November 13, 2024

Matt Reynolds

Senior Editor, Books

The Black Church Has Five Theological Anchors

Within evangelical circles, we are currently enjoying what might be called a “retrieval revival.” Many believers are working to retrieve parts of our Christian heritage for the sake of enjoying…

Tending and Keeping the Christian Past in an ‘Ahistoric Age’

You may have heard this story before: While studying the past at Oxford, an atheist scholar converts to Christianity. But this isn’t the story of C. S. Lewis. This is…

The post CT Books – 11-13-24 appeared first on Christianity Today.

Resources Mentioned:

Why African American History Matters

Remembering Steve Albini

The Bulletin Episode 57: That’s Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man

Today’s Guests:

Nicole Martin serves Christianity Today as chief impact officer after serving on its board of directors. Nicole oversees three major strategic initiatives that are shaping the future of CT including the Global Initiative, the Big Tent Initiative, and the Next Gen Initiative.

Sheila Wise Rowe is a graduate of Tufts University and Cambridge College with a master’s degree in counseling psychology. She has over 30 years of experience as a Christian counselor, spiritual director, educator, writer, and speaker. Sheila has counseled women, children, couples, and emerging and established leaders. She has also taught counseling in Massachusetts; Paris, France, virtually; and for a decade in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she also ministered to homeless and abused women and children. Sheila’s essays can be found in numerous blogs, newspapers, journals, and books. In 2020, she authored the award-winning book, Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience. Recently, she wrote Young, Gifted, and Black: A Journey of Lament and Celebration and has coauthored the soon-to-be released Healing Leadership Trauma.

Author and media personality Hadeel Oueis leads Arabic communications on behalf of The Center for Peace Communications. An advocate for liberal democracy in her native Syria during the historic uprising against Bashar al-Assad, she subsequently relocated to the United States and developed her career in Arab media as an analyst of American foreign policy. She serves as a reporter for the Saudi daily Al-Riyadh, and now hosts biweekly programs on two leading independent news networks in the region: Iraq’s Al-Sharqiya and Yemen’s ATV. She appears frequently as a commentator on some of the region’s largest indigenous outlets as well as the Arabic editions of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, and Al-Hurra. Oueis holds a BA in sociology from the University of Aleppo.

William Miller is a wildlife biologist and professor at Calvin University. His research interests include One Health, landscape ecology, and wildlife diseases.

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and previously served as the Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University. She cohosts a podcast with Claude Atcho and Austin Carty called The Scandal of Reading: Pursuing Holy Wisdom with Christ & Pop Culture. She is the author of Flannery O’Connor’s “Why Do the Heathen Rage?”: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress (Brazos Press), among other works.

“The Bulletin” is a production of Christianity Today Executive Producer: Erik Petrik Producers: Clarissa Moll and Matt Stevens Associate Producers: McKenzie Hill and Raed Gilliam Editing and Mix: TJ Hester Music: Dan Phelps Show Design: Bryan Todd Graphic Design: Amy Jones Social Media: Kate Lucky

The post Something in the Way appeared first on Christianity Today.

For some, this looks like rediscovering older traditions of liturgical worship. Others are reading books like John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way, which introduces ancient spiritual formation practices to a new generation. And Christian publishers are pumping out titles about the value of early church and medieval theology for God’s people today.

When we give a fresh hearing to forgotten or silenced voices, we honor the past while expanding possibilities for the future. Just as the church is “always reforming,” as the Reformation adage says, there is a sense in which it should always be retrieving. These are shared synapses, meant to fire together.

In the American context, perhaps the most urgent work of retrieval relates to African American Christianity. Even many well-read believers—regardless of ethnicity—have too little knowledge of this tradition. African American Christianity is a significant story within the singular story of church history. When we lack familiarity with its contours, we know less of God’s faithfulness. In retrieving it, however, we allow it to reform our faith and practice.

This is part of the gift Walter R. Strickland II presents to readers in Swing Low, his massive new treatment of the Black church in America. Strickland’s groundbreaking book amplifies a story we have tended to ignore or, at best, grant a selective hearing to.

Strickland, a theology professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, unfolds his account over two volumes: one subtitled A History of Black Christianity in the United States and the other An Anthology of Black Christianity in the United States (which gathers a wealth of primary source writings). Taken together, the two volumes immerse readers in the grand narrative of the Black church experience, educating and edifying as they magnify the God who makes a way out of no way (Isa. 43:19).

Many writers and scholars have tackled the story of African American Christianity, taking a variety of approaches. Previous efforts have applied the lenses of historical survey (Paul Harvey’s Through the Story, Through the Night), denominational development (C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya’s The Black Church in the African American Experience), African and cultural origins (Albert J. Raboteau’s Slave Religion), and pastoral lament (Thabiti M. Anyabwile’s The Decline of African American Theology).

For its part, Swing Low takes a comprehensive approach, blending history, theology, and firsthand testimony from prominent Black church figures. Surveying events from 1619 to the present, Strickland proposes five theological “anchors” of Black Christianity—core commitments that “emerged from the nascent days of African American faith” and endure to this day.

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The first anchor is “Big God.” As Strickland describes it, the Black church tradition stresses God’s sovereignty as Lord over all, emphasizing his capacity to “do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20).

The second is “Jesus,” portrayed as the Man of Sorrows, friend of sinners, and Savior of the world. The suffering of Christ and the atoning power of his blood are vital to any understanding of Black Christian faith.

Third, Strickland notes the importance of “Conversion and Walking in the Spirit.” Here, he highlights Black Christianity’s early roots in the revivals of the First Great Awakening, which infused it with a passion for conversion and sanctification.

Fourth, Strickland highlights “The Good Book,” emphasizing the Bible’s centrality to Black faith, from its oral rehearsal in slave songs to the insistence on “telling the story” that pervades Black preaching.

Last, and crucially, Strickland cites the theme of “Deliverance.” This fifth anchor is rooted, he writes, in the fact that “God is a liberator.” Deliverance, Strickland argues, has a multifaceted meaning. The theme originates in the Old Testament, with Israel’s rescue from Egypt and the observance of Jubilee years, when slaves are freed and debts forgiven. But it reaches a climax in Christ’s atonement, which frees his people from sin and death and assures their victory in “God’s eschatological kingdom.”

Throughout Strickland’s narrative, the five anchors give readers handles by which to grasp, appreciate, and evaluate the trials and triumphs of Black faith in America. They offer a framework for seeing the development of this faith across historical eras, illustrating both where Black Christians speak with one voice and where elements of diversity remain.

As Strickland shows, various Black Christian leaders have sought to revise our understanding of certain anchors, prioritize one over the others, or integrate them in different ways. In one example, he argues that modern Black liberation theology reflects a desire to heighten themes of deliverance while departing from widely held conceptions of the role of Scripture and the work of Christ.

A picture emerges, then, of Black Christianity beginning mainly as a single trunk, from which various branches and limbs have grown in response to scholarly trends, the ravages of systematic racism, and major shifts in Black and American life. Swing Low is valuable for understanding, historically and intellectually, the “birth story” of Black Christianity and the beauty and diversity that marks its development. Even as that diversity, at times, stretches beyond the bounds of historic orthodoxy, Strickland commendably tells the full story, giving space to even dissenting writers in his anthology.

The African American Christian tradition is never merely intellectual. It is inherently celebratory and participatory, its doctrines culminating in praise and action. Likewise, Swing Low embodies the very theological tendencies it describes, which is perhaps its greatest strength. Beyond telling the story of African American Christianity, the book offers a vivid encounter with the Lord at its center. It radiates God’s faithfulness to his church, no matter the oppression or obstacles it faced.

In particular, Strickland’s narrative demonstrates the enduring witness and gift of Black faith on American soil. Early on, American colonists were frequently hesitant, if not outright unwilling, to evangelize Black slaves. One missionary, Francis Le Jau, insisted that slaves sign a pledge, wherein they promised not to “ask for holy baptism out of any design to free [themselves] … but merely for the good of [their souls].”

This form of Christianity, to borrow the language of Strickland’s fifth anchor, was purposefully devoid of deliverance. Out of this truncated gospel, however, African American Christians recovered the deliverance motif that runs through Scripture, setting “trajectories for African American Christianity that are evident among Black Christians today.” In refusing to accept a slaveholder’s gospel, Black believers cultivated a more biblical expression of Christian faith on American soil, one rooted in the love of God and neighbor. They advanced a gospel that touches body and soul.

