Online Bookstore: 2023

In The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the costly grace we all receive from God through God's work to follow Jesus daily. Grace is costly because it asks us to accept Christ's yoke, share his passion, and follow him in the political praxis of love and justice. Simultaneously, the cost of discipleship invites us to remember the hiddenness of our discipleship in prayer time, devotion, and almsgiving in loving God, self, and the other. So, in the 21st century, where Christian practices seem divided, some political and others personal, The Cost of Discipleship reminds us of the costly grace through which Christ invites us to be everyday disciples in both public and private commitments.

In this book, Metaxas invites us to explore Bonhoeffer's everyday spiritual and emotional challenges and how he discerned and lived out his vocation and call as pastor in a time when fundamental nationalism dictated his nation's religious and political realities. We also learn about Bonhoeffer's childhood and how the respectful father, Karl Bonhoeffer, and his mother, Paula Bonhoeffer's strong faith, impacted his curious and critical formation. Bonhoeffer's young adult adventure also introduces us to the intelligent, confident, and beautiful Maria and how her authentic love melted his heart. Besides, Bonhoeffer's international pastoral and academic experiences shaped his intercultural life. For example, during his visit and study at Union Theological Seminary, Bonhoeffer was surprised at how students at Union were divided between fundamentalist and progressive camps without solid arguments for their claims. And in his friendship with diverse students and visits to the Black churches, he was touched by Negro Spirituality at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. His experience in the Black church shaped his theology of life together. In the end, Bonhoeffer's firm faith reminds us that our faith transforms death into the beginning of life and affirms the road to freedom. "This is the end… For me, the beginning of Life."

In Life Together, Christian communities are reminded of what it means to be Christ for others. In the Word, sacraments, prayer, and service, Christians are invited for togetherness to be with and for one another as God's self-revelation in the world. Again, in the 21st century, this book is a good resource for congregations in reminding the power of Christians' togetherness in finding belonging and flourishment through embodied presence and being in one another.

The latest book from Barbara Kingsolver, a Pulitzer Prize winning American writer, is a 20th century Appalachian folk riff on a 19th century British novel by Charles Dickens. Set in a rural corner of Virginia, the story involves family and football and addiction, told through the voice of the main character. It resonates with as much candor as Dickens offers in David Copperfield and more complexity than J.D. Vance provides in Hillbilly Elegy. If you’re interested in more books about the geographical region, see further recommendations by Kendra Winchester, founder of Read Appalachia: https://bookriot.com/books-about-appalachia/

Fall semester, I am teaching a course on theologies of disability, and this is one of the assigned texts. As the Introduction explains, the book “is about God’s time and what it means to live one’s life faithfully within the time that has been gifted to us.” John Swinton, a nurse and a pastor, explains that God’s time is generous, gentle, and slow. Living faithfully means awareness of our finitude, acceptance of our inability to control time, and willingness to slow down in order to love more fully. Aiming toward these ends allows us to walk with God and with one another in ways that are neither rushed nor laden with expectations of productivity.

This collection of essays was written after the author received the diagnosis of a rare cancer. Wiman, a poet and teacher, takes us on his lived pilgrim journey toward death, which all of us walk (albeit with less awareness most of the time). He gives the reader experiential glimpses of wrestling with faith and doubt and explores the ways human and divine love emerge in the midst. I carried this book with me as I sojourned with a dear friend in the final months of her life. There is some dark comfort in its pages.

It’s time to update both your pew Bibles and your personal Bible. If you have the Olive Tree Bible Study app on your phone, as I do, you should also download the newly available tagged NRSVue with grammatical lemmas (https://bit.ly/3NFsmif). What is the NRSVue? Recently the National Council of Churches (NCC) tasked the SBL with updating the NRSV after 30 years of use, and the result is monumental (over 20,000 revisions to the text). I had the privilege of being on the team that did the work, and I could not be more pleased with the result. Do not keep using your thirty-year old NRSV, when we have worked so hard at getting you an updated Bible rendered using the most recent discoveries and the best of current scholarship. Unfortunately, the precipitous drop in the study of the biblical languages in our seminaries means this may be the last updated Bible that the Christian churches will produce. In thirty years, we just will not have enough scholars of the Bible any more to make it possible.

