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Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding True Faith

April Ajoy. Worthy, $27.99 (256p) ISBN 978-1-5460-0668-8

TikTokker Ajoy debuts with a witty account of her departure from the toxic Christian nationalism in which she was raised. The daughter of an evangelical pastor, she’d been indoctrinated since childhood in the importance of “keeping America a Christian nation.” Her views began to shift during the Trump presidency and were forever changed after she saw footage of members of her church at the January 6 Capitol insurrection (this was “not some extremist sect I had never interacted with before,” Ajoy recalls thinking. “These were my people”). During the painful spiritual “deconstruction” that followed, the author agonized over “researching topics and finding answers that could destroy meaningful relationships in my life.” Ultimately, she was able to detangle her Christianity from Christian nationalist beliefs and find a more inclusive faith rooted in love. Throughout, she pairs impassioned calls for readers to recognize how Christian nationalism “exploits our faith for power” with flashes of tongue-in-cheek humor. For example, on the quiz she provides to determine where one falls on the Christian Nationalist spectrum, a score of 30–40 points is “Marjorie Taylor Greene Level”: “If you keep reading this book, you probably won’t be triggered too much, because you can just write off what I say by believing that George Soros is paying me with eternal youth from his space lasers.” It’s an approachable insider’s look at a controversial movement. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

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On Being Jewish Now: Reflections from Authors and Advocates

Edited by Zibby Owens. Zibby, $12.99 trade paper (272p) ISBN 979-8-9911402-3-2

Owens (Blank), founder of Zibby Books and cofounder of Artists Against Antisemitism, gathers more than 70 thought-provoking essays from Jewish writers, actors, artists, and religious leaders about the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. Author Judy Batalion recalls her anxiety about giving a college lecture on the Holocaust soon after the massacre, fearing the surge in antisemitism would yield a hostile response. Elsewhere, novelist Jacqueline Friedland reflects on how her family came to the decision to celebrate her daughter’s bat mitzvah several weeks after the attack so as not to “let evildoers rob us of even more than they already had.” New York Post editor David Christopher Kaufman, a Black man accustomed to being the “darkest Jew in the room,” argues that the Jewish community should accept the permanent dissolution of alliances with progressive groups who were unsympathetic to Jewish interests in the wake of the attack, and instead prioritize uplifting Black, queer, and Latino Jews and diversifying Ashkenazi-dominated institutions. Despite the heavy subject matter, the volume ends on a hopeful note, with rabbi Sharon Brous recalling a family trip to Vietnam amid a climate of escalating antisemitism during which she formed an unexpected minyan with another Jewish family. It’s a revealing look at the wide range of responses to a sad chapter in Jewish history. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2024 | Details & Permalink

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A Million Little Miracles: Rediscover the God Who Is Bigger Than Big, Closer Than Close, and Gooder Than Good

Mark Batterson. Multnomah, $25 (272p) ISBN 978-0-593-19281-8

Pastor Batterson (Win the Day) offers an energetic invitation for believers to notice “everyday miracles—and praise God for them.” Specifically, he calls on readers to cultivate a “holy curiosity” about God and the complexities of his creation, from the intricacies of the human body—the retina alone houses 10 million light-sensitive cells and transmits data through the optic nerve at a rate of 10 million bits per second—to the splendor of nature. Simply spending time outside can broaden one’s perspective, Batterson writes, reminding readers that God commanded Abraham to leave his tent and look up at the stars, which symbolized the number of his descendants (“As long as Abraham was inside his tent, he was staring at an eight-foot ceiling. The second he stepped outside? The sky was the limit”). Batterson’s enthusiasm is infectious, and the links he draws between the natural world and the divine are creative, though they’re sometimes undercut by tired critiques of digital culture (“Smartphones aren’t making us smarter.... Most of us spend more time gazing at screens than we do stargazing, and then we wonder why we’ve lost touch with the Creator”). Still, Christians seeking a fresh approach to their faith will be rewarded. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 09/27/2024 | Details & Permalink

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Every Home a Foundation: Experiencing God Through Your Everyday Routines

Phylicia Masonheimer. Thomas Nelson, $29.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-7852-9226-5

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

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Get Your Spirit Back: Break Free of Negative Self-Talk and Step Fully Into Your Calling

Earl McClellan. Waterbrook, $23.99 (192p) ISBN 978-0-593-44564-8

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

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Pray Bold: Dare to Ask and Believe Big

Joel Osteen. Faithwords, $29 (224p) ISBN 978-1-54600-515-5

“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

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Uncommon Courage: Defending Truth and Freedom While There Is Still Time

Keisha Toni Russell. Harvest House, $18.99 trade paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-73698-640-3

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

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The Mystics Would Like a Word: Six Women Who Met God and Found a Spirituality for Today

Shannon K. Evans. Convergent, $26 (208p) ISBN 978-0-593-72727-0

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

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The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance

Jemar Tisby. Zondervan Reflective, $29.99 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-0-31014-485-4

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

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Heretic: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God

Catherine Nixey. Mariner, $32.50 (384p) ISBN 978-0-358-65291-5

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

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