In such ways, the advent of Black Christianity played a pivotal role in fusing orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice). In a famed second-century apologetic for Christianity, the Epistle to Diognetus, the anonymous author states that “the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body.” Reading Strickland’s account, one can hardly help concluding that God, in his providence, appointed the Black church as a corrective conscience to its white counterpart—a cleansing ecclesial soul to a compromised ecclesial body.

The Unearthed Conscience of Black Fundamentalism

Daniel R. Bare

As Strickland puts it, African American Christianity is not impressed with an orthodoxy severed from orthopraxy, for “the simple affirmation of biblical concepts is not the goal of a doctrinal statement.” Statements like these help explain why Swing Low covers the robust yet forgotten history of African American missions. Strickland highlights the neglected stories of Betsey Stockton (a missionary to Hawaii), John Marrant (who witnessed to Native Americans in the 1770s), and Lott Carey, “the first recorded American missionary to West Africa.” For these and like-minded figures, knowing the gospel meant doing something with it for the good of others.

The thematic throughline of Swing Low is Strickland’s portrait of African American Christians as “a determined people driven by faith to pursue spiritual and social uplift for themselves and others to God’s glory.” I found his account of this drive for spiritual and social uplift in the modern era (1969 and onward) particularly riveting.

Strickland wisely devotes multiple chapters to narrating the development of Black evangelical theology in response to racists, riots, and other 1960s-era tumult. He then offers multiple chapters recounting the development of modern Black liberation theology, which occurred along a similar timeline. Strickland’s meticulous yet concise retrieval introduces readers to overlooked figures like Tom Skinner, William Pannell, and William H. Bentley. Broadly speaking, these figures sought to free themselves “from uncritical dependence upon White evangelical theologians who would attempt to tell us what the content of our efforts at liberation should be.”

Movements like the National Black Evangelical Association worked to emphasize the anchor of deliverance, attempting to counter Black liberation theology with a socially conscious evangelical alternative. Strickland observes that this movement “started strong but did not persist,” in part because “many of its primary proponents were ministry practitioners, not academics.” Since academics can focus more attention on writing than ministers, Strickland observes, Black evangelical theology couldn’t produce a body of written work to compete with the Black liberationists.

As he ranges across the modern evangelical landscape, Strickland’s narration and analysis are trenchant—and painfully relevant. Readers see how efforts to seek distance from white evangelical institutions in the 1970s foreshadow more contemporary dynamics, such as those considered in a 2018 New York Times article titled “A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Believers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches.”

I have only a few minor quibbles with Swing Low. Because Strickland’s occasional moments of prescriptive analysis are so insightful, readers might benefit from more of them, especially in the form of a longer concluding word or epilogue.

In the final chapter of volume 1, “Into the Twenty-First Century,” Strickland gives a brief assessment of where Black Christianity is headed. Strickland sees three major movements: “the anchored, conscious, and culturally liberated Christians,” “Black liberationists,” and “Black evangelicals.” The final chapter centers on the first group. As Strickland notes, believers in this category worship and serve in a range of church contexts, but they have largely broken away from white evangelicalism. Today, you can find them returning to Black churches or other ecclesial contexts that are “socially conscious and celebrate Black cultural expression,” even as they remain rooted in the five anchors.

Strickland briefly hypothesizes that this movement will develop in contrast to liberationists and “adjacent” to Black evangelicals. He suggests that “the major question for their future is not regarding doctrinal commitments,” but instead “where these believers will find their homes in terms of local churches, established Christian ministries, and institutions and church-planting movements.” This is fascinating terrain, and I’d like more of Strickland’s thoughts on it.

My other critique pertains to volume 2, Strickland’s anthology. It is, to be sure, remarkable in its depth and breadth, with genre headings that include “Sermons and Oratory,” “Theological Treatises,” “Worship and Liturgy,” and “Personal Correspondence and Autobiography.”

I was enthused to see such a wonderful range of voices and texts but surprised that Strickland omitted the fiery Jeremiah Wright sermon that caused campaign trouble for Barack Obama in 2008. Wright, Obama’s former pastor, sparked great controversy for his “God damn America” refrain decrying American militarism. For many American Christians, though, this sermon represented their first encounter with a certain strand of Black prophetic Christianity or liberation theology.

Missing as well are the contributions of African American Roman Catholics, whom the scholar Raboteau once called “a minority within the minority.” Strickland notes in the opening pages why Black Catholicism is beyond the scope of his project, but one can hope that his work will spur others to retrieve the story of Black belief in all its ecumenical dimensions.

These small constructive notes aside, Swing Low is poised to become a standard guide to the history of African American Christianity. Strickland has blessed the church with a thorough and much-needed work of retrieval. With this book’s inspiration, we can give ourselves more passionately to the reforming work of orthodoxy and orthopraxy for the spiritual and social uplift of all, to the glory of God.

Claude Atcho is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just.

The post The Black Church Has Five Theological Anchors appeared first on Christianity Today.

Reading Black Books

Atcho (Author)

Baker Pub Group/Baker Books

208 pages

$8.99

Christianity is no stranger to the importance of “I am” statements. God’s self-disclosure declared him to be I am (Ex. 3:14). Through seven “I am” statements, John’s gospel explains who Jesus is, the eternal Word made flesh. There is, then, both theological origin and depth to the “I am a man” declaration of those workers. The declaration is a demand to be recognized and seen as fully human and made in God’s image.

The image of God is like a doctrinal diamond, refracting multiple truths about humanity. Yet much standard Protestant theological reflection does not account for the doctrinal elephant in the room: What does it mean to live as an image bearer when other image bearers try to limit your existence?

Read through a theological lens, the classics of Black literature, like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, can point us toward a rich and profound answer. Ellison’s attention to the embodied experience of invisibility pushes us into a deeper recognition that the imago Dei is a visceral doctrine concerned with blood and bones, dignity and freedom, bodies and sight.

Widely lauded as one of the finest 20th-century novels, Invisible Man is an expansive, landmark text, tracing the painful absurdity of Black life in the Jim Crow South and the thinly veiled racism of the urbane North. Ellison’s novel is comedic and tragic, gritty and surreal, mythic and symbolic, layered and accessible. At its center is Ellison’s nameless protagonist and his quest to find dignity in an American society devout in its denial of his humanity.

The novel opens with the protagonist, Invisible, mulling over his life’s journey with an arresting, metaphorical “I am” declaration: “I am an invisible man.” Readers quickly find that Invisible is not seen as a full human complete with autonomy and dignity. He is viewed only as a living pawn to be acted upon or moved in service to any agenda but his own.

What is the source of Invisible’s invisibility? As we quickly learn, it results not from any defect of his own but from the moral faults of those who behold him: “My invisibility … occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality.” This sort of diagnosis draws us toward the notion of sin—a malfunction of the spirit, a malady that burrows deeper than rational, surface externals.

The novel’s early battle royal scene is an appalling example of invisibility and its visceral, bodily consequences. As the high school valedictorian of his Southern school, Invisible is invited to deliver a speech on Black humility to an audience of the town’s most important white leaders. Upon arrival, Invisible is not called to the podium but forced by the white organizers to partake in the entertainment that precedes his speech.

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What follows is a traumatizing, degrading debacle: Ten Black students are led into a smoky ballroom under the drunken gaze of “the most important men of the town … bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants” and placed before a “magnificent blonde [woman]—stark naked” before being blindfolded, set in a makeshift boxing ring, and commanded to blindly beat each other battle royal style while the white townsmen hoot, holler, and hurl racial epithets. Bruised and beaten, Invisible is thankful to close the night with his speech, swallowing his own blood and saliva to expound on the need for Blacks to be humble and socially responsible. He’s rewarded with a briefcase and a scholarship to a Negro college.

The battle royal, in the novel’s view, is society in miniature: Representatives of every slice of society gaze upon Invisible as a means to an end, a human prop for fetishized entertainment and a muzzled voice for proclaiming that the absence of equality is due to the absence of Black responsibility. Even his rhetoric is confined to the talking points of a segregated society. The crowd hardly listens to a word of his speech “until, no doubt distracted by having to gulp down my own blood,” he blurts out the phrase “social equality.” Upon which “the laughter hung smokelike in the sudden stillness,” and “sounds of displeasure filled the room.”

