Blowing the Book Awards Starting Whistle
More than ever, in a modern media age, professional sports leagues want spotlights shining on them all year round, even while the actual players are resting and recuperating from the rigors of live competition.
Take the National Football League, for instance. The season itself only lasts for a matter of months. But football chatter hardly ever ceases, between the free agency signings, the draft-weekend spectacle, the schedule unveilings, the training camp ramp-up, and an insatiable rumor mill revolving around injury timetables, contract negotiations, and related scuttlebutt.
The CT Book Awards, mercifully, don’t generate anything like this nonstop buzz. But for something that only gets published once each year, it does loom over a surprisingly large chunk of the annual editorial calendar. By the time we put the finishing touches on one chapter of the awards, it’s nearly time to begin laying groundwork for the next.
So here we are again, ready to blow the starting whistle for this year’s contest. Authors and publishers: If you haven’t already, you’ll want to click on this link. It’s your ticket to all the information you’ll need about this year’s nomination process, from categories to deadlines to fees.
Everyone here at CT who has a hand in planning, overseeing, or troubleshooting the Book Awards knows how the whole production rests atop months of unseen, unglamorous labor. But we’ll always perform it gladly, even joyfully, for the sake of celebrating books that bring glory to God while equipping his saints.
What Supernatural Experiences Can and Can’t Show
After Ezra was born in 2021, Amber and I had a Friday evening relaxation ritual. Once the little guy got settled in bed, we would fire up old episodes of The X-Files, the 90s TV hit that followed two FBI agents tasked with unraveling spooky mysteries and paranormal oddities.
The X Files cultivated dramatic tension by pairing lead characters with conflicting worldviews. One echoed the show’s alien-curious tagline that “the truth is out there,” while the other was more comfortable operating within a basic Enlightenment framework of science and reason.
The resulting dynamics attested to an enduring fault line within the modern mind. We like to imagine ourselves as rational creatures, immune to superstitions, fairy tales, and belief in things that go bump in the night. But many people—owing to personal experiences, contrarian tendencies, or conspiratorial casts of mind—suspect there are more things in heaven and earth than dreamed of in official accounts of reality.
In Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World, Lee Strobel—best known as a former investigative journalist who investigated his atheism out of existence—considers the apologetical implications of phenomena that burst the bounds of rationalistic philosophies. Reviewing the book for CT is Harold Netland, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and the author of Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God.
“In defending the supernatural,” writes Netland, “Strobel is responding to those who embrace versions of naturalism, physicalism, or scientism. There is no question that each of these frameworks is influential today. But we should be careful not to exaggerate this influence.
“Strobel himself acknowledges that ‘interest in the supernatural is incredibly high in our culture.’ He cites a 2023 study from the Pew Research Center that found that eight out of ten Americans believe ‘there is something spiritual beyond the natural world.’ A more recent Pew study (from 2025) reveals that 86 percent of Americans believe that people have souls or spirits in addition to their physical bodies, and 83 percent believe in God or a universal spirit. In other words, American culture does not seem as disenchanted as we often assume.
“Seeing the Supernatural advances two central claims. First, that a broad range of phenomena indicate a spiritual or nonphysical dimension to reality, including continuing consciousness after death of the body. And second, that these phenomena provide a degree of evidential support for the truth of central Christian beliefs.
“Although related, the two claims are distinct. Regarding the first, Strobel amasses an impressive array of evidence suggesting that there is more to reality than what can be reduced to physical properties and processes. In one of the book’s strongest chapters, on the reality of the soul, neuroscientist Sharon Dirckx provides compelling reasons for rejecting the view that the mind (the center of consciousness) is identical to (or reducible to) the brain and neural activity.
“In expounding a ‘clear and compelling case for an existence beyond our physical world,’ Strobel is surely correct. The second claim, however, is more complex. To what extent do the phenomena Strobel identifies provide evidence for distinctively Christian beliefs? Particular phenomena might well point toward a spiritual dimension of some kind without entailing the truth of central Christian beliefs about God, angels, demons, heaven, and hell. In other words, the relevant evidence could be compatible with a variety of broader worldviews, and other considerations—such as a person’s background beliefs—might affect conclusions about the supernatural realm.”
This holiday season, we invite you to share comfort, quiet, or excitement with each person on your gift list. From beautifully illustrated Bibles and devotionals to novels and picture books,…
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Even amid scandals, cultural shifts, and declining institutional trust, we at Christianity Today recognize the beauty of Christ’s church. In this issue, you’ll read of the various biblical metaphors for the church, and of the faithfulness of Japanese pastors. You’ll hear how one British podcaster is rethinking apologetics, and Collin Hansen’s hope for evangelical institutions two years after Tim Keller’s death. You’ll be reminded of the power of the Resurrection, and how the church is both more fragile and much stronger than we think from editor in chief Russell Moore. This Lent and Easter season, may you take great courage in Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:18—“I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
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