Faith & Life

FAITH & LIFE How Beautiful the World Could Be

Christian Refl ections on the Everyday Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt Meditations on life and faith om the

author of e Love at Is God. “In an age where our theology o en either wilts or bludgeons, we’re desperate for faithful, artful voices that speak into the grit of our world without adding to the clamor. We need words that pierce while carrying the lilt of love. We need true poets in the pulpit. ankfully, we have Bauerschmidt’s haunting, holy sentences beckoning us toward the God of beauty and thunder.”

— WINN COLLIER

pastor, director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination, and author of Love Big, Be Well

“By se ing these winsome and memorable homilies out as poetry, Frederick Bauerschmidt highlights that every word counts and that the secret lies in the delivery. To read these homilies and commentaries is to clothe oneself with wisdom and grace.”

— SAMUEL WELLS

vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London

“ is beautiful collection couldn’t come at a be er time. Deacon Bauerschmidt looks at our world with compassion, eloquence, and something all too rare these days: hope. ese homilies re ect all the challenges of our age— om a lethal virus to heartbreaking violence—but reassure us that we are not alone. Grace abounds. God is near. Open these pages and you’ll truly appreciate how beautiful the world could be.”

— GREG ND

deacon, journalist, blogger, and author of A Deacon Prays

Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt is professor of theology at Loyola University Maryland and a permanent deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, assigned to the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. His other books include e Love at Is God: An Invitation to Christian Faith.

978-0-8028-8021-5 • Paperback • 242 pages • $22.99 US $30.99 CAN • £17.99 UK • AVAILABLE NOW

Hope

A User’s Manual MaryAnn McKibben Dana What hope is, what hope isn’t, and how to nd it in hopeless times.

Hope is not optimism. It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not a promise of future success or progress. And it’s de nitely not something that can be reduced to a scripty-font platitude on an Instagram post.

So what is it?

One thing is certain: real hope demands that we do something with it. at we live it out. at we use hope to participate in a bigger story playing out behind the bleak world we see on the news or in our social media feeds every day.

It doesn’t ma er whether you’re a person of faith, or someone disillusioned with faith, or someone who hardly ever thinks about faith: if you’re a human being who longs for a spiritual counternarrative to live by, this book points to one resilient enough to endure crises and crushing defeats. If you’re tired of hearing about some heavenly herea er amid the pressing need for justice here and now, this is a book about hope for this world—not the next.

A er exploring what hope isn’t and then what it is, MaryAnn McKibben Dana re ects on the surprising place where hope is o en found—in the messiness of our imperfect, awed, beautiful human bodies. In the second half of the book, she talks about making hope real: sharing hope through stories, cultivating hope through simple practices, and nurturing hope in hopeless times— when only real hope can persevere.

MaryAnn McKibben Dana is a writer, pastor, speaker, and ministry coach living in Virginia. She is the author of God, Improv, and the Art of Living and Sabbath in the Suburbs. Her writing has appeared in Time, the Washington Post, Hu Post, the Christian Century, Religion Dispatches, and Journal for Preachers, and was featured in a monthly column for Presbyterians Today for three years. She was pro led on PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly for her work on Sabbath and was recognized by the Presbyterian Writers Guild with the 2015–2016 David Steele Distinguished Writer Award.

978-0-8028-8231-8 • Paperback • 160 pages • $16.99 US $22.99 CAN • £13.99 UK • AVAILABLE AUGUST 2022

Make a List

How a Simple Practice Can Change Our Lives and Open Our Hearts Marilyn McEntyre What if writing lists could literally change your life?

“Goes well beyond the to-do list to invite new and creative ways of thinking and doing. . . . Readers of all kinds, om type A veteran list-makers to those whose blood pressure rises at the thought of making a list, will nd much useful information here.”

— PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“You do not have to go too far into the book to discover that McEntyre has created a whole new paradigm shi , moving lists out of being simply to-do taskmasters and into being a tool to help us delve deeper into our lives and indeed into our very souls.”

— THE PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK

“A perfect book for yourself or to give as a gi .”

— SAN F NCISCO BOOK REVIEW

“Brings lively a ention to the way words can open multiple doors of memory, imagination, and re ection.” — RICHARD ROHR

“Marilyn McEntyre reminds me of the power of language—to heal and instruct us, to challenge and shape us.” — SHAUNA NIEQUIST

“Just one week into living with Make a List, I can already tell that this small book, which both invites me into a new practice and re ames one of my existing daily habits as a spiritual practice, will be life-giving and edifying.”

