Spring 2023 – Most Anticipated Books for Christian Readers!

The first half of 2023 promises a ton of excellent new books! Here are 50+ of our most anticipated books of Spring 2023 for Christian Readers…

These anticipated books of Spring 2023 (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 ]
[ Theology ] [ NonFiction ] [ Church ]
[ Formation ] [ History ] [ Literature ]
[ Coming in the Fall ]

Page 1: TOP 10 – Part 1

(In Alphabetical Order by Author’s Last Name)

Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day 

Kaitlin B. Curtice

(Brazos Press, March 2023)

In an era in which “resistance” has become tokenized, popular Indigenous author Kaitlin Curtice reclaims it as a basic human calling. Resistance is for every human who longs to see their neighbors’ holistic flourishing. We each have a role to play in the world right where we are, and our everyday acts of resistance hold us all together.

Curtice shows that we can learn to practice embodied ways of belonging and connection to ourselves and one another through everyday practices, such as getting more in touch with our bodies, resting, and remembering our ancestors. She explores four “realms of resistance”–the personal, the communal, the ancestral, and the integral–and shows how these realms overlap and why all are needed for our liberation. Readers will be empowered to seek wholeness in whatever spheres of influence they inhabit.

Poverty, By America

Matthew Desmond

(Crown Books, March 2023)

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God)

Peter Enns

(HarperOne, February 2023)

The author of How the Bible Actually Works and The Bible Tells Me So explains how our model of God and faith must evolve as our understanding of the world deepens—just as the Bible describes it should.

Life throws us “curve balls”—from devastating personal losses to world tragedies. These events often leave us doubting God, the Bible, and our faith. But instead of pushing away our reservations, we should embrace them, Peter Enns argues. A leading biblical scholar and Christian mentor, Enns has never been afraid to question the Bible or Christian beliefs. Such thoughtful inquisitiveness, he argues, is part of God’s plan. He wants us to question, because doing so actually leads to a stronger, lasting faith.

By reframing how we see these events, we allow ourselves to see how the Bible itself showcases this very process and that “treating curve balls as the enemy” is not only counterproductive but thwarts God’s goal of helping us become mature and wise. Enns shares a number of curve balls he’s encountered in his own life and the questions he has pondered. Does God care about the millions of people who never heard the gospel? Could I relate to a God who has created a universe this big? If God is so relatable, constant, and caring, how do we explain quantum physics? He reveals how particular biblical passages have helped him find wisdom, and how they can do the same for us.

As Curveball persuasively shows, God is bigger and more mysterious than anyone’s expectations. We need a faith that can grow just as deeply.

Touch the Earth: Poems on The Way

Drew Jackson

(IVP Books, Jan. 2023)

Gather it from memory.
Let it touch the earth.

In Touch the Earth, Drew Jackson continues the project he began in God Speaks Through Wombs, reflecting on the Gospel of Luke through poetry. Touch the Earth picks up in chapter nine and continues through the end of Luke’s Gospel. Part protest poetry, part biblical commentary, Jackson presents the gospel story in all its liberative power. Here the gospel is the “fresh words / that speak of / things impossible.”

From the feeding of the multitude (“The best hosts always provide / take home containers”) to the resurrection of Jesus (“the belly of mother Earth / is, indeed, a womb . . . the humus of life is where we become fully human”), this collection helps us hear the hum of deliverance―against all hope―that’s been in the gospel all along.

Christianity and Critical Race Theory: A Faithful and Constructive Conversation

Jeff M. Liou and
Robert Chao Romero

(Baker Academic, April 2023)

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a lightning rod in American politics and evangelical Christianity. This book offers a critical but constructive and sympathetic introduction to CRT written from a perspective rooted in Scripture and Christian theology. The authors take us beyond caricatures and misinformation to consider how CRT can be an analytical tool to help us understand persistent inequality and injustice–and to see how Christians and churches working for racial justice can engage CRT in faithful and constructive ways.

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