Category: Christian

Braving the Truth

Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagining Faith

by Rachel Held Evans
edited by Sarah Bessey

HarperOne, 2026. 383 pages.
Review written May 17, 2026, from my own copy, ordered via Amazon.com
Starred Review

Rachel Held Evans was a Christian writer who wrestled with her faith in print – and changed people’s lives. She died way too soon in 2019, only 38 years old. She started blogging in 2007, shortly before she started publishing books – and this book collects many of those blog posts.

Editor Sarah Bessey chose the selection of posts to collect in this book, and she also included tributes from 37 other authors – usually after a blog post from Rachel that especially inspired that author when it was first posted.

This book makes me so wish I was following Rachel when she was blogging. [Yes, I was blogging at the time, but I wasn’t reading a lot of blogs because I was so busy with books. I also didn’t have a good feed reader, so attempts to read blogs usually got forgotten. Now that many authors have switched to Substack, my email has blown up with unread emails, so maybe it’s just as well?] Anyway, now that it’s in book form, I can see so much wisdom coming from this young woman. It does make me wish I’d been in on the conversations she got going on her blog.

What is it about? The essays (That sounds more book-like than posts, doesn’t it?) are presented in categories, rather than chronologically, though the book does start with her first blog post and end with her last. The topics covered are Evolving Faith, Patriarchy and White Supremacy, the Church, Gender and Sexuality, and “Life in the Midst of It All.”

This is full of wonderful writing, Braving the Truth is an appropriate title, because Rachel gets real with her readers, and that wasn’t an easy thing to do.

Let me copy a few examples of quotations I marked to give you an idea:

This is from a post on lessons she learned the hard way:

It’s not always right to rock the boat. I get frustrated with Christians who seem to find it easy to believe everything their pastor tells them to believe. It makes me especially angry when my friends refuse to even listen to new ideas because they are either too certain or too afraid to see things from another perspective. But I’ve learned that it is not my job to test other people’s faith. My job is to be a friend to people who are already struggling through tough questions, to offer companionship on the difficult journey through doubt. I am to be a counselor, not a recruiter. It’s not always right to rock the boat.

This is a post about what she’d say if she got a chance years later to redo the commencement address she gave as a graduate of a conservative Christian university:

I thought God wanted to use me to show gay people how to be straight. Instead God used gay people to show me how to be Christian.

I thought the world needed my answers, but as it turns out, I needed the world’s questions. I needed to learn how to doubt well, listen better, and be humbled by how little I know. I needed to discover that evangelicalism is just one table in Christ’s banquet hall, the Great Cloud of Witnesses far more sprawling and diverse than I’d ever imagined.

And this is from an essay called, “I love the Bible.”

I love the Bible more now than ever before because I have finally surrendered to God’s stories.
God’s long, strange, beautiful stories.
We asked questions.
God told stories.
We demanded answers.
God told stories.
We argued theology.
God told stories.

And when those stories weren’t enough, when the words themselves would not suffice, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, laughed among us, wept among us, ate among us, told more stories among us, suffered among us, died among us, and rose among us. The Word entered our story and invited us into his.

If you’ve already read any of Rachel Held Evans books, I probably don’t need to tell you that, yes, you’ll want to read this one. If you haven’t read any of her books, this would be a great place to start. Many of the posts (essays!) were written before her books were published, but they also give a great overview of the topics that she wrote about in her other published books. This brings her thoughts together, and the tributes alongside show that she powerfully affected people’s lives in good ways.

You couldn’t ask for a nicer tribute than this lovingly collected volume.

rachelheldevans.com
harpercollins.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/braving_the_truth.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Sacred Belonging

A 40-Day Devotional on the Liberating Heart of Scripture

by Kat Armas

Brazos Press, 2023. 195 pages.
Review written April 14, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

I have a strong knowledge of Scripture – attending Christian schools since elementary school and memorizing large portions – but Kat Armas is able to get me looking at Scripture with new eyes and asking new questions and yes, making new applications.