In this moment, blood functions in pivotal ways that illumine the dignity and physicality of the imago Dei. Blood, of course, is charged with theological significance. In Scripture, blood makes expiation for sin (Lev. 17:11) and “the life of every creature is its blood” (Lev. 17:14). Life, both temporal and eternal, is a matter of blood.

To even utter words that hold Black people responsible for the problem of white racism—the message that appeases the white crowd—Invisible must swallow his own blood, the very substance of life within him. To champion social responsibility as the path to human dignity is to deny one’s God-given humanity as an image bearer. Dignity is not earned; it is given by the very hand and heart of God. This is the reality Invisible must swallow and deny in order to proclaim responsibility as the way out of invisibility.

At the same moment, his blood cries out like Abel’s, though not from the ground but from within his own body. Invisible, “distracted by having to gulp down” his own blood, calls unintentionally for social equality. It is blood, the source of life and salvation, that causes a divine slip of the tongue: Image bearers are made for dignity and freedom.

Visibility and dignity are at the crux of much of African American history. When early Black church leaders like Richard Allen and Absalom Jones simply wanted to pray in the front of their church undisturbed, they sought to be seen in body and soul. When Sojourner Truth raised her voice to speak for the rights of Black women, declaring, “Ain’t I a woman?” she effectively issued a rhetorical demand to be seen.

Invisible’s realization of his invisibility is a traumatic awakening that builds like a cursed crescendo. For most of the novel, we watch as he lives with pharisaical adherence to the laws of respectability politics and ideals of personal responsibility, only to be boomeranged back and forth between false hope and dehumanizing embarrassment, finding himself used and discarded by each figurehead and institution he encounters.

Living invisible—as one whose dignity is given by God but denied by humanity—produces profound internal tension. Invisible’s existence is marked by a “painful, contradictory voice … within me,” a pulsating “guilt and puzzlement” as he feels the pull of revenge toward an unjust society and his “obsession with my identity” in the form of questions like “Who was I, how had I come to be?”

The story line of the novel advances as Invisible experiences the whiplash of his invisibility and responds with new strategies—from personal responsibility to career prospects to political activism—for asserting his personhood. In particular, education, via the scholarship to a Negro college won at the battle royal, becomes Invisible’s messianic hope. But he soon suffers a crisis after chauffeuring the school’s white trustee, Mr. Norton, on a voyeuristic ride to observe the troubling lives of nearby rural Black folks, leaving the trustee deeply traumatized.

The Negro college president, Dr. Bledsoe, castigates Invisible for not knowing that he should have kept him on the campus. After rebuking Invisible (“instead of uplifting the race, you’ve torn it down”), Dr. Bledsoe expels him from the college and sends him into exile: He is to journey to New York City to work and earn tuition for the following year.

Dr. Bledsoe sends Invisible away with seven sealed letters addressed to “several friends of the school” who are meant to assist Invisible upon his arrival. Encouraged that the letters “were addressed to some of the most important men in the whole country,” Invisible enters his northern exile with a burgeoning sense of dignity, though this confidence is tempered, for the letters are seen by no one:

I caught myself wishing for someone to show the letters to, someone who could give me a proper reflection of my importance. Finally, I went to the mirror and gave myself an admiring smile as I spread the letters upon the dresser like a hand of high trump cards.

Understood theologically, Invisible’s desire for “a proper reflection of my importance” is the longing to be seen by others in such a manner that confirms the image of God in him and ratifies his inherent dignity. Unable to find this in a Jim Crow world, Invisible labors to give himself what he has not received from others. But with no one to properly see and affirm his dignity, Invisible’s turn toward the mirror falls flat, a demonstration that the image of God in us is most seen and celebrated in community, not in isolation.

The scene is tragic, for the letters in which he hopes are but a flimsy substitute for what he is himself: one made in God’s image. There is dignity in our merits, work, and education. But not the sort of foundational dignity that can bear the weight of defining us in a world often out to degrade us or to deify us. To know deep in one’s bones that one is made and loved by God is to be filled with reservoirs of resolve to image God in freedom and righteousness, no matter the world’s gaze.

Invisible arrives at his epiphany as a grassroots activist in Harlem for a multiethnic movement called “the Brotherhood.” At this stage in the story, he is a dynamic speaker under the marching orders of Brother Jack, a white man, and the movement’s mission to shape “a better world for all people.”

Here, too, Ellison’s protagonist is confronted with the ugly truth of his invisibility. In the eyes of this movement, he is less a person than a commodity. After Invisible leads an unauthorized protest, Brother Jack berates him, at which point Ellison shows us the root cause of invisibility from Invisible’s view:

Suddenly something seemed to erupt out of [Jack’s] face. You’re seeing things, I thought, hearing it strike sharply against the table and roll as his arm shot out and snatched an object the size of a large marble and dropped it, plop! into his glass. … And there on the bottom lay an eye. A glass eye.

Ellison’s protagonist thinks he’s been seen in his humanity—after all, he’s been a leader, speaker, and influencer in the movement—but the symbolism of the glass eye demonstrates otherwise. Those who possess a glass eye have, in the novel’s terms, a “polished and humane facade” of moral sight that hides a “harsh red rawness.”

Soon, Invisible experiences a deeper revelation: “I looked around a corner of my mind and saw Jack, Norton, and Emerson merge into one single white figure. … Now I recognized my invisibility.” Each branch of society embodied by these figures—and society as a whole—possesses a glass eye, a defect that renders Black life invisible.

Invisible’s conversion moment—his awakening—is visceral and visionary. He sees things on two planes: the physical—an eye erupting from an angry white face—and the spiritual—his mind prompting a transformative vision. Both revelations affirm that the invisibility of Black people is not the result of a fault in our being or doing. The fault of invisibility resides in the gaze of persons and institutions that blend into “one single white figure.”

Though we are not sinless, we are not at fault for the invisibility imposed upon us. Like all persons, we bear God’s image. Like all humanity, we share an existence and a nature that is at once broken and beautiful. Like all people, we possess in our very selves a humanity that is worthy of affirmation, that demands an embodied freedom, and that needs Christ’s redeeming grace.

No matter how we understand ourselves, we must reckon with how others see us—and they must reckon with how we see them. Theologically, this means the test of our commitment to the imago Dei is not what we believe about the doctrine of the image of God but how we view, treat, and relate to our fellow image bearers—particularly those most prone to be rendered invisible. Our doctrine is not tested by its rational precision but by its lived application.

While attuned to the particulars of the Black experience, Invisible Man also ponders whether the dynamics of invisibility are part of the universal truth of human experience. This manifests in the novel’s structure and bookends. It opens with the declaration “I am an invisible man” and ends with a question: “Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

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The first word of the novel, then, is like a preached word, an indicative truth: I am an invisible man. And the last word, like the conclusion of a well-crafted sermon, drives the audience toward self-reflection: Does this narrative, in any way, speak for you? In this manner, the novel’s framing—epilogue and prologue, opening salvo and final word—invites us to consider our shared human association, how we see each other and live together.

Anytime we see and relate to others as a means to an end, engaging them purely on the level of personal gain, our seeing is theologically skewed. When we view children as a drain and nuisance, coworkers as footstools to our advancement, significant others as receptacles for our frustrations and dispensers of our happiness, we walk in the tragic tradition of fallen humanity, seeing God’s visible image bearers not through the true lens of their dignity but selectively, as commodities. We render them invisible.

What, then, is the way forward? If our sight is off, causing us to sin against God and his image bearers, our eyes—that is, our moral and social imagination—must be removed, replaced, redeemed. If our eyes cause us to sin, we must tear them out, Christ declared (Matt. 5:29; 18:9).

Our sight needs redemption, which requires both repentance and a Redeemer who draws us back to the purpose for which we were made. Christ—the image of God—must be the center of our vision, as the image of true humanity and the redeemer of broken humanity. He is the one who seeks the invisible, comforts the outcast, and dissolves the hostilities between those who have seen each other through the lens of hatred, exploitation, and invisibility. It is Christ, the image of the invisible God, who mends and heals broken image bearers—body, soul, eyes, and all—so that we might grow to behold one another rightly as we image our Creator under the Spirit’s powerful, loving sway.

Claude Atcho is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville. Adapted from Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just by Claude Atcho (Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, ©2022). Used by permission.

