and calls on communal discernment, being good citizens for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors. What a great little book.

Our old friend Dr. James Skillen raves, saying this:

This is a powerful challenge from a young heart and a mature mind. Schiess seems to touch every unexamined habit of Christian thought, work, leisure, and worship. With a wide sweep of life’s liturgies and church liturgies, of spiritual formation and political responsibility, of Bible reading and communication with others, Schiess goes straight for the heart in relaxed conversation that packs a prophetic punch about our complacency, ignorance of Scripture, cultural conformity, and more. Her urgent message is for communities of Christian faith to repent and turn ourselves over entirely to God, as disciples of Jesus Christ have always been called to do. It is hard to imagine how this young woman has been able to read so widely and think so profoundly about so much of life. Here you’ll find fresh insight and compelling hope that will renew your labors for the coming of God’s kingdom. Young people, old folks like me, and everyone in between, read this book now!  — James W. Skillen, author of The Good of Politics, former president of the Center for Public Justice

Jesus and the Disinherited Howard Thurman (Beacon) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

I am sure I don’t need to tell you that this is a true twenty century classic, a person who had significant influence on the ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, and a personal favorite book of his. There are pictures in the MLK archives showing him carrying it around. I sometimes tell young people that if it influenced King, you should read it. Enough said.

Join the Resistance: Step Into the Good Work of Kingdom Justice Michelle Ferrigno Warren (IVP) $18.00      OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

Oh my, do you remember the previous book by Michelle Ferrigno Warren? It challenged me and encouraged me and reminded me of essential things. It was called The Power of Proximity and, in some ways, she struck me as a youthful, evangelical Dorothy Day. Yes, we must be present to others, including the poor, and there is great “power in proximity.” From simple things (I hate “drive through” and automated check out at the grocery store) to the bigger question of our typical segregated distance from the poor, it’s a hugely important book.

This one has similar insight, calm and reasonable, even if the title is a bit punchy. Yes, indeed, this invites us to “step into the good work” of creating signposts pointing the way to God’s coming Kingdom, and ways to be agents of social change and public justice. A great, inspiring, and helpful guidebook.

Mathematics for Human Flourishing Francis Su (Yale University Press) $16.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

We have a handful of books for math geeks, from Redeeming Math to Mathematics Through the Eyes of Faith to the heavy Mathematics in a Postmodern Age but when we discovered this a few years ago we were delighted to learn that, aside from the tremendous, Jubilee-esque title, the author is a thoughtful, good writer and a person of sincere faith. A great read.

Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community Bonnie Kristian (Brazos Press) $24.99            OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

We were thrilled that Bonnie Kristian was at Jubilee this year and it was funny (and a bit embarrassing) when I was going on and on about her previous book (A Flexible Faith) to a customer and she was standing right there, chiming in as if on cue. I wish more would have attended her workshop on journalism and I wish we had announced this one from the main stage as it. Is. So. Important. Fake news? Conspiracy theories? Not knowing who to believe? Why do wacky and often mean-spirited notions get passed around, even in churches? This book looks judiciously at all of this, pondering how we know what is true in this age of misinformation, spin, a propaganda. It’s got an excellent forward by David French and is simply a must read. We named it as one of the Best Books of 2023.

Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering Healthy Male Sexuality Zachary Wagner (IVP) $18.00                              OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This came a few days before our big event and of course I lugged a bunch of them there. Some years men’s topics are of great interest; I seem to think that there wasn’t much interest in this category this year. One never knows. In any case, this book looks tremendous and not only a lively and inspiring read, but really important. I like that it really seems to offer a solid Biblical narrative, placing “masculinity” in this redemptive context.

Here’s the quick pitch from the publisher’s info sheet:

Boys will be boys” and purity culture sell the same excuses with a different spin. Can we break the toxic cycle and recover a healthy identity for men? Confronting harmful teaching from the American church that has distorted desire, sex, relationships, and responsibility, Zachary Wagner offers a renewed vision for Christian male sexuality.

There’s a lot of good blurbs on this vital work. Check this out, noting how widely appealing it could be:

Boldly vulnerable, Zachary Wagner gives voice to the brokenness of male sexuality within contemporary Christianity, and in so doing, points the way toward healing. Because he is dogmatic only about the goodness of the gospel, readers from a broad spectrum are invited to join him as he continues to process the complexity of these issues. As one who advocates for the value of women in the Christian story, I am thrilled to recommend this book as one that restores and cultivates the God-given value of men. — Amy Peeler, associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, author of Women and the Gender of God and associate rector at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

((By the way, although it has a very different tone and style and comes at this topic from a different angle, I know my friend Nancy Pearcy’s book is coming out in mid-June 2023 and it will be well worth pondering. You can pre-order her forthcoming The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes (Baker; $24.99.)) 

Do You Believe? 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life Paul David Tripp (Crossway) $32.99            OUR SALE PRICE = $26.39

I have highlighted this before, too, and we were glad that one workshop leader — on memorizing the Bible, actually — was going to recommend it in her class. This is a handsome, readable, thorough introduction to basic evangelical doctrine, without the air of being a highbrow textbook. It is detailed but conversational and — get this! — after every chapter there is a follow up chapter on what difference this Biblical truth makes in our daily living and ordinary discipleship.

Tripp is a grace-based Biblical counselor and knows the hurts and foibles of folk, and as a Kingdom preacher, knows well the full-orbed, whole-life implications of the gospel. So this is a fine, straight-arrow approach that has some fresh insights and helpful guidance.

Stott on the Christian Life: Between Two Worlds Tim Chester (Crossway) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59

One can hardly think of a great 20th century preacher and writer and leader who has so influenced the best of modern evangelicalism that the late, great John Stott. (I so enjoyed having the book Living Radical Discipleship published a year ago by the UK Langham Trust which was inspired by him, edited by Laura Meitner Yoder.) This one, though, part of a great series by Crossway, gives a good overview of his life, his teachings, and what we can learn from his steadfast, wholistic ministry. A few friends are named in this, and there is plenty to enjoy, much to admire. Kids today don’t even know Stott, but some of us will never forget the time he spoke at Jubilee in the late 1970s. Get this!

Signals of Transcendence andThe Great Quest Os Guinness (IVP) $16.00 each  OUR SALE PRICES = $12.80 each

Less than a year ago we promoted a fabulous little book by Os Guinness that invited us to “the examined life.” That was called The Great Quest: Invitation to an Examined Life and a Sure Path to Meaning and I showed it to a number of thoughtful seekers at Jubilee. The new sequel just came last week and we were happy to show it off, side-by-side. Signals of Transcendence is a guide to how various key thinkers and thoughtful seekers followed the echoes of truest reality, searching for some signal of the divine. Jews and Christians are included, with famous stories from figures who are described in ways that are classic Os — Malcolm Muggeridge, Peter Berger, W.H Auden, Philip Hallie, G.K. Chesterton, C.S Lewis and more. Included is a tender story of his own relative (Whitfield Guinness) and those who followed the quest who as different as Russian author Leo Tolstoy and the great Kenneth Clark. I’m not sure young adults know some of these names, but it is nothing short of spectacular, described by Mako Fujimura as “a gift” and “imaginative.” He says, “I found myself gripped by every page of this book.” It is a fabulous companion to The Great Quest.

A Skeptic’s Guide to Faith: What It Takes to Make the Leap Philip Yancey (Zondervan) $15.99                               OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

Yancey is a name we must continue to promote, as he is quiet and unassuming. His popular, riveting memoir (Where the Light Fell) made a bit of a splash last year but yet his older writings are enduring, smart, eloquent, but not arcane in the least. We highly recommend a steady diet of his many books.

A Skeptic’s Guide to Faith was first published as Rumors of Another World and while that is a bit more allusive, hinting at Peter Berger’s “signals of transcendence” this new title is clear and helpful. He is, he insists, an ordinary person, like most of us, just trying to figure things out, relating our lived experiences, the BIbles teachings, and wondering what is true.

As he puts it, “This book comes out of my own search and is written on behalf of those who live outside of belief — that borderlands region between belief and unbelief.” I wish we could have gotten it into the hands of more young adults (and others!) at Jubilee. Maybe you can help us spread the word about how very useful this lovely book is.

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.85; 2 lbs would be $4.55.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50,  if it fits in a flat rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

If you just want to say “cheapest” that is fine. If you are eager and don’t want the slowest method, do say so. It really helps us serve you well so let us know. Just saying “US Mail” isn’t helpful because there are those two methods, one cheaper but slower, one more costly but quicker. Which do you prefer?

– DON’T FORGET TO LET US KNOW WHAT SHIPPING METHOD YOU PREFER –

BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

Lent is approaching, a bit early this year, it seems, and I am sure, like us, many of you have huge and important distractions. In our personal lives, our church lives, our work lives, and in the broader world of the world’s opportunities and tragedies, we are all in need of God’s guidance and strength. May God bring discernment and, where it is needed, healing and hope. Maybe Lent will be a time to focus on the call to discipleship, spiritual formation, and seeking renewed desires to be found on the road with Jesus, even if that road has us walking towards hard stuff.

For some BookNotes readers, inhabiting this season of the liturgical calendar comes as almost second nature. (Perhaps it is even too routine, for some?) For others it is new, or feels that way. Maybe you’ve recently read one of our Best Books of 2022 award-winners, Jamie Smith’s How to Inhabit Time or Fleming Rutledge’s Advent and you’re interested in taking up some new Lenten practices. Of course, that means picking up a book or two to guide and motivate you further. Obviously, right?

We’ve done extensive Lenten book lists in the past, and you can see a few HERE, HERE, HERE or HERE.

Here are a few new ones and a couple older ones we invite you to consider this season. All are 20% off, of course, and you can order them from us by using the link to our order form page which is shown at the very bottom of this column. Scroll down to see all the books mentioned and then see the order link.

Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal Esau McCaulley (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

I’m sure you know of Esau McCaulley — African American Bible scholar, college prof, PhD guided by N.T. Wright — whose brilliant Reading While Black not only inspired thousands but helped get him a gig writing op-ed pieces in the New York Times. That a Wheaton College evangelical writes for the Times it is a very interesting thing, and that he is an Anglican, who now has a series of books he is editing called the “Fullness of Time” series, is maybe even more remarkable. This one called Lent is the first in this series (there is one coming from Tish Harrison Warren on Advent, one next year on Easter by Wesley Hill, one by Fleming Rutledge on Epiphany.) These slim, compact hardbacks are going to be a major gateway to the theology and spirituality of the church calendar, especially for those somewhat new to these things.

Lent, by Esau McCaulley, is fabulously interesting. It reminds us, of course, that Lent is “inescapably about repenting.” Okay, then. Let’s so it.

Each volume in the Fullness of Time series will not only invite readers to engage with the riches of the church year, but will explore prayers, Scriptures, traditions, and rituals that can help point us to the way of Jesus.

Saturated with biblical wisdom, McCaulley’s practical guide is the perfect introduction to newcomers to this practice of self-examination and renewal. — Garwood Anderson, Dean of Nashotah House Theological Seminary

By the way, if you don’t know Esau’s writing, see, for instance, “What Easter Says About Black Suffering” published in The New York Times April 17, 2022.

The Good of Giving Up: Discovering the Freedom of Lent Aaron Damiani (Moody Press) $12.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

I have mentioned this the last few years and now that his new one, Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding Life in Liturgy, Sacraments, and Other Ancient Practices of the Church has become known (we highlighted it in our Best Books of 2022 list last month), I thought I’d mention it again.

Just to remind you, Fr. Aaron Damiani is one of these great cats who was once an edgy evangelical, full of church planting energy and hip theological insight. Over time — a story for another time — he became Anglican and now is rooted in the teachings of the Scriptures as well as the church fathers and the liturgical renewal of the 1500s in Britain and the 2000s in the US. I’m not Anglican and I’m not that high liturgically but this is really good stuff.

The title The Good of Giving Up should not be taken to literally. It isn’t only about “giving up something for Lent and not even only about self-examination and repentance, although, naturally, that is part of it The three sections of this fine introduction are “The Case for Lent” and “The Path of Lent” and “Leading Others to Lent.” (These last three chapters include a helpful one on leading children through Lent and another on leading congregations, together, into this season.)

How do we observe Lent with proper motivation and how can it reform our habits and convictions? How do we do this in families and in the broader family of the local church? This book can help.

A Busy Parent’s Guide to a Meaningful Lent Marcia C. Morrow (Our Sunday Visitor) $16.95  OUR EXTRA SALE PRICE = this week only $10.00

Yep, we have this at a great extra discount. I’m being honest — somebody ordered a bunch and then didn’t take them so we have them at a great discount so we can entice you to take a few off our hands. It is specifically Roman Catholic and, for better or worse, Catholic folks have been as experienced as anybody in this ancient tradition and contemporary Catholic writers bring a rich experience (and a lot of evangelical-like fervor.) This woman is an adjunct professor at Seton Hall, has a PhD in theology from the University of Dayton, and is a mother of seven so, uh, she gets it. When she calls her quick and easy-to-use all-in-one Lenten resource “a busy parent’s guide” she knows what she’s talking about.

For some, Lent and the time heading towards Easter may be considered a nearly overwhelming season; well-intentioned efforts to try to experience God’s grace in fresh ways, may end up adding more stress than grace. Morrow’s been there. She lays out a practical plan that can transform your forty days. I think this daily plan has a lot to commend it and we’re happy to sell it on sale, now. After this week it will go back to our more typical BookNotes 20% off. Order it now, on extra sale, while supplies last.

Finding Jesus in the Psalms: A Lenten Journey Barb Roose (Abingdon Press) $17.99                     OUR SALE PRICE = $14.39

• Finding Jesus in the Psalms: A Lenten Journey Leader’s Guide $15.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79
• Finding Jesus in the Psalms: A Lenten Journey DVD $44.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $35.96

This book (and accompanying DVD) is by a dynamic African American woman from Toledo, Ohio who hosts Facebook Live events and speaks at the upbeat Aspire Women’s Events, She Speaks, and more. We’ve stocked other Bible study material she has done and this one invites you to “immerse yourself in a meaningful encounter with Jesus and the Psalms through the season of Lent.” As author Kathi Lipp notes, “When I am in those hard places, those needy places, those places where I need to see God’s tenderness, I always turn to the Psalms.”

Yes, the New Testament Jesus read and prayed and sang and quoted the Psalms. This is a beautiful guide to this very use of the holy poetry of the Hebrew Psalter by Lord Jesus. This weaves stories and Biblical insight into the use of the Psalms during this season.

The book has six chapters making it ideal for a Sunday school class, small group Bible study or weekly book club choice. Most chapters link a Psalms (or two) to a Gospel text. The book stands on its own, but the DVD and leader’s guide for the DVD study is fabulous, too. This is lovely, solid stuff. Somebody has compared Barb Roose with Beth Moore which illustrates her honorable commitment to the glory of God and the saving power of Christ, but also her honesty about mental health stuff and her inspiring, upbeat style. I’m a fan.

Meeting Jesus at the Table: A Lenten Study Cynthia M. Campbell and Christine Coy Fohr (WJK) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

A somewhat smaller, trim size makes this a perfect compact book to hold, a lovely one to study, as it provokes the question (as Elizabeth Caldwell notes) “For what are you hungry this Lenten season?” This book, like the meal it evokes, is rich and inviting, calling us to eat, to receive nourishment, to ponder amongst friends. Might we truly meet Jesus at this table?

This is an eight-week study (including a week for Easter) that can be read individually, of course, or used in an adult class or Bible study group. There’s a leader’s guide in the back with good questions and lots of Scripture. (There are also nice drawings by the late Kevin Burns, who was an architect and ruling elder at Highland Presbyterian Church in Louisville KY. Campbell (a former President of McCormick Theological emissary) is the retired pastor of Highland; Fohr is also a Presby pastor in Louisville.

The sessions of this lovely Lenten book remind us that Jesus spent time at meals with people and the gospel accounts tell us a bit about these holy encounters.  This includes “Dining Alfresco” (which is on the feeding of the multitudes in Mark 6), “The Welcome Table” (where he is accused of eating with tax collectors and sinners as recorded in Matthew 9), a dinner that is interrupted (see Luke 7) and an important chapter on “relationships and reciprocity” where room is made at the table (in Luke 14: 7-14.)  There is a chapter on “empty chairs” at the table, another on “hospitality and discipleship” (The first verses of John 12 tell of a meal with a chosen family.) There is a “meal of memories” which they call “not the Last Supper”) and of course “revived by the breaking of bread” in Luke 24.

What a great and interesting study this is. Come to the table this Lenten season!

Toward the Cross: Heart-Shaping Lessons for Lent and Easter Taylor W. Mills (Abingdon Press) $13.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

The format of this used to be more common but resources in this style are harder to find these days. It has a chapter for seven weeks, one for each Sunday of Lent (and Easter Sunday, too.) This makes it ideal for an adult class, a weekly small group Bible study, or a weekly book club.  However besides the seven short chapters to be discussed together as a group, there are also a week’s worth of short daily readings for personal devotional use. It’s a great combo — a book that can be used in a class setting and/or a daily devotional for Lent.

As you can see, this is about the classic Lenten theme of moving towards the cross. His exploration uses the language of the heart, inviting us to traits and characteristics that can be shaped by our season’s practices.

The chapters are “A Humble Heart”, “A Committed Heart”, “A Gracious Heart”, “A Heart for Seekers”, “A Purposeful Heart”, “A Heart of Extravagant Love”, and, for Easter, “A Joyful Heart.”

Rev. Taylor Mills is a United Methodist pastor who has served in many cities and towns in North Carolina. He get an assist, here, from Gary Thompson (of Mississippi) and Michel Morris, who is a lead pastor of First United Methodist in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Wild Hope: Stories of Lent from the Vanishing Gayle Boss, illustrated by David G. Klein (Paraclete) $19.99                             OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I suppose you recall our enthusiastic promotion of Boss & Klein’s amazingly nuanced and very thoughtful Advent study All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings which, curiously and effectively, developed Advent reflections inspired by the hibernation patterns of animals, each artfully illustrated, week by week. Just this past Advent they re-issued it in a celebratory bright hardback with a ribbon marker which gives you a sense of how many loved it and how the publisher was behind it.

We’ve mentioned this companion volume to it which I believe is as good or better (although not yet released in hardback.) This handsome, just slightly oversized volume offers a beautiful bit of nature writing, profound spirituality, vivid lament about species loss, and, yes, all related to the practices of Lent.

As poet Luci Shaw notes, it includes “detailed, vivid accounts of an ark-full of wild lives in danger.” As the extraordinary scientist (and founder of the Safina Center) Carl Safina wrote, Wild Hope is the only book whose table of contents alone gave me chills.” These beautifully rendered stories invite us to reflection and renewed commitments to safeguarding God’s precious creatures. It is a Lenten practice worth taking up and this is a resource well worth having and sharing.

Please read this important endorsement:

Full of power and poignancy, love, and lament. Gayle Boss invites her readers to groan together with all creation in grief at the profound loss of species. Lament is a cry of truth-telling, and in her portraits of these exquisite creatures we hear the necessary and devastating truth of what we are losing. — Christine Valters Painter,  Earth, Our Original Monastery: Cultivating Wonder and Gratitude Through Intimacy with Nature

A Just Passion A Six Week Lenten Journey compiled and edited by Tianna Haas (IVP) $12.00    OUR SALE PRICE = $9.60

Wow. Just wow. This is the best little collection of pieces I think I have ever seen compiled to be used as a Letter reader, mostly around the relationships of spirituality, discipleship, and working towards a culture of shalom and racial justice.  The readings are all drawn from previously published IVP books and these are some of the best contemporary writers working these days in this space. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the list of contributors and am so glad for the expert gleaning and curating done by the team at IVP. Editor Cindy Bunch has a very useful forward about spiritual practices, about Lent, and some wise words about using this little volume intentionally and helpfully.

Authors include Ruth Haley Barton, Marlena Graves, Donna Barber, John Perkins, Eugene Peterson, Sheila Wise Rowe, Tish Harrison Warren, Terry M. Wildman, Natasha Sistrunk Robinson, Christina Edmondson, Soong-Chan Rah, Esau McCaulley, and the poet Drew Jackson, among many others.

The devotional format of A Just Passion is not merely a short reading, but some Bible texts and prompts for a weekly “breath prayer.” It is a handsome, useful little paperback and we recommend it heartily.

The Resilient Disciple: A Lenten Journey from Adversity to Maturity Justine Allain Chapman (SPCK) $20.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.79

Resilience. In Lent. Oh my. Many know about the Japanese art of kintsugi, repairing with gold, which restores a cracked object even while it retains some image of the damage, making the item even more beautiful than it was before. The crack on the paperback book cover, embossed with the lines in gold, makes this UK title itself a poignant beauty.

Alone on an eight-day retreat in the Egyptian desert, author Justine Allan Chapman encountered first hand the physical, spiritual, and mental struggle many have endured there before her. As it says on the back cover, “our own desert experience may involve attending to challenges that come upon us suddenly — such as illness or bereavement — or to difficult relationships or patterns of thinking that have long been draining us of life and joy.”

A Lenten pilgrimage, she assures us, is testing. The forty daily readings in this vividly written book includes wide-ranging prayers, Scripture readings, and guides to using the material with groups, or even in preaching and worship. It’s not only an encouraging read, but “bringing us to Easter with both a deeper sense of self and a deeper engagement with God.” This book offers challenge and consolation, perhaps even tender healing for our brokenness.

Sacred & Desecrated: Forty Days with Wendell Berry John Hewitt, Elie Jackson, Emily Mosher, and Michelle Shackelford (independently published) $14.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

I can hardly believe we found this last year and I’ve been waiting nearly a year to announce it here. Sacred & Desecrated is the work of a group project “to reflect not ehe season of Lent in light of the poems, essays, and stories of Wendell Berry.”

Here is how they put it:

We hope these devotions will help you develop a greater appreciation for GOd’s creation and the way our everyday choices affect our bodies, families, land, community, and world.” As part of Lent, this book honestly acknowledges the deep hurt and brokennes that exists in all these areas of life but it also looks forward to the salvation promised us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the redemption of all creation through the power of the Holy Spirit. As you engage with the challenges and opportunities presented by Berry, you may even find that God is present in the places and things you thought were desecrated, boring to transform what has been violated into something holy once more.

The book is divided into six sections, or for six weeks leading us through Lent. After each daily reading there are three reflection or discussion questions and a closing prayer.  Attentive Berry readers will know that the phrase of the title is drawn from a poem “How to Be a Poet.”

The Desert of Compassion: Devotions for the Lenten Journey Rachel M. Scubas (WJK) $17.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

For many, Lent is a time when we are intentional about our relationship with God. The classic practice of “giving up” something is less old-school self-denial based motivated by shame or guilt but a time to create space for God. It is a time to be more intentional about our interior lives and wonder how things are in our souls. For my money, a book by a Presbyterian pastor who is also a Benedictine oblate who lives near a real desert (the Sonoran, near Tucson) has all the right features of lived experience, solid theology, and a robust vision of social and cultural concern.

Each day’s rich entry opens and closes with an eloquent and deep prayer.

As the great Marjorie Thompson (author of the spiritual classic Soul Feast) writes:

Rachel Srubas weaves a rich fabric of spiritual and psychological wisdom, knitting the personal and communal, inward and outward, ordinary and profound. Each meditation sparkles with a vivid story and masterful metaphor. Over and over, her words led me to depth reflection and contemplative awareness. I didn’t want this book to end. It is one I will return to often and gift to others. — Marjorie Thompson, author of Soul Feast

I have become a fan of one of the great scholars of the mystical tradition (and a good guide to the contemplative life), the prolific Carl McColeman. He is one who knows about these things, and reads very widely, and he writes:

During Lent we recall Jesus’ sojourn in the desert — a time for generosity, simplicity, and, most of all, prayer. Rachel Srubas’s vivid meditations make the season come alive as she invites us into our own desert places where Christ meets us with a love that will transform our hearts. — Carl McColman, author of Unteachable Lessons: Why Wisdom Can’t Be Taught (and Why That’s Okay), Eternal Heart and The Big Book of Christian Mysticism

The Way of Thomas Merton: A Prayer Journey Through Lent Robert Ihchausti (SPCK) $13.99        OUR SALE PRICE = $11.19

I have long admired Robert Inchausti for his work on Merton and a few other books about education, creative thinking, and deep spirituality. This new book is patterned after others done by SPCK The Way of Julian of Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent by Sheila Upjohn and The Way of Benedict: Eight Blessings for Lent by Laurentia Johns (both $20.99 — our sale price = $16.79.) It is a standard daily reader, with a good reflection guiding us from a passage from Merton. There are astute reflection questions, too. And, man, does he know Merton. I’ll let Parker Palmer explain.

Just listen to this amazing quote by the amazing Parker Palmer:

This Lenten devotional is unlike any I’ve seen. It’s not about giving up something trivial for a few weeks. It’s about getting free of the “false self” that alienates us from ourselves, from each other and God. Nobody understood that transformation better than Thomas. Merton — and nobody understands Merton better than Robert Inchausti. — Parker Palmer, author of On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old

The Art of Lent: A Painting a Day From Ash Wednesday to Easter Sister Wendy Beckett (IVP) $17.00                               OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

I adore this small sized book that has wonderfully full-color reproductions of paintings old and modern, well known and most likely not familiar, overtly religious and otherwise, a fine painting reproduced on one page with a meditation on the facing page. Like the Advent and Christmas ones in this series, The Art of Lent (and, new last year, The Art of Holy Week and Easter) are just splendid ways to meditate on the meaning of the season.

These are really well designed, so very nicely done, the reflections handsomely arranged (but maybe smaller print than some may wish.) This will help you become informed about masterpieces and you will be glad just for that. More significantly, this leads you into a deeply prayerful response to all that these paintings convey. It is exceptionally useful to have around and we very highly recommend it.

An Easter Book of Days: Meeting the Characters of the Cross and Resurrection Gregory Kenneth Cameron (Paraclete Press) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

In An Easter Book of Days Gregory Kenneth Cameron invites us to “encounter anew the story of Jesus’s passion” with these twenty-five profound meditations accompanied by beautiful illustrations that inspires us to “enter the heart of each character” (from the disciples to Pontius Pilate, from Mary and Marty to Simon of Cyrene, and more.) We adored Cameron’s handsome little An Advent Book of Days and this is like it — compact sized paperback on good quality paper, with glassy French folded covers. The illustrations are not masterpieces of renaissance or modern art but are stylized contemporary paintings that are somewhat in the style of, or after, icons. It’s perfect for a liturgical season, it seems to me.

For what it is worth we really, really like a book by David Darling called The Characters of the Cross, that stands with his Characters of Christmas and The Characters of Creation. These are creatively written, offered by a Southern Baptist preacher, drawing out Biblical themes. Those are well worth reading and I’ve announced The Characters of the Cross before. I mention it here because it fit, but also to note that Cameron is an Anglican Bishop in Wales. His tone is a bit more academic, a bit more direct, a bit more about the history of the setting, rooted in the larger church tradition than perhaps the upbeat Darling ones. Kudos to Cameron for his original art that enhances the book very nicely.

Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter Malcolm Guite (Canterbury Press) $21.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.80

We have stocked and promoted Guite’s books for years and we are so grateful that more are coming to know about him. He is increasingly known in both in the Anglican communions and in broader church circles. We’ve had friends who have met him this past year and were delighted by his friendliness and literary brilliance, in places as diverse as Virginia Theological Seminary to Rabbit Room’s Hutchmoot gathering. (And he will be in Lancaster PA on February 18th and the intriguing Square Halo Books conference. They, after all, published one of his excellent books, lectures on the Christian imagination called Lifting the Veil.)

In any event, this book includes a Guite-chosen poem — one for every day from Shrove Tuesday to Easter Day and for springtime saint’s days, from George Herbert to Seamus Heaney to Gwyneth Lewis to Rowan Williams to John Donne to many of his won, that hold up nicely next to Yeats and Lewis. He has a substantive devotional for each,  arranged over the weeks with themes such as preparing for action, beginning the pilgrimage, deepening the life of prayer, knowing ourselves, facing pain, and more. As he puts it, each is a “window into heaven to light our Lenten road.”

Hearing God in Poetry: Fifty Poems for Lent and Easter Richard Harries (SPCK) $14.99                    OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is a remarkable collection, piece very nicely together by a very notable British leader. Harries was at the Bishop of Oxford from 1987 to 2006 and is both a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the House of Lords. Rowan Williams says he is “one of our greatest Christian intellectuals.” From our vantage here, we gave a very positive review to his book Seeing God in Art: The Christian Faith in 30 Images.

Here he offers six poems for every week of Lent, with a short reflection by Harries with each, often telling about the poet. There are ten specifically chosen for Easter. You will perhaps learn of authors you did not know and discover poems well worth remembering. His repository is wide, but many of the expected classics of Brit lit are here, from Yeats to T.S. Eliot, from C.S. Lewis to Malcolm Guite, from Chaucer to Emily Dickinson. You will find poems by Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and “No Coward Soul Is Mine” the famous Holy Saturday poem by Emily Bronte. It’s a good book.

A Book of Days for Lent: Daily Reflections for the Season of Lent edited by Steven G.W. Moore & Father Richard Ganz, SJ (Murdock Charitable Trust /Seedbed) $19.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

Have we told you about this before? Or the beautiful companion hardback, A Book of Days for Advent. We are fortunate to stock this as we so believe in the remarkable work of the Murdock Charitable Trust that funds all sorts of common good project in the Pacific NW. This sharp volume — with heavy glossy paper and some full color, classic art nicely reproduced — is a compilation of pieces compiled by folks who are involved with or have been funded by the Trust. Most are on the cutting edge of social work, although some are what we might call cultural curators, thought-leader, wise influencers. Murdock encouraged serious thought about all sorts of things and this wonderful collection testifies to their deepest faith commitments. It’s a joy to behold.

Many of the women and men in this volume are people many of us don’t know, but a few are authors we care for — Steve Garber, A.J. Swoboda, Cam Anderson, Kate Harris. Although we never met, the late Brian Doyle has a contribution. A Book of Days for Lent is a rare treat. Order it while supplies last…

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BookNotes

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For those who want to review all our three part Favorite Books of 2022 list, you can see them by visiting the BookNotes archives HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Here are some new books that have recently been released, or are just out, or are coming soon. I was going to use the alliteration “Five for February” but there’s a few too many that I just have to name. Here’s thirteen.

Be sure to scroll through to the very bottom to see all the reviews. Unless your picking things up here at the shop, please click on the “order here” link (below) which takes you to the secure Hearts & Minds order form. Thanks.

Ordinary Saints: Living Every Day Life to the Glory of God edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I could go on for pages about this, and perhaps I will, later, but it is just out now so we are thrilled to be among the first to announce it. That I’ve got a chapter in it makes it sort of special for me. Other than my own edited collection, Serious Dreams, I’ve never had a chapter in a book, so, to be honest, this cause for a little personal celebration. I wrote about the calling of a bookseller, a few pages about the work of being in retail. Like the others in the book, it invites us to expand our imaginations as to what it means to glorify God in our ordinary lives.

This book is full of heady visions for Kingdom living and a whole lot of whimsy, too. Tom Becker’s fun chapter on roller skating is amazingly good and the piece on karaoke is wonderful, as is the one on comic books. Margie Haack’s ruminations on raising chickens is a hoot. There’s a chapter on the Muppets, for God’s sake. The book is designed handsomely by graphic designer, artist, and writer Ned Bustard and is chock-full of art of all sorts. (He has a chapter, by the way, on lovemaking.)

There is a verve and intellectual depth to all of the pieces, some more playful, some more intense. There is one on mental health, one on chronic pain, one on therapy, one on grand parenting which is beautiful amidst some struggle, and an honest one on pornography — but every one is a delight, wise and interesting, informative, entertaining. From museuming to writing to juggling to creating playlists to homemaking, there are so many examples of ways to see how ordinary folks — saints, all! — have considered what they do, their passions and hobbies and vocations, and how these become venues for theological consideration and spiritual formation. What does God require of us? How does faith inform our daily grind, the fun stuff and the hard stuff of down to Earth life? Ordinary Saints is a treasure-chest giving us glimpses of that, a tool, a challenge. It is a brilliant sort of book and I do not think there is anything like it in print. Kudos to all at Square Halo for thinking up such a task and pulling it together so well. It is an honor to be included.

There are a few famous saints in this splendid paperback. Luci Shaw has a piece on knitting. Calvin Seerveld has a chapter on knowing. Christie Purifoy has a terrific testimony about home repairs. Artist Bruce Herman has a great essay on painting. Poet Malcolm Guite has an original poem commissioned for the book and a chapter about his love of smoking pipes. Psychiatrist and author Dr. Curt Thompson has one on “presence.” Did I mention Byron Borger has one on selling stuff? It has the most footnotes of any chapter, I can say that, at least.

Ordinary Saints is a book for anyone wanting to ponder the spirituality of the ordinary, the human creatureliness of daily faith. These aren’t essays on big cultural trends — politics, racism, global poverty — but they invite us all to wonder about how we glorify God in our very common-place (or, not so common place) quotidian activities. One of its great gifts is the particularity of glorifying God in our seemingly secular ways. It gets specific.

I got a real kick out of the well-written piece by Mark Bertrand on choosing a high-end briefcase. Steve Scott has a good contribution on storytelling. There is a wonderful reflection on small talk. I haven’t yet read the one on napping, but I’m going to take it very seriously. There is a short but meaty reflection on drinking wine and another of honoring God in our own limitations, a great piece written by a former punk rock girl who came to grips with a physical disability. Theologian (and C.S. Lewis scholar) Donald Williams kicks the whole thing off with a chapter on the truth of God’s own glory and the Biblical meaning of glorifying God. What is that even about?  He explains.

There are a bunch of chapters I don’t even have time to mention, pieces by living saints, gathered together sharing about their own daily passions. Everyone rose to the occasion, contributing excellent work, helping Square Halo Books celebrate their own 25 years of serving God’s ordinary people. I’ve reviewed and promoted almost all of their nearly 40 books over the years. This may be the best yet. It will provide hours of entertaining, edifying, reading, offering transformational insight. It will help you deepen your own daily habits, offering them up as worship to God. As this book shows with such vigor, we can even read to the glory of God and have a blast doing it. Hooray!

Perhaps you know Douglas McKelvery who compiled the moving Every Moment Holy prayer book volumes. Here is what he said about this collection:

“A delightfully organic, fleshing out of the “every moment holy” idea. Real people communing with a real God in the midst of real lives.” — Douglas McKelvey

A Year of Slowing Down: Daily Devotions for the Unhurried Alan Fadling (IVP) $20.00                    OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

This is a nice, solid hardback, a real bargain even before our BookNotes discount. You may know Fadling from his best-selling An Unhurried Life (and the follow-up called The Unhurried Leader.) It’s very good stuff  He is a church and organizational consultant and has helped many groups focus on how they’ve created cultures of rush, of hurry, of growth at all costs, inviting the to, well, slow down. With the overwhelming pace of life, “many of us struggle to stop long enough to be present.” Don’t you, as it says on the back, want to have “breathing room to hear from God?”

This is a collection of what you might call “five minute daily retreats.” There are rich blurbs on the back from contemplative Jan Johnson and writer A. J. Swoboda. Fadling is well-loved and well-respected.

Bill Gaultiere, author of Journey of the Soul, says:

I found myself drawn into the selah of the psalmist, the richness of God’s Word, the whisper of the Holy Spirit and the pace of Jesus.

Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People Tracy Kidder (Random House) $30.00                   OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

This book just released this week and I have not spent time with it yet (but have sold one already!) Beth and I are fans of the great nonfiction writer and literary journalist Tracey Kidder, who has many creative books to his name ( the unforgettable Strength in What Remains, Home Town, Among Schoolchildren, and the extraordinary book about the late doctor who served in Haiti, Paul Farmer, Mountains Beyond Mountains.) When Kidder does a new book, we notice.

Rough Sleepers takes its title from what the Boston activist / street doctor Jim O’Connell calls those who sleep unhoused. It is a heroic story of O’Connell’s mission and in it’s almost 300 pages you will learn plenty about the vocation of medicine, about social services, about the homeless population, about the humanity of those in those situations.

Rough Sleepers will do for treating homelessness what Mountains Beyond Mountains did for public health. What a compellingly beautiful, inspiring read. — Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here

Rethinking Life: Embracing the Sacredness of Every Person Shane Claiborne (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99  PRE-ORDER – DUE February 7, 2023

It has been a while since we’ve seen a major new book by our busy, activist friend in Philly, Shane Claiborne and we are nothing short of thrilled that he is bringing this out next week. We were in correspondance with Simply Way folks just recently and we know they are still inviting folks to a whimsical sort of serious ministry, a dedicated life of influenced by Jesus by way of Dorothy Day and Saint Francis, maybe. If Dorothy had been a communist before her dramatic turn to taking Jesus and the church seriously, Shane was a right wing Southern fundamentalist zealot, flying his Stars & Bars while listening to Rush Limbaugh. That we would become a Jesus-following servant of the poor, starting urban gardens and learning blacksmithing so he could literally turn urban handguns into gardening implements is nothing short of astonishing. His first book after his great transformation, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical and he has continued to encourage thinking and action, rooted in regular prayer. I hope you know the prayer book he and some others put together —Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals.

This is not the time to revisit his whole story, but we appreciate so much of what he and his friends at The Simply Way have been doing. From his speaking about intentional community to doing civil disobedience with righteous, nonviolent zeal, from sharing life with struggling neighbors in the city to writing books to helps us understand the inequities of the death penalty, he seems tireless, eager, and usually pretty upbeat.

I do not know if this forthcoming book was in the works for a while but there is little doubt that the public debates about the overturning of Roe v Wade by the Supreme Court and the fresh conversations happening around the pro-life issue gives it an urgent context.

I have not seen the book yet but here’s what I’ve heard: it is taking seriously, as many do, the call to be conscientiously and consistently pro-life. Ron Sider was, in a way, one of his guiding lights as a younger man, and Sider years ago tried to link an consistently Biblical non-violent social ethic pushed made him to be anti-abortion and anti-war; pro-life and pro-woman; he was pro-life when it came to the unborn but he was equally pro-life when it came to the hungry, the imprisoned, the oppressed. It ends up not being a very popular position, believe me.

