The days are longer and warmer, and many of us find ourselves with more time for leisure in the summer months. This season offers us an invitation to shift from frantic routines to a more mindful way of living. It's also the perfect time to look inward and dive into our spirituality. These books on spiritual growth, faith exploration, and prayer encourage us on our journey of spiritual renewal, reflection, and transformation in a season of slower pursuits.
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Building a New Kind of Faith
Have you ever been told that you're doing faith wrong? Through stories of grief, joy, digital ministry, nature, rituals, and rage walks around the lake, It All Counts challenges the idea that faith only "counts" when it fits inside institutional boxes. Instead, Natalia Terfa offers a liberating vision of spirituality rooted in authenticity, curiosity, and love. Whether you've been told your questions are too big, your worship too unconventional, or your body too broken, this book insists: You still belong. You are not alone. And yes—it all counts.
How Western Christianity Got It Wrong
Jesus never intended to start a religion that would justify stealing land, enslaving people, or destroying creation. So how did we get here? In How Western Christianity Got It Wrong, acclaimed author Randy Woodley, of mixed white and Native American heritage, traces how a brown man from Nazareth who never lost his connection to the whole community of creation became the poster child for empire-building and environmental destruction. Drawing on Indigenous wisdom, uncover what Jesus's liberating message looks like when freed from imperial frameworks.
What if God is not just above us but also beneath and between, alongside and among? What if God comes into us, and is thus within and throughout and around—all while yet beyond? Through lush and literary prose, Beneath and Between invites us to encounter the omnipresence of God through the lens of the lowliest of all parts of speech: the preposition. For the contemplative and the confused, for the confident Christian and the heartbroken one, for the skeptic and the seeker: Find in these incandescent pages an expansive view of God and a companion for your spiritual journey.
Being a Christian has nothing to do with being Chinese American—that's what Kristin T. Lee learned as a child. A fissure between her identity and what she was told to believe opened wide. In We Mend with Gold, she asks: What if we can bridge the divide? Through lyrical storytelling about her upbringing in Asian immigrant churches as well as in white evangelicalism, Lee wrestles with history, ancestral stories, and what it means to follow Jesus.
Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods
Christian patriarchy teaches that women are dangerous, manipulative, and untrustworthy. Whether painting women as the archetypal old witch in the woods or the biblical temptress, toxic religion vilifies their wisdom and uses fear to maintain male power. And these harmful stereotypes aren't just historical; they persist in modern religious, societal, and political rhetoric. Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods is a road map for readers to challenge limiting beliefs, confront systemic injustices, untangle from patriarchal Christian attitudes toward women, and tap into the deep well of feminine wisdom.
The Christian industrial complex teaches us that whatever is centered, celebrated, and large is a movement of God, and that Jesus is at work in existing structures. So why are we surprised that many churches are obsessed with power, size, and reputation—and that people are leaving them in droves? Lost, Hidden, Small, a stirring book of spiritual formation, asks us to consider: What if the abundant life lies in finding what's been lost, uncovering what is hidden, and learning to hope in what is small?
Growing in Spirit
When you hear beautiful music or stand before a work of art, have you ever felt a stirring within, a sense of something more? Art Is How God Loves Us is a radiant exploration of art as a spiritual gateway. This deeply personal and spiritually rich book beautifully illustrates how a spiritual perspective on art guides us toward our Creator and our most authentic selves. Through stories of music, visual art, nature, and everyday life, discover how beauty and brokenness alike can become places of divine connection.
For too long, conservative or literalist voices have used the Bible to exclude, shame, and silence, leading many of us to disregard the text altogether. But the Bible is still speaking to us, if we know where to look. This book invites readers of all backgrounds—religious, secular, spiritual but not religious—to engage with the Bible as a living conversation. With warmth, clarity, and a fresh look at Jewish tradition, The Torah Is an Open Book reclaims sacred text as a space for dialogue, transformation, and moral courage, where questioning, wrestling, and interpreting are not only allowed—they're sacred.
Sojourners Magazine (Volume Editor)
For five decades, Sojourners magazine has been deeply engaged with the world while calling its readers to a new kind of life and faith rooted in justice and peace. Light for the Way is a powerful, yet meditative collection of pieces from the last fifty years of Sojourners magazine, exploring how contemplative practices, rest, simplicity, environmental engagement, and communal care are essential for sustaining our resistance and repairing our world.
