Last week I offered a list of my top fiction books that I read in 2024. This week it’s nonfiction, including a few that have some controversy connected to them.
Great Books
As mentioned last week, these books meet three criteria:
- They taught me (nonfiction) or made me feel something (fiction) even if I didn’t agree with them.
- They were very well written.
- They stuck with me after I read them.
As I’ve reviewed them I noticed they’re primarily about the church and culture. I guess that’s what caught my attention this year.
To see everything I’ve read, and all the books I’ve written, feel free to follow me on Goodreads.
Book of the Year (Nonfiction)
The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality (Glen Scrivener, 2022)
The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus changed everything. Not just for eternity, but for the world here and now.
According to Glen Scrivener, most of what we now consider to be self-evident human values . . . aren’t. Principles that most people now consider obvious were scandalous and foolish to most people (especially to the rich and powerful) before Jesus upended all of it. In this very readable walk through history and philosophy, Scrivener reminds us how revolutionary and scandalous the Jesus way was—and can be again.
Check out my interview with the author on The Church Lobby podcast, How Christianity Became The Air We All Breathe, with Glen Scrivener (Ep 92).
In Church As It Is In Heaven (Jamaal E. Williams and Timothy Paul Jones, 2024)
The topic of racial reconciliation is far more controversial than it should be, especially in the church where we should see Imago Dei in everyone.
The authors (a Black pastor and a White pastor from the same church) address the reality surrounding this issue, not primarily by focusing on better arguments, but by inspiring better behaviors. They give readers some helpful on-ramps to overcoming our racial prejudices and blind spots.
Their approach is realistic (it’s worked in the church they serve), practical (you can use these tools to clear your own blind spots), and theologically sound.
The authors were the guests on my podcast, The Church Lobby, for a great convo about Cultivating a Multiethnic Kingdom Culture, with Jamaal Williams and Timothy Paul Jones (Ep 93).
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The Art of Pastoring: Ministry Without All the Answers (David Hansen, 2012)
How did I miss this book? It’s been around for a over a decade, and it resonates with so much of my approach to ministry, but I didn’t hear about it until it was recommended by a friend this year (Thanks, Ira Hall!)
Some notable quotes include:
- “Pastoral ministry is a life, not a technology.”
- “It’s easy to say that we want to follow Jesus in our ministry—until we hear Jesus tell us about the wilderness.”
- “Ladder-climbing pastors destroy their families. They organize their family life around their career.”
- “When Jesus befriended sinners, they followed him. When the disciples befriended sinners, they followed Jesus.”
The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Karen Swallow Prior, 2023)
As an evangelical, I have often been concerned about our lack of self-awareness. Not only do we not see ourselves accurately (always a difficult undertaking), but we seem to have very little curiosity or concern about it. Karen Swallow Prior shares this concern and has written well about it. As she notes, “It is not simply that Christianity and evangelicalism are infected by other ideologies and identities—it’s also that too often we don’t recognize their undue influence on our beliefs, narratives, images, traditions, and institutions.”
“The central goal of this book” according to Prior, “is to help tease out the elements of the evangelical social imaginary in such a way that those elements that are truly Christian can be better distinguished from those that are merely cultural.” If you share my curiosity about this, I highly recommend looking at ourselves through Prior’s mirror.
Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (Abigail Shrier, 2024)
This book was recommended by people I respect, but I was slow to pick it up (not too slow, obviously, since it was written in 2024) because the subject matter and title felt a little like click-bait. I’m not a big fan of reactionary writing, so I went into it with some skepticism. But Shrier surprised me.
Abigail Shrier is an investigative journalist and a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal with a strong educational pedigree (B.Phil. from the University of Oxford, and a J.D. from Yale Law School), but she is not a licensed therapist. Maybe that’s the point.
She asks important questions in thoughtful ways. Yes, she has a clear bias, but she is upfront about it. Not having an expertise in the field of mental health or pediatrics myself, I can’t vouch for everything from a clinical standpoint. But as a parent, grandparent, and pastor, she needs to be taken seriously. There are big problems in the field of mental health and education, so voices like hers need to be in the conversation.
God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music (Leah Payne, 2024)
In the 1970s through the 90s I was one of the most avid first adopters of what was then called Jesus Music. First, it was artists like Larry Norman and Andrae Crouch, then Audio Adrenaline and DC Talk. They filled my waking hours. But sometime around the new millennium, everything changed. Christian bookstores became dominated by the softer, more corporate sounds of worship music from places like Hillsong and Bethel.
It wasn’t that these more corporate sounds were added to the mix, it was that they replaced everything else. Leah Payne has written well about the market forces that caused this change and what has followed in its wake.
Me, Myself, & Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables (Phil Vischer, 2008)
A candid look at how to build a Christian media empire, then lose it all. Vischer is honest, self-deprecating, and insightful as he chronicles how his passion for Jesus and storytelling led him to create the most successful Christian children’s series of all time. Then, faster than it was built, it collapsed.
This is an entertaining book that acts as an important counterweight to so many of the rah-rah stories about taking big risks and going from success to success. It also includes thoughtful cautions about the dangers of unrestricted growth, such as “Beyond a certain size, in the world of entertainment, you simply cannot afford to let morality govern your work. Your shareholders will not allow it.”
If you’ve tried, but failed to reach a dream, it’s nice to know you’re not alone—and that God’s plans are bigger than our failures.
The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic (Ginger Strand, 2015)
From February 13-15 of 1945, the WW2 allied forces bombed the German city of Dresden practically off the face of the earth. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (future renowned author) was being held as a prisoner of war in a slaughterhouse basement in the middle of the city. Meanwhile, his brother Bernie had been on the team that developed some of the technology that made the bombing possible. That’s a taste of how two very different lives of two very different brothers intersected, as told in this fast-paced book.
If you’re interested in reading about politics, corporate culture, science, family, literature, satire, war, weather control, conspiracy theories, the birth of the computer, and more, there’s something in this book for everyone. And something to make just about everyone angry, suspicious, and keep you fully engaged.
Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda (Megan Basham, 2024)
The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (Tim Alberta, 2023)
I’m covering both of these books in the same review because they can serve as helpful bookends to one of the main issues in modern evangelicalism—church and politics.
Both books argue against extremism within the evangelical church. Alberta sees the dangers coming from the right, Basham from the left. While both have a strong viewpoint, unfortunately, it too often leaks out in unhelpful pettiness, undermining their arguments. (Moderate examples include Alberta referring to the Falkirk Center as “ridiculously named” and “cartoonishly far right”, while Basham calls persistent appeals to “love your neighbor” as “blithe and unthinking,” and “cheap sloganeering.”)
Most readers will love one book and hate the other. While I am very right of center, I agreed with Alberta’s conclusions more than Basham’s. Extreme leftist politics are a problem, but Basham’s villains (Russell Moore, Beth Moore, and so on) are not leftists. They may be considered moderately conservative politically, but they’re very conservative theologically.
If you’re interested in the state of modern American evangelicalism and politics I recommend reading both books with discernment and an open mind, not just one. Even when you disagree with their standpoint or conclusions it’s helpful to know the arguments that each side is making.
What Did You Read This Year?
Did you read any of these? Did you read any other books you loved?
Let me know on Facebook, Instagram, or X.
Also, check out these articles to enhance your own reading journey.
(Disclosure: I will receive a small percent of the purchase price of any books you buy through clicking the Amazon links in the article.)
