Politics. Love them or hate them, they're not going away. So this voting season, why not delve into new reads that will challenge us and inspire how we think about and engage with complex issues facing our country and our world? The following books at the intersection of faith and politics will stretch your spiritual senses, tug at your heart, stimulate your mind—and remind us all that politics affect real people, every day.
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Books on Religious Extremism
When charismatic believers wage spiritual battles, ideas can take tangible form. With scholarly precision and narrative force, religion scholar Matthew D. Taylor makes intelligible the language, leaders, and symbols of the New Apostolic Reformation, which has galvanized support for Trump and far-right leaders around the world. The Violent Take It by Force maps a movement of magnetic leaders and their uncompromising beliefs—and where it might be headed next.
How to End Christian Nationalism
Christian nationalism is a powerful and pervasive ideology, and it is becoming normalized. How to End Christian Nationalism is the essential guidebook for Christians alarmed by the rise of Christian nationalism and committed to faith freedom for all. Amanda Tyler, lead organizer of the Christians Against Christian Nationalism campaign, helps us confront Christian nationalist fervor and invite others to a better version of the gospel.
The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture's preparation for war. Religion scholar and former insider Bradley Onishi maps the origins of White Christian nationalism and traces its offshoots in Preparing for War. Through chapters on White supremacy and segregationist theologies, conspiracy theories, the Christian-school movement, purity culture, and the right-wing media ecosystem, Onishi pulls back the curtain on a subculture that birthed a movement and has taken a dangerous turn.
Books on LGBTQ+ Issues
Western culture hates the fact that we have bodies—from evangelical culture, which insists "you are a soul and have a body," to wellness culture that turns your control over your body into a moral test, to transphobic activism that insists any step taken to change one's body is an immoral act, to the treatment of disabled bodies in a profoundly ableist culture. Body Phobia is an examination of the fear of the body, how it permeates all parts of culture, alienates us from one another, marginalizes some, and harms us all.
Raising Kids beyond the Binary
The debate around transgender children rages, with some Christians being the loudest voices against supporting these young people. So, now more than ever, people of faith need to be grounded in God's call to love and affirm young people in who God created them to be. Drawing on the author's experience as the mother of a transgender child and her years of advocacy work, Raising Kids beyond the Binary helps Christian parents navigate the emotional, spiritual, and logistical landscape of raising a gender-diverse child. It paints a picture of who transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse young people are and what they need to thrive.
Nia Chiaramonte, Katie J. Chiaramonte
When Nia Chiaramonte came out as a trans woman to her wife Katie, she knew she would be met with a loving response. But she was less sure what would happen when they began to bring their community alongside them on their journey of identify formation as a Queer family. Embracing Queer Family is a guidebook with tools for learning and reflection for Queer families on how to live into your true selves and strengthen your communities through radical love, acceptance, and mutual healing.
Books on Racial Equity
Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all, from gunshot wounds to traumatic brain injuries. In The Bodies Keep Coming, Williams ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. He draws a through line between white supremacy, gun violence, and the bodies he tries to revive, and he trains his surgeon's gaze on the structural ills that manifest themselves in the bodies of his patients.
The women have something to say. In this powerful and needed collection, editor Angela P. Dodson brings together the voices of more than thirty-five accomplished women writers on the topic of violence and injustice against Black men. Each lends her voice to shine a new light on the injustices and dangers Black men face daily, and how women feel about the vulnerability of our sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, uncles, friends, and other males we care about as they navigate a world that often stereotypes and targets them.
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Black women are heading to college in record numbers, and more and more Black women are teaching in higher education. But the very structure of higher education ensures that we're still treated as guests, outsiders to the institutional family—outnumbered and unwelcome. In Black Women, Ivory Tower, Dr. Jasmine Harris moves beyond the "data points" and examines the day-to-day impacts on Black women as individuals, the longer-term consequences to our professional lives, and the generational costs to our entire families.
Books on Marginalized Stories
Human beings are not trash, and the system that enables humans to imagine each other as such needs to end. Daily, 66 million poor white people pay the price for failing whiteness. In Trash, activist and chaplain Cedar Monroe introduces us to the poor residents of a small town in Washington who grapple with a collapsing economy and their own racism. Trash asks us to see the peril in which poor white people live and the choices we all must make.
Writer, director, and photographer Kim Watson sheds light on the experiences of the unhoused people of Los Angeles in this moving collection of photo essays, including stories of those he has befriended during his three years serving homeless populations and 160 stunning black-and-white photographs. Trespass dares us to confront our own biases and inspires us toward compassion and empathy for our fellow humans.
What We Remember Will Be Saved
A woman who sewed her city into a dress. A musician who rescued his ancient songs. A couple who rebuilt their pharmacy. What we salvage tells our story. What We Remember Will Be Saved is a breathtaking, elegiac odyssey into the heart of the largest refugee crisis in modern history. Journalist Stephanie Saldaña crosses nine countries to give voice to stories from the people of Iraq and Syria about hope, home, and what they rescued from war when everything else had been lost.
Books on Bridging Divides
Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul
Social justice work, we often assume, is raised voices and raised fists. But what does social justice work look like for those of us who don't feel comfortable battling in the trenches? Alongside inspiring, real-life examples of highly sensitive world-changers, Social Justice for the Sensitive Soul expands the possibilities of how to have a positive social impact, affirming the particular gifts and talents that sensitive souls offer to a hurting world.
Too often, the public abortion debate depicts the experience of ending a pregnancy in falsely simplistic terms. Abortion stigma is ubiquitous, even among those who identify as pro-choice. A Complicated Choice offers a call to progressive people of faith to center the lived experiences of people who have abortions. In this book, Rev. Katey Zeh opens us to the complexities of our reproductive lives, giving voice to the experiences of grief, loss, and healing surrounding abortion experiences. By focusing on these experiences, we will be drawn away from the stalemate of debate and into a spiritual response rooted in compassion for those who end pregnancies.
Frustrated with an increasingly polarized social landscape, award-winning photographer John Noltner set out on a 40,000-mile road trip across the United States to rediscover the common humanity that connects us. He did so by asking people one simple question: "What does peace mean to you?" Through difficult conversations, gentle humor, and a keen eye for beauty, Noltner's Portraits of Peace captures a rich collage of who we are as a nation and offers a promising road map to a peaceful future as a pluralistic society.
Books on the Economy
Unleash your ingenuity for systems that offer plenty good room—not for just a few but for all. Plenty Good Room helps us understand Black Christian socialism, a stream of the Black radical tradition, from the perspective of a Brooklyn pastor and political scientist's civic awakening. As the former director of the Drum Major Institute, founded by America's most famous democratic socialist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Andrew Wilkes mounts a challenge to the endless greed, inequality, and profiteering of racial capitalism.
Whether you have $100 or $100 million in the bank, you have the power to change the world for the better. The Social Justice Investor is a step-by-step guide to personal finance for those interested in building wealth while also aligning their finance decisions with their values, intentions, and commitments to social justice.
America's economy does not currently live up to our country's core values. We are a nation founded on the ideals of coming together across differences to forge a common future. Yet over the past fifty years, the richest Americans have been able to hoard wealth like almost never before. Our Fair Share combines accessible scholarship on wealth and income inequity with stories of real people struggling to survive and thrive in America today.
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