Spring 2024 – Most Anticipated Books for Christian Readers!

The first half of 2024 promises a ton of excellent new books! Here are 60 of our most anticipated books of Spring 2024 for Christian Readers…

These anticipated books of Spring 2024 (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 ] [ Formation ] [ Church ]
[ NonFiction ] [ Literature ] [ Memoirs / Kids ]
[ Coming in Fall 2024! ]

Page 1: TOP 10 – Part 1

(In Alphabetical Order by Author’s Last Name)

Field Notes for the Wilderness: Practices for an Evolving Faith

Sarah Bessey

(Convergent, February)

“This is the perfect guide for all those of who need to be reintroduced to a faith full of grace, mercy, and love.”—Kate Bowler, author of Good Enough

It’s hard to leave a faith that has raised us. Maybe it’s even harder to stay. But what can feel impossible is living in the tension. Living with a faith that evolves.

Sarah Bessey is an expert at faithfully stumbling forward. As a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Evolving Faith,the foremost community for progressive Christians, she has been trusted by thousands of people to pursue a reconstruction of faith centered on compassion, truth, and inclusion. Bessey has found a deeply underserved and underestimated remnant in the wilderness of Christianity who are still devoted to Jesus, deeply rooted in the Gospel, fascinated with Scripture, and committed to reimagining their faith.

Field Notes for the Wilderness guides us through multiple principles to live by for an evolving faith, including

• practicing wonder and curiosity as spiritual disciplines
• mothering ourselves with compassion and empathy
• making space for lament and righteous rage
• finding good spiritual teachers
• discovering what we are for in this life, and moving in that direction

In this groundbreaking and nurturing book, Bessey becomes a shepherd for our curiosity, giving us a table for our questions, tools to cultivate what we crave, and a blessing for what was—even as we leave it behind.

The Broken Body: Israel, Christ and Fragmentation

Sarah Coakley

(Wiley-Blackwell, May)

A fascinating collection of essays exploring a fresh contemporary approach to the person and doctrine of Jesus Christ

How should Christians think about the person of Jesus Christ today? In this book Sarah Coakley argues that this question has to be ‘broken open’ in new and unexpected ways: by an awareness of the deep spiritual demands of the Christological task and its strikingly ‘apophatic’ dimensions; by a probing of the paradoxical ways in which Judaism and Christianity are drawn together in Christ, even by those issues which seem to ‘break’ them most decisively apart; and by an exploration of the mode of Christ’s presence in the eucharist, with its intensification,‘ breaking’ and re-gathering of human desires. In this sequel to her celebrated earlier volume of essays, Powers and Submissions, Coakley returns to its unifying theme of divine power and contemplative submission, and weaves a new web of Christological outcomes which remain replete with controversial implications for gender, spirituality and ethics.

Readers will also find:

• A discerning philosophical analysis of the problem of the ‘identity’ of Jesus Christ, including a rich discussion of the Chalcedonian tradition and its precursors;
• A comprehensive exploration of the themes that seem to divide Judaism and Christianity and yet richly inform the issue of their eschatological future together;
• An insightful exploration of the Christian eucharist and its ‘efficacy’ as a lens on the topic of Christology;
• A complete new treatment of the meaning of the ‘apophatic’ Christ.

Perfect for academics working in the fields of systematic theology, the philosophy of religion, and early Christian studies, The Broken Body: Israel, Christ and Fragmentation will also benefit students and academics in Jewish and Christian relations, as well as feminist and gender theory.

Reckoning with Power: Why the Church Fails When It’s on the Wrong Side of Power

David Fitch

(Brazos Press, January)

History is clear: Whenever the church has aligned itself with worldly, coercive power, it ends up on the wrong side of important justice issues.

But when the church cooperates with God’s power through his presence among the least powerful, its witness for Jesus transforms the world into a better place.

In Reckoning with Power, David Fitch unpacks the difference between worldly power, or power over others, and God’s power, which engages not in coercion but in love, reconciliation, grace, forgiveness, and healing.

In a world where we can see the abuses of power everywhere–in our homes, schools, governments, and churches–Fitch teaches readers how to discern power and avoid its abuses and traumas. By learning from the church’s historical pitfalls, Fitch empowers Christians to relinquish worldly power and make space for God to disrupt and transform our culture for his kingdom.

Strange Religion: How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling

Nijay Gupta

(Brazos Press, February)

“A fresh and rigorously researched take on Christianity’s founding.”–Publishers Weekly

The first Christians were weird. Just how weird is often lost on today’s believers.

Within Roman society, the earliest Christians stood out for the oddness of their beliefs and practices. They believed unusual things, worshiped God in strange ways, and lived a unique lifestyle. They practiced a whole new way of thinking about and doing religion that would have been seen as bizarre and dangerous when compared to Roman religion and most other religions of the ancient world.

Award-winning author, blogger, speaker, and New Testament teacher Nijay Gupta traces the emerging Christian faith in its Roman context in this accessible and engaging book. Christianity would have been seen as radical in the Roman world, but some found this new religion attractive and compelling. The first Christians dared to be different, pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable, transformed how people thought about religion, and started a movement that grew like wildfire.

Brought to life with numerous images, this book shows how the example of the earliest Christians can offer today’s believers encouragement and hope.

The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church

Sarah McCammon

(St. Martins, March 2024)

“An intimate window into the world of American evangelicalism. Fellow exvangelicals will find McCammon’s story both startlingly familiar and immensely clarifying, while those looking in from the outside can find no better introduction to the subculture that has shaped the hopes and fears of millions of Americans.” ―Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne

The first definitive book that names the massive social movement of people leaving the church: the exvangelicals.

Growing up in a deeply evangelical family in the Midwest in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sarah McCammon was strictly taught to fear God, obey him, and not question the faith. Persistently worried that her gay grandfather would go to hell unless she could reach him, or that her Muslim friend would need to be converted, and that she, too, would go to hell if she did not believe fervently enough, McCammon was a rule-follower and―most of the time―a true believer. But through it all, she was increasingly plagued by fears and deep questions as the belief system she’d been carefully taught clashed with her expanding understanding of the outside world.

After spending her early adult life striving to make sense of an unraveling worldview, by her 30s, she found herself face-to-face with it once again as she covered the Trump campaign for NPR, where she witnessed first-hand the power and influence that evangelical Christian beliefs held on the political right.

Sarah also came to discover that she was not alone: she is among a rising generation of the children of evangelicalism who are growing up and fleeing the fold, who are thinking for themselves and deconstructing what feel like the “alternative facts” of their childhood.

Rigorously reported and deeply personal, The Exvangelicals is the story of the people who make up this generational tipping point, including Sarah herself. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, this is the first definitive book that names and describes the post-evangelical movement: identifying its origins, telling the stories of its members, and examining its vast cultural, social, and political impact.

 

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