The post The Image of God in ‘Invisible Man’ appeared first on Christianity Today.

Reading Black Books

Atcho (Author)

Baker Pub Group/Baker Books

208 pages

$8.99

What is a Black book? How do you define it?

For me, it’s those classic, canonical texts that look at African American experience, hope, and concern but also—as literature—have stood the test of time. It’s not just about having an interesting plot; these books take up significant themes and ask important questions about human experience universally, but Black experience in particular.

What’s an example?

I remember reading Richard Wright’s novel Native Son as an undergraduate and being just floored by the power of the writing and the portrayal of human existence it puts forth. It rocked my world. I just remember thinking: What does this story mean for me as a Christian? I felt this burning urge to talk about the book from a literary and religious perspective—as a matter of theology and lived faith alike.

How can books like Native Son—or Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, or Toni Morrison’s Beloved—move readers to a deeper theological understanding of, say, the imago Dei?

With Invisible Man, for instance, you can begin to wonder: How do I actually see people? For white Christian readers, for example, it’s unlikely they would deny that an Asian American, African American, African, or immigrant is made in God’s image. But by reading these novels, we learn that when we habitually see people in certain ways, filling our minds with particular stereotypes, then we’re not truly seeing them. So, reading these books can be a corrective that produces empathy. And I would hope that for Christian readers, our empathy would be Christian empathy, rooted in what Christ displayed for us.

What do Christians miss when they avoid or condemn Black books?

What’s missed is the story of God at work—and God’s not at work just among one people. We’re shutting the door and closing ourselves from a view of God’s faithfulness from below, as it were. From the African American experience, we can see what it means for God to be with, among, and faithful to people going through trial and suffering—people who, in the words of theologian Howard Thurman, are disinherited, rejected, and despised. Avoiding these books cripples our imagination, which leads to a truncated faith and practice. If we take the plunge of humility to read and learn beyond our perspective, we can grow in lived righteousness.

What can Black books offer to Black readers themselves?

What faith “from below” produces in the hearts of people who are suffering is a power almost beyond words. When people who feel the world crushing them in every way possible can say, “Here is Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory; he knows exactly what I’ve experienced, and I can look at his crucifixion and know he cares”—what that puts into a person’s soul, I don’t think you can really quantify. It makes concrete the truth of God’s love and presence for people who have experienced immeasurable pain and suffering.

African American literature, in particular, depicts suffering people looking to the Suffering Servant and finding the hope and comfort that the Bible speaks of. That’s the gift of attending to this literature in a literary and theological way. We’re guided into a fuller biblical picture of who God is and what God is calling us to.

How do you answer complaints that some Black books are too explicit or violent?

Part of our faith is being honest about human experience: that it can be beautiful, but also very grimy. True literature is going to deal with that in uncomfortable ways. But we are called to enter into the pain and stories of others. Maybe somebody isn’t ready to step straight into reading a novel like Beloved. But you can read Margaret Walker’s poetry or James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain. There are all sorts of different entry points if we’re willing to have the posture of a learner and to learn with others.

Are there advantages, then, to reading these books communally?

That’s the way we read best—when we’re reading, discussing, and processing books together. When we can say to each other, “What did that feel like to you? Here’s how it felt to me.” In reading communally, we rely not only on our own understanding, but also on the strength of the community to process together, and that’s where the best learning and transformation will emerge.

You declare that sin has a systemic dimension—that it isn’t just an individual’s isolated failing. Why do some Christians resist that view?

There’s a fear that affirming the social dynamics of sin—that sin can be found in systems or organizations—has the effect of denying individual responsibility for sin and our individual need for forgiveness. But if you read Native Son, for example, and take it seriously, it paints a fuller picture of sin—that it’s not just a volitional choice of one person but also a power that lords over us and has social dynamics and connections that go deeper than we care to admit.

As we read our Scriptures, like the Book of Romans, it’s clear that sin is both a verb and a noun. It impacts individuals, but also the whole world. As people made for fellowship with God and one another, our sin creates fractures that run both vertically and horizontally. We can debate how far those ripples go, but those ripples do, in fact, go downstream.

Juneteenth Was an Answer to Centuries of Prayer

Eric Washington

Your book was conceived during the summer of 2020, in a moment of racial reckoning. Since then, we’ve seen a period of pushback. Do you ever worry that your book missed the moment?

The time is still right because, with God, the time is always right. The kingdom of God is at hand. So there’s always hope to be had. And on a practical level, I just couldn’t go back into Target and see all these books lined up on the shelf without wanting to say, “Let me be a guide to people who might buy James Baldwin books while they get their groceries. Let me try to contribute something for people who might pick up these great works and then wonder: What does this mean for me?”

Your book closes on the theology of hope, as shown in Margaret Walker’s poem “For My People.” But the poem only feels hopeful in the last stanza. Why, then, do you recommend it?

In the poem, Walker traces through all these trials and stumbles that define African American experience—including what she calls the “unseen creatures who tower over us omnisciently and laugh.” Yet, in closing, she still summons up the hope to say, “Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born.” This is the invading nature of hope. There’s a sort of cosmic evil at work in the world, which means we need an invading hope whose arrival is almost unexplainable. I couldn’t imagine anything but this poem to close the book.

Claude Atcho is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The post The Christian Case for Reading Black Classics appeared first on Christianity Today.

When my alarm buzzes on the morning of an especially busy day, I often respond with a strange lack of urgency. A low rumble of dread builds as I ponder all the chores, errands, or work tasks that need completing. But instead of resolving to get up and get cracking, I linger in bed, nearly paralyzed by the weight of responsibility. I know what I need to do, but for some reason I can’t summon the willpower to do it.

Something similar plays out in the lives of many Christians, according to Uche Anizor, a professor at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. They know they’re supposed to love God, study Scripture, and pursue a life of holiness, but they can’t escape the clutches of spiritual indifference. In Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care, Anizor appeals to lukewarm believers, not with an accusing glare or a motivational speaker’s bullhorn, but with the compassion of someone who has fought this battle himself.

It’s a worthy choice for CT’s Book of the Year. Across the board, the judges who read and evaluated it commended Anizor for putting his finger on a problem that routinely flies under the radar, even as it sinks so many of God’s people into a spiritual quagmire.

Like Overcoming Apathy, all of our Book Awards winners have the capacity to awaken slumbering souls, whether they ring out with theological wisdom, literary beauty, pastoral warmth, or everyday encouragement. Don’t sleep on any of them. —Matt Reynolds, CT books editor

Apologetics & Evangelism

The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality

Glen Scrivener | The Good Book Company

The Air We Breathe is a book for this moment. Western society increasingly seeks to break free from its Christian moorings, yet at the same time it holds in high regard such values as equality, freedom, science, and compassion. Scrivener shows that these values (and more) are in fact thoroughly Christian. They appear self-evident to our 21st-century thinking, but they were certainly not the norm in the ancient world. Scrivener writes in an engaging and powerfully persuasive way, connecting with key cultural reference points from the past and present and combining apologetic arguments with compelling appeals to believers and seekers alike. His book is honest, eloquent, and at times shocking, but all in the interest of getting to the heart of the matter. —Sharon Dirckx, freelance speaker, author, and adjunct lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics

Award of Merit

Is God a Vindictive Bully?: Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments

Paul Copan | Baker Academic

Many Christians struggle to understand how a loving God could command some of the things he commands, and this book is the best single volume on the subject. Its scope is amazing. Most of us are familiar with what Copan calls “critics from without,” namely those, like Richard Dawkins, who argue that the God revealed in the Old Testament is evil. Copan forcefully answers their charges. But the real challenge today comes from “critics from within,” those who want to “unhitch” the Old Testament from the New, or worse, who wonder if the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New. Copan addresses questions about polygamy, “divine smitings,” foreign slaves, the Canaanite conquest, and much, much more. His work is well argued, discerning, and refreshing. —Clay Jones, chairman of the board of Ratio Christi

