The first half of 2022 promises a ton of excellent new books! Here are 50 of our most anticipated books of Spring 2022 for Christian Readers…
These anticipated books of Spring 2022 (released in the first 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 ]
[ Literature ] [ NonFiction ]
[ Church ] [ Formation ]
[ Theology ] [ Young Readers ]
[ Coming This Fall ]
Page 1: TOP 10 – Part 1
(In Alphabetical Order by Author’s Last Name)
God is a Black Woman
Christena Cleveland
(HarperOne, Feb. 2022)
In this timely, much-needed book, theologian, social psychologist, and activist Christena Cleveland recounts her personal journey to dismantle the cultural “whitemalegod” and uncover the Sacred Black Feminine, introducing a Black Female God who imbues us with hope, healing, and liberating presence.
For years, Christena Cleveland spoke about racial reconciliation to congregations, justice organizations, and colleges. But she increasingly felt she could no longer trust in the God she’d been implicitly taught to worship—a white male God who preferentially empowered white men despite his claim to love all people. A God who clearly did not relate to, advocate for, or affirm a Black woman like Christena.
Her crisis of faith sent her on an intellectual and spiritual journey through history and across France, on a 400-mile walking pilgrimage to the ancient shrines of Black Madonnas to find healing in the Sacred Black Feminine. God Is a Black Woman is the chronicle of her liberating transformation and a critique of a society shaped by white patriarchal Christianity and culture. Christena reveals how America’s collective idea of God as a white man has perpetuated hurt, hopelessness, and racial and gender oppression. Integrating her powerful personal story, womanist ideology, as well as theological, historical, and social science research, she invites us to take seriously the truth that God is not white nor male and gives us a new and hopeful path for connecting with the divine and honoring the sacredness of all Black people.
Faithful Antiracism: Moving Past Talk to Systemic Change
Christina Edmondson /
Chad Brennan
(IVP, March 2022)
It’s time to move past talk. It’s no longer news to most of us that our society has a deep-seated racism problem. Christians of all ethnic and economic backgrounds are tired of seeing the ugly legacy of racism play out before their eyes and feeling ill-equipped to respond. They watch as friends and family members leave the visible church over this issue, or fall prey to a gospel of White nationalism that is an affront to the cross of Christ. Racism presents itself as an undefeatable foe―a sustained scourge on the reputation of the church. In Faithful Antiracism, Christina Barland Edmondson and Chad Brennan take confidence from the truth that Christ has overcome the world, including racism, and offer clear analysis and interventions to challenge and resist its pernicious power. Drawing on brand-new research from the landmark Race, Religion, and Justice Project led by Michael Emerson and others, this book represents the most comprehensive study on Christians and race since Emerson’s own book Divided by Faith (2001). It invites readers to put this data to immediate practical use, applying it to their own specific context. Compelled by our grievous social moment and by the timeless truth of Scripture, Faithful Antiracism will equip readers to move past talk and enter the fight against racism in both practical and hopeful ways.
Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again
Johann Hari
(Crown Books, Jan. 2022)
In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.
We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity.
Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus—as individuals, and as a society—if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.
Fortune: How Race Broke My Family and the World–and How to Repair It All
Lisa Sharon Harper
(Brazos Press, Feb. 2022)
“Extraordinary. . . . Let this story of family, race, and resistance create anger in your spirit and ultimately inspire your heart to join the work to heal our nation and eventually our world.”–Otis Moss III (from the foreword)
Drawing on her lifelong journey to know her family’s history, leading Christian activist Lisa Sharon Harper recovers the beauty of her heritage, exposes the brokenness that race has wrought in America, and casts a vision for collective repair.
Harper has spent three decades researching ten generations of her family history through DNA research, oral histories, interviews, and genealogy. Fortune, the name of Harper’s first nonindigenous ancestor born on American soil, bore the brunt of the nation’s first race, gender, and citizenship laws. As Harper traces her family’s story through succeeding generations, she shows how American ideas, customs, and laws robbed her ancestors–and the ancestors of so many others–of their humanity and flourishing.
Fortune helps readers understand how America was built upon systems and structures that blessed some and cursed others, allowing Americans of European descent to benefit from the colonization, genocide, enslavement, rape, and exploitation of people of color. As Harper lights a path through national and religious history, she clarifies exactly how and when the world broke and shows the way to redemption for us all. The book culminates with a powerful and compelling vision of truth telling, reparation, and forgiveness that leads to Beloved Community.
Josey Johnson’s Hair and the Holy Spirit
Esau McCaulley /
LaTonya Jackson (Illustrator)
(IVP Kids, May 2022)
When Josey wonders why people are so different, Dad helps her understand that our differences aren’t a mistake. In fact, we have many differences because God is creative!
Josie is spending the day with Dad―getting her hair braided at Monique’s Beauty Shop, and picking out a new red dress for Sunday. Because Sunday is Pentecost! In the process, she learns to celebrate the differences she sees all around her as part of God’s plan for his creation.
Children and the adults who read with them are invited to join Josey as she learns of God’s wonderfully diverse design. Also included is a note from the author to encourage further conversation about the content.
Discover IVP Kids and share with children the things that matter to God!
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