With Divine Nobodies
, “emerging church” leader Palmer touched a nerve with readers who gravitate toward cutting-edge evangelical writers like Brian McLaren and Donald Miller. Similarly, this book employs a personal, homespun style to dissent from Christianity-as-usual. Palmer examines such spiritual disciplines as honing one's belief system in accordance with biblical principles; advancing the gospel outside of church walls; dismantling ineffective church practices; and discovering purpose in unexpected places. He might raise the hackles of some evangelicals with a confessional narrative of putting aside the Bible for a season, recognizing that it was at the center of “...a religion that had left [him] empty, exhausted, and disillusioned.” Palmer shed this conventional religion as he purposefully “tuned out preachers and others quoting or referring to it,” and writes that the result was that God spoke to him through nature, people, art, film and music. Palmer might be termed a renegade, but most young evangelicals will see him as a rebel with a cause and a message worth considering. (Dec. 4)
