The home is the “primary seat of discipleship” from which Christians can best serve God, according to this graceful guide. Masonheimer (Every Woman a Theologian) details how readers can live out God’s purpose by finding beauty in “mundane” work like laundry or cooking (as all labor matters to God) or creating a “community of welcome” where “strangers, foreigners, sojourners” can gather. Appreciating one’s home despite its imperfections teaches one to love “whatever He has given us,” a lesson the author illustrates by recalling her grandmother’s pride in her modest single-wide trailer, which “might have been small, but it was impeccably clean.... Just a place to feel safe and loved, to be fed and attended to.” Interspersing the account with useful lessons for sprucing up one’s living space (decluttering kitchen cabinets can help readers to better “enjoy the blessing under your feet”), Masonheimer makes a creative, open-minded case that the domestic and the divine need not be mutually exclusive. Christian homemakers will feel especially inspired. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this rousing debut, pastor McClellan invites Christians who feel adrift or insecure to “stand in the confidence of who God made you to be.” Encouraging readers to find self-worth in their intrinsic, God-given value—rather than “worldly” markers of success like social media followers, degrees, or accolades—he explains how to release resentments and avoid comparisons to others. By way of example, McClellan writes that praying for those he envied helped him see them “the way [God] wants them to be seen.” Discussing how to tackle challenges in moments of fear, McCellan cites the biblical story of Gideon, who followed God’s commands to tear down pagan idols despite being scared of provoking the ire of his father and others. What emerges is a mostly convincing manual for how Christians can build confidence, though McClellan undermines his efforts with some awkward analogies (he assures readers who feel like “discounted shirts” that have been overlooked or damaged that “you don’t lose your worth... because someone spilled something on you”). Flaws aside, it’s an uplifting guide to finding strength in one’s faith. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/20/2024 | Details & Permalink

“How you pray determines what kind of life you live,” contends megachurch pastor Osteen (Speak the Blessing) in this impassioned if well-worn prayer guide. Assuring readers that God “knows where your provision is, and He knows how to get it to you,” Osteen calls on believers to worship with the knowledge that God will answer their prayers when he sees fit (“If it happened instantly, it wouldn’t take any faith”). Elsewhere, Osteen advises that Christians should avoid thinking or speaking pessimistically (“God wants to show you supernatural increase, but you can cancel it out with a negative tongue”); eschew a victim mentality; and pray for others and their communities, because “every seed you sow will come back to you.” Osteen’s trademark charisma is galvanizing, and his command of lesser-known Bible stories is impressive, though repetition both within the book (the story of Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well is discussed in two separate chapters) and across his other works lends this the feel of an overlong sermon. Still, Osteen’s fans will get exactly what they came for. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 09/20/2024 | Details & Permalink

America is “marching steadily toward tyranny” as the country casts aside its Christian heritage, according to this problematic debut treatise. Russell, a constitutional lawyer, argues that increasing “disdain” for Christianity (wrought by “the rise of Marxist ideology and secular humanism”) and the church’s political polarization have produced a climate of “soft totalitarianism” where liberal ideas are prized, “hatred of dissenters” is hidden under “the guise of helping and healing,” and Christian values are being “dethron[ed] from politics, education, family life, and even Christianity itself.” She discusses the “harms” of the 2011 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which guaranteed the right to marry for same-sex couples; Planned Parenthood (“We do not have the right to decide whether someone’s life will be worth living”); and bans on praying in school. Even readers who can accept her selective interpretation of separation between church and state will be alienated by her alarmist language and shoddy reasoning. For example, she contends that “the issue with changing the definition of marriage or the normal expectation for sex is that to do so often results in no standard,” which she suggests, without evidence, could somehow lead to rampant pedophilia. Inflammatory and hyperbolic, this misses the mark. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 09/20/2024 | Details & Permalink

Evans (Feminist Prayers for My Daughter), an editor at the National Catholic Reporter, spotlights in this animated survey a half dozen Christian female mystics whose lives inform “questions of faith and liberation in our modern world.” Teresa of Ávila sublimated her sexual desires (which landed her in the convent after her father caught her in an “indiscretion with a love interest”) into intense spiritual friendships, an approach that Evans contrasts with evangelical “purity ring culture,” which constrains female sexuality and prohibits sex before marriage. (Christian notions that separate the physical from the spiritual rely on a false binary, she contends.) Elsewhere, Evans draws on the lives of Margery Kempe (to discuss mental health) and Hildegard of Bingen (to expound on environmental justice). It’s sometimes unclear which audience the author is trying to address; she celebrates the progressive views of her subjects alongside questions that seem designed for a more conservative reader (“Consider friends or loved ones who express their sexuality differently than you do. What would it look like to honor those differences?”). Still, Evans makes a solid case for reexamining female Christian thinkers who’ve been flattened by the historical record into meek models of humility and self-sacrifice. Spiritual seekers will find value in these provocative reconsiderations. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 09/13/2024 | Details & Permalink