Others have invited us to ponder how to not merely be against abortion but to be robustly and consistently in favor of life. I think of David Gushee’s extraordinary, large Eerdmans book, The Sacredness of Human Life. For a recent, excellent exploration from a Roman Catholic view, see, for instance Rehumanize: A Vision to Secure Human Rights for All by Aimee Murphy (New City Press; $24.95.) I suspect Ms Murphy has more tattoos than Shane, and works in more secular space to end aggression and injustice against human beings, born or unborn, but they seem on the same page. She reminds me a bit of an edgy Dorothy Day.

Shane does, too, except he learned a lot about Jesus and discipleship from his Southern fundamentalist upbringing. He’s got a passion for revival and holiness, even if he defines that with the big picture values of the reign of God.

I think many of our customers will be glad for this “rethinking” opportunity, and even if one may not follow Shane on every detail, this is a book that I am sure will be worth reading, discussion, pioneering, and, in some small way, living out, day by day. We’re hoping many will order it.

Rethinking Life is an intervention. In a moment when the politics of life is leading to death, master storyteller and public theologian Shane Claiborne leads followers of Jesus on a brave pilgrimage through the meaning, ethics, and politics of life–and death–and love. This is one of those books you will cherish and quote for the rest of your life. — Lisa Sharon Harper, president and founder, Freedom Road; author, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair It All

I resonate with this book in the marrow of my bones! In Rethinking Life, Shane Claiborne shows us what a genuine pro-life theology, ethic, and practice demands of us and looks like in practice. Authentic Christianity has always been robustly pro-life, but it must be more than a politicized slogan selectively and narrowly applied. In Rethinking Life, Claiborne’s thinking is as keen as his heart is compassionate. And best of all, Jesus shines through on every page. — Brian Zahnd, author, When Everything’s on Fire

Here is a book that courageously and effectively tackles several difficult issues around the ethics of life for those who wish to follow Jesus of Nazareth. Whether it is abortion, capital punishment, eugenics, war, or the historic culpability of the church, Shane Claiborne avoids oversimplification in any direction by focusing on the human element, offering provocative questions for both individuals and small groups to chew on.          —The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church; author, Love Is the Way and The Power of Love

What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman Lerita Coleman Brown (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

You may know the name Howard Thurman, a middle-of-the-20th-century black contemplative, and unsung influence on MLK. His Jesus and the Disinherited was an important book for King, and is a watershed volume in Biblical social ethics. Fewer know about Thurman’s many books of contemplative spirituality. We’ve got more than one major biography of him and several studies of his influence.

We love the look of this one, short and sweet, a considerable work in a small, chunky hardback, perfect for those being introduced to Thurman’s work. (And, we are told, it is great for those who know a lot about him, too; it’s that good!) It is said to be elegant and very well informed.

Thurman noted that we shouldn’t ask “what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.” That, after all, is what the world needs — you being alive and well, making a difference out of glad passion, not mere duty. I like that. Thurman was one of the great mystics of the recent past but he also had a trajectory away from the monasteries and towards the needy world. Yes!

Listen to what Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World and Holy Envy, has written about Lerita Coleman Brown’s insight:

If you have been searching for an engaging introduction to Howard Thurman, here it is… Lerita Coleman Brown has spent so much time learning about his life, absorbing his work, and trusting his guidance that she has made his wisdom her own.

This book makes good on its central promise: in her hands, it is not a book about Howard Thurman; it is a spiritual walk with him. Accept her invitation to take that walk, and the healing won’t stop with your spirit. Your body, mind, and heart will be restored as well.

Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction Cory C. Brock & N. Gray Sutanto (Lexham Academic) $36.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $29.59

For some of us in some circles, this, truly, is a book we’ve been waiting for. Like, we’ve been waiting for decades. Never before has there been such an explicitly neo-Calvinist study of the leading theological voices of this Dutch tradition — namely Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck, among others. As the forward by George Harinck, formerly of Princeton, now in the Netherlands, suggests, there has been a renaissance of sorts in recent decades of the public theology or social policies of this tradition which emphasized the Lordship of Christ, embodied for cultural flourishing in a pluralistic culture. From the philosophers at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto to the civic-minded networkers at the Center for Public Justice (heck, in a way, to the campus ministers that run our beloved Jubilee Conference in Pittsburgh each February) the living out of faith in action inspired by a Kuyperian worldview is increasingly known. How many books cite Kuyper’s “every square inch” line. How glad we are that even those not particularly taken with the details of the Calvinist doctrine are taking up what Niebuhr called the Reformed “Christ transforming culture” posture, and digging into the social philosophy outlined in brief in Al Wolters’ Creation Regained: The Biblical Basis of a Reformational Worldview.

Studies about this abound, and we have highlighted and promoted here Bartholomew’s Contours of the Kuyperian Tradition: A Systematic Introduction, his splendid book with Bob Goudzwaard, Beyond the Modern Age: An Archaeology of Contemporary Culture, the creative, global collection Reforming Public Theology: A Global Vision for Life in the World edited by Matt Kaemingk and, of course, the modern-day updating of and evaluation of Kuyper’s famous “Stone Lectures” the excellent Jessica & Rob Joustra-edited project Calvinism for a Secular Age: A Twenty-First-Century Reading of Abraham Kuyper’s Stone Lectures. I never tire of saying how delighted I was to see our own bookstore positioned as part of this movement in the pages about us in Richard Mouw’s wonderful All That God Cares about: Common Grace and Divine Delight.

Yet, Kuyper and Bavinck, early 20th century social architects that they were (having started schools, a faith-based labor union, newspapers, the Free University of Amsterdam, a political party) were primarily theologians and pastors. What were the uniquely theological underpinnings of their broad social vision? New translations (sometimes first-time translations) of Kuyper and Bavinck and Klaas Schilder have come out in the last few years and for those who want primary source material, there is a wealth of words.

But no-one has systematically explained the doctrinal theology of these giants of Protestant faith, nor has anyone (short of obscure monographs and PhD dissertations) explored the ways in which their theological project bridged modernist impulses and more traditionalist Calvinistic perspectives. There is some debate about all that and Brock and Sutanto are well equipped to walk us through this remarkable blend of innovation and convention, Biblical fidelity and modernist relevance, a creative approach that seems to have breathed fresh life into the thinking and preaching of Kuyper and Bavinck. Their early 1900s “neo-Calvinism” was and is a social movement, to be sure, insisting that all of life is being redeemed and that we need cultural reformation, even the reformation of ideas, but it was and should also be seen as a theological tradition. Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction is the book that gives voice to that tradition in a way that no other volume ever has. We might call it magesterial. It is important for anyone interested in historical theology and is a major contribution to evangelical theological studies.

Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation Collin Hansen (Zondervan) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59  PRE ORDER – DUE FEBRUARY 7, 2023

One of the reasons, it seems to me, that Timothy Keller has become so famous and deeply respected around the world has been not only his sharp mind and deep commitments to historic Christian orthodoxy, but his generous interest in contemporary culture, modern philosophy, and a balanced sort of concern for the flourishing of the spaces we find ourselves in. For him, it has been “the city”, as some in New York call their megalopolis. He planted a church in Manhattan and got busy listening well to serious seekers in the arts community, in the theatre world, and of course on Wall Street.

He started doing Bible studies with skeptics, teaching about faith lived out in the work-world (which came to fruition in Every Good Endeavor, one of the best books on the subject and the Redeemer Center for Faith and Work.) He brought in world-class speakers like N.T. Wright and worked on questions of pluralism with John Inazu, author of Confident Pluralism. He did a dozen or more thoughtful, often concise books like Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters that called people to a countercultural posture, based on a gospel-centered awareness that our identity and purpose must be rooted in the grace of God, the cross of Christ, and the vision of the coming Kingdom. He wrote a serious book on marriage in part because many of his young, career-driven, upwardly mobile professionals seemed to have time for that.

Naturally, if you are aware of any of these theological themes, you will know that he was an early student of Kuyper and Bavinck (and, indeed, has a lovely endorsing blurb on the inside of the aforementioned book on neo-Calvinism.) This situates Keller, it seems to me, as somewhat other than his conservative mainstream evangelical colleagues in the Gospel Coalition; he created a culture at Redeemer that would host authors like public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson and the provocative Biblical scholar Richard Middleton. Women and men influenced by this culture have grown their marketplace endeavors under the leadership of Katheryn Leary Alsdorf and have development a helpful social service network, congregants working in health care reform for the poor, a robust counseling center and support groups for artists, musicians, writers, and performers.

So who is this guy? Born in Pennsylvania, he came to grapple with the truest truths of the gospel while a student at Bucknell University in central PA. His wife (who as a child wrote to C.S. Lewis and whose letter and repose is found in C.S. Lewis’s Letters to Children) lived in Western PA. We will have to read this new biography to learn more details. Keller has not been terribly autobiographical and has understandably not shared much with the general public about his severe cancer diagnosis in recent years. His latest book Forgive, is remarkable, a potent blend of gospel proclamation and practical, pastoral care, but he doesn’t say much about himself.

I am really looking forward to Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and we are taking pre-orders now. It releases in a week, and we’re eager to see it. It’s a major, serious look at the formation of a significant leader. It is surely going to be worth reading and I’m very happy to recommend it.

Read these really nice endorsement. Each say something important:

Tim Keller’s sermons and books have influenced me greatly, but I believe his curiosity has influenced me most. To now have insight into the people and places that cultivated his brilliance–a dramatic yet suitable word–feels like a gift I didn’t know I needed.         — Jackie Hill Perry, Bible teacher,  author of Holier Than Thou

In our time, few Christian leaders have a vision of the faith that is as recognizable–and as globally influential–as Tim Keller. In this engaging book, Collin Hansen charts the fascinating range of figures whose writings and examples influenced that vision and guides the reader through a life spent exploring and distilling the best of the Christian tradition. By humanizing a towering figure, Hansen challenges his own audience to learn from the deliberateness that marks Keller’s own journey in the faith. Quite simply, I could not put this book down. — James Eglinton, Meldrum Senior Lecturer in Reformed Theology, New College, University of Edinburgh

I’m so grateful for this well-written and expertly researched work. Collin Hansen reveals things that many of us never knew about Keller. This is a book about Tim Keller of course, but in the end, it is a book about Jesus Christ. I’m fairly sure this was intentional, or at least instinctive, and as a result it is a delight. — Tim Farron, member of the British Parliament and former leader of the Liberal Democrats

Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church – Death, The End of History, and Beyond: Eschatology in the Bible Greg Carey (WJK) $45.00                                      OUR SALE PRICE = $36.00

This is brand new, officially not even out yet, so I’ve not looked at it at all but wanted to announce it here. Many of our mainline denominational friends (and others) know the useful commentaries in the Interpretation series. A few years ago they expanded this brand to include topical studies, designed to explore Biblical topics for Bible study leaders and preachers. We’ve got Brueggemann on wealth in the Bible, Patrick Miller on the Ten Commandos, Jaime Clark-Soles on women in the Bible, Jerome Creach on violence in Scripture, Richard Lischer on the parables, Clifton Black on the Lord’s Prayer and Robert Jenson did one called Canon and Creed. They are all thorough and quite useful.

This brand new one is by Dr. Greg Carey professor of New Testament at the UCC Lancaster Theological Seminary, near us here in central PA. Carey has a major work called Using our Outside Voice which explores Biblical interpretation for public theology, several scholarly monographs, and has useful smaller books on the parables, on apocalyptic literature, and a recent small group Bible study on Revelation. He is well loved there and serves local churches well.

In this fine volume, Greg Carey surveys the biblical canon with intelligence, honesty, and even wit. The results place before readers the diverse witness of the Bible to hope in God’s good future. An important, accessible read! — Beverly Roberts Gaventa, New Testament Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

Scripture’s many and varied perspectives on eschatology require slow and careful analysis — especially for those of us who preach and teach. The proposals in this book are timely and crucial for those who want to reflect on the future that awaits us individually, collectively, and ecologically. — Donyelle C. McCray, professor of homiletics, Yale Divinity School

The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction Jamie Kreiner (Liveright) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

When I saw this fairly progressive, secular publisher doing a book on distraction, I almost skipped over it. There are a lot of books coming out on mental acuity, focus, flow, mindfulness and more these days; especially in January the self-help books, some influenced by brain studies or the science of behavior, are everywhere. I am glad I gave this a second look as I think it is going to be fantastic.

Brand new and newly received here at the shop, I can only say this is on my own stack over in our living room. I’m eager to see how this medievalist researches the writings of monks in those days long, long ago. As we have heard (but not deeply explored) these monks of the Middle Age complained about their busy lives and, yep, distraction. Ha.

As it says on the back cover, The Wandering Mind is “a revelatory account of how Christian monks identified distraction as a fundamental challenge — and how their efforts to defeat it can inform ours, more than a millennium later.” Wow.

Listen to Cal Newport, guru of “digital minimalism” who writes,

In elaborating the complicated, human battles that medieval monks waged for control over their own minds, Jamie Kreiner provides a compelling call to address our current distracted moment with both more seriousness and more humility.

Professor Kreiner teaches history at the University of Georgia. Her work on the early Middle Ages examines the politics, ethics, and scientific sensibilities of what she calls those “under-appreciated centuries.”

This is a serious read, perhaps what we might call a “deep dive.” There are rave reviews from historians from Yale and Princeton. I’m sure it is going to be offered with verve and wit, but be prepared. This really offers quite a lot, about, finally, “human fallibility and ingenuity.”

All My Knotted Up Life: A Memoir Beth Moore (Tyndale Momentum) $27.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39  PRE ORDER – DUE FEBRUARY 21, 2023

This is the spiritual memoir that many have been waiting for, surely one of the most anticipated books in this genre in quite some time. We have just gotten an early version. It is really, really well-written, lovely, wry, even, with some great, great sentences. She is a very thoughtful, eloquent but plain-spoken and down-to-Earth speaker, teacher, and writer. I love the style. I started at the end, oddly, and found myself in tears, it was so beautiful. We have always appreciated her clear-headed, evangelical books and have been glad that one so rooted in the strict, conservative, Southern Baptist world was so gracious and good. We have carried many of her books over the years.

And then. Beth is exceptionally gracious on social media and those who have followed her on Twitter these last years have noticed her resolve to stand with those who have been harassed and even abused, usually by strongly-opinionated, theologically conservative men. Sometimes called theobros, these guys seem to make it a point to follow and critique, like trolls, women they disapprove of. Beth has been mocked and abused in the most vile ways by these guys who are supposed to be representing Christ. The mind staggers.

After the sexual abuse scandals hit the Southern Baptists, exposing leadership complicity, she renounced her membership in that denomination, the only one she knew, and started, eventually, attending a more liturgical, Anglican congregation.The chapters about that are breathtaking. She has bravely admitted that she had been sexually abused herself (and, believe it or not, the online harassment continued, with little sympathy.) She has born a good witness in reply, honest and gracious. And now she is telling her whole life story although I know she is being discreet at this point, not saying much about the contents of the book.

I suspect that the story of the online ugliness with her critics and those targeting her with threats and her leaving the SBC is only a small part of All My Knotted Up Life, if it is described at all. It is an autobiographical memoir, of course, and will tell of her Arkansas childhood and youth, her coming of age and her call into ministry, her marriage and its ups and downs, her rising to international fame as Bible teacher (in a denomination that does not ordain women.) There were family issues, we know that much and she now glories in being a grandparent. She’s led quite a life, in an ordinary sort of way.

Moore has written, “It’s a peculiar thing, this having lived long enough to take a good look back.” She is a very relational person, I gather, and I can assure you that this story is captivating, well told, honorable, funny, even, and at points vivid. It is said to be “a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness.”

A bit of advance word we got notes her own sense — mirroring a line by C.S. Lewis perhaps — that “if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories we’d all walk around slack-jawed.” All My Knotted Up Life is going to be quite a story and we’re happy to take pre-orders, sending them out a day or so before the official street date. You really should order it today — it is going to be one you will really want to read.

The Great Story and the Great Commission: Participating in the Biblical Drama of Mission Christopher J.H. Wright (Baker Academic) $23.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $19.19   PRE-ORDER – DUE  FEBRUARY 28, 2023

It is difficult to say much, of course, about a book I have not yet seen, but I am confident that this is one that we have long needed.  I admire this great Biblical scholar and missional thinker and keep many of his others on hand. (For instance, his Zondervan Academic paperback in their “Biblical Theology for Life” series, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission, is outstanding and his award-winning The Mission of God is stellar. I love that he added to the reissued John Stott classic, Christian Mission in the Modern World, bring it a bit up to date.

Here he seems to be doing three things, all really, really important. Firstly, he is arguing that how we read the Bib le matters and that we are most consistent with Jesus’s own reading and Paul’s own telling, if we read it broadly, drawing on the trajectory of the big story, the grand meta-narrative as some put it. Simply put, the “creation-fall-redemption-restoration” story is especially helpful even if he, Older Testament scholar that he is, might flesh it out a bit more. Seeing the big picture matters. I think he is right about that.

Secondly, he seems to be connecting what some have called “the cultural mandate” with “the great commission.” Our divine calling and human task is to tend and keep the garden (what Andy Crouch called “culture-making.”) The command to make disciples among the peoples is merely a way to restore our foundational calling. I think, if this is what he says, that he would be right.

Thirdly, he is offering, as he has before, foregrounded a missional reading of the story and opened up a missional understanding of God’s redemptive work in the world.

As the publisher says, “Wright encourages us to explore the Bible’s grand narrative and to bring “the whole counsel of God in Scripture to our understanding of who we are and what we must do as God’s people on the earth. He helps us understand mission in its broadest sense, including our creational responsibilities.”

Woo-hoo, and praise the Lord. This is such good news, a great author piecing together so much that is truly essential. I suspect you have not heard this put so clearly before, and commend it to leaders, preachers, and anyone wanting to “seek first the Kingdom.” We are eagerly taking pre-orders now. Shipping in mid-February, we hope.

Saint Patrick the Forgiver retold and illustrated by Ned Bustard (IVP Kids) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We were so happy to hear two years ago that IVP was starting a children’s line and what an honor it was for Ned’s bright and beautifully done Saint Nicholas the Gift Giver to be their inaugural release. This new one is similar, but, I think, even better. I love the bold printing, the bright, rich green, the Celtic-theme art. As before, Saint Patrick the Forgiver is a story told in almost musical rhyme. What a poem this is! The linocut illustrations, while artful (and more complex to make than many of us may realize) appear simple and clear. It’s a very nice blending of lots of content and eye-catching style.

The story teaches children that the famous Bishop of Ireland wasn’t Irish; I’m sure you know he was captured and enslaved. After his miraculous escape he returned to bring the gospel to the Irish. Naturally, it tells of Patrick teaching the “blessed mystery” of the Three-in-One by way of the shamrock, an admittedly inaccurate description. It shares more tales (including the baptism of the giant) and how the pagan Druid customs mostly faded away. The last page includes the line “Christ above me, Christ within” and nearly made me cry. The afterword includes some suggestions for further study. Great for wee ones (maybe ages 4 – 8) although adults will love it too.

While the source material is limited, what we do know of Patrick of Ireland is that he carried within himself a great passion for the good news of Jesus and a great love for the people of Ireland. Ned Bustard’s delightful children’s book Saint Patrick the Forgiver captures this gospel spirit of the Celtic missionary and, just for fun, weaves in a few of the charming legends connected to his amazing life. — Jeff Johnson, musician and composer

This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us Cole Arthur Riley (Convergent) $18.00 just out in paperback  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

We have been delighted to exclaim about this back when we first heard it was coming out, then as a preorder, then when it released less than a year ago, and then named it as one of our Best Books of 2022.  It is now, the first week of February 2023, coming out in paperback. Hooray.

You can see my comments HERE or HERE, although it has been reviewed in more notable circles, such as the New York Times and Library Review and The National Catholic Reporter. It’s a moving read, a memoir and broad-minded spiritual meditation by a young black writer increasingly aware of the power of her story.

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• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.85; 2 lbs would be $4.55.
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• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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BookNotes

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You know sometimes when awards shows on TV get long, and they have to shorten some of the speeches? It feels a bit distracting, counting down how much time is left, and yet you know there’s some great (even important) awards to celebrate. And some good comments, maybe some surprise fun.

Welcome to the third installment of the Hearts & Minds Best Books of 2022. I’m going to try to keep it brief so we can get this thing wrapped. I’ve noted before my ambivalence about declaring my own personal favs “the best” but there it is.  We invite you to consider these titles, knowing how I value them. Please take in my short acceptance speeches on their behalf (since, well, the authors and publishers can’t be with us – they don’t even know about this.) I get to say why they matter to me and hopefully why they might matter to you. 

Scroll through to the end in order to see them all — you’ll find the order button at the very bottom. That takes you to our secure Hearts & Minds order form page which you can easily fill out. Be sure to notice the section asking how you want them sent.

(Basically, the options are the cheapest (USPS Media Mail) which can be a little slower, or quicker, which costs more, depending on distance and weight and whatnot. Let us know if you have clear preferences, or just ask if have questions.)

We’re here to celebrate books, affirm our growing community of readers, and get these books into your hands. Spread the word if you’d like. We’re always looking for friends and fans to support this work and we are grateful for those who send orders our way.

In the meantime, know that you are the best, reading as you do. Kudos to authors, publishers, sales reps, delivery guys, our hard working team here at the shop, and — perhaps most importantly — you, the readers, the heroes of the story.

(See Part One HERE and Part Two HERE.)

20 MORE OF MY VERY FAVORITE BEST BOOKS OF 2022. Part Three.

Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits are Hurting the Church Katelyn Beaty (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

My advanced copy of the manuscript is marked up and I knew, even as I was enthralled last summer, that it would be on my list of favorite reads and most important books. It is readable, breezy, in a way, but deadly serious. It’s hard to explain how a book about such unpleasant stuff — the sexual abuse perpetrated by Ravi Zacharias, say, or the loony wealth of some hip,  young, megachurch stars, or the shenanigans of some popular authors and their ghost writers — can be mostly enjoyable and very exciting. But it is and I seriously recommend it.

Publishers Weekly gave it a coveted “starred review” and said it is “required reading for all who love the church.”

It is not a book filled with gossip or mocking the obviously mockable. Such an approach would perhaps stand in the tradition of the prophets, maybe event use harsh satire, to expose the foolishness that passes within the Christian community today. But this is not that, just so you know.

Celebrities for Jesus is a study of how, as the subtitle suggests, too-often profit-driven creation of celebrity has afflicted the contemporary church. She does some history, some asset observations about the notions of celebrity, and makes extraordinary analysis of what Joni Mitchell once called the “star making machinery.”

I’ve said more about this here and many have complimented Katelyn on her honest, and even vulnerable, expose. Fame and power and maybe even wealth are not necessarily bad, but many — especially within the evangelical subculture — have a fixation on celebrity. She worries about the consequences of such social power without proximity (and sounds like a modern-day Eugene Peterson at times.) The lust for fame and the promotion of platforms has really gone awry in many ways, and this brave book calls us to faithful spirituality, mature theologically grappling with our postures towards culture. Her stuff on the book publisher world was, for this book lover, eye opening and yet utterly familiar. As one who works in Christian publishing she brings the details about what many have had hunches for years.

Stupendously convicting and well-researched. Celebrities for Jesus provides a timely, sober reflection on the toxic culture that often arises when piety and popularity mix.       — Jemar Tisby, author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism

Beaty brings knowledge and insights that will help anyone wanting to disentangle their faith from celebrity culture. But, even more than this, she offers an honest, humble self-examination that is a model many of us in the church need to follow. — Karen Swallow Prior, professor, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books

Unruly Saints: Dorthy Day’s Radical Vision and Its Challenge for Our Times D.L. Mayfield (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Speaking of celebrities, here is a book about one who was, at her height of fame, incredibly well known in the Roman Catholic community, at least, and a radical inspiration for a rising generation of socially engaged young evangelicals, from Jim Wallis to Shane Claiborne. But, having committed to voluntary poverty and living, often, with the homeless and guests at her houses of hospitality, she mostly avoided the allure of fame and leveraged her influence for the sake of the poor. She was, as the title of this splendid biography puts it, unruly.

This book is somewhat of a memoir by the excellent writer and honest thinker D.L Mayfield, who wrote a previous memoir-like account of her work with refugees. She cares about people, wants to serve the outcasts, and desires, deeply to be found faithful by Jesus. Like Day, Mayfield is confounded that many don’t take Jesus all that seriously when He gives direct command to care for the poor and work for peace. Day was an unruly saint, indeed, in part because of her love for God and her following the ways of Jesus.

This may be my favorite biography of Day. Or at least my favorite short one.(For the record, for a longer one, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century is doubtlessly the best.) Unduly Saint, though, is fiery, fun, interesting, telling of the evangelical Mayfield’s own discovery of Dorothy. She tells Day’s story with energy and seriousness, inviting us all to take her life and message seriously. Dorothy’s old friend and former managing editor of the Catholic Worker, Robert Ellsberg, has a nice forward.

If you don’t know much about Dorothy Day and her dramatic life, you owe it to yourself to discover her and this is a great way to read a bit about her. A prefect choice, actually. If you do know Day, then you’ll love this. Lisa Sharon Harper calls it “a gift to the world.” Right on.

Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World And How to Repair It All Lisa Sharon Harper (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

How can I not list this — it was one of the most memorable books I’ve read in years and a powerful example of a personal memoir with a social vision. There are tender moments, passionate stories, historical details with the constant backdrop of the barbarism of enslavement hovering. But yet, angering as it is to read about the mistreatment of real families of real people we care about (like Lisa, an author we admire and true friend) Fortune isn’t morose. It’s a fascinating and engaging read and we name it as one of the very best books of 2022.

You may recall a week or so ago I announced the “award” we gave to Amina Perry for her South to America. That was a massive work that I couldn’t put down but throughout I kept wondering if she knew Lisa’s book. I’m sure Lisa knows hers.

Jamar Tisby is right that this is “nothing less than an epic and true story of race, religion, history, and identity.” She is what Ruby Sales calls “a masterful storyteller” and we were thrilled to read about her own generational research, the DNA research, the documents she found, the oral histories. Ending with a solid vision of restoration and repair, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World and How to Repair It All is a great, great book.

Plain: A Memoir of a Mennonite Girlhood Mary Alice Hostetter (University of Wisconsin Press) $26.95    OUR SALE PRICE = $21.56

I have pondered this, wondering why I was so very drawn, reading it non-stop one long Sunday afternoon. I wanted to just dip in a bit and found myself deeply captivated by this story of a Lancaster County farm girl in a fundamentalist family near a town we know well. There are farm chores and animals and a mostly loving, large family and there are revivalist preachers and end times scares. She is embarrassed by her plain style (and there is a chilling scene in which a public school teacher mocked the pacifism of Mennonite and Amish fathers who did not fight in World War II.) It is a gentle story, told fairly simply, and I kept turning the pages.

There are scenes central Pennsylvanians will understand well. She worked at Plain and Fancy for a while and talks easily about the Lincoln Highway, and there are scenes that only some will understand — the feelings she experienced in her first foot washing service was exquisitely told.

I turned the pages in part because I knew what was coming; Plain is part of a series by this publisher offering the stories of LGTBQ writers and while Hostetter’s sexual longings are not explored very much at all, it is a fabulous story of a person’s religious identity, belonging and not, of difference, and how her extended family coped with several families members moving away from the closed-knit community.

Actually most of the story is more generally about Mary Alice’s faith and lifestyle choices — she attends a Presbyterian church for a while (gasp!) and wears fashionable outfits as she teaches school and develops friendships in the upscale Philadelphia main line. She returns to the family farm often (and at least once a year to receive communion at the small country church) so this is not a story of family animosity or religious exclusion. But she is not a rigorous Anabaptist (and perhaps not a rigorous Christian at all; it is unexplored.) She leaves teaching, moves to Appalachia and helps restore an impoverished small town in a classic West Virginia holler.

When near the end of the book she writes to her strict, religious father — in his 95th year and by now in a Mennonite nursing home, having long lost the beloved farm — to share about her lesbian partner, he pondered it a bit and came to conclude that it shouldn’t tear apart a family.  If only all such memoirs ended that well. I had tears in my eyes as I finished it, quiet as it was, and then wanted more. Some say that is the sign of a truly great read.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind – with a New Preface & Afterword. Mark A. Noll (Eerdmans) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

This anniversary edition, a reprinted volume with a new long preface and a solid afterword, is, as was the 1994 original, nothing short of brilliant. I devoured the new introduction and that afterward, wondering how Noll would frame this re-issue of the “prescient, perennially relevant, award-winning” book.

He has to revisit the question about whether or not we’ve had much progress away from the scandal of evangelical anti-intellectualism. He has to ask if his project — as historian and uniquely Christian scholar — is still urgent. Oh my, yes, yes, it is.

Of course he laments the way in which the very word “evangelical” has come to mean something somewhat other than it once did. With MAGA idolatry and alt-right ideology, for some, evangelicalism is a far cry from the robust, wholistic, Christ-centered, Christian worldview it once was. He struggles with that and his brief introduction is well worth the price of the book.

I trust you know the importance of this major work, one that I’d list as a key title showing some of why Hearts & Minds was started and what we are trying to be and accomplish. It means a lot to me, and I’d say it is one that is every bit as timely now as before. I was glad that, unlike many books we promote, this was, in the 1990s, reviewed in The New York Times and Commonweal and taken seriously in many places. CT named it their Book of the Year and Os Guinness said evangelicals should “finish it on their knees.”

Here are some others who have shared their story of why the new edition is so important.

More than a quarter century ago, Mark Noll issued a scathing indictment of the evangelical mind. The fact that the scandal has only intensified since then is a testament both to the depth of the problem Noll identified and the urgent need to revisit its causes and reconsider its remedies at this critical juncture of evangelical history.  — Kristin Kobes du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne

This book changed my life. Like countless others who grew up in the thick of the scandal, I found Noll’s ‘cry de coeur on behalf of the intellectual life’ at once revelatory and convicting. In this new edition Noll tackles the post-2016 landscape head on, considering whether ‘the evangelical mind’ is in fact an oxymoron — and ensuring in the process that this book will remain a must-read for decades to come.  — Heath Carter, coeditor Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism

The City for God: Essays Honoring the Work of Timothy Keller edited by Ned Bustard (Square Halo Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I honor this one of a kind book even as it is designed to honor the Kingdom work of PCA pastor and cultural thought leader, Tim Keller. Agree or not with all of Keller’s theology or analysis or, now, global church-planting networks, there is little doubt that he is one of the finest evangelical public intellectuals of our time, fluent in philosophy and cultural studies, the arts, and political discourse. He’s a gentleman scholar, not an activist, and, in that, it seems he has been faulted a bit by those in the academy (he’s not a professional scholar) and by those who are in the streets, doing gritty work of visiting prisoners and protesting injustice.

He has been a fabulously interesting church planter in an era when there were few seriously evangelical churches in Manhattan and his emphasis on thoughtful messages, cultural engagement, and foregrounding the call to think Christianly about work, has all been a distinctive mark of his presence in New York. Many have modeled their own common good ministries for their cities after his own teachings about nurturing a sense of place and a passion for the public square.

There is an eagerly awaited major biography coming soon (Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen, to be published next month by Zondervan; $26.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59) and we are taking pre-orders for it. I am very eager to see it, and hope to review it before long. For now, though, I seriously hold up this excellent 2022 resource as perhaps the best book we have seen — perhaps that we will ever see — about the character, pastoring, faith, and service of Tim Keller.

As I said in my first review at BookNotes earlier this year, The City for God is a collection of nearly 20 essays by friends, co-workers, colleagues and writers who admire Keller’s life and work. There is theology, spiritual formation, testimony, Biblical study, and lots of great stories. Even if you know little about this Reformed advocate for culturally-astute ministry and even if you don’t know the names in this collection, nearly every one is fabulous. You can read them in nearly any order and I am confident that you will be blessed, challenged, informed, and inspired. It is one of the Best Books of 2022 and a great example of how to write in the vein of, on the shoulders of, and alongside the work of Keller and Redeemer. Kudos, all.

Eighth-Day Discipleship: New Visions for Faith, Work, and Economics Richard H. Bliese  (Fortress) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

I do not want to have our honoring of this good book sound like insider-baseball, as they say, suggesting it is only for those already involved in the wide-spread faith and work conversation. Sure, there is a movement these days, networks of ministries, equipping centers, podcasts and support groups and study materials. We have one of the larger collection of books on sale on this topic, anywhere, so I’m a bit skeptical when there appears yet another book on serving God in the work-a-day world, on living into and out of our visions of vocation. I’m glad, but not burning to read one more.

And then I decided I really should pick up Eighth-Day Discipleship and I was hooked. He is a solid Lutheran leader who has served the church in many creative ways He does, indeed, bring a fresh perspective and it is alway good when mainline denominational presses release books about discipleship. But this is not just a rehash of the importance of congregants taking their faith into their careers and callings, not just another study of marketplace mission. I was enthralled by Bliese’s integration of such a wide array of sources. I was glad that he not only cites some well-known Reformed insights (yep, he cites Abraham Kuyper) but also on elements of Luther’s Catechism.

We are glad for a book which has so many interesting folks endorsing it from a wide spectrum of church settings. I like that it not only invites personal faith that is applied to Monday work contexts but also looks at economics and the principalities and powers that deform our systemic and structural social lives. I like that he isn’t pessimistic about that, but does call for a moral framework for thinking about big, economic questions. I appreciate his creedal perspective and his bit about an “eight sided church” is great. I like his faith, his hope, his love.

Lutherans really need this, but, to be honest, maybe those less familiar with the nuances of Lutheran catechism might like it even more.

Blood From a Stone: A Memoir of How Wine Brought Me Back from the Dead Adam McHugh (IVP) $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00

When I announced this at BookNotes earlier this fall I was hurrying, I’m sure. We had just got a stack of these in, maybe a bit early, and I wanted to shout about it. I looked at the table of contents, saw the rave reviews on the back, got a sense that it was clever and a good, redemptive story, and highlighted it. We sold a few and I was glad.

Now that I’ve read almost all of it I can say it is truly one of the most enjoyable and enthralling books I’ve read all year. I’m so excited about this and without giving too much away, I’ll say just a few quick things to try to convince you to join me in celebrating this amazing book, which was, I gather, a long time in coming. What a story!

McHugh was a college pastor, then a PCUSA clergyman, and then a hospice chaplain. He lost that job and then was re-hired, on the graveyard shift. For a rather melancholy guy (who also wrote the remarkable Introverts in the Church) with some major ill-content (and a marriage on the rocks) working with the dying in the middle of the night, night after night, was not, as they say, a good fit. He was literally dying inside.

And, seriously, he writes about this morose stuff with a fabulous vocabulary, a fine sense of humor, amazing wit, and, well, a little bit of mouthy attitude. I’m not sure I’ve seen this sort of, uh, colorful language in an IVP book before but I have to admit it tickled me. His writing was so moving about his near-despair that I nearly got weepy, and then he had me laughing right out loud. Or rolling my eyes when a joke was a bit much or just didn’t land right. But mostly, the writing is just wonderful, a gift, a generous gift. It is a really entertain read — just about the most fun I’ve had reading all year, which maybe says something about me, I suppose.

And then “the corkscrewing tale of how I got to Santa Ynez” — where he now works as a wine tour guide — begins in earnest. He goes on a fabulous trip to the wine country of Southern France and one learns not only about vines and terroir, and castles and medieval religious conflicts and religious orders, but also Van Gogh and soil and place and love and hope. It’s a great couple of chapters and I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying the ride, even as you learn so much about the French countryside and the wine it produces.

After France he ends up back in California and learns more about the good gift of wine, about friendship, about place. There’s so much interesting here as his story unfolds, as he teaches from the Bible and from wine history, even as his own vocation is being clarified. (His reflections on the emotional constraints of a pastor, and the joys and hardships of working with the dying are honest and fantastic!)  He has to say no to, and has to grieve the loss of, some old identities and welcome some new stuff, which he gets off his chest even in the writing; it is so palatable.

Blood From a Stone is a marvelous book, about wine history, about McHugh’s life, about faith and doubt and struggle and new possibilities. He drinks a lot, knows a lot, shares a lot. Almost always with a lot of wit and a lot of verve, even some of the book is about loss. I loved this book and may write more about it if the spirit moves. Cheers!

Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children edited by Leslie Bustard, Carey Bustard, and Thea Rosenburg (Square Halo Books) $29.99                                  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

I raved and raved about this, so glad about it and wanting to have parents and grandparents of all ages appreciate the many chapters where various authors ruminate on why books matter in the lives of children. As I said in my BookNotes review, this is much more than a listing of titles (although there are bibliographic suggestions after every chapter that are handy when you head to the library or are making out your Hearts & Minds order.) Rather, it is a collection of thoughtful, often passionate and often poetic, pieces that show how to think about certain genres of children’s literature.

The contributors to this big volume are not famous (although Mitali Perkins is very highly regarded in YA work) but several are published authors. I love Margie Haack and Andy Ashworth and Katy Bowser Hutson, for instance and it is terrific to see them here. Matthew Dickerson has a great chapter on “Sorrow and Grace in Tolkien’s Works.” All, though, worked hard to create excellent chapters on their assigned topics, ranging from “Middle Grade Fiction’ to “Latino Literature”, from “Classic Picture Books” to “Family Reads.” There are chapters about books for toddlers,  chapters about books for high schoolers. There is a piece on graphic novels and there is a good chapter on poetry. From books about suffering to books about art appreciation to a good chapter on reading about those who are differently abled, this collection just doesn’t stop. There’s so much. A few are aesthetically oriented, thoughtful about representation or rhyme; others are eminently practical. Wild Things and Castles in the Sky is the best book I’ve seen to remind us all why books for children matter. Hooray.

For any parents or grandparent, any aunt or uncle, this generous guide for “what to read next” to your beloveds is a heartwarming, mind-enlarging appetizing pathfinder to the wide range of available kid-lit.  — Luci Shaw

The Wonders of Creation: Learning Stewardship from Narnia and Middle-Earth Kristen Page, with contributions from Christina Bieber Lake, Noah Toly, and Emily Hunger McGowan (IVP) $22.00                      OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

Whenever a book is done in conjunction with the prestigious and important Marion Wade Center at Wheaton College, we take notice. It is the premium location collection C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien artifacts, papers, and forming a community of contemporary like-minded dreamers, writers, thinkers, artists. The Wonders of Creation came about in what are called the Hansen Lectureship Series which offers “accessible and insightful reflections by Wheaton College faculty members on the transformative work of the Wade Center authors.”

