Pastor Timberlake (The Art of Overcoming) reminds Christians in this upbeat guide that facing life’s roadblocks can help fortify one’s faith. He explains how asking for help can grow one’s community (“Remember, you weren’t designed by God to do life alone”), how sacrificing time or money for a long-term goal is often part of God’s plan (he recalls being approached by a TV network about hosting a show but choosing instead to follow “God’s call” to pastor full-time), and how enduring “difficult seasons” can encourage readers to shed a false sense of control and lean on their faith. (Biblical characters who endured hardships—Paul was “persecuted endlessly, despite being called and gifted by God as an apostle”—were driven “to find their hope in God, not in their own resources, connections, circumstances, or cleverness,” Timberlake notes.) The author’s targeted guidance and streamlined presentation (numbered key points, reflection questions, and helpful acronyms appear throughout) make the advice easily digestible, and his knack for pithy phrasing will ensure these lessons stick in readers’ minds (of sacrificing for the sake of long-term objectives, he writes: “You’re not losing. You’re choosing. And your future self will thank you”). The result is an optimistic, hands-on testament to the notion that challenges build character. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/20/2025 | Details & Permalink

Priest Alison (Jesus the Forgiving Victim) delivers an intermittently insightful argument for why loving Jesus means loving one’s “queer neighbors” as oneself. According to the author, Christianity has historically been wedded to linear, “two-dimensional” biblical narratives driven by a “top-down God” who blindly dictates rules. In reality, Alison explains, humans are designed to understand God’s wisdom with and through others, especially those who are marginalized or different from them; in humanizing “the scapegoated... among us,” one learns to humanize and love the scapegoated Jesus. In the author’s view, the process of eschewing moral righteousness and entering a “slow, penitent learning process by which we begin to apprehend reality” is central to becoming a true “disciple of God.” While the notion of faith as a process of co-creation is elegantly conceived and intriguing, Alison’s account is marred by meandering arguments and distracting metaphors (”Think of it as if Jesus had come into the world in order to produce the antibodies to immunize us against being run by death and its fear. In living into his death on the cross, he finally achieved the creation of the vaccine, and handed it over to his Father for distribution among all of us”). Still, patient and theologically minded readers will be rewarded. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

Hypnotherapist Walden (I Had the Strangest Dream) shares an eccentric and irritating guide to “dreamifesting,” or “tapping into the visions, images, and insights that come to us while we sleep” to “bring forth favorable three-dimensional outcomes.” She walks readers through identifying “soul goals,” which transcend earthly things like money, align with “what the universe wants for you,” and can be pinpointed by extrapolating from “the last time you felt a deep inner peace, laughed until you cried, or felt in awe.” With those qualities in mind, readers can train themselves to remember their dreams, record them in a journal, and analyze how they might inform one’s attempts to put their soul goals into action or let go of what stands in the way. Those steps are intercut with advice on undertaking so-called “media fasts,” identifying “non-physical allies’ (like mythologiocal beings or angels) to fuel one’s “dreamifesting journey,” and spotting differences between radical gratitude and toxic positivity. Walden also indulges in frequent personal digressions (at one point, she recalls a conversation with a friend in which she compares dreamifesting to making cookies—“When we sleep, what if our dreams are the oven of our subconscious that bakes our thoughts?”). Unfortunately, Walden’s enthusiasm doesn’t make up for the haphazard structure, tangled metaphors, and lack of substantive advice. This falls flat. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

Generation Z believes that God is unconcerned with them and the increasingly chaotic world in which they live, according to this eye-opening debut. Maddox, the national director for generational impact at Young Life ministries, contends that growing up in a world dominated by social media and plagued by crises like Covid-19 has made the generation (young people born between 1997 and 2012) anxious, jaded, and skeptical that the church can answer their existential questions. To fix that disconnect, she draws on conversations with Gen Zers about such issues as whether God will unconditionally accept them (yes—unlike on social media, Christians need not hide parts of themselves to be accepted) and whether God can be considered good if he allows people to suffer (Gen Zers, who are likelier than other generations to understand good as that which is without pain or sacrifice, should be reminded that God’s goodness lies in his ability to provide comfort amid hardship). Despite the author’s sometimes awkward use of Gen-Z slang, she delivers trenchant points about how faith exists in a specific generational context and convincingly frames Christianity as a helpful resource for finding purpose in an information-saturated but meaning-starved world. This will appeal especially to pastors, parents, and clergy looking to bring younger people closer to God. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/04/2025 | Details & Permalink