Finalists

Why Believe?: A Reasoned Approach to Christianity

Neil Shenvi | Crossway

Logic and the Way of Jesus: Thinking Critically and Christianly

Travis Dickinson | B&H

Biblical Studies

The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books

Simon Gathercole | Eerdmans

People are surprised when they first hear there are other gospels besides Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Why are these not in our Bibles? Various arguments have been proposed. One of the top New Testament scholars in the world, Simon Gathercole, brings all canonical and noncanonical gospels together and argues that the four canonical gospels share key theological elements that differentiate them: Jesus’ messiahship, his death, his resurrection, and his fulfillment of the Old Testament. While this book is geared toward scholars, it is an important argument for differentiating the canonical gospels from all the others. —Patrick Schreiner, associate professor of New Testament and biblical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Award of Merit

The Book of Jeremiah

John Goldingay | Eerdmans

While it is difficult to get excited about a Bible commentary these days, Goldingay’s volume is a treasure trove of explorations into the text, traditions, and theology of the Book of Jeremiah. As a modern commentary, this volume interacts with an enormous amount of recent research and reveals Goldingay’s years of Old Testament scholarship. Without a doubt, The Book of Jeremiah will be a new standard reference for all researching and teaching the message of the Weeping Prophet. —William R. Osborne, associate professor of biblical and theological studies at College of the Ozarks

Finalists

The Samaritan Woman’s Story: Reconsidering John 4 After #ChurchToo

Caryn A. Reeder | IVP Academic

The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary

David F. Ford | Baker Academic

Bible & Devotional

Heaven and Nature Sing: 25 Advent Reflections to Bring Joy to the World

Hannah Anderson | B&H

Written with creative eloquence, this book invites readers to pause and reflect on the hope, faith, joy, and love communicated through the coming of our Savior. Anderson uses ordinary, everyday moments as a lens through which to gain insight into parts of the Advent story we often overlook. While each devotional runs only a few pages, all are full of wisdom. In a time when Christmas tends to be tainted by commercialism, Heaven and Nature Sing is a breath of fresh air. —Elizabeth Woodson, author and Bible teacher

Award of Merit

Literarily: How Understanding Bible Genres Transforms Bible Study

Kristie Anyabwile | Moody

Gaining tools to understand the Bible can feel like getting your prescription glasses updated: Things you didn’t realize you were missing suddenly emerge to your joy. That’s what happens when one uses the strategies Anyabwile recommends in this book. Her accessible writing is a helpful starting point for understanding the various forms of writing we find in the Scriptures, and her warm and passionate tone reminds us that our goal is not just knowledge, but transformation under the Word. —Taylor Turkington, author and director of BibleEquipping

Finalists

Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible

John D. Meade and Peter J. Gurry | Crossway

Sheltering Mercy: Prayers Inspired by the Psalms

Ryan Whitaker Smith and Dan Wilt | Brazos Press

Children

A World of Praise

Deborah Lock | Eerdmans

There’s beauty in this book, not only in its captivating pictures, but in its affection for the places and people that span God’s world. It makes us marvel at the earthly home God has created for us and long for the day Jesus returns to make it all flawlessly, sparklingly his. This book has a song-like quality. It’s a carol to the Lord of all the earth. Read it alongside a psalm that sings of how the world bursts with the Creator’s glory. Or read it alongside the prophets, who gaze at distant lands with the good news that the Savior is coming to restore all beauty and be the delight of all nations. —Jack Klumpenhower, author of Show Them Jesus: Teaching the Gospel to Kids

Award of Merit

How to Fight Racism Young Reader’s Edition: A Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice

Jemar Tisby | Zonderkidz

How to Fight Racism gives a challenging overview of the history of racism in the US, opening the eyes of young people to the inequalities and segregation existing today. With practical advice and inspiring stories, Tisby empowers children to engage with the reality of racism and change things for the future. It’s great to see a book encouraging young people to seek out relationships across racial divides, armed with the humility of Christ’s example and the truth that all people are made in God’s image. —Steph Williams, children’s writer, illustrator, and graphic designer

Finalists

Bare Tree and Little Wind: A Story for Holy Week

Mitali Perkins | WaterBrook

Fly High: Understanding Grief with God’s Help

Michelle Medlock Adams and Janet K. Johnson | End Game Press

Young Adults

Who Am I and Why Do I Matter?

Chris Morphew | The Good Book Company

In the latest installment in his Big Questions series, Morphew asks—and answers—what are perhaps the primary questions adolescents wrestle with: Who am I? Why do I matter? Relatable and accessible, the book never talks down to its young readers. Rather, their concerns are taken seriously, whether fitting in with friends, grappling with social media, or simply wondering if they can be themselves without social repercussions. Morphew takes readers back to Scripture, offering examples from the Bible and plenty of reminders that we are made in God’s image, that we have worth based on that simple fact, and that we are called to follow Christ. Even better, he offers the hope of the gospel, so that past mistakes don’t define current self-worth or the future. —Betsy Farquhar, managing editor and staff writer at Redeemed Reader

Award of Merit

The Dragon and the Stone (The Dream Keeper Saga, Book 1)

Kathryn Butler | Crossway

With nods to Narnia and The Neverending Story, Butler has crafted a portal fantasy adventure with charm and wisdom for middle-grade readers. After encountering a dragon slurping chili in her kitchen one afternoon, main character Lily McKinley is led by the creature into the Realm, a new dimension where dreams live and the nightmarish Shrouds threaten at every turn. It’s a timeless formula, and Butler captures the high-stakes quest with a confident knowledge of her own world, as well as humor and a truly engaging voice. —Glenn McCarty, author of the Tumbleweed Thompson series

Finalists

You’re the Worst Person in the World: Why It’s the Best News Ever that You Don’t Have It Together, You Aren’t Enough, and You Can’t Fix It on Your Own

Scarlet Hiltibidal | B&H

Your New Playlist: The Student’s Guide to Tapping into the Superpower of Mindset

Jon Acuff | Baker

Christian Living & Spiritual Formation

Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care

Uche Anizor | Crossway

One of the more surprising temptations I’ve experienced in recent years isn’t toward overt or egregious sin, but toward numb inaction. In a postpandemic world where politics are polarized and the news cycle constantly yells, “Fire!”, many followers of Christ are too overwhelmed to care. We’re paralyzed and unsure how to hold all the sorrows in our hearts. Anizor graciously meets Christians in their apathy, helping readers discover the origin of their own numbness and offering gospel-rooted reasons for renewed passion. He challenges us to love deeper, with a Christlike affection that throws off apathy and propels us to action. —Emily Jensen, cofounder and content director of Risen Motherhood

(Read CT’s interview with Uche Anizor.)

Award of Merit

Jesus and Gender: Living as Sisters and Brothers in Christ

Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher | Lexham Press

Jesus and Gender is an incredibly timely book. There is much debate in evangelical circles surrounding the roles of men and women in the church, with complementarianism and egalitarianism the two common categories. But Fitzpatrick and Schumacher tackle the subject with fresh language, calling us to be “Christic” men and women who seek to “cooperate together for [God’s] glory” rather than “compete for glory amongst themselves.” —Vance Pitman, president of Send Network and founding pastor of Hope Church Las Vegas

(Read CT’s review of Jesus and Gender.)

Finalists

Good and Beautiful and Kind: Becoming Whole in a Fractured World

Rich Villodas | WaterBrook

(Read an excerpt from Good and Beautiful and Kind.)

How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now

James K. A. Smith | Brazos Press

Church & Pastoral Leadership

The Flourishing Pastor: Recovering the Lost Art of Shepherd Leadership

Tom Nelson | InterVarsity Press

Without attempting to be novel or imposing unreasonable expectations, Nelson sets out to recover what he considers the lost art, among pastors, of shepherd leadership. Refreshingly, he doesn’t come off as superior or the lone expert in the field. He admits mistakes in his personal walk, ministry habits, and pastoral labors. I found plenty of pastoral encouragement, practices to ponder, and workable habits for shepherd leadership. —Phil Newton, director of pastoral care and mentoring for the Pillar Network

Award of Merit (TIE)

The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry

Austin Carty | Eerdmans

As a lifelong reader, I’ve seen the value and richness that come from reading widely and deeply. A pastor whose mind and heart are formed by deep engagement with books can understand and communicate capital-T truth more clearly, creatively, and insightfully. By giving pastors permission to include reading as part of their regular schedules, Carty offers the gift of slowing down to think deeply and the opportunity for timeless spiritual themes to take root in their hearts. This is a recipe for greater wisdom, empathy, and love—qualities that in turn benefit the people God has called them to shepherd. —Kelley Mathews, author and editor

Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why It Matters

Bob Smietana | Worthy

Smietana helps church leaders face the sobering reality of the religious landscape in which they serve. Drawing on statistics and real-life stories, he demonstrates the waning influence of organized religion in many people’s lives. Alongside pictures of churches in decline, however, he shows us churches that have turned the corner toward growth and relevance in their communities. And he reminds us of the positive contributions churches make in American life and the negative impact our culture will experience as they decline or cease to exist. —Michael Duduit, dean of Clamp Divinity School and executive editor of Preaching magazine

Finalist

On Earth as in Heaven: Theopolis Fundamentals

Peter J. Leithart | Lexham

Culture & the Arts

Christian Poetry in America Since 1940: An Anthology

Edited by Micah Mattix and Sally Thomas | Iron Pen

I was very impressed with this anthology, which has a detailed and thoughtful introduction, helpful introductions to each poet, a few well-placed and appropriate footnotes, and amazingly good poems: challenging, diverse, and unsentimental. There is a great balance between famous and lesser-known poets, denominational backgrounds, and formal and free-verse poetry. A colleague of mine, who teaches on Christianity and literature, told me he has never encountered a resource like this and that he would find it very useful for his class. —Eleanor Nickel, English professor and program director at Fresno Pacific University

Award of Merit

The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints

Jessica Hooten Wilson | Brazos Press

Wilson deftly plows the fertile field of literature, wonder, and the Christian mind. The book reads as both journal and love letter to her own past and her passion for literature. Her chapters brim with wonderment and awe, and I enjoyed the feeling of longing to read the books she celebrates. In the hands of another author, this book could have felt academic and stuffy. But Wilson’s prose is elegant and clear while retaining the warmth of a voice inviting you to come sit by the fire and listen to a story. —John Hendrix, illustrator and children’s author

(Read an excerpt from The Scandal of Holiness.)

Finalists

A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel

William Edgar | IVP Academic

(Read CT’s review of A Supreme Love.)

Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make Our Faith More Whole and Just

Claude Atcho | Brazos Press

(Read CT’s interview with Claude Atcho.)

Fiction

Count the Nights by Stars

Michelle Shocklee | Tyndale

In this dual-timeline novel, Shocklee tackles challenging topics like immigration, discrimination, and human trafficking with grace and hope, and her vivid use of historical detail adds intrigue to the story. Her writing is smooth and engaging, and I found myself pulled into the storylines of both time periods, which rarely happens with books of this sort. The way this book opens hearts and minds to the trauma experienced by victims of human trafficking is truly commendable. —Christina Suzann Nelson, author of What Happens Next , Shaped by the Waves , and other novels

Award of Merit

The Book of Susan

Melanie Hutsell | Paraclete

My reaction to this book might be biased by the fact that I watched the wife of a close friend endure the anguish of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder after the birth of their first child, an experience that shattered their marriage. The Book of Susan stirred memories of that time, reminding me how vital it is to embrace compassion and tenderness toward those suffering the ravages of this illness. Hutsell’s writing is raw, real, and beautiful. While taking us inside a journey few can truly understand, she guides readers into the reality that all of us are flawed, bruised, and broken. Within that admission, there is hope and the chance for healing. —James L. Rubart, novelist and professional marketer

Finalists

Absolute Music

Jonathan Geltner | Slant

The Baxters

Karen Kingsbury | Atria Books

History & Biography

An Odd Cross to Bear: A Biography of Ruth Bell Graham

Anne Blue Wills | Eerdmans

This is historical biography at its finest. Wills has a profound empathy for Ruth Graham, born of meticulous research and the insights of gifted scholarship. Graham was a critic of second-wave feminism, and yet, as Wills shows, she also “devised her own ethic of Christian womanhood, characterized by ‘adjusting’ to” her famous evangelist husband. This concept of “adjustment” becomes a central thread of the book, not only clarifying how Graham negotiated her own womanhood but also illuminating the complex relationship between evangelical womanhood and feminism. Both moving and captivating, An Odd Cross to Bear will be the standard work on Ruth Graham in her own right, as well as essential reading for anyone wishing to better understand Billy Graham, Ruth Graham, and their movement. —Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, associate professor of history and Western civilization at Australian Catholic University

Award of Merit

Denmark Vesey’s Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial

Jeremy Schipper | Princeton University Press

Schipper’s book offers a concise but comprehensive look at how the Bible was litigated by enslaved people and white slaveholders before, during, and after Denmark Vesey’s planned 19th-century slave rebellion. It was common, in early American history, for debates on morality and criminality to involve dueling interpretations of Scripture, and Schipper illustrates how biblical language was co-opted by whites not only to strengthen slavery in the abstract but also to aid white legal responses to Vesey and his coconspirators. —Miles Smith IV, assistant professor of history at Hillsdale College

(Read CT’s review of Denmark Vesey’s Bible.)

Finalists

A History of Contemporary Praise & Worship: Understanding the Ideas That Reshaped the Protestant Church

Lester Ruth and Lim Swee Hong | Baker Academic

Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas

Kirsten Silva Gruesz | Harvard University Press

Marriage & Family

Teach Your Children Well: A Step-by-Step Guide for Family Discipleship

Sarah Cowan Johnson | InterVarsity Press

No parents can guarantee their children will walk in faithfulness to Christ. Our children’s eternal souls are first and foremost in the hands of God. But God, in his sovereign design, has not only given parents children, but given children parents. Johnson encourages and challenges parents with the call to be the primary disciplers of their children. She offers practical help supported by experience, research, and Scripture alike. —Curtis Solomon, assistant professor of biblical counseling at Boyce College

Award of Merit

Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms

Justin Whitmel Earley | Zondervan

There is no shortage of parenting books on the market, but Earley manages to break through the noise and offer a timely (and timeless) appeal to the power of liturgy within the home. The household rhythms and practices he advocates are neither onerous nor ridiculous, but simple ways for parents to lovingly disciple their children through the power of habit. Earley’s humor and honest vulnerability shine through, and the reader has a sense of getting to know his lovely family on each page. I’ll be returning to this book with joy for many seasons. —Jonathan Holmes, founder and executive director of Fieldstone Counseling

Finalists

It Takes More Than Love: A Christian Guide to Navigating the Complexities of Cross-Cultural Adoption

Brittany Salmon | Moody

The Race-Wise Family: Ten Postures to Becoming Households of Healing and Hope

Helen Lee and Michelle Ami Reyes | WaterBrook

Missions & Global Church

No Shortcut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions

Matt Rhodes | Crossway

This volume provides a thorough appraisal of methods in American missionary circles that have gained massive popularity because they promise a vast harvest of new converts in the shortest possible time, with minimal effort or preparation from the missionaries themselves. For Rhodes, the appeal of these “silver-bullet” formulas reflects a “distaste for professionalism” and the abandonment of the painstaking training associated with earlier Western missionary heroes like William Carey and Adoniram Judson. His assessment is careful but devastating. He weighs in on erroneous obsessions with statistics, disparagement of traditional missionary methods, false or misleading representations of success, and distorted (or defective) biblical understandings of mission work. Most of the book, however, is devoted to making an energetic case for the missionary vocation as a profession, with the Pauline phrase “ambassadors for Christ” as a centerpiece. —Jehu J. Hanciles, director of the World Christianity program at Candler School of Theology and author of Migration and the Making of Global Christianity

Award of Merit

Faith in the Wilderness: Words of Exhortation from the Chinese Church

Edited by Hannah Nation and Simon Liu | Lexham

The Chinese church has long been a model of how to chi ku (eat bitterness) while still walking faithfully with God. This book affirms that in the face of persistent persecution and suffering, the Chinese church, broadly speaking, continues to forge ahead in spreading the gospel throughout China and beyond. The personal reflections gathered here will humble readers and, hopefully, expand their understanding of the global church. There is much to learn from the Chinese church, and Faith in the Wilderness offers a good place to start. —Jamie Sanchez, associate professor of intercultural studies at Biola University

(Read an excerpt from Faith in the Wilderness.)

