Here I Walk: A Thousand Miles on Foot to Rome with Martin Luther

Andrew L. Wilson (Brazos)

A fondness for hiking, paired with a scholarly interest in Martin Luther, gave the author an idea. To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Luther’s pre-Reformation pilgrimage to Rome, he and his wife would retrace the route themselves. “Surely,” he thought, “this would turn up something more than could an arid text; surely walking would divulge data hidden from the bookish, isolated scholar. Luther was a man, after all, with flesh and feelings, who occupied space, who felt and saw many things he never mentioned in writing.” Here I Walk takes readers through the sights and insights that the Wilsons encountered during their travels.

Transgender

Vaughan Roberts (The Good Book Company)

Many Christians probably thought they’d never see the day when men would identify as women, women as men, and both women and men as something other than women and men. In this short pamphlet, Roberts, an English churchman, runs through some basics of the biblical perspective on gender and biology. “There are two common responses to this [transgender] issue,” he writes: “an unquestioning ‘Yuck!’ and an unquestioning ‘Yes!’ Christians should avoid both these reactions. Rather than turning away from people in disgust . . . we need to remember that they are made in God’s image and deeply loved by him.”

Saving the Saved: How Jesus Saves Us from Try-Harder Christianity into Performance-Free Love

Bryan Loritts (Zondervan)

We all feel intense pressure to get our lives in order—to get fit, to get ahead, to get out of debt, to get a handle on our worst habits. Loritts, lead pastor of Abundant Life Fellowship in Silicon Valley, cries out against “the meritocracy” and invites us join the “revolution” Jesus launched against it. Walking through the Gospel of Matthew, Loritts addresses readers ready to “fire [the] inner lawyer—who is constantly cross-examining you, pointing out your deficiencies in an effort to get you to perform more—and instead look to Jesus, who offers you a better way of living.”

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