The title may sound unfriendly, but as the author aptly states, for Christianity to be anything, it must stand against some things. That said, Olson is not a Fundamentalist and is certainly not against our modern striving for social justice, ending racism, and saving the environment. He is against theologies tracing back to the 18th-century German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and running through Walter Rauschenbusch’s social gospel and on to John Shelby Spong and Marcus Borg. Spong and Borg receive some of Olson’s most searing criticism. The “god” of these thinkers turns out to be merely the projection of the human need for self-esteem onto ultimate reality! Such a “god,” of course, is not worthy of worship and is nothing like the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob, Rachael, and Leah. The biblical God is supernatural, intimate, and interactive. It is especially tragic that liberalism robs God of the commitment to judge evil and robs Christ of the cross.

What is so refreshing about this very popular book is how McCaulley refuses to squeeze into a mold either on the right or on the left. He firmly rejects the need to join the camp of the liberal Bible-bashers just because he is passionate about fighting racism. His upbringing taught him to treasure the Bible, not bash it. His black church community found justice, encouragement, and hope in the Scriptures, not oppression. As a gifted biblical scholar, he deftly leads the reader through a genuinely constructive black theological reading of biblical texts. The journey is academically sound while also deeply true to the wisdom and faithfulness of the historic Black Church tradition. What a treat! He finds in the Exodus narrative, for example, that a mixed crowd went up from Egypt to Canaan, that is, a crowd of different ethnic groups that included black and brown bodies newly liberated from slavery. This diversity is no accident but relates directly to God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah of spiritual leadership of many diverse peoples and nations. Black and brown readers do not face the task of finding themselves in someone else’s story. This is their story from the get-go. All of us are in it!

Christians have a rich musical tradition in worship to be sure, but in many ways, the focus in western traditions is on speaking, on sight, on vision. It is by Word that God that gives rise to creation; it is as the Word that the Johannine gospel imagines the central place of Christ in the order of all things. But this is not the case with all traditions. Some focus on sound more than on speech… on musical hearing rather than sight. As an exercise in comparative theology, Christians might read Guy Beck’s fascinating exploration of the role that sound, not speech, plays in certain Hindu traditions. Coming out of the text, we might then ask: what can we learn about our own tradition from an immersion in the sonic traditions of Hinduism? What does the Christian tradition sound like? How might our tradition be enriched if we figured Christ as God’s music, as well as God’s Word?

While Egeria’s description of the rituals of the Christian community in Jerusalem in the fourth century are deeply significant to the Episcopal Church’s reclamation of Proper Liturgies for Holy Week in the 1979 Prayer Book, there is more to Egeria’s pilgrimage than her visit to Jerusalem alone. From Mt. Sinai to Edessa to Constantinople, Egeria’s account of what she saw and the liturgies she witnessed is entrancing – a view into another world. This new translation by McGowan and Bradshaw offer a fresh take on her journey, and a fresh take on Egeria herself. This is a fine addition to any library of important fourth century texts with relevance to ancient Christian faith and worship.

Another entry in Fordham University Press’s very good line of Comparative Theology: Thinking Across Traditions, this work is a stimulating and provocative revisitation of Christian models of the atonement in the light of comparative learning from other religions. It addresses some of the most contested historical and contemporary issues in the Christian theology of atonement and beautifully models how engagement with other traditions – in this case, Islamic, Buddhist, Daoist, Hindu, and Jewish sources can send us back to our own tradition with fresh eyes and enriched imaginations.

The cover photo of George H.W. and Barbara Bush leaning toward each other drew me into this book about their life and faith. The vignettes that the Rev. Russell J. Levenson Jr. shared as he wrote with intimacy and respect allow readers a rare glimpse into the private lives of very public people. Levenson is a VTS alum, class of 1992, and is rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, where the Bushes worshipped for years. The personal accounts in the book make the Bushes very real. Their wit and wisdom shine through the pages. The book also provides a behind-the-scenes look at one priest’s witness and pastoral care to the Bushes and their families. This book is for anyone who likes to know the “back stories” of public people. It is also for anyone who wants to read a primer on pastoral care at its best.

This book is for anyone wishing to “talk” to the Virgin Mary. Recommended to me last February by the Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, 25th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, after attending his forum entitled “Mary and the Communion of Saints,” this book peeled back the layers of my image of Mary. In this book, Mary seeks rest and relaxation by “dropping in” on a middle-aged writer and asking for a temporary place to stay. The writer is not particularly religious, but she decides to embrace the experience with Mary. They become friends, and through experiences and shared conversations, the writer begins to unpack the complex and powerful figure that is Mary, Mother of God. This book will make you laugh, cry, and hopefully understand Mary as a venerated saint and a mother. In fact, The Mother.