Finalists

The Realities of Money and Missions: Global Challenges and Case Studies

Edited by Jonathan J. Bonk, Michael G. DiStefano, J. Nelson Jennings, Jinbong Kim, and Jae Hoon Lee | William Carey Publishing

Virtuous Persuasion: A Theology of Christian Mission

Michael Niebauer | Lexham

Politics & Public Life

Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism

George Yancey | InterVarsity Press

Yancey proposes a compelling alternative to our current racial stalemate that—dare I say it?—actually gives me hope. Instead of touting colorblindness or antiracism, Yancey asks us to consider how we approach this issue instead of focusing on a desired outcome. Attempts to thread the needle between two extremes so often get the worst of both or simply fail spectacularly. They call it the mushy middle for a reason. But Yancey is not mushy. On the contrary, he writes clearly and persuasively, and he advances an argument that is internally coherent and backed by social science. Finally, Yancey writes movingly about his own experiences, demonstrating that he, like all of us, has much to learn. —James E. Bruce, professor of philosophy at John Brown University

(Read CT’s review of Beyond Racial Division.)

Award of Merit

Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community

Bonnie Kristian | Brazos Press

There is a discernment crisis in pulpits and pews across the nation: We have lost the ability to name truth. In a climate where conspiracy theories and half-truths abound, Kristian writes with piercing insight into the epistemological crisis facing the church and the broader society. She examines the issues that have brought us to this state of affairs and offers wise counsel for navigating our current media and information envi- ronment. —Kathryn Freeman, writer, speaker, and cohost of the podcast Melanated Faith

(Read CT’s review of Untrustworthy.)

Finalists

What Are Christians For?: Life Together at the End of the World

Jake Meador | InterVarsity Press

(Read CT’s review of What Are Christians For?.)

Uncommon Unity: Wisdom for the Church in an Age of Division

Richard Lints | Lexham

(Read CT’s review of Uncommon Unity.)

—

Theology (popular)

You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News

Kelly M. Kapic | Brazos Press

Some theology books offer in-depth treatments of a particular doctrine. Others seek to serve as guides for studying theology. You’re Only Human might seem much more practical than either of these, since it calls us to accept the limitations of being human as good gifts from God. But Kapic manages to convey incredible depth of doctrinal insight and teaching for such a supposedly “practical” book. From the nature of the Incarnation and the proper understanding of Mary to our union with Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, Kapic covers enormous theological ground with detail and nuance, all while keeping the discussion alive and intimately connected to our own lives. Each chapter could be a book in itself. —Emily G. Wenneborg, Pascal Study Center director and assistant professor at Urbana Theological Seminary

(Read CT’s interview with Kelly Kapic.)

Award of Merit

The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith

Trevin Wax | InterVarsity Press

This book presents a well-written, accessible, and winsome apologetic for recapturing and embracing the orthodox and historic Christian faith in the modern world. The church desperately needs to read and heed books like this. I plan on using this book in the context of my local congregation. Superb! —Anthony Selvaggio, senior pastor of Rochester Christian Reformed Church

(Read CT’s review of The Thrill of Orthodoxy.)

Finalists

Fruitful Theology: How the Life of the Mind Leads to the Life of the Soul

Ronni Kurtz | B&H

Reading Theology Wisely: A Practical Introduction

Kent Eilers | Eerdmans

Theology (academic)

Jesus and the God of Classical Theism: Biblical Christology in Light of the Doctrine of God

Steven J. Duby | Baker Academic

In this erudite and substantial volume, Duby examines New Testament Christology and how it relates to the doctrines of so-called classical theism. It is an important work, especially at a moment in evangelical theology, and in Christian theology more broadly, when contemporary theologians are rediscovering and reappraising the rich resources of the Christian past. Duby interacts with a wide range of sources: ancient philosophers, church fathers, medieval doctors, Reformers, and post-Reformation scholastics, as well as modern theologians and biblical exegetes. But most impressive is Duby’s deep engagement with the text of Scripture itself, which he treats with exegetical care and theological earnestness. —Luke Stamps, professor of biblical and theological studies at Oklahoma Baptist University

Award of Merit

Trinitarian Dogmatics: Exploring the Grammar of the Christian Doctrine of God

D. Glenn Butner Jr. | Baker Academic

This book helpfully lays out the landscape of Trinitarian dogmatics. Butner does a fine job at presenting the major issues and carefully defining the edges of orthodoxy from the vantage points of Scripture, history, and philosophy. He is refreshingly reserved, too, on many difficult issues on which orthodox theologians have historically differed. In that sense, while Butner is clear, persuasive, and convictional, he is also modest in his aims. I predict this book will become standard in the classroom for a long time. The truly curious reader will not walk away empty-handed. —Samuel G. Parkison, assistant professor of theological studies at Gulf Theological Seminary in the United Arab Emirates

(Read CT’s review of Trinitarian Dogmatics.)

Finalists

Justification by the Word: Restoring Sola Fida

Jack D. Kilcrease | Lexham Press

God in Eternity and Time: A New Case for Human Freedom

Robert E. Picirilli | B&H

Book of the Year

Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care

Uche Anizor | Crossway

“Meh” may be the spirit of the age in which we live, but it is more than mere indifference—it is a spiritual sickness that infects believers, churches, and cultures alike. Even if we feel like our lives are unending episodes of Seinfeld, that famous “show about nothing,” Anizor calls us from our spiritual slumber to wake up and care again. —Douglas Estes, associate professor of biblical studies and practical theology at Tabor College

Overcoming Apathy addresses an issue that feels quite prevalent in the American church, even if we hardly talk about it. Anizor succeeds in taking a vague, somewhat hard-to-define issue and turning it into a readable, immensely practical book. The real problem, as he observes, is not that believers care too little but that we care about the wrong things, while often showing indifference toward God and matters of the Spirit. I plan on recommending this book to fellow church members. It was refreshing and convicting. —Andrea Burke, women’s ministry director and host of the Good Enough podcast

(Read an excerpt from Overcoming Apathy.)

The post Christianity Today’s 2023 Book Awards appeared first on Christianity Today.

In Praise of Good Bookstores

Jeff Deutsch (Author)

216 pages

$12.05

For many, the conversation evoked memories and hopes of one of the great pleasures this side of Eden: browsing a well-stocked and interesting bookstore. Naturally, as a longtime bookseller, I shared the interview and devoured the book. But I’ll admit that Deutsch’s perspectives made me a bit uneasy, and I am still trying to decipher my curious reaction toward a book most friends figured I’d commend unreservedly. This side of Eden, few things are as simple as they seem.

Scale and status

In Praise of Good Bookstores gives a fascinating account of a former Jewish kid who grew up to love books and bookselling, and Deutsch waxes eloquent about the joy of connecting book and reader. He offers an intellectually stimulating essay that will appeal to those who like books about books, the reading life, and publishing-world curiosities.

For many CT readers, In Praise of Good Bookstores would no doubt fit seamlessly alongside such titles as Karen Swallow Prior’s On Reading Well, Alan Jacobs’s Breaking Bread with the Dead, Jessica Hooten Wilson’s The Scandal of Holiness, and Claude Atcho’s Reading Black Books. Deutsch is as learned as any of those authors, and his obvious passion for books is contagious.

What makes Deutsch’s book stand out (despite an oddly tacky cover) is his status as a bookseller. Like the best of our trade, he is mostly self-taught and exceedingly eclectic in his reading habits, a practitioner of what John Milton called “promiscuous reading.” As the title indicates, Deutsch is offering not only a paean to the reading life, but also to the book-browsing life. In a real bookstore.

So, what’s not to love?

Well, for starters, I think I was jealous. As would be the majority of bookstore owners, booksellers, and frankly, bookstore fans. When Deutsch describes his well-stocked and eccentric store, the legendary Seminary Co-op, set in a tony neighborhood near Hyde Park in Chicago, it is at once charming, vast, busy with book-buying customers, and just a bit intimidating. Who are these apparently important authors of literature, philosophy, poetry, religion, economics, and history that roll off his tongue, whose signature volumes are readily available in his jam-packed store? And what kind of customers—besides the famous ones—buy these substantive books? How does the store afford all that space, all that inventory?

Most of us who run indie bookstores, frankly, are not surviving so well these days. And those of us offering uniquely Christian literature are doing even worse. Deutsch properly resists overcommercializing the bookseller’s vocation, and he gives the obligatory nod to our famously low margins. He knows how hard it is to make a living selling the blocks of paper and ink that we so cherish. Since most booksellers are constrained by what is ingloriously called “the market,” they will be a bit demoralized by The Seminary Co-op’s remarkable inventory, scale, and status.