There are 40 devotionals in this book, in nice bite-sized pieces to mull over as you go about your day. I read them during Lent this year, but they are appropriate for any time of year.

Let me quote from the Introduction to let you know the focus of these devotionals:

The bodily resurrection of Jesus is an invitation to be fully human.

That’s what this devotional is about: being human. And with our humanity comes the ability to inquire, to imagine, to dream, to create.

When it comes to Scripture, I wonder what kind of relationship many of us would have to the text if we had all been invited to do those things when we read it. Rather than viewing the Bible as a book of absolutes, what if we were to read it as a diverse book of stories and instructions relating to the human experience in all its messiness and beauty? Oe of my seminary professors once said that when we read the Bible, we should read it with resistance: constantly asking questions, wrestling with it the way Jacob wrestled with God.

She also talks about the way colonizers and imperialists used the Bible to further their own aims.

I argue that such a syndrome has permeated our being, causing us to view the world as fixed, linear, dichotomous, and functioning in hierarchical relationships of domination and submission. For many of us, the assumptions behind how we perceive the biblical text have brought us to a place of unlearning and unraveling – of decolonizing – where we find ourselves hungry for new, liberating insights into our faith tradition.

For me, she succeeded at bringing a fresh and refreshing approach to biblical stories. She succeeded in these goals she articulated at the end of the Introduction:

My hope is that these words will point you to a belonging deeper than you have dreamed of, that you will see and experience yourself being tethered to your ancestors, to God, and to every created thing. And in exploring this relationality, I also hope that you will get to know divinity as embodied – where you can find a God who is familiar with planting and sewing, good wine and lilies. This is the God to whom we belong: one who is wholly material and wholly spiritual. As close to us as our own skin and far beyond anything our minds can fathom. It is in this paradox where we exist, where our spiritualities find their home. This is where we find sacred belonging.

If you take up this book, I promise your devotional time won’t feel routine.

katarmas.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/sacred_belonging.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church

Year W

A Multi-Gospel Single-Year Lectionary

by Wilda C. Gafney

Church Publishing Incorporated, 2021. 336 pages.
Review written February 17, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I heard about this book at my church’s women’s retreat last year from pastor Lauren Todd. So though technically the book begins with readings for the start of the Church Calendar in Advent, I started in the middle, and you can, too.

I didn’t grow up in a church tradition that uses lectionaries. They are a collection of Scripture readings to go with the church calendar. For each Sunday and for special feast days. Each day’s readings include an Old Testament passage, a passage from Psalms, a gospel reading, and a section from one of the Epistles.

In the Introduction, Wilda Gafney tells us the questions she posed:

What does it look like to tell the Good News through the stories of women who are often on the margins of scripture and often set up to represent bad news? How would a lectionary centering women’s stories, chosen with womanist and feminist commitments in mind, frame the presentation of the scriptures for proclamation and teaching? How is the story of God told when stories of women’s brutalization and marginalization are moved from the margins of canon and lectionary and held in the center in tension with stories of biblical heroines and heroes? More simply, what would it look like if women built a lectionary focusing on women’s stories?

Honestly, those were questions I’d never thought to ask. Reading this book showed me a fresh and eye-opening way to look at Scripture.

I especially loved her translations of Psalms, a book I’ve memorized in the New International Version – She uses female pronouns for God in all of them. I was surprised how powerful that felt. As she says at the front:

Exclusively masculine language constructs and reinforces the notion that men are the proper image of God and women are secondary and distant. Further, the simple reality that men and boys have always heard their gender identified with God cannot be overlooked as a source of power and authority and security in terms of their place in the divine economy. Many, if not most, women and girls have not heard themselves identified by their gender as and with the divine and for those who have had that experience, it has been profoundly moving, rare, and even sometimes profoundly disturbing.

