The Lectio Letter - Issue #90 - All the books I read in 2024 Reviewed
"Spiritual reading, for most of us, requires either the recovery or acquisition of skills not in current repute: leisurely, repetitive, reflective reading. In this we are not reading primarily for information, but for companionship. Baron Friedrich von Hügel once said it was like sucking on a lozenge in contrast to gulping a meal. It is a way of reading that shapes the heart at the same time that it informs the intellect, sucking out the marrow-nourishment from the bone-words."
Eugene Peterson, Take and Read
Welcome to Issue #90 of the Lectio Letter. This members-only newsletter is (normally) filled with music, film and food suggestions, links, and an article written by yours truly. But this time it’s my yearly review of (almost) every book I read in 2024.
Why Read?
This year, just as I did in the introduction to last year’s list and the year before, I am reflecting on why we should read.
Let me first say, that I am far from the most voracious reader I know. Like most of you, I imagine, my life is full of responsibilities and time scarcity alongside the lack of discipline, which makes a Netflix show or short online article, more attractive than plodding through a demanding book.
With that said, in a world with an abundance of access to information we badly need to recover a true wonder. The wonder is that the largest proportion of people in human history have both the access and ability to read books.
Because we have lost the wonder of this historical novelty we take for granted our access and thus treat it as a burden instead of a privilege. Throughout human history, it was only the elite who were able to access books which shared the perspectives and wisdom of the past and of other cultures. But in our information age we are inundated and therefore overwhelmed by this level of access.
That is where wonder and strategy must be combined. To sense the privilege of being able to read books and then to set a course to read. But wonder will only take us so far, we also need vision for what reading will cultivate in us for the sake of God and Others.
To my mind, what books primarily offer us is an opportunity to cultivate a virtue in short supply these days: Humility.
To begin to read is to desire to know, which is an admission that we do not yet know all we need to know. This doesn’t mean we come as readers with nothing to offer. A great deal of books need extraordinary discernment to, as they say, spit out the bones and eat the meat.
We live in a time when now, as much as ever, the words to the Ephesians are relevant to us; we can too easily be “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching”. Through reading books we can be further equipped through the wisdom of others to learn to discern these waves in humility.
Given the great number of books available, it can sometimes feel like books themselves might be the way we are “blown here and there” but as I reflected on last year, we read with an ear for what God is speaking to us and in the community of saints in the midst of those words.
Practically speaking, one of the ways we can receive the most from books is to pick a subject area and consistently read in it. This does not have to be to the exclusion of other areas but it does mean having something of a strategy. As will be clear to most of you who read the Lectio regularly, I read at the intersection of theology, spiritual formation and mission.
But in the last few years, I have also read several books on South African politics and the practice of the Sabbath. What results is that I have received a body of understanding around these themes and practically it means I am able to read the books in those fields more quickly, with more understanding, discernment and retention because I can perceive how the book ‘fits’. While it is a good thing to read widely, I also think developing these specific areas which interest you can be uniquely equipping and rewarding.
In this coming year, I am hoping to read much more about the life and words of Paul, the most prolific writer in our New Testament for a project in 2025. Paul’s writings contain some of the most important, implicational and contested parts of the scripture and fresh attention to his life and the writings that arose from it are crucial in navigating the missional and pastoral realities many of us find ourselves in.
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Introduction to the 2024 Book Reviews
Well, This is the fifth annual book review of “(almost) every book I read” (read 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 here)
Do you have a book you read this year that you thought was fantastic? Let me and others know which one by leaving a comment…I’d enjoy that!
A couple of weeks ago, I was delighted to unexpectedly “fill in” for a guest who cancelled on our friend Joshua Johnson’s Shifting Culture podcast on favourite books of the year.
It was fascinating to discover that out of the 20 books picked between Joshua and the other guest Lore, I only knew of 2 of them… as I mentioned on the podcast, a few of them will now populate my “to read” list of 2025, one of them I’m already reading!
Did you read something that you loved this year? Now’s your chance to share it! Let me know in the comments, I love receiving recommendations!
Also, if you are reading in Gmail, this email will likely be clipped due to its length. If you want to read it all, scroll to the bottom and then click “View entire message” or read it online at LectioLetter.com to see it all. You are not getting it all if you don’t see my signature at the bottom.