After all, Deutsch can manage a store that is so “impeccably curated” (as one admirer described it) in large part because of his prime location and exceptionally well-educated customer base. I love our ordinary folk in our ordinary small town and never cease to be amazed at what people do read, but the “good bookstore” that Deutsch celebrates is, well, not like most.

Truth be told, I’m also a little jealous that, in the store he manages, Deutsch carries very few items apart from the books themselves. A few decades ago, the major Family Book Stores chain rebranded itself as Family Christian Stores to better reflect the range of products it was selling. Against that backdrop, the high-minded, bookish purity of the Seminary Co-op strikes me as nearly a prophetic witness against the shallowness and superficiality of our culture. Closer to home, the vision of a well-stocked bookstore evokes the tragedy of what Mark Noll famously named “the scandal of the evangelical mind.”

It’s no wonder there are very few evangelical-minded bookstores that offer anything even close to the sort of well-curated, stimulating, and artful selection praised by Deutsch; too many of our people seem not to have been taught or nurtured in their discipleship to be people of the book. Leave aside the odd ways in which evangelical Christian authors (and their publishers and publicists) routinely promote Amazon, quickening the decline of the Christian bookstore industry; the bigger issue is that many evangelicals would rather lay down their hard-earned cash for celebrity worship albums or self-help DVDs than browse the shelves of a serious bookstore.

In our store, for instance, we have large sections of books offering Christian perspectives on nursing, engineering, art, business, education, law, media studies, and the like. Christ is, after all, Lord of these areas, and we are called to serve him in all that we do. The virtue of intellectual curiosity, particularly as it relates to the relationship between faith and public life, simply isn’t cultivated in most churches. I suspect many otherwise fine Christian people would be bored in a reader’s paradise like the ones Deutsch describes.

At times, the grandness of In Praise of Good Bookstores inspired me to renew my vocational vows. Yet even as a bookseller of 40 years, there were moments that felt like reading an exotic ethnography of a rare tribe with exquisitely interesting customs and values in their exceptional habitat. Who are these strange people?

The slow browse

Despite its name, the beloved Seminary Co-op is no longer a seminary bookstore or even theologically oriented. Yet it’s hard to come away from In Praise of Good Bookstores without suspecting that Deutsch makes an idol out of books, learning, and the joy of human discovery.

I believe God honors the writing and reading of books (we are to love him with all our minds, after all), and the Bible affirms what some might call secular learning. Creation actually speaks, as Job 12 and Psalm 19 attest, so learning from good science and social science is a Christian duty. “All truth is God’s truth,” as the late Wheaton College philosopher Arthur Holmes declared in a book by the same name. My wife and I have staked our livelihoods on that claim, despite the confusion it has caused some of our customers, who might wonder why a Christian bookstore would carry books about film or art or environmental science or urban design.

Still, it is disconcerting when Deutsch calls his shop a “book-lined house of worship.” He insists that we “make our own canon” of essential books and, like his hero Walt Whitman, disapproves of submission to any deeper authority or tradition. As Whitman advised in a preface to his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, “Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men.” He encouraged his readers to “re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,” and “dismiss whatever insults your own soul.” Deutsch preaches this gospel of free inquiry, quoting Virginia Woolf’s counsel to “take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.”

For Deutsch, the bookstore offers a “spirit of freedom.” Well, sure. Nobody wants to be told what they have to think, and for all the churches fretting these days about the holdings of local libraries or the content of school curricula, few wise leaders want to get into the business of book-banning. Still, this “spirit of freedom” is only one way to think about books, one that prioritizes self-actualization and the cultivation of one’s individualized worldview.

It is fascinating (and ironic) that Deutsch was raised as a conservative Jew, and his book has glorious sections describing the communal reading habits at Shul and the celebrations of those who were learning together under the umbrella of a coherent religious tradition. My fear is that his upbeat celebration of the individual book buyer’s autonomy erodes the truths that matter most, leaving each reader to discover them on their own. The bookstore, on this model, is something like a cafeteria. Some serve better food than others, but the invitation is more or less identical: “Eat up! Enjoy whatever you want.”

And yet, the freedom-thinking extremes of Whitman or Woolf aside, Deutsch is doubtlessly noble in envisioning a well-stocked and curated store as a place for serendipity and discovery. In fact, he sounds almost neo-monastic in his observation that the best bookstores invite people to the best sort of browsing and bookish consideration, actually summoning forth a renewed view of time itself, about which he waxes almost spiritually. You don’t get this from one-click Amazon shopping or the cheapo remainder stores:

The good bookstore fosters the expenditure of a certain kind of time: the slow browse. It is the time we take, for instance, to single out which Clarice Lispector novel we would like to read next. Or the time we take when our eye is first caught by the curious cover of Saint Augustine’s Confessions on the front table, to read the jacket copy of the book and the first few pages: “Who will grant me repose?”

Deutsch continues with a long paragraph of other imagined curiosities (most almost laughably highbrow) found in a very good bookstore, nicely describing titles and authors the browser notices, the things she talks about with the bookseller behind the desk, and what said bookseller is most impressed by lately. It is all quite glorious, almost luminous. He evokes a sense of the holy, calling such moments “thin places.”

“Such discoveries take time,” he writes. “They happen by being in that space where we let ourselves submit to aimlessness. Sometimes the spine of a book will catch our eye as we are making our way to the register and we’ll grab it on impulse, then buy it on good authority of the bookseller.”

All of this assumes, of course, that browsers have the free time and disposable income for such unplanned purchases. And that the bookseller loves books and is as well informed as this studious, open-minded book buyer. At The Seminary Co-op Store, that may be the case. Not so, everywhere else.

Still, where there is conviviality among a group of browsers loyal to a team of wise booksellers in a given good place, something akin to community can emerge, and Deutsch cites older writers celebrating the bookshops that invite a commingling of various sorts of folks. He mentions a patron who reflects on the notable kindness found among the community of bookstore supporters.

We, too, have seen that; we are grateful to our own shoppers who have become, as one of our early slogans had it, “more than a customer.” I’m inspired when Deutsch writes, “It makes me happy to think of wandering through the aisles as a journey of kindness, one that takes us beyond the narrow limits of the self.” Yet this aspiration also strikes me as idealistic. We’ve seen ugly debates develop on site; even Christian bookstores experience rudeness and dishonesty.

Even so, I don’t want to dismiss Deutsch’s celebration of the communities formed around bookstores. In her recent book Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy, Mary McCampbell explores how empathy develops, showing how narrative art—stories, poems, songs, movies, and certainly novels—can help us cultivate a biblical ethic of loving our neighbors. Serious reading, it can be argued, deepens our awareness of others and their unique lives.

A labor of love

Deutsch is also correct, I think, in imagining the local bookstore as part of the public square. The very diversity of titles on offer, which appeal to different sorts of readers, all loyal to the same local bookstore, facilitates a kind of deliberative spirit. As he puts it, “This diversity of viewpoints needn’t separate and splinter us.” Instead, “this sort of public discourse in the public square of the bookstore can bind us together, creating a more civic-minded populace.”

Few booksellers get rich creating these kinds of places. Deutsch rails against Amazon only a bit, although he does cite an old H. L. Mencken piece, “Lo, the Poor Bookseller,” which could’ve been written yesterday. For those of us called to this vocation, it is a labor of love. Hopefully this book, dense and learned as it is, will inspire many to love more deeply the printed page and honor more intentionally the bookseller who sets the table for your hospitable encounters.

Describing reopening The Seminary Co-op’s doors after the worst of the pandemic a year ago, Deutsch writes:

Bookstores are roused by their patrons; it is the encounter that fulfills a bookstore’s purpose. Reopening the doors in June 2021 felt like a resuscitation first, then a revival. If an argument ends when a bookstore closes, what argument is continued when a bookstore remains open?

Ultimately, I wish Deutsch had made his book a bit more personal, a bit warmer, and a little less erudite. I wish, too, that he had leavened it with a few fun stories. For that missing element, we may have to take up the handful of novels set in bookstores or turn to other volumes by bookseller raconteurs. Like pastors, or maybe like bartenders, we hear a lot; most of us have seen it all. The job is more than curating and hosting the best books, and it is that “more” that I struggled to find in Deutsch’s intellectually vivid tribute to his book-lined spaces.

Byron Borger owns and operates Hearts & Minds bookstore in Dallastown, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Beth.

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