— LAUREN F. WINNER

“Encourages, guides, and directs. . . . Marilyn McEntyre embodies simple, patient kindness in her writing.” — MICHAEL CARD

Marilyn McEntyre is a dedicated list-maker and the author of several books on language and faith, including What’s in a Phrase? Pausing Where Scripture Gives You Pause (winner of a Christianity Today 2015 book award in spirituality), When Poets Pray, Speaking Peace in a Climate of Con ict, and Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.

978-0-8028-8225-7 • Paperback • 202 pages • $16.99 US $22.99 CAN • £13.99 UK • AVAILABLE NOW

Reconstructing a Disillusioned Faith Ti any Yecke Brooks “We have a right to encounter God where we are. We have a sacred responsibility to experience God authentically.”

What happens when the God we’ve been taught to believe in seems powerless to help us in the struggles of life? What do we do when the God we personally encounter no longer resembles the God we’ve been shown in narrow interpretations of the Bible?

Many of those raised in the world of fundamentalist Christianity have been manipulated into accepting a false reality that runs counter to lived experience. e result is confusion, isolation, fear, shame, and trauma, o en carried throughout one’s entire life. is book is for the victims of this spiritual abuse—anyone looking to reclaim their faith from legalism, nationalism, sexism, anxiety, intolerance, and other mechanisms of control utilized by the self-appointed gatekeepers of God. It’s for anyone who has learned that the real God is in nitely complex, that authentic faith is perfectly compatible with doubt, and that our su ering is not something we’ve earned.

Gaslighted by God is not a book of easy answers—it’s a companion for those mourning the loss of a belief system who need their pain recognized and legitimized. Ti any Yecke Brooks shows—through stories from her own life, conversations with Christians from a variety of backgrounds, historical anecdotes, and messy episodes from Scripture—that there can be faith a er disillusionment. But it will be a di erent faith—bruised, ba ered, nuanced, and real, rather than one wrapped in tissue-thin platitudes and three-point sermons. It will be a faith empowered to see beyond who God “should” be to who God is.

“Ti any Yecke Brooks has wri en a moving book full of honesty, courage, wisdom, and faith. In always-searching scriptural re ections and sometimes-searing personal ones, Ti any reveals to her reader what the Gospel writers already know: that the cross of Jesus Christ o ers neither a tidy answer nor a magical solution to the problem of human su ering, only a humble, just, and holy human response.”

— MA HEW ICHIHASHI PO S

Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church at Harvard University cohost of the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text

“In Gaslighted by God, Ti any Yecke Brooks eloquently gives a voice to those of us who through seeking God have found ourselves in the midst of deconstruction. With in-depth biblical study, modern-day narratives of people of faith, and an understanding of cultural evangelical conditioning, those who deconstruct will feel seen and validated.”

— MEGHAN TSCHANZ

author of Women Rising: Learning to Listen, Reclaiming Our Voice host of the podcast Faith and Feminism

“If you’ve ever felt you just didn’t need another Sunday sermon, or someone saying, ‘It’ll all be okay,’ then Ti any’s book Gaslighted by God should be on your nightstand. In her o en-hard-to-read, raw book, she shows us a picture of a God that cares deeply for us, even through hardship and despair.”

— JERUSHAH DUFORD

author, speaker, LPCA, granddaughter of the late Rev. Billy Graham

“It’s rare to nd an open and honest conversation about faith that doesn’t use shame and scarcity to pressure the reader into agreeing with the author, but Ti any does that in this book. I highly recommend Gaslighted by God to anyone struggling to reconcile their church hurt with the abundantly loving God they thought they knew.”

— ANGELA J. HERRINGTON

faith deconstruction coach and founder of the Deconstructing Faith Summit

“In my work as a chaplain, I o en meet with faithful people who are seeking healing a er spiritual trauma, guidance through times of doubt, and li le bits of wisdom for their antic lives. Gaslighted by God is a book that speaks into those conversations and will be a resource for the winding spiritual journey.”

— SA BARTON

university chaplain and associate vice president for spiritual life at Pepperdine University 978-0-8028-7868-7 • Jacketed Hardcover • 252 pages • $22.99 US • $30.99 CAN £17.99 UK • AVAILABLE NOW

Ti any Yecke Brooks is the lead or contributing writer on more than two dozen books, including multiple New York Times bestsellers. She is the coauthor of Fear Is a Choice: Tackling Life’s Challenges with Dignity, Faith, and Determination (with NFL running back James Conner), Limitless: e Power of Hope and Resilience to Overcome Circumstance (with Paralympic gold-medalist Mallory Weggemann), and the narrative non ction historical thriller Espionage and Enslavement in the Revolution: e True Story of Robert Townsend and Elizabeth (with historian Claire Bellerjeau). She holds a PhD from Florida State University, where her dissertation covered, in part, cultural adaptations of stories from the book of Genesis. A popular speaker for student groups, faith conferences, and academic lectureships, Ti any has taught literature and writing at Abilene Christian University, McMurry University, and the University of South Carolina Beaufort.

