Faculty Book Recommendations

The Prophetic Body: Embodiment and Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature by Anathea Portier-Young

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024

This book employs an exciting and refreshing paradigm for reading biblical prophetic literature, emphasizing the bodies and material worlds of the prophets (rather than focusing narrowly on their words and writings). Portier-Young's argument has important implications for how scholars understand what it meant to be a prophet in ancient Israel and early Judaism and how the church understands the ways in which the word of God becomes entangled in human flesh.

Passions of the Soul by Rowan Williams

New York: Bloomsbury, 2024

Based on a series of retreat addresses, this is Rowan Williams at his pastoral best. He offers a survey of early Eastern monastic teaching on the "Eight Thoughts" which hinder Christian freedom and maturity in Christ. An excellent tool for "the defense against the dark arts."

His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham

New York: Random House, 2020

I don't normally read biographies of American politicians, but I made an exception in this case. Jon Meacham (C '1991, Pulitzer Prize 2009) is of course a well-known journalist, historian, and commentator on current events, so his authorship was part of the appeal. But the main reason is the focus on John Lewis's remarkable life (1940-2020) as student activist, Baptist minister, civil rights leader who suffered physical violence for his non-violent witness, and, yes, American politician (US House of Representatives, Georgia's 5th congressional district, 1987-2020). Meacham makes the case that Lewis should be considered a contemporary saint and the book is an important account of how Christian faith and civic leadership can combine to promote justice and the common good.

We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope by Steven Charleston

Minneapolis: Broadleaf, 2023

Charleston, a member of the Choctaw nation as well as an Episcopal bishop and former seminary dean, offers stories from four Native American prophets and from the Hopi community to see how they helped their people survive genocide and catastrophe. He reminds us that apocalypse refers to both the end of the world and to revelation, and so he asks what these prophets and people might reveal to the rest of us as we confront various forms of environmental and social collapse in our own time.

Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024

What might happen if a novelist read Genesis seriously but not just academically? This book is one possible result. Robinson is cognizant of academic issues, pays attention to literature from surrounding cultures through subsequent centuries, and writes with a novelist's flair. She looks at the book as a whole as well as in its lectionary-sized snippets. How I wish she could have dealt with the Hebrew in some instances instead of taking the KJV text as her foundation! 

If you were put off by James Woods' review in The New Yorker, March, 4, 2024, I would advise you to put him aside and read Robinson herself. And if you are looking for a fascinating and thoughtful novel, pick up Robinson's Gilead. (I assure you it has nothing at all to do with the Gilead of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.)

The Anglican Tradition From a Postcolonial Perspective by Kwok Pui-Lan 

New York: Seabury, Church Publishing, 2023

This book is a must-read, in my opinion. I remember reading Beyond Colonial Anglicanism in seminary (which she edited with Ian Douglas), and being deeply appreciative of and formed by the different perspectives brought into the book. With this monograph, Kwok Pui-Lan asks us to encounter the Anglican Tradition from a postcolonial perspective, thereby challenging and enriching how we think of Anglicanism. I'm looking forward to incorporating this into my classes this year.