Top 3 books of 2024
1. Beholding: Deepening Our Experience in God by Strahan Coleman
I discovered Strahan Coleman as a Kiwi Christian musician about a decade ago. In the intervening season, he has struggled with chronic illness which is the story which sets the backdrop for this book on beholding prayer.
This book more than any other this year made me think, “Oh I should buy this for [insert name]” (hence its position as the #1 book this year)! What makes this book particularly engaging for me (similar to Fully Alive by Elizabeth Oldfield) is that he is roughly my age and has had very similar experiences and influences in his faith.
Coleman tells how his early faith was filled with prophetic charismatic experiences, signs, wonders and provision. When chronic illness became his reality, he was forced to reconcile what he had known about God with how God seemingly wasn’t acting in his current situation.
Coleman turns towards a contemplative form of prayer he describes as beholding prayer and recognises the way that his previous, seemingly more exciting experiences with God were marked with requests for something other than God Himself.
What I particularly appreciated about his writing is that, in contrast to the large ex-vangelical publishing bubble, he retains and integrates all that is good about an expectant charismatic spirituality and deepens those impulses towards a refined desire for God’s will above all others.
It’s a story of someone moving from doing lots of things for and with God, to learning simply to be with God. He navigates around the temptation to an either/or dichotomy and narrates a deepening wisdom and peace as He comes to know God in his new humbled circumstances.
2. The Imago Dei: Humanity Made in the Image of God by Lucy Peppiatt
What does it mean to be made in the Image of God? It’s an important biblical phrase that gets picked up increasingly in serious ethical dilemmas in our modern world; euthanasia, transgender, race, and many other conversations which require us to speak Christian-ly about the intention and dignity of human lives and bodies.
Here Lucy Pepiatt, in a remarkably short book, surveys major ways of interpreting this phrase, along with discussions around how those relate to ethical dilemmas Christians face. It is though, in her last chapter where she brings forth some of her own suggestions that the book really shines. Well worth a read if you are looking for an accessible and theological introduction to the “Image of God” language.
3. The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis by Alan Jacobs
Alan Jacobs has done a pretty extraordinary thing with this book. He covers the thinking of Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil who during World War II, at a point where victory was assured, as they were separately attempting to imagine what a moral and spiritual regeneration would look like after the war.
They were almost all disconnected from one another, but Jacobs finds a number of golden threads amongst their work. Their consistent argument was that only an educational system which developed character, virtue and an understanding of the fallibility of humans would bring about a post-war world worth living in. Their call in the midst of the de-humanising effects of war was to deeply re-humanise people through an education which drew on Christian hope.
And the rest of the Books
4. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt
In the Teleios course we designed this year for young leaders we created a research assignment and one group tackled this book. The book begins by creating a thought experiment; What if your children, without your consent, were invited to live on Mars, despite not knowing exactly what the implications would be for their health?
Haidt argues this is almost exactly what social media companies have done; executed a large experiment in developmental psychology on minors. While that sounds like the shrill fear-mongering of apocalyptic-ready luddites, Haidt meticulously unpacks research findings which back his concerns that social media is having an unanticipated and devastating effect especially on girls and on those 13-16-year-olds who are in a particularly formative phase. This book is long (and can be read selectively) but is deeply worth reading for parents or those invested in the development of teenagers.
5. Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus, Become Like Him, Do As He Did by John Mark Comer
John Mark Comer has become the preeminent populariser of Dallas Willard. His ability to integrate psychology, church history, formation and culture studies with a succinct simplicity makes this an excellent read. Comer has thought long, hard and practically about the task of becoming like Jesus and the result is a book that deserves its popularity.
Having read around this subject for almost a decade, few things were new in Comer’s book, but what stands out is his integration and explanation which reveals a skill developed through his many years preaching.
The overwhelming popularity of this book though does give me some hesitation. The hesitation is not rooted in Comer’s work but in the faddish nature of Christian publishing. I have deep conviction that discipleship or the term Comer picks up “Spiritual Formation” is the foundational call of renewal to the Church in our day. Rapid popularity in publishing sometimes means that certain things are ‘sellable’ in the short term but then, as capitalism requires, the focus moves on.