She also has a list of names she uses for God in place of “Lord” – which is a “common male human slave holding title.” She reasons that she is following in the tradition of “the ancient biblical and rabbinical practice of substituting something that can be said for that which cannot.” The list at the back is lovely to browse through, and even use in prayer, with names like “The Ageless One,” “Author of Life,” “Generous One,” “Mother of Wisdom,” “Sheltering God,” and many others.

Each set of readings has text notes about her choices in translation and preaching prompts, which obviously I didn’t need, but gave me things to think about.

After reading this whole thing, I’m ready to go through it again another year. I would like to see an entire translation from her, at least of the Book of Psalms, but this way the readings are directed and thematic – and a true blessing.

wilgafney.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/womens_lectionary.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Liturgies for Resisting Empire

Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World

by Kat Armas

Brazos Press, 2025. 205 pages.
Review written January 24, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I’ve been reading this book slowly, a section at a time, as part of my devotionals over the last several weeks. I’m not sure I grasped everything, but I like the way it opened up my thinking and showed me how much of the way I look at the world is shaped by empire-building.

At the front and back of the book, there’s a liturgy, with an Invocation and Benediction – and prayers, reflections, and readings in between. Each chapter begins with an Invocation and Reflection – a folk tale from an indigenous people group – and ends with a Prayer of Resistance and a Benediction. Each chapter is about something in Empire to reject, and something in Christianity to embrace. For example: “Rejecting Lies, Embracing Reality,” “Rejecting Hierarchy, Embracing Kinship,” “Rejecting Dualism, Embracing Paradox,” “Rejecting Sameness, Embracing Wholeness,” “Rejecting Dominance, Embracing Connection,” and “Rejecting Violence, Embracing Peace.”

This is another book I’ve marked up with quotes for Sonderquotes. It’s full of food for thought, challenging assumptions I’d carried and didn’t even realize I was holding. Let me type out a few examples to give you the flavor, rather than trying to summarize:

But the Bible itself reveals a truth often overlooked: Divine wisdom is not confined to one culture or people. Many of the sayings in the Bible’s wisdom literature echo the insights of neighboring ancient societies. Take Proverbs 22:17-24:22, which parallels the Instruction of Antenemope, an Egyptian wisdom text dating back to at least the twelfth century BCE that offers guidance on how to live with humility, integrity, and care for the vulnerable. The Hebrew authors did not reject these principles but instead wove them into their sacred texts.

In doing so, they remind us that wisdom transcends boundaries, that truth can be found in unexpected places, even beyond our own traditions. This is a quiet decentering of exclusivity, a recognition that knowledge belongs to no single people. Instead, it is a gift to be shared and honored across cultures. Perhaps this is the heart of wisdom itself: an openness to learning from the “other,” without fear, in a sacred exchange that resists the grasping hand of empire.

The last chapter especially shows us how Jesus brought the opposite of empire.

When empire used the cross to subdue, Jesus used it to restore. This is restorative justice: healing through relationship and repair. In Christ, justice is not the hammer of empire but the mending of what is broken – the gathering of the lost, the lifting of the fallen, the restoration of dignity where it has been stripped away. The cross does not demand allegiance through fear but invites transformation through love.

And in this sacred reversal, reconciliation finds its true meaning. Enemies are no longer enemies; the estranged are drawn into belonging, woven into a community where love breathes life into existence. Christ’s self-giving redefines our very identity, calling us into a peace that heals and binds and makes whole. Here, in the shadow of the cross, we step into divine reality – a place where love transforms empires and grace redraws the boundaries of what it means to belong. Here, we find shalom.

I’m going to hold onto this book to read again – hoping more will sink in each time I read it. This book acknowledges that the Way of Christ is not the Way of Empire and helps us see the difference.

katarmas.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/liturgies_for_resisting_empire.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us

40 Devotions to Liberate Your Faith from Fear and Reconnect with Joy

by Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail

Tarcherperigee, 2025. 222 pages.
Review written December 17, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I don’t remember which book I was looking at on Amazon when this book came up as a suggestion – but the title delighted me, and I ordered it on the spot. I liked it even more than I expected to.

