In this ardent manifesto, Wallis (Christ in Crisis?), director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, urges readers to “dismantle a false gospel that propagates white supremacy and political autocracy” and reclaim core biblical principles. Mining six scriptural passages, Wallis utilizes the parable of the good Samaritan to lambast politicians who “deny the neighbor ethic” by vilifying immigrants; the creation story to champion voting rights, albeit via a somewhat inelegant deductive leap (he claims that attempts to disenfranchise voters are “nothing less than an assault” on the “image of God” in which all humans are created); and the quote “blessed are the peacemakers” to encourage readers to establish “right relationships” with those they differ from. Concluding that it will take plenty of “courageous good faith to help take our nation to a better place,” Wallis provides readers with a handful of action steps (among them, starting dialogues with fellow congregants about inclusion in churches), but he’s most focused on inspiring voter turnout for the 2024 election, which he believes may determine “whether democracy will survive or collapse in America.” Wallis’s passion for justice and creative interpretation of the Bible generate more than enough energy to keep readers’ attention as he wends his way from Christian nationalism to the responsibilities of citizenship to criminal justice reform. This promises to be a conversation starter in church groups and beyond. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Inspired by the work of W.E.B. DuBois, Derrick Bell, and Octavia Butler, sociologist Hunter (Chocolate Cities) offers an imaginative and exhilarating vision of slavery as “a founding premise of the current human condition,” utilizing this idea as a launch point for his argument that “radical reparations” need to extend beyond the merely financial. In between autobiographical chapters in which he lays out his philosophical and sociological framework, Hunter unspools three alternate-history “parables” that demonstrate the broad societal impact of slavery and colonialism. The first takes place in an alternative America in which the fulfillment of Civil War general William T. Sherman’s promise of 40 acres to repay formerly enslaved people has yielded a Black territory in South Carolina on the verge of gaining independence. The second imagines that Zionist plans for a Jewish settlement in Uganda came to fruition and delineates the impact on the local African people as the settlers begin to abandon the area for a newly formed Israel. The third narrates a multi-century family history about the descendants of Nigerians kidnapped into Arab slavery, tracking their escape from India, establishment of successful business ventures in South Africa, and later political struggle against apartheid. Evocatively portraying the unresolved damage that slavery, racism, and displacement have on the descendants of those who first experience it, Hunter’s uncanny parables refract the violent contours of today’s world. Readers will be spellbound. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Historian Lal (Empress) delivers an insightful biography of princess Gulbadan Begum (1523–1603), an adventurer and influential presence at court during the early years of the Mughal empire. Born to Babur, the first Mughal king, Gulbadan’s youth was characterized by travel as her father expanded the empire across South Asia. Later, during the reign of her nephew Akbar, and after a stultifying mid-life spent in the cloistered court harem, Gulbadan was given permission to lead several other harem women on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The women’s scandalous independence (their activities were labeled “un-Islamic” by local authorities) led to their expulsion from Mecca, and the group returned home to north India more than four years later, after a shipwreck and subsequent halt to their journey afforded them an even greater period of independence. In 1587, when Akbar ordered the compilation of a monumental history of the Mughal empire, he commissioned a contribution from Gulbadan. The resulting autobiography, the Ahval-i Humayun Badshah, is one of the earliest prose works by a woman, but the portion of the Ahval describing the four-year pilgrimage is missing. Persuasively arguing that it was likely suppressed by male authorities, Lal evocatively ruminates on the feminist implications of this missing piece. The result is a comprehensive and vivid portrait of an exceptional historical figure. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Poet Verma debuts with a candid exploration of what it means to search for belonging in a society riven by racial and ethnic prejudice. Growing up in rural Alabama, Verma felt perennially trapped in a “liminal space” between two cultures (“If God wanted me to be Indian, why had my parents left India? If God had wanted me to be an American, why did I look Indian?”). Addressing readers who feel similarly “stateless,” she explains how minorities in the U.S. experience both invisibility and hypervisibility as they’re simultaneously “targeted and profiled” and “ignored in ways that diminish our influence.” Such treatment, Verma contends, fosters social exclusion and loss of cultural identity. While Verma wisely avoids easy solutions, she advises readers to draw boundaries around one’s “time and energy” (by limiting news sources that cause “vicarious trauma,” for example), and emphasizes the grounding power of faith, because “we are perpetually seen, known, and loved by God.” A dizzying amount of ground gets covered here; as a result, worthy topics such as parenting in a racialized society, representation, and PTSD in people of color get somewhat shortchanged. Still, readers will be won over by the author’s bracing honesty, keen insights into America’s systemic inequalities, and measured hope for repairing them (“I can speak up, speak out, write, pray, think, share my story”). It’s a brave and compassionate look at questions of belonging, identity, and faith. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this compassionate outing, Surviving Sarah podcaster Bragg (A Mother’s Guide to Raising Herself) tackles “the hard questions” of purpose, faith, and identity that arise in midlife. Routinely kept awake at night as a busy 40-something mom by a “Rolodex of fears,” Bragg would ruminate on her relationship with Christ, her tendency to compare herself to others on social media, and her feeling of being “stuck” in her fitness and personal goals. Eventually she realized that “happiness comes down to connection,” and she began seeking ways to foster her relationships with other people, from reaching out to acquaintances for coffee dates to taking a four-month-long hiatus from social media (which she contends promotes comparison, not connection). Not all of Bragg’s practices stuck, and not all will suit each reader (“Happiness doesn’t look the same to everyone,” Bragg acknowledges), but her assertion that “we’re all a work in progress” resonates, as do her candid meditations about how her faith has benefited by being challenged and tested throughout her life. This frank and chatty offering will go a long way toward helping believers feel less alone. Agent: Mike Salisbury, Yates & Yates. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this stimulating and elegant memoir, Tworkov (Zen in America), the founding editor of the nonsectarian Buddhist magazine Tricycle, chronicles the lifelong search for answers that drew her to Buddhism. Born to an artist father and a melancholic mother, Tworkov was pained as a young adult by America’s role in the Vietnam War and mystified by the 1963 self-immolation of Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc (“as much as I looked for signs of torment, the photograph [did] not show a man in the throes of physical or mental suffering”). She traveled to Japan in 1965 and made her way through Asia, where she tried out meditation practices, pored over the works of Zen philosopher D.T. Suzuki, and generally sought “understanding beyond the limits of selfhood” through forays into Buddhism. After returning to the U.S. nearly two years later, Tworkov began studying Buddhism in the Tibetan and Zen traditions, but was perturbed by the sectarianism and scandals that plagued the American Buddhist community. In 1991, she founded Tricycle amid backlash from the “conservative” Buddhist establishment. With abundant self-awareness, Tworkov traces how she sought enlightenment only to find herself on a winding and ultimately rewarding Buddhist “path of confusion,” while also providing an incisive insider’s look at the naivete of the first generation of American converts to Buddhism. This enlightens. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Pope Francis (A Gift of Joy and Hope) distills lucid lessons for a life of faith and fulfillment. In brief chapters, he urges readers to offer sincere gratitude to God, “believe in the existence of lofty and beautiful truths,” and “learn how to dream big” by “seek[ing] out the ideals of justice and social love that are born of hope” without recreating an “unjust, and already ill” past. The core of his message is to love others “as they are and not as we would want them to be,” particularly when they’re socially disenfranchised, as Jesus was in life. (That love should above all be tangible, the pope adds, reminding readers that Jesus advised his followers to give food to the hungry and visit the sick, because “faith dies without action.”) While Pope Francis doesn’t shy away from critiques of modern life, imploring readers to seek happiness in God rather than in material possessions and cataloguing the dangers of “digital relationships” that “lack all the complexities involved in building a friendship,” his concerns mostly come across as measured rather than out of touch, and the persistent encouragement to “let yourself be loved by God for He loves you just as you are” rings true. Catholics will find hope and assurance in this uplifting guide. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, LBA. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 01/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Rabbi Brous, founder of the justice-driven Jewish spiritual community IKAR, explores in her compassionate debut how to better connect with others in a social climate of widespread division. For Brous, of foremost importance is simply “showing up” for others in hard times, a principle that’s illustrated by a Mishnaic ritual in which pilgrims circled the temple courtyard in one direction and comforted the “grieving, the lonely, the sick,” who were moving in the opposite direction (the practice “awaken[s] us to one another’s humanity,” Brous explains, because “today, you walk from left to right. Tomorrow, it will be me”). Also discussed is the value of showing up for one another in happy moments (sharing good news can be more psychologically beneficial than experiencing the joyous event in the first place, recent research suggests); seeking emotional support when needed; and getting genuinely curious about others, because “when we don’t wonder what [they are] thinking or feeling... our hearts close.” The author’s religious- based principles are anchored by practical tips for conducting “openhearted” conversations with those across the political aisle and helping the bereaved by making meals and providing childcare. Seamlessly mixing rabbinic wisdom, personal anecdotes, and psychology (she discusses compassion fatigue and how mirror neurons facilitate sharing others’ joy), Brous offers readers hope for building bridges. This inspires. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 12/15/2023 | Details & Permalink

In this scathing account, journalist Alberta (American Carnage) scrutinizes the unraveling of American evangelicalism over the past several decades. According to the author, extremists are now the establishment within the evangelical movement and have been “conditioned to subdue” their Christlike love and chase political power. To make his case, Alberta profiles such “conservative clerics, Trump-inspired politicos, patriot crusaders, [and] culture-war capitalists” as Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist megachurch pastor and longtime Trump acolyte who believes evangelicalism is “under siege” from a secular government, as well as moderate pastors who’ve broken from the denomination, including Russell Moore, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, whose critiques of Trump and calls to address racial tensions in the church sparked “vicious internecine fighting” and led to his 2021 departure from the denomination. Alberta adeptly illustrates how Christian nationalism is “destroying the evangelical church” on a big-picture level, as well as how it’s justified individually, framed scripturally, and blared over pulpits in support of hyper-conservative political candidates. While he suggests a “true Christianity” might still be salvageable, Alberta’s own evidence reveals how deep the rot has already spread. It’s an incisive, unsparing look at a movement in crisis. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 12/15/2023 | Details & Permalink

“Earliest Christianity emerged as a new and strange religion” that sometimes left others “puzzled” and “offended,” according to this dynamic history from Gupta (Tell Her Story), a professor of the New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Ill. Unlike first-century Romans, whose relationship to the divine was ritualized yet distant, early Christians worshiped a God that “loves you and cares for you, and [that] you ought to honor and love... back,” Gupta writes, explaining that the concept was foreign to pagans, for whom love was “beside the point of religion.” Furthermore, early Christians spurned animal sacrifices, venerated a so-called “criminal” (Jesus), and suspiciously shared no common ethnic background, all of which made them a “deviant and improper” threat to Rome’s civic order. After exhaustively contrasting the pagan and Christian traditions, Gupta ventures that the latter triumphed because of “the people, the Christians themselves... this community had to be compelling.” While the personal qualities that made Christians so compelling might have been explored in greater detail, Gupta provides a fresh and rigorously researched take on Christianity’s founding, and in the process sheds light on the community-building functions of religion and religious norms. This is an excellent resource for students of theology and religious history. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 12/15/2023 | Details & Permalink