This one is a real winner, truly one of the most fun and interesting books of the year.

Here’s the question: “When an author of fiction employs their imagination and sets characters in a new location, they are in a sense creating a world. Might such fictional worlds give us a deeper appreciation for our own?”

And, if yes, the question is what we might learn from the beloved fictional landscapes of Narnia and Middle-Earth about caring for real-life landscapes, becoming better care-takers of God’s good creation.

Yep, this is a delightful set of lectures — with responses from Wheaton faculty — about the interface of fiction and climate change, fantasy and reality, Tolkien and Lewis, on one hand, and the concerns of creation-care and ecological ethics today. Wow.

For anyone who grew up mentally wandering the forests of Narnia or Middle-earth, this book will be a joy and a revelation–you’ll be reminded just how deep those images went into your heart. I’m pretty sure the best place to read it is with your back against a tree trunk on a sunny day–but if it’s cold and snowy out, these pages will summon that summer in your soul. — Bill McKibben, author of the Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon

The Wonders of Creation is a creative, insightful, and well-written book. It is, furthermore, a timely tome that shows how fictional landscapes, such as those created by C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, can inspire us to care for the damaged landscapes of our world today. Drawing on careful readings of Lewis and Tolkien, ecologist Kristen Page weaves a tapestry of reflections on ecological literacy, lament, and wonder…The thoughtful writing in The Wonders of Creation will foster our care of our home places.  —Steven Bouma-Prediger, Hope College, author of For the Beauty of the Earth and Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic

The Completion of C.S. Lewis: From War to Joy (1945- 1963) Harry Lee Poe (Crossway Books) $34.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.99

At last, the remarkably good and highly regarded Poe trilogy on C.S. Lewis has been complete and this is surely a landmark in Lewis studies. The first two are Becoming C. S. Lewis (1898-1918): A Biography of Young Jack Lewis and The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918-1945.) Now we celebrate and honor volume three, The Completion of C.S. Lewis that just came out this fall.

Many Lewis fans have their favorite biography (such as the wonderfully written The Narnian by the great Alan Jacobs or perhaps Alister McGrath’s thoughtful C.S. Lewis: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet or, for a short read, Not a Tame Lion: The Life, Teachings, and Legacy of C.S. Lewis, one you should have on hand.)

Anyone serious about Lewis’s life and times simply must know of these Poe volumes, though. They are handsomely made, exquisite, almost, and exceptional in clarity and drama, well-researched and wonderfully told. These are, as Lewis genius James Como (founder of the New York C.S. Lewis Society and author of the popular Oxford University Press “Very Short Introduction” to Lewis) says, “require reading (including the notes!)” As he puts it, it shows “the ironies, tribulations, joys, and triumphs of a major figure of twentieth-century world literature.”

Others agree that this third volume is truly deserving of much applause.

Harry Lee Poe covers an extraordinary continuity of unfolding events and realities — moving from the effects of Lewis’s coming of age to outstanding maturity. — Colin Duriez, author of C.S. Lewis: A Biography of Friends and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship

To read this book is to walk side-by-side with Lewis through day-to-day life as well as through the life-changing events of his latter decades.  — Carol Zaleski, Professor of World Religions, author of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams.

Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women Alissa Wilkinson (Broadleaf Books) $25.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

The long opening introduction to Salty offers just such luscious writing, fun and energetic, eloquent, colorful, tasty, even. It invites us to a table —and from the sounds of it, it’s going to be quite a bash. The classic question of who you would invite to your quintessential meal with anyone hovers around the book, obviously and Wilkinson earnestly invites readers to ponder that themselves. She is learned and knows her way around foodie stuff, but the opening story about an open air market was so engaging, I was really jazzed.

Then the tone changed a bit, I think, and this is fine. I’m not sure I could handle that breathy style for almost 200 pages. The book is indeed about “eating and drinking” but it is also very much about the women who show up to this fictional party. As she guesses, some of them you may know. (Hannah Arendt and Maya Angelou? Octavia Butler and Alice B. Toklas? Holy smokes!)

Yes, this invites us to “gather around the table with a group of extraordinary women to explore how eating and drinking can ground us, sustain us, and connect us.” There is a Capon quote early on.

I think part of what made this so enjoyable for me, so unique, so award-winning, was less the dinner party itself, but the histories of the women. Salty, creatively written by a film critic and creative writer, and somewhat edited by the master Lauren Winner, does have extraordinary structure. But it also has tons of good stories about these nine women. (Not to mention clever drawings and a great bibliography after each chapter.)

The back cover said they are “sharp, empowered, and often subversive women” As Lauren herself comments in a blurb, “it is Alissa Wilkinson herself — the host of this dinner party and the author of this book — who turns out to be the most vivacious presence. It’s not nine companions this book offers; crucially, it offers ten”

Agreed. This whole thing — the dinner party, the recipes, the cocktails, the foodie writing, the women, the lessons learned from them, and Alissa’s own strong (and at times vulnerable) voice that makes this a major release — in one you should know. It’s one of my favorite books of 2022. It’s perfect for a book club, too, by the way. Join the feast!

Practice of the Presence of God: A Revolutionary Translation Brother Lawrence, translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Broadleaf Books) $25.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.79

This is such a fabulous book, a smallish, compact hardback with a colorful cover, that just feels like a delight to hold, perfect for the book experience you will have when you take it up. It is, as I am sure you understand, a new translation by a fresh, vivid, deeply mystical writer herself, of this old, old classic. As I said in my BookNotes review, I loved the story of Lawrence learning to pray while doing the dishes, the idea of practicing being attentive to God’s daily presence. The actual old book, well, it’s one of those one is supposed to read, but most don’t. Or if they do, like me, it just wasn’t that captivating. I got the gist.

Now! Now we have a wonderful new translation — hot, I think I’d call it, or maybe it’s cool. It’s a cool package of a hot translation, fresh and lively and informed and contemplative. Butcher is a fine writer— we have other books of hers, daily devotionals and other translations of spiritual classics. Putting a fresh coat of paint on such a lasting classic must have been daunting for her but she shows no trepidation. She is sure of her holy calling, and this strong rendering is a great example of how a new translation can bring an old classic up to date, so to speak. It is a major literary contribution, a lovely gift of 2022 that will endure for a long, long time.

Mirabi Starr captures much of what’s so great about this book. Let’s let her say it:

What a bold, vibrant, and potent translation of this mystical masterpiece! As she did with the perennial wisdom jewel Cloud of Unknowing, Carmen Acevedo Butcher once again breaks open the stilted and patriarchal language that encrusts our most life-giving spiritual treasures and makes The Practice of the Presence of God easy to grasp and impossible to resist. Its author, the humble seventeenth-century sage Brother Lawrence, reminds us that every task, no matter how ordinary, is a fresh opportunity for drawing near to the Friend. And that the more we take refuge in this intimacy, frequently repeating such phrases as ‘My God, I am all yours, ‘ or ‘God of love, I love you with all my heart, ‘ or ‘Love, create in me a new heart,’ the more often we find ourselves simply resting in the presence of Love Itself. — Mirabai Starr, translator of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Julian of Norwich; author of God of Love and Wild Mercy

Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding Life in Liturgy, Sacraments, and Other Ancient Practices of the Church Aaron Damiani (Moody Press) $14.99              OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

This is a book I really enjoyed and truly valued and want to hold up as worthy of our best books list. I say this carefully and sincerely — it fills a real need and his writing style is such that it reaches a certain sort of audience. And this deserves a lot of holy hullabaloo, if you ask me. Although that’s not the way this Anglican mystic would put it.

Here’s the deal. Damiani was a former evangelical. Maybe charismatic. He was narrow in his Biblical interpretation (and still may be) and solid in his theological bone fides (which he certainly still is.) And then he discovered — as many have in recent decades — what was once called “The Canterbury Trail.” He didn’t convert to Episcopalianism, though, or Orthodoxy, but to the new version of evangelical Anglicanism that is growing everywhere these days. He is currently an Anglican priest in the ACNA.

I lament the splits within the Anglican communion but it is, as they say, what it is. And this book shows how a younger generation is rising to lead vibrant sacramental worship, teaching many about spiritual formation, about eucharist, about liturgy, about ordered worship and fixed hour prayer. There are ancient habits of faith that have shaped more liturgical churches for thousands of years and the most vibrant voices for that tradition, these days, it seems, are former evangelicals, newly embracing a deeper, more ancient sort of discipleship and congregational life. That this deep and wise book quoting church fathers and Orthodox monks and sacramental scholars passed muster of Moody Press speaks volumes. That they dressed it up so nicely with colored pages and nice ink and handsome pull quotes makes it that much more attractive.

There are other more scholarly Anglican works, there are serious Lutheran and Catholic theologians writing about the mysteries of the liturgy. We have bunches. But this is reaching out to new folks who may not be prepared to read Alexander Schmemann or Gordon Lathrop, let alone Fagerberg’s Liturgical Dogmatics, etc. Earth Filled With Heaven is a great entry to good things.

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

I mentioned Matali Perkins above, noting that she contributed a chapter to the lovely and broad book Wild Things and Castles in the Sky. She has written some children’s picture books and she has won prestigious YA awards for crafting some of the most memorable and important juvenile fiction in recent years.

We were ecstatic to see that she has published this lovely book, a call to take kids books seriously and to learn from their nuances, wisdom, and artful storytelling. For those who love books, some of this is common and familiar – the power of story, the glory of language, the religious importance of fiction. Yes, yes, and yes!

And there is her own wisdom as a guide for us all. Significantly, she warns about cultural blindspots in old tales, stuff we should be aware of, even offended by, but, with grace and discernment, never throws the baby out with the bathwater. She offers a robust and visionary capacity to love good stories, even when there is weirdness in them. Even when we have to push back.

As it declares on the back cover, “the stores we read as children shape us for the rest of our lives.” As do the stories we read to our children and grandchildren, loved ones and neighbors. This book is beautifully crafted and vital, lovely and important. One of the Best Books of 2022.

Mitali Perkins’s winsome way with words seeps through every page of this useful guide that’s so much more than a guide. Her love of classic writing, even with all its flaws, serves as a compass for us to navigate the ins and outs of timeless stories so that they do more than entertain our modern craving for amusement.  –Tsh Oxenreider, author of At Home in the World and Shadow and Light

Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious – Reframed & Expanded David Dark (Broadleaf) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is an awards show, ladies and gents, and time is running short. I should write pages on this provocative book (and, in fact, I have, when I reviewed the first fabulous 2016 IVP hardback edition.) David has always been a storyteller, a good writer, and an observant reporter on the human condition and I admire him so much.

(One earlier book was called The Sacredness of Questioning Everything which itself hints something about his way.)

This new edition of Life’s Too Short to Pretend… is notably reframed. It’s an important word for him, I think. In a long afterword he talks about repenting, even. He’s not just tweaking things a bit, he is offering regrets for how he was perhaps dismissive or argumentative. This really is remarkable, actually, the example of a good person who is willing to change his mind and revisit previous books.

It is complicated to try to paraphrase quickly the exceptionally complex oration found in those closing pages; even more to explain the dense new opening. Agree or not (heck, understand fully or not) it is worth it to savor every sentence, some which come strong, others that have a smiling wit. It is a reading experience like none other and at the very least I want to honor this extraordinary book for its candor, breathtaking sentences, moral seriousness, and yet good humor. It’s not everybody who can be so full of zeal and so kind, so honest to say what he thinks and yet willing to say he must repent of some of his rhetoric and intellectual formulations. This is one heck of a read, a book I think I will ponder for a long time.

Hear these two women who say why they value Life’s Too Short…

For those of us who claim to be religious and those of us who religiously deny such labels, Dark grants us the gift and burden to think deeply about the imagination, scaffolding, and consequences of our religiosity. In reading his journey and cautions, my sense of personal accountability and religious identity were expanded. Such is a book that reads the reader and if we stick with it we gain insight into self and neighbor. — Christina Edmondson, scholar activist, author of Faithful Antiracism and host of Truth’s Table podcast

David Dark is one of our most astute and necessary cultural critics. His work gracefully opens new doors of understanding and breaks down barriers between secular and non-, and it puts a lot of old mythology out to pasture with a daring affirmation at the heart of his radical critique. Life’s Too Short refreshingly ropes everyone in, insisting that we’re all in it together.  — Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic

Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy Jamie Raskin (Harper) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I like some books that are ponderous, weighty, provocative, nuanced. Others grab me immediately, make me rage and weep and I want to tell everyone about them. Last summer I read six big books about the crazy “Stop the Steal” movement and the latter-day MAGA lies leading to the storming of the Capitol on January 6th. Book after book I read on, late into the night, and I wrote a long BookNotes review hoping to interest readers in joining this deep dive into what happened just a few years ago. And then I read Jamie Raskin’s stunning book, now out in paperback, and I knew it was the best of them all, a book I would gladly list as one of the most important books of recent years, a lively memoir of a public servant stuck in the revolt of the alt-right, and duty-bound to speak out and stand with integrity.

But what really grabbed me was the backstory (or is it the lead story?) — the unthinkable loss of Mr. Raskin’s when his adult son who committed suicide on December 31st 2020. The brave telling of this vulnerable tale makes Unthinkable a political/current events book unlike any you’ve ever read. (And Raskin’s moment-by-moment description of January 6th and the brave, urgent work in the weeks following, always entangled with the family heartbreak of the loss of their son, makes this a family grief memoir unlike any you’ve ever read.)

The accolades for this marvelous read have poured in (even as the hate mail and death threats have as well.) Laurence Tribe of Harvard calls it “a masterpiece”  Vogue called it “extraordinary.” I call it one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Unthinkable is not a work of emotional austerity; rather, it is an unburdening, a howl, a devotional. The grief is nightmarish, but the love that suffuses the text is even more powerful — the love for family and a lost child, as well as a love for a fragile democracy. It takes its greatest inspiration from the idealism of Raskin’s son. — David Remnick, The New Yorker

 

Voices of Lament: Reflections on Brokenness and Hope in a World Longing for Justice edited by Natasha Sistrunk Robinson (Fleming Revell) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

The editor of this classy volume, Natasha Robinson, is a memoirist who wrote a great story of her own very interesting life (A Sojourner’s Truth) and a fine book on discipling others called Mentor for Life. Here she has pulled together a remarkable array of black women to reflect — almost like a daily devotional — line by line on Psalm 37. Do you know it?

There are seven main portions — strophes, we are told — and these are sort of like units or chapters. Within each of these seven sections there are four (although one section has more) devotional contributions, starting with a poem, making this great for a 30-day read.

Here is how the publisher puts it:

Inspired by Psalm 37 and inviting empathy and healing, Christian Women of Color who have faced deep suffering and injustice hold their lament in holy tension with hope and love through this unique collection of reflections, poetry, and prayer.

Even if the content wasn’t excellent and accessible and wise; even if the topic wasn’t so sadly urgent; even if the authors weren’t so very interesting (some of them rather well known, at least in our circles) I think the very idea of this — a collaborative project on one Psalm of lament — is nothing short of brilliant. Kudos to Fleming Revell for a nice design, for the amazing pencil drawings of women of color, for making this book a classy and useful resource. And thanks to the many women who shared their souls, grappled with faith and the Scriptures, and offers “voices of lament.” The essays, prayers, poems, songs, and liturgies are powerful for us all.

Freeing Congregational Mission: A Practical Vision for Companionship, Cultural Humility, and Co-Development B. Hunter Farrell with S. Balajiedlang Khyllep (IVP Academic) $26.00                  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

What a joy to have followed a bit of this book before it came out; to have met the authors and to believe in their strong work. This is a book that stands out — we have a large missions section and there are fascinating books highlighting God’s work all over the globe — and we want to honor it now.

The topic is not unknown these days although, as you will see, the need to articulate a serious theology of collaboration and humility is as urgent as ever. Nobody likes the old image of the imposing colonial missionary and many are at least sensitive to how our translation of the gospel needs to be contextualized and gracious. But few have gotten below the surface of this audacious shift in missiology and not only explain it theologically, but made a programmatic argument of what it looks like. Hunter Ferrell, who has lived and served all over the world, it seems, and his brilliant colleague at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Bala Khyllep, are done an exceptional job. This is not only a magisterial work but a very important contribution.

Virtues of companionship and cultural humility are the starting points for a missional vision which affirms co-development. It is as simple and as endlessly complex as that. That may be why it takes well over 250 pages showing how — get this — the local church community is that place “well-positioned to build a spreading circle of relationships centered in Jesus Christ” that can direct resources in truly faithful and life-giving ways.

As one reviewer put it, Freeing Congregational Mission is “a vision, a road-map, and a vehicle for parishes to revitalize their mission to the world.” Huzzah.

Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture Christopher Watkin (Zondervan Academic) $39.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $31.99

I list this last although I might have listed it first. It is a book of breathtaking depth, readable, and energetic. It covers philosophy and culture, visits current ideological debates and explores how we got into some of the entanglements within our culture that we now have, at least within the Western world. This is a magisterial volume — just shy of 650 pages — and it deserves many an award just for doing such a capable job of exploring cultural analysis in light of the Scriptures. In a conversational and often chatty way. It’s heavy stuff, granted, but it is not a dry tome.

Watkin is doing a lot here, and has read incredibly widely. I smiled when I realized he was drawing on Dutch reformational philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd and delighted to see a reference or two from N.T. Wright; he offers surprising insights from everybody from Chesterton to Paul Ricoeur, from Oliver O’Donovan to Charles Taylor. Naturally he draws on James K.A. Smith (and on Augustine — in a way, this is a 21st century City of God, or so it sort of seems.) I was delighted how he handled the brilliant Esther Meek and her insights about knowing (a la Polanyi.) It’s not everybody who interacts so flawlessly with Bavinck and Bonhoeffer and Brueggemann.

I have not finished this yet. I have hardly stopped pondering the many rave reviews, from Natasha Moor (at the Centre for Public Christianity) to Richard Cunningham of Bruce Riley Ashford of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology. In some circles this book is being taken very seriously, and we want to add our voices to the choir, tipping our hat and suggesting it to you.

Can we make Biblical sense of what’s going on around us these very days? Can the grand story of the Bible itself somehow subvert some of our modern ways? Can we take seriously the latest in philosophy and “read” the times in light of the Scriptural story? With a forward by Timothy Keller, this offers evangelical faith and a Biblical vision aimed at understanding the times, and perhaps helping to heal them. I am not fully convinced of all of his direction thus far, but I am fully convinced that it is one of the great books of 2022, and one of the most momentous of its kind in many a year. Serious thinkers should have it.

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BookNotes

SPECIAL
DISCOUNT

20% OFF

It was hard narrowing down that previous list of my absolutely favorite books of 2022. Just ten? You’ve got to be kidding me!

Most of these awarded below could have easily been on that list. They are wonderfully written, offering rigorous ideas; they beautifully teach and vividly entertain. Overtly Christian or not, read with discernment, they are edifying. Here, then, is the second portion of our three-part awards show.

Don’t forget to scroll the whole way down to see the last few. Use the order form link at the bottom, please. All are 20% off.

And the envelope please…

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

Sometimes at awards shows, the same film or director gets brought to the stage for yet another award. I want to once again honor this one, one I named in my “Top Ten” list last week. It’s’ just that good.

From the moment I started this book I was captivated, brought in, glad for how wonderfully written and wise and interesting it was. Andy would not want us to overstate his genius and he’s critical of a world that created that kind of hubris. In fact, in this book, he explores the history of the notions of magic, alchemy, and — in modern times — manipulation through new forms of technology and mass media. He knows all this, and (is self aware enough to know that he flirts himself with it all) is inviting us to consider not only our technological environment (with some astute cultural criticism) but inviting us to being fully human, humane, righteous in the very best ways.

He draws on the Scripture, and the Bible, always. He riffs on history and he explores what reviewer Tom Holland cleverly calls “The Holy Ghost in the machine.” That is, how does power, and technological power, work out in our lives? Is it what we want and what is best?

I think of Andy’s extraordinary second book, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power which is perhaps the best book I know of on the topic of power, idols, and how good things can be dangerous and redeemed. Somehow, this new book is shaped by that grand vision. Can our world of devices and technology be redeemed? Can we figure out how to allow human-ness and community and goodness and beauty to carry the day?

Tish Harrison Warren calls this book “breathtaking.” I, too, was deeply moved by this beautifully profound book. Here is what Tish wrote about it:

I was surprised to find myself tearing up often, not because it is a book about tragedy or loss but because Andy Crouch, perhaps more than any other writer of our day, perceives and names the deepest and most vulnerable longings of the human heart.

The Life We’re Looking For is biblically-interesting, culturally wise, honest, vulnerable, tender. He has a great and interesting vocabulary illustrating how very smart he is without being obscure or overly academic.  And as I said before, there is a lot going on here. Brilliant cultural critic Sherry Turkle (MIT professor and author) asks, in her rave about Crouch’s book, “What would it take to insist that personal technologies become personal instruments of wonder?” As she notes, “Crouch asks us to summon the intelligence, resolve, and faith to regain lost ground.”

This is a stunning book, a delight, a wonder. I highly recommend it.

This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us Cole Arthur Riley (Convergent) $26.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

This, like others on this new list, almost ended up on that first post of my favorite 15 of 2022. How could it not? Cole Riley is a friend, a young woman I admire very much. She and her husband (another dear pal) grew up in Western Pennsylvania — her years in Pittsburgh figure into this memoir quite vividly and we love books set in our old town. She is a woman of deep faith, a thoughtful writer, an honest and I might say courageous person. She is following her heart — tattered as it may be in some ways — and putting it out there, as they say. She is honest, and this candid story illustrates her grace, her forthright truth-telling, and her move into a more capacious sort of faith experience than perhaps she lived with previously. This Here Flesh is a book by a strong black woman about her family, about the power of stories, about justice and change and pain and hope. It is a book many have adored.

I say often about books by good friends that it is hard to be objective, as they say. That is, knowing the author, I can hear her voice, almost literally. I pick up on some cues and hints, assuming that I might know the place or people she is alluding to. Anyway, what’s not to like when a friend has a New York Times bestseller on her hands?  (Oh, how Beth and I smiled when we saw a Facebook picture of Cole and Billy in New York looking at the book’s name as a sparkling sign on a Times Square marquee.) So, given our closeness to the book, might I really say it is that good? Honestly?

Yes. Yes I do. The advance praise has been astounding (maybe I dreamt it, but I thought I had heard there was some talk of her connecting with Oprah, whose own magazine touted it, no common feat.) The blurbs on the back are mighty, from evangelical writer and hip-hop wordsmith Amena Brown to mystic interviewer Krista Tippett to the remarkable storyteller Kate Bowler (who calls it “beautiful” and “soul-stirring”) to the amazing Southern, black memoirist Dante Stewart, whose Shoutin’ in the Fire also gleaned near-universal applause. Stewart says it is “rigorous, joyous, complex, and honest, and tells the story of how we get free.”

This deserves to be on the Best Books of 2022 list, a memoir by a rising star (she’s the curator of the Black Liturgist instagram sensation.) I have read this twice. I eagerly commend it to you, hoping you, too, will gain a creatively written glimpse not only of a woman’s life — going back in time, and looking forward — but hints and hopes of a beloved community, a space of grace.

This book is an invitation into the delicate weavings of family, inheritance, and pain, how they mark a bloodline and connect a people. Cole Arthur Riley writes with grace and gravity. And somehow she teaches us to think of ourselves as deserving of such grace along the way. This is the kind of book that makes you different when you’re done.       — Ashley C. Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Somebody’s Daughter

Between the Listening and the Telling: How Stories Can Save Us Mark Yaconelli (Broadleaf Books) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Well, if the very first one I list is mostly a creative nonfiction foray into memoir, I suppose this argument for the importance of story needs to be listed next. I adored this book, loved it, and found it more moving and entertaining than I even expected. Mark is a good writer, honest and sober, candid about things that matter. I would read anything he does, I suspect, and this was a winner. We are happy to award it a Best Book of 2022.

For the record — not unlike that famous line from Dostoevsky about beauty saving the world — I can live with the phrase if I take it as a somewhat writerly hyperbole. I’m still among those who say that Jesus is the only savior. Still, if Yaconelli is in league with Dostoevsky’s romantic overstatement, that’s not too bad, actually. As he tells it, it sure seems he is mostly right. Stories matter, they can bring healing and hope, renewal and something better than clarity. I get it. This book is a beautiful example of just how holy this can be.

And the book is simply amazing. Anne Lamott says it is an “owner’s manual for the soul.”  Progressive preacher John Pavlovitz (author of, If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk) says, nicely:

For a world so afflicted with isolation and disconnection, this beautiful book is medicinal. Yaconelli reminds us how we find our way home.

Indeed, this is a book about finding our way home. In fact, some of it is about Mark’s own upbringing and longing for home, sharing candidly some hard stuff with his famous evangelical dad, Mike. (For those of us who grew up following Mike’s good work and wild antics at YS or reading the Lampoon-esque Wittenberg Door, this is hard, unpleasant revelations.) As Mark unfolds his own story, we come to learn a bit about his move from youth worker to Christian contemplative to, now, this work as storytelling trainer and gatherer and how it became so life-giving for him and those around him. It is, as one reviewer put it, “an immersive, elegant meditation.”

There are stories here about storytelling, about the magic of storytelling events, of the hard and buoyant places where “facades fall and suffering and joy are metabolized.” It is really well written, the stories told with economy and grace. He makes good points and ushers us into a broad vision of a good life.

There are a few major stories set aside as interluded. One about his spiritual director and friend Morton Kelsey is — I kid you not — worth the entire price of the book. Those few pages are simply astonishing, a story of loss and God and goodness and, well, it’s amazing.

His work now is doing this as storycatcher and movement activist. He goes to war zones, works with immigrants at the border, helps those in need of retreat to find ways to integrate storytelling into their work or ministry. It is more than a handbook and you will come away feeling somehow uplifted, more compassionate. It’s a great read.

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

I raved about this in our earlier BookNotes review, suggesting it was both beautifully written and ethically urgent. Rienstra is a great writer, a literature professor at Calvin University (I’ll admit, I’m partial to folks there) who knows a whole, whole, lot about climate change and deep ecological stress, Biblical creation-care, and deeply Christian insights about the natural world. Refugia Faith is a marvelously made book and a true treasure.

We were not alone in sharing how great this book is. Good folks from indigenous theologian Randy Woodley to activist Bill McKibben to leaders in the Evangelical Environmental Network all agree. This extraordinary book’s invitation to become “a healer of a damaged Earth” is inspired.

As her colleague Kristin Kobes Du Mez (of Jesus and John Wayne) put it:

Filled with beauty, wisdom, and a vision for how things might be, this book itself saves as a refuge for the weary, discouraged, and disheartened. Imaginatively conceived and gorgeously written, it is a work of profound insight and deep goodness.

Refugia Faith is absolutely one of the best books of recent years, richly enjoyable prose bringing serious, compelling truth and a fresh way forward.

Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year edited by Anne Snyder & Susannah Black (Plough Publishing) $35.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.00

This came out early in the year and as soon as I saw it I knew it would be a book we’d cherish for a very long time. There’s so much in it, and it is so mature and rich, I knew it wouldn’t be stormed through quickly. I tried to celebrate it at BookNotes and, now, I am even more glad for its presence in the literary landscape. I hope you consider it — certainly a deserving Best Book of 2022 award.  Here’s some of what I said at BookNotes:

Every season or so a book comes out that is just so very special, brilliantly conceived, handsomely made, beautifully written, wisely argued, offering solace and joy, guidance and provocation, that as booksellers, we just want to celebrate its presence in the publishing world, want to press it into the hands of nearly every thoughtful reader, and certainly want to write more about it than I should here at BookNotes. Breaking Ground is just such a book. It is an extraordinary volume, one you will keep and cherish for a lifetime.

Breaking Ground can be explained in several ways, from several angles, but I’ll say this much: Anne Snyder and Susannah Black are two very different Christian women who individually edit our two favorite journals, magazines of class and intelligence, faith and vision, publications that we admire and support. Snyder is the editor of Comment (our friends Jamie Smith and Gideon Strauss were her predecessors, and I’ll admit I was honored that they allowed me to contribute to their magazine that was, in certain ways, in the lineage of Abraham Kuyper’s neo-Calvinist movement which we have written about in previous BookNotes.) She has worked at think-tanks and in journalism, is a graduate of Wheaton College and is married to the well-known pundit and public intellectual David Brooks. Comment is an artful, remarkable thought journal about rebuilding our crumbling social architecture and publishes some of the best writers about public life from within what we might call a broad and generous orthodoxy. They have published Smith, Seerveld, Mouw, of course, but also David Brooks and Mark Noll and N. T. Wright and Marilynne Robinson. And they just keep getting classier.

Susannah Black is also a remarkably gifted editor for another magazine, perhaps our favorite these days, Plough. From a different (more ecumenical and even interfaith) literary tradition and somewhat more unique perspective — it emerges from the Jesus-following, Anabaptist folks who live in intentional, shared community in places called The Bruderhof; Plough, like Comment, offers exceptionally high-quality nonfiction writing about society, culture, faith, and values, enhanced by great photography and artwork. While Comment has roots in the Dutch Reformed community and Plough is grounded in the simple way of the Bruderhof, both have a knack for offering profoundly Christian insight into the issues of the day without being preachy. They include classic poetry and fine essays and astute social commentary (with Comment sometimes tending a bit socially conservative and Plough titling a bit leftward, sometimes, or so it may seem.) Each are exquisitely designed, illustrated with full color art.

When the pandemic got serious nearly three years ago, Snyder and her team at Comment (and their sister-in-arms Canadian think tank, Cardus) deepened their work which was already in progress about strengthening civic bonds, healing the fraying social fabric, explore the way the spirit of the age has deformed mediating structures and institutions. I do not recall if they ran pieces by Yuval Levin, but they might have. This project grew to become an online collaboration between Comment and Plough and enlisted all sorts of supportive organizations; Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future… grew out of these remarkable networks such as the Center for Public Justice, the (&) Campaign, The Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America. It isn’t every day we see The Davenant Institute collaborating with The Awakening Project, and it is lovely to see The Trinity Forum listed next to Mosaic and Bitter Sweet. Kudos to educational organizations like the CCCU and Regent College and Fuller Theological Seminary and to policy think tanks like Initiative on Faith and Public Life for their role. That this beautiful book of essays and articles is a collaboration is an understatement. It is one of a kind.

This kind of collaboration, they tell us, is “an expression of unity amidst plurality and respectful engagement in the context of diverse perspectives.” A lot of good stuff came out of that “web commons” and this book is the result of that “real time” writing offering insight about what we might do as we move forward past the worst years of the pandemic. Those who care about the common good and who long for fresh insights and daring but doable proposals, will find this book a major resource.

Here is what is on the back of the book to explain the genesis of the Breaking Ground project and eventual book:

A public health and economic crisis provoked by Covid-19. A social crisis cracked open by the filmed murder of George Floyd. A leadership crisis laid bare as the gravity of a global pandemic met a country suffocating in political polarization and idolatry. In the spring of 2020, Comment magazine created a publishing project to tap the resources of a Christian humanist tradition to respond collaboratively and imaginatively to these crises. Plough soon joined in the venture. So did seventeen other institutions. The web commons that resulted – Breaking Ground – became a one-of-a-kind space to probe society’s assumptions, interrogate our own hearts, and imagine what a better future might require. This volume, written in real time during a year that revealed the depths of our society’s fissures, provides a wealth of reflections and proposals on what should come after. It is an anthology of different lenses of faith seeking to understand how best we can serve the broader society and renew our civilization.

The authors contributing serious content to this nicely crafted thick hardback (of just over 450 pages) include Mark Noll, N.T. Wright, Grace Olmstead, Jennifer Frey, Michael Wear, Dante Stewart, Marilynne Robinson, Tara Isabella Burton, Phil Chrisman, Jeffrey Bilbro, L. M. Sacasa, Oliver O’Donovan, Jake Meador, Cheri Harder, Amy Julia Becker, Jonathan Haidt, Gregory Thompson, Duke Kwon, Luke Bretherton, Doug Sikkema, Shadi Hamid, and more. You really show own this collection of original pieces by these great writers. They are a remarkable and astute group and this volume — arranged in four seasons — is a gift to behold.

Breaking Ground is surely one of the most important and beautiful books of 2022, a book to cherish. Thank you to all involved. Almost a year later I am still convinced of its lasting value, and want to honor it the best we can. Kudos.

Agents of Flourishing: Pursuing Shalom in Every Corner of Society  Amy L. Sherman (IVP/Made to Flourish) $26.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $20.80

If you are drawn to the collaborative vision of Comment and Plough (above), wanting to enlist the most talented, balanced, caring folks to envision a better future, drawing on distinctively Christian practices for the common good, and joining them in ways that non-religious folks might value; that is, if you want to make a difference in the big picture of our needy world without any of the right-wing hoopla of the conquering dominionists, then you may want a serious, careful, studious but upbeat resource offering the Biblical basis for and the spiritual guidance to accomplish just that. Can we really be transforming agents that create goodness and beauty, “pursuing shalom” as “agents of flourishing” as this author puts it?

There is simply no better book to explore these things in this way. I admire Amy very much and commend her work at the Sagamore Institute’s Center on Faith in Communities “which trains and consults with faith-based social service providers and religious congregations desiring to invest more effectively in their neighborhoods.”

She has a PhD (in international economic development ) from the University of Virginia. I’m sure you recall us often mentioning her stand-out Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good. She also, I might add, did what may be the best chapter in the book I edited, Serious Dreams: Bold Ideas for the Rest of Your Life.

Although I’m inclined to say a lot about this amazing book — almost 350 pages if you count pages of endnotes — perhaps the back cover is helpful to show why we care so much about it. And a bit from the publisher:

God calls Christians to participate in his redemptive mission in every sphere of life. Every corner, every square inch of society can flourish as God intends, and Christians of any vocation can become agents of that flourishing.

Amy Sherman offers a multifaceted, biblically grounded framework for enacting God’s call to seek the shalom of our communities in six arenas of civilizational life (The Good, The True, The Beautiful, The Just, The Prosperous, and The Sustainable). Because we believe in what is good and true, we strengthen social ethics and contribute to human knowledge and learning. Because we value beauty, we invest in creative arts. Because we are committed to a just society, we work toward restorative justice and a well-ordered civic life. And our desire to see society prosper sustainably means that our business practices seek the economic good of the community while protecting the physical health of our environment.

This comprehensive volume showcases historical and contemporary models of faithful and transformational cultural engagement, with case studies of all kinds of churches advancing human flourishing. It provides a roadmap for leaders wanting to participate in Christ’s mission of holistic renewal. Discover how being God’s agents of flourishing can change our communities for the better and offer a winsome witness to a watching world.

I’m not alone in insisting this book is truly great and very important.

Agents of Flourishing is a timely book loaded with expert guidance and amazingly practical insights for local churches (agents of God’s inbreaking kingdom) seeking the flourishing of their communities. It presents captivating examples of local churches’ engagement with six community endowments–the good (ethics), the true (knowledge), the beautiful (creativity), the just and well-ordered (political), the prosperous (economic), and the sustainable (natural environment)–as congregants carry out their priestly work of restoring shalom: rightness of relationships with God, self, others, and creation.  –JoAnn Flett, executive director of the Center for Faithful Business at Seattle Pacific University

In an age of political division and a shrinking Western church, Amy Sherman gives pastors, scholars, and students a comprehensive vision for equipping the saints to work toward the healing of our cities. Sherman bridges the gap from Scripture to praxis and gives readers both theological frameworks and practical examples of how our work and churches once again show our culture what the gospel looks like in the ordinary, everyday movements in our lives. I highly recommend Agents of Flourishing for anyone longing to see a reintegration of faith and work, private and public, church and city.  –Jeff Haanen, founder and CEO of the Denver Institute for Faith & Work

What Are Christians For? Life Together at the End of the World Jake Meador (IVP) $22.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

We highlighted this when it first came out, celebrating Jake’s follow up to his excellent 2020 release In Search of the Common Good: Fidelity in a Fractured World. Like that one, this is exquisitely written, combining stories and examples with fairly profound thinking. To say he’s a combination of Wendell Berry and Jamie Smith with a dash of Timothy Keller wouldn’t be too off base.

In this volume the editor of Mere Orthodoxy brings together the extraordinary thinking of black scholar Willie James Jennings, putting him into figurative conversation with the old Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck. Meador, too, not unlike Amy Sherman (above) explores a “thick conception of the natural order” as a life-giving way to see goodness, beauty and truth.

His call to a more profound sort of Christian politics, a social ethic that seems radically different than the fundamentalist right or the liberal left, is mind-stretching. For some it will be mind-blowing as he makes a seriously Biblical, deeply faithful critique of racism and capitalism and ends up with a profoundly pro-life witness

You’ll have to read this amazing book to see what Meador means by it all and see how he calls us to “renounce the metallic fantasies that have poisoned common life in American life for too long.” For what it is worth, he worries that our Western assumption is to bend the natural world (and all of life) to its own political and economic ends. This is sort of a radical application of some natural law theory and I think it is something we really need to consider, ponder, grapple with.

Alastair Roberts at the Theopolis Institute call it “provocative and unsettling” as a critique of modernity. And yet, it is hopeful, good, gracious. I very highly recommend this book.

Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community Bonnie Kristian (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

When I announced this earlier at BookNotes, almost as vigorously as I could, I said I would come back to revisit it. I have pondered it for months and my instinct that this is a very important book has not left me. I adored Kristian’s previous book — a guide to all manner of different sorts of Christians and their practices and insights — and was sure this would be wise and fun.

Well, it isn’t that fun. But it is beyond wise, it is nearly brilliant. It is one of the Best Books of 2022. And if not enough people buy it, I’ll name it as one of the best books of next year, too. It’s that important.