This is a book of 40 devotionals, with the final one about Easter – so it would be a good choice for Lent. But I enjoyed it at a totally different time of year, reading a devotional every few days. And I’ve recommended it to my church small group to read when we start up after the holidays. We’ll stretch it out through Spring, taking a break to do a churchwide study for Lent.

The message is, as you’ll guess from the title, affirming and uplifting. The devotionals are based on Bible stories, with a large number of them being stories about women. They end with a prayer. They aren’t about striving and gritting your teeth and trying not to disappoint God – they remind you how much God loves you already.

The Introduction talks about deconstruction and disillusionment with traditional theology, so yes, that’s partly why I liked it. Here’s a section from that Introduction:

So how do we melt away the fear?

I believe it begins here: by looking at the heavens, and looking at the dandelions in the cracks, and looking at scripture, and looking at God, and trying an older and wilder way of trust. It begins by saying: God did not make me to hate me; God made me to love me. God made me out of desire. God made me out of joy.

God is not so small-minded or vindictive as to make people in order to just . . . hate them. I mean, look at the sheer multitude of galaxies in the universe. The membranes of butterfly wings. The way a toddler’s teeth make the most crooked and sublime smile when they laugh. The dreamer-upper of these things isn’t an asshole. I just don’t buy it. The Bible doesn’t sell it, either; while full of challenging and complex stories that do dip into the lament and wrath of God, scripture on the whole has an undercurrent and over-arc of God’s delight in God’s people.

Something else I liked about this book was the author’s ability to help me see old stories in new ways. One example, talking about the story where Jesus told his disciples he was giving them his blood to drink, she reminded anyone who’s given birth that our babies feasted on our blood when they were in the womb, and blood converted to milk after their birth. We know about sustaining others with our very being. And that’s an image of how Jesus sustains his followers.

And, yes, this is another book I’ve marked up to make posts on my Sonderquotes blog. It will probably take me a long time to get all of them up, but it will give me more opportunities to mull on the wisdom found here. I do highly recommend this as a devotional book that will uplift and encourage you – and help you believe that God delights in you.

revlizzie.com
penguinrandomhouse.com

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/god_didnt_make_us_to_hate_us.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?

Through the Year with George MacDonald

366 Daily Readings

by George MacDonald
edited by Rolland Hein
foreword by Douglas Gresham

Winged Lion Press, 2012. 406 pages.
Review written December 16, 2025, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com
Starred Review

I normally wait until I have finished every page of a book to write a review, but I decided to make an exception in this case, just in case someone’s looking for daily devotional readings for 2026. (Not that you couldn’t start midyear.) I’ve read a page a day from this book for all of 2025, and it has enriched my life.

I have long been a George MacDonald fan. C. S. Lewis famously said, “I consider George MacDonald my master,” and I could say the same. It was George MacDonald’s nonfiction writings, which I first encountered in Discovering the Character of God and Knowing the Heart of God, that I first grappled with the idea that God will save everyone – and it was George MacDonald’s obvious deep knowledge of Scripture and deep love for God that helped me dare to believe it.

I’ve already read MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons and other nonfiction many times. So this book was a nice way to be reminded of his ideas with a dose each day. Each day’s reading is one page from MacDonald’s writings – mostly the nonfiction. The book also includes important events in George MacDonald’s life and a verse for each selection. Some of the selections come from his letters or other sources that were new to me.

George MacDonald, a nineteenth century Scottish preacher, firmly believed in that God is our loving Father. His writings simply drip with the perspective of that amazing love. I’ve long found that regularly reading George MacDonald’s writing lifts my perspective, builds my faith, and fills me with hope and joy. This book was a perfect way to fill that dose, and I’m planning to go through it again for 2026.

Buy from Amazon.com

Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/through_the_year_with_george_macdonald.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

Subscribe for more reviews and talk about books.

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?