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Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down

A Guide for Parents Questioning Their Faith Bekah McNeel “ is book is about the various ways that uncertainty shows up for parents who, having le or altered the faith they once knew, now must decide what to give their kids. It’s about church a endance, Bible memorization, school choices, and sex talks. It’s about forging new paths in racial justice and creation care while the intractable voices in your head call you a pagan Marxist for doing so.”

A er the spectacular implosion of her ministry career, Bekah McNeel was le disillusioned and without the foundation of certainty she had built her life on. But rather than leaving the Christian faith altogether, she hung out around the edges, began questioning oversimpli ed categories of black and white that she had been taught were sacred, and became comfortable living in gray areas while starting a new career in journalism. en she had kids.

From the moment someone asked if she was going to have her rst child baptized, Bekah began to wonder if the conservative evangelical Christianity she grew up with was really something she wanted to give her children. at question only became more complicated when she had her second child months before White evangelicals carried Donald Trump to victory in the 2016 presidential election. Soon, Bekah found that other parents were asking similar questions as they broke with their fundamentalist religious upbringing and took on new values: Could they raise their kids to live with both the security of faith and the freedom of open-mindedness? To value both Scripture and social justice? To learn morality without shame?

In Bringing Up Kids When Church Lets You Down, Bekah calls on her skills as a journalist and gathers voices from history, scholarship, and her own community to guide others who, like her, are on a quest to shed the false certainty and toxic perfectionism of their past to become be er, healthier parents—while still providing strong spiritual foundations for their children. She writes with humor and empathy, providing wise re ections (but not glib answers!) on di cult parenting topics while reminding us all along that we are not alone, even when we break away from the crowd.

Bekah McNeel is a journalist, wife, and mother of two. Her work has appeared in Christianity Today, Sojourners, Relevant, the Texas Tribune, ESPN’s e Undefeated, the Christian Science Monitor, Texas Public Radio, and elsewhere.

978-0-8028-8209-7 • Jacketed Hardcover • 256 pages • $26.99 US • $35.99 CAN • £21.99 UK

AVAILABLE OCTOBER 2022

Sex, Tech, and Faith

Ethics for a Digital Age Kate O

Foreword by Mihee Kim-Kort A values-based, shame- ee, pleasure-positive discussion of Christian ethics in response to a range of pressing issues in the digital age—including online pornography, dating apps, sexting, virtual-reality hookups, and sex robots.

Digital innovation has rapidly changed the landscape of sexual experience in the twenty- rst century. Rules-based sexual ethics, subscribed to by many Christians, are unable to keep up with new developments and, more o en than not, seem e ective at li le other than generating shame.

Progressive ethicist Kate O steps into this void with an expansive yet nuanced approach that prioritizes honesty and discernment over fear and judgment. Rather than producing a list of don’ts, O considers the possibilities alongside the potential harm in everything from the use of internet porn to the practice of online dating to human-robot intimacy. With the aid of thought-provoking anecdotes and illuminating research, O invites readers to wrestle with the question of how to practice a just and ourishing sexuality in the digital age—and does so by drawing on core values of the Christian tradition.

A rich resource for both individuals and groups, Sex, Tech, and Faith includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter for those considering these issues in community, as well as extensive youth study guides for parents, pastors, and teachers in need of age-appropriate means of beginning these di cult conversations with teens. Readers of all backgrounds and identities will be challenged to consider how their choices and habits in the digital world can lead to sexual health, wholeness, dignity, and ful llment—for themselves and those in relationship with them.

Kate O is professor of Christian social ethics at Drew eological School in Madison, New Jersey, and lecturer in practical theology at Yale Divinity School. A Christian feminist ethicist interested in the formation of moral communities, she is the author of Christian Ethics for a Digital Society and Sex + Faith: Talking with Your Child om Birth to Adolescence, and she lectures and leads workshops on technology, sexuality, and professional ethics for teens, young adults, parents, and religious leaders.

978-0-8028-7846-5 • Paperback • 208 pages • $22.99 US • $30.99 CAN • £17.99 UK

AVAILABLE AUGUST 2022