There are three things I loved about Untrustworthy. Firstly, it isn’t that academic or dense. There are books about fake news and our propensity to believe weird stuff, and why these days are prone to conspiracy theories and whatnot and some are very dense. This explores this complex topic with astute insight but it isn’t a drag or more than you need to know. It is serious and meaty without being needlessly deep.

Secondly, akin to the first, Untrustworthy is very readable. At times I smiled knowing just what a fine writer she is and how good the prose was. There are stories. Maybe it was a fun and enjoyable read after all, come to think of it. It is sober and serious and although she doesn’t overstate the concerns, I’m convinced that this is one of the most urgent topics of our times. This one will not be the last book we read on this complex and pressing matter, but it should be the first.

Thirdly, if this “knowledge crisis” is “breaking our brains” (and “polluting our politics”) what do we do? Here, again, Ms. Kristian is a mere Christian (I’m alluding to Lewis), standing firmly in the classic ground of Christians from all times and places. That is, she is not overly eccentric, not an oddball not fanatic, but a reliable theological voice. She offers deeply Christian ideas about wholesome practices, from enhancing the Christian mind to being an agent of civility, from forming communities that care about cultural discernment to becoming people who, in graciousness, know how to stand for truth.

Many of us know that all media outlets are biased — it’s just the way we limited, believing, humans work, objectivity being a myth, after all. But fewer of us know how the massive amount of information we have may be verging on propaganda, and what to do about that. How can we be a more responsible consumer of the news? Who can we trust? How can we combat misinformation and lessen its impact on the people I love (not to mention our neighbors and culture at large.)

There are forces that contribute to this crisis. Overcoming the current polarization is going to demand we think harder and work more conscientiously on trust, truth, knowledge. This book is one of the very best — indeed the only book like it. Highly recommended.

Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be Marissa R. Moss (Holt) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I happily read a number of pop culture books, several each year, and this stood out, head and shoulders, above any others — and I don’t even pay that much close attention to country music. I know little about Nashville, even though Beth and I adored the TV show, Nashville.

This book grabbed me even more than Sarah Smarsh’s populist study She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs that I raved about last year. It is so well written, upbeat, lively, with edge-of-your-seat gossip and drama. And some very touching, earnest, even, look at a few key women in country, alt-country, roots and new folk. As Brandi Carlile notes in her great blurb, Moss introduces us to “the modern-day pioneers, the rebels, the risk-takers, the marginalized, and the misfits.”

I did know quite know about the “startling inequities” in the country music industry. Despite a few famous ladies — from Loretta Lynn to Dolly to Reba — record for record, dollar for dollar, women in country women have been woefully ignored and often overtly mistreated.

Here’s part of the thing as Moss explains it (and man, it leads to some amazing drama): in country music so very much has to do with radio airplay. Unlike other forms of popular music (from soul to rock to hip-hop) Nashville radio DJs and the network of country music radio leaders, call the shots. If one doesn’t get airplay, records aren’t known, and albums don’t sell. This is true for men and women, but, uniquely, an even harder hurdle to get over if one is a woman.

In this sense, Her Country, shows what in older days they called the payola scandal. Except for women, you can imagine the sexual favors that may be demanded by country radio executives.  It has been an uphill battle, and this book bravely details artist after artist, songwriters and performers.

The Dixie Chicks, now The Chicks, famously spoke out against then-President Bush’s ill-begotten war in the Middle East. The backlash was fast and furious and put a chill among song-writers wanting to address anything political. Women writers and players were especially marginalized. This is a shocking story almost on par with the McCarthy red-baiting and Hollywood blacklisting of decades before as right-wing talk radio and country music stations mocked women who dared to speak out at all.

Even those who stuck to typical country themes — including some who were Christian and/or gospel — were not given their fair shake. There is even computer soft-ware that country radio stations use to make sure two songs by women singers were not played back-to-back. To circumvent the “good ‘ol boys” power of Music Row was nearly impossible.

Her Country circles back and forth around the lives and history of a few key players — Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris, and Mickey Guyton, especially. That these talented writers and players couldn’t get their work heard was remarkable. That they spoke about LGTBQ equality and that Mickey is black didn’t help their mainstream popularity. (That these women paid incredible dues on the roadhouse circuits in their home state of Texas is itself a story.) The advocacy for a more diverse sort of singer in the country music scene is a fight worth knowing about.

Recently, in the very moving TV show of the Kennedy Center Honor Awards, one of the honored artists was Amy Grant. One of the groups singing one of her songs was the Highwomen, a bit of a supergroup modeled after the Highwaymen. The struggles and joys of this band coming together is part of Her Country as well (not to mention their legendary work getting more women on the stage at the Newport Folk Festival.) To see Brandi Carlile, Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, and Amanda Shires (all who I had just read so much about) honoring Amy was a blessing. And to think I had just been reading about them a week before.

Some of the country history here, stuff about the Opry and songwriter circles and talent agencies and white privilege and studio musicians and so on is a blast. Her long playlist is worth the price of the book, including solid tunes from everyone from Patsy Cline to Shania Twain, from Jeannie C. Riley to Faith Hill. From Tammy Wynette to Carrie Underwood. Of the dozens and dozens of songs there are many I never heard of and some are, Moss insists, very important. She’s an unapologetic LeAnn Rimes fan, and highlights singers as diverse as Mindy Smith and Margo Price and the great Rhiannon Giddens.  It was a blast from my past recalling Jessi Colter and the wonderful Patty Griffin. (If only she had mentioned Nanci Griffith.)

Marissa Moss even has a few men in her list — guys whose good work comes up in the book since the playlist folders her almost 300 pages; alongside the Pistol Annies there is Jason ispell, Sturgill Simpson, and even Tim McGraw (“Last Turn Home.”) The remarkable playlist just illustrates how deeply researched this is, how this New York author knows the genre, and just how much there is to gain when women — straight, gay, of any race — are given a fair artistic shot. Politics and cash, religion and culture wars are the larger backdrop and these women wouldn’t allow the shift to a brash and macho national ethos constrain them. It is an amazing story.

 Her Country shines a light in the dark corners we don’t talk about; it’s equal parts unbelievable and completely believable. These realities are used brilliantly in this book as a tool to illustrate how women are breaking the mold, changing the rules, blurring the lines of genre, and how strong, resilient, inventive, and inclusive these women are.  –Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe of Lucius

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

Thinking about our favorite books and favorite moments in bookselling this past year, I am deeply touched with gratitude to recall how we got to help host an online launch party for this book. Along with former Calvin College pop culture curator (and very good friend) Ken Heffner, we kicked off a day of live Facebook presentations about how “narrative can make us better neighbors.” Imagining Our Neighbors shows us how and that good day reminds me of just how good a book this is.

I reviewed this, then, at BookNotes and we were pleased to sell a bunch. It is surely one of the great books of 2023 and we enjoyed it immensely. As Karen Swallow Prior notes, it will “instruct and delight any reader who cares even a little about art, imagination, and humanity.”

With rave reviews from the artful likes of Makoto Fujimura and Jessica Wooten Wilson, this book has been much discussed and I am not alone holding ups its vision of empathy gleaned through stories. As our longer BookNotes review explained, she looks at all sorts of narrative work, from TV shows to novels, from films to record albums. Her tastes are wide and her insight profound. Professor McCampbell invites us to enter into a deeper care for the world by hearing well the stories of artists, religious or not (usually not, at least not overtly so) who bear God’s image and offer insights into the world as it is — and perhaps offer visions of how it might be. This is one of the great books of 2022.

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

A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing Amanda Held Opelt (Worthy) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

I’ve mentioned this more than once at BookNotes and I can’t shake how interesting it is, a grief book unlike any I’ve ever read. It is surely one of my favorite books of 2022.

Here is what I wrote back in at the end of the summer:

This came out a bit ago and I’ve mentioned it before but I just have to announce it again. It is, quite simply, a beautiful walk through 12 different grief practices. Amanda is the bereaved sister of the late Rachel Held Evans so it starts with her coping with that sudden loss. She writes well, includes some humor, and the book feels like a clever cross between a memoir of sorrow and an anthropologist’s survey of what might seem like oddball practices to the uninitiated.

There is so much here – it’s a great read. From fairly common habits (sending cards) to the nearly superstitious (covering mirrors) to the nearly amusing (see “funeral games” – who knew?) to the beautiful (like coping with fear through “telling the bees”), there is something here for everyone. Join Amanda as she sits shiva or as she takes in the beauty of funeral food. You will laugh, I bet, and you may cry. It’s a great book.

The fine writer Jen Pollock Michel says it “invites us to put our aching bodies in motion, to glimpse at the surviving we can all do.” Other fine raves on the back are from Sarah Bessey, Jeff Chu, Michael Card, and K.J. Ramsey, all authors we’ve commended here. Trust us – A Hole in the World is well worth having. I think it is one of the most interesting books I’ve encountered this past year and I am sure we’ll be recommending it for years to come.

Good and Beautiful and Kind: Becoming Whole in a Fractured World Rich Villodas (Waterbrook) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

As I’m sure you appreciate, we recommend a real diversity of books here at Hearts & Minds. And our shop is even more complicated than our somewhat curated BookNotes. We really do appreciate so very much and are glad for books to read, good books, joys and challenges.

When it comes to recommending titles, we’re trusting and eager — not too many of our customers are offended by this or that, even if it isn’t for them. We know some read a bit out of their conventions sometimes, just to grow and learn. I love that. I suspect more conservative evangelicals read more liberal stuff than vice versa, but, in any case, there’s a lot of cool diversity here. We’re grateful.

But then there are those authors that really resonate, that are, in one way or another, nearly soul mates, or close to it. I feel that way about the work of Rich Villodas. I’m not alone as a fanboy, of course, and his first book, A Deeply Formed Life, invited many fairly straight-arrow evangelicals to see that racial prejudice was not merely a trendy justice topic, but a matter of the formation of our souls. Agree or not about his traditional views of Christ and the atonement or his gracious but traditional view of sexual ethics, he was a good man, inviting readers to a deeper life, shaped in the virtues of Christ, from the inside out.  He offered monastic values, reminded us of emotional health, showed how our bodies connected with our spirituality, insisted on a multiracial vision and called us to a missional way of being the hands and feet of Jesus in a consumerist world.

And then he wrote the follow up, one of 2022’s best books. I couldn’t put it down and have fond memories of reading it outdoors, late into the evening. Good and Beautiful and Kind nearly blew me away, in part because it was so interesting, built on so much good thinking (illustrated by the amazing footnotes and citations.) Here was a theologically conservative evangelical — a grad of the CM&A’s Nyack College—  citing Walter Wink (and our old friend Marva Dawn on Walter Wink),  Benedicta Ward, Orthodox fathers, James Cone, Karl Barth, Fleming Rutledge. He knows the work on trauma done by Bessel Van Der Kolk (and cites Curt Thompson.)  I loved his drawing on a lesser known book by Barbara Brown Taylor. Man, this dude reads widely and writes so nicely.

Importantly, though, for anyone, but dear to the heart of the urban pastor that he is, he knows black literature. I was deeply moved by his use of Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. And, giving him the title, a poem by Langston Hughes.

This book flows out of his experience with his faith community. They seem to have a healthy thing going on and I’m grateful, given how many churches are either toxic or boring. If his community is being shaped by his words — on being good and beautiful and kind — they are, as are we when we join in through reading this book, becoming whole.  Which is to say, we are growing in love. In discipleship. In hope. This is a transformational book, not complicated to read, about 200 pages. Highly recommended — the kind of book nearly any of our buyers should appreciate.

Faithful Anti-Racism: Moving Past Talk to Systemic Change Christina Barland Edmondson & Chad Brennan (IVP) $25.00  OUR SALE PRICE =$20.00

I almost feel like I could give an award to InterVarsity Press for doing the most good books on racial justice, cultural diversity, multi-ethnic ministry and racial reconciliation. In recent years they have been consistent and solid, fresh and wise. There’s been a lot on this topic, from other good publishers too.

It was hard to pick just one that stood out to me, but I am confident this should be on any list of the most important books of 2022. I’ll write another time of other good books in this key aspect of ministry and prophetic work, but for now, I want to honor this extraordinary book. I could go on and on, but will just say three things about what makes it so very useful, stellar, even. It’s a stand-out and should be award-winning.

First, it is unapologetically Biblical and Christina Edmondson and her co-author are excellent on this. (Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who knew Christiana from when she was at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, in fact notes the book’s “sophisticated engagement” with Scripture.) It isn’t a lengthy, arcane treatise, but it is mature and serious in its Biblical orientation.

Secondly, the phrase “faith anti-racists” puts it at loggerheads with both conservative ideologues who decry anti-racism as nothing more than far-left lingo rooted in Marxist CRT  and well-intended progressives who just adopt ideological views of anti-racism as if there is nothing to ponder. She is wanting church folk to get beyond talk and good intentions but doesn’t just jump into the anti-racist biz without some theological reflection. Her call to fidelity in our anti-racism work is vital. Naturally, this includes a passion for whole-life discipleship and culturally-astute, systemic changes that are necessary. These authors do not shy away from important, big picture stuff.

Thirdly, this book brings to us the most updated, urgent, illuminating data, research done by the landmark Race, Religion and Justice project (led by Michael Emerson, who wrote a significant foreword.) I said this in a previous BookNotes review but this is, as Duke Kwon puts it, “unparalleled among Christian treatments of the topic.”

There are other reasons I value this — there are excellent discussion questions and eloquent honest prayers. It is nicely made, not too hefty, and really is one of the Best Books of 2022. Kudos to all.

The Merton Prayer: An Exercise in Authenticity Steven A. Denny (ACTA) $19.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.96

Can I name a book as one of my favorites of the year because I am footnoted in it? Ha! Golly, it’s a little thing but although I’ve been thanked and even described in a few books over the years — Rich Mouw gives me a couple of pages in All That God Cares About: Common Grace and Divine Delight, a book I adored, by the way — but I am not sure I’ve ever been actually in a footnote. And there you have it: I was delighted, nonfiction book nerd that I am.

More importantly, this is a book that is unlike any that exists. So many people appreciate and have been deeply touched by the famous Merton prayer (at least part of it) found in Thoughts in Solitude, one of the books I often tell people to read first if they are tackling the famous contemplative. My acquaintance Steven Denny — we met at a conference — had his own life transformed by praying this prayer and asked me if it might help anyone by writing a book about it. I assured him there was, indeed, a need for just such a book. On the big, wide, Merton shelf there’s nobody talking much about it. Yet, it’s so helpful. And so Denny wrote this, his own simply-told story of his own encounter with the famous prayer.

The Merton Prayer is the one that starts, “My Lord, God, I have no idea where I’m going.”  You may have heard some of the later lines: “The fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.”

As I’ve described before in BookNotes Denny does a few simple things. To be honest, none are brilliantly literary, not over-the-moon stunning. It is just so earnest, so clear, so sane, so helpful. Step by step, Denny — a former evangelical preacher turned lawyer — walks us through the prayer, line by line. In that, there are worlds of insight and many treasures. It makes this small book on a small press a very significant book. I’ve read it more than once, which is rare for me.

There are three sections that Steve offers for each phrase. First he does some Bible study. Nothing is rocket science here, but he’s a solid preacher and knows his way around the Scriptures. It’s good. Then he exegetes the lines (sometimes even the words) of the prayer. I’m not sure it was necessary to call this exegesis, since that isn’t a word most people use, but we’ll overlook it — he’s an evangelical preacher turned lawyer, remember? The point is he examines the prayer carefully, highlighting a phrase, a bit of grammar, offering reflections on Merton’s own usage. It is amazingly rich, good, solid, stuff, freshly shared. I’ve never seen anybody ruminate on Merton like this, and it is very, very lovely.

The third part in each portion is where we are invited to “turn it, turn it, turn it.” By which he means to ponder, reflect, apply. How do we live this stuff? What difference does it make? How do we inhabit this prayer as our own, knowing what we know now? This is really good stuff and he guides us towards our own deep reflections on the ground words of The Merton Prayer.

There is a fantastic introduction to Merton in the beginning that is really nicely done. There are photographs for those that might appreciate the visual metaphor. All in all, it’s a fine book, made that much more important because it is on a topic that is not often explored — how to use this famous prayer about seeking God’s will when we don’t know where to turn.  As he says, “it’s a prayer for you.”

How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now James K. A. Smith (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I have mentioned this book a lot at BookNotes so it will come as no surprise to our friends to see me list it here. It was certainly one of my favorite reads — in part because it pushed and pulled me into new ways of thinking and in part because I just so enjoy this author’s voice. But also, it is important because there is nothing like it that I know of. Nothing I can even compare it to. It deserves an award for that!

There are those who may want to dive into this not because they are drawn to the author but because they are intrigued with the topic and are taken by the themes. Please, please do. I am a big fan of this, dense as some parts are, complex as it may be. Because I trust him so, and value his voice and writing, I hear Smith and smile when he warns/advises in the good, long introduction that citing philosophers (not unlike citing poets and artists) is a chance for the reader to slow down. To ponder and reflect. This is a book which, he says, hopes to draw you more deeply into contemplation. It is, very much, about inhabiting.

As I noted in an earlier review, Smith says,

“…the hope of this book is to occasion an awakening, a dawning awareness of what it means to be the sorts of creatures who dwell in the flux of time’s flow, who swim in the river of history. Knowing when we are can change everything.”

Although it waxes eloquent at times about all manner of obscure goings on and explores in detail stuff like “A History of the Human Heart” and “The Sacred Folds of Kairos” or, as that chapter subtitle puts it, “How (Not) To Be Contemporary” it is at times clear and convicting. Very early on, and then several times later, he asserts:

“Knowing whether it’s dawn or dusk changes how you live in the next moment.”

To wit, he coins an annoying little word he uses throughout, about a debilitating ignorance about not knowing what time it is, or thinking we (and God!) somehow “floats” above it all, not concerned about being in time and in history: nowhen.

This is a book about temporality — which implies an awareness of where we are in history, how we have been generated and how we are to feel about it all; and, he is eager to help us understand the grace of living, appropriately, in a futural manner. The now is pregnant with the future and we live into God’s realm in fresh aways each day.  But first, of course, we must reckon with our past. I really resonated with how he used that word, reckoning.

With examples from the tangible, visible arts, to poets and rock singers, with studies from philosophers and social critics, with plenty of Bible and church history How to Inhabit Time is a masterpiece, one of the very best books of 2022. Even if it is at times a bit arcane, a bit dense, a harder work that his most popular few of recent years.

I wonder what reader’s reactions have been to his chapter “Embrace the Ephemeral” (which, happily, starts with a description driving through our local Susquehanna Valley in late October.)

I enjoyed his “Seasons of the Heart” chapter helping us to “inhabit your now.” (Ahh, his bits about the Grand Rapids community garden are very sweet.) His deeper dive into the classic “a time for…” section of Ecclesiastes 3 (cue up Pete Seeger about here, or Cockburn’s version, if you like — it’s not the first Cockburn allusion) is richer than most of the obvious explication in standard commentaries. His call to discern the times cites Gaudete et Exsultate, Pope Francis’s exhortation on holiness in today’s world and he explores how “seasons are transitory yet focal.” All of this is remarkably rich and very thoughtful and, yes — inspiring. From a Fleet Foxes song to a passage lifted from Proust, we come to see how in harder, quieter seasons we can learn much, even as we are attuned to Scripture differently than before. Smith notes that,

“…a life lived with God through time is a period of incubation in which the Spirit of God is creating the capacity within us to hear the same Word anew and to make the Word echo afresh in the new crevices of our heart.”

We are creatures of time. There are, as he notes more than once, vicissitudes. Jamie is a smart guy with a great vocabulary, but he is also a tender guy, sharing about his own depression, drawing out the contours of his homes, celebrating his marriage, a good witness that it is. He is also a philosopher so expect some forays into some deep stuff, but even that is clever and readable. Only Smith calls Huesserl, whom he loves, “a fusty German” and draws on Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger (a student Kierkegaard) as well as Henri Bergson, “the great turn-of-the-century phenomenologist of time (where Proust was the best man at his wedding!)” Who knew?

Yes, you get some cool lines from the Avett Brothers and he cites the moving memoir of Brandi Carlisle and he goes on, righteously, about BLM and Alice Walker’s food revolutions. But you also hear his calm ruminations on Reinhold Niebuhr and other heavyweight thinkers. (Did you see his piece in the Christian Century about Niebuhr? It was quite good.) From Winn Collier’s lovely recollection of Eugene Peterson’s “aha” moment about becoming “unhurried” (as told in Winn’s biography, A Burning in My Bones) to his citation of a beautiful passage on leisure by Calvin Seerveld, he helps us live into the vicissitudes, and hear the “tempo of the Spirit.” I told you it was interesting.

I name this now as a favorite book of 2022 and one of the best, delighted as I was to be challenged to think more about being an eschatological person (or, better, to be part of a eschatological people.) The notion of longing for “kingdom come” is different, of course, than (as he explains beautifully) counting down the days to a rapture; fixation on the end times, he curiously shows, is, actually, rather a-historical, as we wait for God to wipe the slate clean. His vision of God’s renewal of all things is very, very different — nor nowhen. It is worth having. I hope you order it today.

James K. A. Smith shows us that time is a gift waiting to be redeemed, and a central conviction of this book is that ‘the Lord of the star fields’ is intimately attuned to our haunted, beautiful histories. Dwelling with these lucid, winsome meditations on ‘spiritual timekeeping’ was like listening in on a lively conversation between St. Augustine, Gustavo Gutiérrez, James Baldwin, and Marilynne Robinson, while Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon played in the background.  — Fred Bahnson, author of Soil and Sacrament

James K. A. Smith’s inspired work examines time not as hourglass sand running hopelessly through our fingers but as a divine gift that we can capture just enough to recognize the pearl of life that time shapes. A thoughtful and engaging book.  — Sophfronia Scott, author of The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton

This Contested Land: The Storied Past and Uncertain Future of America’s National Monuments McKenzie Long (University of Minnesota Press) $24.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.96

There are some academic publishing houses that make very nice general market books beside their arcane scholarly texts. Books by the University of Minnesota have blessed me nicely over the years with some very nice volumes, and this is certainly one of them. I’m not kidding — it’s a joy to hold, hefty and nice.

It is also funny to think that parts of an early chapter of this were first published in a journal called Nowhere. Which isn’t exactly “nowhen” (see above) but still sounds fishy. But this book is anything but nowhere: it is precisely about specific places and whether you have been to them or not, this author takes you there with vivid prose, solid natural history, good stories, colorful concerns. It’s a great read.

There are interviews galore, informative and captivating history, and stuff about landscape and wildlife and, yes, politics. From the older travesties of the removal of indigenous people to modern debates (from Obama to Trump to Biden) about national moments, this is cutting edge, vital stuff. I am very glad to name it here, celebrating it as a wonderful read, a very good book, and an important contribution to our contemporary discourse.

This Contested Land, you should understand, is about taking a closer look at twelve national moments (which she calls “the scrappy younger siblings of National Parks.”) I have not been to most of these and had not even heard of a few. The first one she visits because President Trump was decreasing its land size by 80-some percent. Of course, he wanted to sell it off for drilling, mineral rights, and other capitalist gains, rejecting the notion from Ulysses Grant on through Roosevelt and most others that we need such public spaces.

The book is arranged with a handful of chapters in each of three sections, Rock, Ripple, and Rift. She takes us from Bears Ears National Monument, Utah, to Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine. One is in Hawaii, another in Hanford, Washington. Most, like the fabulous Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Nevada are “out West” as we East Coasters say, like thrilling spots in California, New Mexico.

Author McKenzie Long is a rock climber, graphic designer, and writer who lives in the Sierra Nevada. A former managing editor at OutdoorGearLab.com, she is the coauthor of two climbing guidebooks and author of an award-winning essay, “The Alphabet Effect,” published in Nowhere magazine. Some of our readers will be glad to know that was a writer in residence at Mesa Refuge in Point Reyes, California, where she was named the 2019 Terry Tempest Williams Fellow for Land and Justice.

In This Contested Land, McKenzie Long reframes national monuments in the American consciousness. With painterly language, superb historical research, and engaging boots-on-the-ground storytelling, this book explores crevices for meaning and truth in what for many is a gray area between politics and place. This is a vivid, smart, and overdue book.–Kathryn Aalto, author of Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World

With intricately woven stories and stunningly artistic prose, This Contested Land invokes the intense power of relationships between humans and landscapes–a force that not only influences what people think should happen to a specific place but what the future of our Earth itself might become. — Katie Ives, editor-in-chief of Alpinist and author of Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams

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It often happens this time of year. My head is nearly spinning, giddy with the thought of sharing with you our picks for the Best Books of 2022. Christmas is always hectic here in retail-land and then the new year is often (thank goodness) a bit more hectic than we expect or remember. We’re so glad folks are sending us interesting requests for us to weigh in on, asking for book ideas for their winter programing, for their reconvened book clubs, for their upcoming preaching season, for their classes, for their own personal reading plans. It’s just a busy time of year to be creating this momentous post.

Which then makes me ponder about the point of all the list-making and honorable mentioning. As a struggling bookseller, I’ll admit: our goal is to persuade you to buy books. From us. Obviously.

And yet, there is some altruistic motivation, too, an educational offer for the common good. We really do want to inform the reading public and (insofar as they notice or care) honor publishers and their authors who do good work. There’s no real awards show or prize money, of course, so our little hoopla goes mostly unnoticed.

Yet, our fans and friends and followers want to know what we think. I am so honored by that. We thank you for caring.

So, here is a righteous shout-out to a handful of really good books. My top ten.

Here’s my caveat, offered as bluntly as I can put it. I am not insisting these are the “best” books, whatever that may mean. Heaven knows, I am not a judge of that.

But they are books I loved. Books I think others should read. Books we want to honor.

Soon, we’ll do a second list of more titles and authors that we consider the cream of the crop of 2022; the best of the best, in the literary world that I know, at least. I can’t wait to list those for you.

But here, today, I want to celebrate my choices for my own favorite books of the year. These are the ones I most enjoyed and that I think are worthy of being on a year’s end recommended reading list. These achieved that sweet spot of being delightfully written, artful and entertaining, and important, with something vital to say. These are my own choices for my favorite (nonfiction) books of 2022. I commend them all, strongly so. Each is a masterpiece that gave me many meaningful hours with these good volumes in my lap. I hope you order something from this list today.

The ORDER LINK is at the very bottom of this column… don’t forget to scroll down the whole way.

MY VERY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

Wastelands: The True Story of Farm Country on Trial Corban Addison (Knopf) $30.00                    OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

This is one of the most dramatic and well written books I have ever read. Like a novel (and I’ve read this author’s fiction) it has such lush description and well crafted sentences — it’s a beauty to behold. I have to say this is the book I enjoyed the most all year and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes vivid, energetic prose and one heckuva story.

Yet, it is hard to say I “liked” it because it is horrendous, deeply so. It is about a major, years long, lawsuit against the CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) hog operations in North Carolina and the extraordinary lengths the fat cats at Smithfield (now owned by a communist Chinese business tycoon) and their acolytes in the North Carolina legislature went to fight this suit.

Along the way you meet the folks — mostly Black — who inherited land generations previous and their hopes for a quiet, agrarian life. Most are church-goers and since the author himself is a Christian (I know from his other work) he seems particularly aware of the sustenance and value simple country folks get from their small churches. Drawing on faith and hope and a good bit of love they take their stand against the sickening odors and disease from these shit-filled facilities.

(One learns quite a bit about the extraordinary amount of refuse that comes from packing tens of thousands of hogs in a small space — more waste than a small city would handle, but devoid of regulation. The pollution is gross and offensive with foul lagoons overflowing, trucks that carry out dead hogs disrupting the quiet nights, the spray method — spraying the excrement into the air — beyond ridiculous; cruel. Other proven methods less harmful to public health would cut into Smithfield’s profits a bit, so were obviously tabled time and again. The public officials tasked with protecting people simply ignored the issues. The EPA was nowhere to be found, in any event, useless against the war chests of big meat.)

Faithful followers of Christ or not — and many seem to be — the heroes of this story (besides the dignified homeowners who protested, and are forever hated by many of their neighbors) are the valiant lawyers from a small practice in North Carolina (who recruited a passionate public interest attorney from Colorado) and their teams who are on the side of the angels. Over and over and over they face obstacles, including threats of intimidations and violence, by those who start up these huge industrial hog facilities (I will not call them farms; one does not have to be Wendell Berry to see the utter disregard for and even disdain of traditional agriculture from these CAFO billionaires.) This is the wildest David and Goliath story I have ever read.

The great foreword is by Baptist bestseller, the one and only John Grisham. He lamented that he hadn’t made up a story this thrilling or told one so well as this. It is remarkable praise and after reading Grisham’s foreword I was hooked. If you like his legal fiction (or movies like The Pelican Brief or the iconic Erin Brockovich) you have to get this book immediately. You won’t be able to stop turning pages, believe me. Who knows, you may end up wanting to go to law school to take up public interest advocacy.

The history of black property owners is explored. The rise of the meat industry and the big slaughterhouses are explained. There’s some fascinating studies of the science of aroma (and the bogus study of smells that the high-priced, pseudo-scientist Smithfield put on the stand.) From pondering legal jurisprudence to the inside look at a mid-size law firm (these are not the big shots from “The Good Fight or other such big city practices) to the toll stressful cases take on mental health and relationships — again the case took years and years with millions of dollars of expenses and multi-millions at stake — Wastelands is so informative. Anybody interested in lawyering or legal practice has to read it. The details of jury selection and court process and how an opening argument is crafted (and rehearsed) and the complexities of cross examination and — yes — appeals are all fascinating, written with expert detail but colorfully textured that, again, is like an unfolding novel. Beside the turn-paging plot and the struggle for justice (one could hardly make up such corrupt bad guys), the telling is gripping. I’ve said before that Corbin Addison is one heck of a storyteller and an artful writer.

As Grisham himself puts it, Wastelands is:

Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and told with the air of suspense that few writers can handle…

This absorbing book that evokes thrills and emotions and makes you think about so very much will, in the words of the remarkable nonfiction master Wilbur Smith, “hold you spellbound with his elegant prose from his first word to his last.”

Jonathan Harr, author of the best-seller A Civil Action, says:

In this book, Addison turns a novelist’s eye to the thorny complexities of a real legal case. The prose is lyrical, the cast of characters jump to life on the page, and the result is a captivating account of how a small group of citizens bring a huge corporation to justice.

A few more things to be aware of, things that make this even more page-turning and so very important, given how our democracy is these days.

There is evidence here — explicitly documenting and powerfully exposing — a propaganda campaign on the part of the meatpackers at Smithfield. They spent millions airing sweet TV footage (and creating billboards) of family farms with bucolic scenes in lovely rural villages (and their smiling children) all the while implying that the litigants — who have hog excrement (from the CAFO’s spraying methods) on their laundry lines and cannot stand having a picnic or worship service from the affront of the odor and presence of the CAFO’s waste — hate farmers, hate meat, hate bacon. What a batch of lies, these industrial hog-facilities portraying themselves as quaint rural farmers with traditional (Christian) folkways. And people fell for it, believing the litigants were liberal leftists who are trying to stop farmers and American business and small farmers. That the lawyers were just in it for the money. This PR campaign was insidious and despicable but it framed the lawsuits in a certain (utterly untrue) light. It is an ugly part of the book even though Addison doesn’t dwell on it.

Secondly, the ungodly relationship between government and business was so odd that even super strict conservative constitutional scholars opposed the machinations of the North Carolina House, if to no effect. We’ve seen shenanigans in our own State House and we all know what goes on in DC sometimes. This is the most egregious move to pass legislation that would prop up an industry under fire of which I know, and I’ve studied this sort of injustice a bit. Man. Read it and weep, especially if you live in North Carolina. Those who voted to protect Smithfield from litigation should be ashamed of themselves.

Thirdly, although it isn’t directly an overt part of this story, there is hovering around this plot the question of how we eat, what sort of farming practices we want to encourage, and how to reform large scale agriculture. (For another expose of the meat industry as such, see Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed, and the Fight for the Future of Meat by Chloe Sorvino.) Insofar as the Smithfield-led CAFO industry was forced to grapple with their irresponsible business practices which clearly harm the air and Earth and neighborhoods (not to mention abusive of the animals) there is some modicum of reform. But the bigger questions this raises are themselves huge.

Wastelands brilliantly in captivating detail offers an important investigation, creating a truly great story, making this a rare, exceptional book. I am happy to name it as one of the Very Best of 2022.

South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Imani Perry (Ecco) $28.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.19

I have reviewed this, briefly, before, and I have pondered my comments last summer when I read this the first time. I admittedly skimmed some in the beginning as I just knew it was so important I had to describe it for you. It is so rich, so vast, covering so much — more on that in a moment — and is so wondrously creative that I was glad to commend it. It subsequently won the prestigious National Book Award and, so, I was proven right. South to America is extraordinary, nothing short of brilliant. As the great Isabel Wilkerson notes, describing its elegance, it is “by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time.”

I was correct to explain that this is part African American history, part cultural studies, in the format of a travelogue or memoir. I noted the book’s light touches — she talks about candy or sweets that she likes, the outfits she wears, shoes, pop music, memories of her girlhood, gentle conversations she has along the way.

Let it also be said that there are reports here, consistently, of the savage ways Black people have been abused, from the Middle Passage to the slave blocks, from the Plantations of certain parts of the South to the Jim Crow lynchings and the onerous daily indignities faced by Black people everywhere in America, almost always. Isabel Wilkerson is right to say that this is a meditation on “the complexities of the American South — and thus of America.” I believe this is one of the most educational, informative, inspiring books on America I have ever read.

To remind you, the structure of the book is splendid. In each chapter Perry visits a certain location, usually a city or region, ranging from Virginia, Annapolis, Baltimore, and West Virginia through Louisville, Memphis and Nashville, into a chapter on North Carolina called ‘Tobacco Road in the Bible Belt” and to the deeper South (Birmingham and Mobile, Atlanta and the famous “Black Belt.”) From Baton Rouge and New Orleans (what a chapter) to Florida (and its important survey of indigenous people and Spanish colonization) to (yes, and it’s important) the Bahamas, Cuba, and Haiti, she explores so very, very much.

If you like travelogues, this should appeal to you. I had little idea about any of these places, even though I’ve visited a few and read about others. South to America, though, filled in the color, the details, the local history, good and bad. If you want to learn some fine details through the eyes of an expert in Black history and Black literature, Perry is the best possible guide you could find. Read South to American, please.

You should know this; Perry is from the South, but now lives around Philly while she teaches at Princeton. (And, yes, there is a chapter on that most Southern of the Ivies.) Her parents were Black civil rights and movement activists and they introduced her to everybody. She is young, but knows so much about so much. The book shifts and moves, almost stream of consciousness-like, at times. One minutes she is describing something about the colors of historic cloth used for certain things in the colonial era or wild Savannah legends or Haitian slave revolts or the racial history of Beale Street and Elvis or riffing on mobile homes in Mobile or the rise of black Catholic nuns in New Orleans or offering great details about entertainers or artists. She knows quite a bit about African history and she knows tons of details about characters she introduces us to in the US cities she visits. She gets around.

Dr. Perry is a scholar, a writer, an artist, and a historian. (She wrote a previous book that was seriously awarded on the life of Raisin in the Sun playwright Lorraine Hansberry called Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry that illustrates her wide knowledge.) I admire her greatly. There are moments, though — I’ll admit this but I hope it doesn’t scare you off — I had no idea what she was talking about. There are sentences that are gloriously poetic but, frankly, made no sense. Over and over I’ve re-read certain paragraphs and, not unlike the hippest of contemporary creative writing, some of it leaves me scratching my head. I had to look up a few words — and oh, what a wordsmith she is. Some of it, I suspect, is my lack of familiarity with deep Black culture. In any case, this is mostly wonderfully written, deep, thoughtful, poetic, mystical, inspiring. It’s an amazing book, one I have read twice and will surely find time to read again. We eagerly add our voices to the many who have named it one of the great books of our time.

I do not want to overstate this but I have read a number of books about Black history, African- American culture, racial justice and multi-ethnic ministry. We have a lot of good ones. There is something about South To America that was so rich it demanded more than one read and there is so very much happening, so many turns of events and so many places she talks about that I think it is one of the most important books in this field that I’ve ever read. I cannot imagine a white person, at least, and probably most others, who will not learn something new.

South to America marks time like Beloved did. Similarly, we will talk not solely of books about the south, but books generally as before or after South to America. I have known and loved the South for four decades and Imani Perry has shown me that there is so much more in our region’s fleshy folds to know, explore and love. It is simply the most finely crafted and rigorously conceived book about our region, and nation, I have ever read. — Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

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

If there is one recent book that I wish every pastor and Christian leader would read, it is this one. My, my, it is a blast, fun, even. The author was on the national TV show Survivor, for crying out loud — how can it not be? It is nicely written, moving at times, serious minded without being fussy. His unique combo of clarity and sophistication and teacherly explanation reminds me of Richard Mouw, and that is saying a lot. He’s a very good writer, not overly flamboyant, but he’s obviously got some colorful writing chops.

But more to the point, this chronicles Carty’s increasing awareness that to be a good pastor in the classic sense, he simply must be a reader. He must make it a point to read daily, and to read widely, including lots of fiction. He is, I dare say, in this regard, at least, the closest thing we’ve got to Eugene Peterson whose love of reading and convictions about that hover around the entire book. If you appreciated Peterson’s almost grumpy resistance to trends about mega- leadership and speedy techniques for growth and formulas for hipper churches, you’ll love Austin Carty. He isn’t quite so old as Eugene but there he is, citing Peterson’s stories about reading well as a pastoral duty.

I so appreciated his calm guidance, his stories of meeting with others to invite them to read more, his suggestions on how to make it happen. This is exciting for any of us who are book lovers and great for those who need an extra push in the right direction. He’s got both a deep and big perspective but he’s also a good teacher about this stuff, practical and helpful.

Naturally, he uses the trope of reading for “formation, not information” which if you’ve heard me on this topic, you know I recite routinely. He shows how reading can nurture wisdom and help us learn to love.  This whole section about formation is rich and inspiring and, I might add, good for anyone, not just pastors.

The next portion covers specific practices and aspects of the reading life as it works out in a pastors life. I am not a clergy person, but this still was fabulously inspiring for me as he explores how reading well can help with sermons and pastoral care, vision casting and leadership. He is right that reading is “not a luxury.”

