cover image THE BEST CHRISTIAN WRITING 2002

THE BEST CHRISTIAN WRITING 2002

, . . Harper San Francisco, $15.95 (336pp) ISBN 978-0-06-009483-6

As editor of the literary review Books & Culture, Wilson is well equipped to survey the world of Christian writing, and he has once again assembled a collection of essays that stimulates and surprises. The presence of writers like Walter Wangerin, Frederica Mathewes-Greene and Philip Yancey will be no surprise, of course, but other less well-known authors like Garret Keizer (The Enigma of Anger) and Sarah E. Hinlicky make equally graceful and compelling contributions. The writing is "Christian" because the writers are (with one exception, Amy Schwartz, an observant Jew who contributes a perfectly tuned updating of C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters); the topics range from teaching to farming, from birth to death. There may also be something distinctively Christian about the way that these essays fuse the written word with personal encounter. Yancey celebrates G. K. Chesterton, Joseph Bottum rereads Dickens; Hinlicky bids farewell to her dying grandfather; Sam Torode contemplates an ultrasound of his unborn son; Wangerin remembers his father-in-law, a lifelong farmer, and Gabriel Said Reynolds explores the faith of his friend Mojtaba, a Shi'ite Muslim. A few of the essays are systematically theological, but in most, Christian faith serves as a source of indirect illumination, equipping the writers to perceive deeply without introducing artificial glare and shadows. Christian readers will be heartened by this collection; others may be surprised at how universal the best Christian writing can be. (Dec.)