Again I believe Comer would be well aware of this, but Spiritual Formation coming into vogue might offer at least as much danger as it does opportunity. I hope my cynicism is proven wrong here, but Spiritual Formation language entering the mainstream might innoculate those who expect it to be a quick one-stop shop and move on discouraged. As I said, I hope I am very wrong.
6. Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others by David Zahl
Zahl is a thoughtful yet humourous author who in this book tries to recover an appreciation for the doctrine of original sin. A tough assignment you might think, but Zahl argues, and I agree, that optimism about our human condition hurts us more than we expect. I
nstead, he wants us to recognise that the brokenness within and without us is the very stuff that Jesus leads us through it towards love, empathy and an embrace of our creatureliness.
7. Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age by Samuel James
Samuel James in this book recovers the understanding that as it often quoted “the "medium is the message”. He argues that the Internet is not just an information delivery system that brings us good and bad, but that the format, namely being on a screen, can be deeply distorting for people in the areas of Authenticity, Shame Outrage and Meaninglessness.
Picking up similar themes as “You are What You Love” by James K.A. Smith, he more specifically focuses on the gestures, habits and repetitions that online life creates and asks the question; How is this deforming us as people who seek to follow Jesus.
8. Hannahs Child: A Theologians Memoir by Stanley Hauerwas
Stanley Hauerwas shaped my thinking significantly when I studied in Aberdeen, Scotland. He is a brick-layer son from Texas turned Christian ethicist never truly at home in his own skin and well known for speaking prophetically disruptive truths.
This memoir was deeply enjoyable in that it wove together a good deal of 20th-century theological academic history in North America and identified Hauerwas formations and motivations. He recounts becoming a Christian through being a theologian (quite the admission), and his friendship with MacIntyre, Yoder and others.
His personal life, by his own admission, is a place of deep pain, particularly in the context of his first marriage. What shines through for Haerwas is how God, particularly in the shape of His many friends, upheld his life and as he likes to say, made him possible.
9. Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times by Elizabeth Oldfield
Elizabeth Oldfield writes as the previous head of UK Christian Think Thank Theos and a broadcaster who is bringing to bear in this book her experience of holding a winsome witness in the echelons of the secular elite.
I genuinely enjoyed reading this book, especially given much of her formative Christian experiences happened in the corners of British Christianity similar to my own. The book is a kind of 21st-century apologetic for the presence of what Christians have called ‘Sin’ continuing to exist in the world despite most secularists pretending like it doesn’t exist.
Each chapter investigates one of the original seven deadly sins and reveals its abiding presence and significance in modern life. I did enjoy reading this book (despite some bad language and eyebrow-raising disclosures in the chapter on sex) and while, from what I can tell, it has enjoyed quite a bit of success, it felt like a book caught in the middle between two potential audiences. I felt that I’d feel a bit bashful to recommend it to friends of faith but also to friends exploring faith. This admittedly may be simply due to the circles I am in.
10. The Gift of Being Yourself - David Benner
I’ve read this before, but it really is a book that keeps on giving. At just over 100 pages Benner has written a classic on vocational discernment. The title though, makes it sound like Benner has written a floppy “be your best self” book but early on he ruggedly asserts that we can only come to know ourselves in knowing God.
There is a knotty issue in discipleship where, we might say, a level of self-awareness is a crucial ingredient and yet that self-awareness must be obtained through God-awareness not self-referential navel-gazing. He unpacks in this book the need to dispense with a false self, which, while not biblical language, gives us an imagination for the aspects of ourselves that we “present to the world”.
He argues that only after this has been put away in favour of the love of God can we give ourselves up and therefore find our lives as they are, hidden in Christ.
11. Paul: An Apostles Journey by Douglas Campbell
Douglas Campbell is a likeable yet bombastic kiwi Pauline scholar who is a proponent of the biblical studies movement “apocalyptic Paul” which emphasises the themes of overcoming powers and principalities, as well as how revolutionary to Jewish expectations (apocalyptic, in fact) Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection was.
Here Campbell explores Paul’s biography from Acts into the letter attributed to Paul. Campbel reflects on how we approach mission (from Campbell’s prison ministry experiences and referencing Paul’s words about His own approach) which was the most engaging for me (including the important issue of patron-client relationships). He also covers the issue of sex, gender and politics.