The final part includes six great chapters on reading with a good attitude, on the spiritual discipline of study, of how to choose what to read. (He even has a section on marking and filing, which was awe-inspiring, but I’m not there. Whoa.) The final chapter, which is fantastic, is about reading the Scriptures — obviously.  It’s a great way to end the book and wise on any number of levels.

The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters is truly one of my favorite books of the year. I hope you get a few and share them with readers and maybe those who are not as given to the reading life. Pastors, certainly, and others.

As the great pastoral leader and author Thomas Long puts it in his fabulous introduction, “One remarkable feature of Carty’s writing in this volume is how much of it is done in conversation with others, particularly parishioners and others who are on the receiving end of ministry. Carty hopes to encourage pastors who read, but not merely as a form of gratuitous self-improvement, but reading done among, with, and for the people of God.” Nice, huh?

Christians are a people of the Word, yet we are formed more and more today by wanton, careless words. Those who will lead the church well will be those who are formed by good words — those who know the power words have over our hearts and minds. Those who read good books well will be such leaders. Pastors who read and live by the wisdom in this book will be changed, as will their ministries and the people to whom they minister. This book belongs on every pastor’s shelf.  — Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books

Reading is crucial for ministry, not as a mine for anecdotes and illustrations, but as an apprenticeship of the imagination. In this warm and wise book, Austin Carty invites pastors to develop capacious reading habits, as wide and curious and wonderful as the world in which they serve. I hope this book is an occasion for many pastors to build new shelves of poetry and fiction, biography and memoir, all of them adventures in understanding humanity.  — James K. A. Smith, editor of Image journal, author of You Are What You Love

I am gobsmacked by this book’s threefold beauty: its writing, its erudition, and the author’s deep commitment to what true reading can give not only pastors, but us all.  — Maryanne Wolf, author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

Surrender: Forty Songs, One Story Bono (Knopf ) $34.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $27.20

I have written in my mind about five different reviews of this, sharing this or that feature, recalling this or that story, saying which parts I was most moved by. I think to honor this as one of my very favorite books that I read this year, nearly devouring it, I’ll just share what I wrote back when it first came out before Christmas.  Here goes:

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story is one of the very best books I’ve read all year and it will certainly be in my personal favorites list coming up next month. In a way, it is a book of a lifetime for me. As a fan of U2, as a music-lover, as a uniquely Christian music-lover, this book resonated with me so very, very much. It brought stunning insight and joy; lots of joy. And, man, does Bono know his stuff. He knows so much stuff. Sure, he’s got the swagger, and he (as one reviewer noted, here “embraces his contradictions.”) But he really is smart. This book is an education in the popular culture of the last 40 years.

Let me just say four quick things about Surrender. I could, and surely should, wax more eloquently about it (it’s over 550 pages, after all) but I want to keep this relatively succinct. I want you to know (if you don’t already) whether this book is for you.

Uno, the book is not exactly linear and chronological (would you expect it to be?) but it mostly is. And there are song titles for chapter headings; naturally the first chapters are entitled from songs from their earliest recordings. (And the last few are, naturally, from their last albums; the important penultimate chapter is called “The Moment of Surrender” which you know from the No Line on the Horizon album.)

We learn from Mr. Paul Hewson in his own words a lot about his boyhood, the rough and rowdy ways of the religiously-conflicted Northern Ireland during the years of the troubles. With famous songs about “Sunday Bloody Sunday” outspoken pacifist tirades by the socially aware frontman of the social aware band, with nuanced lyrics recalling about how they cut down the few trees in their neighborhood and used them against their enemies (from “Peace on Earth” on All That You Can’t Leave Behind) I would have expected a bit more of the Troubles. Instead we hear about his love of bands, his school experiences, the impact of books he read, like Lord of the Flies, and — a theme throughout the whole book — the sudden death of his mother, Iris, when he was a young teen. So many of the lyrics of his long career, we come to find out, are veiled (or not so veiled) references to his mother and father. (As he sings in “Iris (Hold Me Close)” on Songs of Experience, “The ache in my heart is so much a part of who I am…”)

He’s a hurting punk and wanted to be a punk rocker, and man, I grew to love him more, learning a bit, in impressionistic style, about his youth and his longing for a more stable family.

He met his best friend, Ali, in his teen years in Dublin, Ali who became a girlfriend, who became his wife, early on. Again, this bit of his past is exceedingly important to him, enduring for him. My hunch is that many celebrities and certainly many rock stars are less connected to their youth, their past, their families. Or at least they think it isn’t cool to share that sort of sentimental family stuff. I loved that Bono has such affection for his dad (even if there was a lot of brokenness) and it was fun learning about Ali. It was fun learning about how he met the other three guys in the band and the importance of their friendships. His loyalty to these men is remarkable and in a way Surrender is a memoir of the trusting loyalty of these friendships.

I am a serious fan of the music, a real fan of Bono’s political action, and have admired his sly art as it transfigured and changed over the years. I really enjoy all of the albums and admire them all. (As we suspected, by the way, the changes were often very intentional; the Zoo-TV era antics of the Fly and the sensory overload of the shows were almost fully satire, some of it literally informed by C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, messing with the devil, their dangerously materialistic lifestyles mostly an embodied prophetic experiment.) So I know their work. But I have not read fan bios and knew very little about Bono’s family life. Maybe other fans knew about Ali and his children, but I think this is the most forthcoming he has been about them. There are beautiful pages, lovely episodes shared with many passages about the hard conflicts and honest struggles. Bono knows he has a very good woman by his side and he knows if he isn’t careful (as one of the most famous rock stars in the world) he could blow it. He almost did. But, man, his candor and poetic insight was some of the most romantic stuff I have read, ever. My hat is off and my heart is warmed.

Dos, did I mention the music? I could quote pages and pages about this (and have sticky notes throughout the book in case I want to do a serious study.) He goes on tangents — not really tangents, just colorful side-journeys, into his friendships with other artists. From punk guys to Frank Sinatra, soul singers to new wave artists, from Prince to black gospel choirs, he tells endearing and sometimes heartbreaking tales of the many people he admires and loves. It is very obvious — he never speaks badly of anyone (except himself) and even when talking honestly about the horrors of drug or alcohol abuse (even Adam’s) he is not judgmental or mean-spirited. His generosity is lovely and his Irish storytelling — often of drinking late at night — is captivating. As a celebrity he knows he has been given quite remarkable opportunities, but he is also a gregarious bridge-builder and he knows more artists, working in different genres, than you could imagine.

He has encouraged many rising artists to apply their craft to anti-poverty and other justice measures; he tells of fashion designers, models, film-makers, poets, novelists, painters, dancers. Wow. Not bad from a kid from the Northside.

His story of how Pavarotti got him involved in relief work in Sarajevo is, by the way, hilarious. Annoying as it was, he applauded Pavarotti’s tenacity in pursuing him. “Miss Sarajevo” (from the pseudonymical “Passengers” album) remains one of Bono’s favorite pieces of his career. His moving reflections on Sinatra were powerful; his tribute to Michael Hutchence (of INXS) and his suicide was very tender.

Do you recall when a hard rock band was playing in Paris (in 2015) and a mass shooting killed dozens of audience members? U2 were doing a series of stadium shows also in Paris that week and their show was shut down — it wasn’t the only time Bono had experienced a mass shooting, by the way. When they rescheduled the cancelled show they brought the smaller bar band — Eagles of Death Metal — onto their stage so they could finish their show that was so horrifically interrupted. These small stories of bands and stages and colleagues in the music biz were a blast to read and often inspiring.

And the recordings! I have read lots of books about rock music. Serious music lovers who read this sort of stuff may know Greil Marcus’s magisterial work Mystery Train: Images of American in Rock ’n Roll Music or his book on Dylan and the Band’s “Basement Tapes” sessions (Old, Weird America.) And there are some really cool books on the details of certain recording sessions. Bono doesn’t give us that much of that sonic and technical detail, but there is plenty for even the most geeky fans of recording studios. Not to mention the small revelations of the band’s work with lighting artists and staging designers creating what have been some of the most outlandish, brilliant, and expensive stage shows in the rock touring world. This is all so interesting but it never turns self-indulgent, naming the obscure brands of tubes or speakers or the sorts of electronics in the amps. (Although it might be said that it is self-indulgent in a different way as he talks much about the personal stuff going on in the midst of these urgent sessions, squeezing in so much global activist between tours and recordings, struggles with his voice, and the constant guidance of producers like Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.)

I love hearing bits about so many songs — his reflections nearer the end about writing songs about friendship (“Bad” for instance) or linking the famous “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or how one song was co-written by Salman Rushdie. I was glad to hear about them holding their ground on changing the plans for a nice, spared-down, acoustic rendition of “Ordinary Love” (from the Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom Movie) for a live, Oscar show performance.

So there’s family stuff, friendships, relationships, old ones and new ones. There’s music, U2s and Bono’s numerous friendships with so many other rock artists. There’s great stuff on performing, on singing, or writing, or recording. If you like rock music (and especially if you like U2) this book is going to be a true joy.

Tres — and this is huge —there is a whole lot on politics. I found these portions hard to put down and as one who has engaged in a tiny, tiny bit of lobbying and protesting and building civic coalitions, I found this insider’s look to be a blast. Early on, Bono learned (from a story about Dr. King told to him by Harry Belefonte) to build bridges even with those one might not want to work with. There were times when Bono was deeply lobbying the Bush administration — with the Jubilee campaign to cancel the third world debt, with ONE and then with his DATA and (RED) to fund life-saving drugs against AIDS in Africa — and was becoming friends with those who others on his team (and in his band) found unsavory. Bush was bombing Iraq, of course, torturing Muslims in off-the-grid black sites, and cutting budgets for the poor in the US. Yet, as he endured, learning from all sides, he came to be convinced of some of the value of conservative economic theory and in his famous office visits to right-winger Jesse Helms even found a friendly prayer partner. I was on the edge of my seat as Bono had to make some decisions regarding the leader of the free world and consequential choices about aid and trade, war and peace. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, friends like the late Mike Gerson are named. What a thrill, knowing how it finally turned out.

From his meetings with Nelson Mandela (and other lesser known African leaders) to his off-the-record opening of his home to Mikhail Gorbachev (despite Ali’s outspoken work with anti-nuclear power activists resisting Russian malfeasance at Chernobyl) to his palling around with (and fallings asleep at) the Obama’s, it is very entertaining, although none of it feels like name-dropping. To listen in on one with such amazing global connections who was actually nervous about it all — imposter syndrome, don’t ya know — and his bits of candor about, say, fretting about what to wear when one is a rock star visiting the Oval Office, made for a great read. If you care at all about how the world works and how change happens, if you’ve donated money to ONE or (RED) or other similar anti-poverty groups, listening to Bono will be as inspiring as listening to the likes of Gary Haugen or Melinda Gates.  He knows a lot about the facts of economic development and global politics and he weaves it into magical stories, often with stories of his on-the-ground, real-life volunteerism in poor villages. You’ll learn a lot.

Catorce? I sort of hate to mention this final element as a discreet point since it is interwoven so naturally throughout the book, but it should be noted that Bono’s Christian faith — unorthodox and uneasy as it may seem to some — is central to the whole story. It is not just cited a little, it is not just mentioned briefly. There are Bible allusions and explications, basic theology, Christian authors mentioned, and spiritual realities talked about in significant ways during every portion of his life, so throughout the 40 chapters. (And you know, of course, that one of their most famous songs (”40”) is a nearly verbatim rendition of Psalm 40. Fans used to leave the stadium singing over and over “How long…”)

There is even a moving telling of the family’s deeply affecting religious tour of the Holy Land, which, for a glitzy rock star seems such a conventional, churchy practice. This is from the guy who says he “has never left Jesus out of the most banal or profane actions of my life.”

Most know how Bono’s father was a not terribly active Catholic and his mother was a good Protestant and how three of the band members came to a lively faith in a charismatic, Jesus-movement sort of evangelical ministry in their young adult years.They remained in touch with some of that crowd even after their faith moved to more ecumenical and liberationist ways and Bono continues to be haunted by that robust sense of the Spirit and that strong teaching of Biblical truth. For many of us, his casual, humorous, but serious-minded love/hate relationship with the church, is an inspiration. His honest lament and plea, of the sort found in “Wake Up Dead Man”, (from 1997’s Pop) means more than any number of happy-clappy CCM ditties.

Through his fame and tenacity and righteous commitments Bono has had contact with world-class Christian leaders, from Desmond Tutu to Eugene Peterson to a hilarious episode that he writes about with Pope John Paul II. When he is visiting dignitaries he mentions that he sometimes gives away books— often a volume of Yeats or other Irish poetry. But I happen to know he’s given away his share of The Message, too. I admit to getting teary-eyed when I read his brief acknowledgment of Eugene Peterson.

Relationships, music, politics, faith. Stories galore, goodness and failure, temptation and joy, meaning and vision, art and wealth, compromise, justice, romance, sex, life and death. There is so much in this marvelous, stimulating book.

One final word: Surrender is creatively and colorfully written. Bono can really write; it is whimsical, a bit stream-of-consciousness, and, man, can he turn a phrase. There are witty lines on every page, brilliant sentences, wondrous prose. His clever honesty has him say things like about his ego being “far taller than my self-esteem.” Ha.

As the flyleaf of this well designed volume puts it,

A remarkable book by a combative artist, who finds he’s at his best when he learns how to surrender.

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness Meghan O’Rourke (Riverhead Books) $28.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.40

Memoirs of those with chronic pain or the drama of trying to find a diagnosis are important to me. So many of us suffer with unusual ailments and for some, the pain (or the quest for answers) can nearly lead to madness. For others, it generates remarkable insight into the broken human condition and allows for a sense of grace, despite all. From practical guides for life lived while in chronic pain like the very good Hurting Yet Whole: Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness by Liuan Huska (IVP; $17.00) to powerful stories like the brilliant The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery about Ross Douthat’s battle with Lyme disease (Convergent; $26.00) that carries a fine endorsement by Kate Bowler, there are many to commend.

The Invisible Kingdom is one of the best books I’ve read this year because it is so full of pathos, yes, but also because it is so elegantly written, so very thoughtful, so honest and real.

O’Rourke is an academic who teaches in New York City and makes her living also as a writer and poet. Besides contributing intelligent pieces to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and the like she has done several volumes of poetry and, a decade or so ago, a moving memoir about the early death her mother called A Long Goodbye.

The Invisible Kingdom was a finalist for the American Book Award and that, of course, carries its own weight and recommendation. It is notable because it is so well written (and in that sense, I say, carefully, that it is in a sense entertaining, a good read) but also because it covers not only her own story, her marriage, her work, her aspirations and fears and (yes, of course) her many encounters with medical practitioners (And, like Ross Douthat’s with alternative medicine folks who she might have been averse to in another life, but, now, desperate, is willing to try nearly anything in the search for answers and relief.)

If this were all this book did — a moving memoir offering a writer’s candid glimpse into the life of one with eccentric disorders and unclear diagnoses — it would be more than enough. I honor Ms O’Rourke for her candor and courage in sharing this stuff so very, very well. Her coping with a compromised autoimmune disorder is not uncommon but her writing is extraordinary.

But there is, as the telemarketers say, still more. Besides this eloquent and life-giving memoir there are excursions into the history and philosophy of science, of medicine, of women’s medicine. About the common accusation that “it is all in your head.” The trends in medical care and the backstory value systems that are in the air — Freudian assumptions, views about hysteria, and more — are vital to understand and O’Rourke carefully dissects many of the prevalent motifs that entangle even caring physicians.

Not to mention those who are not so caring. And those who wish to be but may not buck the managed care strictures of the insurance companies demanding that they spend less time with patients, not more. Anybody who cares about humane and effective health care simply must keep up with some of the debates that this book evokes, and The Invisible Kingdom is a good way into those discussions. At times searing, and at times tender, I recommend it to doctors and nurses of all sorts.

Allow me to be blunt: if you opposed President Obama’s reform of health care, popularly known as Obamacare, a few years ago, you need to read this book, hearing from the ground up what a middle class professional goes through in managing her appointments and less than efficient doctors, all time strapped due to financial considerations of the management teams to supervisor most hospitals in America. If you worked for passage of some kind of health care reform, this will be a refresher course — in the first person — of some of what is at stake. This is not, I’ll remind you, a book of politics or policy but a narrative of illness and struggle, a search for hope. But some of the health care reforms (starting with doctors not dismissing their patients and their stories of discomfort) that are so very needed are insinuated into this well-crafted story.

Of the many rave reviews this book has garnered here are just two:

In this elegant fusion of memoir, reporting, and cultural history, O’Rourke traces the development of modern Western medicine and takes aim at its limitations, advocating for a community-centric healthcare model that treats patients as people, not parts. At once a rigorous work of scholarship and a radical act of empathy, The Invisible Kingdom has the power to move mountains. —Esquire

Listen to this amazing quote by Esme Eijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias, a quote saying it is “the best book on the subject.” Wow.

I’ve gone through much literature about being sick, hoping to better understand the tangle of circumstances relevant to chronic illness. In The Invisible Kingdom, O’Rourke brilliantly unpicks the threads, creating the best book on the subject that I’ve read yet.

Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury Evan Osnos (Farrar Straus & Giroux) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00 // now in paperback $20.00  OUR SALE PRICE – $16.00

I think I am not going to try to say much about this other than to assure you that if you are one (like so many in America) are trying to figure out how it all happened — people falling for Trump’s election lies, the storming of the Capitol, the right of the alt-right, the wild weirdness of our civic life these days — if you are among those grasping at ways to discern how we got here, this, then, is a must read. It is more detailed than some may want but it, in my view, top notch reporting and expose, narrative nonfiction that rivals classics such as Dopesick or Soul Full of Coal Dust (among my favorite books in this genre.) Not quite as eloquent and dramatic as Wastelands it is none-the-less a page turner. I couldn’t put it down and didn’t stop reading (as I often do) until I finished the acknowledgements on page 433. What a book.

The short version is this: Wildland is a study of three pockets of American culture, including the very rich in the financial sector, including dubious hedge funds (in Greenwich CT — I had no idea that place was that wealthy) and the financially hard off in small town West Virginia, and in quintessentially mid-western Chicagoland. The author (a master craftsman of investigative writing who won a National Book Award for his book The Age of Ambition) had lived in the Middle East and in China for years and upon returning home could hardly recognize the culture he left more than a decade previous. He went to three towns in which he had lived, which he thought he understood, and began to explore the stories of his former neighbors, telling about how things changed in the fast-paced era leading up to the Trump era. I like nonfiction narrative that is colorfully written with a personal touch and as Esnos tells of his connections to these three very different places, we learn to trust his instincts and become eager for his analysis, his evaluations. We are caught up in his own story, the search for answers, or at least some clues.

The stories switch back and forth from one place to the other, so much that it has been called “sprawling” and a “reportorial tour de force.” There are the super rich who came to favor President Trump (even though some despised him, personally) since his policies favored their Wall Street investments. (There are shades in this portion of the great literature and film that came out of the years of the Great Recession, with works about the subprime scandal like The Big Short.) There is the declining local newspaper in Clarksburg, West Virginia (and, yes, some shades of Dopesick and other studies of the complexities of Appalachian towns and governance.) The politics of Chicago and the black neighborhoods? Oh man — there’s much to be said but you can imagine.

This is not the study that is typical these days of disaffected poor white folks hitching their hopes to the straight talking Trump, duped into thinking he was on their side. That’s a story that has been well told, often. This, or so it seems to me, went after a different nuance, the shift in worldviews among the rich and the powerless, blacks and whites, from here and there, but often with a realization of how the greedy left such an impact. The scope is broad, if focused, and what he comes up with is nuanced and insightful. It is less about the wild rebellion of the Tea Party movement inspired by Bannon, segueing into the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. It’s maybe less dramatic than that kind of wild story, but, at the end, it pays off with greater insight into what makes this sad country tick. I really recommend it.

Diligent and deeply researched . . . Osnos offers intimate portraits of the men and women in the three communities on his radar . . . Wildland is written in first person, which often gives the book a satisfying immediacy . . . Osnos himself seems too driven, too idealistic to give up on the America that he once promoted on his travels abroad. But as he makes painfully clear in Wildland, the underbrush is still parched, and a mere ember could set it ablaze. — James S. Hirsch, Boston Globe

Evan Osnos’ Wildland is a reportorial tour de force, describing the kaleidoscopic changes that threaten to cause America to come apart at the seams. He deftly connects the dots between the hedge-fund billionaires of Greenwich, Connecticut, the opioid-soaked towns of Appalachia, and the gun-heavy gangs of Chicago. By turning his trained eye as a former foreign correspondent on his own country, Osnos paints an indelible picture that is heart-rending, appalling and hard to put down. — Jane Mayer, chief Washington correspondent for The New Yorker and author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

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

From a few pages in I knew I would love this book and early on I said to myself (and anyone else listening) that it surely will be among my favorite books of the last year. Yes, indeed. To honor it as a Best Book of 2022, I’ll reprise some of what I wrote back in April.

Andy is an elegant and careful writer, always offering interesting insights that set him above most authors of what I might call profoundly Christian cultural studies. But the genre of “cultural studies” doesn’t exactly capture the nature of his work which is notably personal as well. For instance, his book (one of my all time favorites) Culture-Making is about the human vocation to make things, to shape culture, to better the world —“recovering our creative calling” as the subtitle puts — so while it is in some ways about culture, informed by remarkable Bible study and a uniquely Christian world and life viewpoint, it isn’t essentially cultural criticism or social analysis; it is an invitation to a better way of life in and for the world.

It’s the same with his exceptionally important book on using power, Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power where he makes an impeccable case that, like other things in God’s good but fallen world, institutions and organizations and influential leadership (that is to say authority and power) can be misused but, with great intentionality and care and prayerful innovation, can be exercised with grace and justice…

The Life We’re Looking For is new and after writing a small and practical book about using smartphones and computers well in a family setting, Crouch has returned to offer another major work. It comes to us in a slightly trim-sized hardback so even though it is 226 pages (including the intriguingly exquisite footnotes) it isn’t too long or hefty. It is mature and stimulating in his most gracefully crafted style yet. Tech scholar Sherry Turtle of MIT raves about it, calling it a “personal meditation” written with “warmth and erudition.”

Already in the pocket-sized Tech-Wise Family Crouch explored what it does to us when we are shaped — our habits, our inclinations, our desires, our sense of how the world is to work — by our devices. (He doesn’t note James K.A. Smith’s notion of “secular liturgies” in the new one but he surely could have.) The Life We’re Looking For goes a lot deeper and in different directions than Tech-Wise, inviting us to reflect on the meaning of being human, the importance of being made in God’s image, and how to exercise our capacities (even drawing on self-help neurological studies about “flow” and the like.) He is trying to consider what we really want — what Tish Warren in her back cover blurb calls “the most vulnerable longings of the human heart.” He knows that we have a primal need to be seen, to be “embedded in rich relationships.”

As we all know, one-click ordering from faceless corporations is designed to be seamlessly smooth and very efficient. And, as we should know, these algorithms and  bureaucracies are damaging us, eroding community fabric and molding our attitudes. His brief rumination on not knowing the UPS and other delivery drivers in his neighborhood anymore, since Amazon has gig workers is quite observant and telling.

Do we really want this shallow connection — quantity over quality? Do we want devices to make everything easy (even if they could) as we become consumers, but less adept at using our bodies, playing instruments, cooking our own food?  Do we want to be tethered to multitasking and regularly speed-speed-speed through increasingly impersonal environments? Do we want rugged individualism or do we long for communities of care, extended households, even? Andy’s chapters on the formation of such households — a countercultural move to subvert the individualism and even loneliness brought on by technocracy — were simple and radical and moved me to tears.

In an otherwise very positive review in Publisher’s Weekly they worried that The Life We’re Looking For was uneven, and I sort of understand why — Crouch covers a lot of ground. There are sections which include a bit on the history of technology, a look at alchemy (with a nod to Harry Potter), a good bit on artificial intelligence and “boring robots”, a powerful reflection on money/Mammon and nature of capitalism, his wife’s use of instruments in her scientific research, and an admitted excursion in what calls an “intermission” on a very moving story from the New Testament as a remarkable reminder of the early church’s presence within first-century Roman Empire.

All of that, and more, could be seen as tangents, but, trust me: they are not. The chapters weave together and reward the patient reader as connections are made and insights circle back and layer on one another, bit by bit. We all know these are confusing and contradictory times (“we love it, we hate it, ain’t that life?” the late, great Mark Heard sung so powerfully in “Nod Over Coffee.”) Andy’s book helps us navigate in healthy and even beautiful ways, the tensions and trade-offs of these days.

To glean the evocative style and deep wisdom of this book, ponder (and be enticed) by just a few of twelve chapter titles, paying close attention to the helpful subtitles:

• The Superpower Zone: How We Trade Personhood for Effortless Power
• Modern Magic: The Ancient Roots of Our Tech Obsessions
• From Devices to Instruments: Truly Personal Technology

None of this is bombastic or heavy-handed (as passionately concerned as he obviously is.) The book is not overly polemical nor alarmist. It is often gentle, even a bit quiet, in a way that seems proper for the human-scale ecology into which he is inviting us. In a chapter called “From Charmed to Blessed” he tells a story that you will long remember as he calls us to “the community of the unuseful.” In the telling about our New Testament friend Gaius and the odd, diverse community under Roman rule of which he was a part, he describes them as “fragile.” He follows that with reflections on own ancestry and I found it very tender.

This lovely, thoughtful book offers plenty of well-researched information and teaches us much, even a bit, as we’ve noted, on AI and computer science, which is enlivened when he mentions his Roomba and how he sneakily alludes to a dishwasher as a computer. He observes a bit about the human-scale texture of our lives when we give ourselves over to automation. (Which is, by the way, one of the reasons we always reply with a personal note acknowledging orders here on line, trying in our small way to redeem the online buying experience, inefficient as that may seem.) Naturally, the book includes poignant stories (and some fun ones, for instance about his own bike riding habits and his driving habits as well.) In the second portion, Crouch offers “redemptive moves” — new postures and habits to “help us begin, right now, to live more fully human lives.” I am convinced that it just might. I am sure reading it will help us cope with  — you’ll have to read it to get the full irony — “the loneliness of a personalized world.” For starters, he reminds us that we “do not have to accept our technology’s default settings.” They can be adapted “to serve a new and better set of purposes.”

As Andy so nicely invites us to move away from “ever-increasing isolation” and create homes “that become creative centers far more consequential than the refuges of consumption and leisure have let them become” he also pushes us to include the outcast, the unwell, the unproductive, the overlooked.

And he is hopeful:

The great news is that there are already examples of these redemptive moves — some seedlings, some saplings, some beginning to bear widespread fruit — and we all have a part to play in helping them grow.

Quiet and reflective as it may be, finally, The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationships in a Technological World is not a gentleman’s armchair treatise. It is a reformational manifesto, calling us to renewal, change, redemptive efforts, to become agents of the shalom God wills for us all. Or at least a bit more sane in this fast-paced, digital world. It is a wise and wonderful book.

Alan Jacobs is one of the prominent essayists of our time, and knows a thing or two about the implications of our shift to machines in the middle of modernity. (Read his spectacular Year of Our Lord: 1943 for a particularly in-depth study of what five important Christian thinkers were thinking about these very things.) Here he says this is Andy’s best book yet:

The Life We’re Looking For is, and this is saying something, Andy Crouch’s best book: a deeply moving meditation on the human need to find true personhood, which means, among other things, to know as we are known. Strong and cogent critiques of Mammon’s empire–which, as Crouch shows, is where we live–are not unheard of, but a book that goes this deeply into the heart of things, into the heart of God, is a pearl of great price. — Alan Jacobs, author of How to Think and Breaking Bread with the Dead

Listen to Tish Harrison Warren, who writes so well about so much:

As I read this breathtaking book, I was surprised to find myself tearing up often, not because it is a book about tragedy or loss, but because Andy Crouch, perhaps more than any other writer of our day, perceives and names the deepest and most vulnerable longings of the human heart. The Life We’re Looking For describes the confusion and contradictions of our cultural moment in clear and resonant ways and, more important, offers hope that we might find a beautiful way of living amidst them. – Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened Bill McKibben (Henry Holt & Company) $27.99        OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

I raved about this in the June 23, 2022 BookNotes, a column I was proud of. Here are a few key excerpts, sharing why I think this book was so very good, such a great read, and one of my favorites of 2022.

The format of this memoir is, obviously, in three big parts. But first, why do I say “quasi-memoir”? I’ll leave aside if that is even a word, but the point is made clear in the beginning when McKibben wryly notes that the best memoirs have drama and adventure and pathos and since he grew up in a pretty ordinary, middle-class, stable family, was dealt a good hand and has had a fairly uninteresting life, his memoir, such as it is, is going to be more social history than gut-wrenching autobiography.

McKibben is a prolific author of great renown, actually, and he not only is a professor of note at Middlebury College in Vermont but has founded several environmental organizations. He has travelled the world. His campaigns to do MLK-type mass civil disobedience to try to stop dangerously polluting pipelines and his mobilizing even against the Obama White House is, frankly, quite thrilling and would be, for most, drama enough for several lifetimes, so he’s being a bit demure in suggesting that his life doesn’t have enough angst for a full-on memoir.  Maybe that will come later.

For now, though, he uses this storytelling format of recalling moments and eras of his life as a window to see other, bigger things. He has an agenda and it is to illuminate much about the last fifty years of US history and how patriotism, religion, and our consumerist way of life (rooted as we are in suburbs and automobiles) have shaped our culture and the world’s climate, how these things have themselves changed in recent decades, and need now to be reimagined and refined if we are going to rise to the occasion of being faithful in this day and age. That he is finally getting at how to more urgently and effectively mobilize to lower our carbon output and mitigate the disastrous climate change (of which he is an expert) should not surprise anyone who knows him. That he would do so with antidote and charm and a lovely survey of his own patriotism and faith, while not exactly surprising, is a writerly delight and makes for one tremendous book. I am not alone in suggesting this may be his best book yet. (And I’ve got The Bill McKibben Reader by my bedside!)

“Bill McKibben has written a great American memoir, using the prism of his own life to reflect on the most important dynamics in our society. Bill McKibben’s writing is poignant, engrossing and revealing. His message is a clarion call for a generation to understand what happened to their American Dream, and to fight for our common future.”  — Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: How Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together

THE FLAG

This is a fabulous couple of breezy chapters – not long — where McKibben shares his own passion for US history, especially colonial history. You see, he grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and worked as a teen as one of those New England historical interpreters, wearing his tricorn hat and waxing eloquent about the shot heard round the world and the nearby Battle of Bunker Hill and Paul Revere’s famous ride. He knows that stuff cold and his retelling of it is vital, and with enough local color and backstory to make it captivating. In memoir fashion, he is telling us of his telling of it (a standard colonial-era joke, playing the board game Risk while waiting for the next crowd to arrive, his “half hour spiel” to “maybe one family with a couple of bored teenagers, maybe an entire bus of Japanese tourists” and holding out that hat” to collect tips, which was his summer job pay.) This respected scholar and activist-leader and New Yorker writer who is known around the world was a pimply faced kid wearing that three-sided cap and earning tips by sharing his passion for the great US revolution. I loved it, hearing of his love for our country and its founding story.

As McKibben puts it, “I came by my patriotism honestly.” He writes about the account the guides would deliver and the lasting influence of the basic importance of the story,

It was a clean and brave story, and, as I say, it has informed me ever since. The valor of standing up to unjust and arbitrary power seemed to me its clear and obvious moral. Indeed in the years that followed, as I read more deeply in American history, the importance of that stand sank further in.

I want to talk about that – to tell how and why the Revolution came to seem so important to me. I want to draw the picture in as bold lines as possible. Because soon enough the picture is going to get much more shaded, much less noble. But not quite yet.

Here it gets even more interesting and provides good instruction for many of us. He tells briefly about the important work of the 1619 Project and what new insights it brings to our understanding of our nation’s early history. He is embarrassed that his teenage job holding forth about the revolutionary years in Lexington didn’t have him telling the truth about the indigenous people nor the role of enslaved people (or black freemen like Crispus Attucks, say.) He ponders which is worse, that they knowingly ignored the unpleasant fact or if they just didn’t think to include them – an example of the generous but candid self-awareness that gives this book much of its appeal.  That is, it is neither a white wash or a diatribe. It’s just a good man trying to say what he’s learned to be true and ponder its significance for us all today in our own cultural moment.

It is, as I’ve implied, earnest and fair and wise. Terry Tempest Williams (whose most recent, luminous writings are collected in Erosion: Essays of Undoing) described McKibben as an “everyday hero” and says the book is plainspoken, direct, and conversational. His candid and well-informed critique of the right-wing pushback against the 1619 Project is worth the price of the book; it is not overly zealous and it is not unfair. But on just a few pages and with a few key examples he shows why we need the insights of black and native peoples and why their stories need to be part of our national story. I’ve read a bit on the controversy and think McKibben is sensible and right; I’m surprised that some writers I respect have fretted about the Project – I just don’t get it, and so appreciated McKibben’s sensible generosity.  It is interesting how he gets a bit passionate and names what needs to be named, but comes back to the memories of his own early patriotism formed there in the Lexington Green.

(There is one paragraph unlocking a racially-consequential line in the famous poem about Paul Revere that will take your breath away if you do not know about it; I did not, and McKibben’s discovery is stunning.)

There is a pivotal event that happened in the town when he was a kid and I won’t spoil the show by saying anything about it, but I want to say for the record that I so admire his parents and was very glad for this fascinating glimpse into small town New England politics in the late 1960s. Kudos to local historians and small town storytellers who write booklets and make tapes and keep records and oral accounts alive in local libraries and historical societies. McKibben comes back to this episode throughout the book, but I don’t want to ruin it by saying more.

There is a part that explains, too, about the economic realities that emerged from our troubling history of white privilege. Books like Richard Rothstein’s must-read The Color of Law, Dorothy Brown’s scholarly treatise The Whiteness of Wealth, Randall Robinson’s The Debt and Ta- Nehisiha Coates’s stunning 2014 call for reparations are mentioned and it becomes clear that McKibben’s commitments to the flag, seen in his telling of his pride in raising Old Glory with his Boy Scout troop – a lovely paragraph that made me smile — are now deeply tied to true truths about economic injustice stemming from a history of institutional racism. What the hell happened? This book explains it as clearly and succinctly as any I’ve read.

I needn’t say much more about his early formation as a proud, if now sobered, US citizen, but I will note this:  I’m inclined to protest, or, these days, at least compliment those who do, when things go haywire. But the sort of honest lament McKibben names about our sinfulness doesn’t mean we cannot affirm the good ideas and good things that emerged from our founding as a nation. McKibben’s reflections on the flag and proper patriotism are solid, balanced, and, I think, very important.

THE CROSS

Beth and I were thrilled even by the first page or so of this section where McKibben describes the character and tone of his youth group (often held in “fellowship hall”) and church camp and mission/service trip and endlessly singing songs like “Kum Ba Yah” and “Day by Day” from Godspell. (Does anybody out there remember “Pass It On”?) These were the early and mid-1970s and kids didn’t sing “praise and worship” songs like they do today. His testimony of the value of his UCC church was as wonderful to read as, well, some of the scenes in Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads novel that I devoured last summer. His earnest mainline faith, his reading of the gospels, his telling of his own faith journey is simply delightful.

Those that have followed the nature writer, environmentalist, anti-global warming activist, and social critic, have known of his faith. He writes for Sojo and had a book published years ago (on Job, actually) by the prominent religious publisher Eerdmans out of Grand Rapids. But to hear him talk about his Sunday school teachers and his spiritual concerns as a young adult is terrific and encouraging. Importantly, his description is not offered only for the purpose of literary memoir but to make an observation, to testify, about the positive formative nature of much mainline Protestantism and the social ethic that emerged from this broad, non-fundamentalist youth ministry which so influenced him. In fact, this piece is, in many ways, a eulogy for a certain sort of healthy civil religion that allowed mainline Protestant public intellectuals (from Reinhold Niebuhr, say, to Martin Luther King to Dorothy Day) to have influence over the discourse and values of American culture.

I might want to push back in conversation about his take on mainline Protestantism although, given his framing of it – in the 60s we had Tillich and Barth and King and the brilliant William Sloan Coffin as public representatives of Jesus and in more recent times we have had the Jerry Falwells, Franklin Graham, and Trump sycophants that seem to care little for the Bible or Jesus – it is hard to argue. Hipster evangelicals mock “Kum Ba Yah” (as did Donald Trump, for that matter) but if singing that around the church camp campfire gave us the likes of Bill McKibben, I’ll take it.

McKibben is earnest, also, about his college years and it is a great grace that he sought out thoughtful Christian leaders while a student at Harvard. He is never proud or smug about this but it is clear that he was mentored, in part, by the black, Republican (and gay) preacher there, Peter Gomes. McKibben is nearly evangelistic when he wishes others would read Rev. Gomes’s book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News?

There is little doubt that Christianity has been a hugely important influence, for better or worse, in both forming and fraying our social fabric in the last few decades. No social commentator can ignore the role of faith communities, or what we sometimes called “the religious landscape.” It is helpful that McKibben here shares both personally and more broadly, about his sense of how the Christian faith ought to be an influence for the common good. It is all so very interesting, informative and at times beautiful.

As in the previous section, he refrains from academic footnotes, but there is a fabulously interesting essay about sources and book recommendations in a final epilogue. His passion for early US history is evident and his suggestions there offer a year’s worth of reading, at least, starting, not least, with the important work of Gordon Wood (for instance, his early The Radicalism of the American Revolution.)

For the section “The Cross” he thanks his friend Diana Butler Bass (a fine church historian and contemporary writer who I mention often in BookNotes) and he commends her on-line newsletter “The Cottage.” He names the magisterial collection, The Future of Mainline Protestantism in American, edited by James Hudnut-Beumler and Mark Silk, the fabulous edited IVP volume by Mark Labberton called Still Evangelical? and he highly recommends Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise. I was glad to see that he pointed readers to Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s must-read Jesus and John Wayne — again, a book that we very, very highly recommend. One would almost think he’s reading BookNotes. Ha.

