Books
Lyz Lenz’s midrash on pregnancy and motherhood
Lenz blends storytelling and critique to explore the role of myths in defining women’s bodies.
Willie Jennings’s plea to create a new kind of theologian
After Whiteness is urgent reading for any institution that purports to care about God and race.
Take & Read: Practical theology
Five books that introduce new voices to the conversation
Marilynne Robinson’s new Gilead novel makes Jack Boughton make sense
Everything in Jack is a marvel.
Douglas Ottati’s liberal piety
The theologian starts by recognizing that we know enough to live fully in response to God’s grace.
N. T. Wright and Walter Brueggemann look to the Bible for wisdom during the pandemic
They both resist easy answers to the problem of suffering.
Sexual assault is a public health issue
Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan’s study of agency, consent, and sex on college campuses
Can the religious left be as effective in Washington as it’s been on the streets?
Jack Jenkins’s book is informative and persuasive, if not exactly unbiased.
Michael Cohen’s tell-all about Trump is mostly about himself
The moral lessons of his humiliation and imprisonment seem fairly limited.
The artist at the end of the world
Scott Russell Sanders’s essays balance ecological despair with the promise of human creativity.
Are we trapped by the way others see us?
Brit Bennett’s novel explores racial passing, gender transition, and family trauma.
When your partner loses faith
After Stina Kielsmeier-Cook’s husband became a none, she reached out to some neighborhood nuns.
Dr. King’s voice in verse
Joseph Ross’s poems are an elegy for the civil rights movement’s martyrs.
The law in our lives
David Opderbeck’s book about theology, the law, and how we engage with both
Louise Erdrich’s novel gives names, faces, words, and life to the Chippewa Turtle Mountain Band
A story of survival in the face of termination
Prominent evangelical scholars are, once again, disavowing Trump
They’re brave to do so. Do they go far enough?
I wish Francis Su had been my third-grade math teacher
Su’s book is about math and human flourishing. It’s also about how to be a teacher.
How Heather Cox Richardson looks to the past for hope
The “Letters from an American” author provides historical context for today’s threats to democracy.
The treasure of the Psalms
The psalter’s wisdom, illuminated from five perspectives
A desire to return home
Aharon Appelfeld’s novel of wartime survival among Jewish partisans in Nazi Europe