Summer Reading: What Book Has Changed Your Life?

Tripp Fuller

Today, the church is just realizing the power and imagination of the whole church doing theology. It is often really hard to explain and introduce your average American church-goer to all the different theologies we are finally hearing as the theological pulpit is being expanded to include a much more diverse representation of God's humanity! The thing is, we really need to hear and learn from these voices, and it is saddening to see so many churches continuing to go on as if theology still sounds best in a privileged West, White, and baritone key.
Jon Sobrino's book Jesus the Liberator first made this impression on me, changing the way I think theologically and the way I attempt to live out my Christian life. The best book I know at introducing all these voices is Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God. No one I have recommended it to has regretted reading it! I also have interviewed her about the book on my podcast here.

Tripp Fuller is a Baptist minister serving Neighborhood Church and Ph.D. student at Claremont School of Theology. He blogs at Homebrewed Christianity.

Kara Root

Almost everything I read, if it is well-written and thoughtful about this business of being human in the world God loves, ends up affecting my faith life, and coming out in my sermons in one way or another. For that reason ten years is an overwhelming span and most affected is a sweepingly intimidating pronouncement. Frederick Buechner, Barbara Brown Taylor, Anne Lamott, and Parker Palmer help me wrestle with the intersection of life and scripture and faith, and big shifts in faith and belief emerge from small doses of Bonhoeffer, Moltmann, Brueggeman, Ray Anderson, and Douglas John Hall.

But I am going to risk the truth here and admit that I have been most impacted by the things my practical theologian husband has written. Having spent countless hours as proofreader and sounding board (not to mention living through many of the personal illustrations) has made the concepts and quests within his books flesh themselves out in my life and ministry in tangible ways. So I'll share about one of them.

The Promise of Despair by Andrew Root looks at our post-modern context where meaning, authority, belonging, and identity all are in constant flux and we struggle to make sense of life and see God within it. Drawing from Luther's Theology of the Cross, it explores Christ's presence with us in our deepest suffering and most haunting questions. This book continually challenges me to live a life of fearless honesty, preach in a way that names the places of godforsakenness in order to seek God within them, and share mutually in each other's joy and pain, where we encounter Jesus Christ.

As far as what Christians should read more of, I would simply say, well-written fiction. Pull up your beach chair with the likes of Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Tyler, Kate DiCamillo, or John Irving; people who write good stories dig under the surface of human existence and relationships and creatively ask the question that defines our humanity: what is a lifetime and why do we live it? I believe God meets us in our openness to enter this question and seek its unfolding answer in our living. 

Or, if you absolutely insist on a transformative challenge, pick up Wayne Muller's Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives. This book has enriched my own faith and family life, and kicked off a whole new way of being in the life of my congregation.

Kara Root is Pastor of Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis, MN and blogs at in the hereandnow.

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