This vibrant survey from historian Tisby (Color of Compromise) spotlights Black Christians who have harnessed their faith to fight racism. Ranging from the colonial era to the present, he profiles famous activists like Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as lesser-known figures like William J. Seymour, a preacher who helped form the multiethnic Pentecostalist movement in the early 20th century. Also highlighted are reverend Albert Cleage Jr., who sought in the 1960s to “radically redefine Christianity in a way that supported the... Black [power] movement”—including by commissioning an 18-foot-tall painting of a Black Madonna for his church. Prince Hall, cofounder of the Black Freemasons, was inspired by the “existential equality of all humankind granted by God” to launch the organization in the 18th century. In the present day, Austin Channing Brown’s memoir I’m Still Here revealed her “experience as a Black woman in mostly white professional and evangelical spaces.” Throughout, the author reveals how Black Christians have debunked misconceptions of Christianity as a “white man’s religion,” drawing on liberative biblical themes—like freedom from slavery and equality under God—to shape a Black church that has played an essential role in civil rights efforts. Enriched by impressive research, it’s a worthy tribute to Black Christian activism in America. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 09/13/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the early days of Christianity, there were many different versions of Christ, according to this scintillating history from journalist Nixey (The Darkening Age). Studying texts that emerged in the centuries after Jesus’s death, Nixey dissects ancient Greco-Roman writings that depict Christ as little more than a magician in a world suffused by the supernatural (“Jesus created magical meals almost from thin air?... There were spells in the Greek Magical Papyri that offered a far larger menu”). Also discussed are the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which portrays Jesus as a borderline-arrogant miracle worker with a temper; and Acts of Thomas, which describes Jesus preaching “abstention from sex lest any ‘lunatic’ children were conceived.” When Rome began banning such accounts in the fourth century, “heretical” depictions of Christ began to fade in favor of something closer to today’s ”familiar Jesus of Sunday school and sunbeams.” (The texts are not entirely forgotten, however—so-called Thomas Christians, who “pride themselves on being some of the first people to be converted to Christianity,” still live in India). The author gives due to the diverse and fascinating yet sometimes invisible threads hidden in the history of Christianity, enriching her study with intriguing arcana and close analysis. The result is an illuminating reassessment of the world’s largest religion. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 09/13/2024 | Details & Permalink

Promey (Sensational Religion), a professor of religion at Yale, delivers an ambitious exploration of the public nature of religion in America. Locating an overlap between Christianity and capitalism, she traces how the rise of modern advertising in the late 18th and early 19th centuries collided with Christian evangelism to help shape a “testimonial aesthetics” that finds expression in public displays ranging from 45-foot-tall Christmas trees to “Got Jesus?” bumper stickers. Such forms of display seek to proclaim, promote, and—implicitly or explicitly—to convert viewers, she writes. Yet they also serve to conceal by occluding other identities, histories, and religions, positioning white Christianity as “the default American religion” and contributing to the formation of a “white Christian nation.” Promey expresses hope that the dominance of this Christian system of display might be exposed for its harms, though her reasons are vague and rely mostly on the notion that the presence of these designs might invite public conversation that could lead to the creation of more inclusive civic spaces. Though jargon-filled, Promey’s study of the ways in which power is mediated via material culture fascinates. Scholars of religion will want this on their bookshelves. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/13/2024 | Details & Permalink

Motivational speaker Habif makes his English-language debut with a mishmash of platitudes urging readers to follow their dreams. Breaking down his program into three steps, Habif outlines how to “inhale” (gathering self-knowledge, including by auditing one’s talents and types of intelligence); “inflame” (preparing for action by sharpening the ability to focus and make decisions); and “roar” (devising an action plan and putting it into practice while looking to God for strength). He supplements the steps with solid guidance on identifying Enneagram types and discovering one’s personal talents (“Remember, don’t look for [satisfaction] in the outcome but in what you feel when you do it”). More often, though, the parade of truisms is dominated by vague advice (“Stop being silent... and God will join you in that battle where you must overcome yourself”) and grandiose language (“Yes, it will hurt to tread on the parched field of betrayals and lies. Yes, there will be distortions that will attempt to extinguish what is rumbling within you”). This self-help guide spends a lot of time saying relatively little. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 09/06/2024 | Details & Permalink

Maroon 5 keyboardist Morton debuts with a run-of-the-mill account of his faith and his musical career. Growing up steeped in the musical traditions of his pastor father’s New Orleans church, Morton played in gospel bands and choirs until his teens, when a Stevie Wonder record “changed my musical brain” and inspired him to start writing R&B love songs. After garnering some success with his college band FreeStyle Nation, Morton initially struck out as a solo artist (“My songs weren’t sexual enough to be R&B, and they definitely weren’t gospel”). Success came in fits and starts until a chance audition with Maroon 5 in 2010 put him on the band’s path to stardom and also accelerated his solo career (he would go on to earn a Grammy nomination for his breakout 2017 album Gumbo). Unfortunately, his successes and failures feel untethered to the meandering narrative, and even moments of emotional crisis—for example, telling his father he’d decided not to pursue a career in Christian music—resolve quickly and without fanfare. Only devoted Maroon 5 fans need apply. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/06/2024 | Details & Permalink