Reading list

Nonfiction

• Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church by Vijay Gupta

• Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

• The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks

• Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood by Aimee Byrd

• Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren

• Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America by Jeff Chu

• Not in It to Win It by Andy Stanley 

• Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu

• I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown

• The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis (I read the version adapted for young people - I'm sure the grown up version is good too.)

• The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr

• Rediscovering Scripture's Vision for Women: Fresh Perspectives on Disputed Texts by Lucy Peppiatt and Scot McKnight

• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez 

• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

• The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture, and the Kingdom by Andrew Peterson

• The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

• Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans

• Every Moment Holy by Douglas Kaine McKelvey 

• Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson  

• Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life by Tish Harrison Warren

• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

• A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken 

Fiction

• Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim’s Tale by Ian Morgan Cron

  • "And for the first time in years, the enormousness of the story burst forth like an expanding universe in my chest, and I was grateful it was mine."

• Jayber Crow: A Novel by Wendell Berry

  • "You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out―perhaps a little at a time."

"And how long is that going to take?"

"I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps."

"That could be a long time."

"I will tell you a further mystery," he said. "It may take longer." 

• Green Ember Series by S.D. Smith 

  • "For the mended wood and the whole wounded world, bear the flame."

• The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson

  • "He moved through the days in peace and wonder, for his whole story had been told for the first time, and he found that he was still loved."

• The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein

  • "That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world."