The narrative arc in Mary Kooy’s How Did I Get Here? An Immigrant’s Odyssey is framed by the encouraging voices of a Dutch community leader, a high school principal, and a faculty advisor. Yet the emotional content is dominated by a far more formidable force: her mother. Only by rejecting her mother’s voice does Mary…
Ever been grateful for houseflies? Me neither! Living on a farm most of my life, I know houseflies and was never once glad to see them. So, the title of Elise Tegegne’s book intrigued me – In Praise of Houseflies. I hoped it wasn’t some shallow assortment of Pollyanna musings. To my delight, it was…
“When I was fifteen . . . an angel of God came to me in the night, pinned me to my bed, and demanded that I trust in the Lord.” So begins Christopher Beha’s book Why I am Not an Atheist. The former Harper’s Magazine editor writes of growing up Roman Catholic, turning to atheism…
For the last decade, I, like many, have tried to make sense of what’s going on across the border and have been dumbfounded by Christians gleefully signing on to MAGA. We need fresh theological insights. Happily, Lee Camp’s book Scandalous Witness, first published in 2020 during Trump One, is newly re-released and is more relevant…
What to make of the high percentage of evangelical Christian women continuing to support Donald Trump, even after a sexual assault conviction, the Epstein files and evidence of enriching himself from tax dollars? Historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez traces the development of a particular notion of femininity and Christian womanhood in a book complementing her…
Anchors and foreign correspondents were familiar names when I began paying attention to the news as a young person during the 1980s. Brian Stewart stood out with coverage from far-off places like Ethiopia, Northern Ireland, Poland and Afghanistan. His reporting on The Journal went beyond sensational headlines, providing deeper insight into world events. References to…
“Miss Prim had been called all kinds of things – precise, punctual, and practical. Sometimes even stern, strict, and scary. But never welcoming or whimsical, and certainly not wild. Miss Prim believed in no-nonsense.” So begins author Katy Rose’s playful, lyrical introduction to Miss Prim, a controlling, grouchy woman who terrifies neighborhood children with threats…
Paul Kingsnorth gives us his deeply considered assessment of the post-Christian world: “The dethroning of the old sovereign – Christ, who sat at the heart of the Western sacred order – has not led to universal equality and justice. It has led . . . through Robespierre, Stalin and Hitler, to the complete triumph of…
Perpetua, killed in 203 A.D., was her era’s most famous martyr. Her fame came from being regularly mentioned in sermons by well-known bishop Augustine, as well as other third and fourth century preachers. Sarah Ruden’s biography of Perpetua is part of Yale University Press’s “Ancient Lives” collection, a series exploring stories of ancient thinkers, writers…
In Matthew 6, Jesus told us to “look at the birds of the air” for lessons that birds can teach us about ourselves and God’s care for us. The word “ornitheology” was coined by theologian and avid birdwatcher John Stott, blending together ornithology (the study of birds) with theology (the study of God). It’s a…
Imagine a coffee shop in a small American town, its walls adorned with ninety portraits of town residents rendered by a local artist. Then, a mysterious stranger moves into town and buys the paintings one by one and gives them to the persons portrayed. This is the plot of Theo of Golden, a book self-published…
It’s not a secret that I’ve been repairing and bookbinding my church’s Bibles and hymnals. I’m not surreptitiously stuffing them into my backpack, though I suppose the optics might be a bit confusing to members of my congregation. It came about naturally; after all, part of learning a craft involves becoming curious about the product….
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