When everything feels gray and hopeless, curiosity emerges as an unexpected path back to color and life. Through personal stories, spiritual reflection, and practical ideas, Sacred Curiosity reveals how curiosity slows us down when life feels overwhelming, builds bridges across our deepest divisions, pushes past shame toward liberation, and rewilds our domesticated spirits. In this book, Britney Winn Lee invites us to follow breadcrumbs of wonder toward a more generous, hopeful way of being.
Birdwatching is a delight, a deepening. It puts us in touch with the ineffable, and it draws us toward self-denial for the sake of love. Birding brings us close to hope, abundance, and joy. In fact, it looks a lot like prayer. In Watch and Wonder, naturalist, birder, and Episcopal priest Ragan Sutterfield delves into how birdwatching shapes our souls. Whether you are a serious birder with an extensive life list or a casual observer of hawks along the highway, this book is an invitation to wonder and awe.
Fishing is an exercise in hope. In a world where every answer is at our fingertips, fishing is transformative for its sheer unpredictability. Priest and fisherman Pete Nunnally loves to teach people how to fish for fish and, through that, how to fish for what their soul is yearning for: to come alive. In Catching Hope, he takes his readers fishing with him. Along the way you'll learn how fishing connects the human condition to the divine presence in all things. And even if you never go fishing, this book will open your heart to the hidden wisdom and beauty found at the water's edge.
Rocks. Cast iron skillets. Portraits. Calendars. Shoes. The regular objects of our lives can be conduits of God's love and grace—if we notice them. In Souvenirs of the Holy, join Laurie M. Brock on a journey of spiritual direction through everyday things, and discover the sacred in the ordinary. Reflect on the items in your life that connect you to a God who dwells within and beyond the material world. With creative ideas for praying with objects, this book is ideal for book clubs, church circles, and small groups seeking deeper, more tangible spiritual experiences.
Prayer, Meditation, and Mindfulness
Beginning in around the third century CE, a group of monastics known as the desert mothers and fathers retreated to the deserts of northern Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to pursue lives of silence and prayer. A key phrase, repeated often among the sayings of the desert mothers and fathers, is "Give me a word." Fast-forward many centuries to the present day, and we find the practice of seeking a word being reclaimed by the spiritually minded in new ways. Give Me a Word will gently lead you through the process of receiving your word, testing its resonance, and embracing its meaning.
What if desert elders from more than a millennium ago could walk beside us and nourish our spirits now? Desert spirituality doesn't mean going it alone; it means finding companions to walk with us. The Way of the Desert Elders is a spiritual expedition into the stories and wisdom of ancient, desert-dwelling Christians, who show us how to forge faith at the edges of empire.
Can the Bible be saved? More and more Christians are troubled by how difficult passages in the Bible can be used to promote sexism, homophobia, hostility to other faiths, and other problems—but a sterile, "academic" reading of the sacred text seems spiritually unfulfilling. Carl McColman reminds us that there is an ancient "third way" of approaching the Bible: reading scripture like a mystic. Read the Bible like a Mystic will help Christians find an expanded relationship with their sacred textbook, and it will also invite all people to bring together the wisdom of the written word with the wisdom of the contemplative life and the call to foster peace, justice, and equality in our world.
Also available from Carl McColman is The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism: An Essential Guide to Contemplative Spirituality.
Pray and meditate along with saints through this luminous collection of one hundred block prints by artist Kreg Yingst, curator of the Instagram account @psalmprayers. Mystics like Teresa of Avila, Howard Thurman, Black Elk, and Fannie Lou Hamer come alive. Everything Could Be a Prayer is a rich resource for private prayer and communal reflection.
Prayer has long sustained movements for social change. Ritual gives shape to our desire for justice, and liturgy lends power to our work. With more than fifty resources from eighty contributors, We Pray Freedom is useful for individual reflection, corporate worship, and protest and action. Through liturgies of liberation, join a movement that bears witness to the justice of God and to human faith, suffering, protest, and love.
For books specifically about faith deconstruction, click here to view our resources.
Searching for faith and spirituality resources for kids? Click here to view resources from our sister imprint, Beaming Books.
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