Not found online (may be self-published).
This book came to me by the author's grace, Nancy Herzog Walker, who gifted me a copy. Her father was the late Rev. Robert D. Herzog (VTS' 63), who died of cancer in 2008. As a preacher's kid, or "pk," Nancy struggled through her growing up years to understand her father's ministry, mainly his focus on death, dying, and end-of-life issues. During her father's last 100 days, she started to understand the meaning and purpose of his ministry to others.
In this book, which is part memoir and part personal reflection, Nancy Herzog Walker journeys with her father from diagnosis to death. She chronicles family moments, doctor's appointments, and other seemingly ordinary events that made God manifest in their lives. As the book title implies, it was during her father's death that Nancy understood the story of his life.

Rarely have I encountered so much theology in so small a book. Maximus the Confessor was, for too many years, on my list of “theologians I’ll read soon.” Maximus has a seemingly effortless ability to show the deep interconnectedness between doctrines, to delve deeply into doctrinal tensions without falling into incoherence, and to appreciate the smallest details of human struggle by bringing them into the heart of theology.

This is an enthralling telling of Pauli Murray’s life written by her niece Rosita Stevens-Holsey and by Terry Catasús Jennings. They write Murray’s story in an accessible manner intended for middle-school readers—though older readers will also be inspired! Following the example of Rev. Murray’s profound poetry, the biography is written in verse, such that Murray’s life jumps off the page into our hearts and souls. Murray’s life is a testimony to persistent longing for justice and keeping hope amid adversity. When the doctoral summer residency celebrated Pauli Murray’s feast day last summer, Stevens-Holsey generously came to campus to offer greetings from the Murray family. Her presence was a wonderful gift, as is her book!

Eze offers an account of reason emerging out of diversity and difference. For Eze, humans do not reason over and above the world, nor apart from our experience in history, but rather reason arises from our experience of making sense of the diversity of experiences and peoples we encounter. “Rationality is a bridge over a breach: it is a practical response to the difficult condition of thought in the world, and of experience in history,” he writes. While Eze’s earlier work displayed how racism has become embedded within our thought, this book provides a philosophical grounding for reasoning that enables us work through sins of racism and colonialism—not through reasoning that overpowers or dominates, but through reasoning that is always already interconnected with others.

While they may not always recognize it, pastors and anthropologists have a lot in common. Both explore the innerworkings of mundane and ordinary community life, portraying the social meanings embedded within them. Pastors portray this meaning through things like sermons, while anthropologists do so through their ethnographies. Anthropologist Joel Robbins has been at the forefront of putting anthropology and Christian theology in conversation over recent decades, much to the benefit of each. His latest book provides textured portrayals of Christian practices—notably ones that Episcopalians often avoid, like charismatic churches and the prosperity gospel—providing insightful reflection on classic doctrines like the atonement while also showing promising areas for doctrinal reflection overlooked by Christian theologians.

Just released! A VTS alumna and Episcopal priest, Felicetti addresses a pastoral issue that is pervasive, yet seldom addressed in the church today. She showcases the lives and ministries of 25 childless women, from biblical women to mystics and reformers to activists and clergy, interwoven with the story of her own personal journey with being “barren,” a title she has come to claim as fruitful and lifegiving.

Dr. Cooper, a history professor at the University of London, pieces together the stories of the four women in St. Augustine’s life by mining Augustine’s references to them in the Confessions, augmented by her rich depiction of the social strata of women in the fifth century. She brings vividly to life the empress Justina, Augustine’s jilted fiancée Tacita, Augustine’s mother Monnica, and his long-term “concubine,” whose real name is unknown and who is now referred to by historians “Una.” A fascinating insight into women’s lives in the early church period.

Reading Kate Cooper’s book on the women in Augustine’s life inspired me to dip into his Confessions again. If journaling prayers feeds your spiritual life, then this book will be an inspiration. I recommend this fresh translation of the Confessions by Benignus O’Rourke OSA. Unlike the stodgy prose of earlier translations, this one is intended to be readable, the translator says, by a sixteen-year-old. “Then, Lord, little by little, with a gentle, compassionate hand, you worked on my heart and set it right…” (Book 6, chapter 5).

