Every year, when the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature wrap up their annual joint meeting, not all the unsold or display-only books at the conference go home with the publishers. Many valuable textbooks, commentaries, and works of research are scooped up by the Theological Book Network for free or for a steep discount. TBN staff then curates, packages, and ships the books to Christian seminaries and schools in Eastern Europe, Africa, or Latin America, where library shelves are empty or have just a handful of outdated books.
This month, the network officially completed a merger with the 40-year-old nonprofit Scholar Leaders, marrying their common goals to develop theological leaders in the Majority World. While TBN provides the books, Scholar Leaders provides scholarships for advanced training and education designed to train pastors, found innovative ministries, and direct their own seminaries and schools.
Evan Hunter, executive VP at TBN, illustrated how symbiotic the programs are: In 2023, he was in Africa with the TBN president Christopher M. Hays, when they met with the president of a seminary in Nigeria. "We had sponsored him for his PhD back in the early 2000s and he returned to Nigeria as a dynamic scholar who writes on issues of ethics and religious violence. On that day there were about 2,400 books, two pallets, heading for his seminary."
Kurt Berends launched TBN in 2004 after visiting struggling libraries in seminaries across the "majority world," where 65% of all Christians live. Scholars living in those regions face huge challenges in their postgraduate studies without the advanced texts they need, Berends explained. In the 20 years TBN has been operating, Berends said, the nonprofit has shipped more than 2 million books from a massive warehouse in the Christian publishing hub of Grand Rapids to more than 2,000 schools in 96 countries.
Even a single pallet of 1,200 volumes is worth an estimated $35,000—far beyond the humble-to-nonexistent book budgets of most majority world libraries. Each pallet's contents are selected to suit the theological perspective at its destination. Acquisitions director Scott Watson curates all the donations from publishers, universities, and private donors' collections. "If it's an academic library and you want accreditation and you want scholars to do actual research and actual scholarship there, you have to have a library that's well represented across broad spectrums," Watson said.
TBN staff were in Kyiv, Ukraine, last year to meet with leaders of a seminary that had seen their entire campus, including a library of 25,000 books, burned to the ground by Russian invaders. "The school had located a university in Illinois that was shutting down its biblical studies department and was willing to donate its books," said Watson. "And here we were with the logistical expertise they needed to get those books." A container of 27,000 books reached Kyiv in September.
For those who donate books, the rewards are immense, said Richard Brown, senior executive editor for Bloomsbury Academic, who is a former board member and treasurer for the network. Brown told PW he joined staff and board members on a trip to Accra, Ghana, in 2015 to learn about their needs and to ask, "How could we help teachers teach, and learners learn?" Brown recalled: "One day we met with a roomful of seminarians who raised profound theological and justice issues while thanking us for all TBN had done to help them with their education. We thanked them—they were teaching us. "
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The focus for TBN is on English-language physical books, given that translated theological scholarship is still scarce and the internet is unavailable or unreliable in many majority world locales. But TBN leadership is looking ahead to advances in technology such as AI that could open up the theological texts, in hand or online, to more local languages. They are also working with BiblioTech, a digital library platform empowering theological institutions worldwide.
"We have the chance to work with some of the most gifted and brave leaders in the world, and it's our desire to see them have all of the kingdom impact possible," said Hays. "So, if we get to help do that by providing a scholarship, if we get to help do that by getting books in the library, if we get to do that by creating collaborative projects, pulling in leaders from all across the globe in a variety of disciplines, for us that's a privilege. We are not the heroes of our story."