I’ll be re-reading NT Wright’s biography of Paul and am interested to see how they relate and compare given they hold contrasting views on Paul’s timeline and emphasis.
12. How God became King by NT Wright
This is Wright at his most accessible in asserting that the gospels are all about how Jesus became King. Wright argues that while the early church was concerned with the creeds to affirm that Jesus was not only human but God, whereas the gospels are concerned that we understand Jesus as Israel and ultimately the world’s true King.
Crucial to the gospels is Jesus’ enthronement not in earthly power but on a cross and then resurrected. This reveals the true nature of God’s power as sacrificial rather than “lording it over” His people. Wright also shows how Jesus’ incarnation reframes the Jewish expectation of the temple and our expectations of how to “get to” God by picking up the temple theme and asserting that He is now the place to see what God looks like.
While Wright pulls on one end of the rhetorical rope fairly hard as he tends to do and is popular for, but with that said, I wouldn’t hesitate to pass this on to someone looking to understand the gospels in their first-century context.
13. Why the Gospel?: Living the Good News of King Jesus with Purpose by Matthew W. Bates
Last year I read Bates’ Salvation by Allegiance alone and interviewed him for our Teleios group. We used sections of this book to consider how faith as an allegiant life responding to Jesus reshapes how we understand sharing the gospel.
Put simply, the gospel is an invitation to a whole life which is shaped by being a follower of Jesus not just an affirmation of intellectual belief. Bates here side steps (or back steps) the reformation controversies around what it means to be saved and connects it much more deeply to Jesus’ initial invitation to “come and follow me as King”.
14. James by Percival Everett
Almost 20 years ago while I was working a mind-numbing office job I found a free ebook called The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. In my upbringing in the UK, I was never exposed to what a cornerstone of American literature this book was but read and enjoyed it on its own terms.
The original story’s main character is Huck, who is accompanied by a runaway slave he refers to as Jim. James is a book written from the perspective of “Jim” or as we come to know him “James”.
The book is clearly the work of a world-class writer operating at the highest level. I devoured the book in the course of a long-haul flight and it is well worth a read, especially if you’re familiar with Huck Finn.
Everett in writing the book creates impressive twists and backstories that the original novel doesn’t move near. My only hesitation in the book was the anachronistic stretches of James’ life behind the eyes of his white counterparts. The idea that James is a deeply literate pretend Christian but true atheist organising groups seemed like it was as much a mechanism of projection as the difficult aspects of Mark Twain’s novel. With that aside, there is much to reflect on when you read and consider these narratives side by side.
15. Bitter Lemons of Cyprus by Lawrence Durrell
This year Rachel and I visited Cyprus for the first time, hosted by some dear friends, we helped lead a Teleios intensive there and then returned to be part of another training.
In our preparation, we quickly discovered a political divide that runs through the centre of the capital that dates back to the 1970’s. Wanting to gain more of an appreciation for the land we would spend time in, I happened upon Lawrence Durrell’s account of living there leading up to the explosion of tension which resulted in the division.
Durrell’s account is winsome, albeit given its age, colonial but his love for the country and its people nevertheless shines through.
16. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
I read this book on our second trip and it deals much more directly with the time of the conflict itself. It dramatises the story of Turkish and Greek teenagers being caught up in the conflict and is told partly through the narrative of their daughter finding themselves navigating life in the UK.
The Father is a botanist who has brought a tree from Cyprus to the UK and is filled with fascinating facts about Cyprus’ nature alongside the heartbreak of political and cultural conflicts made personal. It is a beautifully written book and captures the complexity of Cyprus’ modern history.
17. Keeping Faith: How Organisations Can Stay True to the Way of Jesus by Stephen Judd, John Swinton and Kara Martin
For many years I have felt the tension of being involved in, and observing other, Christian organisations learn more about how they operate from the corporate business world than from the gospels.
I very much hoped this book would represent a corrective to that and in many ways it does do that. It’s a book that looks at the very practical challenges of running organisations and thinking about how not to cower to financial and impersonal pressures but to care for people.
What let the book down (at least for me) was that despite being co-written by 3 authors it was never really clear who was writing what. Secondly, the examples given were based in Australia which made the book feel too located to recommend to others working in a different area of the world.
