Thanks to all our readers who voted for their favorite new books of 2024 in our recent poll!
We received over 1000 votes, and after tallying up the results, we are delighted to announce five award-winning books…
*** The Winner:
The Understory: An Invitation to Rootedness and Resilience from the Forest Floor
Lore Ferguson Wilbert
Hardback: Brazos, May 2024.
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Wilbert shares her story of alienation and disorientation after years of religious and political unrest in the evangelical church. In doing so, she looks to an unlikely place—the forest—to learn how to live and even thrive when everything seems to be falling apart.
What can we learn from eroding soil, the decomposition process, the time it takes to grow lichen, the beauty of fiddlehead ferns, the regeneration of self-sowing seeds, and walking through the mud? Here, among the understory of the forest, Wilbert discovers rich metaphors for living a rooted and flourishing life within the complex ecosystems of our world. Her tenderness and honesty will help listeners grieve, remember, hope, and press on with resilience.
*** Runners Up:
Chuck DeGroat
Paperback: Tyndale Refresh, October 2024
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We can’t always control what happens to us. But we can discover how to heal the hidden hurt it leaves behind.
If you’re like many of us, you carry a weight of buried pain. Despite looking put together on the outside, you feel secretly fractured within. While you appear strong and resilient on the outside, inside a storm brews of all the ways you’ve been hurt or harmed. There’s a constant churn of unprocessed feelings of shame, anger, grief, or loneliness. And your body tells the story of its struggles in a myriad of aches and ailments. Little by little, you find yourself becoming disconnected from who you truly are. Not knowing what to do with your suffering and fearing you’ll be hurt again, you’ve learned to cope, to numb and suppress the ache within.
How Ableism Fuels Racism: Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in the Church
Lamar Hardwick
Paperback: Brazos, February 2024
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“Marshaling fine-grained historical detail and scrupulous analysis, Hardwick persuades.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
As a Black autistic pastor and disability scholar, Lamar Hardwick lives at the intersection of disability, race, and religion. Tied to this reality, he heeded the call to write How Ableism Fuels Racism to help Christian communities engage in critical conversations about race by addressing issues of ableism.
Hardwick believes that ableism—the idea that certain bodies are better than others—and the disability discrimination fueled by this perspective are the root causes of racial bias and injustice in American culture and in the church. Here, he uses historical records, biblical interpretation, and disability studies to examine how ableism in America led to the creation of images, idols, and institutions that perpetuate both disability and racial discrimination.
He then goes a step further, calling the church into action to address the deep-seated issues of ableism that started it all and offering practical steps to help listeners dismantle ableism and racism both in attitude and practice.
*** Honorable Mentions:
All Change: Unlocking Kingdom Potential in a World We Weren’t Prepared For
Rich Robinson
Paperback: 100 Movements, September 2024
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Lunchroom Theology: Pushing Tables Together in a Fractured World
Heather Gorman, Mark Nelson
Paperback: 100 Movements, September 2024
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Our 2024 Advent Calendar
With Our Picks for the Best Books of the Year!
Katie Selby is Associate Editor of The Englewood Review of Books. Prior to her family‘s recent transition to the Englewood Christian Church community, Katie served various churches and organizations in Nebraska, East Tennessee, India, and Ethiopia. She is an M.Div. graduate of Emmanuel Christian Seminary at Milligan University.
 Reading for the Common Good From ERB Editor Christopher Smith "This book will inspire, motivate and challenge anyone who cares a whit about the written word, the world of ideas, the shape of our communities and the life of the church." -Karen Swallow Prior Enter your email below to sign up for our weekly newsletter & download your FREE copy of this ebook! |
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