Novelist VanLiere (The Day of Ezekiel’s Hope) delivers an earnest ode to a holiday that, she argues, has been sanitized in contemporary culture by picture-perfect celebrations and secular customs. Unpacking elements of the Christmas story, she highlights how Mary “provided a loving home for God’s only Son” at the risk of being shunned for getting pregnant out of wedlock and how steadfast Joseph was chosen to be Jesus’s adoptive father despite being a “nobody by the world’s standards.” Other chapters discuss Jesus’s birth in a manger after Joseph and Mary were denied a room in the local inn—humble origins, she argues, that foreshadowed Christ’s dedication to the disadvantaged. Throughout, the author uses the Christmas story to highlight how Jesus welcomes the “brokenhearted and downtrodden”—a reassuring point that she hammers home a bit clumsily (on the lack of space in the Bethlehem inn: “There was no room for the King of kings to lay His head, but he always makes room for you.... The doors of Bethlehem were closed to him but He has flung open wide the doors of heaven to us”). Though this treads familiar ground, it will uplift Christians looking to rediscover the season’s joys. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/27/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this astute if occasionally meandering treatise, Christman (How to Be Normal), an English professor at the University of Michigan, advocates for abandoning “the old covenant between Christians and conservatism” and adopting leftist values closer to the ones Jesus espoused. Diverging from the liberalism of today’s Democratic party, he outlines a leftist politics that seeks to build a society where “the meek, the peacemaker, the person on the bottom of things is abundantly blessed.” Doing so would entail dismantling capitalism—which provides too many opportunities for individuals to accumulate “enough wealth and capital” to “fund the destruction” of a fair society—in favor of something closer to a socialist democracy, Christman acknowledges. More practically, readers can enact leftist values by giving to charity; joining or starting a union; opposing nativism; and supporting climate change initiatives. While the author’s digressive, footnotes-heavy style can frustrate, curious readers will appreciate his careful attention to moral nuance and clear points about the insufficiency of good intentions. Simply believing the “right” things, he notes, “shows me a lot of ways in which the strength of my intentions is not enough to change... social structures that my actions are embedded within.” Christians seeking a stimulating political discourse should pick this up. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/20/2025 | Details & Permalink

Unbelievable? podcaster Brierly (The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God) draws from his conversations with Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, and other nonbelievers in this comprehensive case for the value of Christian faith. Diving into debates on faith-related topics, Brierly provides insightful responses to questions like whether religion and science can coexist (yes, because the universe’s boundless complexity points to the presence of a creator) and whether Jesus was actually resurrected (yes, on the basis of historical data like the empty tomb and witnesses’ reports of the resurrected Jesus). Brierly’s less convincing when it comes to perennially spiky topics like suffering and why God allows it (possible explanations include that removing suffering from the world would also mean robbing people of free will and that hardship can spur people to grow their faith). Still, he provides a smart, evenhanded model for what disagreement on matters of faith can look like. Despite his fondness for apologetics, he’s also careful to delineate its limits, writing that a reasoned defense of Christian beliefs can remove barriers to faith for skeptics but can never be “the whole picture... in the end, nobody gets argued into the Kingdom of God.” This provides much food for thought. (May)

Reviewed on 06/20/2025 | Details & Permalink

Late Show writer Sidley debuts with a delightfully irreverent rundown of Catholic saints and beliefs. Loosely framing the book as a guide to canonization (“Heaven has received many talented applicants for sainthood over the course of forever, so it may take a while to process your application.... On the plus side there’s no concept of time in heaven”), Sidley lays out the basics of Catholic doctrine and the steps required for sainthood, beginning with dying and concluding with performing a posthumous miracle (the most common of which are medical—“healings, cures, restoration of lost abilities... basically anything that would make a great episode of House”). Interspersed throughout are discussions of specific saints, including those who probably weren’t real (St. Christopher), “nepo baby” saints (St. Basil the Great’s entire family–“enough for a bobsled team, including alternates”—is canonized), and who rejected marriage (like St. Agatha, who’s “unfortunately commemorated with cakes shaped like her lopped-off tits”). Sidley’s ribald tone is rooted in a genuine affection for her subject that shines through in the granular, informative, and sometimes bizarre details she shares about Catholic tradition. Readers will enjoy themselves. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 06/20/2025 | Details & Permalink

Hannah L., a recovered addict, and Rabbi Winokur combine Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step program with Mussar, a “Jewish spiritual practice” that focuses on cultivating middot, or “soul traits,” in their thought-provoking debut guide to tackling addiction. Framing the two systems as complementary—the 12-step program guides addicts “one day at a time,” while Mussar is a path to “uncover[ing] our divine beauty, implemented iteratively over time”—the authors link each of the 12 steps with a middah that facilitates it. For example, step three, which entails turning over one’s life “to a recipient identified as the God of our understanding,” is used to explore how such trust requires a deeper, longer-term faith similar to the middah emunah, which involves “knowing, in our hearts and minds, that there is a power of the universe... that leans toward doing good for all of creation.” Broadly defining addiction as the pursuit of a substance, person, or experience at the expense of well-being, the authors construct a flexible framework that links spiritual, emotional, and psychological health using a blend of ancient and contemporary wisdom. Addicts and those who love them have plenty to gain. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/20/2025 | Details & Permalink

Researcher Howell debuts with a fascinating survey of the intelligent design movement, a late 1980s through early 2000s effort to displace Darwinian evolutionary theory. Religious opponents have long argued against evolution, viewing the notion that life developed without direction from a creator as a repudiation of the Bible. Yet as efforts to debunk evolution failed to gain acceptance in public school classrooms, a group of anti-evolutionists decided to attack Darwinism via its roots in naturalism, or the belief that there is nothing beyond nature–a “strategic” attempt to dismantle evolutionary theory on philosophical rather than biblical grounds. Howell traces how the movement garnered support throughout the 1990s and early 2000s from the right, including conservative intellectuals and “grassroots evangelical populists” wielding intelligent design in “culture-war campaigns against US secularism.” By the mid-2000s the movement had faltered for reasons including the inability to produce a convincing alternative to Darwinism and was largely barred from classrooms. Still, Howell convincingly argues that intelligent design permanently influenced American conservative culture by casting the kind of doubt on “the reliability of scientific practice” that fueled later skepticism against vaccines and climate change. Deeply informed and substantive, this is a trenchant examination of the contested terrain where science, religion, and politics battle. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 06/20/2025 | Details & Permalink