18. Heaven and Earth by William H. Willimon
Will Willimon is a methodist preacher who is best known for co-writing Resident Aliens with Stanley Hauerwas. I bought this as an Advent accompaniment and despite my reservations below, I enjoyed his reflections. Initially, Rachel and I intended to read together but I continued alone after she abandoned it feeling like it was too dry for her.
While this is a fair critique, I think the main challenge with a book that revolves around a liturgical season was the length of the chapters. It could have easily been broken up into smaller parts and sometimes the reflections felt like they dragged. It’s not a book I’d recommend widely for that reason as well as the fact the content (likely drawn from his extensive sermon archive) targets his home audience (educated elite North Americans) as a chaplain at Duke University.
19. Rooted In Love by Margaret Blackie
I mentioned in my introduction that reading those who are not from your ‘corner’ of Christianity can be hugely refreshing. I read Blackie’s book (which let’s face it should win the prize for worst cover) on a retreat and found her gracious introduction to understanding the Ignatian stream of Christianity very helpful.
As a Roman Catholic contemplative of course there are places I would want to adjust or nuance her language but the combination of vulnerability, history and simplicity made this book a great invitation for just the kind of retreat I was engaged in.
20. The Connected Life: The Art and Science of Relational Spirituality by Todd W. Hall
Over the last 10 years I have, through reading the likes of Curt Thomson, been convinced that the path of discipleship is a path of integration. A love for truth includes the truth of scripture, Jesus as Lord and also the truth of our lives and relationships.
An overly intellectual faith holds truth as an intellectual concept which never touches earth, this results in split lives which leak out in depression, moral failure and deconstruction.
In this book Todd Hall attempts to integrate psychological understandings of connection so that we are relationally engaged with the God we know in Jesus Christ. He makes connections around attachment behaviours and the resulting relationship with have with God and others and makes the case that, in my words not his, to be Spiritual is to be relational.
21. Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology by James K.A. Smith
You could be forgiven for never having heard of the theological movement of Radical Orthodoxy. Its main proponents are John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, they argue that large swathes of Christian thinking have fallen into the sacred / secular divide and seek to articulate a theological vision which moves beyond modern and post-modern approaches.
What is particularly fascinating about the movement as Smith represents it is the ontology of participation. It is the radical affirmation that true knowing only takes place when it is inhabited by God’s life. It’s the ultimate pushback on Descartes “I think therefore I am”. While this kind of subject may seem like the ultimate philosophical abstraction, it has huge implications for Christians in how and by what means we “know” what we “know”. If the grounding of all our “knowing” of Jesus is simply asserting a truth claim, we will have deeply deficient discipleship.
22. Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa by Martin Meredith
This book covers the period of colonial British exploits in South Africa, focussing on Cyril Rhodes and other mining magnets who made their fortune in the 1800’s. It leads up to the period of the Anglo-Boer War and covers the history of modern-day Botswana and Zimbabwe. It primarily details the tensions between the British and Afrikaans peoples struggling for supremacy, power and freedom. At over 500 pages this was not short but drawing from personal letters and public documents Meredith puts together the complicated and often contriving actions motivated by a desire for power, national supremacy and wealth.
It once again reveals the history of South Africa as a place of deep suffering, certainly for the original black inhabitants but also for the horrendous treatment of Boer families in the war by the British. The Boer politicians were motivated by a desire for independence but also a deep Christian Nationalism which created a skewed self-understanding as a chosen race and new Israel. This, alongside the paternalism of rampant British colonialism, created the sub-structures which led to the horrors of Apartheid.
If you’ve made it this far, then Well done!
These yearly reviews are quite a lot of work! I always hope to write them as I go through the year, but alas, I end up facing the task at the beginning of a new year. I have to say that my reading this year left me dissatisfied. Maybe because I was reading to build curriculum which makes me read instrumentally but already this year I’ve been enjoying chewing on a few books which have felt like good kingdom marrow. I’ll mention them in the next Lectio. If you want to receive that, you can get 50% off through the button below
As I said in the beginning, I’d love to hear if you have a book you’d highly recommend.. or a question about the books I reviewed leave a comment below;
The next Lectio will be out in a couple of weeks, full of music, food, reading and link suggestions along with an article from me, and should be slightly shorter than this one..
Grace and Peace,
That’s all for now,
Thanks Liam!