My first selection is obvious. Ruth is a biblical book for which I have deep affection and Ilana Pardes is a scholar whose work I admire greatly. And here they are together! Pardes is professor of Comparative Literature at Hebrew University and, in her “biography” of this biblical character, she explores the story of Ruth and its many afterlives. Pardes notes that writing a biography of a character from a short biblical story filled with gaps demands that the biographer become a gleaner, like Ruth herself - what a beautiful image. Pardes curates material from midrashim, kabbalists, artists, and modern-day film, demonstrating the power of one story to create multiple after lives. The sections of the book explore various interpretive traditions of Ruth in exile, as an American immigrant, and in the pastoral tradition in art. Pardes’ dialogic hermeneutic reminds us of the power of a reader’s context in the interpretive process, and the possibility of new meanings and new understandings that exist in even the shortest of texts. There are moments when this book inspires my intellect and other moments that speak to my soul. Pardes’ careful work as reader and researcher combined with her imagination makes for a most fruitful and generative read.

This spring VTS held its first Womanist Conference on our campus and I was prompted to return to this ground-breaking book by one of our guest speakers, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes. Dr. Gilkes’ cross-disciplinary brilliance is evident in her collection of essays about black women. In sections one and two, the reader is offered a glimpse into Gilkes’ insatiable intellectual curiosity coupled with the skills of a disciplined researcher as she reflects on the role and function of black women in the church and community. The third section, focused on “womanist culture,” includes a chapter entitled, “Some Mother’s Son and Some Father’s Daughter: Issues of Gender, Biblical Language and Worship.” What is striking about this chapter is how much progress has been made in our churches since its original publication in 2002, and yet how much work remains to be done, both responding to the existing subjects and expanding the conversation. The final section of the book, “Crisis, Confrontation and Conflict,” locates womanist thought in black women’s bodies, spirits and communities, reminding us, as Dr. Gilkes stated when she was with us, that Alice Walker’s definition of womanist still matters for all of us. This is embodied scholarship. Here is a collection of writings that forms the foundational work of womanist thought and theology and orients us for the work that remains.

Known as the “Nap Bishop” on Instagram, and founder of The Nap Ministry, Tricia Hersey’s message is physical, theological, political, and liberating. The chapters are organized in the order of “Rest,” “Dream,” “Resist,” and “Imagine,” embracing our wholeness. This work speaks to the soul, inviting us to remember that purpose given us by our creator may be in opposition to “grind culture.” There has been much attention given to rest and Sabbath lately. Tricia Hersey has been “laboring in the fields” of this embodied theology for years. Her message is clear. We need to find space for meditation and prayer. We need to find some time to take a nap. And now is a good time. Bodies that have been commodified by capitalism and their descendants will find the act of taking rest is subversive, liberating, and world-changing. These are lessons that all can benefit from. Hersey’s writing is provocative, funny, soul-wrenching, inspirational and filled with epiphanies. This is a book for your entire being. Read this book when you can be still or read this book so that you will make space to be still. This is practical, life-giving theology. Her work reminds me of the rationale for Sabbath in Deuteronomy 5:15,

Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,
and the LORD your God brought you out from there with
a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the
LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.


Rest is what free people do, and we prove our liberation in our ability to rest.

Referring to anthropology intelligence as the “Other AI” Gillian Tett makes a compelling case that “anthro-vision” is urgently needed to understand human behavior, markets, and organizations in order to cultivate compassion in an era of globalization. She demonstrates why financial and political models fail when they don’t account for culture. Tett, an academically-trained anthropologist turned journalist, highlights the capacity of the soft sciences to make the strange, familiar, and the familiar, strange. Fluent in ritual theory and a skilled participant observer, Tett raises practical questions with moral implications that challenge the reader to dismantle the taken-for-granted. Currently the chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large of the Financial Times, US, Tett will become Provost of King’s College, Cambridge in October. (Fun fact: She and I attended the same girls’ high school in North London, UK, albeit ten years apart!)