THE STATION WAGON

I suppose it makes sense that McKibben uses the station wagon – indeed, one that his family owned and for which he has great affection to this day – as a symbol of the consumerism and social inequity caused by the rise of the American suburbs. I mentioned the rowdy critique of the ugliness and ecological harms of suburbia described with such wit and zeal by James Howard Kuenstler and McKibben stands in his tradition, I suppose, without any of his cynicism or rudeness. (I kept wishing for a quote from The Geography of Nowhere or Home from Nowhere.) Happily suburban bred and raised, McKibben realizes that the rise of individual homes, and the station wagons that transported the (mostly white) kids across this land in those glory days of the American Dream, became detrimental to the planet and here his passion about climate change begins to appear.

We knew it would, of course. He’s been writing about this since his 1989 breakout bestseller The End of Nature — inspired, as I recall, by his colleague Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth — and the influential Eaarth that came out in 2010. In the previous sections of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon he exposed how the lovely boyhood and middle class, churched upbringing contributed to a distorted understanding of our society and how things work in the world, but here – oh my. His reporting continues to shine; his prose riveting and his insight brilliant. The relationship of the flag and the cross are coming into focus and much of it is about, well, not exactly the station wagon, but the money accrued from the homes where those station wagons were parked. I know housing bubbles and interest rates and zoning battles may not seem like the sexiest topics for an entertaining nonfiction read, but trust me.

McKibben has lived this stuff, but he has also researched it well, drawing on the definitive and the most fascinating works, such as Meg Jacobs, who he thanks, for her Panic at the Pump: The Energy Crisis and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s.

Here, particularly, is where McKibben’s writing style makes this complicated stuff accessible – he is able to tell a story or two, bringing in a big picture analysis, and name the need for some kind of repair – all while keeping the prose light, the information interesting, the story compelling.

You see, he is showing the ways in which owning one’s home naturally creates wealth; generational wealth. Yes, certain suburban cul de sac lifestyles can cause increased pollution and alienation from place and creation, and yes, ice caps are melting due to our materialistic extravagance. But that is only the most calamitous of the implications. Along the way we got racist policies (like redlining and the gross injustice in disallowing black World War II vets access to the benefits of the GI Bill, educational opportunity, lines of credit, jobs.) Deeper wealth discrepancies developed and the economic injustices based on the rise of the US suburbs (and subsequent home ownership and banking) is damning. That he isn’t even more emphatic and prophetic in his denunciation is admirable. The social evils are so obvious in his telling, the book could have gone off the rails with screeds and anger and extremist proposals. He verges on it, but he returns to his town, the ups and downs, the good and bad, rooted in a good family and good faith and decent folks who mostly want to make a difference. The “Station Wagon” section, like the others, is a fair-minded, honest critique. It is the kind of analysis that, if widely heard – that is, if this book sells well and is discussed widely – could become a compelling game-changer. We hope you consider it and order a few. It is, no doubt, one of my favorite books of 2022.

The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon is a great read, and much of it is really quite entertaining. For instance, what a blast to hear his own story of the famous solar panels installed on the White House by Jimmy Carter and famously taken down, out of spite or ideology stupidity, by Ronald Reagan. (I recall that Ed Meese called them “a joke.”) McKibben actually knew a bit about those panels as they were rescued from some Washington warehouse and ended up being used effectively at a small college in Maine. Bill tells the rest of the story, including a large Chinese business startup making more of these panels, inspired by one they got from the college in Maine, and how he got some students to create some holy trouble when they brought some of the remaining panels — still working good as new — as a gift to Obama whose people refused to meet with them, let alone put them up on the White House roof.

In retrospect, McKibben writes, sharing his disillusionment, “it was pretty clear why Obama wanted nothing to do with those solar panels: they were tainted by their association with Carter. The 1980 election, thirty years later, still dominated our politics.”  Yup.

There is a final piece to The Flag, The Cross, and the Station Wagon which I will only mention briefly, but it is his big altar call / patriotic ending. It is hinted at in the story about taking college kids on the road trip – stopping for PR events along the way – to the White House to give the historic Carter-era solar panels back to the Obamas. He mentions that he truly felt bad causing the disillusionment of the youth he had brought along. It was a tell-tale line in passing, but McKibben – as the subtitle notes – is graying. And this is how he ends the book, with some remarkable stuff about how older people can become mentors for younger ones, can encourage and fund them, how our more experienced citizens can mobilize alongside the idealistic younger leaders. He has (of course he has) started a great organization to help facilitate that and it is already going strong.  Check out his group, Third Act.

Mr. McKibben’s last, short chapter is inspiring, entitled “People of a Certain Age.” He writes about caring for kids and grandkids and is encouraged that many older people are ready to act differently in their public duties, as well. He notes that “many of us are now emerging into our latter years with skills, with more than our share of resources, and with grandchildren. Surely that might give us the capacity and the reason to help.”

Evangelical Anxiety: A Memoir Charles Marsh (HarperOne) $27.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $22.39

I started out my BookNotes review last June with this:

I want to start this BookNotes edition telling about a book that blew me away and which I am now reading for the second time. It is rare when I make time for an immediate repeat but this book was so engaging – that is, it was very well-written in a way that was artful and richly-crafted but was equally inviting and enjoyable. Not every book that is written with literary verve and gorgeous prose is, frankly, still that interesting. This, though, a memoir of a journey in and coming out of a southern sort of fundamentalism, and finding a way through the hurts and hang-ups of that milieu, is a page-turner. My mind is reeling thinking of a dozen things to say about it as there is so much going on in this breathtaking story.

The least I can do to honor this extraordinarily honest and fascinating story is to name it as a Best Book of 2022. It was certainly one of my favorite reads, even if some of it left me pondering. I suppose that is the sign of a good book, eh? Kudos!

Evangelical Anxiety by Charles Marsh is some of what I might have expected in a memoir from him, knowing a bit about Dr. Marsh’s journey and scholarly interests from his previous books. I am not sure I can describe simply his current, lively, Episcopalian kind of mere Christianity, but his conservative, Southern evangelical past is the swamp he has slogged through. As a Bonhoeffer expert (his second Bonhoeffer book, Strange Glory, is an essential one), a scholar of and advocate for racial justice (and author of several excellent books on these exact themes, including one co-written with John Perkins called Welcoming Justice) and Director at the Project for Lived Theology at Charlottesville’s UVA, I assumed his story surely included some shift away from evangelicalism and distancing himself from the ugly compromises made by many white evangelicals in the last decades as they’ve drifted from gospel clarity and focused increasingly on right wing politics. When former evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell, Jr say that Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with their values voting, what is a somewhat socially progressive evangelical Christian to do? Needing to disavow the weirdness of a shallow God and Country sort of so-called evangelicalism has produced a number of memoirs and a number of serious studies about the value and wisdom – for the sake of the gospel! – to no longer use the phrase evangelical. Other books in this recent genre are less about the current state of the evangelical brand, and are artful tellings of the tales of living through what was often a toxic sort of legalism. There’s a lot of deconstruction type narratives with a lot of anxiety.

We have commended, for instance, the much-discussed Where the Light Fell by Philip Yancey as a gripping look at the boyhood and young adulthood and ongoing faith journey set in this complicated and sometimes religiously harmful subculture. As any good memoir, Yancey’s book allows us to look over his shoulder and into his life as he navigated his broken family and harsh faith – it’s an entertaining if intense read; I often say that well-written memoirs provide a reading experience akin to reading great fiction. In some cases, one could hardly make up such astonishing stuff. Let’s face it, regardless of what one thinks about or what relationship one has with a given religious subculture, it makes for great literature.

This is a long way to get to a major point about the exquisitely written story, Evangelical Anxiety. It is, in fact, mostly not about the somewhat predictable question of how a smart young scholar and person of conscience with devout commitments to Christ can abide being a evangelical, given how grubby that phrase has become these days. I was wrong to assume he was talking about that anxiety. (Although not as a memoir, Marsh did explore this already in 2007 with an acclaimed Oxford University Press book, Wayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Political Captivity.) With Charles’s masterful writing chops and his extraordinary mind and learning, it would be fabulous to have a book about his worries, struggles, disagreements, cognitive dissonance, and theological ruminations, about his evangelical past. However, I was wrong about this being mostly that kind of a story, really. It is, in fact, about his real anxiety disorder. In this stunning report that reveals more than I expected, we learn about Marsh’s years of psychotherapy to cope with his nearly debilitating panic attacks and something akin to depression.

Within the opening paragraphs we realize how very well written Evangelical Anxiety is and what an artful reading experience it will be. Wow. Soon enough, we realize that even as some of the themes are what we might first expect – a strict religious background giving way to a more expansive faith, the struggle to understand for oneself the spiritual life in the college and young adult years, the not uncommon journey from sparred down fundamentalist preaching services to a more liturgical (Episcopalian) worship — we soon realize that coping with real anxiety is much of what this book is about. And, well. What a story it is!

You should know this: Mr. Marsh wrote an earlier autobiographical account of his growing up years and it focused on an exceptional episode in his young life, a life-changing season at his father’s church, and while Evangelical Anxiety is not a sequel or second part of his life story, the remarkable stuff told in that previous one, does inform this new one. He explains those years briefly since it comes up over and again.

In The Last Days: A Son’s Story Of Sin And Segregation At The Dawn Of A New South, written in 2001, Marsh tells about how his father, a good preacher and thoughtful Baptist pastor, realized that there were violent KKK guys in his church, even on his leadership council. The Last Days tells of their horrible crimes, his father coming to terms with it. Like many Protestant pastors in those hard years in the South, Reverend Marsh was not an active anti-segregationist nor grossly bigoted. He was, perhaps, the sort of leader who would have realized that King’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail was, in part, addressed to him. He was a good man and a good father, if conventional in that Southern Baptist setting and slow to come around to the courage needed to confront the likes of Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Mississippi KKK who lived near the Marsh’s in Laurel, Mississippi.

The violence in the town, aimed at Blacks, of course, was in the air, and Marsh was not unaware of this fearful texture to daily life. But when his father removed the men of the KKK (and their families) from his church, the violence was aimed at his family as well. Young Marsh — athletic, popular, strong — couldn’t sleep at nights.

In a nutshell – and Marsh describes it with considerable beauty and pathos and understanding and keen insight based on his own decades of studying the civil rights movement in the American south – this consequence, this violence and fear of violence, is the origin of Marsh’s own crippling anxiety attacks.

Yes, he reads literature and theology by authors outside of his evangelical world in high-school and then college; yes he ends up at Harvard Divinity School after Gordon College with some nearly anti-Christian teachers, or so it sounds. Yes, there is this refining and reframing of his faith and church life (perhaps akin to what some today call deconstruction) but all of that, or so Evangelical Anxiety suggests, is colored by the trauma of growing up in a repressive fundamentalist subculture, and of coming of age in a time and way that might suggest his fears are a fallout from his father’s fidelity to the gospel. Charles does not cheaply pat his father and mother on their backs and does not portray himself as collateral damage from their small, if belated, part in the civil rights struggle. But he knows the cost of discipleship in his bones. It drives him to seek help.

And this – oh my – is where the book gets even more captivating. He ends up (to make a colorfully long story of his circuitous path a bit shorter) in Freudian psychotherapy.

Think what you will about the appropriateness of a Biblically-trained evangelical young man heading to the couch to talk about his sexual desires and his mother and such, it is at the heart of this story. In a few spots, the book admits to Marsh’s own awareness of the irony of this (he knows all about Jay Adams and the anti-Freudian teaching from conservative evangelical thinkers who propose more overtly Biblical counseling; golly, he had a meeting with Francis Schaeffer when he was a teen as he sought guidance and direction. The story is made that much more fascinating knowing just how unlikely it was for this young man to take up such therapy.

As a broke young scholar with a new wife, feeling drawn into therapy, he ends up in a rare situation of doing analysis with a new shrink in a nearly free program in Baltimore. For those who know anything about this, you won’t be surprised that it goes on, almost daily, for years. Some of his breakthroughs and insights are disclosed here although the book never devolves into a mere account of his id and superego. It’s a great memoir, not a document of his therapy. Nonetheless, working on the couch has been a significant part of his life in coping with his disorders, and, well, there it is, written about with candor and wit. It is sharp and at times funny.

As Jemar Tisby puts it:

Marsh probes the realms of piety and mental health with engrossing prose and naked honesty, showing us how the sacred can be found in literature and on the therapist’s couch. Anyone curious about a better way to navigate mental health and belief will find hope and inspiration in this.

I do not think I have ever read a book like this. The glimpse into a professional and religious life in which debilitating panic attacks and gripping depression and unusual ticks and so many concerns are described in such detail (without being overly dramatic or maudlin or self-pitying) is rare and so very interesting. I was stunned when I read early on in the book about his first attack. (Sorry for the spoiler alert — I hadn’t seen it coming. It is, no matter, an amazing piece of writing.) If you care about how some people cope with psychological disorder and their subsequent physiological consequences, this book will be illuminating. (Granted, he is from an educated class, a world-famous scholar, and award-winning author and the book is a memoir, not a guidebook, of his particular experience as a professor, academic, writer, and theologian.) I do not think it is a bad thing to say Evangelical Anxiety will be entertaining, a good read, as they say. There were descriptions and well-crafted sentences that just made me shake my head in wonder and there were episodes described that made me laugh out loud. Publisher’s Weekly called it an “endearing and rewardingly unusual account of mental illness and faith.”

Patricia Hampl, author of The Art of the Wasted Day says,

“A harrowing book but, weirdly and wonderfully, also a hoot. I kept laughing aloud – and then sighing. A remarkable achievement.”

But, again: Mr. Marsh’s story unfolds against the backdrop of considerable anxiety around the religious questions of leaving behind a strict version of faith; it is, as more than one reviewer observed, connected to the questions about the relationships of the so-called secular and sacred; the split between body and soul, desire and duty. As in the Yancey memoir, moving away from the faith and very worldview of one’s youth, especially if it was a demanding subculture defined as over-and-against all others, can be painful and can create relational ruptures. Fortunately, Marsh’s parents were not toxic or harmful and some of his faith experiences (and the webs and networks of relationships he experiences) were perhaps less caustic that the caricature of this harsh setting might conjure; still, getting severely paddled by high school coaches and terribly shamed by youth group leaders was part of what was considered ordinary in that time in that place.

As Marsh comes of age in the 1970s there is cultural change in the wind, not unrelated to the seismic shifts begun in the 1960s. “The Times They are a Changin’” Dylan sang and the words were prescient. I feel it in my gut as I type it, knowing how I myself snarled out the words with my own cheap guitar in the ‘70s. Marsh reports well how one person and family – including his beloved wife K – negotiated these changes in these times as they moved into their early married years of the 1980s and on. Again, I could not put this book down and was very deeply moved by it all; I can at least say that anyone who is aware of the nature of Protestant life during the end of the 20th century and into the new millennium will find it fascinating.

We need you, dear and gentle reader, to know something else about this stunning memoir. It is honest. Marsh is exceedingly candid about his fears and his failures. Do I need to issue a trigger warning? Perhaps. He is candid, particularly, about his sexuality and, given the way purity culture was made into a fetish in some evangelical circles and how the Biblical teachings not to have sex before marriage were made exceptionally clear and linked to the looming threat of hell in his subculture, it is no wonder, I suppose, that he, uh, had issues.

A scene in Evangelical Anxiety of Charles and his then girlfriend reading wildly together while house-sitting in the home of Elizabeth Elliot of all people (look her up if you don’t know) is so erotically charged I don’t know how they remained chaste. In any case, there is some very frank talk in parts of the book. As a reader with a pretty wide palate for “language” in stories and who doesn’t think that human sexuality needs to be off limits for writers telling about their life story, I still have to say that some of this felt gratuitous. I think an editor should have put her foot down a time or two, even if Publisher’s Weekly enjoyed the “bawdy” parts.

Nonetheless, the book really does need to explore this stuff: it is an integral part of the story. It was the heavy-handed sexual repression combined with the ubiquitous racial violence that helped shape the psyche of a man who realized he could not manage a life in these modern times, as a faithful person, without unpacking it. And, so, he goes there, sharing without shame some intimate details of his life and not so unusual desires.

The very discerning James K.A. Smith called it “at once transgressive and faithful.“ Perhaps that’s it — both transgressive and faithful.

Other early readers also have raved about this long-awaited memoir by Mr. Marsh. We know it may not be for everyone but it is a major book by an important voice, and it was very difficult to put down. I’m happy to tell you about it and hope you’ll send us an order.

There is vivid storytelling, there are remarkable recollections of important stuff, and there is some broad-brush cultural analysis, placing his own journey in the context of the fundamentalist and evangelical world of the past generation, up to and including his own worship experiences today.

The opening page describing in smooth detail the crisp khaki trousers and brand name shirt of the Anglican worship leader presiding at worship, the tasteful praise songs, and the shockingly weird sermon, was so well written and deftly designed, shifting to a line at the end of the page that made tears well up in my eyes, alerted me that this was going to be one great read.

There is also great tenderness in Evangelical Anxiety. Marsh writes about taking his kids to a Christian camp. He describes his love for his mother, including the solace she offered during his fearful nights as a boy. He is deeply remorseful when he has hurt his wife. He struggles with how to relate his own scholarship – he writes about Bonhoeffer, after all – with his own practice of lived discipleship. He holds what he knows to be true about the world, its racism and violence, and is learning how to carry on as a sane and happy person. In a simple passage about finding joy in good things in God’s creation, the spirituality of the ordinary, so to speak, he mentions how his friend, the evangelical, black leader John Perkins likes blue berries. I got a lump in my throat, just such a lovely little line about a man who has suffered much and experienced great fame, Charles’s friend. Many who pick up this book and enter this story will also be struck by Marsh’s great love for literature and the often beautiful way he mentions novels and authors, his intimate relationship with their truths and artful pleasures. I so enjoyed reading about a man I respect and the books he loves and the authors who have informed him.

This is a bold, beautiful memoir, at once transgressive and faithful. Marsh embodies a theology with the courage to tackle the taboo, including depression and desire, in prose that is evocative and seductive. In the end, we learn that the most astounding grace is found in the God we can tell our secrets. — James K.A. Smith, Calvin University, editor in chief, Image, author of You Are What You Love and On the Road with Saint Augustine

Stories of My Life Katherine Paterson (Westminster/John Knox) $22.00                           OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

This. Yes — one of my favorite books of 2022.

I will never forget the spectacular talk the esteemed YA novelist gave at the 1998 Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing on the role of the imagination, the best of the keynotes that year, sandwiched between Elie Weisel and John Updike. In Stories of My Life, Patterson tells about that lecture, and staying in the Grand Rapids home of the legendary writer (and Calvin prof) Gary Schmidt for that weekend, when she got the phone call saying she won the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award.  It is just one of the great, tender moments in her new book of memories, Stories of My Life. It is utterly magnificent, touching, and I found it captivating — a gentle but absolute page-turner!

I was very moved by this sprawling set of memories from her life, including what she has learned about parents and grandparents on her side of the family. We learn a bit about the colorful stories of her late husband — he was a Paterson (“with one t” she noticed, quickly) whose own father had very colorful years of, among other things, serving in World War One, being gassed, losing a leg, and being treated for TB. It is very nicely written with a calm and no-nonsense style. It was truly lovely, without being luminous, engaging without pretension. She says firmly in the beginning that it is not a memoir. It is, as the title sensibly proclaims, a set of stories from her life.

And what a life she has led. I can hardly say enough about this wonderful read about a wonderful Christian woman whose contribution to (and fame in) the world of contemporary children’s literature is nearly unsurmountable. She is, certainly, one of the great children’s writers of these times.

How can I persuade you to order this handsome volume full of entertaining and edifying stories of a life well lived? If you do not know that she was born in China (her parents were medical missionaries) who fled as a little one during the Japanese invasion, and who returned, only to be exiled again (mostly due to tensions with the communists that time) and you do not know that she herself was a Presbyterian missionary in Japan, if you do not know her moving stories like Bridge to Terabithia and her several nonfiction books about the role of the imagination and of faithful but not overtly religious storytelling, I hardly know where to begin. Any good library would have her many out of print children’s titles and now you can easily learn about her life and times.

Here are just a few fascinating and enjoyable moments you will encounter if you order Stories From My Life. I’m only scratching the surface — it is such a great read.

Firstly, you know you are in for a treat (and will be walking among the gods of stories) when you open the book to find a fabulous short intro by none other than Kate DiCamillo. She highlights a key moment of vulnerability in the narrative when she alerts us to Katherine’s story of being a child (home from the Chinese mission field, wearing second-hand clothing, a bit shy, and seemingly not welcomed into her new school) and not receiving any Valentine Day cards in school. Kate notes that Katherine writes that she told her mother many years later about this and she was, of course, aghast. Mother wondered why Katherine never wrote about the hurtful incident. As DiCamillo recalls, Katherine “answered her by saying, “All my books are about the day I didn’t get any valentines.”

And then, in her own great gift, the great Kate DiCamillo says:

This book is a valentine.

It is Katherine’s Valentine to her parents and to her children. It is her Valentine to life and to stories.

It is her valentine to us.

Kate Dicamillo also has badgered Katherine to include the story of Maude, a relative of her grandfather’s who was the last person to kiss Robert E. Lee, who, in turn kissed little Katherine. DiCamillo loved the story so, she threatened to write it up herself if Katherine didn’t write it down. So, yes, here is the bit about Lee, although, personally, I enjoyed the episode about her brother and the bones of Lee’s famous horse, Traveller. You will have to read it to discover that yourself.

The second foreword is so endearing and masterfully written and insightful that I’ve read it twice — it is by writer Nancy Price Graff and she tells of the twosome’s weekly lunch at a diner in their town in Vermont. For over twenty years the women have grown old together in their regular Naugahyde booth. Paterson has written 40-some books in fifty years, performing what she calls “the fragile magic” of spinning stores for children and young adults. But she doesn’t talk about her writing or much about her fame.

“Week after week,” Graff writes,

…one of the great storytellers in the world has told me the story of her exceptional life. Diners no more than three feet away, deep into their meatloaf, are oblivious to the presence of the former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, the winner of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the Hans Christian Andersen Award. It would never cross their minds that the gray-haired woman sitting two booths over, wearing a turtleneck and a pink sweater, might have had dinner last week with the librarian of Congress or the empress of Japan.

The stories are not exactly chronological and in fact, starts with a good piece responding to “Three Frequently Asked Questions.” I was hooked. In one of these early pages she tells of being at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. (Now known as Union, it was started when there was a need for theological education for women headed to the mission field or into educational tasks since the Presbyterian churches were not yet ordaining women so women were not as likely to attend a seminary like Princeton, say.) One of her favorite professors stopped her in the hall — he has been reading her exam —and said in made her wonder if she ever thought of being a writer.

Now I, the lifelong reader, the summa cum laude graduate in English literature, knew what great writing was, so how could Dr. Little imagine, on the basis of an essay on an exam, that I could be a writer? ‘No,’ I said primly. I had no intention of being a writer because I wouldn’t want to add another mediocre writer to the world.

Well, the prof pushed back, wondering if perhaps that was exactly what God was calling her to do.  Katherine tell us simply:

It was hard to imagine that God needed a lot more mediocre writers in the world, so I didn’t become a writer or movie star. I became a missionary.

Her first piece of writing, by the way, was a great Sunday school book for middle school age kids published in 1966, Who Am I?, which is still in print from Eerdmans. She was by then home from her Japanese mission experience (1957 – 1961), had married John whom she had met at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and was teaching in Pennington NJ, while John attended Princeton. By ’66 they had moved to Tacoma Park, MD.

One of the opening questions in that long opening chapter was “How does it feel to be famous?” Children and others ask this at book readings and interviews and it is a question she is not fully comfortable with. She tends to be shy, although has learned to be brave. She tells of being at very fancy dinners at a head table and being ignored. She has been shunted here and there on book tours and speaking engagements and sometimes mistreated. She reports that she’d come home whining to her husband that she is not treated “like a human being.”  This reveals both her insecurities, it seems, and her life’s overarching principle — that people, made in God’s image, should be treated with understanding and kindness. This matter of being uncared for comes up over and over and I found it quite gripping. Near the end of Stories… she admits that she wrote  The Great Gilly Hopkins after pondering a question of how it would feel to be considered disposable.

The Paterson’s have adopted two children, one from Hong Kong and one an indigenous Native baby. She and her husband were great parents, it seems. They have been foster parents, too, and it was painfully difficult. “After The Great Gilly Hopkins was published, I realized, belatedly, that I had put two foster children in the story. I might not have been Gilly. I might well have been William Ernest.”

She was an honorable child, usually, it seems, but playful and adventurous (and a good reader, bored with early school book readers.) There are stories of family in China, and of being back in the US, a “home” she did not know, of course. (Today we call this phenomenon being “third culture kids.”) Her parents loved her dearly, even though there were harrowing times of her dad being on Chinese riverboats trying to smuggle life-saving medicines and supplies to Christian hospitals for the Chinese people. There were times when he’d to travel undetected for remarkable distances, keeping away from the Japanese invaders and the young communists and certain military officials. What a story!

(Her parent’s backgrounds were fascinating themselves. She is somehow distantly related to Mark Twain. After WW I her father was cared for by a Mrs. Lathrop Brown, whose husband was a special assistant to the Department of Interior, high up in the Wilson administration. She had been a New York debutante and her husband had been Franklin Roosevelt’s roommate at Harvard. As a disabled veteran, he was fortunate to have her as a caregiver and she stayed in touch with her parents until she died. In fact, she sent boxes of children’s books to little Katherine in China. When they were exiled from China and spent an awful time in 1938 as refugees, she had arranged for a chauffeur to meet them at the boat in New York harbor.)

Katherine’s time in Japan is explained and there are a few memorable stories. It doesn’t take much —she’s working that ‘fragile magic’ — and I was in tears at a going away party which had a Japanese pastor reading Ephesians 2:14 (a personal favorite, about the dividing walls being broken down in Christ) and Paul’s revolutionary words in Galatians 3:28. It is especially powerful knowing that Katherine had admitted that she had trained to return to her native China. Going there on mission was not to be and when she was assigned to Japan — the feared and despised enemy that had attacked China (and perpetrated atrocities such as the Rape of Nanking in 1937) — it caused turmoil in her soul. Of course she went and then, knowing the language and caring for the people, a Japanese pastor says,

Katherine is young, I am old. She is a woman, I am a man. She is American. I am Japanese. When she was the child of missionaries in China, I was a colonel in the occupying army in Manchuria. She comes from the Presbyterian tradition, I come from the Pentecostal. The world would think it is impossible that she and I should love each other. But Christ has broken down the barriers that should divide us. We are one in Christ Jesus.

After her own sermonizing just a bit, she notes how the influence of Japan is evident in all her work. “My first three novels are set there, as well as the beautiful picture book The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks, whose illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillard garnered a Boston-Globe-Horn Book Award.” She has translated some Japanese folk tales, as well, illustrated by the award-winning Suekichi Akab. She quietly notes that she wouldn’t be the writer she is if it were not for her four years in ministry there. “To be loved by people you thought hated you is an experience I wish everyone could have.”

She loved her job as a teacher, then, first in 1955 reading aloud to poor rural kids in a one-room school in Virginia. Oooh, was she irritated that these kids were all said to be dumb because they supposedly had done poorly on IQ tests. These kids were not dumb! (And she henceforth distrusted standardized tests.) She doesn’t think she was much of a teacher but she gave them good experiences (including a trip to the National Zoo in DC that, trust me, was a great episode to read about.)

I choked back tears when she tells of going to visit the little school in Lovettsville years later while passing through the region. It was now a community center so she found the newer building. School had just closed but teachers were there, cleaning up as they do on their last day. Katherine marveled at the well-stocked library. Nobody had time, really, to chat until it became evident that she used to teach there and some old-timer had some recollections of people she had known decades beforehand they realized who she was. Oh, were they pleased, confident that Bridge to Terabithia’s Lark Creek was based on Lovettsville. The current sixth grade teacher said that he tells their students that each year and they never believe him. She assured him that he was right.

She also taught for a while in a Methodist boys school, teaching the Bible. There’s a great story there about a boy complaining about how all the kings of the Old Testament seemed to be getting killed and how irrelevant that all was. Before she could even answer, the classroom door was thrown open. “The history master was standing in the doorway, ashen faced. ‘The president has been shot,’ he said.” She comments,

Without a word, we filed out into the common area where there was a large television set and watched in horror until Walter Cronkite finally announced the news that Kennedy was dead. The boys didn’t try to argue about the stupidity of the ancient Hebrew ever again.

This is a typical passage — casually reported yet full of pathos, poignant, even, and sort of sly. There are some fun laughs in the book —her young married life was hard and she had four young children (two of two different races) and yet she and her husband made do and did well. It’s a glorious part of the book, hearing about their married life and her efforts as a parent.

One of the most moving stories comes at about page 270 as she tells of her son, David, finally getting a good friend; Katherine had been diagnosed with cancer and worried about her children, but David, especially, needed a good pal. And then one day he met Lisa. Who — to cut a tender story short — was suddenly killed, struck by lightning at Bethany Beach. This was, of course, the genesis of the tragic story of a boy/girl friendship and the way youth cope with death that became Bridge to Terabithia. (You may recall that in that story they read The Chronicles of Narnia together.) She hardly wanted to finish writing the story and tells of putting off doing the chapter when Leslie Burke would die.

And to think Bridge to Terabithia has been maligned and banned! To think we have been criticized for carrying it!

It is fascinating how Katherine Paterson has often written about serious things. Her story of struggling with her first novel, The Sign of the Chrysanthemum, comes to mind. It is nicely told and she tells us much, but she offhandedly observes that she was doing a juvenile novel set in 12th century Japan (with a storyline of ancient civil strife, poverty, and which included trafficking and a brothel) at the same time that the nation’s number one best seller of adult fiction was a calming, almost silly narrative about a seagull named Jonathan. If you are a baby boomer, you know what she means.

There are fun things to learn while reading Stories of My Life. She has a whole chapter called “Pets” and it involves more than their beloved dogs. Yes, the great Gilly Hopkins is named after Gerard Manley Hopkins. Jacob Have I Loved came out of thorny ground and a difficult time — her editor, the famous Virginia Buckley, had to push and pull to get her to develop it suitably. She missed the first Newbery Award press conference when a plane couldn’t land —Peter Spier was the only one who made it and he “single-handedly charmed the press and the American Library Association, melting the heart of blizzard-bound Chicago.” The story of what she allowed her kids to do with the first Newbery Award check —one thousand dollars was the prize amount and it was the most disposable income they ever had —is cute and made me chuckle.

Early on Paterson notes that there were stories she heard growing up as the family did the dishes together. She wondered why many of these stories were not passed on to her own now grown children and grandchildren. You never told us that, they’d exclaim. (The answer is easy — they had a dishwashing machine which eroded such family time.) In a way, this book was written for her own loved ones. She set about finding diaries and letters and researched things in far away courthouses and museums to get more information behind the anecdotal stories she grew up with. She added much from her own life, her writing career, her travels around the world as an internationally known figure promoting children’s literacy and the imaginative arts.

I will not spoil the last two chapters but they are tender and touching. The very last is short but she ponders that one famous reviewer said, looking back over her work, said that she is a writer of hope. Indeed. But there is something behind that, she insists, and it is the Biblical doctrine of grace. She cites the words to the hymn Come Thou Font of Every Blessing. She is now 90, doing well, and active at the First Presbyterian Church in Barre, VT, where, as she puts it, she has “experienced the true communion of the saints.” It is a lovely ending to a marvelously entertaining book. It is surely one of my favorite books of 2022.

As always, you can easily get to the secure order form at our website by scrolling down to the very end of this column where you will see the order links. That’s the best way to order – or call. We’re happy to help and, as always, thank you sincerely for business sent our way. 

Intentional. It’s a great word, but was hardly in our vocabulary a few decades ago. Like “coming alongside” someone or “loving on” them, it seemed faddish at first. Yet, those I knew who used it — some specialists in group processing and experiential education who read widely — were, well, intentional. If God was making “all things new” then they wanted to be open to God’s grace re-orienting everything and they worked for how that might be. They were people who did not allow their faith to develop willy-nilly (which is to say, haphazardly at best) or through some technique-laden, formulaic plan.

These friends eschewed both shallow sentimentality and harder-core manipulation. Still, they organized folks into groups (often in wilderness adventures) who learned to be honest about their lives (being authentic was another buzz word in those days) and somehow grew as real humans in a good if broken creation, reflecting a new identity in Christ. My friend Sam Van Eman writes a bit about some of this in his classic Disruptive Discipleship: The Power of Breaking Routine to Kickstart Your Faith (IVP; $17.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60.) He doesn’t overuse the word, but it’s a book about being intentional.

Andy Crouch, in his extraordinary, eloquent rumination on healthy change, Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing (IVP; $18.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40) also reminds us of how certain moves — intentional ones — can deepen both our capacity to risk while honoring our human limitations. The notion of being self-aware and setting some sorts of goals for our lives can be misused, wrangled into some straight-jacket of false security, but, still, understood well, intentionality is good.

Which brings me to give a happy thumbs up to the brand new, self-help guidebook done by Holly and Glenn Packiam, The Intentional Year. I’m not sure I can take a whole year of being intentional but maybe you can. Wowza. Here we go.

The Intentional Year: Simple Rhythms for Finding Freedom, Peace, and Purpose Holly & Glenn Packiam (NavPress) $16.99                           OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Allow me to briefly say just a few things about this good book that will set you at ease and, hopefully, help you see how it could be a life-saver for you or somebody you know.

First, The Intentional Year isn’t just for January, useful as it is this month; sure, some people make New Year’s resolutions, but many make resolves during Lent;  any time in the calendar year we might face what seems like a momentous turn of events. Maybe it is a birthday or anniversary, a sudden awareness of a painful predicament, a new job or an old ailment or a new college major. Maybe it is just the realization that, as they put it, “the frantic pace of your life no longer needs to define you.” The Packiams invite us to choose to live on purpose, with intentionality. Any time is a good time to refresh our sense of things and set some new goals, to “embark on an intentional year.” Maybe buying this book now might become the nudge you need.

Secondly, this book is chatty — it reads nicely, with back-and-forth conversations between Holly (who holds a master’s degree in counseling and is a pastor of parenting ministry at New Life Downtown in Colorado Springs) and Glenn (who has his doctorate in theology from Durham University in the UK and has written rich books on liturgy, music, and worship and what nearly could be called a sacramental worldview. I really liked his Blessed Broken Given: How Your Story Becomes Sacred in the Hands of Jesus.) These two are evangelical church leaders who read very widely, draw on a remarkable array of resources, and yet live busy, complicated lives like many of us. They get us, they really do.

Glenn’s last book was one I raved about at BookNotes a few months back (The Resilient Pastor: Leading Your Church in a Rapidly Changing World) and his upbeat style of storytelling serves them well, here. Holly is a gem and we not only learn a bit about her mid-Western agricultural background, their current lives, raising four multi-ethnic kids at their home, and her practical spirituality. So the book is easy to read — fun, even. It would be a breezy and practical outworking, perhaps, for those who have read Ruth Haley Barton’s somewhat more spiritually intense Embracing Rhythms of Work and Rest: From Sabbath to Sabbatical and Back Again (IVP; $25.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $20.00.)

Thirdly, The Intentional Year is a book that calls us to be intentional about retreating for refreshment and renewal is and is what I will call wholistic, even if not fully comprehensive. That is, it focuses on five key spheres of our lives and how we must be thoughtful about God’s presence in those areas. These five spheres really do include a lot — from personal to public and much in-between — and they show the importance of each arena.

Here are the five chapter titles (in the central second part of the book) that explore the five “spheres”:

• Practices of Prayer
• The Power of Rest
• Pathways of Renewal
• Circles of Relationship
• Habits of Work

Again, The Intentional Year is written as a resource to help us focus on being more intentional, taking steps to work out some specific stuff in our real lives. I sometimes mock cheesy and formulaic self-improvement books, but this nicely invites us to spiritual practices and gentle habits that embody our deepest longings. They are trusted guides and wise (and honest about their foibles and the difficulties of some of this.) Yes, they’ve been reading Jamie Smith (like You Are What You Love) and they cite the cool popular science books about behavior change like Atomic Habits, but they are more at home quoting the Benedictine writer Esther de Waal or Vancouver’s Ken Shigematsu or, of course, Eugene Peterson. Contemplative as it may be (and, happily, there is a section about the importance of reading for personal depth), still, their guidance is directive and really practical. They talk about “connecting, sharing, and processing.” And they repeat it and tell some stories, lots of stories about this process. They invite us to “take inventory” and such. Holly and Glenn help us to (as it says on the back) “identify themes and callings and start to implement life-giving rhythms.”

They speak eagerly of their planning times where they discern the need for establishing rhythms for the next season. I’m lucky if I make a plan for the day. How about you? The last chapter is creatively called “Calendar Rules” and the double entendre has captured my attention. I know I’m not the only one who needs some encouragement about this sort of intentionality.

As their friend Rich Villodas writes in a very complimentary foreword,

As I read through this book, I was blown away by how much ground they cover in such little space. This is a book you can read rather quickly, and at the same time, it’s a book you will want to return to for years to come. Glenn and Holly offer beautiful theology, accessible spiritual practices, and a refreshing honesty that will put you at ease. Instead of wanting to “try harder,” you’ll walk away with a longing to order your life in a way that bears good fruit.

Instead of wanting to “try harder,” you’ll walk away with a longing to order your life in a way that bears good fruit.

They open the book with an epigram from John Lennon and his beautiful song “Beautiful Boy.”

Life is what happens… while you’re busy making other plans.

Indeed. Yup. This book can help. Order one today — or maybe more than one to share. It would be a blessing, I’m sure.

Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms Justin Whitmel Earley (Zondervan) $19.99                                      OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

Okay, in many ways this is a sequel, for families, from his stellar 2020 release, The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction (IVP; $20.00 / OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00.) That colorful, practical book stood as a beacon to me as a new sort of self help book. It got its start on the internet and uses graphs and charts, positive psychology and theological insights. Rooted in his own narrative of near-breakdown, he invites folks to give up certain things, and take up certain things — daily, weekly, monthly. This planner is one of the most hip and compelling resources we’ve seen.

Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms flows very naturally from that one, although one doesn’t have to read it first. It is more of the same, but a lot of new material, too. It has full color charts and little graphs full of ideas to reframe the story of your family. It invites us to quality time (in the internet age) and evokes new desires, new habits, new lifestyles. It’s sort of a self-help version of some of Jamie Smith’s key insights and offers some very practical handles on — shall I say it? — being intentional about the habits of our households. It’s the quality and calibre of a book that Andy Crouch has called “gold.”

As I said in BookNotes when we first premiered it about a year ago:

Ann Voskamp calls it “a gem of a book that I want to give to absolutely every family I know.”  She continues, “Earley hands us transformational hope for every family with these practical and gospel-saturated pages. I couldn’t put it down.”

Earley hands us transformational hope for every family with these practical and gospel-saturated pages.

Undistracted: Capture Your Purpose, Rediscover Your Joy Bob Goff (Thomas Nelson) $26.99          OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

Bob Goff is celebrated as one of the most interesting characters and most interesting writers working today. I dare anyone to read a page or two and not smile with his wordplay and not be gripped by his stories. He has seen some stuff — some quite heavy, some nearly unbelievable, as good as the wild stuff Campolo used to talk about. He harnesses his passion (and whimsy) into well-crafted books such as Love Does and Everybody Always. They are fabulous.

A few years ago he developed a coaching business, mentoring hundreds through dreaming big, cooking up their own creative plans, mentoring others towards a godly purposeful sort of ambition. A book about that (certainly good for a new year) is called Dream Big: Know What You Want, Why You Want It, and What You’re Going to Do About It $26.99 / OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59.) I liked it a whole lot and have revisited it often, reading it at least twice.

In a way, Undistracted is a sequel to Dream Big, exploring the obstacles that are often in the way as we are distracted from our ambitions and goals. Naturally, he gives us great stories and examples and principles for overcoming these distractions and recovering a sense of purpose.

A year or so ago when it first came out I wrote this about it, and I still believe it:

We are distracted by our own fears and foibles. We are distracted by very real problems and limitations (Goff over and over acknowledges this, although his optimism could feel a bit dismissive if you feel called to lament and sorrow.) We are distracted by others who are intent on tearing us down; Bob gives good advice about not engaging with the cynics. We all have endless to-do lists and most of us scroll on our phones just a bit too much. The list of distractions, big and small, are endless.

Goff has an uncanny ability to make nearly anything a teaching moment. From some major heart problems to dashboard lights going out on a plane that he was solo night-flying to the story of a high school wood-shop teacher missing some fingers, this guy can turn anything into a parable. I grate against zippy bromides and chicken-soup-for-the-soul happy thoughts, but, again —  even though Undistracted may seem a bit like that, with its pithy stories, life-lessons, urgent advice, and all those analogies and metaphors (the book is, he tells us, like those rumble strips along the side of the road, reminding you if your drifting off course) I could not put it down.

Props to him for the never-ending delight of finding lessons in nearly everything. He has good stuff to say and it is important stuff, even profound, even if he’s not too busy having fun and spinning his magic to say that it is. It is. As it says on the back cover, “Bob shows you the way back to an audaciously attentive life.”

How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully in the Now James K.A. Smith (Brazos Press) $24.99                  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

Okay, just to show that BookNotes doesn’t just recommend the accessible, fun, and easy-to-read books that we highlighted above, I’ll once again recommend this. Smith is a working philosopher and a professor at Calvin University in Grand Rapids. He is as wide-reading, artful, ecumenical, and interesting as anybody I know. I admire him a lot.

This book, which you’ve seen listed here at BookNotes before, and you will see next week as one of our “Best Books of 2023”, deserves to be added here to our little list about being intentional. As the great books listed above show, we simply must attend to the textures of our lives, which is to say, our habits, our details, our liturgies, rituals, practices, the stuff we care about which (as Smith showed so well in You Are What You Love) bubbles up from “under the hood.” Our lifestyle emerges from those values that are inherited as we are conscripted into certain sorts of stories. What’s it all about? What do we live for? What gets us up in the morning, and what’s that all about? What stories and habits most influence us? These are questions worth asking anytime but certainly in January.

How to Inhabit Time takes Smith’s work about our subterranean lives — written about so wonderfully in both his On the Road with Saint Augustine and You Are What You Love — and applies that vision to how we understand and live into and out of a view of time. It sounds a bit arcane — who thinks about that? — and on some pages the weeds are a bit deep. It is not your typical self help book. But, as we’ve said over and over in these pages, it is a magisterial book, a rich reflection on why we discredit our creatureliness (and our indebtedness to time — the past, present and future.) There is a better way. It isn’t simple. Smith is the right person to help us reimagine some things and “live faithfully in the now.”

You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News       Kelly M. Kapic (Brazos Press) $24.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99

I’ve mentioned the word “creatureliness” in talking about Smith’s view of us as creatures who not only live certain places, but in particular times, upheld by God, always. This isn’t unusual, but it is a bit unusual to say and reflect upon. It’s a deep non-negotiable for Christians who have a solidly Biblical worldview; we are here, now, dependent, with limits. It’s the really real of the creation, how it’s meant to be. The internet and Tic Toc makes us seem as if we are connecting to “viewers” (with our “content”) all over the world, but there are constraints. Jesus was tempted severely before His ministry and even he renounced the demonic offer to control everything, to have it all. We cannot have it all.

This is a natural thing that even secularists at their best remind us of in the new year’s advice columns. We’ve got to be in touch with our limits; don’t forget to rest. We’re only human, they say.

Well, they are right. But to keep such a bromide from being an excuse for inappropriate living and, better, to evoke from it an intentionally Christian bit of enduring guidance, we need somebody who has really thought about this well.

Kelly Kapic is that guy. He is theologically rich (he teaches Reformed theology at Covenant College) and yet is not overly strict or ideological. He knows a bit about suffering (and has written widely about it.) He is encouraging, interesting, as he plumbs the depths of how good theology can shape our daily lives as well as anyone.  As his subtitle puts it, our limits “reflect God’s design” and “that’s good news.” Really?

Need some gospel-centered good news that invites us to live in a Kingdom coming (but not of our own work?) Want to imagine your very bodies as places where God shows up? Want to think about finitude and embodiment that leads to a “joyful realism”? Do you need some of relief that comes from remembering that we are not God?

You’re Only Human offers us readers more than a framework, but a process. He invites us to embodied worship in a community with others where in freedom we can live well in our limited lives. I’m telling you, this is a great sort of book a wise and helpful book. Disability activist and scholar John Swinton calls it a “hopeful gift” and contemplative spiritual formation writer Ruth Haley Barton calls it an “uplifting work.” Karen Swallow Prior says “it’s a celebration of being human.” I know even our wallets are finite and for many of us, quite limited, but this is a book you really should get. Thanks, Dr. Kapic, for this very good news.

Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself)  David Zahl (Brazos Press) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

One last title in this peculiar list of books that offer a glimpse of being intentional as Christians this new year. I adore — as I have said — the practical edge of books like The Intentional Year: Simple Rhythms for Finding Freedom, Peace, and Purpose by Holly & Glenn Packiam, discussed above. Justin Whitmel Earley’s books (The Common Rule and Habits of the Household) offer helpful, cool insights into arranging our lives in new ways, making some life-giving hard choices and establishing some new patterns. Although Bob Goff may not see himself as a “self help” author, his practical (if hilarious and moving) stores guide us to live undistractedly. Yeah.

There are other good guides and helpful books of self improvement that we carry. Of course we do.

But while I’m not as stodgy as C.S. Lewis who said we must mostly read old books, I do worry about those who read only or mostly these breezy, practical guides to happier living. They have their place, and some are more thoughtful than others. But still.

So you can see that I’m ending this list with a book that is sort of an anti-self help book. It is really well written, fascinating, even. There are stories galore and helpful illustrative examples. Despite a rather weird cover, and a cleverly odd title, it’s a great book.

I love Nadia Bolz-Weber as a writer. Even when I disagree with her, I sometimes weep through her poignant, holy stories, and her deep care (and her breathtakingly good sentences.) Here is what she said about this conservative (Lutheran-ish?) writer and his new book:

This is the book I have been waiting for: an antidote to all the self-help nonsense that weighs down our bookshelves and our self-regard. I feel lighter, freer, and less alone with every word I read in Zahl’s brilliant and truthful Low Anthropology. — Nadia Bolz-Weber, author of Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

What is a low anthropology? I’m sure most readers can figure this out, but just in case, he does not mean “cultural anthropology” a la Margaret Mead and those who study other cultures. Anthropology is merely the term used to mean our view of the human person; as he points out, not the exotic sounding store of a similar-sounding name, either. Just your view of people.

Low? Well, it’s a hard sell for some, but yep. Zahl spends this whole page-turner of a book explaining why a high view of the human condition leads to disappointment. A lower (more realistic, informed by the Biblical doctrine of sin and fallenness I suppose) view keeps us from idolatry, positive thinking, over-promising, dreaming too big.

Here’s how the book marketeers put it, helpfully:

“Many of us spend our days feeling like we’re the only one with problems, while everyone else has their act together. But the sooner we realize that everyone struggles like we do, the sooner we can show grace to ourselves and others.

In Low Anthropology, author and theologian David Zahl explores how our ideas about human nature influence our expectations in friendship, work, marriage, and politics. He offers a liberating view of human nature, sin, and grace, showing why the good news of Christianity is both urgent and appealing.”

By embracing a more accurate view of human beings, we can discover a true and lasting hope.

So, this fascinating book cuts through the religious and inspirational noise inviting us to deep truths, truths already anticipated in Kapic’s Your Only Human. We aren’t all we’re cracked up to be and, frankly, that’s a good place to start.

Sure we need to be intentional about creating space for God; we need to hear the Packiams and their call to set aside time to refresh, replan, repent, even. God cares about all areas of our lives and we need to think seriously about what that looks like and how to “inhabit time.”

But let’s be realistic. Remember that buzz word, authentic? I’m not sure all that it means, but it at least means this much: we are sinners and God loves us anyway, ragamuffins that we all are. A low anthropology has vast implications, some of which Zahl explains in vivid detail. Others we can ponder ourselves, maybe for the rest of our lives. Low Anthropology is a game changer.

As the publisher said: “Many of us spend our days feeling like we’re the only one with problems, while everyone else has their act together. But the sooner we realize that everyone struggles like we do, the sooner we can show grace to ourselves and others.”

Here’s a great recommendation for the book by — get this — a self-help writer who wrote a book about time management. Ha. Here’s what he says about Zahl’s Low Anthropology:

A remarkably perceptive, funny, subversive, and nourishing book that hasn’t left my mind since I read it. David Zahl shows that transformation — and the kind of hope we can actually rely on — isn’t to be found in the oppressive perfectionism of self-improvement but rather in accepting the liberating truth that we’re all flawed, finite, prone to overconfidence and messing things up, and in need of forgiveness.                — Oliver Burkeman, New York Times bestselling author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

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We here at Hearts & Minds hope you are happy celebrating the twelve days of Christmas. Before the dumb “Merry Christmas” wars made me self-conscious, I loved saying ‘Happy holidays.” Not only as a consideration to Jews or other non-Christians who celebrate this time of year but because we do have Advent, and Christmas, and the 12 Days, a couple of Feast Days in there, (my birthday, too) and the ringing in of the New Year. Hard as these times are for many of us, laden with disappointment and heavy with hearts sad about the state of the world, there are some festivities to be had. Whether you celebrate large or small, with family or mostly alone, we hope you are well and that this season is meaningful, maybe even with some delight. We can hope.

Even if we aren’t obeisant about it, most of us get that there is a flow to the church calendar, which is essentially a year-long reflection on the life of Christ. From annunciation through birth, baptism and transformation, passion and death, resurrection and ascension (and on to Pentecost, celebrating the birthday of the church, as some call it) the calendar orients us less towards New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and Valentine’s Day and Tax Day and the 4^th of July but to  pivotal moments in the life of our Savior.

It makes sense that if Christ is who the carols say He is, then everything must reflect “the wonders of His love” as “heaven and nature sings.” This includes even how we think about time and the flow of our days. It might even shape our reading habits a bit…

James K.A. Smith ruminates on this with sophistication and candor, sharing his philosophically-tinged insights about the importance of a Christian view of time in his major work that came out early this fall, How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now (Brazos Press; $24.99 – OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99.) It isn’t on the church calendar as such, but is a book I had to mention in this little BookNotes preamble as it is so framing and foundational for this essential aspect of our faith, knowing how to be in time. We are the kind of creatures, he observes, who remember, and who have the capacity to hope. He worries that we often experience “temporal dislocation” and live as if our faith is nowhen (a play on the word nowhere.) It is a deep, extraordinary book and I’ll be celebrating it soon as one of the top releases of 2022 when I post our BookNotes “Best Books” column.

I bring all this up not just to say happy Christmas-time and joyous Epiphany (and suggest we give gifts during that celebration, since that is when Jesus got his first Christmas presents from his wise visitors from the East.) It is also to say that on the heels of these occasions, most liturgical calendars and church year schedules jump to the Sunday that commemorates the Baptism of our Lord.

Which is a long-winded way of saying this: we can use this occasion when the text point us to John the Baptist and Christ’s own baptism by considering our own. That is, we can read up on the sacrament that is, frankly, more important than most realize.

And boy, do I have a book for you. Living Under Water is one of my favorite new books about faith and discipleship, spiritual formation and theology, nicely written with plenty of stories, and I can’t wait to tell you about it. After that, I’ll list over a dozen books which help us explore the person of Jesus, the meaning of the incarnation, and the call to follow Christ; not a bad segue after Christmas, eh?

In one of my Advent BookNotes lists I suggested in passing that folks might want to order On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasias. Nobody did, so I’ll revisit that and a handful of other books that remind us who this person is that we celebrate as God-With-Us, the baby King of the Cosmos.

But first, one of my favorite books of the year, Living Under Water. 

Living Under Water: Baptism as a Way of Life Kevin J. Adams (Eerdmans) $19.99                 OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I loved this book for several reasons. I hope you’ll find these reasons compelling but even if you don’t, it is a wise and good book that I am sure will benefit both ordinary Christian people and pastors, too, maybe especially. It is reflective enough to be nearly a spirituality book but with enough stories about congregational life that it would be a good read for any congregation or parish. It is delightfully ecumenical in the very best sense, drawing on Orthodox writers and stories from Assembly of God pastors and Baptists both rural and urban; the author is Reformed but started his cool California CRC congregation as a very creative, evangelical church plant. He is mainline but spirited, orthodox but open-minded. He cares about serious Christian practice within the faith community and he knows that this simply must equip us to be God’s workers in the world. He is not afraid to draw out some of the specific issues that we must face when, as we say in the classic baptismal ritual, when we proclaim that we will “renounce evil.”  He’s my kind of guy.

Here are seven big reasons I really value Living Under Water. Besides Adams’s well-honed gift of being a good writer and the clever, evocative title, which is a big win for starters.

FIRST I’ve mentioned that Pastor Adams is ecumenical. This is important, a matter of fidelity to the gospel, and good for all of us. You may not know Alexander Schmemann, but you really should and Adams cites him nicely. You may not know much about Roman Catholic practices or free-church Pentecostals, or Lutheranism, but here you get to hear Adam’s nicely informative name-dropping of church leaders as well as first hand conversations with pastoral colleagues telling how they do things. This is a delight and really helpful. I found myself feeling more loyal to the big body of Christ, despite our different styles and convictions, and these days, this is a very good thing.

You are, I bet, longing for a better sort of faith experience in your church and in your life, one that is somehow enriched, but, rooted, probably, within your own tradition; this book will be an ally on your journey. Your own faith will be enhanced from his many diverse citations, quotes, and stories, all shared with considerable open-mindedness. These kinds of books are all too rare, and I applaud Adams for his graciousness. (It comes as no surprise, really, that he is a program affiliate at the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship and even got a grant to take a sabbatical to travel and interview various pastors and church leaders from the Louisville Institute and the Lilly Endowment.) He thanks John Witvolet, which speaks ecumenical volumes in my book.

SECONDLY, I think it is wise to read books that are knowledgeable about church history and the broader discussions about faithful life and practice across denominations and time. Adams is the sort of writer that can with whimsy and grace offer glimpses of historical theology without it being boring or dry. As Cornelius Plantinga puts it in his charming foreword, “Kevin has done his historical research.” Plantinga also says, “You wouldn’t necessarily think of a book on baptism as interesting – let alone fascinating. To me, this one was.” Yep, historical theology made compellingly rich and even fascinating.

THIRDLY,  Living Under Water is a book chock-full of stories. This makes in touching, both entertaining and powerfully gripping at times. I chuckled and I wiped away tears. I shook my head in disbelief (well, not really disbelief, as I, too, have seen some pretty wild stuff in my years as a church guy.) I nodded a lot, saying, yes, yes, yes, I’ve seen that. Or, wow, I wish I’d seen that. There’s a lot to learn and every few pages I kept wishing I could share this with pastors I know who long for greater liturgical integrity in their rituals and greater depths of discipleship in their church circles. This book shows, through realistic stories, how this (usually) slow, transforming work gets done. As he makes clear, Adams is sure that deepening our teaching about Baptism will help our congregations find renewal and clarity about being followers of Christ, but he gets at it by storytelling, mostly.

FOURTHLY, Living Under Water makes a few very important points, mostly focusing on our identity. That is, Baptism is that ritual that bequests to us a new identity and we are no longer firstly a Republican or a Democrat, not even a Presbyterian or Anglican, a mainliner or evangelical, an American or Russian or Mexican or whatever. We are baptized in the name of the Triune God who adopts us into His church. This is the most fundamental reality, the core truth of who we are as baptized believers. We are given a “baptismal ordination” and we put on “baptismal clothes.”  This tell us who and whose we are.

It strikes me that there are those who talk about conversion and salvation as a thing we “do” (receive Christ as savior, recite a “sinner’s prayer” or whatever.) And there are those who think it is is a thing we come to understand (being able to articulate the ideas of atonement and justification.) And, again, there are those who don’t really do any of that, that just run congregational programing and hope some of it sort of rubs off. For those who are revivalistic to a fault, or those who overly intellectualize conversion, or those that don’t really face profound spiritual transformation at all, this book will help restore balance and a smidgeon of helpful theology, experienced through this liturgical ritual laden with lasting implications. He says all this much better than I do, but I hope you get my hope: this book will offer a correction or reorientation to our language and habits about conversion, church life, discipleship, spiritual formation, and such. My hunch is most of us need this revitalization of language and images and could draw on baptismal insights quite helpfully.

FIFTHLY, the book explores the best practices and creative ways to get towards a meaningful baptismal rite. It does not attempt to resolve the differences of opinion about the best method or age to baptize and while Adams baptizes infants,  even families, he actually does a lot of immersion baptisms of youth and adults. The stories of these are often deeply moving (and often entertaining) as he tells the stories of those who longed to be washed clean in the bath.

Naturally, Adams makes much of the Biblical, theological, and ceremonial significance of the notion of going down into the waters to death and arising with newness of life. (Did you know that that in the early church many baptismal fonts were shaped like coffins? Wow, talk about serious business! One chapter is entitled “Drowning in a Coffin.”) He ponders the preparation needed before a good baptism and with healthy open-mindedness describes those with long and hefty catechisms and those with scant prep. He insists that the best traditions all describe how the ritual is formational and how we must underscore that in our congregational cultures. He shows some good ways and some not so good ways to pursue this.

(Call this point 5.5 but along with these good baptismal practices, almost inadvertently, he tells stories of what can only be called evangelism and congregational renewal. People want to get baptized because they’ve come to belong to a faith community and they now have come to belief. The stories of the often-slow process of folks showing curiosity about God, a desire to be apart of a congregation, and longing to cross over the line of faith, so to speak, and desire baptism, is inspiring and a helpful reminder for any church that is wishing to deepen their own outreach to seekers and their ministry with the unchurched. Afraid of the “e-word”? Read Living Under Water; it might help.)

SIXTH, there are several important chapters about abuses of the sacrament. He made me laugh reminding me of an old Simpson’s episode when Bart and Lisa are nearly baptized against the families will (by, of course, Ned Flanders) but he nearly made me weep in telling of folks he has met who have deep distrust of congregational rituals because they were foisted almost cruelly upon them as children or youth. Lord have mercy. There are several chapters of different sorts of abuse and it is touching and good to consider.

SEVENTH. Yes, a seventh reason to read Living Under Water. It is the way in which he weaves in what I might call a world-and-life view and a faithful bit of cultural criticism. That is, the sacrament of baptism has often been seen as sentimental and lovely, whether done in a genteel font or an outdoor swimming pool. But Adams reminds us that Christ is Lord of all areas of life and a deep awareness of our Kingdom identity will necessarily lead us to what might end up being countercultural values in the worlds of politics, social concern and racial justice issues. Without overstating things, he goes there.

Liturgy shapes life, of course. This theme is a great gift and while it is carefully explored, it is a powerful contribution. This world belongs to God and – guess what? – in some streams of the church baptism is almost considered as a exorcism, casting out idolatry and brokenness, restoring us to our proper, creational role in a good (if fallen) world. Baptism, in this view, help situate us within the unfolding Biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

His stuff on race was especially well done, and I’d advise a good reading of this for almost any sort of church. Further, he has a section on the famous (but not often reasonably explored) insight that baptism is connected to healing. There are some bits in that chapter that I do not want to tell you about as the surprise will grip you. His missional sense is that this primal Christian ritual truly makes a difference as “God is seeding shalom” (in the worlds of Leanne Van Dyk on the back cover.)

I wish I had time to lift long quotes from Living Under Water. You will underline stuff and if you have a book club study of it, I’m sure your participants will each find lovely or challenging portions to discuss. There’s a lot there in 13 lively chapters. The last talks about “the baptized imagination” and is a splendid, big ending. I didn’t want this book to be over and am happy to suggest it to you.

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FOURTEEN BOOKS ABOUT JESUS

I have created other lists of books about Jesus (HERE, for instance, are 20 titles; or read my review of Diana Butler Bass’s fabulous Freeing Jesus, now out in paperback, HERE.) I could do others. There are so many that are well done for ordinary folks (and plenty of scholarly ones as well.) I think my all time favorite book on the enormous subject is The Incomparable Christ, in part because it covers so much ground, so well. Let us know if we can help find something right for you. Here are some mostly recent ones that come to mind that help us ponder what Christmas has wrought — the Son of Mary, God incarnate, born into the world.

On the Incarnation  Saint Athanasias (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press) $17.00        OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

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On the Incarnation Saint Athanasias (Whitaker House) $12.99                                     OUR SALE PRICE = $10.39

This is one of the most enduring books in church history, written importantly in the fourth century, and one that ought to be considered by many of our BookNotes readers. The St. Vladimir’s Seminary edition is nicer, compact, with the famous preface by C.S. Lewis (who affirmed, as we know, reading older books.) There is also a long introduction by editor John Behr. SVS Press is Russian Orthodox and they make very impressive volumes; this one is in their “Popular Patristics Series” of which we carry many.

The second version listed is a few dollars cheaper, a different translation, slightly abridged, I think, drawing from a translation by a religious woman of the Community of St, Mary the Virgin and first published by MacMillan in the 1940s. It is by a more fundamentalist publisher, on cheaper paper, but the type is a bit bigger. Not a bad choice.

Incarnation: The Surprising Overlap of Heaven & Earth William Willimon (Abingdon) $15.99               OUR SALE PRICE = $12.79

This is a fine little book in the fantastic “Belief Matters” series. (Our friend and regular customer Kenneth Loyer did the one called Holy Communion: Celebrating God with Us, by the way.) The series seems to get authors with theological chops and invites them to write a basic primer on a complicated topic. It attempts to show that by “thinking more clearly about faith, persons can love God more fully, live with confidence, and change the world.” No pressure, but it’s true. Belief does matter and knowing a bit about doctrine as it makes a difference in our lives, can be incredibly helpful.

Willimon is one of the most lively mainline pastors writing today and while he has done massive books (on Karl Barth, say, or preaching, or Barth’s preaching, for that matter) this is as succinct as he has been. The book has an easy-to-read print size and is less than 100 pages. Yet, this mystery (that Jesus is fully human and fully divine) is shown to be a bedrock truth of the faith and a great promise of God to be with us.

Veiled in Flesh: The Incarnation: What It Means and Why It Matters Melvin Tinker (IVP-UK) $18.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

The first half of this serious lay-person’s guide to the incarnation is a study of the book of Hebrews. “This grounds the doctrine in Scripture and works through some of the theological and pastoral implications,” he says.

The second part goes deeper, “drawing on systematic and historical theology to tease out what the doctrine means and why it is vital to the life and health of the church.” As you will understand, this leads to a bit of reflection on the Trinity and even the atonement. Tinker is Senior Minister of St John Newland, Hull, UK and a respected, evangelical speaker. Nice endorsements on the back are from popular writer Tim Chester and Gordon Conwell scholar, David Wells.

God Will Be All in All: Theology through the Lens of Incarnation Anna Case-Winters (WJK) $30.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $24.00

I have not read this but it looks intriguing and, to be honest, we just don’t know of anything like it. In an ecumenical Christmastide list of books about incarnation, this has to be listed. Thomas Jay Oord says it “elucidates God’s incarnation in mind-blowing and life-enhancing ways.”  He thinks she is on to something and that she makes a compelling case “for how best to understand God with us. The implications of her views are deep and wide.” She is known for being a bit of an iconoclast and is respected for serious ecumenical work for the PC(USA) serving the church in conversations towards Christian unity.

Listen carefully to Ronald Cole-Turner, a professor Emeritus (of theology and ethics) at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, who writes:

This book does just about everything right. It offers a courageous and resounding defense of Christianity’s two most powerful ideas: The Trinity and the incarnation. It combines feminist, womanist, and liberationist insights necessary for any credible theology in an age of Black Lives Matter. Most of all, it demystifies the jargon but reawakens the mystery of the church’s vision of a creation overflowing with the transforming grace of our loving God! God Will Be All in All is a great choice as an introductory text or as a pastor’s self-guided refresher course.

On Earth as in Heaven: Daily Wisdom for Twenty-first Century Christians N.T. Wright (HarperOne) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

One can hardly name a more prominent and, in our view, delightfully creative and orthodox, New Testament scholar than the internationally known, UK Bishop and historian, Tom Wright. He goes way back with one of my pals, Brian Walsh, and has written dozens of books both academic and popular. He brings a certain Kingdom vision to his work on Jesus and has captured the attention of the scholarly guild by insisting on the historical facts of the resurrection. He has captured the attention of the church — evangelical and mainline — for insisting that this Jesus is Lord of the creation and is bringing restoration to the world, a project we get to be a part of. His missional vision and his Biblical teachings, informed by historical study of first century Judaism, make his many big volumes exceedingly important.

His popular level books on Jesus — think of Simply Jesus or How God Became King or, drawing on John, Broken Signposts — are true favorites of mine.

This nice, hardback volume that came out last years is a daily reader, a devotional that allows you to dip into excerpts from his books day by day for a year. That in itself is terrific and makes On Earth as in Heaven a very useful resource, but what makes it genius is that the book’s editor (Tom’s son, Oliver) arranged the excerpts in somewhat of an an order, paralleling the liturgical calendar. It follows the life of Jesus for a month, and then has excerpts of the implications of that aspect of Christ’s life in the following month. For instance, following readings on the Ascension, there are readings on power. After Lent, interestingly, there is freedom. Following the Advent season are readings on justice. It makes great sense.

Curiously — and it, too, makes great sense — the book starts us off in Easter. That really is the “new year” for believers and Wright’s work on the resurrection obviously is his strongest suit. So this daily reader, in a way, starts in the Spring. Naturally, you can dip in and start any time you want — perhaps in the sections bout Christmas (followed by a month or so of lush and thoughtful explorations about “truth.” )

On Earth includes readings about contemporary Christian ethics and what we might call public theology. But most is grounded by and circled around the readings about Jesus. It’s a great book, a great primer for reading about Christ and a great primer for learning about the important work of N.T. Wright.

A Doubter’s Guide to Jesus: An Introduction to the Man from Nazareth for Believers and Skeptics John Dickson (Zondervan) $18.99       OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I have highlighted this before so I will be brief. This is a compact sized paperback that is truly fabulous. (Tim Keller says “I can’t recommend this book enough.”) It is, as the title suggests, good “for doubters” but it really is for nearly anyone – believers or skeptics, those who know Christ well or those who are unfamiliar. It is a systematic guidebook written in nice prose, with clear and clean categories and chapters, making the case for who Jesus claimed to be and what the Bible says about Him.

There are some opening chapters that I loved (“Imaginations”, which explores our visions and longings for such a Person and how we have often poorly “made Him in our own image,” and “Sources”, which lays out some of the technical and historical data about what we know and how reliable our written accounts are.) From there it covers various aspects of Jesus’s life and work with some further chapters on his preference for the lowly and poor, the meaning of his death, the claims of resurrection, his subversion of Caesar’s empire. There’s a rousing and beautiful short chapter showing Christ’s own relationship with God. That’s called “His Oneness with the Almighty.” It’s a good thing to read and ponder right after Christmas, I think.

This is interesting and fair, intriguing and balanced, all informed by ancient history, primary sources, and a robust awareness of the implications of all that Jesus did and said. It is not manipulative or preachy, let alone argumentative, but it is, shall we say, “eye-opening.” A great little book.

Confronting Jesus: 9 Encounters with the Hero of the Gospels Rebecca McLaughlin (Crossway Books) $14.99   OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

Ms McLaughlin has her PhD from Cambridge and is an award-winning author, most famously for Confronting Christianity which was named Christianity Today’s 2020 winner in their “Beautiful Orthodoxy” category. She has a heart to reach the skeptic and unchurched, is aware of serious questions of postmodernity (and postmodernism) but has a fairly strict, orthodox angle. (One small book she did for the Gospel Coalition is called The Secular Creed which draws on the likes of Carl Trueman for punchy cultural exegesis.)

This new book offers reflections on the eyewitness accounts within the gospels which illuminate Jesus’s identity. It is good for those who are exploring Christianity, perhaps for the first time, or the first time seriously, or if you just (as J.D. Greear puts it) “want to learn something more about the beauty of our Savior.”

Listen to this lovely endorsement by Rev. Irwyn Ince, urban pastor and Coordinator of “Mission to America” for the PCA, and author of the excellent book on the multi-ethnic church, Beautiful Community:

Rebecca McLaughlin has done us a kindness by laying out the beauty of Jesus with clarity and conviction. Bring your questions and, through these pages, find Jesus ready, willing, and able to answer.

The Nazarene: Forty Devotions on the Lyrical Life of Jesus Michael Card (IVP) $16.00                       OUR SALE PRICE = $12.80

You may recall when Michael Card, musician extraordinaire, Bible scholar and teacher, graced us with his presence here in Dallastown. We partnered with a local church, had tons of great food, and as Michael played and spoke, I got to interview him. (Talk about nervous! But he’s a good guy and played along with my curious questions and our awed local crowd.)

What brought Mike to us was not really to do a full concert but to promote a book project he was working on. We’ve stocked his many books over the years (and there are a lot) but a few years back he did a set of four commentaries on the gospels. They were called the “Biblical Imagination” series and in them he did typical commentary stuff – informed exegesis of Greek words, lucid explanations of key notions, savvy reminders of the ancient cultural background and the like – but added a small element of creativity, of engaging not just the mind but the imagination. These artful writing projects were ideal for those who wanted to study the Bible in a way that yielded transformed affections and wilder, more Christ-like lifestyles, creative but bounded by Scripture. He wants us to imagine the Kingdom.

This recent book, The Nazarene, is, in a way, a lovely glimpse into the imaginative rendering of Jesus from the pen of Mike Card. It is even more rooted in his work as a poet and songwriter that the commentaries, it seems. Each devotional reading on Jesus actually starts with a lyric and then offers a mediation. Sometimes these insights into the Christ would stand well on their own without the poetry/song lyrics, and, of course, the poems/lyrics stand on their own. Sometimes he draws on his own rendering (and sometimes has a “lyric note” as an afterward.)

Card never wants to draw attention to his own serious education or his talent or aesthetic style. This book isn’t a proud retrospective of all the songs he’s written about Jesus (although there is a fabulous and fabulously-useful index in the back highlighting more than a hundred of his Biblically-influenced songs from his dozens of albums.)

The Nazarene is a poetical vision of who Jesus is shared by a singer-songwriter and serious follower of the Way. Having met Mike more than once, I can assure you that he’s the real deal. Having read this book quickly, I can say I will pick it up again, perhaps even during Lent, using it to guide me more deeply into a love of the Lord and a more serious dedication to follow the Master.

Touch the Earth: Poems on the Way Drew Jackson (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

One of the great joys of this past season was experiencing the privilege of being at an event at Western Seminary (in Holland, MI) sponsored by the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination. Pastor and poet Drew Jackson was a speaker there and it was a great honor to meet him and hang out just a bit. His urban pastoral sensibility was powerful and his poetic style remarkable — accessible, but not simplistic, Bible-based, but not didactic. Touch the Earth is so aesthetically rich it carries a forward by the great Irish wordsmith and activist, Padgraig O’Tuama.

Touch the Earth is brand new and picks up where his 2021 release, God Speaks Through Wombs leaves off. That collection, subtitled “Poems on God’s Unexpected Coming” (and with a vivid foreword by popular musician Jon Batiste)  draws its allusive, poetic insight from Luke 1 through 8. Touch the Earth also reflects on Luke, through poetry, starting with Luke chapter 9. And, whoa, is it captivating: the first poem is about his father’s good actions caring for Drew’s mother as she was dying of cancer. I have pondered the next one, on Luke 9: 3-4 (“Take Nothing”) more than I’d expect. Ruth Haley Barton, who says it has touched something deep in her, invites us to “partake Drew’s newest collection of poems with an open heart and an open Bible.” Right.

Our friend Cole Arthur Riley says of it:

Poem after poem, Drew Jackson approaches questions of community and trust and meets them to with the bore of certainty but a reverence for the unspoken, for mystery and suspense.

Luke: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws Adam Hamilton (Abingdon) $19.99           OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I suppose if you follow religious publishing at all, or read BookNotes very carefully, you know who Adam Hamilton is. The pastor of one of the largest United Methodist churches in the country and a very popular Bible teacher, his DVDs are standards, these days, used by many. He is affirmed on book jackets and given accolades by evangelical moderates and those in more progressive movements; from Jim Wallis to Philip Yancey to Brian McLaren, he is honored as a balanced and thoughtful voice teaching the church good stuff about the Scriptures. He has done several on the birth of Christ, several on His life, a few on the cross and Holy Week. He has done short ones on Bible characters, too — Moses, Peter, etc. This one is down-to-Earth and full of insight; Susan Hyman (NT prof at Candler) says it is “Readable and relevant, this book will both delight its readers and discomfort them, just as the Gospel does.” Yup.

This may be the first time Hamilton has tackled a whole book of the Bible and I am both appreciative and a bit frustrated. It isn’t a commentary as such and he obviously can’t cover the whole book in a six short DVD sessions. The hardback book (which has six key chapters, and an afterword and such) is handsome and solid and very readable, as you’d expect from the popular mega-church communicator. Even with the forward and footnotes it’s only about 150 pages.

As anyone who cares about the integrity of the preaching with close attention to the Biblical text would affirm, it is good that he sees how Luke brings in stories of justice and poverty, economics and politics, healing (he was a doctor, they say) and hope. The subtitle says much, illustrating his clever and entertaining approach and the seriousness with which he takes what the Bible actually says.

Of course it doesn’t say all that needs saying, but for a great introduction to Jesus as seen through the eyes of Luke, this new Adam Hamilton resource is great. We have the hardback books, the DVDs, of course, and the adult leaders guide. Maybe you could use it for a small group or adult education class at your church.

Finding Messiah: A Journey into the Jewishness of the Gospel Jennifer M. Rosner (IVP) $17.00      OUR SALE PRICE = $13.60

There are lots of books (thank goodness) that explore the Jewishness of Jesus. From Messianic followers of Jesus to Jesus scholars who remain Jewish (like Amy-Jill Levine, say) to hefty historians like N.T. Wright, there is much to learn.

This recent book captured my attention when I saw the foreword by Richard Mouw, an author I admire greatly. In his opening remarks (where he ably tells what is good about the book) he admits that it has forced him to reconsider, yet again, some of his own deeply held assumptions about the relationship between Christians and Jews and, more, between the gospel of Jesus and the role of Judaism. In other words, this isn’t just a lovely little guide to some of the distinctly Jewish ways of Jesus or how He fulfilled certain prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. It’s very engaging but meaty.

As you may know there are serious questions among and even controversies between Christians about all this. (Not to even mention a horrendous background of persecution visited on Jewish people by so-called Christians.)

This book is both a dive into that contentious space and a lovely overview for those wanting refreshed in hearing the story of a Messianic Jews. As Brian Zahnd puts it, while saying how much he enjoyed Jennifer Rosner’s book, “her attempt to bridge the ancient rift between Jewish identity and Christian faith is timely and important.”

“This is a book I didn’t know I was waiting for.”

“This is a book I didn’t know I was waiting for,” says Marty Solomon (president of Impact Campus Ministry.) “Look no further,” says Gerald McDermott – “This is the most enjoyable introduction to Jesus and Judaism you will ever find.” It is an account of some of the scholarly debates but it not only helps those conversations come alive, but it offers a bit more light and not just heat. I’m impressed, even if I (like Mouw) still have questions to ponder and issues to work through. Finding Messiah is a wonderful book, written by a woman who is now teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary in California.

As Mouw writes,

So, yes. Jen Rosner has forced me to face issues that I have long been willing to ignore, and I will now continue to face. I am confident that her wonderful book will motivate others to make the journey, also. Jen still has questions that she is pursuing, so it has to be a continuing journey for all of us. For now, though, I can express deep gratitude that she has prodded me to take some new steps along the path.

Saints and Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus Nancy Guthrie (Crossway) $16.99                OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

I have often said that for a straight-arrow, solidly evangelical, straight-forward teacher of the Bible, Nancy Guthrie is hard to beat. She is one of the most reliable and interesting writers in that good tradition and while she doesn’t take in edgy postmodern ideas or add zippy applications from contemporary culture, she is lively enough, interesting, earnest, and (as one reviewer put it about this new one) “can speak directly to the realities of your life, giving you a fresh glimpse of all that can be yours in Jesus Christ.”

