If you haven’t yet heard, this summer I signed a contract with Broadleaf Books for my next book. Tentatively titled Church Camp, the nonfiction project is part spiritual memoir, part theological musing; part humor and wondering if there might be another way.
Although many have wondered if I’m just trying to burn it all down or throw white evangelical church camps under the bus, the truth is that I’m not. I am critical, to be sure, but this world, these people, this place in which I spent years of my life is not simply a part of my past – it’s also a part of the many versions that live within me.
“I am still every age that I have been,” Madeleine L’Engle once wrote. This is through this lens that I approach writing this book …and ever since I really sat down to muddle through my thoughts and write the book, this has also been how I’ve approached reading for the book.
Twenty-two books sit at my feet, still waiting for me to pull quotes from to insert into subsequent chapters. But in the meantime, as we soon wrap up 2023, I wanted to pass along 12 books that have been instrumental in writing the book. Whether for subject material or craft inspiration, they have guided me along the way.
In no particular order, these books left an imprint on my own:
- The Day the Revolution Began (NT Wright). Wright has been critical in painting a narrative that extends beyond the whole point of Jesus being that he came to earth to help people get to hell (or, on the other hand, avoid hell).
- Wholehearted Faith (Rachel Held Evans, with Jeff Chu). Will there ever be a better chapter than “Jonathan Edwards is not my Homeboy”? Although I’ve long held to a belief that “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” didn’t make for the strongest case for Christ, I found a kindred spirit in her words.
- Her Gates Will Never be Shut (Bradley Jersak). Listen, folks: I needed to learn more about hell, and Jersak provided me with plenty of thoughts. Not only did it help define my own position on the subject, but it helped me understand where many in the evangelical church have landed.
- How to Stay Married (Harrison Scott Key). Speak funny to me, Harrison Scott Key! Listen, y’all: camp is funny. Camp is campy. Camp is full of uproarious laughter and crazy shenanigans and questionable skits that leave you wondering if you should just quit your day job and eat little smokies all day. I hope to convey some of this levity in the book, and Key is acting as a guide along teh way.
- Women and the Gender of God (Amy Peeler). God is not a male. But God becomes male to many in the Church. Peeler gave me language to spell out a chapter on God as a verb and not a noun.
- Love Wins (Rob Bell). Although I read the book after it first came out, I had a whole new appreciation for the book upon reading it again a couple of months ago. Bell spells out another way forward; even if it further ousted him from the ranks of evangelicalism, I can’t say I don’t agree.
- Do I Stay Christian? (Brian D. McLaren). A wise sage, McLaren is another one of those voices that I placed on the backburner of my mind for several years. Lo and behold, when I revisited his thoughts again, I found I was not alone in the midst of a changing, evolving faith.
- Preparing for War (Bradley Onishi). Anyone care for a spot of white Christian nationalism with their tea? Although Onishi’s thoughts indulge a more extreme side than I am exploring in this particular book, it’s all interconnected.
- Orphaned Believers (Sara Billups). I am not so much quoting Billups as I’m using her book as a guide for my own. The part memoir, part theology, part investigative journalism hybrid kind of writing is a buoy to me.
- Blood from a Stone (Adam McHugh). Is my book about wine? Nope. But is McHugh’s book just about wine either? Nope. More than anything, I appreciated how he wove humor into history, into pain, and into the narrative as a whole.
- Touch the Earth (Drew Jackson). Jackson’s poetry is inspirational to me, in general. But it also dares me turn a passage I’ve read a thousand times upside down and see what might live between the lines.
- The Mood of Christmas (Howard Thurman). When the world feels upside down at best, I turn to Howard Thurman. He points to a world turned right-side up again, which is certainly what I want to do when and as when dream of new ways moving forward.
Eclectic at best, this list could easily be doubled, if not tripled. But for now, theirs are the notes most often showing up in the pages of my book.
Look for another 12 soon enough here!
Otherwise, what “top twelve” books would readers find in your next book, were you to pen approximately 60,000 words? Leave a comment and tell me more!
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