For years I have heard friends say that they read C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters during Lent. This year I decided to pick up the old classic again and let it work its wisdom on my own Lenten reflections. First published in February 1942, the story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter-in-training. This unique book’s popularity in both the UK and the US got Lewis on the cover of Time magazine in 1947, with a horned devil on his shoulder and an angel’s wing above his head. Eighty years later in our secularized and materialistic society, it is harder and harder for all of us to maintain an awareness, curiosity, and longing for the spiritual side of reality, perhaps especially in ‘church.’ And yet, I find it impossible to read even one of the 31 letters in this book and not see myself and my sincere but often clumsy desire for a relationship with God depicted in its pages. Like the Patient, I too am a believer but easily pulled from the abundant life in Christ toward thoughts and actions, however minor, that are ultimately empty idolatries. As Screwtape says to his student, “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one— the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…” As it did the first time I read it, The Screwtape Letters remind me of the power of the rhythms of my life that are being formed by my daily choices. Lewis reminds us that human lives are formed as much by countless minor choices as they are by major life events. I move toward Easter this year with heightened awareness of my minor but faithful daily choices for holiness, short moments of prayer, and deep breaths with the Holy Spirit. These tiny pieces of faithfulness are building the new life we receive in the baptismal font.

I loved Horse! It is a masterful braiding of distinct narratives across time, geography, and disciplines into a gripping story about horseracing, American history, and the Smithsonian. It examines ambition, resilience, and defeat with extraordinary detail and mystery. This is not a novel about horses. Pulitzer Prize-winning Geraldine Brooks’s ability to focus with keen detail on the science of horse musculature and psychology of human-animal relations resists the pitfall of sentimentalism or the temptation of anthropomorphism. The novel gallops from the antebellum South to running in Rock Creek Park, Washington DC as Brooks enlarges the true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington into an imaginative fusion of science and art, love and greed, and America’s haunting struggle with racism.

For decades I have been blessed to call Dr. Juan Oliver, until recently the Custodian of the Book of Common Prayer, my friend. His life is a testimony of faithfulness, joy and utter commitment to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ while forming others to do the same. The church and the world know Juan as a creative expert in liturgical theology. Shaped by Worship is a chance for a broader audience to see his loving mind at work explaining to us all that liturgy is a “time and a place set apart to do something significant in the presence of God.” What spoke to me in this humble and holy guide is Juan’s wholistic understanding of the role of worship in the larger mission of the Church to form all the baptized into universal priests in the world. Liturgy is not leaders and followers: liturgy opens the possibility for all people to become the Body of Christ that we share in worship. Like the elements of bread and wine, we are changed by our liturgical experience and we are invited by the Holy Spirit to cooperate with that change so that together with God, we are transformed in every aspect and every moment in our lives. In Shaped by Worship, Juan offers a passionate explanation of how this growth in grace happens. He “explores the process by which our worship forms us and helps us to make meaning and purpose in life.” In these pages you meet a friend, a pastor, a teacher and guide who will help you see that “meaning is not something inert, lying ‘out there’ or in a library but something we do: a type of human action essential to our humanity.” The more we understand the parts and paths of our worship, the more our lives join and share in the unfolding “treasure of meanings that we have accumulated over centuries as a living tradition.”

Skreslet is keen to put “master narratives” in their place because, he argues, they lead to unintended consequences such as the devaluation of indigenous voices and initiatives. In contrast, he is after a historical method. While seeking to avoid a new master narrative, he argues for a method grounded in speech act theory. On motivations in modern mission he identifies the mediation of salvation, knowledge-sharing, and the practice of benevolence. On the practice (or performance) of mission he names complex power encounters, projects for social change, translation, and counter-cultural or subversive witness.

Much here has been said before and, arguably, said best by those in the field of post-colonial studies. However, I do appreciate the centering of inter-cultural encounter as a way to read mission history. The gift of this book may be that it is both a study of the historiography and history of mission in one volume by one author. If it helps us tell a more complicated story of the past then we might not fall into oversimplifications in the present.

This is a resource to help congregations understand the nature of conflict, the Christian vision of peace, and priorities for life-giving witness today. Scholars, practitioners, and church leaders from Asia, East Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the United States of America, and West Africa join together to provide scriptural, theological, liturgical, contextual, and practical reflection. Scott MacDougall notes that the book “actually performs the kind of dialogue it advocates” and Cathy Ross calls it “a compelling read”. I can’t disagree!

Though McConnell has published two poetry pamphlets (2018 and 2019) this is her debut collection. In 1984, at three years old, McConnell witnessed the murder of her father at the hands of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). This collection invites you to accompany McConnell as she sifts through an archive box of materials relating to the life and death of her father, William. This is a singular contribution to the literature of “the Troubles”. It is also a study in grief, memory, and loss.