In other words, get ready to see yourself as a scoundrel and, by God’s grace, increasingly, as a saint.

Yep, as Rosaria Butterfield writes, this book is “convicting and comforting at once.” God’s family is, as Rosaria puts it, “rough around the edges and held together by grace and blood and faith and the King of kings and Lord of lords…”

The story of Jesus in the Gospels includes all kinds of interesting people. (Think back to the subtitle of the Adam Hamilton study of Luke!)  As the back cover of this new Nancy Guthrie volume puts it, there are “some who claimed to be saints but proved to be scoundrels, as well as scoundrels who were transformed into saints.” If you were paying attention during Advent and Christmas, you got some of that, I’m sure. Even in our Christmas story there are some rough characters and some wild goings-on, and always the possibility of surprise reversals.

With fine writing and deep doctrinal knowledge and clear-headed faith she offers a fresh look at what shaped and maybe what motivated the likes of John the Baptist, Peter, the Pharisees, Zacchaeus, Judas, Caiaphas, Barabbas, Stephen and Paul.

Granted, there are bunches of books that have done “character studies” and, yet, we still are often moved by finding ourselves in their complicated stories. These kinds of books often work, and in her hands it is for reasons other than what we might call moralism. What is especially strong, here, in this telling of these tales, is how she helps us see so clearly how each reveals something of the goodness of God and the grace of Jesus towards all. God, finally, is the point of these very human stories. God, revealed in the person of Jesus the Christ.

Damon Garcia (Broadleaf Books) $18.99                 OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

I have been to protests where our nonviolent leadership was ignored and ugliness arose. (I have been to some where, despite our nonviolence, police ugliness arouse, too – whew.) I get how things can go haywire in such turbulent, contentious contexts. But I am not a fan of riots and there is no justification for destruction in the name of peaceful protest. Even though I liked the controversial 1971 Sly Stone album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, I’m taken aback by the title of this book.

Here, in this boldly provocative and passionately frank book, we are invited to realize that Jesus was a God who invited people to resist oppression, to take a stand against injustice, to rise up, and, well… be disruptive. One only need to think of Dorothy Day or MLK or the Berrigan brothers to recall how many great saints who knew their BIbles well understood something of this call to outcry.

You can read for yourself how this fresh public theology is informed by liberation themes and de-colonial theory. We are now years away from Occupy Wall Street, but this live on-the-streets storytelling in The God Who Riots and Garcia’s passion abasing structural injustice that hurts God’s little ones brings to mind that resistance work. From that socio-political angle, he takes up a fresh reading of the gospels.

Garcia knows the Bible and respects the Scriptures trajectory, even if less interested in this book about systematic details. This is a big look at God from the margins, insisting that following Jesus is costly. As one activist theologian put it, “our work today is to count the cost of what it really means to follow a Brown Palestinian Jew.” Are we now in Babylon? Do we need a whole new way to think about our relationship with the Empires of the age? It’s a live question.

Another similar book, while we are on this testy theme of deconstructing the safe and domesticated Jesus, which also does this with what some will think is an overcorrection, is Not Your White Jesus: Following a Radical, Refugee Messiah written by Sheri Faye Rosendahl (WJK) $18.00 – OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40. She bluntly states that Jesus is not American, does not want to “make America great again.” You get the vibe. She is unflinching in wanting to be true to the authentic Jesus and his subversive teachings, contrary to the gods of consumerism and nationalism and privelege. Listen to this, about Not Your White Jesus:

Be moved by the passionate, heartfelt reflections of a brutally honest, refreshingly real woman who is totally devoted to following Jesus into the hard places and among those often overlooked by the church. Yes, she’s forthright and candid. Yes, she says things that will likely rub you up the wrong way. She’s just trying to be true to Jesus – the radical, brown-skinned, refugee Jesus.”  –Michael Frost, author of Keep Christianity Weird, and Surprise the World!

Daman Garcia, in The God Who Riots, may also not have all the answers, but it seems obvious that, at least, “the Jesus who flipped tables in the temple led an empire-destabilizing movement for liberation.” This isn’t exactly a consistent study of the life and teachings of Jesus but somewhat of a story of a guy who read the footnotes, so to speak, learned to be inclusive and gracious to outsiders who were shunned in his pious and conventionally evangelical upbringing and needed to depart that tradition in order to embrace a progressive, radical faith and community. Agree or not, this story raises righteous questions for anyone paying attention to the themes of the Bible, the nature of Jesus, the teachings of the Master, or the anti-imperial, counter-cultural lifestyle of the early church. Whew.

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BookNotes

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Here’s a little essay to offer some context before I list five specific books that are seasonal, and then more than 20 that are more generally for those feeling conflicted or at the end of their rope this Christmas. Thanks for allowing me into your inbox this busy season; we don’t take it for granted. You can scroll to the very bottom to see our link to our secure Hearts & Minds order form. All books are 20% off.

I love Christmas. I love the joy, the sentiments, the colors, the smells. We don’t give a lot of family gifts anymore but I love the idea of nicely wrapped presents; I love trees and lights. I love the movie Elf.

And of course I love our church family and a very special service on Christmas Eve. Although we avoid singing them in Advent, and love Christmas carols.

But yet, I have long felt that even as we sing “oh come let us adore Him” we don’t really. We don’t pay much attention to the details of his real birth (a teen birth, a nearly homeless couple, born with animals and the very blue collar shepherds, etc.) Bracketed by Mary’s revolutionary cry in Luke 1 [the piece to the right is by Philadelphia artist Ben Wildflower] and the non-Jewish wise men’s civil disobedience against the genocide of the ruling powers, the story is never as quaint as it seems in Christmas cards. Or in most church services.

When I was a teen during some kind of youth Sunday at my church I played the Simon and Garfunkel song off their 1966 Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme album called “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night.” As Wikipedia puts it, the track is a sound collage juxtaposing a rendition of the Christmas carol “Silent Night” with a simulated 7 o’clock news bulletin consisting of actual events from the summer of 1966.”  I am not sure I had yet heard the famous quip by Karl Barth that we must read our Bibles with the newspaper in the other hand, but, as I dimly recall, not everyone in my EUB church saw my gimmick as fitting for a Sunday service. I knew it was a good juxtaposition, but couldn’t exactly say why.

Only later did I come to understand (a little bit, at least) of the theology of the incarnation (try the classic On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius to study up a bit) and the all-of-life-redeemed worldview that now seems so natural, but even as a teen I intuited that the Biblical story is messy, that Christmas is complicated, and that we humans are not as cheery as the Rockwell paintings might surmise. And that God was born into what Thomas Merton, I later learned, called “this demented inn.”

(Listen to this stunning song “Bethlehem” by Over the Rhine for a mournful song of longing that says much in a few moving minutes.)

No, I didn’t know much but I knew that the Lord had lots to say about serving others, not accumulating wealth, turning the other cheek and whatnot.

I didn’t need Jackson Browne’s “The Rebel Jesus” to remind me of the radical disruption the words of Jesus might bring to our holiday festivities, but it didn’t hurt.

The other day Fleming Rutledge and I were exchanging brief correspondence about her splendid, must-read book Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ in which she quipped that Advent is not for the faint of heart. The paradoxical embrace of light within darkness, of the now and the not yet, of crying out “Maranatha” even though we know that may mean judgement and something that seems like woe, is complex and intense. Her sermons in that book are among the very best I’ve seen and we do seriously recommend it. They will last a lifetime.

If you are interested, here is an Advent meditation I wrote for the annual CCO’s Advent devotional; they wanted a story, so I started with a story. Here is a really great one, and another that moved me deeply and yet another must-read by author Steve Garber, about crying out “How Long O Lord?”

And so, here we are in this last week of Advent, hoping against hope, longing for restoration, knowing that we have much to shout about given that Christ did come (even if the story is challenging) and that He can be “born in us today.” Yes, Advent looks back to the first coming of Christ, invites us to discern how Christ comes afresh, daily, now, and — and many miss this — how we are to eagerly await His return to bring healing judgement and final restoration to the cosmos. Past, present, and future.

For many of us, it is this waiting for final restoration that creates the texture of our hope. We are reminded by Bible verses galore and many great carols that the Kingdom breaking into human history in the incarnation (followed by the decisive death and resurrection of Christ, His ascension and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to empower the counter-cultural faith community) underscores and makes meaningful “the hopes and fears of all the years.” The story of our faith isn’t separate from the story of our lives. We can be honest about our hopes and we can be honest about our fears.

Which is a long way of saying that we don’t need to be jolly this time of year and while Andy Williams or whoever croons that it is the “hap, happiest time of the year” it simply isn’t so. At least not always.

For some, being “home for Christmas” is toxic. For others, being at home without all the loved ones present reminds us of our losses. Some have died of damn cancer (or whatever) and others from COVID. We are rightfully angry at Trump and the other anti-maskers who exacerbated the pandemic early on and allowed the spread of the disease causing more than a million fellow citizens to die, many needlessly.  Where is the judgement of Mary’s Magnificent when we need it?

I don’t know if you carry great burdens this time of year but I bet you do. Young or old, you know people who struggle with depression, who have faced great losses, who are ill, who understand in their bones those lines from “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” about the “crushing load” and that speaks of “all the weary world” (with “sad and lowly plains” no less.) I know you know about weariness, about crushing loads. We all do, but some of us more than others.

I do not mean to dampen anyone’s Christmas Spirit but the season of Advent — which, as Fleming implied, is not easy to practice well — invites us to be real about all this stuff. We long for God’s presence, we hunger for God’s healing, we cry for God’s redemption of all things. Laid low by political injustice here and abroad, gripped by the sorrows that now go by a new name, “climate grief”, or plagued by typical doubts about the reasonableness of our faith itself, or the sustainability of our church life, we soberly bring those things into the light that is to come.

It is paradoxical, weird work, this “already but not yet” project, and yet, despite the sadness we carry, the Jesus whose birth we celebrate (for 12 days at Christmastime!) grew up to say his burden was not heavy. Yes, the way is narrow, but it is not harsh. He calls us to pick up our crosses but he also invites us to a feast. He has come to bring life, even abundantly, Jesus promised in John 10:10. I love that verse! It is a counter script to the pain.

The generous abundance of renewed life in Christ does not negate the brokenness of the world. And so we learn to practice waiting. We do Advent, and get in touch with our hopes for peace and goodness, in part by being honest about our hurts.

On Easter morning I often put on Facebook my favorite version of “I Know That My Redeemer Lives”, a rare recording by the late, great Mark Heard. I sometimes note that it is a majestic song, made gritty and real by the nearly fragile rendition the world-weary Heard gives. Similarly, I love Sufjan’s Stevens’ quiet “Joy to the World” (from the gorgeously eccentric Songs for Christmas.) It’s not roaring out a triumphant victory with brass but it is so pretty it almost makes me weep.

FIRST, FIVE FOR AN HONEST HOLIDAY SEASON

A Weary World: Reflections for a Blue Christmas Kathy Escobar (WJK) $15.00                                  OUR SALE PRICE = $12.00

I highlighted this last year and should have named it again this year — it is the best book intentionally designed for those who find the holidays to be less than happy. Whether you wrestle with chronic pain or broken relationships or shattered dreams, a fragile faith or unexpected losses, “our grief and sorrow feel particularly acute when compared to the festivity and joy everyone else seems to be feeling.”

Kathy Escobar is pastor of The Refuge, a radical Christian community and mission in North Denver. She is a trained spiritual director and author Practicing: Changing Yourself to Change the World.

Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-with-Us, Then, Here, and Now Scott Erickson (Zondervan) $19.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

This is for any who want to re-focus on the deepest meaning of the holiday season, resisting consumerism and the loss of wonder. As Scott says, “Maybe for you, it has become a bittersweet season of complicated family dynamics, a predictable brand masking insatiable consumerism, or simply a sacred story that feels far too removed from our current chaotic world.”

Scott is an artist, a graphic designer, an on-the-ground theologian of sorts. Honest Advent shares “the shocking biology of a home birth that goes far behind the sanitized brand of Christmas as we know it.” This is a truly great book, nicely illustrated with hip graphics and raw prose. Particularly for younger folk, it is a must. We’ve got a few left — order now!

Wounded in Spirit: Advent Art and Meditations David Bannon (Paraclete Press) $29.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $23.99

Here is something I wrote about this beautiful book a few years ago:

We raved about this earlier in the season, explaining that Bannon is himself a bit of a hurting man. He is an honest guide as he’s had his own struggles; among other things, his adult daughter died in an awful tragedy. He knows a life of faith and he knows a life of sorrow.

Consequently he has been drawn to paintings that evoke lament and that honor the grief of these hard times and the art is ravishingly shown in this fabulously designed, handsome hardback. The paintings are mostly older, classic, even (Gauguin, Delacroix, Van Gogh, and more) and often done by artists who themselves were facing deep disappointments. Besides his own informative and tender prose, Bannon adds remarkable lines from poets and writers and thinkers — from N.T. Wright to Barbara Brown Taylor, Philip Yancey, Bonhoeffer, Nouwen, Paul Tournier, Joan of Arc, and more. He shares a bit about the latest research on grief. Yet, these rich daily reflections are more than an admitted “pilgrimage of brokenness.” Wounded in Spirit is a book of lovely, tangible hope.

There is a great forward by Philip Yancey (who says it has “become his guide.” Poet Luci Shaw calls these meditations and images “a marvelous gift.”

Because this book deserves to be known and taken seriously, allow me to excerpt a quote from the good Christian Century review written by Elizabeth Palmer:

David Bannon… has lived through the realities of failure and grief. In this book, he intersperses carefully curated photos of Christian art with his own reflections on the artists—their lives, their tragedies, and their persistent hopes. Bannon also evokes an honest grappling with grief by including brief quotations from a variety of thinkers: Carl Jung, Annie Dillard, Terence Fretheim, Isabel Allende, Elie Wiesel, Julian of Norwich, Simone Weil, N.T. Wright, and Søren Kierkegaard make appearances. Particularly evocative are the excerpts from Friedrich Rückert’s poems, which Bannon translates here into English for the first time: “Do not wrap yourself around the night, / bathe it in eternal light. / My tent is dark, the lamp is cold, / bless the light, the Joy of the World!”

The Advent of Justice: A Book of Meditations Brian Walsh, J. Richard Middleton, Mark Vander Vennen, and Sylvia Keesmaat (Wipf & Stock) $12.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $9.60

I have suggested this rigorously most previous years, suggesting that it is one of the most honest Biblical studies I know, exploring the socio-political context of the Advent texts of Isaiah and the gospels.  All four authors, who each take a week, are friends I admire more than this short shout-out can say.

I assume you know Old Testament scholar Richard Middleton (whose recent Abraham’s Silence: The Binding of Isaac, the Suffering of Job, and How to Talk Back to God is groundbreaking, not least in its honesty before God) and Brian and Sylvia, (see their amazingly provocative Empire Remixed website, and their amazingly good, very provocative commentary on Romans, Romans Remixed: Resisting Empire/Demanding Justice.) Mark is an old Pittsburgh friend, fellow peace-maker and activist and now therapist. The four of them did this book to commemorate the advocacy work of Canada’s Citizens for Public Justice and I list it here for those who long for some healing from our ugly and dysfunctional political situation. It is honest and doesn’t flinch from the deeply challenging poetry of the prophet of exile and homecoming. I have used this over and over and am still probing its Brueggemann-esque prose and deeply Biblical vision of God’s redeeming work in the world. It is Biblically solid, and consequently hopeful, but without any commercial sentiment whatsoever. If you haven’t gotten this, you should. It will help.

Advent: The Once Future Coming of Jesus Christ Fleming Rutledge (Eerdmans) $31.99         OUR SALE PRICE = $25.59

I have described this often, cited how some of the best theological thinkers and Christian writers working today have esteemed it. From Richard Hays to Marilyn McEntyre, from Michael Gorman to James K.A. Smith, her wit and wisdom is commended, her brave sermons
“tastefully unfolds the ethical and future-oriented significance of Advent for the church.”

Few resources have helped me understand a more historic and profound understanding of Advent waiting and the eschatological hopes of this season and its unique, sober practices. I very highly recommend it.

We still have it here at our 20% off and hope you order it. It’s 400 pages of mature Biblical insight.

BOOKS ABOUT COPING WITH HARDSHIP, SORROW, LOSS, PAIN…

A Crazy Holy Grace: The Healing Power of Pain and Memory Frederick Buechner (Zondervan) $16.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

Our friend Caleb Seeling, a Colorado editor and publisher, studied Buechner in college under the great Dale Brown. In Seeling’s fabulous introduction to this collection of various excerpts from Buechner’s many books he ends by citing a line from the novel, Godric — “All’s lost. All’s found.” And then writing:

And that’s what this new collection of Buechner’s writings, including a lecture he gave that has never before appeared in print, aims to help us realize — that when we enter the gates of pain and use the healing power of memory, we will hear God speaking, and we can take comfort and rest our weary souls in his crazy, holy, grace.

If you’ve not read Buechner’s lively, honest memoirs or theological prose, this is a great introduction. If yoiu love his work, you will appreciate this fabulous anthology.

You Can Talk to God Like That: The Surprising Power of Lament To Save Your Faith Abby Norman (Broadleaf Books) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

In recent years many good books have come out about lament as a faithful Biblical practice. Some are almost exclusively Biblical; this one is not like that. It is full of stories, ideas, practices, permissions, honoring our pain and inviting us to be real before God and others. Abby Norman’s got some wit and some energy going on so it isn’t a heavy book, really, even if it evokes some serious humane spirituality.

It is billed as “a hopeful and transformative introduction to the practice of lament.” It looks at many Psalms and invites us to bring our honest emotions and messy lives to God, for real.

In a moment when many around the world are experiencing grief, it’s also clear that many of us have forgotten how to lament. Abby Norman’s timely and wise book will help anyone who struggles with the language and expression of lament, whether collective or individual. — Kaya Oakes, author of The Nones Are Alright and The Defiant Middle

This book is an absolute gem of straight-talking encouragement and practical wisdom for anyone who’s frustrated by the lack of authenticity in church. Everyone needs an Abby Norman in their life: she has a rare gift of writing about unresolved suffering that will leave you feeling seen, hugged, and galvanized at the same time. — Tanya Marlow, author of Those Who Wait: Finding God in Disappointment, Doubt and Delay

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep Tish Harrison Warren (IVP) $22.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.60

We have raved about this before and any who order it from us (at our previously announced BookNotes 20% off) inevitably get a little message from me not only thanking them for ordering such a fine book but assuring them that it is, indeed, one of my all time favorite reads. It is gripping, honest, raw at times, deeply rooted in ancient faith insights (including some use of the Book of Common Prayer) and yet is utterly contemporary. Tish is a gifted writer and a fine thinker. It is an honor to call her a friend and this book allows us all in on some of the intimate struggles of her and her husband.

Like her must-read and thoroughly lovely Liturgy of the Ordinary, this one is nicely arranged and wonderfully written, serious without being heavy or academic. She’s a good pastor, a sharp thinker, but doesn’t write from the ivory tower. He life as a mom and wife and church worker is revealed as one that is hectic and sometime anguishing; she has experienced more sorrow than many of us.

Prayer in the Night is about how to pray in the midst of that context, one that is not uncommon, since all of us have sorrows, hurts, and fears. As I’ve said elsewhere, the “night” in the title is both metaphorical (praying in the dark night of the soul, with the gloom of doubt, amidst the midnight of hardship — you know) but it is firstly literal. It is about praying at night, using the structure of the BCP prayers of Compline.

Whether you are Episcopal or Anglian or Roman Catholic (and familiar with Compline) or not, this evening prayer makes sense and it is a practice that is both revealing and transformative.

To be creatures is to face many nights: the darkness of the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen. God, in his grace, does not promise to expel the dark; he promises to be with us in the night. In prose that is both powerful and vulnerable, Tish Harrison Warren invites us to receive Compline as a gift to help us face the dark. Prayer is how we press our hands into the invisible and find the hand of Christ reaching back. –James K. A. Smith, Calvin University, author of How to Inhabit Time

By the light of an ancient nighttime prayer, this book tenderly and thoroughly explores the beautiful and precarious reality of our shared human life. And it illuminates for us the ultimate Christian question: what it means to love and be loved by a God who made us as vulnerable as we are, and also made himself as vulnerable as we are. — Andy Crouch, author of The Life We’re Looking For

Companions in the Darkness: Seven Saints Who Struggled with Depression and Doubt Diana Gruber (IVP) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

This is a go-to book for us nowadays that we recommend for nearly anyone struggling with depression and/or doubt because it is rooted not only in the author’s own anguish but in clear-headed exploration and storytelling of others from church history who have walked that hard road. I appreciated learning about the historical realities of depression among the saints — who knew? She tells about Martin Luther, Charles Spurgeon William Cowper, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.

There is a great forward by counselor Chuck DeGroat, fabulous endorsements by the likes of Dr. Richard Winter and novelist and spiritual director Sharon Garlough Brown. Nicely done.

Time and Despondency: Regaining the Present in Faith and Life Nicole M. Roccas (Ancient Faith Publishing) $17.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.36

Dr. Nicole Rocca’s, a young Orthodox scholar (who lectures at Trinity College in Toronto) does, here, what most mature Orthodox writers do well — invites us into a deep, careful consideration of ancient sins in light of ancient truths and the good news of Christ. Without shaming us, she reminds us that Idleness, apathy, restlessness, procrastination are all symptoms of what the earlier Christian writers called despondency (or acedia.) It is a disorder of sorts, a “spiritual sickness rooted in a lack of care.”

As it says on the back cover:

A condition as old as the ancients, despondency thrives in today’s culture of leisure, anxiety, and digital distraction. Time and Despondency is a penetrating synthesis of ancient theology, spiritual memoir, and self-help practicality. It envisions despondency as the extension of a broken relationship with the experience of time.

Did you get that? If you’ve read the essential How to Embody Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now by James K. A. Smith (who shares a bit therein about his own struggles with depression) this last sentence will make sense, I think. It is still jarring, though.

Roccas invites us to regain the sacredness of time and to “re-encounter the Resurrection of Christ in the dark and restless moment of our lives.”

It isn’t about Advent but since Advent is the start of the liturgical calendar and the church year, this is a good time to start to ponder this serious book.

A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness Marlena Graves (Brazos Press) $19.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.20

Whenever anyone asks us about books on contemplative spirituality, the desert fathers and mothers, or how evangelicals might discover a more profound and ancient way of walking in faith, I almost always suggest this first book by popular writer, activist, leader, and author Marlena Graves. Rachel Held Evans, before her passing, called this “an extraordinary debut by one of today’s most promising new authors.” Other blurbs were from Dennis Okholm (Monk Habits for Everyday People) and Jan Johnson and Emile Griffin, all known for deeper, contemplative practices. Karen Swallow Prior called it “a rich blend of theology, devotional, memoir — which at times breaks into sheer poetry.”

Rachel Marie Stone (author of the stunning Birthing Hope: Giving Fear to the Light) is right in commending Marlena’s “gentle wisdom, pastoral tenderness, and graceful convictions” but says much when she observes that this book “offers a balm to the hurting and hope that our dry and weary times will with God’s help, bloom into something beautiful.”

Balm for dry and weary times. Yep. The heart of the book, actually, is a walk with Christ through the wilderness. Perfect for the time after Christmas.

Shaky Ground: What to Do After the Bottom Drops Out Traci Rhoades (Church Publishing) $18.95  OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16

Traci is a gem of a person, upbeat and witty, but down-to-earth and honest. She has travelled in diverse religious communities that she happily and honestly wrote about in Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) Are Lost and here, again, she shares with a ecumenicity and generosity that is striking. There is a lot to commend about her writing but mostly, she’s an honest storyteller.

And that counts for a whole lot for most of us. For one thing, it shows that we aren’t the only one who has feel the bottom drop out.

As it says on the back cover, “When all seems lost, we are not alone.”

“When all seems lost, we are not alone.”

The back cover copy continues: “Shaky Ground is an engaging roadmap through life’s struggles for anyone looking to dive deeper into faith.” This book is actually about just that — learning spiritual practices that help us seek meaning, even when things go haywire. Her spiritual disciplines are evolving for her as she finds ways to navigate faith in a fallen world.

There is a fabulously fun foreword by the great writer Catherine McNiel (All Shall Be Well: Awakening to God’s Presence in His Messy, Abundant World) who affirms her friend’s writings and the careful, solid, what she invites us to move along, even on shaky ground.

Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope During Hard Times Henri Nouwen (Thomas Nelson) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59

This small hardback is a solid, lovely book that you won’t forget.Father Nouwen offers solace without platitudes — never simplistic, always gentle; he wrote The Wounded Healer early in his ministry, so knows a bit about our fragile condition. This is a deeply comforting book and includes a lot. It was first gleaned from previously unpublished writings and presentations given by Nouwen over the years. I suppose you know that Henri wrote a book about the death of his father, another on the death of his mother. He was sensitive, caring, thoughtful, and always aware of the deep wounds of the world. Yet, he clung to Matthew 5:4, the promise of comfort for those who mourn.

These chapters are compiled from previous unpublished presentations, good for “even the darkest night.”

Out of Chaos: How God Makes New Things from the Broken Pieces of Life Jessica LaGrone (Zondervan Reflective / Seedbed) $18.99               OUR SALE PRICE = $15.19

This is an extraordinary book; can anything good come out of the chaos of life? I tend to be suspicious of books that gloss over our pain with religious platitudes, that fail to honor the struggles of real people. Because this author is the Dean of the Chapel at Asbury Theological Seminary I know she is experienced in comforting those in pain; she knows how to honor the chaos and relates well to those who experience bedlam and the struggle.

Here, though, while she is not offering cheesy “silver lining” bromides, she does challenge “the hope-destroying belief that God has abandoned us in our broken relationships, our pain, and our grief.”  “When the Spirit of God hovers,” she explains, “chaos can give birth to hope.”

There’s an excellent foreword by A. J. Swoboda, himself a very good writer, one who has written good books with titles like A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension Between Belief and Experience and After Doubt: How to Question Your Faith Without Losing It. If he recommends it, you know it’s worth reading, especially if you are facing your own chaos.

Voices of Lament: Reflections on Brokenness and Hope in a World Longing for Justice edited by Natasha Sistrunk Robinson (Revell) $19.99             OUR SALE PRICE = $15.99

I am thrilled with this recent book which I’ve only dipped into a bit. It has lots of great Biblical content, powerful voices by women of color, stories, meditations and exegesis of the famous Hebrew lament text, Psalm 37. Line by line they reflect on it, drawing in contemporary women writers we know and respect —Jenny Yang, Pat Raybon, Vivian Mabuni, Marlena Graves, Sheila Wise Rowe, Robinson, herself, of course and many more — and there are selections from women from around the globe (some who are no longer living) who offer essays and poems and meditations. This book is just a tremendously rich compilation with various genres side by side, giving a multidimensional appreciation for the Bible texts in question.

It is not overly dour, but it is a book of lament, beautifully done. We need this. Highly recommended.

Bright Hope: Discovering Resilient, Sustainable Ways of Living Through Even the Darkest Times Ted Blackman (Cascade) $31.00                               OUR SALE PRICE = $24.80

I was hooked on this powerful, thoughtful, serious book from the wonderful introduction by the author’s old friend from seminary days, Jim Wallis. Jim, as you may know, started up the Post American and, when their radical community of idealistic counter-cultural evangelicals moved to DC, changed their name of the flagship journal to Sojourners. Ted was part of that, an activist, more than a voice for peace, justice, reconciliation, and such, but was a doer, a servant of the poor, a street-level leader. And he became a psychologist and therapist. It seems like he evolved into a politically-savvy, righteous pastoral counselor who integrated faith and psychology, and not only for the privileged.

As becomes clear in Jim’s tender forward, Ted got cancer and, with a terminal diagnosis, set out to live a life of Christ-centered resilience. He was given less than a year to live, but lived more than a decade; deepened by that experience he developed and lived out a way of life “animated by hope in the transcendent reality of God’s future coming to us in the present. He is, I’m sure, an honest and yet inspiring companion for all of us.

Tristia Bauman (an attorney at the National Homelessness Law Center) calls it,  “A light in dark times.”

“A light in dark times.”

The book is for those who feel defeated or seek a new way forward “that reframes the present.” It is also for caregivers and activists and advocates who may “need new tools for replenishing both internal and external resources.” It is even good for congregational reading, for those communities of faith who are seeking to bring change to (or empowering hope for and with) marginalized folks.

We are all dying every day, but not all of us know that to the depths as did Ted Brackman. His book is a passionate, intelligent, faithful cry from the heart that speaks to all people seeking to follow Jesus in challenging times. Drink in Ted’s words of wisdom and be inspired anew to walk in joyous discipleship. — Wes Howard-Brook, author of Come Out, My People, God’s Call Out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond

How to Begin When Your World Is Ending: A Spiritual Field Guide to Joy Despite Everything Molly Phinney Baskette (Broadleaf Books) $26.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59

I like Molly Baskette for being a witty young UCC pastor who has other books about church revitalization, especially from her own mainline denominational context. This book, though, is her moving and quite witty, even probing, set of chapters helping folks through hard times. As one Jewish Rabbi wrote, “Your brain, heart, and soul will be better off for having spent some time in Molly Baskette’s extraordinary company.” I have been with her and can attest.

It is funny and nicely written, and it “whirls her reader through stories of hardship with a light step and a deft hand, all to the rhythm of grace.” As Emily Scott (who wrote the spectacular For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World), put it, “This book is for anyone learning to dance through difficult days.”

The Lord Is My Courage: Stepping Through the Shadows of Fear Toward the Voice of Love K.J. Ramsey (Zondervan) $22.99                                  OUR SALE PRICE = $18.39

We have reviewed this powerful read before (it came out over the summer) and we think it important to mention it again. K.J. previously wrote the extraordinary book about chronic pain called This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers and here, in this newer one, The Lord is My Courage, she walks through Psalm 23 as it ministered to her in a season of pain, trauma, church stress, toxic faith and more. She asks how we can cultivate courage when fear overshadows our lives. “How  do we hear the Voice of Love when hate and harm shout loud?” This is somewhat memoir, somewhat Bible study, balm for anybody hurting or disillusioned.

The stunningly good, artfully Christian psychiatrist Dr. Curt Thompson wrote a great foreword to The Lord Is My Courage which alerts you to its significance and quality.

PRE-ORDER: By the way, we already have a little waiting list for her mid-January release, The Book of Common Courage: Prayers and Poems to Find Strength in Small Moments. It releases 1/17/23 and goes for $19.99 — our sale price = $15.99. PRE-ORDER it today by using the link at the end of this column. We won’t charge you until we send it, of course in January.

I Understand: Pain, Love, and Healing After Suicide Vonnie Woodcock (Eerdmans) $14.99     OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99

There are several books like this that we carry; from the very short one by the excellent Catholic mystic Ronald Rolheiser (Bruised and Wounded: Struggling to Understand Suicide) to the recent memoir about the extended family by Heidi Paul (Abiding Light: In the Shadow of Your Absence) there is much good and helpful writing.

I Understand is written by the wife of a well-known business leader, Rob Woodrick, who took his life in 2002; she writes movingly how in the aftermath she wanted to understand. There was, of course, the stigma of mental illness that loomed large over Rob’s death which, she notes, made healing more difficult.

Vonnie found that the common assumptions surrounding suicide to be false. She says “Rob was not ‘crazy.’ He did not choose to take his own life. He was in agony and only wanted the pain to end.” Over a decade later she and her children created a nonprofit (i understand) to help others enduring this same grief and loneliness.

The back cover says, “This is the story of ow love transformed Vonnie’s brokenness into hope — not only for herself and her family but for anyone struggling to emerge from the darkness of suicide.”

A review I read somewhere online said this:

I Understand is about the living, about picking up the pieces and moving forward, about understand the root cause of suicide, about forgiving, about grieving, and about changing the conversation in how we talk about suicide.

There is, somewhat remarkably, a very good forward by actress Mariel Hemingway (whose famous grandfather, Ernest, famously shot himself) and who became friends with the author. Mariel writes,

“This book is an invitation to be brave enough to share our demons with others so that we can let them go.”

 

Sparrow: A Book of Life and Death and Life Jan Richardson (Wanton Gospeller Press) $24.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $19.20

A simply exquisitely made book, hefty, handsome, with deckled pages, one can tell it was designed by a maker, an artist. We carry Jan Richardson’s several books of devotionals and spirituality and very much recommend her prayerful poetic meditations and blessings in The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief (also published by her Wanton Gospeller Press, in hardcover or paperback.)

Richardson, you may know, is a beloved writer, artist and ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. She is the director of The Wellness Studio in Florida. She frequently collaborated with her husband and creative partner, the singer/songwriter Garrison Doles, until his sudden death in 2013.

Sparrow tells the story of their love, his death, and her soulful recovery. As she says,

We are attended. We are accompanied. We are asked to open our eyes, our hearts to the grace of it, that we might bear witness not only to the fall of the sparrow but also to what follows it.

A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Ritual Grief and Healing Amanda Held Opelt (Worthy) $27.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

Christmas is so very interesting in part because many families have unique and idiosyncratic ways of enjoying the holidays together. There are special family gatherings, distinctive rituals, habits that are so engrained that they become almost sacred, maybe what Jamie Smith (in You Are What You Love) called “liturgies.”

This idea for this extraordinary book is written by the bereaved sister of the late Rachel Held Evans (who died suddenly a few years back) as she tried to know how to grief. The idea of the book is simple and I do not know of any book like it. Each chapter of A Hole in the World is her learning about a certain grief ritual. She ponders wearing black, she explains the history of tolling bells, has a chapter on sending sympathy cards, she talks about sharing casseroles and a chapter on “funeral games.” We learn about Sitting Shiva. There’s a chapter called “Telling the Bees” (a rumination on fear) and a beautiful chapter on how memory is shaped by photography.  You get the point — it is somewhat of a history of grief rituals and it is somewhat a memoir of her own season walking through these distinctive practices. It’s a great read, interesting and healing, good for those in grief, or for those who will (I guarantee it) someday be in grief.

A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss revised and expanded Jerry Sitter (Zondervan) $25.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $21.79

I could do an entire BookNotes post about the many, many good books about grief but I can save you some time by suggesting this, our most-often recommended title for those in awful grief. Sittser is a great writer, a fine Christian leader, and suffered the loss of his wife and daughters in a horrific car accident. This book tells his story with honesty and grace. Philip Yancey (who has written some good titles on this) says it is “realistic and redemptive.”

This is a book you will never forget and, I suspect, will recommend to authors who have experience traumatic loss or serious grief.

Dare We Speak of Hope? Searching for a Language of Life in Faith and Politics Allan Aubrey Boesak (Eerdmans) $18.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $14.40

I have written and spoken about my admiration for this black, South African neo-Calvinist who was best friends with Desmond Tutu and helped lead the religious movement fighting for freedom during the evil apartheid regime in South Africa. It is rare to find scholar/pastor/activists who know Calvin and Kuyper and were friendly with Biko and Mandela. Who has himself despair (and been to jail.) As Nicholas Wolterstorff says in his very moving forward, this study of Biblical hope is “eloquent, challenging, and a deeply spiritual book.”

And so, while Curtiss Paul DeYoung calls it “a masterpiece” and “powerfully persuasive” it also is, it seems to me, a possible meditation for those who can’t quite wrap their minds around the joyfulness of a status quo Christmas. How do we practice hope in all its social and political implications? How do the oppressed of the world come into our thinking as we embrace this question of hope?

Yes, this is a book on politics. But it is also a deeply theological and deeply realistic study of God’s faithfulness and our call to what another has termed the audacity of hope. We hear about hope at Christmas, of course, but few holiday homilies get this real with the notion.

Songs of Resistance: Challenging Caesar and Empire R. Alan Streett (Cascade) $27.00             OUR SALE PRICE = $21.60

This new book looks fascinating to me and I very much respect this Baptist scholar, a researcher at Criswell College in Dallas. His previous books include Subversive Meals and Caesar and the Sacrament, both doing socio-political study of the meaning and implications of these sacraments.

Does cheesy praise music sometimes get you down? Do you wonder why some church groups can raise their voices (and maybe their hands) to worship Christ but then vote in ways that do not honor his basic teachings? Is there a way to rethink how we think about praise of Christ Jesus? Shouldn’t paying homage to this kind of King change our very lives?

This powerful, studious work looks at the hymns of the New Testament — that is, the praise and worship songs of the early church. He discovers that their lyrics contest and defy the “great tradition” of Rome and its claim to power.

Streett says,

The early Christ followers sang songs that opposed the empires worldview and offered an alternative vision for society. These songs were a first-century equivalent of modern-day protest songs. But instead of marching and singing in the streets, believers gathered in private spaces where they lifted their voices to Jesus and retold the story of his execution as an enemy of the state and how God raised him from the dead to rule over the universe.

“As they sang,” he notes, “believers were emboldened to remain faithful to Christ and withstand the temptation to comply with the sociopolitical agenda of the empire.”

Dr. Streett looks at Mary’s Song (Luke 1), the lyrical prologue of John 1, the hymn of Christ in Philippians 2, naturally Colossians 1:15-20, and the bit about the mystery of Godliness in 1 Timothy 3:16. He explores some hymn fragments and has a chapter about the songs of Revelation. Wow.  With the conclusion, there are 11 chapters in all. This is radical, Biblical stuff, maybe a strong enough salvo to help you with your Christmas funk. I hope so.

TO PLACE AN ORDER 

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

It is very helpful if you tell us how you prefer us to ship your orders.

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

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

• United States Postal Service has the option called “Media Mail” which is cheapest but can be slow. For one typical book, usually, it’s about $3.69; 2 lbs would be $4.36.
• United States Postal Service has another option called “Priority Mail” which is $8.50, now, if it fits in a flat rate envelope. Many children’s books and some Bibles are oversized so that might take the next size up which is $9.20. “Priority Mail” gets much more attention than does “Media Mail” and is often just a few days to anywhere in the US.
• UPS Ground is reliable but varies by weight and distance and may take longer than USPS. We’re happy to figure out your options for you once we know what you want.

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

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