When I left full-time ministry nearly 15 years ago, I remember feeling stymied by all the unread books on my shelf. I wanted to pick up a book, and while the shelf boasted plenty of Christian books to choose from, none seemed to be what I needed to read.
Leaving my job had inadvertently birthed doubt. Everything that once felt so true and easy to gulp down about Christianity didn’t feel so easy and clear, so black-and-white anymore. As I write in Church Camp, “God felt less like a connect-the-dots puzzle and more like a haphazard collection of dots flung across the room toward me. Here, try and put this together! Left without a clue as to direction, let alone an example of a two- or three-dimensional picture, I didn’t know where to start.”
Cara Meredith
I recognize now what I didn’t have examples of at the time — examples of wrestling with faith and pushing back against black-and-white narratives of faith. I needed writers who still clung to the hope of the resurrection but who weren’t afraid to embrace the wild mystery of a God who is more often encompassed in glorious, bewildering shades of gray.
Today, my book-loving arms are filled with a toppling array of options. A better way to embrace evolutions of faith is to read from those who have been there, who aren’t afraid to ask big questions and offer permission along the way.
The six books below offer unique perspectives from an array of first-time authors: poetic and prayerful, funny and biting, historic and true. Together, they paint a new way forward in the life of faith.
Better Ways to Read the Bible, by Zach Lambert
Lambert’s new release is going to strike a chord in Bible-loving readers everywhere — but it may not be the chord every reader wants to see struck. Just as he pushes back against interpretations of Scripture that promote exclusion and hate, he challenges readers not to just accept what a preacher might say from the pulpit as absolute truth.
He writes: “Equating a pastor’s interpretation with God’s truth assumes that questioning the pastor is the same as questioning God. The problem isn’t believing the Bible is inspired by God; the problem is equating someone’s interpretation with God’s inspiration.”
Lambert dares believe there might be a better way to read and interpret the Bible that leads to healing and wholeness.
The Missionary Kids, by Holly Berkley Fletcher
In her forthcoming release, Fletcher, a former missionary kid, pushes back on an institution many consider a sacred cow in the church: Missions. Missions are not to be questioned, Fletcher would argue, not when missionaries themselves are called by God and hallowed as the holiest of all.
But “dismantling the myths surrounding and undergirding American evangelical missions will help the American church see itself more clearly, tend to its own wounds and invite it into more equal partnership and fellowship with Christians around the world,” she says.
Whether or not readers identify as missionary kids doesn’t matter — but distilling the myths around evangelical Christianity by asking necessary questions, exposing hard truths and finding the God who moves through love is perhaps what does matter.
Rage Prayers, by Elizabeth Ashman Riley
According to the Episcopal priest, both God and faith should be able to take some scrutiny. To Riley, “We have to deconstruct our beliefs, values and preconceived notions so that we might get to the truth of the matter.”
While her book is not entirely about doubt and deconstruction, the short essays and prayers allow the reader to push back against the questions that niggle around in the back of our minds and say the quiet parts out loud.
Whatever the rage — “Raging Through the Human Condition,” “Raging at Mortality,” “Raging with Faith,” “Raging for Justice,” or, put simply, “Petty Rage” — Riley offers a response. Perhaps even more, though, she encourages readers to play with her model of prayer and “let them be a springboard for your own expression to God.”
She gives new permission to old versions of faith.
The Myth of Good Christian Parenting, by Marissa Franks Burt and Kelsey Kramer McGinnis
In their forthcoming release, Burt and McGinnis expose the impact of popular Christian parenting books. As they write, “Many parents who had worked hard to raise their children ‘the Christian way’ were now experiencing shame, anger, worry or guilt that they had done it all wrong. Adult children, wrestling with Christian ideals about honoring parents, struggled to separate and set boundaries.”
Anyone whose family shelf ever was filled with the likes of James Dobson, Tedd Tripp or Larry Christenson, who has since questioned narratives of sparing the rod, shepherding children like sheep or “prevailing pattern(s) of relativism and permissiveness” likely will find understanding, solace and perhaps even new ways of training up a child in the way she or he should go.
I’ve Got Questions, by Erin Hicks Moon
With humor, grit and a whole lot of empathy too, Moon is like a steadfast companion on the journey toward asking big questions and not letting go of hope along the way. Sprinkled with Southern aphorisms and old hymns alike, she speaks directly to the reader and makes them feel like they’re not alone.
Take this quote of longing for an old friend she calls Blessed Assurance: “After years of trying to doll up assurance so it looked like faith, I realized the two were not compatible. And when you give up on Blessed Assurance, there’s one question on the lips of everyone still huddled around the flagpole: But what if you’re wrong?”
For those readers who need not to throw the baby of faith out with the bathwater, Moon, once again, offers new ways forward.
Hell Bent, by Brian Recker
In his forthcoming release, Recker pushes back against the doctrine of hell. A Bob Jones University alumnus and former evangelical pastor, the popular influencer speaks directly to Christians who find themselves tangled between beliefs of a loving God and the fear of eternal conscious torment.
When he realized the Bible does not demand such belief, it filled him with questions: “Why was the church as I knew it so obsessed with hell? Why would anyone choose to believe something so traumatic and spiritually harmful if the text didn’t require it? Were respected evangelical leaders like Tim Keller and Don Carson unaware of the dismal biblical support for hell, or did they just not care?”
Following in the footsteps of others who have gone before him, Recker dares offer a perspective that hell isn’t real and that God’s universal love is radically inclusive to everyone, no questions asked.
Cara Meredith was raised in the American Baptist Churches in the USA but currently worships as an Episcopalian. She is a freelance author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation.
Related articles:
In conversation with Zach Lambert | Opinion by Greg Garrett
New book explores missions from viewpoint of MKs
The guest preacher who was a fortune teller | Opinion by Erin Hicks Moon