Fall 2023 – Most Anticipated Books for Christian Readers!

The second half of 2023 promises a ton of excellent new books! Here are 60 of our most anticipated books of Fall 2023 for Christian Readers…

These anticipated books of Fall 2023 (released in the second half of the year) wrestle with some of the deepest challenges of our day, and will guide us toward faithful living in the present and in years to come.

These anticipated books of Fall 2023 (released in the seocnd half of the year) wrestle with some of the deepest challenges of our day, and will guide us toward faithful living in the present and in years to come.

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[ TOP 10 – Part 1 ]   [ Top 10 – Part 2 ]
[ Theology ] [ NonFiction ] [ Church ]
[ Formation ] [ Memoirs / Bios ] [ Literature ]
[ Coming in 2024! ]

Page 2: TOP 10 – Part 2

(In Alphabetical Order by Author’s Last Name)

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel

James McBride

(Riverhead, Aug. 2023)

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

Karen Swallow Prior

(Brazos Press, Aug. 2023)

“Provides plenty of fodder for those wishing to explore what evangelicalism is and reimagine what it might become. It’s an eye-opener.”–Publishers Weekly

Contemporary American evangelicalism is suffering from an identity crisis–and a lot of bad press.

In this book, acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior examines evangelical history, both good and bad. By analyzing the literature, art, and popular culture that has surrounded evangelicalism, she unpacks some of the movement’s most deeply held concepts, ideas, values, and practices to consider what is Christian rather than merely cultural. The result is a clearer path forward for evangelicals amid their current identity crisis–and insight for others who want a deeper understanding of what the term “evangelical” means today.

Brought to life with color illustrations, images, and paintings, this book explores ideas including conversion, domesticity, empire, sentimentality, and more. In the end, it goes beyond evangelicalism to show us how we might be influenced by images, stories, and metaphors in ways we cannot always see.

The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here

Kaitlyn Schiess

(Brazos Press, Aug. 2023)

“A nuanced look at America’s legacy of scriptural language.”–Publishers Weekly (starred review)

How do Bible passages written thousands of years ago apply to politics today? What can we learn from America’s history of using the Bible in politics? How can we converse with people whose views differ from our own?

In The Ballot and the Bible, Kaitlyn Schiess explores these questions and more. She unpacks examples of how Americans have connected the Bible to politics in the past, highlighting times it was applied well and times it was egregiously misused.

Schiess combines American political history and biblical interpretation to help readers faithfully read Scripture, talk with others about it, and apply it to contemporary political issues–and to their lives. Rather than prescribing what readers should think about specific hot-button issues, Schiess outlines core biblical themes around power, allegiance, national identity, and more.

Readers will be encouraged to pursue a biblical basis for their political engagement with compassion and confidence.

To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul

Tracy K. Smith

(Knopf, Nov. 2023)

A stunning personal manifesto on memory, family, and history that explores how we in America might—together—come to a new view of our shared past

In 2020, heartsick from constant assaults on Black life, Tracy K. Smith found herself soul-searching and digging into the historical archive for help navigating the “din of human division and strife.” With lyricism and urgency, Smith draws on several avenues of thinking—personal, documentary, and spiritual—to understand who we are as a nation and what we might hope to mean to one another.

In Smith’s own words, “To write a book about Black strength, Black continuance, and the powerful forms of belief and community that have long bolstered the soul of my people, I used the generations of my own patrilineal family to lean backward toward history, to gather a fuller sense of the lives my own ancestors led, the challenges they endured, and the sources of hope and bolstering they counted on. What this process has led me to believe is that all of us, in the here and now, can choose to work alongside the generations that precede us in tending to America’s oldest wounds and meeting the urgencies of our present.”

To Free the Captives touches down in Sunflower, Alabama, the red-dirt town where Smith’s father’s family comes from, and where her grandfather returned after World War Iwith a hero’s record but difficult prospects as a Black man. Smith considers his life and the life of her father through the lens of history. Hoping to connect with their strength and continuance, she assembles a new terminology of American life.

Bearing courageous witness to the terms of Freedom afforded her as a Black woman, a mother, and an educator in the twenty-first century,Smith etches a portrait of where we find ourselves four hundred years into the American experiment. Weaving in an account of her growing spiritual practice, she argues that the soul is not merely a private site of respite or transcendence, but a tool forfulfilling our duties to each other, and a sounding board for our most pressing collective questions: Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?

American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church

Andrew Whitehead

(Brazos Press, Aug. 2023)

“Heartfelt, incisive, and worthy of thoughtful consideration.”–Library Journal

Power. Fear. Violence. These three idols of Christian nationalism are corrupting American Christianity.

Andrew Whitehead is a leading scholar on Christian nationalism in America and speaks widely on its effects within Christian communities. In this book, he shares his journey andreveals how Christian nationalism threatens the spiritual lives of American Christians and the church.

Whitehead shows how Christians harm their neighbors when they embrace the idols of power, fear, and violence. He uses two key examples–racism and xenophobia–to demonstrate that these idols violate core Christian beliefs. Through stories, he illuminates expressions of Christianity that confront Christian nationalism and offer a faithful path forward.

American Idolatry encourages further conversation about what Christian nationalism threatens, how to face it, and why it is vitally important to do so. It will help identify Christian nationalism and build a framework that makes sense of the relationship between faith and the current political and cultural context.

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