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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to these quotes, please:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table of Contents:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The publisher tells us this much:

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

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

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

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

Here are some blurbs about it:

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

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

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

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

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

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